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http://www.archive.org/details/artartistsofourt02cook
F. H-KAEMIIERER
PHOTOGRA\-TJRE
A BAPTISM DURING THE DIRECTORY
yjlANCB. i79b *
eTEEL ENGRAVINGS PRINTED ON THE
HESS PRESS.
COPYRIGHT,
i888,
BY SELMAR HESS.
Contents, IDolume II.
PAGE
ACHEXBACH, Akdreas, 288
Amberg, Wilhelm 231
asdersen-lundbt, 284
Angeli, Heinrich von, 260
Artz, David Adolphe Constant, . . 324
Becker, Karl Ludwig Friedrich, . . 90
Begas, Karl, 154
Benczur, Julius, 213
Bendemann, Edouard, . . . . ^ 40
Bendemann, Rudolph 193
Beyschlag, Julius, 209
Blau, Tina, 290
Blommers, Bernardus Johannes, . . 323
BocKLiN, Arnold, 169
bodenhausen, cuno von, .... 202
BodenmCller, Alfons, 197
BoDMER, Karl, 282
BosBooM, Johannes, 324
BWrger, Anton, 300
Calame, Alexander, 280
Camphausen, Wilhelm, 51
Carstens, L. v., 194
CkderstrOm, Baron Thure von, . . 344
Cermak, Jaroslav, 304
Chodowiecki, Daniel Kicolaus, . . . 247
Cornelius, Peter von, 7
Dahl, Hans, 112
Defregger, Franz, 126
Deger, Ernest, 18
Deutsch, Rudolph von, I81
DiEFFENBACH, ANTON HEINRICH, ... 137
PASS
DiEZ, Wilhelm, 181
Dill, Ludwig, 293
DtiRER, Albert, 3
Dvorak, F., 138
Bpp, Rudolph, 13S
Erdmann, Otto, 242
Feuerbach Anselm 17a
Fink, August, ....... 284
FiRLE, "WALTHER, 161
Gael, Alois, lio
Gebhardt, Karl Franz Edouard von, . 75
Gebler, Friedrich Otto, .... 309
Gentz, Wilhelm Karl, 19^
Gossow, 227
GrUtzner, Eduard, 95
GuDE, Hans, 349
Haanen, Cecil von, 388-
Hagborg, August, 34S
Harburger, Edmund, 207
Hasemann, Wilhelm 163-
H.iSENCLEVBR, PlERRE PAUL 94
Hellqvist, Karl Gustav, .... 346
Hendschel, Albert, 122
Herterich, Ludwig, 65
Hildebrandt, Ferdinand Theodor, . . 213
Hildebrand, Ernst, 100
Hildebrandt, Eduard, 278
Hoecker, Paul, 154
Hofmann, Heinrich Johann Ferdinand
Michael, 184
Holbein, Hans, !>
89^i56
IV
CONTENTS.
HoM, George,
Igler, G.,
Israels, Josef, .
iTTENBACH, FRAISTZ,
Jacobides, G.,
Kaemmerer, Frederik Hendrik
Kaufmax:^, Hugo,
Kaulbach, Wilhelm von,
Kadlbach, Hermann,
Kaulbach, Fbiedrich August,
Ketser, Emile, ....
KlESSLING, JOHANN, AdOLF, PAUL,
Kleehaas, Theodore,
Knaus, Ludwig, .
KoENiG, Hugo, .
Krat, Wilhelm,
Kurtzbauer, E.,
Leibl, Wilhelm,
Lenbach, Franz,
Lessing, Charles Frederic
Liezen-Mayer, Alexander,
LiNDENSCHMIDT, WiLHELM,
LOfftz, Ludwig,
Lt'BEN, Adolf,
Makart, Hans, .
Marak, Julius, .
Maris, Jacobus or James,
Maris, William,
Maris, Matthew,
Maute, Anton, .
Max, Gabriel, .
Meissner, Ernst Adolf,
Menzel, Adolf, Friederich, Erdman
Mesdag, Hendrik Wilhelm,
Meter, Johann Georg (von Bremen)
Meter, Glaus, ....
Meterheim, Paul Friedrich,
MCCKE, Heinrich, Karl, Anton,
MCller, Carl, .
MuNKACST, Michael,
MuNTHE, Ludwig,
OvERBECK, Friedrich,
Passini, Ludwig,
Pausinger, C. von, .
Pesne, Antoine,
Pettenkofen, August von,
PlLTZ, Otto,
N,
PAGE
225
96
31G
27
141
336
168
31
218
220
147
63
144
103
92
208
148
233
267
43
58
83
245
83
175
280
331
333
384
321
215
307
52
326
140
158
298
29
25
87
350
14
166
263
256
169
156
PAGE
PiLOTY, Karl Thkodor von, .... 45
Pletsch, Oscar, 119
Plockhorst, Bernhard, 69
Preller, Friedrich, Johann, Christian,
Ernst, 273
Preter, Johann Wilhelm, .... 296
Ramberg, a. von, 199
Raupp, Karl, 146
Rethel, Alfred, 76
Retzch, Friedrich August Moritz, . . 24
RicHTER, Karl, Ludwig, Gustav, . . 238
Richter, Adrian Ludwig, .... 114
Riefstahl, Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich, 66
RONNER, Henriette, 339
Salentin, Hubert 142
Schenck, August Frederic-Albrecht, . 286
SCHMID, Mathias, 131
Schkorr, von Carolsfeld, Julius, Veit,
Hans, 18
ScHREYER, Adolf, 300
SCHROEDER, ALBERT, 98
SCHUCH, Werner, Wilhelm, Gustav, . 59
ScHwiND, Moritz Ludwig von, ... 33
SchWtze, Wilhelm, 151
Seifebt, Alfred 303
Seitz, Otto, ....... 61
SicHEL, Nathaniel, 303
Smith-Hald Frietjof, 352
SoHN, Carl, Jr., 244
Spa_ngekberg, Gustav Adolf, ... 195
Stryowski, Wilhelm, 100
Thoren, Otto von, 303
Thumann, Paul, ...... 231
TiscHBEiN, Friedrich, 358
Treuenfels, N., 103
Uhde, Fritz von, 73
Vautier, Marc, Louis, Benjamin, . . 223
Vogel, Christian Leberecht, ... 341
Voltz, Friedrich Johann, .... 306
Wagner, Paul, 137
Wahlberg, Alfred Leonard, . . . 348
Wagner, Alexander, 339
Werner, Anton Alexander von, . . 365
Winterhalter, Franqois Xavier, . . 358
Zimmermann, Ernst Karl Georg, . . 73
Zt'GEL, Heinrich Johann, .... 308
jfull^lpaGe IFllustrations. Dolume IK
A Baptism DnBi;sG the Directory
The Birth of the Vibgi:n
The Madonna of the Meyer Family
The Destruction of Troy
puss-in-boots
The Holy Family
The Body of St. Catharine Borne to Mt.
SiNAI
The Battle of the Huns
Death of Wallenstein
Friedrich Wilhelm I. VISITS the Village
School
A Chamber-Concert at Sans-Souci .
Episode from the "Thirty Years' War"
An Incident in the Peasants' War .
In the Refectory
The Adoration of the Shepherds .
Come, Lord Jesus, and be our Guest
The Last Supper
The Visitation of the Sick
The Death of William of Orange .
The Last Days of a Condemned Man
Christ Before Pilate
The Examination Day
Shaving-Day in the Monastery
"Your Health!"
The Baptism
Behind the Scenes
The Story-Teller ."
By F. H. Kaemmerer
" Albert Diirer
" Hans Holbein
" Peter von Cornelius .
" Moritz von Sohwind
'' Franz Ittenbach
Heinrioh Milcke
Willielui von Kaulbach
Karl Theodor von Piloti
Adolph Menzel
" W. Schuch .
" Ludwig Herterioh
" Wilhelm Riefstahl .
" Ernst Zimmermann .
" F. von Uhde
" E. von Gebhardt
" Adolf Liiben
" Wilhelm Lindenschmidt
" Michael Munkacsy
F. P. Hansenclever
Eduard GrUtzner
E. Hildebrand .
Ludwig Knaus .
Alois Gabl
PAGE
Frontispiece
To Face
3
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23
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38
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30
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34
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44
li
52
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60
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72
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74
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76
11
80
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84
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86
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94
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96
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104
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110
VI
ILL us TR A TIONS.
Too Late
A Song of Welcome
Speckbacher and his Son Andreas .
The First-born
Spring-Time
Expectation
Right or Left? . ...
The Woodland Prayer .....
The Coming Storm
A Nunnery
Morning Prayer in the Orphanage
A Tranquil Hour
Curiosity
Caught at Last
The Mermaidens
The Hunt on the Nile
Penelope . . . . .
Othello
In the Gloaming . . ...
At the Embroidery Frame ....
The Waves of the Sea and of Love
Coming from the Baptism ....
Forsaken
The Tower-warden
At Church
The Spanish Mail-Coaci-i in Toledo
The Brothers
At Dessert
Avarice and Love
The Work-room of a Painter .
Calas bidding Farewell to His Family
Florinda and her Maidens ....
A Landscape
Agony . .
Chased by Wolves
The Sewing School at Katwyk
The Departure of the Fishing-boat
By Hans Dahl .
" Ludwis; Riohter
Rudolph Epi3
Meyer von Bremen
Theodor Kleehaas
Hubert Salentin
Carl Raupp
Claus Meyer
Walther Firle .
W. Hasemann
Ludwig Passini .
Hugo Kaufinann
Arnold Boo^in .
Hans Makart
Rudolf von Deutsch
H. Hofmann
Gustav Spangenberg
A. von Ramberg
Wilhelm Kray
' Julius Beysohlag
Julius Benczur .
Hermann Kaulbacli
Benjamin Vautier
■ Alexander Wagner
Christian Leberecht Vogel
Carl Sohn, Jr.
Ludwig Lofftz .
■ Daniel Nicholaus Chodow
iecki
FranQois Xavier Winterhalter
Julius Marak ....
August Frederic-Albrecht Schenck
Adolf Sehreyer ....
Josef Israels . .
Bernardus Johannes Blommers
Hendrik Wilhehii Mesdag
On the Ebb
The Tow-path " James Maris
The Dispute " F. H. Kaemmerer
PAGE
) Face 112
116
126
130
136
140
144
146
" 148
158
163
164
166
.168
" 173
178
183
186
196
300
306
310
314
218
333
338
340
244
246
348
353
260
280
288
302
316
334
338
" 333
" 336
GERMAN ART.
I.
BROADLY si)eaking, the art of Germany as it exists to-day is an affair of our own
century. In the general ruin and desolation brought about by the Thirty Years'
War, Germany, so far as Art and Letters were concerned, had become almost a tabula
rasa, a clean slate: her older art was more than neglected, it was despised: if any hand were
discerned busied with the pencil or the chisel, it was a hand taught by Italy and working on
;V7 Sfri-rr/er fecit-
"TIRED-OUT."
FROM THE PRAYER-BOOK OF THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. BY ALBERT DURER
models furnished by the later Italian schools. It is a familiar fact in the kingdom of nature
tliat, after the primeval forest has been cleared by the woodman's axe or by lire, the new
growth that springs up is of a different species from the old. It was so with the Art of Ger-
many after the ground had been cleared by the bloody axe of the Thirty Years' War. The
themes of the older art had been almost exclusively religious. She had provided pictures for
the churches, illuminated manuscripts for kings and princes, and by the newly introduced arts
Vol. II.— 1 * *
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of engi'aving and printing, she had circulated broadcast among the people a profusion of
designs with subjects drawn from the Bible and from the Legends of the Church. The taste
of the Renaissance had led the Italians to subjects drawn from classic history and poetry.
These they j^ainted with one hand, while, with the other, they supplied the never-failing
demand from the churches for religious pictures. The taste of the Italians for classic themes
was instinctive : it was in their blood : a long inheritance ; and, from the first, as soon as the
practice of art was taken up in Italy by Italian hands, it recurred, as by a natural bent, to
antique models. The decorations of the roof of the Upper Church of St. Francis at Assisi,
attributed to Cimabue, are a prophecy of unearthed Pompeii and. the Baths of Titus. Giotto
gives to the house of Anna and Joachim, the
parents of the virgin, a pediment of classic form
ornamented with the familiar mussel-shell,
which here incloses, not, as we are wont to see,
the pagan Venus, but the effigy of God the
Father: the new wine put into old bottles.
Nay, did not Raphael himself, when in his
time the Baths of Titus, with their frescoed
arabesques, were uncovered, recall Avith leaps
of heart the days of his youth, when he as-
sisted his old master, Perugino, in decorating
the ceilings of tire Perugian Exchange and
its Chapel with designs in the same spirit:
wreaths and garlands inclosing Diana, and Venus, and Cupid? And did not Love and
Memory spur him to the playful task of the Loggie as much as the mere example ^f clas-
sic precedent and the enthusiasm of his scholar- friends? These are only a few illustrations
out of many that might be given. But, what was native to Italy was only borrowed in
Germany, on whom the classic garb of the Renaissance sat with an ill grace. The Italian
artist following his nature, and inheriting the classic traditions, sought to embody his ideas
in beautiful and graceful forms. He was instinctively drawn to generalize, to omit all
details that were not absolutely necessary, and if he were obliged to introduce details, he
either copied such models about him as were ornamental, or, in default of these, invented such
as pleased his refined taste. But the Germans w^ere not only less given, on principle, to gen-
"LOVE AND TIME."
A VIGNETTE FROM THE PRAYER-BOOK OF THE EMPEROR
MAXIMILIAN. BY ALBERT DURER.
"THE BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN."
FROM THE DESIGN BY ALBERT DURER FOR HIS "LIFE OF THE VIRGIN,'
#
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
eralize, they seemed to lo\ e details for their own sake; or, if this be not allowed, let it be said
that they seemed best able to express their conception and tell their story by multiplying
incidents and details ; and they had no example of classic restraint before their eyes to deter
them from following their native inclination. The space at our command does not permit us
to do more, than hint at these differences. But let any of Our readers, who care to look into
the matter, compare the treatment of any one of the incidents in the Old or New Testament,
or in the various legends of the Church, by an Italian painter, with the treatment of the same
subject by a German. Let him compare the " Birth of the Virgin," by Diirer, for example,
with the " Birth of the Virgin " by Giotto, or by an artist contemporary with Diii-er, Andrea
del Sarto. In Giotto, the story is told in the fewest possible words : not a syllable could be
spared. In Andrea's pictui'e, the bare-necessaries-of-life look of the room As^here the scene
takes place in Giotto's picture, is exchanged for a sumptuousness, expressive at once of the
i'icher and more luxurious times in which the later artist lived, and of the desire he had
to emphasize the supposed fact, that the Virgin's parents were people of wealth and position.
A rich bedstead, a carved marble frieze, a stately fire-place — these, from the artist's point of
view, are necessary but sufficient indications: they serve their purpose, but they do not dis-
tract the mind from the main story. How different it is with Diirer ! He shows us a room
in the house of a comfortable burgher of his own Nuremberg : perhaps his own father's house,
with its big, heavily-curtained bed, its apparatus for the toilet : a copper water- vessel hanging
over a sink, a towel on a roller, a shelf for holding household utensils, and chests for clothing.
In the bed we see the mother to whom her women and neighbors bring refreshment and worda
of cheer; and in the foreground, a crowd of nurses sit about on chests and stools, some worn
out with watching, some drinking no end of beer from huge tankards supplied by a sturdy
servant. Others wash and swaddle the new-born infant — two children being shown, for one —
as was often done by the old j)ainters to indicate the successive stages of the dressing: the
washing never omitted, since that was symbolical of the rite of baptism. The whole is a scene
of homely confusion characteristic, no doubt, of the time, and of the manners of the people
among whom Diirer lived, but certainly devoid of dignity, and in no wise answering to the
spirit in which the subject would have been treated by Jan van Eyck, or Roger van der
Weyden, or by Diirer's immediate predecessor, Schcingauer. Even the angel who has de-
scended into tliis homely birth-chamber, and hovers in a cloud over the bed of Anna, swinging
a censer, is in nowise an ideal or beautiful creation. Diirer never even attempts to lift his
angelic or saintly beings above tlie level of ordinary mortals:
he always gives them homely, honest burgher-faces and en-
cumbers them with a prodigious amount of clothing: appar-
ently for no other reason than the enjoyment he has in
designing complicated folds of drapery. What stronger
contrast could there be than that between the clumsy awk-
wardness of the angel in this design and the sweetness and
simplicity of the angel who comes floating in at the window
of Anna's room, in Giotto's picture in the Arena chapel at
Padua?
Perhaps a stronger contrast still is that between Diirer's
designs made for the Prayer-book of the Emperor Maximi-
lian, and those with which we are all more or less familiar in
the missals of the middle ages. We give examples of these
designs of Diirer, printing one to inclose our text, as in the
original, it incloses the text of the Emperor's missal. Durer's
designs are drawn with the reed-pen in delicate-colored inks,
and contrary to the custom of the ordinary illuminator, they
have, as a rule, only the most forced relation to the text they
inclose. The one we reproduce is perhaps not well chosen
BORDER FROM THE PRAYER-BOOK OF THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. DESIGNED BY ALBERT DURER.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 5
to illustrate this point, since it is really a religious subject. St. John is represented at the
bottom of the page, writing his gospel : his inkstand and pen-case are before him on a rock,
and his eagle stands at his side. His eyes are uplifted, directed to the vision of the virgin,
who aj)pears to him with her child in her arms. In other borders we find the most curious
medley of profane and sacred subjects that can be conceived : crucified Christs, Christ suffer-
ing, or rising from the tomb, saints of the Bible or of Legend, and all these mingled with
figures from the life of Nuremberg in Diirer's day : ornaments of pure arabesque drawn with
dexterous flourishes of the pen, with apes and cranes, dogs and horses, dragged in pell-mell:
here, a satire on the preaching-monks : the fox with a bird- whistle calling the cocks and hens
to their desti'uction ; here, an old woman tired out with her spinning, and sleeping of an
afternoon with her tankard of beer beside her : here, a chubby German Cupid singing to his
lute with one foot on a snail — the whole making far more the impression of selections at
random from the artist's sketch-book than of an orderly and deliberate design. Perhaps this
prayer-book may be looked at as an emblem, not of Diirer's mind alone, but of the spirit
of his time, when the old social order was changing, and old ideas were losing their influ-
ence, and things sacred and jsrofane were scrambling and fighting to divide the kingdom
of man between them.
A greater painter than Diirer, if a less interesting man, Hans Holbein, a contemporary,
though born later, shared with him that freer and more familiar style, now in that age
become universal. In his world-famous " Porti-aits of the Meyer Family," Holbein does only
what Italian artists of the best rank have done in pictures as famous : he shows us the Virgin
appearing with her Child to a worshipping family. But although the arrangement of the
group is classical in its regularity, there is a rude homeliness in the treatment, an awkward-
ness in the attitudes of the personages, a want of elegance in some of the details, and a
positive ugliness in the costumes of the women, such as would be impossible to find in an
Italian painter. At the same time, these defects, it must be allowed, exist alongside traits of
real beauty, in the Virgin's face ; in her hands — equalling in the painting, if not surpassing,
the world-famous hands in the Mona Lisa of Leonardo ; in the paiating of the robe of finest
lawn of the hard-featured young daughter of the house, and in her head-dress; above all in
the painting of the infant son of the family, making his pretty, innocent salute to a delighted
world. This picture, best known by the copy in the Dresden Gallery, of the original in the
Ducal Gallery at Darmstadt, represents the Burgomaster Meyer with his first and second
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
wives, his daughter and his two sons, kneeling ia the presence of the Virgin who carries her
child iu her arms. Reiaelled by the bourgeois homeliness of these j)eople, sentimentalists
have tried to inject into the picture something of what, in their vocabulary, is called poetry.
They have iavented a tale out of whole cloth, imagining the Child in the Virgin's arms to be
a dead child of the Meyer family, to fill whose place on earth she has brought down her own
child— the one who stands by the kneeling Burgomaster and his eldest son. Not only are
there no facts whatever to warrant such an interpretation of the picture, it must be admitted
that the explanation is foreign to the spirit of the time and to the character of the artist, who
had no such stufl in his thoughts, nor ever appears other than the hard-headed, matter-of-fact
portrayer of things seen with his bodily eyes, things which he reproduced with consummate
skUl. indeed, with beauty of coloring and perfection of drawing combined as they were never
combiaed in mortal before, but never iHumiaated, ia this picture or elsewhere, by the smallest
ray of fancy or imagination. ^
When Holbein died, snatched away by the plague in London ia 1543 in the 46th year of
his age, there was no artist left in Germany to carry on the great tradition which Diirer and
himself had taherited from the noble school of the Netherlands and which they, and a multi-
tude of other artists, had so splendidly maintained. From this time a decline set in, due to
various causes, pai-tly political, partly religious, which ended for a time in the complete
yV.' ^'f//'ijr;urfp£ii'-
THE FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING.
FROM THE PRAYER-BOOK OF THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. BY ALBERT DURER.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 7
extinguishment of all art in Grermany worthy of the name. We turn over the pages of the
latest histories of the subject and while we find a cloud of names, we are struck with the
scarcity of artists who have attained to any particular distinction, although a few are not
unknown, and shine with more lustre than is fairly their right, because they are set off by
such a foU of mediocrity. Nothing would be gained in a sketch like this by attempting to
free from the tangle of lesser names the few which in a larger survey of German art would
deserve mention ; and leaving, therefore, behind us the seventeenth century and the greater
part of the eighteenth, we come at once to the re-birtli of art in Germany in our own century.
This art, however derived, was in the main personal in the influences that gave it vitality.
In a time when the practice of art had become purely perfunctory and academic, an affair of
teaching by rote, the only salvation that could be hoped for must come from men to whom
art was one with religion, to whom it was a necessary expression of feeling and belief, and
who not only cherished it for themselves, but ardently longed to make others partakers in
the consolations they had found in it. In the very close of the eighteenth century, two such
men appeared in Germany who were destined to work a great revolution in the art of their
time, and who, no matter what may be the final judgment on their work, must always be
accorded the praise that belongs to those who, believing they have found the true path, have
the courage to walk in it. These two men were Cornelius and Overbeck, without some men-
tion of whom no account of modern German art, however summary, would be complete, since
it was they who, with their pupUs and friends, gave the first living impulse to the art of their
country long locked in the stagnation of the eighteenth century.
Peter von Cornelius was born at Dusseldorf in 1787. His father was the Keeper of
the picture-gallery, which contained many good paintings, since removed to Munich, and the
young Cornelius, who early showed a taste for drawing, had that taste confirmed and
strengthened by the practice of reproducing, from memory alone, the pictures in the collec-
tion which had most attracted him. He was fond, too, of illustrating his story-books by
designs made in their margins, and his biographers tell us of almanacs decorated in the same
way. He early developed a taste for reading, and was especially fond of poetry, and fed full
on the rich stores j^rovided for him by the living literature of the time: the Golden Age of
German literature, when Goethe and Schiller, Tieck, Novalis and Lessing were bringing forth
the books that were to remake, not Germany alone, but the world. So great an impression
did the youthful talent of Cornelius make on those about him, that, at nineteen, although he
8
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
had not received the advantages of an academic training, he was intrusted with the decora
tion of the Cathedral of the old town of Neuss. The work was to be executed in fresco, a
method never practised in Germany to any great extent, and now long disused. The archi
tecture that prevailed in the countries north of the Alps, and which was marked by large
windows and correspondingly small wall-spaces — a style naturally developed in a climate
where abundant light was of the first necessity, had natiirally discouraged the art of wall-
decoration. In Italy, on the other hand, where the so-called Gothic architecture was not
"APOLLO AND THE HOURS."
FROM A FRESCO BY PETER VON CORNELIUS.
native, but imposed, and never successful, the ^tyle of building that had naturally developed
itself was characterized by few windows and small, since what was needed was, to keep out
the light and heat of the long summers. This was the style of building that had always
prevailed in the peninsula, and the large wall-spaces due to the mode of lighting had been
decorated with painting from the earliest times.
The revival of the art of fresco painting in Germany — a revival, it may be said in passing,
that neither went far not continued long — was the consequence of the newly awakened enthu
siasm for the works of Raphael and Michelangelo and Correggio, excited in the minds of
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
travellers, since at this time a new invasion from the North, from England, France, and
Germany was pouring over the Alps, and returning with fresh tales of the wonders to be
found there.
It would seem as if every generation of men must, once in its life, have the Italian
fever, and rush to her perennial springs for a reviving draught, and now, after a long lull,
due to the disturbed state of the continent, and in the pause between the last convulsion and
that great scene of ship\vreck and devastation that was to foUow, we find Italy once more
I'll f I vi4il{ii{iiiiirii;i"|iiii| I M
"JOSEPH MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN TO HIS BRETHREN."
FROM THE FRESCO IN THE CASA BARTHOLDY, BY PETER VON CORNELIUS.
the goal to which all the world of European travel was tending. Poets, artists, writers and
scholars made up the long procession, and they came back to their several countries filled
with a desire to renew at home the marvels that had astonished them in Florence, Yenice and
Rome. In England the fever for Italy had raged more strongly perhaps than anywhere else,
although with her it was an old story, but now it had become an infatuation, and every
youth who would be an artist must go to Italy to study, or give up all hope of advancement.
Hogarth protested in vain : even our Americans succumbed, and West and Copley and Wash-
ington Allston all joined the ranks, and went to Italy, to lose there the little native force with
which nature had endowed them. France had gone through the same experience, and now it
JO ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
was the turn of Germany. Everywhere we find the minds of her leading men turned toward
Italy, and directing thither the studies of the youth who came under their influence.
Among the rest who went to Italy was Cornelius, and it was after his return from this first
visit, that he made the series of designs for Goethe's Faust which he dedicated to the poet, and
which show him already under the influence of the great masters, Michelangelo and Raphael,
who were henceforward to dominate his life and work. He also brought back a great enthu-
siasm for fresco-painting, and accustomed himself, so far as opportunity allowed, to work in
that way. Although he had necessarily borrowed his style and practice from the Italians, he
sought his subjects at first in the poetry and history of his own people and undertook a series
of designs from the Lay of the Niebelungen. In 1808 he went to Frankfort to execute a
commission from the Prince Primate, and in 1811 he went to Rome, whither Overbeck had
preceded him by a year. Here he found himself in the midst of a singular group of enthu-
siasts, of whom Overbeck was at the head, and who with' Koch, Yogel, John and Philip de
Veit, Eger, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and the Schadows, Friedrich the painter and Rudolph the
sculptor, had formed a brotherhood, and lived a sort of monastic life in the ruined convent of
St. Isidore. They kept an ascetic rule, emulating the example of artists like Fra Angelico,
Invoking the guidance of the Holy Ghost each morning before beginning to paint, and looking
upon their profession as one of the ministries of religion. Of this group of men, nicknamed
" Nazarites " by the other artists, it is not to be denied that Cornelius was the strongest. In
the memoirs of Baron Bunsen and in the Letters of the Baroness Bunsen, we find frequent
allusions to this singular colony, which reminds at once of our own Brook-Farm, and of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England: of the fonner in its attempted withdrawal from the
world while ingeniously keeping iip intimate relations with the selected best part of it ; of
the latter in its infantine determination to force the genius of art back into the narrow
boundaries of its beginning. They were all poor, and Cornelius would seem to have been the
poorest of the comj)any, but this was not a society where people were valued for their money,
nor in Italy is money a matter of importance for an artist: the German colony of the Convent
of St. Isidore were to all appearances very happy in their poverty, and when they wanted
other society, they found themselves always welcome guests in the houses of the Prussian
Consul Bartholdy or in that of the Chevalier Bunsen. The Consul lived at this time in the
Casa Zuccari near the Piazza Sta. Trinita di Monte, once the property of the family of the
artists of that name, and still containing, in rooms on the ground-floor, paintings by Federigo
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. ii
Zuccaro. Bartholdy commissioned Cornelius, Overbeck, Scliadow and Veit to paint in fresco
one of the rooms in the suite occupied by him in this house. At first he proposed to have
merely some simple arabesque ornaments, but Cornelius persuaded him to adopt a larger plan,
and with his consent the four artists undertook the decoration of the four walls of the room
with frescoes from the Bible-story of Joseph. Bartholdy was to furnish all the mechanical
assistance : the scaffolding, plastering, and colors, and was to supply the four artist with meat
and drink while they, in their turn, were to charge nothing for their work. Cornelius
painted on the smaller side the "Interpretation of Joseph's Dream," and opposite this,
" Joseph making himself known to his Brethren." " The dramatic character of these two
paintings, the perfection of their style, and the harmony and force of expression, caused them
to be greeted with great enthusiasm in Rome, more especially since fresco-painting had been
long abandoned there, and this revival of it was unexpected." In other parts of the room,
Overbeck painted "The Seven Years of Famine" (in the lunette on the smaller side over
Cornelius' painting), and " Joseph sold by his Brethren." Veit's subjects were " Joseph and
Potiphar's Wife," and in the lunette opposite that filled by Overbeck, " The Seven Years of
Plenty." Schadow took for his part, " Joseph in Prison telling his Dream to the Butler," and
" Joseph's Brethren bringing the bloody Coat to Jacob." The friends executed other works
in Rome, but none that attracted so much attention as those we have mentioned. Their
intimate association did not last long after the conversion of Overbeck to the Catholic faith,
although nothing ever occurred to disturb their friendship. In 1824 Cornelius was made
Director of the Academy at Munich. This Institution, which to-day contains more pupils in
proportion to the population of the city than any other art-centre in Europe, had been
founded in 1808 by Maximilian I. of Bavaria. Ludwig I., when in Rome as Crown Prince, had
been much in the company of the German colony of St. Isidore, and when he became king he
showed himself an enthusiastic friend of the Arts, and did all that lay in his power to put
Munich at the head of the Capitals of Europe so far as the patronage of art was concerned.
Encouraged by him, Cornelius produced there some of his most important works. Already
in Rome he had been busied with the cartoons for the frescoes with which to decorate the
two HaUs, of the Cods, and of the Heroes, in the Glyptothek or Museum of Sculpture erected
by Klenze in 1816. In the Hall of the Gods, the subjects of the frescoes were taken from the
Poems of Hesiod. In the Hall of the Heroes, Cornelius illustrated the Tale of Troy. The
design for the Destruction of Troy which we copy, is generally considered the most important
12
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of these. It represents Hecuba sitting in the midst of her family who are being slaughtered
about her, and in its rude horror might rather serve as an illustration of Shakespeare's bar-
barous description of the scene, than of VirgU's classic narrative. The cartoons for these
frescoes attracted a wide attention in Rome, and owing to theu- more important destination
were of greater weight in deciding the position of Cornelius as a leader among German artists
"ST. LUKE."
FROM A FRESCO BY PETER VON CORNELIUS,
than the frescoes in the Casa Bartholdy, although in these his genius showed in a softer, more
agreeable light. More important iu his owm estimation was his " Last Judgment " in the
Church of St. Ludwig in Munich, a work on Avhich he expended an incredible amount of
labor. This fresco covers the entire wall at the back of the high altar: it is sixty feet high
and forty feet broad and contains a crowd of figures, but as the comparison with the work of
Michelangelo is inevitable and the absence of original motives painfully evident, this fresco,
which the artist looked upon as his greatest work, is the one by which in reality he is the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 13
least to be judged. Ludwig had a great respect for Cornelius, but even in the earlier days of
their intercourse at Rome, as we perceive by the memoirs of Bunsen, he had found the frank
criticisms and honest advice of the young artist a somev^hat jarring note in the general
chorus of adulation, and vs^e are not surprised to read that vs^hen differences arose between
Klenze, the King's architect, and Cornelius, the King took sides with Klenze, and the painter
in consequence left Munich for Berlin, where the King Frederick William IV. was endeavor-
ing to do for his capital, what Ludwig I. had done for Munich. The chief work executed in
Berlin by Cornelius was the decoration of the Campo Santo or burial-place of the royal
family which is all that was completed of the Cathedral intended to be erected by the king.
The subjects of these frescoes which were intended to cover the four walls of the Campo Santo
— ^modelled on the famous quadrangle of the same name at Pisa — represent the Redemption,
the Coming of Christ, the Kingdom of his Church, and the Last Judgment. The cartoons or
drawings for these paintings are exhibited in the I^ational Gallery in Berlin in one of the two
Halls especially devoted to the works of Cornelius. He was engaged upon them from the
time of his removal to Berlin in 1841 to the day of his death in 1867.
Cornelius visited England in his later years, and was received with great distinction,
owing, no doubt, in a measure, to the favor with which everything having the seal of German
authority was welcomed at that time in that country. In Paris, too, he was cordially
received and was made an Honorary Member of the French Institute. His greatness — and
that he had greatness cannot be denied, however much it was cramped by the unfortunate
state of the arts in Europe in his time — was freely recognized everywhere in Europe, and in
Germany the highest honors were generously heaped upon him. If, in our time, he has
become a name, and his influence a thing of the past, it is not to be ascribed to a mere change
in the fashion of looking at art, nor to the fact that the subjects with which the artist dealt
belong to another age than ours. It is rather due to the fact that the genius of Cornelius,
great as it was, was not yet great enough to let him break definitely with an art which was
not only past, but with which he had really no legitimate relation. His visit to Rome was
every way fatal to him, as it was fatal to every member of the German colony. A double
captivity enthralled them : they became the slaves of the art of Michelangelo and Raphael,
and they become the slaves of a narrow and pedagogic school of criticism to which they were
subjected in the highly polished, amiable and accomplished circle of diplomats and scholars
that had entrenched itself on the Capitoline, and of which Niebuhr and Bunsen were the
»4
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
cMef lights. The trouble with Cornelius was that he could not assimilate either the literary
food or the artistic that was so freely offered him in his youth. Goethe and Michelangelo
together were too much for him, and he never really expressed what was genuine in his own
nature and character*.
And if this were true of Cornelius, what remains to be said of Overbeck, who, with a
narrower mind, less culture and less artistic skill, early tied
himself to the chariot wheels of Raphael, and wasted his
life in attempting to repeat the youthful exploits of the
painter of Urbino.
Friedrich Overbeck was born at Lubeck in 1789,
and after some time spent in study at Vienna, where the
classic routine was in fashion, he went to Rome in 1810,
and remained there for the remainder of his life, dying in
that city in 1869. He had early become interested in the
works of the Italian Renaissance, and particularly in the
artists who preceded Raphael, as well as in the Avorks of
Raphael's early time, in Florence, and he not only gave
himself up to the study and emulation of their produc-
tions, but persuaded other German artists of his own age
to unite with him in a school that should endeavor to bring
art back to what he believed its highest development in
the Florentine art of the fifteenth century. We have
already described the practical social outcome of this
movement in the establishment of the German colony of
artists, the so-called "Nazarites," in the convent of St.
Isidore under the leadership of Overbeck. Overbeck from
the first insisted upon looking on art as one of the chief
ministries of religion; he took for his motto: "Art does
not exist for itself, but as the handmaid of religion," and
with the exception of a brief period when he turned from the painting of Madonnas, and
Holy Families, and scenes from the Bible History, to subjects drawn frotn Tasso, his whole
life was given to following weakly, almost slavishly, in the footsteps of Raphael. Yet he had,
'ST. JAMES THE LESS."
BY FRIEDRICH OVERBECK.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
15
like Cornelius, an original vein of feeling and invention, and no doubt, in his case as in that
of Cornelius, an artist of distinct merit was lost to us in this unfortunate subjection to bor-
rowed influences. In the slight sketch we copy of " The Parents of Tobit waiting for his
EO'^ej-bcc-ll
'THE PARENTS OF TOBIT WAITING FOR HIS RETURN."
FROM A DESIGN BY FRIEDRICH OVERBECK.
Eetum " there is a genuine note of pathos, a simplicity of feeling not rare in Overbeck's
early work, while the " Joseph sold by his Brethren" from the fresco in the Casa Bartholdy,
although it strongly suggests the pictures of Gozzoli, is yet marked by a decided individ-
uality. In his later works, painted after he became a Catholic and had virtually withdrawn
* *
i6
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
from the world, at least from all intimate companionsliip with those not of his own faith,
he became more and more mannered and vapid : his ideas revolved in a narrower and nar-
rower circle, and he ended, as an artist, in mere iaanition. Yet in the beginning, so sincere
had been his impulsion toward a higher view of art than belonged to his time, and so marked
were the earnestness and purity of his character, that he exercised a powerful influence for
"JOSEPH SOLD BY HIS BRETHREN."
FROM THE FRESCO IN THE CASA BARTHOLDY, BY FRIEDRICH OVERBECK.
a while on men like Cornelius and Schnorr, much stronger naturally than himself, and
through them he influenced many others of his time. Overbeck's later works are almost
destitute of color, and indeed he cared so little for the material part of his art, that he
seemed desirous of reaching a point, if that were possible, where he could dispense with
color altogether, and even reduce drawing to its lowest terms. Much of his work is in
crayons, and the engravings made from his pictures are chiefly in outline. Of the two
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
1.7
Schadows, brothers, wlio went to Rome in 1810 and joined the ISTazarite Brotherhood Fried-
rich was a painter, and Rudolph, a sciilptor. Two years after their arrival in Rome they
both became Catholics, and thenceforth devoted their lives to the expression of their relio-i-
ous feelings in their works. Friedrich Schadow was chiefly distinguished as a teacher. He
was a professor in the Academies of Berlin and Dusseldorf and for a time he had a syreat
j-rrfcsij
"virgin and child."
FROV) THE FRESCO BY DEGER IN THE CHURCH OF ST. APOLLINARIS.
following. Among his pupils Avere Sohn, Hildebrandt and Lessing, and he thus gave an
impulse to the art of his time, though after a while, when the first fervor of propagandism had
died out in his disciples, the zeal of the master turned against himself, and in the criti-
cisms that began to be freely made of his excessive devotion to external religion, and of
the weakness, and want of artistic skill that were the consequences of his one-sided teaching
and practice, the master saw the uselessness of contending against his age and resigned his
Vol. TL— 3 * *
i8 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
place. The influences of his teacliing lingered on in artists like Deger born in 1809, in
Jaeger born in ISOS, and in Carl JMiiller born in 1818. In all these men, the religious feel-
ing is manifested in even a weaker and more sentimental fashion than in the work of Over-
beck himself, as will be manifest by even the slightest consideration of the examples here
given of their art. No doubt there is much sweetness, delicacy, and purity in the designs
of this school, but they are wasted in a field where the motives no longer offer any oppor-
tunity for original expression. Ernest Deger was born at Bockenheim, a village near
Frankfort. He studied under Schadow at Dusseldorf, having followed him from Rome,
where he had been one of the disciples of Overbeck. When the Count of Furstemberg
Stammheim made a vow to build a church dedicated to Saint Apollinaris at Remagen on the
Rhine, he employed several of the group of Xazarites to decorate it with frescoes, and among
them Deger, who as an artist is best seen in this beautiful building, one of the finest among the
many fine modern churches of Germany. It was designed in 1839 by Zwirner, at that time
the architect of the Cathedral at Cologne. The chureh contains ten large frescoes with some
smaller works, among them the Virgin and Child by Deger, which we copy. Others by
Deger are the "Adoration of the Shepherds," " The Crucifixion," and " The Resurrection," and
" The Savior with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist." The other artists called in to assist
in the decoration were Ittenbach, and Karl Miiller, but the work of Deger is the chief
attraction.
Julius Veit Hans Schnobr von Caeolsfeld deserves a distinguished place among
the stronger men of the movement that had its beginnings in the teachings of Overbeck and
Cornelius. He was born at Leipsic in 1794, and studied first with his father, from whom
he is distinguished by the addition of " von Carolsfeld," to his name, and afterward in the
Academy at "\"ienna. In 1817 he was drawn by the current to Rome, where he remained for
ten years a member of the German artistic colony gathered about Overbeck as its head,
although his sympathies were not altogether in harmony with those that distinguished the
school. Invited by King Louis to his new cajDital, he left Rome for Munich, and was com-
missioned by Louis to decorate the palace erected by Klenze in 1827-33 in imitation — for
imitation was the watch- word in the Munich of that day! — of th»^ Pitti Palace in Florence.
The apartments given to Schnorr to decorate were those on the ground floor, and as the royal
architect had shown so fine a sense of fitness in taking an Italian palace of the most lumber-
ing style of the late Renaissance as a model for a nineteenth-century palace, Schnorr followed
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
19
suit by decorating this palace with, stories from the old Teutonic legend of the Niebelungen.,
He began his work in 1846, and the frescoes cover the walls of five rooms called, from their
subjects — after the'Entrance Hall where all the persons of the drama are portrayed assembled
as in the jDrologue to a play — the Marriage Hall, with the nuptials of Siegfried and Kriemhild
and the incidents connected with it ; the Hall of Treachery, where Siegfried is murdered by
Hagen at the well ; the Hall of Revenge, with the conquest of Hagen by Dietrich of Berne,
and the Hall of Mourning, with the burial of the fallen heroes. This work, the greatest
achievement of Schnorr, is not accessible to the public, or was not during the reign of the late
fantastic King, but the cartoons of the whole series are in the Museum of Leipsic, including
those of the last room, the Hall of Mourning, which were painted in 1867 by the pupils of
Schnorr, among them Jaeger, born, like
Schnorr, in Leipsic, and of whom we shall
presently have to speak. Schnorr's work
is almost exclusively confined to the illus-
tration of scenes from the old legendary
history of Germany and from the Bible.
The work by which he is most popularly
known is his " Bible," a series of wood-cuts
intended for jDopular circulation. The work
had an immediate success: well deserved
FROM A VIGNETTE BY MORITZ VON SCHWIND.
for the clearness, succinctness and energy with which the stories are told. Meant for children,
and to replace the older designs, or rather— since the old Avood-cuts had now, by reason of their
scarcity, become objects of curiosity, shut up in the portfolios of museums and collectors— to
supply the new generation vsdth pictures more suited to their comprehension, these designs of
Schnorr were undoubtedly the best of their kind that had been produced until Dore came to
occupy the field with his more picturesque treatment of the subject. The two designs which we
give will serve to illustrate the character of Schnorr's work. In the " David and Goliath," the
champion of the Philistines ds lying prostrate on the ground, the blood pouring from the hole
in his forehead with such force that it has carried with it the stone hurled from David's
sling. David has leaped upon the giant's back, and draws the great sword from its scabbard
at the braggart's waist, and in a moment will have hewn his head from his body. In the
distance we see on one side the camjp of the Philistines, the near ranks of their army already
20
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
in confusion and flight, and on the other the army of Saul exulting, and with levelled spears
preparing to pursue the foe. Here a great deal is told in little space, and it is told in the way
that had been pointed out by Raphael and his school. The mind is not disturbed as it would
be in the treatment of the same subject by Diirer, Lucas of Leyden or Cranach, by absurd
anachronisms, or grotesqiie incidents or oddities of costume. We have here the precision of
drawing carried into the minutest details which was the shibboleth of the new school : with-
" DAVID SLAYING GOLIATH."
FROM THE "BIBLE" BV SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD.
out any pedantic straining after realism, there is an attempt to hit the mean of probability in
the costume: in short, the aim of the artist clearly is, to make the incident he is describing
intelligible to those for whose use his pictures were intended. In the other design, " Samson
throwing down the Pillars of the Theatre," Schnorr had a more difficult task, but he has
acquitted himself with much skUl, while working under restrictions where only genius could
produce an interesting result. Schnorr cannot fairly be said to have had genius; he had only
talent of a kind common enough at all times, and, in his case, made the most of by a training
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
21
purely Academic in its principles and its practice. An artist of genius — Delacroix or Gustav
Dore: and Dore certainly had a genius, tliougli he abused it — would have known how to
grapple with such a subject, and would have subdued it, even at the risk of swallowing up all
the minor improbabilites of proportion and composition in one greater improbability. Dore
has done astonishing things in this way in his " Contes Drolatiques," and in some of his other
books as well, but we instance this one because there he has had to work in a very restricted
"SAMSON THROWING DOWN THE PILLARS OF THE THEATRE.-
FROM THE "BIBLE" BY SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD.
space. Some of his compositions in this remarkable book are astonishing for the audacity
with which he has dared, and for the success with which he has achieved, subjects that no
amount of training, no deliberate thinking could have enabled him to master. They are
subjects of pure fantasy, wild extravagancies, and no other way of treating them could have
been successful. And although the story of the destruction of the Philistines by Samson is
not so extreme an instance as any one of those of Dore which we have in mind, yet it comes
under the same category. It ought to be presented in a way to confuse and confound the
22 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
eyes and the mind; we ought not to be able to follow it calmly, to count the falling stones,
to distinguish the features of the victims as they are hurled to their doom. In his picture
Schnorr has left little, if anything, to the spectator's imagination. He has attempted to tell
us too much, and to tell it too distinctly. Samson was to be sho\vn as a giant, in thews and
bulk, and this left no room for more than a symbolic treatment of the ruin his revenge has
brought about. He stands naked, and with manacled feet, between the " two pillars where-
upon the house standeth " and which are too small for the service they had to perform, while
at the same time they are so short that Samson could not have stood erect under the archi-
trave. And since the building, as Schnorr has devised it, could not have held together had
Samson never meddled with it, we are the less impressed by the fact of its tumbling down.
The garlands that are wreathed about the columns, and the harp that lies at their base are
introduced only as symbols of the festival so rudely interrujjted. In jiistice to Schnorr, and
to the school of which he was certainly an illustrious member, it must be understood that,
what in our time are considered defects in their w^ork, were the result, not of weakness, but of
strength: what they did was done deliberately, in obedience to certain principles, clearly
defined and earnestly held, and they ought to be j udged by their own standard rather than by
ours. Their art was essentially a literary art, that is, it tried to tell by pictures what could
have been told much better by words, written or spoken ; whereas the highest art appeals to
the imagination through the senses, and deals with what can only be expressed by itself.
These artists and those who came after them a]iplied their art chiefly to the painting of
historical, literary, and religious compositions which, by the munificence of their monarchs
and princes, they were enabled to carry out on a grand scale, but it is painful to reflect upon
the coldness or indifference with which these works, once so much talked about, written
about, and extravagantly praised, are now regarded, even in the country that gave them birth.
MoKiTZ LtTDWiG vojst Sohwind, an artist who belonged to the same school with those
we have been considering, but who worked upon a different order of siibjects, was born in
Vienna in 1804, and died in 1871. He studied under Schnorr aad Cornelius, and was later a
professor at the Academy of Munich. In his manner of working, and in his way of
regarding his art, he in no way differs from his school : he has the same devotion to line, the
same indifference, let us say insensibility, to color, and the same conventional Academic way
of interpreting nature. But, as we have said, he did not apply himself to the same sort of
subjects : he dealt neither wdth religion nor history, but with themes drawn from the stores
"PUSS-IN-BOOTS."
FROM THE DRAWING BY MORITZ VON SCHWINDT.-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME, 23
#
of poetry and fable. One of liis productions is a series of designs illustrating the loves of a
young married pair, another is the contest of the Minnesingers on the Wartburg, still others
are illustrations of the German Fairy-tales: "The Beautiful Melusina," and "The Seven
Ravens: " these are counted among his chief works, but unfortunately they are not accessible
in a form to admit of their reproduction for our readers. We have therefore selected one
which, although a slight and unpretending work, illustrates very well the skill of the artist.
It is one of a series of wood-cuts, cheaply issued for wide popular circulation ; different artists,
many of them distinguished, having joined in the work with the design of substituting
pictures with some artistic merit in place of the inferior things with which the market was
supplied at that time. The present plate — intended, like all the series, for the amusement of
children— illustrates the old fairy-tale of Puss in Boots. It is reduced in size from the
original, but the simplicity and clearness of the style of engraviug makes this reduction a
matter of no importance. A charming skill is shown in the way in which the story is told in
a succession of little pictures artlessly connected with one another. Across the top of the
plate is a row of smaU designs that serve as a prologue to the main story: the younger son of
the miller weeping over his mean inheritance ; the caresses of the cat who comes to comfort
him Avith promises, and its appearance on the scene booted and armed for adventure. Then
we see the cunning creature threatening the astonished peasants and ordering them to tell
the nobleman who comes lumbering along in his carriage, with his pretty daughter by his
side, and the coachman and footmen in f aU wig, that these fields belong to his young master,
" The Marquis of Carabas; " further on he has stolen the clothes of his master while he is
bathing, and crying out on the imaginary robbers, has persuaded the nobleman, come up in
the nick of time, to supjily the needs of the Marquis until he can reach his castle near at
hand. The cat next appears on the terrace of the giant's castle, where he has tried the trick
of the mischievous Locke of the JSTiebelungen, and has persuaded the monster to prove his
brag by turning himseK into a mouse. This done, and the mouse gobbled up, the cat issues
from the stately gate of the castle in time to welcome the arrival of the nobleman and his
daughter, and as his master hands the princess from the coach, the cat, with a low sweeping
bow and infinite grace, invites them to enter the castle of the Marquis of Carabas. Surely
never was a fairy-tale more neatly packed into a few square inches of paper, and although
Schwind has done many more pretentious things, his whole art may be understood from this
small specimen.
24
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Friedkich August Moeitz Retzch is another artist of whom mucli was at one time
heai'd, but who is to-day ungratefully forgotten, considering the pleasure his works once gave
to so many and the number of imitators who sprang up about him. He was born in Dresden
in 1779 and died in 1857. His work as a painter is little known, his popularity was the result
of the publication of his illustrations to the works of the German poets, chiefly those of
"THE GAME OF LIFE."
BY MORITZ RETZCH.
Goethe and Schiller. These were in outline, recalling the designs for Homier, Dante, and
Hesiod, by the English artist Flaxman, and probably suggested by them. The outlines of
Flaxman, however, were more legitimate in their aim, intended rather to serve as suggestions
for bas-reliefs, and cameos than as pictures, whereas the outlines of Retzch are purely pictorial
compositions, and have no relation to sculpture ; we miss in them form and color, and are
poorly compensated by a dry cataloguing way of checking-off, as it were, the incidents of the
story, very different from the playful narrative fancy of Schwind, where those who think
•
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 25
themselves too old to care for the story told may enjoy the artistic touches of the telling.
The design we give by Retzch is one that at the time of its publication enjoyed a favor
strange to look back upon, considering how vapid the sentiment is that the artist seeks to
convey, and how mechanical the method that he employs. It is called "The Game of
Life." Satan, in the well-known disguise of Mephistopheles, is playing with a young man for
his soul, while the youth's guardian-angel looks on, and watches the game, Prom the passive
attitude of the angel and the decided want of interest shown in its face, it is rather to be
feared that the fate of the youth is in the hands of his opponent, who is depicted with all
the traditional armor of the stage-villain. Retzch had no power to portray delicate shades of
character, even if we supjDose that he was able to conceive them : he never got beyond the
conventional abstractions of the stage, and his tastes were rather in the direction of melo-
dramatic exaggeration than of direct and natural expression. Yet for a while his reputation
was wide-spread, and his popularity seemed almost sure to ripen into fame. In our own
country he had several followers : one of the best of them, the late Felix O. Darley, produced
in his "Margaret," a series of designs illustrating Judd's beautiful but rough-hewn story —
a work that both in artistic skiU and truth to nature far surpassed its model.
Gael Mullek was a native of Darmstadt, where he was born in 1818. He studied first
under his father, and later at Dusseldorf with Professor Sohn; but while Sohn left the
religious school which inherited, through his master Schadow, from Overbeck, Muller gave
himself up entirely to the teachings of that school, and carried it to its last consequences in
servile imitation and even affectation. His frescoes, painted in COTijunction with Deger and
Ittenbach in the Church of St. Apollinaris, are his best works, but in his easel pictures, not a
few of which have been seen in this country, he carries the smoothness and minuteness of
finish which belong only to miniature-painting into canvases that are rather belittled than
helped by such treatment. Gilded haloes, jewelled borders to the robes of his Virgins and
other saints, birds and flowers painted as if for the pages of a missal — all these details,
however they may please as curiosities, do but detract from the pictorial interest of the
works in which they are found. There can be no doubt, however, that, to a large part of
the XJublic, there was something in Midler's pictures that proved very pleasing: they
appealed to a certain sensuous element long starved by the iconoclasm and Philistinism
of German Protestantism, and now feeling its way to a moi-e externally poetic religion, as
plants shut up in a cellar, jiush out their tendrils to the light. We see in Miiller's pictures an
26
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
attempt to return to the mysticism of the early Italian painters of the schools of Umbria and
Siena; but although the effort is successful up to a certain point, the impression left upon
the mind is always of effort: the unconsciousness of an art that had developed in ignorance
of any art greater than itself, or even very different from itself, is not to be found in these
pictures. In the picture by Carl MuUer which we reproduce from an engraving, the youth-
ful Christ is represented in the courtyard of his parents' house, assisting his foster-father in
his work as a carpenter. This was not a subject familiar to the older art, nor does it belong
'THE HOLY FAMILY."
BY CARL MULLER.
in the authorized series of scenes from the Life of the Virgin. It is rather an innova-
tion, particularly as treated by Miiller and other artists of his time, due to the sentimental
way of looking upon the story fostered by the new school of Catholics and which found a
profuse expression in poetry and romance. In Muller's picture, Joseph is supposed to be
cutting a beam intended for a house, and while he stands by the side of the beam and pushes
the long saw with one hand, the child, kneeling upon the ground, draws the saw toward him
with both hands. Mary, who has been sitting upon a bench at the side of the house, engaged
in spinning, has risen and turns to look at her child, lifting her hand with a gesture of pity,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 27
as if an apprehensive thought of e\-il days in store had crossed her mind. As it is, the
picture stops far short of the symbolism that in our day has produced such works as the
" Christ in the Carpenter's Shop " of Millais and the " Shadow of the Cross " of Holman Hunt;
we have nothing but a commonplace incident in the probable early life of Jesus. It is in the
treatment of his subject that Muller betrays that morbid affectation, which not in his works
alone, but in those of all his school, marks the wide difference between these artists and the
art they sought to emulate. Goethe in his Wilhelrii Meister, in one of the most charming of
its many charming episodes, has given his version of the story of the Birth and Childhood of
Jesus, thinly veiled as a real narrative, but the common-sense of Goethe gave an objective
clearness and reality to the poetry of his idyl. Even Diirer, in spite of his tendency to treat
his subjects in a fantastic manner, knew how to give a similar scene to this of Miiller's
picture a real side, making Josej)h working in earnest at his task and Mary singing to her
baby in the cradle which she rocks with one foot as she spins. But in Miiller's picture
neither Joseph nor the child is really working: they are merely posing. Joseph could not
work with such tools as he has, nor with a log so ineffectually braced, while the artist has
thrown all his learning into the drawing of the child to make him beautiful and graceful,
playing at pulling the saw with his slender hands, and taking care not to disturb the lines of
his delicate body by any suggestion of toil or iincomfortable exertion. Yet, that this grace-
ful, vapid, sentimental treatment of religious subjects has a place in the world, was shown
some years ago when Miiller's " Holy Family " was brought over to this country by Mr.
Schaus — the picture, a copy of which has since been presented by him to the Metropolitan
Museum. In this picture where the infant Christ is sitting in his mother's lap and listening
in ecstasy to the music of attendant angels, the frank homeliness and simiDlicity, that in the
pictures of a Botticelli, a Lij^pi, or a Gozzoli act as a healthy antidote to the supersensual
mysticism of such subjects, are wholly refined away by Miiller. There is an excess of sweet-
ness and grace, and in the attempt by the artist to portray the ideal, infantine beauty of a
divine child, the result is a too painful reminder of the abnormal developments sometimes
produced by excessive religious training. Miiller's ChUd Jesus is the hydrocephalic victim
of too much Sunday-school.
A far healthier development in the same general direction is found in Feanz Ittenbach,
who was born in 1813 at Koenigswinter, a pretty little town on the Rhine near Bonn. He
studied at Dusseldorf under Schadow and, like Deger, Jaeger, Miiller and the rest, became
2 8 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
deeply imbued with, tlie mystical-religious ideas tliat permeated the school under the
influences of the master. Like the rest, too, he travelled in Italy, and gave himself up to the
study of Raphael and the painters that immediately preceded him.
Ittenbach was one of the group of artists who were invited by Count Fiirstenberg-
Stammheim to decorate his newly built votive-church on the Apollinaris-Berg. Ittenbach
painted a "Child Jesus among tha Doctors," and in the choir, figures of St. Peter, St.
Apollinaris, and the four Evangelists. His picture of the Holy Family which we copy is in
the Museum at Berlin, and is a good example of his style. It will be noticed that it is far
less artificial and less sentimental in treatment than the pictures of Deger and Muller: of
the morbid feeling of the latter artist there is indeed no trace. The symbolism, of which the
picture is full, is purely idyllic and unaffected, and considering the nature of his subject, and
the infinite number of times it has been painted, the artist must be given credit for his
freedom from direct imitation. Like Miiller, he has borrowed from Raphael and Leonardo,
who, themselves, learned it from the miniaturists, the delicately painted flowers and leaves
that spring up about the feet of the Yirgin in the foreground of his picture : the strawberry,
the violet, the clover, and the muUein: aU executed vnth the precision and painstaking of a
missal-painter in a mediaeval monastery, and reminding us of such work as well in their
artiflcial disposition, not growing naturally, but set about in little isolated groups, each one
asking to be looked at for itself. Ittenbach has introduced some of these plants for their
symbolism: the lilies of the field that grow by the stone on which Mary is sitting, and the
ears of Avheat choked by the thorns of the rose that climbs over the parapet at her side. In
the window of the house a passion-flower is growing, and the fowls of the air are preparing to
build their nest in the hospitable shelter of the embrasure. In the distance are the columns
of the ruined temple which Christ came to rebuild. Joseph, the carpenter, girt with his
workman's apron, and with the main tools of his trade, the saw, axe and plane on his arm,
and the smaller implements in a wallet at his waist, stops as he goes forth to his day's labor,
to look at his foster-child asleep on its mother's lap. Joseph who, for some unexplained
reason, is usually represented in the older pictures as a man advanced in years, hardly needs,
in Ittenbach's picture, the staff he holds, and which is, indeed, rather a shepherd's crook than
a staff. The Virgin is also an unusual type, reminding us more of Venice than of Florence:
of the beautiful and bountiful Violetta with the golden hair, of Palma, than of the aristocratic
and cloistered virgins of Raphael and Botticelli. The Child, too, is a healthy, hapjDy creature
"THE HOLY FAMILY."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FRANZ ITTENBACH.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 29
enjoying his sound morning sleep : very unlike the precocious swaddled darling of Deger's
picture, or the too graceful boy in that of Miiller.
It may be said, in passing, that these German painters — the disciples of Overbeck —
deserve our thanks for the influence they exerted in awakening the public to the neglected
merits of the " primitives " as they are called in France, the artists of the Umbrian and
Florentine school in especial, who were the immediate predecessors of Raphael and to whose
circle he himself belonged in his youth. It was to the " Nazarites " of the Pincian Hill in
Rome that was due the revival of interest in Perugino, in Botticelli, Gozzoli, Fra Angelico
and the young Raphael, which we are apt to ascribe rather to the youth in England, the
self-styled Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who made a public announcement of their faith
transferred to these older men: from the Raphael of the "School of Athens" and the
"Disputa," to the Raphael of the "Betrothal of the Virgin" and the "Madonna of the
Grand Duke." And it is due to them to say that they showed a true taste and a sound
artistic feeling in their choice — a choice which has never been reversed, but rather con-
firmed since their time, as is showoi by the fact that these earlier pictures are now among
the choicest treasures of the collector, and have reached prices that are rapidly withdraw-
ing them from private hands and restoring them to the public by means of museums and
galleries owned by the State.
Another service that these artists and their pupils and disciples rendered incidentally
was the awakening an interest in the work of the old German masters, particularly Diirer
and Holbein, who, if not despised, were at least neglected and almost forgotten in the
beginning of the present century. We shall see, a little later, how the revived interest in
these men led to the restoration of the old art of wood-engraving as it was practised under
their superintendence, and generally speaking we may say that, in spite of the apparently
reactionary character of their art, their influence was steadily in the direction of the develop-
ment of a national spirit, and of a national culture; although it may well be tliat they were
unconscious of the part they were playing.
Heinrich Karl Anton Mijoke, the painter of the beautiful " St. Catherine carried to
Mt. Sinai by Angels," was born in the old city of Breslau in 1806. Drawn to art at an early
age, he at last made his way to Berlin and entered the Academy there, studying under
Schadow who was then the Director. "When Schadow went to Dusseldorf to take charge of
the Academy, Miicke followed him with a crowd of otlier young artists, and soon after his
30 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
arrival was intrusted with a share in the decoration of the Chateau of Heltorf near Dussel-
dorf. The i^ainting of this chateau, the property of Count Spee, had been begun by Cornelius
when he was Director of the Academy at Dusseldorf . He had chosen as the subjects of the
frescoes, scenes from the life of the Emperor Frederic I., Barbarossa, and he was assisted by
his pupil Karl Sturmer, to whom is due the oldest picture of the series, afterward continued
and completed by pupils of Schadow — Lessing, Pluddemann, and Miicke. Miicke's work is
the most important, and he owed his reputation to it. He was employed on these frescoes
from 1829 to 1838, but in the interval he went to Italy, and it is no doubt to the influence of
his studies there that we owe the picture we engrave. The motive is distinctly borrowed
from the well-known painting by Luini in the Brera Gallery at Milan, but Mucke has given
it independent expression, and has produced a work that at one time enjoyed more popu-
larity than any of the productions of the mystical-religious school of Dusseldorf. The
subject of Miicke's picture is taken from the legendary Mstory of St. Catherine of Alex-
andria, so-called to distinguish her from a more modern saint of the same name, whose legend
belongs to Siena. St. Catherine is one of the oldest of the legendary saints of the church:
she belongs to the Eastern branch of the church, and her story seems to have originated with
the monks of Mt. Sinai. She is the patroness of studies and learning, a combination of the
types of a Minerva and a Sibyl. Like Minerva, she was an " unconquered Virgin," and one of
the chief points in her story is her mystical marriage with Christ, which has been made the
subject of many pictures, the most beautiful and famous of these, the one painted by Correggio
which is in the Louvre. The King of the country, seized by her beauty and her wonderful
accomplishments, wished to marry her, and when she refused, and refused also to renounce
her religion, he caused her to be put to death on the wheel. Her body was carried by angels
over land and sea to Mt. Sinai, where it was placed in a sepulchre. In the picture by Luini,
the angels are placing the body of the saint in the tomb, a beautifully designed sarcophagus of
the Renaissance period. In Miicke's picture, the angels have not yet reached their destination,
but are still bearing the body of the saint through the air. The sword, carried by the fore-
most one, is emblematic of her martyrdom, and the stars that strew the robe of the angel at
the right are perhaps typical of the astronomical studies in which the royal virgin took such
delight in life. The picture certainly deserves its popularity. We stiU admire in it, seen
again after the lapse of years, the beauty of the flowing lines of drapery, the grace of the
angelic forms, the sense of slow onward movement as the saintly convoy is lightly borne
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
32
along like some flock of soft clouds in the morning air, sailing over the earth just wakening
from its slumber. Mucke has certainly shown a great deal of poetic feeling in this picture:
the power to put new life into an old and well-worn theme.
II.
^Tl 7ILHELM VON KAULBACH was born in 1805 at Arolsen in Waldeck, a small
* " settlement prettily situated not far from Cassel. His father was a goldsmith and
an engraver on metal, and as Wilhelm was his only son, he naturally exjoected (after the
fashion of his country) that the boy would learn the same trade and continue the busi-
ness. But, besides that Wilhelm had no inclination to that particular branch of art, he
would seem at first to have had no special leaning to art of any kind; and owing to
domestic misfortunes brought about by unfortunate speculations, his education in the regu-
lar way was neglected, and he was left to pick up learning in whatever way he could.
His biographers do not supi^ly us with many details of his boyhood : it may be that in
after-life he did not care to recur to his early years ; we are therefore left to conjecture,
in searching for the influences that made him an artist. Arolsen has a small museum
which contains, among other things, a good collection of antiquities from Herculaneum
and Pompeii: if that were there in Wilhelm's youth, it may have led his mind to the
study of the antique in a natural way. And if he had any germs of a love of art in his
nature, he would have been certain to hear of the gallery at Cassel : a rich collection, one
of the best of the minor galleries of Europe. Cassel was only a short distance from
Arolsen, about twenty English miles, and if he felt any desire to go there, the distance would
have been no obstacle to a stout and healthy German boy. But, however this may have
been, there was in Arolsen itself a still more powerful influence, a living one, in the person
of Wilhelm's townsman Ranch, the famous sculptor, author of the statue of Frederick
the Great with its accompanying groups of the chief men of Frederick's reign, well known
to every visitor to Berlin. Ranch, born in 1777, was twenty-eight years older than Wilhelm
Kaulbach, and already distinguished when Wilhelm was a youth. He was an intimate
friend of the Kaulbach family, and he must have seen evidences of talent in the boy, since
it was by his advice that he was sent to Dusseldorf in his seventeenth year, and put to
study under Cornelius, who was at that time Director of the Academy.
32
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
A person skilled in playsiognomy might gather some indications of the influences that
went to form the domestic training of Wilhelm Kaulbach from the admirable portrait-group
of his family which we engrave. Unfortunately, it is not dated; but, from the age of the
persons represented, we gather that it was a study made when Kaulbach was still in his
'THE PARENTS AND SISTERS OF WILHELM VON KAULBACH."
FROM A DRAWING BY W. VON KAULBACH.
father's house; and the style of the drawing, in its clear, hard precision, bears witness to his
early practice obtained in the use of the graver under the elder Kaulbach's direction. The
father, a man of middle age, sits at the nearer arm of a sofa, looking earnestly at us, or
rather at his son wlio is supposed to be making the drawing. The face is that of an intel-
ligent man of firm but sympathetic character: one from Avhom we should much sooner expect
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. .33
the sort of work produced by his son than from the son himself, were we left to judge of the
latter's character by the hard-headed peasant-type shown in his portraits. The father has on
his morning-gown, and appears to have seated himself thus for his son's pleasure before
beginning the day's work. Next him is the mother, who in her plain house-dress, with her
scissors at her side, and leaning forward with her hands loosely clasped, looks with even
more earnestness than her husband at the young artist, following his work with a penetrating
glance, as of a cool and not over-indulgent observer. Of the two sisters, the one next the
mother, with her elaborately plaited hair, carrying us back directly to the models of the
sixteenth century preserved in the engravings of Diirer, is the nearest also in character to that
parent, while the younger daughter, who sits at the right, facing the group, her knitting
dro]Dj)ed upon her laj), is the child of her father. In her well-fitting but easy and simply
designed dress, with its falling ruff of muslin; her hair in loose waving ringlets, and her
sensitive intelligent face, she is the complete opposite of her mother and her elder sister, and
it may well be that she and her father were the nourishers and supporters of the artistic
leanings of her brother, in opposition to the cooler and more practical judgment of the other
two. The reader will judge for himself of the reasonableness of our deductions : we have no
more to go upon than he himself will find in this group, but it is most certain that the truth
of this family's history is here recorded ; in its simplicity, its earnestness, its freedom from all
posing or self-consciousness, it is not only one of the most interesting among the similar
performances left us by artists, but to our mind one of the most interesting of Kaulbach's
works, small as it is in bulk, and at first glance insignificant.
The same qualities that we praise in this drawing, we praise in the " Madhouse," of which
we judge from the cartoon, as engraved by Johnson. It must be conceded that the subject
is one abstractly unfit for art to engage itself upon — unfit because repulsive to the mind no
less than to the eye, and absolutely empty of anything that can elevate, cheer or inspire the
human mind. It is useless as well, whether for instruction or reproof, since it portrays
afflictions that ai'e apparently as little to be avoided as they are impossible to cure: so that,
if Kaulbach had deliberately chosen the subject, he would be to blame as an artist ; but, as we
shall see, he did not choose it, it forced itself upon him, and the painting the picture was no
doubt a relief to his mind, over -charged with the spectacle of so much misery. It is this
necessity of utterance that gives the picture its power over the mind and makes the secret of
its horrible fascination.
Vol. II.— 3 * *
34 .-^A^y^ .ixz) .umsrs of OL'J^: time.
Cornelius nlso snw tl\e signs of tnleiit in the yourli placed under liis care, and early
distingnisheil liini among his nuniennis pupils. He employed him upon the cartoons he
was making for the decoratitni of the Cathedral in Bonn, but Kaulbach was dissatisfied
with his share in the work, and so much discouraged that he was strongly tempted to
give up the profession, and to content himself w-th the humbler position of a teacher of
drawing. From this resolve he was, however, earnestly dissttaded by Cornelius, who per-
suaded him to accompany him to Munich, whither he had been invited by King Lud-
wig to take charge of the 'Academy which had been founded there by King Maximilian
in 1808. Kaulbach ai'cexited the invitation of his master, and went with him to the city,
where, with the exception of the years spent in Berlin while executing his frescoes in the
Museum, he was to pass the remainder o"" his life, and to become identified with the art and
culture that were so energetically de^"elox"led there under the generous encouragement of the
King and his Court. At hrst, however, Kaulbach found nothing to his mind to do in
IMunich. lie was given a commission to paint a wall-iiictnre of "Apollo and the Muses," for
a Concert-Hall, and for the Count aou Birkenfeld he executed a series of designs illustrating
the story of Cupid and Psyche, but nothing in liis treatment of these subjects betrayed any
special talent, nor was it until he came to wo. 'n the throne-room of the Queen's palace that
he seemed to find his proper field. Here lie painted the first of those heroic subjects on
which his fame was to be founded: "The Victory of Hermann over the Romans,"' but it was
a picture in a very different vein that immediately followed tJiis, which fixed all eyes tipon
him, and announced the arrival of a remarkable personality in the world of art. This was his
"Madhottse," a stibject not arbitrarily selected by him, but the result of a powerful impres-
sion made upon his mind by an actual experience. He had been invited to paint a grotip of
angels for the chaiiel of an Insane Asylum at ^Munich, and when the work was finished, the
keeper, to reward him, invited him to make the rounds of the establishment — a privilege rarely
accorded to any outsider. The sight of these unhappy peojile so deeply affected the young
painter that he was unable for some time to rid himself of the impression, and it was while
the scenes he had witnessed were still haunting him in liis sleeinng and waking hours, that
he jiainted this picture. Its clear ami unrelenting realism recall the family group of his
parents and his sisters Nvliii'h we ha\e already described: in both pictures he shows a power
of observation and a love of truth that ptromise a far dift'erent fruit from th;it whicli his tree
of life actually bore. We know so little of the infiuences that acted upon our artist in his
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 35
youth, that we are able to say nothing with certainty about the matter, but to ns it looks as
if the influence of the sculptor Ranch must have told for more at this period than the
teachings of Dusseldorf. The love of truth to nature, the accuracy of statement, that charac-
terize the author of the statues of Frederick the Great and of Queen Louisa are far more akin
to the Kaulbach who made this drawing of his family, the picture of the " Madhouse," and
the illustrations to Reynard the Fox, than to the Kaulbach of the " Destruction of Jerusalem "
the " Tower of Babel," and the "Age of the Reformation." In short, it seems to us that in his
later pictures Kaulbach departed ever more and more from the true path which his native
genius, aided by sane teaching, had clearly marked out for him. Had he followed his real
bent, we should have had something pleasanter to record than we find -in these labored
attempts to give a romantic and mystical interpretation to historical events. But, to admit
this, is, we are aware, to deny to Kaulbach the possession of genius : genius never makes such
mistakes : no teaching, no influence can make her desert her own ideal.
Kaulbach's next picture deepened and strengthened the impression made xipon the public
by his " Madhouse." This was the " Battle of the Huns " painted in 1837, when he Avas
thirty -two, and which we reproduce from the engraving made after the cartoon. The scene it
represents is, of course, a wholly imaginary one, and the choice of such a siibject was, no
doubt, due entirely to the artist's surroundings, since, in the reviving national spirit of the
Germans, there was a healthy tendency to seek for themes in the story of their own people.
If jjreference were given to the legendary history as recorded in the Lay of the Niebelungen,
or in the other heroic tales that, however born, had taken root in the popular fancy, it was
due partly to a feeling that such subjects made a more universal a^Dpeal to public interest,,
and partly because they afl:orded more scope for an artistic treatment in costume and details.
Kaulbach, as we have seen already, had painted in the throne-room of the Queen, on his
first coming to Munich, a great event of actual history: "The Defeat of the Romans by
Hermann." The subject of his next picture in the heroic field was a legend of the arrival of
Alaric witli his Huns before the walls of Rome in the time of Theodoric the Visigoth. In
one of the furious combats which ensued, the battle raged so fiercely that the souls of the
dead rose from the field in the night and continued the fight in the air. Once given the
subject, we are able to follow Kaulbach's conception, which, as in the case of aU the works of
its class, is absolutely incomprehensible without the literary comment. This fact, however,
has to be accepted once for all: these men of the new school were tellers of stories: not
36 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
painters of pictures. They looked ii]Don their art as the handmaid of history and poetry,
translating to the eye, Avhat the muses sang to the ear. If for this position of " recorder " and
" translator " they were willing to surrender the nobler name of creator, our part here is not to
criticise their choice, but, as occasion arises, to ask how they have acquitted themselves of
their task. The wide apjDlause that greeted the apx^earance of the " Battle of the Huns "
proved that, to his countrymen at least, Kaulbach had done his work well. Before us in the
distance rises the city of Rome with the great tomb of Hadrian crowning its mass of buildings,
and at the extreme left the line of the Alban mountains traced against the sky. Under the
nearer walls a group of dead and dying warriors serves to connect the battle with the groups
in the foreground. In the middle foreground we see a group of dead warriors, Romans as Ave
judge, though pillaged of their arms, and near them their wives, or fellow-combatants,
Amazons, tilled with the fury of battle, or with despair at their threatened fate, refusing to
believe that the dead can be deaf to their j^assionate cries, urge them with shrieks and
prayers to rise and fight on, for them and their children. The dead hear their voice and stir
in their slumber. The heathen foe, too, hearken the call of their kindred and companions —
one rough-bearded warrior at the left ah-eady draws his sword again from its sheath, and
others near him open eyes closed in death and look upward to the sky where the souls of the
slain on either side, once more reforming their ranks, continue the bloody strife:
" Fierce, fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
In ranks and squadrons, and right form of war
Which drizzled blood upon the cajDitol.
The noise of battle hurtled in the air.
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan."
In the upper part of the picture, where the aerial combat is waging, we see, on the left,
the Roman Emperor, supported by attendant youths, advancing with draAvn sword to meet the
furious Attila, who stands charioted upon a mighty shield upborne by his warriors. Behind
the Emperor, the souls of dead Romans bear the cross, streaming Avith triumphant light,
while others in advance of the sacred emblem turn and point to it with loud exultant cries
and furious gestures, as their standard of victory. No matter what we may think of the
moral value of the subject, or of its suitableness for the purposes of art, it is impossible to
avoid praising the skill with which the composition is handled; the dramatic power shown
in the gradual awakening from death to the acti-'^e renewing of the bitter jDassions of life,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 37
and the majesty of movement in the contending armies, as they meet on their new battlefield
in the air.
The original cartoon for this celebrated picture, painted in monochrome, is in the
National Gallery at Berlin, in the collection of Count Raczynski, which has been loaned to
the government for public exhibition. The completed fresco is one of the six immense
pictures painted by Kaulbach between the years 1847 and 1866, for the decoration of the
great staircase of the New Museum. The painting of these frescoes was the chief occupation
of the later years of Kaulbach's life, and necessarily transferred much of his active interest
from Munich to Berlin. " The Battle of the Huns " was the starting-point of the conception
of a series of pictures that should illustrate important epochs in the history of mankind.
" The Battle of the Huns " is the finest of the series, whether we consider the clearness and
unity of the conception or the harmony of the design in Avhich it is embodied. We shall
only name the others, without attemjpting any detailed description, since not only has this
been well done already in many popular works, among which we may refer the reader to Miss
Howitt's' "An Art Student in Munich," a little book reflecting in its earnest youthful enthu-
siasm the spirit of forty years ago — that time of strife, intellectual, artistic and political — but
these pictures have been made common property by innumerable cheap reproductions. The
subjects of the frescoes are " The Tower of Babel," " Greek Civilization " with Homer reciting
his poems to the Greek people; "The Battle of the Huns;" The "Taking of Jerusalem by
the Crusaders," " The Era of the Reformation." Between the large paintings and connected
with them, are several figures on a gold ground : allegorical representations of Tradition and
History, Poetry and Science, with colossal figures of Moses, Solon, Charlemagne, Frederick
the Great, and beside these a cloud of lesser figures, groui^s and symbolic subjects, over which,
as over the great pictures themselves, the iminstructed eye Avanders in a maze of conjecture,
for without a guide the work is intelligible only to the learned. No doubt the Avhole idea of
such a series of pictures with their attendant and connecting allegories and ornaments was
borrowed from the Camera of Raphael in the Vatican, but beside tliat tlie thing could only
be done once — and Raphael himself never repeated the triumph of the Camera della
Segnatura with the " School of Athens," the " Disputa " and the " Parnassus," the minds of
.the two men were so totally different that the success of Kaulbach's experiment was fatally
impossible. With all its faults, the work of Raphael is sufficiently clear to make it easily
enjoyable with slight explanation, and the whole decoration of the room is bound up in a
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
unity, tlie beauty and ingenuity of whicli are not less enjoyed as time increases our famil-
iarity. Witli Kaulbach's work, however, there is no real harmony in the ground-work, and
'mpi-
^' ■ S
"DOROTHEA."
BY WILHELM VON KAULBACH.
the whole is so overlaid Avith fantastic symbolism, far-fetched, recondite allusions, pedantic
display of petty learning, and a misplaced humor, that the mind becomes inexpressibly •
wearied: we depart Avith a sense of intellectual and festhetic indigestion, and are hardly able
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 39
henceforward to do justice to the real talent and greatness of the man — how much greater,
had he not been born in that unlucky age of bombast and misdirected art-patronage. No one
of these paintings in the Staircase-Hall (Treppenhaus) at Berlin is so comical in its tragic
incompetence as the once much-vaunted "Era of the Reformation," the cartoon of which is
unhappily owned in this country — a salad where all the great men and women of the time
are stirred in together without aim, and Avith no attempt at unity of composition, a vast
charivari, a Mardi Gras, where every one is grinding away at his own little job, Luther bang-
ing the Bible, Elizabeth strutting like a stage-queen, Albert Diirer painting away for dear life
in a corner, Petrarch pulling Greek manuscripts out of a chest, Shakespeare " chewing his
gums," as a clever American critic once said, Copernicus puzzled over his own theories, and so
forth, and so on— as we look we seem to see the " Madhouse " of the artist's earlier years
enlarged into a i^anorama of the world.
Of Kaulbach's once much-praised " illustrations " to " Shakespeare," Goethe," " Schiller,"
nothing is now left for the world at large but the faded memory: as we turn over the crowd
of photographs in the printsellers' portfolios we cannot but wonder at the popularity they
once enjoyed— a popularity that must have been factitious, since no critic of to-day could by
any charm of Avords bring back the public to where it once stood. These works with their
clumsy type of beauty, their affected simplicity, their incompetence of characterization, are
their oaati condemnation. Not that they are all alike failures— that would not be possible
with a man so able in many ways as Kaulbach: had he known and obeyed his own limita-
tions it may be believed that his place in the history of art would have been far more secure
than it is. We have selected the " Dorothea," one scene from Goethe's beautiful idyl of the
exiled peasants, forced from their homes in Salzburg, unwilling emigrants, made to serve the
will of Frederick by transferring themselves and their belongings to a barren land, Avhere lie
would sow men as tlie husbandman sows corn. The point chosen by the artist for illustration
is that where Hermann first meets Dorothea, as he describes the interview to his parents and
their guests on his return to the house.
" When, now, as I went, I reach'd the new road through the valley.
There was a wagon in sight, constructed with suitable timbers.
Drawn by two oxen, the largest and strongest that foreigners boast of.
Close by its side, with stejis full of strength, was walking a maiden.
Guiding with a long rod the pair of powerful cattle;
Urging on now, and again holding back, as she skillfully led them."
40 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Anotlier ^York of Kanlbach's that has given much pleasure, and will long continue to give
it, is his " Reynard the Fox," a series of illustrations to accompany an edition of Goethe's
translation of the old poem, the delight of Germany in the Middle Ages. No one, not even
Grandville, has surpassed Kaulbach in the difficult task of representing animals moved by
human emotions, and yet never losing sight of the animal nature. Here again Kaulbach's
talent both for clear concej)tion and clear statement are seen working in harmony within
their natural limits, and we are happily far away from the confused pretension of his so-called
great works.
Edouaed Bexdejiann, another artist who pursued the road of "grand art," was bom in
Berlin in 1811, a few years later than Kaulbach. He too studied at Dusseldorf, but under
Schadow, who succeeded to the direction on the resignation of the post by Corneliixs. When
his studies were completed he went to Rome, Mdiere his original tendencies toward religious
subjects, nourished by Schadow's influence, were still further strengthened, and on his return
to Germany in 1832, at the age of twenty-one, he painted his " Mourning Jews in Captivity "
which is now in the Museum of Cologne. In 1837 he sent to . Paris his chief picture,
" Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem," Avhich was so much admired that it gained a first
prize. It is of the same order of work in its conception and artificial arrangement as the
Destruction of Jerusalem by Kaulbach, but it is more classic in its restraint and in its
subjection to the laws of unity, while it is far superior to Kaulbach's pretentious and ove]'-
weighted work in its directness and simiDlicity. Whether Bendemann were a Jew or not we
do not learn, but these two pictures have the appearance of springing from genuine feeling
and sympathy; they do not affect us as painted merely to conform to a fashion for grandiose
historical, or so-called historical, compositions.
Bendemann's chief work, next to these paintings, is his decoration of the royal palace in
Dresden, where he painted a series of frescoes completed in 1845. These frescoes cover the
waUs of two connected apartments: The Bail-Room, and the Throne-Room or Banqueting-
Hall. In the former are scenes from Greek mythology: a iirocession of Bacchus A^dth allegor-
ical figures of poetry, music, dancing, architecture, sculpture and painting — the eternal round
of which the Germans never were known to tire. Then come the Marriage of Alexander and
Roxana, the Wedding of Thetis, Apollo in his swan-chariot leading the three Greek tribes,
and Homer. As for the Throne- Room, the pen recoils from the task of recording its perfunc-
tory themes where the Pour Estates : the Knights, Burghers, Churchmen and Peasants, are
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
41
figured in scenes from history : in the frieze the story of the Occupations and Labors of Life,
and then a long procession of the great names of the earth from Moses to Maximilian, with all
the Virtues for outriders and stirrup-holders. In such a riot of allegory and symbolism, since
no one is capable of unravelling the skein by himself, or would care for it if unravelled for him
"JEREMIAH ON THE RUINS OF JERUSALEM."
BY EDOUARD BENDEMANN.
by another, the only satisfaction is in surrendering one's self to the enjoyment of the mere
physical sensation produced by such a multitude of personages and incidents, following one
another in swift succession along the walls of these sumptuous palace-rooms. Pleasing forms
of youth and beauty, manly vigor, and dignified, serene old age— this vision of life is sufficient
in itself, and we ask no more than to close our guide-book and watch it as it glides before our
42
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
eyes, and mutely praise tlie versatility of the artist. Many other works of the elder Bende-
manu — for his son Rudolf has inherited much of his father's talent, evince the possession of
poetic feeling united "with great technical accomialishment ; but, in his case, as in that of the
other men who at this time were making their mark in the history of German art, neither
feeling nor skill found subjects of universal interest to work upon, nor even such as could
long hold the attention of the German people themselves. Even the German mind, with
all its love of abstractions, cannot live uiDon "allegory," and "symbolism," "types," and
"epochs," forever, and the fate that has overtaken Cornelius, and Schnorr, Schadow, and
Kaulbach and the rest of the " grand school " could not be expected to spare Bendemann.
This artist, less fortunate than some of the
others, had no opportunity to show to the
world at large what he coiild do on a mon-
umental scale, but he has certainly earned
the high estimation in which he is held as
a decorative painter. Bendemann married
a daughter of Schadow and succeeded that
artist as Director of the Academy at Dus-
seldorf Avhen he resigned the position in
1860.
Chaeles Fkederio Lessing, born at
"Wartenberg in Silesia in 1808, was one of
the first of the modern Germans to apply
the principles of the " grand school " to
subjects oiitside the domain of allegory and sjinbolism and bounded in a more objective circle
of ideas. He received small encouragement at home in his early expressed desire to be an
artist, but his father gave way on seeing a picture painted by him at seventeen, " The Cemetery
in Ruins," and sent him to Dusseldorf, where he studied under Schadow, who saAv his talent
and encouraged him in every way. While a boy, Lessing had studied with deej) interest the
exciting and romantic history of Bohemia, with which country his native Silesia had been so
closely connected in earlier times. The story of Huss jjarticularly appealed to him, and his
&st important picture had for its subject " Huss preaching to his Discij)les." The earnest-
ness of the painter communicated itself to his work, and the picture was received by the
CHARLES FREDERIC LESSING.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
43
public with real enthusiasm. In Paris, where Delaroche was to win fame by a similar
treatment of historical episodes, Lessing's picture was much applauded, but in Germany, and
especially in Lessing's country, where the story of Huss still burned in the popular heart, it
excited acrimonious criticisms. Not daunted by the opposition, Lessing painted other
pictures illustrating the Huss legend, "Huss before the Council of Constance" and the
subject we engrave, "The Martyrdom of Huss." This work is well known in America, where
it is now owned. It originally belonged to the " Dusseldorf Gallery," for many years one of
the chief attractions of New York City, containing as it did well-chosen examples of many of
the chief painters of the Dusseldorf School, and Lessing's picture undoubtedly stood at the
head of the collection in the popular estimation. The story is so well told that no explana-
tion was needed, and as to the honor of human nature it may be said that hardly any subject
is of more universal interest than that of a man sacrificing his life for his jDrinciples, the
picture apjjealed to the heart of almost every spectator. At the same time the numerous
episodes and manifestations of individual character were not only painted with great techni-
cal skill, but were ingeniously connected with the main event and made to lead up to it.
" The moment chosen is that of the memorable scene before Constance, whose steeples are
seen in the distance. The stake to which the martyr is to be fastened is planted ui^on an
eminence in the middle of the picture. It is surrounded by the fagots, and three executioners
stand ready to carry out the punishment. The troops of the Duke of Bavaria are in the
background with the banner of Constance in their midst. Huss stands before the stake
about to kneel in prayer. Filled with faith in the righteousness of his cause, he looks toward
Heaven, and as he turns his face upward, a sun-beam breaking through the fleecy clouds
illuminates his countenance. As he kneels, the cap of the Heretics has fallen from his head,
and a citizen has stooped to lift the cap and replace it; another citizen stares scornfully at
him and a third threatens him with his clenched fist. While the jprisoner and his escort have
mounted the hill, the chief authorities have remained below: at their head is the Duke of
Bavaria, charged by the emperor to superintend th^ execution. He is addressing a bishop
also on horseback, and a cardinal is also seen at the extreme right. Between the horses of
the duke and the bishop an old Franciscan monk looks at Huss with curiosity through his
spectacles. Tlius, the whole right side of the picture is filled with the enemies of Huss, while
at the left are grouped his adherents. At tlie head of the latter group is a young girl
looking compassionately at Huss, but her rosary shows that in pitying him she goes against
44
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
her conscience. A Bohemian noble on the other hand x-rays openly for him ; a burgher of
Constance looks at him with interest, but a young woman near liim shows the deepest
sympathy. This is a portrait of the wife of Lessing, who is thus ingeniously made to express
her sympathy both with her husband as an artist and with his principles as a man. The
remaining figures in the picture explain themselves ; no one is introduced without a iDurpose,
and the necessary violations of perspective and other technical points must be accepted if the
"THE MARTYRDOM OF HUSS.'
BY CHARLES FREDERIC LESSING.
picture is to be accepted at all. Lessing does not mean to give a picture of the scene that
shall be historically true : it is a tableau, a stage-xDicture, and it is arranged as it is with full
consciousness, no doubt, of its artificiality, but wdth the distinct purpose of summarizing the
feelings of the time by a selection of types. The main purpose of the picture, in full accord-
ance with the sjDirit of the school to which Lessing belonged, is literary : it is a page of a
painted story, and is told as Walter Scott would have told it, aiming to bring about a realiza-
tion of the scene by the selection of a few striking particulars: not as Hugo would have told
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 45
it, storming at our imagination with a multitude of details: an indistinguisliable tempest -of
hate and scorn, insult and reviling, love and Avorshix) and pity siirging about the one central
figure of heroic sacrifice and self-abnegation. Such a comparison between Lessing and Hugo
is no doubt unjust, perhaps it may be reckoned by some absurd, and certainly there cannot
be comparison between a man of talent — and Lessing was nothing more — and a man of
mighty genius, such as Hugo was with all his weakness. But a comparison with a painter
like Delaroche would leave Lessing, in a work like this, defenceless on the score of elegance,
refinement, and the dramatic power of concentration. Lessing painted many pictures in the
same vein of pseudo-history: "Luther burning the Bull of the Pope," "Luther and Eck
disputing at Leipsic," " Pope Pascal II. Prisoner of Henry V. ;" he was also noted in his day
for his landscapes, but even in Germany they would be reckoned nowhere, to-day. The
artificiality of his historical pieces may be forgiven : it may even be defended with a show of
reason, but his landscapes come too late to please a public that has been ministered to by
painters of nature such as England and France and our own country have produced, and are
every day producing.
Karl Theodor von Piloty, the last survivor of the old regime we have been consider-
ing— for Bendemann is hardly to be reckoned in the list — was born at Munich in 1826, and
died in that city in 1886. It would be hard to explain his reputation as an artist, and in fact
it is not as an artist that he will be remembered, but rather as a teacher and the founder of a
school out of which so many artists of repute have issued, that it has been said, the history of
art in South Germany for the last thirty years is nothing more than the history of Piloty's
school.
Piloty was at first the pupil of his father, Ferdinand Piloty, who had some distinction as
a lithographer. He studied later in the Academy under Schnorr, and later still at Antwerp
and Paris, but returning to Munich fixed his residence there, and for the remainder of his
life associated his fame and fortunes with his native city. His picture of the astrologer Seni
before the body of Wallenstein, which we copy, painted in 1855, when he was twenty-nine,
was the first of his works to awaken a general interest, and perhaps he never painted a picture
that more completely expressed his talent. Once given the key to the subject — and in this,
as in ninety and nine cases out of every hundred " historical " paintings, it cannot be under-
stood without an explanation— we find the story told in a dignified, impressive way, with sucli
simplicity and directness as forces our attention upon the fact narrated and makes us for ihe
46 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
moment forget everything but the tragedy enacting before our eyes. The writer saw the
picture for the first time not long after a visit to Eger, where we were shown the room in
which Wallenstein was murdered, and this may have added something to the interest with
which we looked at the work. And yet, on seeing it again, now, after some years have
elapsed, the first impression is not weakened.
The subject of Piloty's picture is nowhere literally found in history, but the elements of
it are derived from Schiller's great drama. As in the case of Shakespeare's historical plays,
we find onr views of history colored, if not formed, by the poet, from whose interpretation
sober fact finds it difiicult if not impossible to separate her legitimate share. Even the name
of Wallenstein would seem to be of Schiller's creating, since all historians are agreed, and
indeed it is most certain, that the hero's true name was Waldstein. It is to Schiller, too,
that we owe the emphasis given to Wallenstein's superstitious dependence upon augury and
astrology, and if he had any authority for the existence of the astrologer Seni, it amounts at
the best to a mere hint: one or two of the biographers-^of Wallenstein alluding in a cursory
way to a certain Senni or Zenni, an Italian astrologer whom he supported about his person.
In both the second and third parts of Schiller's triology : " The Piccolomini " and " The Death
of Wallenstein," Seni appears among the Dramatis Personoi, but he plays no part of import-
ance. In the stage directions of the scene in " The Piccolomini " where Seni first appears, he
is described as fantastically dressed like an old Italian doctor, and Piloty has followed this
hint in his picture, and has encircled the astrologer's tail hat with a band studded with stars.
It was said that Seni had been with Wallenstein a few minutes previous to his assassination,
to warn him that he had been consulting the stars, and that
"A fearful sign stood in the house of life.
An enemy, a fiend, hirk'd close behind
The radiance of his planet."
He warned his master that the danger had not yet passed. Wallenstein, however,
assiired him that he had no fear for himself, but as for Seni, 7iis fate was certainly sealed,
since the stars had assured him that a few hours would see the prophet in prison. Out of
these scattered hints and suggestions, Piloty has contrived his picture. The scene is in the
bed-room of Wallenstein in his palace at Eger. The light of early morning steals into the
room and falls upon the body of Wallenstein as it lies where the dagger of his assassin left
him. He is dressed for the night as in Schiller's play: in falling he has dragged down the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
47
cloth from tlie table, and his dark head, still stem in death, is relieved against its folds. On
the tumbled carpet a hand-bell is lying. Hung from him as if he had tried to summon help
with it and it had been wrenched from his hand. The bed on which he had not yet slept is
seen in the background with its richly carved post and its hangings wrought with the Im-
perial Eagle. On a table at the foot of the bed are the books he has been consulting, a casket
"THE COUNCIL OF THREE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY KARL VON PILOTY.
with letters and documents with their seals, and a sidereal globe where the sign of the Scor-
pion seems to be threatening the Lion. A candelabrum stands in the middle of the table : it
is crowned with a Victory whose back is ominously turned toward Wallenstein, and its one
candle burned to the socket, sends up its thin spire of smoke into the gloom of the not yet
fully awakened night. By the side of his dead master the old Seni, who has entered by the
battered doorway, stands looking down upon his dupe with a half -pitying, half-contemptuous
48 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
expression — pity for one ^vho had. trusted liim, contempt for one who in spite of warning had
refused to see the hand of God in the stars. He has taken off his star-encircled hat and
holds it in both hands, gripping it strongly by the rim: a gesture full of force and meaning:
he still holds firm to his belief in destiny; his grasp on the secrets of fate is not relaxed,
although the arm of the dead hero who would not listen to his warning is stretched out in
surrender, and his good right hand lies cold upon his heart.
■ After he had been appointed Professor at the Academy in Munich, Piloty went to Paris
for a second visit in 1856, and then to Rome, where he busied himself with studies for his
picture "JSTero at the Burning of Rome." This picture, which made a great sensation
throughout G-ermany, was finished in 1861 and is now in the gallery of Count Palissy at
Pressburg. The titles of some of his other pictures will show the principal direction of his
art: — " Wallenstein on the Road to Eger," " Wallenstein's Entrance into Eger, " " The Death
of Csesar," " Thusnelda in the Triumphal Procession of Germanicus " — the original sketch
for this picture is in the Metropolitan Museum, " Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn," " The News
of her Sentence Announced to Mary Queen of Scots," and " The Council of Three" which we
copy. This last work depicts no particular event in history; it is intended only to illustrate
a phase of life in Venice in the sixteenth century at the time when the city was ruled by the
despotic Council of Three. Hired bravoes have brought to the Council the clothes and
weapons of their victims to x>rove their obedience, and secure the promised reward. Two
members of the tribunal keep their places on the bench: the elder of them seems to be
touched with a shadow of remorse for what has been done; but the third has no compunc-
tions. He has approached the murderers and listens to their tale while he coolly examines
the bloody evidences of their crime, and an attendant places on the table the casket that con-
tains the gold with which that crime is to be rewarded. So long as there is a public eager to
welcome such pictures they will be painted, and it is i^erhaps useless to complain of their
want of serious purpose ; of the way in which a pedantic display of furniture and costumes is
allowed to distract our attention from the vital meaning of the scene: dramatic truth
sacrificed to stage-effect, and that of a very commonplace kind. Probably no one of the
Munich masters has had so many distinguished scholars as Piloty, though, as has been said,
the bond that united pupils and teacher was less a spiritual than a purely technical one.
Among these names we find those of Makart, Lenbacli, Defregger, Liezen-Mayer, Gabl, Griitz-
ner, and our own David aS^eal, Toby Rosenthal, and Wm. M. Chase. That Piloty was not
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
49
narrow in his teaching, in s];)ite of his insistance on certain dryasdust rules, is shown by the
result — his best pupils refiect his manner but slightly ; he alloA^^ed them to give free play to
their own individuality. His own work is solid, scholarly, and often interesting, in spite of
"THE EMPRESS MARIA THERESA."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM CAMPHAUSEN.
Vol. II.— 4
50 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. ■
the faults of artificiality and theatric posing, which hare been so freely brought home to him
by German critics no less than by Frenchmen and Americans.
The art of Piloty was of a kind that for some reason, or for many reasons, belongs to Ger-
many and finds there a hospitable home, a widely spreading circle of kindred, and troops of
enthusiastic friends. Since the days of AVest and his school, historical painting has steadily
lost ground in England, and now scarcely survives there ; in France, Delaroche and Horace
Vernet are almost the only names that keep even the memory of it alive, for such historical
painting as there is in France, to-day, is hardly more than genre-painting. But, in Germany,
it survives in full force, and tempts to emulation her best j)ainters ; while public enthusiasm
for such subjects is always ready to crown with applause and honors any successful effort in
the field.
Mr. Wm. M. Chase, who was for some time a pupil of Piloty, and who was invited by
him to paint the portraits of his children, has commuhicated to us the following interesting
reminiscence, which will illustrate the theories of Piloty and the practice of his studio.
The immense room devoted to the pupils of the master was divided by board-partitions
into a number of smaller rooms, in each of which a pupil was installed and set to work on a
subject given to the whole class, to treat according to their own ideas, but, at the same time,
grammatically and orthographically, in obedience to established canons. At one time, when
a good many of the pupils happened to be Americans, Piloty came into the studio and said
with his strong voice and energetic manner: "I will give you a subject; it belongs to you;
take it, and do your best with it: Columbus before the Council." When the young fellows
were left to themselves, there began a lively debate, accompanied by the usual skylarking, and
in the midst of it, some one iDut the question to Chase, known perhaps to be not a little
sceptical as to the merits of the baldng-powder expedients in historical painting: "Well, how
vidll you treat it then ? " " I'll show you," said Chase; and, turning into his stall, shuts him-
self up, and in a little while comes out with his Columbus. A long canvas, longer than liigh,
a table stretching across it, nearly from side to side, and behind it and at the projecting ends,
a crowd of ecclesiastics, big and little, cardinals, priests, and doctors — listening, or not listen-
ing, to Columbus, who stands in the middle, facing the table, with a globe and a lot of books
and papers on the floor at his side, and with one hand raised, energetically arguing his case.
It was but a sketch, but a sketch of such marked originality in its conception, and showing
such exceptional skill in the handling, that both the wrath of Piloty on seeing it, and his
• ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 51
interest in this sinner against all his rules and teachings were alike exiDlicable. He looked at
it long and earnestly ; he marked the vigorous, succinct painting of the row of heads, all char-
acteristic of such ah assembly, no two alike, only blocked out, with a few strokes to each, yet
each alive — eager, indifferent, hostile, supercilious, respectful, haughty. Piloty saw all this,
but he also saw the figure of Columbus, standing with his back to the spectator — ye powers !
The principal personage standing with his back to us ! What folly ! For, of course, in the
true scheme of historical painting according to the Munich gospel, no matter what the facts,
or j)robabilities of the case may have been, the spectator has the first right, and Columbus
should have turned his back not uj)on us but upon his audience; spoken to us, not to the
CouncU. Therefore it was that Piloty came down upon his pupil with stern rebuke and re-
monstrance; reminding him of the sacred rules, showing him again for the twentieth, the
hundredth time, how he ought to have composed his picture, and leaving him with a recom-
mendation to repentance. That he saw what good material was in his pupil, however, is
shown by his urging him shortly after that to paint a great historical Columbus — according
to the rules no doubt ! — with a \ae\v to the Capitol at Washington, offering to help the
scheme in every way by his influence — but Chase had no mind to the undertaking.
WiLHELM Camphausen, a painter of battle-scenes, and ideal portraits, was born at Dus-
seldorf in 1810. He made his studies in the Academy of his native town, and afterward
became a Professor in that institution. In order to become more familiar with military
matters he joined a company of hussars, and remained several years with them. Later, he
travelled in Europe and brought back many studies used since in his numerous pictures and
in the designs he has made for illustrated j)ublications. The titles of some of his works:
" Puritans Reconnoitering the Enemy," " Charles II. at the Battle of Worcester," " Taking
the Entrenchment of Duppel," " Cavaliers and Roundheads," will give an idea of his sjphere
of activity. The two pictures which we have chosen belong to the- list of his " ideal j)or-
traits," as we may call them, for lack of a better name. That is, they are portraits founded
on authentic pictures of their time, but dressed up to suit the artist's notion of the subject's
personality. The " Frederic the Great " is an animated, stirring image of that " Alexandre
de nos jours " — a splendid sword in a rough sheath. The " Maria Theresa" is perhaps rather
the " Rex Noster " of the legend and of our imagination than the Queen of sober history.
Still, the imagination has her rights, and what is more, in the struggle with facts she
generally gets the better, in the long run, of her antagonist.
'HEAD-PIECE BY MENZEL."
FROM KUGLER'S "FREDERICK THE GREAT.'
A
III.
DOLF FRIEDERICH ERDMANN MENZEL, one of the first of modem draughtsmen,
recognized both at home and abroad as a chief in the modern school of historical
painters, was born at Breslan in 1815.
His father, though not an artist, was interested
in the arts, and gave up the profession of teach-
ing to engage in the business of lithograj^hy, the
new process discovered only a little while before
by Sennefelder, which was just then interesting
everybody as photography and process-jDrinting
are interesting us to-day, and like them threat-
ening to displace wood-engraving and etching.
as in fact it did displace them for a time. It
may be worth noting ia passing, that one of
the most remarkable though one of the least
known of Adolf Menzel's published works, the
"Christ among the Doctors," is executed in
lithography, the art he learned in his youth
from his father. It is not, however, a genuine lithograj^h, but rather an engraving, since
it is etched with acids, not simply drawn upon the stone.
The boy early showed a strong leaning to art, but his father, with his instincts as a
teacher, felt that it was desirable his general studies should be attended to before engaging
ADOLF MENZEL.
FROM THE BAS-RELIEF BY BEGAS
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in a special profession. He therefore tried again the experiment that has been tried by un-
numbered parents since the world began, and sought to put his young Pegasus into useful
harness. But this colt, lilve all the rest of his kind, kicked the traces and refused to browse
in the pastures provided for him. His childish studies were neglected, and the world-old
legend of the scribbled copy-book reappears in the case of the little Adolf, as fresh as if it
had not been told of a hundred other bom artists. Seeing this, the elder Menzel, aware
that a talent had been intrusted to him for safe-keeping, and anxious to do the best he
could to make it profitable, broke up his household at Breslau and removed to Berlin, where
he thought his boy would have better opportunities. He had the boy fitted for the Aca-
demy, but though he entered it, he could not be induced to stay there. The methods no
less than the routine were irksome to him, and he insisted on being allowed to sit by his
father's side and assist him in his lithographic work. This he did until he was sixteen, when
his father died, leaving his whole family, a large one, dependent on Adolf's exertions for
support.
The boy applied himself energetically to the task, working, says Miss Helen Zimmern, in
her interesting summary of Menzel's life and work, printed in the Magazine of Art, — " work-
ing almost literally, day and night — twelve hoars beiug his nominal allowance, often ex-
ceeded. He composed and lithographed dinner. New Year, and birthday cards ; he designed
and executed bill-heads, and invitations, illustrations to children's books, menus, etc., etc.,
whatever, in short, came in his way. Yet he always looked upon this as merely a way to get
bread and butter for himself and his family; his aim was to be an artist, and of this he never
allowed himself to lose sight." In 1833, when only eighteen years old, he made his first appeal
to the jjublic with an original work, publishiag a series of six lithographed illustrations to
Goethe's poem "Kiinstler's Erdenwallen." This attracted immediate attention, and the
publishers soon gave him all he could do, encouraging him to new undertakings. He pro-
duced a second set of designs, " The Five Senses," and followed it with " The Lord's Prayer,"
and soon after turned his attention to the field in which his most successful Avork has been
accomplished: the history of the HohenzoUerns. Frederick William IV., who was then
King of Prussia, was ambitious to play the same part in Prussia that Louis of Bavaria was
playing so conspicuously in Munich, as modern Maecenas, Patron of the Fine Arts, etc., etc.
The work that Menzel had already done in his designs for the History of Brandenburg in
illustration of the life of Germany in the eighteenth century, had drawn the king's attention
54 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
to the artist as the man peculiarly fitted by nature and by the exhaustive studies he had
made, for the caiTying out of his special hobby, the glorification of his ancestor, Frederick the
Great. He therefore received the commission to make four hundred illiistrations for Kugler's
" Life of Frederick the Great." The work occupied four years of Menzel's life. He made all
the drawings on the block for the wood-engravers, and as the art of engraving on wood was-
then in a very unsatisfactory state in Germany, the first blocks were sent to Paris to be cut.
This was done for some time, but as fast as the blocks were returned from Paris they were
used by Menzel as models for the Berlin engravers, and thanks to his zealous superintendence
and earnest effort, such an improvement was brought about that the later blocks were cut at
home. It was absolutely necessary that this should be done if Menzel's work were to be
faithfully reported; for his vigorous and uncompromising method of dealing with subjects in
which neither beauty nor grace had any part, was not suited to French elegance and refine-
ment. This Avork Avas so successful that the king immediately gave Mm another commission,
that of illustrating the works of Frederick the Great, a most unwelcome task, since the writ-
ings of Frederick offer scarcely any material for the artist's skill. Beside the mistake of
employing one of the first artists of the time on such a thanldess task the king, like a truly
royal connoisseur, Msecenas, Patron of the Fine Arts, ecc, etc., confined the circulation of the
book wlien completed to the circle of his oavu immediate family, and to the few crowned
heads and men of mark whom the king wished specially to honor. The late emperor,
William L, seeing that Menzel's Avork Avas vutually lost to the Avorld by this exclusion,
alloAved the illustrations to be reproduced Avithout the text, but this has availed but little,
since even in that state the book is too costly for general circulation.
Other works of Menzel in this field, are a series of plates filling three thick folio volumes
and called " The Army of Frederick the Great." This vast storehouse of illustrations of a siib-
ject of no possible interest to any one but a special student of the time, consists of three hundred
plates, draAvn upon the stone, and preserving for the antiquarian every possible recoverable
detail of the costume, arms, wea]Dons and accoutrements of the soldiers and officers of Fred-
erick's army. Into these draAAings Menzel infused all the life and reality that he Avas capable
of, but after completing the work and coloring the plates Avith his OAvn hand, he cleaned off
the stones, preserving only thirty im^jressions. He followed this Avork by one that appealed
more to the popular taste : a series of tAveh^e large and vigorously draAvn and engraved wood-
cuts of Frederick's generals, Avith a iilate devoted to Frederick himself. Fortunately for
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
55
Menzel's fame this was not a royal commission, but a work designed for the public, and it is
likely to prove the most worthy monument of his fame. The Head of Bliicher which we
copy, will give an idea of the style in which Menzel has treated these soldier-figures, though
it is not taken from this particular work.
It woiild be impossible to enumerate even in a summary way, the titles of the works
"blucher."
FROM A DRAWING BY MENZEL.
produced by Menzel's prodigious activity. He has worked in almost every style and with
every material, but it must be allowed that it is as a draughtsman, not as a designer, that
he excels. Of the two pictures that we copy, one, " Frederick playing on the Flute at Sans
Souci," is from an oil-iiainting, the other, " Frederick William visiting a Village-School," is
from an illustration made by Menzel for the History of the HohenzoUerns. Menzel's oil-
painting can be studied at Berlin, in the Museum; as a painting it has small value, but the
56 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
design has all his excellences, and the subjects gave him an opportunity that he did not enjoy
in his book-illustrations. The picture we hare selected, "The Flute-Concert," is a companion
to " The Banquet at Sans Souci," which also hangs in the Berlin Museum, where are also
" Frederick on his Travels," and " Frederick at the Battle of Hochkirch," with others of less
importance. The scene of our picture is the drawing-room of the i^alace, gorgeous in its
rococo splendor, dazzling in the blaze of wax-candles clustered innumerable in chandeliers and
sconces of crystal, their soft light reflected from mirrors and gilding and the polished floor,
and from the rich dresses of the company ; the costume of a time that was all of a piece with
the architecture and the decoration. The king is at a music-stand in the middle of the room,
executing on his flute a difficult piece, with as much dignity as any man, even a king, can
put into that most undignifled instrument. At the piano near him sits Emanuel Bach, who
plays the accompaniment, while Benda with his violin awaits the cadence of the musical
phrase to recommence his playing. The king's music-master, Quanz, sits in the embrasure of
the window, and on a sofa is the king's sister Wilhelmina, the Margravine of Baireuth, whose
affection for her brother, as his for her, plays such a jpart in their early life. Near her stands
Graun, an amateur of music, and the rest of the company is made up of the noble and dis-
tinguished jDeople whom Frederick gathered about him in his Court. The other picture
shows Menzel in a very different vein: the old king, in the carrying out of his elaborate
system of paternal government, has come to a village-school, and the master, for his sovereign's
pleasure, is subjecting the urchins to the terrors of an examination in their studies. Menzel
has depicted the various characters with much quiet penetration and sense of humor — the old
king, vnth his mingled good-nature and patronizing self-importance ; the school-master equally
anxious for his own credit and that of his boys; the youngsters moved by every emotion
natural to their years : one with boyish glee showing his slate to the king ; another, vexed
with failure, cleaning his slate for a new trial — in this slight subject equally as in the more
important pictures, and as everywhere, Menzel is conspicuous as the story-teller, the nar-
rator, who to a full knowledge of every detail of fact unites the dramatic power to seize the
situation as a whole.
As we have said, it is not alone in his own country, but among artists everywhere, that
Menzel is honored. Several of his pictures were sent to the Paris Exposition in 1867, and
they were warmly welcomed, by no one more than by Meissonier. Miss Zimmern tells us
that Meissonier could not do enough to show his appreciation of Menzel's talent: he not only
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57
introduced him everywhere, but by his influence, deservedly povrerful in France, he caused
him to be decorated with the Order of the Legion of Honor. The two artists were inseparable,
but as Meissonier could not speak a word of German, and Menzel knew no French, their
personal communication was confined to repeated pressures of the hand, and gestures of mute
admiration. Beside his exhaustive work in relation to Frederick and his times, Menzel has
published several etchings, has made designs for the illustrations of Kleist's drama " The
Broken Jug," and has painted several pictures on themes drawn fi'om our modern life. The
most important of these is " The Machine Shop "—as seen from the industrial life of the Berlin
of our own day, reproduced with that mingling of photographic accuracy and large pictur-
esqueness in which Menzel excels all his contemporaries. It must be said of Menzel that the
picturesqueness is, so at least it appears, none of his choosing. He has the indifference of
Nature to beauty or ugliness — since those terms are our own, not hers — his whole aim, and it
is his sole enjoyment, is to reproduce with faithfulness either what he sees of the present vsdth
his eyes, or what an exhaustive and impartial study has taught him must have been seen by
the men of the past. He accepts with cheerful equanimity, the fact that he lives in an ugly
city, in an ugly country, among a people indifferent to art and incapable of producing it.
And where another artist might have sought relief from these conditions in some enchanted
Armida's garden of the past, Menzel has deliberately plunged, fathom deep, in the study of a
time when these same conditions existed in even greater force than they do at present. Yet
by the sheer power of loyalty to truth, and a determination to accept life as he finds it, he
has not only won for himself a foremost place among the artists of his time, but has done
much to make impossible a return to the literary treatment and the bombastic methods of the
earlier historical painters of "the grand school."
"tail-piece by menzel."
FROM KUGLER S 'FREDERICK THE GREAT,"
58
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
TRACES of that art, of which Kaulbach and Piloty were the high-priests still remain in
the studios, bnt they are tempered by the logic of the realistic school. Among the
pupils of Piloty, Alexander Liezen-Mayer is one who occupies, with no little distinction, this
middle ground. He was born in 1839, at Raab in Hungary, and after studying for a time in
"QUEEN ELIZABETH ABOUT TO SIGN MARY'S DEATH WARRANT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LIEZEN-MAYER,
the Academies of Vienna and Munich he entered the studio of Piloty, and in 1862, when only
twenty-three, produced his " Coronation of Charles of Durazzo " — a subject evidently chosen
— since the Coronation of Charles of Durazzo could be of no interest to any mortal of the
present day — merely because it lent itself to the picturesque theatrical treatment in vogue in
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
59
the Munich of that day. Neither this picture, however, nor the " Canonization of Saint
Elizabeth of Hungary," though they were considered to show much promise, liad any marl'Led
success with the public; the artist's first laurels were gained by his " Maria Theresa Comfort-
ing a Poor Child," a subject that by its natural and unaffected treatment appealed even to
people whose aristocratic loyalty was not touched by it. The two jDictares that we copj
show both sides of Liezen-Mayer's art. The " Queen Elizabeth Signing Mary's Death War-
rant " is a genuine product of the Piloty school — graceful and dignified, with the gracefulness
and dignity of the stage, not of real life, since neither in costume nor in person is this the
true Elizabeth ; but very frank in its appeal to the popular taste for a histrionic presentation
of a past which exists for us only in the imagination. The picture recalls very vividly the
personality of the great actress Ristori in the part of Elizabeth which she made so famous.
The dress of the Queen is the one Ristori idealized from the formality of the contemporary
portraits, and just so she used to stand, leaning over the fatal parchment, holding the irreso-
lute pen, and deeply meditating on the chances of the cast she was about to make. In the
other i)icture, " Saint Elizabeth of Tliuringen," Liezen-Mayer has chosen a theme resembling
that of his Maria Theresa picture: the charitable princess is sheltering under her ermine
mantle a mother and her child exposed to the cruelty of the winter's cold. Beside his
j)ictures, Liezen-Mayer is well known as an illustrator of the poets — his designs for Goethe's
" Faust," for Schiller's " Song of the Bell," have been very popular, and he has also made
drawings for Shakespeare's " Cjnnbeline."
Werner Wilhelm Gustav Schuch, born in Hildesheim in 1843, began life as an
architect, and did not take up j)ainting until he was thirty years old. In 1872 he began,
without any teacher, to practise himself in oil-painting, copying pictures in the Dresden
Gallery and making sketches from nature in the Tyrol, and in Upper Italy. In the intervals
of his occupation as an architect he made frequent excursions in search of landscape-material
to serve as backgrounds for his pictures. The subject we copy is called simj)ly an episode of
the Thirty Years' War, but it has no special interest except as an attempt to depict the
manners of a bygone time. And to tell the truth, we much prefer to such a jDicture, made by
a man whose knowledge of the time is necessarily limited to what he has been able to gather
from books and museums, the old prints and wood-cuts made by contemporary artists
whose technical skill no doubt was far below that of siich an accomplished draughtsman as
Professor Schuch, but who, at any rate, described what they saw with their own eyes. But it
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would be unfair to find fault with our artist for doing what aU the rest of his contemporaries
with few exceptions are doing: let us see how he has told such story as he has to tell. A
body of troops is crossing a wild stretch of country, and the main, part of the canvas is filled
"SAINT ELIZABETH OF THURINGEN.
FROM THE PICTURE BY LIEZEN MAYER.
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with one of the baggage-wagons and its guard. The ravages of war are hinted at in the ruins
of a castle with its shattered tower and dismantled gable rising above the boscage of its park,
while some nearer trees serve, with their blackened trunks and blasted branches, as emblems
of its former pride, now fallen. The baggage-wagon is a cumbrous structure, too heavy ap-
parently for the work it has to do in carrying only a barrel of wine and a man whose busi-
ness seems to be to tap the barrel occasionally for a thirsty officer. The sturdy wheels plough
deep in the muddy road, but the outrider on one of the two horses that drag the vehicle has
only an ineffectual dog-whip to iirge his beasts. By tfie side of the team, the captain, bare-
headed, and with his leathern doublet protected by pieces of armor— since armor died a
lingering death after the invention of gunpowder, sits on a sturdy cob, and draws the rein as
he turns to throw back some jest at the man in the wagon. He holds in his hand a flagon, the
cover raised, from which he will drink again when his jest is sped. By the side of the wagon
a man-at-arms is walking, matchlock on shoulder, pipe in mouth and hand in pocket; he is
dressed in doublet and breeches, with iron helmet, and big boots, his thick beard just allowing
us to see the corners of his falling linen collar. Behind the wagon comes the rest of the
convoy, a band of musicians with flfe and drum and mounted warriors following, some in
armor with helmet and plume, some in laced jerkins and broad-brimmed hats and feathers, a
motley crowd characteristic of this time of change, when old faiths and customs were giving
way to new, and the world seemed for the time being in chaos. So, at least, the donkey by
the roadside thinks, as he plants his fore-feet, shakes his conservative head, lifts his remon-
strating ears to heaven, and lets his angry owner thwack him with the stout oaken cudgel at
his will. Meanwhile the woman on his back with her nursing baby in her arms joins in the
laugh of the soldiers at her plight, and shakes her fist at the beast, as if she thought the affair
a joke. Not so the little daughter, however, who stands by the donkey's side crying, half for
pity at the beating he is getting, and half for fear of the soldiers; to her the affair is anything
but a joke. This picture of Prof. Schuch is owned in this country, and has lately been on
exhibition at the gallery of Mr. William Schaus in New York.
Otto Seitz, the painter of the " Murder of the Princes in the Tower," was born at
Munich in 1846, and studied with Piloty. His subjects are, as a rule, of a tragic character—
" The Murder of Rizzio," " Prometheus Chained to the Rock " and the " Children of Edward
IV. "—the one we copy— but he has also tried his hand at lighter themes, '' A Faun and
Nymphs," " Neptune Riding on the AVater," and others. There is no need of repeating for
62
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
the liimdredtli time, tliat such subjects as the one we engrave are chosen by the artist not
because he has intellectually any concern with them, but simply because he has come across
them in his search for picturesque incidents. No doubt the murder of the sons of Edward
changed the course of English history, but in what direction no one can tell; for us, its
only interest lies in the pathos of its tragedy. Seitz has treated his theme in a less imagina-
THE MURDER OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OTTO SEITZ
tive way than Delaroche, who, in the two pictures he painted of the affair, shows us the boys
alone in their room, waiting in foreboding fear for the danger that they feel is hovering about
them. Seitz shows us the murderers on the very point of their bloody deed: one getting
ready the bolster with which the victims are to be smothered, while the other, touched with
remorse, holds back his companion with a gesture, as if he would make sure that the boys are
asleep. Should they stir, the villain's heart would be softened, and his hand would fail him.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 63
The story is clearly told, and all the details are true to the time, or probable, at least. But,
as a work of imagination, we must think it inferior to Delaroche's picture, with which it is
impossible not to compare it.
JoHAKN Adolf Paul Kiessling was born in 1836 at Breslau, and studied his art at
Dresden under Schnorr. He there painted his first j^ictaire; a "Ulysses recognized by his
nurse Euryclea," which won him a prize and enabled him to go to Italy. Here he gave
himseli up to the study of the peasant-life under the influence of Passini, but he also painted
several classical subjects — working in the old, well-worn mine of Venuses and Adonis, Rapes
of Hylos, Rapes of Europa, and the rest, only half escaping for a time in the invention of
allegories where antique and modern figures are mingled in illustrations of certain poems of
Schiller. Later he found a better field for his powers in the decoration of the Chateau of
Albrechtsburg at Meissen, where he was commissioned to paint two wall-pictures wath scenes
from the life of Bottcher, the discoverer of porcelain in Germany, and the founder of that
industry at Meissen. We copy one of these pictures, where Bottcher is seen showing to his
patron, and long his dupe, August the Strong, the result of one of his experiments. Bottcher
was an alchemist by profession, one of the tribe who all over Euroj)e were deluding rich men
and princes with the hope of vast wealth to be acquired when once the secret of transmuting
the baser metals into gold should be acquired. He found a ready dupe in August the
Strong, but we should have heard no more of him than of a hundred other men of the same
character, had he not by accident hit upon the discovery of Kaolin, the long-sought-for
material of which porcelain is made. The anecdote current is, that one day on calling for his
wig, Bottcher, taking it from his valet's hands, remarked that it was much heavier than usual,
and the valet explained that as his supply of the ordinary hair-i^owder was out, he had bor-
rowed some from an acquaintance, who had discovered a material that he thought suj)erior
to that in common use. Something in the look of this powder struck the eye of Bottcher,
accustomed to observe, and after some experiments he found that it was the long desired
basis of porcelain. This discovery was one of great importance, since it supplied what had
long been a real need— there being no material for the making of cups, platters, and dishes,
excepting wood and metal, and clays too coarse to suit the uses of any but the poorest people.
Bottcher was only one of many who had been looking for a solution of the difficulty, and, as
in every such case, he has to share the credit of the discovery with men in other countries.
The seeds of discovery, microbes of thought, so to speak, are always in the air and they may
64
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lodge simultaneonsly in any brain where tliey find a condition of receptivity. Printing and
steam, electricity and anfEsthetics, daguerreotypy, and a thousand lesser arts that ameliorate
the roughness of our material life are brought out of her pocket by Old Dame Nature when-
"BOTTCHER DEMONSTRATING BEFORE AUGUST THE STRONG."
FROM THE PICTURE BY KIESSLING.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 65
ever we spoiled children of hers are fully persuaded that we must and will have them. So it
was in the case of porcelain in Europe, but so far as Germany is concerned, Bottcher's fame is
secure, as the benefactor to whom we owe the discovery.
LuDwiG Herterich, the painter of the "Episode from the Peasants' War," is the son of
an artist who occupied a respectable position in his profession, but was in no way distin-
guished. The son made his first success with the public by this picture, exhibited at the
Kunstausstellung in Munich, in 1883. It was a commission, we believe, from Mr. Henry
Villard, of New York, and was considered one of the most interesting pictures in an exhibi-
tion that contained not a few of the best works that the artists of modern Geimany have
produced, and where it was a distinction in itself for any young artist to attract more than
a passing glance from the crowd.
Something of the interest excited by the work of Herterich was due, no doubt, to the
tragic nature of his subject, since people in general are strongly drawn to the contemplation
of horrors, whether described with the pen or the pencil. But it is not given to every one to
make tragedy real. Founded on historic truth though the subject may be, there is the
temptation to exaggeration, to melodrama, to be overcome, and in Munich this temptation
has been too seldom resisted : the public has been habituated, since the days of Kaulbach, to
a theatrical, a spectacular, treatment of historic scenes, until it has become difficult to get
back to a sane and natural method. It is worth noting that the earlier men, to whom the
credit of the revival of art in modern Germany is given, got no nearer to nature than their
immediate successors, in spite of the fact that they sought inspiration in the works of the
" primitives," and the artists of the Italian Renaissance. For all their worship of Angelico
and Gozzoli, Raphael and Michelangelo, such men as Cornelius and Overbeck, Schadow and
Schnorr were no nearer to nature than Kaulbach or Piloty. Nature alone can impart her
secret: it is not to be obtained at second-hand. We cannot learn of Chaucer how to be
simple-hearted, nor from Keats to revel in the luxuries of natural beauty, the delights of
sensuous being, nor from Shakespeare to read the human heart ; we must carry to Nature the
nature that she herself has given us, and let her tune its chords as she will. The only true
historical-painting is that which shows the artist moved to his work by strong independent
sympathy, and where the instinct bred by such sympathy has shown him the scene, and
enabled him to show it to us, as it really looked, or as it may have looked. To such art
Herterich's picture belongs. And the artist has revealed the possession of a finer dramatic
Vol. II.— 5 * *
66 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
sense in bringing before us in this vivid ^vay, the spiritual agony, the horror of fear, that goes
before the dread event, than if he had plunged us into the midst of the physical torment and
outrage that will soon drown the scene in blood. The stage on wliich this tragedy is acting
is the great Hall of some baronial castle in Germany. The victorious peasants have burst the
door, and overrun the guards, and armed with pikes and staves are aboiit to revenge their
centuries of wrongs upon the representatives of those who have inflicted them. The mistress
of the house has thrown herself in front of the huddling crowd of her family and servants,
beside themselves with terror, and offers herself as sacrifice or ransom to the men whom she
and her kind have made wild-beasts, and kept them such. The aspect of the crowd is horri-
ble, but the artist has avoided all exaggeration, melodrama, and even undue emi)hasis:
enough for him to state the cold facts, and leave us to work out the details of the dread
catastrophe by the aid of our own imagination ; and as he has concentrated all that there was
of true courage and chivalry in the feudal party in the jjerson of the chatelaine who offers
her own body to the fury of the angry mob, to protect, if so she may, those who are dearer to
her than life ; so on the other side he has concentrated all the brutal fury and lust of the mob
in the person of the grinning Caliban who stands mopping and mowing at the prospect of
his near revenge, and the sating of foul desires blindly nursed through years of serfage.
WiLHELM LuDwiG Friedricii Riefstahl, boru at New Strelitz in 1827, reminds us, in
the simplicity and sincerity of his work, of the French painters, Brion and Charles Marchal.
As with them, too, the incidents and scenes he paints have come under his own direct obser-
A'ation, and he has painted them because they ajjpealed to his .■■^■:'"'~'"'-
sympathies and feelings as much as to his artistic sense. He first
appeared as a designer of book illustrations, making a number of
the drawings engraved for Kugler's History of Art. In 1869 he
went to Italy, and brought back sketches for some of his x^ictures —
" The Anatomical Theatre in the University of Bologna," " The Pan-
theon of Agrippa at Rome," — the former of them once in this coun-
try, in the hands of Mr. S. P. Avery, was unfortunately aUowed to wilhelm^lu^ivig^friedrich
go back to Europe. It was a most interesting portrait of a world-famous room — the Hall
where many of the most illustrious men in the history of medicine and surgery lectured and
demonstrated — a picture that, were it here to-day, would surely be secured for some one of oar
richly endowed medical institutions. The anatomical theatre at Bologna is a noble room, roofed
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 67
and wainscoted, wtli cedar from the forests of Lebanon, and Riefstahl has imagined it filled
with students, and with some of the famous men associated with its history. Riefstahl has
painted several pictures illustrating convent-life; one of these, " In the Refectory," belongs to
Mr. S. P. Avery, and by his permission we are enabled to offer our readers a copy from the
original painting. Another of these subjects, a " Procession of Monks," belongs to a New York
collector. Our picture, " In the Refectory," shows a scene that will be familiar to many travel-
lers who have sought the hospitality and substantial comfort of these religious houses in their
journeys. In some of these monasteries, the dining-room retains its original fittings and furni-
ture, but, as a rule, the wars and social ui^heavals, and religious revolutions that have swej^t
over the face of Europe, have made rough work with the prosperity of these ancient founda-
tions, and in consequence their rooms have in general a bare look, and are furnished with plain
but solid chairs and tables of modem make; good for use, but not ornamental. The dining-
room in Rief stahl's picture is a plain apartment where eight monks, including the reader of
the day and the brother who is to serve the table, are assembled for dinner. The ceiling of the
room with its corner escutcheon furnishes the only indication of the time when it was built —
in the latter part of the last century: so we judge by its rococo curves. For the rest, the
room is plain to bareness ; a window recessed in the thick wall, its sash filled with square
panes of white glass, looks out upon trees and a glimpse of blue sky ; at right distance from
this window a niche, answering to it in fonn, is filled \vq by an altar; a crucified Christ is sus-
pended at the back with a vase of flowers at its foot, and before the niche an ever-burning
lamp is siispended from the ceiling. On the wall between these openings, hang symmetri-
cally-placed pictures of saints, and in front of the window is a plain jpulpit, with a lectern,
where the brother stands who reads some pious exhortation or gospel-text before the meal
begins. At the extreme left we see the end of a small modern hai-psichord or piano ; at this,
one of the brothers skilled in music will, no doubt, sit after dinner and accompany the others
singing hymns. About the table the brothers are standing, in varied attitudes of devotion ;
at the head of the board is the Prior, and at the other erid pf the room, opposite the buffet,
is the servitor for the day, with his napkin over his arm. We note an absence of formality ;
each monk has his own way of listening to the reader and joining in the devotion. On the
table the soup is standing ready, and the bread beside it; in contrast to this human restraint
and deliberation, the eagerness of the tame magpies hurrying to their dish of food without so
much as-a " by your leave," is in suggestive, somewhat satiric, contrast.
68
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
The artist's other picture, "Funeral of a Child in the Passeir" shows him in a different
mood. Beginning, as a painter, with landscapes, Riefstahl early peopled his views of places
with figures, skilfully contriving to harmonize them with the scenery, or, rather, since each
" FUNERAL or A CHILD IN THE PASSEIR (TYROL)."
FROM THE PICTURt BY RIEFSTAHL. ^
did, in his pictures belong to the other, making us feel their interdependence. Some of his
most interesting pictures have for their subjects religious meetings or ceremonies of one kind
or another, taking place in the open air. Such are his " Mountain Chapel in Passeir, with
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 69
Herdsmen at Devotion," a picture in the Berlin Gallery, and another in the same gallery,
"All Souls' Day in Bregenz." During his second visit to Rome, where he lived for some time,
he painted one of his best pictures, " The Pantheon of Agrippa with a Great Procession," but
as a rule he prefers the open country or the rural towns of South Germany and the Tyrol.
In the " Funeral of a Child " the scene passes in the street before the gate of the cemetery,
the priest with his assistants standing on the upper steps, while the father, holding in his
arms the little coffin covered with its white pall and with the funeral wreath, kneels on the
lowest stone. Behind him are his daughter and a young son ; the poor bereaved mother, we
must think, lying at home grieving in her bed, not able to come so far as this with her lost
one. Sorrowing with their neighbor, the friends of the family kneel in a half circle about
them, holding lighted candles in their hands ; as we look at the picture we find ourselves
believing in it, so to speak ; an air of simple truthfulness pervades the scene, these people
are really mourning and sympathizing, not attitudinizing nor pretending.
The Passeir is a district of Tyrol intimately associated with the memory of Andreas
Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot, born in 1767, shot at Mantua in 1810 by the French. The valley
is rich in memorials of the hero; at Sandhof is the home where he was born, at Pfandlerhof
the chalet where he was captured. He was buried at Innsbruck, whither his remains were
brought from Mantua and where a handsome monument is erected in the Franciscan church
to him and his associates, Speckbacher and Haspinger. What particular village in the
Passeir Riefstahl has chosen for the scene of his picture, we do not know. Perhaps it is St.
Leonhard, where there is a churchyard made famous by the fact that in 1809 the Tyrolese
peasants stormed it and drove out the French who were quartered in the church itself.
' A group of artists notable for their treatment of religious subjects may be considered
here; the successors of the earlier sentimental-religious school of the Overbecks, Degers,
Ittenbachs and the rest, of whom we have already written. These are von Uhde, Zimmer-
mann, Plockhorst and Gebhardt: of these, Plockhorst is the one whose talent is most nearly
allied to that of his already-named predecessors.
Berniiaiu) Plockhorst was born in 1825, in Brunswick. He began his studies in that
city and thence went to Berlin, and afterward to Dresden, where, in both cities, he studied
lithography. His natural bent, however, led him to painting, and he made his way to
Munich. Here he was admitted to the studio of Piloty, and after some time passed there he
proceeded to Paris and became for a year the pupil of Thomas Couture. He then, in 1854,
70 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
set out on bis travels, visiting Holland and Belgiiim and, later, Italy, where he was especially-
interested in the works of the Venetians. After his return he settled for a while in Leipzig,
but in the end fixed his residence in Berlin, where he has continued to live and to paint ; his
field of work being portrait painting, and religious subjects ; these latter dra^^^l rather from
the Bible than from the legends. His first important picture was " Mary and John returning
from the Grave of Jesus," a picture which by its dignity and deep feeling g-ave promise of a
future, which, withoiit disparagement it may be said, has hardly been fulfilled, although his
next pictures, " Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery," and " John icomf orting Mary after
the Death of Jesus," were received with great favor. His large pictxxre, " Tlie Fight between
tlie Archangel IMichael and Satan," has been mucli lauded, but in it Plockhorst, like many an
artist before him, exceeded his powers, although it may fairly be said that such a subject is
one that no artist, not even Michelangelo himself, could do justice to. Nevertheless, there are
degrees of unfitness, and the graceful, amiable art of Plockhorst is peculiarly unsuited to
themes of such tragic import as the conflict between Good and Evil embodied in the imagi-
nary forms of Michael and the Arch-fiend. We have chosen as more characteristic of Plock-
horst's talent, his picture. " Suffer little Children to come unto Me, for of such is the King-
dom of Heaven." The theme once given, it must be admitted, Ave think, that the artist has
treated it with a great deal of natural feeling, and a healthy absence of that morbid
sentimentality that is too conmion in dealing with Jesus in his relation to other human
beings. Nevertheless it is plain that Plockhorst has not allowed in the selection of his tj-pes
for the varieties, not to say the imperfections, of human characters ; all his children, and all
their mothers, are made as pretty and as agreeable to look at, as possible. Christ is seated
upon the curb of a stone water-trough, to which a shepherd is driving his flock to diink.
This somewhat awkward arrangement is, no doubt, intended as symbolical, and recalls, the
injunction given by Jesus to his disciples: "Feed my Lambs," but the incident is not
obtruded; it serves perhaps an additional purpose in connecting Jesus himself more immedi-
ately with his time, and \\'\\\\ tlie work-a-day Avorld about liim. than Avould be suggested by
this rather idyllic incident, the blessing of the children. Jesus holds on his lap one of the
youngest of the children who have been brought to him, and two others won over by the
trusting attitude of the little one ai-e pressing eagerly forward to share the caress. Jesus lays
his hand upon the elder of the two, and in her turn, a little dai'k-haired girl debates in her
childish mind, whether she too shall not join the others. For the moment, however, she still
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
71
clings to h.er mother's side, but the mother's friendly looks promise that she will not keep her
daughter back. Behind this central group another mother stands, holding a baby in her
"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME."
FROM THE PICTURE BY PLOCKHORST.
arms, wlio beats with its outstretched hand, baby-fashion, as if impatient to do what it sees
the others doing. In the foreground a young mother, her unbound hair falling over her
72 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
shoulder and her dark mantle slipping down revealing a lighter under garment, half holds
her son, who asks her consent to share with the kindly man some of the flowers they have
been gathering in the fields, which he has taken from the wicker basket at his mother's side.
His sister, meanwhile, has made herself a garland of the same flowers and now looks up
intently at the gentle stranger with an inquiring gaze, but as yet makes no motion to go
toward him. Quite at the other side, a boy holding a palm-branch in his hand and sitting on
the ground, turns and looks up at Jesus and by his action seems as if in a moment he too
would be at his side. One mo;-e group calls for notice: the three disciples who stand behind
the mother of the dark-haired little girl. Two of these seem to be intended for Peter and
John, the third, half concealed by the others, has nothing distinctive about him. Peters face
has a frowning look, but John, who places a dissuading hand on the mother's shoulder, looks
far more pleased and interested than the contrary. It would be interesting to set beside this
modem representation of the Bible story, the picture by Rembrandt in the English National
Gallery. Here no attempt whatever is made to enlist our aesthetic sympathies by the presen-
tation of ideal types of childish innocence and beauty. For the somewhat effeminate Jesus
of Plockhorst we have a plain and rather rough man of the people, and for the pretty,
laughing boy of our picture on whose head the hand of Jesus is tenderly laid, Rembrandt
shows us a heavy timbered Dutch child with a cake in one hand, and his finger in his mouth,
not overwilling, it would seem, to be blessed. The rest of the group is conceived in the same
spirit; the objecting disciples are not present; their place is taken by a man who, half blotted
out in the deep shadows of the background, looks at the scene with a suspicion of irony in
his expression.
Er]s:st Karl Georg Zimmermann, the painter of the "Adoration of the Shepherds,"
was born in 1852, in Munich, and studied his art in the first instance with his father Reinhard
Sebastian Zimmermann, the well-known genre painter. Later he became a pupil of Wilhelm
Diez, the influence of whose style is plainly seen in the present picture. This was one of the
chief attractions of the Munich Exhibition of 1883, partly owing to the lighting of the scene
— an old device first made famous, as the reader will remember, by Correggio in his " Holy
Night," now in the Dresden Gallery ; partly, and perhaps chiefly, by the unconventionality ot
the treatment, since it must always be difficult for an artist to think out a new setting for an
old story. It cannot be said that Zimmermann has made his scene much more probable than
the older men, or than some of them, at least, but there are not a few attractive points in his
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ERNST ZIMMERMANN,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. y^
version. He supposes the Virgin to be sheltered rather than housed in a rude shed — a mere
pent-house of posts and boards wattled with heath and scarcely shielded from the weather,
although it is in fact under the lee of a big rock and the great branches of a friendly tree
may serve to keep oif some of the wind that is blowing through an angry-looking sky. Mary,
well-wrapped up and hooded, " sits smiling, babe in arm," holding the naked infants' feet in
one hand, while a warm light, stealing glow-worm-like from his divine little body, serves to
diffuse a soft glow over the people who have come, at the beckoning of the star that struggles
through the clouds overhead, to see what is this wonder it betokens. Behind Mary stands
Joseph in an unconsciously humorous attitude as if deprecating any share in this event ; he
holds a shepherd's crook in his hand, as he does, the reader may remember, in Ittenbach's
picture, already described here. His carpenter's tools, his saw, and his old hat are in tlie
foreground and a wash-tub turned upside down which perhaps he has got a job at mending.
In front of us, prostrated before Mary and her child in an attitude of devotion, is a man
whom we may take for a shepherd; he has a water-gourd slung over his shoulder: next him
are two children who bring a present of a lamb ; behind them is an old woman who supports
her feeble steps with a sort of crutch ; then comes an old shepherd, his half -naked body
wrapped about with a sheepskin, and an old sheep-skin hat on his head, while the circle is
completed by a young peasant-woman who clasps her hands in a homely, natural way, as she
looks down with delight at the new arrival. A point of less importance than some others in
this picture where Zimmermann has departed from tradition, is the omission of the cus-
tomary ox: the ass is allowed to represent the stable, all by himself, and he pulls away at
some loose straws in the manger witliout regard either to the strange occupants of his shed
or to their visitors. But, according to the prescribed recipe for this composition handed
down through the ages, the ox and the ass are always to be present, and it is so rare not to
find them, that we may say they are never wanting. Of the many pictures of this subject
which we have examined, we do not remember one in which this part of the formula has not
been respected. " Behind the cradle," says the official " Manual for the Painter of Sacred
Pictures " now many centures old—" Behind the cradle, an ox and an ass contemplate the
Christ." But the modern artist has treated the subject so freely in other particulars that he
probably felt less compunction than another might have had in taking this additional liberty.
Fritz von Uiide is another artist of our time whose paintings of religious subjects have
attracted much attention of late, owing to the seemingly bold way in which he attempts to
74 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
make the old mysteries harmonize with the details of every-day life in our own time. The
picture which we copy will illustrate our meaning. He shows us the interior of a peasant's
house anywhere in South Germany, with its bare rafters, its earthen floor and its rude
homely furniture, the clumsy table spread for the spare meal, and the peasants — the old grand-
parents, the married son and daughter and the fou.r children, about to seat themselves for
dinner. Just as they are about to repeat the old mystic formula, " Come, Lord Jesus, and be
our guest," " Komm Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast," Jesus himself appears in person, and is rever-
ently welcomed by the father of the family, in blouse and sabots, and motioned to the chair
where the wife would have seated herself as soon as she had placed on the table the bowl of
soup she has in her hands. The family are so poor that they have only one small roll of
bread, which has been placed by the mother's plate; perhaps the artist meant to suggest that
Jesus will work a new miracle by making this one roll feed himself
and the eight others. Whatever we may think of the reasonableness
of the artist's conception, it will be admitted that the incident as he
has depicted it, is treated \vith a naturalness and simplicity that do
him great credit. To say that the figure of Christ is unsatisfactory is
to say what would have been true, no matter who, in our time or in any
former time, had attempted the task. But, to,discuss this side of the
«
subject would lead us far beyond our bounds; ^11 we have to deal with fritz von uhde.
is, the way in which the artist has told such story as he had to tell. The room is well painted
mthout exaggeration of its bareness, rather with a sense conveyed of rude but sufficient
comfort. The attitudes and expressions of the children are well given ; that of the little
boy, whose curiosity has got the better of his piety, although formality still keeps his little
hands folded; that of the little girl, whose curiosity has not got the better of her devo-
tion and whose still folded hands are the index of Avhat is going on in her spirit. The
baby, whose small head just shows above the table, has no curiositj^ for anything beyond her
meek share of the soup, on which her eyes are fixed with becoming patience. The old mother,
whose eyes, closed while the customary blessing was saying, are not yet ^lnclosed to the
answering vision ; the old father mth clasped hands and yearning eyes, the stolid child at the
right — rather a servant than a child of the house — who looks with dull eyes at this unex-
pected guest breaking the monotonous routine of their daily life — lastly the practical mother
of the family who, like Martha of old, has been busied about her household cares, and who
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does not forget that she has the soup in charge while she looks with curiosity at the new
comer. The most conspicuous figure in the whole group next to Jesus is the father of the
family; in his face and action, however, there is rather more of servility than we find agree-
able, but even this is no doubt true to life in a peasant brought up under a load of supersti-
tious reverence for those in authority.
Von Uhde's studies of character are confined to the peasant-class and give him small
opportunity to express ideas outside the narrow circle of mere material cares and enjoyments.
Nor does he apparently attenqjt to move beyond the field where his first success was won, but
repeats the same ground-idea, with a
persistency that must end in wearisome-
ness in spite of the variation in the
frame-work.
Kakl Franz Edouaed vok Geb-
HARDT, born in St. Joliann, Esthland, in
1838, studied his art in St. Petersburg,
and from thence Avent into G-ennany,
where he has since continued to live
and work, being to all intents and pur-
poses a German artist. He studied for
a year after leaving St. Petersburg, in
Carlsruhe, then went to Dusseldorf and
was a puj)il of Carl Sohn, and in the
intervals of his studio-work travelled
KARL FRANZ EDOUARD VON GEBHARDT.
here and there, in Germany, in the Netherlands, in France, and in North Italy. When he
began to paint, he followed a strong bent toward religious subjects, but he treated them not
from the legendary and mystical side, but from the modern standpoint, as history, and with a
desire to conceive the events as they might actually have happened. His first picture was
the "Entry of Christ into Jerusalem ;" this was followed by a "Raising of the Daughter
of Jairus," but his first distinct mark was made by the picture that still remains his mas-
terpiece—" The Last Supper." Of how many artists may it be said that they struck fire
at the first blow, and that, ever after, they went on beating the anvil in the vain hope
of striking-out another authentic spark! However, the world may be grateful if it get
76 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
one good thing from anybody, and in its way Gebhardt's " Last Supper " is a good pic-
ture ; it is well composed, well painted, with, uncommonly good tone for a modern picture.
Our engraving gives a very good notion of the composition, and of the various expressions
in the faces of the actors in this last scene of the tragedy of the Life of Jesus. Gebhardt
had a theory of his own to disclose, and we know no reason to deprive him of the credit
of originality, although a picture by Gaye, in the St. Petersburg Academy, is strikingly
like that of Gebhardt in its general impression. But what Gebhardt had in his mind to
convey was the idea that the motive of Judas in betraying his comrades and his Master
is to be found in the essential difference between him and them so far as their aims
and ideals were concerned. He was a man, Gebhardt would say, of materialistic views,
a man of business, of practical ideas, and he found himself associated with a band of
visionaries, of socialists, of theorists, led by one who was more visionary, more of a poet,
theorist, socialist, than all of them iiut together. Tlie process of alienation has long been
going on, contempt has given place to disgust, and disgust has grown to hatred, and now the
hour has come when this Son of man is to be left to his own devices. Judas rises from the
table and goes out, but as he goes he turns to take one last pitying look at this deluded
company. All this is so clearly expressed in the picture that it really needs no comment. In
the face and figure of Jesus, Gebhardt, like all his predecessoi's, has adhered to the old tradi-
tion, but he has not followed them in making the gap between the outward personality of the
Master and that of his disciples too broad for a reasonable view of their relation to one
another as friends and fellow-workers — in the picture they sit together as in a certain
equality, and Judas, by his build and physiognomy, is really the only irreconcilable member
of the group. In Gaye's picture all that we see is the departure of Judas, his putting on his
mantle preparatory to leaving his former friends and companions ; but in Gebhardt's picture
we are shown an interpretation of the action, that, whether we accept it or not, cannot be held
unreasonable and is certainly highly dramatic.
IV.
A LPRED RETHEL, who at one time promised a careeer of great distinction, was born in
t\. 1816 at Aachen or in the suburbs of that town. His father was a native of Alsace, then
in possession of the French, but he came to Aachen in the course of his duties as a French
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official and there fell in love with the daughter of a rich merchant, whom he married. At the
request of his father-in-law he gave up his official employment and settled in Aachen as the
superintendent of a factory. Here he brought u]3 his family of children, and Alfred, on
account of his health, which was never strong, Avas allowed to follow his bent toward art. In
the beginning he came strongly under the influence of the early German artists, Durer,
Holbein, and others of the time, and finding that the ideas which he wished to express as a
result of his thinking in this direction needed an outward form in keeping with their origin,
he sought the aid of wood engravers, who should restore the primitive methods — -methods of
great value and capacity for exj>ression — in use by the masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. The first that was heard of Rethel in this country was on the appearance of two
wood-cuts, 'Death as Friend," and "Death as Avenger." They were engraved in a bold,
simple style, recalling in some respects the wood-cuts designed, but no longer believed to
have been cut, by Diirer, and the contrast between their method and that of the weak, nig-
gling cuts in A'ogue at the time, was very striking, and their example was effective in helping to
break up the system in fashion and to introduce a more manly style. We have selected the
" Death as Friend " in preference to tlie other, Avhich represented the breaking out of the
cholera in Paris at a masked-ball; and as Rethel does not s^iare the ghastliest details — among
other things, some even coarser in expression, crushing the mask of one of the victims into
the semblance of the facial contortions j^eculiar to this plague — the cut seems to us one to be
avoided rather than reproduced, since, for all that we can see, such representations serve no
good purpose whatever. The " Deatli as Friend," though by no means free from morbid
sentiment, is not without a certain charm, recognizable through all the drawbacks of the
medisevali-sm in which it is framed. The scene is the topmost room in the tower of a cathe-
dral. Through a large window, opening ui^on a balcony, we see the top of one of the carved
finials of the spire, and look far over a \\ide i)lain, through which a river, emblem of human
life, flowing by cultivated fields and houses of men, makes its way to the sea. The sun is
setting, and casts broad beams of light upward to the zenith, gladdening all nature with his
smile, even to the little bird who rests upon the sill and sings his vesper hymn. In a high-
backed arm-cliair by the window sits an old man, whose shrunken frame, weak limbs, and
hands feebly clasped in his lap as in prayer, show that his life is drawing to a close. He has
been for many years the sexton of the church, and the warder of the tower, bat now all his
watchful cares are over, and his faithful trust is to pass into other hands. His keys hang at
78
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
his girdle, and as the beams of the dying sun strike npon his face, his eyes are fixed upon the
stairs that lead upward to the platform whence he was wont to sound the horn that caUed
the laborers from their toil in shop and field. Now, the great horn hangs useless on its nail,
"DEATH AS FRIEND."
FROM THE DESIGN OF ALFRED RETHEL
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 79
and though the turret-door stands wide, and the steps invite, his feet will never more mount
the stairs, nor pass oat again from the door to the cheerful platform. Beside him on the
table his Bible lies open, and near it the wine-flagon, the drinking-cup, and the bread, while
over them hangs the image of his Lord upon the cross, whose blessing he had daily sought,
as he read in the Book of Life or as he ate his slender meal. In his youth, the old sexton
had been a j)ilgrini, and had gone with others to the Holy Land. He has kept by him for
memory of those happy days, his cockle-hat and staff, and the palm-branches gathered under
those sunny skies, and they lie in sight upon the chair where he left them when he last took
them from their chest. Lonely have been his solitary hours in the great tower, where seldom
any visitor appeared to disturb the quiet of his watch. But, now, a visitor has come, the like
of whom he has not seen since those pilgrim days ; and in the gathering twilight, and in the
dimness of his old eyes he thinks he sees again one of his youthful companions in the Holy
AVars. But this is no living stranger; this is Death, who, clad as a pilgrim, with sandalled
feet, and the cockle-shell on his breast, and the water-bottle at his side, has seized with his
fleshless hands the rope that rings the vesper-bell, and sends out the summons to the world
below to pray for the speeding soul of the brother whom he is gently leading to the Holy
Land of Eternal Rest.
The other engravings which we publish from Rethel's work are from a series of designs
issued by him in 1848, and called "A Dance of Death." Rethel's mind was naturally of a
morbid cast, and this disposition was increased by the poor state of his health. His gloomy
views of life in general colored his views of society, and his reactionary, pessimistic conclu-
sions as to the political contests of his time are revealed with unmistakable clearness in this
" Dance of Death." In the " Death the Friend " and " Death the Avenger " Rethel plainly
appears as a follower in the footsteps of Holbein, although with no trace of direct imitation,
but in the " Dance of Death " there is nothing of the older master except the name. His
object here is simply to make Revolution a bugbear to the common people, to frighten them
from attempting to assert their rights. Accordingly he draws up the Fates as Pride, Igno-
rance, and Superstition, and makes them give Death a sword, mount him on a Horse from Hell
and send him out to teach the people the watchwords Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
Whatever we may think of the spirit that animated the artist in these designs, we must
admit the earnestness, the honesty, and the force with which he preaches his doctrine. And
there can be as little dispute as to the virility and originality of his imagination. The Horse,
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alone, is a creation that few moderns have ai^proached. He appears in every scene, and with-
out diablerie or exaggeration contrives to play his part as an avenging Fnry, from the hour
when with ghastly whining and eager foot he Ul abides the delay of his harnessing by the
Sisters of Death, to the last scene, when, bearing Death as a Conqueror, he climbs over the
barricade made of the ruins of peaceful homes, and over the corpses of deluded citizens, and
"DEATH AS A CONQUEROR."
FROM "A DANCE OF DEATH," BY ALFRED RETHEL.
quenches his parched tongue in blood lapped from the wounds of the victims of Resistance
to Law and Order. In this latter picture, Bethel's skill in introducing incidents that add to
the completeness of his story and enforce its lesson without in the least confusing or over-
burdening the design, is shown as clearly as we have seen it in his " Death the Friend." The
ruined and burning house, vnXh its owner lying dead upon the threshold; at the right the
street, where the soldiers are resting by their successful cannon, while a few of their number
remove their dead, as the smoke of the conflict saUs slowly away over their heads. Another
"THE VISITATION OF THE SICK."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ADOLPH LUBEN
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 8i
detachment of troops is disappearing in order round a corner, leaving a dead rioter on tlie
sidewalk, by way of pledge. In the distance, the church-spire rises peacefully, friend and
ally of the victorious State, and at the angle of the burgher's solid dwelling the statue of the
owner's patron-saint puts up a perpetual prayer that his client in health and wealth long
may live. But in the foreground the moral of the story is driven in as it were with a sledge-
"KING'S CROWN OR WORKMAN'S PIPE."
FROM "A DANCE OF DEATH," BY ALFRED RETHEL,
hammer. Death, the garments laid aside in which he has hitherto appeared, shows as a
naked skeleton crowned w4th a laurel- wreath and bearing in his hand the great banner of
"victory. As he rides on his way he salutes the victims of his good lessons, one of whom lies
dead on his face while another drags along his wounded body and greets with his dying
breath the friend of the people. The Horse meanwhile, as we have said, licks the blood from
the wounds of the old grandfather over whom his daughter and her little son weep unavailing
tears. In the other jiicture. Death disguised as a quack preaches to the people his doctrine
Vol. II.— 0
82 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of Eqxtality, and shows tliem by actual experiment liow the laborer's pipe and the King's
crown balance one another exactly. The Horse, tethered near, grins as he hears the apologue,
an old woman, smeUing mischief, and like a good church woman, as her cross and rosary show,
unwilling to have her grandchild subjected to such an experiment in Primary Education,
sends the boy home, surly and unwilling to lose the treat of the funny man's speech. On the
other side a group of people listen eagerly to the new doctrine; a nurse-girl and her charge;
the butcher from his stall, the student from the University, a good woman of the town, a
commissionaire, a farmer on his way to market, and most amused of all a cobbler, who laughs
and slaps his thigh and thinks the quack's demonstration perfect. All this passes at the
tavern-door, where Death has posted up his programme, and where he will soon heat up his
hearers' blood still higher with a treat all round.
These works are Rethel's chief legacy. In 1844 he went to Rome, and after his return he
accepted a commission to pain a series of frescoes in the Council Chamber at Aachen, illus-
trative of the Life of Charlemagne. But his health failed him, his mind became clouded, and
he died in 1859 without completing the work.
Adolf Luben, the painter of " The Visitation of the Sick," was born in St. Petersburg of
German parents, in 1837. In 1853 he went to Berlin, where he began his studies in art, but
in 1860 he removed to Antwerp and remained there for several years. After a brief interval,
in which he gave himself up to land-surveying, he returned to Berlin and took up again the
profession of painter. He remained in Berlin until 1876, when he went to Munich and estab-
lished himself permanently in that city. His pictures are in general marked rather by humor
than by pathos, whereas the one we have been drawn to select for reproduction proves that
the artist has at least an equal talent for depicting the sorrows of the life about him. A
poor boy has been sent to fetch the village-priest to come to his dying mother, and administer
the last consolations of religion. The old priest has put on his surplice and stole, and with
the sacrament in his hands comes from the church through the gateway, preceded by the
sexton bearing the lantern with its candle lighted from the altar, and the bell whose tinkle
calls on all who shall hear it to say a prayer for a parting soul. By the side of the sexton
walks the lad, shoeless and poorly clad, holding his hat reverently in his hands as he looks
up in a manly, plaintive way into the old man's face, and asks him questions which he half
fears to have answered. The priest has a rather stolid, perfunctory expression, but the
weather-beaten face of the old sexton shows some light of sympathy for the boy soon to be
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
83
left motlieiiess in the world, and in liis rough, kindly way, puts the best face he can on the
matter. It seems to ns that very few modern painters have shown greater skill than our
artist has here proved, in telling a simple every-day story of human experience in such a way
as to appeal to the heart and the consciousness of whoever, young or old, learned or un-
learned, may chance to see his picture.
At the right of Liiben's composition we see two of the wrought-iron crosses common in
"bishop willigis and the children."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LINOENSCHMIT.
old grave-yards in Germany, -with their projecting covers to keej) the i-ain from the small
pictures that are fastened to them, or the wi'eaths that are hung on them on ceremonial days.
These particular crosses mark graves that have been placed along the road leading to the
church-yard proper: we catch a glimpse of this inclosure with its tombstones through the
gateway Avith its half -opened gate of wrought-iron.
WiLHELM LiNDENSCiiMiT, the painter of the two very diiferent jiictures, " Willigis and
the Children," and the " Death of William of Orange," is the son of a well-known historical
84 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
painter of the same name, who died in 1848. Our artist was born in Munich, in 1829, and
went with his father when quite young to Mainz. From Mainz he went to Frankfort on the
Main, and studied there at the Stadelschen Institute; thence he went to Antwerp, but, ill-
satisfied, he soon left for Paris, where he found the atmosphere and the opportunity he
needed. His principal field has been the painting of history, here he has showoi himself a
prolific worker, but as usual with artists of his class he is not limited in his choice of subjects
by any personal j)redilection in favor of one particular period or one set of events, all is fish
that comes to the historical-painter's net, and accordingly we find Lindenschmit painting
"Alva Visiting the Countess vou Rudolstadt," and " Francis I. taken Prisoner at the Battle
of Pavla," and " Luther in the House of Frau Cotta," and the " Founding of the Jesuit Order
in Rome," and more of the same sort, with perhaps a particular leaning toward Luther-
subjects. We have selected two characteristic examples: " The Death of AVilliam of Orange "
and ''Bishop Willigis and the Children: " they pr^ve the artist's versatility and his skill in
felling a story. Willigis, or, as his name was Latinized, Quilisius, was bishop of Mainz in
975. He was distinguished as a builder and as a friend of education. He commenced the
Dome of Mainz in 978, and built bridges over the Main, at Aschaffenburg, and over the Nahe,
at Bingen. This latter structure, a bridge of nine arches, was constructed on the foundations
of a Roman bridge, attributed to Drusus and called by his name. WiUigis founded many
schools in his diocese, and is reputed to have done more for education than any prelate of his
time. An anonymous poet has told this anecdote of the good bishop, illustrating his meek-
ness and simplicity:
" The Lords of Thule it did not please
That "Willigis their bishop was.
For he was a wagoner's son.
And they drew, to do him scorn.
Wheels of chalk upon the wall;
He found them in chamber, found them in hall.
But the pious Willigis
Could not be moved to bitterness;
Seeing the wheels upon the wall.
He bade his servants a painter call;
And said, — ' My friend, paint now for me
On every wall, that I may see,
A wheel of white in a field of red ;
Underneath, iu letters plain to be read —
THE DEATH OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE."
FROM THE PAINTING BY WILHELM LINDENSCHMIT.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 85
' Willigis, bishop now by name.
Forget not whence you came ! ' "
\
" The Lords of Thule were full of shame —
They wiped away their words of blame ;
For their saw that scorn and jeer
Cannot wound tlie wise man's ear.
And all the bishops that after him came
Quartered the wheels with their arms of fame ;
Thus came to pious Willigis
■ . Glory out of bitterness."
It is said that the wheels in the arms of the city of Mainz were originally in the arms of
Willigis, bat this is denied by some antiqnarians who, however, have not been able to provide
ns with a better explanation. We do not know whether the picture by Lindenschmit has for
foundation any particular incident in the life of Willigis; but so much is plain, that his
visit to the school is in the interest of a kind and sympathetic treatment of children, as
opposed to harshness and severity. The bishop sits in the school-room of the monastery sur-
rounded by the monks on one side and by the village children on the other. At his left is
the monk whose business it is in general to take charge of the school-room, a sour-faced man
who holds the rod in his hand with which he is used to enforce discipline, and which he
grudges at being obliged to spare in consequence of the presence of his kind-hearted superior.
Another monk, more in sympathy, both with the bishop and with the children, stands
behind the bishop's chair and listens with a smile to the parable wherewith Willigis is
enforcing his teaching. The children are well characterized, as they sit or stand about the
bishop's knee, but one of them, at the extreme left, seems to us more amused at the discom-
fiture of the surly brother of the rod, than attentive to the Bishop's lesson;
" The Murder of William of Orange " is a picturesque composition ; its hurry and bustle
are in striking contrast to the quiet lines and compact grouping of the " Willigis and the
Children." It was a daring experiment to attempt to depict an action taking place upon a
stair-case, there being nothing more difficult in draughtsmanship than to show people moving
on a stairs, unless it be to j^lace them in a boat. Some of our readers may recall a curious
experiment made by no less a man than Tintoretto, who in his picture of " The Presentation
of the Virgin," in the church of S. Maria dell' Orto in Venice, has placed the scene directly
upon the grand circular marble stairs leading to the Temple, the little nine-year-old Virgin sue-
86 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
cessfuUy standing on tlie top-most step, and the spectators of the miracle sitting or standing
in the intermediate space. The motive of Lindenschmit's picture would almost seem to have
been suggested by Tintoretto's bold design, but it is far more successful in respect to natural-
ness and \\gox of action than that of the older master.
William of Orange, the founder of the Dixtch Republic, called William the Silent, was
assassinated at Delft in 1584. The deed was done for money, a price having been set on the
Prince's head by the Spanish General Alexander Farnese. Visitors to Delft are still shown
the place in the Prinsenhof where William fell and the marks which the bullets of the
assassins made in the wall. An inscription marks the spot, but the building has been com-
pletely transformed in fitting it lij) for a barracks. The tomb erected by the States of
Holland to William is the cliief ornament of the New Church of Delft.
Our historian Motley, in his " Rise of the Dutch Republic " gives the following account
of the death of William :
- " On Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half -past twelve the Prince with his wife
on his arm and followed by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-
room. William the Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very
plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved loosely-shaped hat of dark felt with a silken cord
round the crown — such as had been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A
high ruff encircled his neck, from Avhich also depended one of the Beggars' medals, with the
motto,
" ' Fideles au roy jiisqu' a la besace/
While a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tavsoiy leather doublet, with wide, slashed
under clothes completed his costume. Gerard presented himself at the doorway and de-
manded a passport. The Princess, struck with the pale and agitated countenance of the
man, anxiously questioned her husband concerning the stranger. The Prince carelessly
observed that 'it was merely a person who came for a passport,' ordering at the same time,
a secretary forthwith to prepare one. The Princess still not relieved, observed in an under
tone, that ' she had never seen so villainous a countenance.' Orange, however, not at all im-
pressed with the appearance of Gerard, conducted himself at table with his usual cheerfulness,
conversing much with the Burgomaster of Leewarden, the only guest present at the family
dinner, concerning the political and religious aspects of Friesland. At two o'clock the com-
pany rose from table. The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private apartments
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 87
above. The dining-room, which was on the ground floor, opened into a little square vestibule
which communicated, through an arched passage-way, with the main entrance into the court-
yard. This vestibule was also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading to the next
floor, and was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as one approached the stairway,
was an obscure arch sunk deep in the wall, and completely in the shadow of the door. Be-
hind this arch a portal opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The stairs them-
selves were completely lighted by a large window, half Avay up the flight. The Prince came
from the dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend. He had only reached the second stair
when a man emerged from the sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, dis-
charged a pistol full at his heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which passing quite
through him struck with violence against the wall beyond. The Prince exclaimed in French,
as he felt the wound, ' O my God, have mercy on my soul ! O my God, have mercy upon this
poor people ! ' "
V.
MICHAEL MUISTKACSY was born at Munkacs, a viUage in Hungary, in 1846. The
Hungarian form for Michael is Mihaly, and we believe that this is all the name to
which the artist is strictly entitled, the name of Munkacsy being a mere patronymic derived
from his native town and serving to distinguish this particular Michael from the thousand
and one other Michaels on the planet. He was a poor boy, and with few to befriend him,
since his parents died at the time of the Revolution, in which Hungary tried to escape from the
grip of the Austrian octopus ; but an uncle took him in charge and put him apprentice to a
cabinet-maker of the place to earn his living. He stopped for six years with this employer, and
then launched out for himself as an artist, painting portraits, and small genre pictures, which
he disposed of in Pesth, until he had laid up enough money to take him to Vienna. In the
larger city he continued to prosper, and was soon able to go to Munich. Here he entered the
studio of Franz Adam, and having taken prizes for three genre pictures found himself in
funds to change Munich for Diisseldorf, where he completed his studies under Knaus and
Vautier. His first success with the world at large was obtained by his "Last Days of a
Condemned Man," exhibited at the Salon of 1870, and honored by the gold medal. In his
earlier pictures, Munkacsy's obligations to Knaus were evident, but in the painting just
88
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
'fi'^^^My-
mentioned he had the good fortune, for the first and only time in his life, to hit upon a
subject drawn from real life and from his own experience. It was an old custom in Hungary
to place a man condemned to death, just outside the prison-walls, and to put before his chair
a table wdth a crucifix and a lighted candle, with a plate on which the charitably disposed
might put an alms for the support of the family of the criminal. Such a scene had, no doubt,
often met the eyes of the young artist, and the directness and simplicity with which he has
painted it testify to the strong sympathy it excited in his mind. The artist has not wasted his
time nor ours in the painting of if/^wi^'^, in this picture; the excellent painting of the table
and the things it siTpports is not allowed to dis-
tract our attention from the more important
study of the human characters that make uj)
the dramatis personcB of this \illage-tragedy.
The criminal himself, the true centi'e of the
story, is also skilfully made the centre of the
composition — the strong light upon the cloth
that covers the table draws the eye at ouce his
way, and his natural isolation, by the drawing
aloof of the crowd of villagers in a half -circle,
moved alike by curiosity and fear, still fiu'ther
emphasizes the importance of this figure. The
j'P piteous action of the wife and child; the curi-
osity, not unmixed with admiration, of the
street-urchin who would fain draw near this chained wild-beast of a man, but that discretion
gets the better of his valor, the various types of village-life that would naturally be drawn to
such a scene — all these figures, painted with force in plenty, but without exaggeration and
without posing, rightly earned for Munkacsy the public applause: applause that was genuine
and not due to any interested dictation. Munkacsy's later works have not fulfilled these
promises, although, if we were to judge by outward signs, the public delight in his pictures
has not only not diminished, but has steadily increased. The truth is, that people in general
are not deterred in looking at pictures by nice points of accuracy either in costume and sur-
roundings or in the historical statement. If they were, there would be few pictures that
would satisfy them, since artists in general care little for these things themselves. Thus
MICHAEL MUNKACSY.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
89
Miinkacsy's picture, " Milton and his Daughters " has been a great favorite with the public,
although it misrepresents the poet, puts the daughters in a light to which they have no claim,
and makes Milton's surroundings those of a rich and luxurious man of the world, instead of
the poor scholar living in a plainly furnished house as we know him by ample testimony.
Doubtless, it would have been too much to ask that we should have been shown the grave,
"MILTON AND HIS DAUGHTERS."
FROM THE PICTURE BY MUNKACSY IN THE LENOX LIBRARY.
but cheerful old poet sitting as he is described to us, in his favorite attitude when he was
dictating poetry, " somewhat aslant in an elbow chair with his leg thrown over one of the
arms " — but at any rate we might have been spared this grim visage and theatrical attitude
in depicting so simple-mannered and so honest a man. The daughters were by no means the
pleasing domestic beings they are here represented— they were cross, undutiful, and disobedient,
who rendered very grudging service to their father, and made his home so unhappy by their
90 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
neglect, that he was obliged to marry in his old age that he might have some one to take care
of him. He seldom called on them for assistance in writing from his dictation, generally em-
ploying a man for that i^nrpose. This i:)icture is in the Lenox Library in New York, and
whoever sees the richly furnished room in which the artist has placed Milton and his
daughters will be surprised to learn, if he did not know it before^ that Milton died a poor man,
leaving to his widow and children only about 900 pounds, in money, the income from his
printed books amounting virtually to nothing. But it would be idle to push this sort of
criticism too far in dealing with such a painter as Munkacsy. He cares nothing for such
things, and had probably never heard the name of Milton before he was asked by the agent
who exploits his talent to paint it for the market. All his pictures are open to the same
criticism, and, not only so, but as the present writer has shown in another place (see The
Studio for December, 1886), the artist's poverty of invention is so marked that nearly all his
pictures will be found on examination to be built up on one of two schemes of arrangement.
This was illustrated very amusingly in The Studio, by Mr. Joseph Keppler of Puck, who
made an analysis in outline of eight of Munkacsy's principal pictures.
One of the most popxxlar of the modern painters of Germany is Kael Ludwig Fried rich
Becker, the author of the " Petition to the Doge," which we have selected out of his nu-
merous works, to copy. Becker was born in Berlin in 1820, but after brief study there he went
to Munich and worked for a time under the fresco-painter, Heinrich Hess. Later he returned
to Berlin and assisted Cornelius in his fresco-painting in the Old Museum. By the aid of the
Berlin Academy, Becker was enabled to go to Italy, where he passed three years, dividing his
time between Rome and Venice, with which latter city he was greatly taken, and with the art
of the Venetian school, particularly with that of Paul Veronese, whose coloring and general
style he has endeavored to emulate, -with, it must be admitted, the least possible success.
The judgment of his contemporaries on this manifestly clever painter is summed up in the
nick-name " Costume-Becker " which has been given him, ostensibly to distinguish him from
the other artists of the same name, of whom Meyer, in his Dictionary, enumerates no less
than seven. Becker chooses his subjects always with a view to picturesqueness, and never
from any private or personal interest, nor is his name associated, as in the case of even a mere-
tricious painter like Munkacsy, with a single picture painted from the heart — all, with him, is
mere show and stage-play, and the best praise that can be awarded his pictures is, that they
fulfil the purpose for which they were designed, and give pleasure to a great many people
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
91
who like bright colors and showy dresses with rich furniture setting off a striking dramatic
incident without regard to possibility or even probability. The picture we copy will abun-
"A PETITION TO THE DOGE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY CARL BECKER,
dantly illustrate this estimate of the general character of Becker's work. An old Doge of
Venice is issuing from his palace, half supported by the arm of his wife, and half by a stout
92 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
cane. He is dressed in the regulation costume, fisherman's-cap (of stiflE gold brocade instead
of the rude cotton of its type !), heavy ermine cape and robe of damask silk — without which
we should not know him for a Doge, though most likely the dress was only worn on state
occasions. The lady he is with, young and handsome, and of a purely modern type— an
anachronism into which plenty of artists beside Becker have fallen, in our age of dressed-up
studio-models — is richly attired in a gown of damasked silk with a costly necklace of pearls'
and directs the Doge's attention to a lady as young and beautiful and modern as herself who
has thrown herself on her knees and holds out a petition to the old Doge, doubtless for the
pardon of her husband condemned to death or banishment for some political offense. She
holds at her side her richly-dressed little girl, who shrinks in terror from an inoffensive grey-
hound which turns to look at her as he comes down the steps. The back-ground of the
picture is filled up with a showy scene-setting of marble columns with useless drapery of rich
stuff impossibly fastened to them, a marble fire-place and mantel with a mirror, quite out of
place — except for histrionic reasons — in so small a vestibule and in a Venetian palace to boot.
We catch a glimpse, too, of a marble statue, and the otherwise vacant spaces are filled with
officials of the Doge's household, pages and halberdiers. All these details, chosen with a keen
eye to their decorative effect, are the marks by which we may always know a picture by
Becker, as far as the eye can distinguish. Of inner meaning, of true human characterization,
of real historical value, there will be found in them no trace.
The picture by H^^go Koenig, " Desdemona's Defence of her Marriage with Othello," be-
longs to the same family as that of Carl Becker, but shows much more dramatic power and
an equal sense of decorative effect. If the artist have not succeeded in completely avoiding
the appearance of a theatrical stage-setting, he has at least toned down this element, so hard
to get completely rid of, and, as some might say, not desirable to get wholly rid of, in painting
a scene from a stage-play. The main light of the picture falls upon the lovely delicate figure
of Desdemona, as, supported and partly drawn to himself by Othello, she addresses her father
Brabantio — who turns in indignation at his defeated purpose, to leave the hall. The artist
has been particularly successful Avith Brabantio, a noble figure of an old man venerable with
years and official dignity. Othello, too, is well conceived : his dark Moorish features brought
into sharp contrast with Desdemona's virgin whiteness; and his bearing, at once proud and
tender. In the background we see a youthful long-haired page prestimably in attendance
on the court, and one or two figures dimly descried are probably intended for friends of
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
93
Othello. At tlie right, beyond the Doge, Senators and nobles press forward to listen to this
strange colloquy. Just behind Desdemona stands Emilia, who puts up her hand with a
foreboding gesture as she hears Brabantio's word of warning : —
"Look to her, Moor; have a quick eye to see.
She has deceived her father, and may, thee."
"DESDEMONA'S defence of her marriage with OTHELLO."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HUGO KOENIG.
At the right are the Senators and the Doge, or, as Shakespeare calls him, both here and
in " The Merchant of Venice," the Duke. He has half risen from his chair of State, and looks
at Brabantio eagerly, as if deprecating these harsh words.
94 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
IX tnrning over the jiortfolios of pliotograjalis and etchings of German artists of our o^vn
immediate time, we are struck with the great number of humorous subjects ; these and the
sentimental subjects take up by far the larger part of the field ; history and genre occupying
the rest. This liking for humorous subjects is comparatively of recent gi'owth, or so it appears
to us ; among the older men, those who presided at the formation of the New School, there is
but little to be found that is not of a distinctly serious turn ; it is all either religious, or illus-
trative of history or legend, and the historical painting lends itself rather to epoch-making-
deeds than to anecdotes of mere manners. In the coUection of modern German pictures that
made tip the well-known Dusseldorf Gallery, exhibited in this city some twenty years ago,
there was only one artist whose work was distinctly humorous; aU the others were devoted
to themes that, in the vocabulary of the critics, are distinguished as the exclusive property
of high art. The only pictures in this collection that had for sole aim the amusement of the
spectator, were Hasenclever's (Pierre Paul : born at Remschied, in Westphalia, in 1810 and
died in 185B) illustrations to the " Jobsiade," with his " Wine-tasters " — all the rest were of a
more serious turn. In spite of the no doubt respectable claims upon the higher consideration
of the public made by these more serious comj)ositions, it must be acknowledged that Hasen-
clever's " Jobsiade " was much enjoyed by the public, and even at this late day it may be con-
fessed that had the pictures been better painted, the clearness with which the story was told
and the cleverness of characterization would have gone far to give them a permanent place
among the modern works of their kind — if there be any permanency for Avork whose sole aim
is to make us laugh at the follies of our kind !
The illtistrations to the "Jobsiade" were three; the "Leaving Home," "The University
Examination," and " The Return of the Graduate." In the first picture we see the boy
Hieronymus Jobs, setting out for the University, the object of the affectionate and highly
demonstrative sympathy of the whole household; all of whom are broken-hearted at the
prospect of losing, even for a brief period, the pride and pet of the family. The baby in the
cradle, the little sisters and brothers, the old father and mother, all are weeping; but, with the
elders, their pride in the prospective noble career of the son of the hoiise, tempers somewhat
the grief natural to the parting. The second picture is the one we reproduce from the engrav-
ing. It represents the appearance of Hieronymus before the learned pundits of the Univer-
sity, who are listening with mingled feelings of amusement, contempt, indignation, and com-
placency to the youngster's answers to their questions. Hasenclever has been compared to
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 95
Hogarth, but without much reason. Such resemblance as may be allowed, is merely superficial.
Leaving out of view Hogarth's abundance and variety, his superiority as a painter prevents
comparison with an artist like Hasenclever, who was not entitled to be called a painter ; his
work is perfectly translatable into black and white ; whereas while the world at large knows
Hogarth chiefly by engravings from his pictures, artists and amateurs of painting derive their
greatest pleasure from the sweetness and delicacy of his coloring, and the precision and bril-
liancy of his touch. A painter, as painters go, may care nothing whatever for what Hogarth
has to say, but no painter worthy of the name could be insensible to Hogarth's mastery of his
art. It is this union of qualities that gives him his permanent place in the Avorld of art; the
skill of a Hasenclever goes only so far as to tickle the fancy of his generation and to raise a
smile now and then upon the lips of those who come after. In his " Jobsiade," however, there
is something of that universality of appeal which is recognized as much at one time as at an-
other, but while the experience of Hieronymus is one that is perennially repeated, it is, for
aU that, not an experience serious enough, or important enough, to affect us very deeply. The
third picture in the series of the " Jobsiade " shows the return of the student after his five
years' course at the University ; he has passed from the chrysalis state to the full blown
" graduate," who appears in all the glory of the fast young man of the period, booted and
spurred, his empty head crowned with a cocked hat, cracking his whip, and astonishing his
simple-hearted family mth his boisterous ways.
Since Hasenclever's day, the class of subjects he cultivated has been taken up by others, and
the men of our own day have rather overstocked the market with drinking-bouts, wine-tastings,
and beer-contests on the one side, and bourgeoise anecdotes on the other. A worthy successor
to Hasenclever is Eduaed Grxjtzkeb, born in 1846 at Grosskarlowitz— a town of Silesia belong-
ing to the Circle of Oppeln. He made his first studies at the Grymnasium of Neisse. Here
the architect Hirschberg recognized his talent and assisted him to make his way to Munich,
where he became one of the favorite pupils of Piloty. His first work belonged rather to the
conventional school; he painted for the house of his friend Hirschberg a series of panels in
oil, representing the "Arts," but his tastes all led him in a different direction, and in 1869 he
made a marked impression on the public by the first of his well-known illustrations to' Shake-
speare—the scene from Henry IV. with Falstaff and Mistress Quickly in the Tavern. This
was generously applauded and followed by others equally successful; "Falstaff and his
Recruits;" "Falstaff in the Buckbasket "— f rom the Merry AVives of Windsor, with scenes
96 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
from the " Taming of the Shrew " and the " Twelfth Night." From Shakespeare he turned
to Goethe and painted one or two pictures from Faust.
The monks then attracted him, and he began that long series of good-natured satires upon
tlie brotherhood, with whose foibles his name is now as closely associated as that of his French
contemporary Vibert. As one of the paragraphists says of him : he seems to have been im-
pressed with the perpetual " thirst " of the monks, and he shows them to us drinking, in all
sorts of situations. We have tliem tasting wine in the cellar, surprised in their pious cups
by the ringing of the vesper-bell, tasting the first vintage of the cloister- vineyard and so forth,
and so on. But Griitzner does not confine himself to the potations of the brothers ; he takes
the whole life of the monastery — the secular side to be sure, for while there is no malice in
his pictures there is no trace of religious sentiment in them — and we are presented with a
series of anecdotes, glimpses of the every-day doings of these religious. Here is the monastery-
tailor placidly busy mending the garments of his brethren, and here are two brothers who have
fished out of the library-bookshelves some volunae, not as orthodox as might be, which, for
all that, seems to have greatly tickled their carnal fancy. But as we have intimated, all this
is done in a sjjirit very different from that of the French Vibert; one can fancy the German
monks shaking their fat sides in honest enjoyment over their good-humored countryman's
account of them. Griitzner has no mind to be called a specialist, and having said his say
about the monks, he has now turned his guns upon the hunters, and laughs at them in a way
that recalls Defregger and Vautier, though without imitation. Still later he has tried his
liand on a subject such as Meissonier might have chosen — "An Amateur of Art in his
Cabinet." This picture has been much praised for its expression of character, and for the way
in which the various details are painted. The picture we have chosen to give an idea of
Griitzner's talent is one of the series of anecdotes of monastic life. It is called " Shaving-day
in the Monastery," and certainly needs no explanation; even the title is superfluous, and we
amuse ourselves in studying the different characters of the monks, and the easy, natural way
in which they are grouped.
Iglee, an artist whose name has not as yet arrived at the dignity of the dictionaries, never-
theless shows himself a clever workman in the same field with Griitzner. His " Kindhearted
Friar " is a picture that would make a good pendant to Adolf Liiben's " Visit to the Sick,"
there is a diSerence, of course, in the way the kindness and pity are shown, but the kindness
and pity are the same. Here is a poor boy from the village who has, it would appear, no one
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
97,
to look after his clothes; either his mother is dead, or she is one of those incapables — happily
rare among women — who can neither make, mend, nor darn, and whose offspring are necessarily
left to the tender mercies of others. Happy for such if some good old aunt or grandmother
Vor,. IT.— 7
"A KIND-HEARTED BROTHER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY G, IGLER.
98 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
come to th.e rescue, or if necessity teach, the neglected ones to help themselves as we saw
the " Poor Student " doing, in Steinheil's picture in an earlier number of our book. In the
case of our boy a kind hearted friar, the convent-tailor, has taken pity on him and while
he'is mending the urchin's breeches he is at the same time helping him with his book and
trying to put some good ideas into his head, but it looks very much as if the youngster's
mind were on the game of ball that is to be played as soon as he can be made presentable to
the world, rather than on the book he holds in his lap, or on the wise counsels of the friar.
Yet it is not uncomfortable in the monk's cell. There is a good stove at the boy's back — one of
those porcelain stoves that are still so common in Germany, and which are not only handsome
to look at, with their rich green, or brown, or snow-white tiles, but are very comfortable things
to have in the house. Generally the seat of the old mother or grandmother of the family is
in the corner where the good brother is sitting, and where, to judge by Ms tailoring-apparatus
disjDlayed on the table at his side, and the basket on the floor with a supply of clothes to be
mended, he may often be found at work. On the wall behind him hang his pincushion and
thread-case, and a beer-mug and a piece of bread are standing ready on the sill. Less acces-
sible are some books set up on a projecting ledge of the thick wall, and another ledge supports
a religious picture, about whose frame tke brother has stuck some green branches gathered in
his walks. A quiet, peaceful little picture, ministering to love and good-will, and sure to
give pleasure to children and innocent people. It is not what we call high art, but it is not to
be despised, for the artist has shown no little skiU in the technical part of his work; the
picture is Avell composed, nothing is here that is not needed, and the effect of the whole is
as pleasing to the eye as to the mind.
If we are to judge by their pictures, it would seem that the German artists are as miich
concerned with celebrating the thirst of their countrymen in general, as Griitzner is said to be
with, celebrating the thirst of the monks. Here is Albert Schroeder, an artist who came to
Dresden in 1876 and has since been diligently painting there, pictures that recall the work
of Moreau and Leloir, though with something less of elegance. Our plate — " Your Health ! "
is, we imagine nothing more than an incident in the courtly life of the Renaissance time — a
family-party celebrating the coming of age of the eldest son who responds in gallant fashion to
the greetings of his parents and sisters. The rich furniture and decoration of the room, the
refined sumptuosities of tke table, the dresses of the personages — costly enough, for all their
large simplicity — all this is painted for no other purpose than to please the eye with a picture
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
99
of by -gone luxury and to charm the fancy with the notion that somewhere, at some time, man
and his surroundings were in a perfect harmony, exempt from all the accidents of wear and
tear that vex the souls of housekeepers. There is, of course, no more truth in such represen-
tations than there is in what is know as the " historical novel " — Scott's " Kenilworth " for
example, that takes no note of the discrepancies that existed in the material surroundings of
"YOUR HEALTH."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ALBERT SCHROEDER.
the richest jseople. They could command splendor and luxury, but not comfort, and in many
cases the contrasts are amusing for us to reflect upon— Queen Elizabeth, for example, dressed
on days of state with the barbaric sumptuousness of an Indian idol, but A^dthout stockings —
and while in the best houses and at the table of the queen dishes and drinking- vessels of
silver and even of gold were to be found, the needs of the mass had to be supplied with
pewter, or the coarsest earthenware or even wood. But in pictures of the class to which this
loo ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of Schroeder's belongs, we find the objects that in the time which produced them, were scat-
tered through many houses, here collected into one, and a completeness and unity suggested
that in reality could not have been possible. However, there is no need of considering this
too seriously, — such idealizations have always found favor with the public ; they are as old as
the oldest poetry and fiction, and they will continue to be provided by writers and artists as
long as the world shall last.
Ernst Hildebrand, another contributor to our gallery of " drinking-pieces " was bom in
Falkenburg in 1833, and studied his art under Stefieck, the animal painter, in Berlin. He re-
mained in Berlin, with the exception of a year's stay in Paris, until 1875, when he accepted a
professorship in the art-school at Carlsruhe. He began as a decorative painter, then took up
portraiture, and finally settled down into genre-painting. In this field he has paiuted a great
many works attractive to the general public; " Margaret in Prison," " Suffer little Children to
come unto Me," and specially " The Sick Child " — artather and mother watching with anxiety
the outcome of the crisis in their little one's illness ; this scene is depicted with a deep but
quiet feeling which would be more remarkable if other Gennan artists had not shown an
equally sympathetic skill in dealing with subjects of a like nature. The example we have
selected from Hildebrand's work is of a less serious character. It is the picture of a stoutly
built younker of the fifteenth century in all his bravery of parti-colored hose, slashed shoes,
and slashed leathern doublet, with his sword at his belt and a broad hat and feather slung at
his waist (since for his more ease he wears a loose hood on his head) and holding up a huge
pewter tankard which, Avith God's blessing on good liquor, he is about to toss off to our better
health!
WiLHELM Stetowski, the painter of the " Chance Meeting," was born at Danzig in 1884,
and studied, with so many others of his time, under Yon Schadow at Diisseldorf. His ap-
prenticeship completed, he made a student-journey to Galicia, led in that direction, perhaps,
by race-affinities, then to Holland and Paris, returning and settling doA\Ti in his native place.
His special talent lies in pictures of peasant life, or popular life generally ; he excels particu-
larly in depicting the life of the Fleissen, Slaves and Jews. He knows these people thoroughly,
and his pictures are full of characteristic and individual points. Some of the subjects he has
painted in the last twenty years are " Fleissen by their Evening-fiire on the river Weichsel,"
" Fleissen resting after Work," " Polish Jews in their Synagogue," " Scene during the Polish
Insurrection," " Israelites in Prayer at the time of the New Moon," etc., etc. As we may see
'• 1. ■•
M.f.-^/'rr.M/
I
.. * !a :fi < ..
f as -^f t ■ ■
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
lOI
by their titles his pictures are generally of a serious character, but the one we have chosen is
of a decidedly humorous cast. The scene is in Danzig, high up on the roof of a house where
"A CHANCE-MEETING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM STRYOWSKI.
a tiler, busy at his work setting the ridge-tiles afresh, sees a chimney-sweep emerging from a
neighboring chimney, and politely offers his grimy brother a pinch of snxiff from his generously
I02 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
opened box. Both tlie men perceive the humor of the situation, and sympathetic grins illu-
minate their respective faces. Under the influence of the odd situation and by the intervention
of tobacco, the universal solvent — caste is for the moment forgotten, and the man of soot and
the man of plaster are at one. There is a pleasant sense of open air in this picture. Fortu-
nately we are not made too uncomfortable by the smoke from the nearest chimney, since the
%vind beats it down and about the lower tiles ; for the moment its thin veil is withdrawn, and
we can enjoy the amusing rencounter in company with the other observer who looks at it from
the window of the opposite tower. The glimpse of the roof -architecture of Danzig is pleasant,
too; the characteristic tower-forms and the gables rivalling the Jacobean architectures of
England, aud the winged dragon on the summit of the gable of the house on which these men
are working, with the lightning-rod ingeniously carried up the monster's back, and ending in
the sword he waves so menacingly. Yet how few Americans who look at this picture will
understand by their owtl recollections what it means — this man sitting on the chimney-top,
so long is it since a veritable chimney-sweep has been seen in these parts. Charles Lamb's
Essay, " The Praise of Chimney Sweepers," reads to this generation, and especially to Ameri-
cans, like a tale of medifeval manners ; in his days the law had not yet stepped in to prevent
the employment of children in sweeping chimneys. " I like," he says, " to meet a sweeps
understand me —not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive — but
one of those tender novices, blooming*through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not
quite effaced from the cheek —such as come forth with the dawoi, or soinewhat earlier, with
their little professional notes sounding like the ^eep, peep, of a young sparrow ; or liker to
the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the
sun-rise? ********
" When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation ! to see a chit
no bigger than one's seK, enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces
averni — to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through so many dark stifling
caverns, horrid shades — to shudder with the idea that 'now, surely he must be lost forever! '
— to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight — and then (O fulness of
delight!) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge
in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a con-
quered citadel ! "
In short, the chimney-sweeper, young or old, is generally a thing of the past, even in
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 103
countries where the use of bituminous coal or other soot-producing fuel makes frequent
cleaning of the flues necessary; machinery, coming to the aid of the law, has made it unneces-
sary for human beings to go up the chimneys broom in hand, and we suspect that, even in
Danzig, Mr. Stryowski's picture would be considered an amusing picture of a " survival "
rather than a record of a general contemporary custom.
In Treuenfels' " En Passant," we have an encounter of a different kind from the one de-
picted by Stryowski, but the two would make amusing pendants. A Spanish market-man on
his morning road to market, his donkey laden with the produce of his garden, stops his beast
under the wall of a house where lives a girl of his acquaintance, who, just in the nick of time —
knowing nothing, of course, of his hour for passing — pops her head over the terrace-parapet,
and invites him to a flirtation. He, nothing loth, springs to his donkey's back, and from this
poiat of vantage carries on the merry war of words ; the objective point being the bunch of
garden-flowers he holds behind his back. He has not hid them quick eno^^gh, however, to
escape her discovery, as her pointed finger shows, and she laughingly reproaches him for hav-
ing destined it for another girl, to which he swears by all the saints in the Spanish calendar,
etc., etc,
" Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever.
One foot on sea, and one on shore.
To one thing constant never."
Nor is the case altered when both feet are on a donkey's back ; deceiving comes no less
easy. Constancy is the word, however, with the donkey — comfortable, patient little Creature,
covered over with his absurdly disproportioned load already, but never so much as winking,
when the solid avoirdupois of his master is added to the burden. The donkey and his load
are prettily painted— the so-called animal rather better painted, one may think, than the
human beings!
A more important artistic jDersonality than all who have come before us in this part of
our work is :
LuDwiG Knaus. This most famous of the German genre-painters and the head of the
younger Dusseldorf school, was born in 1829 in Wiesbaden. He made his studies at the
Academy in Dusseldorf in 1846 and remained there, under Sohn and Schadow, until 1852. He
then betook himself to Paris and studied there continuously, with the exception of one year
I04
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
— 1857-58 — passed in Italy, for eight years, during which time he sought to make himself
familiar with the whole method of modern French painting, and as a result of his industry.
"JUST IN PASSING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY N. TREUENFELS.
which would have availed but little had he not possessed a remarkable natural talent, he
reached a point where his skill was acknowledged bj^ the French themselves. He achieved
< <3
5 <
I- Q-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 105
distinction at once on Ms first appeal to tlie public; exhibiting in 1858 "The Golden Wed-
ding," and in 18o9, " The Baptism." It was by this latter picture, better known here as " The
Christening," that he was first introduced to America, and we must think that in spite of all
we have seen and learned since that time, this picture, so warmly, enthusiastically greeted,
would still be found to possess sterling qualities siich as will preserve it, for a long time at
least, from the fate that so often overtakes popular favorites. Before we come to consider it
more at length, we will continue our story of Knaus's movements up to the present time,
although his life, like that of most artists, has been so uneventful that a few words will suffice
for the outline. In 1860 he left Paris and passed a year in his native Wiesbaden ; lived from
1861 to '66 in Berlin, then made a brief stay of eight years in Diisseldorf, and in 1874 took up
his residence in Berlin, accepting the position of Professor in the Academy of that city, where
he still remains actively engaged in teaching and in painting. Some fears were entertained
lest the duties of his professorship should engross too much time better given to his art, and
also lest the narrow, provincial spirit of the capital where, under the shadow of swords, neither
art nor letters have ever flourished, should quench the light of his talent. But no such bane-
ful efl:ect has resulted : Knaus's talent is too well grounded to be thrown off its balance so
easily, his technical skill is the result of long years of steady practice and of conviction, and
it was not to be supposed that at the age when he went to Berlin to live he would change his
methods of work or his artistic aims. For the rest, Knaus's aims in art have never been in
advance of his public ; there is nothing mystic, searching, or aspiring in it, and the only time
when he attempted to rise above the level of his humorous or pathetic domesticities and anec-
dotes— in the " Holy Family " painted for the Empress of Russia — he signally failed to satisfy,
not merely the person for whom it was made, but the public at large. " The Baptism," of
which our copy gives a reasonably good idea, is perhaps the highest of all Knaus's achieve-
ments, and certainly shows him in a very favorable light, whether we look at the technical
excellence of the work or the spirit of the composition. We are shown the living-room of
the family in a peasant household of the better class ; the furniture and fittings are of the
simplest character, but all is comfortable if homely. There is the usual porcelain stove with
the hanging shelf above it ; the rude cupboard ; on the shelf the prayer-book, and the almanac
on its nail at the side ; the solid table, set with the festival-breakfast, and the plain bench
alongside it that serves the youngsters of the family for a seat —the few chairs being reserved
for the elders and for guests. The chief figure in this picture is, no doubt, that of the young
io6 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
mother, who for the first time since her confinement, sits up and takes her part in the intro-
duction of her youngest born to this pleasant world and the pleasant people in it, now to be
given a name of his own ; no longer an indistinguishable human particle but a concrete John
or Paul. She has dressed herself for the happy occasion in simple fresh holiday attire ; an
embroidered stomacher encircled with a cheerful ribbon sash, ..a ruffled muslin fichu that
allows a necklace of gold beads to peej) out, and a modestly embroidered skirt of muslin over
her figured gown. She is not very strong as yet ; her hands lie softly in her lap and her head
rests on the back of tne chair — this chair the best the house affords, relic of some richer
family in older days — and her face turns with a faint smile toward the queer little chap
bundled up in old-world fashion — who blindly conceives that something is to be done to him ;
he knows not what, but doesn't like it, and by no means content with the good old Lutheran
parson's way of holding him. Near the wife sits the husband, holding one of the younger
children on his lap while he dips his coffee-cake into his cup, but doesn't eat it as yet, for the
pride he has in looking over at the baby. The little girl is not altogether content ; she feels
that something has happened to dethrone her from the place she held but a few days since;
her eyes are on her mother's face — who is looking somewhere else; so she cuddles up more
closely to her father's bosom — her father, too, with only half a thought for her. Meanwhile
the young gentleman, the heir of the family, who, till the appearance of this stranger was
certainly not second in the family, stands by his father's chair, rosy-cheeked, hair curling
lightly round his pretty head, slowly making away with a slice of christening-cake, and with
an annf ul of apples, but even more intent on the new arrival than on the discussion of these
unwonted dainties — his toy-horse and ball, too, neglected on the floor. The central group
of the composition is made up of the venerable pastor holding the much-swaddled infant in his
arms, the old grandparents on either side — the grandmother a little anxious at the creature's
cries, the grandfather, on the contrary, much pleased thereat and asking the parson whether
he doesn't consider that cry proof of a lusty pair of lungs. The family poodle, pushing up
from under the table-cloth, must needs add his voice to the baby's, but his is another nose-out-
of -joint, for nobody marks him. The slatternly housemaid; the two little girls, the younger
and older sisters of the baby's mother, equally proud of their new nephew; their big brother,
who blows his coffee to cool it, with the usual indifference of big-brothers^to family incidents of
this nature; the neighbor's little daughter, who comes timidly in for her share of the festivity
and for a sight of the baby, ushered in by one of her village admirers, who looks at her
J
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 107
askance from behind the friendly shelter of the door, and greeted Avith a friendly word by
the old schoolmaster, who takes his pipe from his lips to say good-morning — such is the
draTnatis personce of this once favorite picture, which is now owned in this country.
The " Glance Behind the Scenes " is one of Knaus's latest pictures ; painted in 1880, it is
now in the Dresden Museum. Here, surrounded by all the frippery and utilities of their art
we see the poor family of wandering acrobats resting a bit before they are called on to renew
their gambols for the village public. The factotum pulls aside the rude curtain to give the
summons and we catch a glimpse of the slender audience, while, high in the air an unskilful
apprentice at rope-dancing, essays some anxious steps. Inside the tent, the father in his
pitiful clown's dress feeds the baby from a nursing-bottle. The wife, resting with outstretched
legs from her arduous performance of Queen of the Air, and with a big shawl wrapped about
her shoulders, listens to the delicate compliments of the village lawyer, who puffs his cigar
between his sallies of bovine wit. This gentleman is well protected from the weather by his
thick coat and warm gloves, but the father draws close to the stove, where the soup is cooking
and the potatoes, roasting, and the two pretty children whose part in life it is to be tossed
about in the air like balls, are trying to get a little warmth from the same source. The per-
forming-dogs, too, seek the comfortable neighborhood of the stove, and the children, in sj^ite
of their familiarity with the animals, must chat a little with them as they stretch out their
hands to the fire. Scattered all about the tent-floor are the properties of the troupe ; the
mantle of the Queen of the Air inscribed with mystic characters, is drying on the line after the
recent shower — here are the weights, and the tambourine, and the cannon-balls, and at one
side, the bedding and the camp-chest of these jioor children of fortune — all this scattered
detail painted with the utmost skill and delicacy, and yet Avith a freedom that makes the mere
painting of Knaus a pleasure apart from his subject.
The other pictures of Knaus need no particular description; he who runs may read. " The
Cock of the Walk " is not a character peculiar to Germany, nor, were he always so attractive
in his personality as this manly little chaj?, would the breed be so out of favor. But, it is
one of Knaus's characteristics that, without being in the least sentimental, he always contrives
to present everything on its good side or, let us say, its agreeable side — and there are few
things that have not a side on which they can be enjoyed. A Cock of the Walk might be a
bullying, blustering, or sulky chap ; such an one Knaus would never be drawn to paint. The
one he has painted has no doubt a good notion of his own importance and enjoys a pleasing
io8
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
contidence in his power to have his own way. But he has two virtues to one fault. He
stands his ground, but keeps his hands in his pockets till he needs to use them ; the carnation-
pink he chews on, both shows he has some native refinement — else he might have chosen a
straw — and serves as an excuse for keeping his mouth shut till the time comes for speaking.
"THE COCK OF THE WALK."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG KNAUS.
Though poor, he is a tidy little man, and maintains his dignity by keeping his clothes in
good order!
And so with the "Wisdom of Solomon! " Who but Knaus could make an old clothes
dealer, and a Jew at that (Tell it not in Gath!) instructing his shop-boy in the elusive arts of
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
109
his trade — so essentially human and respectable that, far from being repelled by him we are
strongly attracted to him and listen to his instructions— or wish we could — with a\adity.
How he delights in the aptitude of his pupil; how conscious he is to himself of the humorous
' THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG KNAUS.
no ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
side of Ms code of morals ; the action of Ms right hand compared with that of the boy's shows
that he has been forestalled in his application of the Wisdom of Solomon to the old-clothes
trade by the qiiicker wit of his disciple, and a sympathetic chord is struck between the two.
There has been a war or a revolution, and the old man sits in 2Lfauteuil wrested from some
palace or chateau; behind him a pUe of rich coats and waistcoats, breeches and top-boots;
even the trumpet of the regiment's band has made its way to this den with the rest, and the
sword of some fallen officer. But the elder takes it all philosophically, and teaches the
younger one the art to transform all this disorder indicative of "second-hand" into the
tempting regularity and neatness of the " new stock " that shows folded and orderly on the
shelves at the left.
VI.
ALOIS GABL, a genre painter of talent, the painter of the truthful and amusing " Grand-
^ mother's Fairy-tale," was born in Wies, in Pitzthal, in Tyrol, in 1845, and made his way
through many and serious difficulties to the study of art. In 1862 he went to Munich, where
he studied at first under Schraudolph and Ramberg, and later under Piloty. In the beginning,
he seemed bent on following the footsteps of Defregger, which would have been a pity, since,
even if we admit that we cannot have too much of so clever a man as Defregger, we certainly
can have too much of his imitators — and of imitators, good, bad, and indifferent, Defregger
has enough and to spare. Gabl's first success with the public was gained by his lively and
dramatic representation of " Haspinger Preaching Eevolt," but his next picture, " Recruiting
in Tyrol," was even better received, owing no doubt to the subject. Some of his pictures
painted after these first successes were not so fortunate with the public, but in 1877, at the
Berlin Exhibition, he again came to the front with his very clever " His Excellence as Referee,"
in which he took o£E in the most amusing manner the love of quarrelling attribiited — by their
neighbors, of course — to the people of Uxjper Bavaria. Whether any painter of Upper Bavaria
has tried to express in a picture the special failing, whatever it may happen to be, of the
people of Lower Bavaria, we are not informed. Gabl followed this success with others of a
similar humorous character, among them the picture we here present to our readers. There
is an Italian character about this picture, reminding us of the work of Chierici, whose clever
" Fun and Fright " is one of the public's favorites in the Corcoran Gallery. This expression
"THE STORY-TELLER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ALOIS GABL
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. in
may be derived from Gabl's Tyrolean extraction. At any rate, there is a vein of humor in his
picture, of a sort not common in German subjects ; something appealing more to the fancy and
less to the animal spirits than we generally find in Teutonic essays in this direction. In this
plain Tyrolese kitchen the children of the family are gathered together of a cold afternoon
when the corner by the big porcelain stove is comfortable and cozy, to beg a ghost-story, a real
creepy-crawly ghost-story, of grandmother. There are five of them, counting the baby, and
they are seated about the sturdy table with the slanting legs pecu.liar to the Tyrol, listening
with their bodies as well as with their ears to the delightfully horrible narrative as it spins
itself slowly out with blood-curdling details to a ghastly close. Slowly, slowly, old Granny's
finger is raised, and although the children have heard the story before, and know what is
coming, the fascination is still potent, and they await the climax with the same intensity of
dread that held them in its grip when the experiment upon their credulity was first tried.
The only one who is proof against the coming blow is the boy who is chuckling with inward
delight in the antici]Dation of Granny's final dart at the pale-faced crowd with her pointed
skinny finger ;' and is fully determined to show her that boys are not as silly as girls ! His
elder sister has a look of mingled disgust and fear as, conscious of her own weakness to resist,
she yet dreads the coming climax. The girl next her, holding the baby, is less moved than
the rest ; the baby itself seems more disturbed at the low whispered crooning of the old dame
than her nurse. The child in front, sidling away on her big stool, is somewhat in sympathy
with her brother, whose courage she admires, though she can hardly emulate it. The old
grandmother is a capital figure, and her attitude is well conceived. She is not too old to enjoy
the situation ; she enters fully into the humor of it, and will laugh as heartily when the final
scare comes, as the merry-faced boy himself. There is great skill required in telling a story
like this with the brush. It is difficult to keep within the line that separates truth from ex-
aggeration. A word for the technical skill that has placed this group of people so deftly in
light and air ! " We can see all around them," as the phrase is. And in spite of its homeli-
ness, there is something pleasant about the room. If it be homely and plain, it is a comfort-
able place, and the solid furniture and belongings speak of well-to-do people. There are some
plates of painted faience on a rack, for holiday-use, and grandmother has a chair to herself
well stuffed and made to shield her from the draughts. High up on the wall by the stove is
a picture of the Virgin with a lamp suspended before it and a holy-water cup below it, with a
medal of the Pope, and alongside the Virgin a smaller picture of some other saint. The
112 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
father is out hunting; a pair of shoes is under the bench that goes round the stove, warming
for him against his return. His young son, as his hat and feather show, shares his sport
sometimes, or, rather, for liunting is not all sport with these mountaineers, sometimes helps
him at his trade.
Hans Dahl, though not a German by birth, has so identified himself with the country
where he was educated, and where he lives and works, that we are justified in considering him
hei'e. He Avas born at Hardanger, in Norway, in 1849, as his Scandinavian name would lead
us to suspect. The first years of his youth were passed in the military school, and he had at
one time the desire to be an officer in the army, but after two years, in 1871, he abandoned
this design and gave himself up to the study of painting. He made his first studies at Carls-
ruhe, where he had for professors, Riefstahl — of whom we have already spoken — and Hans
Glide, a countryman of his own born at Christiana, in Norway, but now settled at Carlsbad as
professor in the place of Schirmer, lately deceased. Gude, as we shall see, had found small
encouragement for his art in Norway, and the same lot befell Dahl, but in spite of this failure
on the part of their countrymen — a failure due to no want of appreciation, but rather to want
of means and opportunity, since the Norwegians are not a rich people — both Gude and Dahl
keep their country constantly in mind in their pictures ; Gude's landscapes have carried the
beauty and grandeur of Norway scenery over all the world, and in a less imposing, less im-
portant way, Dahl's pictures convey the same national flavor. The first introduction of this
pleasant humorist to our country was through a photograph from one of his pictures repre-
senting some country -girls sliding on the ice. They were coming swiftly toward the spectator,
in a line, one immediately following the other, their eyes sparkling, their faces aglow with ex-
citement, their bodies erect, intent, and with such a sense of life, that for weeks, so long as the
picture remained in the window of the shop where it was shown, it was always surrounded
by a group of smiling faces. Of course, it was a trifle, but in a world where trifles play so
large a part, and where it is to be hoped they may long be allowed to plaj^ it, the solemn duty
of the trifler is to do his work well ; to go at it with zest, to keep it up with spirit, and never,
on any account, to apologize for his or its existence.
The picture by Dahl here presented to the reader: "Too Late" is not so full of animal
spirits as the " Snow Slide," but it is an amusing anecdote of country-side life, and tells its story
as cleverly. The aftermath is gathering, and the edges of the meadows left untouched by the
scjrthe of the reaper are cut by the gleaner, and carried off to the farm-yard as bedding for
HI
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 113
the cattle. On the farm the women take their turn at field-work with the men, and this'
afternoon, Olga has gone with Bruno and Olaf to the field that lies along the^orcZ near its
mouth, separated from the water by a shelving lip of sand, and a narrow belt of thin grass and
lady-birches. The afternoon has worn away, and Bruno and Olga have scraped together a
few armfuls of hay, but, with so much laughing and chatting, they have accomplished less
than might have been hoped for. And now comes Olaf, with a bundle of hay on his head as
big, to say the least, as Bruno's and Olga's put together. He has come down the bank in
answer to their call, and balancing his load by the rope that holds it together, has stepped out
upon the stones, expecting to find the boat in waiting, and after adding his hay to the load,
to row home to supper with his companions We can see the situation at a glance. No sooner
have Olaf's sabots landed with a clumjo on the last stone, than Bruno with a malicious grin
and a strong sweep of the oar has pulled off the boat, and Olga dropping her oar and com-
mitting it to the care of its improvised rowlock, starts up laughing at the jplight of her good-
natured companion, and at his puzzled face looking out of his bundle of hay like a bird out
of its nest. However, with three such friends, we need not trouble ourselves over the out-
come of this jjiece of sport. After the due amount of chaffing has been gone through Avith,
Bruno will reverse his sweeps, Olaf will step aboard, add his burden of hay to the rest, and
taking up Olga's oar, while she seats herself upon the soft pile, they will row home along the
'liord to tell the story of Olaf's discomfiture to their mates about the supper-table. The land-
scape in this picture is an example of Dahl's skill in harmonizing his figures with their sur-
roundings. These hardy, cheerful people mixing up mirth and mischief with the hours of the
laboring day, have a look very different from that of the French jjeasant, as we see him, at
least, in pictures; either the real peasant of Millet or the make-believe ones of Breton. And
Dahl, who knows his native landscape as well as he knows his own people, has placed them
in a corner of the land just suited to them. They belong to this grassy shore — one of many
breaks in the gray mountain-wall — with its light fringe of birches, and its strip of silver sand;
the clear water spreading out with rippling haste into the sunshine from under the dark cliff
— a scene of mingled brightness and strength.
There is a group of artists in Germany who are devoted to the cult of little children and
of youth. They seem to have a peculiar insight into the nature of young people; an innate
sympathy with them; and certainly they have a skill altogether their own in reporting their
actions and attitudes. The French had a master in this field — Edouard Frere — but his is
Vol. II.— 8. * *
114 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
almost the only name of note in Ms country to be seriously considered. Boutet de Monvel
lias an undeniable cleverness, and is always amusing, but he verges too closely upon carica-
ture ; even his style of drawing suggests that he is not in earnest, and does not mean to be taken
seriously. And, then, the world of children he introduces us to is not the world we all know ;
it is a world peculiar, not to France, even, but to Paris; nowhere outside of Paris could
children such as this artist has created be found, or, let us say, imagined. The English, too,
curiously enough, considering how fond they are of children, and what success they have had
in creating a type of childhood and youth such as has not been approached by any other
people, have had hardly any success at all in depicting their masterpiece, after they have
made it. The children of Reynolds are not real children; those of Gainsborough are more
like flesh and blood, but they rather resemble undergrown men and women than children; an
objection with which the costume of the time may have something to do.
In our own day, in England, we have Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway, both of whom
have made a wide reputation among English-speaking/ people by their illustrated picture-books
for children, and they have both done pleasant work, especially Walter Crane, but neither
seems capable of completely sympathizing with childish nature ; neither is as unconscious as
childhood. Especially is this the case with Miss Greenaway, whose children are not only
always posing, but pouting as well ; it is noticeable that among all the children she has drawn,
scarcely one will be found who does not look either cross or unhappy.
In Germany, however, there are artists not a few, who have taken the field of childhood
— strevtTi with daisies and buttercups, —for their field, and charming are the things they have
done in it. This love for children, and sympathy with their lives, is an old inheritance with
the Germans ; some of old Lucas Cranach's pictures — one subject in particular that he was
very fond of, " The Repose in Egypt " — are as lively in their presentation of the charm of
infancy as the bas reliefs of Luca della Robbia; and Diirer himself, in his treatment of the
same subject, has shown a surprising sense of participation in the frolicsome mirth of children.
So that our modern Germans come rightly by their prosperity in the same vein. The best of
them, indeed, Ludwig Richter, would seem to have been inspired by the study of these older
■German masters.
Adrian Ludwig Richter was born in 1803 at Dresden. He died in 1884, at the ad-
vanced age of eighty-one. He learned his art from his father, who was a copper-plate engraver
.of some repute, but he preferred to be a painter, and it would seem that his tastes led him to
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
115
landscape-painting rather than to the figure. In pursuit of subjects, he travelled Avith Count
Narischkin through France, and south as far as Nice; later he made a tour in the German
Alps, and by the sale of the sketches made in these journeys he was enabled in 1826 to go on
an extended visit to Italy. In 1828 he was made Professor of Drawing at the Meissen Porce-
lain-factory, and in 1836 he went to Dresden, where he both practised his art as landscape-
painter and filled the chair of Professor in the Academy. He had already gained some repu-
tation for his skill in introducing figures into his landscapes, but his biographers tell us that
it was the sight of certain illustrations by Count von Pocci that first led him to the field he
came to occupy with so much distinction. In the begin-
ning, he confined himself to illustrations of books and
poems; folk-songs, student-songs, the popular tales of
Musseus, Schiller's " Song of the BeU," etc., etc. ; these
were so warmly welcomed by the public that he was led on
to making designs of his own, and from time to time pro-
duced his illustrations for the " Lord's Prayer," together
with " Out of Doors," " Old and New," and others, from
which latter series we have selected two or three designs
for our readers' pleasure. In these designs, Richter intro-
duces us into a world of his own discovery; a very pretty
place indeed, but little less than a children's " Land of
Cockayne." It is a world of solid German comfort, chiefly adrian ludwig richter.
inhabited it would seem by children, beings of perfect innocence, as of human doves or lambs,
and of perfect health of body, who live in the prettiest toy-houses imaginable, with the
neatest and most picturesque surroundings — ^but all sensible and practical ; with comfortable
clothes and plenty of meat and drink, and nothing to think aboiit, except to think — softly to
themselves all the day long — that everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds !
It would be easy to criticise Richter for the sameness of his faces and figures ; for his
narrow range of incident and character; but as he is without pretension to any name hisrher
than that of illustrator, and as his designs are in perfect harmony with the subject-matter, the
objection has but little weight. Beside, the sameness of the faces is more in seeming than in
reality. It strikes us at a first glance, but it disappears on a closer examination. Take, for
example, the children in our engraving, " The Greeting," so immaculate in their get-up, so
■hH
ii6
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
evidently "of the Kingdom of Heaven! " They are by no means all brothers and sisters; on
the contrary, one of the charms of the picture lies in the variety of faces and characters dis-
"the garland-weaver."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG RIGHTER.
cernible under this soft illusive veil of sameness of line and texture. Here is the stolid nurse-
girl with the baby on her arm holding his own special bouquet, and dancing his feet to the
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
117
music. In front is a chubby child with a wreath of roses and two big bouquets ; her little
hands so taken up with her burden that she has only one finger to spare for holding the
address of welcome. She is spokesman
for the company, and evidently the pride
of the Deputation, if we may judge by
the admiring looks that are divided be-
tween her and the Guest of the Day!
And how cleverly Richter makes us feel
that there is a Guest of the Day, and
that he stands in front of the group of
innocents, listening to their song of wel-
come, and responding -with gracious
smiles to their sweet looks and voices.
The reader may amuse himself with
studying out the other i^ersonages in
this rustic drama; better still, let him
submit the picture to the judgment of
a circle of intelligent children, as the
writer has done. It will be an easy
proof of the expressive power of Rich-
ter; the living children will read the
characters of the painted ones, and call
them by their names; one little finger
points out the child in the background
who is singing his part in the song in
sweet unconsciousness of everything
about him. Another pair of bright
eyes spies out the youngster who peeps
from behind his big wreath at the small
spokesman in front. One wee piece of
humanity is taken with the sedate child in the middle of the group, and so, one after another,
the favorites are chosen and remarked upon. Nor do the other pictures by Richter fail of
"THE SERENADE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG RICHTER.
ii8
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
approval from this unprejudiced audience. Perhaps the young girl twining her rose-wreath
under the trellis; or the young lover
singing his serenade beneath the win-
dow of the room where the maiden lies
asleep, guarded by the lily-bearing an-
gel, will interest them less than the
"Pfingsten Morning," though even in
these pictures there are many pretty
details, that childish eyes will be quick
to discover. In the " Rose- wreath," the
sense of tranquillity is ingeniously
heightened by the quiet smoker at the
casement window looking down from his
height upon the peaceful terrace with
its dozing cat and cooing doves, while
he knows that under the rose-trellis his
pretty daughter is sitting and making
herself a garland against the coming of
her lover. But the " Pfingsten Morning "
is the best of all. The young mother is
coming out of the cottage with her baby
on her ann, and followed by her hus-
band, both on their way to the christen-
ing in the church at the toj) of the hill.
In honor of the day the front of the
house has been hung with garlands, and
flowers in pots set on the window-sill,
and all the neighbors' children have
come to welcome the baby and its
mother with songs and bunches of flow-
' PFINGSTEN MORNING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG RICHTER.
ers, gathered in the field. By the mother's side is her little Hans in his quizzical jacket and
bits of trousers, who has had a rag-baby dressed up for him to hold, and who stands at his
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
119
post like a little man, resisting the allurements of his (and our) favorite poodle! On the
other side sits the cat, who, in spite of experience, cannot wholly accept assurance that the
poodle's barking means nothing, and that she is not to be immediately devoured! And the
tulips lift up their cups to drink the baby's health, and the doves pledge the new-comer in
water from the crystal spring, while children's voices send down the song of greeting to the
Spring:
0 thou joyful,
0 thou blessed
Bringer of good-will,
Pfingsten Morn !
Oscar Pletsch, whom it would be unfair to call a rival to Richter, though he is a worker
in the same field, was born in Berlin in 1830. He took early to design, and went to Dresden,
where he studied with Bendemann, and began under his influences to make Bible- j)ictures,
from which he was happily called away to do military
duty. Later he returned to Berlin, and there earned his
bread by making book-illustrations and designs of one
kind and another. In 1857 he drew attention to himself
in high quarters by presenting to the Crown Prince and
Princess a collection of designs with subjects drawn
from the life of children, and these were so warmly re-
ceived that our artist found his vocation fixed, and
henceforth devoted himself to these themes. Like Rich-
ter, with whose name his owa is so intimately associated,
Pletsch has gone outside the beaten track of illustrating
the works of others, and has made books of his own
where the designs are held together by some slight
thread of sympathetic text sufficient to give them a
reason for being. " The Children's Room," " Little People," " Schnick-Schnak," etc., are
some of the titles of these collections, and we have selected two of the designs that may
give a hint as to their general character. The designs of Pletsch are wanting in the
ideal character that is so marked in Richter's art. They are almost without exception
faithful transcripts of real life with juSt that touch of refinement, the elimination of the
ugly— or, rather, the dwelling on what is graceful and pleasing, that is the artist's privi-
OSCAR PLETSCH,
I20
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
lege to bestow. He is far behind Ricliter in his power of suggesting character, and dis
tinctly inferior to him in invention and in a sense of humor. The little chap in his Sunday
rig and with the rag-baby in his arms in the "Pfingsten Morning," would be impossible 1o
Pletsch, and Richter abounds in such strokes. Pletsch, however, has his own distinct merit,
and his matter-of-fact notes from every-day life please many who are insensible to the charm
of Richter's more playful fancy. In the " Young Botanist," a little boy, the child of well-to-
Y,r-r
"THE YOUNG BOTANIST."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OSCAR PLETSCH.
do parents, has been roaming the fields with his tin plant-case, and leans on the fence to talk
with a cottage-girl who is carrying her baby-sister pick-a-back. In the other sketch, " Left in
Charge," the elder sister left in charge of the house while her father and mother are working
in the field, leans against the door-post knitting, while the baby plays with the newly
hatched chicks on the doorstep. These are mere incidents, set down, in passing, in the artist's
note-book and put into more or less conventional lines, but with scarcely anything added
from the artist's own invention.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR- TIME.
121
The list of Pletsch's books for children is not a long one, but as in the case of Richter
and Hendschel, the mere titles are far from representing the amount of work they cover.
" In the Open Air," " The Alphabet," " What will you be? " " Good friends," " In the Coun-
try ■' — these are a few of the titles of these albums, x^-- , ^
each containing a goodly number of sketches : so
true to the life of children, so sympathetic with
their joys and sorrows, their employments and
their amusements, that not only children them-
selves, but all who love children, must find pleasure ^v^^^§ i
in looking at them. And as children are in general
very matter-of-fact little peoiale, preferring to see
things as they are, Pletsch has had the good for-
tune to please the young people more than Richter,
who finds his best audience among people in whom
the fancy and the poetic sentiment have been
somewhat developed. Pletsch's picture-books are
an encyclopaedia — if the word be not too grand
for the thing — of the nursery and the home in his
part of Germany, and the children of his country
can survey their small lives in his pages as in so
many mirrors. He is not playful, though he is
never very serious, and as we have said, he is not
inventive, unless it may be called invention to have
created a race of children, all of whom are pretty
to look at, well behaved, neat and orderly, dutiful
and obedient — at least, such is the rule : the excep-
tions are just enough to add a little needed salt
to season such perfection. But it cannot be denied
that the panorama of child-life that Pletsch unrolls is a very attractive one ; and however it
may be in Gemumy, where perhaps the example is not so much needed, since children are
subjected there to a stricter discipline and a more constant surveillance, yet it may be that,
here, where children are sweetly encouraged to lawlessness, by parents and friends, the con-
' LEFT IN CHARGE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OSCAR PLETSCH,
122
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
templation of Pletsch's specimens of infantile perfection may now and then awaken a desire
for a different state of things.
Albert Hendschel, another artist who has contributed much to the amusement of his
generation, and whose vein seems by no means exhausted as yet, was born at Frankfort-on-
* *^
"THE DWARF AND THE SLEEPING BEAUTY."
FROM THE DRAWING BY ALBERT HENDSCHEL.
the-Main in 1834. He was the son of a journalist who was also a dabbler in art, and amused
himself with portrait-painting. He perceived, signs of talent in his son and gave him oppor-
tunities for study ; sent him to the Stadel Institute, and when he had finished his course there,
put him in the studio of Jacob Becker, and later furnished him with the means of visiting
the principal picture-galleries in Germany and Italy. In the beginning, Hendschel painted
pictures of a half romantic cast; illustrations of favorite poems and popular tales, but his
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
123
popular reputation is founded on the numerous sketches, hints, and anecdotes suggested by
his daily observation of the life about him. Of his illustrative work the " Dwarf and the
Sleeping Beauty," from one of Grimm's Fairy Tales, is a pleasing example, the girl is a trifle
older than the story warrants, and is perhaps too modern, but no fault can be found with the
,:.,:^:.'^<
"THE BOWLING-ALLEY BOY."
FROM THE DRAWING BY HENDSCHEU.
dwarf as he sits, sword in hand, watching the enchanted sleeper— he so still, and she so still,
that the rabbit and the doves are not afraid to come and wonder at the novel sight. The
greater part of Hendschel's independent sketches are reproduced by photography, and pub-
lished from time to time in portfolios. They appeal to the public as a rule rather by their
satiric humor, as seen in the " The Bowling-alley Boy," than by their sentiment, although
124
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
his " Card-House "—a portrait, we are told, of his own boy— shows that he is by no means
wanting in the liner quality. Beside this pleasure we have in the suggestion of a boyish day-
dream in the subject itself, there is the charm of the artist's touch in the lightness with which
the cards are piled up ; the last one so airily poised that we share the child's breathless pleasure
"the card-house."
FROM THE DRAWING BY HENDSCHEL
in the issue. Comic subjects are, however, far more numerous in Hendschel's albums than seri-
ous or even than sentimental ones. He has a boy's love of fun, and of practical jokes, and a
boy's indifference to the consequences of his mischief -making. Thus, when we see the shoe-
maker's apprentice about to shy a snow-ball at the pastry-cook's boy who is proudly
carrying an elaborate sugar-candy trophy on his head to a wedding-breakfast —
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
125
" We know it is a sin
For us to sit and grin
At him here — "
but 'tis impossible to resist the impulse, altogether. A certain resemblance between the
stage and the art of painting is suggested by the fact, that we smile at this " painted sorrow,"
as we should if we saw it in an acted farce or pantomime ; but we certainly should not smile
at it, if we saw it acted in real life. In another of Hendschel's sketches, he echoes Daudet's
satire upon the Swiss. A burly native with an eye to the pennies of tourists in search of the
romantic, is jodelling upon an enormous horn, forewarned by his small ragamuffin of a son
of the approach of one of his victims. This turns out to be the stock Englishman of the
German and French caricaturists, with the well-known hat and veil and alpenstock, leisurely
climbing the mountain on a donkey several sizes too small for him. He hears the astonishing
sounds, though, as yet, he does not see the author of them, but his whole being is stirred, and
he feels that he is repaid by this touch of romance, for 'all the fatigues of his journey.
Many of Hendschel's sketches are nothing but notes in passing, of incidents that seem too
trifling for the pains taken with them, but, to the artist, nothing is trifling in which he
can exercise his powers of observation and his skill of hand.
"TAIL-PIECE."
FROM THE DRAWING BY HENOSCHEU
126
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
VII,
NEXT to Knaus in popular estimation, not only at home, in Germany, but abroad, as well,
comes Franz Defregger, the painter by common consent of peasants — of peasants
in a world he has made his own, as truly as Millet has made a world for the peasants of his
creating. Not that either world, that of the Frenchman or that- of the German, is wholly
unreal; it is based on truth and built up by observation, but the observation is confined
within narrow bounds and includes only a few tj^es. In either case, the portrait reflects in
large measure the artist's o^^^l nature : that nature colors the facts, exaggei-ates certain traits,
and reduces others to insignificance, and thus the chai-m
of individuality remains to give a zest to subjects that in
themselves are nothing.
Frakz Defeeggee was born in 1835 at Stronach, a
fai'm belonging j;0 the parish of Dolsach in the Puster-
thal, and passed his boyhood in the midst of the noblest
mountain-scenery: in the summer watching the herds, in
the winter going to school. The story of his school-days
is the old one that we have so often met vdth in our re-
views of these artists' lives ; the minds of these children
of fancy are seldom on their books, and like the rest of
his intellectual kin, Defregger made figures out of his
luncheon-bread, and scribbled his sketches over every
blank surface of wall or paper that he came upon. He
worked upon the home-farm, however, iintil 1857, when his father died, and it became
necessary for him to take the management of the property upon his own shoulders. But
he had so little capacity for this enterprise, and found so much that was disagreeable in it,
that he finally sold the farm and went to Innsbruck with the determination to follow his
bent and become a sculptor. His teacher, however, found in him a talent so much more
decided for painting, that be persuaded him to go to Munich, and secured a place for him
in the studio of PUoty. Piloty was at this time just beginning his " Kero," and the sight
of this picture made a deep impression on the new comer and confiiToed his desire to become
a painter. After the first preparatory-classes had been gone through, he was placed in
,A ' .'■ i. '* -* 4 * •'I » * % « « <( .*' ■■.'■'
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 127
the painting-class under Anscliutz, but neither the academic discipline nor the climate of
Munich agreed with him, and he went to Paris, where, although in his stay of a year and a
quarter he learned but a little, technically, yet the time he spent there did much for his
•fcaste. A stranger to the language, and unused to the ways of a great city, his health, be-
side, none of the best, he went back to Munich, thinking to resume his studies with Piloty.
But Piloty was away, and would not retvTrn for a month or two, and Defregger, to use the
time, made a visit to his native place, where he busied himself with sketching and painting.
Among other things he painted a picture of a Avounded poacher who is brought home to die,
and is led into the house just as his wife is washing the baby. Armed with this picture and
with his pile of sketches, he went to Munich, and found Piloty in his studio, who welcomed
him warmly and encouraged him with praises for his work. Gabriel Max and Hans Makart
were among Defregger's fellow-pupils, but Piloty seems to have had a special liking for
Defregger, as was perhaps natural, seeing that at the foundation of their art there was a sym-
pathy in ideas and aims, although in their actual work they were far enough asunder. The
first work of importance that Defregger produced after entering Piloty's studio Avas the
" Speckbacher and his son Andreas," of which we are able to give an excellent engraving by
Sonnenleiter from the original, now in the Ferdinandeum in Innspruck. It is a scene from
the rise of the Tyroleans against Austria, and the story is so clearly and vigorously told, that
it hardly needs to be amplified by description. The scene is in a farm-house in the Tyrol,
where Speckbacher, the leader of the insurgents, has taken up his head-quarters. He has been
sitting at a table covered with maps and plans Avhere he has been conferring with his officers,
and has started up astonished at the entrance of a troop of his followers headed by an old
huntsman, who with a grin of delight presents the leader's son to his father, as the latest and
most precious recruit. The father, a giant in stature, looks down at his son with a face where
displeasure plays a losing game with paternal pride; while the boy, looking up at his father
Avith an expression subtly compounded of affection, awe, and boldness, awaits his decision,
with a confidence unconsciously supported, no doubt, by the sympathy and admiration that
runs through the croAvd of spectators to this singular scene. Speckbacher's companions at
the table have turned from their employ to look at the daring lad ; the mistress of the house,
surrounded by her children, regards him admiringly, clasping her hands in delight ; but the
feeling of the whole assembly is concentrated, as it were, and typified in the face and action
of the old hunter, Avho acts as spokesman for the boy. He has taken off his hat and holds it
128 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
in one hand near liis head, as ready to resume it again, while with the other arm he seems at
once to protect and urge forward his young charge, as he smilingly pleads for him with his
father. The power of facial expression, undoubtedly Def regger's strong point, has seldom
been more remarkably displayed than in this picture, but in this respect the work is but the
forerunner of many similar triumphs ; and yet with all its excellence, we venture to question,
whether the picture tells the story so clearly as to make it impossible to mistake its meaning.
In our own exjDerience we miay record, for the sake of illustration, that in our ignorance of the
title, and knowing nothing of the incident but what we could make out from the picture
itself, we saw in it an old huntsman bringing his son as an offering to the cause of freedom,
in which he himself is now too old to do active service. There are several such anecdotes in
history, sufficient to make this interpretation probable, and it is an interpretation, beside, that
has a more universal, a less personal and anecdotic application than that which, as it happens,
is the true one.
In simple incidents of daily life such as Defregger has portrayed in the " First-born,"
other artists have shown as much skill as he. Every character is true to the life, and studied^
so to speak, in situ, not in any way from the professional model. Nor, it may be said in
passing, does the professional model seem to play any part in Defregger's pictures, although
we come again and again upon the same people. His pictures make us believe that we are
really making the acquaintance of the Tyrolese of the artist's district, although it may well
be that if we went there we should find the originals of his familiar faces hard to discover.
But these are real people nevertheless, wherever he found them; from the jolly old grand-
mother in her tall hat to whom the laughing baby is more than a nugget of pure gold, down
to the baby itself, content in its smiling mother's arms and yet willing to go with its grand-
father, who sits sideways on the chair before him, and cannot admire him enough. The
baby's young uncle and aunt, too, are favorite types of Defregger's ; the girl would be known,
as his, among a thousand; perhaps they are his own children, for he has had a handsome boy
like this one.
The room in which these people are sitting, although not much is shown of it, is the type
of a score of rooms in the Tyrol, made famdliar to us by Defregger and his school — for a school
it may almost be called. These are poor people, and their stove is not one of the even moder-
ately handsome sort, so picturesque in themselves, and of which the artists make such good
use in their pictures. The settle runs round it, and about it is the frame on which clothes
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 129
are hung to warm or dry. In the simple ornamentation of this frame, the rude cutting and'
carving of the chairs, the moulding over the door— we see the rudiments of a certain taste and
refinement which are met -with everywhere in these cantons, and in the better class of peas-
ant-houses produce highly pleasing results. There are professional carvers and cabinet-
makers, of course, who supply the needs of the villagers and townspeople with their wares,
but skill in handling the carver's tools is widely dispersed, and many a house owes to the
industry of the men of the family the carved beams and chimney-pieces and chair-backs
that add so much to its jaicturesqueness.
If we were asked to name the picture that best rej)resents the talent of Defregger, the
talent for story-telling and facial expression in which he excels all others who work in the
same field of homely anecdote, we could not hesitate: we should name the Salontyroler — " The
Drawing-room Chamois-hiinter." This picture, painted so late as 1882, has had an immense
vogue, and has made Defregger more than famous. There is a subtlety in the humor of it,
that gives it a pemianent charm ; we doubt if there was ever a picture painted of this sort
where the satire was at once so searching and so good-natured, and where the effects of it
were seen reflected in the faces and actions of so many different characters. The title, even,
is almost unnecessary for the enjojonent of the picture, where there is certainly no room for
so much doubt about the story as we have suggested in the " Speckbacher."
In the " Dravdng-room Chamois-hunter " we are in the big living room of a mountain
tavern in the Tyrol. The room is scantily furnished, the bare rafters are supported on stout
posts, and the low oven is roofed ^^dth a projecting cover to carry off the smoke ; at the side
of the oven is another variation of the hanging-rack for clothes and utensils of one sort and
another generally seen in these houses — here suspended from the rafters, but more commonly
built up about the stove, as we have just seen it in Defregger's " The First-born." At one
end of the room, near the only window that appears, a table is set, covered with a cloth; and
about it a group of men, some sitting, others standing— huntsmen all, from the young fellow
of twenty to the grizzled old man of seventy. They are listening with ill-concealed delight
to a city-bred youth avIio tliinks to astonish the natives by his soberly told tales of hair-
breadth escapes in his pursuit of the chamois. He is now resting from his labors, and with
the exception of the embroidered leggings and hobnailed shoes — his credentials as a liimter —
he has resumed his city costume; his cut-away coat, his cravat with its jjin, his vest, gold
chain and locket, while on the bench before him are his paletot, his opera-glass and his Bae-
VoL. II.— 0.
i-,o
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
deker. He is off to day for town, and before starting, is taking a liglit snack, a simple break-
fast sucIl as befits the hardy hunter ; a bit of meat, the loaf, and a bottle of country wine ; and
while the rest smoke their native pipes he contents himself with a cigarette. The story of his
break-neck adventures has been told chiefly to the men, as most likely to be appreciated by
those who know something about the risks ; but as he reaches the climax, a curious sound, a
"THE DRAWING-ROOM CHAMOIS HUNTER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FRANZ DEFREGGER.
sort of gurgling snicker, strikes his ear, and he turns with a serious and dignified air to meet
the bold gaze of the sturdy maid-servant who with folded arms and one leg flung over the
other has been listening with ever-growing amusement to his bounce. Beside her sits another
damsel leaning her face on her hand and half hid in the shadow of her companion's head as
she gives way to her uncontrollable mirth ; her knitting dropped, and her risibles still further
excited by her companion's fingers accenting the good ]Doints of the audacious story by fre-
quent prodding of her elbow. No living painter, nor any dead one that we remember, has
"the first-born."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FRANZ DEFREGGER,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 131
ever given proof of the skill Defregger has shown in suggesting what is passing in the mind
of the hero of this scene as he turns to look at these young women. He is too simijle-hearted
and too good-natured to be vexed, but he is grieved and surprised at being so misunderstood,
and by two such nice girls besides, for he had an eye to their approval while he Avas talking to
the men. In a moment, however, he will turn his head, and if he has any wit left, he will
read in that row of faces such a comment on his folly, such thorough enjoyment of the situ-
ation as will leave him no alternative but to own iip like a man, treat all hands round, buy
each of the girls a gay handkerchief and a knot of ribbon, and be off as fast as dignity will
permit.
If few of Defregger's pictures have reached, or deserved, the popularity of the " Salon-
tyroler," many of them have become favorites with the public, and the liking for his works
has by no means been confined to the natives of his own Tj^rol. True as he is to the character,
manners, and customs of his countrjonen, he is true to human nature everywhere, and each
spectator finds in his pictures something that answers to his own experience. The whole life
of the Tyrol seems mirrored in his abundant life-work, but his preference is to show the
sunny side of the existence of these hardy, brave, and frugal mountain-folk. He has illus-
trated their national history as well as their private life, and once or twice he has tried his
hand at religious painting, but in this field he has had no success.
Mathias Schmid, born in 1835 at See, in the Paznaunerthal, in Tyrol, looks at life in a
much more serious and earnest vein than his countryman Defregger, and though he has not
succeeded in -winning so large a place in the popular heart, is yet highly esteemed as an inter-
preter of ideas and feelings that have no place in the gay succession of Defregger's bovine
idyls.
Schmid was apprenticed at fifteen to a pictxrre-restorer to whom he had liound himself in
the hope of becoming a painter, and his first achievement was the fitting out an Eve on a dam-
aged vaulting in the village-church with a brand-new girdle of fig-leaves. In 1853 he went toi
Munich, and after two years spent in a gilder's shop, he entered the Academy and studied
under the direction of Schraiidolph. Schrandolph turned his attention to religious painting,,
and Schmid's first work was a " Ruth returning to Bethlehem," which he had the good for-
tune to sell to the Archduke Karl Ludwig. A year later he painted another religious subject
for a Church in Innspruck, " The Three Maries at the Sepulchre," and this brought him two
other commissions, so that he saw the way opening before him, when his hopes were suddenly
13^ ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
dashed by the unexpected withdrawing of the new orders. Embittered by this disappoint-
ment, he woiild seem to have made some sharp comments on the clergy of the city, for which
he was made to snffer by a sort of social nagging, and smarting under the treatment he re-
ceived, he betook himself to Munich, where he worked for some- time as an illustrator for vari-
ous journals, and at last entered Piloty's studio as a scholar. Up to this time he had never had
any regular training, but he now began to study in earnest, and to paint such subjects as he was
moved to by his o\vn experience and convictions. He chose, or rather, painted without choos-
ing, the seamy side of Tyrolean peasant-life, as Defregger had chosen the bright, attractive side,
and like another Vibert, only moved by righteous feeling and not by cynicism, he satirized the
inconsistencies of the clergy, the i^rof essional guardians of religion. His first important picture
Avas the " Herrgottshancller,"' or the Seller of Crucifixes, a picture which had in Schmid's own
country a popularity almost equal to that enjoyed by Vibert's "The Missionary's Tale."
The scene depicted is probably one that had come under the artist's eye, this or something-
like it, but we cannot help thinking that he has exaggerated the details, and that the moral he
Avould seem to draw, is one that the facts will not bear. A peddler of church-images, cruci-
fixes, figures of saints and the like, has been ■^^''andering over the country, dragging and push-
ing his covered cart with his wife and baby, and has come upon a party of priests and peas-
ants in' some village, who are playing a game of cards of an afternoon, in the open air. His
wife, hungry and tired, sits on the ground in front of the cart while the husband with an ap-
pealing- gesture toward his family, begs the priests for sweet charity's sake to buy one of his
crucifixes ; a group of little children have left their play and draw near, looking- with innocent
pity on the poor mother and child, and even the peasants who are taking a hand in the game
forget their cards for a moment to look with curiosity, if nothing more, upon the group. The
23riest immediately addressed, however, meets the appeal very ungraciously, and plaiuh' i-e-
fuses to buy, and is, beside, disposed to be cross on account of his interrupted game. Schmid
has added a sly touch of humor to a scene of pure pathos in making the other priest take ad-
vantage of his companion's diverted attention, to look over his cards, and make himself ac-
quainted with their contents.
Schmid meant this picture as a satire upon the clergy; but where is the point? Does he
mean that priests should not plaj^ cards, or that they should buy all the crucifixes and images
of saints that are ofi'ered them? Either of these objections would seem to be unreasonable,
and Ave are sure that he would find few people not determined to think ill of priests in general.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 133
to go along with him. In countries like Spain and Italy, or the Catholic cantons of Switzerland
and the Tyrol, where religion is as easy as an old shoe, and where there is no hard-headed,
sour Protestantism to give things a color that doesn't rightly belong to them, no one would
quarrel with a priest for taking a little innocent recreation ; it would seem the most natural
thing in the world, and Schmid himself has made it appear such, by showing us his priests
playing their game of cards in the friendliest manner with some peasants of their parish. As
for the crucifix-seller, he would not in real life be so unreasonable as to bring his coals to
Newcastle by offering crucifixes to priests, since they are supposed to be supplied with all
they need. In short, as it appears to us, Schmid has missed his ];)oint, by overdoing the mat-
ter. Protestants may see harm in a priest taking a hand at cards, but Catholics would see
none. Nor is it likely that even Protestants would think a jjriest could be guilty of treating
the crucifix with indignity. The only charge that might hold would be want of pity, and on
that, if he were bent on satire, Schmid should have found a way to concentrate his bitterness.
But in truth, there is no bitterness in this artist's nature, and if he looks askance at the
religion opi:)osed to his, it is only a transient feeling, born of his own uncomfortable experi-
ence. And he was soured too, by brooding over the sectional strifes that in his own Tyrol
had been accompanied by cruel persecutions for oi^inion's sake. And as he felt, he painted,
and whether he were right or wrong, the fact that he was in earnest undoubtedly gave value
to his work, even when the subject was slight, for a man avIio is in earnest in one thing is apt
to be earnest in all. His picture " Driving out the Protestants from the Zillerthal," is a pro-
test against intolerance, but there is more of sorrow than of anger in it. And in his i^ictures
which deal with Tyrolean life, although there are notes wholly cheerful, as in the " Game of
Bowls," yet as a rule, the sentiment inclines to pensiveness, if not to melancholy, as in " The
Bethrothal," " The Smugglers," and the picture we copy, " The Vow."
At a first glance, we see in Schmid's pictures, a likeness to Defregger's, but it is merely
a surface-resemblance; both are dealing with the peasants of Tyrol, but they are drawn to
different types and to different subjects. The peasant-girls Defregger paints, rarely have a
trace of sentiment: they are hearty, healthy, honest specimens of womankind, with bright
eyes, strong limbs, open, cheerful faces, and would appear to be, one and all, blessed with good
appetites and goo4 digestions. The men are made to match, except that there is no beauty
to boast of, and hard work has developed their muscles at the expense of their grace. But
they look as hajipy as the sweethearts they laugh and joke and dance with; if we were to
134
ART 'AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
trust Defregger's report— a few pictures, and those not among his best, excepted— we should
believe life on the Aim and in the Pusterthal, made up of nothing but fun and frolic. If we
find ourselves getting a little tired of this, and incUned at times to resent such a superabun-
"the vow."
FROM THE PICTURE BY MATTHIAS SCHMID.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 135
dance of animal spirits and buxomness, there is Sclimid to turn to, who by no means sees life
alj in rose-color.
Here in liis " Vow " are two young peasants wlio, in pursuance of a promise made to tlie
Virgin for tlie recovery of their little girl when she was sick and given over, have brought
her, now that she is well again, to kiss the Virgin's picture and lay an offering upon her
shrine. We are in a small side-chapel of the village-church ; on a pier, with no altar before
it, that it may be more easily reached, hangs the picture of the Virgin, freshly wreathed with
a garland of leaves and wild iiowers, and with a lamp hanging before it, and two candles just
lighted by the young father and mother. On the walls of the chapel are hung various pic-
tures ; one, a large one, represents Christ standing by the bed of a sick woman, who turns her
head languidly to look at her baby in its crib, as if commending it to the care of her Lord.
And on the wall beneath tlie picture of the Virgin there hang suspended a number of votive
offerings, rude earthenware figures and pictures ; an interesting trait of manners which, like
enough, gave Schmid the first hint of his work. It is plain that the aid of the Virgin has not
been invoked alone for human troubles, since among these votive offerings is the image of a
cow, and no doubt, we should find other domestic animals in the heap if we could examine it
more closely. Beside animals, and doll-like figures of men and women, we see at least one
member of the human body, an arm, and we may be reasonably sure that feet and hands,
eyes, ears, and noses are not absent from such a collection. This is a custom as old as the
world, and like nearly the whole ritual, costume, and paraphernalia of the Chiirch, is directly
derived from a pagan original. Such votive images as Schmid has here deiiicted have been
found in large numbers in excavations in Italy and elsewhere, in the neighborhood of temple-
ruins and shrines where they had been buried, probably to disjpose of them in a suitable man-
ner as they accumulated in the course of the year. Though removed from the shrine itself,
they were stiU, when buried in the sacred inclosure, in the keeping of the divinity whose
power had been invoked for tlieir benefit. Wherever the Romans went, carrying their reli-
gion with them along with their laws and their art, these votive offerings are found, and in
the wilder, less civilized portions of Europe, as here in the Tyrol, the custom may still be
found surviving.
These peasants have come from some little distance — as would appear from the baby-
wagon, with the wife's travelling-bag, and the keys at her waist — seeking some shrine more
famous, perhaps, tlian tlie one in their own village. The father, with his hat on his arm and
i.i6
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
his beads in his hand, looks on with rather an anxious face as his wife holds the little one up
in her arms to kiss the Virgin's jDicture. On the steps of the shrine are placed the votive-pic-
ture the couple have brought with them, and a bunch of flowers to add to the garland that
already decorates the Virgin's picture. It may be noted that the recurrence of the same
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"THE DRILL."
FROM THE PICTURE BY PAUL WAGNER.
model that makes looking over any considerable number of Defregger's pictures rather
tiresome, does not so much trouble us in the case of Schmid. But the rather sad-faced hus-
band of this picture appears again in the same attitude, with a bunch of flowers in place of
the rosary, standing by the side of his young wife that is to be, as she sits listening to the
Protestant pastor who in " The Betrothal," instructs the pair in the duties of matrimony.
"SPRING-TIME."
FROM THE PICTURE BY RUDOLPH EPP
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 137
A group of painters of cliildreh may be noticed here — among them, Paul Wagner,
Rudolf Epp, F. Dvorak, and Anton Bieffenbach, may be briefly noticed. Their pictures of
children attempt nothing ideal, as in the case of Richter and
Pletsch, but are happy transcripts of the life of the little ones
in their every-day sports and pastimes. In "Wagner's " The Drill,"
the characters of the boys are nicely discriminated, and in so slight
a subject the artist has had the skill to introduce a dramatic touch
in the giggling comment of the two little girls upon the bare legs ( J\^
and feet of the eldest boy. He overhears the oifenders, and for- > '\\\^-^i;'
getting discijpline, turns his head to call them to order. rudolph eppT
Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach, born in Wiesbaden in 1831, has devoted his talent almost ex-
clusively to the painting of children, and his " Day before the Wedding," is almost as well
knovnti as Knaus's " Golden Wedding," with which it is often hung as a pendant. He began
life as a sculptor, studying with his father at first, and later -with Pradier, in Paris. He prac-
tised his art for some time in Wiesbaden, but feeling more drawn to painting, went to Diis-
seldorf and studied there under Jordan. Later he found himself again in Paris, but in the
siege of 1870 he Avas glad to get away from the city and take refuge in Switzerland. "When
the war was over he went to Berlin to live, and has since remained there. Our picture
" Learning to Shoot," is a good example of the artist's cleverness, not merely in the delinea-
tion of character, but in making everything tend to the clear telling of his anecdote. The
father has just come home from hunting, and in rather unsportsmanlike fashion has thrown
liis brace of j^heasants on the ground while he gives his little boy a lesson in liandling his
gun. Behind him, the dog waits for the Avell-known "crack! " the pretty mother with her
becoming " Black Forest " headdress, and holding her baby-girl on one arm, betrays by the
action of her other hand that she is as nervously expectant as can be permitted to a hunts-
man's wife. But her pride in her manly little curh'-pated son is master of her fear; she
watches his earnest actions with a delighted face. His arms on the window-sill, the grand-
father smokes his pii)e and scrutinizes the youngster with an old huntsman's critical eye.
The two figures, the father and the son, as they are the centre and gist of the picture, will
bear the closest study ; every point in the action is rendered with a truthfulness that shows
an observant eye. Note the father's firm right hand with its delicately adjusting movement,
the looser left hand liolding the pipe ; the weaker hands of the child, closely following his in-
138
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
structions, liowever;^ then the amusingly earnest face of the youngster, and his small body
strained to the crisis.
Dvorak's children, in his " Eing-a-Ring-a-Eosy," are children of another class than those
we have seen in the pictures of Richter, Ptiecht, Wagner, and even Knaus; there is the same
"LEARNING TO SHOOT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ANTON HEINRICH DIEFFENBACH.
naturalness in the action and expression, but it is the naturalness of beings, more formally,
artificially brought up. Dvorak is not specially given to painting children, but several of his
subjects in this kind have lieen seen in our shop-windows, where, by a certain quaintness and
oddity, they have attracted a good deal of attention. The picture by Eudolf Epp,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
139
" Spring," belongs more to the region of sentiment than the pictures we have been consider- '
ing, those of Schmid excepted, and with Schmid the sentiment or feeling is less abstract than
it is here, it is more closely connected with some anecdote or incident. All that EpxD shows
us is the delight of this mother and her child in the spring season; both breathing the atmos-
I *.i
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" RING-A-RING-A-ROSY "
FROM THE PICTURE BY DVORAK.
\
phere of love ; the child's radiant face turned upward to the play of the butterflies, but his
arms unconsciously clinging to his mother's breast, while the mother, not insensible to the
charm of nature, yet finds her heaven complete in her baby's eyes.
I40 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
VIII.
JOHANN GEORG MEYER, called, from his birth-place, " Meyer von Bremen," to distin-
guish him from the swarm of Meyers— a name as common in Germany as that of Smith
in America or England, was born in 1813, and died in 1889. This was a long life of prosperity,
and of what may pass for fame, since, for many years, no name'among the minor names of
his native Germany was more widely known abroad, especially in America, and no talent in
the same field was more steadily and richly rewarded than that of Meyer von Bremen. The
explanation lies alike in the character of his subjects and in the character of his Avork. Each.
was of a kind to please the general public; his pictures appealed to the common sentiments
of every-day people ; the love of home, the simple piety, the domestic affections, the pleasures
of childhood — to the ideal characteristics, in short, of the German people, and he found that
this was a clientage he could safely rely on. The people who year after year bought his pic-
tures were content with what he gave them, and on his part the supply never failed, nor ever
showed signs of diminution. At the same time, it must be said that he was never careless,
never slighted his work, and never repeated himself, although his subjects were always taken
from the same field. What that field was, is well enough indicated in the picture we have
selected for reproduction—" Expectation." A young girl sits by the window of her father's
house, engaged in sewing. All her surroundings show the comfortable living of a w^ell-to-do
family, between the actual peasant-class and the bourgeois; the house is well built, the furni-
ture solid, and suited to its uses, and while there is no luxury, there are evidences everywhere
of that natural taste which often accomplishes what money cannot compass. The walls of
the cottage are of stone, covered with cement and whitewashed, the ceiling is unplastered, the
planks of the floor are uncarpeted, the table is uncovered, and there are no draperies at the
window for ornament, only the muslin curtains that are necessary to temper the light or to
secure privacy. But everything shows a scrupulous neatness, and while there is little in the
room that cannot give the excuse of utility for its presence, all that we see derives a certain
elegance, from its good proportions, and its fitness for its purpose. Everything here, unpre-
tending as it is, pleases the eye and contents it; the embrasured window, its sashes filled with
leaded glass, the bird in its wicker-cage, and the rose-bush in bloom ; the painted shelf where
the well-polished coffee-urn and flowered milk-pitcher stand in comfortable sight; the colored
print of the Virgin, the lamp that hangs below its black frame not so well seen in our plate
EXPECTATION."
FROM THE PICTURE BY MEYER v. BREMEN.
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 141
as it is in tlie original picture; the pot of garden-flowers on the table by the side of Gretchen's
work-basket; and Gretchen herself— she, too, is a pretty, eye-pleasing object in her coquet-
tish cap over her soft hair, her trim bodice, and her well-molded arm showing below the snowy
linen sleeve. She has this morning received a letter from her sweetheart; it lies open npon
the table by her scissors and thread, the envelope dropped in her impatience upon the floor,
and she stops every now and then in her work, to lift the muslin shade and look out at the
w^indow, that she may catch the first glimpse of his coming as he clinks the latch of the gar-
den-gate. Without loading his pictures with detail, Meyer von Bremen sometimes adds a
suggestive touch, as here, where the grandmother's spectacles are hung on a convenient nail in
the window-jamb, as if to assure us that Gretchen has some one to watch over her youth and
innocence. This ai-tist has by no means confined his industry to pictures of the class to
which the one we engrave belongs ; " The Praying Child," " The Knitter," " The Little House-
keeper," "Fii-st, a Kiss!" and others; he has painted several more ambitious works ; "The
Penitent Daughter," " The Soldier's Keturn," " The Inundation "—these pictures are by no
means without merit and of a marked kind, but, as we said in the beginning, neither what
Meyer von Bremen has to say, nor the way in which he says it, has any interest for amateurs
of painting, who care for something beyond a high degree of mechanical finish, and elabora-
tion of detail ; nor for those who look for elevation of thought and feeling. Even in Ger-
many, the popularity of Meyer von Bremem has suffered a serious
diminution in these later years, while in our own country the com-
mercial value of his paintings has almost reached low- water mark.
A few years ago there were shown at one of the exhibitions of
the Art-Students' League of New York, two large studies from the
life, signed " G. Jacobides." These had so much force of intention ig^l vj
and largeness in the execution that they made a lasting impression '*' * , '^^ i^-
on some of those who heard the artist's name for the first time, and g- jacobides
kept us on the look-out for whatever he might produce. The next time we heard of him
was, however, in his own country; at the KunstaussteUung in Munich in 1883, his picture
of " The New Earrings," was one of the most remarked of the contributions, and was at
once taken to the popular heart and reprodi»ced by photography, and in wood-cuts in the
illustrated journals. The picture itself was purchased by an American, and brought over
to this country; after remaining for a while in New Yoi'k it was added to the collection
142 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of a San Francisco millionaire. The subject was an every-day one, such as would have
pleased Sleyer von Bremen; it represented nothing of more importance than an old
woman who is piercing a little girl's ear for her first pair of ear-rings. But in such mat-
ters, the charm is in the telling, and Jacobides showed a dramatic power in his picture far
beyond the reach of Meyer von Bremen, in the skill with which he represented the strug-
gle in the child's mind between her desire to have the ear-rings, and her unwillingness
to bear the pain. In this respect the pictiire was a remarkable one, and the effect was
heightened by the successful depicting of the old woman's face, absorbed in her profes-
sional duty and benevolently indifferent to the suffering of her x^atient. Jacobides it
would appear, is not a prolific artist, and there was for a time some reason to fear that
he might fall into the snare of repeating his model. The j)icture that followed the one
we have described was not so agreeable in its subject, but it showed the same dramatic
power over expression; it Avas an old peasant-grandfather who is subduing his rebellious
grandchild, and the face of the old man showed a most amusing mixture of exasperation and
doting affection — an expression seized in a masterly way Avithout a touch of caricature. The
same subtilty is shown in our engraving, " The Knitting Lesson," from the picture painted
by Jacobides in 1886. Here, the absorption of the child in her task is shown not alone in
her face, but in the action of her hands, and even in the way in which she holds the ball of
yarn between her knees, and it is this sympathy, recalling the poet's line :
" That one might almost say, her body thought,"
which gives to the picture a dignity that does not naturally belong to the subject. As a
painter, Jacobides is far in advance of Meyer von Bremen ; he belongs, indeed, to the school
of younger men, with whom style in j)ainting is the main thing, and subject altogether
secondary, only considered, in fact, as it lends itself to a display of the artist's technical
ability. Jacobides has no claim to the title of colorist; he often spoils Avhat would otherwise
prove a harmonious whole, by a single false note. Thus " The First Earring," was sorely
injured by the color of the earring, a long old-fashioned "drop" of crude turquoise-blue.
We wished it could have been painted out ; but nothing would have been gained by that.
Inherent faults are as essential to the understanding of character as the inherent virtues to
which they serve as foils. Jacobides would nat be Jacobides AAdthout the blue earring.
HuBEKT Salentin, the painter of the "Woodland Prayer," was born at Zul2:»ich,
anciently known as Tolbiach, and famous as the place where Clovis defeated the Alemanni.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
143
It lies betAveen Cologne and Aachen, in a region so rich in legends and art-traditions that it
is no Avonder a boy of Salentin's temperament was eager to exchange the blacksmith's forge
"THE KNITTING-LESSON."
FROM THE PICTURE BY G JACOBIDES.
144 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
for the easel. Tt was not, however, until he was twenty-eight years old that he was able to
accomplish his desire. But as soon as he could free himself, he made his way to Diisseldorf
and entered the Academy there. His teachers were AY. von Schadow, and Karl Sohn, but
Tidemand was more especiallj' his instructor. The subjects chosen by Salentin were drawn
from the humble life of the people among whom his early youth had been spent, but he pre-
ferred such scenes as permitted a landscape-setting, in harmony with the action of his person-
ages. The picture which we have chosen for copying, and which is reckoned among Ms best
works, is a good example of his manner. A young girl on her way to market sets do^vn her,
as yet, empty basket by her side and kneels for a moment before one of those pretty wood-
land shrines that meet the pedestrian's eye all over Europe, only oftener, perhaps, in Catholic
countries than in those where something like Protestantism is the rule. Our pretty maiden,
still at the age when the hair is permitted to hang in a silken braid, has removed her straw
hat, and with lightly folded hands says the prescribed prayer before the image of the Holy
Mother tabernacled in this leafy wood ; but the smile upon her face seems to show that her
young thoughts are not as serious as her attitude of devotion would imply; she is happy with
the thoughts of childhood, -with the birds, and the flowers, and the bright sunshine of the sum-
mer-morning, and in a few miniites she wiU be up and away, leaving the wood somewhat less
sunshiny for her absence. It is a remarkable fact that Salentin's best work has been done
since he was fifty: "The Foundling," "The Blacksmith's Apprentice," "Interior of a Tillage-
Church," and .many others. One of Salentin's pictures ; " A Pilgrim at a Holy Spring," is in
the Museum at Cologne. Another, " A Pilgrim at a Shrine," is in the National GaUery at
Berlin.
The picture by Theodore Kleehaas, " Right or Left " or, as our children sometimes call the
game, " "Which Hand ^vill you have? " is one that could hardly have been painted out of Ger-
many. Seven children playing in a garret, a homely old-world game ; '" only this, and noth-
ing more," yet how few are the artists of our time outside of Germany who could j^aint a
scene like this with such perfect naturalness and unconsciousness as we find in Kleehaas'
picture? The effect is curiously real, as if we were looking in upon the chamber, and we
seem to share the children's absorption in their play, to the exclusion of all oiitside matters.
The different individualities of the children give opportunity for much pretty by-play. The
hero of the moment is the child with bare legs and arms, who, all aglow with excitement, is
making up his small mind which hand to choose, and the rest of the circle are intent on the
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 145
outcome, watching him ^\-ith mingled love and pride, for 'tis plain that he is the pet of the -
society, as the youngest child is apt to be. At the right, two older children, a nice-looking
boy and a rather grandmotherly girl, are waiting their turn; the boy with his hand on her
shoulder, points to the hand of the leader in the game, which he is sure is the one to choose.
Tlie action of the girl who is leader for the time being, is given with much expression and
shows nice observation. As the question, " Right or Left? " is uttered, the clenched hands of
the asker are to be thrown strongly down and out, and this requires a rigid bending of the
body quite at war with grace. This may seem a small matter, but in reality it is of great im-
portance ; the presence of this truthfulness pervading the picture, gives dignity and perma-
nence to what, in less careful hands, would be merely trivial. Instances will occur to every
one who is in the habit of looking at pictures, of subjects where children are the actors—
street-arabs, shoe-blacks, match-boys, etc., in which there is no trace of nature; nothing but
grimace and affectation, and these begin by being wearisome, and end by losing all hold upon
the public. The German artists in their pictures of child-life go on a principle exactly the
opposite of the one they follow in their so-called " historical " painting. lu the former, they
either try to get inside theii- subject, as it were, or else a natural sympathy with childhood
carries them there without effort on their part. Of how many German artists we must be-
lieve, when we see their pictures, that they love children, and paint them because they love
them ! Whether it be true or not that children in Germany are exceptionally happy, German
artists have almost persuaded us that such is the fact. Sometimes, as in Richter's case, they
show as a transfigured world with all its smirch and grossness washed clean away, but the
elements of truth, sincerity, and naturalness are there in force and give an enduring charm.
And then, again, we have pictures in plenty of every-day life, in which, as here in that of
Kleehaas, there is no attempt made at idealizing, but things are shown as the artist sees them;
though it must be admitted that artists, the true artists at any rate, see things not exactly as
the world in general sees them. But, when the German artist comes to paint " history " or
attempts to recall the manners of a past time, he seems, as a rule, incapable of seeing things as
they must have been. A true action, a natural, unaffected gesture ; these are the exception,
not the rule. Yet the French, and even the Spanish in their great monumental canvases, are
almost free from these vices— while the Germans are still in slavery to the traditions of the
late Italian Renaissance, the French have thrown them off completely, and almost as little
remains of their own pseudo-classic legends.
Vol. II.— 10 **
146
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Karl Raupp is another pupil of Piloty who bears witness to the liberality of the mas-
ter's teaching. He was bom in 1837 at Darmstadt, and from 1856 to 1858, studied under
Jacob Becker at the Stadelschen Institute in Frankfort. He then went to Munich and be-
came a pupil of Piloty, remaining in his studio for eight years, until 1866. In 1868 he was
made Professor in the School of Industrial Design at Nuremberg, but he returned later to
Munich, where he has since continued to reside. Like Salentin, and like others of the
"MERRY VOYAGE."
FROM THE PAINTING BY KARL RAUPP.
younger men, Raupp is almost equally interested in the landscai^e in which his figures
are placed, as in the people themselves. He does not treat this landscape conventionally, as
.many of the old Dutchmen did; he gives to each group a frame of its own, suited to the
action, and reports the aspects of nature with poetic faithfulness. Here in the " Merry Voy-
age," it is a day in early spring ; the sky is clear of all but a f eAv light cirrus clouds ; the wil-
lows are just in leaf, and the rushes on the bank and in the water, have not as yet mustered
their full forces. A merry party of children have come down to the bank of the canal and
are starting off with plenty of enthusiasm on a voyage round the world — if once they can get
"THE WOODLAND PRAYER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HUBERT SALENTIN.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 147
their good ship off the mud ! The sail is hoisted and a light breeze is doing its best to puff
it out, aided by the boy at the tiller, while another boy at the bow does what a boy of his
size can to persuade the heavy scow to move along. Standing by the mast the captain gives
the orders to the crew in a voice of such proportions, as nearly deafens the first mate, who
shuts his ears lest he should hear what is said to him! The passengers meantime are happy
in anticipation of the sights they are to see, once they get afloat ; the chief lady-passenger
mildly hoping that her doll's head will not be sawed off by the sail-rope, the youngest pas-
senger leaning over the boat-side Avatching the water, and one boy, luxuriously inclined,"
stretched his length in the shadow of the sail and lazily looking up into the sky. On the
shore sits the old grandfather smoking his pipe, and occasionally throwing in a word of ad-
vice, while the mother has brought down the baby to see the party off. " Storm-brewing," is
another of Eaupp's pictures ; one that has obtained the po]Dularit j' of the shop-windows and
of repeated reproductions, so that it appears to have earned the right to represent him here.
The young woman who handles the oar in this heavy boat is not new to her business ; she
does not see a storm brewing for the first time, and her confidence communicates itself to her
companions, so that we can enjoy the disjilay of so much health and vigor as this young-
woman is possessed of, without any fear for her safety.
Emile Keyser's picture under the title " Schaukelnde Kinder," — " Children playing at
See-saw" — was exhibited at the Munich Kunstausstellung in 1883. Its painting was its chief
charm, the incident being slight and slightly handled, no paiticulai- study of childish charac-
ter attempted, but a general breezy, out-of-door effect, and much freedom in the action of the
girl on the see-saw, her pretty head, with its hair streaming in the wind, relieved against the
sky. If the landscape seem more important than the figures, this is only in seeming, for if
the composition be looked at Avith care it will be found that the figures and their action are
necessary to give the landscape its full effect, and that the animation of the landscape is, on
the other hand, reflected in the animation of the figures. In other words, the Avhole picture
is in harmony, the artist, it is plain, thought it nil out at once, and it is this that gives it life
and character. A blight afternoon -breeze lightly bends the trees before it, and clears the
west of clouds, and sets the grass and weeds astir, and the blood astir in the bodies of these
merry, out-of-door children, making them ready for any sport that has excitement in it. Two
of the youngest have been sent for water to the sjiring that we see in the lower right-hand
corner of the picture, but the temptation of the plank lying beside the big log has been too
148
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
mucli for tliem; they laave dropped their pitcher, set the plank astride the log and persuaded
their sister to join them in their game. The willing child mounts her improvised steed, and
is tossed higher and higher; and her hair flies out behind, and the fun waxes fast and furious,
so that one of their playmates between delight and fear makes such an outcry that his big
sister must needs try to stop him ! A little child in the foreground who has been pulling
flowers for her doll in its cart, twists her whole small body about to see what is the matter,
"CHILDREN PLAYING AT SEE-SAW."
FROM THE PICTURE BY EMIL KEYSER.
thus accenting the hurly-burly. Yet the artist knew better than to leave the hurly-burly in
complete possession of his picture; he has therefore withdrawn from the noisy youngsters a
group upon the hill-side where one of the smaller children, tired of the boisterous game,
leans both elbows on her sister's knee, and listens to her soothing chat, while her brother,
bound for home and supper, after a day's hard work, just turns to give a glance at the others.
E. KuKTZBAUER is another of the younger race of Munich artists, too young, as yet, like
Keyser, to have found his way to the dictionaries, but, like him, sure to win his way there
"THE COMING STORM."
FROM THE PICTURE BY KARL RAUPP,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
149
before long. His picture, "The New Picture-book," is a fresli illustration of the German
skill in making much of little; three children about a table looking over a picture-book with
"THE NEW PICTURE BOOK."
FROM THE PAINTING BY KURTZBAUER.
their grandfather; what could be more elementary? And yet with such simple materials he
has made a picture that, whatever way we look at it, whether as a study of life or as a idIc-
150 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
ture merely, deserves higli praise. In the corner by the stove with its settle, the table (a
manifest Tyrolean, by its slanting legs!) has been drawn up close to the seat, that grandr
father's little girl may look comfortably at the picture-book he has bought for her of the
peddler. Her two younger brothers, nice, comfortable little chaps, one with light hair and the
other -with dark, have left their play and come to take a look at the treasure. The brown
boy, true to his colors, has mounted the table, shoes and all , in his eagerness ; the fair-haired,
more gentle and graceful, is content with the chair: kneeling on it and leaning an elbow on
the table as he looks at the pictures. The very way in which the t^vo boys look at their sis-
ter's book reveals something of their characters. The blonde looks quietly, earnestly, and
Avith an exjjression in his attitude as if he would like to look at the picture as long as his
sister will be pleased to let him. The other boy who has jumped on the table in his eager-
ness, will jump down again in a minute, and even as it is, cannot restrain his impatience —
though he is too good-natured to be cross about it — at his sister's slow way of turning over
the leaves. There is a funny expression on the little girl's face, as if part of her pleasure in
looking at the book were in knowing that it is hei's, and that no one else can look at it with-
out her permission or make her turn over the leaves a bit faster than she is inclined to. Not
that she is a naughty child! Far be it from us to wrong such a tidy, trim little piece, by so
unkind a suspicion! She is no worse than the rest of us, or than jproperty-owners in general!
And her brothers evidently think it all right. Her hands are folded on the table in front of
the book ; it is plainly too beautiful to be touched. But, then, she is not in the least afraid
that her brothers will touch it either! The old grandfather is a good study, too; tranquil,
sedate, he smokes his pipe in silence, and looks at the pictures with the rest, but leaves their
appreciation to the children. He loves to hear their prattle, and marks how in their com-
ments, and in their prefei'ences, they betray their individual characters.
Certainly this is a pleasant glimpse of family-life in a far-away corner of the world.
But, 'tis only one of many, shown us by these German painters. The impression these
pictures make when seen, in mass, as it were, in turning over portfolio after portfolio, is very
different from that we get from French pictures of child-life; there is far less sentiment, as a
rule, in German pictures than is to be found in the French, and in French studies of peasant-
life there is always an undertone of sadness ; even in their games the children seem as if they
bore a yoke, whereas we do not remember a German picture, dealing specially with children,
that is not cheerful, and generally they are of a decidedly merry cast. The German children,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 151
as shown by their artists, are usually, too, more robust and solid than the French children,
and I suppose this may represent the truth, though generalizing on such data is not very
profitable. Still, one can but be struck with the difl'erence between the sort of child depicted
by Edouard Frere for example— to take the best French painter of children for comparison,
and the children whom Richter shows us, and we mention Richter because he is the German
who more than any other idealizes his subjects and puts into them a good dose of sentiment.
If we were to compare Jlidouard Frere with any of the artists spoken of in these pages : with
Raupp or Kurtzbauer or Kleehaas, the difference would be felt to be much more striking.
Frere's children are, in by far the greater number of instances, frail, delicate beings, who
seem too often over-weighted with responsibilities; they are seldom playing; are almost
always engaged upon some light task; they are not unhappy, but they are not gay, they are
too sage to be gay ; and whether he be true to nature or not, the impression left upon us
by Frere's pictures, is certainly a pathetic impression. We must always find ourselves feel-
ing a little sad in looking at them. Richter's children, on the contrary, if they are not as
gay as those of the later men, are always healthy, active little mortals, in the best of spirits,
and enjoying the simple pleasures of their lives in a hearty, wholesome way. And this is
even truer of the child-pictures painted by the Germans of our more immediate time. In
these, all is frolic, the free play of animal spirits in tight little bodies Avith never a trace of
sorrow or sentiment, and if set to tasks, turning these, too, to play and getting all the amuse-
ment out of them that is possible. Thus, on the principle of the stingy old farmer who called
to his men after supper at the end of a day's hard work, " Come, boys, let's go out and play
'dig cellar' by moonlight!" we have seen small German children carrying strapped to their
backs, baskets, miniature copies of those worn by rag-pickers and others, and taught to play
at picking up things and putting them into their receptacles. And, no doubt, they thought
it quite a good game in its way !
A scene like this of Wilhelm Schtitze's "Mousie's Caught! " is, of course, fun to children
everywhere, since children are, as a rule, a cruel race and have to be taught sympathy and
compassion by a good deal of x>ersonal experience. Every time a child knocks its shins, or
stubs its toe, or has a toothache, it comes a step nearer to feeling a bit sorry for other people's
shins, toes, and teeth. A mouse in a trap, however, is a pleasure which cannot be dampened
to them by any personal suffering of a similar sort, nor are we at all sure that it would be any
comfort to the ordinary child to be assured that it does not hurt a mouse to be played with
152
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
by a cat. The children in this picture are looking forward to a glorious time as soon as
Gretchen shall permit the house-cat, which she has lugged for this purpose from his warm
"MOUSIE'S CAUGHT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY W. SCHUTZE.
bed on the heai'th, to jum]D down and go for the mouse in the trap. Gretchen is a neat
matronly little maiden, and she holds the cat with great care, and counts the steps as she de-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Oo
scends ; but this decorum cannot last long : the cat's eyes have caught sight of her destined '
prey, and in a minute there will be fine times in the old shed. The boy just home from school,
"GIRL AND CAT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY PAUL HOECKER.
or called in by his friends as a compliment, to share the treat, will probably do his full part
in making things lively. Tlie children in the picture are well characterized, but the cat is
154 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
better conceived than any of them. Yet, as a cat, she looks a poor creature by the side of the
one in Paul Hoecker's picture ; a royal beast indeed, but less like a tiger than most of her
kind. The youthful Dutch maiden who holds her has her arms fully occupied, but should
Piiss once make a spring for liberty, her keeper would hare small chance in the race to recap-
ture her unless she could slip her ark-like clogs! Paul Hoeker is a name just emerging, but
from this picture and one recentlj' engraved from the Munich Kunstausstelluug of the pi'esent
year, it is certain we are to hear more of him. He has a style, more than commonly large and
simple, and his decorative-sense is sure ; his pictures, or the engravings from them, make agree-
able spots on the wall ; a sort of recommendation that the reader may think not very high,
but it is one that we can give to many of the older masters and to some of the new who would
not be ashamed of it, as one recommendation among others. It is only when an artist is satis-
lied if his picture be called decorative, and nothing more asked of it, that we are disappointed
in his aim. Paul Hoecker's girl in our picture is good to look at for herself; she has a frank,
honest face with a dash of humor in it; we like her neat Dutch dress and her cap with its
outlandish ornaments. These Dutch maidens have been much painted of late by the Munich
artists and even by our own men who have studied there, and of late the French artists have
found them out ; but the French are somewhat less fond of subjects not indigenous to their
own soil, than we are, or perhaj)s than the Germans themselves. Besides, they are supplied
with artistic peasants and work-people enough to satisfy their oavii needs. It is one mark of
the difference between the older times and ours that, in the sixteenth century let us say — be-
fore that, certainly, and even for some time after — one could judge by the material contents of
an artist's pictures, the costumes of his people, the architecture, the landscape even, from
what part of the world he came, or where he lived; whereas, nowadays, we can have no such
certainty. To judge by his subjects, Paul Hoecker should be a Hollander, but it is by no
means necessary to believe it. He lives and paints in Munich, and merely works the Dutch
mine in company mth a good many others of the younger race, who supply us with Dutch
fisher-folk, milk -girls, flower-sellers, and orphans, ad libitum, good, bad, and indifferent.
The picture by Karl Begas, "Washing Blacky," has an old-time look among these newer
pictures, and many an elderly reader of these pages will recognize it as an old favorite.
Karl Begas, one of four artists of this name — Reinhold Begas, the sculptor, w^ho made the bust
of Menzel, shown on a previous page, among them — was born near Aix-la-Chapelle in 1794 and
died in 1854. He became a Professor in the Berlin Academy and Court Painter. His educa-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
155
tion, however, was French ; he studied under Baron Gros, and travelled in Italy. The pictm-e
we engrave is his best known work, although his aims were in the direction of what his coun-
trymen call High Art ; historical subjects, altar-pieces for the churches, and the like. Our
"WASHING BLACKIE."
FROM THE PAINTING BY KARL BEGAS.
picture is a jDlayful commentary on Jeremiah's query, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin? "
this Raphaelesque child is trying what soai? and water may do to make her good-natured
nuraey as white as herself!
IX.
1]Sr no art of modern times is the peaceful, ruminating side of life so sympathetically mir-
rored as it is in that of Germany. In the regions of fancy and imagination the art of the
German people is no more at home than is their literature. A few great names exhaust
their capabilities in these directions. As a rule, for fancy, whether in books or on canvas, they
give us the grotesque merely; for history, melodrama and bombast; and their humor, if it be
156 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
allowed hearty and sincere, is, nevertheless, of a very earthly sort, shovring a plentiful supply
of animal spiiits and strongly suggestive of abundant beer and good dinners. This is not to
say that their grotesqueo'ie, their melodrama, and their humor are not good of their kind.
All is, that they take the place of other things which the world, long ago, made up its mind
were better worth having. But, as we began by saying, there is one side of life which the
German knows better how to deal with than any other people, the peaceful, ruminating side
— the life of childhood and the domestic life. The treatment of subjects drawn from the
former of these topics has already been discussed here ; something, too, has been said about
German painting of domestic scenes — of this, we have a few fresh illustrations to consider.
Otto Piltz, the painter of " The Sewing-class," is a native of Weimar, where we believe
he resides for the most of the year, although he holds a professorship at Berlin. As a painter
he is distinguished for the naturalness of his treatment : his subjects too are nearly all drawn
from the daily life of his own time, and he excels in the painting of children and young
people. Our picture is as good an example as could be found of his skill in interesting the
spectator by the facial expression alone of his personages, without incident of any but the
most trivial kind, or action, except the quietest. It is the hoiar for hand-sewing in a girls'
school. Nine young women are assembled in a cozy mansarde engaged in needlework of one
kind or another under the charge of a matron. As they work, they listen to a book read by
one of their number ; from the expression of the reader's face we should guess that the book
is a novel, biit that we suppose a novel would hardly be permitted in such a place. And it is
true that only one of the circle shows any lively interest in the reading ; the girl at the ex-
treme right stops in her work, with suspended needle, and turns to look at the reader as if
struck by something in the narrative. But with the others, the listening is rather perfunc-
tory, although no two are listening alike, and so sharply defined are the characters, that a
keen analyst could almost read the thoughts that are passing through these comely heads.
The girl who has been appointed reader has the most intellectual head in the company ; she
thoroughly enjoys what she is reading and understands it, but with the one exception we
have noted, her appreciation of the author is hardly shared by her audience. They listen, but
their thoughts are otherwhere ; and the cunning of the artist is most enjoyably shown in the
way in which, in eA'ery one of the four girls seated in front of the reader, and immediately
about the table, a threefold action of the mind is shown — they are all thinking of their work ;
the one who crochets, the one who sews, she who embroiders and she who threads hei' needle;
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
157
they are all listening to the reading; and they are all thinking of something equally removed
from the reading and from their work, and disconnected with either. In the corner, two girls
are seated; one of them with an embroidery-frame, the other marking a handkerchief — both
intent on a bit of gossip that may possibly be inspired by the mischievous Cupid on the
"THE SEWING-CLASS."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OTTO PILTZ.
bracket over their heads. The expression in the face of the listening girl is most cleverly
caught; her hand arrested in the act of taking the next stitch, the smile just breaking on
her face, her eyes watching the words as they come from her companion's lij)s, her whole
action showing the progress of the story to which she is listening. The details of this quiet
little j)icture are well invented; tlie litter on the table; the formally disposed pictures on the
wall; the small engraved portrait of Goethe — at home here in Weimar; the mirror fixed
158 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
upon the slanting wall, tlie lower edge of the frame of the larger engraving reflected in it and
helj)ing with all the perpendicular and horizontal lines on the wall, of picture-frames and
cornice-ornament, to counteract the strong sloping lines of the two dormers. And the room
itself ; how cozy and comfortable it is ; how well suited to the company and their occupation !
The picture by Glaus Meyer, a Munich painter, " A Nunnery in Bruges," shows us a
very different " Sewing-class " from the one we have just been studying. We are in one of the
rooms of the Beguinage of Bruges, an institution which is similar in kind though inferior in
size and importance to the more celebrated Beguinage of Ghent with its seven-hundred in-
habitants and over, a smaller city within the greater one, surrounded by a moat and a wall,
with its gates, its squares, and streets, its eighteen convents and its church. The Beguinage
of Bruges, though inferior in extent to that of Ghent, is for that reason more likely to please
the searcher after the picturesque. Bruges is a quiet, deserted place, where the symbol of its
departed commercial prosperity is not, as in other (?ities, the grass growing in the streets, but
the water-lilies that brighten up the dark canals that^/once were all astir with boats and ship-
ping. A curious fact is reported of Bruges; that out of the forty-five thousand inhabitants
of the city, nearly one-third are in poverty. When we consider the ancient splendor and
prosperity of this once famous city, teeming with wealth that flowered in sumptuosities of
architecture, civil and religious ; where all the arts brought to a noble perfection combined to
make the homes of her burghers, and the aisles and altars of her sanctuaries, the wonder of
her own day and the rich legend of after ages — when we read of this prosperity, the present
condition of Bruges seems mournful indeed. Yet, considering the large proportion of the
poor in Bruges to the whole population, the visitor is agreeably surprised to find that the
city, instead of swarming with beggars, is singularly free from this nuisance that infests so
many cities of the continent. And not only are beggars absent; one misses also, at least, we
missed on the occasion of our visit, the usual and not always inconvenient proffers of assistance
in one way or another, that commonly greet the traveller in these parts as he leaves the
railway -station and passes out into the square. Hacks are scarce, and their drivers far from
demonstrative, no one offers to carry your bag, no touters insist on your seeking the hospital-
ity of their favorite hotel ; you are left delightfully to yourself, and happy in unaccustomed
freedom, were it not for the haunting feeling, born of so many disagreeable experiences, that
such immunity from the pest of guides and beggars, touters and the ostentatious owners of
blind eyes, rheumatisms, and lame legs, cannot last long. But it does, and the too brief day
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 159
comes to a close without a single call made upon what is euphemistically called our charity.
Dining at the homely estaminet of the Golden Eagle — at a table by the window, where, as we
discussed our frugal meal, we looked out upon the great square crowned by the Tour des
Halles, and listened to its chimes, marking with April showers of melody all the divisions of
the hour — we fell into chat with a young clerk, our chance companion, about Bruges and its
condition. From him we learned the curious secret of the beggary of Bruges, and if it be
the true explanation, we commend it to the consideration of our socialists, and to the members
of the anti-poverty society. According to our informant, the reason why we met no beggars on
the streets was, that the multitude of charitable Foundations established by the merchants and
grandees of the middle-ages, and in the years that immediately succeeded the blooming-time
of the city, have so accustomed the people to depend upon the helj) afforded by these Foun-
dations that aU stimulus to industry and self-help is wanting. No one will work, because the
actual necessaries of life can be had without working. Does a man feel hungry? He goes to
one of the convents and gets sufficient food to stave off the present discomfort. Does he need
shoes, a coat, shelter from the cold? — the same wide charity covers him with its demoralizing
mantle. The great square on which we looked out was surrounded by huge deserted ware-
houses ; and similar buildings, once swarming with the life of .trade and industry, stood loafing
and sullen along all the side-streets. "Why are they empty?" we asked; "why don't the
English or the Americans come and set up factories in them : put them to some use ? Here is
all the enginery of commerce ; why is it not set in motion? " " Because," said my young fellow,
" workmen couldn't be hired to run the factories if they were set going ! No one in Bruges
will do more work than is necessary to keep body and soul together — and why should he,
when he has but to ring a convent door-bell, and have his more pressing wants supplied ? "
"And these people of whom I read here in my Baedeker: he has been speaking of the fifteen
thousand people or so who are in poverty — ' On the other side, there are in the city plenty of
rich Flemish burghers who have retired from business and live here in Bruges, preferring it
to other cities of Flanders? ' " " Oh, these burghers ! " he laughed, " what could be duller, more
starving than the life they lead in those empty houses? They have pinched and saved, all
their days, to get together enough to enable them, by the closest economy, to live like the
beggars, mthout work, and here they are, shut up in their houses, visiting nobody, receiving
no visitors, their only occupation to nurse their pennies and their pride." We leave this
solution of the beggary-question in Bruges to the economists ; satisfactory as it seemed for
i6o ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
the moment, yet eren to a layman the query would present itself: how and where has the
money originally devoted to the support of these various Foundations, the Beguiaages, the
convents and hospitals, been invested, that it still suj)plies the income necessary to carry out
— even in part — the purposes for which it was bequeathed ? Doubtless there is an answer,
even though that of my young acquaintance — himself a native of Bruges, yet weary and dis-
gusted mth the inanity of the society he lived in, and so doubtless seeing things somewhat
awry — be not the whole truth. But, whatever may be the explanation, this is plain, that
something has killed Bruges, and something keeps her dead.
Here, in Clans Meyers picture, we get a glimpse of a room in one of the houses of the
Beguinage, and see the occupants at their work. The place is bright and sunny, scrupulously
clean, and absolutely devoid of everything that is not necessary for the liie that is led in it.
The large, clear windows look out ujion a sunny court, and through an open door we see
another room, a sort of vestibule, where one of the nuns is returning from some household
errand in the town. She wears the street dress of her-^order, the ample /"azZZe or cloak and the
white head-dress, which, as we see, is also Avorn in-doors. The effect is very striking, when,
as in church for instance, the whole body of nuns are assembled ; the mass of Avhite in the
head-gear seems to hover like a lighted cloud over the congregation, contrasting most pictur-
esquely with the dark of the cloaks. Here in the living-room of the convent a half-dozen of
the nuns are sitting, under the superintendence of an older one, who examines with a critical
eye a piece of cloth which one of the women has brought for her inspection. She sits in a
chair somewhat more comfortably made than the others are provided with ; it is covered with
leather and studded with brass nails, while the other chairs are plain, rush-bottomed affairs ;
and three of the nuns are obliged to content themselves with a wooden bench placed against
the wall. The corner of the room where these women are sitting, is floored with planks laid
for warmth over the flagging that is used for the rest. In some of the houses tUes are to be
seen instead of flagging, but even these are of the simplest make ; everything savoring of eye-
pleasing ornament is avoided in these religious houses as if it were unfit — as indeed we may
suppose it is thought to be. The walls of this room are bare except between the windows,
where hangs a crucifix, and, below it, what looks mischievously like a bit of looMng-giass in
its black frame ; on the moulding that caps the wainscot, is a prayer-book with its clasp, an
ink-bottle, a medicine-bottle, a pill-box — no doubt in such a place even pill- taking is felt to be
a diversion ! One only idler is seen in this abode of silence, for the nun on the right with her
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. i6i
liands in her lap is not idling, she is waiting for her neighbor, whose more experienced hands
are turning down a hem for her. No, the idler is the kitten, who, una wed by the solemnity of
the hour, and by no means alarmed at her neai'ness to the somewhat grim-looking Superior,
is playing ^vith that good lady's ball of knitting-cotton, as if it were not a sacred and inviola-
ble thing ! Here in this bare and silent nunnery, from which everything human that can
possibly be dispensed with has been cut oflE, we find a ray of conscienceless and libertine
beauty and gayety crept in in the shape of Pussy, the perpetual incarnation, with a slightly
modernized name, of the venerable Pasht, the cat-faced, whose living originals disported
themselves in the old monasteries and temple-palaces of Egypt. In a world of mutability
where almost nothing is at a stay, pussy at least abides with us; the embodiment of beauty
in line, color, and motion, a perpetual protest against dulness and conformity !
AVhen we pass with AValtheu Fiule from Bruges to Holland, and under his sympathe-
tic guidance exchange the Beguinage for the Waisenhaus, or Orphan Asylum, of Haarlem, or
any other town in Holland, we find ourselves in a different atmosphere. These orphan-houses
as constituted in Holland seem to be an institution peculiar to that country, but it is not easy
to learn much about them ; all that meets the eye of the ordinary traveller is the inmates of
the asylums as they walk about the streets, or come and go from the churches where, in some
of the towns at least, they assist in the singing. But some of the artists, our own Mr. Chase
among them, have been of late allowed to visit the houses themselves, and for that matter it
may be a common privilege enough, but naturally the interest felt by the ordinary traveller
is slight, and he is content, as a rule, with what is, after all, the most interesting feature:
the sight of the boys and girls, young men and maideus, whom he meets in the streets. Their
costumes, as is seen in Firle's picture, " Morning- worship in the Orphanage," is simple enough
and not very different from that of other people in the town; the most striking peculiarity in
the dress is the parti-colored sleeves, one red and one black, or dark-blue and red, or blue and
black, while the skirt is sometimes red, with a black waist and ficliu, or black with a red
waist. As the young people are wisely allowed a good deal of liberty, and as it is for the
interest of the town to which they belong that these orphans should be well-behaved, the
uniform serves as a kind of police to keep a quiet watch upon them. The girls are not
expected to go where they ought not, and the uniform, in their case, is rather to keep others
in order than themselves; but, with the boys, it serves to put them on their good behavior as
to taverns and other questionable resorts. Should a boy from one of these institutions be
Vol. II.— 11 # »
i62 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
seen by a townsman going into a drinking-place, information would at once be given, and tlie
delinquent brought up with a round turn. In the old church at Delft we heard the sweet
voices of these orjphan-girls in the choir, and afterward saw them coming down from the
gallery and lighting up the dull uninteresting interior — what can be meaner, more poverty-
stricken than the Dutch churches ? — with their scarlet sleeves. In Walther Firle's picture
we see a group of orphan-girls assembled in the parlor of the Superior, singing their morning
hymn. The bright sunny room looks out through large windows, not upon the street, as one
might suppose from the appearance of the opposite buildings, but upon the opposite side of
the large garden about which the buildings of the Orphanage are placed. It is one of these
ample gardens which Mr. Wm. M. Chase has painted for us, with the girls in groups quietly
enjoying the pleasant summer's day. What touches us in Mr. Firle's picture is its unaflfected-
ness; the simple, unadorned expression of natural feeling running through the whole scene ;
from the company of comely maidens at the left, in their snowy aprons, fichus, and caps, con-
trasting with their dark gowns, as they stand circle-wise about their leader, to the aged
Superior, sitting with clasped hands in her arm-chair, and listening with half-closed eyes and
spirit withdrawn, to the song in which, as a girl, she once took part. Behind the polished
table by which she sits, another of the inmates, somewhat older than the girls who are sing-
ing, but still young, has come in to spread the cloth for the Superior's breakfast, thinking the
service over ; she stops, with the cloth folded over her arm, and with clasped hands listens to
the closing notes of the hymn. A lovely tranquil picture, and if we look at it from the pro-
fessional point, composed with much skill; the risk the artist ran was, lest he should make two
pictures of one, since the groups at the right and left are so strongly divided. But the senti-
ment of the scene ciilminates in the figure of the Superior; we feel that it is for her that the
picture was painted; and the action and expression of the young woman who is entering, as
it leads us back again to the group of singers, binds the whole composition once more
together. It will be noticed that the room we are now looking at has with all its simplicity
of furnishing, a touch of refinement and grace of living in Avhich Claus Meyer's room in the
Beguinage is wanting. It would be hard to say in just what this touch consists; the hand-
some clock, the flowering-plants on the window-sill, the sheer muslin curtains, the manifest
mirror, in its moulded frame; these things hardly account for the expression we have
remarked. After all, is it not in these young girls themselves, in their erect and unaffected
bearing, in their faces, speaking of health of body and mind, that the greater charm of this
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 163
scene consists ? Youtli is the true sunshine of the world ; the sun that lights the earth is
only an image of it.
WiLHELM Hasemann, an artist of the younger race, who hails from Carlsruhe, has
expressed in his picture, " A Young Grirl Sewing " the same tranquil domesticity that we
find so often celebrated in German genre painting, but which is seldom treated with the
taste and artistic completeness shown in this work. Apart from the sentiment that would
attract the general public to the subject, there are many persons who will find a pleasure in
looking at the picture for the sake of the pretty bow- window and the comfortable look of
the corner in which this young girl has ensconced herself. Many and many a hint for the
artistic arrangement of our houses, for their furniture and their decoration in general, has
been gathered from such pictures as this. And if much that is in vogue in owe coxmtry now-
adays has a German, and sometimes a medifeval German, look, it is because ten such interiors
as this are painted to one French one, and ten German books dealing with old-time household
manners and customs are ]3ublished where one appears in France or England. And as all
these pictures and books influence public taste, and beside giving hints to private persons,
are largely drawoi upon by professional designers and decorators, it is natural that the German
influence should get the upper hand. In Germany itself, the influence of the new studies in
this direction has had striking results. The nationalizing of Germany has, as we have already
seen, given a great impetus to the study of her past, not merely in what is usually dignified
\\ith the title of history, but in every department of life, and the house and its belongings
have become a rich and fruitful field of research and discovery. Not a stone has been left
unturned, and as the scientific students did their Avork in gleaning from books, pictures, old
monuments of every kind, a knowledge of how their ancestors lived, moved, and had their
being, the writers took up the subject and popularized it — such books as Falk's " The House"
and Georges Hirtil's " The German Room," have done good service in the cause — and then the
artists presented the theme to the eye, and made the old chairs and tables, and panelled walls,
and timbered ceilings, and hospitable chimney-pieces more attractive still. It became the
fashion to furnish houses in the old German style; the jpictares of Diirer and Holbein, and
the cuts of the old book-illustrators, were freely drawn upon for models, and much that was
superficially attractive was produced. Then, as now, the artists helped the cause along with
their pictures, popularizing it in a way that could not have been done by the mere practice of
private persons. Where only a man's family and friends would see the interior of his house,
1 64 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
a picture could communicate a similar model to a whole cityful of people. Beside private
houses, it became the fashion to put up taverns, restaurants, and club-rooms in old Gennan
style; there are many places in Germany where this fad has been carried out with great
thoroughness; not only the chairs and tables, the wainscoting, and the fittings of the room
are exact reproductions of the style of the early sixteenth century, but the earthenware,
the beer-mugs, the linen, are all of the same style ; yet as in all such matters, human nature
itself makes her protest against turning back the hands of the social clock, by refusing to
make her men and women over in the old, moulds. French bonnets, stove-pipe hats, coats
and trousers, obstinately refuse to make concessions, and the anachronism is fatally exposed.
Later, with the growing influence of Prussia, and the worship of the Great Frederick, the
counter-current of the Rococo set in, and to-day, although the old Gothic style of Diirer and
Holbein's time has many advocates, the freer, looser style of Louis XV. has been cultivated
with vigor and success, and has once again become almost a national style. It is used with
surprising dexterity and grace by the artists of Munich among others, and even the stone-
cutters, the workers in that cement which gives at small expense such a grandiose air to
many of her buildings, the carvers in wood and the workers in metal, have learned to handle
this style with an ease and skill that are like a second nature.
Pictures such as this we give by Hasemann have the advantage of recommending a style
that is more distinctly amenable to modern ways of living. There is nothing here that might
not be transplanted to the most modern house even in our own country, and made at home
there, provided that a certain degree of culture had prepared the way for such simplicity,
and for the true enjoyment of the home-side of life, the side that is not meant for strangers
or the public.
In another picture by the painter of the " Nunnery in Bruges," " The Dice-throwers," the
artist has given us a glimpse of a corner in one of the inns in Munich that we have alluded to,
as having been refitted in the style of an older time. If it were not for the young man's big
hat and the still bigger hat of the old man who sits at the end of the table we might take this
lot of dice-throwers for contemporaries, but we suppose that was not Meyer's intention. He has
rather wished to carry us back to the times of Terburg and Pieter de Hooghe, but, however it
may be with the painting, it may be admitted that his people have much more life in them
than the older men knew how to put in theirs. This picture has become a great favorite with
the artist's public at home, and even here has met with much favor; its picturesqueness wins
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
165
it friends on one side; the earnestness of the actors attracts others. The head of the old man
who has just made the throw is painted with great force— the ownership of the broad piece
"THE DICE-THROWERS."
FROM THE PICTURE BY CLAUS MEYER.
i66 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
of gold at his side hangs upon the whim of the die, that for a second, as we look at it, dances
on its edge ! Will he keep thera, or will they pass ov^er to the young man who watches the
cast with knitted bi'ows ? The old man nearest us seems to be the least interested in the game
of the party ; he cares more for his beer than for the throw, and holds his old Flemish mug in
readiness to drain it the instant the die has made up its mind on which side to fall.
LrD\\'iG Passini, in spite of his Italian name, is a native of Vien^ia, where he was born in
1832. He must not be confounded with Alberto Passini, the painter of scenes from the life of
Turkey and Persia, who was born at Busseto, in Italy. Ludwig Passini was taken early by his
parents to Trieste and thence to Venice. He studied with Karl Werner and accompanied
him on a visit to Dalmatia; afterward the two artists worked much in comj)any with Carl
Haag. After a visit to Rome, and another to Berlin, where he was married, he returned to
Venice, and has since lived altogether in that city. He paints principally in water-coiors, m
Avhich he is one of the first masters of his time. His picture " Curiosity " gives an excellent
idea of his work, although he has done more serious tjiings — Mr. Vanderbilt's line example,
for instance, " Peasants hearing Mass." With a nice sense of humor, Passini has kept us
from seeing what it is that so excites the curiosity of these Venetians. AVho is in the gondola,
the prow of which we just discover passing under the bridge ? There is no knowing. Perhaps
some person of distinction has just arrived in the city, more likely it is a pair of lovers newly
wed, or on their way to church. But, in fact, anything at all unusual Avill gather a crowd in
Venice, or, for that matter, in any Italian city. On this occasion we find almost every rank
in life represented, except the highest — there is no gentleman visible, much less any lady ; no
Venetian lady being ever seen in the streets. Here, however, are good people enough, and a
j)riest or two to bless them ; the variety of character is remarkable, and so great is the artist's
skill, that the individuality of the smallest face is preserved, while the essentially Venetian
characteristics of the ci'owd are given with a freedom and spontaneity of touch thgit can only
oome of long familiarity and constant study. All these people, forgetting their occupations,
forgetting what brought them out of their houses, have rushed to the parapet of the bridge —
'tis in one of the caUe, or narrow streets — to catch a glimpse of the stranger, were it only for a
second. Only one person in the crowd keeps cool and remains indiffei'ent — the baby on its
young nurse's arm ! His eyes are rather attracted by the boys who are racing up the street
at the call of the noisy gamin, who is shouting in our ears — a figure adroitly introduced by
the artist to carry his subject outside his frame. We may study the picture as long as we
' CURIOSITY."
FROM THE PICTURE By LUDWIG PASSINl,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
167
will; every face is a type and gives us something to study; the two girls drawing water ia
their copper buckets, of whom one still clings to her duty while the other yields to resistless
curiosity; the pretty girl who rests her fan on the parapet, and looks as if she thought to
herself that another girl she knows would make as fair a bride; or the young hsherman in
front, an undeveloped tenor, Masaniello or Edgardo ; the girls pressing on one another, eager
for a sight and making their feminine comments ; the priest on his dignity, a little scornful
"the pumpkin-seller."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG PASSINl.
of himseK for yielding to his ciiriosity, and drawing back his cloak with professional discre-
tion; and so the character-dravdng goes on, true to the life in the smallest head of the group
that ends the line.
The same traits of observation apjjear in our other picture, " The Zucca (pumpkin) Seller,"
and which needs no help to understand from any commentator. These men, with their boat-
load of pumpkins brought from their farm on the mainland, are making their way to a sale
through a sea of gossip and small talk. As yet, only one pumpkin has been got rid of and
that is being carried into her house by the buyer under considerable difficulties. It is at
1 68
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
present extremely dubious whether the superior young person with a black jacket and lace
on her sleeves, will decide to take either of the pumpkins on which the dealer is volubly
descanting. His assistant, in charge of the tiller, gossips with a girl who is fetching water,
while he tills his pipe anew. In the stern of the boat the farmer's boy takes a rest from
handling the oar, and chews a straw by way of appetizer for a breakfast that depends on the
"THE CONSCRIPT'S WAGON."
FROM THE PICTURE BY AUGUST PETTENKOFEN.
sale of enough pumpkins for a profit. In the distance a young woman walks off like a
duchess, with a fine scorn of pumpkins, and of mere vulgar cares of all sorts. Passini remains
the painter of the popular life of Venice before all others. No one has interpreted that life
with a fulness, a humanity, and a dramatic sense in any way comparable to his.
Hugo Kauffmank, born in Hamburg, in 1844, draws almost all his subjects from the life
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of the common people, and invests his scenes with no little dramatic power. His " Poachers
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 169
Surprised," tells over again a story that has always been a favorite one in countries where the
game-laws are made in the interest of a class, and where their violation is a crime liable to the
severest penalties. These men have been discovered in their rude retreat where, after a
day's successful sport, they were amusing themselves, in company with the woman who shares
their fortunes. Their guns, unwarily laid aside upon the stone bench, are of no use to them,
nor would they, perhaps, dare to use them if they could. Their offence is flagrant enough,
for the fawns that they have killed are in plain view upon the floor. Hatred is on the man's
face who has sprung to his feet; his clenched flst motions revenge, but he feels his powerless-
ness. His companion keeps his seat and instinctively puts his arm about the woman at his
side to protect her. The guitar on which she has been playing has slipped to the floor. A
few minutes, and the unlucky pair will be marching hand-cuffed before their captor on their
road to judgment. This is good, vigorous jjainting, a story clearly told, but it has only a local
interest, and as it deals with only a constructive offence, and not a crime in itself, its interest
is purely local; here in America, for instance, such a picture has no value outside its technical
merit. In Germany, it is supposed to convey a deep moral lesson.
The little sketch, " The Conscript's Wagon," by August Von Pettestkofen, an artist of
Vienna, who began life as a soldier, is a vigorous, lively study of a scene in Hungary, where
the artist spent much time. He has also lived in Venice, but his working place is Vienna.
There is plenty of "go " in tliis picture; tlie horses dash madly along, the captain beats the
drum, and all shout and sing together to keep up their spirits, for may they not all be shot
to-morrow ?
X.
A PLACE apart in the art of modern Germany is held by Arnold Bocklin, from the long
list of whose productions we present our readers with two cliaracteristic examples. He
was born in 1827 at Basle, and took up the study of art in obedience to an over-mastering incli-
nation, and in spite of the obstinate opposition of his father. His flrst studies were made at
Diisseldorf, under Schirmer, and were devoted to landscape, but later he withdrew from the
Academy and gave himself up to the direct study of nature, laboring long and diligently at
recording his observations and impressions received at flrst hand. Leaving Schirmer's direc-
tion, he passed to Brussels, where he studied flgure-painting as earnestly as he had before
i-o ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
studied landscape. Restlessness was characteristic of Bocklin's youth, and wearying of
Brussels he turned to Paris, but arrived there at an unfortunate time, when the Revolution
of 1848 was turning everything topsy-turvy. His stay in Paris was short, and he learned but
little there ; although some of his German biographers trace to the impression made upon his
sensitive youthful mind by the cruelties he witnessed on the part of the soldiery, the discord
of his coloring and the want of harmony between the contents of his pictures and their out-
ward form ! Perhaps if the Germans would cease thinking it a moral duty to attempt an
explanation of every fact in the universe, they would be saved from some of the absurdities
they occasionally fall into. Hastily quitting Paris and its disagreeable soldiery, Bocklin
returned to his paternal Basle, and from thence went to Rome, where for some time he sup-
ported a scanty existence by working for the publishers, finding solace for his hard experiences
in the congenial society of other artists as poor as himself, among theui the now deceased
Dreber and Feuerbach, with whom he enjoyed to the full their common wanderings in the
field of classic art. In Rome, in spite of his poverty, he must needs take to himself a wife, and
after a short acquaintance he married Angelina Pascucci, a poor orphan whom he had found
living in the sorest need. Happy as he found himself in his new relation, — a happiness that
suffered a cruel check in the loss of his first-born child — life in Rome proved too hard for Bock-
lin, and he went again to Basle, where he hoped that he might find an opening for his talent.
But things were no better there, and the history of his first commission is a melancholy episode
in his life. He received an invitation from a rich amateur of Hanover to paint the walls of
his dining-room with a subject of his own choosing. Filled Avith high hopes, he took his wife
and child, and left Basle for Hanover, where he soon covered the walls of the room consigned
to him with a series of landscapes painted in distemper on linen, where man's relations, so to
speak, with Fire, were indicated in that allegorical fashion so dear to the German mind. These
pictures have since been transferred to Cassel, where their owner has built himself a Gothic
villa. On the first wall is painted, at one side, a nymph in a meadow, symbolizing, in ways
best known to the allegorizing mind, the primaeval ages ; then comes Prometheus, the luckless
inventor of fire, and lastly Adam and Eve. Then follows the Age of Gold; the farmer sows
Ms field, women fetch water from the spring, an altar smokes with the sacrifice which the
shepherds bring to the god of the wood. The series ends with the burning of a villa crowning
a rocky steep ; the foreground is filled with people who rend the heaven with their cries.
When all was finished, the astonished amateur, not at all comprehending this strange mixture
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME, 171
of subjects and motives, expressed his dissatisfaction with the way in which his well-meant
commission had been filled, and in plain terms refused at first to accept the worli. A lawsuit
ensued, and while it was pending, the artist and his family, dependent on this work for their
support in a strange city, were put to great straits, and in the end he left inhospitable Hanover
and made his way to Munich, where, as it proved, better luck awaited him. Among the many
friends he had made in the early days in Rome, Paul Heyse, the novelist, was one of those
most strongly attracted to him. They came together again at Munich, and the poet of the
pen introduced the poet of the brush to Count Schack, who at once found in the talent of the
artist something congenial, and gave him so many commissions that it is only in his gallery
in Munich that we can get a complete idea of Bocklin's talent. From this time the success
of Bocklin was assured, and whatever his talent has been able to accomplish has been pro-
duced under circumstances altogether favorable. His position among German artists, though
certainly not universally accepted, is with the foremost, and whatever faults he may be justly
charged with, and certainly they are not few, it must be admitted that his distinctive merits
richly overweigh them. His work may be classed under the two heads of landscape and
romantic genre, and the examples in Count Schack's gallery are among his chief ]Droductions
in either class. In this famous gallery, one of the finest collections of modern German art to
be found anywhere, we meet with the pictures of many artists not seen elsewhere in places
accessible to the public; while some, like Schwind, Feuerbach, Genelli, and Bocklin, are only
to be completely understood by the visitor to this gallery, so generously made free to all, since
the insignificant porter's fee cannot be a bar to any one who cares for pictures at all. The
landscape we copy from Bocklin, "The Villa by the Sea," is one of the pictures by him in the
Schack gallery, and it is a subject that so greatly interests the artist that he has painted
several repetitions of it, varying, of course, somewhat in the details. Bocklin's idea, according
to Pecht, is to represent a rich villa by the sea, that has been burned and plundered in the
early morning by pirates, the owner murdered, and the women and treasure carried away.
This is the general theme, but in the example we give, the calamity would not appear to be
so recent. The flames are long since extinguished ; nature, as is her way, has sought by new
growths of vine and verdure, to hide the traces of rapine and destruction, and one of those
who in happier times dwelt in this stately palace, has returned to weep over the memory of
the past. The ruin wrought by the pirates is complete, but enough is left to show us what
the place was in its days of prosperity. The marble columns of the portico still stand, and
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
against the blue sky one or two of the statues remain that formerly guarded the terrace upon
its top. Still m the garden, now encumbered and overlaid with fallen trees and shrubbery,
Neptune tries to guide the ramping horses of the fountain, but as the vandals have left the
once smiling place, it will forever remain. The sea-birds, hoarsely screaming, will fly about
the rocks, the stormy winds will beat the shrubbery and bend the tall cedars like reeds, and
"THE VILLA BY THE SEA."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ARNOLD BOCKLIN
little by little the desolation and ruin will be complete. Much of this we feel in looking at
Bocklin's picture, but we feel, too, that the subject is not treated with the dignity that belongs
to it. There is too much detail, and the pictorial interest is frittered away; the eye wanders
all over the canvas seeking for a place where it may rest. Nor is this the only difficulty; we
feel that the sky and the land are not in sympathy; they do not belong together. A wind
that could so drive the shrubbery before it, and bend the tall trees, would never let the waves
play so at their ease along the shore, nor show us a sky so clear of clotids. There is a want
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 173
of tone, a crudity of coloring, which betrays itself as plainly in the picture as it does in the
engraving. It seems to us that Bcicklin shows to most advantage in such pictures as " The
Mermaidens "—the one we copy — the " Nereid " of the Schack Gallery, the " Fight of the
Centaurs," and others of the same general character — attempts to put life and reality into the
long departed fancies of antique poetry and fable. In his " ideal landscapes "—of which
" The Villa by the Sea " is one of the most striking, we may think we discover a relationship
to the art of the French romantics, although he came too late to share in the glow of dis-
covery; and other influences, derived from literature and the experiences of travel, especially
from his life in Italy, where he wandered over classic ground, arm in arm with love and
friendship, had, no doubt, much to do with these creations, all of which are variations upon a
common theme. As we look at these landscapes, certain poems, or passages of poetry, come
back to the mind; we remember Uhland, or Poe, or Cobridge, or Keats with his —
" Charm'd magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn ; "
but there is no reason for supposing that Bocklin looked anywhere but within himself for his
interpretation of nature. As for the other subjects— the class to which the " Nereid " of the
Schack. Gallery, the "Mermaidens" and the rest, belong, their origin is not difficult to trace.
Such themes are familiar to the German people, whose literature from old times of Norse and
Teuton is filled with legends of pixies, faeries, gnomes, water-sprites, sea-serpents, and many
other denizens of the woods, and waves, and secret places of the earth, and German poets, and
story-tellers, and painters have always delighted in depicting them. In Bocklin's fancy these
have taken a form at once more native and more realistic than we generally see; his creations
are freer from admixture with the classic, or the Kenaissance transformation of the classic,
such as we find in most of the German allegorizing, and in their grotesque subjects. Some-
times Bocklin's pictures of this sort suggest William Blake, and again Henry Fuseli, himself
a Swiss, a native of Zurich, a man with a head full of strange fancies, but incapable of weav-
ing them into artistic harmony. Nor is Bocklin himself capable of beautiful painting. Our
engraving of " The Mermaids "—a very skilful piece of work— does the artist something more
than justice by ridding us of the raw and dissonant color of the original, and fixing our
attention upon the graceful lines, the spirited action, the ovei-flowing animal spirits, the
abounding playful fancy of the scene. In the first act of Richard Wagner's opera "Das
Rheingold," a fancy like this of Bocklin's is given a sort of reality, but the painter's theme
174 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
admitted of far more life and variety than were allowed the poet — for our time has produced
few poets equal to Wagner. Noi' is Bocklin guilty of weighting his pictures with allegorical
significance or nioi-al teaching of any Ivind. They do not typify the cardinal virtues, nor the
cardinal sins either, nor the arts and sciences, nor any of the too well-known ingredients with
which his German and French contemporaries are so fond of peopling wall and ceilings and
acres of perfunctory canvas. These creatures of his fancy are simply, bent on having a good
time, sporting in the water that is their home. This storm-beaten rock in mid-ocean is their
play-ground, and many are the antics it has witnessed. Just now, in the foreground, a
wicked old merman is in hot pursuit of two stout young damsels, unaware of the jealous
dash that the legitimate partner of his joys and sorrows is making for him, while the catas-
trophe is waited for with glee by two other maidens, one of whom clings to the rock, and the
other watches the game from its top. Blake himself would have enjoyed the weird head of
the other old merman that just rises above the water, as he tries to steal unawares upon the
merry group. The luckless baby at the left who, in his^ eagerness to seize a small fish, has
slipped upon the rock, is an amusing freak of fancy, and so is that of the youthful remora
who is turning a hand-spring in the air. With what spirit and abandonment, this figure is
drawn! BticlvMn has imagined- for him a tail with a limpet-like end, by which he can attach
himself to the rock and i)lny with the waves at^ his ease. This picture might serve as an
illustration for Tennyson's youtliful jjoem:
" I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
AtkI still, as I comb'd I would sing and say,
■ Who is it loves me ? Who loves not me ? '
* 'h ***** I
■ But at iiight I would wander away, away,
■I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks.
And lightly vault from the throne and play
With the mermen in and out of the rocks ;
We would run to and fro, and hide ixnd seek
On the broad sea-wolds 1' the crimson shells
Whose silvery spikes are nighest tlie sea.
But if any came near I would call, and shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap
From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells;
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 175
For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list
Of the bold merry mermen under the sea;
They would sue me and woo me, and flatter me,
In the purple twilights under the sea;
But the king of them all would carry me,
Woo me, and and win me, and marry me,
In the branching jaspers under the sea."
Hans Makart, when he died in 1883, at the early age of forty-three, enjoyed, especially
among the younger artists of every country, a reputation as a colorist that in itself was
enough to show how dead we have become in this generation to that quality which is the
highest charm of art. Nor was it as a colorist alone that in the estimation of his time he
stood head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. He was praised for the richness of
his composition, for the exuberant fancy, the wide knowledge, the vast executive j)ower that
were displayed in his canvases. We wei'e told, by sound of trumpet, that he had brought
back the golden age of Paul Veronese, of Tintoretto, of the whole Venetian galaxy, but that
he added to this rather dry and outworn repertory, a modernism, a power of sympathy with
the feelings and aspirations of our own time, that made hi in more than the peer of the great
ones gone! His reputation, that had' been steadily growing since the appearance of his
" Plague in Florence," was at its height in 1876,' when his " Catharine Cornaro," his " Abun-
dantia," and some of his smaller pictures, were brought to this country and shown at the
Philadelphia Exposition; and it is to our credit that they made much less impression here
than might have been expected, seeing how naturally pi'one we are to accept the judgment of
older nations in matters where we take it for granted that their larger experience and ampler
opportunities have given them a right to be heard; In truth, it was difficult then to under-
stand, and it is well-nigh impossible to understand now, how Makart climbed to the position
he held so long. For, to-day, it is all but universally admitted that canvases more empty of
meaning, more wanting in everything that gives worth and dignity to painting, have seldom
been seen. Even their boasted color no longer finds any one so poor to do it honor: And
yet, as no reputation of such magnitude was ever built upon nothing, but always represents
something real, it will be found that Makart, too, , had a reason for being. Something, no
doubt, was due to the colossal advertising he received at the hands of the dealers. In Mun-
kacsy and Makart we have two men who owe nine-tenths of what they stand for to the
magnificent skill the dealers and other men who had them in tow displayed, in rearing in
176 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
their behalf tlie whole vast enginery of modern "advertising." But without some basis to
build upon, even this great skill, to which all Yankeedom combined could not hold a candle,
would not have availed. And in Makart's case he represented the reaction against the for-
malizing spirit, the worn-out allegorizing, the stilted historical-painting, the dead monotony
of color, which had long made of German painting the dreary sepulchre of the dry bones of
art. The spirit of the whole body of the younger men was in revolt- against the formalities of
the studios of Munich and Berlin — a lot of dry-as-dust professors, men of no little mechanical
sl-;i]l. but without a drop of the poetry of art in their veins, were in possession of the schools —
and it was inevitaiiie tliat change nuist come, and that the stream so long pent up would one
ilay burst its barriers and come down with a rush. Makart was not the only "sign of the
times," but he was one of the most auspicious, because he had more ability, such as it was,
than the rest of his young contemporaries, and had he applied that ability to painting big
religious pictures, as Munkacsy did, he would certainly have cut a much greater figure than
he actually fLUed, large as was the place, while his fame was at its height. Munkacsy, as
we have seen, had but a few notes at his command; he had not an atom of inventive power;
he painted big pictures not because he wanted to paint them — at least, their thinness and their
perfunctory character make it appear so — but because those who helped him to his public
knew the commercial value of big pictures. But Makart painted his great " machines," as
the French call such canvases, because he delighted in a wide field, and plenty of figures, and
noisy colors. His first big canvas, " The Plague in Florence," was such a hurly-burly of m«n,
women, and colors, as up to that time had not been seen. It was painted after Makart came
back from Rome to raise money, since he was in straits with poverty. He sold it out of hand
to a dealer for a few hundred marks. The dealer sold it for ten thousand marks, and when it
was exhibited at the Kunstverein in Munich, Makart's fame (for his lifetime at least) was
secured. As the picture made its triumphal progress through the German cities, the enthu-
siasm increased, and even in Paris, amid the babel of voices, the praise was louder than the
fault-findings, though it must not be forgotten that sober criticism outside of Germany never
accepted Makart. But at home, and everywhere indeed, at first, the public cheered his work
to the echo, and the Emperor of Austria set the seal to popular approval by giving the artist a
commission for ten thousand marks. He then produced the " Juliet mourned by Romeo," a
picture that added greatly to his reputation. Encouraged by a material success that almost
at a bound had lifted him from pDverty to affluence, Makart now opened a studio in Vienna
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
177
and began to paint with great industry. He produced in rapid succession the " Abundantia,"
the "Catarina Cornaro," the " Cleopatra," and among a crowd of smaller works which filled
I
'BRUNHILDE" ("DIE WALKURE.")
FROM THE PAINTING BY HANS MAKART.
up the crevices of his time devoted to these huge canvases, he found leisure also to paint the
drop-curtain for the Vienna Stadt Theatre. In 1875 and 1876 he passed a winter in Effvpt
Vol. II.— 12. Sij V
1 78 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
■with Lenbach and Leopold Miiller, and on Ms return painted the "Nile Hunt," which we
engrave. This was followed by the " Entry of Charles V. into Antwerp," which was sent to
the Paris Exposition of 1878 ; the next year, 1879, came the " Five Senses," and in 1880 ap-
peared the "Diana Hunting," which is owned in this country and was exhibited at the
Gallerj^ of the American Art Association. The pictures we have named, with a considerable
number of allegorical and fanciful pieces, figures named after legendary or poetical characters,
such as the " Brunhilde," here given, make iip the chief life-work of Makart, and his ability as
a composer — or let us frankly say, his manner as a composer — for ability in this field he had
absolutely none — may be judged once for all by such a subject as the " Nile Hunt." It is
impossible to believe that the painter had in his mind, before beginning such a picture as this,
any clear idea of what he meant to make of it. The more we study it, the more absurdities
we discover, and the same may be said of every one of his large scenic loaintings. He had
never studied anything to the bottom ; to the last, he never knew how to draw anything ; he
relied on dashing brush-work, and color piled on in large masses, and in rich bewildering
harmonies to blind the spectator to all other considerations. It is, in fact, in the highest
degree unfair to Makart to criticise his work to those who can only see it reproduced in black
and white as it is here ; but if the reader will look at the engraving with a view simply to
discover the various details of the composition, he can at least see what a man might make
out of these nude Egyptian bodies of men and women ; these richly jewelled head-dresses ;
these boats ornamented with barbaric splendor, this trophy of game-birds, these crowded and
heaped-up accessories of riotous luxury — the whole a charivari of unreason and impossibility,
conceived and carried out in mere wanton lust of the eyes. AH that a man with such an
aim, and with power to revel to the end in fulfilling his desire could do, Makart has done,
but this is the limit of his accomplishment. For the mind, for the gratification of the higher
faculties, his pictures do nothing. We do not mean that they teach no moral lesson ; that is
not required ; our criticism is, that they give no lasting pleasure of any kind. On the material
side of his art, all is failure. There is no composition, no harmonizing of lines or masses, no
intelligible grouping ; the wearied eye seeks rest all over the crowded canvas and finds none
anywhere. In this hurly-burly nobody is really doing anything, though everybody is
violently pretending to do something. In the foreground is a boat, over the edge of which a
net is drawn, not by the people in the boat, but by two slaves in another boat alongside. The
net is found to contain a crocodile, and some fish selected apparently on account of their color,
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 179
that quality being a claim that Makart always pays on demand. As the crocodile is not
welcome, two of the occui)ants of the boat are making believe despatch him, but it is plain,
from the way they go to work, that the crocodile is in no great danger. As a specimen of
Makart's rather insolent contempt of drawing, the reader may be asked to look at the man
who is thrusting a spear at the crocodile, and to discover, if he can, what he has done with the
lower half of his body. But, in truth, it is sheer waste of time to attem^Jt to account for any-
thing whatever in such a picture as this. The artist did not mean to make a reasonable
work. He chose what he thought a picturesque subject, with plenty of excuse for rich color-
ing, gave himself free play, and produced such a gorgeous salad as satisfied the popular crav-
ing, and made him the favorite of the hour. But, even the coloring of Makart's pictures has
no permanent charm. It surprises, and even pleases at first, because it is a relief from the
dull and muddy, or crude and gaudy, coloring of German pictures in general. And no doubt
Makart was strong on this side and had a great natural talent for harmonic combinations.
But we soon weary of his morbid tones, hints of nature's decay, or, at the best, of her fading
and declining hours; neither pure and sweet, like that of the early Italian art; nor rich and
reviving, the breath of some sumptuous garden that takes our senses cajptive in the art of
Italy's blooming-time. The test of beautiful color is the painting of the human body ; all the
great colorists have made this the object of their art, and everything else in their pictures has
been subsidiary to this perfection. With Makart, the exact opposite is true. No painter
that ever lived has shown us so many naked bodies as he, but he treats them as a part merely
of his ornamental scheme, and so far from being principal, they are only foils to his flowers
and gems, rich draperies, the plumes of birds, and the rest of his luxurious apparatus. This
is a fatal defect, and no amount of dash or of skill in any other direction will atone for it. It
is the sufficient cause of the decline of the artist's reputation, which has vanished almost as
rapid] y as it arose.
Anselm Feueebacii, the painter of the "Dante and the Noble Women of Ravenna,''
has been mentioned already in connection with Arnold Bocklin. An intimate friendship
sprang up between the two in Italy, and at bottom there is much in common in their pictures
— leaving out of consideration those playful subjects drawn from tlie Northern mythology in
which Bocklin really resembles no one. Feuerbach was born at Speyer, in 1829. After some
time spent in Diisseldorf under Schadow, and then at Munich with Rahl, he went to Paris and
studied with Couture. He then made his way to Rome, and there gave himself up to the
* -s
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
study of the old Italian masters, and developed a style in Avliicli this influence is clearly
manifested while at the same time the sentiment of his pictures is as clearly his own. The
first picture that drew attention to his name was the one we copy — " Dante with the Noble
Women of Ravenna.'' This was first exhibited at Carlsruhe, and afterward purchased by
the Grand Duke. It was destined for the Carlsruhe Museum, but the opposition of Lessing,
at that time Director of the Museum, was so strong that the Grand Duke gave way, and
"DANTE AND THE NOBLE WOMEN OF RAVENNA."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ANSELM FEUERBACH.
retained the pictiire for his ]3rivate collection. Lessing was obstinately opposed to the new
movement in art making itself felt in the works of Feuerbach, Bocklin, and the rest of those
who wei'e striving to give expression to a romantic and idyllic art founded on the classic
traditions of the Italian Renaissance, in opposition to the purely narrative and literary art of
the Diisseldorf school represented by such men as Lessing. Othei' subjects chosen by
Feuerbach show a similar leaning to serious and lofty themes, in which the treatment is in
direct opposition to the spectacular and histrionic character of the art at that time the fashion
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. i8i
in Germany. Feuerbacli rejects everything of an anecdotic or trivial nature, and translates
the sentiment of his subject by simple lines and massive forms, with the action reduced to
the least possible. In the " Dante and the Noble Women of Ravenna " we are free to explain
the subject for ourselves, since so far as Ave can learn it has no historical foundation. We
know little of Dante's life at Ravenna, where he passed his last days under the protection of
his friend Guido Novello da Polenta, a protector of learned men, himself a poet, and the
father of that Francesca da Rimini whose story Dante has told with such unrivalled pathos.
By a slip of his j)en, an eminent German writer, in describing this picture, makes the girl who
leans upon Dante's shoulder, no other than Beatrice herself. Beatrice had, however, been dead
many and many a year before Dante sought refuge in Ravenna, but in truth we suppose the
time would be wasted that were given to a.literal exj^lanation of the jiicture. It is unfortu-
nate, or so it seems to us, that it is so precisely named, because it sets us searching for an ex-
planation that is hard to find. Were Dante's face not modelled on the weU-known mask that
shows him in his last years, if not in death, we might refer the subject to the Vita Nova, and
explain it by the passage where Dante describes himself as walking with a company of ladies
who question him about his love for Beatrice. But, as we have said, conjecture as to Feuer-
bach's meaning is limited by the title he has himself given to his picture.
Similar in character to this work of Feuerbach is the " Penelope " of Rudolf von
Deutscii, a Russian artist by birth, born in Moscow in 1835, but who learned his art in Dresden
and has lived since 1855 in Germany. He resides at present in Berlin. His subjects are almost
exclusively dravm from classic poetry or from mythology: " The Chaining of Prometheus,"
" The Carrying off of Helena," and others. His treatment of his subjects is at once simple and
grandiose; the lines and masses are severe, but in the details and the expression there is a
sympathetic feeling that forbids the charge of coldness. This figure of Penelope, her loom
abandoned, watching on the terrace of her palace in the fading light of day for the return of
her lord Ulysses, while it reminds us in its attitude and in the lines of its drapery of the Fates
of the Parthenon, is yet instinct with warm human life, and shows an intimate sympathy with
the poet in whose gallery of women Penelope is one of the most beautiful figures. No one in
modern times has painted anything of this kind more worthy to stand as an illustration of
Homer than this.
WiLHELM DiEZ, distinguished among the artists of our day as a genre-painter and illus-
trator, wasbo]'n at Baireufli in 1839. At fourteen he went to Munich, where he has since
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
continued to live and work. He began his studies there under Piloty, and he is another
example of the freedom enjoyed in that school, since in his case as in that of so many others,
his way of looking at nature and his way of painting are as unlike his master as can be
imagined. He has been compared to Wouverman, but this is unnecessary; his manner is
really his own, and his individuality so strong, that it makes itself felt even when his pictures
"THE CAMP-FOLLOWER."
FROM THE PAINTING BY WILHELM DIEZ.
are seen for the first time in a large collection of miscellaneous Avorks. And yet they are but
of small dimensions, and their" subjects amount to but little in themselves. The two that
we give, " The Camp-Follower " and the " Marauders," are illustrations of the time of the
Thirty Years' War, a period with which Diez has made himself thoroughly acquainted. Mr.
Kurz's excellent reproduction from the photograph, and Mr. Rhodes' equally good copy of
the wood-cut, give an excellent idea of the look of his pictures, though Mr. Kurz had the
advantage of the better original ; the rich, flowing touch and the delightful sense of relation
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between sky, earth, and things which make the charm of Diez's pictures, are perfectly trans-
latable by the photograph ; they escape to a certain degi'ee the skill of the engraver. In
looking over a considerable collection of photographs after Diez the impression made by his
pictures was renewed, that his love of painting is greater than his care for the detail of his
"THE MARAUDERS."
FROM THE PAINTING BY WILHELM DIEZ.
subject; he strives to express it, in spirit, as a whole; to give the sentiment of the scene,
and to make the details ratlier felt than perceived. This may not be very clearly expressed;
what we would like to convey may perhaps be better sho\vn by a comparison. Thus, in
Makart's pictures, we have the artist working with the same aim; he wishes us to forget the
details and to see the picture as a whole. But, as Makart cannot, or what is the same in
result, will not, draw any single thing so tliat it can be looked at and enjoyed for itself; as he
1 84 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
cannot draw — or neA-er does di-aw — a hand, or a foot, or a face, we perverseh^ look for these
things and as we are continually disappointed, we end by refusing to take the whole for a
part, particularly as Ave find that truth of action and truth of attitude are no easier to find
than truth in the lesser details. Now Diez, though he sinks, or never obtrudes, the details of
his subject, yet proves again and again that he is master of them, and that, therefore, he can
trust to our knowledge of his science, and let him hide his detail or show it, as he will. At
the same time, the i^ublic is entirely right in the pleasure it tries to get out of Makart's
pictures and pictures like them. If they were painted as they ought to be, they would be
far better worth seeing than pictures, however clever, that deal only with the vices and the
failings of mankind — with Nym and Bardolph, drunken marauders, retailing their camp-
stories to one another as they stagger along the dusty road, or disgruntled soldiers lingering
on the march to fill their canteens at the sutler's cart.
XI. ^
THE three pictures contributed to oixr collection by Heustrich Hofmann show that ver-
satility for which he is distinguished ; but it cannot be said that this extends further
than to a variety in his choice of subjects; in his treatment of his themes we find that same
mannerism which balks us in the works of nearly all his countrymen ; that love of stage-play,
that inability to look at their subject with the eye of imagination. One and all — how few the
exceptions! — see the thing as they have-been taught to see it, not as they would have seen it
had they trusted to the eyes and the intuitions that nature gave them. Yet Hofmann has
not wanted for opportunity. He has travelled much, and seen much, and studied with more
than one master. K the end have found him not far from where he began, this is a fate
common to all who reduce to routine what was meant to be individual and spontaneous.
Heinrich Johann Ferdinand Michael Hofmann— it is not often that a German is weighted
with so many names — Avas born at Darmstadt in 1824. He Avas a younger brother of the
Secretary of State for Alsace and Lorraine, Karl Hofmann, and made his first essays in art
under the engraver Ernst Ranch. At eighteen he went to Diisseldorf and studied in the
Academy there under Theodore Hildebrandt and Schadow, and, as might have been predicted,
produced a huge canvas, " A Scene from the History of the Longobards," for Avliich Schadow
Avas mainly responsible. For a time, however, Hofmann escaped from the traditional bonds;
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 185
went to Antwerp and studied in tlie Academy there, then travelled in Holland and visited
Paris, but returned to Darmstadt and took up portrait-painting, which he practised with great
success. We next hear of him in Munich, where he is deep in Shakespeare, j)ainting the
regulation "Romeo and Jaliet," his particular rendering earning him much applause. After
three years' stay in the Bavarian capital he exchanged it for Darmstadt and Frankfort, where
he once more took up portrait-painting, and found some distinguished sitters. In Dresden,
where he lived for three years, he finished one of his jjrincipal pictiires, " Enzio in Prison."
'■ Enzio " is Henry, the natural son of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, who was taken
prisoner by the Bolognese, and held in captivity for twenty-two years. As the sole object of
his enemies was to keep so strong and brave a man out of the fight they were waging with
him and his father — GueK against GhibeUine — Henry's prison was a jirison only in name; he
was lodged in a palace, where he kept a luxurious court, and lived the life of a prince. As
we have seen in other cases, it was the opportunity the subject gave for a sumptuous display
of material splendor that led the artist to choose it, and not any interest in Henry, for whom
lie, of course, could care nothing. In 1854 he went to Rome, where he came under the influence
of Cornelius, and painted what by his admirers is considered his masterpiece — " Christ taken
Prisoner," a picture which bears unmistakable signs of the teaching of Cornelius. This paint-
ing is now in the Gallery at Darmstadt, whither Hofmann repaired, on leaving Rome, and
where he passed the next three years. In 1862 he took up his residence at Dresden, where he
has since continued to live and work. With indefatigable industry he has all his life long-
produced picture after picture, of which the best that can be said is that they satisfy the taste
of a large part of the German art-public ; contented if it be provided with a painted story,
clearly and intelligibly told, making no call upon their imagination or fancy, and presenting
no point likely to provoke disturbing discussion. The titles of a few of Hofmann's pictures
will show the nature of the field in which he works: "Othello and Desdemona," " Shylock
and Jessica," " St. Cecilia," " Venus and Cupid," " Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery "
(Museum in Dresden), and " Christ Preaching on the Sea of Gennesaret " (Museum in Berlin).
In the upper vestibule of the new Hoftheater, Hofmann has jjainted the ceiling with an
apotheosis of the heroes of the old German mythology, and in the Albrechtsburg at Meissen—
once, in the decline of its fortune, abandoned to the uses of the porcelain manufactory, but
since renovated, and restored to something like its old splendor — Hofmann, working with
other artists, took i^art in the decoration ; his share consisting in a painting representing the
1 86 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
betrothal of tlie little prince of Saxony with the eleven-year old Bohemian princess, Sidonie.
Of the three examples of Hofmann which we place before our readers, the " Othello and
Desdemona " best illustrates the defects of the school to which the artist belongs, while the
others show him in a more agreeable light. In the " Othello " it is easy to perceive that
Hofmann conceives his subjects as a scene from a stage-play, and he has composed it as a
stage-director of the old time would have done, with little reference to nature, but thinking
only of stage-effect. We are so much in the habit of seeing this done that we rarely stop to
analyze the matter, and discover wherein the difference between the natural and the artificial
treatment lies. Of course if we were to ask for a purely natural treatment of such a subject
we should be in the wrong. Shakespeare is not natural, in the legitimate meaning of the
word; he invents an unreal world, and makes his people act consistently in that. And this
is all that we can properly demand of the artist who attempts to make pictures of the actions
Shakespeare describes. The highest art of the actor is to make the unreal, real; and the
artist's aim should be no less. He certainly should carry us as far away from the actual stage
' as possible, and he is little to be praised if he do not, since he is much freer from the limita-
tions of hard fact than the actor or the stage-manager. They are hampei'ed in their aspira-
tions by having to deal with make-believes of all sorts, not merely with make-believe men and
women, but with painted canvas, oiled-paper moons, calcium-lights, and tinsel sj^lendors of
costume. The reader in his closet, if he have full sympathy with his poet, can see in his
mind's eye a lovelier Verona, a more enchanting Venice than any that the stage-carpenter can
show him, even if an Irving or a Booth should give him his design. And the painter is
bound to be an enchanter, too ; we have a right to ask of him that he leave the poet whom he
attempts to " illustrate," In the realm of the imagination where he found him. But what has
Hofmann done in his " Othello " ? Is this stout, well-fed lady, laid so comfortably abed, and
sleeping the sleep of a year-old child — is this the Desdemona whom her father described a
little before:
" A maiden never bold:
Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blush'd at herself ? "
Is this the delicate being whom we heard but now singing her " song of willow," and saw
beating her torn and bleeding wings against the net that villainy had wove about her ? Even
on the stage, surely, such a Desdemona would be regarded as ill-suited to the character. So
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very neat! So carefully adjusted! With such a becoming night-dress a la Grecque; fibula,
and golden pendant too, all complete, and suitable for the purpose ! This might be Imogen,
now, as lachimo saw her lying asleep, and took note of her perfections before he slipped the
bracelet from her arm.
" I will write all down:
Such and such j)ictures; there the windows; such
The adornment of her bed
*********
She hath been reading late
The tale of Tereus; here's the leaf turned down
Where Philomel gave up. * * * * "
There might be some reason in the picture then, and it would be economy in the artist to
make a few changes — throw away Othello's dagger (with which he has no business, any way!),
take the kinks out of his hair, make an lachimo of him, and so get two pictures out of one !
This was the cheap expedient often practised by men 'tis no offence to call superior to Mr.
Hofmann — Tintoretto, for example— and therefore we may make bold to recommend it. As
for Othello himself, he is familiar to us on the boards ; with his conventional stage-hero's
attitude, his face made up after the well-proved recipe for passion — his voluminous mantle
tossed so picturesquely over his shoulder, though we think that even on the stage such a vast
piece of upholstery would be found unmanageable. The artist would hardly find in his
Shakespeare a warrant for the dagger he has made plaj' so important a part in his picture;
considering that he has come resolved to shed no blood. Othello is well armed; his big
sword, and his dagger just pulled from its sheath, are very threatening !
" The Child Jesus in the Temple," is not only one of the best of Hofmann's pictures, it
seems to us one of the most pleasing among the many representations of the subject. There
is no attempt here at a recondite treatment of the story, such as we find in Holman Hunt's
celebrated picture. Hofmann has not wasted his time and hours in efforts at restoring Solo-
mon's Temple, with nothing worth mentioning to go upon ; nor has he thought it worth his
while to spend six years in Jerusalem in order to paint what he might have found in London
or Berlin, without trouble. Following the simple words of the story as told in Luke, he
shows the child standing in the midst of the doctors. The group is placed in front of the
tabernacle, which is merely indicated; its veiling curtain half withdrawn, a detail meant
perhaps to be symbolical of the part Jesus was to play in the religious teaching of the race.
i88
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
At the right of the picture, one of the doctors is sitting with a boolc in his lap which he has
been examining for some text tliat miglit confute the boy's argument. The gesture of Jesus
shows that he is answering the question, and his answer evidently moves the minds of all his
hearers, each of whom expresses his feeling in liis own way, according to his character. A
very old rabbi near him, leaning on his staff, regards the child with the pleased wonder of age
i
"THE CHILD JESUS IN THE TEMPLE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HEINRICH HOFMANN.
in the brightness of youth. Next him, a younger man, keen-witted and intellectual, follows
the argument with interested attention, the action of his hand showing his readiness to in-
terrupt the speaker with an objection, but that respect, as for a superior, restrains him until
the proper moment. On the other side, a sterner auditor listens in no relenting mood to words
that even from the mouth of a child, threaten the stability of a creed to which he is pledged.
His arm resting strongly on the book of his faith, he grasps his beard, and looks earnestly in
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 189
the face of the youthful prophet, while with the other hand he holds the scroll of the law, as-
if it were a weapon whose temper against such a foe he almost doubts. Behind this man
appears the head of still another who looks on at what is passing with an expression of mere
curiosity. We have said that Hofmann has not attempted to make of his pictures an anti-
quarian study. He has no doubt been wise in this, since we really know but little of what
the costumes, furniture, and details in general of the outward life of the time were like. He
has dressed his doctors in costumes partly Eoman and partly Oriental, and with the exception,
perhaps, of the oldest of the group, has not attempted to mark these people with the supposed
distinctive features of their race. He has certainly succeeded, if that were his aim, in making
an interesting picture of an event that can never lose its charm ; one of those anecdotes of the
childhood of great men that the world cherishes as among its pleasantest possessions. It has
from earliest time had a j)lace in the pictured series of the Life of Christ, and in that of his
Mother, and it would be an interesting study to bring together the various interpretations of
it by the masters of the art. The directions given in the most ancient Greek manual for the
assistance of painters charged with the decoration of churches and missals, for the treatment
of this subject, were followed by all the earliest artists in the west, and continued to be so
followed down to the time of the Renaissance. These directions are as follows, given with
the terse simplicity that marks all the contents of the book:
" Within the temple, Christ is seated on a throne. In one hand he holds an unopened
scroll ; the other hand is extended. About him, the scribes and pharisees are seated ; they
look at him with astonishment. Behind the throne Joseph is seen, to whom the mother of
Ood jpoints out the Christ."
Among the older German artists Diirer has treated this subject, introducing it into his
series of designs for the Life of the ^^irgin. As is too common with him, the quaintness of
his conception, and his independence of convention makes his representation interesting at
the expense of its dignity. Christ sits at a high desk on a platform under a canopy, and
lectures his audience with an energy that has plunged them all into confusion. They gather
into groups to conjure up arguments of defence against the unlooked-for invader, they shut
up their books wdth bangs of despair ; lean their heads on their hands ; shake warning fingers,
or gaze up at the ceiling as if hoping against hope for help from heaven. One very old
pharisee, still trusting in his books, has toddled out after a convincing volume, which he brings
back, supporting his steps with a crutch. Opposite, entering by the porch, we see Mary and
I go
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Joseph; Mary with her hands folded in prayer; Joseph, hat in hand, in his usual attitude
of humility. Diirer's design is a type of the disorder that was brought into the domain of
"THE SLEEPING BEAUTY."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HEINRICH HOFMANN.
religious teaching by means of art, when every artist thought himself at liberty to translate
the subject according to his own taste. Perhaps the most extraordinary i^erversion of the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 191
poetic interest of the story is, however, found in the representation by Menzel alluded to in
our notice of that artist, where the whole force of his undoubted talent has been brought
to bear in putting the Jews in a hateful light. Jesus himself is hardly spared, since he appears
as a youth of preternatural sharpness, who sees with intellectual gusto the confusion of his
adversaries. It is worth remarking in passing, that this vein of malice, so foreign to modern
ideas of the character of Jesus, is cons]Dicuous in the so-called apocryphal books that describe
his infancy. One of these, bearing on our subject, relates that in school, the teacher, instruct-
ing the boy in the alphabet, asked him to say Aleph. He said it, and was then told to say
Beth. " No," rebelled the child, " not till you tell me what Aleph means ! " The teacher
raised his hand to strike him, and immediately it was withered. It can hardly be denied that
something of this harshness appears in the answer that the boy made to his mother when she
reproached him for putting his parents to so much trouble in searching for him: " How is it
that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? "
In still a third picture, Hofmann deals with the fairy-tales of his oavu country; painting
the scene from the story of the " Sleeping Beauty " where the Prince arrives who will break
the chai-m. This is a subject not above the artist's powers, and his treatment of it is pleasing
enough. Domroeschen, as the Germans call the maiden, has gone to sleep in a cheerful place,
in an open gallery at the top of the castle. A rich arcade rose-wreathed looks out upon the
sunlit landscape, and roses, growing at their will for aU their hundred siimmers, have covered
wall and stairway with their fragrant barrier. Dornroeschen sits in slumber; one hand half
supporting her head as it leans against the marble pillar, the other, drooping at her side, just
iiolds without holding, the spindle that has wounded her, while at her side is the basket of
wool that she was spinning when her drowsy eyelids began to fall. On the rod that ties the
arches of the arcade, her hawks are perched asleej), on the ledge asleep, curled up and quite
content to sleep forever, is her favorite cat, and on the parapet of the stairs, with his head
under his wing, the peacock sleeps with all the hundred eyes of his gorgeous tail. But, up
the stairs the prince at last is coming ; in his hunter's dress, with cap and feather, his horn
slung about his neck, he tears the hindering thorns aside, and mounts the stairs —
"More close and close his footsteps wiud;
The magic music as his heart
Beats quick and quicker, till he find
The quiet chamber far apart.
192
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
His spirit flutters like a lark,
He stoops, — to kiss her — on his knee,
' Love, if thy tresses be so dark.
How dark those hidden eyes must be! "
"FRITHIOF AND INGEBORG."
FROM THE PAINTING BY RUDOLPH BENDEMANN.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 193
Another tale of fairy-land is illustrated by Rudolph Bendemann, tlie sou of that
Edouard Bendemann already spoken of in these pages. This artist, whose full name is Rudolf
Christian Eugen, was born in Dresden in 1851, and studied first at Dusseldorf and later with
liis father, under whose direction he was still working when he painted the scene from the
Frithiof's Saga, which we engrave. At the same period he painted other pictures that gave
him rej)utation, and took part in the decoration of the New Museum in Berlin, where he exe-
cuted, in encaustic, some of the groups of the Geniuses who preside over the different arts.
The scene from the Frithiof's Saga is treated with much directness, grace, and poetic sympathy,
characteristics Avhich the young artist has inherited from his father, whose " Jews in Cap-
tivity " and " Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem " are remarkably free from the grandiose
mannerisms of the time when they - were painted, but who excelled in the treatment of those
allegorical decorations, the love of which seems ineradicable from the German breast. If we
must have them, Edouard Bendemann has had the skill to make them tolerable, and his son
has shown the power of sympathy to put life into an old world-story.
The Frithiof's Saga, or, as we should say, the Tale of Frithiof , is a poem translated into
the Swedish language out of the Saxon by Esaias Tegner, the author of that " Children of the
Lord's Supper " which was long ago translated into English by our Longfellow. It relates
the loves of Frithiof the lowly-born son of Thorsten, for Ingeborg, the daughter of the great
Jarl Bele; and the adventures of the youth in search of perils and dangers to be overcome for
the sake of his mistress, since it was only by bravery and heroic deeds that he could hope to
break down the barriers that his birth interposed between them. The children had been
brought up together, living under the same roof in constant companionship, sharing one an-
other's sports and occupations, and growing up unconsciously into mutual love. This part of
the poem reminds us of the opening chapters of " Paul and Virginia," the rudeness of the
only accessible English translation cannot blind us to the simple charm of the narrative —
" How gladly at lier side steer'd he
Ills barque across the deep blue sea;
While gayly tacking, Frithiof stands.
How merrily clap her soft white hands.
" No birds' nests yet so lofty were.
That thitlier lie not climb'd for her.
Even the eagle, as he cloudward swung.
Was plunder'd both of eggs and young.
Vol. II.— l.S
^94 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
" No streamlet's water rush'd so swift,
O'er which he would not Ingeborg lift;
So pleasant feels, when foam-rush 'larms,
The gentle cling of small white arms.
"The first pale flower that spring has shed.
The strawberry sweet that first grows red.
The corn-ear, first in ripe gold clad.
To her he offer'd, true and glad."
These verses gave young Bendemann liis theme, and certainly he has made a pretty pastoral
out of it. While the boy has been busy with his bow-and-arrows, the girl has been weaving
him a crown of wild-flowers, as she sat awaiting him on the stone seat he built for her on the
shore of the fiord, and now she leans forward to place it on his head as he kneels before her
with the first fruits of his hunting. Like the young Parsifal, he would seem to have for his
motto: "I shoot at everything that flies," and in the pride of his exploit, that shines in his
face and transflgures his boyish body, he forgets that dead birds may not be the fittest offer-
ings for a girl's delighting ! All the romance is, however, on Frithiof 's side. Ingeborg is a
tight, practical Norse maiden, not a bit sentimental, and, for all that appears, she will wel-
come Frithiof's gifts with an eye to a good dinner for their outing, cooked to a turn in a cleft
t)f the rock, and seasoned with that best of relishes that health and youth have always at
command.
L. V. Carstens, a Munich artist, has found an attractive subject in this " Cosy Corner " —
a nook in the deserted garden of an old castle such as are foand all over Europe, sad, romantic
vestiges of times gone-by forever. Perhaps, this castle is once again inhabited in part, as is
the fortune of some of them nowadays, and this young girl, in wandering through the neg-
lected rooms, has come upon some book full of forgotten joys and sorrows, and taking her
knitting with her, has sought out her favorite corner in the park; here, lost in the mazes of
the romance, she forgets her work and forgets the time. Behind.her, rises the great wall of the
castle; its stones covered with moss and lichen, and embroidered on this soft-hued back-
ground with the tender tracery of the ivy. The shrubbery, grown rank and spindling for
want of care, strains upward to the light, and weaves a trellis of its slender branches, through
which the sunlight streams, softly diffused. Grass and weeds have long ago marked out the
pattern of the pavement with their fringing growth between the edges of the flagging-stones,
and although tlje stone bench yet holds its place, and the great slab still serves for a table, as
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
195
it did in tlie old days when the master of the castle and his friends came here after dinner to
drink their wine and discuss the times, yet these marble blocks are worn and shaken with the
years, their angles marred and their surface stained with mould. But, in the midst of all this
ruin, the old ramping lion loyally guards the stone shields that keep his ancient master's titles
"a cosy corner."
FROM THE PAINTING BY L. V. CARSTENS,
alive, although his once bristling mane and angry i^ride are tamed by centuries of storm; and
his mouth, that once roared as threateningly, is now only a safe resting-place for birds. Time,
too, that, so softly takes our joys away, yet is not altogether cruel, since he hides his wounds
in moss and flowers, and lightens up this sjiot, so full of saddening memories, with this fair
blossom of youth and gracefulness for whom all this ruin is but a foil.
GusTAV Adolf Spangenbekg, the painter of " The Twilight Hour," is an artist of pure
t96 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
(xerman type in his choice of subject, in his way of conceiving it, and in his style of execu-
tion. In the choice of liis subject he confines liimself to liis own countrj^, to its history, its
legends, and its beliefs; he looks at it with the eyes of those about him, aiming no higher than
to give expression to the thoughts and feelings of those among whoin he lives, and in his way
of painting keeping to the well-worn paths which were marked out by the early masters of
painting in Germany, not, however, following them slavishly, but moved by reverence for tlieir
greatness and by sympathy with their aims. As we have jinrsued our narrative, in however
rambling a fashion, it must have occurred more than once to the reader, that compared with
the French, the German artists are much given to wandering. The French artist born in the
• provinces, makes his way by hook-or-crook to Paris. He has no other goal. Once planted
there, he makes no other move, unless it be in summer time to stroll a little in the near
country side, until the' day comes when as a reward for his labors, he is sent for a four years'
study-time to Italy. This finished, he gladly comes back again to Paris, and if he is so happy
as to obtain employment there, he is content never te^leave it, happy if he can spend his days
In the sacred city. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is the rule for France. How
different it is in Germany! There is no centre and there never can be for Germans; there is
no city of the heart nor will there ever be. Diisseldorf, Munich, Vienna, Berlin — each has its
attractions, and now one seems to promise a permanent home, and now another; while, for
many a German artist, Paris or Rome, London or America, offers attractions stronger than nny
place in his own country, although it must be confessed, that the instances are few where
German artists succeed in escaping from the limitations of their home-training. Like the
greater number of his artist brethren, Spangenberg has made his wandering year — born in
Hamburg in 1828, he has studied in his native city, in Antwerp, in Paris, England, Holland,
again in Paris, with Couture, and a year in the atelier of that very amateurish amateur,
Triqueti, then to Italy, and at last to Berlin, where he finally settled down, and where Ave
believe he is still painting. He began with small genre pieces, leaning to no special class of
subjects—" The Stolen Child," " The Eat-catcher of Hamelin," " St. John's Eve in Cologne,''
" Tlie Forester's Family," etc., etc., then took a fancy to the Reformation-time, and painted
no end of Luthers— our readers know them well ; the good Martin is the George Washington
of Germany, and Spangenberg's article is as sound and reliable as a Trumbull or a Stuart.
" Luther in the Bosom of his Family," " Luther Translating the Bible," " Luther in the House
of Cotta," "Luther's Entrance into Worms "---these are a few titles by way of sainple; we
"IN THE GLOAMING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY QUSTAV SPANGENBERG.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 197
have no mind, to ^Yeary our readers with a sight of the pictures the titles stand for, but rather
j)refer to show them one wliere tlie artist has stepped a little out of the conventional ruts,
without at the same time losing the German accent. " The Twilight Hour," embodies one of
the many old legends of the German fireside, that relate to the fairies, gnomes, pixies, and
other creatures that haunt the woods and waters, and the secret places of the earth, and exer-
cise an influence on man and his belongings. As the mother sits in her arm-chair by the
cradle of her child, after the day's work done, the gnomes steal up from the earth — queer, un-
canny beings, in the shape of little, stunted, deformed old men — and draw near to the cradle
to watch the sleeping baby. The gnomes are the embodiment of the earth-forces: the strength
of the metals is in their sinews, they bind the roots of oak and pine like cordage to the
foundations of the world, and swarm like sailors to their task when the tempests bend these
mighty masts ; the lava's molten fire burns in their veins, theirs is the savor of salt, the reviv-
ing purity of springs: they light their way with the gems imprisoned in the rocks, and so thej^
come to the cradles of mortal children, and if they think them worthy, breathe into them the
forces by which the earth is conquered for the brave, the earnest, and the pure. In the mean
time, while the gnomes keep watch-and-ward over their unconscious charge, the mother sleeps.
and smiles as she sees in dreams what her waking-eye could never see, the good people of the
under- world blessing her child. She is not of our time, this solid and contented piece of
femininity; she belongs to ]N"uremberg, and may be a neighbor of Albert Diirer— except that
he seldom painted so pretty a face, we should say we remembered her in his pictures. Dressed
in her best coif and fur-trimmed cape, with her housekeeping keys and bag safe at her side,
she has been spinning all the afternoon," relieving her light labor with an occasional draught
of beer from the big tankard on the window sill, and an occasional verse from the Bible by
its side. Her white, well-shaped hands are lightly interlocked, her dress is rich but plain;
except the wedding-ring upon her finger, the gold buttons on her sleeve and the brooch at her
neck, she wears no ornaments; yet the richly carved cradle of the child and the brocaded stuff
that makes its coverlid, with the Eastern rug— a rarity in those days— all show that this is a
well-to-do household.
Alfons BoDENMiJLLER's picture, " Think of the Poor," is one of a class of pictures com-
mon enough in Germany, that are rightly enough called costume-pictures— this one has really
little other motive for being than the desire on the artist's part to reproduce some of the
picturesque details of life in Nuremberg or elsewhere in the Germany of the XVI. century.
iqS
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
All is pretty enough, though naturally a little exaggerated; the costume of the mother who
is teaching her little girl to be charitable, is rather a resume of the possibilities of female dress
"THINK OF THE POOR."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ALFONS BODENMULLER,
at a given epoch than a probable example, and as for the recipient of charity, she has been
suddenly whisked-back, face, dress, baby and all, from the nineteenth century to the sixteenth
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 199
— a strange piece of forgetfulness on the part of an artist wlio has made up his mind to paint
a costume-piece. The view of the square with its fountain and the people getting water; the
climbing gabled houses, the oriel-window, are all cleverly done, and remind one \T.vidly of
Nuremberg ; the window near us with its wi'ought-iron cage, is a good example too, though a
trifle too delicate for its place and duty.
WiLHELM Karl Gentz, the painter of "A Story-teller of Cairo," has made himself a wide-
spread fame by his pictures of Eastern life. He is a native of New Ruppin, near Berlin, where
he was born in 1822. He has been a traveller from early in life. After a brief course in the
Berlin University, he devoted himself to painting, going first to Antwerp and then studying
six years in Paris under Couture and Gleyre. He then set out on his travels, visiting Spain,
Morocco, Egypt, Nubia, Asia Mipor, and Turkey. He has visited Egypt at least five times,
and has painted a large number of pictures, and made drawings innumerable of scenes, inci-
dents, and landscapes in that country and in Nubia. In 1873 he visited Jerusalem, and made
careful studies of the localities for his great picture, now in the Berlin National Gallery, " The
Entry of the Crown-Prince into Jerusalem in 1869." He also contributed a large number of
illustrations to George Ebers's " Egypt," his pictures making indeed the chief attraction of the
work. The picture we coj)y is interesting as showing us the birth-place, so to speak, of the
delightful stories which we call the "Arabian Nights"— not that they came from any one
author or were confined to any one circle of hearers, but that they have been handed down
in this way by reading and recital to infinite groups of listeners from ancient times, and are
5till one of the chief amusements of the people. Here in this cool cavern, the lower part of the
wall lined with a wainscoting of stuccoed stone, and a high bench of stone running along it, a
motley group of natives are assembled listening to the reader who faces his audience. On the
wall over his hearers' heads a large family of pigeons come and go, or rest on the perches
provided for them; at the end of the room an Arab on his part of the bench has a family of
kittens in his charge, the mother-cat playing on the floor beside him. The reader, too, has
his cat beside him — there are no other animals in sight. There is a freedom and naturalness
about Gentz's Eastern studies that we do not find in Gerome's pictures. The French artist
has too much self -consciousness, is too much bent on picture-making ; Gentz is perhaps more
of a photographer than a painter, but in his line he is unrivalled.
A. VON Ramberg's "At the Embroidery -frame," is a i^iece of innocent sentimentality
altogether German in its way, but not belonging to our time; it is the innocence of our grand-
200
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
mothers' day — these are creatures quite too bright and good for the daily food of this genera-
tion, and indeed at any time we fear tliey would be safer in a glass case than in the jostling
"A STORY-TELLER OF CAIRO."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM GENTZ.
world. Considering the deep absorption in his devotion expressed by the gentleman's coun-
tenance, the object of it is singularly unmoved, but then it may be questioned whether any-
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
20I
thing short of the house tumbling over her head, or the cat jumping up on her embroidery,
frame could move this piece of excessive placidity. We fear that our gentleman is wasting
"the song."
FROM THE PICTURE BY CUNO VON BODENHAUSEN.
his manly heart in sighs over a being not capable of comprehending his superior worth, and
we strongly advise his putting his extraordinary legs to a good use, by getting up from his
202
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
seat, making his best bow, and walking away. We doubt if tlie young lady would so much
as stop counting her stitches !
'MEDITATION."
FROM THE PICTURE BY N, SICHEL.
\
CuNO VON Bodenhaitsen's •' The Song," is a graceful piece of sentiment, much more
French than German in its refinement and delicacy. This young girl wlio has stopped in her
garland-making to listen to the song of the bird on the branch over her head does not belong
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 203
to any particular age or place. A more ideal treatment of the landscape, which is far too real
for the figure, would have made less obvious the violation of wholesome sanitary laws implied
in sitting barefoot and half clad, in so dam]3 a situation! The girl being improbable, the land-
scape should have been made so also, and then we should not have been annoyed by the obsei'-
vations of practical and common-sense people, but could have done full justice to this Dryad.
Nathaniel Sichel, born at Mainz in 1844, has been a rather prolific producer of " his-
torical " pictures after the usual manner, subjects chosen for no reason in the world but be-
cause they ofl'ered good histrionic opportunities, and treated accordingly — but of late years
he has lived in Paris and gone extensively into the painting of good-looking models, or rather
of models dressed in a bewildering variety of costumes of all nations — the so-called " Medi-
tation," which we copy, for example. They have all the mechanical cleverness to which we
are accustomed nowadays, and no doubt, since they are supplied in such quantities, there
must be a demand for them, but when the spectator has seen one of them, he has seen all.
XII.
ALFRED SEIFERT'S " In Memoriam " is, in spite of its title, to be reckoned little more
^ than what the Germans call, "a costume-picture"; by which they mean a subject
chosen mainly with reference to its suitability for picturesque treatment; for the sake of
showing off the dress of men and women of some by-gone age, when dress played more of a
part in keeping up the distinctions of rank than it does to-day ; or, for creating a showy effect
by the display of handsome furniture, rich draperies and hangings, and costly things in gen-
eral It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that three-fourths of the pictures that supply the
German market, at home and abroad, belong to this class. In this regard, the contrast be-
tween the state of things in France and that in Germany is as amusing as it is striking. In
France, the artist chooses his subject, in nine cases out of ten, for the opportunity it gives him,
" To twitch the Nymph's last garment off "
or, in any case to rid his model of as much clothing as possible. Pictures of the nude are as
common in France as they are rare in Germany. Indeed, we should be almost justified in
saying that as the French consider the painting of the nude the highest test (as it certainly
is) of an artist's skill, so no artist thinks he has earned a right to sit among the elect until he
has proved himself a master in that field.
204 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
With tlie Germans, on the contrary, ever since the beginning of their art, the tendency
has been to muffle-nji and swathe their models in bountiful clothing. Diirer often carries this
to excess, but his predecessors, Wohlgemiith and Schongauer, far surpassed liim in the ampli-
tude of the draperies that seem to overburden and vreigh down their personages. That this
was not Avholly the fancy of the artist, is made probable by the numerous publications of the
time; the " costume-books " — answering in some way to our collections of "fashion-plates " — of
Hollar, Jost Amman, and Holbein, to mention the best known, where w^e are impressed with
the weighty look of the dresses, and the solidity of their manufacture. We are sometimes
struck with the same thing in the early sculpture ; a curious example is shown in some of the
monumental effigies of the Cathedral church of Naumberg, where several of the personages
are covered with large and ample cloaks having the broad collar turned up about the neck of
the wearer, and the garment held closed with one hand as if to ward off the cold. In the
most of these cases the folds of the cloaks are managed with great dignity and simplicity, free
from the multiplied and tormented crinkly folds of the early German painters ; but the intro-
duction of the standing collar, and the action of the hands, still keeps up the personal, indi-
vidual note, the constant obtrusion of which serves to mark the line that separates the German
from the Classic spirit.
The German artists of to-day who employ their time in painting costume-pictures, would
seem, as a general thing, to prefer the dress and belongings of the sixteenth-century in their own
country ; although not a few have devoted themselves with more or less fidelity to the classic
world of Greece and Rome, while others find a fruitful field in the late Italian Renaissance.
Recently, with the revival of the interest in the Rococo or Baroque style of the eighteenth-
century, a few artists have found it profitable to supply a houdoir and 5«fo;^demand for
" conversation-parties," " musicales," birth-day festivals, and other subjects of like nature,
where powdered hair, and garlanded petticoats, and high-heeled shoes, and all the parapher-
nalia of the heau monde that delighted the souls of abies and marquises, and dames galantes
is once more brought upon the stage to delight a world as frivolous as their own.
Seifert's picture shows us a young lady dressed in a style recalling that which Diirer's
j)ictures and those of his contemporaries have made familiar. Seifert's rendering of it is not
very accurate ; it is leather a studio-costume than a street rendering of the dress of Diirer's
time. But, like Sichel, one of whose pictures we reproduced a few pages back, Seifert is
more anxious to make a pleasing picture than to be coiimiended for his archeeology, and he
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
205
chooses this particular dress, partly for its oddity, and partly because he knows the taste of
a goodlv number of his countrymen for something that savors of the past. One thing, how-
"IN MEMORIAM."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ALFRED SEIFERT.
ever, eludes the skill of most modern artists who attempt this putting of new wine into old
bottles. They show great cleverness in painting the dress and the belongings of past ages;
2o6 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
but, thougli they can inform us with, in general, trustworthy accuracy. Just how a Greek, or a
Roman, or a person of the sixteenth-century dressed, they seldom show us the face that went
witli the dress. Thus, in Seifert's picture, here given, the model is distinctly a person of our
owTtt time, dressed up for purely pictorial reasons, in a sixteenth century costume, or one re-
sembling it. It is not easy to define the difference, nor to show in what it consists ; but it is
most certain that the difference exists ; and the conditions kno\\Ti on which life is held in
a given country at any one time — the climate, the government (whether a restrictive and
tyrannical one, or a free and liberal system) the state of society ; these things known, it might
be possible for an acute observer, a Diderot or a Herbert Spencer, to predicate something as
to what manner of man would be the result.
However, the general j)ublic cares very little for these refinements, and the young men
especially, for whose pleasure pictures like this of Seifert's and others of the same sort are
painted, will be indifferent to everything but the fact that, here is a girl with a very pretty
face, as faces go, sweet and intelligent, dressed in a-becoming costume, and occupied with a
duty that adds to her material attractions, the charms of sentiment and religious feeling. It
is All-Souls' Day, and this maiden among others is going to the graves of her friends, to deck
them A\-ith wreaths and flowers. We catch a glimpse of the church-wall, and of the iron
crosses on some of the graves, but it must be admitted that in the face of the girl herself, there
is little expression to suggest the sad errand she is upon. This, however, is characteristic of
the costume-picture. The expression of grief, or pain, or any other emotion that would
disturb the repose of the features, and, by so doing, make them less agreeable to the adoles-
cent public, will be carefully avoided by any artist with a keen eye to the market, and, as in
this case, the necessary ingredients of melancholy or sadness will be supplied by the subor-
dinate details ; the church-wall aforesaid, the grave-crosses, and the funeral wreath (not too
obtrusive) in the hand of the fair mourner! One can easily imagine an order given to the
painter by an enthusiastic admirer of pretty girls, for a replica of this very picture — " More
cheerful, you know, sir; nothing sad, now, no reference to death or disagreeables of any
sort ! " — and the painter with commercial alacrity, whisking-out the church and the grave-
crosses, and the funeral-wreath, but leaving the face and figure of the girl untouched ; then
putting in a busy background of street and houses, and people, and calling the picture '' Home
from the Flower-market ! " Every one familiar with pictures knows that such transfonma-
tions are of every-day occurrence.
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
207
In " The Mourner," by Edjiund Harburger, a picture owned we believe by the Metro-'
politan Museum of Art, we have a Avork of a very different quality from that of Seifert. This
has been painted with the distinct purpose of expressing a certain sentiment by the whole
contents of the artist's canvas, not merely by some subordinate details. And the success
obtained is noteworthy, although from what we learn of the artist's practice we should not
have looked for anything so serious. Harburger, who was born at Eichstadt, in 1846, was
employed in a builder's office until he was twenty, when he went to Munich, and studied with
"THE MOURNER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY EDMUND HARBURGER.
Lindenschmidt. His principal field of work has been the comic journal the "' Fliegende
Blatter," for which he has made many illustrations, but it is evident he has powers that do
not find room for their full exercise in that Journal, clever as it is. Nor, when we read the
list of the pictures by which the artist is principally known— "The Beer-drinker," "The
Village Barber," "The Education of Bacchus," "The Young Venetian-girl," etc., etc., do we
understand how the painter of such trivial and conventional subjects can also have produced
a picture like the present, so full of deep and solemn feeling expressed in so natural and un-
conventional a style. There is no attempt on the artist's part to dress up his theme in
2o8 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
borrowed robes. He has taken such a room as may be found in a hundred Bavarian hoi;ses
of the better chiss of peasants, and painted it as he saw it, in its furniture and general aspect,
only throwing over it the charm born of the eye that can see its artistic possibilities. In the
twilight hour, a widow in her cottage sits in the high-backed arm-chair that gives its German
title to the picture (" Im Sorgenstuhl "), and leaning her head on her hand meditates upon her
lot. The fading light of day comes in through the window sunk in the embrasure of the
thick wall, and striking upon the snowy table-cloth spread for the evening meal, lights iip the
wall behind the lonely woman, making more gloomy by contrast the dark chair on which she
sits, and her dark dress only relieved by the white cap and cufPs, and the handkerchief that
from time to time must dry her tears. The bird is silent in its cage, the cat sleeps on the chair
where, a while ago, the widow sat, looking out upon the busy village street ; only the sound
of the ticking clock, and occasionally the crackling fagots on the hearth break the quiet of
the hour, sacred to memory and holy thoughts. Nothing could be simpler than the com^sosi-
tion; there are no incidents, there is no by-play; but in the harmony between the attitude of
the mourning woman, and the large lines and masses of the picture, Ave are reminded of some
of the Dutch masters.
AViLiTELjr Kray, whose " Love Wakes while Age Sleeps" makes such a contrast with the
latest pictures of our list, was born at Berlin — a cold cradle for such a romancer as he — and
he would aj)pear to have got as far away from it as he could on the first opportunity, speeding
to Rome and Venice, and biinging iip at Vienna, where, at present, he lives and works. His
subjects in general are of the same character as that of the picture we coi)y: "The Mermaid
and the Fisher-boy " (Das Wasser rauscht, das Wasser schwoll "), " K"ight on the Bay of r
Naples," " The Dance of the Will o' the Wisp," " Undine " — and he treats tliem with much
playful freedom, and with as much earnestness as the theme admits of. The present picture
has for title, '' The Waves of the Sea and of Love " ('' Des Meeres und der Liebe Welleu "), and
seems to to imply a " moral " — but in fact we suj)j)ose that just at present there is no danger
from either quarter. The old father of this pretty fisher-maiden has gone confidingly to sleep,
and is giving his mind to it with such a will that he does not heed an occasional ducking from
an unruly w^ave. Meantime the young man presses his suit under what must be allowed
extremely favorable circumstances, and with an earnestness that no one can have the heart to
blame him for, who can fancy himself in the same circumstances. The young fellow himself
looks, we fear, dangerously like a marine Don Juan, but tlie maiden's face is reassuring; she
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 209
is apparently quite certain of herself, and pleasingly aware of the neighborhood of her papa.
As for the probabilities of all this we are no more concerned than Kray himself. What that
audacious iconoclast, Mr. Mark Twain, who has recently been slaying Raphael over again, and
following the other critics in laughing at his " boat " in the cartoons — what our Connecticut
Ruskin would say to Mr. Kray's boat, we do not know ; perliaps he would say that for the
innocents who are abroad in it, the boat is quite good enough. The picture ought to tempt
Mr. Stockton to write a story about it ; the adventure is every bit as i^rei^osterous as any one
of his own inventing.
Next to " Costume-Becker," Julius Beyschlag is the most prolific purveyor to the taste
for such j)ictures among his countrymen that we have thus far met-with. He was born at Nord-
lingen in 1838, and studied in Munich with Philipp Foltz, travelling afterward for a while in
Italy and visiting Paris. He is essentially a costume-painter, making no pretence of high-art,
or high aims of any sort, more than industry and honest doing of the tasks he undertakes, can
give him a right to claim. His name has been widely sjiread by the aid of ijhotography and
wood-engraving in the illustrated journals : he appears to be a Avelcome guest in these sheets,
and in the portfolios of the dealers as well. It is difficult to choose among the hundreds of
his designs that have been published, because one is as good as another, and there is nothing-
really interesting in any of them, while at the same time it must be admitted that the artist
knows his public, and succeeds in maldng pictures that in the aggregate give a good deal of
pleasure, year in and year out, to an audience who ask for nothing more than picturesque
costumes, i^retty faces, and an agreeable landscape-setting for the personages of the artists* ■
small domestic dramas. The " Coming from the Baptism," is a pure piece of picture-making:
these people having really no errand in this year of grace but to show off gowns that have
been cut on the old pattern of Nuremberg, Basle, or Augsburg, foand in Holbein's or Diirer's
picture-books. We must think that the older woman who is pretending to hold what we are
asked to accept as a baby, is, as one might say, " rather queer "in her drawing; her head
appears to have been left behind by her body, and though we make no pretence to expert
knowledge on the subject, we feel confident that no real woman would hold a real baby in this
fashion. The younger woman, too, who vdshes us to think she is looking at the baby, is really
cl oing nothing of the sort, and if she could see it as well as we can, she would not wish to see
it at all. As for the costumes of the women, they are neither right nor wrong; the artist has
not followed his painted or engraved originals with accuracy, nor would he appear to have
Vol. II.— 14 **
2IO ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
gone to the trouble, as so many modern artists do, to have careful copies made of the old
costumes, and painting from them. For ourselves, we confess to caring nothing whatever for
these modern reproductions of old things ; the pictures that are the result of all the infinite
pains bestowed on their preparation, seem to us mere curiosities, idle toys ; and in very few
cases does the artist succeed in putting life into his work after he has finished it. The news-
paper-writers have told us how hard Meissonier works, sparing neither money, time, nor
patience, in getting up his historical pictures ; ransacking Paris for a button, a shoulder-strap,
a liat, or a pair of breeches, and yet, when these tithes of mint, anise, and cummin are paid to
the god of accuracy, the weightier matters of the law are too often forgotten, and we miss the
life, that, if we could find it, would make all this pedantry of straps and buttons ridiculous.
Beyschlag has found the material for his studies of costume in this picture from two
drawings by Albert Durer, published in fac-simile in 1871, on the occasion of the four-hun-
dredth anniversary of his birth.^ The young woman at the left is lifting her over-skirt and
showing the rich embroidered petticoat Just as the lady in Durer's drawing is doing, and the
head-dress of the older woman and her peculiar over-skirt are found in another of the draw-
ings referred to, although Beyschlag has exaggerated the character of the folds. It is inter-
esting (to those who care for such trifles!) to find in Diirer's picture the " accordion " pleating
of to-day faithfully re^Dresented. In Beyschlag's picture, the over-skirt of the nurse is rather
like the stuffs which Mr. Millet, in those interesting lectures of his on Greek and Roman
costumes, used to prepare by rolling them up very tight and hard when damp, and unrolling
them when he came to drape his model. The reader will, we hope, pardon these details ; it is
not useless, once in a while, to take these made-up compositions to pieces and see how they are
put together. It is seldom done with skill, and never affords, not even when it is best done,
more than a brief satisfaction. Two of the greatest masters in this mosaic-work in our day
are Baron Leys, and Alma Tadema his pupil. Baron Leys wasted great talent and splendid
opportunities ill painting picture that are already passed into the category of curiosities, and
are on their way to neglect and oblivion; and Alma Tadema, with all his skill, which is un-
deniably great, can have no enduring hold on those who ask for something more at an artist's
hands, that the perpetual imitation of tilings.
The other picture by Beyschlag, " The Father's Return," shows him in a somewhat more
agreeable asj^ect, for thoiigh this is really as much a " costume-picture " as the Baptism — and,
indeed, Beyschlag never paints anything else — yet there is here a little more of a story to
"COMING FROM THE BAPTISM."
FROM THE PICTURE BY JULIUS BEYSCHLAG.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 211
tell, and more variety of incident. There is a select set of artists at the present day who make
a great deal of fun over pictures with a story ; one would think, to hear them talk, and to
mark the fine scorn with which they consign the whole tribe to limbo, that pictures with a
story were an invention of modern times, like sewing-machines, railroads, patent cow-milkers,
and newspapers, instead of being as they are, of course, coeval with the art of painting. This
is such a mere truism, that one would be ashamed to take the time needed to set it down,
were it not for the fact we have mentioned that some among our cleverest artists profess to
have found some other reason for painting than to record their observations of nature or their
experiences of human life. These discoverers talk and write a great deal about "technique,"
and " brush-work," " values," " methods," etc., etc., in a jargon as unintelligible to the world
at large as that of medical-men, chemists, or stock-brokers ; they dwell entirely in the externals
of their art, and have, or profess to have, no interest in the contents of a picture, unless the
execution be in a style that answers to their notion of what " painting " should be. Of coiirse
such notions are really confined to a small circle, but the pity is that, here it is the best men
we have who indulge in such heresies; for, heresies they are, let who will defend them. It is
no doubt, true, that the first duty of an artist as a professional man, is to know how to paint,
carve, or design — according to the field he has chosen; in other words, he must know his
trade. But, for the general public, what is of the most importance is that he should have
something to say. If what the artists have to communicate be interesting, it is enough for
the pleasure of the majority if he can contrive to make it intelligible. Let him i^aint a« well
as he may, the extent of his public will depend far more upon the interest he is able to excite
in what he has to say, than upon the technical excellence of his work.
To return from our digression to Beyschlag's " The Father's Return ; " it is certainly easy
to understand why such a picture should be popular, and why its popularity should be proof
against the strictures of the professed critic. It is a simple story told for simple-hearted
people who are not expected to care for the principles of art, but who will be interested in
this picture, because it puts into a romantic form, with an appeal to their imagination, a
domestic experience that has as many manifestations as there are modes of human life. The
return of every kind of father has an interest (either of attraction or repulsion) to his par-
ticular family; but it cannot be said, that all of them, if painted, would have the same interest
for the world at large. Therefore we have no end of Sailor's Returns, Soldier's Returns (the
modem variety), with Warrior's Returns (for the antique or mediaeval expression) and corre-
212
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
spending Farewells — all of which used to be painted in pairs, and sold as such, and Mr. Bey-
schlag's picture here presented takes its natural place in the series. We confess to finding
the " Father " in this case a rather wooden personage : he seems to find some difhculty in
keeping his right leg in his boot, and has, we may suspect, the air of being a victim to loco-
motor ataxia, but the other members of the family are less open to criticism. The young
"the FATHER'S RETURN."
FROM THE PAINTING BY JULIUS BEYSCHLAG.
daughter is a pleasing womanly figure as she looks up lovingly at her father, holding the
nosegay of flowers that he would take from her were not one hand occupied with cordially
grasping the hand of his comely wife, and the other with supporting the baby-daughter sit-
ting on his arm. In front of the group the son and heir, a pretty child in velvet doublet and
breeches with hat-and-feather, is proudly marching off, trundling his father's sword.
"' To a tune by fairies played."
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 213
All are on tlieir way to the castle, preceded at some distance by the mounted man-at-arms
leading his master's horse, who extends a greeting to the two serving-women sitting waiting
for the coming of the family under the branches of the old oak. The warden has lowered the
drawbridge, and stands at guard in the shadow of the portal ; from a window in the donjon-
tower a banner is idly flapping in the air, and two women by the parapet of the moat-bridge
are waiting the arrival, one sitting on the grass, the other shading her eyes with her hand as
she spies the approaching party.
Ferdinand Theodoe Hildebrandt, the painter of " A Warrior and his Child," was born
at Stettin in 1804, and died ia 1874. He studied at Berlin under von Schadow, and went with
that master to Diisseldorf, where he took charge of the Academy there. Afterward Hildebrandt
settled in Diisseldorf, and is considered one of the best artists of that school. He painted the
stock subjects: "Othello Telling His Adventures," '-Romeo and Juliet," "Judith and Holo-
fernes," " The Death of the Children of Edward," etc., etc., but he occasionally stepped out-
side the consecrated bounds and invented — if this be not too large a word for the occasion —
subjects of his own; " Children Around a Christmas Tree," "Children in a Boat," " Choir-boys
at Vespers," and, among many others of a like kind, the present painting. There is little in
this picture to remark upon; a soldier of the mediaeval time has his little boy upon his knee,
and is apparently giving him some religious instructions, if we may judge by the raised fore-
finger and the Bible on the window-ledge -with its mark at the Kew Testament, where perhaps
he has been reading him one of the parables. The sentiment of the picture is pleasing enough,
and the listening aspect of the child clinging to his father's gorget and dreamily smiling as
he follows his words, is rendered with simple feeling. Where the main of the picture is so
good it would doubtless be hj^jercriticism to note, that the suit-of-armor hanging on the wall
is api)arently too small for any grown j)erson, althoiigh the sword that hangs with it is of the
right size ; the handle of the inevitable beer-mug, too, could in this case hardly be grasped by
our doughty warrior's hand. These points are, after all, not unimportant; they detract from
the truthfulness of the general effect and seem to indicate a want of correctness in the artist's
eye.
Julius Benczue, the painter of " Forsaken," is a native of Hungary, born in 1844 at
Nyiregyhaza. When yet a child his parents removed to Kaschau, where he had better advan-
tages for education in the excellent high-school, and improved his time so well that by the ad-
vice of friends who thought they saw signs of uncommon talent in the lad, he was sent to
214
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Munich to study art. He was at first the pupil in the academy of Hiltensperger and Anschutz
and later entered the studio of Piloty. Here he became intimate with his fellow pupil Gabriel
"A WARRIOR AND HIS CHILD."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FERDINAND HILDEBRANDT.
Max, whose sister he afterward married. After an extended tour in Hungary, South Germany,
Prance, and Upper Italy, he settled in Munich, where he lives and works at present. His field
"FORSAKEN."
CROM THE PICTURE BY JULIUS BFNCZUR.
I
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 215
of work is chiefly Mstorical painting : he made a number of pictures for the late King of Bava-
ria, treating mostly scenes from French history connected with the life of Louis XV. and Louis
XVI. He has also painted several subjects drawn from the history of his native Hungary,
which have won him considerable reputation. The picture we copy was sent to the Munich
Exhibition of 1883. The subject explains itself so far as we see a woman, young and meant
for handsome, who, in some sore strait, abandoned doubtless by lover or husband, has sought
consolation on the bosom of this somewhat severe mother in her church. Her rich attire of
lace and satin contrasts with the austere habit of the nun who holds her hands softly in hers,
and waits in calm assurance until the first tempest of passion and grief shall have subsided,
before she speaks the words of faith and trust, born of her own experience, and fortified by the
prayer-book that she was reading when her unhappy sister entered. On the missal lies a
spray of willow-catkins, first-fruits of spring; and haply from this symbol of life reviving
after the death of winter, this daughter of a church that lives by symbols, may draw some
fresh consolation — better than old books can ofi'er — for the wounded heart that now lies
broken and desolate upon her heart, that perhaps has known its own bitterness and found the
remedy in days long gone by.
Gabriel Max, the painter of the " Penitent Madgalen," and the " Visit to the Fortune-
teller," is the son of the sculj)tor, Joseph Max, Avith whom he worked as an assistant until the
death of the latter in 1855. Gabriel was born at Prague in 1840, and after his father's death
he studied in the Academy of his native town until 1858. He then went to Vienna, where he
worked for three years in the Academy, and became so deeply interested in music that he
attempted to embody the ideas of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and other masters in a series of
drawings which had a great success and created a wide interest in the young artist. His next
achievement was the painting of the Martyr Julia, a supposed victim of the Roman persecu-
tion, who was shown in his picture nailed to the cross, while a young Roman, passing by,
takes the rose-wreath from liis head and lays it at her feet. This picture of pure, sensation,
made, of course, a great impression in Munich — the hot-bed of this vicious art, where the
greatest extravagances are sure of the warmest welcome, and Max was not the man to hide his
talent under a bushel. One scene of melodrama followed another: "The Last Token," a girl
in the arena stooping to pick uji a rose flung to her by her lover, while round her —
"Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid, laughing jaws;"
"The Melancholy Nun " brooding over joys fled or untasted; the inevitable "Gretchenj"
2l6
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
" Juliet " in lier feigned death-sleep, witli, oli, most touching symbol of a woman's abandon-
ment to grief — a hair-pin, lying conspicuous on the coverlid! Then, the " Lion's Bride," after
"THE PENITENT MAGDALEN."
FROM THE PICTURE BY GABRIEL MAX.
Yon Chamisso's poem; then " Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, Looking at a Dead Child; " the
'• Child-murderess," and " Christ Briiiging-back to Life the Daugher of Jairus," where, that
"THE TOWER-WARDEN."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HERMANN KAULBACH.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
217
no doubting Thomas may question her death, the artist has, with exquisite taste, placed a
corrupting liy already fastened upon her arm !
'CONSULTING THE FORTUNE-TELLER.''
FROM THE PICTURE BY GABRIEL MAX.
What it is that pleases in Gabriel Max, it would be hard to say. Beyond a certain arti-
ficial clearness of coloring, as if he used wax for a medium, and a choice of morbid colors, that
2iS ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
degenerates into mannerism, there is little in his execution that would seem suited to please
artists, and it might be -thought that even the public would tire of the sensational subjects
he delights in. His drawing is clumsy and careless ; his forms heavy, his power of facial ex-
pression almost nothing— yet, for a time, he seemed likely to become a power in the art- world.
The subjects we have selected show him in as favorable a light as could be contrived ; " The
Penitent Magdalen," is a sweet-faced model, as capable of moral emotion as a canary-bird, and
the dravsdng of her arm, huge beyond reason, and of the hand with its impossible finger, shows
the carelessness of the artist, when seen undisguised by the luxurious morbidness of his palette.
The " Consulting the Fortune-teller," is, like all the artist's subjects, one chosen out of pure in-
difference, with the result that the spectator's indifference matches the artist's ! The only
curiosity we feel is, as to what this old woman will make out of the object she appears to be ex-
amining— whether she vdll finally decide that it is, really, a hand; and whether her chiromancy
will prove equal to reading the lines of life in a member that could never have been alive.
XIIL
HERMANN KAULBACH, the painter of " The Tower- warden," is the son of Wilhelm
Kaulbach (see p. 35), and was born at Munich in 1846. There are now three artists
of the name of Kaulbach living and working in Germany : Friedrich, distinguished as a por-
trait-painter, a nephew and pupil of Wilhelm (the chief of the family), born in 1822 at Arolsen;
Friedrich August, his son, portrait and genre painter, born in 1850 at Hanover, and Her-
mann, of whom we are now to speak. After completing a course of study at the University of
Munich, he took up painting as a profession, and entered the studio of Piloty. After leaving
that master, he made his Wandering- year in Italy, and after his return, settled down in
Munich, where he has since continued to live and to paint. His pictures are distinguished
for the technical skill they display and for the finish of the details, Avhich, nevertheless, is not
allowed to usurp an undue place, bat is always kept in proper subordination to the subject
Some of his historical pictures are " Louis XI. and his Barber, Olivier le Dain, at Peronne ; "
"The Children's Confession;" "Hansel and Grethel vsdth the Witch," — from one of Grimm's
stories — " The Last Moments of Mozart," and " Sebastian Bach with Frederick the Great and
Turmfalken." Our picture shows the artist in one of his more playful moods; he has imag-
ined a scene which is a good many thousand years older than the far-away mediaeval times in
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 219
which he has chosen to place it, and which will probably renew itself an innumerable number
of times before the sun shall have kept faith with the scientific men, and turned into an ice-
berg. The Warden keeping his traditional post of watchman on the old tower that has
outlived the stormy scenes of its youth, has amused himself as he best could through the
long sunny hours of the morning ; now trying an arrow upon the birds that circle round the
turret, now watching what life of man or beast might chance be stirring in the village below
him, or what boats might put out upon the distant lake. And time has hung heavier on his
hands for knowing that it must be noon before Gretchen will climb the tower-stair to bring
him his bowl of porridge, and to ask his help in stringing the clothes-line, and hanging out the
wash! But she has come at last, and now the birds may circle the tower at their will, or
stream out from its topmost weather-vane like a pennon; and the people in the village street
may come and go as they please, for Rudolf has business in hand, that interests him much
more than mere birds or villagers ! Many and many a day has Rudolf enjoyed these meet-
ings with the pretty daughter of his friend and companion, the warden of the castle, and often
has he watched for an opportunity to tell her what lay nearest to his heart. But, though she
has given him chances enough, of which perhaps a younger man would have been quick to
avail himself, it is only to-day that he has plucked up courage to whisper in her ear the secret
hope, that has long kept youth and he from parting company. The lucky moment came just
as he had fastened one end of the clothes-line to the staple that, with its fellow on the other
side of the embrasure in the wall, served, in less peaceful times, to hold the oaken shutters
that sheltered the besieged while they shot their arrows at the besiegers. As he turns to slip
down from the stone ledge on which he was sitting that he might fasten the cord at the other
side of the platform, he finds himself close to Gretchen, who had been paying out the line
from its reel, and the next minute he has caught one of her hands in his, and drawn her
to his side, and whispered such an old-time tale of love-making in her ear, that before the
clothes are half hung up, she has promised to marry him if her father will consent. While
thus playing with the artist's subject, and trying our hand at translating it into words, we
must confess to an unwillingness to accept the details of his picture as in all cases correct.
Thus the costume of the young woman, whom we have, out of hand, christened Gretchen, is
certainly too modern, and we are sure no " girl of the period " would ever have gone up to the
platform of the castle tower to hang out the week's wash, clad in such a gown as this, lying
in folds about her feet. And the fashion of it is incorrect— not merely in the details, but in
2 20 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
general ; it does not belong to the time. And this is the less excusable because we know so
well, from countless pictures and engravings, and other sources, just how people in Germany
dressed at the period indicated by the dress of the man; though, even in his case, we should
question whether such an amount of cross-gartering were ever thought necessary to hold
one's sandals on one's feet. It is not hypercriticism to notice points like these in such a
picture as the present, for it assumes to be a picture of manners at a given time, and with all
the knowledge on the subject at one's easy command in these days, no excuses for inaccuracy
can be accepted.
" The Fishermaiden " of Friedrich August Kaulbacii is a j^icture that recalls, in its
own way, the treatment of such subjects, which perhaps we may be permitted to class under
the head of "rural," by the painters of the Rococo; by Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, and
the rest. AVhat it amounts-to is nothing of more value than a j)retty masquerading ; the
dressing-up of comely young maidens in the guise of peasants, milk-women, flower-sellers,
and fishermaidens with no other intention than to please the fancy. Kaulbach's Fisher-
maiden may be com]Dared mth the well-known picture by the late Feyen-Perrin, "Les
Gancalaises," where a flock of pretty Parisian models with dainty figures, delicate com-
plexions, and fine feet and hands are trijDijing over the sands at even-tide laden with baskets
of oysters. Kaulbach's "Fishermaiden" is not quite of the same breed; she is rather made
to suit the German taste for a sturdier type of womanhood, but she is none the less city-bred,
and her head, at least, is of a type that would suit a more dignified subject. However, there
is no doubt that too much questioning is out of place in dealing with iDictures of this char-
acter. They are meant only to amuse, or to serve a decorative ptirpose; we can easily imagine
that a large dining-room, in some handsome restaurant or hotel, would be much enlivened by
panels filled with graceful figures such as this, of young men and maidens :
Much too good
For human nature's food
engaged in offering to the guests the different raw materials of the bill-of-fare. We think we
should much prefer such a decoration to the well-worn classic nymphs, goddesses, or genii
who are usually employed for this purpose. Frankly acknowledged as a compromise be-
tween fact and fancy, the artist might successfully stave off the troublesome questions of a
Gradgrind who should insist on asking, what this buxom maiden is doing all alone on this
barren shore; whether this boat, stranded high and dry on the bank, is hers; and whether in
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
221
this matter-of-fact, prosaic world of ours, it is to be looked upon as quite in the natural
course of things that fish should be offered us in this summary way by pretty girls, as- we
'THE FISHERMAIDEN."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HERMANN KAULBACH.
take our morning-stroll on the beach, for all the world as if the cold, clammy, slippery things
were fresh-cut roses! And, indeed, there is a merry twinkle in Piscatoria's eye as if she were
laughing to herself at Gradgrind's dulness!
222
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME
Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier, the painter of "At Church," one of the most widely
popular, as a designer, of the school which Knaus, Defregger, Schmid, and others have done
so much to establish in the public favor, was born in 1829 at Morges, a brisk commercial
town in the Canton Yaud, on the northern side of the Lake of Geneva, not far from Lausanne.
He was educated at Geneva, and on leaving school he worked for two years as a painter of
enamels for the jewellers ; but in 1849 he took up the study of painting under a local artist
Lugardon. Feeling the need of better instruction, he went in 1850 to Diisseldorf, then, out-
side of Paris, the principal art-school in Europe, when after a short course at the Academy
he became the puj^il of Rudolph Jordan. He made his wandering-year in the Black-forest
and in Switzerland, and spent a year in Paris, but returned to
Diisseldorf, where he has since continued to live, and work.
His pictures are found in the museums of Berlin and Dresden
as well as in jirivate collections in Europe, and here in Amer-
ica. In the collection of Mr. John Taylor Johnston, now un-
happily dispersed, was ^s " Music-Lesson," and Mr. William
T. Walters, of Baltimore, owns the " Consulting his Lawyer,"
and in Mr. George I. Seney's collection was an excellent ex-
ample "Bringing Home the Bride." Vautier's subjects are
almost exclusively drawn from the peasant-life of Westphalia,
Bavaria, and the Rhine provinces, and he has been much
praised for the acuteness of his observation, shown by the clear way in which he discrimi-
nates between the characteristics of the different populations. "There is nothing superfi-
cial," says Wilhelm Liibke, " in his treatment of the scenes from the peasant-life which he
depicts. He never puts us off with costumes for character. On the contrary, the different
individualities of his personages are forcibly expressed not only in their faces but in their
figures and their gestures, and this individuality controls every detail. Vautier knows, and
makes us perceive, that the wine-merchant of the Rhine differs from the beer-merchant of
Bavaria, and the cit, the SpiessMorger — the German equivalent for the contemptuous French
epicier — differs again from both these."
Something of this excellence is discoverable in the picture we copy. " In Church,"
represents a Sunday morning in some village church in Swabia, where only the dress of the
peasant-flock of worshippers, and the character of their heads, differentiates the scene from
MARC L. B. VAUTIER,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 223
what we may see in a hundred places in Protestant Germany and Holland. Here-and-there
in Holland — the sight is common enough — we have seen the short rod of the sexton in our
picture with its bag for collecting the offering, amusingly replaced, among that half-aquatic
fishing-population, by a prodigiously long fishing-rod with a similar bag at the end, which was
kept bobbing over the heads of the people ; the persistent angler reaching even the most shy
and sheltered denizen of the pews, and waiting with the patience of a born fisherman until the
tricky penny shall let itself be taken. Here, in the Swabian church, the sexton has his
victims at short range ; he has pocketed his dues from all but one of them, and he, if we may
judge by the action of his head, is looking in his wallet for the needed penny. Vautier has,
certainly, not flattered his sitters ; they are a hard-featured and not very intelligent set, and
it is plain that the young boy in the foreground is growing up to be like the rest of them.
With his hat in one hand, he seems to be waiting with dogged patience for the moment when
he can be let free, but in the mean while he is tethered, as it were, to his father's big cane and
there is nothing for it bat to submit. The most pleasing part of the picture and that which
explains its pojjularity, is the row of women, sitting by themselves, as is the time-honored
custom in all the older churches. The old grandmother, in her queer bonnet with its lace fall
shading her face as she follows the words of the hymn in her book, has the seat of honor in
the stall, handsomely carved by the rude skill of some village genius. Her book, too, is a
handsomer one than the rest, with its clasps, and its case that lies in her lap on its cover, in
which the whole is wrapped-up and laid aside in the drawer of her press, on week-days.
How persistent are these minor fashions, that, seemingly, a part of the old-world order of
things, come to the surface again in later times with a new face adapted to new manners ! In
old pictures, particularly in those of the early Flemish masters, we see the sacred personages,
the Virgin or the saints, reading in illuminated missals richly boimd, and protected by covers
of embroidered or brocaded silk. An example of this will be found in the onc^ beautiful, but
now hopelessly damaged picture, attributed too confidently to Hans Memling, in the Bryan
Collection in the New York Historical Society. This was at a time when books were all
written by hand, and were consequently very precious and treated with great care. And the
custom held for some time, and from being merely a precautionary measure, for the safe
keeping of a valuable possession, became a symbol of sanctity; and printed Bibles and prayer-
books, of no great money-value, were for some time longer protected with cases and covers,
until, by the vulgarizing influence of printing, the eustom was given up ; as people cease always
2 24 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
to take much care of things that can be replaced at a wish. Now, again, with the revival of
so many old customs, taken njj as fads by people in search of novelties, we have this one
restored to favor, and prayer-books, missals, and hymnals in their dainty morocco or velvet
cases, with gold or silver clasps (the cases of far more money-value, often, than the book they
protect — since these are seldom well-printed or on good paper). Gift-books, too, are common,
in loose covers of silk or velvet, embroidered by the fair hands of the giver ; and, of late,
publishers send out book after book wdth a false cover of paper, repeating, in text and device,
the design of the true cover, which for the time being it protects from the wear and tear of
the shop-counter. But our old grandame's book has kept us too long from her matronly
daughter at her side and her younger grand-children beyond, the elder a jDretty girl of
sixteen; while beyond these still is another family of three; a grandmother, not so old as the
one who sits nearest us, and who puts on her spectacles to follow the hymn, in the book
which her daughter is holding before the baby-grandchild, who plays at reading in it for
herself.
In this picture we find the artist essaying a task, tlo^ representation of the act of singing,
in which he had been jjreceded by three artists of note: Van Eyck in his " Saint Cecilia sur-
rounded by Singing Angels," in the Altar-piece of Ghent; Luca Delia Robbia, in the bas-
relief of the Singing-choir formerly in the Cathedral of Florence, now in the gallery of the
Uffizii, and Benozzo Gozzoli, an artist of deserved repute, though far inferior to the other two,
in his Angels singing the Gloria in Excelsis, in the Chapel of the Riccardi palace in Florence
(one of these groups was engraved by Mr. Cole for the Century Magazine of November,
1889). Of these three, it may be allowed that Van Eyck has accomplished the feat aimed-at
most scientifically, and with the least exaggeration; we not only see that these angels of his
are singing, by the nicely expressed action of heads, throats, and bodies, but it is hardly an
extravagance to say that we hear them ; and some of the German critics in their enthusiasm
insist on our believing them, when they declare that they can distinguish the very note in the
scale that each angel is sounding. Gozzoli's picture would almost seem to have been painted
in rivalry with Van Eyck, so marked is the efl:'ort on the artist's part to express, by bodily
movement and gesture, the act of singing, and even the character of the emitted sounds. But
there is a sense of exaggeration, and of self -consciousness in Gozzoli's work, that are entirely
absent from that of Van Eyck, while at the same time there are certain features in it that
would almost persuade us that it had been painted in rivalry with the great Fleming. Of
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 225
the three works cited as examples of effort in the same field in which Vautier has tried liis
hand, that of Delia Robbia is the one most likely to be recognized by our readers, since casts
of his group of singing-boys, Avith others, dancing, and playing upon musical-instruments, are
now often met with in our museums, private-houses, and shops.
In the case of Yautier's picture, the illusion produced by the other artist Ave have men-
tioned has been by no means so successfully attempted. There is no question as to the
individuality of the several heads; each of these jDersons has a character of his own; they
are plainly studied by the artist from the people in the world about him, as he saw and
sketched them in their daily life. There is no look of the professional model about them.
But, as for expression, we fear that no more of it can be found in the supposed living person-
ages than there is in the painted ones which we dimly discern on the screen at the back of
the choii". Four of the men — counting the one whose head is half hid by the old woman's
bonnet — four of the men, and two of the women, have their mouths arranged according to
the academic prescription for "singing," but the result hardly carries 11s farther than
academic prescriptions in general.
George Hom, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1838, has shown considerable power in
facial expression in his "A Secret ! " and has also been successful in the management of the
candle-like effect in the same picture. As in so many German pictures of this domestic
character of subject (and who can number them!), the incident depicted is nothing in itself,
but the artist has plainly enjoyed the narrating it. Two girls are off for bed, but just at
parting at the stair-head, the one Avhispers to the other the secret which has been filling her
bosom with ill-repressed Joy since Fritz left her at the garden-gate, an hour ago. The secret is
plainly no news to her companion, but she listens in full sympathy, and a smile of genuine
pleasure lights up her face in serene response to the mirth that tmnkles in the other's eyes.
The candle-light effect in this picture is one of those feats-of-skill which are always sure of
applause from the general public, but which have long ceased to interest artists, or connois-
seurs, because they express nothing beyond what is attainable by the patient application of
mechanical skill. All depends however, upon what is the object of the artist's skill, and
whether he rests in the exercise of a merely mechanical facility, or produces effects that are
beautiful in themselves. A Van Schendel. or any one of his many imitators, becomes very
|tiresome with his eternal market-scenes, where puppet-like figures from the fashion-plates of
the period are engaged in examining some improbable market-woman's wooden carrots, cab.
VOL. II.— 15 * *
226
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
bages, or fish, by the light of torches or lanterns managed with theatrical conventionality.
£ut it is not the subject itself we tire-of, it is only of Van Schendel, and his way of dealing
"A SECRET."
FROM THE PICTURE BY GEORGE HOM.
with his really picturesque material, of which a Rembrandt would make something we
should never tire-of if it were to hang before our eyes a life long. And so even a minor
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 227
painter, like the one whose picture we are at present considering, may turn a merely mechan-
ical effect to good account, and give us all an honest pleasure by illuminating with his candle-
light two human faces all aglow with the answering light of youth and innocent enjoyment.
It is only as tricks, that effects such as we have been discussing are not considered worth
admiring by people of mature taste. They become admirable in proportion as they serve
some purpose higher than a display of merely mechanical skill. It is a trick, by which the
eyes of a portrait are made to follow us round the room : it is a noble art, by which the eyes
of a portrait.are made to look into ours with an answering human look, especially if he who
so regards us be one to meet hope with higher hope, to breathe courage to the faint in heart,
to restore even to a momentary bloom our fading belief in virtue and heroism. In short it is
as true in art as it is in other matters, that skill has two sides, a vulgar one, and a noble or
beautiful one : the tricks of the every-day j aggier who breaks a watch to pieces in a mortar,
and takes it, whole, out of the gaping spectator's pocket, or makes an omelette in the bride-
groom's new hat and restores it to him unsoiled and fresh as he received it, are certainly not
to be compared to the delicate fancy of the Japanese magician who plants a seed in a flower-
pot, and when, in a moment after, it sj)rings up, and puts forth leaves, and bursts into bloom,
makes the butterflies he has adroitly twisted out of bits of pajDer, hover and flutter about the
flowers and light upon them as if to feed upon their honey. The tricks of the one man
appeal solely to our curiosity, those of the other delight our poetic sense.
Gossow's " News " is a clever bit of anecdote-telling, where, as in the case of Diez, ive
perceive a design to make the picture interesting as a decorative scheme ; but Grossow suc-
ceeds better than Diez in making these tAvo elements of more nearly equal value. Apart
from their pictorial effect, not much is to be had from the pictures of Diez: in Gossow's
picture we can enjoy the play of character in these four people independently of the play of
lights-and-darks, and broken tones that make, in our plate at least, a mosaic of no little rich-
ness. The manners of the old world differ so miich from the more formal and rigid manners
of our world, where every man is afraid of his neighbor's criticism, that we cannot understand
how these three people, the old grandam, her son, and her daughter-in-law should be so much
interested in the letter which Bettina, the servant, has just received from her sweetheart, who
has gone to the war. So impatient is she to read it, and so eager are they to hear it, that no
note is taken of the fact that the cabbage and the other vegetables she was sent into the
garden to cut, have been brought into the sitting-room and put down upon the floor, regard-
2 28 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
■«
less, for the monieut, of propriety; nobody minds it, however; nor does it matter that the
coffee-pot and the table-cloth, the last vestiges of the breakfast, have not yet been removed.
"news."
FROM THE PICTURE BY GOSSOW.
The letter is the thing, and as it is evident that it contains nothing but good news it shall be
read and heard in spite of cabbages, coffee-pots, table-cloths and the proprieties in general.
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 229
The old woman, who in her bonnet and shawl has just looked in for a chat with her daughter,
has taken off her spectacles, and folded her gouty lingers, and fixed her face in an attitude of
attention and is ready for a good time. Her son, who is deaf, leans over his mother and bends
his head that he may lose no word of the letter, while his wife, in her striped woollen petticoat,
warm jacket, and shawl, with her head prodigiously muffled uj), though not to the prejudice
of a large receptive ear, follows the narrative point by point, beating time, as it were, with her
hand ux^on the table. Bettina, sitting at the corner of the table, in her working-gown, with
her apron pinned up, and a handkerchief over her head, reads the letter with a smile of
mingled pride and affection; and when she has shared it with her friends, and received their
congratulations on her good news, will tuck the missive inside her bodice, and go about her
chores with a lighter heart for the rest of the day.
Alexander Wagner, the painter of " The Spanish Mail-Coach in Toledo," was born in
Hungary in 1838, but made his artistic studies in Munich under Karl Piloty, and has ever
since continued to live in that city, where he holds a Professorship in the Academy of Fine
Arts. Both in his o^N^x country and in Germany he is much esteemed as a painter of history,
and his name has been carried into a much wider field by his " Chariot-race," known all over
the world by jDhotographs and reproductions of all sorts. He has produced many scenes
from the history of his native Hungary, as well as from that of Austria and her piovinces.
The first picture that he exhibited after leaving the studio of Piloty: "Isabella Zapolya
taking leave of Siebenbiirgen (Transylvania)," made a good foundation for his reputation; it
was followed by two wall-paintings, in the Bavarian National Museum at Mimich, — "The
Entrance of Gustavus Adqlphus into Aschaffenburg " and " The Marriage of Otho the Great "
—which are counted among the best of those with which the building is ornamented. Other
paintings followed in rapid succession, all of them dealing with subjects of national interest,
and insuring the popular favor, but belonging to an order of work essentially melodramatic
and superficial, akin to the mass of " historical painting " for whicli his countrymen have
such a rooted affection — shared alike by the cultivated and the uncultivated — but which out-
side of Germany is by no means so indiscriminately admired. Later on, Wagner visited
Spain, and the fruit of his travels was a large number of pictures with subjects illustrating
the more striking and picturesque episodes in the life of that half-medijBval, half -barbaric
land, most of which subjects were reproduced for a show-book on Spain, published in Berlin
in 1880. " The Mail-Coach in Toledo," which we place before our readers, was one of the
2.^0
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
pictures engraved for this book; and to those who are familiar with the artist's earlier
picture, the "Roman Chariot- Race" — and who is not? — it will be evident that the composi-
"AT THE LAKE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM AMBERG
tion and the essential spirit of the scene are to all intents and purposes the same in the two
works. Wagner painted the " Roman Chariot- Race " twice; the first was a small picture,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 231
now owned in England ; tlie second, a much larger work, is the one painted for the Philadel-
phia Exposition of 1876, where it was much admired, although it is considered far inferior to
the original painting. The subject was, however, well-suited to the larger canvas, and there
can be no doubt that as a purely spectacular and sensational performance it deserved all the
applause it received. It was a very vivid, and no doubt in the main true, object-lesson in
Roman manners, and it will certainly long hold its place in ]3opular favor by virtue of its
spirited and energetic expression of rapid movement animating the whole scene as in real
life, and by no means confined to the main actors. In the " Mail-Coach," the same merit is to
be acknowledged, but the artist has been carried further, and has narrowly escaped transgress-
ing the limits of art, by adding the suggestion of danger to the excitement of his scene. It is,
indeed, doubtful whether we are on the verge of a catastrophe : whether the great lumbering,
overloaded vehicle is to be upset or not, but it is certain that the passengers on top of the
coach are prepared for the worst, and if our ears were sharp enough we should be able to hear
a volley of adjurations to the Virgin and all the saints shouted above the oaths and yells of
the outriders, the clatter of the harness and hoofs, the cracking of whips and the crunching
and grinding of the nearly shipwrecked ark. The ubiquitous beggars at the side of the road
join their cries to the din, and have good hope that in case the dreadful corner be once safely
turned, a few pence may be tossed them by some grateful survivor, giving his prayers for
mercy a practical form. We suppose there is little use in remonstrating against these painted
agonies, these high-strung representations of blood-curdling crises in which the modem world
delights, and which modem artists so plentifully sujpply. It is the artists who suffer most
from this perversion of the healthy service of art and literature to the needs of a growing
excitement and unrest, since thej^ are put to it ever more and more to invent the means of
gratifying the wants of their insatiable clients. Still, as we have seen, there is another audi-
ence in Germany and a large one, and, i)erhaps, we may allow that it is chiefly in what they
are pleased to call historical-painting that the love of bombast and of horrors prevails. We
have certainly chronicled enough of quiet and tranquil domestic scenes, and here, at the end
of our chapter, we come upon two idyllic experiences which may serve to rest the mind after
its strained watching for the upset or the hair-breadth salvation of the Spanish Mail. The
"At the Lake," by Wilhelm Amberg, of Berlin, born in 1822, and "The Betrothal-Ring" of
Friedrich Paul Thumann, born in 1834 at Tschacksdorf in the Lausitz, are pretty pastorals,
such as need no comment for man or maid, and such as every country nowadays provides in
232
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
plenty for the deliglit of its youtlifiil clientage. Botli these artists carry us back to the
love-makino- of a little earlier time than ours. But, after all, the comedy or tragedy of
'THE BETROTHAL RING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY PAUL THUMANN.
love-making is ever the same, no matter in what dress it be played, or on what scene the
prompter's bell ring up the curtaia.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 233
XIV.
T 1 yiLHELM LEIBL, the painter of "At Church," and "The Hunter," was born at
' ' Cologne in 1844. He was at iirst apprenticed to a locksmith; but he had the instincts
of an artist, and in 1864 he made his way to Munich, where he became a pupil of Piloty.
His tastes led him to choose genre subjects and portrait as his special field, and we read that
he was particularly drawn to the painting of Van Dyck, whom he took as his model in his
early work. In 1869, he was at Paris; but, on the breaking-out of the Franco-Prussian War
he returned to Munich, and has since remained there, working still in the same field in which
he began. Leibl's pictures have been called coarse, ugly, verging on caricature, while they
are also praised for their fidelity to local types, for their independence of convention, both in
motive and in treatment, and for the excellence of theu' coloring. As in the case of J. F.
Millet, something of the rudeness and narrowness of the early life and employment of the
artist may affect his choice of subject, and color his treatment of it. As will be remembered,
his youth was spent at the forge, and his associations were necessarily with the lower or mid-
dling class of his people, and his symxjathies have plainly never been alienated from them,
while at the same time his artistic sense has kept him, in feeling and sentiment, above the
level of his surroundings. The examples we give of Leibl are characteristic of his manner of
looking at things, but as in the case of all reproductions in black-and-white, the artist's color-
ing has to be left out of the account. It will be interesting to compare the treatment of his
subject by Leibl in liis "At Church," mth that of Vautier in his picture bearing the same
title. Both in the conception of his subject, and in his treatment of it, Vautier is much
more conventional than Leibl : he follows ih.Q old rules, and selects his types with as much
consideration for gesthetic laws as is consistent with a desire to be faithful to their essential
character. But Leibl is a law to himself, and his pictures, in general, are constructed on a
principle which, as there is no authority for it in the books, the spectator must make out for
himself. So far as arrangement is concerned, there is little of anything added by Leibl to
what nature might have supplied by chance ; his groujps and their surroundings are, for the
most part, what a man might see by looking out at a window, or in at a door. Take, for
example, the "At Church." These three women might have been photographed, just as they
are sitting in their pew, each figure artistically independent of the others, and with not so
much attempt to bring their grouping into harmonious arrangement with any scheme of pic-
234
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
torial composition as is commonly made by pliotograpliers in placing their sitters. In this
respect Leibl often reminds us of Ms contemporary, James Tissot, and between both these
\
I
"AT CHURCH."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM LEIBL.
artists and the English school of Pre-Raphaelites, there is a certain affinity, which, if its
existence be allowed, is probably due to what we may call a special condition of the moral
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 235
atmosphere of their time, since, so far as we are informed, there was never any personal
relation between these artists ; and in their training they came under very different masters.
As a detail, which will probably not be reckoned of much importance, we may allude to the
gowns of the nearest two of the three women in this picture — the one made of a striped
stuff, the other of a plaid pattern. To an artist trained in the conventional rules, either of
these would be objectionable. Stripes, indeed, can be made decorative under certain condi-
tions: but they must always be used with moderation. As for the plaid, we hardly remem-
ber, however, an instance of its employment by any artist of eminence among the older
painters. There is one instance of such employment, in the fourteenth century, which we
may cite as an illustration of that direct following of facts without regard to their pictorial
effect, that was one of the principles of the English Pre-Raphaelites, and to which they might
have referred among hundreds of other similar violations of academic rules by the artists
who preceded Raphael, in justification of their own practices. The picture we refer to is a
fresco in the Lower Church of the Church of Saint Francis at Assissi, in the chapel dedicated
to Saint Martin (Pope Martin IV., a.d. 1281). It is attributed by Vasari to one Puccio
Capanna, but later writers give it to a better known artist, Simone Memmi. Whoever painted
it, has gone to work like all the men of his time, taking the facts of the everyday life about
him, and using them as the setting for his story; clothing its personages — sacred or pro-
fane, near in time, or far-off — in the dress of the artist's own time, and surrounding them
with the utensils and furniture that were familiar to the people for whom the picture was
painted. So, here, in Memmi's picture we see the Pope lying asleep, and visited in his dream
by the Saviour. He has not taken off his halo, but has it conveniently disposed around his
night-cap, and he rests placidly on his bed — a plain, homespun affair, such as any Italian
peasant of that day — or this^ — might sleep in, comfortably tucked in under a homespun plaid
counterpane, no better than would be found in any one of the poor houses that nestle at the
foot of the hill on whose side the great convent of Saint Francis suns itself at ease.
In our own time we do not remember any painter who has been so audacious as to dress
his personages in a gown with a plaid pattern, except Leibl and James Tissot. Tissot has
done this in a picture representing two ladies in high-life, and Leibl has done it, here, in his
picture of peasants in church. This, of course, might be an accident, and ordinarily would
indicate nothing deeper in the way of resemblance between the two artists. But it seems to
us that there is something deeper, a more intimate relation, however it has come about,
236
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
between the art of the French painter who has been devoted all his life to the dej)icting the
manners and experiences of the upper classes — for, even his Margaret is a lady, albeit of the
"THE HUNTER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM LEIBL.
I
4
middle-class, and the art of the German, who, born a laborer, has painted little beside scenes
from the life of the iaboring-peoiale. Each of them turns his back peremptorily on the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 237
Academic teaching, and insists on conceiving the scene he has to paint as nearly as possible
as it would have looked in reality ; not, indeed, attempting to deceive the eye by any tricks
of imitation of stuff, or materials, or by feats of perspective, but aiming at deeper things :
truth of human characterization, truth of gesture, and action. In each artist, too, is the same
indifference to beauty, and it must be admitted to grace, as well. It is long since we saw
Tissot's lady in the plaid gown, but we remember her tormented attitude as she sat upon the
grass, and the multitudinous folds of her " tempestuous petticoat " ; there was a plenty of
veracity and energy in the picture, but there was little to attract the lover of prettiness.
But as this print after Leibl's picture lies before us on the table while we write, we are more
and more impressed with its unpretending earnestness of feeling, which, in the end, makes us.
oblivious to the homeliness of these poor people and the awkwardness of their attitudes. In
fact, everything in the picture is ugly and awkward. The carved end of the seat in front of
the one that holds these women is of such a coarse and unmeaning design that it would
seem as if Leibl must have gone out of his way to find it. The old women are as ugly as
hard work from youth to age, slender meals, and the aches and pains that come with poverty
could make them. As for the young woman, her ctress is neat enough, and no doubt con-
sidered quite the correct thing by herself and her neighbors, but nothing could well be more
tasteless than the whole get-up, accented as it is by the ridiculous hat. There is, therefore,
nothing pleasing in the picture to the eye that is wont to take pleasure in externals ; here, as
in Millet's pictures, or in Tissot's, we must look for the pleasure that comes from expression:
we must get what we can from human sympathy felt for these people with whom the artist
has himself plainly sympathized ; the woman with deeply earnest look and clasped hands
telling her beads; her neighbor, bent with age and holding her prayer-book — protected by
its cloth cover like the one in Vautier's picture — in her long, bony hands ; then the younger
one who, just come in from market, with the Jug she has been getting filled set down by her
side, and turning over the leaves of her prayer-book to find the place with hands as big as
those of the old grandame at her side, and on the way to be as knotty and bony, in time.
Our other example of Leibl, " The Hunter," shows the artist still in quest of awkwardness
and always in luck to find it! What a clumsy lout this is, to be sure; with his small head, his
big legs, and his semi-detached feet! His dog is the best part of him! And yet the man has
a real look; he does not look like a Salon Tyroler, but like a man of deeds, such as they are.
Here again, we note the absence of composition, in the academic sense. The straight line
238 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
formed by the rougli- rail extending from tree to tree, no doubt was there when Leibl made
his slsetch; but an academician would certainly have left it out. Nor would he have put
the young fellow's foot on that ragged log, certainly no comfortable foothold. But, then, an
academician would never have given us LeibFs excellent pollard willow, nor would he have
cauglit his easy way of resting on his gun. Judging even by the print in its black and white
this must be a well-painted picture.
Beauty carries the day, and how few would look at Leibl in his best estate if Gustav
Richter's " Young Neapolitan " were to be seen! This almost ideal piece of human loveliness
has had such a vogue, that some of our readers may wonder at our selecting it, but this is
such an honest, healthy beauty, with neither sentimentality nor consciousness to mar it, that
we see no reason why, if everybody has seen it once, everybody should not see it again ! The
only harm it can do is the persuading us that all Neapolitan fisher-boys are models of ideal
beauty — a too large deduction from this one splendid fact! The truth is, as every one who
has visited Naples knows, the people are no handsomer than we may see them any day in
our. streets. They are a strong, hard-featured, rather stunted race, with plenty of rough
intelligence looking out of their dark eyes, often shaded by a forest of stormy hair,
as, here, in our Beppo. But Beppo is one in ten thousand, and Richter was lucky to
find him.
Kael Ludwig Gustav Richter, to give him his full tale of names and so distinguish
him from his namesake, plain Gustav, the landscape painter, was born in Berlin in 1823, and
died in 1884. After finishing his studies at the Academy in Berlin, he went to Paris and
there entered the atelier of Cogniet, with whom he remained for two years, and by whom
his style was greatly influenced. Leaving Paris, he went to Rome, where he studied for two
years, and on his return to Berlin was intrusted with a share in the decoration of the Hall of
Northern Antiquities in the New Museum. The work of filling the wall-space above the
cases and over the doors and windows with subjects from the Northern Mythology was
divided among several artists, Bellermann, Miiller, Heidenreich, and Richter, and the pictures
were executed in the then newly-revived art of wax-painting (stereochromy). To Richter were
given the three subjects " Balder " — the Northern Apollo, the " Walkyrie " — who conducted
the souls of the illustrious dead to Walhalla, and " Walhalla " itself, the abode of the gods
and heroes. Later, for a Christmas festival, Richter painted for an exhibition of transparent
pictures, a " Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter " which so delighted the king that he gave the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
239
artist a commisaion to paint it on a larger scale in oils. Ricliter's next success was gained at
the exhibition of 1856, when he showed his first portrait. This was considered the crown of
"A YOUNG NEAPOLITAN."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG RICHTER.
the collection and still maintains its reputation. In 1859, he received the commission to
daint one of the thirty large oil-paintings intended for the decoration of the great Entrance-
240 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Hall of the Maximilianeum at Munich — an institution founded by King Maximilian the II.
for the advanced education of young men who have proved their special fitness for the civil-
service of the state. Many of the most distinguished artists of Germany were invited to take
part in this work of decoration, which, after the grand German manner, was intended to be
illustrative of the most important events in the history of the world. Cabanel and Pauwels
were, we believe, the only artists outside of Germany invited to participate in this work.
Cabanel painted, " The Fall of Man," and Pauwels, " Louis XIV. receiving a Deputation from
the Republic of Genoa" — this latter, a singular choice of subject Avhen the limits of the
scheme are considered; and the mention of Genoa leads to the reflection that in this salad of
big and little events, on which the destiny of the world was supposed to have turned — no one
seems to have suggested the " Discovery of America " by Columbus ! The discovery of a new
world might have been worth mentioning along with " The Olympian Games " and " Haroun
al Raschid," and if it were thought desirable to include for the most part in these epoch-
making events only the doings of Teutons and Scandinavians, that of the finding of America
might have been given to the Northmen in general, or to Leif Eric in particular, the latest
rival to Columbus! The subject assigned to Richter was, "The Construction of the Pyra-
mids " — another amusing selection, seeing how vast a part these buildings have played in the
history of the world, and how much we know about them ! Richter, instead of following the
example of the other German in the well-known squib, and constructing his pyramids " out
of his moral consciousness " did as the Englishman in the story did : packed his valise and
started for Egypt! What he expected to find there suitable for his commission we know
not ; certain it is that he brought back nothing for that purpose that he might not have had
without the journey. His picture, however, when finished was considered one of the best of
the series, and still holds its oavh alongside the " Battle of Salamis " by Katilbach, and the
works of PUoty, Hess, and Muller. His reputation does not rest on these larger and more
pretending works, but upon his portraits and the " Heads " he painted on themes found in the
course of his visit to Egypt and later (1873) in the Crimea. Among these, the " Neapolitan
Fisher-boy" ranks perha]3s first, in popularity at least, but his "Fellah-Woman," his
" Odalisque," and his " Gipsy- woman of the Crimea," are also great favorites Avith the public.
The " Odalisque " is almost as well known as the Neapolitan boy. Among his portraits, too,
that of Queen Luisa of Prussia has been the subject of a sort of ovation at the hands of the
artist's own people, and, indeed, the graceful figure of the good and beautiful woman de-
I
;. t 4^ ■■5'
' *f' 'r'-V '-'lb 5f?-:
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 241
scending the steps of her palace has met with a welcome the world over, and has been repro-
duced by every known process, to meet the varied popular demand.
Another picture that has taken the popular fancy is " The Brothers " by Vogel, in the
Dresden Gallery.
Christian Lebeeecht Yogel was born in Dresden in 1759. He studied his art under
Schonau, the Director of the Dresden Academy, who inherited French traditions from the
teaching of Silvestre, brought from Paris by August the Strong to take charge of his new
Academy, and to be court-painter. In 1780, at the agg of twenty-one, Vogel had begun to.
make himself a name, and was invited by Count Solms-Wildenfels to accompany him to his
Chateau near Wildenfels, a small town near Zwickau in the Erzgebirge, where he was kept
employed for a long time in painting pictures for his patron and for his patron's friends, the
owners of neighboring castles. Considering, says Woltmann, the comparatively small extent
of the estate ruled by Count Solms, the number of pictures painted for him by Vogel must
be reckoned considerable; they consisted of portraits, decorative ceiling-pictures, and altar-
pieces. When in 1804 he was elected a member of the Dresden Academy, Vogel returned to
his native town, where, in 1814, he was made Professor at the Academy, and where he died in
1816. Vogel excelled in painting the portraits of children, and pictures in which children
play the principal part, as in the allegorical ceiling-painting in the Library of the Castle at
WUdenfels, and in the " Christ with the Children " in the same castle. But he is, perhaps,
more at home in smaller, less pretending pictures, chiefly known through engravings, as they
are mostly in private houses, such as his " Ganymede," his "Boy with a Canary-bird," "Boy
with a Book and a Birdcage," and the present picture, the best known, as it is reckoned the
best, of his works. It has been many times engraved, and is always copying by professional
copyists in the gallery at Dresden, where it hangs. The children in "The Brothers" are the
two Little sons of the artist who are sitting side by side on the floor. One of them, in a brown
jacket and with shoes, holds a picture-book on his knees from which he looks up with a sweet
expression, as if he were spoken to by father or mother. His dress is of an older fashion
than his brother's, he not only has shoes, but stockings and loose trousers and a large linen
collar with a ruffled edge turned over his jacket. His long fair hair falls on his neck in curls
and is cut short on his forehead. He reminds us of pictures of French children of his time,
painted by Greuze or Drouais. His brother is of a sturdier build, a younger child, bare-
footed and bare-armed and dressed in a loose red frock with a handkerchief tied bib-fashion
Vol. II.— 16 » *
242 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
about Ms neck. His hair is dark and stronger than his brother's, and is cnt short in the neck
and on the forehead. He holds a whip in his hand, and looks, but none too eagerly, into the
book in his brother's lap. On a loosely folded shawl by the elder brother's side is his hat, of
a size and shape to amuse a child of to-day, since it is of the same pattern as that which
would be worn by the child's father. Such, however, was the fashion in that day ; the dress
of children in the lower class, no less than in the higher, was the same in substance as that of
their elders, and even at the present time in England it is very common to see little boys, on
a Sunday especially, in tall hats like their fathers', while we are all familiar with the German
and Scandinavian emigrant-children dressed like their grandfathers in clothes that, as we say,
" look as if they had come out of the ark." And half the perennial charm of the cuts engraved
by Bewick and so cleverly copied by our American Anderson, lies in the harmony between
the dress of the boys and girls, and their general priggishness and airs of wisdom beyond
their years. Nothing but prudence and discretion, with contempt for youthful follies, could
be looked for in the wearers of these high hats, tail-coats, breeches, knee-buckles, and low-cut
shoes ; these long-skirted, short- waisted gowns, with flowing sashes, and taU, pointed beaver-
hats trimmed with flowers and ribbons. The expression given by this dress, so outlandish in
our eyes, is not, however, always that of priggishness. In Madame Le Brun's " Marie Antoi-
nette and her Children," given in the first volume of this work (p. liv.. Introduction) the
Dauphin's costume is in keeping with the sweet childish dignity of his bearing; and, here, in
Vogel's picture, 4he miniature man's dress does not detract from the look of infant innocence.
It may be noticed that Karl Woermann, the continuator of the excellent history of painting
begun by Alfred Woltmann, cannot enough praise the painting of this picture ; he exhausts
his German adjectives in expressing his delight, and makes its warm, glowing, luminous
coloring, the text of a sermon on the recreancy of modern German art to its splendid begin-
nings as illustrated by the " Portrait of a Man " by Peter von Cornelius that hangs near it in
the gaUery.
Otto Eedmaistn, the painter of the " Bringing-home the Bride " was bom at Leipzig in
1834 and after studying his art first at home and then in Dresden and Munich, fixed his
residence at Diisseldorf, where he has since continued to live and to paint. He has been a
successful caterer to the public taste for anecdotes, setting his little tales of high-life in a
fashionable Rococo frame- work, polished marquetry floor, panelled walls in white and gold,
lambrequined windows, mirrors, and porcelain vases, and people to match ; all convention-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
243
ality, formality, and high-caste German exclusiveness, and touch-me-nottery. The present
picture is a good example of the artist's manner when he is at his best: there is more
dramatic feeling, and clear character-drawing in this scene than his pictures call for in
general. The son of this high-born and dignified lady has chosen a bride for himself a little
"BRINGING HOME THE BRIDE."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OTTO ERDMANN.
outside the charmed circle in which his family moves. There have been hard thoughts, if not
hard words, in consequence, and it is only now that, after much letter-writing and embassies
to-and-fro, the mother has consented to receive her danghter-in-law, and see with her own
eyes what she looks like. She sits in her gilded and brocaded ./a?ifeMiZ, dressed in her stateli-
est, satin and silk and lace, and does her best, with a wintry smile and a dubious hand, to
welcome the intruder, this bird from the outer world who has dared to come and sit on the
244 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
branclies of her family tree; but for her son's sake and for the sake of peace she will give
her such welcome as she can. Judging by the consternation of the family, we must think
this a terrible old lady, in spite of her calm exterior and general air of harmless respecta-
bility. Yet, all these people seem to be expecting or fearing an explosion ; the young bride,
a most delicate piece of Dresden china, approaches her new relative with a faltering heart
and a timid foot, supported by her young husband's arm ; the husband himself seems pre-
pared to snatch his wife away on the first spark of danger; his sister, with one arm on the
back of her mother's chair and the other raised in a gesture of expectancy, stands lightly
balanced between hope and fear; the father in the background, still unreconciled, looks
severely at the offending pair, and adds his well-dressed mite to the general sum of discom-
fort. However, let us hope for the best; let us believe that the mother, an excellent person at
heart, no doubt, underneath this shell of convention, has been led to a proper and becoming
state of mind by the Court-chapel book of devotion she was reading when the footman an-
nounced her son, and that when the ijretty young creature before her shall have kissed the
proffered hand, and asked her blessing, there will be an end to this high-born nonsense, and
that the heads of this aristocratic family will begin to appreciate the kindness of fortune in
sending such a gleam of sunshine to light up their dull formality.
Carl SoHisr, Jr., as he signs himself in the corner of this picture "At Dessert," is the son
■of the once distinguished painter, a chief of the Dusseldorf school; remembered here, perhaps,
by some as the painter of a " Diana and her Nymphs " that was one of the main attractions
of the Dusseldorf gallery. The son was bom at Dusseldorf in 1845, where his father died in
1869. An older brother, Richard, still lives and paints portraits in his native town, and there
is also a cousin, Wilhelm, a painter of history and genre, bom in Berlin, but living and work-
ing at Diisseldorf, so that the family is well represented. The younger Carl Sohn's "At
Dessert" is one of the regulation costume and studio-property pieces with which we are
already so familiar ; but we must confess to finding it not so reasonable as many of its com-
panions. Considering the venerable character of the company seated at the table — so much
of it, at least, as we can see through the open door-way — we are not surprised that this young
eouple should have slipped away for a quiet chat in the ante-room, where, seated on an old
carved settee by the side of his lady, the young gentleman has preluded his love-making by
an airor two strummed upon his lute. But, what puzzles us is the action of the young lady,
whose state of violent commotion is in curious contrast to the cool undemonstrative air of her
•SM
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 245
lover. He would seem to have stated his case with unusual deliberation and to be awaiting- a
reply with an air that might equally well be translated as indifference, or assurance. The
lady, on the contrary, starts back with a frightened air, and appears to be in some danger of
losing her balance ; at any rate, her next movement will be, apparently, to spring to her feet,
and leave her companion to strum on his lute to himself. Or, can it be that all this agitation
is caused by the unwelcome appearance of the young lady's little sister, a miniature copy of
herself, dressed in festal array, in a brocaded gown, satin shoes and a jaunty cap and heron's
feather, who has begged a plate of bon-bons from her rather grim-visaged aunt who lowers in
ruff and bodice on the other end of the table; and, under pretence of offering them a share of
the dessert, has come olit, just at the wrong moment, after the fashion of small sisters, moved
by mere chUdish curiosity to see what her big sister Wilhelmina is doing? This might possi-
bly explain the fact that the young lady is so flustered while her lover is so calm — for she
sees the pretty intruder, and he doesn't. Yet, even so, her evident agitation ought to pique his
curiosity, since he must know very well that as the lady has been for some weeks well aware
of his intention, and she herself prepared to hear his declaration, there cannot be any reason
for surprise on her part. As a composition Sohn's picture has merit sufficient, albeit it is of
a conventional kind, and follows rules easily taught. The lighting of the inner room is
cleverly managed, and the people are well-seated at the table. Were we practically disposed,
we might object to the architectural disposition of the rooms ; such a screen between two
principal apartments in a handsome house calling for an explanation, since in the times when
the handsome dress of this young lady was worn, with its graceful compromise between the
stiffness of the preceding era and the freedom of the next to come, in the early seventeenth
century, there was no lack of light in the houses; they were far enough away from the
troglodyte system of house-building to which we are accustomed. Or, if these rich people
had had a screen only, to separate their dining-room from the hall, we may be sure they
would have known how to arrange the glass in it. Small square panes diversified with glass
dinner-plates — for there are no joints in these discs to make us think them properly leaded
ornaments — would not have found their way to such a place. But the whole screen looks like
a cheap collection of bits put together for studio-purposes, an inexcusable make-shift when
we think of the abundant models that are at any artist's disposal in any old European town.
LuDWiG LoFFTZ, the painter of "Avarice and Love " was born at Darmstadt in 1845, and
was apprenticed at seventeen to an upholsterer. He had already a few years' instruction at
246 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
the Technical Institute in his native place, but at the end of his apprenticeship, he decided to
become an artist, and give up trade. He went first, in 1869, to Nurembeig, where he studied
under Kreling for a year, but the next year found him in Munich, where he entered tlie studio
of Wilhelm Dies. After a number of essays in genre painting, with a certain success, he
produced the j)resent picture exhibited at Munich in 1879, and won the willing suffrages of
the public and the artists. The work was plainly suggested by the famous picture, in the
Louvre, by Quentin Matsys: "The Gold-merchant and his Wife" although there cannot be
said to be more than a suggestion of an original, either in the coloring or the design of Lofftz's
picture. Matsys' work shows us simply a merchant and his young wife sitting side by side
in his counting-room, he examining a piece of gold he has been weighing, and she pausing in
turning over the pages of an illuminated missal, to look at the coin and to listen to what he
is saying about it. The table is strewed with various objects that have come to the merchant
in exchange, and which are all painted with the utmost care, an ostensoir, or crystal shrine
for the altar, a watch in its jponderous case, a small convex mirror with its reflections, such as
more than one of the sixteenth-century artists tried his skill upon, and a pile of gold pieces.
On shelves behind the couj)le are a number of small objects, all painted with the sam^.
precision. Another picture at Windsor Castle, " The Misers," once attributed to Quentin
Matsys, but now given to his son Jan, may have mingled in the mind of Lofftz the idea of
avarice with that of love, as suggested by the Louvre picture. But this is as far as the
resemblance goes. This sturdy yeoman, whom we suppose we must allow young (after a
mediaeval fashion) has found the merchant sitting with his bountifully blooming daughter in
his counting-room and takes the opportunity to exchange glances with her, while her father
carefully counts out the money he has brought in settlement of some transaction. The rose,
too, which he had slipped into the mouth of the bag of money as he handed it to her on
entering, she acknowledges with a speaking look that seems to promise him prosperity in his
suit. As in Matsys' pictures, the table is strewn with things in the painting of Avhich the
modern artist has attempted no rivalry Avith the work of the older master. They are here
simply as necessaiy facts, to have their dues, but to be subordinated to the main purpose of
the composition, whereas, vdth a Matsys, Van Eyck, and even Holbein, these details seem
often to have been painted for their own sake, for the mere pleasure of wrestling with diffi-
culties.
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 247
XV.
T N" the somewhat wearisome waste of modern German art, the name of Daniel Nicolaus
*■ Chodowiecki stands out as a cheerful luminary. "Pronounce Kodov-yetski," says
Thomas Carlyle, " and endeavor to make some acquaintance with the ' Prussian Hogarth '
who has real worth and originality." He was an artist of a marked personality, whose work,
if it had but little influence on the art of his own time, and if, for us, it form merely a part of
the baggage of curiosity bequeathed by his age to ours, must yet always have an interest for
the student of manners in his part of Germany in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century.
Chodowiecki was born at Dantzig in 1726. This city, although it had been for a long time
one of the most important places in that part of the dominions of Prussia which was ruled by
the Order of Teutonic Knights, had joined the league of the towns that threw off the yoke of
the Order, and placed herself under the protection of Poland, while still maintaining her
municipal independence. The second partition of Poland which gave Dantzig back to
Prussia and to Germany, did not take place until 1793, when Chodowiecki was nearly seventy
years of age, so that, had he continued to live and to work in his native town all those years,
his fame must have been given to Poland, to which, as it is, nothing but his Polish name
belongs. Chodowiecki's father was a corn-merchant in a small way, his mother, we are told,
was of French descent, and yet the artistic leaning in their son's nature would seem to have
been derived not from the mother, but from the father, who not only put no obstacle in the
boy's way when he saw him resolutely bent toward art, but himself gave him his first instruc-
tions, since he was not without some little talent in that direction. An aunt, too, who
painted in enamel, assisted him in his studies, but there was little doing, in the town, in the
way of art to encourage him in the pursuit, and few pictures, either in public or private
possession, to stimulate or instruct his youthful talent. One important picture by a great
artist, " The Last Judgment " of Hans Memling, of Bruges, did, indeed, hang in Chodowiecki's
time, in the Church of St. Mary, where it is still to be seen. But, though, to amateurs of
painting and lovers of the earlier art, it is to-day chief among the few attractions of the old
sea-port, it may reasonably be doubted whether it had ever received more than a casual
glance from Chodowiecki. In his time, the art of the middle ages was more than neglected,
it was despised ; and the art of the Renaisance was hardly in better favor. A picture by
Memling, or Van Eyck, or Matsys, covered now by buyers with gold-pieces, was then looked
248 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
at merely as a curiosity, Avell enough, perhaps, in a church, but by no means a fit ornament
for a room in whicli one was to live. In the picture by Cliodowiecki which accompanies this
notice : " The Work-room of a Painter," all the pictures that hang on the wall are the pro-
ductions of the later Dutchmen, or of the Italian Eclectics; the men who were just before
Chodo%viecki's time, and in vogue when he was coming on the stage or was just in his prime.
We may ask ourselves, too, whether the picturesque old town of his youth was more to his
mind than the old art ; whether the narrow streets, with their tall houses, built for the most
part of brick, some of them plain to austerity, though well designed, others richly ornamented,
with columns and cornices, window and door-frames of carved stone, would excite him to
artistic sympathy, or would leave him cold, as before so much mere survival of a barbarous
past? Ought he not, if he had in him any artistic instincts, to have taken some little
pleasure in the multitude of gables which give such a rich and varied sky-line to every street ;
or in that picturesque feature, once common to nearly all the houses of Dantzig, and peculiar
to the city, the Beyschldge or " stoops," as we call their degenerate descendants here in New
York: stone platforms extending weU out from the fronts of the houses, handsomely railed
in, and reached from the sidewalk by comfortable steps? Here, under the shade of trees, the
owners of the houses and their friends would sit on summer-evenings, enjoying the cool air
and the long twilights, and filling the narrow streets with a cheerful murmur of friendly
voices. Bat, though in those sketch-books of which we shall speak presently, and especially
in the sketches made during the visit to Dantzig in 1773, where he went to see his mother,
whom he had not met for thirty years, he records the backgrounds of his groups, however
slightly, yet with the same truthfulness with which he depicts the groups themselves, we can
find no evidence that he cared at all for what most interests us of this generation when we
visit the ancient sea-port on the Vistula. For want, then of better models in his art, Chodo-
wiecki feU back upon the engravers, and under his aunt's direction began to copy the etch-
ings of Callot, and such prints as he could obtain after the works of the Dutch and Flemish
artists. Later, he obtained engravings after Watteau and Lancret, and with these he now
began the practice of making small-size reductions of his originals, doubtless aided in this, as
in all his efforts, by the aunt, whose work as a miniaturist and enamel-painter, lay in the
direction of minute and finely finished execution. All his drawings up to this time had been
made vsith the pen and washed with India-ink, but he now began to painf upon parchment,
and he soon made such progress that an uncle, a shop-keeper, who lived at Berlin, and who
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 249
used to buy for his customers the aunt's enamels as they were sent him, now encouraged the
nephew by buying some of his drawings that from time to time were sent to him along with
these. Life was thus made a little easier for the lad, as the small sums of money he received
refreshed his slim pockets and gave him the means of procuring the materials for his drawing
and painting, vrithout calling on his parents, who were ill able to gratify him.
In 1740, when Chodowiecki was only fourteen, his father died, and his mother, who had
never encouraged him in his efforts to make himself an artist, apprenticed him to a relative, a
widow who kept a small grocery shop in Dantzig. Here began a dreary episode in the life of
the boy, who was now obliged to serve behind the counter from six in the morning until ten
at night, and in the evening, after supper, to go to church with his mistress for vespers, and
to join her in singing the hymns. Yet so strong was his bent toward art, that even in church
his thoughts went wandering that way ; he would study the pictures on the wall and try to
lix their composition in his memory by foUovdng their main lines with his finger in the
hollow of his hand or on the cover of his prayer book, and afterward on reaching his bed-
room would reproduce them as well as he could from memory. Thus hard necessity schooled
him, and taught him a method which no master could have bettered. In the shop, too, were
many hours when little was doing in the way of business, and these he improved by sketch-
ing the shop and its contents, and once made a drawing of his mistress and her friends at
table which is still to be seen among his sketches, and shows the considerable progress he
was making in his studies from nature.
Finding that all their efforts to crush the boy were in vain, the Fates, who perhaps only
meant to try his mettle, resolved to do him a good turn. They bankrupted the old widow
and shut up her shop, a happy event for Chodovsdecki, who now returned to his mother's
house, and after a brief stay there, followed his younger brother to Berlin, where his uncle
already mentioned was ready to give him a helping hand. For some time he worked away at
his water-color drawing, and made attempts at enamel-painting, but he found little success in
disposing of his work and was at length reluctantly obliged to abandon the hope of earning
a living in Berlin by art of that kind. Here, as in many another instance, we who look back-
ward upon the event, can see how circumstances that at the time seemed to be hardships,
were really spurs to drive the supposed victim into the true path to success. Chodowiecki
was not meant by nature to be a mere copyist of other men's work; neither was he meant to
be a shopkeeper. Yet like a brave young fellow, he did his best to bend his neck to the
250 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
yoke, and finding that he could not as yet earn his bread by his drawings, rather than be a
burden to his uncle he went into his shop to assist him and to gain a living. The uncle, on
his side, showed his good will, and gave his consent that both Daniel and his brother Gott-
fried should take lessons of Rode, a Polish artist settled in Berlin, and who had been himself
a pupil of Rugendas, the Director of the Academy of Augsburg. Rode's name hardly appears
in the dictionaries; he could probably do little for his pupils technically, but he was enthusi-
astic on the subject of art; he had seen pictures, if he could not paint them, and he did
Chodowiecki a service by stimulating his ambition and keeping his hope alive. This was the
more needed, as Berlin at that time was poor both in art and artists; there were no pictures
of any merit in the churches, and the royal collection, such as it was, was not accessible to the
public. Little by little Chodowiecki began to experiment with original designs, and he
improved the chances that were every now and then thrown in his way of seeing pictures, and
of making acquaintance with artists ; among these, Antoine Pesne — of whom we shall have
to speak later — was the most useful to him ; much older than Chodowiecki — he was born in
1683 — he was able by his position in the art- world and by his relations with the court, to be of
service to our artist and he showed great friendliness to him. Chodowiecki studied for a
while in the life-school of Christian Rode, and in 1755 he married Jeanne Barez, and took up
art seriously as a profession.
After his marriage Chodowiecki settled down to his work as a painter of miniatures, and
of enamels — these latter often intended for the decoration of snuff-boxes, then as much
objects of ornament as of use, and greatly in vogue for gifts and souvenirs. He kept up also
his early practice of copying engravings, and chiefly delighted in those from the pictures of
Watteau and Boucher, the favorites of their time, not only in France but wherever in Europe
France was the arbiter elegantiarum; the mistress in the realm of taste. Little by little he
began to exercise himself in original design ; and it was to enable him to supply his friends
with copies of some drawings he had made with subjects of local interest, that he took up
etching. At first, he was discouraged, and after some efforts that he felt to be unsuccessful,
gave it up, but still returned to it, until at last by a happy accident as we may call it, he
produced a plate that both for its subject and for the way in which he treated it, interested
everybody and opened for him the way to reputation and employment. This was the plate
called " Der grosse Calas," the larger Calas, to distinguish it from a smaller plate of the same
composition made for the frontispiece to a play by H. Weisse, " Der Fanatismus." The story
r
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 251
of Galas, and of the indignant protest of Voltaire against the atrocious mockery of justice
that led to his death, is well known and needs to be only referred to here. In 1762, a young
man named Marc Antoine Galas, a native of Lacaparede, in Languedoe, committed suicide in
a fit of temporary insanity. There was not the slightest reason to doubt the fact that the
young man, addicted to gambling, and subject to deep fits of melancholy, had killed himself,
but the religious strifes that were raging had worked up the popular mind to a state of
morbid intolerance and suspicion, and some one having said that the young man's father, a
Protestant and a person of very good reputation, or some member of his family, had mur-
dered him to prevent his turning Roman Catholic, the whole mass of inflammable bigotry in
suspense in the community caught fire from this spark, and the entire Galas family became
the objects of a barbarous social jDersecution. The old man was put to the torture, but refus-
ing to confess, he was haled before the Parliament at Toulouse, and as the result of the
inquiry was sentenced to be broken ixpon the wheel. The wife and children were acquitted
after having been put to the torture, and finally fled to Geneva and took refuge with Voltaire.
Three years later, through the influence of Voltaire, the sentence was revised, the Parliament
of Paris declared the innocence of Galas, and the King, Louis XV., ordered the sum of 30,000
livres to be given to his family. This was only one of a series of atrocious persecutions which
had brought the public mind of Prance and Germany to a state of high excitement. Voltaire
had become so well known in Prussia, so admired, almost worshipped by the one side, so
hated and feared by the other, that his fierce espousal of the cause of Galas had made the
story almost a household one. A French print called " La malheureuse Famille Galas " was
brought to Berlin, and fell under the eyes of Chodowiecki, who interested, like the rest of the
world, in the story, copied the print in oil. He became so much absorbed in the story, that it
took a new shape in his mind, and he re-created the scene of the parting between Galas and
his family, on his way to the scafi'old, in a composition of his own which he called " Les
Adieux de Galas a sa Famille." This picture excited so much admiration that he was minded
to etch it, in order that he might more easily gratify the popular wisli to see it, and the result
of his effort was the plate we have already mentioned, " Der grosse Galas." By the kind-
ness of Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, of Washington, we are enabled to give our readers a
reproduction of this rare plate from a copy in that gentleman's possession. Pecht has
pointed out, in his interesting sketch of Ghodowiecki's life, that in the general conception of
Ms picture, the artist has imitated Greuze, but that he is far more faithful to nature, and not
252
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
so sentimental. And thoiigli the comj)osition may recall the French artist (and it will be
remembered that all Chodowiecki's instruction has been filtered through French influences,
and nearly all his life spent in copying directly from French models), yet in the feeling of
this picture there was nothing French at all. We see before us an honest Berlin father of a
family, who is about taking leave of mother, wife, and child, in his prison cell, while the
priest who is to prepare him for death enters the room, and the jailer knocks off his chains.
VIGNETTE TITLE-PAGE TO LESSING'S
"MINNA VON BARNHELM."
BY CHODOWIECKI.
.l.r..r.^,.-J
THE PEDANT'S MARRIAGE-PROPOSAL."
BY CHODOWIECKI.
Tlie fainting mother, the weeping and lamenting wife and daughter all this is so truly
German, so Berlinish, and yet so true to universal human nature, and withal so moving, that
we may well call the composition the first genre picture that was produced in Germany. It
had at the time a far-reaching influence, and imitators by the score.
The success of this plate was so great that it decided the fortunes of Chodowiecki, who
from that time was overrun with orders from the booksellers, and found he had no longer
leisure to paint his laborious miniatures. In 1764 he was made an associate of the Berlin
Academy, and in 1769 he was appointed engraver and etcher to the same society. In 1770 he
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 253
produced, for himself, a series of twelve designs to Lessing's " Minna Von Barnhelm," and
with these small oval pictures, set, like many of the miniatures and silhoaette likenesses of
the time, in a simply decorated panel, a new era in book illustration was introduced into
Germany. Here, again, France was (as she has for all the world so often) the inspirer and
director of this new departure. Of his contemx^oraries who have gained the greatest distinc-
tion in this same field, Moreau the younger, and Eisen, in Prance, and Stothard, in England,
Moreau was fifteen years his junior, and Eisen his senior by six years, while Stothard was
twenty -nine years younger. Stothard, like Chodowiecki, owed much of his inspiration to
France, but he is far inferior to his Prussian contemporary in the intellectual value of his
work as well as in the variety and force of his design. The facility, energy, and fruitfulness
of Chodowiecki are wonderful. Engelmann's Catalogue gives us the titles of 2,075 distinct
designs in 978 plates. In the thirty years of life that remained to him after the appearance of
his " Minna von Barnhelm," he illustrated the works of almost every celebrity of his time, in
England, France, and Germany, beside a cloud of others whose books, long since forgotten for
themselves, are still sought out on the musty shelves of the dealers at second-hand for the
sake of the designs by our artists which give them all their value. In 1775, Chodowiecki,
after a lapse of thirty years, took a holiday, and re-visited Dantzig to see his now aged
mother. He had left her, poor and unknown, to seek a doubtful fortune; he returned,
famous and well to do, changed in everything but his good heart and kindly nature. Of this
journey and his visit he has left a most interesting record in a series of sketches, over a
hundred in number, in which he has noted down everything he saw that interested him. He
rode all the way from Berlin to Dantzig, and might often have been seen standing by his
horse's side with the bridle held in his teeth, to leave both hands free while he sketched in his
note-book something that had attracted him. On reaching his inn he would finish his
sketch from memory, sometimes washing it with India-ink. A selection of these drawings
has recently been published m facsimile in Berlin. He made other journeys on horseback,
visiting Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, and other North-German cities, sketching most industri-
ously and accumulating in this way a multitude of studies which he put to good use in his
book-illustrations. Many of these, it is said, were etched directly upon the plate without
making a finished design beforehand, a practice not uncommon perhaps in the case of certain
artists who are not particularly solicitous for form, but rare, surely, with those whose work
is of so precise and orderly a character as that of Chodowiecki. His early studies, and the
254
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
miniature and enamel-painting that liad occupied Ms time for so many years, had in great
measure limited his skill to small compositions, and when he attempted larger plates, his
good genius too often deserted him. His first plate, the " Galas," and " The Painter and his
Family " both which we copy— are reckoned his best productions in this more ambitious field.
His " Ziethen Sleeping," the scene where Frederick finds the old general sleeping in a chair
in his audience-room, and forbids his waking by his attendants,, saying, " he has watched
often enough for us, now let him sleep," and that other anecdote, of Frederick insisting on
"the OFFICER'S MARRIAGE-PROPOSAL."
BY CHODOWIECKI.
"TWO GIRLS."
BY CHODOWIECKI,
Ziethen, old and infirm, sitting, while he, the King, stands and talks to him, both these
plates are interesting from their subjects, but they are of no great artistic vahie. The repro-
duction of the " Painter and his Family " which we publish, is interesting, as a direct copy
from the rare original plate as well as for its subject. We see the artist sitting at his small
table by the window, the curtain drawn aside for more light, and held in its place by the
back of the chair, while he draws the miniature of his little daughter, seated with the four
other children at a large table near their father. The long wall of the room that faces us is
hung with pictures, small and large, of which we see thirteen either in whole or in part, and
there are consoles also supporting casts. On the floor leaning against the wall there are big
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 255
portfolios, and on a pier table at the right, under a mirror, is a cast of a Crouching Venus^
probably she of the Capitol. All these pictures, as nearly as we can make out, are, as we have
already described them, of the later French school, or of the Eclectic, but we fancy there is
also a Diirer among them — a copy, perhaps by Chodowiecki himself, of the Flight into Egypt,
from the " Life of the Virgin," and below it is also, if we are not mistaken, Tenier's picture of
the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. If this be so, it shows that Chodowiecki was
not shut up to the works of one school, although it is true that his studies in art had lain
almost exclusively among the favorites of his time, where Diirer and Teniers certainly had
no place. The group about the table seems to us very attractive; the kindly-natured,
pleasant-faced mother in her simple bourgeois house-dress, with her arm on the back of the
eldest daughter's chair, and caressing the cheek of the next oldest, who leans toward her
affectionately while she holds fast to the wee baby in the big chair with one hand ; the eldest
son, in his queer little German dressing-gown tied round his waist, and with his head tied up
in a handkerchief (he is drawing a picture of his sister to rival his father's!), while his small
brother, also capped and gowned, is pointing out this and that in his work and asking him
small-brother questions about it. The eldest daughter — no beauty she, with her long slender
face drawn out into a tremulous pointed nose (the image, as we can see, of her mother at her
age) is conscious that she is sitting for her portrait, and not ill-pleased thereat. She has a big
picture book before her, but she is not looking at it just at present, is more concerned in the
result of the contest between the two artists, the older and the younger one.
As we look up from this picture of Chodowiecki's to the smaller subjects, the vignettes
to the plays, novels, romances of the time, we see that the general air is the same, although, as
a rule, he was content with much simpler backgrounds and with plainer surroundings. It
may be that he dressed up his own room a little, or he may have copied it with the accuracy
so characteristic of his work in general ; in either case we cannot find much to say in praise
of his taste. But in these numerous vignettes of his, aM in the series of his own designs
" The Amateurs," the '' Occupations des Dames," the " Centifolium Stultorum," we find the
mirror held up plainly to the society he saw about him. The costume of aU the people he
sketched or drew, the rich and the poor, the high and the low, people of all professions and
occupations, are there for us to study as they lived, moved, and had their being in the Berlin
or Dantzig or Dresden of his day. The comparison between him and Hogarth was never a
very appropriate one. He has neither fiattered his world nor ridiculed it; his satire, when he
256 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
indulged it, was but gentle, lie was content to depict things as lie saw tliem and left them to
speak for themselves their OAvn praise or blame. He had, for a German, far more grace and
playfulness than Hogarth, he had also more native refinement, but far less dramatic power
and less earnestness. Beside, he had not so ample a stage on which to present his characters ;
he could never do with his small plates, no larger, for the most part, than the small oval of a
lady's palm, what Hogarth could accomplish with his large engravings, permitting the intro-
duction of a great number of figures, with a multitude of accessory episodes. Chodowiecki
does not play so epic a part ; he is rather the Theocritus of the bourgeois world in which he
Kved, and a part of which he was. He made few excursions outside this world, and when he
attempted to depict high life, he certainly was less happy than when he kept at home, in his
own circle. During the last few years of his life Chodowiecki suflEered much from swelling
of the feet, which confined him to his house and his desk for the greater part of the time.
But his industry and his energy were indomitable, and he continued to produce to the last
and with little diminution in the excellence of his work. He died on the 1st of February,
1801. , "
One of Chodowiecki's most distinguished contemporaries living in Berlin was Antoine
Pesne, the painter of the portrait of Frederick II. and his sister WUhelmina, Marchioness of
Baireuth, as children — " The Little Drummer " as it is sometimes called. Pesne was in truth
a Frenchman, bom at Paris in 1683, but he spent the greater part of his active life in Berlin,
where he was called by the King of Prussia in 1710, and made court-painter, and the next
year was appointed Director of the Academy in Berlin. In 1720 he returned to Paris, where
he was elected a member of the Academy, but returned shoi-tly to Berlin and passed there the
remainder of his life, dying in 1757. He is the painter of a great number of the portraits of
celebrities that now adorn the palaces of Berlin, but he has most endeared himself to the
German worshippers of Frederick by the picture which we have chosen as an example of hie
skUl. Carlyle in his great epic, the Frederick II., incomparably the richest of all his works,
has much to say about this picture, and we cannot do better than to give the reader his own
words in describing it.
" For the rest, here is another little incident. We said it had been a disappointment to
Papa that his little Fritz showed no appetite for soldiering, but found other sights more
interesting to him than the drill-ground. Sympathize then, with the earnest papa as he
returns home one afternoon — date not given — but, to all appearance, of that year 1715, when
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
257
there was such, war-rumoring and marching toward Stralsund, and found the little Fritz ,
with WilhelmiQa looking over him, strutting about and assiduously beating a little drum.
" The paternal heart ran over with glad fondness, invoking Heaven to conlirm the omen.
Mother was told of it ; the phenomenon was talked of — beautif ullest, hopef uUest of little
drummers. Painter Pesne, a French immigrant or importee, of the last reign, a man of great
"THE LITTLE DRUMMER," CROWN-PRINCE FREDERICK 11., AND THE PRINCESS WILHELMINA.
FROM THE PAINTING BY ANTOINE PESNE.
skill with his brush, whom history yet thanks on several occasions, was sent for; or he had
heard of the incident and volunteered his services. A Portrait of Little Fritz drumming,
with Wilhelmina looking on; to which, probably for the sake of color and pictorial effect, a
Blackamoor aside with parasol in hand grinning approbation has been added— was sketched
and dexterously worked out in oil by Painter Pesne. Picture approved by mankind there
and then, and it still hangs on the wall in a perfect state at Charlottenburg Palace, where the
Vol. II.-17 **
258 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
judicious tourist may see it without difficulty, and institute reflections on it. * * * *
Fritz is still, if not in long clothes, at least in longish and flowing clothes, of the petticoat
sort, which look as of dark-blue velvet, very simple, pretty, and appropriate ; in a cap of the
same ; has a short raven's feather in the cap ; and looks up with a face and eye full of beauti-
ful vivacity and child's enthusiasm; one of the beautifuUest little figures, while the little
drum responds to his bits of drum-sticks. Sister Wilhelmina, taUer by some three years,
looks on in pretty marching attitude and with a graver smile. Blackamoor and accompani-
ments elegant enough ; and finally the figure of a grenadier or guard, seen far ofl' through an
opening — make up the background." It may be added that Carlyle tells us, with the excep-
tion of this picture and one of Frederick when a young man, also painted by Pesne, there
exists no authentic portrait of him. " It seems he never sat to any painter in his reigning
days, and the Prussian Chodowiecki, Saxon Graff, and English Cunningham had to pick u]3
his physiognomy in the distance, intermittingly, as he could."
F. TiscHBEiN, the painter of the portraits of Queen Louisa of Prussia and her sister
Friederika, was one of a large family of artists of that name, most of whom are associated
with Cassel and its Academy, of which the oldest of the name, Johann Heinrich Tischbein,
born in 1772, was the Director. The painter of our picture, Johann Friedrich August Tisch-
bein— born in 1750, and died in 1812 — was the nephew of this one, and was Court-painter to
the Prince Von Waldeck, and Director of the Academy at Leipzig. He painted a great
number of portraits which are to be seen in the galleries of Leipzig, Weimar, Brunswick, and
Frankfort, but the best known is this portrait of Queen Louisa, the mother of the late
Emperor William, the beautiful and high-hearted woman, whose statue by Ranch is so well
known. Our engraving is only of a portion of a larger plate, which it was thought would
sufl'er, as a portrait, by the attempt to reduce it. It represents the two sisters standing at the
foot of a terrace-steps, and looking out upon the garden beyond. It will be remembered that
Richter has painted a similar portrait of the Queen, in which she is seen descending the
palace steps to the terrace — a portrait of maturer years.
As we come down to later times, the names of portrait-painters in Germany become, if
not more numerous, more individualized; the artists showing less the influence of routine and
conventional models than we find in the older painters, who worked more frequently in
schools. Few words will suffice for Francois Xavier Winterhalter, whose name by grace of
royal favor once fLQed the fashionable world, but is now passed away with other tinsel glories
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
259
of the Second Empire. He was born at Baden in 1806, but after studying at Munich and in
Rome finally settled in Paris in 1834. He travelled much, however, during all his life, visit-
" QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER SISTER FRIEDERIKA."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FRIEDRICH TISCHBEIN.
ing England, Germany, and Spain, and painting a prodigious number of portraits, of Louis
Philippe and Queen Amelia with aU the Orleans family, but especially known as the Court-
painter of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie. The present picture, which now hangs
26o ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
on tlie staircase of the Metropolitan Museum, is a singular relic of that singular time. It
represents the Empress and the ladies of her Court at St. Cloud, but it is unnecessary to say
that it is not intended as a literal presentation, but rather as a poetical grouping of the
\Tomen thoiight pretty, who surrounded that queer, vixenish doll who played the devil with
France and her fortunes for so many years, and finally proved the riiin of the witches' palace
she had helped to build. Loose and shameless as was the court over which she ruled, this
picture of Winterhalter's was too much even for its stomach, and its public exhibition made
such a breeze that it was withdraAvn from view, and later found its way to this country, as
not to be allowed at home.
Heixrich vox Angeli, who, less frivolous than Winterhalter, yet fills in some measure
his vacant place, was born at Odenburg, in Hungary, in 1840. Already, as a child, he showed
a strong artistic bent, which was developed by careful training; first, at the Academy in
Vienna, then at Dusseldorf, and later at Paris and Munich. Although now known chiefly as
a portrait-painter, he did not at once enter on the field where he has made both fortune and
renown, but first aj)peared as a painter of history ; this being the most natural outcome of
his Dusseldorf and Munich training. His earliest exhibited picture was " Mary Stuart on her
way to Execution," and this was followed by a subject commissioned by the King of Bavaria:
'* Louis XL entreating Franz von Paula to prolong his Life." These paintings, with his
"Cleopati'a and Antony" and ''Ladj' Jane Grey before her Execution" made a strong
impression at the time, by the skill shown in the technical part of his art. In 1862, he
returned to Vienna, where he soon found his true field of work in portrait-painting. In this
he was successful from the start, and rapidly rising in favor found himself before long
established as the painter of the high aristocracy, first in Vienna, and at last in all the
palaces of Europe. A list of the portraits painted by Angeli would include almost every
member of the royal and imperial houses of Europe. He is often criticised as a flatterer of
his subject: a charge that seems to have no better foundation than a certain softness in the
handling — very skilful withal — and a preference for the best side of his sitter, a preference
certainly not peculiar to this artist. From the time when ApeUes painted Alexander in
profile, to hide a defect in one of the royal eyes, down to our own day, the powerful and
the rich have expected of the artists they employ that they would make as good a report
of them to posterity as a decent respect for truth would permit. If Angeli have ofl'ended,
this is, we believe, the head and front of the matter, and it is offset by the fact that he gives
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
261
as, in all his portraits, a distinct and individual character, which extends even to the dress of
his sitter. Thus, in the portrait of then crown-princess, now the ex-empress Victoria, the
"THE EX-EMPRESS VICTORIA."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HEINRICH VON ANGELI.
clumsy and ill-arranged costume is inevitably English or German, but we find so much to
attract us in the intelligent face, where sweetness and strength are so well commingled, that
202
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
we forget to dwell upon these inartistic details. In the long list of portraits of notables
painted by Angeli, this of the Crown-princess Victoria is spoken of as holding the highest
place, and certainly the events of the last few years have made it one of the most interest-
ing to admirers of noble womanhood, especially when the light that streams from their
character illumines the high places of the world, affording a welcome relief to the pettiness
of their surroundings. In the portrait of the princess Henry of the Netherlands, there is
more elegance, both in the subject itself, and in the treatment, but, in truth, this quality,
which exists in Angeli's mind, and for which he has therefore a remarkably clear perception,
is only seen at its best in his portraits of titled or high-placed ladies of Vienna, but these
naturally were not obtainable for reproduction. Angeli has painted, among other distin-
guished women, Queen Victoria and the Empress of Russia. In Ms portraits of men he is
not reckoned so successful, and yet he has had many distinguished sitters: Grilparzer,
Alexandre Dumas, Prince Manteuffel and the Emperor of Austria. Beside the Queen herself,
Angeli has been called on to paint nearly all the members of the English Royal family, to
the annoyance of those who justly think that the unquestioned talent of English portrait-
painters should be employed by those in authority in preference to that of a foreigner, espe-
cially when that foreigner is one, like Angeli or Winterhalter, whose position is rather facti-
tious than real. Much as we should like to ignore the fact, it cannot be concealed that both
by her German origin, and by the influence of Prince Albert, the Queen has been strongly
inclined toward everything German, and that, in matters of art especially, she and all her
family have exerted an influence adverse to the prosperity of English art; always employing
Germans in preference to Englishmen, and throwing the whole weight of her influence
against the development of a national art. In the intervals of this industrious portrait-
painting, Angeli has found time for not a few genre and anecdotic subjects that have added
to his popularity, and made him known where his work as a portrait-painter would never have
carried his name. His principal achievement in this direction is his " The Avenger of his
Honor," a picture familiar to the shop-windows and always sure to attract the gaze of the
passing crowd. The subject is the unexpected return of a husband to his home, where he finds
the betrayer of his honor seated among a party of guests invited in his absence, and making
merry about his own table. Like another Ulysses, he has made short work of the offender,
and it cannot be denied that the artist has shown considerable dramatic power in depicting
the varied emotions of the spectators of this grim tragedy. Other pictures by Angeli, skilful
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
26"
works, but less striking, are " Young Love," the " Italian Lovers," and " The Refused Abso-
lution," this last, a picture reckoned among the artist's chief productions.
"the princess henry of the NETHERLANDS.'
FROM THE PAINTING BY HE NRICH VON ANGELI.
The " Souvenir of the Fair " by C. von Pausinger, is a trifle which we have inserted in our
collection rather as an example of the German way of treating this class of subjects, than as
264
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
worthy of mudi consideration for itself. This smart soubrette in the costume (above her waist)
of a postilion of Louis XV.'s time, is betrayed in her masquerading by her essentially nine-
"A SOUVENIR OF THE FAIR."
FROM THE PAINTING BY C. VON PAUSINGER.
teenth-century face— a deficiency in invention not peculiar to this artist, but shared in com-
mon with almost all the men of our time who endeavor to depict the manners of a by-gone
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
265
time. But, perhaps, our artist might reply that he had no such intention, nor any higher
aim than just to set dowTi a memorandum of a fleeting, and not very important phase of
modern life. His cleverness is vrell-known, and our picture is only one of many like it, made
to meet the fancy of the gay youth of our time whose liking for a pretty woman has no taint
of archaeological pedantry in it.
Antojst Alexander vo]s^ Weener was born in 1843 at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. He
had his first instruction in his art at the Berlin Academy, but after reaching a certain point,
went to Carlsruhe, where he studied with Lessing and Schroedter. From thence he went
in 1867 and again in 1868, to Paris, and in 1869 to Italy. After his return, he settled down at
Berlin, and in 1875 was made Director of the academy where
he had once been a pupil. His earliest successes were
gained as an illustrator of poems — first, for those of von
Scheffel, for which he made designs while at Carlsruhe
under the influence of Schroedter. The spirit he threw
into his sketches was so in harmony with the rollicking stu-
dent-life echoed in Scheffel's songs that his pencil became in
great request, and for a time, he seemed destined to settle
down in permanent employment as an illustrator of books.
Beside the well-kno-wn songs, " Frau Aventiure," " Junipe-
rus," " Gaudeamus," and " The Trumpeter of Sackingen,"
for which last he made thii-ty-nine drawings, Von Werner
made designs for Herder's " Cid " and for one of Schiller's plays. In the intervals of this work
he produced several genre pictures, showing no particular direction in his talent, but growing
naturally enough out of his excursions in the world of poetry and song. Such trivial themes as
" The Quartette," " Life in the Cloister," " The Friar," and " Don Quixote among the Shepherds,"
are the common stock of artists nowadays, and Von AVerner put his hand into the bag vrith
the rest and accepted what he found there. After a while he turned his attention to historical-
painting, where in fact his best laurels were, in time, to be won, but at first he simply followed
the general run, and produced for a while the same crop of lay-figures and marionettes, culti-
vated with such mechanical success by the rank-and-file of his artist-countrymen. It is impos-
sible to avoid smiling as one reads for the fiftieth time the old titles : " Conrad in Prison,"
"Archbishop Hanno of Cologne carrying ofl' Henry IV.," and, of course, our steady friend
ANTON ALEXANDER VON WERNER.
266
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
" Luther at the Diet of Worms." It was not until the stirring times of 1871, that the true
talent of "Werner, which is at least a respectable one, found a field for itself where it could
work in freedom, on subjects not outworn. He himseK took part in the Franco-Prussian
Wai-, and no doubt his particiiDation in the siege of Paris gave a stimulus to his talent which
it would not have received from merely reading about the events, while there can be no doubt
that the fact that he saw what he has painted, and was a part of it," adds much to the vahie of
"THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN-1878."
FROM THE PAINTING BY ANTON VON WERNER.
his pictures as contributions to the history of the time. His two small pictures : " Moltke
before Paris," and " Moltke in his Study," are better examples of his talent than the more
pretentious work with which his name is so conspicuously associated in Berlin : "■ The
Emperor proclaimed at Versailles " — rightly enough judged by German critics to be merely a
dry "and tame official performance. It is, however, valuable as a collection of portraits, a fact
that has added greatly to its popularity at home, while, considering the difficulty inherent in
disposing of so large a number of persons naturally-, and with due regard to official preced-
ence, the painting has a right to stand among the best of its kind. The same commendation
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 267
may be given to the picture by Werner which, we have chosen to represent him. " The Con-
gress of Berlin, 1878," contains nearly thirty portraits of men, almost all of whom are con-
spicuous in the history of our time, and whose names are familiar to all who keep up even
superficially with what is going on in the world of European politics. The faces are so
clearly characterized that even in our small reduction of the large plate, the separate portraits
can be easily distinguished. At the extreme left we see Baron GortschakoflE seated, with
D'Israeli standing before him leaning on his cane, and Waddington at his side. The central
group is composed of Prince Bismarck, who grasps the hand of General Schuvaloff, while
Count Andrassy at his elbow waits his turn to salute the Russian commander. At the right
of the picture, standing and looking out at the spectator, is Mehmed Ali Pasha, while Salis-
bury listens to the conversation between Lord Odo Russell and two of the Egyptian diplo-
mats. The art that can combine so many separate ijortraitures in one easy and consistent
grouping is not, of course, very high art, but it serves a useful purpose, and will perhaps be
better appreciated by posterity than by the artists' contemporaries.
Feaistz Lenbach, a painter of a very different stamp, was born at Schrobenhausen, in
Upper Bavaria, in 1836. His father was a bricklayer, and the boy was sent to the technical
school at Landshut to learn his trade, but he was less attracted by the lessons he received in
the art of building than by the beauty of the Gothic church in that city. Neglecting his
trade-lessons, he began to paint portraits for his own amusement, and made such striking
likenesses that his vocation seemed clearly enough pointed-out. From Landshut he went to
Augsburg, to pass a term, at the polytechnic school of that city, and while there he heard so
much talk of the treasures of art to be seen at Munich that he made his way thither— his
biographers say on an allowance of fifteen cents a day from his father— and succeeded in
getting a place in the studio of the wood-carver Sickinger. While at work in Munich, his
father died, and in 1856 he entered the Academy there, determined to be a painter; but the
Academic instruction did not suit him, and he applied for admission to the studio of Piloty.
He was long in finding his place in art, now acknowledged to be among the best of living
portrait-painters, for his first efforts were in the field of genre, and were marked by no special
individuality— his " Peasant-family in a Storm," attracted notice by its coloring, but for the
rest did not differ from the ordinary run of such subjects as treated by clever men. In 1858
he accompanied Piloty on a short visit to Rome, and while there painted a view of the
Roman Forum and its surroundings, which, when exhibited at Munich, created a lively inter-
268
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
est, and fixed public attention upon the artist as a man certain to be heard from. This
impression was strengthened by his next performance, the Portrait of a Physician, where for
"PRINCE VON BISMARCK."
FROM THE PORTRAIT BY FRANZ LENBACH.
the first time he showed his great skill in this field in full force. The absence of all detail
that could distract attention from the head itself, the strong life-like expression, and the
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 269
energy of the handling, called forth the warmest expressions of admiration from his fellow-
artists and from the public, and with this work his success began. In 1860, he received a call
to take charge of the art-school at Weimar, but he remained there only a short time. Count
Schack invited him to go a second time to Rome, and he joyfully accepted the offer. Still
later, he visited Spain, and both there and in Italy made those copies of the old masters
which adorn the gallery of Count Schack in Munich, and which so far excel the coj)ies made
for that collection by other artists of the time. But a man of Lenbach's powers was not born
to be a copyist of other men, even of the greatest, and his success in portrait-painting soon
led to his absorption in that pursuit. The example that we give in the " Bismarck," one of
several representations of " the man of blood and iron,'' will indicate the force and clearness
of vision which Lenbach brings to his task. At the same time we do not get from any mere
transcript in black and white, the full impression received from the painting of the artist ;
the rich but sober coloring of his pictures — though tone would be the more appropriate word,
since of color, in the ti-ue acceptation of the word, there is none — adds powerfully to the hold
they take upon every spectator. With Lenbach all his skill is concentrated upon the head
of his subject, and he often neglects details in a way to deceive the unthinking into a sus-
picion that he is a careless draughtsman. Thus, the hand of Bismarck in our picture is not,
properly speaking, a hand at all, but the mere symbol of a hand, yet no man living can paint
a hand better than Lenbach when he must ; he is in fact a most accomplished draughtsman,
which no one could really doubt who should leave the hands in this picture, to study the
strongly built, massive, yet mobile head of the great bulwark of German unity — the con-
sistent enemy of liberalism and progress; the Goliath of modern Philistinism. Many of the
greatest names of the Germany of our time will be made living presences to future genera-
tions in their portraits as painted by Lenbach, yet it is safe to say that in his case, as in that
of Holbein, these portraits will be prized as much for their value as laaintings as for their
value as likenesses. How many times he has painted Bismarck we do not know, but he
must have j)ainted Dr. Dollinger oftener still; the head of this venerable man seems to have
had a special charm for Lenbach ; when in Munich, w^e saw several examples in the artist's
studio. Among his other portraits are those of Moltke, King Ludwig II., Wagner, Helm-
holtz, Liszt, Paul Heyse and his wife, and Count Schack, the noble amateur to whom the arts
in Germany owe so much. Lenbach has painted but few portraits of women ; and indeed
his style is not suited to this softer employment.
2 70 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
XVI.
THE realism that is tlie strongest point in German art, and which comes in as a disturbing
element in the attempts of her painters to treat ideal subjects, has had a still more
unfortunate influence on the landscape-art of the country. German landscape— a very few
names excepted — ^has never made any impression upon the outside world, and even at home
seems to have but little hold upon the popular fancy. A Corot, a Rousseau, a Daubigny,
would seem an impossibility in Germany; at any rate, none such has, as yet, appeared there,
nor does there seem to be any tendency in that direction. The German landscapes that have
made a name for themselves outside of Germany are, with so few exceptions as to be scarcely
worth mentioning, more allied to science than to poetry. In their landscapes, as in their
historical painting, the pedagogue plays a more conspicuous part than the seer of visions,
and even when the seer of visions appears, he is apt to be somewhat of a prosaic person. As
Titian was the first landscape-painter in Italy, so Diirer was the first landscape-painter in Ger-
many, and there was between them all the difference that there is between Italy and Germany.
The reaKsm of Diirer, too often intruding pettiness and meanness between us and the heart of
his subject, caused him constantly to belittle his landscape with a multitude of unnecessary
details ; in his '' Great Cannon " we can count every tree and bush on the slopes of the distant
mountain-range; in his "Great Fortune" we can number the logs in the piles of wood
stacked-up in the farm-house yard. In Diirer, we lose the general in the particular; in
Titian, we are impressed by the grand facts of light and air, the height of the mountains, the
noble forms of the trees; we are not disturbed by petty accidents in our enjoyment of the
impression due to the scene itself. Titian cared no more to make an exact portrait of a
place, than Turner or Claude; Diirer was never able to idealize any landscape, he painted
every separate tree in the distance, and every separate stone, or leaf, or curling tendril of vine
at our feet, with the same fidelity and enjoyment with which he drew the separate hairs in
his own beard in his famous portrait of himself, or the separate lines in the sole of the
Apostle's foot in the Heller tryptich; and out of Durer's practice and silent teaching,
has grown modern German landscape, as modern French landscape, led off by Claude and
Poussin, and the best English landscape, with Wilson and Turner at the head, have grown
out of the practice and silent teaching of the great Italians, however it may have been
modified by the influence of Rembrandt — that wonderful genius who created a new world
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 271
of art and peopled it with artists !— and by the direct and ardent study of nature at first-
hand by the race that began with Constable, Crome and DeWint. In the case of the
French and the English we may suppose that there can be no doubt of the parentage
of their landscape-art, but with the Gemians Durer may rather be accepted as a type
of his countrymen, than as a distinct forerunner; he looked at nature as they all look at
it ; Titian looked at nature in his own way and taught those who came after him how to
look at it.
But, at the time of the modern revival of art in Germany, another influence, much more
disastrous than that of a Diirer could ever be, was imposed upon the studios. We say,
imposed upon the studios, because, although it appeared and grew up, keeping equal step
with what was going on in literature and social life, yet in reality this new influence, derived
from the revived study of the classics, and the opening to Germany of the ways that led to
Italy, was not native to the German people, but was imposed upon them by the literary men
and scholars who were then preparing for her a new birth of Fame. The old German art was
despised ; alike its painting, its sculpture, its architecture — and the Germans of the new day
sought for inspiration, as the French were at the same time seeking it, in classical models,
but with results far colder and more prosaic than those obtained by their Gallic neighbors.
Could the German artists of the new era have remained at home; had there been in any part
of Germany a central rallying-place such as we have already pointed out the French had in
Paris, there might have come about a normal development of native art, that would have
absorbed the new influences instead of being absorbed by them, as was unfortunately the
case. As we have seen, these earlier artists all made their way to Rome, and though they
for the most part returned to Germany and took up their residence at Munich, or Diisseldorf,
or Berlin, yet they could not escape from the influences of their Italian training. The laurels
of Michelangelo and Raphael would not let them sleep, and for a long time the works of the
new men infallibly reflected, and seemed proud to reflect, either one or the other of these
masters ; and even to-day, it is still the fashion in some quarters to call Cornelius the Michel-
angelo, and Overbeck, the Raphael, of the new renaissance. It is true that the founders of
this German renaissance sought for national subjects on which to exercise their skill, and
that they stoutly upheld the dignity of their native legends and their native history as
against the themes of classic history and fable. But it was not possible for them, looking at
art as they did, to express their ideas in a language of their own; they presented their
2 72 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
subjects in a guise that either concealed their individuality entirely, or confounded them
with the very subjects they sought to avoid.
The few artists who were drawn to landscape-painting were not so hampered as the ideal-
ists, but they had to contend both with the influence of Claude and with the scientific spirit
of the time, just then waking into new life. On the one side all was imitation and slavish
subjection to a model ; on the other side was a spirit, utterly antagonistic to poetry, but, it
must be confessed, by no means alien to the German mind. And between the two there was
born the landscape-art of modern Germany, which, if, in our day, it has forsaken Claude, has
only clung more closely to a scientific realism that is the antipodes of poetry, or that, at any
rate, can only be made to serve the uses of art in the hands of a poet, and which, as a general
thing, we would gladly exchange for even the imitation of a poet's handiwork.
Feibdeeich Johawn Cheistian Eenst Peellee was born at Eisenach in 1804. His
father was a confectioner, whose modicum of inborn talent for art found ample scope and
verge enough for its exercise in modelling the ornaments for his cakes and candy-trophies,
and who was not displeased to find a son of his disj)osed to do something more venturesome
in the field of art. About a year after the birth of this second of his three sons, the elder
Preller removed to Weimar in order to look after the affairs of his father, then an old. man
in feeble health. Here he brought up his son, who, in course of time, was put to learn at the
public school and afterward at the gymnasium, where, as he tells us in his pleasant autobio-
graphical sketch, he made a fair acquaintance with Greek and Latin. It was in Weimar that
fortune came to him with the friendship of Goethe, whose acquaintance he made when he was
in his fifteenth year, the poet being then seventy. Young Preller had shown so strong a
predilection for art, and had given such marked signs of talent, that he attracted the atten-
tion of Goethe's friend, the Counsellor Meyer, called Kunst Meyer from his love of art, who,
there being as yet no art-school in Weimar, invited Preller to his own house and gave him
instruction in the use of oils. A little later he encouraged the boy to call upon Goethe, and
he did so, moved, as he saj^s, by curiosity, but wondering at the same time what a boy of
fifteen could find to say to so great a man. " But Meyer urged me, and I went. The poet
who, though really only of middle size, seemed, when sitting, to be j)Owerfully built, and with
those wonderful eyes that looked one through and through, received me with a bewitching
friendliness that yet could not wholly overcome the awe that his presence imposed upon me."
After some talk of this and that, Goethe opened up the subject, which very likely he had
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 273
discussed beforehand witli Kunst Meyer, and in which he wished for the assistance of some
person who would be skilful enough to follow his directions, and yet young enough to work
at a reasonable rate. Remembering all that Ruskin has written about the study of cloud-
forms, and the impression he contrives to give that no one before himself and Turner had
ever thought these forms worth mentioning, it is certainly interesting to find that in the very
year in which he was born, 1819, Goethe, led by the study of an English book on Cloud-
formation, was himself studying the subject, and that he was looking about for a draughts-
man who could make for him some cloud-studies from nature. He proposed the matter to
young Preller, who gladly agreed to do what Avas wanted, and who made, to Goethe's great
contentment, at least a dozen studies of the sky from nature. The old poet took a great
interest in Preller from this time, and by his aid the young artist was shortly after enabled
to Adsit Dresden, where by making sketches for the book-publishers and cojpies in the gallery,
of Ruysdae], Claude, and Poussin for Goethe and his friends, he made a comfortable living.
Preller was introduced by Goethe to Carl- August, the Grand Duke of Weimar, who took a
great liking to the young artist, and invited him to accompany him on a visit to Belgium and
Holland. After making the round of the chief cities, they brought up at Antwerp, where the
Duke introdiiced Preller to the chief of the Antwerp school of artists at that time, and
Director of the Academy, Matthijs von Bree, a painter who had learned his art in Paris of a
pupil of Vien. Into his hands the Duke put his young protege, and after a stay of a few days
left him to pursue his studies, his parting words to Preller being, " See that you do me
honor! " In Antwerp, Preller says, landscape-painting was thought nothing of, and although
his taste lay strongly in that direction, he gave himself up with docility to the teaching of
his new master. He worked industriously, drawing morning and evening from life, and
between times from the antique, for which he already began to feel a strong attraction. After
some time spent in Antwerp, he was enabled by the help of the Grand Duke to visit Italy,
and at Milan he studied in the Academy before proceeding to Rome, the goal of all his hopes
and his highest ambition. Here he found the famous German colony of artists in fuU pos-
session: Overbeck, Thorwaldsen, Wagner, Koch, Genelli and the rest; Cornelius no longer
there, but returning soon after and greeted like a king by his loyal people. In Rome, Preller
came under the influence of Koch — " Koch, the witty cynic," as Preller calls him, and from
him learned to apply to landscape-painting the principles that at Antwerj) he had been
trained to applj' to the figure. He travelled over Italy with Koch, and the two made inces-
VoL. II.— 18 «*
274 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
sant studies from nature, which in Preller's case at least would have been more fruitful had
they not been passed through the academic sieve. Preller returned in 1831 to Weimar, where
he was received by Goethe with the old kindness, although he died too soon after Preller's
aiTival to be of nuich further service to him. The outcome of all our artist's studies and
travels was now to appear in the form of those designs for the Odyssey which adorn the hall
now called after himself, the Preller Hall, in the Museum at Weimar. In these pictures he
^vished to express his doixble love for nature and for classic fable, and he chose the story of
the wanderings of Ulysses as the theme about which to weave his memories of the fair ItaKan
land where so many happy years had been passed and where he was at last to die. He made
his first essay in this important undertaking in seven compositions painted in distemper on
the walls of the so-called Roman House in Leipzig (Romische-Haus) built by the architect
Hermann in 1833 in the then prevailing classic taste, for Preller's friend Hartel; afterward he
made additional designs in black and white, and sent them to Munich to the exhibition of
1858. Here they were received with great enthusiasm, which was not lessened by their sub-
sequent journey through Germany, where they were shown in all the chief cities and enjoyed
a long drawn-out triumph. When shown at Munich they had been competed for by the
Grand Duke of Weimar and by Count Schack, each desiring that the artist should complete
the cartoons for himself. Count Schack gave way to the Duke, and Preller having received
the commission to paint the pictures for Weimar, at once set out with his family for Italy in
order to make his studies for the composition directly from nature. When he had comiDleted
his work, he returned to Weimar and execiTted the wax-frescos in the Museum, of which we
have already spoken. The cycle of subjects is designed to represent the chief events in the
wanderings of Ulysses from his leaving Troy until his return to Ithaca. The paintings are
very skilfully adapted to the architectural arrangement of the rooms. Round the base of
the wall are painted in red on a black ground, in imitation of the Greek vases, different
scenes at Ithaca before and after the return of Ulysses. Two of the subjects from this cycle
were painted for Count Schack by Preller, and we copy one of these, the " Ulysses and the
Nymph Calypso," which may give a notion of the general treatment of these subjects at the:
hands of Preller. The wish of the artist was, to make a complete accord between the land-
scape and the figures of his story. But it is inevitable that every such attempt should fail,,
since man is too insignificant a being to hold his own as an element in any landscape, if he is
shown in his true proportion. It follows, then, that either the landscape must be sacrificed
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
275
to the ll^^man figures, or the figures to the landscape; and which of these shall be done will
depend upon the artist's personal preference. That of Preller was plainly for the landscape,
and it is as a landscape-painter that he has conceived his subjects. His figures are purely-
conventional, and of no more value than those of any other x^ainter of " landscape-with-
" ULYSSES AND THE NYMPH CALYPSO.'
FROM THE PAINTING BY FRIEDRICH PRELLER.
figures," from Claude to Turner. Although Count Schack was not able to secure from Preller
the prize he coveted: the whole series of the Odyssey pictures, he obtained from him two
companion-subjects; the "Calypso" and the "Leucothea," representing successive scenes in
the adventures of the hero. The one we engrave, the "Calypso," represents the nymph
2 76 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
taking leave of Ulysses after she has assisted him in building his raft. " But when," sings
Homer, " the mother of dawn, rosy-fingered morning appeared, Ulysses immediately put on a
cloak and a garment, and the Nymph herself put on a large white veil, thin and graceful, and
around her loins she placed a beauteous golden girdle ; and she placed a head-dress on her
head; and then she prepared the voyage for the strong-hearted Ulysses. She gave him a
large axe, fitted to his hands, of steel sharpened on both sides; and with it a very beautiful
handle of olive-wood well fitted to it ; then she gave him a well-polished adze ; and she led
the way to the extreme part of the island where tall trees sjjrung up, alder and poplar, and
there was a pine reaching to heaven, long since seasoned very dry, which would sail lightly
for him. But when she had shown where the tall trees had sprung up, Calypso, divine one
of goddesses, returned to the house; but he began to cut the wood, and his work was quickly
performed. And he felled twenty in all, and cut them with the steel, and polished them
skilfully, and directed them by a rule. In the mean time Calypso, divine one of goddesses,
brought augers, and he then perforated all ; and fitted them to one another ; and he fixed it
with pegs and cramps." Homer goes on to describe the building of the sides of the raft and
the furnishing it with decks, and masts, and sail-yards and a rudder ; so that in truth what
began as a raft, ends by being something very like a ship ! As we read in the Odyssey the
description of the building of this ^aft, the imagination keeps pace with the magniloquence
of the poet's phrases and epithets until the image in the mind has grown to ideal proportions,
far beyond those of any merely human ship or raft. And it is but fair to demand of the
artist who pretends to set before us a series of pictures illustrating the Homeric ]3oem, that
he should at least keep his performance up to the level of our oAvn interpretation. But this
has certainly not been done by Preller ; on the contrary, he hardly gives to his conception the
■dignity of commonplace reality. The raft-ship is seen at the right, in appearance not much
bigger than an ordinary yawl, and a very clumsy yawl at that. When Ulysses mounted his
shij), he was clad in perfumed garments brought him by Calypso, and even while at work,
we read of him as clothed, but Preller represents him as all but naked, having a nonde-
script mantle thrown across one thigh. In short, there is no connection worth speaking of
between the description of the poet and the jpicture of the painter; and after seeing this
series of paintings in the Museum of Weimar, we listen with incredulity to the artist's own
account of the hold that Homer had taken of his admiration, causing him to dream for years
of painting the story of the Odyssey, and leading him to take long journeys in search of land-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 277
scape-material to serve as a setting for liis subjects. Even his landscapes have little that is
ideal in their treatment of nature; at the same time they do not compensate us for the loss of
poetry, by a literal portraiture. The scenery of the coast of Southern Italy, which seems to
have suggested his choice of subject, is done scant justice to ; and all these XDictures might
have been painted without the artist putting himself to the expenditure of time and money
in order to study a landscape which, after all, had nothing to d® with his story. It is plain,
however, that Preller's ideas of landscape-painting were born of the same movement that
produced the so-called historical-painting and ideal-painting of his generation. It grew up
side by side with the work of Cornelius and Overbeck, von Schwind, Bendemann and the
rest — Bendemann almost the last of his race ; his death reported, even as we are writing his
name — and it suffered like the work of these his contemporaries from the attempt to be
faithful at one and the same time to two irreconcilable things: to the s^Dirit of an art that
had lost its vitality, and to the scientific spirit that was just beginning to move over the face
of the earth. All the young artists of Germany were flocking to Rome, to worship at the
shrines of Michelangelo and Raphael; but when they came to paint their pictures, they
found themselves confronted with the realism of the new time ; the demand for accuracy in
the portrayal of costume, of furniture, of things in general. Later, foUoAved a similar demand
for accuracy in depicting natural objects ; the age of observation and discovery had set in,
and the enthusiasm excited was not confined to the i^rofessed scientific world, bat invaded all
classes. AVe have seen Goethe interested in the study of cloud-forms, and employing Preller
to make drawings of their different varieties for him, and Goethe was only the most conspic-
uous among the many men of his time outside the ranks of the scientific professions, who
were interested in the study of natiiral ]3henomena, finding in these an inexhaustible well of
poetic and philosophical ideas and suggestions. But the influence of all this new-born
interest in nature upon art in Germany was but slight. If we look from Preller and Rott-
mann — the beginners of landscape-painting in Germany, in the new era— to England, with
her Constable, her DeWint, her Crome, her Cox, and her Turner; or, to France, with her
Corot, her Rousseau, her Daubigny and her Dupre— the last three a few years younger than
Preller, but yet his active contemporaries; we shall see how great was the distance between
the landscape-art of Germany, and that of England and France, in the beginning of the
century, a distance that, in the case of France and Germany, is as great to-day as ever it was.
The landscape-art of France is the vision of the earth reveated by poets, and appealing to all
278 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
tliat is poetic and romantic in the nature of the beholder. But the landscape-painter of
Germany is not a poet ; he is a pedant, a pedagogue, a reporter, his aim is geographical or
topographical; learned and painstaking, he seeks to inform us, to play the guide; and if by
chance a gleam of poetry should shoot athwart his picture, he makes haste to shut the blinds,
and apologizes for the intrusion. Preller, with all his laborious journeying and sketching,
and his derotion to Ulysses, accomplished little beside the example given of a constant refer-
ence to nature, however inadequate his interpretation of nature may have turned out to be.
To his contemporaries, his countrymen, he seems to have been almost a discoverer; they
took him at his own valuation and saw in his pictures all that he himself believed to be there.
And so it was ^^^.th Rottmann, whose Italian views seem to us the merest statements of fact,
such as industry and a trained eye have always- within their jDower. But the Italy of Claude,
of Turner, of Corot, is another land ; it is the Italy of poetry and of the soul, and in spite of
all protests from well-meaning sensible ]people, it is the Italy that the mass of men and
women expect the artist to show them. If they wpjit the dry facts, they can buy photo-
graphs, or travel, and see the country for themselves.
Eduaed Hildebeandt, a native of Dantzig, where he was born in 1817 — he died in 1868
— was at one time a great favorite in Germany among those to whom this purely topographi-
cal landscape appeals. His reputation was more widely extended by the publication of some
very clever chromo-lithographic copies of his pictures, which, for a time, went everywhere, and,
to tell the truth, were as good as the pictures themselves. Hildebrandt was a pupil of Isabey, •
and he had certainly caught a good deal of his master's manner, bxit he had very little wine
of his own to put into this borrowed bottle. Isabey's work, well known here by many first-
rate examples, is rich, sensuous, flowing, and as full of color as that of Diaz; and though
ideas may be wanting — and neither Diaz nor Isabey was troubled by an overplus of ideas —
yet, as the one feasted the eye with hints of the sumptuosities of nature, so the other made
real to us the descriptions of medieval splendor and picturesqueness in the romances of a
Scott, a Hugo, or a Dumas. But Hildebrandt's performance was less than his promise. He
dazzled expectation, in his Eastern views, by startling effects of light, by brilliantly colored
architecture and varied costumes ; but all was superficial ; there was no unfolding, so to speak,
no afterglow, such as draws us again and again to the pictures of the old Venetians or to those
of Turner, Isabey, Diaz, or MonticeUi in our own day. He did not confine himself to Eastern
scenes, although his popularity was largely due to them, his Oriental landscapes, but painted
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
279
English and Frencli subjects, cities, and sea-ports, Hastings and Heligoland, Rouen, and
Lyons and Rio Janeiro and Teneriffe — in sliort his pictures are a painted itinerary of a large
portion of the planet, and serve a useful purpose as such. The diflSculty with them is, that
their aim is too plainly picturesqueness rather than accuracy, and as Hildebrandt's imagina-
tive power, his creative faculty was not great, he satisfied neither the poets nor the scientific
"SUEZ."
FROM THE PICTURE BY EDUARD HILDEBRANDT.
people. For all that, it is hardly fair to him to copy his work in black and white as we have
done in our "Suez," since its poverty of motive, and the thinness of the treatment are
brought out in too strong relief divested of the brilliant, and theatric coloring of the original.
One of Hildebrandt's best pictures, " Moonrise in Madeira " is in the Corcoran Gallery. It
was a commission given the artist by Baron Humboldt, who wished to present it to Mr.
Corcoran. The talent of Hildebrandt would have found a proper field in scene-painting for
28o ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
the theatre, or in a panorama, the only ways left lis in which large bodies of people can be
reached by pictorial art, and either of them offering a worthy career, if artists could be made
to believe that it is ever worth while to paint for the people !
Alexander Calame, born at Vevey in 1810, is much better known by his lithographs
and etchings than by his paintings; and indeed his paintings are by no means common; he
seems to have preferred the copper-plate or the lithographic stone to the canvas, and his
productiveness and picturesquesness combined, made him at one time extremely popular,
abroad as weU as at home. His pictures are found in many public and private galleries ; his
"Lake Lucerne" and "A Mountain Ravine" are in the Berlin National Gallery; other pic-
tures are in Leipzig, and there are several in this country, mostly in private possession. Mr.
Wm. T. Walters, of Baltimore, has an important example. As Goethe cultivated the talent of
Preller, and Humboldt that of Hildebrandfc, so the art of Calame, which found its subjects
almost exclusively in the region of the Alps of Switzerland, was much approved by the great
Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, and the circle of scientific men whom he gathered about him.
It was they who brought the first knowledge of the artist to this country; it was Professor
E. Desor, one of the most accomplished of the companions of Agassiz during his residence
in Cambridge, who first introduced the writer to the engraved works of Calame, and put into
his hands the portfolio of his Alpine etchings and lithographs. To these men of science the
work of Calame recommended itself alike by its truthfulness to the sentiment of Alpine
scenery and by its accuracy in the representation of the physical facts of the region. Of its
scientific accuracy, none could be better judges than such men as Agassiz, Guyot, and Desor,
but it may be allowed that they were hardly unprejudiced Jxidges of the sentiment of these
pictures, since much less would have served to satisfy these strangers in a sti-ange land
hungering for home. While the merit of Calame's Alpine studies may be freely acknowl-
edged: the good drawing and the skilful composition, the artist never seems able to ex-
press in any adequate degree the grandeur and sublimity of the Alps, nor even their deso-
lation. The fault we find with his engravings and etchings, as well as with his pictures, is
that they are too " pretty," and seen in any number they weary us by a monotony with which
the artist's mannerisms have as much to do as his want of invention. The trees, the rocks,
the cascades, are ever the same, and when we have seen and studied any dozen of these Alpine
landscai3es we have seen all.
Julius Makak^ — pronounced Marscli — a Bohemian, born in Leitomischl, in 1835, reminds
fl»
U.\tvX',:'.\-::':i'V::
■•c-i^.i^'hriy!^^-
n.M:M::i
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
2bl
US sometimes of Calame in his clioice of subjects, but he has a far less academic way of
treating them. This will appear in his " Waterfall " as compared with the Swiss master's
"Alpine Landscape;" the wildness and desolation of the scenery depicted with great force,
but without exaggeration by Marak, is in striking contrast with the tameness of Calame's
conception, and the smoothness of his execution. Marak is, however, so essentially different
"alpine landscape."
FROM THE LITHOGRAPH AFTER HIS OWN PICTURE BY ALEXANDER CALAME.
from Calame in the main of his subjects, that no comparison between them can be usefiil.
The Bohemian artist belongs distinctly to the Romantic side of Art, and chooses his themes
not as a portrait-painter of nature, but as means for expressing the wild poetry that is char-
acteristic of his race and which he shares to the full. He loves to depict the gathering of the
storks in the groves of elms ; the mystic stone with its Runic inscription hiding in the dark
oak-wood; the moon rising softly through the firs; as we look over the portfolios of his
282 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
etcliings, or the numerous engravings from liis pictures, we recall the wild romantic episodes
of '■ Cousuelo," that book so enchanting to boyhood, and seem to wander once more in the
woods of Rudolstadt, and to read again with delightful awe of the blasted oak, and the
Schreckenstein, and the deep cavern where Zdenko and Albert led their charmed life, while
the air is dark with memories of Ziska, and Mt. Tabor, and the bloody strifes that hurtled
round the great vision of The Cup. To others, no doubt, these pictures will yield poetry of
a different, and perhaps a higher, sort, and to Marak's countrymen it must appeal strongly,
as expressive of the peculiar character of their own scenery, so dyed as it is through and
through with stirring and romantic memories.
XVII.
T Z ARL BODMER, like Calame and Marak, has popularized his art by his own reproduc-
•*■ *- tions of his pictures in etchings and lithographs. ^We may note, in passing, the pleasure
it gives us, to know of the revival of the art of lithography in these later days. Driven for a
time out of the field by photography and wood-engraving, it is now i-eviving in the hands of
several excellent artists, with etching, as a means of personal interpretation of their pictures ;
the thing most desired by all artists, high or low, who, pi'operiy enough, will never be satisfied
with seeing their work filtered through the brains and hands of other people. Bodmer is a
Swiss like Calame; he was born in Zurich in 1809, and in 1830 he devoted himself to the study
of art. In 1833 he accompanied Prince Maximilian von Neuwied in his visit to our country,
and on his return he published the results of his journey in his " North America in Pictures,"
and followed this work by a number of oil sketches and paintings of the scenery here. He
is well known as a contributor to the " Magazin Pittoresque," that excellent Journal which in
the long series of its issues has now arrived at an almost encyclopaedic character, and he has
also made many designs for " Le Monde lUustree." He also made the illustrations for a
work by Theophile Gautier, "La Nature chez elle;" Nature at Home, and in conjunction
with Veyrassat, made etchings for Hamerton's "Chapters on Animals." He has lived for
many years at Barbizon, but his pictures do not belong to the "school," so-called, that we
associate with that village. Bodmer, like Calame, is a painter rather for naturalists, or for
lovers of nature directly reported, than for those who care for her most when poetically trans-
lated. Hamerton's praise of him is significant: "He is an artist of consummate accomplish-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
283
ment in his own way, and of immense range. There is hardly a bird or quadruped of West-
em Europe that he has not drawn, and drawn, too, with a closeness of observation satisfac-
"IN BAS-BREAU."
FROM THE PICTURE BY KARL BODMER.
tory alike to the artist and naturalist. The bird or the beast is always the central subject
with Karl Bodmer, but he generally surrounds them with a graceful landscape full of intri-
284 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
cate and mysterious suggestions, witli here and there some plant in clearer definition, drawn
with, perfect fidelity and care."
This praise of Mr. Hamerton's does not carry us far. All that it amounts to is, that Karl
Bodmer is to be counted an excellent and learned animal-painter, and that he knows how to
give his models a tasteful and appropriate setting of landscape. And the very pleasing ex-
ample that we copy proves Mr. Hamerton right in this particular point, as all may see. This
group of a stag with does and fawns is certainly painted with great delicacy and sentiment —
the alertness, the grace, the lightness of foot of these handsome creatures could not be better
given, though others in plenty have done it as well. But, after all, it is not a picture that
we have here, but only a realistic study of animals and of landscape, such as Rosa Bonheur,
Wolf, Meyerheim and Landseer— when he was at his best, and not caricaturing his fellow-
men under the thin disguise of animals — have produced in plenty. Sach work calls for
knowledge, accuracy, and if possible, taste, with as much technical skill as may be forthcom-
ing, but it does not call for imagination, nor fancy, nor for any other of the higher faculties
that go to make a picture, properly so-called.
August Fink, a Munich artist whose name has not yet climbed so high as the diction-
aries, and of whom therefore, we may believe so much, that he is young!— shows in his
" Winter in the Mountains," as much skill as Bodmer, and as deep a sentiment for nature, but
he is a landscape-painter and not an animal-painter, though he often introduces animals into
his compositions as here, and as in his " Mountain -heights with Deer," exhibited at Munich in
1883. But, in Bodmer's pictures, the animal-life is the main thing, and the pleasure we get
from it is for the most part independent of the landscape. In the picture by August Fink,
however, the landscape is the chief thing; the presence of the doe, strayed, apparently, from
the rest of the herd, adds no doubt to the impressiveness of the scene, and at first may seem
to heighten the sense of wintry desolation. But by her action we may judge that her mates
are not far away, and just this little turn of the creature's head reassures us, and leaves us
free to enjoy the beauty of the snow-painting, the dark fir-forest, the skeletons of last sum-
mer's shrubbery showing through the drift, and the gleam of the glacier on tlie distant moun-
tain side.
AjStdersen-Lundbt, the painter of "A Mill-stream in Winter," hails from Munich, where,
in 1883, at the Kunstausstellung, we saw two of his pictures — " Fresh-fallen Snow," and
" On the Way to Market." The example of Lundby's art that we present to our readers is a
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
285
very pleasing one, and shows winter in a more human and comfortable aspect than we saw it
in August Fink's picture; we have it here intimately associated with domestic life, and sug-
W3^^f4ef¥ii'-
•WINTER IN THE MOUNTAINS.'
FROM THE PICTURE BY AUGUST FINK.
gesting only cheerful thoughts. The dark mill-stream runs through the middle of the pic-
ture, not frozen, though black with chill, and hurrying to get within reach of the miller's
hospitable house, where it can hear the sound of human voices, and see the light gleaming
286 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
from the windows. The trees are thiclvly powdered with snow, and it lies in a soft warm
blanket of whitest wool over the rock-strewn ground at their feet. On the other side of the
stream a meadow stretches far and wide; we can trace through its white expanse the course
of the main Avater that turns away from the mill pond after supplying the race ; a man and a
woman have just crossed the bridge that spans this stream, and are making for one of the
houses of the settlement about the mill. The smoke rising straight npward in the still even-
ing air, speaks of warmth and homely cheer. This pretty picture might be an illustration of
Emerson's " Snow-storm," a piece of Dutch landscape-painting in words:
"Announced by all the trumjDets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields.
Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven.
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the, housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous j)rivacy of storm."
It calls for some skill to make a snow-piece cheerful. It is not so hard, as our own Wal-
ter L. Palmer and the late William Bliss Baker have shown, to make winter beautiful ; but
it requires human neighborhood to make it cheerful. Here are two artists, August Schenck
and Anton Biirger, who succeed pretty fairly in chilling us to the marrow !
AtTGirsT Fredekic-Albkecht Schenck was born in 1828 at Gluckstadt, a dull little
town on the Elbe, and was intended by his parents for trade. At fourteen he went to Eng-
land and thence to Portugal, where he remained for five years engaged in mercantile life. In
the intervals of business he amused himself with sketching, and made many studies from the
life of the landsmen and fisherfolk that attracted the public by a certain melancholy grace.
He had been, we believe, very successful in his business undertakings — but his heart could
hardly have been in it — and he soon gave it up, and went to Paris, where he entered the
studio of Leon Cogniet. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1855, but his picture — a subject
drawn from the peasant-life of Portugal, '" Fruit Sellers of Aventes," attracted no attention.
A second venture, "' L'Hiver," was, however, more fortunate, and the critics received it with
considerable favor. By some misfortune, Schenck soon after lost all the money he had laid
up while in business, and he found himself obliged to depend on his talents as an artist for a
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
287
living. Happily lie was still young and in good health, and not frightened by the vision of
hard work ; he therefore took up life with strong hand and a merry heart, and soon won for
himself a solid position. His earlier attempts had not been successful, and M. Montrosier
tells us that they had the misfortune to recall the pictures of that once too popular sentimen-
talist, Leopold Robeii;, whose •' Harvesters," — a true scene from the operatic ballet — was for-
merly the delight of the shop-windows. What a contrast these delightfully clean, charm-
ingly costumed, and gracefully moving and smiling peasants would now present if they
"MILL-STREAM IN WINTER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ANDERSEN-LUNDBY.
could be shown side-by-side with the peasants of Millet, or even with the peasants of Jules
Breton! M. Montrosier, by-the-way, is much mystified by the fact that Schenck should have
exhibited in his first Salon with the Portuguese: "Why an artist born at Gliickstadt in the
Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, should exhibit with the Portuguese," he cries, " is impossible
to discover! " As we have explained, it was in Portugal that Schenck was engaged in b\isi-
ness, and it was there that he first began to exercise his art, finding his subjects suggested by
the life about him. But he now abandoned this path, and devoted himself to subjects in
which animals play a principal part. He installed himself at Ecouen, a little vUlage near
288 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Paris, known to lis in connection with Edouard Frere (Vol., I. p. 77), and long a favorite
haunt of American artists. Here Schenck lived, surrounded, says Montrosier, with a veritable
menagerie of domestic animals, whose sole duty in life was to serve as models for their mas-
ter. As soon as the Salon was over-, the artist took his staff and knapsack and set off for
Anvergne, whence he returned in the autumn with his portfolio filled with sketches and stud-
ies for pictures. While in Auvergne he made a singular choice of head-quarters, taking up
his abode at Royat, described as a filthily dirty little village, which has twice been nearly
swept away by inundations of the torrent which flows past it. But it is a place much re-
sorted to by tourists and artists for the sake of its wild and savage scenery, and for its fine
view of the Puy-de-D6me. It cannot be said that Schenck's pictures give us much informa-
tion about Auvergne, although the scenery of the place may have had something to do with
the generally sombre character of his subjects. His animal-subjects are not always melan-
choly like the one we copy, for Schenck has a caustic humor of his own, and not seldom raps
his human mates about the knuckles under the thin disguise of sheep and asses. But he is
best known by subjects like the present, where the tragedy of the sheep's life, exposed to the
dangers of snow and cold, is narrated with a pencil that spares none of the agony. Whether
by temperament or intention, our artist is seldom able to paint an animal-subject in which
we are shown the animal-nature and its workings free from all suggestions of an underlying
human relationship.
Andeeas Achenbacii, born at Cassell in 1815 — died in 1884 — is, like Preller, Hilde-
brandt, and Calame, a painter of portraits of places, but he comes much nearer to being an
imaginative artist than the others ; his pictures are interesting in themselves to a degree rarely
attained by any German landscape-painter, unless it be his own brother Oswald. It is easy
to recognize this in comparing even the single example we are able to give of his work with
those of Hildebrandt, Calame, and Preller — although, as we have admitted, our plate hardly
does Preller justice. Thei'e is a richness, a sense of life, in this subject that are in strong con-
trast with the emptiness or tameness that we find in the pictures of these other artists. This
is the Jews' Quarter in Amsterdam, or a corner of it, for the place itself impresses the visitor
as a much more crowded and po]3ulous neighborhood than is shown in Achenbach's picture.
This portion of the city has been occupied for several hundred years, almost exclusively by
Jews, who are said to form a tenth part or thereabout, of the population. They represent a
great deal of wealth, and own no less than ten synagogues. Since the extension of the city
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
289
toward the east, and tlie establisliment of the famous Zoological Gardens — the richest of the
sort in Europe — together with the improvement of the docks and wharves in that part of the
town, the Jews' Quarter no longer has the picturesque and tumbledown irregularity shown
in our picture. This is owing to the fact that the stream of travel between the Dam, the
central part of the old city and the main seat of traffic, and the new, fashionable district in
the east, passes directly through the Jews' Quarter, and the natural tendency has been to
"THE JEWS' QUARTER IN AMSTERDAM."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ANDREAS ACHENBACH.
break ap the old, free-and-easy, careless way of living, so long indulged in by the inhabitants.
To find such a tumble-down state of things as is here represented, one must noAV go a long
way out of the city, and it is a chance if he come anywhere upon so picturesque a spot. For,
to tell truth, there is very little of the picturesque left in Holland, and though Amsterdam,
, thanks to the way in which her streets are laid out, and to her canals and bridges, and gabled
houses, is a handsome city, she has none of the charm that comes from decay and ruin.
Vol. II.— 19 * *
290
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR' TIME.
What is going on all OA-er Europe ; in ■^^enice, in Rome, in Najiles, in Florence, in Paris,
in London, is going on in Holland as Avell. These mnnicipalities are bound to make them-
selves comfortable, clean, airy, and healthy, if possible, and they are going about the Avork
with small consideration for the mutterings or shrieks of sentimentalists. Wo sensible person
can really blame them for this, hoAvever sincerely and feelingly he may regret the loss of so
much that is consecrated by memory and tradition. So, fareAA^ell to this old, rotten, tumble-
doAvn JeAA's' Quarter, as to its sister Ghetto in Rome, and yet thanks to Achenbach for pre-
serving for us the look of it in the days before the octopus of respectability " claAv'd it in her
clutch," and squeezed all individuality out of it ! Here, on one side are tAvo of those tall
gabled houses with their fronts all AvindoAvs and door- way, that are, no doubt, the direct
ancestors of those in this JSTeAv Amsterdam of ours ; the outsides reduced, it is true, to " a pale
unanimity " not found in the Dutch originals, Avhere no tAvo are alike, but the internal ar-
rangement almost identical, so that an Amsterdam burglar Avould need no lessons in making
his way about a ISTbav York house in the dark. As Avith us, the material is brick, with stone
dressings to the doors and AvindoAvs ; but the bricks are seldom red ; of tener a dark gray,
either painted or self-colored, and the stone a creamy white, kept to its natural color in
houses in the better quarter by frequent painting. These fronts are often slightly enriched
by carving shown in shieldsof-arms, or pilasters, or string-courses, with ornamental iron-
work over the doorways, stanchions for the lanterns once in use, and for other details, all of
which give a certain moderately ornamental look to the streets, as one may fancy who sup-
poses the two houses in Achenbach's picture repeated along a whole block. Here they show
somewhat isolated, although we can see that the building is carried on more closely at the
right, and between them Ave see the gables of other houses of the same sort. But, at the left,
and in the middle distance, the houses are smaller, and less pretending, and in front all dAvin-
dles down to some rude shanties or cook-shops, the resort for Avarmth, shelter, and food, of
the men and Avomen living and working on the shores of the canal. There is almost as much
water as land suggested here, for the sails of the shi]3s and barges make as much figure in
the composition as the houses themselves. But this, as every traA^eller knows, forms one of
the charms of Holland. It affects one strangely, at first, to walk over great stretches of
meadow on a causeway, with slender do-nothing trees on either hand, as here in Tina Blau's
" Road near Amsterdam," or as in the famous picture by Hobbema in the National Gallery
in London, Avhich this faintly recalls, and to see suddenly appearing above the rushes at one's
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
291
side, the sail of a boat coming straight toward you ; then to see it dip, and after a minute,
come up again on tlie other side of the causeway. And all this in silence, perhaps no sound
of a human voice, for in these wide plains, intersected by hundreds of canals, the vision ex-
tends so far that no signs of warning are needed as in Venice — that Southern Amsterdam —
and even in the city itself, where the great canals bordered by the several Grachts or avenues,
"road near AMSTERDAM."
FROM THE PICTURE BY TINA BLAU.
are busy all day with shipping, we were struck by the absence of noise and shouting. One
hears more of this in the down-town steets of New York in an afternoon, than he will in a
summer of Holland. Achenbacli may have been less inspired in this picture by the reality as
seen by himself, than by reminiscences of Ruysdael and Hobbema, but he has given the true
expression to his subject; we know this heavy sky, with its low-lying clouds broken here and
there with patches of blue; the screaming gulls, the sails of the lumbering coasters bagging
292 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
■with tlie -ndnd that rushes before the rain from the Zuyder Zee ; the wisps of trees — they
must needs be web-footed to keep their hold in this amphibious shore! — tossed and tumbled
by the gusts that bear to the ground the smoke from the pot-house shanty by the water-side,
or carry it off like a streamer from the chimney of the toAver-like house. But, if the weather
be diiU, what do the people care? They are well used to it and know far too much to go in-
doors when it rains! The fish-women seated by the roadside, ready for custom, do not mind
the weather. One of them has her baby on her knee ; so combining business with pleasure !
And the women down by the shore, washing clothes in the canal, what is a little rain more or
less, to them? One of them has stoi^ped her scrubbing to chat with a neighbor who has
seated herself on the top of the wharf -steps with her child in her arms — doubtless one of
those apple-cheeked, tow-headed blue-eyes that we once saw tumble into the canal in Haar-
lem and fished out with a boat-hook by its irate father, Avho spanked it well for its awkward-
ness, wasting small sympathy on its simulated blubber! On the shore is another woman
bearing down the wind like a heavy lugger, with her two children as outriggers. In tl;ie
house-porch an old woman sits and spins, while her man sits, spinning street- yarns, on the
rail of the stoop — for every Dutch house has its " stoop," the ancestor of ours! By a well in
the middle of the street with a young tree planted beside it an old man is talking with an-
other, who has harnessed his horse to a sledge on which he is going to carry off some of the
Tboxes and barrels that are in the small boat just landing. The master of this boat, as he
3)ulls-up alongside the barge that came in an hour ago, exchanges notes upon the weather
with the captain, who lounges on the deck smoking his pipe at his ease. His vsdfe meanwhile
is talking weather, too, — for what else is there in Holland to talk about! — with an old wife
squatting on the shore. Off to the left again, there is more out-of-door life to be studied. A
l)oat loaded Avitli fishing-gear is stranded on an unlucky bit of flats, waiting for the tide to
ietch her off — the fisherman's wife sitting in the prow, and whiling away the time by listen-
ing to the talk on shore and occasionally injecting an observation of her own. Meanwhile
two women with a boat-load of fish are just come up alongside, and are bargaining with the
men for their afternoon's catch. And, last of all this idling, busy world, we discover two
men seated quite comfortably in the lee of the bank, Avith the smoke from their cabin-chim-
ney beating down upon them, and philosophically giving the chimney as good as it sends —
puffing away at their j^ipes and discussing with the good wife, Avhat shall be for supper.
We have gone at length into this analysis of Andreas Achenbach's picture because this
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 293
dramatic character, if we may so dignify it, is the most strilving character of the artists' work,
and marks an important difference between him and the generality of his countrymen. Not
only is he fond of depicting Nature in her more animated moods, but he shows great clever-
ness in peopling his scene with groups and single figures that harmonize with the landscape.
Among the moderns. Turner is the only conspicuous example we can remember of a similar
skill in invention ; but, though Turner can give the impression of a crowd very well, yet he
has not Achenbach's skill in interesting us in the individuals that make up his crowds;
though he occasionally puts character into single figures.
We are speaking now, of "landscapes with figures," as the conventional phrase goes; not
of subjects like these of Ludwig Dill, or Jaroslav Cermack, or Otto von Thoren, or Adolf
Schreyer — these, with the pictures of E. Meissner, Anton Biirger, Otto Gebler and H. Ziigel
are "Figures with landscape," or with surroundings that are secondary to the figures —
whether of men or animals — -or meant merely as backgrounds, though always, of course, re-
lated to the main subject, and in harmony with it. Dill's " Venetian Fishing-boat," is, as we
should say, rather a disorderly composition ; if composition it can be called, though it makes,
rather, the impression of a bit cut out of actual fact, without any attemjpt on the artist's part
to bring it into conformity with rules. And it looks even more disorderly and uncomforta-
ble, from the impossibility of rendering in black-and-white the color which, in every picture
of Venetian life, plays, or should play, by far the most important part. The richly dyed sails
of red or yellow, with their painted emblems, crosses, crowns, stars, hearts and arrows — the
fancies of their simiale-hearted owners; the boats themselves, mottled with stains of the sea,
and marks of daily wear-and-tear, and shining in the sun as the water drains from their
drenching sides; then the deep-toned or gay color of the men's dresses, their hats of knitted
wool or felt, and their flannel shirts: red, yellow, blue; the original hue still glowing through
streaks and stains of salt siDray, and driving mist, and basking sun, as dusky-rich as the walls
of the old palaces themselves ! Mr. Dill's picture has vivacity enough, and with sixch a tub as
this to manage, we may guess the amount of talk that is found necessary to get her on her
way to the lagoon, whither a number of other boats of the same sort have preceded her.
What with all this lumbering out-rig of tubs, lobster-traps, nets and buoys, baskets and jugs,
and the clumsy-seeming sails to boot, it would strike fishermen hereabout as something of a
task to handle such a craft, and we can imagine the jeering or sarcastic comments that would
be bestowed upon the whole performance if it were shown on the wharves of Gloucester, or at
I
294
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
the fish-stalls in our markets. When we come to speak of the English " Pre-Raphaelites,"
we shall find something in their ideas as to " composition," that will remind us of this picture
"a VENETIAN FISHING-BOAT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY LUDWIG DILL.
by a German, and that will siiggest a relationship which very possibly does not exist. There
is, no doubt, in certain art-circles in Germany and in France, a reaction against the code of
formal rules that have so long been imposed upon artists, and accepted by them with almost
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 295
the submission due to natural laws, but in England, as will be seen, this reaction supported
its claims to respect by adducing the example of the artists who came before Raphael, and
who were not hampered by the rules that in the later work of that artist would seem to have
controlled Ms practice. With the younger German and French artists, the reaction has ap-
parently never been at the pains to make any excuses for itself, nor to call any names to its
aid, nor has there been either in Germany or France, unless it were the movement of the
French Impressionists, anything that looked like a concerted propaganda of artistic heresies.
At the same time it is by no means impossible that the younger men of the continent
may have been influenced by the English Pre-Raphaelites, to look more closely into the laws
that were imposed upon them by the academics ; and that, finding there was some reason in
the arguments adduced in support of the new movement, they may have attempted to apply
them to their own case. In all sxich revolutions in taste and practice, it is, however, very
difficult, if it be not altogether impossible, to settle the claims of precedence, or to follow in
a chart the blowing of the winds of influence. In this picture by Dill, every law of composi-
tion laid do^vn by the academics is violated or defied: there is no harmony of lines, no grace
of proportion, no balance of parts — yet all this negation which, fifty years ago— supposing
any one to have been capable of it, at that time, would have found not an ally to support it,
awakens, nowadays, no remonstrance, nor lifts a single eye-brow in surprise. One reason for
this attitude of the public toward works so contrary to old usage is found in the works them-
selves, which, when they are painted, like this of Dill's, with vigor and conviction, give pleas-
ure to everybody who likes to see a bit of human life faithfully reported ; a pleasure quite
independent of the nature of the subject. And another reason may lie in the harmony be-
tween the indifference to established laws and conventions shown by the artists we have in
mind, and the general, and certainly growing, indifference to social laws and conventions
once in vogue. But this subject vnll come up for consideration at a later stage of our work.
Even in still-life subjects, the new spirit may be and in fact is, as active, at times, as in the
larger and so-called more important fields. Philippe Rousseau, VoUon, Manet, Diaz, Met-
tltng, reveal the romantic movement as vividly in their fruits and flowers, nay, in their fish
and garden-vegetables, as do Delacroix in his lion-hunts, or Barye in his ravening wild-beasts,
or Rousseau in his landscapes, where his comer of this fair earth of ours is seen under every
aspect, sunlit or stormy, of the moving year. But in Gei-many, little of this imaginative
spirit has been shown in the treatment of still-life subjects; a formal portraiture, a scientific
296 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
rendering of natural facts is all tliat any artist in Germany lias, so far as Tve know, attempted.
No one of them who has gained any note has gone further in this direction than Preyer, the
author of the small fruit-piece which we reproduce, by permission, from the dra^ving belong-
ing to Messrs. Knoedler & Co.
JoHA'N'N WiLHELM Preyer, uow the oldest, as he is the best known of the German
still-life painters, was born in 1803, at Rheidt, and made his stxidies in art at the Academy
in Diisseldorf, with which he remained connected from 1822 to 1837. In 1835 he made a visit
to Holland, where he studied the masters who had excelled in the painting of still-life, the
branch of art to which he had been drawn, and in 1837, leaving Diisseldorf for a while, he
went to Munich, where he stayed for three years, and thence for three years to Italy. In
1843 he visited Bozen and made there many studies of southern fruits ; in 1848 he went to
Berlin, and after a brief stay in that city returned to Diisseldorf, where he has since that time
continued to live. He has a son, Paul, and a daughter Emelie, who are both skilful still-life
painters. Visitors to the gallery of paintings by the artists of the Dusseldorf school — the
Diisseldorf GaUery which, thirty-odd years ago, made one of the chief attractions of our city,
mnst still remember the interesting picture — the landscape painted by Lessing, the figures by
Friedrich Boser — in which all the leading artists of the Dusseldorf school were represented
taking their luncheon in the woods. In this picture one of the most striking figures was that
of Preyer, conspicuously placed in the foreground, a distinction not so much awarded to his
■ talent — unquestioned, indeed, but exercised in a field somewhat outside of that appropriated
to high art — as made necessary by the extreme smallness of his figure, which was so dwarfish
in fact that, had he not been put in the very foreground of the picture, he could not have
been shown at all. His picture always excited the good nature of visitors, since the little
man, with his tight, well-i)roportioned figure, his long hair, and his smiling, strongly-marked
countenance, seemed fuUy alive to the humor of the situation, though preserving a proper,
self-respecting dignity. Preyer's fruit-pieces at one time enjoyed a wide popularity, and
although they are now somewhat less cared for, and indeed are seldom offered for sale by the
dealers, whose shops are a convenient test of contemporary valuation, we must believe that
the exquisite care and faithfulness with which they are painted will always have its value,
even though, for a time, work of a larger, freer execution may cause it to be neglected. The
drawing we publish — it is made with the lead-pencil, slightly tinted here and there with color
— shows the careful draughtsman but gives no sufRcisnt notion of his painting. Something
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
297
of his skill in this j)articular may be gathered from a very beautiful reproduction of one of his
best jpictures, published by the Messrs. Knoedler & Co., remarkable as a specimen of the art
of chromo-lithography, just then brought to perfection, and since vulgarized into unmerited
obloquy. This published plate is, however, a silent critic on the art that can so faithfully be
reproduced by a process so largely mechanical ; and indeed beyond the taste which Preyer
/
ji.r"
fdf'
N'-
/
' ,^
/-
"FRUIT-PIECE."
FROM THE PENCIL-DRAWING BY JOHANN PREYER
undoubtedly possesses, there is nothing in his picture which is beyond the reach of patient
assiduity. He has studied the exquisite works of von Huysum, Rachel Ruysch, Kalf, and
other painters of flowers and still-life, until he has caught much of their finished manner and
something of their spirit, but his failure to take an equal place with these masters in the
appreciation of the public arises from the difference between the modern artists and the older
298
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
men in pictorial power; the power to make a picture with the given materials. At his best,
Preyer is but plain prose where the others are poetry. By this, we mean, that Preyer arrang-
ing his still-life objects on his tables; his fruit freshly gathered and lying loosely as it
was brought in from the garden, or placed in bowls or dishes, his glasses filled with cham-
pagne, the beaded bubbles rising and gathering round the edge of the surface of the wine ;
or, an ojDened walnut, with some raisins — ^these tilings the artist vieTving, proceeds to paint
them with strict scientific accuracy, thinking, or so it would seem, far more of the truthful
representation of his subject than of its pictorial effect. The von Huysu.ms, Kalfs, Hondekoe-
ters, and the rest of the still-life masters, on the other hand, accomplished both wonders :
they painted with an accuracy to delight the naturalist, and they made pictures that com-
pletely satisfy the artist.
Still, let us be thankful for the accuracy that is the Germans' strong point, not Preyer's
alone, but that of the German artists in general.
XVIII.
r)AUL FRIEDRICH MEYERHEIM, the painter of our "Lion and Lioness" has earned
^ his reputation as an animal-painter by strict fidelity of portraiture, as we see it in this
picture; he seldom indulges in satire or story-telling, such as Landseer and our own Beard
are so fond of, and so clever in, although the apes have occasionally tempted him to experi-
ments in that direction. Meyerheim was born in Berlin in 1842, and
was at first the pupil of his father, Eduard Meyerheim, but later
studied in the Academy. His studies ended, he travelled in Ger-
many, the Tyrol, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland, and lived for a
year and a half in Paris, where he paid particular attention to color
in his painting. He sketched in oils as well as in water-color, and
% finding himself strongly drawn in that direction, ajDi^lied himself
PAUL F. MEYERHEIM. for some time exclusively to the study of wild-animals, for which
the Zoological Garden in Berlin offered him abundant means. He varied these studies by some
attempts at genre painting, in which he was very successful, and by decorative painting, his
chief performances in this field being " the History of the Locomotive-engine," which he painted
in a series of seven pictures in the Villa Borsig in the Moabit^a suburb of Berlin. He has also
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
299
painted portraits, but, with some few exceptions, has not achieved any great success in this
direction, although his portrait of his father, now in the Museum at Dantzig, is spoken of as a
masterpiece. It is, liowever, as an animal-painter that Meyerheim will be best known, and some
of his pictures have not been surpassed for strength of characterization and simple naturalness
by anything that has been done in England or France, where the Landseers, Rivieres, Baryes,
"LION AND LIONESS."
FROM THE PICTURE BY PAUL MEYERHEIM.
and Bonheurs have set up a standard difficult of attainment. Among the best of his pictures
are "The Sheepshearing," "The Serpent-tamer in the Menagerie," "The Wounded Lion," and
" The Apes holding Court," with the "Apes' Academy "—the last two, examples of his satiric
humor, which are by no means wanting in cleverness, but where he finds himself rivalling men
fully able to contest the palm with him. We confess to caring very little for such subjects, even
when handled by men as skilful as our own Beard, who certainly has never been surpassed
'-,oo ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
in the genuineness of liis liumor by any artist at any time. We tliink we do best jiistice to
Meyerlieim by presenting our readers with this " Lion and Lioness in Captivity," even though
it may be admitted that photography could easily have produced a result so nearly similar as
hardly to be distinguished from this, which is an actual study from life. " Hardly to be dis-
tinguished," we say, because there is always in faithful study from nature something that is
different from what photography, or mechanism of any sort, would have produced. Neither
the photograph nor the artist is always to be trusted, but when each is at his best they do not
present the same side of their subject, but two sides, essentially different the one from the
other. If nature, working with her sun and a sensitive plate, can often see what is hid from
the eye of man, that same eye of man can as often see what is hidden from nature, and it
will be observed that photography as a rule works by the discovery of defects, while the art-
ist, if he be a good one, aims to record his sitter as a whole, but with a leaning toward the
bringing out of excellences too often hidden from the supei'ficial view.
Anton Burgee, the painter of " The Discovered Stag," is a native of Frankfort-on-the-
Main, where he was born in 1825. He had his first instruction in art in the Stadel Institute in
his native town, and later he passed a year or two each in Munich and Diisseldorf. He after-
ward settled down in Cronberg in the lovely region of the Taunus Mountains, where he still
resides — his numerous pictures recording the scenery of the region and the manners of its
peasant population — views of villages, farm-yard scenes, tavern-incidents, hunting adventures,
whatever the life of the region has to offer in the way of simple every-day subjects, of which
our picture is a good example. The scene has a certain affinity with the picture already de-
scribed by Schenck, but has a more matter-of-fact foundation. This deer dying from the hun-
ter's shot is not attended by a ghastly ministry of crows waiting for his death, but his agony
is perhaps none the less affecting; and certainly the stolid peasant who stands over him
calmly smoking his pipe is as devoid of pity as any crow! There is winter here, as in
Schenck's picture, and the dreariness of it is weU expressed; the hunter whose shot has
brought the animal down, is led to the place by his guide ; at least that is the way we inter-
pret the picture, though we should have looked for signs of a gun somewhere. The peasant's
dog, too, seems a very disinterested spectator of a scene that generally excites some canine
eagerness, but this animal has learned stolidity and indifference from his master.
Adolf Soheeyer is another painter who, like Barye, Delacroix, and Schenck — if we
may name this artist in the same breath with two such lords in the kingdom of art — likes to
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
301
paint tlie stormy side of life. He was born in 1828 at Prankfort-on-the-Main, and as a child
showed great delight in drawing horses. As he grew older he frequented the riding-school,
"THE DISCOVERED STAG."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ANTON BURGER.
where he followed and studied the exercises of his favorite animals, and at the Stadel Insti-
tute he continued to study in theory and from models what the riding-school had taught
302 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
liim practically. After leaving school, he went to Munich, and later, to Diisseldorf, where
he accomplished himself in the technics of his art. In 1848 he was invited by the Prince
of Thum-and-Taxis to travel with him, and visited Hungary, Wallachia, and Southern Rus-
sia. Here he studied the life of the Slavs, and their beasts of burden, and here he painted his
first battle-piece after the light at Temesvar — a picture that had a great success, and made
his name known. In 1856 he accompanied the same j^rincely patron to Syria and Egypt, and
later travelled with him in Algeria. The sketches and studies which were the result of these
travels created a very lively impression when they were shown in Paris, and Schreyer soon
found himself on the high-ioad to success. He produced in rapid succession those pictures
of wild life in Eastern Europe in which horses play so conspicuous a part, and which are so
associated with his name by their subjects that a " Schreyer " without a horse, or horses,
would indeed be the play of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. Yet it is seldom that the artist
repeats himself. His invention, founded on the industrious sketching kept up while travel-
ling, that had filled his portfolios to overflowing with studies, seems never to fail him, and
though we know a " Schreyer " as far as we can see it, yet it is long before we become so in-
different to the artist's subjects as to pass them by without study, because we are held by
their overflowing energy of life. In our tamer civilization these scenes transported from the
half -barbarous lands of the Slavs have an air of exaggeration, almost of melodrama, but those
who know the people and their manners assure us that all this storm and stress, this plunging
and rearing of wild or half -tamed horses — hoofs pawing the air, manes and tails streaming to
the wind ; these swarthy men in queer outlandish garb, guiding with easy savage grace their
reckless charge — all these things, we are assured, are the every-day sights and scenes of these
countries so far removed from the route of the ordinary traveller. The best known of his
pictures — several of them made popular by excellent engravings — are "Cossack Horses;"
"Winter Landscape" — horses huddled together in the snow; — "Wallachian Post-horses;"
"Detachment of Cavalry on the March;" "Arabs Returning from the Fight;" "Terror,"
horses madly flying; "The Wounded Horse," and the subject we engrave, "Chased by
Wolves," where certainly the scene needs no title to explain it. In 1870, Schreyer joined the
artist-colony that has associated itself with the village of Cronberg in the beautiful Taunus
country near Franltfort-on-the-Main, where we have already met with Anton Bvirger — a quiet
resting-place, and a singular contrast to the wild life that makes the staple of Schreyer's
pictures.
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
303
Otto voisr Thoren is another painter wlio brings to us the report of what he lias seen in
the eastern parts of Europe, but he deals for the most part with quieter, domestic scenes: "'A
Herd of Hungarian Oxen," " Cows in the Meadow," " The Hungarian Steppes at Sunset, with
Gfroups of Cattle," and tlie " Grrain-thrashing," wMdi we publish — an excellent example of his
art. The horses, guided by the man who stands in the middle, jog round and round in a
circle, beating out the grain from the ear as it is continually fed and spread by the other men.
The dress of the men is singular to our eyes, used to a more curt and summary garb for labor,
"CORN-THRASHING."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OTTO VON THOREN.
whether at home or in the field. At first, on seeing these long coats we think there must be
something priestly or religious about their wearers; perhaps these are a sort of lay-brothers
from some neighboring monastery, working in the field as monks used to do, and as they still
are found doing all over Europe. But, then, we reflect, that the dress of monks, priests, and
popes is itself only a survival of the dress of the people in Greek and Roman days— out-
grown with time and generally abandoned, it has crystallized as we see it in the vestments of
the Roman church. This long coat, or gown, worn over his under garments by this man and
his companions in the field, is the cMton of the Greeks, the tunica of the Romans, the dal-
matic of the modem Romish priest, called by this last name because it was formerly made.
304 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
and is still, perhaps, made in some places in Dalmatia, of the wool grown in that country.
And thus we see the old still surviving in the new, and perceive that the world of man is but
a palimpsest where the most ancient writing can still be read through the records of age suc-
ceeding age. But, von Thoren's bright and sunny leaf from the life of this Danubian popu-
lation has anything but an archaeological expression. How naturally the horses plod along,
each in his own character; one inclined to play a hit with the geese the woman is guiding,
and wlio are gleaning a few of the scattered grains as they fly from under the horses' feet.
The white horse seems to be thinking back to the time when he had something to do better
worth-while than treading-out corn ; his neighbor puts down his head to catch a mouthful of
straw, while the two next him make a few confidential remarks to one another on the situa-
tion. The last horse in the line starts with a jump as the man behind him touches his flanks
with an armful of corn he is about to throw down; at the extreme right a man with a fork
spreads out the grain in readiness for the horses.
y
Otto von Thoren was born in 1828 at Vienna, served in the Austrian army, took part m
the campaign in Hungary in 1848-49, and not until 1857 began the study of art in Paris and
Brussels. His pictures deal for the most part with subjects, like the one we publish, where
men and domestic animals are brought together in a natural everyday harmony, reflecting a
patriarchal simiDlicity of life, very pleasant to contemplate.
Jaroslav Cermak, the painter of the " Herzegovinian Girl," here reproduced, was born
at Prague, but the dictionaries give us no particulars of his early life. In the useful book of
Mrs. Clement, "Artists of the Nineteenth Century," there are a few data as to his pictures.
He died in 1878. He was a pupil of Gallait and of Robert Fleury, but he found his subjects
neither in Belgium nor Paris, nor yet in his native Bohemia, but pushed further east and
painted episodes in the life of Herzegovina and Montenegro. At the Salon of 1877 he ex-
hibited " Herzegovinians Returning to their Ravaged Village," and in 1873, "An Episode of
the War in Montenegro." Our picture is his most pleasing performance, and deserves its
wide popularity. AVhether it be intended to be accepted literally or not, we do not know,
but it certainly looks like a piece of pure romance; an incident in a novel by George Sand or
by Prosper Merimee. This lovely dark -eyed girl standing by the horse, as beautiful as her-
self, caressing his silken mane with her hand as she looks dreamily out over the fields, can
hardly, one would think, be a type of the people of her country. Rather, we see in her the
embodiment of her country's past, when the land was subject to the rule of the Byzantine; by
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
305
her dress, her attitude, her expression, she seems a vision of the antique muse brooding in
soft melancholy over the decay of glorious empire. Her dress recalls what we said a little
before on the permanence of old types, when describing Otto von Thoren's picture. Here we
have, surviving, down to our own day, all the elements of the Greek and Roman dress— the
"a herzegovinian girl."
FROM THE PICTURE BY JAROSLAV CERMAK.
chiton, with its double girdle, and the himation or mantle, while the jewelled circlets pen-
dent from the necklace, the girdle made of gold or silver jilates, the earrings, and the head-
dress fringed with glittering ornaments, recall the days of Byzantine decadence. The horses
— one a cream-white stallion with flowing undipped tail and long profuse silken mane shad-
ing his eyes, and with some of its strands confined in braids, the darker a more common-
VoL. II.— 20 * *
3o6 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
place animal — are drinking from a ruined fountain-basin, once belonging to a Byzantine
palace, its base half hid in burdock and nettle. This picture has always seemed to us a
remarkable oue; among a cloud of works to which by its title it seems to belong — ethno-
graphic notes inspired for the most part by mere curiosity and idleness of travel — this has all
the qualities of a genuine poetic impression; we feel that it is real, but it is real in a world of
its own, a world of dreams.
Friedeich Johann Voltz, the painter of the " Cattle by the Brook," was born at Nord-
lingen in 1817. He studied with his father, and from him learned etching, and made such
progress in the art that when he was seventeen a series of twelve etched plates after pictures
by some of the old masters procured him admission to the Academy in Munich. Here,
during the winter, he made cojDies of the older masters in painting, and also practised his
liand in pictures of his own composing, while in the summer he made sketching excursions in
the Bavarian Highlands. Later, he visited Italy and the Netherlands, but returned to
Munich, where he studied with Piloty for a while; but starting off again he visited Paris,
Berlin, and Vienna, with this good result, that he grew more in touch with the art of his own
time, and Aveaned from his too strict devotion to that of the older men. The picture that we
reproduce is a type of his work in general ; he is one of the large company of cattle-painters
of our day, but his pictures are distinguished from the mass by a certain idyllic character, a
liarmony between the landscape and the living beings that jDeople the scene, such as we find
in the pictures of Troyon and Veyrassat; though Voltz is not equal to either of these as a
painter. Like so many of the Germans, like by far the most of them, we must admit, he
.shows to best advantage in black and white. The little picture so prettily reproduced by
Rhodes, from an engraving, shows the artist in one of his happiest veins. The cattle are re-
freshing themselves in the clear water of the brook at noon-tide ; some drinking, some stand-
ing in the stream, some lying down on the meadowy bank, while on the higher ground at the
right, the keeper of the herd is seen with an eye to his charge, while his wife sits on the
ground at his feet, with their dinner in a basket. Further on, some of the field-hands are
leaving their work for their noon-day rest ; a woman with a big bundle on her head walks off
with her child by her side, and against the horizon we see a crixcifix, protected by its pent-
house hood, with two wayfarers doing it reverence as they pass. Over all is a sky of delicate
"beauty, with clouds of white and gray, that blends the whole scene in sunny harmony. In
liis figures, and in the animation they give to the scene, we are reminded, as we are in many
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
307
of Voltz's pictures, of the later Dutch and Flemish landscape-painters, and of the later
Italians as well; but, in the more careful observation of the appearances of nature, particu-
larly in his skies, we acknowledge an individual note; conventionality and abstraction are
sacrificed to the more modern spirit that strives to reconcile art with science.
Ernst Adolf Meissnee, born in 1837 at Dresden, now settled at Munich, after visiting
Switzerland and Italy, is still another painter of animals, but like Ziigel and others, confines
himself more immediately to them as the subject of his pictures, and makes the landscape of
"CATTLE BY THE BROOK."
FROM THE PICTURE BY FRIEDRICH VOLTZ.
less importance. Here, for instance, in his " Frightened Sheep," the landscape is insignifi-
cant; the whole interest, such as there is, lies in the truth with which the actions of the sheep
are rendered. A small white dog, taking the air with his master or mistress, for his owner
must be guessed-at, being outside our frame, has started ofl' to have a little fun with the
sheep, and has succeeded in getting the flock into a high state of hysterics. They were mak-
ing for the farmhouse yard, but they are brought to a pause — partly by the difficulty of
scaling the fence bars; one of the lambs has squeezed himself through them, and is ofi', but
one of the sheep is coming to grief in his vaulting ambition, while a third is thinking too long-
about it to have his thinking come to anything. Then, again, some of the sheep have caught
;oS
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME,
sight of their enemy, and are beginning to bhish at his insignificance ; it is a chance if the old
ram does not give him a taste of his horns and send him to Jericho. Bnt the most potent
inflnence that is Avorlving to calm the flock, is the appearance of their master, who, on hearing
the linbbub, has come ont of his cottage, and is calling them to order with his well-known
voice. Meissner has had good fortune at home; his pictures are hung in the Academy of
"FRIGHTENED SHEEP."
FROM THE PICTURE BY E. MEISSNER.
Vienna, in the Museum at Dresden, in the palace of the King of Saxony, and he has been a
favorite here as well, many of his best pictures belonging to Americans.
For a time, too, we heard a good deal of Ziigel in this country ; his pictures of sheep,
mostly small canvases, were seen in the dealers' shops, and eagerly bought; their simplicity
and naturalness made them many friends. But, of late we have not seen them so frequently.
Heineich Johann ZtJGEL was born in 1850 at Murrhard, in Wurtemberg, but after moving
about a little in Germany— a year and a half in Stuttgart, then for a like stay in Vienna, he
1
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
309
finally came to settle down in Munich, where he still lives and paints. His " Sheep-washing,"
"Ox-team," "Cattle Flying before a Storm," and in the National Gallery of Berlin his
" Sheep in an Alder Grove " — are among his best known pictures. The one we copy, " Open
the Door for Us ! " belongs to a family of small genre pictures, such as he is best known by in
this country. The sheep are impatient to be let out of the fold, and the little girl is opening
"OPEN THE DOOR FOR US."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HEINRICH ZUGEL,
the door for them. The lamb, Avho was so very eager a minute ago, has forgotten all about it
for another minute, but probably as soon as the door is fairly opened he will push himself
through without the least thought of respect for his elders. His starting action is very
prettily given.
No doubt our readers mil find Gebler's " One of the Seven Sleepers," a more entertaining
subject than any of these later pictures. Feiedrioh Otto Geblek, bom at Dresden in 1838,
went early to Munich, where he studied under PUoty. He paints animal-pictures almost ex-
3IO
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
clusively, but his humor is not always so genuine as we find it here, where it grows out of a
natural, e very-day situation. The morning light is streaming through the cracks and cran-
nies of this old barn where the sheep are folded, and they are anxious to get out for a taste of
fresh ail- and the grass of the pasture. But Peter, the farm-hand, is locked up tighter in
slumber than they are in the barns, and no ray of the morning sun has peeped as yet through
the chinks in his eye-lids. A swallow has lighted on his hat — perched for the night on the
"ONE OF THE SEVEN-SLEEPERS."
FROM THE PICTURE BY OTTO GEBLER.
top of his sheep-hook, and cheeps and twitters to the other swallows that circle round the
bam or cling to the wall, but Peter does not hear the sound. One leg is thrown over the dog,
his bed-fellow and guardian, but though the dog is wide awake and has his faithful eye on
the sheep, he does not stir for fear of waking his master. In the heat of the summer night
the boy has tossed the clothes about and kicked off the feather bed, but the cool morning air
that blows over his bare legs has no poAver to disturb him, while, if he hears the bleating of
the sheep, he probably hears it in a dream of noonday in the pasture, with his flock about
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 311
him calling one another from side to side of the held. Perhaps the artist meant to indicate
by the pictures pinned to the wall and the sketches of the ram, the dog and Peter himself,
sheep-hook in hand, that this is an artist in the bud lying in bed when work is to be done,
and dreaming when he should be awake. But the moral, if it were meant, is not obtruded,
and we are at liberty to enjoy the quiet humor of the scene without feeling obliged to inter-
pret it otherwise than as an idyl of youth and health dreaming of rustic love and beauty, not
under the roof of the spreading beech, but in the warm air of the hay-scented barn, in sweet
momentary forgetfulness of the work-a-day world that is calling him to share its toil.
DUTCH ART.
THE revival of art in Holland in our own day, after a long period of indifference and
decline, did not seem so surprising as the similar revival did in England, or even, we
may say, that which took jplace in the first quarter of the century in France. Each
of these countries, England and France, had had good painters, a few excellent ones ; but no
country north of the Alps could boast of such a glorious family of artists — all born of her
own body and nourished at her own breast — as Holland. The wonder was, not that we should
see art revived in Holland, but, rather, that in a country which had produced a Rembrandt,
a Terburg, a Franz Hals, a Van der Meer, a Van Goyen — but the list would be too long were
we to attempt to name all the illustrious ones — that a country which had produced such men
as these, should ever have produced lesser men. It is, however, a common experience; all
things in nature have their ebb and flow ; and we have Hamlet's word for it that
" Nothing is at a like goodness still.
But Nature growing to a plurisy
Dies of her own too-much.''
In the history of art in Holland, there are three periods very clearly marked. They are
described in that excellent hand-book on the Dutch School of Painting, written in French by
M. Henry Havard, and translated into English by Mr. G. Powell, published by Messrs. Gas-
312 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
sell & Co., to wliicli the reader may be referred for an intelligent, appreciative summary of tlie
subject, illustrated witb cuts that serve a very good purpose as notes. And here it may be
said that although we may never hope to have in this country such and so many splendid
examples of the great Dutchmen as are to be found in Holland itself, in England, Avliich
rivals Holland in the treasixres it possesses, or tii France and Germany, yet we shall in time,
no doubt, be able to show a considerable number of fine specimens ; and, indeed, even to-day
there are enough good Dutch jjictures scattered about, in public and private collections, to
enable a student to get at the rudiments of the matter. We have at least five first-rate por-
traits by Rembrandt; we may get more, in years to come, but we shall get none finer than
the " Gilder " and the two Van Beresteyn portraits, owaed by Mr. Havemeyer and now on
temporary loan at the Metropolitan Museum ; the " Portrait of a Man," owned by Mr. Ells-
worth, of Chicago, and the portraits of Dr. Tulp and his wife, in the gallery of Messrs. Cot-
tier & Co., in New York. And these are not all the examples of Rembrandt that might be
cited: there are others of less interest, but of equal authenticity, and Avell able to hold their
own in connection with these. We have, besides, examples of Terburg, Maes, Pieter de
Hoogh, Van Goyen, and others, so that, if it were wished, an exhibition of the old Dutch mas-
ters could be made that would be of great interest not merely to artists, but to the general
public — for there is always a public for really fine painting.
It will only be necessaiy here, in order to prepare the way for the consideration of the
works of the Dutch artists of our own day, to make a brief reference to the successive j)hases
through which the art of Holland has passed since its beginnings. The actual beginnings
are indeed lost to us : not only have the works of the various artists in every branch disap-
peared, leaving no visible trace of their existence, but only the barest record of them exists
in tradition, with here and there an allusion in an old bouk, or a meagre fact painfully im-
earthed from some musty document spared by the greed of Time. As it was not until the
first quarter of the seventeenth century, that the United Provinces were finally sejparated
from the southern jproviuces of the Netherlands, there can be no reasonable doubt that, in
earlier times, the art of the two divisions was as nearly identical in character as the condi-
tions of society and climate would allow. In aU. these northern countries, the first civilizing
ideas came not from Italy and the Romans, but from Byzantium and the Greeks, and it is to
the Arians and their more fundamentally democratic ideas in religion and in church govern-
ment, that we owe the seeds of opposition to aristocracy and feudalism, which, thank Heaven,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 313
were sowed so broadly and planted so deep that tliey never have been and never can be up-
rooted. Fortunately for the race and for the welfare of nations, these ideas were sown in
Germany, in northern France, including the Netherlands, and in the British Islands before
the Roman missionaries came, and the bloody persecutions of these zealots, who struck hands
with pagan kings and slaughtered, burned, and pillaged their heretical brethren in the sweet
name of Christ, only served, as persecution always does, to keep the ideas it sought to up-
root alive. But while the ideas remained, the things in which they had found material ex-
pression were largely swept away, and in the fierce, savage conflicts of the Dutch and Span-
ish of the seventeenth century, nearly all traces of the earlier art disappeared with the
destruction of the abbeys, monasteries, and churches, and with the dismantling of the town-
halls and palaces. This destruction was so thoroughly accomplished that it is only by the
sparse and scattered remains still existing in Flanders and in Germany that we are able to
discover what must have been the character of this first phase of art in Holland.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we find the names of many artists born in Hol-
land who are yet by their art allied on the one side to Flanders and on the other to Italy.
Flanders drew them to her cities by the promise of gain and employment at the splendid
courts of the sovereigns and nobility of that flourishing country, while Italy attracted them
by the fame of her great painters and sculptors, borne by the reports of travellers and spread
through all the northern lands. It may be permitted to coni]iare the state of the arts in Hol-
land at that time with what we find in our country at the present day— a condition of things
which has, however, existed here from the Beginning. Owing at once to the scanty means of
education for artists here in America, the lack of schools, and, what is of far more import-
ance, the lack of public galleries where examples of the great artists can be familiarly seen,
our young men flock to Europe, year after year, for study and inspiration. And, on the
other hand, owing to the fact that few of our rich men care for American pictures, much pre-
ferring to spend tlieir money for the works of foreigners, our young painters go abroad and
settle in London, Paris, or Munich, where many of them find customers in plenty for their
work and earn a good living, besides making for themselves a solid position in society, such
as they could never have obtained at home.
This was what happened in the case of many of the early Dutch artists; some of rhem
became so identified with Flanders and Italy that their real place of birth is forgotten or ig-
nored, and indeed they were only Dutch in name. Nor did any of them paint in a style that
314 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
was derived exclusively, or even in part, from influences peculiar to Holland; all of them
were inspired by artists not of their own land; and if they returned to Holland after their
wanderings in other countries, led back by the growing wealth and prosperity of her mer-
chant-cities, they endeavored to establish there the standards that they had found in favor
in the older cities of Europe.
But with the establishment on a secure foundation of the independence of the United
Provinces, a new era at once set in, and we soon find artists arising, one after the other, de- .
veloping individual styles, forming schools, and creating pupils, until by the end of the cen-
tury, Holland had made such a mark in the history of art as can never be effaced and that
gives her a place side by side with Italy. And this was accomplished by artists who neither
needed to leave Holland for subjects nor for patrons; they were content to paint, and the
rich or well-to-do people of Holland were glad to buy, pictures of their own landscape, scenes
from the lives of their own peasants and bourgeois citizens, and portraits of themselves, their
wives, their children and their magistrates. Painters were bred in obedience to the law of
supply and demand, but the question why the demand for painters was met by the supply
of painters of such unexampled, splendid quality, is one that has never yet been answered,
though many attempts have been made to answer it, and to which no adequate answer will in
all probability ever be found.
The light that lightened the world of art streaming from Holland in the seventeenth cen-
tury faded at last ; the sun set, and with it the splendor of the bountiful but too brief day.
Nor was it until our own immediate time that Holland was again heard from as a producer of
artists, but the men who are once more bringing the name of their country to the front, and
who are influencing so strongly the younger artists of France, England, and America, are not
descended in direct line from the painters of the great period in their own country, although
the spirit in which they work is akin to theirs. There can be no reasonable doubt that the
painters we are about to consider were inspired in their work by the example of the French
Romantics, but the outcome of that inspiration is something essentially their own ; and it is
proved such by the fact that it has itself, as we have hinted above, exerted a strong influence
on the younger artists of other countries. And nowhere has that influence been so marked
in its effect as here in our own country.
The paintings and water -colors of Israels, Mauve, Artz, the brothers Maris (William, Mat-
thew and James), Stacquet, Mesdag, and others, are now well known in this country. They are
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 315
to be found in many private collections and with all the principal dealers, where they bring
high prices. But it is only a short time ago that these names, one and all, were practically
nnkno^vn in America ; for though a few examples of their work may have made their way to
this country, and found homes in some of our private collections, the general public knew
absolutely nothing of them, and in fact is only just beginning to know something. The
copies of their pictures given to our readers in connection with this notice will be among the
first that have been published in this popular way. Nor has it been possible to procure as
many examples as we should have been glad to have. Comj)aratively few of the pictures of
this group of artists have been published by photography or engraving, and the pictures
themselves are not always to be obtained. But even with the materials at our command,
we shall hope to do something to make an interesting corner of the world of art better
known, here at home, and if we can do no more than to excite cariosity, that will have been
worth doing.
It is now fifteen years since Mr. Daniel Cottier, coming to New York from London to
establish here a branch of his business, brought over with him a collection of pictures, princi-
pally by Dutch artists, men whose names, as we have said, were at that time practically un-
known to our public at large, and known to very, very few, if they were known to any, of
our amateurs or picture-buyers. His collection was not confined to the Dutchmen, but con-
tained examples of the so-called Barbizon school of which we have already given an account
in our first volume. The Millets, Corots, Rousseaus, Diaz, and the rest of the circle, allies by
the spirit of their aims rather than by actual companionship, were represented here ade-
quately for the first time. It is of importance to allude to this event because it was really
one of first-rate importance in the history of our art-development. Up to this time, through
the influence of the enterprising dealers catering for a public whom they had taught what to
admire, the pictures of the Diisseldorf, Munich, and Paris artists — the Eomantics rigidly ex-
cluded— had been the only ones offered for our inspection. Corot was almost unknown ; the
knowledge of MUlet, first made known to us by the late Wm. M. Hunt, was confined almost
entirely to Boston, where it was looked upon as the fad of an exclusive circle; of Rousseau
we knew nothing, of Daubigny little, and of Diaz, still less. As for the great Romantics —
Delacroix, Gericault, Decamps, Courbet — we had yet to learn something more of them than
their names. It is not meant that these artists were entirely unrepresented in this country,
but only that the general public had as yet not been offered the means of knowing what
3i6 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
these names stood for. As for the Dutch artists of Avhom we are now to speak, it may be
said that they were entirely unknown to all of us, artists, amateurs and laymen alike, until
Mr. Cottier showed them to us. They took an immediate hold upon our younger artists,
those who were in the formative stage, and, explain it how we may, it is certainly true that
the influence of the contemporary Dutch school of landscape-painters is more potent to-day
in the American studios, especiallj^ in those of the water-colorists, than that of the French.
The last exhibition of the Water-Color Society, the twenty -third, might almost have made
a Dutchman rub his eyes and half believe himself at home.
Of the Dutch figure-painters belonging to the circle we are now considering, one of the
best known is Josef Israels. He was born at Groningen in 1824, and studied his art at
Amsterdam under Pieneman, a painter of historical subjects on a small scale, and he was
also, for a time, in the studio of Cornells Kruseman. Later, after he had mastered the rudi-
ments, he went to Paris, where first Picot gave him advice and then Henri Scheflfer, a younger
brother of Ary Scheffer (see Vol. I., p. 14). He returned/to Holland, and at first set up his
easel at Amsterdam, where his studies were begun, but after living there for some years, he
removed to the Hague, where he has since continued to reside — the Hague being the centre
of the new movement in painting in Holland. Israels, Ave are told, was already well known in
Belgium and Holland when he appealed to a wider public at the Exposition Universelle at
Paris, in 1855, exhibiting his picture " William the Silent Rejecting the Decree of the King
of Spain," the first and, we believe, the only essaj^ made by him in the domain of historical
painting. This picture, the natural outcome of his studies under the conventional teaching
of men like Pieneman and Kruseman, Henri Scheffer and Picot, was not very successful, and,
fortunately for himself and us, Israels was not long in finding themes more suited to his
talent. He began to paint at Katwyk-aan-zee, a smaU. watering-place about two hours by
boat from Leyden, a favorite resort of the inhabitants of that city in the summer-time.
From this place he sent to the Paris Salon of 1857 his " Children of the Sea " and " Evening
on the Shore," which at once attracted attention to his name. In 1861 he sent five pictures to
the Salon, and in 1863 three more, while in 1862 he had appeared at the International Exhi-
bition at Brompton (London) with four pictures, among them " The Shipwrecked,*" a work
that called forth the highest commendation. " His ' Shipwrecked,' " said Francis Turner Pal-
grave, " is a very impressive work, imagined with great solemnity and a total absence of sen-
timentalism or over-point. The poetry of the scene lies in the long, dark line of figures
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 317
against the sky; in the homely tenderness with which the sailors are bearing their cortiTade;
and the unaffected truth of the lesser details. It is genuine art which could venture thus on
the gradual indifference to the catastrophe displayed by the followers of the sad procession,
and represents the desolate wreck, not surrounded by stormy waves, but gently rocked on
the unpitying and unconscious sea, in the last undulations of the tempest." And Tom Tay-
lor, in his hand-book to the Exhibition, thus speaks of the same picture, and of the artist's
work in general : " The most impressive picture in the Dutch collection, and one of the most
impressive in the whole Exhibition, is J. Israels' ' Shipwrecked.' Through the twilight of a
stormy day, which tells its tale in the ragged gray and watery blue of the heavy sky and the
dirty surf that still breaks heavily along the shore, a sorrowful procession winds up from the
beach over the low sand hills where the bent grass waves in the cold wind. It is headed by a
stupefied mother leading an orphan in either hand. Behind are two fishermen, bearing ten-
derly and reverently the body of the drowned hnsband and father. The one who supports
the head gazes in the face with wistful sadness. Other fishermen and their wives follow. In
the offing is the boat, aground in the broken water. This sad story is painted as if with a
brush steejped in gloom. It is toned throughout to the same mournful key: in the low
leaden sky; the sullen plunge of the cruel sea; the cold wind that whistles through the bent,
no less than in the stupor of desolation and bereavement on the woman's face and the silent,
neighborly sorro-w of the rough fishermen. In fact, this picture is an excellent illustration
of imagination, taking Coleridge's definition of it, as ' the faculty that draws all things to
one.' As if to show his power of sounding the key-note of calm and sunshine, as well as that
of storm and sorrow, the same painter, in his ' Cradle,' has painted the edge of a summer sea,
with the innocent little wavelets lipping the sand under the serenest of skies, and in the shal-
low water, a pretty Scheveningen girl with a younger sister washing the family cradle."
Although his j)ictures exhibited at Brompton had made him pleasantly known in Eng-
land, it would appear from the biographical notices of Israels that he did not personally visit
that country until 1875, thirteen years later, when he crossed the Channel and exhibited at
Burlington House "Waiting for the Herring-Boats" and "Returning from the Fields."
Since that time, secure of reputation and employment, he has remained in Holland, working
with extraordinary industry both in oils and water-color, happy in seeing his own triumphs
repeated in those of his son Isaac, who works, however, in a different field.
The pictures of Israels that we reproduce, " The Sewing-School at Katwyk," "A Village
3iS
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
Interior," aud '• Folding Slieep by Moonlight," belong to the more cheerful side of the artist's
talent, and, it may be thought, show him in a less characteristic view than his reputation
would lead us to expect. But besides that the melancholy sentiment of too many of his j)ic-
tures is become a little Avearisome, it is but fair that we shoiild show the other side, since, in
truth, he is as successful in one as in the other. " The Sewing-School " is a sunny, peaceful
scene, belonging to the same family with the pictures by Walther Firle and Glaus Meyer
that we have already described. There are the same docile, well-trained children, the same
homely but comfortable surroundings, the same steady, good-natured, motherly old woman
"FOLDING SHEEP BY MOONLIGHT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY JOSEF ISRAELS.
presiding over her flock: these things we can all enjoy, and artists take pleasure in the sim-
ple, direct painting and the well-rendered atmospheric effect of the whole. The " Village In-
terior " belongs to a class of subjects where Israels shows the influence of Rembrandt, the
light softly diffused through the low-studded room, and bringing here one point and there
another out of the gloom. It must be said that Israels is not alone among his countrymen
in his liking for these low-toned effects : the followers and contemporaries of Rembrandt set
a fashion that has been widely followed, and P. von der Velden, H. Valkenburg, G. Henker,
Artz, Kever and many another have all produced very successful work in which this effect is
the main thing sought. Israels, however, excels them all in his management of light, and in
the power to lift the scene both above the level of mere execution and that of a commonplace
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 319
rendering of the incidents of daily life. If lie does, not seldom, give a melanclioly or senti-
mental turn to his subject, we really have nothing to do but to accept it or — reject it, if we
will, and if we prefer cheerful subjects, seek them otit where they may be found. But surely
the gentle melancholy of Israel's subjects can harm no one, since it is not forced ; it is nature
to the artist, and it grows naturally out of one side of the life he saw about him. How that
life may differently affect different people, had once a striking proof. In the summer of
1883, we had been one day at Amsterdam at the Exposition Universelle, and had seen there
the picture by Israels called " The Struggle for Life," representing a fisherman with his trou-
sers rolled up to the knees, Avading in the water near the shore and pushing his scoop-net
before Mm for bait. It was perhax)s the title that helped give a melancholy twist to the ex-
pression of the picture, but there was no doubt something in the picture itself that made us
think the man's lot a hard one, Just as Millet's peasants, no matter what simi)le, every-day
thing they may be doing, make a somewhat saddening impression upon the mind of the spec-
tator. But the next day, being at Zaandam, the strip of shore that the people of Haarlem
affect as a watering-place, we were taking a stretch along the delightful sands — what a place
Holland is for the man who loves walking! — we came upon Israels' man — or another — inly-
ing the same task along the shore. The sun shone brightly, the air was clear and sweet, and
the waves broke softly on the sands while we stopped for a moment to watch our fisherman
at his work. All was there Just as Israels had painted it: the rough clothes, the sunburned
face, the hard features, the toilsome occupation — but how different the expression of the
man ! He was neither depressed nor gay ; he Avas bent upon his work, but it seemed work
that pleased him ; and for all that I could see, he was as much at one with the landscape as
we felt ourself to be on that sunny morning. Seeing us stop in our walk to pick uj) some of
the shells with which the shore was plentifully strewn— small shells, for the most part, but
very prettily colored— he came out of the water, laid down his net, and going to his coat that
he had left high up on the shore, he pulled a handsome shell out of the pocket, and offered it
to us to look at, and, no doubt, to buy, if we would. And we were glad, as it happened to
be a handsome specimen, to add it to our own find, and to have the chance the bargain gave
to chat a bit with this " struggle-for-lifer," as the French slang of to-day has it. It was inevi-
table that the contrast should force itself upon us between the actual man as we had seen
him and the man as he stood in Israels' picture. All is, that there are as many sides to
everything in human life as there are human beings who regard it; and nothing really is ;
320
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
but all is, as it seems to him who looks at it. The little sketch " Foldiug Sheep by Moon-
light " reminds us of Millet, whose pictures, no doubt, had much to do with turning the talent
of Israels from the barren painting of subjects dead and gone, to the illustration of the lives
and labors of the peasant-folk and fisher -folk of his native country. But the quality of his
sentiment is very different from that of Millet. It is far less robust and uncompromising,
and where the Frenchman inspires us with active sympathy for poverty cheerfully borne,
"A VILLAGE INTERIOR."
FROM THE PAINTING BY JOSEF ISRAELS
and uncomplaining labor, making us courageously ashamed to rebel against our own lot, the
pictures of Israels that deal with such subjects are rather apt to waste our sympathy in an-
swering tears and sighs. Mr. William Ernest Henley, in his notes on some of the pictures of
Israels (in the " Catalogue of the French and Dutch Pictures in the Loan Collection at Edin-
burgh in 1886"), describes a picture called "For These and All Thy Mercies:" an old woman
and her son seated at a table, with a dish of potatoes between them — a cheerful subject
enough, one would think, but which, he says, must be wTongly named, because both mother
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 321
and son are crushed with grief ! It is curions to reflect, how fond the Northern people are of
such subjects: the Germans, the Dutch, the English! You may go through the French
Salon and perhaps not find one such subject painted by a Frenchman. The pictures will
abound with bloody, cruel, ferocious subjects — suited to the cannibal market — but not pity-
ful, tearful, melting, maudlin themes. The nearest the French have come to this was in the
hysterical years that followed the Franco-Prussian War, but that was an exception that
proved the rule, and they have pretty well laughed themselves out of that mood. The Eng-
lish, however, are never tired of weeping and condoling, and there can be no doubt that one
reason for Israels' success in England has been the profusion with which he has ministered to
this national love of pathetic subjects. A very clever painter, recently dead, Mr. Frank HoU,
ran Israels very hard in this direction. His " The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away " —
a bereaved husband and his children, English gentlefolk, standing aboiit the table with no
longer a mother and wife to preside — had a great popularity in England, and even here,
when shown in 1876 at our Centennial, was always the centre of a crowd. In France it would
hardly have attracted a second notice.
Our little sketch " Folding Sheep " is, however, cheerful enough. The composition is
agreeable, the long line of the sheep, repeated in the hurdles, and in the trees that fringe the
horizon, with the level clouds — all these horizontal lines are contrasted with the upright lines
of the building, and the erect figure of the little girl, half bravely, half timidly holding back
the door for the sheep to enter.
Anton Mauve was born at Zaandam in 1838, and died only a year ago, when, as it
seemed, he was in the fuhiess of his powers, and just as he had conquered a wide place for
himself in countries far removed from his native Holland. To-day in America his name is
almost as well known as that of Theodore Rousseau or of Troyon, to whom, indeed, he has
often been compared, though vdth no more reason than goes to such comparisons in general.
Mauve was a pupil of a little-known painter, Pieter Frederik van Os, of Haarlem, born in
1808 and still living, we believe. A picture of his was in the Exhibition at Amsterdam in
1883, " Horses before the Inn-door." Zaandam is to Haarlem what Scheveningen is to the
Hague, or Katwyk to Leyden: these Dutch towns, delightful in themselves, are made still
more pleasant to live in by these seaside resorts, easily accessible by rail-cars, omnibuses,
tram-ways or on foot; fishing-villages, all of them, but thronged the summer through by
town people who come to sit or walk upon the beach, to listen to the music of the casino
Vol. II.— 21 * *
322 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
band, or to dine at the restaurants, and return to town as easily as tliey came. Zaandam —
known among other things as the place where Peter the Great lived when he undertook to
learn ship-building, his rude cabin still shown there, saved from tumbling to ruin by the
late Queen of Holland, a Russian princess by birth — ^Zaandam is in itself, perhaps, hardly a
place where one would look for an artist to be born ; but once born, he could not have a pret-
tier place to be bred in, and as soon as the time came for him to try his hand at learning,
Haarlem would be found close by with its riches of picturesqueness and its treasure-hoase of
pictures by Franz Hals, while, since no place in Holland is much more than a lialf day from
any other place in the little kingdom, the artist would find all that he would need for inspi-
ration in the Hague and in Amsterdam. To most of us, accustomed to the vast distances of
America and to the inconveniences of travel, the smallness of Holland, and the delightful
ease (to say nothing of the cheapness) with which one can move about, gives the visitor a
most amusing surjDrise. " Well, Mr. Landlord," we said, after a week at the Hague, " we are
thinking of going to Leyden. How do we get there, and how long will it take ? " " There is
no need, sir, to think much about it : you can take the cars at almost any time and be in Ley-
den in fifteen minutes." And as almost every town in Holland has something in it — art, or
architecture, or picturesqueness — worth seeing, this projjinquity and accessibility make the
country a rich mine to the traveller and to the artist. Mauve Avould not, of course, stay at
y^aandam ; the Hague with its rich picture-gallery — which we are glad to know is not to be
swallowed up in the new Ryks museum at Amsterdam — would draw him even more strongly
than Haarlem, for, besides the pictures there, he would find himself in the company of artists:
Mesdag and his accomplished wife, Israels, James and William Maris, Artz, ISTeuhnys, Blom-
Tners (not at the Hague, but close by, at Scheveningen) and Bosboom — the whole galaxy of
Dutch stars, twinkling or shining in that verdant heaven of the Hague. In this galaxy.
Mauve is no doubt one of the chief stars. There is no reason in comparing him Avith Troyon.
Beyond the fact that he often paints cow^s, there is nothing he has in connnon with the
French master; he neither treats his subject in the same pictorial spirit, nor does his tech-
nique at all resemble his. He often works in water-color, and by far the greater number of
his works seen in this country are in that medium. The picture that we give of Mauve,
" Bringing in the Boat " is a fine example of his early work ; more carefully, solidly painted
than much of his later performance, and with a warmer, more golden tone than we are accus-
tomed to see from his hand. He is not often found painting pure landscape ; he likes simple
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
323
iLuman incident, or else he makes his landscape a setting for his cows or horses ; though the
cow is the animal he likes best next to man. Almost all the landscapes we have seen from
the hand of Mauve are inland — as inland as one can be in Holland, where the sound or -the
smeU of the sea is never entirely absent ; but the i^icture we give is an exception to this re-
mark, and we remember another, where horses are harnessed to carts that men are filling with
sand from the seashore. But those we know best are scenes of wood-cutting, the logs piled
up on either side, ready for carting; or of hedging and ditching; or of fields covered with
snow and the shepherd painfully driving his huddled flock homeward along the sloppy road;
wm-.
.■.«;^^
.4
"BRINGING IN THE BOAT."
FROM THE PICTURE BY ANTON MAUVE, BELONGING TO MESSRS. COTTIER & CO
or girls pasturing their cows, walking by the side of their charge — pastorals of the simplest
motive, and dependent wholly for their interest upon the artist's treatment. That treatment
is as pure and simple as the subjects themselves : his range of color is small, yet he is skilful
to avoid monotony, and his pictures, seen in numbers together, have the charm of variety. At
the time of his death his pictures had begun to be much sought for, and we were fortunate in
the fact that, thanks to Mr. Cottier's initiative, so many of them, and such fine ones, were
already in this country.
Bernardus Johannes BLOAtMERS was born at the Hague in 1845, and was educated
there at the Academy. Like all this company of artists, his life has been uneventful; he has
324 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
continued to live and to Avork where he was born, and, indeed, when we are in Holland we
cannot imagine to ourselves any reason why one who has had the good luck to be born there,
should ever wish to leave it. England, France, Italy and Holland, it would seem, have in
them a supplj^ sufficient of all that makes life worth living. Blommers, as will be seen by
our picture, " The Departure of the Fishing-boat," has something in common with Israels, but
in general he rather points to the inflaence of the older Diitch masters, to whom Israels owes
his style of painting, while in his choice of subject he may have been affected by the example
of Millet. As a painter, Blommers is certainly more accomplished than Israels, who is often
felt to be deficient in technical qualities ; this shows more plainly when he is brought to close
quarters with the precision and surety of hand of the Frenchmen. Blommers, on the other
hand, is, without being more Academic than Israels, less wilful and more certain of himself.
At the same time his |)ictures are less interesting than those of Israels, similar as are the sub-
jects of the two men, for Blommers rarely, if ever, escapes from the hard facts, or seems
moved by any desire to do more than paint. This is, of^course, the first duty of an artist, but
the world at large is always more interested in an artist who can both paint and play the
13oet at the same time.
David Adolphe Constant Artz was born at the Hague in 1837, and after studying at
the Academy at Amsterdam, went to Paris, where he studied for eight years under various
artists, and then returned to the Hague, where he lives and works at present. We are told
that he considers himself a pupil of Israels, although he has never been under that artist's
direction, nor worked in his studio. But it is like enough he may have taken Israels as a
model, and looked for his subjects in the same general direction. He has far less feeling and
sentiment than Israels, and he is more bent on telling a story. Where Israels is content with
merely recording a situation, simplifying it to the last point — a secret learned of the old
Dutchmen — and setting it in as near an approach to the magically lighted gloom of those
same older men as he can compass, Artz is thinking of how best to make himself understood
by the ordinary spectator, how best to please those who are content to find in a picture a
simple story clearly told. The picture we copy, " The Visit to Grandfather," is a companion
to his " Visit to Grandmother," exhibited at Amsterdam in 1883, and is little more than a
variant on that composition.
Johannes Bosboom, born at the Hague in 1817, learned his art of Jacobus Van Brie, a
Pntch artist who had studied with his brother, Matthias Van Brie, who, in his turn, had been
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ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
325
taught in Paris in the school of Vien. Bosboom was also, for a time, in the studio of Girodet,
and thus his art should by rights have some flavor of its French descent, but in fact nothing
of the sort is to be detected in it. His early work may very likely have shown something
more akin to the ostentatious science of Granet, or the cold correctness of Peter Neefs, but he
"the visit to grandfather."
FROM THE PICTURE BY DAVID ARTZ
I
long since left such things behind him if ever he were guilty of them, and submitted himself
to the influences that had helped form his great predecessors Rembrandt and Pieter de
Hoogh. His pictures deal with architecture only, and only with interiors, in the painting of
which he has no equal at the present day. Nor, within the limits he has chosen, has any
artist ever approached him in the management of light. His pictures stand alone, and though
it is impossible, since Rembrandt has once lived, that any one should dispute his sovereignty
o
26 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
on his own ground, yet it is mncli that an artist should be able to stand by Rembrandt's side
and look in his face, and not be shamed. And this it may fairly be said that Bosboom can
do. His magic brush, when he wills it, and he and life are perfectly in tune — for he is not
always equal to himself — can transfuse the dusky gloom of these old Dutch churches with
soft splendor, filling the air with motes of floating gold, touching with magic fingers the
soaring arches of the groined roof, stealing from pier to pier, or brushing silently as with
angel wings the broad fields of whitened wall, that only such a hand as his could redeem
from vulgarity. It is no common power that can so deal with such material, for nowhere in
Europe are the churches so hopelessly bare, dismantled and forbidding as they are in Hol-
land, and only a man ^^ith a poet's eye and mind could restore them to us, as Bosboom does,
recalling the day when religion went hand in hand with art. Tlie picture that we give shows
only so much of this artist as can be translated into black and white. He is not a colorist,
but his tone is masterly, and his power to get the effect of color out of these rich browns and
golden bufi's and blacks is extraordinary: etching alone can come near to a translation of
Bosboom at his best.
Hendrik Wilhelm Mesdag was born at Groningen in 1831, where Israels, as we have
seen, was born seven years earlier. However soon Mesdag may have felt drawn to art, he did
not, Mr. Henley tells us, begin to paint iintil he was thirty-five. He studied at Brussels
under Willem Roelop ; and also under Alma Tadema, and he made such good progress that
four years after he had begun to paint, he received a medal at the Salon, where he exhibited
as a pupil of Alma Tadema, showing two pictures, " The Breakers of the North Sea," and "A
Winter's Day at Scheveningen." Eight years after, at the Exposition Universelle at Paris, he
received a third-class medal, and after a gold medal at the Hague in 1880, he attained to
first honors at the Salon of 1887 with his " Setting Sun." Although these are real distinc-
tions and well earned, it is nevertheless true that Mesdag's place among the Dutch artists is
not with the first: he owes something to his social position — his means are independent and
he lives very handsomely at the Hague — and also something to his own strong character and
helpful disposition: he is a leader in the art-circle at the Hague, and exerts a healthful influ-
ence on the younger men about him. His art deals almost exclusively with the sea and the
life of the people who live by it: the sailors and fisherfolk whose ways he has ample oppor-
tunity to study in the pleasantly accessible sea-side villages of the Dutch coast, especially that
of Scheveningen, which is only a half hour's ride from the Hague by tram-way, or a delight-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
327
ful walk if one prefers it. The two pictures by Mesdag which we copy give a sufficient idea
of his style: direct and manly, avoiding tricks, and if without the romantic charm of Corot
tr--''^ - — *^f * -^•-" • —
"INTERIOR OF A DUTCH CHURCH."
FROM THE PICTURE BY JOHANNES BOSBOOM,
or Diaz, or even so much of sentiment as is to be found in James Maris or Anton Mauve, yet
satisfies the liking we all have for truthful rendering of the every-day aspects of nature.
32S ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
" On the Ebb " is a quiet scene of sea-sliore life, in which figures play a more important
part than is usual iu Mesdag's pictures. The tide is going out, and the folks mast \Yait for
its coming back before they can resume their work. So they sit on the shore and while
away the time in simple fashion — the elders in chat, and the younger ones in quiet play ; an
idling time, which is iu strong contrast to what we shall see Avhen the ocean, retixrning from
its " dinner -hour," shall set to work again, and whistle-up all hands to work with it. The
other illustration is a reproduction from a sketch by Zilcken after a painting by Mesdag,
and is taken from the catalogue already referred to of the Loan Exhibition of French and
Dutch pictures exhibited at Edinburgh in 1886. Mr. Zilcken's rendering is very clever, and
conveys as much of Mesdag's picture as can be given iu black and white, but the medium is
hardly fair either to the artist or to the scene, since the whole interest of Mesdag's painting
lies in the truthfulness Avith which he renders the color as well as the movement of the water
and' the beaut j' of the sky, and these can only be dimly suggested in such a drawing as this.
The earth and the sky, the water and the sky : these are the grand, the simj^le, but the ever-
varying elements the Dutch landscape-painter has to deal with. There are no mountains nor
hills, no trees to speak of, no picturesque buildings — although, as we have seen in the case
of Bosboom, an artist determined on the quest can wrest picturesqueness even out of the lean
and bloodless interiors of the Dutch churches, just as Hobbema or Tina Blau (see ante, p. 291)
can make charming an avenue of trees as featureless as bean-poles. In the richly varied use
the Dutch painters have made of the slender material nature has provided for them — for slen-
der it ai^pears to English, German and American eyes — the same power is shown, the power
to make much out of seeming little, that is shown in all things Dutch. It used to be the
sport of waggish spirits or of spleeny satirists, to ridicule Dutch economy, and to taunt them
with the stinginess of nature. But tliere is no nation that might not be shamed by the com-
parison of its use of its opportunities, Avith the use the Dutch have made of theirs, and, in fact,
the satire of Andrew Marvell, so often quoted for its Avit, is tlie highest compliment to the in
genuity, the energy and the perseverance of the Dutch in building-up an empire — for such it
once was, and such it may be again — out of the most unpromising— one might, in fact, say
the most hopeless —materials. And as they have made themselves a sea-coast — strong to resist
the most threatening inroads of the ocean — first Avith stones, laboriously brought from far-
away, since one may skirt all Holland round, and not pick up a pebble big enough to throw
at a sand-piper; as they have laced their country Avith a net-\vork of canals to piece-out Na-
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
329
ture's parsimony in denying them rivers ; as they have turned thousands of acres of mwass
and quicksand into fertile and wholesome meadow-land ; so with little enough, as might have
been thought, to go upon, they have put themselves at the head of the world in many of the
"dutch fishing-boats."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILHELM MESDAG.
arts and sciences, and in painting have disputed tlie palm with Italy herself. Nay, in Italy,
where the fame of her scenery might reasonably have led us to expect it, there has been no
great landscape-painting, at any time, nor any really good painter of marines. Even in Venice,
where far richer material may be found than in Holland, no native artist has risen to paint
330 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
her beauties; she owes the report to strangers: to the French, Ziem; the Spanish, Kico;
and the Americans, Whistler, Blum and Bunce. But Holland has, from far-away times
doAvn to the present, found interpreters of her charms in plenty among her own children, and
it will be remarked that while Holland offers few attractions for living, compared with Paris
or London, her artists, as a rule, prefer to live and work at home. It must be noticed, too,
that since the rise of the artists with whom this chapter is mainly concerned, Holland has
come into fashion, and Dutch landscape, Dutch fisherfolk and sailors, Dutch interiors, are
met with in exhibitions the world over, painted by English, French, German and American
artists, many of whom make Holland a regular camping-ground nowadays, year after year.
Before leaving Mesdag, it seems but right to say a word about Madame Mesdag, who is
an excellent artist, and in the opinion of some good judges, a better painter than her hus-
band. When, a few years ago, in company with Mr. William M. Chase, we called upon Mes-
dag at his hoixse in the Hague, in response to an invitation received a day or two before at
the Exhibition of the AVater-Color Society, where we haji been introduced to him, we were
unfortunate in not finding him at home, but we were well received by Madame Mesdag, who
showed us the studio and the house itself, rich in modern Dutch pictures and in French
pictures of the Romantic school. There Avere several pictures in the studio by the lady her-
self, one on the easel still unfinished, which gave a high idea of her talent in dealing with
subjects similar to those painted by her husband. Madame Mesdag is distinguished also for
her skill in painting flowers.
We have now to speak of a remarkable family of artists who, in the persons of two of its
members at least, stand at the head of the modern school of Dutch painters. These are the
brothers Maris : Jacobus or James, Wilhelm, and Matthys, or Matthew. They were the sons
of a printer who had also some skill as a painter, and allowed his sons to have their own
way; so they all took to painting, or, at least, have all become painters. Yet one who knows
them well, tells the writer that none of the three brothers wanted to be a painter ; they would
rather be carpenters or tailors! "They have not," he says, "the least desire for fame, but
work to get bread for their children." This may be true on one side, but it is impossible it
should be what the French call " the true truth." As to one of them, Matthew, who in the
j udgment of many, is the most interesting and purely poetical, not only of his family but of
all the Dutch group, he has, unless we mistake, no wife nor family to get bread for. How-
ever, all that is essential in the statement is no doubt consistent with a general observation,
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 331
that the Dutch painters — those of the so-called " Hague " circle — do really take life and 'their
art very easily, and might, like many distinguished artists before them, have been successful
in any trade or profession they had chosen to take up.
The eldest of the three brothers is Jacobus, or, as he is always called out of Holland,
James. He was born at the Hague in 1837, and after a short time spent in the Academy
there, went to Antwerp, where he studied at the Academy under De Keyser and Von Lerius.
From Antwerp he went to Paris and entered the studio of Edouard Hebert, one of the pupils
of Thomas Couture. In Paris, he first became acquainted with the art of Corot, Rousseau
and Daubigny, with the rest of that circle of innovators, from whom he and the artists of the
Hague group were to learn so much and receive so powerful an influence, while at the same
time keeping their own individuality untouched, and in their turn influencing their own gen-
eration. Besides working under Hebert, James Maris studied at the Beaux- Arts for four
years from 1865 to 1869. He first exhibited at the Salon of 1866, where he appears as
Jacques Maris and as a pupil of M. Hebert. His picture was "A Little Italian Girl,"' proba-
bly nothing more than a study from the professional model. In the catalogue of 1867 we do
not find his name. In that of 1868 he appears, still as Hebert's pupil, with a " Potato Gather-
ing," and a " Borders of the Rhine, HoUande." The former of these two subjects would seem to
point to the influence of Jean-Frangois Millet upon our artist, and the same may be said of the
subjects of the pictures sent to the Salon of 1869, "A Woman Knitting," and "A Sick Child."
But " after this," says Mr. Henley, " with occasional lapses into figure-painting, he seems
to have devoted himself to landscape," and the following years show a succession of pictures
with subjects dravm from the scenery of his native Holland. The public was to be congratu-
lated on the change: it was plainly one dictated by the individuality of the artist; he had
come, there could be no doubt of it, to his own. His figure-subjects had no particular reason
for being; they were not, like those of Millet, the embodiments of his own experience or the
expressions of his own sympathies; and though the mere painting may have been good
enough to please people who care more for the execution of a picture than for the contents,
those who looked for something more in subjects where men and women are the actors, than
if only rocks and trees were the theme, could not be satisfied vnth these lifeless figures.
But it was natural enough to begin with figure-painting, since not only do such subjects in-
terest the general public more than landscape, but they call, of course, for a far higher order
of talent, and an artist's pride is more gratified with victories gained in that field. Yet
332
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
James Maris did wisely to follow his real inclination and the bent of his talent, as his suc-
cess as a landscape-painter proves. Even while Corot and Rousseau were alive, he stood hi^h
>^W^
I
"A QUIET CORNER."
FROM THE PICTURE BY WILLIAM MARIS, BELONGING TO MESSRS. COTTIER & CO.
in the ranks of those who deal directly with what is called nature, and now that they are
gone, there is no one to dispute his right to be named among the first of their successors.
"the tow-path (HOLLAND).'
FROM THE PICTURE BY JAMES MARIS
i
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 333
He has not the poetry of Corot; the spark of the divine flame that made him of Ville d'Avray
a light and a joy to his generation is not in James Maris, but tlien it is to be remembered
how rare it is to find that spark in more than one artist, or poet, or actor, in a generation. It
was in Turner, it was in Shelley, it was in Rachel, and it was in Corot; to expect to find it so
soon again in another artist, would be rash. But if the gods have not made James Maris
poetical, they have made him honest, and he is loyal to the nature that he loves, the vision of
nature as she reveals herself in his native Holland. In the picture we copy, and which Mr.
I. T. Williams, to whom we are already indebted for the examples of Michel and Ribot, pub-
lished in our first volume, has most obligingly loaned us, all the best qualities of the artist
are shown, some of them obsciired, as must always be the case in the attempt to render color-
values in black and white. Mr. Williams owns another picture by James Maris, " Plough-
ing," which only its size prevents our reproducing here. It is less a pure landscape than the
present one, since the horses and the laborers take up a large part of the composition, but,
after all, they do but emphasize the large and tranqiiil landscape, and, as it were, put a soul
into it. In the picture we present, it is rather the sky than the earth that is in the artist's
mind in selecting or creating his subject, and the sky is James Maris' just domain. " No
artist," says Mr. Henley, " excels him in the painting of clouds." He is compared to Consta-
ble, but while it is likely enough that the English painter may have inspired him, and in his
visits to London he had freqent opportunity to study his pictnres, yet it was in Holland, the
land of clouds, that he found a more living and a truer inspiration than could have been
gained from any painter.
William Maris, the youngest of the three brothers, was born at the Hague in 1844.
He studied with his father and, as we are told, had no other instructor. He has remained at
home, and still continues to paint in the city where he was born. He is called " Maris the
Silvery," from the delicate, sun-lit sweetness of his pictures, with their twinkling trees, their
level pastures, their slow streams creeping lazily between the rushes : their cattle asleep, or
standing knee-deep in the cool water, or indolently pulling at the branches of the willows
that shelter them from the heat. He loves to paint cattle, as does Anton Mauve, and the two
pictures that we present give as good a report of him as we have been able to find. For the
larger one we are indebted to Mr. James S. Inglis, of the firm of Cottier & Co. The smaller
one is from an etching by William Hole, made for the catalogue of French and Dutch pic-
tures already referred to.
334
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
The tMrd of these brothers, Matthew Mabis, is to many persons the most interesting of
them all, and certainly his talent lies altogether apart from theirs, in a region consecrated to
poetry and dream. He is two years younger than his brother James, having been bom at the
Hague in 1839. Like James, he went first to Antwerp and studied there at the Academy, and
thence to Paris, where he followed his brother's course under Edouard Hebert and at the
Beaux-Arts. Like James, too, he went to London, but here the likeness in their story
ceases ; for while the elder brother returned to Holland and threw in his fortunes with his
fellow-artists at home, Matthew has continued to live in London, and will in all likelihood
"cows IN MEADOW."
FROM THE PAINTING BY WILLIAM MARIS.
never leave that city. As for his field of work, it would be impossible to define it : he has
painted landscapes, genre, still-life, portraits and decoration, but it may be said that all he
paints is informed by the sj)irit of romance, sometimes intimate and human in its sympathies,
but oftener beckoning us to a land of magic and mystery, where we wander gladly and with-
out the wish to know more than that we are glad. ]\Ir. Henley finds in INLitthew Maris a
painter to match Heine in his j^oetry, but he seems to us to suggest rather Coleridge in his
" Christabel " or " Genevieve," and William Blake in his " Songs of Innocence and Experi-
ence." But though he may recall the evanescent tremulous charm of such poetry as this, he
recalls no other painter. In his best work he stands alone, and this as a painter, for it is on
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
535
painting that he seems to us intent, and it is the beauty of his painting, the loveliness of his
coloring, the richness of his tones, that make the charm of his pictures, and breed meaning
or suggestion to the spectator's mind often with little more help from the artist than we find
"he is coming."
FROM THE PICTURE BY MATTHEW MARIS.
in the forms of clouds or in the coals on our hearth. This is not the case with all his pic-
tures, but it is with all those that essentially express him, and it is partly so with the picture
" He is Coming," which we copy from Zilcken's lovely etching originally published in Mr
.^,6 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
00
Henley's catalogue. This pretty maiden, turning from lier spinning-wheel in happy expecta-
tion as she hears her lover's step, certainly belongs to the land of fairy-tales, and not to this
dull, work-a-day world. But in Matthew Maris' picture the beauty of the painting, the
richness of the blended tones, are so in accord with the sentiment of the figure that we think
of it only as a whole, and gladly accept it as such.
From these painters of poetry the passage to triflers like Kaemmerer or dealers in popular
genre like Van Haanen and Henriette Ronner is somewhat of a descent.
Fri:derik Hendeik Kaemmeeee was born at the Hague, so far as we can discover, and,
like the I'est, after a few home-lessons went to Paris to complete his studies in an ampler
field and with richer opportunities. He entered the atelier of Gerome, and in time returned
to the Hague, where, we believe, he has since continued to live. He is one of the fortunate or
unfortunate men, as we choose to look at it, who has painted one picture that has become so
widely popular, and so well known, that it has set the standard by which everything he may
paint hereafter is sure to be judged; and the chances are one in a hundred that any new
picture will be allowed the equal of the first one. Kaemmerer's first picture was the " Wed-
ding under the Directory," and this for a time kept the anecdote-loving half of the town in a
fever of delight over what they had got, and in a glow of expectation for blessings that might
be to come. And when the second came, in what may be called an entirely natural sequence,
"A Baptism under the Directory," following the marriage in due time, it must be allowed
that the public satisfaction was only so mnch cooled as might have been expected. If we had
not been given anything entirely new, we had at least been favored with a little more of the
delightful old! The place was the same, the people were the same, and the slight addition to
the number was merely calculated to whet curiosity. The two pictures were well calculated
to give pleasure to the general public: the spice of ancedote, the flavor of history, the sur-
prise of the costumes— not so familiar to us then as now— the skill with which the story, such
as it was, was told, the dexterity of the execution— all these, made up a delightful tid-bit for
the lover of persiflage and gossip in painting, and secured an audience for anything that the
artist might have to offer next. But that first success— counting the two pictures as one-
has never been repeated. The other example we give, " The Dispute," has many excellent
qualities— it has clear story-telling, force in execution, and displays more than common skill
in drawing, but there is nothing beneath the surface and nothing in what appears, we will
not say to fascinate, but even to give pleasure. There is no such appeal to the domesticities,
I
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
in
to the merely liuman syinj)athies, as we find in the " Wedding '' and the " Baptism," while
there was much to repel the lover of " pleasing " xjictnres in this bloody quarrel in a public
Vol. II.— 22
"THE COBBLER'S SHOP."
FROM THE PICTURE BY CECIL VON HAANEN
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
garden over a question des dames. Since then, Kaemmerer has been often in the public eye
with pictures which recall that trick of the makers of mantel-i^iece ornaments who design
groups that can either be sold in their entirety, or can be taken apart and the single figure
sold separately. Many of the single figures that are found in the dealers' shops with Kaem-
"THE SEWING-SCHOOL."
FROM THE PICTURE BY HENRIETTE RONNER.
merer's name seem to be the materials of which his first successful groups were composed, or
at all events to be merely the same personages in different attitudes. His present success,
such as it is, is really one of reminiscent gratitude, so to speak: people who liked his "Wed-
ding " and his " Bajitism " are glad to have, if they can, something to remind them of what
they once enjoyed so much.
Cecil Von Haanen, so far as we can learn, though he came of a Dutch family, was
1
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 339
born in Vienna. The picture we give of his " The Cobblers' Shop " is one of many clever
sketches he has made of every-day life in Venice— recording sights and scenes that have
only the cleverness of the artist who records them to thank for the lease of life thus given
them. Venice has lilled a hundred sketch-books with incidents of no more value than this,
but taken in sum they crowd the mind with a busy, cheerful picture— a picture signed by so
many names as almost to confound the memory, and mingle the honors due to Passini, Von
Blaas, Blum, Von Haanen and the rest in one delightful anticipation, or one equally happy
backward look upon life in the fairy city by the sea.
Madame Henriette Ronner, born Knip, is a native of Amsterdam, and studied her art
with her father. She has proved herself a good painter, finding her subjects in the same
world of animals where so many artists of our day delight to live, and give delight to a
wide and ever-growing circle. Cats and dogs are Madame Ronner's pets, and she likes to
paint them, either as here in " The Sewing-School," simulating, or at least suggesting, their
human relations, or engaged in some employment that associates them with " their betters."
Madame Ronner, as an artist, is well known here, where many of her pictures have been
bought.
SCANDINAVIAN ART.
NORWAY AND SWEDEN, WITH DENMARK.
IF the art pi'odaced in the two divisions of the great Northern peninsula has any individ-
ual interest, it arises almost entirely from the fact that the artists as a rule find their
subjects in the domestic life, tlie history, and the scenery of their own country; for, so
far as technical qualities are concerned, they have in almost every case acquired their skill in
foreign schools — chiefly in those of Prance and Germany. The painters of Norway have for
the most ]part studied in Germany or at liome, and some of the principal ones, such as Hans
Gude, Adolphe Tidemand, and Ludwig Mxmthe, are often counted among the Germans. The
Swedish artists, on the other hand, while in many cases they have gone to Diisseldorf after
finishing their preparatory studies at the Academy at Stockholm, have afterward made their
way to Paris, and put themselves definitely under French instruction. This was the case
340 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
with Alfred Walilberg, Hugo Sulmson, and Auguste Hagborg, to name only a few examples.
Others, not a few, have remained constant to their native country and are content to owe all
they have and are to her. Out of eighty-one works by Swedish artists in the Exposition
Universelle of 1889, thirty-three were by artists who had studied in Paris under French mas-
ters. Out of seventy Norwegian artists who exhibited, onlj^ seven — according to the official
catalogue — had studied out of Norway. But it is natural that this should be the case. Both
Norway and Sweden are comparatively j)Oor countries, and they have few advantages to offer
those Avlio are moved by ambition and by a desire to win the great prizes of the world. The
wonder must always be, first of all, that in these bleak and inhospitable climates, removed
from the great centres of European civilization, and outside the stream of travel, the seeds of
art and literature should ever be found to sprout at all ; much less should we wonder that
hopes should arise of a larger growth and a freer blossoming, Avith richer fruitage, if once the
young ]3lants could be transferred to a better soil and a more congenial climate. At all
events, such has been the case thus far ; nor does there s,eem any likelihood that things will
be different in our immediate time. Artists, if they would improve in their art, if they
Avould even bring their talent to the light, need companionship with other artists; and they
need, besides, something more than the mere access to museums, however well provided with
pictures. They must either live in a world wliere art is so abundantly produced as to have
become a necessity of daily life, or if that cannot be, then they iinust, if it were only once in
a while, be brought into contact with some manifestations of art that shall stir them deeply
and excite their enthusiasm. This last is what happi^ened to the artists of Scandinavia —
in which category we may place Denmark along with Sweden and Norway — at the time of
the French Exposition in 1878.
Denmark in art, as perliaps in other things, is, to some extent, an extension merely of
Holland, and ui? to the date of the Exposition her painters had satisfied themselves and their
countrymen by working on the lines laid down by the old Dutch masters, looking at life and
nature through spectacles that had become dull with convention and routine. But 1878 set
the artists of the North in motion. They had sent their j)ictures to Paris, and they must
needs follow them thither, and see how they looked in company with those of the rest of the
world ! Certainly, the comparison was not reassuring ! They found themselves in the pres-
ence of an art, larger, more instinct with life, turning strongly to the light, and eager to wrest
from nature her most intimate secrets — hundreds, no doubt, failing in the attempt, where
1
I
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME. 341
one had a little success. But it was neither the failure nor the success that interested these
new-comers. It was the consciousness that they had to do with an art that was alive, and in-
stinct with ideas native to the time; not an art of the past, galvanized into the semblance of
life.
Among those Danish artists who were inspired by the movement that was going on in
the French studios, the most important name is that of P. S. Kroyer — "the most brilliant, the
most fertile, the best known of Parisians," says M. Hamel. Oi^en-air subjects and interiors,
landscapes in full sunlight, mysterious twilights, artificial lights — he attacks everything with
a rapid certainty of hand which plays with difficulties. He is an astonishing improviser ; he
has a genius for drawing; the pencil is never out of his hands; he notes down a likeness, a
posture, an attitude — almost always a striking one. In two strokes he can create a physiog-
nomy. Among Kroyer's best open-air subjects are " The Beach at Skagen " and " Night-
Fishing," and he has lately added to the distinction earned by his " Soiree at Carlsberg," where
the guests of the evening were really talking, listening, looking on, by his portrait-grouj) of
" The French Art-Commission in Denmark." The purpose of this work was to commemorate
the participation of the French artists in the International Exhibition of the Fine Arts held
at Copenhagen in 1888 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coming to the throne
of Christian IX. and of certain reforms instituted by him. The picture was the result of a
commission given to Kroyer by a wealthy brewer of Denmark, Mr. Jacobson, who has a
great admiration for the French. Mr. Jacobson conceived the idea of an international exhi-
bition, and he not only invited the leading French artists to take part in it, but himself built
a wing to the exposition-building to accommodate their work. Desiring to perpetuate the
memory of the event by a painting, he gave this commission to his countryman, M. Kroyer,
who painted the group of portraits which was exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889.
The principal French artists, Falguiere, Puvis de Chavannes, Roll, Bonnat, and others, are rep-
resented seated or standing round a long table, talking, discussing, consulting; and the artist
has succeeded in making an interesting picture out of what at the best can never be a very
grateful one to an artist. In such a theme too much is imposed on the painter; too little is
left to his own free will. This mention of M. Kroyer and his picture Avill serve to emphasize
the fact of French influence in the art of Denmark, and yet that influence has not been strong
enough to destroy all national feeling nor to make of the Danish painters a race of copyists
and imitators. The laiidscape of Denmark still kee^js its charm for her amateurs of painting,
342 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
as for her people at large; and the manners of their countrymen, the incidents of their
national history, and the creations of their novelists and playwrights tind artists, and good
ones, not a few, to record them. M. Viggo Johansen paints scenes from domestic life, but
while they are strongly marked by native characteristics, they remind us of Munich rather
than of Paris, and indeed we believe Johansen, who hails from Copenhagen, has not
studied in France. M. Julius Paulsen, although known as a landscape-painter and counted
among the best of the new time, has also distinguished himself as a painter of genre subjects
where a vein of sentiment or mystic religious feeling lends a peculiar charm to what in other
hands might prove mere commonj)lace. His " Mary with the Child," a peasant mother sitting
in a rude, unfurnished garret by a bed, with her sleeping child upon her la^j, is full of tender-
ness expressed with the utmost simplicity.
The Academy at Copenhagen was founded by Frederick V., in 17.'56. The Academy at
Stockholm was founded earlier, in 1735. The influences of French art in our time have been
as potent in Sweden as in Denmark : as we have seen, nearly half of the artists exhibiting in
Paris in 1889 had their training there. The first national impulse was given to art in Sweden
by the painter Sandberg and the sculptor Fogelberg. Sandberg iDainted scenes from the his-
tory of the country and from home-life, while Fogelberg drew his subjects from ttie mythol-
ogy of the Eddas. The impulse once given, was followed by other artists, and in spite of the
fact that so many of her j)ainters have been taught in Paris, there remains enough of national
spirit and home-bred influence to found a school with some claim to distinctive character.
Among the artists whose works attracted attention at the Paris Exposition were Richard
Bergli, the most learned, the most sincere, and the most dexterous of fantasists ; Osterlind,
the refined narrator of the " Baptism in Brittany," the charming humorist of " The Tooth-
ache;" Zorn, a water-color "oirtuoso ; Liljefors, who loves Japan; Kreuger, Pauli, Anna
Hirsch, Eva Bonnier, Ekstrom, Nordstrom, and Larsson, whose triptique, "The Renaissance;
The XVIII. Century; Modern Art," decorative panels designed for the gallery of M. Fiirsten-
berg at Gothembourg, might serve for an emblem of this art of Sweden : supple, laughing,
and full of character, amirsing itself with sketches, with rapid notes of tender harmonies it
meets in nature, while waiting for the time when it shall be ripe for more serious things.
Little is known among us of Swedish art, or of Scandinaviar art in general; and even
engravings and photographs of Swedish pictures are difficult to find here. The few pictures
that come to us from these Northern countries, are for the most part painted by artists living
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
343
in France and wlio have liad tlieir training there, and tlie dealers import them with others
from the French market. One o\ two pictures by Hugo Sahnson, an artist born in Stock-
holm and a pupil in Paris of P. C. Comte, have been bought in this country; one of them,
"A Woman Peeling Potatoes," lately owned by Mr. George I. Seney, made a favorable im-
"THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER."
FROM A PAINTING BY AUGUSTE HAGBORG BELONGING TO MESSRS. REICHARD & CO.
pression on our public. Auguste Hagborg, born in Gothembourg, Sweden, lives in Paris,
where, to judge by his style, he certainly had his training. He deals almost exclusively in
his pictures with seaside-folk, and his way of dealing with them recalls sometimes the work
of Haquette and again that of Feyen-Perrin. It is not always so sturdy and downright as
the former, nor is it often so mistakenly refined as that of the painter of "Les Cancalaises."
Yet while he apparently draws his subjects from nature, he seems to avoid showing them to
344 ^RT AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
us just as they are: like the street Arabs and boot-blacks of our own J. G. Brown, his fisher-
folk are too neat and too fiee from the scars and stains of their hard work-a-day world. The
example of Hagborg that Ave copj- is as good an illustration of his manner as could be shown.
It is taken from a picture painted in 1888 for Mr. Reichard, who has obligingly lent it to us
to copy. The subject is nothing: only a fisherman's daughter who has come to sit by the
shore while her little brother sails his toy boat in the shallow water. We may fancy, if we
like, that the girl's abstracted look is due to some absent lover sailing on the seas, but it is
only a bovine exjDression of sentiment at the best, and we cannot feel much interest in it.
The picture, if found pleasing at all, nuist content us as any sunny glance at youth and inno-
cent lives contents us, too busy and too preoccupied with the teasing questions of daily life
to look any cleeper into the matter, except to be glad in the knowledge that youth and inno
cence still manage to keej) a footing in the world.
Baron Thure von Cederstboji is the nephew of Baron Gustav Olaf von Cederstrora.
The two are nearly of an age: Gustav born in 1845 at Stockholm and Thure in 1843 at the set-
tlement of Gut Aryd, in th9 dreary province of Smaland. Both went in youth into the army,
and after a brief service left it for the study of art. Gustav studied at first in Stockholm and
then in Diisseldorf, but after a severe illness which obliged him to return to Sweden, he went
to Paris and continued his training under Meissonier and Bonnat. Then, after a brief visit to
Italy he returned to Paris, where he has since continued to live. Thure, on the other hand,
made his studies wholly in Germany, at Diisseldorf and Weimar, and in Munich, where he
still lives. He is best known by pictures such as the one we engrave — dealing mostly with
monks in the fashion of Griitzner and Vibert, though with none of the bitter, half-concealed
mockerj^ of the latter. He depicts, like Griitzner, the joUj^, good-natured side of the monastic
life; his monks are forever pulling refractory corks, tasting good wine, i^rei^aring dinner, or,
as here, amusing themselves in the sitting-room after dinner with listening to the clumsy
singing and strumming of one of their number. In blissful unconsciousness of criticism, or
indifferent to it, he gives himself up to the luxury of the C in alt., while the amiably satirical
old prior, with a face like Voltaire, takes snuff in good-natured sufferance, his doubtful
smile reflected in the full-moon face of the young monk behind his chair. On the other side
of the stone pillar suj)porting the groined roof, against which our singer leans his back, an
elderly monk, disturbed in his reading the newspaper by the vocal gymnastics of his brother,
turns with ill-suppressed impati nee to listen, and on the other side of the room two monks
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
345
make sly comments on the performance: one of fliem whispers in the ear of his companion,
a fat and toothless old brother, who shakes with delight over his equally fat brother's vaulting
"THE HIGH C."
FROM THE PAINTING BV BARON THURE VON CEOERSTROM.
ambition. Just as Hagborg illustrates the influence of French art on some of the Swedish
painters, so Thure Cederstrom's picture shows the almost complete absorption of othgrs in
346 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
CTerman ideas and methods. This j)icture was painted in Munich, and there is nothing in it
to indicate that its aiithor is not a native of the city wliere he lives and works.
The same thing may be said of Karl Gustav Hellqvist, except that he is to be credited
with a preference in general for Swedish subjects, though his mode of paintiag shows no
"the transport of the body of gustavus adolphus from the harbor of wolgast,
JULY 15, 1632."
FROM THE PICTURE BY GUSTAV HELLQVIST.
peculiarities to mark his nationality. He began his studies with a decorative-painter and
later entered the Academy at Stockholm, finally making his way to Munich, where he lives
and works. His earliest picture, an unimportant episode in the religious discords of Sweden
and Norway, is owned by our Metropolitan Museum of Art and gives a good idea of his
style when he was under the influence of Baron Henri Leys — not as a pupil but as an ad-
mirer. It represents the disgraceful entrance of Bishop Sonnanvader and the Provost Knut
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
347
into Stockliolm in September, 1526. The two unfortunate men, seated on miserable hacks
with their faces turned to the horses' tails, are entering the city accompanied by a jeering and
insulting crowd. As it was impossible to extract any moral from such an unseemly spec-
"AT CHRISTMAS-TIME."
FROM THE PAINTING BY GUSTAV HELLQVIST.
tacle, it may be thought hardly worth painting. Nor can much more be said of our picture,
"The Transport of the Body of Gustavus Adolphus from the Harbor of Wolgast to Stock-
holm." It is an academically painted subject, but while perhaps it drives in the trite lesson
of the uncertainty of human greatness, it never seems quite the fair thing to do by a brave
548
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
man, to choose the hour of fnih;re nnd defeat as a theme to commemorate. In the small bit
from peasant-life which we copy, Hellqvist shows more natural, and seems more within the
true bounds of his talent. These children have been to the wood to cut a tree for Christmas;
they are enjoying the merry sledge-ride home, little brother manfully pushing, and his sister,
well niulBed up, with an eye to the tree that rests on the sledge before her. The air is full of
"SWEDISH COAST-SCENERY."
FROM A PICTURE BY ALFRED WAHLBERG, BELONGING TO MESSRS. KNOEDLER & CO.
snow, the trees are loaded with the gathered flakes, and in the wayside shrine that shelters
the rude image of the Crucified, there hangs a star, jilaced there by pious hands to recall the
night of His birth. But it cannot be said that there is anything in the |)i<^ture from which
to guess the artist's nationality. A hundred German artists, with brush, and pencil, and
graver, have treated similar subjects in a language no way different, and with I'esults neither
better nor worse.
Alfred Leonard Waiilberg, born at Stockholm m 1834, is a landscape-painter of a
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
349
much highei' order. He acquired the rudiments of his art in Diisseldorf, but it was froai
Corot and Daubigny, with whom he studied later in Paris, that lie learned to look at the
landscape from within, and to interpret rather than merely to copy it. His pictures of
Northern scenery are not translated into the dialect of Munich, nor into the more refined
speech of Paris. He belongs to his native Sweden, not only by the choice of his subjects;
he reflects in his style the inner characteristics of the scenery he i^aints, as well as its
forms. He shows us pictures of Sweden, painted in Sweden, by a Swede. By the courtesy
of Messrs. Knoedler & Co., we ai'e enabled to give a pleasing example of Wahlberg's art in
our copy of a recently painted picture of Swedish coast-scenery.
Of other Swedish painters we know little, probably too little, in this country: of Hockert,
once a great favorite, with his pictures of peasant-life in Dalecarlia, or his scenes in Lap-
land; of Nordenberg, a pupil of the Norwegian Tidemand, nor of Wallander, Pernberg, and
Saloman — but in truth these latter artists have had their brief day, and all they could do for
us would be to serve as mile-stones to mark the distance the art of their native country has
travelled in the twenty years since they were actors in the scene.
For a long time, almost the only names of Norwegian artists
that reached us here in America were those of Tidemand, Gude,
and Dahl. They belong to the time when Norway and Denmark
were politically united, but as we have already said, only their
subjects distinguish them from the German painters who were their
contemporaries, and among whom they had the chief part of their
training. Adolpii Tidemand was born at Mandel in 1814, and
studied first at Copenhagen, and afterward at Diisseldorf, where he continued to live and to
teach. His subjects were drawn from humble life in Norway, and their treatment was in
no way different from what we were accustomed to in the works of the Diisseldorf school.
The same remark applies to Gude, born in Christiania in 1825, and distinguished as a painter
of Norwegian scenery. He, like Tidemand, studied first at Copenhagen and later a^
Diisseldorf, where after some time spent in the Academy he entered the studio of Schirmer,
and while there painted his first picture that attracted notice. He then returned to Norway
and remained there several years, giving himself up to a close study of the scenery. He after-
ward, on the death of Schirmer, his early master, took that artist's place as professor in the
art-school at Carlsruhe. His pictures of the coast of Norway, its precipitous cliffs, deep
oo^
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
fiords, and wide-spreading bays, are so well known that we have preferred to give an exam-
ple of his style in dealing with a softer subject, and have selected an etching of his own to
copy, a " View of the Bodensee, or Lake of Constance." In 1880 Gude went to Berlin, where
he established in the Academy a studio for teaching landscape-painting. It Avill be seen that
not only by his training, but by his life-long residence in Germany, Gude must be reckoned a
"the lake of CONSTANCE."
FROM HIS ETCHING OF HIS OWN PICTURE BY HANS GUDE.
German painter, but it is true that he has confined himself almost exchisively to painting
the scenery of his native country, and that on all occasions when he takes part in public ex-
hibitions, he appears as a Norwegian.
LuDWiG MuNTHE, born in Aaroen, in Norway, in 1843, studied in Biisseldorf, but under
no particular master. In his wandering- year he visited the Netherlands, France, Scandinavia,
and Italy, and came back laden with stxidies which have since stood him in good stead. His
pictures have often been brought to tiiis country, and have not only been much liked by
ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
351
amateurs, but have had a marked influence on one or two of our American artists. His win-
ter-scenes are perhaps those most commonly met with, but he is fond of choosing the hour of
"NORWEGIAN LANDSCAPE."
FROM A PAINTING BY LUDWIG MUNTHE, BELONGING TO MESSRS. KNOEDLER & CO.
sunset, when he can ligliten up the icy fields and frozen pools with the warmth of a ruddy
Qrb whose comfortable rays are seen through a network of bare boughs. The characteristic
352 ART AND ARTISTS OF OUR TIME.
landscape u-Jiicli we copy is from a painting obligingly loaned us by Messrs. Kuoedler & Co.
Anotlier interesting Norwegian painter is Adelsten Nokmanx, born at Bodo. His subjects
are all taken from Norwegian scenery, and his three pictures in the Paris Exposition of 1889
were much admired. Last in our brief list is Frithjof Smith-Hald, born at Christiansand,
"NORWEGIAN COAST-SCENERY."
FROM A PICTURE BY FRITHJOF SMITH-HALD.
but living in Paris, where he probably had his training. He, too, finds all his subjects at
home, and the one we have selected gives an idea of his style as satisfactory as can be ob-
tained from the material at our command.
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