GIFT OF
Mrs. William Deninan
THE
.ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A PARISIAN IN AMERICA.
Essays on various subjects concerning American
civilization.
BOSTON ARTISTS.
FANCIES.
IN THE PATH OF THE SOUL.
Essays on Literature, Music, and Art.
MY SENTIMENTAL ANCESTRESS.
THE SEVEN RICHEST HEIRESSES
OF FRANCE.
SIX GREAT PRINCESSES.
THE ESTHETIC PURPOSE
OF BYZANTINE ARCHI-
TECTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY THE
COUNT DE SOISSONS
PROEM BY G. P. GOOCH
LONDON
MURRAY AND EVENDEN, LTD,
PLEYDELL HOUSE
PLEYDELL STREET, FLEET STREET, B.C.
. . .
. .. .
' ' *
PROEM
OF the essays contained in this volume, that on
Edward Munch appeared in the Fortnightly Review,
while most of the others were published in the
Contemporary Review, to which Count de Soissons
has for many years been a valued contributor. Sir
Percy Bunting entertained a high opinion of his
work, and the Count has recorded his friendship
for the late Editor in the dedication of his work,
" My Sentimental Ancestress." As the successor of
Sir Percy, I have been asked to write a few words
of introduction.
During his years of residence in England the
author has built up a solid reputation as a critic
of literature and art, and he combines in a rare
degree the three essential qualifications of know-
ledge, insight, and expression. His wide acquaint-
ance with many aspects of civilization is evidenced
in all his writings, while his charming volumes
on the nieces of Mazarin and the unruly daughters
of the Regent exhibit his intimate familiarity with
the history of his own country. In the second
place he is gifted with the faculty of penetrating
behind the form to the spirit, of interpreting the
1
M121330
2 PROEM
thought of the poet and th,e artist, of seizing the
significance of a movement or a school. And finally
he has won an astonishing command over the
resources of our language. Few living Englishmen
possess such an easy mastery of the technique of
verbal values which are needed to express the shades
of meaning in a deeper analysis of thought and
emotion.
Some years ago the Count collected his studies
of Verlaine and D Annunzio, Hauptmann and
Sienkiewicz, Paderewski and Rodin, Seganlini and
Liebermann, in a volume entitled " In the Path
of the Soul." The present work opens up new
vistas along that winding and perilous track. It
is indeed devoted exclusively to art ; but in studying
the masterpieces of architecture, painting, and music,
he fixes his gaze above all on the human beings
who created them. Art, he declares emphatically,
is the most sincere and the most direct expression
of the soul.
The opening essay on Byzantine Architecture
breathes that generous appreciation of the value
of the Eastern Empire to civilization and Christen-
dom which the world is at last learning to recog-
nize. The incomparable majesty of Santa Sophia,
again, has never inspired a more full-throated
paean. Byzantine art was the mingling of East
and West, the marriage of colour and form, and
its glowing rays are traced Westwards to the shrines
of Venice and Monreale.
PROEM 3
The greater part of the volume is devoted to
painting. The second and third essays deal at
length with the art of China and Japan, which
is pronounced as mature as that of Europe. In both
cases the creations are closely related to the life
of the time, and the parallelism between the different
stages of political and artistic development is clearly
established. Our critic writes with a warmth of
appreciation and a delicacy of insight worthy of
Mr. Laurence Binyon, and he does not hesitate to
bracket Hokusaj with Turner as the greatest land-
scape painter in the world.
Returning to the West, he selects five artists for
discussion, three of whom have filled Europe with
their fame. He speaks of Ingres with a whole-
hearted devotion rarely inspired by that consummate
master of form. While noting his debt to David and
Raphael, he denies that the creator of " La Source "
was immured in an icy classicism, and depicts him
as a man of passionate temperament whose women
were at once vigorous and invigorating. For the
utterly dissimilar genius of Boecklin he has even
higher praise. He declares the great romanticist the
most interesting and original painter of modern
times, and suggests that no colourist equals him 1 ,
with the possible exception of Giorgione. To the
rare genius of Manet and to his explosive influence
on the destinies of French painting he also pays
a striking tribute.
Felicien Rops and Munch have inspired a good
4 PROEM
many monographs abroad, but are little known in
England ; and the essays devoted to them will for
that reason be read with special interest. The
Belgian etcher, who settled in Paris at the age of
thirty, was obsessed by a dark, brooding sensu-
alitypoisoned, tortured, maddened by the concep-
tion of woman. The unsavoury subject is treated
with much discretion by our critic, who does full
justice to the wonderful gifts of the artist who was
at the same time a master of social satire. Of the
Norwegian, another fevered and passionate spirit
whose elemental greatness is slowly dawning on
the world, he writes with. deep sympathy and under-
standing. Munch, he declares, expresses the
phenomena of the soul directly through colour.
No pages in this volume are more brilliant than
those which describe the intolerable oppression of
the Scandinavian landscape on the hyper-sensitive
moral retina of the artist.
The appreciation of Strauss reveals the author as
a master of the language of sound not less than of
colour. We are conducted through the series of
operas, from the Wagnerian " Guntram '' and
" Feuersnot " to the clashing discords of " Salome "
and " Electra," and we finally emerge on the sunlit
landscape of the " Rosenkavalier," which our critic
hails as a return to sanity and truth. No composer,
however gifted, has a right to be incomprehensible.
Thus the task which Count de Soissons set out
to accomplish is achieved. He communicates lo his
PROEM 5
readers his frank enjoyment of every variety of
art, and he teaches them to decipher the message
which it brings from the distant horizons of the
kingdom of the soul.
G. P. GOOCH.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROEM ....... 1
THE ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE . 9
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA . . . .33
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN . . . .63
JEAN AUGUST INGRES . . . . .89
EDWARD MUNCH ...... 103
FELICIEN ROPS ...... 125
ARNOLD BOECKLIN . . . . . . 143
RICHARD STRAUSS ...... 161
EDWARD MANET . 187
THE
AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE
THE ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF BYZANTINE
ARCHITECTURE
THE snowy barriers of the Himalayas do not so
divide the two mighty civilizations of Asia the
Chinese communism of Confucius, and the Indian
individualism of Vedas, for Asia is one in regard
to love for the Universal and the Ultimate as the
notions of form and colour divide the East and the
West. This is the standing antithesis between the
art of the two continents. The art of the West rests
on stability and decisiveness of form, which pertain
almost exclusively to the intellectual part of the
human Ego, whilst the art of the East depends on
changeableness and volatility of colour, which
belong to the province of the senses. The Western
temperament, being intellectually strong, excels in
form,* while the Eastern is sensually weak, and
therefore its superiority rests on colour. This
verity becomes evident when one travels eastwards
through the European towards the Asian Continent ;
as soon as one passes the Prussian boundaries,
within which the dominating colours, especially in
dress, are grey and black, the dominion of bright
hues seems to increase with every mile as one
advances towards the mysterious East ; the bright
>; Edinburgh Review, October, 1904.
11
12 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
shades of red, blue, yellow, and green shine in
the variegated dresses of peasants, who look like
lovely wild flowers in the midst of the verdure of
the fields of Galicia, Malo-Russia, and the Ukraine ;
and when one reaches Moscow, when one ascends
the heights where the golden Kremlin glitters, and
from that eminence looks on the Mecca of Russia,
one is amazed at the liveliness and variety of rain-
bow-like colours lavishly displayed on walls, roofs,
cupolas, and domes of churches and houses. One
realizes then how universal is the sense of colour in
the East, how deeply it pervades the whole of life,
how widely it is diffused even on trivial objects.
In the Orient, where life is in its most primitive
and simplest stage, colour is manifested in the
strongest manner and in the richest hues ; so much
so that it becomes a sense, that it is a natural
element, while with us it is an acquired taste, put
on the surface as a decoration of life and not a
part of it. Colour is not indigenous to Western
life, and its presence may be rightly attributed to
Eastern influence, which came to us by channels
too many to enumerate ; but it is sufficient to say
that Alexander the Great and his followers brought
to the West the polychrome decoration from the
East, that this was inherited from Byzantium,
whence it came to Venice and thence spread
throughout the whole of Europe, while the invasion
of the Moors introduced colour into Spain. If we
admire the glow in pictures of some of the masters
of the Netherlands, it was brought there by that
conjurer of brilliant hues, Rubens, from Venice, and
the proud mistress of the Adriatic had learned it
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 13
from her ally and friend, Constantinople. Reynolds,
the greatest English colourist after Turner, brought
also his rich suffusion of hues, and his great skill
in melting down the obstruction of form from the
town in which St. Mark's is the centre and heart of
colour inspiration.
It is clear, then, that one of the two essential
elements of art, colour, is supplied by the emotional
and sensuous East ; the other element, form, has
been furnished by the intellectual and self -restrained
West. As the great qualities of the colour of the
East are simplicity and strength, one finds the same
attributes in the form of the West. The form of
the West and colour of the East are remarkable for
opposite characteristics, for while Western feeble
temerities of half tones and neutral tints look
debilitated when compared with the opulent and
full tones of Eastern colour, the capricious, involved,
eccentric, confused, and fantastical shapes of
Eastern form in China, India, Japan, Persia, and
Arabia look weak, unstable, and undecided when
compared with the Western form, full of virility,
precision, restraint, and serenity. This is the result
of the difference in the temperaments of the people
according to Hippolyte Taine of the climate the
East being inhabited by races who are impotent
because of their emotional character, and conse-
quently wanting in that energy, strength of purpose,
concentration, and sober judgment so necessary for
the perfect mastery of form. It is true that in
the classic temple, which was the simple con-
ception of strong intellect, there was a certain
amount of colour ; but in Greek architecture,
14 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
ruled by the law of proportions, by the sense of
decision and exactness, which constitute the founda-
tion of the whole effect of structure, it was only
like a smile on a lovely countenance, and but
helped to produce the play of light and shadow,
lending expression and animation to lintel con-
struction of stone and marble, in which horizontal
and perpendicular lines have a definite reciprocal
relation ; it was not essential to it.
The union of form and colour was to produce a
perfect work of art, for which the great qualities
of power, of combination, of dogged perseverance,
of steadfast endurance and self-sacrifice, were
necessary. To accomplish this great work Ihe
Byzantine Greeks were called. Antioch and
Alexandria * cultivated the ancient Hellenic tradi-
tions, but they modified them under the influence
of the East. Pursuing their example, Byzantium,
a new town, having taken up in her turn the direc-
tion of the Greek art, was going to follow a road
until now unknown. Hellenic culture influenced
Byzantine art,f while the East influenced the in-
heritance of free Greece, and taught her the hieratic
gravity of attitudes, and especially the magic of
colour. The Byzantine art grew on the soil on
which the capital of the triumphant Christ was built,
and that new art was going to realize a dream of
grandeur the union of form and colour. The Edict
of Constantine, promulgated in 323 A.D., established
:;: Histoire de VArt, by A. Michel ; see chapter on Byzantine
Art, by Gabriel Miller.
t Orient oder Rom, by Strzygowski. Fondements HcUeniques
de VArt Byzantin, by Ajnalov.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 15
the capital of the Eastern Empire at Byzantium
originated by colonists from Megara, in the seventh
century B.C., and it was there that there was to be
created a new and wonderful masterpiece of art,
in which the genius of the Byzantines succeeded
in fusing in one peerless whole the Western, well
defined and perfectly balanced form, with the elusive
and capricious colour brought from the dreamy
East by the victorious ancestors of the Greeks, and
appropriated by their active and cultured colonists.
Previously to this the unsurpassable Greek genius
had gathered the architectural fragments, forms, and
lines from Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, and had
harmonized them in a perfect classical temple ; now,
stimulated by the opportunity furnished by the
demands of a new capital of a great Empire, the
Byzantines appropriated from the East the diffused
attempts at colour delineation and, uniting them
with their former achievement in regard to form,
created a new and perfect style, which was properly
and rightly called Byzantine, because it was in
Byzantium that were shaped, co-ordinated, and har-
monized, new forms, formulas, and canons ; it was
there that were manifested and realized aspirations
which must be regarded as la propre raison d'etre
de la nouvelle cite.
Under Justinian art reached its full expression
and its golden age. When the lowest dregs of the
people in Byzantium burnt, on the 15th of January,
532. the pre -Justinian church called Sophia, the
work of restoration began on the 23rd of the follow-
ing month, and the solemn dedication of the new
structure took place on December 26, 537 ! It was
16 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
dedicated to nothing less than " Holy Wisdom,"
and it illustrates well the great wisdom of the ruler
at whose command it was erected ; it shows in
the highest degree the genius of the Byzantine
Greeks, personified in Anthemius of Tralles and
Isidorus of Miletus, the greatest architects that ever
lived. The splendour and beauty of Santa Sophia
shine above all man's creation, for it is a marvel
of audacious logic, an inimitable and exceptional
success. However, one must bear in mind that
whilst the greatest eulogies are rightly bestowed
upon that church the most perfect yet erected by
any Christian people those praises must be applied
only to the perfect representation of the Byzantine
interior, for externally the building possesses little
architectural beauty beyond what is due to its mass,
and the varied outline arising from the mechanical
contrivances necessary to resist the thrust of its
internal construction.* The internal arrangements
are complete and perfect, both from a mechanical
and from an artistic point of view.
In numerous books on Byzantine architecture,
written by authors of all nations, we find the exact
description of details, excellent reproductions of
decorations, scrupulous measurements of propor-
tions, of mouldings, and an abundance of rhapsodic
exclamations over its beauty ; but all that, while it
enlarges our detailed knowledge of the subject, does
not give us the slightest notion as to what aesthetic
purposes the Byzantine architects had while
* History of Architecture in all Conn fries, by James
Fergusson.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 17
creating a new and original style, and it does not
help us to formulate a clear aesthetic estimate of their
achievement. Thanks to Winckelmann, Lessing,
and Goethe, who still remain unrivalled in the pro-
vince of art criticism, we have quite a clear idea
that the creation of a study of form, perfect in
symmetry and precision, in which every line and
shape was to be harmonized into the realization of
a common aim, was the purpose of classic archi-
tecture ; but we do not know what end the carefully
described and faithfully depicted buildings of the
Christian Greek style served.
What, then, was the aesthetic purpose the Byzan-
tines had set before themselves, when they conceived
the plan of Santa Sophia, that wonderful and
almost fairy-like construction, which has aroused
the admiration and excited the astonishment of the
whole artistic world? Santa Sophia owes its
supreme position in the world of art not only to its
magnitude and splendour, but to the mechanical
skill of its builders, and especially to the intrinsic
beauty of the interior, unequalled by the great
mediaeval cathedrals of Europe ; for no Gothic
architect ever rose to the conception of a hall
100 ft. wide, 250 ft. in length, and 180 ft. high.
Neither the Pantheon nor any of the vaulted halls
of Rome equals the nave of Santa Sophia in extent,
or in the cleverness of construction, or in beauty of
design. Nor was there anything erected during the
ten centuries which elapsed from the transference
of the capital to Byzantium till the building of the
great cathedrals which can be compared with it.*
* James Fergusson, lib. cit.
2
18 THE .ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
It is evident from the Pantheon at Rome that the
Romans had mastered the difficulties of domic con-
struction long before the transference of the seat
of power to Byzantium, the Pantheon being, up to
this time, the largest single dome ever constructed
by the hand of man. Simple and grand as it un-
doubtedly is, it has several defects in its design,
and these defects the Byzantines remedied, and
accomplished the extraordinary achievement of
building the dome in the air and not on the ground,
as did the Romans in the Pantheon. They have
succeeded in raising into the immeasurable air the
spherical -shaped great helmet of the dome,* which
bending over, like the radiant heavens, embraces
the church, and makes it beautiful indeed. And
wondrous it is to see how the dome gradually
rises, wide below, and growing less as it reaches
higher.
It is true that other churches, built since, have
great domes : St. Peter's at Rome, and Santa Maria's
at Florence being each 126 ft. ; St. Paul's, London,
is within a foot of the same diameter ; but these
domes are only adjuncts to the whole of the church.
None of them is integral with or supported by the
rest of the design, and all tend to dwarf the buildings
they are attached to rather than heighten the general
effect. Santa Sophia's dome alone is a perfect
creation, for it constitutes an inseparable and in-
dispensable part of the wondrous whole. This
marvel of Greek genius was very ably described by
Procopius of Gaesarea f and sung by Paulus the
* roAo.
t DC jHKtiniani Imperatoris ced'ificiis, libri sex, Parisiis, 1537.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 19
Silentiary * in a beautiful poem written in Homeric
metre and phrasing.
The description of the church left by Procopius
is so masterly that at least a part of it should be
recalled to our minds on this very proper occasion.
He says :
' The church presents a most glorious spectacle,
extraordinary to those who are told of it. In height
it rises to the very heavens, and overtops the neigh-
bouring buildings like a ship anchored among them,
appearing above the rest of the city, while it adorns
and forms a part of it. The length and breadth
are so judiciously arranged that it appears to be
both long and wide without being disproportionate.
It is distinguished by indescribable beauty, excell-
ing both in size and harmony of its measures, having
no part excessive and none deficient ; being more
magnificent than ordinary buildings and much more
elegant than those which are not of so just a pro-
portion. The church is singularly full of light
and sunshine ; you would declare that the place is
not lighted by the sun from without, but that the
rays are produced within itself, such an abundance
of light there is.
"A spherical -shaped dome roXo? standing upon
this circle makes it exceedingly beautiful ; from
the lightness of the building, it does not appear
to rest on a solid foundation, but to cover the
place beneath as though it were suspended from
k He was the chief of the Royal Silentiaries ; they were Court
officials, whose office was an exalted one, as they ranked with
the Senators. They were employed on all kinds of service, not
unfrequently becoming the historians of the Emperor.
20 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
heaven by the fabled golden chain. All these parts,
surprisingly joined to one another in the air, sus-
pended one from another, and resting only on that
which is next to them, form the work into one
admirably harmonious whole, which spectators do
not dwell upon for long in the mass, as each indi-
vidual part attracts the eyes to itself. Seeing the
art which appears everywhere, men contract their
eyebrows and they look at each part, and are unable
to comprehend such workmanship, but always
depart from thence stupefied by their incapacity.
" Who could tell of the beauty of the columns
and marbles with which the church is adorned?
One would think that one had come upon a meadow
full of llowers in bloom ! . . . Whoever enters
there to worship perceives at once that it is not
by any human strength or skill, but by the favour
of God, that this work has been perfected ; the
mind rises sublime to commune with God, feeling
that He cannot be far off, but must especially love
to dwell in the place which He has chosen ; and
this is felt not only when a man sees it for the first
time, but it always makes the same impression upon
him, as though he had never beheld it before. No
one ever became weary of this spectacle, but those
who are in the church delight in what they see, and,
when they leave, magnify it in their talk/' *
Procopius' disquisition, most able and beautiful
in its simplicity, may be supplemented by the
explanation that as a single dome of the area of the
central and two semi-domes would not have
appeared nearly as large, and would have over-
* Procopius of Ccesarea, lib. cit.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 21
powered everything else in the building, the great
Byzantine architects avoided this by constructing
a cluster of domes, rising one above the other,
until they culminate in the wide, light, central dome.
Thus the whole system is raised on a succession of
concave surfaces, mutually self-supporting, and
lesser domes, half domes, and segments of domes,
holding together and rising like a pile of bubbles,
realize their appropriate issue at last in the central
perfect specimen, in which all culminate, and to
which they converge.* Nothing so perfectly artistic
has been built on the same scale before or since ;
in these arrangements Santa Sophia stands alone,
and appears unique among the great structures of
the world.
By building Hagia Sophia the Byzantines com-
pleted the Roman arch principle, for it is a com-
position arranged on such a basis. Those lofty
curves, supported until they sweep victoriously in
a culminating effort across the vast central gape,
are the most perfect representation that exists in
the world of the resources and possibilities that are
latent in that principle. The result they achieved,
in its purity and consistency, is far beyond anything
of which the Romans had any conception. This
clearly demonstrates that the Byzantines contributed
very largely, and in the most important manner,
to the development of the science of construction
by " the arrangement by which the thrust of the
dome was received by the pendentives the stone-
work between the arches in the shape of a triangle,
the lower angle of each triangle, being compressed
* Edinburgh Review, men. cit.
22 THE .ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
where the arches unite, is slender, while the upper
part becomes wider as it rises in the space between
them and transmitted by them to the supports,
and that they created a new domical style which will
remain for ever characteristic of their genius."
The daintily wrought and gracefully displayed
flexures, winding throughout the whole interior, well
delineated, marked out with distinctness, clearly
defined, and decidedly structural, were proposed as
studies of form, and were united in such clearly
marked arrangement that they constitute by them-
selves the most beautiful decoration ever conceived
for an interior of a building, and required no other
beautifying factor. However, this did not satisfy
the Byzantines, who received from the sensuous
East the love for colour, and consequently Santa
Sophia was most lavishly decorated with resplendent
hues of costly mosaics. As the pristine splendour
of the decorative colour effect has been dimmed by
time, and the Mussulmans have disfigured the adorn-
ment by partial obliteration and by the childish
displa}' of hideous round panels on which the
" Arab's wisdom " assumes anything but a decora-
tive effect, we must borrow from the Homeric des-
cription left us by Paulus the Silentiary, in order
to have some idea of the result of the influence
of the colour brought from the East, united with the
form of the West. Paulus sang :
" Yet who, even in the measure of Homer, shall
sing of the marble pastures gathered on the lofty
walls and spreading pavements of the mighty
church? These the iron with its metal tooth has
graved the fresh green from Carystus, and many-
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 23
coloured marbles from the Phrygian range, in which
a rosy blue mingles with white, or it shines bright
with flowers of deep red and silver. There is a
wealth of porphyry, too, powdered with bright stars,
that has once laden the river boat on the broad
Nile. You would see an emerald green from Sparta,
and the glittering marble, with many veins, which
the tool has worked in from the deep bosom of
the Italian hills, showing slanting streaks, blood-
red and livid white, or which the Lybian sun, warm-
ing with his golden light, has nurtured in the deep-
bosomed clefts of the hills of the Moors, of crocus
colour, glittering like gold ; and the produce of the
Celtic crags, a wealth of crystals, like milk poured
here and there on a flesh of glittering black. There
is the precious onyx, as if gold were shining through
it ; and the marble that the land of Atrax yields,
not from some upland glen, but from coast
lands ; in part, fresh green as the sea or emerald
stone, or again like blue cornflowers in grass, with
here and there a drift of fallen snow a sweet
mingled contrast on the dark shining surface."
This extraordinary lavishness of colour adorn-
ment satisfies the writers on Byzantine art, and they
use a profusion of superlatives to express their
wonderment ; but it did not content the genius of the
Byzantine Greeks, who realized that Santa Sophia
was only a most wonderful and perfect study of
form. The reason for their dissatisfaction probably
was that the rich mosaics did not become here an
architectural motive ; they did not determine the
architectural style ; they were reduced to a mere
surface covering, to a decorative adornment, and,
24 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
consequently, they were of no real significance and
true importance. The Byzantines understood this,
and as they were moreover prompted by the Oriental
sense of colour as yet unrealized in art, Santa Sophia
was left a solitary, unique, and inimitable manifesta-
tion of their most masterly attempt. They pre-
served the dome system of building, which they
found most appropriate for the purpose of interior
adornment, for the display of colour through the
means of the new decorative material, viz., mosaic.
Having come to the firm conclusion that if they
wished to give a proper recognition in art to colour,
the} r must attenuate and even remove the importance
of form, they determined to eliminate from their
new structures, friezes, pilasters, galleries, cornices,
architraves, and archivolts ; they further resolved
to retain from the domical architecture they created
while building Santa Sophia, rounded and curved
shapes, for they thought these more advantageous
for the use of the new building material and the
display of colour. Only when the peerless church
consecrated to " Holy Wisdom " was completed
within, they understood that the great display of
crisp and lofty arches and well-defined architectural
lines, graceful and varied curves, which constitute
the main fascination and beauty of Justinian's un-
rivalled construction, must be made simpler, or
even entirely excluded ; they comprehended, too,
that the domes and semi -domes, which in this
masterful building were the greatest triumph of
architecture, on account of their exquisite dainti-
ness, charming gracefulness, and surprising variety
of shape, must be made less elegant but larger,
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 25
less dainty but deeper, less airy but lower, for only
in that manner would the artists have larger spaces
for the display of decorations, and only then would
form not preponderate over colour.
Another very important change introduced by the
Greeks into the new style was the modification
of light. For the purpose of showing to a better
advantage the interior colouring, the Byzantines
built their new churches in such a manner as to
have in them more play of light and shade. They
understood that abundance of light was advan-
tageous for bringing out the beauty of form, but
that for the keeping of the effect of glow of colour,
especially of mosaic, a solemn twilight was
essential ; for it is only in chiaroscuro that glow
works. This important lesson the Greeks learned
from Santa Sophia where there is such a profusion
of light that under its influence the rich hues of
mosaics look faded, strange as it seems, and as
if sprinkled with grey ashes.
All these changes concerning the interior decora-
tions and manner of lighting the Byzantine
churches are so essential and of such consequence
that they show how erroneous is the notion of those
who regard Santa Sophia as the prototype of
Byzantine architecture, the glorious rays of which
diffused throughout the Christian Orient and
reached Palermo, Venice, Ravenna, Novgorod, Kieff,
the Caucasus, and finally, after so many centuries
this is most strange indeed ! London, where the
most artistic cathedral was built at the end of the
last and the beginning of the present century. The
Greeks were right to be proud of their civilization,
26 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
a pride which made them sing during solemn pro-
cessions an anthem * in which it was called " the
eye of the world."
It is obvious that the Byzantine artists introduced
those changes with a clearly defined purpose,
namely, for the, advantage of using mosaic as
structural and not as decorative material, which
went to make colour the great factor in architecture.
In order to have a clear notion concerning the
differences between decorative and structural
employment of mosaic, one should bear in mind
that architecture is a science of building, of manipu-
lating form ; and consequently, if one wishes lo
create a new architectural style, one is obliged to
express an idea of a different form of construction.
The Byzantines, after they built Santa Sophia,
understood that if they wished to create a new
architectural style, they could no longer employ
mosaic decoratively, that is to say superficially, for
in that case the new material would not efface the
whole structural system of marble, brick, or stone
architecture ; if mosaic should be applied merely
as covering the material of which a building was
constructed, that material would be visible, would
not convey the notion of a different form of con-
struction, and there would be nothing new. This is
the most important point. Hence the already men-
tioned changes in domical system, which did not
rest any longer on the wondrous variety of domes
and semi-domes, and on the exquisite daintiness
of well-defined shapes, but whose dominating
features were spaces, as large as they could be
* Art Byzantin, by Gabriel Millet, lib. cit.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 27
obtained by the construction of vast domes, of plain
vaults, and of deep apses, all darkened and solemn,
lavishly covered with glittering gold and beautiful
with figures and groups blooming with bright hues
of blue and crimson predominating ; in a word,
the realization of the Eastern idea of colour. By
covering the walls with mosaics in that new manner,
in buildings constructed for the purpose, the Greeks
reached at last their aim : they discarded the defined
and hard structural form, and made colour an archi-
tectural motive.
The best examples of the elaboration of this
theory are to be found in St. Mark's at Venice, and
in three churches in Palermo, the Monreale
Cathedral, the Capella Palatina, and the Martorana
Chapel. St. Mark's is too well known to be des-
cribed here, and it will suffice to say that although
apparently it is built on the same domical system
as is Santa Sophia, it is totally different ; for while
the admirable church of Constantinople is only a
most able development of the arch principle, and
an extraordinary elaboration of dome theory as a
constructive motive, in which colour adorns form,
in St. Mark's, where there is a complete absence of
well-defined shapes, mosaic that brittle, flexible,
soft, and plastic material dictates the entire interior
arrangement, and, in that manner, composes the
structure and becomes the governing architectural
factor. If Santa Sophia were stripped of all its
marvellous mosaic adornment, it would remain as
beautiful as ever nay, its wondrous curves would
have more decisive effect ; but if the same were
done to St. Mark's, the building would appear bare,
28 THE AESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
and look like a cavern cut out in a rock, lacking
in the elegance and variety at which one marvels
in the church of " Holy Wisdom." In St. Mark's,
mosaic is used in accordance with the principle
which demands that the whole structural system
belonging to stone or brick architecture must be
entirely effaced ; which in this case is so well
accomplished that when one looks at those vast
domes, deep recesses, and dim apses, one has the
impression that the whole structure is built of solid
gold, studded with precious stones, and not with
bricks. This is the essential difference between the
first achievement of the Byzantines at Constanti-
nople and the further development of the notion
of the control of colour structure, for mosaic, being
a plastic and soft building material, is a colour
material as well ; consequently, when the Greeks
gave preference to mosaic over putty, which pos-
sesses also softness and plasticity, in effect they
employed colour as an architectural motive. In
that manner they succeeded in effacing the structural
features of the old formal architecture and had,
this time, created a new style.
Perhaps nowhere have the Greeks shown their
pursuit of artistic effect better than in some Sicilian
Byzantine churches. In the first place the
Monreale Cathedral occupies a very important
position, not only by its imposing proportions, but
also by the mosaic decoration in which the great
struggle between the Eastern sense of colour and
the Western conception of form is evident, and
the issue of that contest was whether mosaic should
remain a decorative or structural material. In this
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 29
building it is fully demonstrated that there where
the Greeks, knowing what was at stake, succeeded
in carrying out their notion of control of colour over
form, they have produced the most astonishing
result, and shown to great advantage the structural
value of mosaic by causing the rich folds of glitter-
ing gold to dominate the interior, and in that manner
they placed the substantiality of the constructive
material beyond all doubt. The victory of the
Byzantines was here most complete. The mosaics
displayed in the Monreale Cathedral astonish by
their incomparable richness and splendour ; one
is dazzled by the beauty and confounded by the
grandeur of the work ; * one is awed by the multi-
tude of figures displayed on a surface of six
thousand square metres ; one is seized with wonder
while looking at those cunningly wrought forms of
saints ; one remains speechless at the daring of
artists ; one feels the might, the grandeur, and
the infinity of religion. The God revealed in the
Monreale Cathedral is the Almighty Lord, who
demands homage and adoration.
In the Capella Palatina the Greeks were still
more successful ; for here, as the chapel is but
a small building, the competition between the
Byzantines and the Western artists was less acute,
and consequently, while in the Monreale Cathedral
the Greeks were given only the control of the apses,
which is of lesser importance, in the Capella Pala-
tina they succeeded in mastering the dome ; this
gave them a fine chance to display to the best
advantage their artistic pursuit and -taste, which
* IS Art Byzantin dans V Italic Meridionale, by Ch. Diehl.
30 THE .ESTHETIC PURPOSE OF
they did in such a manner that the Capella Palatina
is the pearl of their art. Perhaps nowhere does
one understand better the mighty and marvellous
effect of colour mosaic decorations, of which the
Byzantines were so fond. While in the Monreale
Cathedral one bends one's head in order to offer
to the Lord the most respectful prayer, at the
Capella Palatina one is inclined to ecstatic reverie.
However, the most successful and the most per-
fect little masterpiece the Byzantines ever built and
decorated is the Martorana Chapel. One may say,
without falling into the pitfall of exaggeration, that
it would be impossible adequately to express its
unrivalled beauty in words, for it is the most signifi-
cant construction in the world, notwithstanding its
very small dimensions, not only because of its
aesthetic importance, but also from this point of
view, that here the Byzantines embodied in the
best and clearest manner their idea at which they so
steadily and so strenuously aimed. In that little
building, in which they did not allow any structural
element to appear, they have established as the
authoritative law that mosaic must be employed
not decoratively but structurally, and for this pur-
pose they wrought the whole building in unbroken
gold, which makes one believe that the whole is of
precious material.
Nevertheless, the enthusiastic rapture over this
perfect gem of Byzantine art should not make us
depreciate the great importance of St. Mark's at
Venice, for, in the first place, it was there that the
positive assertion of the right of the material to
establish laws in congruity with its own nature,
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 31
which marks the solid treatment of mosaic and the
true character of the style, was shown in a decisive
manner ; secondly, because no other building in
the world had more influence on art than had St.
Mark's, by the medium of its marvellously glowing
mosaics. That influence was felt and manifested
at first amongst the Venetian painters, some of
whom are still inimitable in their dazzling suffusion
of colour and in their skill in softening hard shapes ;
thence it spread throughout the whole of Europe.
It was through the mediation of Venice, through
her great love for Eastern civilization, that the sense
of colour brought from the East was diffused
amongst the Western nations.
Thus through the spaces of the great church
at Constantinople came rays of wondrous art, ex-
pelling clouds of care ; and again through another
church at Venice our mind became filled with
the joy of colour, both showing us the way to the
living God.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
WHEN Commodore Perry anchored the American
squadron at Uraga and broke the wilful aloof-
ness of Japan from the outer world, Europeans
became acquainted with the Japanese, and subse-
quently with the Asian, art through the medium of
wood-cuts and colour-prints ; these interested
greedy dealer -collectors, democratic writers, and
naturalistic artists, who caused commonplace
notions concerning Asian art to be imposed on the
world. The dealer-collectors praised those artists
whose works were rare, in order to satisfy their
mercenary propensities ; the writers fell into rap-
tures over the modern democratic development of
Japanese art, overlooking that which was really
grand in the artistic movement of the inhabitants
of the charming Isles of Nippon, and extolling
Japanese prints whose chief value for the most part
was that of popular, social, and anecdotal docu-
ments. As to the artists, they being nowadays
principally the makers of pictures, and only occa-
sionally and unconsciously creators saw in the
works of Asian artists almost exclusively the
technical part, but were incapable of seizing that
which constitutes the real value of pictures ; accord-
ingly they praised only that which corresponded
with their own temperament and personal talent.
35
36 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
Thus Whistler emphasized in his pictures and
this was the best part of his artistic activity the
elegant subtlety of colour-prints and the capricious
way the Japanese painted their landscapes. Degas
liked and imitated although not very successfully
their fantastically easy way of forming groups, as
well as their unsurpassable daring of composition.
Monet fancied their colouring full of freshness and
life. Manet has borrowed from them his har-
monious fireworks of colours, while the French
poster-makers have learned the decorative use of
lines and surfaces. As to the fundamental princi-
ples that is to say, creative power, synthesis, sug-
gestiveness, freedom for .play of fancy, and opening
large views on depths difficult to be expressed all
that was passed almost unnoticed by writers on art ;
the fact being that from amongst numerous books
some of them very important on account of size-
there is only one in the English language, that of
Mr. Laurence Binyon,* that is of true and great
consequence. There is nothing of equal excellence
in any other literature. The patronizing, com-
placent Westerners condescended to acknowledge
that the art of the Eastern barbarians was possessed
of certain external qualities, but decided autocratic-
ally and superficially that the Asian artists were
inferior to Europeans intellectually and in creative
power.
As to Chinese art, the current notion is that the
Japanese have improved on, and even surpassed, it.
Chinese art is associated in our minds with the
* Painting in the Far East. London : Edward Arnold,
1908.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 37
productions of its decadence especially in the
ceramic art which was imposed on Europe by
the manufacturers and merchants of Canton, who
discovered a fount of riches in these worthless,
monotonous, exhausted conventions, weak and
spiritless in shape, and obnoxious because of their
too bright and inharmonious colours. The conse-
quence of all this is that the real nature of Chinese
art is known only by a very few students outside
of Asia.
The Japanese paintings executed on rolls of silk
called makimonos if unfolded horizontally and
kakemonos if they are unrolled vertically were
almost unknown until 1881, when the British
Museum purchased William Anderson's collection,
the exhibition of which was held in 1888. At the
beginning of 1911 Mrs. Olga Wegener sold to
the British Museum nearly one hundred and fifty
most important pictures, which she acquired during
her sojourn in China. Still more recently Dr.
Aurel Stein, sent on the joint initiative of the India
Office and the Trustees of the British Museum to
make researches in Eastern Turkestan, discovered in
a vault at Tun-huang, where they were walled up
at the beginning of the eleventh century, a number
of Chinese pictures of Buddhist religious subjects
of extraordinary interest. Those pictures, together
with the collections acquired from Mrs. Wegener
and Anderson, which were on exhibition in the
British Museum Print Room, form the most im-
portant collection of Asian art either in Europe
or in America, where the Boston Fine Arts Museum
has a number of valuable Japanese paintings.
38 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
This exhibition, made not for the vulgar dis-
play of unrivalled wealth in precious masterpieces
of the Far East, but for serious purposes of culture,
gave an opportunity to those who are in quest
of beauty to correct erroneous notions concerning
Asian art ; for here they could study the pictorial
art of the East through a period of some fifteen
hundred years, from the fourth to the present cen-
tury. Perchance this exhibition will open an
era for the development of a new art with lofty
aims as was that of some periods in China and
of this there is an imperative need.
The first impression one receives from looking at
the Chinese pictures gathered in the Print Room
concerns colour, and arouses sensations which until
now were considered, not only by the people at
large but by the Western aesthetes as well, to be
characteristic of the emotional, feminine, and
sensuous East ; while the intellectual, manly, and
sober West was supposed to excel in ideas of form.*
We all thought the West trivial, uncertain, and
weak in colour, while the East was eccentric,
capricious, and unstable in form ; and that this
constituted an antithesis between Asia and Europe.
Now we may convince ourselves that during the
great periods of Asian art, and especially that of
the Celestial Empire, colour was subordinate, if not
entirely eliminated, and never a predominant ele-
ment. Both the Chinese and Japanese developed
the art of tone during the best periods of their
* Edinburgh Review, 1904.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 39
history of painting, but almost, if not entirely, left
out colour.
It is true that the sensuous Easterners are full of
appreciation of colour, which is profusely and uni-
versally diffused in their countries ; but their fond-
ness for it is limited to inferior, if not trivial, objects,
such as tiles, embroideries, carpets, silk fabrics,
and articles of clothing, thus making colour, in
the way they employ it, not an aesthetic question,
but a matter of life.
Then we can see that, although the Asian artists
proceed in a different way from ours in their search
for the beautiful, their art is as fully mature in its
own way as is ours. The artistic pursuits of the
Orientals vary from ours in this way, that theirs
is an art of line rather than of colour. The main
tradition of art in China comes from caligraphy,
combined with flat, slightly coloured spaces that
intensify and give charm to the harmony of line.
Limited to line, the painters of Asia have concen-
trated centuries of study on the effort to make that
line intimately expressive of form ; and with mere
contour they succeeded in producing the illusion
of perfect modelling. The very ease with which
relief can be represented by shadows, as with us,
has taken away from our painters the necessity
for this concentration, and weakened their sense
of expressive line.* The painters of the East have
succeeded in giving life to their figures, and that is
the essential thing we demand from them.
As one can see, the means of communicating
beauty in the sensuous manner employed by the
* Laurence Binyon, lib. cit.
40 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
Easterners is different from that used by the
Westerners. To write in Chinese beautifully
requires a similar command of the brush to that
of a painter ; the greater the degree of that accom-
plishment, the greater painter is the man who
possesses it and can express through the brush
not only the forms of reality but the rhythmical
beauty innate in the formed and varied stroke of
an artist-scrivener. A fine specimen of the cali-
graphic art is as much valued as a beautiful picture ;
for in both the sweep should communicate the
artist's mood and thought, and therefore be intense
with life.
Then the painters of the East always remember
that the principal aim of a picture is not to teach,
to moralize, or to tell a story, but to fill and decorate
a flat surface, which means that their efforts at
the development and arrangement of colour har-
monies are undisturbed by any other tendencies or
purposes. The idea of harmonious sensation has
such a hold on the Eastern painters, that they
remain still and unconfused by the problems of
chiaroscuro, to which the Western artists became
bound by the intellectual painters of Italy. Our
artists are not satisfied with the idea of organic
beauty, of harmony of lines and colours, of
coherence and concentration, and they try to repre-
sent the visible world by striving to equal sculpture
in producing shape, by vying with architecture in
creating well-arranged spaces, and by asking help
from optics to simulate distances. As soon as an
artist begins to think how to produce the likeness of
an object, of a figure as it appears in Nature, his
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 41
mind is distracted from the main purpose of the
picture this is to say, harmony and decorativeness
of lines and colours ; his sense of that harmony
grows feeble, and becomes dubious.
The painters of the Far East are not disturbed
by science, the development of which is commonly
assumed with us to be an advance in art. In
current European criticism of painting there is
almost always talk about perspective, anatomy, and
optical laws, the command of which does not
increase in the slightest the artistic value of a work,
but simply helps artists to realize efficiently their
imaginative ideas. The encroachment of science
is detrimental to art, for the laws of one cannot
be applied to the other, which verity was clearly
expressed by one of the greatest of art critics,
Goethe, when he said, " Art is not entirely subject
to natural necessities, but has laws of its own."
Sad experience teaches us that pictures painted
several hundred years ago with pigments the pro-
duction of which was not due to modern scientific
chemistry are still resplendent with beautifully vivid
colours, while those which were executed with
scientific preparation have become black after a
few years. Then how ugly are the aniline tints !
Consequently one may say that chemistry has had a
bad effect on our sense of colour, while machinery,
through which nowadays many articles are made,
has ruined, degraded, and vitiated our sense of
form.
The aim of Asian art is not the outward semblance
but the informing and inner spirit of objects repre-
sented. Throughout the whole history of Asiatic
42 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
art, with the exception of the popular movement
in Japan, this is the prevailing and dominating
preoccupation of the Eastern artists, who reproduce
only that which is essential and permanent in the
painted subject ; hence the deliberate elimination
of shadows from their pictures.
As far back as the fifth century a Chinese aesthete,
named Shakaku, formulated the criticism of paint-
ing in six canons, in which are set forth the con-
ceptions of art that already existed in the minds
of the sons of the Celestial Empire, and are still
respected by all except a small number of artists
of the eighteenth century who were led astray from
their safe artistic road and conducted into the
wilderness of realism in art by Europeans. These
six canons of Chinese aesthetics are: (1) Rhythmic
vitality, or the life -movement of the spirit through
the rhythm of things; (2) organic structure;
(3) the law of conformity with nature ; (4) appro-
priate colouring; (5) arrangement; (6) finish.
One should remember that the Chinese aesthete
assigns the principal place to rhythmical beauty ;
for, as Mr. Laurence Binyon rightly said, " A man
of art is an incarnation of the genius of rhythm,
manifesting the living spirit of things with a
clearer beauty and intenser power than the gross
impediments of complex matter allow to be trans-
mitted to our senses in the visible world around
us. A picture is conceived as a sort of apparition
from a more real world of essential life."
As the main effort of the Asian artists was to
seize the inherent life of the subjects they depicted,
they purposely ignored not only the accidental
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 43
qualities (as is done by the Western aesthetes and
better painters), but almost their whole surround-
ings, so dear to the Europeans, who are fond of
crowding their pictures with superfluous details
which mar the pure beauty of a painting. By
obliterating secondary motives in their pictures, by
isolating the painted subjects, which they represent
in large although finely proportioned space, the
Chinamen will give to a bird, to a tree, to a flower,
to a figure, a meaning of monumental grandeur,
loftiness of spirit, irresistible elegance, and charm-
ing suggestion, hinting in the meanwhile at the
infinity of life.
However, the greatest praise one can bestow on
Chinese art is this, that throughout the whole course
of its history one does not find the grossly erroneous
notion, so popular with us, that the imitation of
nature is essential in art ; on the contrary, they
look contemptuously on such an idea as a despicable
and passing heresy. This is comprehensible, at
least, to a limited number of Western aesthetes,
who, however, fail to understand why all the Asian
artists paint in the same manner the same subjects,
no matter how original the artist. This is regarded
by us as a serious drawback to Eastern art, and is
advanced as a weighty argument through which we
try to prove that the Western artists are superior
on account of the individual treatment of the sub-
jects they paint, and that the Eastern painters are
incapable of originality or progress. Such a way
of looking on Eastern art is but superficial. If the
water, let us say, is painted in the same way
throughout Asian art, this is done consciously ; for
44 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
the Eastern painters, being true to their purpose of
expressing always the essential character and genius
of the element, leaving out the accidental changes
produced by different light and varying atmosphere,
represent the essence of the waves in their per-
petual rhythm and the curves by which they
are formed. The limits given to this study do
not allow reference to several other traditional sub-
jects painted in the same conventional, or rather
symbolic, manner, each artist adding that of his
individuality, which decides the value of his work.
Suffice to say that this symbolic way of painting
might be characterized as the expression of spiritual
serenity Goethe's Heiterkeit floating above the
turbulent life of the world.
Still another difference between Eastern and
Western art is this, that in pictures representing
many figures, the European artists set them in such
a manner that they all tend to one central point ;
unity being one of the required elements of a work
of art, this convergence is an imperative neces-
sity. In Eastern paintings with crowded figures,
this unity seems not to exist at least, it is not
as much accentuated as it is in the compositions of
the Western masters. However, this is only
apparent or rather less formal, for the unity in a
work of Asian art is expressed by the mutual rela-
tion of figures and even of objects.
It is certain that to China, and not to India,
the Asian people have to look, not only for the
most fragrant flowers of painting, but for a starting-
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 45
point, a foundation, and even for an ideal and
pattern.
Through a legend we learn that the art of China
goes as far back as 4,500 years, when the China-
men were ruled by the Yellow Emperor, from
whose reign date the arts and crafts of mankind ;
that there lived then two inspired sages : Is'any
Chieh, the inventor of writing, and Shin Huang,
who originated drawing. The earliest mention of
colour dates from the reign of the Emperor Shun,
about 500 years later. According to Shun Ching
" Book of History " His Majesty commanded
that the twelve symbols of power, which had been
handed down from the most remote ages, should
be embroidered, or painted, in the five colours on
his sacrificial robes.* Chinese writers report that
the first artist was a younger sister of the Emperor
Shin, named Lei. This fact made a Chinese
litterateur exclaim, " Alas ! that this divine art
should have been started by a woman ! " Already
in 220 B.C. Chinese art attained such a degree of
perfection that it was said of an artist of the name
of Lieh Yii, that he painted phoenixes and dragons
without pupils in their eyes lest they should fly
away ; and when once, at the Emperor's command,
he put the pupils into a dragon's eyes, the creature
disappeared from the wall, leaving behind only a
cloud of smoke.
The first Chinese dynasty, that of Han, existed
from 2700 B.C. to 200 A.D., and during that period
* An Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art,
by Herbert A. Giles. Published by Messrs. Kelly, of Walsh,
Shanghai, 1910.
46 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
the names of fifteen artists are recorded in the
history of China. Then follows an era called " The
three kingdoms," during which there were six
dynasties, from 200 to 600 A.D. The Wei dynasty
220-265 A.D., furnished only four painters, while
that of the Chin, 265-420, produced twenty-
two artists whose names have been handed down.
Amongst those was Wang Hsi-chich, 321-379 A.D.,
China's greatest caligraphist, whose writing was
" light as floating clouds, vigorous as a startled
dragon."
We see then although we cannot judge the
artistic value of the pictures of this period, for we
do not know of any till we come to the fourth cen-
tury that there was an active and vigorous artistic
movement in China ; for we find names of artists,
arl criticism, and artistic allusions. The Chinese
literature refers so often to art that we are able to
form a clear idea as to what kind of art flourished
then ! The favourite subjects were the phoenix,
dragon, and lion ; { pictures of animals were
common, and portrait-painting was prevalent. This
might be explained by the influence of Confucius,
for according to him filial piety was the foremost
virtue, and the portraits of those who were remark-
able, either for their deeds or accomplishments, had
an ennobling influence over those who look at them.
Although he was a stern moralist, he said, " Let
relaxation and enjoyment be found in the public
arts." *
It is plain that the art that was capable of pro-
ducing such a masterpiece as is the makimono
* Confucian Analecta, Book VII, Chapter VI.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 47
painted by Ku K'ai-chih, entitled " Admonitions of
the Instructress in the Palace," the greatest art
treasure of the whole collection of the British
Museum, and it would not be an exaggeration to
say, of the world, was not in its infancy. This un-
surpassable masterpiece was painted between 364
and 405 A.D., and it represents nine scenes, each
illustrating a precept or example of conduct held
up for admiration by the instructress of the ladies
of the Chinese Court. It is the oldest document of
Asian art in existence at least, known to Western
students ; what is more, it is the only one known
to exist between the fourth and eighth centuries.
There is nothing clumsy or awkward common
characteristics of primitive art about the work-
manship of this precious roll of paintings. On
the contrary, the art of Ku K'ai-chih is so con-
summate that it is impossible to notice even the
slightest effort ; and the Chinese writer T'ang Hon
was justified when he said in his Hau chien, that
" Ku K'ai-chih painted his pictures as a spring
silkworm spins silk. At first sight his pictures seem
flat, but a close inspection shows that the six canons
are all observed. His ideas are like clouds floating
in space, or a stream hurrying along perfectly
natural." The Chinese critic was right in praising
the spontaneity and assurance of the brushwork
of the great Asian artist.
Yes, six canons, but especially the first concerning
rhythm, were well observed in this peerless work of
art, for in regard to beauty of sweeping yet sensi-
tive, rhythmical and precise line, few paintings
if any in the world approach this. The painter
48 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
mastered his materials to perfection, and his delight
overflowed in the exquisite modulations of the brush
line with which the streaming draperies are cali-
graphed. The composition of the groups is not
inferior to the execution, especially in the sixth
scene, called " Harmonious life," illustrating the
following passage, written by the lady Pan Chao,
who lived and wrote in the first century A.D. thus:
' To utter a word seems an insignificant thing ;
but on it depends honour or shame. Think not to
hide your thoughts ; the heavenly mirror has no
need of visible forms. Say not that you have made
no noise ; the Divine Ear has no need of
sound. . ." While in the " Toilet-scene," illus-
trating the line : " All* can adorn their faces, none
can adorn her heart," one notices a refined sim-
plicity in the surroundings and accessories. The
women depicted by Ku K'ai-chih are slender and
exquisitely elegant in their flowing robes, orna-
mented with streaming ribbons.
The style of the paintings, dresses, and types
of men and women indicates that the roll was
executed by a fourth -century master. Then there
is an intrinsic proof of its authenticity, for the
landscape which is painted in one of the scenes
is executed in the same manner as was described
by Chang Yen-Yuan, a Chinese art critic of the
eighth century. This writer saw some pictures
painted by Ku K'ai-chih, and in his Famous
Painters of Different Dynasties, he said that his
mountains were drawn stiffly, " like hairpins and
combs," and that it was his wont to paint the figures
larger than the mountains. It is exactly in that
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 49
manner that the mountain is executed on the roll
in the British Museum : there is no sense of propor-
tion between a man shooting with a cross-bow and
the landscape.
Ku K'ai-chih's name appeared in the history of
China in 364 A.D. in the following manner. A
Buddhist monastery was appealing to the public
for funds to build a church, and the artist promised
one million in cash. When the monks pressed him
for the money, he asked to be allowed to closet
himself in one of their rooms ; they granted his
request, and in a few days he executed on a wall
of the chamber such a wonderful figure of the
Buddhist saint Vimalakirti that the people came
in enormous crowds to see the masterpiece, and
soon one million in cash was deposited by the pious
pilgrims. He was a whimsical mind, and it was
said of him that he was supreme in painting, poetry,
and foolishness. Like all great Chinese painters
he excelled in all kinds of pictures, but he was most
renowned for his portraits, because of their deep
spirituality and expression, and " as expression "
says a Chinese critic" is of an occult nature
beyond anything which can be learned, of all
painters I place Ku K'ai-chih first." Notwithstand-
ing his pre-eminence in portraiture, he complains
of the difficulties of this branch of pictorial art
when he says : " In painting, the most troublesome
subject is man. . . Painting the face of a; pretty
young girl is like carving a portrait in silver. There
may be great elaboration, but no likeness will be
forthcoming. It is better to put the elaboration
into the young lady's clothes, and trust to a touch
4
50 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
here and a stroke there to bring out her beauty
as it really is."
At the end of this priceless roll there is an in-
scription made by the great Emperor Ch'ien Lung,
1710-99 : " At an odd moment in summer I came
across Ku K'ai-chih's picture, ' Admonitions of the
Female Historian,' and under its influence I sketched
in ink a spray of epidendrum, as an expression
of sympathy with its profound and mysterious pur-
port. Only one who had himself reached Samadhi *
could attain to such a standard as this. The picture
has not lost its freshness an achievement not to
be surpassed by the after born. Of the painter's
four works, this is the best."
This is a literary monument worthy of the great
master !
Ku K'ai-chih's picture is of great consequence,
not only on account of its inimitable beauty, but
also as a document of importance through which
two obscure questions are made clear. It proves
that Chinese art was not influenced by Greece, for
in that priceless makimono, there is not a vestige
of Greek art. It demonstrates also that Chinese art
was already great, when some Indian elements were
added to it. The argument in favour of this asser-
tion rests on these facts, that the oldest Indian
pictorial document, the Ajantu frescoes, were exe-
cuted two centuries after Ku K'ai-chih's death, and
that notwithstanding those two centuries, they look
but very primitive if compared with the consummate
Chinese masterpiece. The refined and subdued
colouring, the elegant and artistic rhythm, the fine
* The highest pitch of abstract ecstatic meditation.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 51
and nervous power of Ku K'ai-chih's picture prove
convincingly that the achievement of Chinese art
was far superior to that of India.
There is not one picture painted between the
fourth and eighth centuries in existence except per-
haps somewhere in China although history has
on its roll a great many artists.
During this long period two symbolic con-
ceptions were constantly reproduced ; these were
the Tiger and the Dragon both emblems of power.
The Dragon was the genius of water, producing
mists and clouds ; he represented also the power
of the spirit of the infinite, of change. The Tiger
was the genius of the mountains, whose roaring is
heard in the wind ; he represents the power of
material forces. The Dragon is a product of the
lurid Chinese imagination, capable of giving horrible
shapes to those strange frights which are found
at the bottom of the fancy of all mankind. The
Tiger -Dragon pictures portrayed the ceaseless
conflict of material forces with spiritual the
Infinite. ,
When the most famous Chinese pilgrim, Fa Hsien,
returned from India at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, Buddhism followed him, and had a great
influence on Chinese art, bringing into it new
motives and elements, stimulating ideals and reli-
gious imagery. The ideas of Confucius, represent-
ing the national orthodoxy and well-ordered society,
interpreted by pedantry, which is a great drawback
to the Chinese mind, made everything so stiff that
a reaction against convention was necessary. This
was accomplished by the doctrine of Lao Tzu, the
52 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
preacher of individual freedom in opposition to
Confucian social obedience and slavery. Towards
the fifth century Laoism, or Taoism, took a strong
hold on those Chinese who embraced Buddhism, and
brought a new element into life, literature, and
art. Taoism has much in common with our
Romanticism ; one of its subjects was the Rishi
or Wizards of the mountains, human beings eat-
ing only fruits and drinking only dew, and enjoying
immortality ; they personified hair-brained youth
and everlasting joy, riding through the air on birds
and animals. Rishi have a certain likeness with
Buddhist Arhats, who also were supposed to live
in the mountains, and personified intellectual might,
combined with forms of grandeur ; their sole
occupation was deep meditation, whereby they
remind one of Christian hermits. Both Arhats and
Rishi were favourite subjects with the Chinese
painters, and inspired true masterpieces.
The introduction of Buddhism brought into
Chinese art numberless deities, not only various
personifications of Buddha and Budhisattva, but
hundreds of other forms, borrowed from Indian
mythology, from which was also derived grotesque-
ness ; the refined Chinamen had many difficulties
before they succeeded in changing those not very
artistic conceptions and in subduing them to a har-
monious and elegant rhythm.
Perhaps the best acquisitions that Chinese art
gained from Buddhism are the sublime personifica-
tions of Mercy, Tenderness, and Love ; their figures
slightly inclined forward, their broad foreheads,
their regular and calm features, noble in their deep
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 53
contemplation, make them worthy to be placed side
by side with the ecstatic creations of the masters of
the West.
Such were the state and tendency of Chinese
art, when, in 618, the era of the T'ang dynasty
opened ; it lasted until 905, and was not only the
period of China's greatest political power, but also
of her most vigorous, although not most perfect art,
and of important poetry. The efforts of the artists
of this period were to develop and to perfect the
art of line which was the ordinary Asiatic style
to make it express not only the forms of reality
but also the much -desired rhythmical beauty. This
union of painting with caligraphy was best effected
by Wu Tao-Tzii, who is one of the most celebrated
names in the history of Chinese art. He was
astonishing for his extraordinary facility and
wonderful imagination, which enabled him to paint
no fewer than three hundred frescoes, full of a fancy
so brilliant that it was said that his picture repre-
senting the Buddhist Purgatory frightened the
populace and arrested their sinful propensities.
The most important, nay, surprising specimen of
his work was the " Nirvana of Buddha," a piece
crowded with figures and showing a tremendous
power of conception combined with a freedom and
grandeur which can be found in no other works ot
Asian art. The original of this picture has perished,
but a talented Japanese artist of the thirteenth cen-
tury made a copy of it, with some variation, now
in the British Museum, and this allows us to admire
the masterly conception of this magnificent creation
of Eastern art.
54 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
In 907 the T'ang dynasty succumbed to its destiny,
and before the rise of the Sung house, which lasted
from 960 to 1280, five unimportant dynasties
emerged only soon to disappear. The Sung period
of three hundred years is the one most splendid
for art, which then reached its zenith, in spite of the
dwindling power of the Empire.
The love of Nature introduced by Lao Tzu, and
developed by the Zen sect the Conversationalists
into a doctrine of contemplation of the world,
became the dominating thought of the age. This
love of Nature, being of the essence of romance,
prompted Chinese artists and poets not only to
discuss the Abstract and Pure, the subtle beauties
of Nature, but also to seek after them by leaving
the commonplace life of towns for the country, in
solitary Buddhist monasteries, when they could
assuage their ardent craving for quiet and delicate
sensations.
The Zen doctrine inspired the art of the Sung
period, not only by developing a kind of religious
worship of Nature, and, by a natural consequence,
its representation, but also by cultivating that re-
fined sentiment of suggestion of mind to mind
through which the Asian painters attained such
heights, and produced such masterpieces that it is
impossible to surpass them. Nothing mattered to
them but the artist's mood or emotion ; his soul was
revealed and illuminated in the life of things ; the
reality was in his own soul, and he could only
suggest and never fully express it. According to
their notion, a painter expresses far more by a
suggestion, by depicting only a branch of a tree,
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 55
a flower, a bird, than he could do by filling his
picture with many subjects. Kuo Hsi, one of the
greatest of Chinese landscape painters, in whose
works one finds a passionate feeling for Nature,
said that " a painter must, above all things, seize
essentials, and discard the trivial." One may rightly
suppose that Toenmei's poems on the " purity of
the dew-drooping chrysanthemum, the delicate grace
of the swaying bamboo, the unconscious fragrance
of plum -flowers floating on twilight water, the green
serenity of the pine, whispering its silent woes to
the wind, and the divine narcissus, hiding its noble
soul in deep ravines, or seeking for spring in a
glimpse of heaven," inspired many a painter of
that period with those charmingly simple pictures,
the fragrance of which may be felt but never
described.
The characteristics of this period are a supreme
refinement and most exquisite finish, the brush -
line temperate and quiet, yet sensitive and alive ;
the space perfectly balanced ; the colouring noble
and harmonious, although subordinate to form and
very often eliminated. The life of Nature and of
all non-human things is regarded in itself ; its
character contemplated, and its beauty cherished for
its own sake, not for its use and service in the life
of man.
The over-refined Sungs could not withstand the
pressing power of the barbarous Mongols, and they
were succeeded by the Yuan dynasty, which ruled
over China from 1280 to 1368. However, the
56 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
civilizing power of the Chinese was so strong that
the Mongols soon became imbued with it, and
Kublai Khan, having elevated Pekin to the dignity
of his capital, fostered literature and art, and so
continued the glorious Sung period.
An interesting fact connected with the Yuan
dynasty is that Buddhism was introduced into Tibet,
where it took the name of Lamanism. Naturally
the religion was followed by art, which found ex-
pression in religious pictures. The original faith
of Tibet consisted of the adoration of a great number
of devilish gods, which, in accordance with the
Buddhist spirit of tolerance, were introduced into
the religious system of the Enlightened One. The
gloom of the Tibetan religion influenced its art,
and mixed the monstrous with the sublime, the
lurid side dominating. The serenity of the Buddhist
ideals were unable to prevail over infernal god-
desses, and fire-wreathed fiends drinking from
skulls. Notwithstanding graceful individual figures,
notwithstanding rich and glowing colour and rhyth-
mical drawing, the general characteristic of Tibetan
art is a burning gloom, obscene and terrible.
The barbarous Mongols, led by the terrible
Genghis Khan, conquered Persia, and this estab-
lished communication between Eastern and Western
Asia, which was still more quickened at the end of
the fourteenth century, when Tamerlane effected the
second conquest. When the slaughter was over,
and the havoc superseded by peace, a prosperous
art school was founded at Samarcand, which ex-
celled in miniatures. The characteristics of old
Persian art are the caligraphic rhythmical beauty,
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 57
as with the Chinese manner of painting, and an
almost total absence of colour, which is restricted
to a few touches of blue and red. Subsequently
it adopted an exquisite colouring, while its design
grew feeble, languid, and uncertain, due to restricted
creative ideas and slavish repetition ; on the other
hand, it is free from academical mannerism.
*****
The Mongols were expelled from China in 1368 ;
the Ming dynasty sat on the throne of the Dragon
until 1644. In the first part of this period art
continued the tradition of the house of Sung, was
flourishing and important, notwithstanding that
Chinese artists forsook the loftiness of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries for an external magnificence,
and abandoned the simple beauty of monochrome
for sensuous colouring. The art of the Ming period
is well represented in the British Museum by two
pictures of " Wild Geese, Lotuses, and Rushes,"
painted by Lion Liang, which may be described as
very clever for their strength of brushwork and
assurance of design ; but one cannot help noticing
a decline of subtlety and of that fine modulation
which distinguished the Sung artists.
The best example, perhaps, of the genius of this
period is the picture called " The Earthly Para-
dise," which, although it is signed with the name
of Ch'ien Chun-chu, an artist who was famous
during the reign of the Yuan house, could have
hardly been painted earlier than in the middle of
the Ming dynasty period.* The subject seems to
: Guide to an exhibition of Chinese and Japanese Paintings
in the Print and Drawing Gallery, British Museum.
58 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
be the arrival of beatified beings in the Earthly
Paradise of the West. The painting, with its float-
ing figures, blossoms dropping through the air, its
sense of ethereal gaiety, and its richness and rarity
of colour, is full of the romance of Taoist con-
ception. It is a charming idyll, but certainly it has
nothing of the sublime.
Wen Cheng-ming was the greatest landscape
painter of the Ming period, and his pictures remind
one of the best eighth -century masters, with this
comment, however, that the intimate communion
with Nature of the Sung masters is exchanged for
a romantic element.
The year 1644 witnessed the downfall of the
house of Ming, which was followed by that of
Ch'ing, the last dynasty. Pedantry, which began
to show its destructive power on literature and art
during the Ming period, caused a decadence under
the Manchu Tartars. The Chinese of this epoch
were satisfied with a proud contemplation of the
glorious past, contributing nothing that could
originate a new renaissance in the Celestial Empire.
Neither was there a refreshing stream coming from
without, as was Buddhism in former ages. The
names of painters recorded by Chang Keng * are
very numerous 202 artists, 15 Buddhist priests,
and 22 women but, unfortunately, they were only
more or less imitators and copyists of the old
masters. Perhaps the most remarkable amongst
the painters of the Ching period was Huang han,
* KnocKao hua cheng lu, published in 1739.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 59
of whom a Chinese critic said that he painted
flowers and birds with " the extreme of life
motion " ; according to Sie Ho's " Six Canons,"
this is the highest praise that could be bestowed
on an artist. The Chinese expression " life's
motion " is as untranslatable as is the German word
Stimmung ; it is next to impossible to define it,
either. It does not mean motion pure and simple,
for the Chinese would say even of a rock that it
is painted with " life's motion," if the picture or
drawing fulfilled certain aesthetic conditions, the
importance of which is comprehensible only to their
mind.
A Chinese art critic, named Chang Keng, des-
cribes what an unfortunate result was obtained by
Chinese artists who wished to imitate the European
manner of painting. " He depicted," says the
Chinese litterateur of a European artist, " a woman
holding up a little child, declaring that this last
was a representation of God. The projection and
colouring of these were very fascinating ; and the
artist himself maintained that the Chinese could
only paint flat surfaces, consequently there was no
projection or depression relief on their pictures.
' We, in our country,' he said, ' paint both the light
and the dark, so that the result shows projection and
depression. A man's full face is light, and the
side parts are dark. If the side parts are coloured
dark in a picture the face will appear in relief.'
Chiao acquired this art, and modified his style
accordingly, but the result was not refined or con-
vincing. Lovers of antiquity would do well not
to adopt this method."
60 THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA
This judicious advice, however, was not followed ;
and some Chinese artists took a fancy to European
naturalism, with the result that modern Chinese
art is in decay, especially with those artists who do
not even follow their great old masters, if they are
incapable of creative work.
A few enlightening precepts furnished by the
exhibition of Chinese art may be formulated in
the following manner. Without presuming to decide
whether Western art is superior to that of the East,
or vice versa, one may rightly affirm that Asian art
is complete in itself, that it impresses us as a
whole by its cohesion, solidarity, order, and har-
mony, that it is worthy of our most serious
consideration and intense study, for it shows almost
throughout its whole course the complete victory
of the spirit over the matter ; and that Chinese
artists enriched the lives of their countrymen by
creating beautiful and even sublime masterpieces,
which is the purpose of every art.
Then the Chinese pictures demonstrate that
muddy hues produced by mixing of colours should
be eschewed in favour of clean tints which should
be harmonized by the creative power of the artist.
Further, they prove convincingly that the purpose
of art is not the beautifying of Nature according
to commonplace patterns, nor her exact photo-
graphic reproduction, but that everything should
be decided by the free individuality of an artist for
whom Nature is only material for creative purposes.
Again, that too eager materialistic search for minute
THE PICTORIAL ART OF CHINA 61
optical illusions, and too heavy, material modelling
are not necessary, and are even detrimental, for
lines and spots of colour are sufficient. Again,
neither too regular composition, nor a foolish lack
of it causes a painting to be a masterpiece ; too
much symmetry being contrasted successfully with
graceful and careless fancifulness, while the absence
of regularity is opposed by the principle of decora-
tive inventiveness. Again, it is not necessary to
paint big canvasses, for some of the Chinese master-
pieces, full of depth and breadth, are painted on
relatively small pieces or rolls of silk. They teach
us also the secret of bringing out from numberless
accidental details only the essence of things, and
of rendering it by the most necessary means. Then
they make it evident that an artist should not
strive to express everything ; that to the fancy of
the spectator should be left the freedom of com-
pleting, through feeling, the suggested motive, ascer-
taining in this manner the only principle of beauty
which can be applied everywhere.
It would be impossible to close this study by a
more appropriate utterance than is this of the great
aesthete, Laurence Binyon, when he said : " Surely
it is not least by her painting and her literature
that China will live for the world ! "
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
NOTWITHSTANDING the efforts made by some arch-
aeologists * to prove that the Amos, the aborigines
of Japan, were not deficient in the useful arts, one
would be quite safe in maintaining that art was
brought into the Isles of Nippon by the Yamato
race, whom we call Japanese. Their natural sensi-
bility to the beauty of Nature was intensified and
fostered by the extraordinary beauty of their islands,
which fully justifies Hippolite Taine's theory.
Although the mightiest mountains in the world
divide the Asiatic continent, and Japan is isolated
from it by the sea, Asia is all one in its boundless
love for the Universal and the Ultimate. This unity
of Asia is the cause that the principal canon of
Japanese, as of Chinese, art is " the life-movement
of the Spirit through the Rhythm of Things."
Line and line-composition have always been not
only the primitive but the universal Asian method.
However, one must not think that the excellence of
Japanese pictorial art lies merely in contours and
outlines ; for although the Japanese artists added
the beauty of dark and light, they did not forget
that their purpose was artistic and not scientific,
and therefore, while they contributed the notion of
* The Pictorial Arts of Japan, by William Anderson. Japan,
its History, Arts, and Literature, by Captain F. Brinkley.
5
66 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
composing in colours, the whole philosophy of
their art was comprised in the saying : " A picture
is a voiceless poem ; a poem is a picture with
a voice." Japanese art has also another point
in common with that of China, namely, a love
of Nature and of Freedom, the result of the
introduction of Laoism or Taoism.
* :':: * * *
Albeit the Yamato race were possessed of artistic
taste and ability, their aesthetic energy was aroused
and developed by the wealth of Chinese artistic
culture when the matured arts of the Hang dynasty
were introduced into Japan. The numerous
inscriptions in Chinese found in Japan attest that
the art education of" the Japanese was well
advanced before the age of Buddhism, and pro-
duced the grand art of the Asuka period. The
history of art in Japan, before the introduction of
Buddhism, shows that her intercourse with the
Asian continent goes as far back as 147 B.C.
According to an ancient writing called The Cata-
logue of Families, pictorial art in Japan began in
the reign of the Emperor Yuriaku, 457-479 A.D.,
when a Chinese painter named Nanriii, or Shinki,
came over to Japan. The Japanese had a Ministry
of Fine -Arts as early as the fifth century.
When in the sixth century A.D. the teaching of
Buddha was accepted in Japan, the joy inspired
by the idea of union with the Absolute gave rise
to a great love of the beauty and significance of
things. The Japanese followed the enthusiastic
Northern Buddhists, who painted the whole world
with gods, and mingled sensuously decorative effects
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 67
with the calligraphic dexterity of primitive art.
This was done by the medium of a gorgeous but
studied play of gold and lively colours, which,
naturally, pleased the untrained taste of the popu-
lace. But as in the meantime the bold sweeping
stroke of brush, understood and appreciated by the
educated few, was not neglected, the higher taste
of the aristocracy of learning was not offended,
and the illumination was received with approval.
The main characteristic of the first epoch of
Japanese art, called the Asuka period (550-700),
was abstract idealism, and the first Japanese picture
was a portrait of the Prince Wumayado, who
stands out in the history of Japan as St. Louis
does in that of France, and Alfred the Great in
the history of England. He is worshipped to this
day as the patron of the arts ; his portrait, not-
withstanding its stiffness of pose characteristic of
primitive works is of great artistic consequence.
In Chiuguji there is a tapestry representing the
Kingdom of Infinite Bliss, which, together with
the lacquer decorations of a shrine belonging to
the Empress Suiko, gives an adequate idea of the
drawing and colouring of the first Japanese
painters.
When at the beginning of the eighth century the
capital of Japan was removed from Asuka to Nara,
a great era in Japanese history and art began. It
was an age of grandeur and of liberalism, which
resounded in the songs of Hitomaru, Ritaihaku,
Kalidasa, Banabhatta, and Jain Bavikirti. Nara
68 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
soon became rich, splendid and refined ; the only
occupations of the Court and nobility were festivals,
dancing, music, poetry, flower fetes, and art. The
elaborate ceremoniousness of the Buddhist religion
imparted to the upper class a love of rich clothes,
of gorgeous pomp, and of courteous manners. In
respect of art, it was an epoch of calmness, result-
ing in a harmony of spirit and matter, very much
like that of Greek classicism. The Japanese artists
succeeded not only in rendering the abstract beauty
of the Indian ideal, but also in adding to it a
completeness and delicacy that made the Japanese
art of the Nara period perfectly expressive of
Asian thought.
The history has handed down a great many
names of these artists, whose works, unfortunately,
have perished, with the exception of the frescoes
preserved in the temple of Horinji ; and these are
of high consequence, not only on account of their
grand, strongly -outlined figures, but also because
through them we learn that the Japanese artistic
genius was able to improve on wall-paintings of
the Ajanta Caves in India, so celebrated in Asian
art. Another relic of this period, " The Beauties
under the Trees" a line-painting representing
single figures of women under trees, and a land-
scape in the background possesses much of
the flexibility of Japanese genius expressed in
graciousness and suavity.
Still another painting of the same period,
" Buddhist Angel," has great sweetness and beauty.
The angel, bearing the jewel of life, is a charm-
ing figure, without a vestige of human grossness of
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 69
any kind ; it is free from fear, struggle, and hate ;
an enlightened spirit floating above everything that
is low, and near Nirvana, that is to say, the final
bliss, which is to be obtained when one is absorbed
by the eternal Oneness. That angel, moving above
the sufferings, strifes, and longings of men, full of
divine compassion and tenderness, is one of the
most enchanting, most gracious creations of
Buddhism, " revealing that side of infinite tender-
ness and " sense of brotherhood in all life, which
constitutes that religion's most universal appeal."*
In regard to colouring, the pictures of the Nara
period are exquisite in their tones of subdued rich-
ness, the landscapes being different from the
Chinese both in execution and spirit.
In 794 A.D. the capital of Japan was again
removed, this time to Heian or Kyoto, and then
began the third epoch, which lasted until about
900 A.D.
The ideas of the former or Nara period, the
harmony between mind and matter, and the
realization of the Supreme Spirit in concrete form,
now became more developed, and grew stronger.
Nature and art were looked upon in a new light,
for in every object was to be found the Impersonal-
Universal. Kukai's twelve deuas, preserved in
Saidaji, and the Kiokaimandara of Senjuin, are the
best specimens of the pictorial art of the Heian
period, the characteristic of which is virility.
Heian art is lacking in detachment and in the
spontaneity of great idealism, but it possesses
assurance, vitality, and vigour, and it is concrete.
* Painting in the Far East, by Laurence Binyon.
70 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
The Japanese mind having completed the con-
templation of the Indian ideal, and absorbed what
was best in Chinese and Indian wisdom, decided
to develop its own ideals and forms in politics,
government, life, literature, and art ; and for this
purpose intercourse between the Continent and the
lovely isles was deliberately stopped. This develop-
ment of Japanese culture and art may be termed
national, and it is known under the name of the
Fujiwara period, 898-1200 A.D.
The most peculiar characteristic of this epoch
was not only the isolation of the country and the
realization of its separate purpose, but also the
ascendancy of woman to an extent unknown in
any other land. This feminine sway was mani-
fested in the first place by the appearance of
important books written by women, amongst whom
stands out Murasa Ki Shikibu, the authoress of the
great romance of Genji, which was read and illus-
trated by every generation. The sarcastic pen
of another woman named Seishonagon anticipated
Mme. Scudery's witticisms by seven hundred years ;
while Komachi, in her glory, was the envy of the
court at which she was the frailest, the loveliest,
the wittiest of the women, and 'the greatest poetess.
The prevalence of the eternal feminine was so
strong in Japan during the Fujiwara period, that
the nobility urged, as a reason for their womanish
softness, that the true man was a combination of
man and woman ; they went so far as to imitate
women in their clothes, and in making up their
faces. They left all their useful duties to the
inferior classes, and considered that burning
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 71
incense, drawing on fans, hawking, playing foot-
ball, writing verses, planning palaces, building
monasteries, and patronizing artists, were the only
functions worthy of their caste. Intoxicated with
love, men and women danced, sang of Amida,
and organized masquerades and fetes in which
angels were represented seated on the lotus, and
descending from Heaven to carry away departing
souls.
Such a state of affairs could not last for ever ;
the lower orders rose against their enfeebled
superiors, unmasked the powerlessness of the Fuji-
wara court, and set up the barons, amongst whom
the two martial families of the Minamatos and of
the Tairas were the most powerful. An epic battle
was fought at Suma and Shioya, in which a
Minamato defeated his rival Taira, and the
candidate to the Imperial throne.
While morals were lax, severe canons ruled
manners, accomplishments, and art. The high
standard of art may be seen in the paintings of
Buddhi-Sattvas, for they are images of infinite
tenderness, and express spiritual serenity in such
a supreme manner that to contemplate them is to
be strangely moved, yet wonderfully appeased.
Usually the forms of the stern or benignant Buddi-
Sattvas were painted on a dark background, sur-
rounded by a delicate radiance which made them
look like a presence from the unknown. The
forms are produced by the medium of flowing
lines ; they were attired in harmoniously stream-
ing draperies, that seem to be animated with life,
while the colouring " discloses itself as a part of
72 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
the calmly glowing life within, veined with fine
lines of gold, not as something applied from with-
out." * Another elevated conception of this art
was Amida-Buddha, whose form, executed with
mysterious and undulating harmonies, acts on one
like a glow of glorious and solemn music. Amida
is represented as surrounded by a fluctuating
multitude of heavenly beings, gleaming with gold
behind him ; he gazes down upon the world kindly
and graciously, while sweet flowers stream down,
and the inmates of Heaven play all kinds of musical
instruments.
Amongst the painters of this period Kanaoka is
the most remarkable perhaps he is the greatest
in the history of Japanese art. This may be
inferred from his portrait of the Prince Shotoku,
a masterpiece worthy of the greatest genius, on
account of its noble simplicity, solemn but glow-
ing colouring, and surpassing grandeur of design.
Kanaoka was the founder of the Rose School,
which was influenced by his descendants from the
ninth to the twelfth century. The British Museum
possesses a masterpiece of the Rose School,
" Nirvana of Buddha," which is either based on
the great conception of this subject by the Chinese
painter Wu Tao-tzu, or copied from his picture,
with certain Japanese variations. This picture is
ascribed to Hiroka, Ranaoka's great-grandson, and
after him the most talented painter of the Rose
line. This painting is remarkable for its grand,
vigorous^ and impassioned style, for the expressive
force of its line-drawing, and for its harmony of
colours.
* Laurence Binyon, lib. cit.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 73
Yeshiu Sozu's conception of Buddha's golden
angelic figure, represented as rising between two
hills, fills the canvas with supernatural peace ; it
is supremely august, and must be counted amongst
the few paintings of the world which are unsur-
passable in their religious sentiment of bliss and
exaltation. \Yhat a mighty artistic source is
religious enthusiasm ! The greatest artists of the
world, Phidias, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Leonardo
da Vinci, Murillo to mention but those were
inspired by religious sentiment in creating their
sublimely serene masterpieces.
In the eleventh century Takuma Tamenji, who
was much influenced by the Chinese masters of
the Sung period, formed another school, an off-
shoot of that of Rose, and this was followed by
still another school of Kasuga Motomitsu. Those
two schools were subsequently united into one by
Tosa Tsunetaka, and from thus fusion came the
Yamato or National School ; its works possess a
matured style, which indicates that the Japanese
artistic tendencies were now fully developed, their
delicacy and voluptuous colouring being united with
the virility of the Chinese style.
The paintings of the Fujiwara period are striking
for their delicate lines, their gorgeous but refined
colouring, and their predominating use of gold-
very much as in the pictures of European mediaeval
artists ; they have impressive qualities of decision
and order. It was a magnificent and rare art !
After a long civil war, Yoritomo one of the
74 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
greatest figures in the history of Japan, represent-
ing the family of the Minamatos defeated the
Tairas, and forced the Emperor to bestow on him
the title of Shogun.* This event ushered in yet
another epoch of Japanese history, begun in 1186,
and lasting till about 1400 A.D. This period is
called Kamakura.
The Eastern barbarians, who lived in the trans-
Hakone regions not unlike the hordes of Goths in
Europe overthrew the too refined nobility of the
artistic Fujiwaras, and on the ruins of aristocratic
rule inaugurated an epoch of individualism and of
hero-worship, combined with woman-worship.
This period had much in common with our times
of chivalry, of adventurous deeds for " the lady
of my heart," of religious enthusiasm displayed in
building churches and monasteries, and of love of
heroic romances. The romantic figure of the hero
Yoshitsune the brother of the formidable Yoritomo
reminds one of the Knight Pendragon ; both are
surrounded by the poetic mist so dear to our fancy.
The whole of Japan was divided into feudal
provinces, ruled by daimyos barons who were
followed by their knights, called samurai, a class
of sublime warriors who not only vied with each
other in martial prowess, but also in courtesy, in
self-conquest, in patience, in charity, in sweetness,
in wisdom, and in devotion to women. " To suffer
* Shogun is an abbreviation of Seigi tai Shogun, or Coni-
mander-in-Chief of the Armies that fight Barbarians. The
long succession of military regents of Japan were called
Shoguns, and of them the Minamatos reigned in Kamakura,
the Ashikayas in Kyoto, and the Tokugawas in Tokio or Yedo.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 75
and die for others " was the samurai's motto, as
it was that of our immortal Crusaders, who
ennobled the brutality of warfare by religious
enthusiasm.
All these elements caused to blossom a literature
of epic romances and of adventures. The art of
the time lacked the idealized perfection of the Nara,
and the refined delicacy of the Fujiwara periods,
but it was remarkable for its virility of line.
Amongst the painters, Nebuzane's pictures are note-
worthy for the strangeness of their beauty, for
delicacy of drawing, and for the simplicity of
design ; his art is a rare, new, and precious flower,
quite different from that of China. In his " Maki-
mono of Court Life," the poet-painter united virile
expressiveness with conventional design, adding
also resplendent but harmonious colours, such as
have never been surpassed by any of the Japanese
painters ; the originality of his colouring consists
of peculiar harmonies of orange and lapis lazuli,
of black and gold, of fawn and opaque green. His
portraits indicate a great intimacy with the sitters'
characters, and are painted in light hues. The
British Museum possesses good specimens of Kore-
hisa's energetic brush, with which he renders the
riot of speed and the fury of fear. The makimono
owned by the Prince Tokugawa, the three battle-
scenes of the Heji stories one in the possession of
the Emperor of Japan, one in the Boston Museum 1 ,
and one in the Baron Iwasaki's collection are
excellent specimens of this art, for which there
was neither too high nor too low a subject, because
the canons of formalistic distinction were put aside
76 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
under the pressure of enthusiasm for the spirit of
motion and for the individual consciousness. How-
ever, the most noteworthy characteristic of the
Kamakura period is the absence of the influence
of Chinese ideals.
Takuji was the founder of the Ashikaga line of
shoguns, hence the name given to the new era,
that lasted from 1400 to 1600.
Under the Ashikaga sway the capital was removed
from Kamakura to Kyoto, the interrupted com-
munications with the Asian continent resumed, and
Japan again became influenced by the spiritualism
of India and the harmonic communism of Con-
fucian thought, approaching in that way the
romantic ideal from a subjective and idealistic point
of view, which was quite different from that of
the European races who sought it materialistically
and objectively. The ideal of the Ashikaga epoch
was due to the Zen sect, which intliionced so much
the daimyos and the samurai of the Kamakura
times, when they wore priestly attire over their
armour, shaved their heads, became militant monks,
and were fond of contemplative retirement into
monasteries. This ideal became now the fountain
of an aesthetic inspiration, almost all Ashikaga
painters having been either monks or priests. As
thought became of the foremost importance, as
opposed to form, there ensued a lively strife
between the worldly senses and the spiritual life.
Beauty, said the Zenists, or the life of things, is
always deeper hidden within than outwardly ex-
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 77
pressed ; not to display, but to suggest is the
spirit of infinity ; perfection like all maturity fails
to impress, because of its limitations. The Japanese
artists took a great fancy to these ideas, and not
only maintained in theory, but put into practice
the view that " virility and activity were necessary
to make a permanent impression, but that to leave
it to the imagination to suggest the carrying out of
an idea was essential to all forms of artistic expres-
sion, for thus was the spectator made one with the
artist." * This was nothing new, for the same
principle was accepted by the Chinese artists of
the classical Sung period, under whose influence the
Japanese painters now worked. This influence
made them give up the representations of heroic
actions, or ceremonious manners, depicted with
sensuous, rich colouring and delicate curves, and
prefer to paint flowers, birds, and landscapes, which
they executed in monochrome, simple ink sketches,
with a few bold, summary lines. They painted but
very few subjects taken from legends or history,
and even this was done under the guise of " types
of contemplation or spiritual desire, and not as
actors in any human drama." Their art became
almost entirely subjective.
This Japanese Renaissance began a little earlier
than did the Italian ; it was in full bloom towards
the end of the fifteenth century. However, one
cannot help thinking of this strange, almost
simultaneous, but unconscious, coincidence that
occurred in two distant and unconnected countries.
* * * * *
* The Ideals of the East, by Kakuzo Okokura.
78 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
The Ashikaga succumbed to the fate of the Fuji-
wara. Their time was one of war and terror
caused by fighting the daimyos between themselves.
The country was saved from anarchy by three great
men : Ota-Nabunaga, who became dictator in
1573; Hideyoshi, who succeeded as Shogun, and
Tokugawa leyasu, who overpowered the feudal
barons, and founded a new capital in Yedo and a
new line of Shoguns, who were abolished only by
the revolution of 1868. Hideyoshi was the Napo-
leon of Japan, whose ambitious plans of conquering
China only went as far as the devastation of Corea,
because of his sudden death. But this invasion
of Corea renewed intercourse with the Asian con-
tinent, and introduced "to Japan the mature Ming
art. The new Japanese nobility, sprung from
robbers and pirates, could not understand the
refinements of the Ashikaga period ; their uncul-
tured minds demanded a new art, not one of inner
significance, but of the vulgar display of gorgeous
colours and of a wealth of ornament that reminds
one of the Prince Albert and Queen Victoria monu-
ments. However, Japanese art, with its glorious
past, could not succumb entirely to the vulgarity of
the exigencies of the nouveaux-richcs. The grand-
son of Kano Monlonobu, the founder of the Kano
school, which left such a strong tradition that it
persists even to this day, by the name of Yeitoku,
was a follower of the great art. Having been
employed by the uncultured Hideyoshi to decorate
his castle, he tried to satisfy his employer's crav-
ing for gorgeousness without derogating from the
lofty traditions in which he had been trained by
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 79
his father. For this purpose, he was the first to
introduce gold leaf for wall decorations and
screens ; the effect was magnificent, but Yeitoku's
talent saved the art from falling into vulgarity,
and in his hands it preserved its grandeur and
importance.
When, in 1615, Tokugawa leyasu had stormed
and taken the Osaku Castle reported to be im-
pregnable and established the Tokugawa dynasty
of shoguns, he made a strenuous effort to bring
art back to the simple ideals of the Ashikaga times.
In this he was seconded by his court painters :
Tannyu. Nonabu, Yasunobu, and Tsunenobu, whose
aim it was to imitate the simple refinement of
Sesshu. But the vulgar spirit of the time was
hostile, and frustrated this exalted endeavour to
revive the severe culture of the Zenists. Seven-
teenth-century Japan outdistanced nineteenth -cen-
tury America, and her imitator Europe, in sub-
stituting vulgar display for simplicity. After half
a century of bloodshed, the Japanese vented their
joy in wild revelry and almost childish playfulness
in every form of unbridled pleasure. Yedo grew
in size and wealth ; industrial arts flourished, and
gave rise to genre painting, for the artists who had
risen from the common people delighted in paint-
ing the common scenes of life. The popular pres-
sure was so strong that it destroyed the exquisite
fabric of art and manners of the Ashikaga times,
which had been produced by long tradition, diligent
study, religious training, and solitary meditation.
The new decorative, though not spiritual, art was
triumphant.
80 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
This artistic revolution was started by Hanabusa
Itcho, who, in a mocking spirit, began to paint
subjects from popular life, and gave impulse to
the Ukiyoye * or popular school, the true originator
of which, however, was Matabei (1578-1650).
Matabei's art is characterized by natural gesture
and pose, combined with a keen sense of swiftly
caught essentials, of simplicity of design, and
expressive outlining of the figure. The four pictures
by him, representing women and men playing
games, show how originally he improved on the
aristocratic Kano and Tosa, who also painted genre
pictures occasionally, and produced great master-
pieces like the Hikone screen, the most important
work of the beginning of the Ukiyoye period.
Matabei's was such an original genius that he
escaped the common fate of eclectics. " He is a
power working in the life of art, in which is
centred strength." Notwithstanding the revolu-
tionary element introduced by him into Japanese
art, the great tradition was still prolonged with
some glory by Tsunenobu, and there remained the
old school of Tosa in Kyoto, patronized by the
Imperial house, while the Kano school was in
favour with the Shogun.
The main characteristic of European decorative
* Ukiyoye is a term of Buddhist origin, and it means
" pictures of the fleeting world," by which were designated all
the appeals to the senses and the transitory elements of miser-
able mortality. Then it came to mean a recognized style,
applied first to painters of scenes of daily life, and the artists
of the school were known by that style even when they painted
battles, or flowers, or landscapes.
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 81
art was symmetry ; in architecture, the decoration
was ruled by the style of the building ; but we had
a notion that it had nothing to do with the pictorial
art, and that the imaginative element must be
almost excluded from it. It was quite different in
Japan, where, in the first place, the decorative ele-
ment was rarely discarded from painting ; the
Japanese artists would decorate a screen or a
lacquer-box with a single flower, or with a flight
of birds, or with a landscape. However, it must
be borne in mind, that although they were able
to do so without symmetry as a geometrical basis,
their decorative art is not a happy caprice, a skilful
irregularity ; on the contrary, it has the same prin-
ciple of balance ; that is to say, science combined
with taste, as European decorative art. To these
the painter Korin added the mark of almost
impertinent gaiety and free audacity ; his influence
upon the applied arts was wonderful, not only in his
own country, but in other lands as well ; but its
most felicitous results were perhaps realized by the
Copenhagen china decorators.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were
times of rivalry between two great cities : Yedo,
or Tokyo, dominated by the Shogun, whose rigid
authority extended even to art, and Kyoto, in which
the Emperor resided in such poverty that he was
obliged to sell his autographs. The Shoguns'
official painters controlled the Kano schools, which
worked under prescribed academic routine, and
imitated, more or less, Tsunenobu and Tanyo. A
6
82 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
great number of the Ukiyoye artists, having been
despised by the feeble representatives of the
glorious ancient art, and excluded from the life of
the aristocracy, created for themselves a joyous
artistic world, by illustrating the life of the popu-
lace, popular drama, theatrical celebrities, and the
gay life of the Yoshivara beauties. Kyoto, being
free from the discipline of the Shognn, which
crushed all vigour and artistic creativeness, became
a centre of literary and artistic life free from aca-
demic formulae, where the rich bourgeoisie admired
originality in the artists. This artistic life of
Kyoto was open to two important influences : the
first was the introduction from China of the later
Ming and the earlier Manchu-Shin styles ; the
second was the study of European naturalism,
brought to the Celestial Empire by Matteo Ricci,
and from there to Japan through the instrumentality
of Chinnan-ping, a Chinese painter who resided for
a few years at Nagasaki. Besides this, Dutch
engravings became known in Japan, and were
copied with a brush (sic) by Maruyamo Okio. He
was the representative artist of this period, for,
having been well trained in the Kano school, he
combined the new methods with his own, and was
able to depict with a sure brush the various moods
of Nature with delicacy and exquisite effect.
Although he was capable of grand conceptions, yet
his art does not move one as does that of the
Ashikaga art. " There is a difference of import, of
all that lies behind a work of art, in the recesses
of thought, reverie, spiritual ardour, and desire."
There are many other painters of some merit,
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 83
but all, clever artists as they were, notwithstanding
their skill and dexterity, failed to grasp as their
great predecessors had done the essential character
of their subject, and, therefore, to continue the
traditions of a great national art.
*****
Although charmingly coloured wood-cuts and
prints full of variety are so little thought of by
Japanese writers that in their serious works on
art they speak of them but slightly, this essay
would not be complete if some space were not
given to those specimens of Japanese artistic
activity through the medium of which the art of
Japan became known in Europe, rather than
through the grand masterpieces kept in the temples
and in the residences of the daimyos.
The first wood-cuts were brought to Europe in
1692, by Kaempfer, the historian of Japan; but
they were really a Chinese product. Wood-cuts
were originally used in Japan in making images
of saints and gods. Moronobu employed them for
popular picture books and single-sheet prints. His
pupil, Kiyonobu, produced wonderful harmonies of
only two colours, green and rose, besides the black
outline. His prints representing actors, actresses,
and the famous beauties of the Yoshivara, were the
most exquisite productions of the new art, and were
sold in their thousands. Harunabu increased the
number of blocks, and thus developed colour print-
ing. He created a very seductive type of Japanese
woman, representing Madame Chrysanthemum, as
sweet, fragile, shy, and slender as the stem of an
Easter lily, and sensitive to her finger tips.
84 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
Through Utamaro the Ukiyoye reached its zenith.
His art has not the charm of serene beauty, but
he was a master in composition, in figure-drawing,
and in expressiveness of line. He was a very
gifted man, but lacked the superior qualities, and
this lack made him inundate the world with
prints loud in colour and of low artistic value,
which caused the Ukiyoy to be abominated.
Hokusaj and Hiroshiye arrested for a while the
decay of the Ukiyoy6. Hokusaj's life and work
are the best known to us of all the Japanese
artists ; it is enough, therefore, here to remind the
reader that Hokusaj's chief merit overwhelms one
only in his landscapes ; for with all his resources
in composition and his knowledge of humanity, he
did not succeed in leaving any classical figure
work, that is to say, any work combining the
essential powers of art in perfection. His appli-
cation to labour surpassed even that gigantic
worker Turner, with whom he rightly shares the
fame of being the greatest landscape painter of
the world. But we cannot say that his masterly
depicting of Nature possesses the lofty contempla-
tion, the aerial vista, or the majestic reverie that
we find in the great landscape art of China ; he
was not able to feel and express certain more
elevated moods. When he was dying in 1849, his
last words were : " Now my soul, a will-o'-the-
wisp, can flit at ease over the summer fields."
Hiroshiye was Hokusaj's worthy successor in
landscape painting. His art, expressing single
objects and their beauty, under the changes of light
and atmosphere, is delightful, and his influence on
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 85
the art of Europe was the strongest and the widest
of the Japanese artists. His followers, however,
are very much mistaken in thinking that he had
solved the great problem, and created the ideal
decorative art, simply because he thinks of nothing
but of enchanting harmonies of lines and colours,
for the history of Japanese art teaches us that an
ideal art possesses some more important elements
than that.
The last epoch of Japanese history opened in
1868, when the shogunate was abolished. The
Meiji restoration glows with the fire of patriotism,
and is characterized by a great national loyalty^
as well as by two mighty forces, which are striving
to master Japanese life the Asian ideal and Euro-
pean culture. The first urges Japan to unite her-
self with Asiatic culture ; the second attracts the
inquisitive Japanese mind to the wonders of modern
science. Both of them are equally conscious, but
nobody would be presumptuous enough to predict
what will be the result of this most interesting
spiritual strife of a nation.
The dualistic character of the Meiji period has
already produced its effect on art. On one side
there is a strenuous effort to revive the literature
and art of the times of the Tosas and the heroic
Kamakura. On the other hand the influence of
European realistic art has now a chance of success
with Japanese artists, who are fascinated by the
Western civilization, which confounds beauty with
science and culture with industry. However, the
86 THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN
active individualism of the Meiji was not satisfied
either with the orthodox conservatism, or the
radical Europeanization of art ; a group of earnest
men made an effort to find an expression which
would combine the ancient art of Japan with the
knowledge and love of what is highest and best
in the art of Europe, producing a new national art,
the motto of which is "Life true to self." The
result of this movement was the establishment by
the Japanese Government of art schools in Ueno,
Tokyo, and Yanaka, in which European masters
teach side by side with Japanese. The principles
prevailing in these schools may be summarized in
this way : " Freedom is the greatest privilege of an
artist, but his freedom should be understood in
the sense of evolutionary self-development. Art
is neither the real nor the ideal. Imitation, whether
of Nature, of the old masters, or above all of self,
is fatal to the realization of individuality, which
rejoices always to play an original part, be it in
tragedy or comedy, in the grand drama of life,
of man, and of Nature."
When one reads such an elevated art programme
one feels that there is no fear of the vulgarization
of the exquisite old Japanese art, through the
influence of the inferior elements of European
civilization. We may be sure that where idealism
and not imitation is given as a standard, art will
develop in a sound direction, and will reach those
heights where ideas, moods, and sentiments are the
real, while facts are mere incidents. It is certain
that under such conditions the students educated
in those schools will understand that not the thing
THE PICTORIAL ART OF JAPAN 87
as it was, but the infinite it suggested to him, is
demanded of an artist. It is certain that, thanks
to the aesthetic freedom that prevails in the modern
art schools of Japan, both the range of subjects
and the method of their expression, will grow
wider, as is evident in the works of Kano Hogai
and Hashimoto Gaho.
Thus Japanese art, notwithstanding the neiw and
difficult conditions of the national life, from which
art cannot be separated, the confusion of ideas, and
the detrimental influence of industrialism, which
took so strong a hold of the Japanese mind, is
aspiring to the high regions of her grand old art,
by the contemplation of which we learn that art
is not an issue in itself, but a medium for the
charm of life ; that only in the conquest of spirit
can art prevail. And we are delighted and elevated
because, in beholding its immortal masterpieces, we
feel that we are in communion with the Eternal.
JEAN AUGUST INGRES
JEAN AUGUST INGRES
THE exhibition together of pictures of dead and
contemporary artists is not an anachronism, for it
furnishes an opportunity of making comparison and
of seeing how much the living artists are indebted
to those who preceded them. This lesson was
evident when, in the Salon d'Automne, Ingres' work
was compared with the pictures of living painters,
for it was then demonstrated how closely he is
connected with the art of to-day, so much so that
one may look upon him as on one of the fathers
of modern art. That spiritual relationship is
probably due to the fact that there is much in
common between the present epoch and that which
preceded Ingres ; as to-day there is a reaction
against realism and impressionism, so in the same
way there was formerly a reaction against
mannerism, minuteness, and the effeminate charm
of the eighteenth century ; the exhausted art was
standing on a crossway, waiting for a Renaissance.
When Ingres began to paint the change had
already begun. The capricious and playful line
had become stiff, and produced tedious, almost
geometrical figures ; the powdered beauties, boudoir
scenes, charming marchionesses and elegant cava^
Hers, excursions to the Isle of Cythera, wigs and
frocks a panier, had vanished. Instead of all that
there appeared dull, dignified, morose figures, the
92 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
product of the new tendencies. Winckelman and
Quatremere de Quincy had rediscovered classical
beauty ; under their influence David in France,
Raphael Mengs and Asmus Carsten in Germany
turned to the stately Romano -Greek style to the
Hellenic ideal as to a source of everything that is
beautiful. The only authority on aesthetics was
Winckelman's Die Geshichte der Kunst des Alter-
tums ; the only recognized truth in painting and
statuary was a canon like that of Polyclete ; pictures
were composed according to the ideas of sculpture,
and were like bas-reliefs. A type was conceived
and deemed worthy of reproduction a type of man,
type of woman, type of horse ; there was, one
might say, an algebra of shape and colour.
After that the direction of art changed and was
divided into two streams : we have on the one
hand a conflagration of colours, the war music
of the Renaissance represented by Eugene
Delacroix ; and on the other, a moderate classicism,
at the head of which stood Ingres, who put his
own soul into the antique dreams, made them bright
with his own thought, and softened their stiffness
by his personal observation.
Ingres brought to the common art-treasury the
love of line, a subtle simplification of shape, con-
centration in drawing, a bewitching naivete of
vision. He says about his own creative power : " I
permit myself to think that I have opened a new
road, adding to David's love of the ancient world my
own love of Nature, together with a continual search
after the tradition of the great Italian school and
the cult of the works of Raphael."
JEAN AUGUST INGRES 93
It seemed to Ingres that he was a follower of
Sanzio ; he could not see how individual he
remained, notwithstanding his enthusiasm for
classical tradition. It is true that Ingres lived on
reminiscences of and wandered in his thoughts
round the Acropolis, where he sought his ideal of
beauty ; it is true that he was fascinated by the
master of Urbino ; but he did not feel himself that
all the- time the sharp melody of modernism
resounded in him ; he did not know of how many
different elements his vision was composed, or that
this vision was modern and antique at the same
time, though it reached to the Etruscan vases,
the Byzantine and Gothic art, passing over Praxi-
teles, Phidias, and Scopas, over the " School of
Athens " and the Madonnas.
Ingres' " Apotheosis of Homer," with its straight,
almost geometrical lines and its rhythmical sym-
metry, has it not the Byzantine character?
" Ulysses " and " CEdipus," have they not an affinity
with the Etruscan vases in their preciseness of line,
their flat modelling, and even their colour? While
in his " Odalisques " and " Bathers " he has united
a nature vibrating with life with a classical rapture
of beauty. In all his pictures fine outlines, the
sentiment of the beautiful, a modelling in the light,
and a diffused illumination not concentrated but
strong are characteristics of his genius, and give
to his work an originality before unknown.
Jean August Ingres' artistic activity began towards
1801, at which period we trace the influence of
94 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
his master David, his works being inspired by
models, bas-reliefs, and cameos. Between 1801 and
1806 he painted " Philemon and Baucis," " The
Wounded Venus," and the allegory, " Napoleon on
the Kehl Bridge." Notwithstanding a lack of
balance very natural in a beginner, one feels already
the hand of a master, manifested not only in the
figures, drawn in exact outlines, but in the logical,
clear, and beautiful composition. The figures
painted by Ingres, full of quietude and of great
harmony, stand in their serious beauty near to the
statuce iconicce which were erected by the Greek
statuaries to the victors at the Olympic games.
From 1806 to 1820 Ingres was in Italy, where
he became very intimate with Raphael's work, and
then and there made a vow to admire him for ever,
for he saw in him the only painter of the highest
rank, one endowed with supernatural gifts,
embracing the whole universe, looking into the
depths of the human soul, encompassing the celestial
regions of beauty. Under the influence of " the
divine Sancio," as he called Raphael, Ingres pro-
duced several pictures, in which he strove to express
the archaic dignity and charm of the painter of
the "Transfiguration."
" Romulus " and " Virgil Reading the JEneid " are
good samples of Ingres' inspiration at that period
of his life, in which one can still see traces of
David, of Guerin, and of Girodet ; but his thought
by and by plunged deeper, and although outline
remained for him the quality of prime importance,
there appeared an expression of life on his faces,
which until then had been cold and impersonal.
JEAN AUGUST INGRES 95
What concentrated thought, for instance, there is
in " GEdipus standing before the Sphinx " ! What
grief there is on the face of the sovereign to whom
Virgil is reading from his poem the passage Tu
Marcellus eris !
During his sojourn in Italy Ingres painted the
picture called " Odalisques," a work beautiful with
physical health and pagan repose, sensuous and
chaste at the same time, graceful and delicate like
flowers. The women represented in that picture
are very different from the elegant ladies in
decolletes frocks painted by Fragonard, Van Loo,
and Boucher, or from David's Puritans wrapped up
in the chlamys ; they seem to be proud of their
chaste nudity. Ingres gave them flexible and charm-
ing forms, but he clad them in the majesty of per-
fect beauty ; he purified them from everything that
might seem provocative. Even in such a composi-
tion as his " Turkish Bath " refined measure and
good taste are so well preserved by Ingres that
nobody could possibly be shocked at the group of
beauties, who look like white lilies, pink roses, and
golden anemones.
From 1820 to 1824 we find Ingres in Florence,
from whence he sent to Paris the pictures
"Louis XIII's Vows" and " The Entrance of
Charles I into Paris," and at once became famous.
From that time began those passionate discussions
between the admirers of Ingres and those who pre-
ferred Delacroix, discussions difficult to understand
even to-day, after so many years have passed over
them and both the artists who fought for their
respective ideals are dead. From that time also
96 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
began the sharp and unjust criticism of the romantic
writers, who saw in Ingres rather an archaeologist
than an artist, an academician insensible to life and
reality. We inherited that unjust appreciation, and
until recently we have not understood Ingres ; we
have overlooked his ardent love of the beautiful, a
love full of passion and poetry which showed itself
in a new vision. Baudelaire alone, always very
sensitive and quick to understand anything un-
usually artistic, said, " Ingres a Videal antique a
ajoute les curiosites et les minuties de I art
moderne " ; but that highly just and appreciative
sentence seemed paradoxical to the classics and
romantics, who failed to see anything in Ingres'
work. They were so blind that they did not even
notice that in his portraits Ingres has given a clear
picture of the people of his epoch, and that he felt
the pulse of the historical moment. The admirers
of classicism did not comprehend this feature of
Ingres' art, for it did not express the academic
tradition ; they looked upon him as their last refuge
in their fight with the romantics a kind of taber-
nacle in which the Hellenic ideal was guarded from
modern influence.
Ingres himself had so strange a conception of
his own mission to preach the beauty of Raphael
and the cult of the antique, that during his sojourn
in Florence he had shut his eyes to the marvels of
the Florentine school. He would have liked not
to see, not to feel, not to admire either the solemn
figures of Giotto or Cimabue, or the celestial visions
of Fra Angelico or the supernatural creations of
Buonarotti. But as his artistic soul was too sensi-
JEAN AUGUST INGRES 97
tive to the charm of masterpieces, he could not
pass them by with indifference, and it so happened
that all those pictures, which he could not help
seeing, were absorbed by him, in spite of him-
self. When, in 1824, he returned to Paris and
painted " Homer " and " St. Symphorinus," his debt
to Michael Angelo and Sebastien del Piombo was
manifest.
In " Homer's Apotheosis " one can see that Ingres
still maintained his personal creative will, notwith-
standing his exalted respect for Raphael ; there
is nothing in Ingres' canvas that might remind one,
in colour, style, or composition, of Sanzio's " School
of Athens." How different is that singer of singers
from all those I have seen painted, standing in
the centre, solemn as Jupiter ! He is almost a demi-
god ; at his feet sit Odyssea and Iliade, a winged
muse crowns him, and he is surrounded by a crowd
of those who had derived from his immortal songs
the sentiment of poetry.
" Les kommes qui cultivent les lettres et les arts
sont tous les enfants cTHomer" said Ingres ; conse-
quently in the apotheosis of the great blind man
he surrounded him with immortal bards, poets, and
singers of all nations and all centuries. All those
figures the painter distributed into square groups,
and by this means he has produced an effect of
severe, truly Olympian, beauty. " Homer's Apo-
theosis " is built like a logical puzzle, like a figure
of oratory ; everything in it people, architecture,
and background goes to make up a monumental
whole.
The artistic problem is quite different in " St.
7
98 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
Symphorinus," for which Ingres has found inspira-
tion in a Gothic missal. Here the artist has demon-
strated what tragic beauty he could produce, of what
ability he was capable in modelling, in using light
and shade ; how he could understand character.
This composition is very dramatic ; i woeful
tragedy is played in it without pathos, without
theatrical recitation, a holy tragedy of the self-
denial and self-sacrifice of a saint, who believed
and was not afraid to die. The legend says that
St. Symphorinus, brought up as a Christian, would
not deny his creed and bow to the goddess
Berencytia, for which he died in awful tortures,
during which he was comforted by his mother.
During the period from 1824 to 1834 Ingres
painted many portraits, which are not only master-
pieces but also historical documents for the times
of the July monarchy. One sees amongst them
such types as that of the business man, " Dix-
Huit-Cent-Trente," insolent because of his success
and his wealth, and many Messieurs Prud'hommes
and their respectable wives, with short busts, wear-
ing mantillas # la Pamela. Among all those por-
traits the most remarkable is that of the director
of the Journal des Debats, Berlin. His features
are regular, but his head, set on large shoulders,
is heavy ; he sits in an armchair, his big hands
resting on his enormous legs ; he is massive and
clumsy, like a log. The whole spirit of the bour-
geoisie is expressed in that canvas ; it is a synopsis
of the epoch ; an epic poem of its tendencies and
its ideals.
During that time Ingres began his educational
JEAN AUGUST INGRES 99
efforts ; he opened a school of painting and tried
to impart to his not very numerous pupils his
theory, his artistic credo ; he believed himself to
be an apostle, for he said, " Vart n'est pas seule-
ment une profession, c'est aussi un apostolat." The
little, fat, impetuous man had, in fact, something
of the sacerdotal in him ; enthusiasm, faith, and
energy radiated from his proud and independent
face. " He looks," Theodore de Banville said of
him, " like a figure of a threatening Titan by,
Michael Angelo ; it seems that while creating him
Buonarotti began to work, as was his custom, with-
out previously having taken any measurement, and
starting from the head ; as the block of marble
proved to be too short, the torso was made in pro-
portion, but he was obliged to make the legs too
short."
And how enthusiastically that Titan was sowing
the seeds of his thought in his academy ! He would
throw out handfuls of sentences, sometimes
pompous in style, a little ridiculous in form,
reminding one slightly of maxims and aphorisms
of the prototypes of the bourgeoisie, Messieurs
Prud'homme and Brid'oison, but full of truth and
of deep respect for art and beauty. Here are some
of them :
Le dessin c'est la probite de 1'art.
II faut donner de la sante a la forme.
Le calme est la premiere beaute du corps.
The last sentence is very interesting ; it is strange,
however, that Ingres' view was the same as that
of Baudelaire, whose ideas were vastly different
100 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
from his, but who said, " Je hats le monument qui
deplace les lignes" Sometimes, however, Ingres*
impetuosity made him one-sided and prejudiced.
Everybody who differed from him was his foe, and
for this reason he said that Rubens was a painter of
slaughter houses, a kind of butcher-artist, fond of
blood . . . " chez Rubens il y a avant tout de la
chair f rate he dans la pensee et de Vetal dans la
mise -en-scene"
Speaking of ideals in art he exclaimed : " Sirs,
one must dominate one's mind in order to be able
to distinguish truth from falsehood. This result
is reached through onesidedness ; one should
eliminate everything that is not beautiful, and live
with beauty always. How amusing and monstrous
is the love that turns at the same time to Murillo
and Raphael ! "
And yet this passionate man was called cold and
devoid of temperament both by his admirers and
his adversaries ; all of them would have shut him
up in the narrow formula of classicism and put on
him the label of an academician. Disgusted with
the sharp criticism of such judges as Landon and
Keratry, and perhaps discouraged at not being
understood by the would-be classics, Ingres left
Paris in 1834, and went to Rome as director of
the Academie de France. There he diffused amongst
the young students the cult of the beautiful ; from
thence he sent to his country such marvellous
pictures as " Stratonice," " The Holy Virgin with
a Wafer," " Raphael and the Fornarina,"
" Pius VII," " Francesca di Rimini," " Roger
delivering Angelica," " Odalisque," " The Portrait
JEAN AUGUST INGRES 101
of Cherubim," etc. Those pictures were received
by the public and the critics not as masterpieces,
which they really are, but as arguments pro et
contra in the dispute with the school of Delacroix ;
and when, in 1841, the admirers of Ingres per-
suaded him to return to Paris, they did so in order
to make of him a banner under which might gather
together the survivors of the defeated classics.
When Ingres settled in Paris (1861) he was
already very old. Surrounded by the respect of
some, persecuted by the hatred of others, he painted,
preached, and got angry as formerly. Neither fame
nor age tranquillized that seething nature. He was
as determined a fighter as he was a zealous propa-
gandist ; none of his hatred died, none of his cults
became weaker. He would cry at the opera when
listening to Gliick's Alcestis, and go to the museums
to copy antique sculpture that " he might learn
how to draw." Proud and unbending in his old
age, he was able to say : " Down to this day the
fear of opinion has never made me retreat one inch,
because I have considered it to be a point of honour
to remain faithful to my old convictions, which I
will never give up, not at the last hour of my life."
He was 82 years old when he pronounced the
words etiamsi omnes, ego non.
The years had no influence over him ; his ever-
lasting vitality enabled him to produce new works
not inferior to those he had done when he was of
mature age. It was quite in advanced age that he
painted " La Source," a figure that embodies all
the charms of virginity, then " Venus," which repre-
sents the mature type of womanly beauty, and the
102 JEAN AUGUST INGRES
already mentioned " Turkish Bath." How far are
these three works from the woman whom a poet
called V enfant malade et douze fois impur ! Ingres'
types of women are vigorous and invigorating ; they
are wrapped up in youthful poetry and the majesty
of beauty.
Ingres is not a colourist, if by colouring we should
understand not the composition of colours, but the
mutual play of reflection. He said, with romantic
pomposity, " le reflet est indigne de la majeste de
Vhistoire" a saying which, although apparently
ridiculous, is not wrong, for the principal point
in colouring is its strength and certainty, while its
quality is the relation of shade to light and their
delicate tones. All those qualities are in Ingres'
pictures. There is something more, for his palette
shines sometimes with a rare variety of colours ;
some of his pictures remind one of the oriental,
faded brocades and rugs, while others make one.
think of the illuminations in old prayer-books.
Therefore when Ingres' contemporary critic,
Theophile Silvestre, called him un Chinois egare
dans les rues d'Athenes, wishing to make him
ridiculous, he unintentionally very well charac-
terized his art. In order to love it one must look
intently at it, for, as he said, les chefs-d'oeuvre ne
sont pas pour eblouir ; Us sont pour convaincre.
EDWARD MUNCH
EDWARD MUNCH
EDWARD MUNCH was born in Norway. Norway,
the country of bright mountains and mystic nights ;
the country of strange majesty, and of heavy and
oppressive melancholy ; Norway, the most tragic
country in Europe. It is a small piece of land,
that has been formed by the gradual breaking
away of the mountains during thousands of years.
Part of these mountains was carried by the glaciers
far beyond the sea ; Norway remained bare, with
its granite rocks, whilst the land stolen from
it became the fertile countries of Frisia and
Holland.
Again the mountains started on a desperate work,
a work lasting for ages ; again they formed a thin
stratum of fertile soil, and on this grew gigantic,
interminable forests : the whole of Norway is
composed of mountains and forests.
Over this land of mountains, forests, and sea
hangs a depressing melancholy. There is no
escaping from it ; it is an ever-present reality ;
its saddening influence is felt in the red half-dusk
of the summer nights, when within an hour the
sun sinks to rest in the sea. It is felt when
the first winds of autumn tear the leaves from the
trees, and the nights, with all their painful weight
of blackness, roll down from the mountains, but
105
106 EDWARD MUNCH
its utmost awfulness and hopelessness is only
experienced during the latter part of autumn.
It reaches its zenith in November, when the bare
trees, like dark ghosts, stand out against a back-
ground of lowering, lead -co loured sky ; when
the earth is covered with a carpet of putrefied
leaves, and the rain falling continuously for weeks
changes the ground into a muddy swamp ; when
for whole weeks the sun is invisible, and there is
nothing but fog and rain, rain and fog ; then that
vast desert, that awful solitude, becomes a pain.
The inhabitants are entirely cut off from the world.
There is ever the yellow light of the lamp, ever
the same faces ; the people go silently to and fro,
they avoid one another, they hate themselves. We
here have no idea what solitude really is ; we know
not the gloomy way of looking into the secrets
of the soul.
And under the depressing influence of the sob-
bing of the continual rain, and the black cover
of the lead-like, murky sky, the sky that oppresses
one, even within the house, the soul of the usually
calm and intelligent Norwegian becomes unstrung.
Evil and gloomy thoughts spring up within him,
like bubbles on a poisonous morass. Vague senti-
ments of fear creep forth from the mysterious
depths of his soul ; his brain loses its strength,
and a limitless rule over the defenceless state of
the soul commences. He has no power to bridle
the fear and despair that have seized upon him,
and he ceases to defend himself against the night-
mare feeling that pervades his whole house. He
takes the old and forgotten Bible from a garret,
EDWARD MUNCH 107
devours the Word of God, turns and twists it, and
loses the thoughts of the words. Then he tries
to recover his senses, for there is still a small
spark of common sense remaining in his brain, that
tells him all this is mere foolishness but, alas !
it is too late.
He searches the inmost recesses of his heart, he
lives once more, a whole life in every second ;
once more he ruminates over every thought, and
the fear and despair mount ever higher and higher,
arresting his breath and quenching every other
sentiment. Sin is in every thought and deed,
and all that is not sin the brain changes into
opprobrium.
The cup of sin is full there is no remedy, no
redemption, no pity. From behind the black
mourning-cloth there looks forth the awe-inspiring
face of the biblical Jehovah, in the full awe of
vengeance and pitilessness.
There is no remedy.
Satan, the god of the miserable and desperate,
fixes his claws into the misguided soul, and like a
wedge, the sentiment of damnation and eternal
death enters into every cellule of the brain.
The soul is in despair.
There is no repentance that can wash that sin
from the soul, and at length the days of utter
despair change into days of intoxication. When
once one is in the power of Satan, it matters not
if one sin lead to the others. And sin is prolific.
Oftentimes already have German artists come
108 EDWARD MUNCH
under the influence of this strange phenomenon.
The delirium of the soul, tortured by despair, has
been reproduced in numerous works, both by Jan
Luyken, the unbridled, fantastic Calvinist, and by
the rather hellish Breughel. In "Fred" Arne
Garborg has described with unrivalled force the
entire development of that malady. Huysmans, by
birth and culture a thorough German artist, repre-
sents in En route the most complicated and most
painful manifestations of that chaos. And it is in
this atmosphere of fear and despair, under this
terrible inclination towards evil, followed by con-
trition, that Edward Munch has dreamed his
gloomy pictures.
His whole artistic creative power lies in the
despair of the soul chastised by fear. In all his
work we find the same sentiment, which ceases
to be a conscious sentiment, and is lost in the
depths of eternity : the presentiment of the tortures
of hell, of damnation, and eternal death. And over
all that Munch creates hang the black clouds,
the depressing heavens, and the anger of an aveng-
ing Jehovah. Everywhere there looks forth the
despairing eye of pessimism that sees nothing in
life save pain and brutal violence.
A picture : a bold, strong line of coast form-
ing a bay in the foreground, and lost to view in
the distance. On the shore are two groups of
trees, and amongst them can be seen the white
walls of a fisherman's hut. A dam juts out into
the sea, and on it stand two figures the girl is
EDWARD MUNCH 109
dressed in white. Overhead the sky in all the wild
gorgeousness of twilight is torn into wide stripes
of fading purple fire.
And from out the melancholy produced by the
unutterably sad, sultry twilight, from out the
gloomy majesty of quiet melancholy of a Nor-
wegian fjord, from out the night-fall saturated with
numerous eternal mysteries, and with a presenti-
ment of new weariness, and new pains, the white
spot of the girl's dress shines forth like a strange,
mysterious, impenetrable charm.
And that white spot enters the soul, awakening
therein a thousand incomprehensible sentiments
and sensations. No ! not sentiments, only the dim
presentiment of these sentiments, only the most
remote, most secret echo of the expected light.
Around this spot of white the whole landscape is
concentrated, and whilst looking on the endless line
of coast, and on the summit of the compact mass
of trees enveloped in mist, the soul constantly
returns to the wonderful charm of that white spot.
All at once we understand the mystery of the
picture. The artist was walking one evening along
the shore of the fjord. His soul, in mysterious
concentration, was gazing into its fathomless depth.
He noticed not the fading splendour of the sky,
he noticed not the mountains, raising their wild
summits to the clouds, he noticed not the white
mist rising over the shore, or the gigantic mass of
black trees. He looked thoughtfully before him,
seeing nothing. But suddenly the white spot
entered into his soul, and it awoke.
He looked surprised : then he distinctly saw two
110 EDWARD MUNCH
figures. Probably they will enter a boat and go
on the sea.
This simple impression stirred his soul to its
depths. Those two were in love, they would enter
a boat, would go away into the distance, would
lean on each other, would look at the rising stars,
would dream and feel, whilst their souls flowed
into the infinity of the sea.
And again he resented the awful burden of his
solitude. Like the ivy growing over and entwin-
ing a ruin, longing and the dark pain of solitude
embraced his heart.
And in that weariness and pain the visible
landscape of the fjord changed and became some-
thing new and unknown. The sky burned with
the wild might of passionate desires, the shapeless
body of trees took the form of gigantic, terrible
archangels, who watched the white house as though
it had been a precious paradise ; the boat, that was,
scarcely visible in the dusk, took life and became
a very important item in that chaos of dusk and
atrophy of colour, for in it the holy mystery would
be accomplished, the melting of two souls, the
fusion of two bodies into one.
The artist returned home. But in his dreams,
in his burdensome thoughtfulness, the white spot
of the dress, and the red boat, shone forth con-
tinually. They left him no peace, and the whole
scene, that had lasted but for one second, became
a mighty force, shaking his whole being.
And he painted the sky, as in the pain of his
solitude he had seen it ; painted it torn into wild
stripes by a mad chaos of colours ; he painted
EDWARD MUNCH 111
the trees in the shape of two mountains, so as
to represent the silent, deep mystery of the white
house between ; and he painted the line of the
shore, but no ! there he painted the wild and end-
less line of his own longing, reaching into eternity ;
and through it all there are two lines, between
which flows the fiery wave of the thought that
lived but for one second : the white dress and the
red boat.
Such is the path along which Munch's soul
travels.
Ever but one or two elements from a whole row
of phenomena ; but these impressions are the
most remote, most secret reflections of the dawn,
which, entering into his soul like lightning, kindles
therein a fire which, by its glare, changes the
whole world, devours the forms and colours in
which the brain sees it, and discloses its alarming
depth, its inmost being.
By his powerful intuition he is able to seize
the cause of our intentions and deeds.
For in order to arouse within me a sentiment
that would drive me mad, neither dramatic scenes,
nor the death of my dearest ones, nor a murder
are necessary.
These are theatrical means.
To enable my soul to blossom with love, peace
will be sufficient ; some remote sound will suffice
to render my soul creative and that transient
glance, that silent pressure of the hand, that remote
sound, that spot of white dress these are the only
112 EDWARD MUNCH
true elements from which our most powerful senti-
ments originate, these are the hidden sources
whence issue small brooks of sentiment, which
little by little swell into rivers, whirl round the
brain, and finally sprout forth, geyser -like, great
sentiments of great virtue or great crime.
These small impressions disappear in conscious-
ness, they are scattered like the seeds of autumn
flowers, but the soul was fecundated in one second
by that vision.
What the artist has now created was already an
accomplished fact in the soul ; it was its fruit,
waiting in readiness, with all the logical connec-
tions and logical causes which the brain has
thought out, and which "are usually false.
Munch gives the bare impression that awakens
life within the soul ; he caresses it, and nourishes
it with his soul's blood, until it becomes a gigantic
body full of might and glory.
Consequently, that which is the most important
thing for the artist's reality of brain, shape, colour,
form, such as one sees in Nature, becomes for
Munch secondary and accidental, making at most
a frame for his impressions.
What cares he that the sky never looked as he
has painted it? At the moment when life awoke
within his soul his pain was throwing on the
heavens that bloody conflagration of crushing suns.
At that moment he saw not the mountains on which
were growing pine and fir-trees ; he saw but
shapeless, ghost-like, thickly outlined masses.
What matters it that the forest looks like a
strip of black ribbon, if it expresses the gigantic
EDWARD MUNCH 113
line at the moment when man suffers, and cries
aloud in his pain, if it reproduces in my line the
trembling of fear and the awful melancholy of
soliiude?
* * * * *
Another picture.
Which of us has not seen a boat moored in the
sea during the noonday heat? But perhaps never
was there wound around that simple scene any
deeper line of sentiment. In the soul of this
visionary, however, a depth was opened.
That hour of tranquillity, in which the whole
organism of the world seems to be a tiger waiting
in an apparent calm for a destructive spring,
becomes for Munch a vampire.
That dreadful calm, which we feel, perhaps,
only during a complete eclipse of the sun, held,
in the consciousness of the primitive peoples, some-
thing pernicious and awful. The terrible "Noon-
ghost " of the Slav peoples, that struck the har-
vesters dead at one blow, hovers in the air above
the Northern sea, in Munch's pictures. The next
moment the whirlpool will seize the defenceless
boat and precipitate it into the abyss.
A yellow sail, a horribly yellow sail, occupies
almost the entire background of the picture. The
edge of the boat is seen like a thin red line. And
in the boat, that death is stirring, sits an old
fisherman.
Death, that incomprehensible end of incompre-
hensible life, attracts the whole attention of the
painter-philosopher.
Some black presentiment of death has stretched
8
114 EDWARD MUNCH
its mourning-cloth over everything that Munch has
created. Death has wrapped in its pall his dusky
fjords ; death is lying in wait in the sultry noon-
day heat ; death has contorted the face of a
drowned man lying at the bottom of the sea ;
death looks out from the widely opened eyes of
a naked girl -child, who for the first time feels the
sentiment of love and of death. A hideous,
abominable skeleton presses to itself a young
woman.
The germ of annihilation pervades every senti-
ment ; every desire, every thought is imbued with
that dark presentiment of death.
Munch knows no happiness in love. For him
love is a terrible torture, a painful mystery, the
gift of Pandora, who gave to the world tears,
decomposition, and pain.
And the artist-philosopher strays in the dark-
ness of problems. Evidently he is unable to answer
these questions, but the conviction of the existence
of some dreadful and destructive power in the life
of love has so burned his brain that every sensa-
tion of love that he receives awakes the same
questions within him, and the dark pessimism of
his soul mounts, in all its black splendour.
This is his most important work, a work of
genius, showing everything in a new light, creat-
ing new syntheses, and opening new horizons in
life.
* * * * *
Munch's principal work, and a work on which
he is constantly engaged., is a cycle of pictures :
Love !
EDWARD MUNCH 115
A grove of young birch-trees stands bathed in
the mystic charm of moonlight ; beyond it is the
sea again, and always the sea in which, as in a
stream of molten silver, the moon looks at itself.
In the foreground is outlined a figure, a face, from
which looks forth the eager desire of two eyes.
The whole picture, strictly speaking, is that pair
of eyes, that in painful straining search for some-
thing to quench the conflagration of the blood.
Perhaps, once the artist caught the transient glance
of eyes, that for the first time cried in the eager
longing of a passionate girl. Perhaps for one
second the lightning of burning lust passed over
her face, and the talented prophet seized that
which others would have found difficult to grasp.
That lightning entered into his soul, not like the
ordinary glance, that blossoms on the face of a
girl when caressing the delights of the moon, but
as a conscious cosmic impulse that searches for
sexual completion, and throws the man and woman
on each other, in order that the human species
may be continued.
It is a great symbol of maturing sex. It comes
into existence suddenly, grows shapeless, and is
difficult to be grasped. It is concentrated in the
torture of dark longing, and demands shape and
incarnation. It is the longing of conception, the
painful longing to become matured, a muffled
uneasiness, an intense listening how the blood boils
in the veins, it is half woe, half delight, on the
dark background of sexual irritations :
Venus Anadyomene !
116 EDWARD MUNCH
Another picture represents a girl, who during
the night became a woman, and sits with burning
eyes and the hectic blushes of desire on her face.
The same matured female appears in the other
picture as a vampire. She is biting a man's neck,
her blood-red hair falls over his face, she encircles
his head with her strong arm of unbridled passion,
and presses and bites him. And the background-
it is chaotic lightnings of blood -red purple,
poisonous greens, a mad chaos of different spots,
colours, dots then some small crystals, such as
are seen on frozen window-panes.
And the whole is awful, pitiless, almost passion-
less, in its immeasurable resignation.
For that man rolls down the precipice without
will, without strength, almost happy that he is able
to roll down without any effort of will.
Here the whole pessimism of sex bursts out most
passionately.
Love might be happiness peripherically. It
magnifies, so powerfully, the forces of the spirit,
stirs so marvellously the impressions of the senses,
and so treacherously ensnares the brain, that it
revolves, like the ball in roulette, round a few
boundary posts of momentary pleasure.
But the old, eternal soul, the powerful king-
spirit, that has survived all the storms of develop-
ment, cannot be easily deceived. In the depths
of that " naked soul " love is felt as a perpetual
pain, as a biting vampire, as a torture ; it is torture
to be unable to throw off the yoke of the woman,
and never, never to be able to satisfy the hungry
demons of passion.
EDWARD MUNCH 117
But amidst the most charming blossoms of
happiness there suddenly bursts forth the fiery lava
of the old volcano, and there comes a moment
when one recognizes that this happiness is the
happiness of worms, produced by the sun on a
dunghill. There is a moment, however, when
woman ceases to be a vampire. In the absolute
surrender of herself to one man the only one, and
the last all that is bad in her disappears.
A strange immaculateness shines forth in her
face, the beauty of the eternal mystery of con-
ception rising in her soul blooms in her eyes,
whilst around her there trembles a luminous
glory of delight, that ceases to be a delight
of the body, and becomes an ascension into
heaven.
It is the moment in the soul of a woman when
she forgets everything around her, and becomes a
timeless and spaceless being, the moment in which
she conceives immaculately.
But such moments are rare. It is very rare that
a man, and still rarer that a woman has tasted that
unearthly happiness, when two souls blend together
in awful majesty.
Generally, it is suffering.
The suffering of a man.
For in that eternal fight the man usually gives
way. The woman, with her lesser passion, sooner
or later dominates the man, who, ever, again and
again, must conquer the woman.
The man, who suffers the desperate Adam who
wishes to melt the woman into his soul, into his
blood, but cannot because the nature of sexual
118 EDWARD MUNCH
differences is stronger than his will this is the
principal subject of Munch's pictures.
And there is ever the same painful conviction
that the man and the woman are two completely
different and differently organized beings, each of
whom feels differently, and thinks differently, that
they can never understand each other, or if it
should sometimes happen, it is only through the
violation of one soul by the other.
And this tragedy of dominated man, this awful
yoke which, perhaps, never weighed more heavily
than in the present time, Munch reproduces in his
pictures by gigantic sketches.
There is the despair .of the man, who searches
for the only one, searches everywhere, sees her
everywhere, and can find her nowhere.
There is a long street, and on it a long row of
female figures, all similar to each other.
His heart throbs throbs. . . . Every one of them
passing there is she, the only one. Ah ! And
always there is the same disappointment. His
eyes search each face in mad uneasiness. There
she passes there. He sees her in each one, but
it is not she not she.
He will see her no longer. Tired, and in pain,
he looks vaguely before him. Afar off, somewhere
towards the end of the street, the rays of the set-
ting sun light up an upper window. That burning
window attracts his eye. For a moment his whole
brain is concentrated on that window. It is thus
that the man who has a fever, or the man who is
about to commit suicide, views the world. The
people unite in one black wave that flows forward,
EDWARD MUNCH 119
returns, hesitates, and again advances, but some
small detail, some burning window, becomes for
him the whole universe, something that exists
exclusively, and has dominated all his being.
And that mad symphony of the suffering of a
man boils ever higher and higher.
The landscape is outlined in thick lines, in
idiotic, dull penumbras. In the front, as in the
Chinese pictures, there is a man's decapitated head,
plunged into some bottomless abyss of suffering,
of pain that has ceased to be pain. It is jealousy !
But it is not the jealousy of a man who has been
deceived, it is the jealousy of a desperate lover,
who looks into the woman's eyes to see if there
is not some deceitful thought ; who spies out all
her steps ; who interprets her every word ; and
who, mad with pain, would rend her brain to dis-
cover whether the thought of another had not
entered there.
His soul is wounded bleeding. He feels that
he can never rid himself of that sentiment, that
he will never know her thoughts, that she will
never be able to calm him', for he knows that thej
woman's truth is an unconscious lie, and that for
this there is no remedy.
The wings of despair rustle round the man's
head.
" Shriek ! "
It is impossible to give an idea of this picture,
for the whole of its wondrous power lies in colour.
The sky becomes mad at the cry of that poor
son of Eve. Each pain is an abyss of red blood ;
all the long cries of agony are gigantic stripes,
120 EDWARD MUNCH
unequally and brutally mixed together, like the
boiling elements of rising worlds during the wild
outcry of creation.
The sky cries aloud, all Nature is concentrated
in an awful hurricane of shrieks, and in the front,
on a bridge, stands a shrieking man. He presses
his head with both hands, for because of such
shrieking his veins burst, and his hair turns
white. . . .
Ah ! life !
A good God has created pure beings, and His
dominion is over a good and beautiful kingdom.
An evil spirit has created matter, dirt, and
misery. He has conquered this vale of weeping,
and he rules over it, for the good God does not
descend to earth, does not care about it.
And these two elements are repeated in the
human soul, where evil lies beside the good, equally
strong, eternal, and infinite. Besides the greatest
profligacy, which man is not responsible for,
because it is grafted in his soul by God, there is
the germ of grace and perfection.
Perhaps Munch was thinking of this cosmic
doctrine when he synthesized his woman.
The good God in woman is " Symbol," but this
God is only an ideal. Perhaps once, by the power
of his will, man embodies his warmest dreams, and
through his own love spreads the luminous glory
of beauty and immaculateness round the woman.
The good God is the boundless love of the mother,
but in the woman's soul the black god dominates,
EDWARD MUNCH 121
the demon of vanity, which, even when she
surrendered herself to one man, displayed his
peacock-tail before a thousand other men, and
attracted them towards her the bad Huldra, who,
even if she be faithful to one, sets snares for a
thousand others. Munch's woman is a passionless
light, in which the moths are pitilessly burned ;
she is like the female reindeer, that calmly eats
the grass, whilst the two males are tearing out
their bowels for her.
And this theme is constantly repeated by Munch.
At one time he represents woman as a mythical
griffin, tearing the remains of a man her wings
are already spread for flight, already she is gazing
into the distance, searching for a new victim, but
she casts one more look, a look cold, pitiless, and
contemptuous, on that stupid beast, the man, who
allows himself to be torn.
It is difficult to characterize Munch's powerful
individuality. I have only desired to draw atten-
tion towards him, because he cuts out new paths
in the forests, because he passes through the wildest
thickets, breaking off the branches that intercept
the road, in order that others following him may
find their way.
He has reproduced, for the first time, the naked
states of the soul, as they are manifested indepen-
dently of any action of the brain. His pictures are
simply conditions of the soul in moments when
the voice of common sense is not heard, and the
activity of the brain has ceased conditions of the
122 EDWARD MUNCH
soul when it perishes in gloomy atrophy, shrieking
with pain and howling with hunger.
Almost all painters have been, and are, painters
of the exterior world. Every sentiment they wished
to portray was, by them, first clothed in some
external action, every feeling they took from
external surroundings. The sentiments were always
relative, and obtained by means of the external
world. To express the state of the soul by exterior
accidents was a tradition strictly observed by all
painters. Munch has departed from this tradition.
He endeavours to represent the phenomena of the
soul directly by colour. As can be seen, he only
paints nude individuals, .whose eyes, turned away
from the world of phenomena, are looking into
the depths of their own existence. He sees his
landscape in his soul, perhaps like the picture of
Plato's anamnesis. His rocks resemble the grimaces
of devils seen in feverish dreams ; the boundaries
of horizon, for him, do not exist, his boats seem
to sail on the sky : his pictures are the absolute
equivalents of certain impressions. This is, there-
fore, an entirely new field of art, which Munch has
been the first to open ; he has no predecessor, and
no tradition.
Munch desires to express the psychological state
of the soul, not mythologically, but directly, in its
coloured equivalent, and from that point of view
he is a naturalist of psychological phenomena.
He paints the dread and woe of life ; he paints
the chaos of fever, and deep uneasiness full of
vague presentiments ; he paints the theory that
cannot be deduced logically, but can be felt in
EDWARD MUNCH 123
moments of most dreadful fear, as we feel death,
without being able to imagine it.
His style of painting is powerful, deep, and
strong, as are his visions.
He is a symphonist of colours in the same sense
that Beethoven is a symphonist of sounds. All
that Munch represents are symphonies of senti-
ments, which change with him into colours, in the
same accidental way as they did with Beethoven
into sounds.
Munch expresses himself with the same abso-
luteness in colours as others do through the medium
of sounds.
And if it be possible sometimes to change sound
into colour, and to find the equivalent in sound
corresponding with colour, then the crowd that
laughs at Munch, but is capable of listening
to Beethoven's symphony to the end, with some
understanding, will be convinced that Munch must
paint in the style he does, and that he could not
paint otherwise.
This explains why Munch never had either a
predecessor or a teacher ; no one could teach him
anything.
FELICIEN HOPS
FELICIEN ROPS
STRANGE is the lot of some artists !
Misunderstanding him, many people connect
closely perverse profligacy, unbridled sensuality and
intoxicating eroticism with Hops' name. Not know-
ing him well they are pleased to see in that artist
an individuality similar to that of the Marquess de
Sade in literature or Gilles de Rays in life.
Rops' admirers, judging him according to their
own artistic conceptions, putting him on the altar
erected for their own gods, lessen the value of his
works.
Huysman, Barbey d'Aurevilly, see in him a
Catholic fighting the demon of bawdiness ;
Demolder and Rebell think he is an inheritor of
Jordaens' sensuality, of Eulenspiegel's joviality, and
Brueghel's mysticism.
It is interesting to note that all of them are right
to a certain extent. But the first two mentioned
writers forget Rops 7 early works, which, if less
deep, are forcible, full of life and truth, while the
later critics overlook the sharp demoniacal charac-
teristics to be found in his ulterior etchings and
lithographs.
Rops' activity as an artist is divided in two
phases : at the beginning he draws what he sees ;
later he renders that which he feels. Then his:
127
128 FELICIEN ROPS
creative power becomes deeper, and his works
resemble the former only by an unheard-of sensi-
bility for the slightest changes of shape and by
scrupulous observation of the faintest expression
of feeling. He remains always a great sensualist,
as are almost all painters of the Netherlands.
Because of sensuality he is their son and heir while
the Hungarian blood Rops' grandfather was a
countryman of Jokaj gave him the mad impulse
and warmed the Dutch phlegm inherited from his
mother.
During the first period of his artistic efforts Rops
was a pantheist, looking at and listening to every-
thing that lives, moves, shines, attracts, and repels.
During that time he looked without and not within
him : he represented the charm of Flemish homes,
the types of his country that attracted him by
their national beauty, amused him by their gro-
tesqueness, or aroused the warm pity that almost
ever} 7 heart feels for sadness, misery, and old age.
Rops' thought was then for his native country, and
he produced such masterly works as V Enterrement
au pays Walton, VExperte en dentelles, VOncle
Claes et la tante Johanna, La laitiere anversoise,
Oude Kate, and many others.
In those etchings and lithographs one feels
Courbet's slight influence, while Rops' peasants
remind one a little of the hard, dried up, sad types,
rough, as if made of black earth, painted by Jean-
Francois Millet. This, however, lessens neither the
value nor the originality of Rops' work. He always
knew how to remain himself. Those reminis-
cences are perchance more literary than plastic ; the
FELICIEN ROPS 129
type of the slave attached to the black earth was
then en vogue. Thus Rops also has penetrated
with the poetry of work the healthy Flemish
farm boys. Semear has all those characteristics ;
on a sandy stretch of land, covered with stones,
weeds, low bushes of juniper, and bristling with
dried stems, a tall, sad peasant is sowing with even,
measured movements the grain that will never
sprout.
Rops is devoted to the sandy hills of Flanders
stretching along the coast ; he is attracted by their
colour of gold ; while enduring the rain he is
fascinated by the veil of clouds in which the shores
and the waves are wrapped and seem to slumber.
He is also passionately fond of the sea ; one
could say he loves it as one does a desired woman.
Only Swinburne admires the sea in the same sensual
way ; for both of them the myth about Venus
rising up from the waves and foam' becomes
the truth.
Such is one side of Rops' creative power. Here
is another.
He was more than thirty years of age when he
settled in Paris, and was intoxicated with its atmo-
sphere, made hot by thinking, creating, and high
living, where ideas and sensations vibrate and
shine like gold dust. His sensitive nerves felt all
the shivers of the great town. In that smithy were
wrought all his new thoughts. Here he acquired
new ideas. He was bewitched by the Parisian
woman, whom he wished to understand, to fathom.
After the healthy Flemish girls, the Parisian woman
seemed to him to be like a doll, and he said that
9
130 FELICIEN ROPS
she is un compost de carton, de taffetas, de nerfs
et de poadre de riz. Looking more closely at her,
he found in her elements which he had not noticed
elsewhere. Gradually the Parisian woman gave him
the madness of love, followed by the sin and pain.
When Rops settled in Paris he was of an age
at which the animal side of man loses its strength
and when he gains refinement and imagination,
when love becomes complicated and is like a
llame burning with the desire of something new
and unknown. Then the honeymoon is followed
by satiety, disillusion and regret concerning
woman ; for this reason Rops bestowed on her
in his drawings a crown made of seven capital
sins.
He looks at woman and represents her as a
destructive element, an emissary of hell, a venomous,
shameless creature, devil's servant, a cup of deadly
henbane, an eternal temptation sent for the perdi-
tion of the world.
From this point of view Huysman and Barby
d'Aurevilly are right to consider Rops as one of
them, for the pantheist and the observer of the real
manifestations of existence turns into a deep, Catho-
lic mystic, who, preserving all his previous qualities,
produces masterpieces in which licentiousness is
covered with the shine of phosphorus, and is burn-
ing like a will-o'-the-wisp over marshes.
Rops, who at one time enjoyed in a heathenish
way the world and its pleasures, now turned a
Catholic in whom were resuscitated the former
beliefs, and who recollected the scent of incense,
the ringing of bells, the chanting of the liturgy,
FELICIEN ROPS 131
the whisper of prayers, and the mumbling of
exorcisms. Forgotten fears and dreams from the
time of the Jesuit College of Notre Dame de la
Paix, near Namur, where he was brought up,
old ghosts and temptations crept out from the
corners of his soul and, nimble, shivering, vicious,
and sweet, they rushed on his cliches.
Following tradition it may be that he was
prompted by his own impulse Rops unites the
beauty of feminine forms with the fearful pro-
ductions of his fancy, although it must be stated
that amongst all demographers he is distinguished
by an unusual feeling of measure, of balance, and
logic of human forms, as well as by a great under-
standing of harmony and of life. Rops' monsters
are full of probability and possibility of existence ;
they are alive one is tempted to say they are true,
and they make one shiver by their peculiar beauty.
The most dreadful monster in Rops' gallery is
the last and faithful lover . . . death, that lurks
from all his works ; only death represented by him
is strange, vile, and sensuous. It does not look on us
from the threshold of eternity ; it has not behind it
nothingness, nor eternal torture, nor even satisfied
profligacy, nor biting and continually re-emerging
desires. Death represented by Rops is mors erotica,
death that bites by kisses, kills by delight and suffer-
ing during the desperate spasm of passion.
His cliches are powerful works in which the
bodies shiver continually without being relieved
or satisfied ; tied with lustful chains they writhe,
132 FELICIEN ROPS
scourged by the senses and burnt with passion.
Eroticism shouts, howls, and becomes despair,
plague, curse.
Rops' women, flexible and strong as steel, beauti-
ful and nimble as panthers, are fearful as something
infinitely dangerous, insensible, but tempting,
alluring, and invincible. In his drawings woman
appears not as a mere creature carrying joy and
dissipation, but like a vampire and a wicked spirit of
darkness ; she is almost a cosmic power ; she burns
as fire ; she frightens as a thunderbolt ; she deludes
as a chasm ; she was sent into the world as it seems
by the evil one that he might enlarge his dusky
dominion through her and rule over it with her
help.
This thought is expressed by Rops in the
allegory Satan semant liuraie. It represents a
gigantic sower standing over Paris in the dark and
quiet night ; he puts his straddling feet over roofs
and towers, he dominates the silent and helpless
town ; with a broad gesture he throws among the
people seeds of vice, suffering, crime, and hatred in
the shape of woman's masks ; he has plenty of
them ; he scatters them broadcast, and knows that
his sowing will be fruitful ; he smiles sarcastically,
his eyes shine with pleasure, his bony face
beaming with delight.
This etching is pathetic, cruel, and mercilessly
eloquent.
Another etching, so intensely tragic that once
seen it remains for ever in one's memory, is La
Biweuse d'absinthe. With eyes dimmed by
drunkenness, full of dreaming hallucination, a pale
FELICIEN ROPS 133
bluish mask looks at one. It is a condensation of
madness of inebriety ; it is a symbol and synthesis
of absinthe, of green, devouring poison, killing like
cicuta and producing the cry of folly. This etching
is delirium tremens embodied in the shape of
woman.
* * * *
When an artist reaches such dramatic strength
and such poetic feeling, he cannot be accused of
being indecent.
Rops' sensual intensity is so strong that the erotic
part disappears and loses its connection with the
instinct of the preservation of the species.
Works originated under the influence of an excited
brain are not and could not be simple aphrodisiacs,
as some people are inclined to think. A thought
penetrated so much with passion, because of that
tremendous intenseness, is not the result of ordinary
mental hysteria, but seems rather to be a true satanic
whisper, a great biblical sin.
Looking at Rops' cliches one is inclined to believe
that they were conceived not by an ordinary physio-
logical impulse even be it despairingly exalted
but by the evil spirit that is hidden in the brain^
which tempts and soils the intellect and, as was the
case with the great anchorites, forces one to see, to
feel, and to desire, and then to suffer in the helpless
fight with the lustful nightmare.
It is clear that Rops felt and thought in that way,
for in his drawings woman is represented in the
same way as she appeared to the saints visited by,
temptation according to the Catholic and Mani-
cheistic idea that is to say, as an evil element,
134 FELICIEN ROPS
dragging one's soul into eternal perdition, destroy-
ing holy thoughts and the great purposes of human-
kind. 'Rops' idea of the wrongsided holiness is
strange indeed, for his mad women are as mystic
as are the virgins of Fra Angelico, of Memling,
and of Roger van der Weyden, while his saturnalias
resemble much the black masses during which the
devil proclaims himself god, and great mysteries
are celebrated in his honour.
This is how Rops represents woman. His etch-
ings are not jovial, gross jokes of sensual monks,
nor boudoir pictures of Boucher or Fragonard ; nor
are they the lascivious, but healthy sensualities of
the ancients personified by Venus and Priapus. No,
they are painful visions like those of the anchorites
of the Tebaid, or like the dance of Herodiada
drunk with blood, like shivers of suffering and
intoxication.
Consequently these mystic characteristics so dis-
tinct in Rops' work forbid that he should be
compared, as some people do, with that genial
sensualist Rodin, or still less with the purely
heathenish Clodion.
Rops' individuality is so great especially in the
last period of his activity his talent is so strong
and so original that he cannot be subjected to any
precise filiation, but in order to understand his work
a few analogies should be pointed out and his
affinity with other creators should be indicated.
There are but a very few minds that could influ-
ence Rops. However, that influence should be
FELICIEN ROPS 135
searched for rather in literature than in art.
Even that influence is but ver} r slight, for Rops
listened, looked, thought, and then produced works
stamped with his own genius.
It is true that while he is the poet of reality
taking his subjects from his surroundings by his
innate charm he stands near the masters of the
North : there is in him a little of Cranach, of
Brueghel, and as it was already said of Courbet
and Millet, but even those masters had hardly
touched his soul, and then only on the surface.
In the second period of his artistic life sur-
prised by new sensations, bewitched by feminine
fascination, and frightened by its might, when he
created the cycle Les Sataniqiies, or when he illus-
trated Barbey d'Aurevilly's and Pelledan's books,
when he produced works full of awe, or when
in Theatre Gaillard and Point de lendemain he
reproduced the conflagration of the bodies burnt by
the passion of lust, desiring continually, even after
death, even in the grave, everywhere and always ;
when with an heroic impetuosity he shaped out
women that seemed to be incarnations of the per-
petual fire Rops even then preserved the religious
sentiment which is to be found amongst the mystic
foes of feminine charms.
The mystics made an effort Rops does the same
to despise woman as an impure vase of sin ;
they curse her, but are longing after her, loving
her like madmen. They are Rops' spiritual
brothers Swinburne, Baudelaire, Barbey d'Aure-
villy, and all those who see in woman a b'ait sent
into the world by Evil to fight Good, the first cause
136 FELICIEN ROPS
of miseries, troubles, sufferings, and sins of the
accursed Adamites, an eternal disappointment and
bitter disillusion.
In the meanwhile one is bound to say that Rops
remains himself, as one could see from the illustra-
tions made for Barbey d'Aurevilly's Le Bonheur
dans le Crime, in which he rendered not a sporadic
fact, but the idea of happiness in crime.
Gorgona's head, standing on a pedestal, entwines
with its viperous locks a man and woman kiss-
ing each other passionately ; they seem to be fused
in one by their sentiment towards each other, he
seeing nothing but the beloved woman, she heed-
ing nought but his caresses ; they radiate with
bliss. At the foot of the pedestal there writhes a
woman shouting despairingly. Unhappy, she is
dying there at the bottom, while they, on the eleva-
tion of blessedness, inaccessible, seem to challenge
destiny ; her sufferings are helpless, because nobody
sees them.
In such a broad manner Rops understood Barbey
d'Aurevilly's story.
That proud independence from the thought con-
ceived by some one else, that understanding of the
theme in his own way, permitted the artist to pro-
duce works superior to the average standard. Rops
is not an illustrator, but a creator par excellence;
his illustrations are rather genial transcriptions
and variations of the given subjects than exact
interpretations. For this reason one of his best
conceived etchings is to be found at the head of
Pelledan's La vie supreme. That cliche called Finis
Laiinorum represents in half -opened coffin Salome,
FELICIEN ROPS 137
or to be more precise, only her skeleton clad in
woman's fineries, smiling and cringing ; from
underneath the petticoat coquettishly lifted one sees
bones with silk stockings on, while from under the
bodice there stick out ribs sharp as fish-bones.
Nothing remained of woman except the eternal
desire of alluring andi of tempting. Beside her
stands a headless profligate in evening dress, carry-
ing his own head under his arm like St. Denis ; he
is smutty, fearful, ominous, but still flirting.
As in " Death's Dance " of the Middle Ages, as
in pictures painted by Holbein and all the mystics
who represented Passion, Sin, and Punishment, so
in Rops' works, there are plenty of symbolic
skeletons. And as les extremites se touchent, as
death and life unite, the same in Rops' drawings,
besides delight there grows the flower of suffering,
the kiss resembles a bite, ecstasy of love changes
into agony, while the nuptial bed is similar to a
bier. In Rops' works delight laughs not ; it cries
and sobs ; it is a torture and a curse. Rops was right
to say, while showing one of his etchings, " N'est
ce pas qae le cote erotique disparait ? " In his draw-
ings the unbridled spirit of lust is almost spiritual.
Rops represents not the animal satisfying its im-
pulses, but the soul that suffers and desires the ideal.
According to Rops' monkish point of view, earthly
love is a punishment, woman is a plague. Reing
in the perpetual slavery of Satan, she serves his
might, and for him she drags into perdition man ;
ad majorem satani gloriam, she causes to perish
divine and pure love.
Rops hates woman with a hatred that is still
138 FELICIEX HOPS
an admiration ; he thinks and dreams of her con-
stantly ; his imagination is crowded with strong,
passionate but thoughtless women, in whom un-
bridled passion is united with delicate and subtle
beauty, who distribute mad mortal caresses without
feeling, caresses that torture and delight. The
women of whom he dreams are aphrodisiacal
butterflies, creations of love and death. At their
head is Dame au Cochon tropvo^avri^ who, blind
and destitute of will, is conducted by a fat and
stupid pig. Here is the description of it . along
a marble cornice walks a red-haired woman ; she
is supple, strong, and elegant ; she is nude with
the exception of long stockings, elegant slippers,
and a big hat. She walks preceded by a pig led
on a pink ribbon like a dog. The creature sees
nothing, for her eyes are bound, and she allows
herself to be conducted by a vile beast ; she walks
softly ; she seems to sneak along like a bad,
alluring thought, while little cupids symbolizing
true love run away timidly and bashfully.
Rops' women are unique in art : they are neither
related to classical Bacchantes drunk with passion
and wine, nor to Gustave Moreau's goddesses and
virgins holding flowers of the lotus in their hands.
They are different : their birthplace is the low
regions ; their caresses are sterile and dangerous ;
they are a source of regret, pain, madness, and
shame.
Among Rops' etchings and lithographs there are
many taken directly from the Catholic demonology.
It seems that in Rops' body there was the spirit of
penitence of the, exorcists, of frightened monks
FELICIEN ROPS 139
muttering with pale lips, uade retro sathanas,
when they were tempted, and ringing bells when
their souls grew weaker and their bodies demanded
their rights. Memento mori was sufficient philo-
sophy for them. They lived in order to die. Their
thoughts and beliefs are paraphrased by Rops' many
cliches, perchance the most eloquent of them being
Mors et vita.
In a coffin covered with a shroud lies she-
woman : youth, beauty, life. Over her bends caress-
ingly Death, plunging its claws in the white bosom
and pressing its bony mouth to the lovely body.
Life and Death characterize the work of Rops,
who searched everywhere for the contrasts of begin-
ning and end, for alternatives of bliss and torturing,
for the alliance of joy and penitence, for the mixture
of lust and madness, and for the logical consequence
of incurable longing.
In the evil, so much spread in the world, he
sees the works of Satan, the lord of the black
regiments, the ruler of the inferior regions. Rops,
like Barbey d'Aurevilly, believes in the devil, so
much so that the preface to the latter's Diaboliques
could serve as an introduction to Rops' demoniaco-
sensuous works.
In that preface that " Christian moralist," as
Barbey d'Aurevilly calls; himself, says that he
believes in Satan and his influence over the world ;
he laughs not at his might, but tells about his
cunning temptations in order to warn and frighten
pure souls.
Rops' belief is similar.
140 FELICIEN ROPS
Rops was conscious and proud of his import-
ance as an artist ; he knew that he was one of
the very few masters of the nineteenth century who
understood and knew how to reproduce the human
body in all its truth and riches, as well as how to
express plastically fear, sorrow, and pain of the
human soul, and, knowing his value, he disdained
those who would have his works locked up because
they think they are immoral and indecent.
In a princely motto, aultre estre ne veulx, he
shut up, so to speak, his soul as in an ivory
tower, and found in it consolation for the long
years of neglect. From his works, as well as from
his sharp, deep, brilliant, and witty letters, there
comes forth the same independent pride, the same
indifference for the easy applause of the people,
the same contempt for the success with art dealers,
as well as the appreciation of academical Pundits.
Rops left six hundred etchings and three hundred
lithographs, which, together with Mats sometimes
there are three or four tats of the same clicht
before the final impression represent a great work,
such as but few artists have given to the world.
It should be added that some vernis mous are as
finished as are the pictures of Mieris or Callot's
etchings. Only through a magnifying-glass can one
see a host of elegant details, of elaborately executed
faces and figures of perfect shape and great finish.
However, the details are always dominated by the
whole, the idea conquers the matter.
Rops' etchings executed in grey tones have seldom
those light contrasts which the etchings of
Rembrandt and Goya possess. They are subtle but
FELICIEN ROPS 141
simple ; the drawing is sure, clear, and one might
say classical. He searched not for violent effects
of light, but created quiet and charming har-
mony ; the black tones are full of variety of shades,
from very thick to half tones of transparent crepe ;
the balance of light and shade is unusually beautiful
and pleasing.
At first Rops' needle cut the background of
the cliche ; later that hard tool became soft,
almost like a brush, preserving, however, the vigour
and the strength of the drawing, the purity and
assurance of the line. His technique is in
the meanwhile simple and refined as that of a
painter, for his cliches seem to be imbued with
colours, while the precision of the shape permits
a comparison with the work of a sculptor.
Felicien Rops was a great poet, deep and prolific,
sensuous and mystic, as well as a great moralist, for
he has demonstrated that round the corner of pro-
fligacy there is madness, that at the bottom of delight
there lies pain, and that immoderate pleasures of
body are followed by satiety and regret.
ARNOLD BOECKLIN
ARNOLD BOEGKLIN
ART is the most sincere and most direct expression
of the human soul. But that soul embraces such a
gigantic world of phenomena, such a fathomless
sea of mysteries, such an entanglement of im-
measurable and sometimes contradictory manifesta-
tions of life, such a medley of brutal and subtle
sentiments, emotions, and ideas, that artistic criti-
cism is unable to find a real connection between
a work of art and the soul of its creator. To find
this connection is the task of the theory of art ;
but in attempting it not only learned systems of
aesthetic but also those temporary watchwords
which describe the narrow tendencies of certain
schools in art are usually taken to pieces.
The mutual relations and inter-dependence even
of a few simple and essential manifestations of the
soul, such as thought, sentiment, and imagination,
produce such a complexity of phenomena that all
the resources of the different branches of art would
be necessary to reproduce them. But these ele-
mentary psychological phenomena possess so
many shades produced by the influence of the
infinitely varied play of external life on the
states of the artist's mind that it is impossible to
explain them by anything which can be considered
a standard measure of human deeds.
10 145
146 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
Hence the difficulty and even the absurdity of
criticism, which looks on a work of art not as a
conscientious student would look on a phenomenon
unknown to him, but as a judge with lucid para-
graphs which he applies to it, whereas it is in
reality the result of the effort of a soul quivering
with unrestrained desire to express itself entirely,
and thus it stands in opposition to the surrounding
life of soul as well as to the moral and material
conditions of the existence of the bulk of mankind.
A critic is in the same position in relation to art
as a poet or an artist is in relation to life, to Nature.
The subject of his investigation is changed, but the
means and the results are the same. If the soul
of a critic is so rich as to give the impression
of an unexhausted source, if he be a deep thinker
whose capacity of creating ideas is boundless as the
ocean, if he be a man in the highest degree honest,
in whom there are united a childish simplicity
and frankness with great learning, experience, and
good taste, let such a critic write ; for should he
not create a scientific theory of art, which is im-
possible, he will arouse enthusiasm for it, as did
Ruskin, and his work will be good literature. Such
is one raison d'etre of criticism. Another is the
accumulation of facts and anecdotes concerning the
life of artists, or the conscientious cataloguing of
works of art.
Not feeling strong or infatuated enough to put
myself into the first category of critics, I propose
to follow in this study the modest task of the
second kind of writers, and to relate what I have
gathered about one of the greatest, perchance the
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 147
greatest, of German artists, Arnold Boecklin, who,
notwithstanding the fact that so much has been
written in the land of Lessing, was unknown to
the people at large until he was well over sixty,
and was never recognized at all by official
Germany.
The Pan -Germ an genius, with which, in litera-
ture, philosophy, and discoveries only the Greeks
can compete ; whose music, as represented by Bach
and Beethoven, has never been surpassed ; that
genius, to which the French are superior only in
Cuvier, the Spaniards in Columbus, and the Poles
in Copernicus, having always been beaten by Latin
genius in the field of art, has in Boecklin at length
found a worthy champion. In him German art
has a great representative, whom the Germans
admire as the greatest poet -painter among them.
He has succeeded in what Goethe strove in vain
to accomplish : he has grafted the German soul
upon the antique ideal of beauty. On a charm-
ing afternoon, on a certain summer day, he per-
ceived old Pan, and through the medium of his
glaring colours, he has restored to the Germans
that which they had lost : their feeling for the uni-
verse and for infinity.
Thus proudly spoke Ola Hanson of Boecklin.
Unfortunately for the Germans, Nietzsche says that
Boecklin was not a German at all, but a Swiss ; and
he exclaims : " What poet had Germany to equal
the Swiss Keller? Has there ever been a student
like Jacob Burkhardt? Or a path -finding painter
like Boecklin? " Over the first of these questions
the Germans can shrug their shoulders ; they can
148 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
answer the second, but over the third they would
be obliged to drop their heads.
Since that eloquent outburst of Ola Hanson, there
has appeared so much rich material about Boecklin
that perhaps there is not another contemporary
artist of whom more has been written. From these
materials one may learn all about Boecklin's life
full as it was of hard struggles ; about his artistic
principles and aims, about the secret of his tech-
nique and his workmanship ; and the conclusion
to which one comes is that there has not been in
Germany any painter whose activity was surer, who
was greater in natural artistic gift, in incessant
effort, or in harmony and colouring.
A modern man of culture associates Boecklin's
name with something great, surpassing the ordinary
measure of things to which people are accustomed.
Boecklin is a phenomenon, admired by all those
who are able to understand him ; he astonishes us
by the primitiveness of his nature, which resembles
that of mythical people, and by his spiritual
culture, which places him amongst the most eminent
men of the nineteenth century.
Boecklin's artistic spirit bore no marks of the
narrow-minded, petty surroundings of the com-
mercial city of Basel, where the supreme ideals of
everybody, even of his own father, lay in a cer-
tain bourgeois capacity and commercial honesty,
blended with a slight tendency towards pietism,
manifested by external religiousness, an atmosphere
by no means artistic. In that uncultured town, un-
cultured in spite of its university adorned with many
portraits painted by Holbein, Boecklin was born
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 149
on October 16, 1827. His father, like his ancestors,
who came to Basel in the seventeenth century from
the Canton Schaffhausen, was a weaver, and
naturally in his father's house Boecklin did not
find much artistic stimulus or tradition. In the
circle in which his parents lived an artist was
looked upon as a vagabond, although there was a
certain amount of interest for art on account
of an uncle who was a house painter.
Arnold Boecklin spent five years in the college
of his native town, and although he did not make
enough progress in Greek to understand Homer
in the original text, he read him again and again
in translation, and this had a great influence on
his art, as may be seen in the many pictures for
which he chose Greek subjects. His first artistic
notions he got from two sources : he frequented
a public art school, and he often visited the hall of
Basel University, where many of Holbein's pictures
are to be found. But when he made up his mind to
become a painter, and said so to his father, he found
in him a stubborn opposition, expressed in the
following words : ' There are already enough
hungry painters, and I am sure you will not become
another Calame." And he was right there, for
Arnold Boecklin became a greater artist than the
Swiss landscape painter, whose academic pathos
was then very much admired. Arnold's mother
came to his rescue, and the old weaver was obliged
to give in and to consent to his son becoming
an artist. So in 1845 he was sent to the Dusseldorf
Academy, the nearest place where he could get an
artistic education. There he was put under the
150 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
direction of the historical painter, Ferdinand
Theodor Hildebrandt. He was fortunately rescued
from his influence by the landscape painter,
J. Wiihelm Schirmer, in whose class he studied
very diligently. His early studies, preserved in
Munich, show astonishingly minute reproductions
of plants and trees, of which he painted every leaf
and blade until he gradually succeeded in accus-
toming his eyes to look at landscape as a whole.
From his youth up he learned how to live with
Nature, how to read her secret book, which not
every one can understand. But the mere faithful
and minute reproduction of Nature, no matter how
conscientious it may be, does not make an artist,
and Boecklin's first efforts did not announce his
future greatness. At most, one can find in them
the elements of that gloomy, romantic tendency
which became one of Boecklin's foremost
characteristics.
After a year of diligent work, Boecklin returned
to Basel, but soon left it with his friend, Budolf
Keller, a painter also, and went, to Brussels, where,
however, he did not find " any pretty landscapes/'
and went on to Antwerp. In that city, so full of
reminiscences of the broad life of Rubens, he
remained but a short time, and then went to
Switzerland.
In September, 1847, he found himself in Genoa,
in the studio of Alexander Calame, but, tired of
making lithographs for that master, left him after
three weeks of hard work, so that Calame could not
claim him as his pupil. This time Boecklin was
very strongly attracted to Paris, and in 1848, not-
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 151
withstanding his father's opposition and his very
limited means of subsistence, he went with Keller
to the cite de la lumiere. It would be difficult to
state how much this sojourn in Paris influenced
Boecklin artistically, but it is certain that it con-
tributed much to free the young man from the
narrow-mindedness of the small bourgeois pre-
judices amidst which he was brought up.
Boecklin and Keller hired a small room, No. 29,
rue Verneuil, where they slept in one bed. As
they had very little money, they could not enter any
school ; so they determined to copy diligently the
old masters in the public galleries and to draw
from models in the room of a certain M. Suisse,,
who himself had been model to J. L. David. Suisse
did not pose as a professor ; he furnished the
future artists simply with a model and a room, and,
in truth, such a way of studying is better than the
training got from a mediocre and small -hearted
teacher. From early in the morning till noon the
two friends would draw from the models ; in the
afternoon they would copy in the Louvre, draw
again in the evening, and then dine for half a
franc each ! It seems that Corot and Jules Dupre
pleased Boecklin the most.
The February revolution broke out, and when
the mob stormed the Louvre the two friends, who
happened to be present, were carried by the wave
of revolutionaries into the palace, and afterwards
were pushed to the Hotel de Ville, where they heard
the speeches of Louis Blanc and Lamartine. Such
was the part Boecklin took in the French Bevolu-
tion in 1848. After three months of hardship in
152 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
Paris he returned to Basel, where he remained for
some years painting portraits and landscapes, which
then began to show that he was one of the greatest
colourists ever born.
About that time Boecklin's love troubles began.
He first fell in love with the daughter of a trunk
maker, but she got inflammation of the brain and
died. In 1852 he became enamoured of the
daughter of a well-to-do Basel burgher, but the
girl refused to marry a penniless painter. This
circumstance, it seems, prompted him to leave Basel
and go to Italy, where he was more fortunate in
his wooing and soon married a young Boman girl,
Angelo Lorenza Pascucci, who was remarkably
beautiful, brought him a' small dowry, together with
good luck, and remained his true and staunch friend
throughout his whole life, which is more than the
majority of husbands can say. She took care of
his finances and of his bad health, and but for her
probably the artistic world would never have
heard of Boecklin. She bore him fourteen children,
of whom six only are alive.
But the misfortune was, as he said himself, that
his wife had the ideas of the ancient Boman matrons
and would not permit any female model in the
studio. Without a model he could not paint, and
had he insisted on having a model, there would
have been trouble in store for him. As he deeply
loved and respected his wife, he was obliged to
act according to her Boman way of thinking, but
suffered much when the critics pointed out that his
pictures were defective for want of a model. This
circumstance was the origin of Boecklin's theory,
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 153
which he applied to his art, that a picture should
not be a slavish copy of Nature, which should be
consulted only in regard to certain forms, in case of
doubt, and that the best plan for a painter was to
have a model in the next room to his studio and
assure himself every time he needed it about the
form and effect. A great man can use even a draw-
back to his advantage.
In 1856 Boecklin sent to an exhibition in Rome
a picture representing a pompous landscape and
a faun dragging a nymph across the river. The
censor ordered the canvas to be thrown into the
Piazza del Popolo. One should not forget that this
happened in Rome, and that Boecklin was a
Protestant, who won for his wife a Catholic girl,
on which account there was so much irritation
against him that his wife was warned by a priest
that her husband's liberty and even his life were
in danger. The result of all this was that Boecklin
returned to Basel, where his genius took full flight,
breaking away from all academic and conventional
rules. Fortune did not, however, yet favour him.
When he exhibited a picture representing a nude
girl at a spring, there was such indignation amongst
the Basel Philistines that his narrow-minded and
uneducated father not only drove him from the
house, but went round to the tradesmen and told
them not to give him credit. The painter's posi-
tion was very hard indeed, but just then came a
proposal from a rich man in Hanover to paint his
dining-room. The fee was not large, but for a
half -starved artist it was almost salvation ; so he
accepted the commission, went to Hanover, and in
154 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
four months had finished five enormous decorative
panels, for which he did not make any sketches,
but painted everything directly out of his head.
After many difficulties in lawsuits to get his money,
he went to Munich, where his misfortunes reached
the culminating point for he caught typhoid fever,
but where he also met his future patrons, Baron
Schack and Count Kalckreuth, the latter of whom
was director of the art schools in Weimar. Both
those noblemen helped Boecklin out of his diffi-
culties ; the Count offered him the post of pro-
fessor in the new art school, while the Baron gave
him a commission to paint some pictures for his
gallery. The artist accepted both propositions.
For the Schack gallery he painted several pictures,
amongst which was the masterpiece called ;< Pan
chasing a Deer." It is true that Baron Schack did
not pay much for his pictures. He gave Lenbach
only 1,000 Bavarian guldens a year, for which sum
the painter was bound to give to the Baron every
picture he painted during that year. Lenbach was
satisfied all the same, saying that " Baron Schack
had one good quality, viz., he paid not much, but
he did pay while nobody else cared whether such
men as Feuerbach, Schwind, or Boecklin made
pictures and statues or broke stones."
Franz Lenbach and Reinhold Begas were also
among the professors in the school of art at Weimar,
and Boecklin became friendly with them, especi-
ally with the latter, between whose art and that
of Boecklin there is some affinity. But notwith-
standing this friendly artistic intercourse, the
academic limitations did not please Boecklin :
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 155
Weimar, notwithstanding its great literary tradition,
was a nest of Philistines to Boecklin, and he left it
in 1862, for, as he wrote to a friend, " service
is an unpleasant word." All the same, the two
years spent in Goethe's country were rich in artistic
experience and results for Boecklin, for it was there
that he painted his large picture " Diana the
Huntress." This work, when it was exhibited in
Basel, so much pleased a rich manufacturer from
North Germany that he wished to purchase it, on
one condition, that Boecklin would take out the
goddess, for he wanted to have only the woods,
without any living being in them. Boecklin,
although it was only a question of an hour's work,
and he badly needed money, declined to make such
a concession. Boecklin's second sojourn in Rome
from 1863 to 1866 was so full of trouble and worry
that he did no good work there. Then he painted
1 The Villa by the Sea," which became very popular
throughout Germany on account of the quality
which the Germans call Stimmung, and secured him
a commission from his townsfolk to decorate the
staircase of the Basel Museum. So he returned to
Basel again, where he spent five years and painted
many masterpieces.
In 1871 he found himself again in Munich, where
he stayed three years and enjoyed life without any
sorrow and worry, for his skill now became widely
recognized and he was paid as much as 60,000
marks for a picture. It was the first time Boecklin
had possessed or seen so much money. In the
capital of Bavaria his negative relations with
Richard Wagner began. The poet-composer wished
156 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
Boecklin to paint the scenery for the Ring des
Niebelungen, for which a sketch was made, but
that was all. Boecklin's ideas about music were
limited to Bach, Handel, Gluck, Mozart, and
Beethoven, and consequently he did not think much
of Wagner. Wagner, on his side, however, admired
Boecklin's work, and when he thought over the
scenery of his opera, exclaimed, " It must be done
by Boecklin ! He alone possesses the right fancy
for it." But there was the question about the
method of execution ; Boecklin insisted that it was
artistically impossible, and that is why they did
not collaborate. What a pity !
There is a story told about Wagner and Boecklin,
who was asked to come to Naples to meet the com-
poser. He went on a burning hot day ; he was
sunburnt and thirsty ; but instead of some refresh-
ment he was offered music, and so much of it that
the painter was bored ; the composer noticed it,
and said :
" Ah ! you do not understand music much."
" As much as you understand art," rejoined
Boecklin, and leaving Wagner rushed to the nearest
cabaret to quench his thirst.
Those two remarkable men were both strong indi-
vidualities, but of such widely different characters
that they could not help clashing ; besides, their
ideas on art were very different. Boecklin, who
kept his art within certain boundaries, was against
the idea of the " united work of art " ; his pictures
are music of colours, but he could not make pictures
for music ; he was a poet in the depth of his soul,
but to him the art of poetry was different from the
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 157
art of painting, and he was unwilling to waste
his work where he thought an idea could not be
painted. For this reason he refused a commission
to paint a picture for a Roman lady, who wished
him to paint a hearse followed only by two little
children ; she thought that such a tragical scene,
placed in a grandiose landscape, was worthy of
the brush of a great painter. She was mistaken,
for Boecklin insisted that if a picture was to repre-
sent an idea, it must be the result of long thinking
and not of a suggestion.
The influence of Italy is very palpable in
Boecklin's pictures ; he plunged into light and
became intoxicated with the charm of southern air
and sun, and even while living under the grey sky
of Switzerland he reproduced the sapphire of
the sky of Italy and the deep blue of the Medi-
terranean. His " Muse of Anacreon " resounds with
merry songs, and through the humid eye and sweet
smile of a charming girl commands that everything
should be forgotten. It is as though she were shout-
ing to us, with the Romans, Carpe diem! His
fancy, loaded with classical reminiscences, threw
on to the canvas : " The Fight of Centaurs," " Klio
on the Throne of dlouds," " Fauns," " Pan,"
" Flora," in which, as in many other of his pictures,
he has proved that he was not a painter of
mannerisms, of routine, and school, repeating the
same formula that made him popular, like most
artists, but a strong individuality, always fresh and
continually changing. The richness of his con-
ception is amazing, the variety of his sentiments
and emotions is inexhaustible, and that richness and
158 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
that universality made him the most interesting and
most original painter of modern times. My limits
of space do not allow me to dwell upon even his
most remarkable pictures, such as ' The Holy
Grove," " In the Mirror of the Well," " Veritas,"
" A Summer Day," " The Isle of the Dead," " The
Isle of the Life," " Faun admiring a Nymph," " The
Playing Naiads," " Hymn of the Spring," etc., in
which the great qualities necessary for a master-
piece are united in the highest degree.
Boecklin painted almost till the last moments of
his laborious life, and produced an amazing number
of pictures, which are scattered all over the world
in public and private galleries. Nevertheless, he will
never become popular, for his pictures are lack-
ing in stories illustrating the current sentiments
and thoughts of the multitude. But for every one
who has attained that high culture which enables
him to receive impressions from Nature and art,
without any respect for practical value, for such
a man Boecklin is one of the greatest artists that
ever lived.
Boecklin's was a problematic, isolated, and broad
individuality, so rich that it shines forth in a
hundred manifestations, each different from the
other. He expressed his fancy and his strange
poetic feeling by colours, and he was such a
colourist that it would be difficult to find any one
in the history of painting who could equal him,
except, perhaps, Giorgione, the painter who first
created the pure Italian landscape and holds the
place of honour among the best Italian colourists.
I have enumerated the most important facts of
ARNOLD BOECKLIN 159
Boecklin's career, but his true life can be read in
his pictures. To-day the whole civilized world
admires him ; to-day we realize that we have lost
an extraordinary man. But formerly it was quite
different the same Boecklin was laughed at and
called a madman. His soul, however, was endowed
with extraordinary strength, for, notwithstanding
the sorrows and struggles of his life, he marched
forward with serene mind, listening to the song
full of colours and light, looking to the ideal of his
immortal art, which he loved more than his life.
And art was the only thing that did not disappoint
him during his life, and, for the love he had for it
and for his hard work, it awarded him the place of
immortality.
There were but few people at Arnold Boecklin's
funeral, which took place in January of 1901, in
the cemetery of Altori, near Florence, where the
great artist rests after the fierce battle of life, in
which he tasted every bitterness, but came out con-
queror. He died as he had lived. A few days
before his death he dreamed that he was one of
Homer's heroes ; he rushed from his bed and
recited some verses from the "Iliad."
The coffin was brought to the cemetery about
five o'clock. The sun hid behind the cypress-trees ;
a soft darkness enveloped Nature. The remains of
the great man were placed in an ordinary grave,
like that of a simple soldier killed on the battlefield.
The sky in the west was a glory of pale gold, a
gentle wind stirring the trees.
Who knows? Perhaps in that moment all the
charming nymphs and naiads, shaggy Centaurs and
160 ARNOLD BOECKLIN
Pans had come to the cemetery in order to brighten
with their spring-like laughter the last earthly
moments of the man who had depicted them in
such a masterly manner, and whose great and good
soul was passing across the mysterious sea to rest
and eternal happiness in the " Isle of Death."
RICHARD STRAUSS
11
161
RICHARD STRAUSS
THE neo -romanticism introduced into literature by
Maeterlinck towards the end of the nineteenth
century was an interesting although but transitory
movement. Its merits consists not in efforts to
create new work, but to bring out from oblivion
what was old and neglected, as the exuberance of
the Elizabethan Renaissance, the adventurous dis-
solution of the Roccoco period ; and even to follow
Wagner in the field of mystical, mediaeval legends.
It was due to neo -romanticism that the for-
gotten works of such romantics as Wackenroder,
Holderlin, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Novalis were
republished and interesting commentaries written.
That revival produced a new turn both in life
and art, consisting in longing for fresh values
of sentiment, in turning away from the terre-
d-terre real existence, in desire for solitude, in
escaping into an ideal world, in searching for
stimmung, in yearning for the metaphysical states
and mystical extasies. Life and art assumed with
some people, limited in number a visionary aspect
governed by mysterious laws ; the poetry of that
generation was characterized by gloom, by dusky
atmosphere, and by indefinite states of soul, full
of obscure presentiments. The purpose of impres-
sionistic art was to produce a soft, sentimental
163
164 RICHARD STRAUSS
atmosphere, pregnant with strange charm that was
obtained not by sharp outlines, but by the medium
of indistinctness of contours and subtle colouring
of delicate shades ; a picture enwrapped in unseiz-
able mist seemed to open remote vistas into the
world beyond and to rouse visions. From that
fount music has taken a strange turn of expression.
Like modern art, modern music wishing to produce
fresh sentimental and atmospheric stimmung was
obliged to emphasize the sounds in order to create
an antithesis to the music of the past, based on
simple, clearly determined melodious lines ; instead
of the former musical plasticity, there was substi-
tuted musical impressionism ; music became an
intimate, internal art, the purpose of which was
not to be under exterior influences and to repro-
duce exterior life, but to take its essence from
the most intimate, subjective, impressions and
sentiments, to change into sounds the mysterious
shivers of the soul.
When Richard Strauss began to produce his
musical dramas, about which the discussions, if
not as violent were as animated as were thirty years
ago those concerning Wagner, one of the favourite
objections raised against his art was that Strauss
was not a thorough dramatist. This was but a
bold paradox if one takes into consideration that
he is now the foremost representative of musical
drama. However, if one thinks earnestly, one finds
that this paradoxical criticism is only apparently
such and that it has its raison d'etre, for Strauss'
RICHARD STRAUSS 165
dramatic creativeness grew from symphony and is
its last consequence ; it would be almost impossible
to comprehend Strauss as a musical dramatist
without his orchestral symphonic creative power.
At the beginning of his career, Strauss, being a
pupil of Brahms, kept away from the progressive
stream represented by Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner,
and it was due to Alexander Bitter, an enthusiastic
admirer of the new music, which found its supreme
expression in Wagner, that Strauss fundamentally
changed his sesthetico -musical taste, became an
ardent partisan of progress, and a radical repre-
sentative of modernism. Strauss connected directly
his creativeness wilh Berlioz's and Liszt's tendency
for programme music. According to a previous
conception music was regarded as a form, acting
through its architectonical sensuous sounds expres-
sive of melodious plasticity ; Berlioz and Liszt
considered sounds to be only a means of expression
of the spiritual world, and, being conscious of this,
they made a strenuous effort to set forth faithfully a
preconceived programme by painting psychological
states with musical sounds. Then Liszt introduced,
instead of the former schematic form of sonata
that limited the free flight of imagination, a new
musical form which he called symphonische
dichlung, fusing individual instrumental passages
into one stimmungbild. Strauss took up that form,
developed and transformed it according to his own
taste, and in that manner produced something indi-
vidual and new. The change and improvement
consisted in this : in Liszt's symphonische dichtung
prevails the homophonious style, its construction is
166 RICHARD STRAUSS
simple and not very coherent sometimes even quite
loose and the orchestral colouring is modest and
limited ; Strauss changed homophony into poly-
phony, dazzling with hitherto unknown richness of
musical colours, that are organically united and
psychologically justified : cold melodies, full of
flight and passionate conflagration of tunes, flow in
a broad stream, unite one with another, penetrate
each other, and fuse into the polyphonic whole,
striking one with an implacable and irresistible
logic and an element-like strength of expression.
The construction of these melodies grows out from
the sentimental contents of music and unites itself
with the general expression and character of the
work ; sometimes there prevail short, concentrated
motives that change continually into new forms ;
then broad and full themes of free rhythms
pulsating with life. Every melodious theme of
Strauss' music possesses a characteristic colour of
sounds and all these colour-sounds he unites in one
whole of stimmung, shining with extraordinary
lustre. He possesses a rich scale of hue-sounds,
which he uses not to produce unexpected effects,
but as a means of creating subtle atmosphere and
for expressing sentiments and impressions. His
other means for depicting psychological states is
a harmony of dissonances, and whilst striving to
produce certain characteristics, he does not disdain
glaring effects of cacophony, which often is a nega-
tion of all the rules of harmony. One could say
rightly that Strauss' principle is that beauty should
be sacrificed for the sake of psychological expres-
sion, as according to him the sphere of aesthetics
RICHARD STRAUSS 167
comprehends both the notion of beauty and the
conception of ugliness ; consequently ugliness being
an individual aesthetic factor, it should have equal
rights with the beautiful. Then Strauss depicts the
smallest details with great realism ; only it must
be stated in his favour, that whilst accentuating
paltry motives, he also bears in mind the whole ;
he embraces in a sure movement the entire
slimmung, and, avoiding the danger of too long,
water -like tunes, he encompasses the thought and
the essence of the work in well concentrated form
hence that broadness of his compositions that
characterizes his performances.
Having mastered to perfection all the means of
musical technique, he bent them for the purpose
of musical characterisation and gave them such a
faculty of reproducing the most complex psycho-
logical states and manifestations, that his symphonic
poems are lacking only in poetical words and exterior
actions to be real dramas. From this one sees
that it was the consequence of logical progress that
Strauss turned from symphony to drama. His
dramatic activity, encompassing more and more
problems, follows almost a straight road on which
one sees the principal halting-places indicating, in
a chronological order, the evolution of his work.
In order to appreciate his dramatic creativeness
one should bear in mind that before Strauss has
produced his dramatic work in such a symphony as
" Aus Italien," and in such symphonic poems as
"Macbeth," "Don Juan," and " Tod und Verklarung,"
he has created an individual instrumental style and
form proper for them. Notwithstanding that, his
168 RICHARD STRAUSS
drama " Guntram," produced at Weimar in 1894,
shows both in poetical conception and in musical
technique, not only Wagner's strong influence, but
even far-reaching Wagnerian reminiscences. The
hero of the drama, Guntram, belongs to a mystico-
religious order, the purpose of which is to rouse
in human hearts the sentiment of charity through
the means of music and singing. In order to accom-
plish his exalted mission, namely, to preach our
Saviour's supreme commandment through inspired
songs, Guntram goes into the world and comes
to a country oppressed by a heartless tyrant. Here
he begins to act by saving the life of the Princess
Freihilda, the wife of the tyrant, who, being unable
to bear any longer his cruelties, jumps into a river.
The Prince, considering himself insulted by
Guntram's remarks, rushes at him with his sword,
but the Knight, whilst defending his own life,
wounds mortally his adversary, through which
he violated one of the rules of his order. Whilst
lingering in prison he has time to enter into the
depth of his heart and to find there the motives
for his action. At the first glance it looks as if
he had acted in order to free the people and the
Princess from the tyranny of the Prince, but on
a closer examination of his conscience he finds that
he behaved as he did through sinful love for
Freihilda. Having become conscious of his guilt,
he imposes on himself a punishment which consists
in giving up his inamorata and in remaining for
life in solitary confinement.
This short synopsis of the drama shows Wagner's
evident influence, which is clear even in this that
RICHARD STRAUSS 169
Strauss composed the words himself, as Wagner
used to do, and clothed the poetical contents with
poetical music. Then that symbolical order of
the apostles of mercy reminds one very much of
the Knights of the Holy Grail from " Parsifal " and
" Lohengrin," not to speak of the exterior atmo-
sphere of Strauss' drama, the action of which takes
place in the thirteenth century as does that of
* Tannhauser." The analogy between Strauss and
Wagner is still closer, for when Guntram analyses
his conscience in prison, there happens nothing
on the stage and the whole dramatic action assumes
a purely interior, psychological character, which
process of the soul reminds one much of " Tristan."
Even the Wagnerian notion of das Erlosungmotiv
is found in " Guntram," for the hero frees himself
through his determination to give up Freihilda's
love, and also when he sacrifices her passionate
sentiment for the tranquility of his own conscience,
consequently his own happiness, and as satisfaction
for his guilt. Then, when one analyses Strauss'
music composed for " Guntram," one finds much
that reminds of Wagner's style displayed in
"Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." In order to pro-
duce the mystical, mediaeval atmosphere, Strauss
uses Wagnerian instrumental means. And when
one passes from general remarks to particular
episodes, then one detects that one of them, namely,
when Guntram is leaving the quiet life of his order
for the turbulent activity of the world and listens
alone in a forest to the mysterious rustling of .the
wind and to the melodious singing of the birds,
that scene is almost like the famous " Waldweben "
170 RICHARD STRAUSS
from " Siegfried," in regard to situation and
stimmung.
However, one must acknowledge that notwith-
standing Wagner's evident influence and undeniable
reminiscences from his work, there is in Strauss'
drama an individual style consisting in refined
instrumentation and orchestral colouring, and
especially in the construction of melodious themes,
which have peculiar character, quite different from
Wagner's leit-motives, instead of which Strauss
introduced many subjective tunes and original
elements of high artistic value. In his symphonic
works, especially in " Tod und Verklarung," Strauss
delights his heart in proceeding by the smaller
intervals or semitones of the scale, taken from
Wagner ; in " Guntram " he prefers to employ the
regular intervals of the diatonic scale, the result
of which are melodies full of freedom and sim-
plicity, that are outlined individually. Then, in
contrast to precise Wagnerian motives, Strauss'
melodious themes possess broadly designed and
magnificent lines, striking by their pathos. The
assertion made at the beginning of this disquisition
that Strauss' dramaticality grew from symphony,
is proved especially by this, that he did not take
into consideration the traditional stage requirement
according to which the principal roles have to
be assigned to voices, but gave to the orchestra the
preponderant dramatic action ; the symphonic
element holds an absolute sway over the whole
work and often makes the dramatic impression quite
feeble. This is the principal reason for which
" Guntram " is no longer performed and even for-
gotten, notwithstanding its musical merit.
RICHARD STRAUSS 171
After the first exertion of strength for the purpose
of ascertaining what he was capable of effecting in
the province of drama, Strauss returned to sym-
phony and composed " Heldenleben," " Zaratustra,"
"Don Quichot," and "Till Eulenspiegel," all
symphonic dramas, through the means of which
he ascended the height of his creative ability and
made music the technical means that obeyed his
slightest wish. Then he proceeded with his second
play, which he called " Die Feuersnot," based on
Ernst Wolzogen's text, for which the principal
theme is taken from folk-lore. It was performed
in 1901 at Dresden and became a source of contra-
dictory appreciation if not of censure. The back-
ground of this play is the festive celebration on
St. John's day, when bonfires are lit and dances
performed round them by the populace. In Strauss'
" Feuersnot " the action is at Munich, where in
the crowd full of fun and frolic there is a stranger
by the name of Kunrad der Ebener, a dreamer
fond of solitude ; stimulated by general hilarity
he also rushes into the whirlpool of amusement,
pulls down his house, and kisses the beautiful
Diemut, the burgom'aster's daughter. The girl is
offended by his daring, swears vengeance, and
employs a stratagem for its accomplishment : she
promises to pull him in a basket up to the window
of her room when everybody goes to watch the
bonfire ; she keeps her promise, but half way the
basket stops ; the romantic admirer of the cunning
girl hangs in space and becomes the laughing-stock
of an enormous crowd called by the malicious
wench. Kunrad, however, being endowed with a
172 RICHARD STRAUSS
magic power, throws a malediction which causes
all the lights and bonfires to become suddenly
extinguished. The crowd get frantic with fear,
whilst Kunrad makes a speech to them in which
he says that the house which he pulled down was
formerly inhabited by Master Reichardt, whose
great artistic gift was not appreciated by the inhabi-
tants of Munich, and he was obliged to leave the
town ; his work will be continued by him Kunrad
on condition that the love of a woman will make
him happy ; he loves Diemut and desires to be
loved by her ; when she gives herself to him then
the lights and bonfires will blaze again. Diemut,
pressed by the supplications of the crowd, pulls
Kunrad up to her room, and lights appear in every
house in the town.
The essential motive in this story is satire :
Master Reichardt is Wagner, who was obliged to
leave Munich because of the intriguing against him ;
Kunrad represents Strauss himself, who continues
Wagner's work ; the satire, throwing the action on
the sensual background, parodies Wagner's notion
of freedom through woman's love ; for the purpose
of characterizing Wagner, Strauss employed motives
taken from " the Nibelungen " ; and to mark with a
peculiar stamp himself he used the melodies from
" Guntram " ; whilst the crowd is designated by
popular songs.
In " Feuersnot," the music is free from Wagner's
influence and is individual and original ; the various
artistic and popular motives are fused in one
organic whole, purely Straussian, by the means of
orchestral colouring ; the singing parts are treated
RICHARD STRAUSS 173
here not as musical recitatives, but flow in broad
streams of noble melodies. The last part, Liebes-
scene, in the room of the fascinating Diemut, is
full of erotic intoxication, and one could call it
an individual symphonic poem encompassed by the
frame of a drama. One would be justified in
censuring the loose morale of the libretto and the
distasteful self-glorification of the composer ; but
one must none the less admit that in " Feuersnot "
Strauss did reveal himself an unrivalled lyricist,
astonishing one by rich inventiveness, capable of
being equal to any stimmung, and that he created
music full of character, of temperament, and of
life.
When in 1905 Strauss produced at Dresden
" Salome," the breach with Wagner became com-
plete, for his style in this work is so indi-
vidual that nobody could detect in it any Wagnerian
influence or reminiscences. Using Oscar Wilde's
work as libretto, Strauss avoided its inadequate
interpretation through the music, disastrous to any
poetical work, and one could say that he melted
the poetic words into a beautiful harmony of
sounds. Salome was living in the criminal atmo-
sphere of Herod's court at which her marvellous
beauty shone, but she hated the orgies of sensual
dissipation. During a feast in the palace she
rushes out wishing to enjoy the charm of a quiet
night, in which there resounded the strangely
solemn singing of St. John the Baptist. His ascetic
figure, contrasting with the dissolute courtiers,
strikes her by its uplifting simplicity and rouses
in her a burning desire to love and be loved.
174 RICHARD STRAUSS
Prompted by her sentiment she goes to him and
offers her love to him. St. John, mindful of his
exalted mission, declines with disdain her pro-
position ; his resistance to her passionate desire
reveals in her a tiger-like taste, for not being able
to possess him alive, she determines to have him
killed and hold him at least dead. When, after a
bewitching dance Herod tells her that he is willing
to do anything to^please her, she asks for St. John's
head, and when it is handed to her on a dish, she
kisses it passionately. Herod, disgusted and
frightened at such an outburst of salaciousness,
orders his soldiers to crush her between their
shields.
Strauss pointed that gloomy abyss of perversity
and crime with appropriate musical colours, aston-
ishing by the depth of psychological truth, for which
he had a very favourable opportunity, to wit : a
contrast between unbridled sensuality and mastered
chastity, and the only censure one could apply to
his performance would be, that he was more
successful in depicting through the means of
brilliant musical hues the decay of Oriental
culture than the purity and vigour of rising
Christian morale and ethics. There were some
critics who objected to Strauss' fostering, by the
means of music, the burning problem of sexual
perversity, and their attitude should be upheld, for
although it is true that spiritus flat ubi uult, and
that consequently perhaps Strauss could not help
that his spirit moved him to glorify that perversity,
it does not follow that he should be praised
for such performance, and that an aesthetic canon
RICHARD STRAUSS 175
concerning beauty to be found in ugliness should
be deducted from his work. However, the most
interesting for our purpose is this, that in " Salome '"
Strauss displayed an unusual richness of technical
means, which dazzle by their power of efficacy
and are accumulated with a strange predilection.
This astounding poetical technique is not Strauss'
aim, but is given to the service of dramatic expres-
sion. There could not be a shade of doubt that the
point of gravitation, so to say, of this drama
remains with the orchestra, which was composed of
such an unusual number of instruments many of
them newly invented, the old being insufficient for
his purpose that even Wagner would be astonished
at its complicated and huge organism, as well as,
at the great skill of each musician. From that
gigantic sea of sounds there came forth distinctly
themes and motives, winding throughout the whole
of the drama, changing again and again their instru-
mental raiments and displaying most varied changes
of tunes and rhythms. The motives introduced by
Strauss into " Salome " are not melodies of themes,
but harmonious effects of counterpoint, based on
the polyphony of brilliant orchestral colouring.
When one compares the musical motives of
" Salome " with those of " Guntram " and espe-
cially of " Feuersnot," one finds them short with
strongly designed outlines, but melting into the mist
of colouring of stimmung. The Straussian motives
have nothing in common with the Wagnerian leit-
motives ; on the contrary, one notices that in
" Salome," Strauss has broken with the Wagnerian
principle, which will remain genetically connected
176 RICHARD STRAUSS
with the general stream of modern music, being
interwoven in it like a golden thread into a silken
fabric. Strauss rejects schematic scaffolding built
on leit-motives and considers them a remainder
of the former architectural form of music, which
he disdains ; instead, he tries to paint in a general
manner the psychological background of the work,
thus avoiding all schematic limitation. It is true
that Strauss does not give up entirely the motive,
but he assigns to it a secondary position, without
giving to it expressive melodious outlines as did
Wagner. Thus there is in " Salome* " a motive
that flows throughout the whole work like a broad
melodious stream it is that of St. John or rather
a solemn cantilene, full "of simplicity and of Biblical
pathos. Besides this there winds the prophetic
motive, full of gravity and announcing the victory of
faith. The contrast between St. John's motives
and Salome's singing is very striking, for in her
motive there shivers the note of sensual passion
that changes into demoniacal madness, and when
she sings : Ich will deinen mund kussen, Johanaan!
the drama reaches its culminating point of exposi-
tion. One cannot help noticing that there is a great
likeness between Salome's song and Tchaikovski's
motive in the A flat Trio, op. 50, but one could not
state whether this reminiscence is conscious or not.
To Salome's dance is given a form of symphonic
scherzo which constitutes in itself a complete
dramatic poem, concentrating like a prism all the
rays of the dramatic action. That dance, full of
Oriental character, is a true orgy of the senses, ex-
pressing a mad crescendo of passionate desire and
RICHARD STRAUSS 177
magnified into unbridled frenzy. As a whole,
" Salome " is such a good work that one hesi-
tates to say that its last part is the best ; if it
be not so, then at least it is certain that Strauss
gathered here all his strength for a powerful flight,
for which purpose he united all the motives
winding throughout the drama in a polyphonic unity
that shines with a thousand lights and reflexes,
dazzling by the extraordinary richness of musical
colours and fascinating by the charm of melodies.
The former short and broken motives assume
broad forms, flow like a mighty stream, and become
the psychological expression of Salome's senti-
ments, the music of her soul, the chords of that
passionate music resounding with an unbridled orgy
of desire and growing into a paroxysm of sensual
delight.
" Salome's music, restless, nervous, free of all
architectonic of symmetry of classical compositions,
conducted to the last consequence of psychological
characterisation, does not hesitate to use any means,
provided it finds a corresponding sound or tune
for a poetical word, for its sentiment, for its thought
and stimmung ; hence that constant change of
accords, pouring in the deluge of melodies, without
clearly determined tunableness ; hence that constant
changing of rhythm and time. In order to express
all his intentions, Strauss used technical means
which are not to be found in his former works,
and those means are harmonies of dissonances
composed of four keys put beside each other, or
even a unity of different keys, as for instance
when Herodias is obliged to listen, full of power-
12
178 RICHARD STRAUSS
ful wrath, to St. John's thundering at her, then the
orchestra conducts simultaneously melodies of two
keys ; then again, in order to paint the disgust at
Salome's kissing the dead man's head, Strauss
employs, without the slightest hesitation, two scales
running side by side in little tunes, which results
in a gnashing disagreeable to the ear. This is a
serious sin against the beautiful, and it could not
be excused and justified on the plea that this tech-
nical means was necessary to paint in a realistic
manner the disgusting stimmung of a monstrous
moment, for realism should never be introduced
into a work of art. Another censure applied to
"Salome" will be in regard to -the overloading
of the orchestra with instrumental effects, the result
of which overloading is, that the voices of the
singers are often drowned by the orchestra, which
is easily done in a composition void of distinct
outlines of melody, and having rather a character
of dramatic recitation. One could state intra
parentesis y that the parts composed by Strauss for
the singers are very trying on account of his
employing unusually long intervals and of effort
of coming as near as possible to dissonances that
vibrates in our speech.
When " Salome* " was performed and appreciated
it seemed that this drama would remain an excep-
tional example in musical literature, showing that
one could not go further in the development of
technique. However, Strauss astonished the world
when he created " Electra," which is superior to
RICHARD STRAUSS 179
" Salome " both on account of the might of dramatic
force, the realism through the means of which he
reproduced psychological states, and because of the
bold use of technical means. In " Salome " there
are episodes repulsive by their perversity and
frightening by their awe. In " Electra " there
appears a powerful demoniacal world, over which
rises the spectre of crime lightened by the glare
of vengeance ; its awe is still more powerful than
in " Salome," for it is increased by the mysterious
anticipation of evil. That tragical atmosphere is
reproduced by music with a masterly subtlety, every
psychological moment being expressed by an appro-
priate and corresponding sound ; there is a superior
force that penetrates the whole of the drama and
compels, through merciless necessity, the accom-
plishment of what destiny decreed. The music in
" Electra " causes one to shiver, to tremble and
produces the same impression, which the ancient
Greeks must have felt, when in the Athenian theatre
they witnessed the tragical visions of Sophocles
and ^Eschylus that passed in their awe-stricken
imagination.
Electra lives with the thought of vengeance ; like
a hunted beast, she shuns the people ; in her soul
there resound painfully the blows of the hatchet
with which the depraved Clytemnestra helped by
her lover Egist had murdered her husband, Aga-
memnon. The air in the King's palace is permeated
with blood and filled with ghosts. Through the
means of dissonances, rolling with unusual swift-
ness, the music paints that disgusting stimmung.
The character of the hypocritical Electra, full of
180 RICHARD STRAUSS
hysterical demonism, is rendered by slippery,
twisted musical motives, whilst for depicting the
woe by which Clytemnestra is tormented and for
characterizing her vicious soul and her moral
sordidness, Strauss used musical means, which one
does not find in " Salome*," these means being tear-
ing and yelling dissonances, that result from the
union of disharmonious tones or of two different
keys employed simultaneously. In that atmosphere,
depressing by its gloom and awe, there shines but
one melodiously luminous motive characterizing
Agamemnon's children and their love for their
father ; that happy motive could be likened to an
oasis that charms one in the midst of the heartless
and pitiless desert of human perversity. Electra
wishes to avenge the death of her father by murder-
ing Clytemnestra and Egist. Electra's only hope
rests in her brother Orestes, who was sent away
from the house by the mother ; the false news
was spread that Orestes was dead. The desperate
Electra was now determined to perform the work
of vengeance alone, and she digs out the hatchet
with which her father was murdered. Maddened
by revenge Electra digs more and more violently
and the music paints that episode with frightful
force. The torturing doubt, rending Electra's heart,
is suddenly brightened by a message that Orestes
is alive : he comes to the palace in order to per-
form what his duty dictates to him. There rises
in Electra's heart the hope of triumphing over her
foe, and the same motive of minor mode, that was
heard at the beginning of the drama to express
the painful reminiscences of a kingly past, now
RICHARD STRAUSS 181
changes into the major mode to depict the joyful
stlmmung of hope of triumph. Orestes rushes into
his mother's apartment to accomplish the dreadful
deed of vengeance ; Electra, agitated by uncertainty
and fear, listens to the faint voices coming from
the interior of the palace, and, with bent head-
like a beast of prey in a cage mad with pain,
rushes round the room. Now is played the drama
of her soul, and orchestra blasts a mad instrumental
combination, illustrating well Electra's psycho-
logical state. Orestes is victorious ! Joy, mingled
with hatred, comes forth with unbridled power ;
Electra performs a thanksgiving, hysterical dance ;
intoxicated with happiness, exhausted by the
triumph of accomplished vengeance, she falls on
the floor to the accompaniment of frantic music.
In " Electra " Strauss reached such limits that
a logical development on the same line would con-
duct him to the absolute negation of the essential
foundation of music. This drama was the final
expression of over-refinement and of the over-glare
of technical means ; of the accumulation of orches-
tral effects and of instrumental colouring ; of
elimination of melodious line and of replacing it
exclusively by harmonic melody ; in a word, of
trifling with everything musical and of giving it
into the service of the dramatic and of the psycho-
logical at the expense of the beautiful.
If Strauss astonished the musical and the
intellectual world when he produced " Electra,"
he surprised it still more when that gloomy
drama, full of demoniacal awe, was followed by
the effusion of his peculiar endowments manifested
182 RICHARD STRAUSS
in his last work: " Der Rosenkavalier." This
wonderment is due to the fact, that in his last
presentment he almost gives up his notions con-
cerning the purpose of music, according to which
notion music should be psychologico-intellectual and
not sensuous. That notion he embodied in his
many symphonic poems and symphonic dramas.
Suddenly he left the demoniacal world and psycho-
logical abysses and returned to life, to simplicity,
and to serenity.
The Prince von Wardenberg is a sportsman and
prefers rather to hunt than to pay attention to his
wife. She is left much alone, and during her long
solitary hours arrives at the conclusion that life
has not much charm without love, that her youth
will soon pass away, and consequently loves the
charming and well-born Octavian. When they are
closeted for the purpose of exchanging their
amorous propos, the Princess's cousin, the Baron
Ochs auf Lerchenau, is announced. As Octavian
cannot either escape unperceived or hide, he dis-
guises himself as a chambermaid, which is easily
done in the theatre, for the role is played by an
actress. As the would-be suivante is very pretty,
the Baron takes a fancy to her, notwithstanding
that he came to announce to the Princess that he
is going to marry a rich girl, by the name of
Sophie von Fannival, a daughter of a freshly
ennobled Viennese bourgeois, and asks his aunt to
select a rosenkavalier from amongst her relations.
The Princess names Octavian for the role and
shows his portrait, which, naturally, bears a great
likeness to the alleged chambermaid. When
RICHARD STRAUSS 183
Octavian meets Sophie von Fannival the mischievous
Amor discharges his arrows at them and Hymen
is going to light the torch in their honour, after
the Baron's brutal treatment of the charming
bourgeoise and after his duel with Octavian, who
challenges him and wounds him.
All that is depicted by music, which although
unmistakably Straussian, which means full of free
and audacious polyphony and of the glitter of his
unrivalled orchestration, possesses what not only
great musical connoisseurs, but also the vast
majority of cultured amateurs require from a
musical performance, namely, a stirring of the
emotions by sensuous beauty. That masterly
comedy the best work of Hugo von Hoffmansthal
ends by the re-appearance of the Princess, who,
having learned the truth concerning her cousin, the
Baron, as well as of the love between Octavian
and Sophie, gives up her lover, and the play is
ended by a most charming dialogue-duet between
the two happy young people.
Strauss, being obliged to keep to the definiteness
of the libretto one of the best ever written saved
himself and his followers from the too glaring
raptures of some of his symphonic poems and from
the tiring prolixity that appears in all his works,
thus producing a performance of silvery harmonies
and enchanting melodies, of joyfumess and humour,
of serenity and refinement, rich in melodic inven-
tion and in dramatic insight, all that resulting in a
stimmung quite different from that one finds in
his former compositions. His treatment of the
voices in " Der Rosenkavalier " is almost as sympa-
184 RICHARD STRAUSS
thetic as Mozart's. And when one adds, that his
trio towards the end of the last act may be justly
compared with the ravishing Cosi fan tutti, then
one is justified in rejoicing at Strauss having
become a catholic in music.
Such are the essential characteristics of Strauss'
art, explained as well as the difficulty in depicting
sounds through the medium of words permits, the
other difficulties being the shortness of a disquisi-
tion and the impossibility of quoting music, which
means alone would be a little more adequate than
explaining all the peculiarities of style and technique
in a work that is the most, complicated in the history
of music of all times.
It is almost impossible to state the cause of
Strauss' astounding change, made suddenly, with-
out an} r transition, nay, without a warning. The
only reasonable surmise one could offer would be,
that Strauss in his quality as a Ubermenschfor
such he certainly is became conscious, before
others, that we were given too much to philoso-
phizing, to the analysis of our psychological states,
instead of enjoying the beauty of form and the
exquisiteness of technique. That consciousness
prompted him to give up the gloom of the
psychological abyss and to turn towards Palestrina's
Heiterkeit. That he is on the right road is proved
by this eloquent fact that his last work is the most
remarkable of our generation, which again proves
that a work born not from pure love for the beauti-
ful, but from the vain personal desire of boasting
RICHARD STRAUSS 185
of exaggerated artificial combination, could not
deserve to be called a work of art. That sin against
artistic conscience is usually punished by the incom-
prehensibility of the work, for any obscure and
puzzling presentment is a vital offence against the
beaux arts. Beauty is a spiritual, infinite essence,
clothed in form, sensualized, and that essence must
be visible and easy to understand. It is the purpose
of philosophy to plunge into the abyss of thoughts
in order to bring into light truths concealed there ;
beauty could be likened unto one of Raphael's
angels that look at one with their wondrous eyes
and smile heavenly ; but from that smile and from
those eyes, with expression difficult to describe,
speaks infinity.
When music is incomprehensible the composer
commits a grave offence against that heavenly art
and against the immortal element that rests within
man ; music is the province of the whole of man-
kind, as is conscience, sunlight, air, tears, love, joy,
and pain. A mighty lord in cloth of gold, a miser-
able beggar in rags and tatters, a simple-minded
or a wise man everybody with a noble heart has
the same right to music given by God as one has
to a patrimony. Music flows on earth from heaven,
and the one who plunges his tired soul into its
invigorating stream forgets the burning wrongs of
life, forgives them that trespass against him, be-
comes as young as he was during his innocent
age, finds himself again amidst the lost paradise
of his sentiments where bloom the most beautiful
blossoms of love, of faith, and of hope. To the
one who listens to music it seems as if he were
186 RICHARD STRAUSS
surrounded by the winged choirs of the seraphim ;
his soul becomes also winged and flies to the world
of marvels. Over the miseries of sublunary existence
there soars the angel of harmony ; he stands on
the rainbow of the seven coloured tunes ; he binds
the memories of the past and longings of the
present ; he sings a lethean lullaby to those whose
hearts smart because of severance of soul ; he
alleviates the sharp adamant of Fate ; he inwreathes
with amaranth gathered in God's garden everything
and everybody that is hallowed on earth.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank I
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold :
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
EDWARD MANET
EDWARD MANET,
SHORTLY before death Ingres met Manet in some
studio where he went probably to defend his ideals ;
they did not know each other ; Manet was young
and unknown. It is almost certain that the old
Ingres did not suspect that that tall young man
would carry such a weight in the evolution of
French art, and that he also would fight all his
life for his ideas, so different from those of Ingres,
who was for the beautiful quand meme, while Manet
desired the truth, even if it were sometimes dis-
agreeable and brutal. Both of them were reaction-
aries necessary in the transformation of aesthetic
ideas.
After Ingres, the French art began to decline
in academical studies as well as in traditions
of the Renaissance, while romanticism changed into
a kind of noisy and tedious guitar, sentimental
and weepingly poetical.
The beautiful and dignified art of Ingres became
a museum of wax figures. There was a hierarchy
of themes ; the whole art was divided into classes.
On the highest step stand historical and religious
art I should have said semi -religious, for it was
not animated either by the faith of the Primitives,
or the sweetness and charm of the Renaissance.
Biblical and mythological subjects were also very
190 EDWARD MANET
welcome ; there was a true invasion of Olympian
gods and goddesses, of saintly women from the
Bible painted in negligs, showing here a nude leg,
there an uncovered bosom. As to landscape, it had
the right of citizenship when it represented some
foreign country with flora that one sees in strange
lands, with sand carried by Samum, with water
in which cloudless, smooth sky and dishevelled
palm-trees, with leaves as if made of tin, were
reflected. And before all it was forbidden under the
penalty laesae artis to put in the pictures air and
light. In such way Manet's professor, Thomas
Couture, used to make his pictures, which were
so classico-romantic that they made one yawn while
looking at them. There was as much life and truth
in all those pompous ceremonies and festivals, such
for instance as " Decadence of Rome," as there is
in an osteolite. And he, Thomas Couture, was going
to teach Manet how to look on art, on the beautiful,
and on Nature ! Manet already felt and understood
that it was necessary to go with art on large
thoroughfares, where one finds air and sun. A
shock was unavoidable between them ; the stronger
Couture wished to bend Manet's creative thoughts
to his ideal the more the pupil resisted, and eo ipso
the greater was the recoil in his work from the
canons imposed on him. Soon Manet began to
pull down the temple of " great art," to destroy its
rules and by-laws, and fight those who were its
followers and propagators.
In that way there was born realism as a reaction
against cheap idealism.
Under the banner of Nature, having taken for
EDWARD MANET 191
his motto " the truth," Edward Manet began to
fight and to work. Already in his first pictures,
although less important for a historiograph, for
they are less characteristic and less original than
those which followed, one can see qualities of the
first importance, viz., solid technique and sure draw-
ing. It is true that there is an evident influence of
Goya and of II Greco, together with slight reminis-
cences of Courbet, Raeburn, Franz Hals, and some-
times even of Couture, but those influences and
reminiscences are a necessary result of youthful im-
pressionability and enthusiasm. Every artist going
on the road for the search of his own impressions,
takes with him a certain amount of baggage com-
posed of foreign penchants and likings.
Such a picture as " Buueur d'absinthe" painted
in 1859, is a strong work, almost perfect technically,
executed sincerely, and possessing very subtle psy-
chology. That emaciated drunkard and penniless
fellow, wrapped up fancifully in a cloak, is a perfect
type of a Bohemian of those times ; he is one of
those Manfreds of the Latin quarter cafes, searching
for the absolute at the bottom of a glass ; one of
those dclasses, who lost in drinking his health,
his talent, and sometimes even a spark of genius,
and who under the influence of Hamlet's " to be
or not to be," leave the world, slamming contemp-
tuously the door of life after him.
Manet, by simple means, without too much
verbosity, has given the full pathos of such ruined
existence that ended tragically by a bullet or a
piece of rope. In the swollen faces, in the whole
figure covered with rotten cloak, one sees the ironic
192 EDWARD MANET
pride, cleverness, hopeless downfall, nights spent
under the bridges of the Seine, and the whole misery
that devours and ruins. And there is the evident
cause of the defeat and of humiliation . . . absinthe
la fie verte, which not only made rags of clothes,
not only turned the face to the colour of lead, but
also, as its supreme triumph, has caused a shiver
of delirium tremens in the emaciated Bohemian.
" Guitarero," painted in 1860, has the same
qualities, but in a higher degree. The technique
here is more simplified, and the relation of light
and shade, as well as bold harmony make almost a
masterpiece of that canvas. On a greenish bench,
with metallic reflections, is sitting a Spanish guitar-
player ; under a broad : brimmed sombrero, there
is a pink kerchief with which the head is wrapped
up, contrasting delicately with the swarthy face ; the
black colours of the bolero, the white of the shirt,
and grey trousers, constitute an unusually charming
whole ; while the expression of the face, ample
modelling, transparency of the atmosphere are such
that the picture seems to be cut from real 'life,
There are no shades in that picture, there are no
contrast of lights and shades, that are the last remi-
niscences of the art before Manet, in whose
pictures the parts that are toned down have the
intensity and worth of values, and they unite with
lights in breezy and lively harmony.
In other pictures, painted in the light of a studio,
such as " Balet espagnol," " Lola de Valence,"
" Olympia," and in numerous portraits there is a
strong rise of the scale of colours and their imme-
diate harmony without a transition to half-tones and
EDWARD MANET 193
without attenuation. As those pictures were con-
ceived in the cold light of a studio, they 'do not give
the whole of Manet's might as a colourist.
Only in pictures executed in plain air does he
come forth as an innovator with his own revelation.
Although " Lola de Valence " with her dress
sprinkled with variegated flowers, a white turban,
and a blue kerchief has, as said Baudelaire, le
charme inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir ; although
" Olympia " is the very type of all posterior nude
studies, a bright and youthful tone, a protest against
soap-like feminine bodies with false charms and
calligraphic forms ; although portraits of Zola, of
Rochefort, of Eve Gonzales, and such pictures as
" Le dame aux evantails," " Un cafe," " Bar aux
Folies Bergeres," "Le vieux mendiant," "Le liseur,"
and many others sufficed to make him famous and
prompted one of his admirers to say over his grave :
ce genie sans cesse en quete d'un effort nouveau;
although in all his pictures there is individual
feeling so different from accepted formulas,
Manet's talent spouts with all its might, blossoms
with all its originality there where the flowers,
caressed by the sun, shine and scent, where the
leaves and grass are green, where the sky is blue.
To this class belong " Dejeuner sur 1'herbe," " Le
jardin," " Le linge," "Chez le pere Lathuille," " Ar-
genteuil," " Les travailleurs de la mer," " Le port
dc Bordeaux," " La maison de Rueil," etc.
Chronologically " Dejeuner sur 1'herbe " was an
important event in the history of art. "In that
picture," said Theodore Duret in his remarkable
work about Manet, "was manifested a kind of
13
194 EDWARD MANET
painting that is beyond ordinary art and which
comes forth from its own and original vision. Here
the onlooker came into contact with a new artist,
who against accepted rules put different colours
beside each other, without any transition, an arlist.
overthrowing former combinations of light and
shade, universally accepted in their stable contrast
and replacing them by contrasts of changeable
tones."
It is easy to understand how the eyes of the
spectators, accustomed to dusky harmonies, attenu-
ated by neutral shades in transition from one colour
to another, were shocked by that bold unity of
sincere colours in their full development and
strength. The critics of those times called that
kind of painting bariolage, and there began a fight
about that picture which seemed to be a challenge,
not only because of its colours and technique, but
also on account of its composition and subject.
On a large canvas, the dimension of which was
considered until now proper only for allegoi i
historical scenes, or battles, Manet painted under
trees two men in ordinary and natural positions
that had nothing in common with heroism. They
are dressed in ordinary, modern clothes that even
from afar could not have been taken for chlamids.
On the foreground a nude woman is squatting,
another is seen in the water on the background ;
there are scattered women's clothes, a basket with
fruits and rosy bread animate the scene with
bright spots. The pale body on the background
of green, contrasting with dark clothes, furnished a
motif full of colour, which should have won ad mira-
EDWARD MANET 195
tion by its beauty and not shocked by its daring,
all the more that in the history of art there was
an example of such a contrast in the most beautiful
" Concerto " by Giorgione. But neither critics nor
artists, and with them naturally the public, wished
to see either logic in the theme or fresh charm 1
coming forth from the picture.
Little by little Manet acquired more and more
fame, sut generis ; some people clalled him a buffoon,
others a kind of Anti-Christ that destroyed every-
thing, while still others qualified him sim'ply. as a
madman. That renown accompanied him till his
grave, for it is true that sometim'es we are divided
from new works by such a distance that only after
many years we are able to understand them.
A kind of tragi-comical fate met Manet's work.
The humorous periodicals of those days, such as
Tintamarre and Charivari, laughed at him ; as
to the respectable publications, they either said
nothing of Manet or exhorted him ex cathedra
to be reasonable and to enter the road of virtue,
of duty, and to paint with chicory ; Baudelaire
muttered something from time to time ; Zola alone
defended the reformer. Manet fought with the jury
of the Salon to which he was not admitted ; with
the public to which malgre tout et malgre tons he
appealed in special exhibitions of his work, with
critics and comrades.
After years of fighting there began to shine for
him, like the sun of March, a relative success, when
in 1873 he exhibited the portrait of the etcher
Belot, a masterpiece of the brush worthy of the
best portraits of Franz Hals ; but even then the
196 EDWARD MANET
success was marred by bitterness, for they found
in his work an affinity with the Dutch painter,
while Manet wished not to be compared with
anybody.
The painting called " Le bon bock " represents
a fat man sitting at a table with a glass of beer,
holding a pipe between his teeth, and satisfied with
himself, with life and drink. The fact is that there
in a relationship between Manet's man and Hals's
beer-drinkers, but only in regard to type ; the
picture is individual and is one of the jewels of
modern art.
After that applause, a year later, when Manet
exhibited " Le chcmin de fer," he met again with
laughter again he was not understood ; it was clear
then that he had not come one step near the public,
or rather that the public had made not one step
i'orward to understand Manet.
The year 1881 brought to the artist a rare
consolation, for his two portraits, exhibited at the
Salon, " Pertuiset tueur de lions " and <; Rochefort"
were awarded the second medal, which gave him
a privilege to be hors concours, and to send his
pictures to the Salon without fear of being rejected.
Then he was decorated with the Legion of Honour.
Thanks to those two honours, or perchance more
to the reason that sooner or later a true talent must
come out victorious, there was a slight turn in
Manet's favour, especially amongst critics and artists
who began to appreciate his emancipated art, and
there gathered round him a few men who were
desirous to tell their thoughts in an individual and
new way. The small circle of Manet's friends such
EDWARD MANET 197
as Legros, Whistler, Fantin Latour, Duret, Vignaux,
Durantz, Cladel, the etchers Belot and Desboutins,
the landscape-painter Guillemet, the Orientalist
Tabar and the poet-statuary Astruc, was joined by
the phalanx of " the youngest ones " such as
Cezanne, Renoir, Claude Monet, Degas, Sisley,
Pizzarro, Berta Morissot, and Eve Gonzales. The
year 1874 constitutes an historical era in the
evolution of art, for about that time and through
these above-mentioned artists began plainarism
and its logical consequence impressionism.
Now in the fight for his aesthetic credo Manet
was no more alone ; he had round him men who
cherished the same ideals, followed his road, and
even, as it usually happens, outstripped him by
making his thoughts broader. With Manet's
followers the effects of light became more varied,
still stronger in their intensiveness ; their pictures
are stronger in colour, more realistic in the selec-
tion of their subjects ; the landscape, considered
until then as a kind of theatrical decoration, as
a background for the represented story, became of
the first importance it laughed with the playful sun,
it wept with the tears of rain, it dreamed wrapped
in grey mists ; a haystack, a stone near a road, a
solitary pear-tree in a field, a half-destroyed fence,
became subjects as worthy of the brush of an artist
as is a beautiful Gothic cathedral ; the changes
produced by different moments of the day were
noticed and considered of importance.
The years passed by, the new aesthetic grew more
and more prevalent, but Manet died (born 1832,
died 1883} half understood. One year after his
198 EDWARD MANET
death in L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, an exhi-
bition of Manet's work was held, but even then the
watchmen and protectors of the Holy Ark Routine
the President of the Republic, Grevy, the Secretary
of the Interior, Ferry, and the Director of Beaux
Arts, Kaempfen consented only half-heartedly that
such an honour should be shown to Manet.
As it seems, it was not yet time for his apotheosis,
for but little was said of the exhibition and the
result was very insignificant.
Only after the exhibition of Manet's work in 1900
at the World's Fair, then after the Salon d'automne
of 1905 and a show at Durand-Ruel's in March
of 1906, did his art appear in its whole import-
ance and the seal which his genius impressed on
modern art became evident.
The tumult of the international fair, the too
great crowd of people and things was not
favourable for Manet's art, whose whole beauty
appeared only in the quiet of the Grand Palais.
Perchance the vicinity of another aesthetic idea,
that of Ingres, was necessary to show us and to
make us understand the filiation of "the young
France." Ingres and Manet put beside each other
appeared to be maitres &s arts of the last epoch .
Manet for his sense of Life, Ingres for his under-
standing of the Beautiful. Moreover, one could see
then how they linked together different phases of
art. The painter of " Olympia " appeared to be
the continuator of the author of " Odalisques "
his completion in some sense, and both of them
proved to be a plus in the sum of modern
efforts and tendencies in art. From plainairism and
EDWARD MANET 199
impressionism came out neo -impressionism ; from
Ingres's classicism was originated neo -traditional-
ism. Those directions completing each other are
predominant in modern art.
The influence of those two masters could be
traced in the work of Puvis de Chavannes, in
Degas, and even in that true barbarian Gauguin.
From Ingres and Manet those three artists, so very
different from one another, take their tendency for
synthesis, simplicity, harmony of colours and orna-
ments ; they also, as did Ingres, gave style to form
and brightness to colouring, as did Manet.
And the youngest ones, those of the present day :
Maurice Denis, Valoton, Maurice Guerin, d'Espagnat,
Paterne, Berrichon, Boutet de Monval, those who
exhibit with " the independent " and in the " Salon
d'automne," do they not evoke Ingres to help them
in their fight against realism and impressionism,
from which, however, they originated? There is
no doubt that, notwithstanding originality and fresh-
ness of feeling and of impression, notwithstanding
their personal vision and individual inspiration, they
are united with Ingres and Manet by the affinity of
thought and spirit.
Thus the souls of masters are grouped like planets
and stars by the strength of strange and wonderful
attraction ; throughout time and space they influ-
ence each other, search each other ; and although
their point of contact may be very slight, one feels,
however, the mystic tie that links them together.
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