Modern artists

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Modern Artists

By

Christian Brinton

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New York
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

1908

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CJOPYEIGHT, 1908, BY

THE BAKEE & TAYLOE COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

THE TEOW PBES8, NEW YOKK

APROPOS

'WJf T'EILE the thrill of the modern spirit hoth in art and
W in life should obviously he the dominant note of
the following pages, no conscious sacrifices have been made
in behalf of any given theory or thesis. The aim has not
been laboriously to trace the origin and development of
certain more or less formative influences, but to reflect such
tendencies in terms frankly specific and personal. Although,
during the period covered, which embraces something over a
century of production, the profile of art in general has yearly
become more and more distinct, that which here takes prece-
dence is the persuasive magic of the artist himself. In order
the better to picture those contagious forces which are to-day
vitalizing art in all lands the selection has purposely been
broad and eclectic rather than narrow or local. A number of
characteristic figures — not always the conventionally greatest
or best known — have thus been chosen from various countries,
and the attempt has been made to give a sense of the individu-
ality of each man treated, and through the individuM a feeling
for the conditions and surroundings, aesthetic and social, of his
actual or adopted home. The personal element and the ele-
ment of nationality will hence inevitably prove the constant
factors in this series of interpretations. The former quality
has long since won its title to consideration. It is as yet, how-
ever, only vaguely realized that the latter is one of the artist's
richest possessions. There are few more amiable fallacies than

[v]

271439

MODERN ARTISTS

the pretension that art should strive to he international and
cosmopolitan, for in point of fact the men who have best suc^
ceeded in becoming so are those whose performances have most
emphatically home the particular stamp of time and place.
Elusive though unmistakable, sensitive though innately un-
changeable, nationality is an element which should never, and
indeed can never, he entirely overlooked. Every artist is in
essence a nationalist. By freely expressing himself he cannot
fail to suggest that larger heritage of which he shares but a
slender portion. Though conforming to these general outlines,
the present volume is not meant to he either speculative or
sternly critical. It is frankly sympathetic and appreciative,
and, in as far as possible, each man in turn has been permitted
to plead his own cause through the facts of his life and the
works of eye and hand. While it is true that the varied mani-
festations of nineteenth-century art may here he followed from
chapter to chapter with sufficient accuracy, the individual him-
self will, it is hoped, always he found to stand the more firmly
and humanly in the foreground of these sketches. Grateful
acknowledgments are due the artists themselves whose efforts
and achievements have been a continuous source of inspiration
in the preparation of the ensuing pages, to owners whose paint-
ings are herewith reproduced, and to those editors who have
already welcomed certain sections of the material in its early
and fugitive form.

[vi]

CONTENTS

PAGK

Jean-Honore Fragonard 3

(Born Grasse, France, 5 April 1732; died Paris, 22 Au-
gust 1806)

Antoine Wiertz 25

(Born Dinant, Belgium, 22 February 1806; died Brussels,
18 June 1865)

George Frederick Watts 43

(Bom London, 23 February 1817; died London, 1 July
1904)

Arnold Bocklin 61

(Born Basle, Switzerland, 16 October 1827; died Fiesole,
near Florence, 16 January 1901)

CONSTANTIN MeUNIER 81

(Born Etterbeek, Brussels, 12 April 1831; died Brussels,
4 April 1905)

James McNeill Whistler 99

(Bom Lowell, Massachusetts, 10 July 1834; died London,
17 July 1903)

[Vii]

MODERN ARTISTS

N PAGE

Franz von Lenbach 117

(Born Schrobenhausen, Upper Bavaria, 13 December 1836;
died Munich, 6 May 1904)

Ilya Efimovitch Repin 135

(Born Chuguyev, Government of Kharkov, Russia, 24 July
1844; resides St. Petersburg)

John S. Sargent * 155

(Born Florence, 12 January 1856; resides London)

John Lavery 173

(Born Belfast, Ireland, 1857; resides London)

Giovanni Segantini 191

(Born Arco, Austrian Tyrol, 15 January 1858; died near
Pontresina, Upper Engadine, Switzerland, 29 Sep-
tember 1899)

Gari Melchers 211

(Born Detroit, Michigan, 11 August I860; resides Egmond-
aan-den-Hoef, Holland, Paris, and New York)

J. J. Shannon. 229

(Born Auburn, New York, 3 February 1862; resides
London)

Ignacio Zuloaga 245

(Born Eibar, Province of Vizcaya, Spain, 26 July 1870;
resides Eibar and Paris)

[ viii ]

il

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

(Plates in Colour)
James McNeill Whistler

Arrangement in Black and Brown— Portrait of Miss Rosa

Corder Frontispiece '^xj^ h

Franz von Lenbach

FACING PAGE

Prince Bismarck 124

Gari Melchers

Brabangonne 218 '■'-^

J. J. Shannon

Miss Kitty 236

(Plates in Half-tone, with Tint)

FACING PAGE

Jean-Honore Fragonard

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 3

La Poursuite g

Le Rendez-vous H

La Lettre d'Amour 14

L'Amant Couronne 13

[ix]

/

MODERN ARTISTS

yACINQ PAGE

Antoine Wiertz

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 25

The Greeks and Trojans Contending for the Body of Patroclus 29

The Revolt of Hell against Heaven 32

A Scene in Hell 37

George Frederick Watts

Portrait of the artist painted by himself . . . . . .43

Orpheus and Eurydice 46

Algernon Charles Swinburne 50

Love and Life 56

Arnold Bocklin

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 61

Sleeping Diana 65

The Island of Death 69

The Fields of the Blessed 73

CONSTANTIN MeUNIER

Portrait of the artist by Max Liebermann 81

Antwerp Dock-Hand 82

Watering a Colliery Horse 86

The Quarryman 88

The Mine 93

James McNeill Whistler

Portrait of the artist by Fantin-Latour 99

Harmony in Green and Rose — The Music Room .... 102

Harmony in Grey and Green — Cicely Henrietta, Miss Alexander 106
The Lady with the Yellow Buskin — Portrait of Lady Archibald

Campbell HI

[X]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Franz von Lenbach

Father and Child 117

General Field-Marshal Count von Moltke 120

Theodor Mommsen 129

Ilya Efimovitch Repin

Portrait of the artist from a recent photograph .... 135

Eeligions Procession in the Government of Kursk .... 139

The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan Mohammed IV . . . 143

Village Dancers, Little Russia 147

John S. Sargent

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 155

Mme. Gautreau 158

Egyptian Woman with Coin Necklace 162

Lord Ribblesdale 167

John Lavert

Father and Daughter 173

Mary in Green 176

Polymnia 180

The Sisters 184

Giovanni Segantini

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 191

Ave Maria a Trasbordo 194

Ploughing in the Engadine 199

The Unnatural Mothers 203

[xi]

MODEEN ARTISTS

FACING PAGE

Gaei Melchers

Portrait of the artist by J. J. Shannon . . . . . . 211

The Man with the Cloak 214

Mother and Child 222

J. J. Shannon

Portrait of the artist painted by himself 229

Lady Marjorie Manners 232

The Flower Girl 240

Ignacio Zuloaga

Portrait of the artist by Jacques-Emile Blanche .... 245

Daniel Zuloaga and his Daughters 248

Lola, the Gitana 250

Promenade after the Bull-Fight 255

The Picador, El Coriano 256

[xii]

JEAN-HONOR]^ FRAGONARD

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

Portrait of the artist painted by himself
[The Louvre, Paris]

JEAN-HOWORE FRAGONAED

NOWHEEE and in no age has art reflected life with more
intimate fidelity than in Erance during the eighteenth
centur}^ The accord between that which was and its
transcription in pigment or marble, in coloured chalk or terra-
cotta, here revealed a perfection seldom attained before or since.
With unfailing spirit and accuracy the painters, sculptors, and
architects of the Reign of Rococo gave to all they touched the
precise physiognomy of the period. They were incomparably
true to existing conditions, to that rose-tinted convention which
was not to be crushed until the red dawn of the Revolution.
Although it seems to stand apart, to display an abandon quite
its own, French art of the eighteenth century recalls on one side
the inflated eloquence of the Grand Siecle, and foreshadows, in
a measure, all that came after. Scattered here and there
throughout the span of Louis XIV are various gestures in
bronze or plaster which presage the coming of Watteau, Pater,
Lancret, and their followers. Certain of Coysevox's nymphs,
Girar don's fountains, and chance wreaths, garlands, and cupids
on palace wall or ceiling, hint that, smothered beneath this
solemn pretence, lurked a gleam of joy and beauty which might
some day relieve the august pomp of Le Brun's ^ Histoire du
Grand Monarque ' and the stateliness of Le Notre *s parks and
gardens. If under de Maintenon all was rigid and constrained,
official and perfunctory, with la Pompadour came a welcome
freedom from control. Society had been too long on parade.

[3]

'■"''''• ''"•''"■'" MODERN ARTISTS

Unnatural restraint gave way to licence frankly human, and
austere splendour was replaced by the magic of personal en-
chantment. As in life, so in art, there were no traces of pain or
sorrow. A feverish reversion to pleasure was the only note
sounded. Skies were perpetually blue, gallants languished about
strumming guitars, and the greensward was dotted with shep-
herds and shepherdesses beribboned and operatic. Existence
became a pastoral now French, now Italian, now Spanish, and
the world gaily embarked in flower-decked galleys for Cythera,
unmindful of hoarse mutterings which were soon to sweep aside
this fleeting moment of nonchalance. In essence the entire
movement was a return to paganism, not the broad paganism
of earlier days, but an ethereal paganism recording all the in-
consequence of its hour. For the time being standards were
strangely confused. Religion as well as reality was obscured.
The crucifix and the crown of thorns were forgotten. Those
bambini who tempered the zealous exaltation of numerous Um-
brian and Flemish canvases, who with Raphael or van Dyck
added such spontaneous charm, became mischievous amorini
bent on missions dubious and diverting. Venus slipped into the
niche so long sacred to Mary of Nazareth and Psyche shone
cream- white amid the green of Versailles leafage.

The chosen poet of all this radiant subversion, the one who
best caught its particular accent, was not Watteau, so tinged
with pensiveness, nor Boucher, who possessed every gift save
the gift of truth, but Jean-Honore Fragonard. It was he whose
purpose was clearest, he who reduced desire to its most infec-
tious terms, he who joyously revived so many lost kisses and
neglected caresses. Throughout his life Fragonard played and
perpetuated the Comedy of Love. Femininity, perverse and en-
dearing, he glorified in countless miniatures, portraits, fans, and
decorative panels. Though he came last among the painters
of Elysium, he imprisoned a beauty which had escaped all,

[4]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

which had even eluded Antiquity and the Renaissance. This
Cherubino of art had no avowed message for mankind, no defi-
nite lesson to instil. He seemed content to follow prevailing
modes. He wished only to delight and amuse, sometimes with
fancies that recall not alone Ariosto and Boccaccio but the mel-
lower wantonness of Propertius and Alciphron. And yet in
the whole range of his production there is never the slightest
note of insistence. It is an art which persuades, never repulses.
Each of these little goddesses of pleasure can say, with Mozart's
Zerlina, *^ Je consens, et je refuse. '^ While having its origin
in the desire to please and to attract, this art is nevertheless con-
siderably more than a propitiation, a mere courting of favour
whether of the public at large or of some wealthy patron. In
addition to being typical of his epoch Jean-Honore Fragonard
also ranks as a distinct precursor, as an unconscious, though
unquestionable initiator. Long decried and ignored, he stands
to-day among the most significant and original of eighteenth-
century painters. In one phase or another of his work he antici-
pates most of those truths of vision and treatment from which
has sprung the vitality of the modem school. Beneath his
astounding facility is a science which few have taken pains to
discover. Nor is he always merely gay and volatile, for in the
midst of his playfulness there sometimes escapes a cry of pas-
sionate tenderness or foreboding. Though he made no preten-
sions, and professed no theories, few artists the world over have
surpassed in felicity, animation, and imperishable charm this
light-hearted son of la Provence.

Born at Grasse, 5 April 1732, in a little house in the rue de
la Porte-Neuve near the place aux Herbes, the boy spent the
first fifteen years of his life at home. Famed for its flowers and
its perfumes, encircled by a silver-green fringe of olive trees,
with, beyond, the sparkling rim of the sea, Grasse could scarcely
fail to influence the lad's early impressions. Always, in his can-

[5]

MODERN ARTISTS

vases, sway and nod the trees and blossoms of Ms native land
bathed in a violet mist blown from across the plain of Cannes.
To the very last the background of his art retained those same
dark masses of foliage, those bright flashes of colour, and the
now gleaming, now vaporous skies of his birthplace. The son
of a modest glovemaker, who was in turn descended from the
Fragonardo, or Fragonardi, of near Milan, Jean-Honore found
himself, at sixteen, articled to a notary in Paris, whither the
family had gone in order to better their fortunes, Fragonard
pere having meanwhile failed owing to certain unlucky invest-
ments. Local tradition, with its infallible instinct for the pic-
turesque and appropriate, avers that the youth made the trip
all the way from Grasse afoot in company with Claude Gerard,
one of whose daughters he was later to marry. He already
wished to become a painter, an ambition which the good notary
of the Chatelet heartily approved, so at the end of a few doleful
weeks his mother took him to Boucher, then at the pinnacle of
his fame. Too busy to instruct beginners, the facile '^ Peintre
des Graces et des Amours ^' sent the boy to his friend, Chardin,
then labouring with patient, searching conviction amid humble
surroundings in the rue Princesse. It was inevitable that the
sprightly, irrepressible little Meridional should have made scant
progress under the sober painter of the bourgeoisie. Just as
when with the notary, he spent most of the time wandering,
wide-eyed and enthusiastic, about the teeming streets. He also
visited the dim, solemn churches of the capital where hung so
many rich toned canvases, and these he would eagerly copy from
memory on returning home. Convinced, after some six months,
that he could learn little from Chardin, the youthful aspirant
went again to Boucher, this time bearing an armful of draw-
ings. His reception proved different, for Boucher, recognizing
his talent, welcomed him at once, and before long he was assist-
ing with various decorative compositions or making replicas of

[6]

LA POURSUITE

By Jean-Honore Fragonard

[Courtesy of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.l

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

his fecund master's pictures. Alert and voluble, Fragonard
instinctively felt at home in the big studio in the Bibliotheque
du Roi which was thronged at all hours by pupils, models, and
men and women of fashion, and where he must have seen " la
belle Murphy " somewhat oftener than he did the seductive and
easily consoled Mme. Boucher. The painter whose false and
captivating Dianas and Auroras fluttered on every wall or
plafond proved a stimulating preceptor. He was the incarna-
tion of the Rococo spirit in all its supple elegance, and this spirit
Fragonard was quick to absorb. So rapid was the newcomer's
progress that in 1752, though not a student of the Academic, he
competed for and won the Grand Prix, his nearest rival being
Saint- Aubin, whose chagrin was such that he thenceforth re-
nounced painting for engraving. From the free activity of
Boucher's studio Fragonard next passed to the Ecole Royale
des Eleves proteges and the more restrained guidance of Carle
Van Loo, where he awaited his turn to proceed to Rome a full-
fledged pensioner of the king.

The years in Rome, five in all, which were passed at the
Palazzo Mancini under the not always approving eye of Natoire,
or in the enlightening company of the abbe de Saint-Non, less
abbe than distinguished amateur of the arts, held unmeasured
richness for Fragonard. At first overwhelmed by Michelangelo
and Raphael, he soon found his level among such masters as
Barocci, Pietro da Cortona, Solimena, and Tiepolo. These he
copied assiduously, readily catching the soft glow of purple
light, or the sheen of satin robe held in place by jewelled hand.
While Natoire and the Academic did much for him, Saint-Non
did more, and it was during those lingering summer months
spent at the Villa d'Este in company with the abbe that Frago-
nard first responded to the silent throb of the antique world and
the palpitating atmospheric beauty about him. From time to
time they were joined by Hubert Robert, who was also at the

[7]

MODEEN ARTISTS

Academie, the three thus cementing an enduring friendship.
While most of Eragonard's studies after the older painters
show accuracy and vitality, none can compare in interest to his
^ L'Allee ombreuse/ with its great vault of foliage meeting over-
head, or his * Vue prise a la Villa d'Este.' Here was the real
Fragonard, sensitive, submissive, and displaying a sjrmpathy
with Roman life and scene which must be partially accounted
for by his Italian ancestry and that unmistakable affinity
which exists between the Campagna and the country about
Grasse. From the very first he appears to have seen nature
and natural forms not boldly and sharply, but enveloped in
a caressing ambience — blue, blond, or golden. Seated before
his easel in one of those majestic oak or cypress lined avenues,
with here a vine-covered wall, and there a flower-grown foun-
tain, the receptive, observant youth did not fail to note that
vibrant play of diffused light and shade which is one of art's
most precious discoveries. He never knew that what he was
striving for would one day be called impressionism. He only
saw and suggested certain effects as best he could, yet it was a
full century before his efforts were to be surpassed.

On his return to Paris full of high enthusiasm, Fragonard,
after a period of indecision, made a commanding debut at the
Salon of 1765 with * Coresus se sacrifie pour sauver Callirhoe.'
The amateurs applauded, Diderot praised him, and the king
ordered the picture to be reproduced in Gobelins tapestry. His
triimaph was largely theatric, for his theme had been taken from
the poem by Roy with music by Destouches. While it was not
Gluck, it pleased the fancy of the public, and a dignified
academic career seemed to await the young Provengal. Yet he
somehow never duplicated the dramatic fervour of this com-
position, the passionate reds of these flowing robes or the be-
seeching whites of these breasts and arms. Although purchased
for the State, it was several years before Marigny paid him for

[8]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

the work, and meanwhile the one-time pupil of Boucher was
fated to conquer Cythera, not Oljnupus. Through the kind
offices of Doyen, who was himself too prudish to accept the com-
mission, Fragonard was enabled to paint for the baron de Saint-
Julien * Les Hasards heureux de I'Escarpolette,' his first indis-
putable masterpiece of grace and frivolity. There was no
further hesitation. He had found his chosen vocation. The
baron was enchanted, and the picture was engraved by de
Launay, quickly becoming the success of the hour. Before he
knew it Frago's fortime was made. Wealthy fermiers generaux
such as Beau j on, Bergeret de Grancourt, Rostin d'lvry, and
Randon de Boisset showered him with orders. Every one, in-
cluding king and court favourite, wished something from the
not over scrupulous brush which knew so well how to flatter the
taste and stimulate the appetites of a society whose character-
istic frailty was what Voltaire termed love weakness. Within
a few busy years the young painter who had so anxiously awaited
payment for his Academie picture was enjoying an annual in-
come of forty thousand pounds.

Meanwhile it mattered little that Diderot should massacre
the charmingly aerial ceiling he had sketched for Bergeret, or
that Bachaumont should savagely accuse him of desiring to
shine only " dans les boudoirs et les garde-robes.'' After the
Salon of 1767 he ceased to exhibit, and grand, imposing com-
positions were renounced for countless exquisite revelations of
nudity, often venturesome, always inviting. Though henceforth
he painted mainly to please himself and his opulent patrons the
marvel of it is that the quality of his work seldom suffered. In-
credibly prolific, he displayed an ease and fertility almost with-
out parallel. His art became a perfect mirror of contemporary
caprice both sensuous and sentimental. Just as the baron de
Saint- Julien had inspired ' Les Hasards heureux de I'Escarpo-
lette,' so the marquis de Veri gave him the suggestion for * Le

[9]

MODERN ARTISTS

Verrou.' To Varanchan de Saint-Genies went * Les Baigneuses,'
and to the rich notary, Duclos - Dufresnoy, * La Fontaine
d 'Amour.' In rapid succession came * Le Serment d 'Amour,'
* Le Sacrifice de la Rose,' * Le Debut du Modele,' and innumer-
able * Billet-doux ' and * Baisers ' all executed in a spirit of
vivacious frankness and responsive sensibility. He proved him-
self amazingly varied, this eager little amoroso of the brush.
The subdued dignity of ' Le Contrat ' was offset by the less cir-
cumspect insinuation of ' La Gimblette ' or * La Chemise en-
levee.' Moreover, he kept his impressions fresh by constant
contact with the world about him. He was no frigid onlooker.
Always animated, always gay, witty and insatiate, he frequented
at will the coulisses of the Opera, the chauff oir of the Comedie,
or took supper *^ chez les soeurs Verrieres." A natural, in-
stinctive being, he was disturbed neither by the maxims of the
Encyclopaedists nor the lachrymose penitence of his moralizing
friend Greuze.

In an age of exteriorization, when the surface of things must
perforce be in fastidious accord with the complexion of the
moment, it was inevitable that the decorative arts should enjoy
high esteem. Already well known through his work for Berge-
ret, and for the royal chateau de Bellevue, it was natural that
Fragonard should have been among those chosen by Drouais to
adorn the new pavilion being erected for Mme. du Barry at
Louveciennes, overlooking the Seine near Marly. Nothing was
spared in making the structure a miracle of refined allurement.
Ledoux was the architect, Lecomte, Pajou, Vasse, and AUegrain
contributed the sculpture, and Vernet, Halle, Van Loo, and
others the paintings. There were timepieces by Lepaute, carv-
ings by Gouthiere, and tapestries by Cozette, while from the
gilded wainscoting glanced demurely Greuze 's ^ Cruche cassee.'
It was in his series of four panels painted for this cabinet of
beauty and licence that Fragonard achieved the cardinal tri-

[10]

LE RENDEZ-VOUS

By Jean-Honore Fragonard

[Courtesy of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

mnph of his career. Conceived by the favourite herself, this
* Roman d 'Amour de la Jeunesse ' epitomizes in chaste and ap-
pealing accents that same Romance of Love and Youth with
which Fragonard was so familiar. And yet the work, fitting as
it seems, was never placed upon the walls for which it was in-
tended. The reason was not because Mme. du Barry lacked
fimds, nor because Vien's lubricous classicism was deemed
more appropriate, but possibly because the artist had been a
shade too explicit in the matter of portraiture. It was one thing
to picture the golden-haired, fresh-tinted creature from Cham-
pagne as a fancy shepherdess, but Louis le Bien-Aime could
hardly have relished being depicted as her companion. The
royal sybarite doubtless refused to sanction even this faint
record of his profligacy, so Fragonard 's idyl, which traced in
such captivating terms the love of king and courtesan, was sup-
planted by decorations in no way comparable to his dream of
youthful fondness and frailty. It is even doubtful whether the
painter received proper indemnity, though in any case he must
have somewhat sadly rolled up the canvases and placed them in
the comer of his studio where they remained neglected in the
flush of a life crowned by success and filled with eager pleasure.
The same mad craze for luxurious appointments permeated all
classes of society, all save the sullen, brooding peasantry who
loomed more and more ominously in the background, and whom
La Bruyere alone had seen in their true light. As du Barry
was employing Ledoux and Fragonard in the adornment of her
pavilion, so had la Guimard secured their services in beautify-
ing her famous ^* Temple de Terpsichore '' in the rue de la
Chaussee d'Antin. The two projects were carried forward al-
most simultaneously, and, oddly enough, ended in a somewhat
similar manner. Annoyed, it is inferred, by his procrastina-
tion, *^ la belle damnee,'' as Marmontel none too deferentially
christened her, quarrelled with the painter who promptly and

[11]

MODERN ARTISTS

generously left the work to be finished by none other than
Jacques-Louis David, then on the threshold of his stormy and
triumphant career.

Weary of endless fetes and numerous princesses of the opera
or the theatre, Fragonard had meanwhile married, on 17 June
1769, at the age of thirty-seven, a simple, wholesome lass of
eighteen from his native town. The wedding itself was not
without its air of refreshing simplicity, having been celebrated
at the church of Saint-Lambert among the green fields and
winding lanes of Yaugirard, then a suburb of the capital. Pos-
sessing less style and decidedly more common sense than the
Parisiennes about her, Marie- Anne Gerard, later known as *Ma
caissiere, ' ' made a prudent, though scarcely inspiring wife. The
family, which was soon augmented by the arrival from Grasse
of Marguerite Gerard, a younger and far prettier sister-in-law,
and also by her brother, Henri Gerard, all lived comfortably
together in the Galleries of the Louvre which, since the time of
Henri IV, had been divided into apartments for those *' excel-
lentz maitres," the artists. To Fragonard 's quarters on the
ground floor often came Hubert Robert and Saint-Non, Hall,
the miniaturist, who brought his flute and his beautiful daugh-
ters Adele and Lucie, Greuze, bilious and irascible, the Vernets,
and de Launay, all delighting in " Taimable Frago's " hospital-
ity and the picturesque diversity of a studio containing BouUe
furniture, Beauvais tapestries, a tiny fountain, a rustic swing
with toylike trees dotted about, and a memorable Benvenuto
vase. Save for a leisurely journey to Italy as the guest of
Bergeret, rich Receveur-general, whose tastes were quite as gas-
tronomic as they were artistic, Fragonard remained faithful to
his lodgings in the Louvre and his country retreat at Petit-
Bourg, near Corbeil. With the advent of his daughter Rosalie,
and his son, Alexandre-Evariste, familiarly known as ^' Fan-
fan,'^ his devotion to domestic life assumed new depth and

[12]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONAED

stability. Memories of prentice days with wise, sane Chardin
seemed to drift back to him. He became ahnost a little Flemish
master, painting with unsuspected penetration and insight such
episodes as ' La Jeune Mere,' * La Visite a la Nourrice,' ' L'Heu-
reuse fecondite,' and * Les Beignets.' It was an existence quite
cahn and equable. The wayward * Baisers ' of former years
had become ' Les Baisers matemels.' The provocative creature
of ^ L'Escarpolette ' had been superseded by * Mo'sieur Fanfan '
learning to walk, or ride a hobby horse, or straddle the back of a
big house dog. Not only did he imperceptibly become one of the
first and greatest of intimists, he loved equally well to paint
outdoor scenes. His records of peasant life are veracious and
exact. They have little of the pretty deceit of their day. His
shepherds are not operatic, his shepherdesses are not made of
Sevres. To everything he treated Fragonard brought the same
clarity of vision, the same lightness yet surety of touch. Just
as he had anticipated impressionism in his views of the Italian
villas, just as in his endearing glimpses of domestic felicity he
had antedated the later apostles of intimacy, so in farmyard in-
cident or landscape he gave the art of his time fresh sincerity
and significance. While Gallic in interpretation, it is manifest
that certain of these inspirations came from outside his native
land. If his more fanciful and pagan conceptions descend from
the florid Rubens, it is equally true that his interiors often recall
ter Borch or Vermeer, and his trees, meadows, and skies those
of Ruisdael and Hobbema. Though it is unlikely that the busy
Frago ever journeyed to the Low Countries, it is a matter of
note that he was familiar with the already important collection
of Dutch and Flemish canvases then in the Luxembourg. A
Greek at bottom, he was gifted with unfaltering instinct for that
which was articulate and expressive wherever it might be found.
Despite a very human laxity in other directions, in questions of
art he was concise, specific, and logical. While his feeling for

[13]

MODERN ARTISTS

form and rhythm was clearly classic, his work was imbued with
a nervous grace and daintiness wholly new. His divinities still
inhabited Olympus, but it was Olympus feminized.

As the years slipped by and good Marie- Anne grew scarcely
less prudent and phlegmatic, it was inevitable that her place in
the household should have been in various ways filled by Mar-
guerite Gerard, among whose attractions were a sprightly wit,
a head of brown wavy hair, a pair of bright eyes, a small, slightly
upturned nose, and cherry lips. More adaptable than her elder
sister, who still wore her crisp white cap and spoke in the none
too limpid accent of the South, Marguerite readily made her
presence felt. Under the painter's inspiration she developed a
slender, imitative talent, and often her ^* bon ami Frago " would
bend over the easel adding deft touches here and there and ab-
sorbing the fragrance of a young being who soon came to embody
for him *^ la poesie '' and presumably more. Decorative paint-
ing was by no means neglected along with the multitude of tasks
including illustrations for Don Quixote and La Fontaine, which
date from this period. On several occasions the entire family
was installed at Cassan where Fragonard was engaged in embel-
lishing Bergeret's new villa. The summers at Cassan, and at
Folie-Beaujon, found their record in quantities of sketches and
larger compositions dashed off with astonishing virtuosity, many
of them fugitive, impromptu glimpses of perhaps the happiest
hours of the painter's life. Though the only cloud thus far had
been the death of his daughter Rosalie at the age of eighteen, it
was not long before the sky began to darken fatefuUy. The
States-General had met in May 1789, and already catch phrases
of freedom and progress were penetrating the studios. Although
largely supported by the crown, the artists of the Louvre were
republican in birth and sympathies and were easily swept along
by the rising hurricane of liberal enthusiasm. In September of
the same year the names of Mme. Fragonard and Marguerite

[14]

LA LETTRE D'AMOUR
By Jean-Honore Fragonard
[Courtesi/ of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.^

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

Gerard as well as those of Mmes. Moitte, David, Suvee, and
Vien figured among the list of citoyennes who offered to the As-
sembly their tribute of rings, bracelets, and jewels of every
description for the national defence. Within a few feverish
months all were plunged into the greatest social convulsion the
world has ever witnessed. The change was cruelly sudden. Be-
fore anyone could realize it the Reign of Rococo had given way
to the Reign of Terror.

Fragonard, lacking the aggressive temperament of David
and his circle, was completely bewildered. There seemed noth-
ing he could do. His wealthy protectors were seeking safer
quarters, and surly, red-capped mobs, maddened by the lust of
blood, thronged the streets and squares. Arrests were being
made on every side. Hubert Robert was flung into Saint-Lazare
and Hall was forced to flee the country, while from his windows
the anxious little painter daily saw groups of sansculottes drag
the " mauvais riches " off to prison or the guillotine. Shaken
in spirit and filled with dismay by the scenes of horror which
constantly met his eye, it was not strange that *' le petit papa
Fragonard,'' as they had come to call him, should often have
thought of bright, serene Grasse. Taking with him his long
neglected panels he one day slipped away to the South, finding,
with his cousins the Mauberts, a grateful welcome. Here at
Grasse he passed considerable time, and it was here, in the se-
cluded, cypress-screened house of his kind host that the ' Roman
d 'Amour de la Jeimesse ' found at last its true setting, a setting
more enduring than it would ever have known at Louveciennes.

In the large salon on the lower floor, with its windows look-
ing out upon the garden where pomegranates, orange trees, pur-
ple hollyhocks, and great masses of geraniums shimmered in
the sunlight, Fragonard completed, harmonized, and fused into
single effective unit his immortal love pastoral. In size and
general arrangement the room was admirably suited to receive

[15]

MODERN ARTISTS

the four subjects already finished, and to these he added a fifth,
painted four dessus de porte, a panel above the mantelpiece,
and four connecting shafts. Although opinions vary, the logical
order of the series is obviously: — * La Poursuite,' * Le Rendez-
vous,' * La Lettre d 'Amour, ' ^ L'Amant couronne,' and * L 'Aban-
don.' Nothing in the art of Fragonard or the art of his con-
temporaries quite approaches the persuasive charm of this
Romance of Love and Youth. Not only is the narrative carried
along with just the proper note of precision in the larger panels,
it is also suggested with playful symbolism in the minor com-
positions. It is Paradise and Earth, a blissful Paradise with
a chubby deity chasing doves about in midair, and a smiling
Earth, profusely fiowered and peopled by a young couple whose
every movement is cadenced by the pulse of love. The gallant
who offers the emblematic rose, who climbs the terrace where
the chosen one awaits him, who is by turns ardent and trium-
phant, is beyond question Louis XV minus nearly half a century
of self-indulgence. His Bourbon profile grows less exact after
the first and second panels, but in them it is unmistakable. The
slender blonde who accepts his suit with such studied artless-
ness, such inviting reserve, is of course Mme. du Barry whose
white throat was soon to be severed by the guillotine. In the
fourth scene, * L'Amant couronne,' it is permissible to infer
that the youthful artist who has been called upon to immortalize
their happiness is none other than Fragonard himself whose
dark curls and clear cut features are also visible in * L'Armoire '
and other canvases. It was an age of touching sensibility as
well as avid pleasure, and in the last panel Fragonard shows his
dainty shepherdess musing ruefully alone at the foot of a marble
column which is surmounted by a mocking and admonishing
cupid. The loved one has departed, the flowers have withered,
and over the park has settled the chill of autumn tinging all
things with subdued fatality. Each of the groups is delicately

[16]

JEAN-HONOEE FRAGONARD

varied as to colour and disposition. Blossoms become brighter
and costumes more vivid as the climax is approached and dimin-
ish in intensity toward the end, the final episode being almost a
monochrome in russet brown. Fluent, audacious dexterity of
handling is everywhere apparent. Silks of blush-pink, mauve,
amber-yellow, or pale blue vie in richness with abounding clus-
ters of bloom. All the resources of an iridescent palette have
been called into play throwing into just sufficient relief the ex-
pressive pantomime of the figures. The whole spirit of the story
is imbued with discreet restraint as well as luxuriant radiance.
It is poetized longing. It is passion made lyrical.

For over a century Fragonard's Romance of Love and Youth
remained quite as he had left it in this silent room with its
Beauvais tapestries, gilt consoles, couches, and tabourets — this
room so filled with the fragrance of past, faded elegance. It
was not, in fact, until 8 February 1898, that the paintings left
the possession of M. Malvilan, a grandson of the artist's cousin,
M. Maubert, on which date they were sold at Cannes, bringing
1,250,000 francs. During the autumn of the same year they
were exhibited in London, and were subsequently purchased by
Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Yet not all of Fragonard's sojourn
at Grasse was spent in dreaming anew with mingled joy and
pathos dreams of former, happier days. Faithful as he was to
his own treasured kingdom of grace and beauty, he did not
wholly escape the troubled issues of the hour. Echoes of the
storm penetrated the farthest comers of la Provence, and, more-
over, the sanguinary Maximin Isnard was his neighbour. If
tradition may be accepted it was the little exile himself who, in
an outburst of patriotism, painted the heads of Robespierre and
abbe Gregoire together with the emblems of law and liberty
such as the Phrygian bonnet, axes, and fasces which ornament
the stairway of his host's house. In any event it is consoling to
know that though things were going so badly with his friends in

[17]

MODERN ARTISTS

Paris, the artist's visit did not prove altogether fruitless, as is
shown by a receipt recently discovered in the Maison Malvilan
which reads: — " J 'ay regu de mon cher cousin Maubert, pour
ouvrages de peinture, la sonune de trois mille six cent livres,
dont quittance jusqu'a ce jour, pour solde de tout compte, a
Grasse, ce dix mars 1791. Fragonard, peintre du Roy."

Returning to the capital on the morrow of the September
Massacres, Fragonard found the situation even worse than when
he had left. The passion for blood had not been slaked and the
Paris which greeted him was not the Paris he had once known.
The streets still swarmed with drunken soldiers, beggars, thieves,
and wild-eyed hags. Saint-Non was dead and there were few
who recognized the tiny fellow with short white locks, flowing
grey mantle, and loosely knotted scarf who dodged about in
search of some friend who might drop him a word of welcome.
The very soul of things had altered. Financiers and nymphs of
the Opera were scattered. The Loves and Graces had departed,
and Beauty had been stamped under foot. Idle gallants no
longer danced minuets or tinkled lutes under the protect-
ing trees. Instead, hot headed fellows mounted rostra and
harangued the populace in the name of liberty and equality.
The insinuating songs of de La Borde were drowned by the
majestic roar of the Marseillaise and art was called upon not
to please or flatter but to flame and to inspire. The blatant
Graeco-Romanism of David was in the ascendant, ^* Fanfan "
was rapidly becoming Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, equally
distinguished and equally monotonous as painter or sculptor,
and Marguerite Gerard was exhibiting at the Societe des Arts
vapid, feeble reminiscences which could hardly have brought
her master either pride or joy. All seemed strange and hope-
less. Cherubino was forgotten. He belonged to another and a
brighter world. Moreover, the brushes had lost their magic.
There remained on the palette no glittering dust from invisible

[18]

L'AMANT COURONNE

By Jean-Honore Fragonard

[Courtesy of J. Pierjiont Morgan, Esq."]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

butterfly wings. There is no telling what might have befallen
the distraught and unhappy painter had it not been for the all-
powerful David, who, though relentless to so many others, never
forgot the kindness Fragonard had shown him years before.
On David ^s reconomendation he was made a member of the Jury
des Arts and later President du Conservatoire du Museum. He
even figured with Lesueur in the place of honour at the planting
of a Tree of Liberty in the Court of the Louvre, and by an
ironical turn of fortune was detailed to make inventories of some
of the same luxurious private hotels he had once helped to deco-
rate. The temper as well as the taste of those about him was
visibly turning against all that Fragonard and his art repre-
sented. He courageously tried in two or three empty, ambitious
canvases to adjust himself to the manner of David, but his heart
was not in the work. So little were his own family in sympathy
with the traditions he still cherished that one day Alexandre-
Evariste consigned to the flames a number of sketches and prints
by his father, exclaiming, with pride, ** Je fais im holocauste au
bon gout ! " The hand which had once painted in a single hour
the fluent, virile portrait of M. de La Breteche shortly became
weak and faltering, and the income, formerly so ample, dwindled
to almost nothing. At one period Mme. Fragonard was even
forced to beg at the butcher and bake shops of the quarter. Be-
fore long Vivant-Denon not only removed him from his post
with the Museum but soon suppressed his pension as well. They
were bitter months for one who had hitherto tasted naught save
success and happiness. In distress he turned to Marguerite
Gerard who replied with daintily phrased platitudes counselling
him to practise forethought and economy. He had showered
upon her an infinity of affection and inspiration. All she had
for him in his hour of darkness was egotism and discreet advice.
On his return from the South Fragonard had again taken up
residence in the Louvre where he had lived since the day the

[19]

MODERN ARTISTS

yoimg pensioner of the king had proudly become painter to the
king. As though his trials and disappointments were not al-
ready enough, he was compelled to submit to another, and still
greater humiliation, for one night Napoleon, riding by with
Duroc and seeing a few modest lights gleaming from the win-
dows of the Galleries, ordered the '"'' immediate evacuation '^ of
the place, fearing that a chance fire might imperil paintings
and statuary sacked from every corner of Europe. Not wishing
to be away from his beloved Louvre, Pragonard moved across to
the rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore, lodging with a restaurant
keeper named Yeri, in the Palais-du-Tribunat, now the Palais-
Royal. Peeling himself isolated he virtually gave up work, and
being active despite his years, spent the time pattering about
the streets and gardens ruefully noting changes which were fast
destroying the ancient aspect of the town. On certain of these
wanderings he doubtless happened upon stray engravings by de
Launay or Beauvarlet of canvases which he must have recalled
with confused, pathetic rapture ; though on the whole, there was
little to remind him of a vanished and discredited Arcady. One
afternoon on returning from the Champ-de-Mars tired and
feverish he entered Veri's and called for an ice. It brought on
cerebral congestion, and by five on the morning of 22 August
1806, he was dead.

His entire life save those few troubled years toward the last
had been itself a * Roman d 'Amour de la Jeunesse,' expressed
in continuous variants on the blues, whites, and reds of his own
luminous Grasse. Though he touched with flexible ease many
themes, love was his favourite theme — love which he pressed into
the petals of a rose, a rose worn now at the breast, now offered
in mystic, virgin sacrifice, now lying crushed upon the floor.
Por a decade or more before the end came the art which he
practised with such infectious enthusiasm had been a thing of
the past, yet he lingered on a solitary, pathetic reminder of those

[20]

JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

pleasure loving days when Ms fame had seemed so secure. The
reign of aristocracy was indeed over. Republican aggression
and imperial authority were the successive watchwords of David,
who at intervals laid aside his Roman toga to picture with
trenchant power the leaders of this vast movement for the eman-
cipation of the human spirit. It was inevitable that the Journal
de Paris and the Moniteur de FEmpire should scarcely mention
the passing of Fragonard, and that the lightness, truth, and
impromptu freedom of his art should find scant favour at the
dawn of so stressful and grandiose an era. In his own elusive,
unpretentious way he represented the principal movements,
artistic, social, and intellectual of his age. A modernized
Athenian, he learned from Boucher and Tiepolo the secrets of
decorative composition. Through Chardin, Watteau, and espe-
cially Rubens, he enriched France with the fruitful Flemish
tradition, while there are in several of his more serious and
aspiring canvases hints of that classic revival which followed the
discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneimi. Typifying in many
respects the frivolous hedonism of Crebillon, Laclos, and Mme.
d'Epinay, he nevertheless echoed at moments the scepticism of
Voltaire and the return to nature so explicitly preached by
Rousseau. Yet above all else he was a poet, not a mere versifier,
a painter pure and simple, not a philosopher or a rhetorician.
Whatever his task, he always managed to illumine and adorn it.
He gave to eroticism new mystery ; he etherealized feeling just
as he volatilized colour. Personally as well as artistically he is
directly allied to the chief modern school, that of the Impres-
sionists, his great-granddaughter having been the beautiful and
gifted Mme. Berthe Morizot, wife of Eugene Manet. If he has
to-day regained his rightful position, if his memory has been
appropriately honoured at Grasse, Besangon, Nice, and Paris,
it is because in him is recognized not only the fitting epitome of
his time but a painter who must always remain youthful and

[21]

MODERN ARTISTS

rich in inspiration. His colouring still retains its freshness and
its bloom. Not a single one of his roses has faded, nor can ever
fade. And neither the ceaseless tramp of armies nor a century
of neglect has been able to obliterate this expressive, spontane-
ous art — ^this art which is both epilogue and prologue, which in
tender, gracious accents bids adieu to the old regime and salutes
the coming of the new.

[22]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

ANTOINE WIERTZ

Portrait of the artist painted by himself
[Wiertz Museum, Brussels^

ANTOINE WIERTZ

IT was not until years after the passing of the pale captain
who had come up from Corsica and had changed for awhile
the map of Europe, and so profoundly the destiny of man,
that art resumed her true course of development. Rigid and
invincible, the resurrected heroes of Greece and Rome continued
to stalk before the eyes of an enthralled populace. Not satisfied
with having formalized the art of his own country, David, like
some conqueror of old, crossed over into Belgium and encased
Flemish painting in the casques, breastplates, and stiff draperies
of bygone ages. The period was one of slavish subserviency or
stormy, ineffectual revolt. Oscillating between the dominant
influence of a single powerful tradition and the gradual awak-
ening of social consciousness, the painters of these arid days
reflected little save restlessness and uncertainty. All were in a
more or less degree victims of the impending transition from
precedent to personal liberty, from established authority to the
sovereign rights of the individual. The most acute embodiment
of this ferment of the human spirit, this fever-dream which fol-
lowed the blood letting of the Napoleonic era was Antoine
Wiertz. It is less as an artist that this singular figure chal-
lenges attention than as the man who best typifies that night-
mare which preceded the dawn of rationalism and democracy.
With scant exception it has been customary to consider this
extraordinary being as a mere freak or madman in no way in-
fluenced by current conditions, or as one whose work possesses

[25]

MODERN ARTISTS

little interest beyond that of eccentricity. Unbalanced Wiertz
certainly was, and incontestably lacking from an artistic point
of view, yet on his vast canvases are pictured as nowhere else
the death agonies of Antiquity and the crude vehemence of the
modern world. The man's entire existence was an unceasing
struggle to attain self-adjustment. He was torn asunder by
conflicting and incompatible ideals. Possessing what he fancied
was veritable Promethean fire, he was jeered at by his contem-
poraries. Hounded out of classic precincts, he took hold of
actual issues only to be maligned and misunderstood. Through
the sheer power of abnormality he nevertheless managed to force
himself into the company of the great, unforgettable masters
of his own and former times. He was not a Rubens or a Michel-
angelo as he supposed, yet by measuring himself against such
giants during years of frenzied endeavour he has succeeded in
being remembered along with them. Ambition, however colos-
sal, is an insufficient asset, but when that ambition is expressed
in transcendent manifestations of misguided genius the result
is apt to be formidable. It is impossible to gaze upon Wiertz 's
tortured canvases or trace the story of his titanic and forlorn
life struggle without falling under the spell of an abounding
individuality. He seizes upon you like some fatal obsession
conjuring up visions hideous or imploring. Involuntarily you
believe that there must lurk somewhere within the man and his
work a baffled beauty, a sublimity which, by the merest mis-
chance, became grotesque pretence or tragic incompletion.

In surveying the field of art it is by no means obligatory to
choose only the stereotyped products of organized effort, only
those names which have been hallowed by general approval.
The lesson of failure is quite as significant as the lesson of
success, and in the case of Antoine Wiertz the failure was
complete enough to serve any conceivable purpose. With this
angry, turbulent spirit you enter at a bound that vague reabn,

[26]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

half aesthetic, half speculative, which has lured countless ar-
dent souls to their destruction — that province where thought
so often triumphs over taste, where the idea and the image
are constantly at war. A child of the great Revolution and
an eye witness of the valiant uprising in which Belgium won
her independence, Wiertz's nature was unalterably militant.
It was in the quiet town of Dinant, on the Mouse, bordering
the leafy recesses of the forest of Ardennes, that this strange
victim of aspiration and fatality first saw light on 22 Febru-
ary 1806. Antoine Wiertz was the only son of Louis-FrauQois
Wiertz, a soldier of the Grande Republique, and Catherine
Disiere, a daughter of the people. His father, though a native
of Rocroy, was of Saxon origin, and in his mother's veins
flowed the blood of the sturdy and industrious Walloons. In
the boy's earliest attempts, in his first recorded sayings, and
through his troubled career, it is impossible not to realize
that he was an outcome of that stirring, sanguinary idealism
which since 1789 had been sweeping all before it. After four
years' campaigning Louis-Frangois Wiertz retired, wounded,
to the hospital of Louvain, later resuming civil life in the
modest capacity of a tailor. On the fall of the Empire he
entered the local gendarmerie, and though he never rose beyond
the rank of a simple brigadier, he was gifted with a noble and
virile soul and exercised a profound influence over his son's
development. Aside from a consuming passion for universal
success and renown he instilled into the boy's heart two notable
qualities — a stoical indifference to mortal ills and an abiding
contempt for material reward. Yet it was of fame which the
old soldier oftenest spoke, and quite logically the father's love
of martial glory became with the son an unquenchable thirst for
artistic achievement. ** My brushes," he would exclaim, *' are
my lances, a canvas is my battle-field." While it is true that
he lost most of his battles, the idea of strife, of conquest, never

[27]

MODERN ARTISTS

forsook him. It pursued him during all those bitter, agonizmg
years, and when, on that mellow June night in Brussels he was
compelled to accept his final defeat, the struggle was heartrend-
ing in its fruitless intensity.

JProm the outset there appears to have been no question con-
cerning the lad's future calling. Playing one day beside his
mother, who was seated at her spinning-wheel, he suddenly an-
nounced that he wished to be a king. ^* Why? " asked the good
dame, thinking his mind must be fixed upon the shock of war or
the splendour of regal pageantry. ^^ So that I might become a
great painter," the boy replied. At the age of four he drew
with astonishing ability, colouring his productions with the juice
of berries, and by ten was painting portraits. A little later he
carved out of wood a frog which was so lifelike that visitors
would try to make it hop about, and which, on one occasion, a
swaggering captain of gendarmes even attempted to impale on
the point of his sword. The art of engraving he also mastered,
or rather rediscovered, and so locally famous had he become by
twelve, that the proprietor of a popular inn at Ciney commis-
sioned him to execute a sign for his hostelry which was known
as the *' Cheval noir." Although the youthful aspirant had
never before handled oil colours he was so successful that honest
folk who flocked to the celebrated fairs of Ciney predicted that
he would one day become the foremost sign painter of the town.
It was about this period that M. Paul de Maibe, patron of art
and member of the States-General, hearing of the boy's uncom-
mon talents, sent him to school at his own expense, afterward
securing from the king the slender pension which enabled him
to continue his artistic studies. Dinant naturally o:ffered scant
facilities for advanced instruction, and, moreover, the lad was
nightly visited by the luminous apparition of a tall figure
wrapped in a flowing mantle and wearing a huge Spanish hat.
Its manner was imperious and in its hands was borne aloft a

[28]

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ANTOINE WIERTZ

banner whereon gleamed in letters of fire the word ** AN VERS. '*
Young Wiertz never for an instant doubted that it was the spirit
of Rubens beckoning him to Antwerp, and, already convinced of
his high destiny, to Antwerp he forthwith proceeded.

Possessing naught save his pension of one hundred florins
a year the young enthusiast desired little beyond ^' bread, col-
ours and sunlight, '^ though often he was forced to do without
all three. He worked assiduously at the Academy under Her-
reyns and Van Bree, occupying a miserable attic room too
low for him to stand upright in and almost too short to ac-
commodate him when lying down. Though only fifteen he was
tall and fully developed physically, having the stature of a
grown man, his pale, chiselled features being covered with a
luxuriant black beard. In his shabby cell was neither stove
nor fireplace, and through the battered casement or openings
in the roof used to blow at will bitter winds or puffs of snow.
The room was a chaotic jumble of books, papers, anatomical
studies, musical instrmnents, and the varied paraphernalia
necessary to the practice of sculpture, painting, and engrav-
ing. At times it grew so cold that the zealous student was
forced to take to his bed, and more than once fell asleep with
crayon in one hand and scalpel in the other. It was a grue-
some retreat. Against the bare wall dangled a skeleton, and
opposite the door grinned a cleverly painted death's head.
Few visitors ever crossed the threshold, for Wiertz was re-
garded as an eccentric, and between himself and the world was
already erecting an impregnable barrier. His fellow-pupils
openly sneered at the strange recluse of the rue du Pont-Saint-
Bernard whose gods were Rubens, Michelangelo, Homer, and
Comeille, and whose only goddess was Glory. He never mar-
ried, and while still a student took vows of chastity, invincibly
schooling himself against every distraction, every seduction. A
phenomenally gifted musician, he played numerous instruments,

[29]

MODERN ARTISTS

and when it grew too dark to work would thus divert his fancy,
while below on the street passers-by would pause and listen to
the wild, haunting strains floating on the midnight air. Al-
though he lived for years in utter poverty, he did so mainly from
a matter of principle. Beyond a few hastily executed portraits
which he refused to sign, he never made the slightest attempt to
sell his work, preferring to have it always by him for purposes
of alteration and correction. A wealthy connoisseur once called
and offered an excellent figure for a certain sketch. ** Keep
your gold,*^ cried Wiertz, closing the door in the intruder's face,
" it is death to the artist! '^

In 1828 the young Dinantais competed unsuccessfully for
the Prix de Rome. It was a cruel blow to his hopes, and a still
ruder shock to his overmastering pride. Undaunted, he next
repaired to Paris, where he was so poor that often, instead of
dining, his only expedient was to draw his belt a bit tighter
about the waist in order to lessen the inconvenient void. He had
hoped to subsist by painting portraits, but not finding sitters at
any price himg out a sign reading ^* Portraits Gratis." As
though to enforce the irony of fate, no one condescended to come
even on such flattering terms. Four years later he again entered
the academic lists, this time carrying off first honours. All the
soaring ambition so long held in check at once flared forth in
radiant anticipation. In an ecstatic letter to his cousin and
patron, Gilain Disiere, a sturdy, kindly boatman of the Meuse,
Wiertz grandiloquently announced that ^* the path of glory "
lay open to him. The Antwerp officials gave a reception in his
honour, and on his departure for Rome via Paris, the townsfolk
of Dinant strewed the streets with flowers, fired complimentary
salutes, and entertained their young genius in the Council Cham-
ber of the Hotel-de-Ville. No wonder after years of anguish
and obscurity, of fevered, mocking dreams in the pitiful man-
sards of Antwerp and Paris, the marble-browed visionary's

[30]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

head was completely turned. Small wonder that when, in the
summer of 1834, he entered Rome by the Porta del Popolo to
the accompaniment of a crashing thunderstorm, he compla-
cently regarded the incident as being heaven's recognition of his
arrival on the threshold of the Caesars.

The same unrelaxing austerity, the same unflinching devo-
tion to what he conceived were the supreme manifestations of
artistic expression, and that same burning desire for glory which
had characterized his student days continued to torment Antoine
Wiertz during his sojourn in Rome. He worked incessantly,
succumbing to no such disturbing passions as those which as-
sailed poor Leopold Robert. Under the aegis of Michelangelo
and Homer a species of heroic, audacious frenzy took posses-
sion of his soul. At the time he was planning his huge canvas
depicting the * Greeks and Trojans Contending for the Body of
Patroclus ' he wrote as follows to his devoted but amazed boat-
man cousin, Gilain Disiere; " I am all impatience to begin; I
would have my arms ready at hand. My brush strokes will be
furious and terrible, like the lance thrusts of the Greek heroes.
I shall defy the greatest colourists; I shall measure myself
against Rubens and Michelangelo! " The Vatican and the
Sistine Chapel had a momentous influence over him just as
Notre-Dame in Antwerp had, when, a mere lad, he stood motion-
less before the Flemish master's * Descent from the Cross.' All
the while he was making studies for, and actually painting his
* Patroclus,' Wiertz was inflamed with the ardour of conflict,
more than once exclaiming, ** I imagine, like Alexander the
Great, that the eyes of the universe are fixed upon me ! " Within
six months the composition was finished and exhibited at the
Academy of Saint Luke in the presence of over a thousand en-
thusiastic artists. Thorvaldsen, greatly impressed, said: ** This
young man is a giant."

Yet the reception accorded * Patroclus ' in Rome was not to

[31]

MODERN ARTISTS

be duplicated elsewhere. When the canvas finally reached the
port of Antwerp, consigned of course to the Academy, that un-
perturbed institution declined to pay the five hundred francs
carriage, and, had it not been for the generous assistance of Van
Bree, it is difficult to conjecture what might have been its fate.
Pending its formal exhibition at Antwerp, Wiertz placed his pic-
ture on private view in the ancient convent of the RecoUets, and
there he sat almost alone day after day playing the guitar and
confidently awaiting his hour of triumph. Fired by the lust of
conquest he meanwhile decided to throw down the gauntlet to
Ms mortal enemy, Paris, but unfortunately the big canvas ar-
rived at the forbidding portals of the Louvre too late for the
Salon of 1838. Wiertz, in Homeric rage, demanded its admit-
tance, or, failing of that, permission to erect a tent and publicly
display his masterpiece in the place du Louvre. As both re-
quests were everywhere suavely yet firmly refused, there was
nothing to do but wait a year longer. The following season he
sent ' Patroclus ' and three other subjects, including an * En-
tombment,' painted at Liege, a work which he assured his
friends marked the opening of his *' duel with Rubens, of which
Paris will be the witness ; his duel with Paris, in which Rubens
will be his second." Unhappily the *' hideous monster," Paris,
which he threatened to crush under his heel, that " cancer," or,
as he often called it, that ^' city of suicide," declined to bow to
the magic of his brushes and palette. The jury accepted three
of his contributions but skied them all cruelly, * Patroclus,'
though hung in the Salle d'honneur, being barely distinguish-
able. Wiertz, cut to the quick, waited moodily about for a few
weeks seeking retribution, then left forever the scene of his pain
and humiliation. Press and public had alike ignored him. It
was a blow from which he never recovered, and from thence-
forth dark shadows of hatred and revenge began to gather closer
and closer about him. He planned numerous retaliatory meas-

[32]

THE REVOLT OF HELL AGAINST HEAVEN
By Antoine Wiertz
[Wiertz Museum, Brussels]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

ures, and the succeeding year actually had the ironical satisfac-
tion of seeing a similar *' immortal jury " decline an admirable
canvas by Rubens, which he had borrowed for the occasion, and
to which, in the presence of witnesses, he had affixed his own
signature.

The verdict of Paris was in large measure sustained when
* Patroclus ' was placed on exhibition in Antwerp and in Brus-
sels. While a few of the critics praised it, most of them were
openly hostile. Classic themes were fast vanishing before the
rise of a \dgorous national school under the leadership of Wap-
pers, and the first hints of that new, poignant actuality of which
Charles de Groux was to become the apostle and Constantin
Meunier the chief exponent. Wiertz felt out of consonance with
his age, and in order to justify and defend his position, began
with brush and pencil a campaign of bitter, indignant rebellion
which only ended with the grave. He resided at Liege during
this period in order to be near his widowed mother for whom
his devotion was unbounded. * Esmeralda ' and * Quasimodo '
were the immediate results of his visit to Paris and his admira-
tion for the Hugoesque. Other subjects followed in lightning
succession, the most important being the * Revolt of Hell ' which
he painted under the cupola of the church of Saint- Andre. He
worked with incredible energy, covering in six weeks this colos-
sal canvas measuring fifty feet high by thirty feet wide, with
masses of writhing demons and avalanches of riven rock. ** I
know neither day, nor hour, nor date," he wrote at the time. " I
know but two things, the moment of labour, and the moment of
repose." Occasionally in the evening he might be seen, tense,
abstracted, yet full of filial solicitude, strolling along the quai
de la Souveniere arm in arm with his tottering mother, soon,
alas, to be taken from him. Her death drove him to Brussels
where, housed in an abandoned factory, he completed the ^ Tri-
umph of Christ,' in many respects his most rational and con-

[33]

MODERN ARTISTS

sistent production. It was this effort which induced the govern-
ment, through the intermediary of M. Rogier, to build him a
suitable studio on condition that upon his death he should leave
all his works in perpetuity to the State. And thus by the spring
of 1850 his restless, sombre probation was over. He had found
at last those great bare walls he had dreamed of as a child, and
which he might now cover as an ever encroaching spirit world
saw fit to dictate.

The interval between his return from Rome and his estab-
lishment in what later became the Musee Wiertz marked the
creation of the painter's most important classical and biblical
works. Those which followed were mainly of a pseudo-phil-
osophical character, or else sheer, unredeemed studies in terror
and grotesquerie. Beset by all save a slender handful of believ-
ers Wiertz made matters worse by rushing into print at every
opportunity. While a few able, though extravagant effusions,
among them a * Eulogy of Rubens,' which was crowned by the
Antwerp Academy, flowed from his vehement pen, for the most
part his writings were charged with exalted egotism and ma-
jestic presumption. The critics were the particular objects of
his wrath. He could never forget them, and even said that if
they pressed about him after death *' like a flock of vultures "
picking his fame to pieces he would surely rise from the grave
and defend himself. The inspiring events of 1830 which had so
quickened Belgian national feeling found ready response in
Wiertz. Political revolution he firmly believed should be fol-
lowed by artistic revolution. In an open letter to the Minister
of the Interior in which he offered to the State a picture of his
own on condition that it be hung beside Rubens 's ^ Descent from
the Cross ' in the cathedral of Antwerp, he says : — * * It is time
we threw off this foreign yoke ; it is time we had confidence in
our native forces. Let us cease to believe with the French that
M. Delacroix is a greater man than Rubens, and that M. Decamps

[34]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

is a worthy rival of Raphael. It is time, in short, for our Bel-
gian artists to sing their Marseillaise! '' And yet all the while
this resplendent prophet was crying aloud to the world in lofty
tones, all the while he was crowding his vast canvases with dis-
traught and pleading conceptions, he was enduring the most
dire poverty and neglect. He painted as always for posterity,
refusing to part with any picture of importance, a foreign prince
once vainly offering an iromense sum for the ^ Triumph of
Christ.' It was often with him a case of *' bread or lead,''
though somehow just enough bread always came to save him
from that oblivion which he dreaded above all else. The image
of death haunted him with increasing vividness as the years
slipped by, not as something to be feared in itself, but as the
messenger who might summon him hence before glory should
be definitely assured.

Under his explicit instructions and in exact replica of the
ruined temple of Neptune at Paestum the State agreed to erect
for him a permanent studio situated near the Pare Leopold and
not far from the Garde du Luxembourg. The building is to-day
surrounded by the melancholy charm of a small, neglected gar-
den, and though gloomy, is reposeful in aspect, somewhat sug-
gesting a mausoleum. About the massive columns, over the
broken pediment, and along the rough walls have for years
twined masses of creeper and ivy, now green, now purple or
crimson. Though certain exterior features have altered, within
the place remains much the same as during the painter's life-
time. It is a pictorial pandemonium, a Vatican of eccentricity.
On the walls rages a cyclopean conflict between good and evil,
between beauty and horror. The majestic and the trivial are
grouped side by side just as they burst from their creator's
disordered, incongruous fancy. Visions of seething, relentless
power are offset by cheap devices and panoptical tricks unworthy
of the rudimentary imagination of a child. Sentiment of the

[35]

MODERN ARTISTS

sugary, Bouguereau brand is succeeded by dramatic vivisections
and insistent diablerie from which the most callous visitor
shrinks in loathing and disgust. All periods from the classic
to the ultra modern and morbid, all episodes from the * Educa-
tion of the Virgin ' to the * Romance Reader ' throng this lurid
graphic cosmos. Apart from the pictures he had previously
painted it took the artist just fifteen years to fill the remaining
space at his disposal. A portion of the time was passed in writ-
ing his * Flemish School of Painting ' and numerous brochures,
pamphlets, and tractates as well as in modelling, for sculpture
was also one of his passions. During many anxious, baffling
months he devoted his energies to the study of chemistry with a
view to perfecting his *^ peinture mate," a combination of fresco
and oil painting supposedly having more fluency of handling
than the former and none of the latter 's often irritating re-
flective quality. It was of course necessary for him to continue
fabricating portraits ** pour la soupe," as he would say, and
during less exalted moments he perpetrated various *' petites
bamboches," or serio-comic platitudes without interest or dis-
tinction. He insisted upon living a rigidly isolated existence,
seldom venturing out, though adjoining his studio he devised
a miniature ** jardin geographique," in which, arrayed in long
black tunic, big Rubens hat, and gaiters, he used to promenade,
fancying himself in different parts of the universe. He laboured
ceaselessly, it being his hope some day to enlarge the museum to
many times its actual size and paint a continuous panorama of
civilization, of which the portion already completed was but the
preface. Yet this grandiose dream was not to be realized.
Death, who had long since gazed fixedly upon him from the walls
of his narrow Antwerp mansard, at last claimed him for that
dim kingdom which is all dreams, all phantoms.

He suffered intolerably from neuralgia, and moreover his
chemical researches had undermined an otherwise robust con-

[36]

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ANTOINE WIERTZ

stitution. Though ill but a few days he died in fearful agony
from gangrene shortly after ten o'clock on the evening of 18
June 1865, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.
Even as the mortal chill was creeping over him he moaned fran-
tically " I am burning! burning! '' At the bedside had gath-
ered Dr. Watteau, Louis Labarre, his lifelong friend and
champion, Mme. Sebert, and the eldest son of the good boatman,
Galain Disiere. It was a soft, magical summer night. Overhead
'swung a silvery moon and from the near-by gardens were wafted
the strains of a waltz. He grew calmer after awhile and spoke
of Socrates 's belief in the immortality of the soul, and then,
realizing that his time was at hand, fought off the inevitable
moment with agonizing fortitude. Just before the end he raised
himself upon the pillow and cried : " Oh what glorious horizons !
What beautiful, tender countenances! how sad they are; they
weep because they love me so. Quick! My brushes! My
palette! What a picture I shall paint! I shall vanquish
Raphael! '^ Then, speechless, he raised his hand and with his
finger traced imaginary outlines in the air, sinking back with
an inexpressible sob of regret. They buried him temporarily
in the cemetery of Ixelles, conducting the heart to his native
town of Dinant to repose in an urn in the H6tel-de-Ville, where,
years before, he had been proclaimed the godson of Rubens, the
saviour of the art of his country.

' It is useless to pretend that the work of Antoine Wiertz
possesses any special aesthetic value or significance. He occu-
pies a decidedly rickety seat in the Pantheon of the masters.
He entered not by day, between wide, lofty portals, but on a
stormy night through the back door and up dingy, crooked stairs.
Though at the outset he may have had some hint of the plastic
fervour of Michelangelo, some gleam of the chromatic f ulgor of
his revered Rubens, such gifts were quickly engulfed in a bound-
less ocean of personal vanity, and vaunting, arrogant emula-

[37]

MODERN ARTISTS

tion. A flash of the spiritual evocation of Blake here and there
shines forth only to be rendered dull and lustreless by the heavy
pomposity of Haydon. The man came too late upon the scene.
He stirred up the dust of giants long since departed. He sum-
moned from the spacious, heroic past stalwart figures who
merely mocked him and glided back into the abyss of eternity.
At no time does he appear to have possessed a clear perception
of reality. His dreams early began to dethrone thought^ and
finally reason. He was utterly lacking in all sense of relation
or proportion. Size was to him synonymous with greatness.
His art is extensive rather than intensive. The fundamental
defect of his nature seems to have been a disastrous form of
egomania. He was continually substituting ambition for ac-
complishment ; he was forever confounding glory and self-glori-
fication. Not the least of his shortcomings is that he was a per-
petual borrower. His special divinities he often placed under
contribution, and, still unsatisfied, he did not scruple to look
elsewhere. Upon ^ Happy Times ' has settled the Hellenic
quietude of Poussin. Back of ^ Two Young Women or the
Beautiful Rosine ' looms the eloquent and occasionally volup-
tuous fantasy of Delacroix. Each stage of his development is
reflected in these violent, abortive productions. In * Patroclus *
he challenges the universe ; the * Revolt of Hell ' depicts his own
revolt against those in power, and in the * Triumph of Christ '
are mirrored the few brief moments of peace he was ever to
experience. Nevertheless this art is not only typical of the man
himself, but in a distorted way of the nation as well. While
individual, this turbulence, this morbid unrest, were also gen-
eral. Other of Wiertz's contemporaries thought and felt much
as he, and numerous Belgian artists both past and present have
fallen under the same spell. There is something of Wiertz in
Laermans, in the pallid figments of Khnopff, and the sardonic
demons of Felicien Rops, while young Henry de Oroux is clearly

[38]

ANTOINE WIERTZ

his artistic grandcMld. Above and before tbem all, however,
towers the mighty, fecund genius who has given the world that
series of * Last Judgments ' and cataclysmic * Revolts ' now in
the Munich Pinakothek. More than anyone else Wiertz resem-
bles Rubens — a Rubens bereft of health, bereft of mind.

It is in the last phase of his activity that Wiertz exhibits
most sympathy with the particular tendencies of his race and
his time. While in his classic and biblical subjects he seldom
speaks with his own voice, in a series of crudely powerful social
studies he strikes a far deeper note. * Orphans,' * Premature
Burial,* * Hunger, Madness, and Crime,' * The Last Cannon,'
and * Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head,' each preaches
a sermon with but scant attempt at disguising the text, one plead-
ing for charity, one for cremation, one against poverty, one
against war, and another against capital punishment. He was
ever haunted by vague souvenirs of the days when the armies
of the Republic and the Empire so seared and scarred the face
of Europe, and in a * Scene in Hell ' does not hesitate to depict
a certain familiar figure with long cloak, cocked hat, and folded
arms standing unmoved amid livid flames, whilst about him
surges an infuriated, lamenting crowd of widows and orphans,
bearing in upraised hands the dismembered remains of their
slaughtered loved ones. In these and similar episodes Wiertz
proves himself a true son of democracy and humanitarianism,
as well as one of the first artists to treat modem themes on an
imposing scale. It is obvious that more restraint and less crapu-
lous horror, less of the stench of the charnel house would have
heightened the efficacy of these appeals, and yet at times the
man's brain seemed itself a veritable morgue. To the last
Wiertz fancied himself a soldier of advanced thought, a ^^ chas-
seur d'idees." One of his favourite projects was the establish-
ment of a series of exact correspondences between the various
arts, a theory to which Goethe and others had already given no

[39]

MODERN ARTISTS

little consideration. In distorted measure lie possessed the mind
of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet, and the fervour of
a patriot. Endowed with acute organic susceptibility he ap-
peared destined from the first for martyrdom. He was born,
and persisted in continuing, tragically out of harmony with the
world about him. He lived the life of a lost Titan, always alone,
always harassed. His unflinching devotion to his career and
his austere vows of poverty and celibacy — vows which were
never forsworn — did not, in the end, suffice to constitute him
one of the gods or redeemers of art. Through reasons beyond
control of his troubled spirit he could not remain upon the
heights. He descended perforce from Olympus into the re-
cesses of dark Avernus.

[40]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

Permission of Frederick Hollyer

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

Portrait of the artist painted by himself

\_Possession of Lord Ilchester, Holland House, London^

GEORGE EREDERICK WATTS

LONGr since, a youth of eighteen with sensitive features, a
brow crowned by dark curls, and eyes that spoke of high
enthusiasms dreamed an exalted, resplendent dream.
He dreamed of a gleaming Temple of Life with vast corridors
and stately chambers. The temple was built of marble and its
walls were covered with frescoes depicting in epic sequence the
august mysteries of birth, of life, and of death. Grouped about
were statues giving form to those ideas better suited to plastic
expression. Each crisis in the upward struggle of the soul and
the surge of each elemental passion there found fitting sem-
blance. The themes were treated in allegorical vein and in terms
which would appeal to mankind for all time. That which is, and
that which is not, that which has been, and that which can never
be — the entire pageant of hope, and effort, and aspiration was
unfolded in symbolic beauty and significance. Inevitably this
fervid, soaring conception was never realized, for the cosmic
history of humanity can hardly be written by a single individual.
Only a little wall-space has been covered, only a few bits of
statuary have been put in place, a few faces limned with un-
faltering serenity, yet enough exists to witness the depth and
vitality of that early revelation. Though feeble of body the
dreamer remained ardent in endeavour, and never ceased striv-
ing for the fulfilment of his youthful vision. Until the verj^ last
he continued adding to a task which from the first must perforce
have remained unfinished.

[43]

MODERN ARTISTS

Only in England during the nineteenth century could such
a phenomenon as George Frederick Watts have occurred. He
belongs to the Victorian age, to an age of liberalism, of humani-
tarian aims, and a certain broad, didactic habit of mind. In
artistic as well as political progress his countrymen had been
the leaders of the modern movement. A century and more be-
fore the place de la Concorde was dyed crimson, England had
passed through a corresponding crisis and was already laying
the foundations of a well ordered social and economic system.
The same results were achieved as in France, but by vastly dif-
ferent and less violent means. The very moral stability of the
people made it impossible for them to drench their country in
blood and tears. Moreover, there were no traditions to hamper
development; the iron hand of classicism did not reach across
the Channel. Society was less highly crystallized and the varied
activities of the human mind were more natural, more healthy,
and more spontaneous. By the time Watts was born in London
on 23 February 1817, the intellectual atmosphere about him was
clear and serene. He grew to manhood amid settled, equable
surroundings, and since throughout his career there seemed lit-
tle to do beyond improving and uplifting existing conditions, it
was fitting that he should have become an idealist. In common
with his contemporaries in the field of letters or of science he
dedicated his gifts to the cause of humanity. For close upon
ninety years he gazed at life with the eyes of the spirit, seeing
only that which the spirit saw, recording only that which to the
spirit seemed worthy of record. Though this steadfast vision-
ary often turned to actuality in order to enforce or verify an
impression, always, with him, did the symbol transcend the fact,
always did the unseen shine more radiantly than the seen.
Fundamentally moral, it was the impress of an ethical rather
than a physical beauty which he sought to transcribe. Since art
was for him a sacred mission rather than a disturbing riot of the

[44]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

senses, that which he strove to portray was the austere serenity
or the purifying anguish of the soul. In depicting what he con-
ceived to be inspiring and eternal truths he never hesitated to
sublimate colour and contour as well as passion and volition.
While his colleagues were for the most part painters only, he
was both painter and prophet. His work was everywhere
illumined by imaginative reason. He saw in all things the
image of divinity. God was for him the world and the world
was God.

Almost any time until the last four years might have been
seen seated before the fire at Little Holland House in his fa-
vourite red plush arm-chair or strolling about the garden of
Limnerslease in skull-cap and workman's blouse this venerable,
benign figure. Those who knew him intimately called him ' * The
Signor, ' ' and in many respects his patriarchal appearance sug-
gested some bygone Venetian senator. To certain minds he was
but a kindly, dignified echo of past grandeur and faded glory.
There seemed, it is true, a pathetic incongruity between the out-
ward frailty of the man and his unquenchable earnestness of
purpose. Furthermore, he was the ceaseless victim of doubt and
mistrust. He habitually imderrated his powers and often re-
ferred to himself as *^ the poorest of poor creatures.'' While
it is obvious that he must often have been taken at his own meas-
ure, those who understood George Frederick Watts were never
deceived. Though his greatness was not at first apparent, it was
nevertheless indubitable. A delicate, sickly child and a man
who suffered throughout life, he still managed to keep burning
the flame of high hope and far reaching ambition. Through
infinite care he maintained a finely adjusted equilibrium of
forces which lasted until the end. With unflinching persistence
he outlived long periods of indifference and obscurity, drifting
at length into the serenity of general recognition and accept-
ance. From the deepening twilight of the heroic age of art

[45]

MODERN ARTISTS

looms this solitary being. In pious ecstasy he recalls the Hebrew
seers ; for tragic awe he may be likened to Aeschylus. In devo-
tion to form he suggests Phidias, and in tone the richness of
the Renaissance. While he possessed none of these qualities in
generous measure, each was in some degree his legacy, and each
in part transfused every canvas, every bit of bronze or marble
he has left behind.

In the truest sense of the phrase this meek yet mighty spirit
seemed to inherit the earth. His majestic roll of years gave him
ample perspective, his open, inquiring mind moved freely among
the varied works of God and man, and his vision embraced all
periods and all epochs from the awakening possibilities of crea-
tion to the clouded hour of our own day and generation. Beyond
everything he was a supreme pictorial genius. Even when he
failed, as he often did, to clothe his ideas in finite guise, the
effort exacts attention and respect, for the man's calibre is also
manifest in his groping, incomplete gestures. He was essen-
tially a creator. Whatever he touched sprang into predestined
form and colour. Out of chaos he made a vast panorama of
primitive potentialities; he retold with new depth and preg-
nance Greek legend and Arthurian romance, and over the
troubled destiny of mankind shed a flood of consoling light.
Above all he was simple and elemental. The sea, the sky, the
gleam of flesh, and the far stars were the alphabet of his art.
From the primal dust and wind, from the diffused radiance of
the first sunrise he fashioned creatures tender and ethereal,
prophetic and courageous. Although the art of George Fred-
erick Watts gathers under her protecting wings so many of the
earth's children and the children of the brain, there is no lack
of unity, or of community, in anything he painted or modelled.
A single thought animates his entire graphic cosmos. His mes-
sage is the message of universal brotherhood and universal
peace. Leaving to divers youngsters the sterile doctrine of art

[46]

Permission of Frederick Holh/er

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
By George Frederick Watts
[Possession of Mrs. Beers, London']

GEORGE FEEDERICK WATTS

for art's sake, he boldly proclaimed that beauty was the heritage
of the many, not the property of the esoteric few. Art, he held,
should in her highest manifestations be consciously utilitarian,
should be a medium for the transmission of ennobling ideas.
** A picture without an idea,'' he said, ** is like a face without
eyes." He went still further. " A great picture," he main-
tained, *^ must be ethical — didactic, if you like, but certainly
ethical. Humanity has created art, as it has created tools and
weapons, for its own advancement, for its own help, for its own
comfort." Had he possessed a mind less clear and logical, and
a less exacting aesthetic conscience, it is easy to see how this
evangelist in paint must have encountered complete shipwreck.
Yet that same gift of balance which so long held body and soul
together also kept in sufficient accord the thought and its ex-
pression. However instinct these canvases are with mental or
moral purport, they but seldom fail to reveal a compensating
external loveliness. Spirit and sense have here been strangely,
almost mystically, married.

It is a frequent contention that the art of Watts is literary,
meaning, presumably, that it contains elements which properly
belong to the domain of letters. Few judgments could be more
superficial or inadequate. The conceptions that took shape
under the caressing stress of his brush or chisel are not the ex-
clusive property of any sect or coterie; they are the common
legacy of all men and all ages. They are those fundamental
verities which have perplexed or inspired humanity from the
beginning and will continue to do so until the end. They occupy
alike the painter and the poet, the theologue and the man of
science, the sybarite and the beggar by the roadside. In scarcely
a single instance has Watts repeated either in substance or in
form that which had been said before. What he did was to take
certain tjrpical themes and recast them in a language of his own.
When at his best he embodied in splendid, sweeping lines and

[47]

MODERN ARTISTS

solemn, glowing colours the eternal aspiration and the eternal
heart-hunger of the human race, the joy of service and the pain
of those who, having great possessions, depart in sorrow. It
was no narrow view that he took of his mission. * * Art, ' ' he held,
*^ embraces the whole of those conditions which are to be repre-
sented to the mind through the medium of the eye.'' Himself a
rigorous, elemental man he gave to certain of these truths a
clarity and a structural simplicity which made them universal
in application and appeal. When he speaks in his rightful voice
it is impossible to remain deaf to the message of Watts. Full
of subdued rhythmic vibrancy, his canvases seem like pictorial
anthems. One and all they chant the Gloria in Excelsis of life
and art.

While he acquired much from without, while he took glad-
ness from the vernal freshness of spring, or tinged his palette
with the burning glow of the dying year ; while he borrowed the
veiled whiteness of the pearl and the pink of the nautilus, the
drifting vapours of the river and the iris of the rainbow, Watts 's
chief storehouse lay within. It must not be assumed that this
man with his imaginative fervour, with that power of recreation
so doubly his, represents a wholly British endowment. The
keynote to his character and his achievement lies in the fact
that he was a Celt, not a Saxon. His father was of Welsh ex-
traction, and from him doubtless came the sustained poetic im-
pulse, the kiss of fire, and the benediction of tears, that suffuse
all Watts touched. Into his landscapes stole unconsciously that
pale light which gleams behind the mist-wrapped hills of Wales.
Imbued with all the wistful yearning of his race, and with an
abiding sense of the futility of earthly things, he managed to
establish a definite and fruitful relation between the past and
the present. Musing in his peaceful Surrey home his fancy
travelled to vague, dim times, to dark forests and the sea crash-
ing on a lonely coast. At nightfall as he moved about the gar-

[48]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

den, wMte-bearded and clad in flowing blouse, lie seemed almost
an ancient Druid watching the flame from some rude pyre moimt
skyward in slender, fitful spirals. And out of this realm half
creative and half reminiscent emerged at intervals stalwart men
and ardent, heroic women. ^ Britomart ' and ^ Uldra,' ^ Una '
and ^ Brynhildr,' each came to him awakening echoes of an ear-
lier, more mystical existence. The trace of the Celt was seldom
absent. ^ Eve Repentant ' might have been a distraught Isolde,
and the broken lyre in the tremulous fingers of * Hope ' a harp
once belonging to some wandering bard. While several of his
inspirations were superficially Spenserian, in point of fact they
went still further back — back, indeed, to days before those rest-
less seekers pushed westward, clinging, finally, to the last fringes
of land facing the Atlantic. There is something not only Celtic
but Asiatic in the art of Watts. It is Oriental sjrmbolism seen
through the grey fogs of Britain.

Every episode in a career inwardly rich though outwardly
placid helped Watts to formulate his cherished conceptions.
The f oiu* years passed in Florence under the patronage of Lord
and Lady Holland, and the months spent among the islands of
the Aegean or the plains of Asia Minor with the Newton expedi-
tion, added warmth and definition to his maturing vision. The
hours consumed while studying the Elgin Marbles in the British
Museum likewise contributed their particular quota. A student
at the Academy Schools for but a few weeks, and a desultory
pupil of the sculptor, Behnes, Watts was without systematic
training. ^* I never had any master save Phidias," he often
said, and this was literally true. Victorian in its breadth and
philanthropy, the art of Watts is eclectic, for he wandered over
a wide field in his endeavour to restore painting to her early
grandeur and prestige. In a measure his sense of form is
Florentine, and his colour Venetian, yet in no pronounced degree
is either the case. The tombs of Halicamassus and the tower of

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Giotto loom vaguely, though only vaguely, against his varied
graphic background. While there are traces of the sweep of
the Panathenaic procession, or the subdued glow of Giorgione,
everywhere can be seen the resolute desire to speak an inde-
pendent aesthetic language. So strongly did the creative im-
pulse surge within that he was incapable of making copies after
the Italian masters he so revered. Though Titian, Tintoretto,
and especially Orcagna meant much to him it was only in a
general way. He was above all a painter of processes, one who
recorded the ever changing vesture of outward things, one who
mirrored the mind's ceaseless inquietude. To him nothing was
explicit, nothing final; decay followed fast upon growth and
death was succeeded by joyous rebirth. A whole cycle of muta-
tions both visible and invisible was continually unfolding itself
before him. The world was ever new; the heart of man ever
young.

The painter-knight who, at Lord Holland's mask ball, ar-
rayed himself in a suit of silver-black armour, and whose earnest
countenance is here framed by a dark casement with, beyond,
glimpses of the Palazzo Vecchio, was always an instinctive,
searching student of human physiognomy. When, on his return
from Florence, he failed in his efforts to revive mural painting
on an heroic scale, he turned to portraiture, gradually forming
the idea of leaving to the nation a complete gallery of the poets,
artists, publicists, and statesmen of nineteenth-century England.
In all his portraits Watts aimed to see beneath mere accidents
of circumstance. Each interpretation displays a humble and
passionate integrity of purpose. This shrinking, modest man
to whom money was naught and fame almost an intrusion, re-
fused to exhibit himself in place of his sitter. He declined to
pounce with a cheap show of analysis upon what appeared to
be a dominant emotion or a characteristic trait. He was at all
times content to remain questing and expectant, merging his

[50]

permission of Frederick HoUyer

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

By George Frederick Watts

[Watts Picture Gallery, Compton Lane, Surrey]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

own identity into that of his subject. No technical bravado
mars the simplicity of these likenesses. Serene, pontifical Ten-
nyson, irate, rebellious Carlyle, and grandly optimistic Brown-
ing look out of canvases that are devoid of any striving after
points. It was the deeper mystery of personality, the uncon-
scious revelation of self and of soul which Watts strove to per-
petuate. None is without interest, none without penetration.
The lyric intensity of Swinburne, the blended humour and sad-
ness of Leslie Stephen, and the brain weariness written on the
brow and in the eyes of the poet of ^ Obermann ' are the acme
of synthetic divination. Obviously these portraits are transla-
tions rather than transcriptions, for that which Watts aimed
to achieve was something higher and nobler than pyrotechnics
in paint or photogi'aphic accuracy. Taking the elements of the
individual before him he recreated upon canvas his inner, rather
than his outer, image, retaining those qualities which alone were
essential and enduring. He remained always the idealist. He
showed with gentle forbearance what man is, and with quicken-
ing enthusiasm what man should be.

The principle Watts applied with such convincing power to
the delineation of his fellow-workers in the field of social ad-
vancement was applied alike to primal fancy. Mosaic tradition,
Cretan myth, or medieval story. He managed to revive with
a magic all his own the centuries-old narratives of the Genesis,
the Fall, and the Flood. To the grief of Ariadne seated on
the wooded shores of Naxos waiting the return of Theseus he
added fresh poignancy. The Orpheus of legend is less tragic
than the sweet singer who here clasps in his arms the already
lifeless form of Eurydice, and it is not simply Diana, but the
very spirit of nocturnal mystery which here bends to kiss the
sleeping shepherd of Latmos. The lines of Dante carry but a
faint suggestion of the listless, burned-out ecstasy of this Paolo
and Francesca circling remorsefully through the Inferno, nor

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has poet been able to picture a knight quite like Watts 's Sir
Galahad standing beside his cream-white steed, his eyes aglow
with mingled rapture and resolye. If it be true that there is no
beauty without some strangeness, it is equally true that there
is no beauty without a certain sadness, and both elements are
ever present in the work of Watts. A delicate veil shrouds each
countenance, an indefinable pathos envelops hill and valley,
and shadows fall aslant the path of peace. Even in the spring-
time of life and love, flowers droop and heads are bowed. It is
not that these beautiful, sedate compositions breathe hopeless-
ness or despair; it is merely that they teach the dual lesson of
courage and compassion.

Yet the real ethical and aesthetic import of Watts 's message
is not manifest until you emerge from the realm of fable and
romance into the pale, serene atmosphere of abstract thought.
The central figure in this drama of ideas is of course man. As
the painter himself said: ** The noblest symbol is the human
form, and the human form can express all the virtues of life —
love, courage, faith ; and all the tragedy of life — sin, suffering,
and death." Considering the manifest difficulty in treating
such themes it is remarkable that this prophet in paint did not
more frequently allow moral considerations to outweigh his
sense of form, colour, or design, for with him the ethical purpose
was ever uppermost. In point of fact, however, he was less
didactic than he imagined. ** I teach great truths," he once
remarked, *^ but I do not dogmatize." Or again, speaking of
the public, he said: *^ I lead them to the church door, and then
they can go in and see God in their own way." In a series of
visions sometimes inchoate and obscure, sometimes incomparably
direct and uplifting, he thus sought to embody the perennial
enigmas and aspirations of humankind. Although in essence
they are deeply philosophical and deeply religious, these works
are unconditioned by creed or doctrine. Basic ideas are ex-

[52]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

pressed in the broadest, most liberal terms. The customary
insignia of the church are absent. Cross, crown, and bleeding
heart find no place in this grandly simple imagery. It is a grey,
somewhat formless region where there are no firmly postulated
texts, no fanatical sacrifices to faith. Over this art is spread
the complex pathos of modern agnosticism. His pictures show,
as Watts himself recognized, humanity's breaking away from
theological formulae and still holding true to the law of its
being — ^morality.

Just as he had formerly read new mystery and magic into
oft-told tales, so Watts gave new shape to certain conceptions
which had long been the property of the multitude. Hope
never before showed such resigned and unwearied tenderness
as does this bowed creature clinging to the bare disk of the world
listening to the music of a solitary string, nor was Time ever
before pictured as a resolute youth, clear-eyed and firm of car-
riage. The man's creative impulse seldom flagged, nor was he
ever satisfied with conventional expedients. With steadfast
gaze this calm apostle of allegory surveyed the universe afresh
and in the seclusion of his studio redreamed the dreams of the
ages. The most moving of all his visitants was Death, who
appeared before him not in the guise of a hideous, leering skull,
but as a majestic, resistless presence clad in pearl-white, her
face averted, as though deploring her dread errand. Now she
carried in the folds of her robe blossoms plucked but yesterday ;
now she crowned the brow of Innocence, and now brushed
aside Love who sought to stay her hand upon the flower-
strewn threshold of Life. There is always in these pictures
a suggestion of maternity in the treatment of death. It was not
accidental, but intentional. ** I want," the painter said, " to
destroy the notion that death is * the king of terrors.' My fa-
vourite thought recognizes Death as the kind nurse who says:
* Now then, children, you must go to bed, and wake up in the

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morning/ '' On another occasion lie spoke of her as ** a gracious
Mother, calling her children home."

Despite the cloud shadows that flit across this fair land, it
is always springtime, always April, in the art of Watts. An
inherent primalism clung about the wondrous old man even to
the end. Born in the morning of the year, he somehow never
lost the capacity for re-creation and the response to new life
and new possibilities. Until the very last he was fond of paint-
ing such subjects as * Green Summer,' or fair-tinted * Lillian '
bearing in her hands a basket of fresh-plucked roses. Particu-
larly fond of the golden crocus, he seldom failed to introduce
into his paintings an appropriate floral symbolism. And like
flowers his thoughts themselves would grow into being, unfold-
ing gradually, according to some inner, hidden law, from bulb
to blossom. Though by no means an exact or painstaking stu-
dent of natural forms his spirit was ever in consonance with
nature's meaning and nature's moods. His sympathies were
attuned to the world and all that throbbed therein. His soul
was at peace with God and man. In his calm, harmonious way
he represented the great oneness of the universe.

There was never, in the daily life of Watts, any conflict be-
tween aspiration and accomplishment. The ideals enunciated
in his art were upheld by his actions. He was not one who
preached charity and failed to put his hand into his own pocket.
Year after year he gave of his best with no thought of reward.
When he returned from Italy convinced of the immense edu-
cative value of mural painting he offered to decorate without
charge the Hall of the new Euston Station only to have his pro-
posal rejected by the phlegmatic directors of the company.
Aside from an insignificant legacy he never had a penny he did
not earn, and yet presented canvas after canvas to the nation.
A whole succession of contemporary likenesses was given to the
National Portrait GaUery, while many of his most important

[54]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

allegorical compositions went to the Tate Gallery. The cartoon
of * Sir Galahad ' he gave to Eton College Chapel, * Love and
Death * to the city of Manchester, * Fata Morgana ' to Leicester,
a version of * Love and Life ' to America, and * The Happy
Warrior ' to Munich. Judging by the price offered privately
for ^ Love and Death,' which was five thousand pounds, he
might have made large simis, yet he preferred to live modestly,
even plainly, with barely enough for his meagre needs. Al-
though evincing generous sympathy for the artists of his time,
and sharing to a certain degree their struggles and triumphs,
he never allied himself with any particular group or movement.
A Pre-Raphaelite he cannot be called, and the only possible label
which may be given one so remote and so hieratic is that of
having belonged to those New Idealists who have offset the
rigours of naturalism and the prismatic conquests of the Im-
pressionists by pouring over the world a tender, melting beauty
— a beauty which is of the spirit rather than of the senses, of
the mind rather than the eye. Decade after decade he wrought
in silence and semi-obscurity, and it was not until he had reached
the age of fifty that he was made a member of the Royal Acad-
emy. Yet such matters concerned him little, for later on, when
twice offered a baronetcy, he each time declined, caring nothing
for worldly distinction.

Like Michelangelo this humbler, more pacific giant of the
English Renaissance had within him a persistent love for the
round. At intervals he busied himself with sculpture, the bust
of * Clytie,' the statue of * Hugo Lupus ' which commands the
entrance to the grounds of Eton Hall, and the heroic equestrian
entitled ^ Physical Energy ' which was appropriately designed
to stand upon the heights of Matoppos in commemoration of the
achievements of Cecil Rhodes, being his chief contributions to
plastic art. For many years he lived in Little Holland House,
Melbury Road, where his friends often gathered to see his work

[55]

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and listen to grave dissertations on current topics or delight in
his playful, almost boyish, banter. He used to wear the prover-
bial crimson skull-cap and blue blouse, and when animated would
move his head sharply from side to side making short, impatient
sweeps of the arm. At times, though, he would remain seated
for days the prey of nervous depression or a curious *' brain
sickness,'' as he called it, which made it impossible for him to
visit the studio wherein were gathered so many canvases com-
pleted or in process. A Stoic in cast of mind, he was a Spartan
in his tastes and habits. He never smoked, never touched alco-
hol in any form, and ate sparingly. Avoiding as a rule public
gatherings, he was fond of strolling about the streets arrayed
in a long fur coat. And every night for years, at the close of a
hard day's work, he would sit down to a supper of cold pudding,
milk, and barley water.

The life in London was carried out in brighter, more inspirit-
ing colours at the painter's country home known as Limners-
lease, in Surrey, near Guildford. Guarded by tall sentinel firs
the modest, vine-grown house looked across a landscape dotted
with white cottages set among smiling fields. In his younger
days Watts was a capital horseman and might often have been
seen galloping up ** Hog's Back " or along the very road where
Chaucer's Pilgrims used to wend their way toward the shrine
of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Throughout the siunmer and
autumn he rose every morning at three thirty, worked until
seven, when he had his bath and breakfast, then worked until
one, and again from three until six or after. Unhurried, undis-
turbed, he would labour at different periods for ten, or even
twenty years upon the same composition, getting closer and
closer to the idea which he sought to portray. Though his tech-
nique was troubled and fumbling, he somehow managed to
achieve the desired results, and when all was finished would
cover the canvas with a film of white, afterward adding fresh

[56]

Permission of Frederick Hollyer

LOVE AND LIFE

By George Frederick Watts

[The National Gallery of British Art, London]

GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

touches of colour in order to get just that bloom which indeed
is the bloom of eternal youth. A few of his pictures, such as the
fire-bathed head of * Brynhildr/ and ^ Time, Death, and Judg-
ment ' came to him as complete revelations, but for the most
part his conceptions were evolved slowly and painfully. His
art is not, in fact, a reproduction of that which is without;
it is a representation of that which is within. It is that most
difficult and hazardous of all aesthetic tasks. It is thought
made visible.

Just as he had in London shed about him loveliness and
benevolence, so here in the open there grew up imder his eye
numerous tokens of charity and utility. Together with Mrs.
Watts he built the picturesque Mortuary Chapel which stands
in the grove near his house, and together they established, under
the auspices of the Home Industries Association, a flourishing
pottery at Compton, not far from the spot where Mrs. Watts
has since erected a Picture Gallery containing as many of her
husband's works as it has been possible to collect. And this Gal-
lery, which he never saw, is perhaps the nearest approach to that
Temple of Life of which he had dreamed so long and ardently.
As time went on, though the weight of years bowed that slender
frame, his spirit never faltered. Shortly before the end he re-
marked, with pathetic heroism, *' I think aspiration will last as
long as there is consciousness." He was in fact actually work-
ing on the huge model for his statue of ' Physical Energy '
when, on 1 July 1904, the final summons came.

Although the past had perhaps always clung too closely
about him, and though he was not fated boldly to carry the
banner of art into new territory, he nevertheless achieved that
first and most precious of all victories — the victory over self.
Eager, ruthless oncomers with the cruel intolerance of youth
were soon to thrust aside his hinnble offering, yet the lesson of
his life can never be overlooked. And as he lay there restful

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MODERN ARTISTS

and motionless in the deepening summer twilight it seemed as
though, like his own * Happy Warrior/ his brow must in truth
have been softly kissed by one of those same beautiful, tender
beings he had often summoned from the radiant beyond.

At the simple, impressive service in St. PauPs Cathedral
which was attended by some of the foremost artists and states-
men in England, they played a Beethoven funeral march, the
archdeacon reading that memorable prayer from Ecclesiasticus
beginning: ** Let us now praise famous men, and the fathers
that begat us. Their bodies are buried in peace but their name
liveth for evermore." The next day they left him sleeping on
the sunlit hillside he loved so well, gently covered with lilies,
the white and slender symbol of that immortality he had man-
fully won.

[58]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

Portrait of the artist painted by himself

[The National Gallery, Berlin]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

IT is a significant fact that despite tlie encroaclunents of sci-
ence and the increasing materialism of existence the Blue
Flower of the ideal should have continued to flourish upon
the earth. Lofty and impersonal with Watts, serene and Vir-
gilian with Puvis de Chavannes, and dreamily sumptuous with
Gustave Moreau, these glimpses of regions beyond or above more
than held their own beside the sturdy reality of such masters
as Menzel, Courbet, and Liebermann. By a logical process of
development that which in England was detached and spiritual,
and in France was vaguely formal and classic, became in Ger-
many a superb apotheosis of native strength and force. The
resistless trinity of modem Teutonic symbolism is composed of
Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arnold Bocklin. It
is they who have swept all before them, they who have routed
prosaic notions of equality and have enthroned that disturbing
and aggressive conception known as the Overman. It is in Ger-
many alone that this new symbolism obtains, and it is impossible
not to realize that it has flowed direct from the ironic outbursts
of Nietzsche, the symphonic lava stream of Wagner, and the
glowing colour poems of Bocklin. The specific product of a
unified country, they embody, each in different terms, that same
Pangermanism which in certain quarters is to-day considered
so inspiring, and in others so menacing a world factor. While
other cults are losing ground, converts are still flocking to this
splendid, turbulent arena of fancy and of fable. Pale with

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MODERN ARTISTS

Watts, languid and exotic with Moreau, the flower of modern
idealism blossoms with unparalleled luxuriance amid the gar-
dens and meadows where the art of Arnold Bocklin finds its
home. More than any of his colleagues does this extraordinary
being represent creative imagination in its fullest, most robust
florescence.

Scarcely anything could have been more arid and pedestrian
than German art during the early half of the century just
passed. There seems scant choice between the flaccid piety of
Overbeck, Schadow, and the Nazarenes, and the congealed
heroics of Cornelius and Schnorr. The plan of reviving na-
tional art on a religious basis, like the irrational return to medie-
valism, ended in sterility. Nazarenes had too much of the spir-
itual and too little of the temporal; romanticists too many of
the trappings of romance and too small a spice of actuality.
Neither the Passion nor the Nibelungenlied was interpreted
with conviction. The Saviour was anaemic, and Siegfried pre-
posterous. By the mid-century German painting had dwindled
into an affair of monks, cloisters, brigands, cavaliers, tearful
sunsets, and operatic crucifixions. This was at Diisseldorf . In
Munich and Berlin had sprung into vogue under foreign influ-
ence a servile rendering of rural or domestic incident devoid of
interest or illumination. During these infertile decades there
had been no Delacroix, no Ingres, and no grave painters of wood
and field. Kaulbach and Feuerbach held attention for a space,
and Piloty, whose studio dramas had been borrowed from Dela-
roche, managed to cast over his canvases a gleam of surface rich-
ness, yet one after another each man and each movement failed
to produce aught that was important or progressive. It was
not, in fact, until certain of the later men began journeying to
Paris instead of to Rome that the situation changed for the
better, though even then the true redemption had to come from
within. Possibly because the probation was so long, the rise

[62]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

of the present school proved to be correspondingly rapid.
While various elements contributed their quota, the impetus, so
sudden and so manifest, was in main part due to a single indi-
vidual, a man who stands almost alone in the annals of art.

Arnold Bocklin was a posthumous expression of Teutonic
romanticism. He flashed forth as it were after the lights had
simmered out bringing with him a fruitfulness hitherto un-
known and a personal equipment riper than any since the
Eenaissance. With the mild exception of Schwind he had no
precursors and no helpmates, yet by the overwhelming vitality
of his nature he recreated the art of his country. Quietly and
without parade he accomplished for German painting what
Goethe had striven to achieve for German verse and what Wag-
ner was endeavouring to attain for German opera. Through
the medium of an exuberant mentality and a rich-set palette he
revealed to Germans, and to the world, the Germanic soul.
While in a measure he had no successors he fecundated an en-
tire circle of men who have since left their traces not alone
upon art, but upon literature and music as well. The sylvan
brood of Hauptmann's * Sunken Bell ' and the rhythmic so-
nority of Huberts * Symphony in E minor ' are as direct a
tribute to Bocklin 's genius as is Hermann Urban 's solemn
variant on ^ The Island of Death.' The forceful Stuck and the
fatalistic Klinger, the idyllic Thoma and the statuesque linger,
have each profited by him, not to mention Greiner, Briick, and
his own favoured pupils such as Sandreuter, Welti, von PidoU,
and Landsinger. The painters of Worpswede and Dachau owe
to him not a little of their poetic view of landscape, while the
boldest bits in the Secessionist exhibitions of Mimich, Berlin,
and Vienna, or the pages of Jugend are the offshoots of his over-
powering personality.

Born in Basle, 16 October 1827, there was little in Bocklin 's
surroundings to foster an artistic career. It is true that his

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father, who was a struggling silk merchant, had been moved
to name his three sons Werner, Arnold, and Walther, after
Schiller's * Wilhelm Tell,' and that his maternal uncle was a
house decorator, yet when the boy wished to devote himself to
art his practical parent replied that there were already " enough
hungry painters in the world." He meanwhile attended the
local Drawing Academy as well as the Gymnasium, and spent
day after day gazing at the wondrous collection of Holbeins in
the dusky Hall of the University, little dreaming that they
would later form, with his own works, the chief treasures of the
Basle Museum. Had it not been for the shadow of Holbein,
Bocklin might never have become a painter, for it is impossible
to overestimate the influence of this master whose sense of verity
was so exact and who showed such compelling energy in his
fantastic and macaberesque conceptions. The boy also passed
much of his time wandering alone in the open among the valleys
or by the rushing river, and never, even in after life, did he
forget the spirit of Holbein and the rugged silhouette of his
Rhenish birthplace. The gradual awakening and development
of Arnold Bocklin 's genius forms one of the most troubled and
inspiring pages in the history of art. Possessing typically
Swiss independence and love of liberty, hardy and undaunted,
he gathered momentum with each year, emerging at last from
darkness into light, from poverty and neglect into general
recognition and renown. Although this great, primordial man
of the mountains and the sea lived to witness his triumph, it
was not because he was more fortunate than his fellows, but
because he was stronger and closer to nature than they. Nothing
ever shook his purpose or caused him to swerve from his chosen
path. Heroic of feature and of frame, he was blessed at birth
with strength enough to carry himself to the ends of the earth,
and while still in his teens began that odyssey which was so to
enrich his soul, each halting place affording new substance and

[64]

<

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

new beauty, each fortifying and intensifying that which ap-
peared to be an ahnost prenatal capacity for vigorous colour
expression.

Responding to the pleadings of his wife and friends, who
firmly believed in the lad's talent, the elder Bocklin at length
consented to his son's departure for Diisseldorf, where he
studied some two years imder Hildebrand and Schirmer. Find-
ing the vitiated atmosphere of the place little to his liking
he next left with a companion, Rudolf KoUer, for Brussels,
Antwerp, and, after a short interval in Geneva, for Paris.
While Schirmer gave him a fugitive appreciation of landscape,
and the Flemish galleries stimulated his love of line and kindled
his eye for tone, that which most impressed the young Swiss
were the bloody and stirring scenes he witnessed on the streets
of Paris during the Revolution of 1848. Though it was an un-
propitious time for study, art was by no means neglected. Poor
beyond belief the two friends took a single room in the rue de
Verneuil, slept in one bed, and drew from models by day in the
studio of a kindly compatriot. Invaluable as these preliminary
experiences were, it was not until Bocklin returned to Basle;
and eventually reached Rome, with more enthusiasm than cap-
ital, that he entered upon his true aesthetic heritage. In Rome
he joined the circle composed of Dreber, Feuerbach, Reinhold
Begas, and the writers von Scheffel and Paul Heyse. They were
eager, anxious days for one of the supreme colour poets of the
centiu-y. Often compelled to sleep imder the star-dotted sky
for want of a roof over his head he staved off actual starvation
by painting again and again the same views of the Coliseum
and the Forum for the picture shops of the Via Condotti. Un-
deterred by the spectre of increased responsibilities, he married,
in 1853, after a single day's acquaintance, Angelina Paseucci, a
luxuriantly handsome Trasteverina. Though there were in-
numerable obstacles, religious and other, to their union, the

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MODERN ARTISTS

impetuous painter overcame them all, wimiing, as it happened,
a noble and inspiring life partner. Yet his success as an
artist was the reverse of encouraging, the first picture he ex-
hibited having been condemned by the censor to be flung into
the street.

This particular Roman sojourn, which lasted eight years in
all, proved but the first of those constant oscillations between
north and south which marked the remainder of Bocklin's
career. Each time he visited Germany or Switzerland his art
became more genial and robust. Each time he turned toward
Rome or Florence it acquired that depth, stateliness, and auster-
ity which are alone the gift of Italia, the foster-child, the
younger sister, indeed, of Hellas. Arnold Bocklin was able to
develop a specifically racial art because he possessed sufficient
magic to impose his vision upon his countrymen, and because
that vision embodied both the national taste for myth and the
national love of antique beauty. The paintings of Bocklin are
an aftermath of the Holy Roman Empire, the idea of which
had haunted the Teutonic mind for ages. They reflect all the
ineffable nostalgia of his land for the marble statues, cream-
white viUas, fountains, and cypress trees of Italy. This art is
but another version of that Sehnsucht for the South which had
already found voice in the ballads of Goethe, the prose fancies
of Heine, and the inspired periods of Winckelmann. Once
again it was the German viewing Greece through Renaissance
eyes. The special form which Bocklin 's appeal assumed in-
volved a reincarnation imder local conditions of the classic
spirit. He early realized that the one way to treat such themes
was to infuse them with modern passion and modern invention.
Pan, Diana, Prometheus, monsters of the deep and grotesques
of the forest, were given new semblance and new vitality. Not
satisfied with existing types he peopled this pagan world with
creatures of his own making. Nature was continually suggest-

[66]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

ing to this vigorous, primal man forms half bestial and half
human. Out of mountain spring or surging wave, from rocky-
cavern or gnarled tree trunk, issued at his beck the strange
children of the great Earth Spirit. In essence this art is simply
anthropomorphized thought. It is a species of graphic panthe-
ism illustrating the kinship of man and nature, a conception
common to all elemental minds. It was Bocklin's triumph to
have refreshed and revitalized art, to have, in a sense, led human
fancy back to its starting point.

While romantic in temperament Bocklin avoided the routine
faults of romanticism. His eye for form was individual and
his colour modem in its chromatic brilliancy. Even when treat-
ing classic scenes not the least charm of these stretches of
meadow or sky, of shore or wood, is the anti-classic, Dionysian
vein in which they are interpreted. Pagan Greece often fades
before Lutheran Germany. Bacchus becomes a beer drinking
burgher and the abundant humour of Hans Sachs now and then
illumines the features of some grisly centaur. Always painted
in a single key, there is never the slightest discord between mat-
ter and manner. Each canvas is a unit, the animate factors
being but a more volatile embodiment of the inanimate. By a
spontaneous, instinctive mental process Bocklin was able to
project himself backward into prehistoric times. He never ap-
pears deliberately to have fabricated his motives; he seems to
have placed upon canvas only that which he himself had wit-
nessed. It is as though he were an accomplice, not a mere spec-
tator of creation. To the cherished faculty of dealing unfet-
tered with the past he added an explicit, detailed observation of
the present. Though he turned through some hidden affinity
toward the South, the traditional ItaHanism of Poussin, Claude,
or the early Corot found no echo or equivalent in Bocklin's art.
With no sacrifice of ideality he gave each theme a personal,
veridical setting. He never copied nature, yet beautiful and

[67]

MODERN ARTISTS

accurate botanical and geological data mark each outdoor scene.
By means of a localization which was never slavish and always
replete with suggestion, always tempered by the secret spirit of
place, he succeeded in making romance real and reality roman-
tic. There seems to lurk in these pictures, as in nature her-
self, some hidden, inexplicable meaning. More than any of
his contemporaries Bocklin was an Inhaltskiinstler. A mys-
terious, indefinable purport magnifies a hundredfold the actual
beauty or solemnity of each flowered terrace, each castle by
the sea.

It was not by rapid strides but through a long process of
inner germination that Arnold Bocklin attained the fullness of
his power. Like nature herself he grew slowly and silently.
Having managed to make a few sales while in Rome, chiefly to
friendly compatriots, he decided to return to Basle only to find
his art received with open derision by his unappreciative towns-
folk. Discouraged but persevering, he accepted a commission
to decorate the dining room of Consul Wedekind's house in
Hamburg, but here, too, disappointment was to await him.
Despite their originality and imaginative force, his patron re-
fused to accept the series of frescoes depicting man's relation
to the elements, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that
the painter received his meagre recompense for four months*
arduous labour. Munich proved his next destination, and it was
there, after a tragic prelude, that the tide at last turned in his
favour. Utterly destitute and lying ill of typhoid fever, to
which malady one of his children had succumbed, he sent to the
Kunstverein a large canvas entitled * Pan among the Reeds '
which was highly praised and subsequently purchased for the
Pinakothek. In Mimich he also found his former friend, Paul
Heyse, and through his good offices made the acquaintance of
Baron, afterward Count, von Schack who was already forming
the nucleus of the now famous Schack Gallery. Although the

[68]

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ARNOLD BOCKLIN

prices von Schack paid were the reverse of princely, he was a
loyal, discerning Maecenas, and did much for the art of his day.
Becoming somewhat better known, Bocklin was offered, in the
autumn of 1860, a professorship in the newly inaugurated Acad-
emy of Arts in Weimar, having for his colleagues Lenbach,
Begas, and Preller, the landscapist. Yet the sleepy scholasti-
cism of Weimar, heavy with the shades of Goethe, Schiller, and
Wieland, proved scarcely to his taste, and after an inactive in-
terlude during which he produced little beyond * Diana Hunt-
ing * and * Pan frightening a Goatherd,* he again fared south-
ward visiting Naples, Capri, and Pompeii, and settling once
more in Rome.

It was during this second Italian sojourn that Bocklin at-
tained his artistic majority. The sapphire skies, the melancholy
sweep of the Campagna, and the thrill of that legendary,
Homeric world of Sicily gave him a richness and profundity of
sentiment which forever influenced his development. Uncon-
sciously his art divided itself into two distinct phases, the
satyric, humorous paganism which had characterized * Pan
among the Reeds,' and * Pan frightening a Goatherd,' and the
solemn, lyric grandeur of * The Villa by the Sea.' All that came
after finds its genesis in either of these two moods. They ex-
press by turns, or simultaneously, the man's exultant vitality
and that subdued, permeating intensity which form the essence
of his entire achievement. Although bom of the mountains, he
was singularly fond of the ocean, and year by year responded
more and more to the fascination of the Mediterranean. Re-
turning again and again throughout his lifetime to this land of
myth and tradition he gradually adjusted nature to his own
particular imaginative requirements. Sunburned shepherds
tending their flocks became faims, dolphins sporting in the
waves became nereids at play, and castles high upon storm-
smitten cliffs were sacked and burned by ruthless pirate bands.

[69]

MODERN ARTISTS

He even dreamed of building himself a home on one of the Siren
Islands opposite Almafi, the supposed originals of Scylla and
Charybdis, but his own ' Villa by the Sea ' the better realized
that romantic ambition. It was not in fact until much later
that he was able to equal the poetic invocation of these wind-
tossed cypresses, these crumbling walls, and this dark, Iphi-
genian figure watching the waves break at her feet. The last
survivor of a departing race she must herself ere long be borne
to that ^ Island of Death ' where the very soul of antiquity lies
immured.

In strong contrast to the brooding melancholy of the * Villa
by the Sea ' was the joyous, idyllic * Daphnis and Amaryllis '
of the succeeding year, one of Bocklin^s happiest Theocritean
fantasias which he composed shortly before his return to Basle.
His home-coming on this occasion was more encouraging, for
shortly after his arrival he was asked to decorate the summer
room of the Villa Sarasin-Thurneysen as well as the stairway
of the recently erected Museum. The stay in Basle was marked
by a number of portraits and also by a trinity of canvases small
in compass but striking in conception including * The Ride of
Death,' * The Rocky Gorge,' which was suggested by his own
crossing of the St. Gotthard Pass as well as by Mignon's song,
and the * Furies pursuing a Murderer ' all of which are now in
the Schack Gallery. They were still romance pure and simple
but more concentrated, more dramatic, than the romance of his
day. Slowly but surely he was acquiring that unity of mood,
that identity between mental state and natural phenomena
which became the keynote of all his subsequent work. The stay
in Basle lasted five years, and as a sardonic memento of his visit
he left on the garden facade of the Kunsthalle six sculptured
masks caricaturing with wilful exuberance the leading pillars
of a conmaunity at whose phlegmatic indifference to matters of
art he could at last afford to laugh. The years which ensued ^

[70]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

were increasingly productive. His vision grew clearer, its for-
mulation more concise, and he was able to give full sweep to
capabilities which had hitherto found but limited scope. Plung-
ing at once into a mythical, pagan realm he depicted the * Bat-
tle of the Centaurs,' which as a masterly epitome of the fury
of natural forces not only recalls but surpasses Rubens 's * Lion
Hunt.' * Pan Fishing ' and the * Nereid and Triton ' of the
Schack Gallery followed within a few months. To the latter
theme Bocklin returned time after time, the deep-sea mystery
and dazzling brightness of sky and wave which he attained with
such assurance having never been surpassed. Sometimes, as in

* Naiads at Play ' and * Sport of the Waves,' he was jovial and
humorous. In * The Silence of the Ocean ' he spread over the
blue expanse an infinitude of calm, while in Herr Simrock's

* Triton and Nereid ' his mood assumed epic significance. The
nereid, superb in her nacreous lustre of tint, is desirous and
insatiate. The triton, his eyes averted, gazes across the waste
of waters with all the diunb, undefined pathos of creature part
man and part aquatic monster. They were bom in the dawn of
life, this strangely mated pair. They belong to dim, rudimentary
days ; around them wash the waves of purple Oceanus.

After four years in the Bavarian capital Bocklin recrossed
the Alps settling this time in Florence, where, imder the in-
spiration of the Renaissance painters, his art acquired a more
formal perfection and still deeper emotional import. It proved
indeed his supreme creative period. With each canvas his
colouring became more sonorous and intense and his invention
correspondingly vivid and daring. The beautiful * Sleeping
Diana,' ' The Fields of the Blessed,' ' The Island of Death,'
^ Prometheus,' and * The Sacred Grove ' are but a few of the
imaginative masterpieces which succeeded each other with ma-
jestic calm and surety. * The Island of Death ' with its gently
swaying cypresses, burnished waters, and barge gliding irre-

[71]

MODERN ARTISTS

sistibly toward its craterlike bourne is one of the most pene-
trant evocations of any age. Noble in tonality, impeccable in
composition, and infinite in tragic suggestion, the picture typi-
fies both the solemnity of a vanished world and the restless in-
terrogation of later times. It is at once an elegy upon antiquity
and a symbol of human longing for divine peace and transfigu-
ration. Silently and inevitably the past and the future are
brought face to face among these dark island catacombs. From
the sublime awe of * The Island of Death ' Bocklin rose with un-
diminished power to the heights whereon his Aeschylean * Pro-
metheus ' lies chained to the inaccessible crags of Caucasus.
Here again is allegory of a profound order, for this colossal,
cloudlike figure suggests not only the battle of gods and giants
but the blunt, imceasing struggle of mankind for a more exalted
estate. The vast, titanic form of this * Prometheus,' so vaguely
outlined that he seems almost an atmospheric vision, marks the
climax of Bocklin 's quasi-classical manner. With undimmed
clarity and zest he turned from purpureal threnody to the
glaucous splendour of * The Sport of the Waves.' The famous
*^ blue phase '' was over. He emerged once again into the light
of the Sim.

For the sake of his children's education Bocklin next moved
to Ziirich, where he bought a house at Hottingen, in the Ries-
bach district, and built himself a big, wooden studio. The world
had at last begun to recognize his originality and his greatness.
Honours fell to his lot, and he gathered about him a devoted
coterie of friends, including the novelists, Gottfried Keller and
Ferdinand Conrad Meyer, and the artists, Stauffer-Bern and
Otto Lasius. His tastes were those of a simple, normal Swiss
bourgeois. His studio was bare and workmanlike containing
none of the sumptuous atrocities which so appealed to Makart
or Munkacsy. For him not only was the kingdom of heaven,
but in large measure the kingdom of earth, within. He was a

[72]

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ARNOLD BOCKLIN

slow producer, and would sit for days beside an imtouched can-
vas, his soul imprisoned by a line from Tasso, by some uncouth,
Boeotian suggestion, or a glimpse into the fabulous fore-time of
the universe. From the first he had been a law unto himself,
caring as little for the conventional in life as for the quotidian
in art. When asked by Wagner, who greatly admired his work,
to undertake the scenic decorations for the * Ring ' he laconic-
ally replied that he did not care ^* to make pictures for music."
His was essentially an isolated nature. In conversation he was
diffident and often constrained, though on occasions displayed
abounding good humour. Society he abhorred; he had to be
dragged, almost, to his daughter's wedding, arriving late and
sitting far back in the church with hair awry and eyes tense
with emotion. His boon companion during these Ziirich days
was Gottfried Keller, as great a nationalist in letters as Bocklin
himself was in art. Often they might have been seen passing
arm in arm along the winding streets of Lavater's town or sit-
ting, almost any evening, ** Zum Pfauen " over their beer, en-
veloped in dense clouds of tobacco smoke. Though his life was
darkened by domestic misfortune, and though he was cruelly
shaken by the death of Keller, he continued to paint with un-
abated energy until 1892 when he was severely, almost fatally
stricken by apoplexy. On his recovery he turned for the fourth
and last time to Italy, his foster home, passing the remainder
of his days at his villa in San Domenico midway between
Florence and Fiesole.

When again strong enough to resume work this epic man
showed but slight diminution of power, ' Venus Genetrix,'
* Polyphemus,' and * Orlando Furioso ' being only a trifle be-
low his accustomed standard. Surrounded by a numerous and
talented family, and acclaimed the length and breadth of Ger-
many on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, the last few
years of Bocklin 's life were calm and quiescent. In a minor

[73]

MODERN ARTISTS

way his home became, like Wagner's Wahnfried, the Mecca of
faithful admirers, who came, chiefly from over the Alps, to
spend a few days or hours with the master-f antast now grown
grey and taciturn and never, indeed, caring aught for worldly
honours or adulation. His own odyssey, which had proved so
fertile, was over, and he seldom left the peaceful walks and
terraces of his villa from whence he could see the valley of the
Arno, the heights of Lastra, and by night the reflected radiance
of the city below. Because of his massive head and military
bearing the Italians called him *' Bismarck,'* for it was not
until shattered by successive apoplectic strokes that his iron
frame lost its erectness and vigour. Though he continued at
his easel to the last, painting within a year or so of his death
* Melancholy,' * War,' and a black-winged * Plague,' the great
work, by the beginning of the century, lay behind, not before
him. Almost inarticulate, and moving with short, ataxic gest-
ures, he seemed like one of those mythical, hyperborean creat-
ures which had so long peopled his brain. Unable to see the
ocean which he so loved, he would place to his ears big, multi-
coloured shells, and sit for hours listening to the murmur of
distant waters. Hastened by an attack of pneumonia the end
came on 16 January 1901. Two days later, at five o'clock in
the afternoon, they bore him to the Campo Santo degli Allori
just beyond the gates of Florence. There was but a handf xil of
mourners present and the services were extremely simple. It
had been a dark, overcast day, with only a few gleams of sun-
light. As they left him reposing on the undulating slope,
watched over by tall cypresses, the western sky was suffused
by a glory of pale gold and a gentle wind stirred the protecting
tree-tops.

Arnold Bocklin belongs to the Olympians of art. Phe-
nomenally endowed, he was a doer as well as a dreamer. Few
men have ever come into the world with such abundant natural

[74]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

gifts and such boundless physical energy. Not only was he a
great painter ; he was a great thinker as well. There was prac-
tically nothing he did not know concerning the technique of his
craft. For months at a time, particularly in Ziirich, he devoted
his mind to chemistry in order to familiarize himself with the
properties of various pigments. Throughout his entire life,
though notably in Weimar, he busied himself with mechanics, it
being his cherished ambition to solve the problem of aerial navi-
gation. Although, in company with a goodly number of Icari-
ans, he failed, no less an authority than Helmholtz, on examining
his models, which were based upon the flight of birds, averred
that the painter had come nearer success than anyone he had
known. Like other members of his family he was a gifted mu-
sician as well as an indefatigable reader, mainly of medieval
and ancient authors, his favourites being Tasso, Ariosto, and
Homer, and on all questions philosophical or aesthetic he held
emphatic and illuminating opinions. His niunerous portraits
of himself offer an excellent index to the outward appearance
of the man, the best of them being the calm, virile likeness in
which he holds a wine-glass in his hand, and an earlier canvas
showing him pausing an instant while Heath plays in his ears
elusive, spectral harmonies, a variant, of course, on Holbein's

* Sir Bryan Tuke ' in the Munich Pinakothek. And yet with
his hirsute head, his powerful arms, and his profound affinity
with bygone ages and epochs, he suggested above all else Chiron,
the wisest and justest of the centaurs, who stands knee-deep
and pensive in the azure pool which waters the painter's own

* Fields of the Blessed.'

The most unusual feature about Bocklin was, however, the
incredible strength and perfection of his eyes, which were a
clear blue-grey. ** I like to look straight into the sim," he re-
marked to Professor Horner of Zurich, and doubtless he was
able to do so. It was in large measure because of this remark-

[75]

MODERN ARTISTS

able visual faculty that Bocklin became the supreme colourist
he was. His eyes literally drank up the varied hues about him,
and no image, once received, was ever lost or ever became
blurred. Although he lived constantly in the open, he never
made sketches, always preferring to paint from memory. He
chose by instinct the most diverse and alluring tints — the blazing
glory of midday, the vapoury softness of a limar landscape, the
grotto-blue of the sea, the copper-brown of faun's skin, or the
viridescence of water serpent. He saw colour ever5rwhere and
in everything. The hazy Campagna, sharp vistas of t^e Juras,
foam-lashed rocks along the Sicilian coast, or the hyacinthine
uplands of Tuscany in springtime — here a splash of sunlight,
there a stretch of dark forest — all afforded him an incomparable
accumulation of optical stimuli. Unlike most artists he com-
posed in colours instead of in line or mass giving each work
a distinct tonal unity which could not fail to compel attention.
Yet in common with his great contemporary in the realm of
opera, Bocklin, like Wagner, often deliberately varied what
might otherwise have proved a smooth, melodic utterance.
Both painter and musician were the avowed apostles of abrupt,
almost crude, transitions. It is they who have best demon-
strated the emotional and artistic value of occasional dissonance.
Though he sometimes drew the figure with welcome precision
it is to be regretted that Bocklin 's plastic sense was not more
highly developed, for in this province he is easily excelled by the
vigour of Stuck or the eurhythmic elegance of Gysis. Sane and
affirmative, the art of Bocklin is concerned with no problems
either pious or social, its only possible text being a fearless
proclamation of the identity of all created things. *^ A picture
must be painted for the eye, not for the mind," he maintained,
and it is for the eye that this art exists. It was Arnold Bocklin 's
aesthetic mission to mirror his soul in a continuous cycle of
beauty and mystery. A Teuton to the core, he accomplished

[76]

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

that which had so long baffled his fellow-countrymen. By the
magic of his brush, and with all nature for his palette, he suc-
ceeded in blending Germanic fantasy and Hellenic blitheness.
Like Euphorion, he was a typical child of those two master cur-
rents. Antiquity and the Renaissance, out of which has emerged
the questing modem world.

[77]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

Portrait of the artist by Max Liebermann

[^Courtesy of Herr lAebermann^

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

TO have led art from palace and cathedral to cottage door
and into field and factory, to have delivered her from
the hands of king, priest, or noble patron and presented
her unfettered to the people, is not the least triumph of the
nineteenth century. Once aristocratic and pietistic, art is to-
day also democratic and socialistic. Although it took the peas-
ants of France but a few months to storm the Bastille and sack
the Tuileries the moment was long preparing. Though in a
similar way it has only been within the present generation that
art has attained universal suffrage, it was as far back as the
early 'twenties that the movement had its inception. Curiously
enough, a flamboyant romanticist, Gericault, was one of the
first to recognize the dignity and power of labour. It was not
Millet, but such masters as Gericault, Cals, and Jenron who
were the true heralds of the proletariat in art, who were the
original champions of the man in sabots and smock. For a good
quarter of a century he moved clumsily, even timidly, in this
new realm of form and colour. With the redoubtable Courbet
he entered aggressively into his own. While Gericault 's * Lime-
kiln ' and the humble rustics and vagabonds of Cals were ex-
perimental, it was with something akin to savage assurance
that the * Stone-breakers ' of Gustave Courbet crushed under
their swinging blows the marble pedestal of a frigid, exclusive,
and antiquated temple of beauty. By the 'fifties work had be-
come a theme in itself. Across the Channel Ford Madox

[81]

MODERN ARTISTS

Brown was inspired to paint its apotheosis, and some years
later the perceptive Adolf von Menzel, to whom no phase of
human activity was foreign, gave the world a third great pict-
ure of labour with his * Rolling Mill/ Thus far, however, work
had been treated in a broad, sjrmbolic vein. Despite their un-
questioned sincerity Courbet^s * Stone-breakers,' Millet's sober
toilers on the plain of Fontainebleau, and Menzel's grimy iron-
moulders of Konigshiitte were not sharply individualized.
There was still something theoretical about them ; the idea still
loomed larger than the fact behind it. With the exception of
Millet, work was with these painters an episode rather than
an experience, a chance text rather than a permanent condition.
It was not in France, nor England, nor Germany, but in a
smaller, more compact, and more densely populated country
that labour and the labouring man assiuned their rightful place
in the domain of aesthetics. It was not, indeed, imtil the rise
of modern industrialism, not until they had gained unity and
organization that these serfs of civilization captured the citadel
of art.

There is singular propriety in the fact that Flanders and
the Low Countries, which were the first to free themselves
from the tyranny of Court and Church, should also have been
the scene of this new conquest for the extension of the artistic
franchise. Certain timid spirits are fond of contending that
industrialism is the enemy of aesthetic expression. The factory
and the forge, the coal-pit and the quarry, are supposed to
crush beauty, to obliterate art. Yet the contrary is true.
No country is more industrial than Belgium. Within a few
decades the meadows of Brabant, the leafy copses of Hainaut,
and the valleys of the Meuse and the Sambre have been seamed
and blistered by myriads of collieries and iron-foundries. The
whole face of the land has been seared and the sky blackened
by fumes from countless chimneys and blast-furnaces. Man,

[82]

ANTWERP DOCK-HAND

From the bronze by Constantin Meunier
[The Luxembourg, Paris^

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

instead of remaining pastoral, has become a dusky, subter-
ranean creature. His back is bowed and the song on his lips
has turned to a bitter harangue for easier hours and better
pay. Everything, it would seem, has conspired to annihilate
art and the sense of beauty, yet both have survived and even
taken on new and profound significance. The novels of Ca-
naille Lemonnier, the verse of Verhaeren, and the gentle mysti-
cism of Maeterlinck have all flowered on this sombre battle-
field of industry. In painting Frederic and Laermans reveal
a vital and penetrating mastery, while the sculpture of George
Minne displays a dolorous and tender appeal. It is not despite,
it is rather because of, existing conditions that such results
have been achieved. The art of Belgium is imcompromisingly
social. It has never been, and can never be, a mere matter
of play or prettiness. Nowhere is the social function of art
more clearly understood; nowhere is its vindication more
concrete or more absolute. Except for a brief excursion into
romanticism jthe Belgians have always been hardy, resolute
realists, and never more so than during the century just passed.
Early in his troubled career there gathered about the pathetic,
sedentary figure of Charles de Groux a group of men whose
creed was actuality, whose passion was not a vapid, languid
loveliness, but a truth that could enlist the deepest hmnan
sympathies and aspirations. Yet it was not in the paintings of
these apostles of the poor, these friends of the forlorn and fam-
ished, nor in letters either, that the supreme accent of the move-
ment was manifested. It was voiced in the austere yet benign,
the vigorous yet resigned art of Constantin Meunier. One by
one his colleagues turned aside leaving the yoimgest member
of the group to find the path alone. And he, too, seemed to
deflect for a while, though only to return with renewed strength
and fortitude.

In his reticence and simple ruggedness and sincerity Con-

[83]

MODERN ARTISTS

stantin Meunier recalls the master-craftsmen of other, sturdier
times. He passed away at seventy-four, in the fullness of effort,
for he was one of those who mature but slowly. With the ex-
ception of a brief journey to Spain he scarcely left his native
land. " I have never had any adventures," he once said, ^' I
have only dreamed and worked." Though modem in feeling
his art is both Gothic and Greek, both restless and serene. It
is above everything an art that typifies the spirit of the hour.
All the fierce energy, all the material pride and progress, and
inventive genius of to-day are reflected in Meunier 's miners
and foundrymen, his puddlers and glassblowers. The logical
product of the coimtry of his birth, he was the first sculptor
who saw plastic beauty in the workman, the first to give labour
the precious baptism of art. Born at Etterbeek, a suburb of
Brussels, 12 April 1831, the son of an impecunious tax-collector
and the grandnephew of a smith whose three boys had left
home to follow the banners of Napoleon, Constantin Meunier
was distinctly of the people. Left a widow with six young chil-
dren to provide for, his mother, who was a gentle, tenacious
soul, moved from Etterbeek to a small house in the place du
petit Sablon where she opened a modest dressmaking establish-
ment and rented her few spare rooms. A timid, pallid child
with huge head and slender, angular frame, Constantin was
placed almost wholly in the care of his elder brother, Jean-
Baptiste, who was a journeyman printer and later an engraver
of note. From birth the boy was emotionally supersensitive and
until fifteen used to weep every evening toward sundown. Hav-
ing been previously taught drawing by Jean-Baptiste, Constan-
tin, at seventeen, entered the studio of the florid, academic
Fraikin in order to learn the rudiments of sculpture. During
his three years with Fraikin the lad did little beside tend the
fire with complete circmnspection, keep the clay wet, and imbibe
an utter loathing for the insipid elegance of the school then in

[84]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

vogue. Although his debut as a sculptor was made at the
Brussels Salon of 1851 with * The Garland/ he evinced but
slight enthusiasm for the plastic arts, and on entering the
atelier Saint-Luc was readilj induced by de Groux and others to
renounce sculpture for painting. The change was a consistent
one, for the poignant verity which these masters sought to lay
bare could be better told by brush and crayon. The moment
when sculpture was to take up the burden of contemporary life
had not yet come.

Insensibly and perhaps through some awakening religious
atavism, Constantin Meunier's rigid, contemplative spirit was
next drawn toward the shadows of the cloister. Oppressed by
the sorrow and poverty about him and seeking perchance solace
or self-immolation, he went to live, as Verhaeren afterward
did, among the Trappist monks. At Westmalle in the Flemish
Campine he found a fitting retreat, and in both cases the se-
questration proved fruitful, the painter's * Burial of a Trap-
pist ' and * Stoning of St. Stephen ' being curiously paralleled
by the zealous exaltation of the poet's ' Friars.' Yet always
Meunier must have felt that sacred art, however pleading and
human, was not his final expression. It was inevitable that
he should have sought to widen his sympathies, to enrich a
somewhat sober, hectic palette. Just as Maeterlinck later
turned from * Ruysbroeck the Admirable ' to ^ The Treasure
of the Humble,' so Constantin Meimier drifted gradually from
the passivity of monastic existence into a broader fellowship
and brotherhood. Bowed figures in dim, grey chapels and those
twisted images of Christ on the wayside crosses of Flanders
seemed, after all, less beseeching than the poor labourer who
hurried by making the sign. Meanwhile he was more than a
mere spectator of mortal suffering and misery. Having mar-
ried young and finding scant sale for his pictures he was forced,
together with de Groux, who was an even sadder victim of iU

[85]

MODERN ARTISTS

fortune, to support himself and family by executing designs
for stained glass and drawing heads of saints for cheap printed
handkerchiefs. They worked side by side, these two friends of
humanity, for Capronnier, the ecclesiastical decorator, and in
the churches of Louvain, Chatelineau and throughout the prov-
ince of Liege may still be seen windows or stations of the cross
fashioned by the sweat of their brows and the blood of their
starved artist souls.

On his return from Spain, whither he had been sent by the
government to copy Kempeneer's * Descent from the Cross,'
Meunier definitely left the monastery for the mine, definitely
gave up colour for clay and bronze. The visit to Spain, where
pity is almost a pastime, and something in the man's own men-
tal and moral austerity impelled him to visit that " Black
Coimtry " which is itself scarcely more than an industrial in-
quisition. An opportune commission to furnish the illustra-
tions for Camille Lemonnier's descriptive book on Belgiima
caused him to make a systematic tour of the region, and it was
not long before he realized that he had at last f oirnd the field
for which he had so earnestly been seeking. At first he drew
and painted as before, but one day in the Borinage, as he was
passing the entrance of a mine he happened to catch sight of a
group of workmen, toil-stained and stripped to the waist,
emerging from the depths into the glow of evening. He
instinctively felt that the rhythm of their movements and the
heavy, yet supple elasticity of their bodies could be translated
only by sculpture. So strong was his conviction, and so implicit
was his faith in himself, that this man of past fifty suddenly
gave up his career as a painter and began his artistic life afresh.
He proceeded to study the labourer in all his aspects and atti-
tudes. He lived for a time at Val Saint-Lambert among the
glassblowers, and later among the f oundrymen and puddlers of
Seraing. All along that black, stifling belt which stretches from

[86]

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WATERING A COLLIERY HORSE
From the group by Constantin Meunier
[Square Amhiorix, Brussels]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

Liege to Charleroi and from Charleroi to Mons he watched
those dogged sons of Cain fulfilling their sinister destiny. At
Frameries and Paturages he found them stunted, deformed, and
stamped with tragic depression, but for the most part they dis-
played a silent heroism and a primitive energy which turned
pity into admiration. Still, he did not spend his entire time
indoors nor imder ground among creatures more like antique
troglodytes than human beings. He also went abroad in the sun,
with the mower or the happy harvester. It was work which he
chose for his theme, work and the workmen in their every phase.
All the man's passion for form and contour which had thus
far lain dormant surged forward with resistless impetus. He
actually appeared to grow younger, to undergo a species of
physical as well as artistic rebirth. The whole of his previous
life was but a prolonged apprenticeship for that which fol-
lowed. At the outset he modelled little figures in wax, which,
though crude, were rich in vital intensity. Within a few short
years he had attained the accent of assured mastery. The fight
for recognition nevertheless proved a bitter struggle. * The
Hammerman ' and * The Puddler ' which were exhibited in
Brussels and in Paris during 1885 and 1886 were received with
more curiosity than enthusiasm. Although their appearance
synchronized mth the rise of the Labour Party in Belgium and
elsewhere, few realized the significance either social or aesthetic
of these majestic, submissive giants of the forge and furnace
or saw that they possessed any special claim to consideration.
It was naturally difficult for an artist who had suddenly
changed his medium to secure commissions, and feeling uncer-
tain of the future, Meunier was compelled to accept the profes-
sorship of painting at the Academy of Louvain. For family
reasons alone the sacrifice was made, and in 1887 he left his
humble quarters in Brussels for the grey, scholastic town of
Father Damien.

[87]

MODERN ARTISTS

Yet this apparent renunciation did not prove in vain, for it
was here that Constantin Meunier revealed the measure of his
power as an artist, and it was here that he proved his deep
understanding of the sad, ennobling beauty of toil. Instead of
being a barren exile the years at Louvain proved the vigil of
his glory. He worked unremittingly, pausing only to attend
his classes. Statue followed statue, and group succeeded group,
until he had almost completed that valiant hymn to labour
which constitutes the fitting climax of his life task. The ma-
jority of these passive, cyclopean creatures as well as numerous
busts and reliefs were either planned or executed at Louvain.
Most of them were men, though he now and then modelled a
female figure such as the buoyant * Mine Girl ' or the mother
crushed beneath a weight of anguish and fatality in that tragic
episode entitled * Fire-damp.' Animals, too, he made share
their portion of creation's inflexible destiny. Like Zola in

* Germinal ' he felt drawn toward those sodden brutes con-
demned to plod dumbly amid suffocating darkness. With the

* Old Mine Horse ' he gave but another version of * Bataille '
in all his spent and helpless decrepitude. Meunier 's sympa-
thetic observation was meanwhile not exclusively confined to
the '* Black Country." Little by little he widened his circle of
activity by adding * The Mower ' and * The Ploughman,' * The
Reaper ' glancing at the noonday sun, and * The Sower ' scat-
tering his seed with an impressive, primeval sweep of the arm.

* The Quarryman,' too, he transferred to this cycle of human
effort nor did he neglect * The Brickmaker ' or * The Dock-
hand.' Bit by bit he enlarged his panorama, omitting the inci-
dental and bringing into closer accord that which was general
and tjrpical. And by and by the varied elements began to show
a certain community of feeling as though obeying a single, uni-
fying impulse. Although the actual subject-matter of his art
had changed he rigorously adhered to the inner law of his being.

[88]

THE QUARRYMAN

From the bronze by Constantin Meuniei:

[The Modern Gallery, Brussels]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

He had simply turned from the heroes and martyrs of faith
to those himabler though not less eloquent victims of economic
pressure and distress.

The studio in which this earnest, patriarchal man worked
from dawn until nightfall was situated on the outskirts of the
town. The building was known as the " Amphitheatre " hav-
ing for a long time served as the dissecting room of a near-by
medical college. It was a grim, sepulchral structure, tower-
shaped and pierced by high, arched windows some of which
were roughly boarded over. The interior was dim even at mid-
day, for the walls were darkened by the moisture of ages. In
the seclusion of this sleepy Gothic town, the silence broken
only by the sound of distant bells or the footfall of some chance
passer-by Meunier remained almost a decade. He rarely had
an assistant, preferring to execute even the most rudimentary
tasks with his own hands. Pale, long-bearded and wearing a
beret and plain grey blouse he wrought with the solemn pre-
occupation of one performing an almost sacred office. Guided
by the inherent simplicity and grandeur of his own nature he
looked at all things simply and grandly, his antique energy of
purpose being tinged by Christian sorrow and self-sacrifice.
Mystic to the core, he was at times the prey of hallucinations
more or less vivid. He appeared to be in constant communion
with the great spirits of the past. The impress of things gone
and the shadows of things to come were always upon him. ** I
am never alone here," he would often say, grimly referring to
the countless departed souls who seemed to haunt the place.
His psychic powers were not, alas, purely fanciful, for the pre-
cise hour his younger son, the beloved *' marin,'' was lost at
sea he had a distinct presentment of the event. This blow
coupled with the death a few months later of his talented elder
son, Karl, turned Meunier 's eyes once again toward the pensive
consolation of sacred themes. A pitiful, tortured * Ecce Homo,'

[89]

MODEEN ARTISTS

a * Prodigal Son,' full of filial trust and paternal forgiveness,
and a * Pieta ' are the mute records of his suffering and res-
ignation.

A wish to leave the scene of his bereavement, as well as the
necessity for better facilities in order to finish the monumental
groups already under way caused Meunier to return to Brus-
sels. He had moreover partially overcome the wasting fight
against poverty and could afford to give up the tedium of daily
instruction. In the old period of obscure, unregarded effort
he had lived first in the rue des Secours and afterward in the
rue de la Consolation. On this occasion he settled in the rue
Albert-Delatour, also in the district of Schaerbeek, moving
later to 59 rue de PAbbaye. Although his step was slower and
his shoulders drooped beneath the double weight of grief and
increasing infirmity, once established he devoted himself afresh
to his art, completing in succession * Watering a Colliery
Horse ' for the square Ambiorix, and a * Trinity ' for Notre
Dame du Sablon besides several single figures and portrait-
busts. As this silent army of toilers slowly assumed their
proper places in the long perspective of his art Meunier began
to perceive that unity in his accomplishment which was appar-
ent to all interested observers. He had never been strong, and
realizing that his days were numbered dedicated his few re-
maining years to that * Momunent to Labour ' which is his
crowning achievement and the eloquent synthesis of his career.
Conscious of the vastness of the project he sought Government
aid, on failing to obtain which he undertook the task himself
piece by piece. Unable to pay for marble or for bronze cast-
ing, he went manfully ahead finishing his scheme in plaster.
Dominated by the colossal figure of * The Sower,' flanked by
four reliefs entitled * Industry,' * The Mine,' * Commerce,' and
* Harvest ' with groups about the base depicting * Maternity '
and the several * Trades,' Constantin Meunier 's canticle in

[90]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

praise of work ranks as one of the most impressive conceptions
in the history of sculpture. It was his legacy to the world, and
before the end came he had the supreme joy of knowing that
it was purchased by the State and would eventually be placed
in the rotunda of the new museum on the Mont des Arts.

As with every true craftsman Meunier's task was left un-
finished. The monument to Emile Zola for the Tuileries is not
in place and other commissions were barely begun. The mes-
sage of his art none the less remains full and complete. Even
at the outset there was no mistaking the man's meaning.
Stripped of trivial accident and exalted to a plane of simplicity
that raises them beside the creations of any age these types
are untrammelled by theory or thesis. Meimier never dealt
directly in generalities ; he approached the general through the
particular. He gives us a single more or less specialized figure,
and if that figure spontaneously becomes a symbol the symboliz-
ing process is as much our own as his. He disavowed all in-
tention, all parti pris. He claimed no rights other than the
right to pity the world's disinherited and to place that pity
on record. When recognition finally came and he was hailed
as the creator of a new epoch in art, as the founder of the ** aes-
thetics of work " he simply looked puzzled and exclaimed
" Why what can they all see in my poor stuff? " Those few
enthusiasts who gathered about Constantin Meunier during the
late 'eighties and early 'nineties and those fortunate individuals
who attended his first exhibitions in Brussels, Paris, and Dres-
den to-day cherish imforgettable memories. They have seen
gropings and hesitations end in a grand, though troubled tri-
umph. They have watched a sustained and resolute sym-
metry issue from that which was rough and tentative. Above
all, they have witnessed in the man and his art the ascendency
of that which is spiritual over that which is material. For
sincerity, intensity, and epic dignity the bronzes of Meimier

[91]

MODERN ARTISTS

stand alone. Though explicit in subject, they share affinities
with the eternally sculptural. Meunier's labourer is both local
and immemorial. He taps at a vein or pauses before a pot
of molten metal, yet he embodies universal dynamic laws.

In the serene and buoyant days of Greece the wrestler and
the athlete were the chief exponents of motion. Man was not
a sullen, driven beast, he was acclaimed in the Stadiiun. Chris-
tian art taught him penance and renunciation, taught him not
to immortalize but to mortify the body. With Michelangelo
he became a surly colossus full of grandiose inquietude, and
with Clodion a white and wanton boy. In recent times sculp-
ture has made him echo, somewhat feebly, a remote antiquity
or chafe against a ruthless modernity. The specific triumph of
Constantin Meunier consists in having bridged over the past,
in having adapted sovereign, immutable truths to actual con-
ditions. In this art, which appears at first so revolutionary, he
has not overthrown, he has preserved, the lasting canons of
plastic beauty. Gods and gladiators have merely been put
into harness. Infolding draperies, soft as sea-foam from the
Aegean, have been exchanged for rough blouse and leather
apron. Mercury has slipped his winged heels into sabots; the
flexible Discobolus has learned to swing a sledge. It is not
Venus, it is Vulcan whom this new race worships. Being but
a continuation of that which had gone before, there are numer-
ous correspondences between this art and the generous sym-
metry of the ancient manner. That early drama of action, the
Pergamum frieze, is the direct prototype of Meunier ^s reliefs.
Each depicts struggle, the one simply epitomizing a former
phase of strife. Weeping Mobe has her counterpart in the
grief -stricken mother of ^Fire-damp,' and the * Old Mine
Horse ' is but an abused and forlorn Pegasus. Coming down
to the Renaissance, the rider in * Watering a Colliery Horse '
is none other than a CoUeoni of the people. Over all Meunier's

[92]

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CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

groups, however tense and concentrated lingers that static re-
pose which is the priceless heritage of Hellas. And yet this art
is not classic, nor Christian, nor modem; it is all three. It
illustrates the gradual and consistent evolution of the plastic
principle.

With the moral aspect of aesthetics Meunier was never con-
cerned. Though his message is manifestly human and social,
he never posed as a man with a mission. He was content to
approach life in the concrete leaving press and public draw
whatever conclusions they saw fit. There is of course a certain
affinity between Meimier's miners and Millet's peasants in the
fields about Barbizon. Though representing different strata
they share, each of them, a similar community of inspiration.
Each shows alike the stamp of that endless struggle of man
against natural fatality. Millet's types are, however, more pa-
thetic and self -pitying ; Meimier's, more resourceful and self-
reliant. While every statue, every bit of bronze bears in some
degree the burden of toil and the burden of sorrow, this art is
not, in essence, a protest, but an acceptance. These miners
are not suppliants; they are conquerors. A species of latent
idealism animates their every movement. They rejoice in
labour well performed. As they themselves say, ** Work and
the Walloon are friends," and it is this note that Meimier
strove to sound. A visionary as well as an observer, he perhaps
unconsciously made man broad and universal rather than nar-
row and individual. His art is the deification of work. Still,
while he modified life, he did not falsify life. He simply
gave these stalwart man-gods a touch more heroism, a shade
more of that sombre, restrained splendour with which they
are clothed. An august majesty accompanies each gesture.
Work with them has become a solemn, physical ritual. * The
Sower ' is biblical, ^ The Butcher ' sacrificial, and that dark
line of homeward-swinging figures in * Returning from the

[93]

MODERN ARTISTS

Mine ' suggests a great recessional of labour. It is not the bare
performance of a given task which this art expresses, but the
eternal continuity of corporate endeavour. These men are not
building for to-day alone. With each stroke they are strength-
ening the solidarity of the human race.

It was inevitable that these modern Atlantes, who seem in
truth to bear upon their shoulders the entire industrial fabric
of to-day, should have moved in triumph from city to city, and
that their modest, reticent sponsor should have shared their
glory. Although for years his existence had been dark and
stressful the twilight of Meunier's life was suffused with peace
and benignity. When at length he had a home which he could
call his own he used to say, with touching relief, " I am not
afraid now when the door-bell rings, '^ knowing that there was
no further danger of visits from creditor or bailiff. Yet the
spectre of poverty and want was hard to dismiss from his mind.
Worn and almost decrepit he would often, in Paris or else-
where, walk long distances, forgetting he had sufficient money
to take a cab whenever he wished. While a constant sufferer
from heart-trouble, Meunier laboured on with Spartan persist-
ence. Though he had grown morose and irascible toward the
last there was, on the whole, a gentle serenity about those few,
lingering weeks. The studio was situated in a quiet subiu-b.
Round about was the green of springtime, the brightness of
the sun. Pigeons cooed imder the eaves, birds carolled in the
tree-tops and from across the way floated snatches of song.
With that singular fitness and consistency which had charac-
terized his entire career Meunier died on the very month and
in the city of his birth. All day Monday, 3 April 1905, he
spent working on the figure of ^ Fecundity ' for the base of
the Zola monument. He retired early, rested well, and by seven
the following morning had started for the studio when he was
seized with a spasm of suffocation and expired peacefully in

[94]

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

the arms of his daughter and his closest friend, the landscape-
painter, Isidore Verheyden.

As he strolled through the busy squares of Brussels or along
the dim by-streets of Louvain, there always seemed to be some-
thing evangelical about Constantin Meimier. He was tall, with,
massive head, deep-set grey eyes, and brow furrowed witH
ceaseless effort and anxiety. His form was bent as by some'v
heavy weight, and a full, apostolic beard covered chin and chest.
His arms were uncommonly long and his movements measured
and sweeping; he might have been made only of nerves and
bone. As a rule he was silent and reserved, speaking seldom
and to the point. Meunier was in no degree a student, prefer-
ring, after a fatiguing day's modelling, to sit quietly within
the ever narrowing family circle. Painting and music were
among the few subjects he cared to discuss. Beethoven and
the Italian Primitives he revered, though he had scant patience-
with the false sentiment of Raphael or the carnal exuberance
of Rubens. Throughout his life and the work of his hands
flowed a deep and tremulous sympathy. He always felt the
sense of tears in human things. His art, like the man himself,
is profoundly fraternal. It seems to palpitate with the bene-
diction, the caress, of a divine pity — that pity which came into
the world long since and which made the world anew.

[95]

JAMES McNeill whistler

JAMES McNeill whistler

Portrait of the artist by Fantin-Latour

'[Collection of the late Samuel P. Avery; courtesy of Sam. P. Avery, Esq.]

JAMES McNeill whistler

IT was inevitable that the teeming world of actuality claimed
with such gusto by Gustave Courbet and the men of the
mid-century should not appeal with uniform zest to all
minds. Although with stimulating enthusiasm the progressive
spirits of the day forsook the legendary and the classic and
forswore the brown tone of the galleries, each found in nature
something different. The sum of creative endeavour was not
diminished, it was turned into broader channels. It spread
itself over a visible land of fact instead of invisible regions of
myth or fable. Fresh points of view and new objects of in-
terest were encountered at every turn. Before long the whole-
sale realism preached by the boisterous, bull-necked peasant
of Ornans gave place to a selective realism, to a choice based
solely upon individual predilection. From the common soil
of universal acceptance sprang in due course the flowers of
personal caprice. By a natural process of development the
principle of aristocracy reasserted itself. As it chanced, the
most aristocratic, the most capricious, and the most personal
of these selective realists did not come from France, where tra-
dition was still covertly worshipped even by the younger paint-
ers, but from overseas where tradition was unknown. Like
Courbet alone, who had arrived unprejudiced from Franche-
Comte to devote himself to the law, James McNeill Whistler
was no respecter of precedent, nor had he any cause to be.
In point of fact his equipment was typically American and

[99]

MODERN ARTISTS

national. The inquisitiveness, the independence, and the seem-
ing irreverence of his nature were his by right of birth. En-
dowed with finely attuned aesthetic perceptions and an unfail-
ing sense of style he was free to devote his gifts to whatever
subject he saw fit. Though it was his good fortune to have
joined that gallant little band of reformers which included
Manet, Fantin-Latour, Bonvin, Bracquemond, and Legros it is
more than likely that Whistler would have developed alone.
Nothing was able to keep him from his favourite themes.
While the gentle Fantin gathered strength from the grave
masters of the past Whistler wandered observantly about the
streets. He went to the Louvre a few times and made the cus-
tomary copies, yet he much preferred stopping at the pension
in the rue Dauphine where they all took their meals and using
* Bibi Lalouette ' for a model. Later on not a few of his con-
temporaries were amazed at the spectacle of this young patri-
cian of art pausing before a fishstall or a sweetshop and
sketching an old dame or a group of ragged children. Al-
though his aim appeared perverse and paradoxical it was log-
ical and consistent. He was merely exercising the divine priv-
ilege of every man to depict the humble and the lowly, to see
beauty in all things here below.

Let us for the moment put aside all previous ideas of Whis-
tler. Let us forget the vapid stories, grotesque theories, and
clumsy misconceptions with which he has so long been sur-
rounded. It is time for his work to speak for itself in its own
subtle and persuasive language. It is enough if he stand there
in the dim studio prompting now and again, or pointing the
way as he might once have done with his unclouded clarity and
enthusiasm. Why has this man who took such deliberate pains
to explain himself remained a puzzle, and an enigma ? How is
it possible that he should have eluded not only an impertinent
public, but his friends and disciples as well? Why does he

[100]

JAMES McNeill whistler

always retreat nimbly as you advance, gliding farther and far-
ther into the distance just as his portraits seem to dissolve into
their vague backgrounds, their matchless envelope of mystery?
The answer is simplicity itself. It lies in the fact that Whistler
is usually approached from without instead of from within.
Nothing could be more dissimilar than the Whistler of tradi-
tion and the Whistler of truth. Stripped of all that has been
foisted upon them of specious and foreign, of malicious or
frivolous, the man and his art shine forth in spontaneous unity.
Instead of being a clever mountebank, he was a mystic and a
martyr. Instead of being careless and inconsequent he was one
of the most scrupulous incarnations of the aesthetic conscience
ever known. It is marvellous how this slender, tenuous crea-
ture survived those years of opposition and obloquy, and that
subsequent period of adulation and overpraise. He succeeded
in doing so only because his was the life of the spirit, because
in a measure he possessed the austerity of Emerson, the self-
detachment of Swedenborg. You will doubtless contend that
this sounds ecstatic. You may find it difficult to associate such
ideas with the Whistler of convention, the nonchalant Whistler
whose very existence seemed so heedless, and who left behind
so much that appears transitory or incomplete. Yet in the in-
terest of verity let us judge this eager, zealous being according
to his own standards. Let us measure him by his own accom-
plishment.

No man in the history of graphic expression has excelled
James McNeill Whistler in that sensitiveness to optical impres-
sions which alone constitutes the bom painter, and none pre-
sents a more consistent example of artistic purification. He
was above all a specialist in the real. With the gates of the uni-
verse standing ajar he stepped in and chose only those few
things which suited his particular taste and temperament.
Erom the outset his practice was to eliminate, to simplify. He

[101]

MODERN ARTISTS

began with rich, ahnost robust qualities. He loved form, col-
our, and contour for their own sake, yet one by one he re-
nounced what are commonly deemed the essentials of pictorial
representation. Little by little his art became fastidious and
evanescent, the merest phantom suggestion of fact. Both in
landscape and in his treatment of the figure it passed through
a continual process of etherealization. Do those later portraits,
lingering far back in their dull gold frames, depict actual men
and women, or are they eloquent, disembodied souls? Are
these vapoury nocturnes bits of Venice and the Thames, or are
they but the magic record of vagrant impressions ? Is this sup-
pressed radiance the glow of nature or the powdered dust blown
from fairy butterfly wings'? You cannot frame a valid reply
without bearing in mind the fact that, though Whistler began
a realist, he ended a spiritist, that what he achieved is the pur-
est alchemy of art. Let us then follow him from those early
Paris days, when he saw so lucidly and so joyously, to the deep-
ening twilight of that last quiescent hour in Chelsea when all
he had seen and dreamed melted into the great, encircling
infinity.

With an instinctive feeling that such details in themselves
signify little. Whistler adroitly rebuffed the prying nobodies
who delved into his antecedents and youthful associations. He
had changed his name, therefore he reserved the right to shift
at will the date and place of his birth. From the beginning he
displayed an imperious contempt for externals. It was the idea
which attracted him, seldom the fact. When, after a whimsical
militant experience, he found himself in the French capital, it
was the theory of realism which he espoused rather than its
practice. It is true that imder the direct inspiration of Rem-
brandt he painted certain vigorous portraits including those of
* La Mere Gerard ' and the one of himself with the hat, which
recall the sober Dutchman's frank energy and heavy, oily pal-

[102]

CopiiiKihf vmr. hi/ Frank J. HecHer

HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE— THE MUSIC ROOM

By James McNeill Whistler

[Courtesy of Colonel Frank J. Hecker]

JAMES McNeill whistler

ette. It is equally obvious that Courbet is reflected in various
coast scenes, and Manet in Ms * Thames in Ice/ yet these
phases were transient and bore little relation to his subsequent
work. Though, attracted by the man^s expansive vitality, he
spent a summer or so with Courbet, his real friend and coim-
seUor was Fantin, the modest visionary who gazed at young
girls reading or embroidering, at the whole subdued intimacy
of daily life, through the most pervasive soul-film art had thus
far known. There was a distinct mental as well as artistic sym-
pathy between the two men. Though Whistler shortly crossed
the Channel, the influence of Fantin persisted, subtly help-
ing him to paint his * At the Piano ' so full of rich yet quiet
tonality, so infused with the permeating limpidity of atmos-
phere, the beauty of sentiment, and the suggestion of softly
played melody. From Fantin, too, perhaps came the idea of
characterizing in terms of music those later and still more in-
sinuating harmonies and symphonies, for Fantin was himself
already dreaming of transposing to black and white the throb-
bing utterances of Wagner, Schumann, Brahms, and Berlioz.
The entire influence of Fantin was in the direction of a rhyth-
mic eloquence, a psychic radiation through which were to
emerge the plastic shapes of an ever present spirit world. It
is significant to note how, long after he had settled in London,
Whistler turned to Fantin for sympathy and encouragement.
Although he had achieved relative success it had not been
without corresponding effort. " Tu-sais," he wrote, ** com-
bien j'ai de la patience et combien je ne quitte jamais ce que
j'ai commence.^' He had passed but a couple of years in
Gleyre's studio, and often lamented his lack of systematic
training. ** Ah I Fantin," he again writes with endearing hu-
mility, '' je sais si pen! les choses ne vont pas vite! " Surely
this is not the arrogant, assertive Whistler of popular imagi-
nation.

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MODERN ARTISTS

While he made numerous experiments there were two works
of his formative period which unmistakably marked the Whis-
tler of the future. They were a little unfinished etching en-
titled * Isle de la Cite,' and * The White Girl,' which was the
feature of that memorable Salon des Refuses which witnessed
the triumph of the new over the old, of the rejected over the
accepted. The elusive quality of the later etchings and the de-
liberately symphonic arrangement of the later portraits were
each there in embryo. It only required an increasing regard
for beauty of space instead of beauty of line in the one case, and
a more restrained psychic mastery in the other, in order to effect
the transformation. Meantime nothing was sacrificed to a
hasty, ill-prepared onward march. He was still to imitate with
needle the light and shade of his great Amsterdam prede-
cessor in such plates as * The Kitchen ' and * La Vieille aux
Loques,' and to trace with frank crispness and force the coun-
tenances of * Becquet ' and * Drouet,' as well as his own youth-
ful head crowned with masses of rebellious hair. The clarity
of vision and surety of hand increased, even, when he left the
by-streets of Paris for the Thames-side, where humanity was
subordinated to those views of wharves and warehouses, sway-
ing masts and tall chimneys standing sharp against the sky
which characterize river life below bridge. Yet just as he
rarely, for intensity of colour or movement, duplicated the viv-
idness and sweeping vigour of * The Blue Wave ' breaking on
the shore of Biarritz, so he never again attempted the accurate
tracery of ^ Billingsgate ' or * Black Lion Wharf.' They are
imique, these plates, in the field of etching. Never have needle
and copper surface been used with such skill in order to express
nature's baffling intricacy. The particular appeal of these sub-
jects lay in their sprightly, casual verity. Nowhere was there
the least attempt to prettify a scene or to provoke sentiments
other than aesthetic. They exalted the incidental, the indiffer-

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JAMES McNeill whistlee

ent. They surprised charm in a bargee sitting in his scow, in
a dog straying across the street. They were all enchanting in
their impoetical poetry.

Years later in Venice when he turns to etching again after
those tender, pensive dry-points of the Leyland sisters, of
* Weary,' and * Reading,' Whistler is a different man. He has
ceased to care for the same effects. That definition of outline
which was the triumph of the earlier work has vanished. You
cannot put your finger on the walls or crumbling cornices of
these palaces along the Grand Canal. They appear before you
iridescent and ephemeral, or stretch in thin lines across the dis-
tant horizon. You never see figures at close range as the two
rivermen puffing their clay pipes in * Rotherthithe.' Infinitesi-
mal specks of personality flit by the Riva ; gondolas glide to and
fro in the twilight ; here rises a campanile, there looms a slender
mast or the bulbous dome of La Salute; all is magical in its
freedom, its feather lightness of touch. With refreshing inde-
pendence he ignores the Venice of convention, the Venice of
Canaletto, and of Turner, and goes about ferreting out odd bits
full of tattered individuality. Now and then you pause before
an entranceway or glance into a garden or courtyard, merely
the better to grasp the contrasting vagueness and remote, illu-
sory splendour of the Water City. Do not imagine, however,
because Whistler transcribed less at each stage of his develop-
ment, that he saw less, that his powers of observation in any
degree abated. The truth is he kept discerning more and more.
He discovered nuances which were indescribably difficult to
perceive, and these he recorded with equal assurance and vi-
vacity. He was not etching in the customary painstaking man-
ner of the linearist, he was literally painting on copper. With
each step forward he acquired increased facility and increased
precision of pattern. He was accomplishing, in fact, with his
etcher's needle just what certain simpler folk near by were

[105]

MODERN ARTISTS

doing. He was attaining the dexterity of those lace-makers he
must often have seen bending over their frames in sunlit door-
way or seated by a quiet window. His art had become the slen-
derest of filaments.

The Whistler of the etchings, lithographs, and pastels will
always remain the Whistler for those of attenuated prefer-
ences. It is the creator of the * Mother,* * Carlyle,' * Rosa
Corder,' and * Miss Alexander * who attracts broader, more
diverse minds. In painting he passed through the same pro-
cess of renunciation as in the strictly graphic arts. During the
period when he was feeling his way with almost tragic earnest-
ness he was not above accepting assistance from the outside,
and considering his lack of serious training it could hardly
have been otherwise. Behind the tremulous aspiration of * At
the Piano,' Fantin, as we know, nods in grateful recognition
and approval. Beside * The White Girl ' and the * Princesse
du Pays de la Porcelaine ' lingers the luxuriantly sensuous
Rossetti, while over those two maidens in a * Symphony in
White, No. 3 ' Albert Moore has cast a spell of that same
classic immobility and mellowness which was wafted from the
shores of Sicily and the isles of the Aegean. From print and
shop front he caught bewitching glimpses of Japan, and in
the Louvre stood reverently before the sweeping line and
silver-grey vibrancy of Velazquez. Each separate factor con-
tributed to his approaching maturity. He selected this, he
assimilated that, fusing all into his inherently personal and
exclusive vision. Yet it was only the least hint that he re-
quired in order to go farther in certain directions than any-
one had gone. He took little indeed considering what he gave
in return.

Nothing is more illuminating than to watch how, through
an almost frenzied self -chastisement, he attained the spiritual
height and artistic restraint of the ^ Mother * and the * Carlyle '

[106]

Copyright. lOOS, by Ji. A. Canfield

Xdll \\

0 G REE X- PORTRAIT

flkaflbb A80fl aaiM lo tiahtho^i

p'/ //, ,1. rnnfi<-l

ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN-
PORTRAIT OF MISS ROSA CORDER

By James McNeill Whistler

[Courtesy of R. A. Canfield, Esq.]

HARMONY IN GREY AND GREEN— PORTRAIT
OF CICELY HENRIETTA, MISS ALEXANDER

By James McNeill Whistler

[Courtesy of W. C. Alexander, Esq.]

JAMES McNeill whistler

portraits. It was not long before he shrank in disgust from
the emphatic impasto of the Dutchmen and the truculence of
Courbet. His colouring became more fluid, more volatile, and
less positive. He left behind without a sign of regret the rose-
tinted azaleas clustering beside his * Little White Girl ' and
the bright, full-keyed brilliance of * The Music Room ' with its
refined, instantaneous figures, shaded reading-lamp, flowered
chintz curtains, and porcelain vase reflected in the clear mirror.
It was doubtless with somewhat easier conscience that he for-
sook such complicated Japanese arrangements as * Die Lange
Leizen, of the Six Marks,' * The Golden Screen,' and * The
Balcony,' which could scarcely have meant more to him than
studies in decorative distribution. Nor was it long before he
maintained that * The Balcony ' as well as his * Princesse du
Pays de la Porcelaine ' incased in her blue and gold Peacock
Room were wrong in principle; — ** Too much elaborated,"
he insisted, ** not nearly simple enough." Only once, in * The
Music Room,' did he give a carefully externalized transcription
of fact, for * The Balcony ' on which these fantastic dolls are
grouped was but the balcony of his own house. He did not even
add an imaginary profile of Fuji towering in the distance, but
let us see the winding river with its dimly outlined warehouses
and scattered shipping. And after all it mattered little, for
he soon cleansed himself of an exotic orientalism. He soon
began to rely upon his own infinitely more precious heritage,
to express things in their briefest terms, to paint as it were with
the penetrant intensity of thought alone.

It was not through gifts wholly artistic that Whistler was
able to conceive the * Mother ' and the * Carlyle.' It was also
by grace of qualities fundamentally intellectual and spiritual.
The basis of the man's nature was moral, and the moral instinct
had gradually become merged into the aesthetic. In all matters
he was a purist. His numerous quarrels were questions of

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MODERN ARTISTS

principle, not the splenetic vagaries of a tantalizing egotist.
Art was his religion, and for his artistic faith he was prepared
to make any sacrifice. In his inimitable fashion, yet with deep
sincerity, he formulated his own Ten Commandments, his own
Tables of the Law. You cannot gaze at these two canvases
without feeling that they represent a fusion of morality and
mentality exceptional in the annals of art. The abstract rea-
soning of his engineer-mathematician father and the piety of
his mother were curiously blended in Whistler's making. The
* Mother ' seated in that subdued room, her hands folded, her
eyes fixed upon the invisible, is more than an * Arrangement
in Grey and Black, * more even, than an adagio of old age. She
belongs to the epoch of the transcendentalists. She is the in-
carnation of that religious mysticism which had crossed the
ocean years before to find a new home in a new land. It is easy
to imagine her having written in her diary during that divert-
ing St. Petersburg period after her sons had been up late the
night before watching the illuminations; — ^^ My boys did not
take their breakfast till noon Friday ; this is surely not keeping
the straight and narrow way." Although puzzled at times in
after years she must have felt that her ** darling Jimmie " was,
despite all, keeping with precision the straight and narrow
way. She at any rate had the satisfaction of knowing that dur-
ing her lifetime he seldom touched brush or canvas on Sundays.
When asked once why he did not work on the first day of the
week he replied simply; — ** Because I promised my mother I
would not." It is true that he prided himself on being a debo-
nair Continental. In point of fact he was American, and Puri-
tan, to the heart's core.

You will as readily agree that no one who was not himself
something of a Covenanter could have painted the * Carlyle ' as
you will that no one whose sympathies were not of the most ex-
quisite fibre could have revealed to us little * Miss Cicely Hen-

[108]

JAMES McNeill whistler

rietta Alexander * waiting there in delicate white and grey, a
black bow in her hat, a black ribbon in her hair, a pair of
butterflies flitting above her head and a spray of daisies peep-
ing out beside her. Nothing Whistler has ever done quite
approaches this gracious, hesitant apparition. The foremost
galleries of the world can show nothing more lovely, more ap-
pealing, or more sensitive. All he had been striving for was
there at last. All he had written to Fantin in despair of achiev-
ing had been achieved. With a line as sure as that of Velaz-
quez, and a surface as smooth as the finest lacquer, he impris-
oned at the moment and for all time this modem Infanta, this
slender slip of latter-day culture and civilization. While the
* Mother ' and the * Carlyle ' mark the climax of his austerity
of statement, ' Miss Alexander ' pauses wistfully on the thresh-
old of this kingdom where actuality was almost to attain the
vanishing point. She suggests, in a sense, both prophecy and
regret. Perhaps she is even pleading with the painter not to
venture farther into shadowland. However that may be, he
was not to heed her unconscious warning. Never again do we
see such pearl-like luminosity of tone and such caressing cer-
tainty of contour. Black, the imiversal harmonizer, herewith
begins to spread its sombre, aristocratic allure over figure and
background. Henceforth we move silently into a realm of half
lights, of suggested colour, and undefined form. Mutely re-
signed, * Rosa Corder ^ stands tall and impassive, her plumed
hat hanging at her side, her body turned more than half around
— ^black, in an atmosphere almost as black. Slipping on her
glove ready to depart, * Lady Archibald Campbell * smiles enig-
matically as she beckons us into the enfolding gloom. Amid
lyric nothingness * Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac '
recites verses faintly articulate, while from the near-by music
room float the strains of * Sarasate^s ' violin. They are chil-
dren of the mind and creatures of the nerves, these beautiful,

[109]

MODERN ARTISTS

impalpable beings. They are but inventories of personality.
Resemblance comits for little, yet each is sufficiently individu-
alized, each vibrates with life and truth, a truth less physical,
however, than psychic. As you glance from one to another the
body appears to recede, the soul to glide forward, inviting con-
fidence and understanding. So fluid and incorporeal are they
in substance that they seem, one and all, to live, move, and
have their being in liquid air.

On approaching the final phase of Whistler's work it is nec-
essary to renounce all preconceptions of painting. Subject,
direct, or even approximate transcription of nature, and what
is called incident, rapidly disappear. A chance mood, a casual
impression, an evasive allusion, these are all that remain.
Along the river-bank in * Pink and Grey — Chelsea ' pass and
repass vague, detached silhouettes. A few scattered, spectral
figures stroll about the * Cremome Gardens ' listening to the
music and watching the flicker of countless lights ; but soon you
are alone with nought save the mystery and the magic of night.
Still this turquoise-blue immensity is never quite without its
note of contrast, its touch of emotional relief. You can hear
long waves breaking on the shore, see the gleam from ships rid-
ing softly at anchor, or watch for an instant the suspended in-
candescence of a bursting rocket. Here again no one has at-
tempted effects so illusive. As a painter of night he never had
a rival save perhaps Hiroshige. It is only when you consider
the penetration of sight and deftness of stroke which this art
exacts that you begin to imderstand what a consummate crafts-
man Whistler was. Nothing could baffle him. Nothing could
elude his refinement of perception and his supreme ease of
presentation. It is precisely because it was Whistler's constant
aim to immaterialize painting that he was able to get closer and
closer to the hidden secrets of nature. Faint and delicate as
these little panels are they are vital fragments of the great, pul-

[110]

Copyright , 1000, by The London Art Puhlishers

THE LADY WITH THE YELLOW BUSKIN— PORTRAIT
OF LADY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL

By James McNeill Whistler

[Wilstach Gallery, Memorial Hall, Philadelphia]

JAMES McNeill whistler

sating world-process. They are not bits of still-life. They are
the breath of the infinite.

Reviewing in turn this succession of nocturnes, harmonies,
symphonies, and arrangements, so full of suppressed colour
and almost audible melody, so intangible, so subliminal, it is
difficult not to feel that Whistler must have enlisted qualities
hitherto unknown to painting. Instinctively you recall the sto-
ries of Poe, of which the artist was so fond. Spontaneously the
memory travels back to those early London days, and to the
tiny cottage in Walham Green where he used to busy himself
with table-turning and spirit-rapping or sit up all night with
Rossetti discussing things which lay across the borderland of
knowledge. With inexorable logic he passed through the three
phases of observation, interpretation, and suggestion. That
hypnotic faculty which was apparent long ago in ' The White
Girl,* who stands as though entranced upon an outstretched
wolf skin, increased rather than diminished as time went on.
Only in rare instances has he used more than one figure, for he
soon came to realize that a psychic state can best be concentrated
in a single object. His habits were abstemious, his nature was
ascetic, and as he drifted through the increasing years he put
aside all that appeals to the lust of the eye and the pride of life.
He grew indifferent to the pageant of external brilliancy roimd
about him. He came to see everything through the grey fogs
of London and the veiled mists of the brain. As he pressed
lightly and eagerly forward he simply jotted down what he
found in this imcharted land. Out of the encroaching darkness
he rescued a few faces, a few vague shadowgraphs. Bloodless,
almost formless, deprived of all save the bare consciousness of
identity, his phantom portraits haunt the mind with cruel per-
sistence. An indefinable pathos enshrouds each character.
They do not move. They stand gazing plaintively at the un-
seen. Are they sad because they have been banished from the

[111]

MODERN ARTISTS

bright, throbbing existence which they once knew — ^because,
though finding their own salvation, they have lost the whole
world?

It has occurred to many that the painter may have made too
great a sacrifice in the attainment of an abstract, impersonal
art. The thought is immature, for he could not have done other
than he has done. He was impelled by the law of his being to
follow the course marked out for him to its inevitable conclu-
sion. It is easy to maintain that these arabesques which he so
fluently traced are isolated and lacking in human application.
Yet it must be remembered that their author possessed some-
thing of that inhumanity which is the bitter portion of all ideal-
ists, and that heredity imprints its insignia alike upon the
world of beauty as upon the world of biology. Only in its early
phases was this art in any degree healthy or joyous. In
its final stages it was clearly the product of a species of emo-
tional erethismus. It was Whistler's fond assumption that he
had succeeded in establishing a definite parallelism between
painting and music. The idea was not original with him, it had
already fascinated numerous minds, and though he came closer
to its solution than any one, the problem remains imsolved and
insoluble. That which he did accomplish was the legitimate
conquest of fresh territory for his own particular medium.
The battle-cry of ** Vive la Nature! '' which rang inspiringly
throughout the stressful years of the nineteenth century closes
diminuendo, in a whisper, almost, with the contribution of
James McNeill Whistler. The cherished traditions of former
times have vanished as in the night. Painting has here ceased
to depict the glories of the past or the insistent realties of the
present. It appeals no longer to the imagination, to sentiment,
or to the intellect. It plays directly upon the nerves, the chief
possession, or affliction, of these restless modem days. You may
not fancy a universe stripped of all save a series of psychic ema-

[112]

JAMES McNeill whistler

nations. You may not relish this power which art has so lately
and so dearly won. It is none the less impossible to hold that
Whistler's work is ever wanting in sheer beauty or persuasive
evocation. And above all it is impossible not to realize that
before he passed away that lingering summer afternoon he had
with his sensitive, nervous fingers imlocked a new and secret
chamber of the soul.

[113]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

FATHER AND CHILD

Portrait of Franz von Lenbach and his daughter Marion^ by the artist

[Possession of the Lenbach family, Munich^

FRANZ VON LENBACH

DURING the past generation the eyes of the world have
for more reasons than one been turned toward Ger-
many. Whether viewed with admiration or with ap-
prehension Teutonic ascendency is rapidly becoming a possi-
bility. Few countries have boasted a similar combination of
political, intellectual, and economic progress as that which has
marked Germany's onward march since the Franco-Prussian
war. On lines laid down by the Iron Chancellor, and modified
by circumstance, the various independent states have been
welded into a single empire and advancement in every direction
has been assured. Little by little the imperial idea, the idea of
national unity, and the idea of world power, if not world su-
premacy, have carried all before them. It has become necessary,
within the past few years, to revise the conventional opinion
of Germany and of the German, for fundamental changes have
taken place in both. The flow of gold from across the frontier
has inflated public pride as well as the public purse. The senti-
mentalist and the metaphysician have been superseded by the
clear-headed, energetic utilitarian. Romance has been discarded
for reality, and everywhere is visible that regulation of human
activity which has produced such significant results. In science,
in philosophy, in letters, and in art the same spirit is manifest.
A magnificent system has been devised, a system upon the
stability of which the future of the country reposes. That this
system is invincible remains to be proved ; that its sponsors be-

[117]

MODERN ARTISTS

lieve it to be so is indisputable. It has naturally taken remark-
able men in every walk of life to erect this austere temple of the
will, this structure which is literally composed of blood and iron.
Fortunately for the future student there exists an unexampled
portrait gallery of the makers of modern Germany. Sombre
and impressive, speaking the ruthless language of the present
in the measured accents of the past, this series of likenesses is
the work of a single individual, a painter who seemed destined
by nature for the fulfillment of his particular task. Even in the
field of art, so replete with exceptional personalities, Franz von
Lenbach is a conspicuous figure. Everything contributed to his
success. He came upon the scene at the precise moment when
his presence counted for the most and used his gifts without
fear or without stint. His very defects, which were not incon-
siderable, redounded to his favour. He knew everyone of con-
sequence during a long and industrious career and left behind
the most comprehensive record of his time which any portrait-
painter has thus far placed to his credit.

Half boor and half courtier, this aggressive son of an obscure
Bavarian artisan forced his way into all classes of society and
managed so closely to identify himself with the special spirit
and the principal personalities of his day that he will ever re-
main the graphic historian of nineteenth-century German.
One by one the chief actors in that world drama which wit-
nessed the rise of one great nation and the temporary humilia-
tion of another, were painted by the rigorous analyst to whom
beauty of colour was naught and character was everything.
Judged according to severe artistic standards Lenbach reveals
serious shortcomings. As an interpreter of the mind his equals
have been few. Notable among the merits of these solemn, mo-
mentous likenesses are their intellectual insight and their ear-
nest dignity of intent. At his best the painter depicted each
sitter with a surety of purpose and a singleness of effect which

[118]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

place him among the master physiognomists. While his tran-
scriptions of both man and woman are restricted and summary,
for intensity of penetration they stand alone. From their dark
backgrounds, as from the dubious unknown, these statesmen and
scientists, these musicians and poets, look with compelling fixity
and truth. Unlike Bonnat whose portraits are but glorified
still-life, Lenbach cared little for definition of contour. No dis-
tracting details mar the simplicity of these canvases. He either
could not or did not choose to catch the sheen of satin or the
steel-grey of broadcloth. Costume had scant charm for one who
had seen so much rich attire, so many glittering uniforms.
Faces only he painted with force and vividness, the rest of the
body being treated with indifference. The hands, even, are
neglected, but about compressed lips and brooding brow cluster
the minute, infallible indices of individuality. It is however
the eyes of Lenbach 's subjects which tell the final story of that
which lies within, for he succeeded as few artists have ever done
in making the eyes the veritable refiex of personality. He reck-
oned only with what he believed to be the inner consciousness,
and of this gave a synthesis. Rembrandt, Moroni, and Lorenzo
Lotto are here his prototypes.

In glancing over this array of portraits both national and
international it is fruitless to look for intimate grace or delicate,
aristocratic allure. There is, it is true, a clever semblance of
such qualities, yet this big, angular creature never learned to
read aright the mysteries of a woman's heart. Although he
painted many of the most beautiful beings of the day, the mun-
dane distinction and nervous dexterity of Sargent or Mehoffer
were beyond his grasp. It is in his likenesses of Bismarck
and of Moltke, of combative, conscience-tortured Gladstone, of
doubting Bollinger, of Heyse, serene high-priest of beauty, and
Bocklin, brother spirit of faun and sea-sprite, that Lenbach
achieved undisputed triumphs. Man he knew and early learned

[119]

MODERN ARTISTS

to fix upon canvas. Womanhood, and in a sense childhood, al-
ways baffled him. The feminine enigma remained to the last
insoluble. Save in its beginnings the career of this large, simian
creature with sandy hair, huge hands, and beetle-like brow, re-
calls the princely days of Titian, Rubens, and van Dyck. From
a poor apprentice he placed himself on a level with the exalted
ones of the earth. Devoid of any save the most rudimentary
training, he nevertheless forced his contemporaries to read his-
tory, almost, through his versions of those who made history.
Born in an isolated workman's cottage he lived in palaces and
died in a superbly appointed villa. Franz von Lenbach's phe-
nomenal rise in the world was due to a conjunction of two quali-
ties— courage and opportunity. From the outset neither was
lacking, nor did either ever desert him.

This painter of emperor and pope, of chancellor and field-
marshal, of grande dame, great actress, or sinuous, sense-dis-
turbing dancer, first saw light on 13 December 1836, at Schro-
benhausen, an otherwise imimportant village midway between
Ingoldstadt and Augsburg, some forty miles from Munich. One
of seventeen children, his father promptly destined him for the
paternal calling, that of a stonemason and builder, whose modest
fee was one florin for drawing the plans of a peasant's cottage.
With this end in view the boy was sent, at the age of eleven, to
the Industrial School at Landshut where he was noted for high
spirits and a mischief -loving temperament. Until his father's
death Franz followed the trade of a mason, but later, through
the strictest economy on the part of his family, was enabled to
attend the Pol3i;echnic Institute of Augsburg where his talents
developed with singular rapidity. He studied drawing, learned
the theory and practice of engraving, and above all was fas-
cinated by the old masters in the Augsburg Museum certain of
which he copied with reverent fidelity. The son of outdoor folk
he was fond of spending as much time as possible in the open,

[120]

GENERAL FIELD-MARSHAL COUNT von MOLTKE

By Franz von Lenbach

[Possession of the von Moltke family]

ERANZ VON LENBACH

and on Sundays and holidays went about sketching from nature,
his companion being a young button-moulder who likewise
boasted artistic aspirations. On leaving the Polytechnic he
passed some years at Schrobenhausen, being much in the com-
pany of Hofner, of Aresing, a kindly, superannuated devotee of
peasant life, who did much to further the lad's ambition to be-
come a painter. The struggle was a severe one, for his early
efforts brought but slender recompense and he moreover suf-
fered from a serious affliction of the eyes. He painted both
landscape and portraits, being especially attracted by the prim-
itive types which he met along the roadway, in the fields, or at
the village inn. His price per portrait was one gulden, and
when he painted family groups he did not fare so badly, families
in the vicinity, being, like his own, notably large.

Lenbach wavered at first between painting and sculpture,
but, though his sense of form always continued strong, coloiu*
soon proved more potent than clay. Already possessing a
thoughtful, reasoning mind he was full of theories as to the
proper f imction of portraiture and was not backward about put-
ting his theories to the test. His lifelong practice came to him
early. It was when painting the youthful countenance of his
brother, that, in his own words, he ** suddenly realized that an
artist should concentrate his mind on the work in hand, as
though nothing existed in the world except the one being before
him, who is unique in the universe and will never come again.''
All his subsequent efforts were guided by this principle of in-
tense, exclusive concentration to which he sacrificed every other
element. He ended, as he began, a man of one idea, of one am-
bition. Munich inevitably proved the magnet which drew him
onward, and in later years he recalled with enthusiasm those
fresh, dewy mornings when he used to start out barefoot to
spend a few hours among the imperishable treasures of the Alte
Pinakothek. At this period his sympathies were divided be-

[121]

MODERN ARTISTS

tween the sovereign spirits of the past, chiefly Rembrandt,
Titian, and Rubens, and the beauty of Upper Bavarian sky and
meadow. He began something of a colourist, but gradually the
brown of the galleries came to darken the brightness of his
palette. From being a free child of nature — ein Natur Kind —
he became a follower of precedent, an embodiment of those
times before light was permitted to flood art with its throbbing
lambence. Just as a profound mental concentration proved the
dominant motive of each portrait, so it grew to be his unalter-
able conviction that " the true breath of inspiration is drawn
from the old masters. '^ As years went on he entrenched himself
more and more rigidly in this belief. With the intolerance of a
man of limited horizon he ruled out all else. He even regarded
it as his solemn office to maintain the continuity of that august
tradition which seemed in danger of being interrupted by cer-
tain disquieting modern tendencies.

After studying for a brief period with Grafle, a pendant of
the stilted and insipid Winterhalter, Lenbach came imder the
influence of Piloty, the most progressive figure of the Bavarian
capital. To the Kunstverein Exhibition of 1857 he sent his

* Peasants taking Refuge from a Storm before the Chapel of
the Virgin,' which, though condemned for its trivial realism,
was nevertheless purchased for four hundred and fifty gulden.
With this sum, together with a State scholarship of five hundred
gulden more, Lenbach was enabled to accompany his preceptor
to Rome. He did not at once succumb to the spell of ancient
art, but spent several happy weeks revelling in the sunshine of
the Campo Vaccino. The fruits of this Italian sojourn con-
sisted in a number of sketches of local types and scene together
with his * Arch of Titus,' which, owing to a lack of funds, he
was obliged to complete at home from the most picturesque
models he could find among the Bavarian highlands. The

* Arch of Titus ' and the * Shepherd Boy ' of the Schack Gal-

[122]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

lery wMcli immediately followed mark the culmination of Len-
bach's naturalistic manner. From thenceforth he turned his
back upon outdoor subjects and proceeded hermetically to seal
himself in the galleries where no ray of light, no breath of life,
could penetrate. Although his feeling for colour was always
defective, and though even the critics of that indecisive period
maliciously hinted that his * Arch of Titus ' must have been
painted with mud and shaded with ink, Lenbach might have
made his name as a pioneer realist. He was in the field before
almost any of the early apostles of actuality, and, as far as it
goes, the barefoot * Shepherd Boy,' lying on his back in the
bleaching sun and shading his eyes with his hand, marks a dis-
tinct point in the conquest of frank, wholesome verity.

Yet things were not to continue so. The new was to come
with increasing vigour sweeping all before it — all save this last
champion of the old whose isolation daily grew more conspicu-
ous. After a year and a half as co-professor at the new Weimar
Art Academy with Bocklin and Begas, Lenbach returned to
Munich where the Count von Schack was so impressed with his
rendering of Rubens 's * Helena Fourment ' in the Alte Pina-
kothek, that he sent him to Italy and later to Spain in order to
copy various Renaissance pictures for the Schack Gallery. He
thus became by degrees a pupil of the old masters, absorbing
their technique and assimilating their secrets as few artists have
ever done or have ever been willing to do. His copies after
Titian, Giorgione, Rubens, Velazquez, and others have never
been excelled. He seemed to be a reincarnation of the past. It
is almost necessary to invoke the theory of metempsychosis in
order satisfactorily to explain his career. In Rome he again
met the modem Titan, Bocklin, and for a time shared his studio,
the two continuing those endless speculations and disputations
on art matters which had begun at Weimar and which were re-
vived later at Basle, when Lenbach, pausing en route from

[123]

MODERN ARTISTS

Spain, visited the lonely symbolist in his modest home. They
used to talk far into the night, these two powerful creatures,
emptying full bumpers thewhile, and, though their views were
radically opposed, they remained close friends, Lenbach in par-
ticular admiring his Swiss colleague's original mind and incisive
speech. There were, besides, numerous points of contact be-
tween the two, notably a community of origin, Lenbach 's rugged
father having been a mountain man from the Tyrolese border.
They were both, in fact, Alpine Germans.

It was not until he had regained the Bavarian capital and
resumed his acquaintance with Paul Heyse, and through him
had met the Wagner circle, on the occasion of the first perform-
ance of ' Die Meistersinger,' that Lenbach devoted his energies
exclusively to portraiture. From the completion of those early
likenesses of Heyse and Wagner until the hour of his death he
did little save place upon canvas with portentous fidelity the
features of the distinguished personages he had the shrewdness
to meet. Though he drifted in turn to Vienna, Berlin, Cairo,
Rome, and elsewhere, Munich continued his headquarters, and
it was in Munich that his friend Gabriel von Seidl later built
him an elaborate Germano-Italian villa fronted by its pretty
garden and fountain and filled with the varied richness of the
Renaissance. At the salon of Frau von Wertheimstein in
Vienna, which was the centre of the diplomatic and artistic life
of the Austrian capital, Lenbach quickly made his presence felt,
just as he afterward did in Berlin at the house of the Countess
von Schleinitz, the queen patronne of the early Wagnerians.
An almost rustic brusqueness of manner, a biting yet servile
tongue, and a superb capacity for forging ahead all helped the
aggressive Altbeyer to secure the most flattering commissions.
He aimed high, this low-bom son. He painted only those who
would add lustre to his increasing list of sitters. In barely a
year he was able to send fifteen portraits to the World's Ex-

[124]

PRINCE BISMARCK

By Franz von Lenbach

[Courtesy of Hugo Reisinger, Esq.^

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FRANZ VON LENBACH

position, including those of Count and Countess Andrassy,
Coimt Wilczek, and Princess Obrenovitch. Yet he was to go
still further, for within a few months Franz Josef called him to
Budapest and Kaiser Wilhelm I summoned him to Berlin, both
portraits being also shown at Vienna in 1873. Although he had
reached the summit of his ambition regarding the choice of
models, Lenbach did not find unqualified favour with either
press or public. The exalted station of his two imperial patrons
clearly paralyzed his faculties, the finished pictures being mani-
festly weak and lacking in observation. He had not attained
that assurance in the presence of royalty which afterward en-
abled him to lay bare the sorrow of the Old Kaiser's heart or
to depict the noble simplicity of Kaiser Friedrich in white
Kiirassier uniform. Taste was also not sufficiently advanced to
appreciate the dignified harmony of Lenbach 's work. It was
some time before south Germany could forget the painstaking
inanities of Stieler and the Gallic imitators.

The two factors which proved Franz von Lenbach 's salvation
and won for him the foremost place in Teutonic portraiture
were his decisive sense of character and his ability to transcribe
in enduring terms the dominant figures about him, and such he
did not find either in the pacific Franz Josef or in the reminis-
cent and rapidly declining Kaiser Wilhelm I. The Bavarian's
name will always be linked with those of Bismarck and Moltke,
of whom he has left so many searching and affirmative present-
ments. Whatever we may hear or read of these dual protago-
nists we must see them through the steel-blue eyes of Lenbach.
As the field-marshal's inexorably effective task was accom-
plished first it is fitting that he should have been painted before
the massive, feudal chancellor. If one typified scientific de-
struction, the other embodied fundamental despotism, and the
former of these qualities looks from every canvas, every sketch
of Moltke; the latter from each study, each drawing of Bis-

[125]

MODERN ARTISTS

marck. It was Lenbach's habit to reduce his sitter to a mental
conception, a specific word, even, and all the while he was paint-
ing to keep repeating this word over and over to himself. By
this process he arrived at that unity of appeal which constitutes
at once the strong and the weak feature of his work. It was a
perfunctory and doctrinal programme which had come from
Schopenhauer, and before him from Plato, and its application
to artistic problems remains debatable. Having made Moltke's
acquaintance in 1873 Lenbach proceeded to paint his idea of him
as the commander incarnate, the impassive, self-contained
genius of war whose results are all preordained, whose victories
are aU assured in advance. He visited the field-marshal several
times at Kreisau and elsewhere, producing at least three unfor-
gettable portraits. Each of these versions of the silent, passion-
less captain though showing the progressive stamp of age, con-
veys an identical impression. Von Moltke himself was not
insensible to the painter's rigid method he having once impa-
tiently exclaimed: ** Why does he always seek to make a hero
ofmer'

Though it was through the Minghetti at Kissingen that Len-
bach first met Bismarck he did not succeed in painting him
until four years later, when they had renewed their acquaintance
at Gastein. From 1878 until the chancellor's death twenty years
after, the two were much together, Lenbach staying with the
prince for long intervals at Varzin or Friedrichsruh and Bis-
marck once responding in kind by stopping over in Munich on
his way from Vienna. Upwards of a hundred portraits and
studies are the result of this intimacy, for, despite the difference
in rank, such it may be termed. Bismarck being, imlike Moltke,
notoriously adverse to formal sittings, Lenbach was accorded
the privilege of sketching the seignorial chancellor at any time
or place, even being a silent onlooker at confidential meetings
of state importance. Nearly every Christmas was passed with

[126]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

the Bismarck family, and on the prince's birthday in April it
was the painter who was chosen to propose his health. It is thus
natural that Lenbach's portraits of Bismarck, whether at the
apex of his power, or as the deposed and disillusionized recluse
of Friedrichsruh, should possess an humanity lacking in much
of the artist's other work. During this long association the
painter perhaps unconsciously put aside theory and remembered
only the man who loomed before him — gigantic, primitive, beset
by dreams of absolutism or mellowed by humour and paternal
affection. It is a significant fact that Bismarck was pleased
with these portraits, for he one day said with a sigh of relief,
thinking, doubtless, of previous attempts to depict his adaman-
tine countenance, " I am glad to see myself immortalized by
Lenbach's brush; it is thus that I should wish to descend to
posterity." While he was notably successful with Bismarck, it
cannot be maintained that the painter was so fortunate in his
delineation of Leo XIII, the prince's subtle adversary and van-
quisher in the Kulturkampf which was then rending asunder
Germany and the Vatican. It was in 1884, while Lenbach was
living at the Palazzo Borghese, that he had his first audience
with His Holiness, and the following year completed the picture
which now hangs in the Neue Pinakothek. It is a pope-diplo-
mat that he has given us, a master of statecraft rather than the
spiritual father of the world, gentle and beneficent as well as
resourceful in the ways of men. Lenbach was obviously more
influenced by the passing issues of the day than by the per-
manent features of the individual he was painting. Theory had
again led him astray.

Only a shade less convincing than his mighty and merciless
builders of the Prussian hegemony is Lenbach's succession of
Geistesheroen, or heroes of the mind and spirit, such as Bollin-
ger, Mommsen, Helmholtz, Hammacher, Virchow, the volcanic
Norse radical, Bjomstjerne Bjornson, and the eloquent Slav,

[127]

MODERN ARTISTS

Strossmayer. They all gaze out of the same enshrouding
penumbra; they seem, each and all, perpetual prisoners of
thought. They are triumphs of pure reason. The method is
realistic, but it is a philosophical, Kantian, realism. Amid end-
less abstractions floats a mere atom of the concrete. While they
are mental masks, not portraits in the general signification of
the term, for phrenological grasp and certainty of characteriza-
tion they have seldom been approached. Though Lenbach will
scarcely rank beside the masters he so revered, it must have been
something after this fashion that Holbein limned Erasmus of
Rotterdam, that Velazquez painted Pope Innocent X, and the
youthful Raphael, Pope Julius II. While there is, it cannot
be denied, a touch of finality about many of these likenesses
which only the greatest painters have been able to attain, yet
this quality has not been won without the gravest sacrifices.
That which beyond everything gives these portraits their com-
pelling tensity of expression was Lenbach 's arbitrary employ-
ment of focus. Just as the ancient Egyptians before him had
done, he deliberately made the eye the chief point of emphasis.
All save the eye and its immediate setting belong to a vast
and formless area of indefinite treatment. It was only the real-
ity and truth with which he depicted the few features he chose
to reveal that make Lenbach 's art in any degree acceptable.
The man's methods were characteristic. His models were posed
in semi-obscurity, and from behind a pair of enormous gold-
rimmed spectacles he flashed upon the sitter a piercing and
reflective gaze. When absorbed he never stopped for fatigue
nor failed to take infinite pains. He employed with extraor-
dinary facility every technical resource, every trick of his
craft. None of his triumphs was accidental. Nothing was left
to chance. Not satisfied with himian vision, he usually con-
sulted the more accurate record of the camera. In order to
arrive at what he held to be a superior fidelity to physiognomy

[128]

Copyright, 1S99, hy Photograiihische Gesellschaft

THEODOR MOMMSEN

By Franz von Lenbach

l^Possession of the Mommsen famili/]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

he would take as many as sixty photographs of a single head in
various positions, finally selecting the one which best suited
his purposes and this he would enlarge and make the actual
basis of his portrait. He was independent and cared little for
public opinion. When reproached with his lack of external de-
tail he would say brusquely " I leave it to the beholder to fill in
what he wishes to see." Of Menzel alone he stood in awe. Re-
ferring to the lack of cordial relations between the two he once
remarked, ^* I quarrelled years ago with Menzel; he criticizes
like a shoemaker."

If it be true that Lenbach expressed most of his men in in-
tellectual formulae, it is equally apparent that he made the ma-
jority of his women fit a preconceived type of femininity. The
former are severe and introspective, the latter are usually sensu-
ous or frivolous. While there are welcome exceptions, such as
the dignified oval portrait of Freifrau von Fabrice, a clumsy
coquetry and a persistent effort to simulate the charm of the
English school of the eighteenth century or the morbid delicacy
of Kaulbach distinguish the Bavarian's attitude toward the
gentler sex. There is more attempt at elaboration in the female
portraits. They possess greater exterior seduction. Almost
achromatic in his men, Lenbach used a wider range of tone in
his treatment of women. Yet he never handled colour with
anything approaching freedom or vivacity. He was always less
a colourist than a discolourist. After several years of stormy
bachelorhood he had married one of these same flowers of the
German noblesse, doubtless fancying he understood her, a dream
which was dispelled shortly after the birth of their daughter
Marion. His wife was the young Coimtess von Moltke, a grand-
niece of the field-marshal, and this patrician creature found it
impossible to adjust herself to the painter's primitive ways, nor
could he comprehend her innate aristocracy of feeling. They
separated eventually, she marrying Bismarck's physician, Dr.

[129]

MODERN ARTISTS

Schweninger, and he, sometimes later, resigning himself to the
more comprehensive temperament of Baroness Lolo von Horn-
stein. Toward the last, having painted most of the grand folk
of his own and other countries, he used to take the keenest de-
light in depicting the artless grace of his children, whom he
arrayed in all manner of fancy costumes, now painting them as
little princesses, now as wandering beggar musicians. He was
especially fond of silver-blonde, blue-eyed Margot, whom he used
to place in the arms of Duse, or other women, or hold close to
his own unkempt head. Yet even here the old desire to read
into nature something which was not there, or was there but
vaguely, made itself manifest. Marion always seems to be gaz-
ing into the future with a shade too much divination, as though
overconscious of that which is still far distant.

There is scant reason for passing in review more of these
portraits which reflect less of life itself than a single individual's
powerful though prescribed rendering of life. They touch all
classes and embrace all callings. The majority were painted
at the Villa Lenbach, in Luisenstrasse, not far from the soaring
Propylaea. It is in reality a double structure, one part contain-
ing the living quarters, the other being dedicated to a sumptu-
ous, three-room studio occupying the entire second storey and
approached from the outside by a broad flight of steps. Himg
with tapestries and rich brocades, filled with busts, bas-reliefs,
antique marbles, and rare paintings the whole place breathes
that Renaissance atmosphere which the painter so loved and
with which he strove during so many years to identify himself.
Though harmony was the passion of this man's life he lived and
died an anomaly, a contradiction. He came from below and
rose far beyond his station. His art, while modern in its an-
alysis, went back whole centuries to find a congenial setting.
Possessing a keen, intensive vision he persisted in looking upon
the world through the eyes of other men. Despite their unques-

[130]

FRANZ VON LENBACH

tioned observation and vigorous plastic energy, Franz von Len-
bach's portraits constitute an entire retrospective exMbition.
Behind each canvas lurks the daemon of a former and a greater
artist. Here is the subdued splendour of Titian, there is the
mellow gold of the sturdy Dutchman who died in obscurity, and
here again is the aristocratic and melancholy charm of the court-
painter who passed away that bleak December day at Black-
friars. It is imposing, this epoch in paint, yet it is often more
composite than individual. It is sometimes, even, merely an
affair of recollections and citations. Despite its manifestly
reactionary tendencies the work of Lenbach has not been with-
out its able apostles and imitators, at the head of whom stands
Leo Samberger, whose canvases reveal the same sombre tonal-
ity, and, at moments, an even greater dramatic force than those
of his predecessor. Such reversions to fonner modes need
not, however, be altogether deplored. There will always be,
in painting, these revivals, these resurrections, for the progress
of art, like that of other forms of evolution, is marked by a
series of curves, not by a single straight line. At intervals,
indeed, as in the case of Lenbach, these curves become almost
a circle — a circle within whose dim and tenebrous arcanmn the
painter's fancy continuously revolves.

No artist save perhaps the regal Fleming was more hon-
oured during his lifetime. They made him a knight and an
Ehrendoktor of the University of Halle. He was frequently
chosen president of the International Exhibition of Munich
and usually had several rooms to himself in the Glaspalast,
ornately furnished and hung with scores of dark, anachronistic
canvases, each of which resembled an awakened echo of bygone
days, an escaped refugee of the galleries. Although he never
wholly recovered from that partial paralysis which for so many
months held him a rigid, unwilling prisoner, Lenbach was able
to resume work before the end, which came on 6 May 1904.

[131]

MODERN ARTISTS

His last picture was a portrait of himself which was shown
at the memorial exhibition of his life work in the new and
imposing building in the Konigsplatz, the conception and
erection of which were largely due to his efforts. For Bavaria,
and for Germany, he remained one of the great ones of the earth.
And when the crowd gathered silently before his villa on that
bright spring morning, each watcher seemed to be saying to
himself that the world had lost a master spirit — each, save a
slender few who chanced to remember that the mind of man is
too baffling and too complex to be reduced to a definition, and
that the soul of man demands light, the pulsing light of day, for
its solace and its inspiration.

[132]

^ *

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

/SO u.

s^e^mt

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN
From a recent photograph
[Courtesy of the artist^

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN"

ON a certain occasion when Flaubert and Zola were dis-
cussing Merimee's style, and Flaubert was endeavour-
ing to explain why it was bad, Turgenev, who happened
to be present, found it difficult to catch the drift of the matter.
It was by no means because the author of * Spring Floods,*
* Smoke,* and * Virgin Soil ' was an inferior French scholar,
but because the Slav, as a rule, has small taste for analytical
subtleties. In art as in life a poignant sense of reality is with
each Russian an inevitable birthright. Those restless wander-
ers who started from Galicia and the upper Dnyepr, who
founded Novgorod the Great and Moscow, and settled the fertile
basin of the Volga, were not theorists. The merchant traders
who in turn pushed across the Urals and penetrated the silent
forests and frozen marshes of Siberia were not impelled by ab-
stract ideas, by the Christian fervour of Crusaders, for example,
but by simple motives of race instinct. From the outset the
Eussian has been brought face to face with the severest actual
conditions. He has always been a subject and a sufferer. Now
overrun by the Golden Hordes of the Great Khans, and now
stifled by the iconography of Byzantine priest, the Slavic spirit
had little scope for individual development. When the Mongol
yoke was at length broken by the Grand Princes of Moscow the
situation remained much the same. Oppression still existed;
only it came from within, not from without. The people no
longer paid tribute to a khan, they bowed to his successor, the

[135]

MODERN ARTISTS

Tsar, a being almost as Asiatic and as autocratic. It was not
until the observant and tenacious Peter brought back with him
an incongruous assortment of European ideas and customs that
material changes were effected, though even then much which
was old continued imtouched. While German dress and Ger-
man bureaucracy were in a measure adopted, and Peterhof be-
came a miniature Versailles, echoes of the East and of that
blighting yellow invasion still persisted. French was prattled
in the salons and beneath the trees of Tsarskoye-Selo, yet the
populace was crushed imderf oot with a cynicism wholly despotic
and oriental. Down to the present time, in fact, matters showed
but scant alteration. Though there were Liberator Tsars as
well as sinister tyrants on the throne, progress remained dubi-
ous and intermittent. Within our own generation the beneficent
clemency of Alexander II has been followed by the drastic re-
actionary measures of von Plehve and Pobiedonostsev. Each
step forward seems to have been offset by a corresponding step
backward. The Tatar spearman merely gave way to the Cos-
sack with his whip.

In the slow and tortuous evolution of aesthetic expression in
Russia the novel preceded both music and the graphic arts. For
long periods the painter was crushed beneath archaic formalism
and frigid academic precedent. Just as in the broader relations
of life, all spontaneous, healthy impulse was repressed by influ-
ences wholly artificial and foreign. Hardly had the bloodless
Byzantine tradition spent its tenuous force when Italian and
French ideals asserted their imported pre-eminence. Instead
of aiming to be themselves, artists struggled clumsily to become
known as the Russian Raphael, Poussin, David, or Guido Reni.
A few, among whom were Levitzky, Borovikovsky, and Kipren-
sky, achieved a more specific and individual success. Though
the St. Petersburg Academy was founded as far back as 1757,
it was not imtil long after the shattered legions of Napoleon

[136]

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

straggled homeward through the snow and the first throb of real-
ism had begun to stir the modern spirit that Slavonic painting
showed signs of independent vitality. Even then the truth was
not fully accepted, for the efforts of Orlovsky and Venezianov
were soon discounted by the operatic romanticism of Brulov's

* Fall of Pompeii ' and the clamour which attended its exhibi-
tion not only in Russia but throughout Europe. That whole-
some instinct for veracity so typical of later art forms found
no foothold in the pretentious and melodramatic wake of Brulov.
Bruni and Neff were mere echoes of an icy classicism, and
whereas Ivanov possessed both truth and emotion, his utterance
was too obscure and pedantic to enlist general sympathy or
comprehension.

The modest, unwitting father of contemporary Russian
painting as well as literature was Gogol, a furtive little man
with the face of a fox and a great mass of dark hair flapping
across his anxious brow. It is from under the mantle of the
author of * Taras Bulba,' * Evenings on the Farm near Di-
kanka,' * The Revizor,' and * Dead Souls,' that have sprung
successively such writers as Goncharov, Turgenev, and Tolstoy,
and such artists as Repin, Pasternak, and Serov. He died at
forty, a pitiful religious mystic, without realizing that his
sprightly humour, the keenness of his observation, and his
scrupulous fidelity to local type had proved an incalculable
stimulus to the entire nation. Once Gogol had paved the way
it was not difficult for Sternberg to paint that same vivacious

* Little Russia ' with skill and animation, nor for Fetodov to
amuse a generation with his * Newly Decorated Knight ' or

* The Major's Match.' And in Gogol also lurked unconsciously
something of that homely and pathetic verity with which Perov
conceived his * Funeral iq the Coimtry ' and ^ The Village Ser-
mon.' As at the outset, literature continued to lead the way,
for it was not until the greatest of Russia's artists whether with

[137]

MODERN ARTISTS

brush or pen — Ivan Turgenev — ^had written his * Diary of a
Sportsman ' that Slavonic painters appreciated the mournful,
elegiac beauty of those gently undulant plains stretching away
toward faint rim of forest or grey, unbroken horizon. Shishkin,
Lebedev, and Savrassov were among the earliest to reflect that
intimate, outdoor poetry which had been so long neglected for a
conventionalized Campagna, the Bay of Naples, or the spectacu-
lar remoteness of the Alps. Down to the past score of years,
almost, Russian painting gained inspiration from the more per-
sonal and courageous appeal of Russian fiction. Though it is
unnecessary to enforce any precise connection between the two,
it is interesting to note that * War and Peace ' antedated the
military canvases of Verestchagin, and that Dostoevsky's tragic
and penetrating studies in * Crime and Pimishment ' were fol-
lowed by the searching sketches and portraits of larochenko
and Kramskoy. It matters little, however, which form of ex-
pression came first or which came after. The chief point is
that each strove to reveal with increasing sincerity that great,
confused, and always suffering humanity which lay just at hand
waiting to be understood and uplifted.

Only vaguely it is known outside of Russia that there is liv-
ing and painting to-day in St. Petersburg one of the foremost
of modem masters. Only dimly is it realized that in Ilya Repin
the shifting pageant of Slavic life and scene finds one of its
ablest interpreters. Yet for personal fervour, national feeling,
or plastic vigour this forceful, veracious genius deserves to rank
close beside Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in prose, and
Chaykovsky in music. The story of Repin 's career and achieve-
ment is the story of Russia during the past threescore years.
On his canvases glows the history of his coimtry with all its pos-
sibilities, all its eager, baffled effort and sullen, misdirected
power. His series of portraits constitutes a Pantheon of Rus-
sia's leading minds; his naturalistic and medieval compositions

[138]

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reflect with impelling conviction a troubled present or a sumptu-
ous, barbaric past. The art of Repin is above everything a dis-
tinctly racial expression. It is to Russia, and Russia alone, that
he has consecrated the clarity of his vision and the surety of
his hand. And these gifts he has not dedicated to the narrow
province of aesthetics, but to a broader, more inclusive human-
ity. At first his message seemed merciless in its imflinching
truth, yet gradually it took on more and more outward radiance
and inward beauty. Gradually the stem accuser who had so
long continued taciturn and sardonic exhaled sympathy and
fellowship. Though he seems to stand alone, Repin belongs to
that great succession of academic realists at whose head re-
mained for so long the diminutive and masterful Adolf von
Menzel. Once the facts of life are at his command, Repin
groups them with resistless scenic appeal. He composes as well
as observes. His work is both individual and typical ; it is both
portraiture and panorama. Despite his years this phenomenal
being is still the most commanding figure in Russian art. He
has touched every field and has everywhere revealed his incon-
testable supremacy. In each he displays the same sovereign
assurance, the same flood of colour, the same impeccable com-
position.

Early in November, some five-and-forty years ago, there
knocked at the portals of the Imperial Academy of Arts in the
city by the Neva a young Cossack from the Government of
Kharkov. He was pale and shy of manner, with masses of
brown hair clustering about brow and ears, and imder his arm
carried a portfolio of sketches. The lad had come all the way
from Chuguyev, an isolated village amid the steppes of Little
Russia, his entire capital consisting of fifty roubles and a con-
suming desire to become a painter. Bom 24 July 1844, of a
martial father and a gentle, solicitous mother, Ilya Repin soon
displayed a taste for graphic expression. When a mere child

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he used to draw pictures for his sister and her playmates as
well as cut figures out of cardboard and model animals in wax.
Before twelve he made creditable pencil portraits of his relatives
and scrupulously copied all the woodcuts and lithographs he
could lay his hands on. Though delicate, he was sent to the
communal school where his mother was a teacher, and later to
the near-by Topographical Institute, but on the closing of the
latter was apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, to Bunakov, a
local painter of sacred images. So rapid was the boy's progress
that within three years he was able to support himself, receiving
anywhere from two to five, and even twenty roubles for a re-
ligious subject or the likeness of some wealthy villager. Pious
muzhiks and pompous rural dignitaries would often come from
a himdred versts around to see his ikoni or to secure his services
as ecclesiastical decorator, the most famous of his efforts being
a * Saint Simeon,' which was by no means devoid of dramatic
fervour or fitting ecstasy. It was while working in the church
of Sirotin that Repin first heard of the eager, ambitious life of
the capital with its possibilities so far beyond the limitations of
provincial endeavour. Certain of his comrades told him not
only of the Academy, but of Kramskoy, the leader of the new
spirit, who had lately paid a visit to Ostrogorsk, bringing with
him the fashions of St. Petersburg and the ferment of fresh
social and aesthetic ideas. When, at nineteen, he finally stood
facing the twin sphinxes that solemnly guard the temple of art
on the Vassily Ostrov, Repin realized that he must begin anew,
that much he had so laboriously learned by himself must be for-
gotten. Instead of entering the Academy directly he spent a
year in preliminary preparation, subsisting meanwhile in the
most precarious fashion, for his resources were pitifully slen-
der. In due course he met his idol, Kramskoy, whom he found
to be a dark, meagre man with deep-set, burning eyes, and who
always attended his classes arrayed in a long black redingote.

[140]

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

Kramskoy took an immediate interest in the young provincial's
work and often asked him to his house where he expounded the
gospel of reality with convincing magnetism. The following
autumn Repin entered the Academy, naturally finding its stilted
routine cold and listless beside the rigorous, wholesome creed of
his earlier master.

It would have been impossible for a young artist to have
come to the capital at a more inspiring period. The era of
reform which followed the liberation of the serfs was daily
gathering impetus. Radiant ideas of freedom and progress per-
meated all classes of society. On every side were signs of re-
generation, of a vast political and spiritual awakening. While
the influence of such ardent apostles of the poor and the homely
as Pisemsky, Nekrasov, and Shchedrin found echo in the paint-
ings of Perov and larochenko, it was not, however, imtil the
very month Ilya Repin journeyed northward from his distant
home that the movement, so far as art was concerned, took spe-
cific shape. On 9 November 1863, under the leadership of
Kramskoy, thirteen of the ablest students of the Academy re-
belled against soulless officialism, left the institution, and formed
themselves into an independent body. The little band struggled
dubiously along for a while, but later was strong enough to
establish the Peredvizhnaya Vista vka, or Society of Travelling
Exhibitions. It is to this society, with its hatred of classic and
mythological themes and its frank love of refreshing outdoor
scene, that Russian painting owes its present vitality. It was
this clear-eyed, open-minded group of enthusiasts who first made
it possible for the Slavic artist to go among the people, to listen
to the secret song of the steppe. Although he passed six years
at the Academy, Repin was never in sympathy with its ideals,
nor did he in any degree absorb its traditions. Beyond every-
thing he strove to attain an explicit truthfulness of rendering.
The grip of the external was already strong upon him, the magic

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of visible things exercised its own imperative appeal. So con-
spicuous was the young radical's talent that in 1869 he was
awarded the small gold medal, and the following term, for his

* Raising of Jairus's Daughter,' obtained the large gold medal
and the travelling scholarship. The summer after winning his
academic laurels he went on a sketching trip down the Volga —
an event which, more than axiyilamg, opened his eyes to that
serene beauty of nature and sorrowful lot of man which so long
proved his inspiration. On his return, boldly and without
prelude, Ilya Repin, at six-and-twenty, proceeded to paint the
first masterpiece of the modem Russian school.

It is difficult to realize the vast distance which separates the

* Barge-towers of the Volga ' from all that went before. These
shaggy, sun-scorched creatures who wearily drag their heavy
grain ship along endless yellow flats signify something more
than a mere band of burlaky. Gathered from every corner of
the empire, of different ages, feature, and stature, they are one
in dinnb resignation, in fruitless, despairing revolt, and in cease-
less, debasing effort. Each pulls on the same sagging line, this
one stolidly, that one savagely, their feet deep in the sand, their
eyes downcast or lifted toward the shimmering canopy of a blue,
cloud-flecked sky. They are the eternal slaves of toil. Their
melancholy, barbaric song and the steady rhythm of their strain-
ing bodies suggest a great symphony of suffering, a whole cycle
of human endeavour which began long since and must continue
forever. The effect of the canvas is that of fulfilling mastery.
The composition is inevitable, each of the types is accurately
individualized, and everjrwhere radiates the glory of the free
outdoors, not the bitumen and brown sauce of the galleries. At
one stroke Repin placed himself at the head of his colleagues ;
with a single picture he discounted decades of rococo and ro-
manticism. His triumph over formula was complete, and his
fame as sudden and widespread as that of the young officer who,

[142]

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years before, had penned with uncompromising verity * The
Cossacks * and ' Sevastopol Sketches.'

While his * Burlaky ' was being exhibited in St. Petersburg
and Vienna, Repin had already begun that sojourn abroad,
which, though it matured his artistic powers, only served to in-
tensify his love for his native land. The Continental museums,
with their remote, grandiose appeal, held no message for his
observant, nature-loving temperament. He succumbed neither
to the mute antiquity of Rome nor to the gracious animation of
Paris. While he enjoyed the endless ferment of cafe and street
life, he could never forget those shabby, smoke-filled student
rooms where political and artistic questions were discussed with
sacred ardour, nor those far-off stretches of waving plume grass.
The only work of consequence to come from his brush during
this period was a touching bit of symbolism entitled * Sadko in
the Wonder Realm of the Deep,' in which the painter-exile
seems to have suggested his own loneliness and home-longing.
There proved, indeed, to be a prophetic note in the picture,
for he returned to Russia before his allotted time had expired,
having, like Sadko, responded to the call of Chemavushka,
the beseeching embodiment of the Slavic race spirit. Once
back amid the scenes of his early efforts Repin devoted his
untiring energy to furthering the cause of national artistic ex-
pression. He immediately cast his lot with the Society of Trav-
elling Exhibitions, in which he became the chief figure. At first
he settled in Moscow, but later removed to St, Petersburg,
where he accepted a professorship in the reorganized Academy,
which, under the vice-presidency of Count Ivan Tolstoy, gath-
ered back to the fold certain of the former recalcitrants. For
diversity of theme, for vigour of presentation, and searching
fidelity of accent, few painters have excelled the succession of
canvases which Repin therewith began to offer an enthralled
public. Year after year each picture was in turn hailed as the

[143]

MODERN ARTISTS

evangel of actuality or greeted as an incomparable evocation of
the past. At times an almost ascetic severity would darken his
vision, but perhaps the next work would glory in a Byzantine
richness of costume, the gleam of jewels, and the glint of pol-
ished metal. Though he often gazed backward across the surg-
ing centuries, never, after student days, did he choose a subject
not defiantly Muscovite.

It is absorbing to trace from canvas to canvas the unfolding
of Repin's genius. His principal works are not the result of a
single, consecutive transcription of something clearly formu-
lated in the mind ; they are the outcome of prolonged effort and
adjustment. As many as a himdred preliminary studies were
made for * The Cossacks,' of which, during some ten years, he
painted three finished versions. He is never satisfied, he con-
stantly strives to attain a verity which seldom seems final. Al-
though certain of his pictures are owned by the imperial family
and the nobility, the majority are in the Tretiakov Gallery, in
Moscow. In this low, rambling building across the gleaming
river from the Kremlin are gathered upwards of two thousand
representative examples of Russian art, sixty of which, includ-
ing sketches and portraits, being by Repin. Such works as * The
Tsarevna Sophie Confined to the Novodevitchy Monastyr dur-
ing the Execution of the Strelitz,' * The Tsar Ivan the Terrible
and his son Ivan Ivanovitch,' * Nicholas the Miracle Worker,'
and * The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan Mohammed IV ' reveal
Repin as an historical painter of incontestable mastery. While
* The Tsarevna Sophie ' is scarcely more than a tense and har-
rowing study in physiognomy, * Ivan the Terrible and his Son '
challenges comparison with the grim Spaniards at their best.
In one of the sombre chambers of the Granovitaya Palata, Ivan,
in a passion of demoniacal ferocity, struck down his favourite
child, and, an instant later, realizing what he had done, clasped
the bleeding, shattered boy to his breast. It is this swift transi-

[144]

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

tion from murder to agonizing remorse that Repin has depicted
with a primitive directness equalled only by Ribera. So over-
powering is the tragic horror of the scene that when the canvas
was first placed on view women fainted and men turned away
aghast. Yet the picture is more than a gruesome episode. It
conjures up as nothing has ever done that dark inheritance,
those brooding centuries of barbaric splendour and relentless
savagery which form the backgroimd of present-day Russia. In
* Nicholas the Miracle Worker,' who is that holy Nicholas of
Myra who prevented the execution of certain Christians during
the reign of Emperor Licinius, Repin bathes his figures in a
suffusion of light which heightens the solemnity and dramatic
suspense of a situation that so narrowly escapes becoming one
of mere brutal butchery. * The Cossacks,' which is notably
popular abroad, perhaps best displays Repin 's effective group-
ing, his robust, almost Flemish opulence of colour, and his char-
acteristic gift for portraiture. The mocking bravado of each
countenance tells its own story. You can literally hear the de-
risive laughter of these liberty-loving Zaporozhtsi as the regi-
mental scribe pens their defiant answer while they gather about
the rude, card-strewn table. Like Gogol before him, Repin has
here rolled back a few hundred years. We are again in the days
of Taras Bulba and his pirates of the steppe, that stormy inland
sea over which used to roam Kazak and Pole, Tatar and Turk.

Yet all the while he was steeped in the past Repin never lost
identity with the issues of his own day. Side by side with the
painter of history worked the painter of contemporary life.
The Russo-Turkish war furnished him with several themes, and
in what is known as the Nihilist Cycle, consisting of * The
Conspirators,' * The Arrest,' * The Unexpected Return,' etc., he
portrayed with minute, penetrating intensity that smouldering
social volcano which has been responsible for so many genera-
tions of anguish and self-immolation. Among the numerous

[145]

MODERN ARTISTS

works of this period are two that merit special attention —
* Vechernitsi/ or, as it is generally called, * Russian Village
Dancers,' and the * Religious Procession in the Government of
Kursk,' which was supplemented by a somewhat similar * Pro-
cession.' Nowhere has Repin's Little Russian origin betrayed
itself so humanly as in these simple, naive merrymakers who
meet at some far-away traktir and pass the night before their
wedding dancing by candle-light to the time of violin, pipe, and
balalaika. There is a humour, an almost tender playfulness to
the episode that proves Repin is not always the austere martyr
painter. In the * Procession,' with its struggling, seething
mass of humanity, its fat, gold-robed priests, stupid peasants,
wretched cripples, cruel-mouthed officials, and inflated rural
dignitaries, Repin seems to have given a synthesis of Russia.
Borne aloft are the sacred images ; banners and festoons flutter
on the dust-laden air, and in the midst of all, close beside crucifix
and pleading Virgin, whistles to right and left the knout. While
simply depicting a scene one might witness any day on the
parched highways of southern Russia, the picture possesses
deeper significance. In essence it is a condemnation, and one
all the more severe because clothed in the inflexible language of
fact.

During the past decade Repin has painted several memor-
able pictures, and this, despite his duties as professor at the
Academy, despite continuous commissions for portraits, and
various huge coromemorative panels. * The Duel,' which was
awarded the medal of honour at the Venice Exposition of 1897,
is unquestionably one of his most dramatic and subtly poetic
conceptions, though * Follow Me, Satan! ' and ^ What Boundless
Space! ' aroused equal enthusiasm. The latter shows a young
man in the uniform of a university student and a young woman
standing hand in hand amid a madly plunging torrent. On ac-
count of its symbolism the public has experienced a certain dif-

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ficulty in divining the meaning of this picture. Is it a warning,
or is it a call to self-sacrifice? Whichever it may be, there is
no question that Repin's heart is with this fearless, exultant
couple in their hour of peril or of triumph. Although Ilya
Repin's reputation abroad is chiefly due to the larger, more
pictorial compositions, many of his coimtrymen claim that the
portraits represent a higher level of attainment. It is obvious
that these likenesses of Tolstoy, Pisemsky, Mussorgsky, Su-
rikov, Glinka, Rubinstein, and dozens of statesmen, authors,
generals, and scientists possess matchless precision and person-
ality. They are invariably vital in treatment and concise in
characterization. Face to face with his sitter, Repin is a rapid
workman, jealous of essentials and scornful of trivialities. The
prophet of Yasnaya Polyana he has painted scores of times —
behind the plough, at his bare writing-table, or strolling abroad
a convinced disciple of Father Kneipp. Not only has Repin
sketched, modelled, and painted Tolstoy, but he has also
illustrated a mmaber of his books. Their friendship, like
that between Bismarck and Lenbach, has extended over
many years, growing ever closer as the time of parting draws
near.

In his summer studio in Finland, or his roomy, workmanlike
quarters in the Academy, before the doors of which he once
paused an imknown, aspiring provincial, Repin is passing the
remainder of his days. Although he has already placed to his
credit a lifetime of achievement, creative enthusiasm still per-
sists. One by one his companions have gone, leaving him an
isolated figure. Of those who lingered, Makovsky has fallen
sadly behind in accomplishment, and his early champion, the late
veteran critic Stassov, never wholly forgave him for returning to
the Academy. His chief source of pleasure is found in teaching,
and it is significant to note that his pupils, who revere him, usu-
ally carry off the majority of the official prizes. It is impossible

[147]

MODERN ARTISTS

to measure the extent of his influence upon the younger men.
The most brilliant among them, such as Serov, Maliavin, Braz,
Schmarov, and Ivanov, owe much of their success to his inspira-
tion and counsel. Throughout his entire career Ilya Repin has
remained a rebel and a fighter, an enemy, by inference at least,
of Church and State. The political as well as the artistic influ-
ence of his paintings has been immense. At various times he
has approached the danger-line of audacity, but always, instead
of his being disciplined, the offending picture has been pur-
chased for private edification by the Tsar or some grand duke.
So open has occasionally been popular approval of his more
radical works that they have been removed from public gaze
within a few hours after being placed on exhibition. At the
bare feet of Leo Tolstoy, when a recent portrait of him was first
shown, were daily heaped so many floral tributes that the cau-
tious authorities were moved temporarily to sequester the
picture.

The invincible naturalistic tradition represented alike by
Repin in painting and by his contemporaries in letters is the
legacy of their day and generation. Its appeal is not to the
imagination, it is in no sense an ardent revelation of the soul, but
rather a convincing transcription of the outward and visible.
Like Turgenev, Repin is one of those instinctive realists who
can create only from the living model. Never, even in his most
powerful and concentrated moments, does he wander from the
wealth of fact always at hand. The stricken, tortured coun-
tenance of Ivan's dying son is practically a portrait of poor,
distraught Garshin in the final stages of insanity and suicide.
The confused, haimted expression on the face of the exile in
' The Unexpected Return ' was suggested to the painter by the
appearance of Dostoevsky when he came home after years of
Siberian immolation. Yet it need not be assumed that Repin
is a slave to the literal and explicit. The predominant quality

[148]

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

of his work is its emotional and scenic intensity. In his feel-
ing for art there seems always to linger the vitalizing magic
of things fecund and elemental, as well as a supreme gift for
arrangement.

Seated in his quiet studio amid the gathering twilight of late
afternoon, grey, shaggy, with contracted brow and keen, ques-
tioning eye, you instinctively think Repin less the painter or
poet than the man of science. When he came on the scene the
Byronic outbursts of Pushkin and the eloquent heart-hunger of
Lermontov had long since been swept away; the age of obser-
vation followed, carrying aU before it. Imprisoned between
Byzantine hierarchy and Gallic prettiness Repin boldly freed
himself and became a convinced apostle of nature. It was the
kingdom of earth which he inherited, not the shadowy, elusive
kingdom of dreams. In all its outlines the art of Repin typifies
the painter's own specific epoch; it definitely incarnates the
temper of his race and his time. Like Courbet in France, Ilya
Repin has fought almost single-handed a long, and in the end,
a victorious battle. He possesses, too, something of the primal
energy of the sturdy peasant of Omans, but to that quality adds
the knowledge and graphic mastery of Menzel. And yet, how-
ever formidable his achievement may now seem, it is by no means
the final word of Russian painting. Already a younger genera-
tion is pressing close about him. Just as Manet dethroned Cour-
bet, and Repin dethroned Brulov, so others have stepped for-
ward to challenge his ascendancy. Men such as Serov, Maliavin,
Juon, and Grabar have lately arisen to dispute, or at least to
share, the position of Repin, Korovin, and Levitan. Natural-
ism found its reply in impressionism, which, in turn, has been
modified and extended by the individualist and the symbolist.
Weary of social problems and the sorrows of the proletariat,
sensitive spirits such as Somoff and Benois glance backward
toward the eighteenth century, toward the gardens of Peterhof

[149]

MODERN ARTISTS

and the leafy arbours of Tsarskoye-Selo. Nevertheless, the
painter of so many scenes throbbing with life and truth looks
on undisturbed, for he knows that the farther these pallid fan-
tasists wander the sooner must they return to that reality which
is the master and the mistress of us all.

It was not until the Paris Exposition of 1900 that the West-
em world in any degree realized what Russian art had accom-
plished, and since then progress has been relatively more en-
couraging than before. As though after a long slumber, Slavonic
painting is emerging clear-eyed and refreshed, choosing what-
ever suits her here or there, yet always retaining the memory
of a powerful and characteristic inheritance. While numerous
canvases that figure annually at the exhibitions of the Mir
Iskousstva in St. Petersburg or the Soyuz in Moscow are di-
rectly traceable to the influence of Repin, newer elements have
lately been in evidence. The Russian artist who now goes to
Germany comes back less filled with the studio heroics of Piloty
and Makart than with the broad, decorative vision of Ziigel. If
it happens to be Paris where he studies, he is apt to return with
something of the prismatic fluency of Monet or Besnard or the
psychic, penetrant evocation of Eugene Carriere. Yet it is a
wholesome thing for these yoimger artists to go abroad and de-
velop technical facility, for technique is precisely what Slavonic
painting has thus far woefully lacked. There is little groimd to
fear that foreign trained men will in any degree drop their dis-
tinctive flavour; nationality is becoming too strong a factor ever
to be lost sight of. Naturally there are other and more concise
reasons why Russian art is to-day so abundantly racial in accent,
the most important being the exceptional prominence attained
during the past decade by the Rural Industries movement. At
Abramtsevo, Talachkino, Somolenka, and other provincial cen-
tres throughout the empire have been established schools for
assisting and directing the peasants in weaving, dyeing, em-

[150]

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN

broiderj, wood-carving, and similar branches of native crafts-
manship. By going back to the naive simplicity of early orna-
ment as preserved among the peasants, and by supplementing it
with modem taste and invention the art of the entire coimtry
has been enriched and fortified. A number of men, among whom
are Vrubel, Malutin, and Golovin, are devoting most of their
energies to this movement, the influence of which on painting
as well as interior decoration has already proved considerable.
It seems, indeed, the leavening factor in Russian art, and is
but another and saner phase of that ** going to the people "
which was formerly responsible for so much heartache and
heroism.

Those same qualities of vigour, sincerity, and fearless, lucid
presentation which established the supremacy of Russian fiction
should achieve a similar position for Russian painting. The
salvation of Russian art, as of most art, lies in a saving sense of
nationalism. It is particularly true of Russia that her best ex-
pression flows direct from the sap of popular life and legend,
and to an instinctive, almost primitive, love of colour will event-
ually be added a surer outline and a more chastened choice of
subject. While the Society of Travelling Exhibitions does much
toward stimulating public appreciation in the various social and
intellectual foci of the empire, yet the peasant who lives close
to the heart of nature and who spontaneously translates his im-
pressions into outward form is quite as important as his urban
brother. These humbler souls, so beset by wistful apprehension,
and so full of artless fantasy, must not be forgotten in any sur-
vey of Russian painting. For it is they who, in large measure,
are responsible for what is best and most typical in an art which
is both modem and barbaric, both insolent and tender. Because
these same misguided muzhiks are still pillaging estates and
murdering their landlords, it need not be assumed even by con-
firmed alarmists that the coimtry is in danger of being torn

[ 151 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

asunder and forever obliterated. A nation which, for over two
centuries, withstood that relentless Mongol domination can sur-
vive a few months, or years, of economic and political disrup-
tion. The red flag of anarchy, like the blue banner of Jinghis
Khan, must in time give way before the enigmatic double-headed
eagle of the Palaeologus.

[152]

JOHN S. SARGENT

JOHN S. SARGENT

Portrait of the artist painted by himself

[The U^zi, Florence']

JOHN S. 8AEGENT

SHE stands upon a glittering crescent, with a cobra coiled
at her feet. About her floats a blue, diaphanous film.
Her robe is richly embroidered with gold, her brow
studded with jewels. On each side sway the devotees of a
wanton, voluptuous dance, while beneath writhe the victims of
her desires, one torn by a vulture, the other being devoured by
a chimera. She is Astarte, the moon goddess, seductive and
heartless. When she first came to London, and later found place
in the Boston Public Library, it was difficult to believe that she
had been summoned from the past by one whose energies had
so long been confined to contemporary portraiture. There
seemed to be no connection, no point of contact, between her and
the lengthening list of her more inquiet and modem sisters.
Even now, after a dozen-odd years, both Astarte and her setting
are a source of mystery alike to the casual spectator and the
conventional admirer of John S. Sargent. Yet instead of being
an enigma, she is in reality the key to the work of a painter who
presents a singularly consistent and homogeneous artistic per-
sonality. Beyond all question he is the most conspicuous of liv-
ing portrait painters. Before his eyes pass in continuous pro-
cession the world of art, science, and letters, the world financial,
diplomatic, or military, and the world frankly social. To-day
comes a savant, a captain of industry, or a slender, troubled
child. To-morrow it will be an insinuating Semitic Plutus;
next week may bring some fresh-tinted Diana, radiant with

[155]

MODERN ARTISTS

vernal bloom. Everyone, from poet to general, from duchess
to dark-eyed dancer, finds place in this shifting throng. De-
tached, at times indifferent, he looks from one to another with
incisive, comprehending glance, and transcribes each with the
same incredible assurance. Personally uncommunicative, his
art is the epitome of lucidity. His vision is strictly literal.
Wonderfully endowed, he dedicates his gifts to rendering the
outward semblance of things, to reflecting that which is explicit
and external. He is in no sense a painter of thought, or of feel-
ings other than those which are plainly etched upon the human
countenance. He is but secondarily, even, a painter of colour.
That to which he devotes his incomparable talents is the texture,
form, and shape of objects. His only kingdom is the kingdom
of the eye, and this kingdom he restricts to mere physical ap-
pearance.

With the entrance of Sargent into the arena of art cherished
conventions disappear in sorry discomfiture. With a dignity
and a technical mastery which compel both respect and enthusi-
asm he tramples upon tradition whenever tradition stands in
his way. It is useless to scan these canvases in the hope of find-
ing various qualities which for centuries have been deemed the
touchstones of portraiture. Contemplation and reflection are
by no means the rule. That fine adjustment of diverse elements
which makes for balanced composition is often lacking. That
endearing love of tone for its own sake is frequently absent.
The vigorous outline of Holbein, the rich sobriety of Titian, or
the permeating magic of Leonardo find but faint echo in the
work of this modern innovator. With almost disdainful inde-
pendence he has declined to repeat the triumphs of the great
forerimners. In place of their ideals he has substituted ideals
which are resolutely his own. However you may regard his
contribution, it is impossible not to recognize its insistent nov-
elty. Once in possession of the underlying facts, there should

[156]

JOHN S. SARGENT

be no trouble in reading aright this salient, positive art, this art
which by turns persuades and repels. Yet you cannot divine
just why these high-bred women are so animated, or why the
soldiers and statesmen are so emphatic, without first peering
beneath the exterior. Though Sargent may himself remain dex-
terously on the surface, the spectator cannot. It is not enough
to watch this conjurer perform his trick ; we must see how it is
accomplished.

So dazzled has the majority been by what is called the man's
cosmopolitanism that the real racial basis of his nature has been
overlooked. In essence this much discussed quality is merely
the eclecticism of the well-bom and travelled American. Just
as Whistler was American in temperament, so Sargent is Amer-
ican in his fundamental instincts. His adaptability and his very
lack of marked bias bespeak the native complexity of his origin.
It cannot for a moment be maintained that the French paint
themselves as Sargent paints them, or the English either. His
art is neither Gallic nor British, it is American, and the chief
reason why it is so different from most Anglo-Saxon art is be-
cause it is so superior, not because it is unAmerican. Born in
Florence, 12 January 1856, educated in Germany and Italy, a
student at the Florence Academy and a pupil of Carolus-Duran,
in Paris, it is not difficult to perceive that Sargent's point of
view must inevitably be that of an unattached observer. En-
tirely without local background, he has remained all his life an
onlooker. Wherever he has lived or wandered he has been ab-
sorbed by certain definite pictorial possibilities, and by the per-
sonal idiosyncrasies of those about him. To the trained analysis
of a physician father and the artistic enthusiasm of a mother
who herself painted well, was added his own innate receptivity.
Nothing could have been more fortunate than the way inclina-
tion and the turn of circumstance conspired to perfect his
youthful ability and create within him that vitality of style

[157]

MODERN ARTISTS

which so soon became manifest. Whatever tendencies he may-
have had toward speciousness were early held in check by an
old-world restraint, the gift of a city wherein art has become a
hallowed instinct. But in order that the spirit of things past
might not press too heavily upon creative power, he left Florence
at precisely the right age for Paris, where all he had absorbed
became quickly utilized. He lingered just long enough, yet not
too long, under the shadow of the masters of the Pitti and the
TJffizi beside whose work his own portrait was one day to hang.

It was in 1874, when he was but eighteen, that the tall, slen-
der youth and his grey-haired father knocked at the doors of
Carolus-Duran's atelier in the boulevard du Montparnasse. Di-
rectly he examined the portfolio of sketches the lad had brought,
Carolus accepted him as a pupil. They were not in the least
brilliant or dashing; most of them were in fact minute and
painstaking copies or details accurately traced from nature, yet
they were sufficient to arouse the interest of his future master.
Although the painter of * The Lady with the Glove ' and * Mile.
Croizette ' has since sadly lost ground, it is doubtful whether a
beginner could at that period have found anywhere in Europe
a more efficient preceptor. An adept in the direct, fluent laying-
on of pure, fresh colour, a man whose sense of construction was
sound, whose eye for values was exact, whose handling was spir-
ited, and whose whole manner was effective and mundane, if
superficial, Carolus had little difficulty in fostering a talent in
many regards so closely akin to his own. They were earnest,
industrious times, those Paris student days, and no one worked
more assiduously than the reserved, even diffident, yoimg Ameri-
can who not only attended his classes imder Carolus but also
studied at the Beaux- Arts and drew from the model at an even-
ing life-class. Being particularly fond of music, the routine
was now and then broken by certain memorable Simday after-
noon concerts at the Chatelet or the Cirque d'Hiver. Although

[158]

MME. GAUTREAU
By John S. Sargent
[Possession of the artist^

JOHN S. SARGENT

he did not advance with undue haste, it was not long before he
had acquired that control over his medium which is both the
delight and the despair of his generation. Even as a student he
could cover an entire canvas while his atelier companions were
laboriously blocking in a single head.

In the way of valedictory the pupil painted a seated portrait
of his master which was both the summary of all he had learned
and a resolute promise of future attainment. He was already
mature in point of decision and that easy solution of technical
problems which is supposed to come with time alone. Follow-
ing the lead of Carolus, he acquired the habit of representing
bodies by mass rather than by outline, each brush stroke corre-
sponding as nearly as possible in size, shape, and local coloiu* to
the object itself. Still more important was his faculty of in-
stantaneous perception, his ability to see at a single glance and
in its entirety either an isolated individual or a group of figures.
It was a formula which had descended direct from the incom-
parable painter of * The Maids of Honour,' * The Tapestry
Weavers,' and * The Surrender of Breda,' but under Sargent's
ready initiative it became expanded as well as simplified.
Whereas Velazquez and Manet were also imaginative impres-
sionists, their younger apostle became a purely visual impres-
sionist. A quiet deliberation marks even the most rapid and
vital of their work. It remained for the American to apply to
portraiture the principle of immediacy, to express that which
is transient and momentary rather than that which is habitual
and permanent. Until Sargent's day it had been generally sup-
posed that a portrait should record a composite of moods, that
it should offer, in a sense, a continuous revelation of the sitter.
With a few swift, nervous strokes he has changed all this, he
gives us personality in a single epitomizing flash. In its final
stage this art illustrates the difference between perception and
apperception.

[159]

MODEEN ARTISTS

Study in succession these vivacious likenesses and you will
the better realize that which Sargent has accomplished, you will,
indeed, find something which painting has never before achieved.
Velazquez's little * Baltasar Carlos ' on his plunging pony
scarcely suggests motion ; the pictorial couple in Gainsborough's
* Morning Walk ' is really stationary, but in Sargent's portraits
women are in the act of starting from their chairs and men are
on the very point of speaking. Here is a dancer whose yellow
skirt still swirls in elastic convolutions ; there stands a painter
lunging at the canvas with sensitively poised brush. All is rest-
less, vivid, spontaneous. One and all these creatures vibrate
with the nervous tension of the age. Other artists have given
us calm, or momentarily arrested motion. Sargent gives us
motion itself. His art is kinetoscopic. With a technique as
facile as it is assertive this magician of the palette, this Paga-
nini of portraiture, has lured us into a new world, a world which
we ourselves know well — perhaps too well — ^but a world hitherto
undiscovered by painting. Moreover, he has taken us a long
way. We have in truth travelled far from where * Jane Sey-
mour ' stands with her jewelled fingers tightly clasped, or * La
Gioconda ' muses beside immemorial rocks and silent waters.
Though you may not relish the triumphs of this younger master
you cannot escape them. While you may keenly feel the lack
of repose in these portraits you cannot deny their veracity or
their vitality. Yet, after all, is this neurosis, or is it art ? Per-
haps it is both. In any case the sense of motion, either sug-
gested or expressed, remains Sargent's personal conquest, pos-
sibly, even, his chief contribution to portraiture.

On leaving Carolus-Duran he took a studio in the rue Notre-*ii^^^
Dame-des-Champs, later moving over to the more spacious
boulevard Berthier. It was only necessary for him to paint a
dozen or so portraits in order to obtain international recogni-
tion. The eloquent * Carolus ' was succeeded by an effective

[160]

JOHN S. SARGENT

presentation of * Dr. Pozzi ' which still looks from the walls of
the distinguished specialist's hotel in the avenue d'lena. The
* Portrait of a Young Lady/ * Mme. Pailleron,' and a standing
full-length silhouette of ^ Mme. Gautreau,' as sensitive as it was
decisive, soon followed. Conceived in the vein of a modernized
Primitive, this last-named canvas proved a veritable storm-
centre. It is Piero della Francesca, not, as has been presumed,
Botticelli whom this much discussed likeness recalls. Violently
denounced and quite as vehemently praised, it added substan-
tially to the painter's fame, and proved, to a certain extent, the
turning-point of his career. From ^ Mme. Gautreau ' onward
he leaves behind the stamp of previous effort. The delicate
mellowness of the * Portrait of a Young Lady ' and above all
the soft, liquid beauty of the little-known likeness of * Mrs.
Austen ' dressed in cream-white satin with a black bow at the
neck and a bouquet of dark red roses at her breast, are seldom
seen again. One after another these qualities are replaced by
characteristics more specifically personal. In 1884, after just a
decade in the French capital, which had been broken by a brief
visit to the United States and a few months' sojourn in Spain,
Tangier, Morocco, and southern Italy, Sargent was induced to
move across to London. He resided at first in Kensington, later
taking the now famous house in Tite Street, Chelsea, with its
mottled brick, pointed Dutch roof, and irregular windows. He
executed portraits as before, among others those of * Mrs. Henry
White,' * Lady Playfair,' and ^ The Misses Vickers,' but just
as he had once sought greater freedom in ^ El Jaleo,' so he again
varied his manner with * Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.' Painted
at Broadway during the lingering summer twilight, this picture,
so imbued with frank grace, charm of colour, and a distinct
though largely accidental symmetry of pattern, continues to
occupy a place quite apart from the main body of Sargent's art.
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887, it was purchased the

[161]

MODERN ARTISTS

same year for the nation by the trustees of the Chantrey Fund,
a fact which doubtless strengthened the painter *s inclination to
settle permanently in England.

As the ever widening panorama of his British and American
work unrolls itself before the eye in all its clarity of tone and
fluency of treatment, it is only necessary to consider in detail
a few of the more significant canvases. The man^s productivity
is astounding. Only the Titans of art have here surpassed him,
and by a narrow margin at that. He will occasionally avail
himself of the full member's right to exhibit eight pictures at
Burlington House, besides sending four or five subjects to the
New Gallery or elsewhere. As a rule his single figures main-
tain the highest average of merit, the larger groups such as

* Lady Elcho, Mrs. Tennant, and Mrs. Adeane,' * The Ladies
Alexandra, Mary, and Theo Acheson,' and * The Misses Hun-
ter,* being more problematic. The scattered arrangement, the
violent foreshortening, and the various lines forced into rela-
tion tend to give these subjects a decided lack of equilibrium.
Moreover, an artist so definitely modern as Sargent is not at
home in the pictorial realm of the eighteenth century. He is
not a composer, or a ready improvisor, he is an observer pure
and simple and when he relies upon nature alone he never goes
astray. While the majority of these inquisitive creatures in
iridescent satin or figured silk may look overvolatile, and while
these men in street dress or braided uniforms may seem a shade
too imperative, you will now and then find countenances upon
which nought is written save quiet benignity, such as those of

* Mrs. Marquand ' and * Miss Octavia Hill.' It is by no means
a restricted choice that Sargent exercises. Next to a lithe, fox-
hunting lord comes a little lady in quaint, full robe and fancy
cap, who may some day rank beside Titian's ' Princess Strozzi.'
He has always displayed a special tenderness for children —
here they play about a great hallway where taU vases are re-

[162]

EGYPTIAN WOMAN WITH COIN NECKLACE

By John S. Sargent
[Courtesy of the artist]

JOHN S. SARGENT

fleeted in the polished floor, there they peep over the back of a
Louis-Seize sofa upon which is perched a vivacious mother in
shell-pink evening gown. Wherever you turn you will be
greeted by spirited, forceful canvases, marked by a particular
zest for exterior effects and revealing a concise, and for the
moment convincing, grasp of character. Although individual,
this art by no means stands apart from the main current of con-
temporary social as well as aesthetic expression. It is of course
realistic in flavour, yet it is the realism of elegant surroundings,
of rich appointments, and well-bred types. It is, in short, the
realism of modem refinement. Wealth having been won after
niunerous hard-fought battles, the man of the present luxuriates
in a superbly ornamental * Venetian Interior.' While his chief
predecessor in England had come across from Flanders to be
the painter of aristocracy, John S. Sargent will go down to
posterity as the painter of its latter-day equivalent — plutocracy.
Caring little for society, Sargent devotes his entire energies
to the practice of his craft. His industry and persistence are
unremitting, he having often been known to paint a single head
over a score or more of times before being satisfied with the
result. No pains are spared in order to acquire that appearance
of ease and spontaneity which he perhaps prizes beyond all else.
His art is the antithesis of the art of Watts. The one is the
glorification of matter; the other, the glorification of manner.
With Watts theme was everything ; with Sargent treatment al-
ways comes first. He does not pretend to gauge the relative
mental or moral value of that which has been put into the world ;
he contents himself with placing on record whatever he finds
most congenial to his tastes and temperament. Although inun-
dated with commissions, nevertheless, when haste and overpro-
duction begin to exact their relentless toll, or when something
of that world-weariness which pursued van Dyck steals upon
him, he usually has the com-age to leave his London studio and

[163]

MODERN ARTISTS

seek a new province, a resplendent, colourful realm. And where
is this fair kingdom ? It is the kingdom wherein we left Astarte
poised upon her gleaming crescent, exhaling warm tints and
exotic perfumes, the sound of the sistrum still falling upon her
gold-tipped ears. You will possibly be surprised to learn that
this correct, urban man is something of an Asiatic, that he loves
with consuming intensity the glare of the sim and the sultry
magic of long-robed Orientals. In the art of John S. Sargent
the blue- veiled Phoenician goddess of the Boston Library by no
means dwells alone. She had her prologue years before with
the Moorish woman in * Smoke of Ambergris ' holding the folds
of a white mantle about her head like a canopy in order to catch
the narcotic fragrance circling upward in thin, vapoury spirals.
Under one guise or another this same creature appears again
and again. Now she is a discreet social sphinx, now a slender
Nile girl slowly braiding her dark hair, or a swarthy desert
beauty bedecked with rich ornaments. The painter ^s interest
in this type is not episodic, it is persistent. Throughout his
career the models in which he has been most absorbed are not
the products of polite convention but those individuals one
meets by chance or seeks out in sheer zest. A distinct sympathy
with Southern life has always shown itself in Sargent's work.
Whenever he travels it is preferably to Spain, Tangier, Mo-
rocco, Sicily, Egypt, or Palestine. He seems drawn toward
these countries by an irresistible affinity. When not sketching
along the shores of the Mediterranean, in the by-streets of
Venice, or the olive groves of Capri, he manages to discover
the same or kindred subjects wherever he may happen to be.
In New York he forsakes a Knickerbocker sitter in order to
paint * Carmencita.' At the Paris Exposition he nervously
dashes off drawings of the Javanese dancers. His greatest suc-
cesses in London have been his portraits of the astute aris-
tocracy of finance rather than those of the more complacent

[164]

JOHN S. SARGENT

aristocracy of blood. Glance, for confirmation, at ' Asher
Wertheimer,' * The Misses Wertheimer, * * Mrs. Carl Meyer and
Children,' or * Mrs. Leopold Hirsch.' Indeed, as a painter of
Semitic types he has scarcely had an equal since the day their
greatest interpreter lived and suffered in the garrets and pot-
houses of Amsterdam. -. "(Ii.4n.*'v4>'\3»^ P^'^'lJ-^v

They are not claimed as masterpieces, these rapid, graphic
sketches such as the * Capri Girl,' the * Italian with Rope,' the
* Egyptian Woman,' or the * Bedouin Arab.' They are mere
memoranda betraying undisguised joy of observation and exe-
cution. There is no fatigue here. All is fresh, native, and
racial. That gift of ethnic delineation which makes it possible
to recognize at a glance the nationality of Sargent's sitters is
even more in evidence in his oriental personalia. Although
they are the reverse of painstaking, no really important detail
appears to have escaped him. The same spirit of accurate
transcription distinguishes the larger compositions, which,
while fewer in number, are relatively more significant. The
' Street in Venice ' with its shawl-wrapped figure hastening
past a couple of curious idlers, and the * Venetian Bead String-
ers ' showing three busy workers in a dim interior are among
the earliest and best of these casual impressions. In the most
incidental manner and without the slightest pretence he gives
us a series of unforgettable portraits of place. In * El Jaleo '
and * A Spanish Dance ' he displays a concentrated frenzy of
movement attained only by such men as Goya, Degas, and cer-
tain of the later Parisians. And, besides, there is a purely Latin
touch of the diabolic in both these latter scenes which is difficult
to reconcile with the chief living exponent of Anglo-Saxon
portraiture.

Although many of these studies were made early in his career
Sargent has never forsaken the field of informal endeavour.
Almost every season he returns to it with increasing zeal, usu-

[165]

MODERN ARTISTS

ally exhibiting at the New Gallery the souvenirs of his various
trips. Of late Asia Minor has been his favourite sketching
ground. While * The Garden of Gethsemane * was in no way
exceptional, he has never, for implied spirituality, approached

* Padre Albera,' seated at his writing table with books and per-
sonal effects strewn about his cloisteral retreat, nor has he ever,
for downright luminosity, surpassed that dazzliug, coruscated
strip of * Syrian Landscape ' with its stimted trees standing
sharp against the sky, its flock of long-haired sheep, and solitary
shepherd in his fez, leaning over the wall. Whether they show

* The Moimtains of Moab ' or subjects less momentous these
colour records are always brilliant, always vivid. They often
fairly crackle with light. It is indeed light which they show
more than anything else, for they rarely or never suggest air.
Though in his earlier days Sargent spent a smmner or so with
Monet, and has long evinced an interest in problems of colour,
he seldom attains that vibrancy of tone which is the particular
triumph of the modem palette. As a portraitist he has remained
untouched by radical impressionism, and in his outdoor diver-
sions he has failed to solve this latest and most subtle of nature's
secrets. It would of course be whimsical too strongly to insist
upon the Asiatic touch which permeates so much of this work,
yet it seems an inherent characteristic. Is it the pallidness and
artistic poverty of western existence which drives him toward
the rising sun, or is it some obscure call of the blood ? It must
be either, or both, otherwise it is difficult to account for many
things, not the least among which is the apt assimilation of
oriental motives displayed in the Boston Library decorations,
wherein he has embodied with so much adroitness not only the
conventions, but the actual spirit of Assyrian and Egyptian art.
Again, in the * Dogma of the Redemption,' with its dim blues,
dull reds, and mellow golds, he has caught with more than a
copyist's trick the archaic beauty and impersonality of the

[166]

LORD RIBBLESDALE

By John S. Sargent

l^Possession of Lord Ribblesdale, London'\

JOHN S. SARGENT

Byzantine tradition. The portraits themselves show certain
kindred qualities, such as a love of accessories and a constant
insistence upon tapestried screens, pottery, and bric-a-brac in
general. And deeper still lurk traces of cynicism, of indiffer-
ence to humanity, of that almost contemptuous submission to
the tyranny of his calling so often the legacy of those whose
eyes have been turned toward the enigmatic East.

Despite his unchallenged supremacy, it is not immediately
obvious that John S. Sargent stands quite where he should, nor
is it altogether clear that he has kept the promises of youth.
He was given much at the outset, hence much may be expected
in return. The recipient of an honourable mention and hors
concours in the early twenties, and a Royal Academician by
the time he had barely turned forty, he has always been a sort
of Prince Charming of art, a trifle cold and unmoved, it is true,
but phenomenally fortunate. He has worked with unrelaxing
energy and enthusiasm, yet success was never far distant, nor
has he ever been compelled to look a cold world starkly in the
face and ask unanswered questions. No artist of recent times
has been more royally equipped. In power of vision and tech-
nical mastery he ranks among the greatest. Besnard and Zom
are his only rivals; Rubens, Hals, and Velazquez are scarcely
his peers. It is a question, however, whether this dexterity has
not tended to encourage a lack of hmnility when confronted
with the graver problems of the situation. There is a danger
of so much facility becoming perverted or remaining an end
in itself rather than a means to some higher end. And yet on
the other hand it may become, and it often does with Sargent,
a legitimate source of emotional pleasure. No one has carried
technique farther than he or given it such a degree of expres-
sional significance. In spite of his keen eye for race distinctions
and the subtle variations of type or class, it cannot be main-
tained that Sargent's versions of character are profound.

[167]

MODERN ARTISTS

Though often shrewdly diagnostic, they are seldom more than
that. He rarely seeks to lift the veil of mystery or interroga-
tion which enshrouds less emphatic temperaments. His vision
is local, not general. That which he so efficiently gives us is not
so much personality as personalities. He possesses sight, rather
than insight; and much of his supposed psychology reduces
itself in the final analysis to mere physiology. It is of course
absurd to accuse such a flawless mechanism of any desire to
distort or to exaggerate personal imperfections. It is not the
painter's business to sit in judgment upon those who come to
his studio, and though he may possibly in his youth have been
touched by the Marah-rod of bitterness, his canvases in the
main display an abundance of wholesome impartiality.

Passing in review Sargent's production as a whole in all its
specific, audacious brilliance, it becomes increasingly evident
that his gifts have been those of the senses rather than those
of the spirit — gifts of eye and hand rather than of mind or
heart. He has achieved as no one else that particular accent
of to-day which is at once our pride and our reproach, but just
how much he has enriched the sum of beauty already in the
world, or just how much he has increased man's love for man,
or for woman, is an open question. At the present moment
these creatures whom his brush has called into being seem im-
patient and unsatisfied as well as imsatisfjring. Yet doubtless
they will soon glide into their place in the perspective of art,
taking on that indwelling serenity which alone is the gift of
time, and which, when deserved, time seldom withholds. In
each of its manifestations this art proves itself to be essentially
concrete and objective. It is not an art of penetration or aspira-
tion, it is an art of superficies. No concessions are made either
to background or to sitter. No feats of mental metamorphosis
are attempted in order to get inside of character. All propen-
sities moral, sentimental, or literary, are rigidly debarred.

[168]

JOHN S. SARGENT

Conscious intervention of every description has disappeared.
The elaborate simplicity of Whistler is scorned, for at his best
Sargent neither arranges nor composes but takes both man and
nature as he finds them. He cares little, even, for flesh tints,
often painting faces with precisely the same broad stroke as he
does fabrics. While he does not deliberately dehumanize hu-
manity, he takes no pains to enforce the human note, nor does
he borrow from his subjects the slightest adventitious assistance
or sympathy. Though it may not be the last, this work is as-
suredly the latest and most marked stage in the evolution of
painting toward complete independence of choice and treat-
ment. It is the most defiant assertion yet seen of the autonomy
of art.

[169]

JOHN LAVERY

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

Portrait of John Lavery and his daughter Eileen, by the artist

[The Luxembourg, Paris^

JOim LAVERY

WHILE it is possible that the love of beauty drifted
inward from the sea, or was blown to Glasgow fresh
from Highland glen or brae, it is equally probable
that there was something definite in the social and psychic con-
ditions of the thrifty city on the Clyde which called art into
being. Humanity has a ready faculty for supplementing nat-
ural deficiencies, and, moreover, nothing is farther from the
truth than the contention that art cannot flourish in an at-
mosphere of industrialism. Those teeming commercial centres
of the past, such as Bruges, Venice, and Amsterdam, witness the
precise contrary, and the Glasgow of to-day affords a not un-
fitting parallel. As usual, outward circumstances played an
important part in the formation of taste and the fostering of
those particular qualities which were later to reveal themselves
in a deeper, more resonant chord of colour and a thrill of genu-
ine romantic aspiration. Almost a score of years before Eng-
land or America appreciated Continental landscape there ex-
isted north of the Tweed numerous private houses rich in the
works of the grave Barbizon masters, the sober painters of Hol-
land, and the tone visions of that smnptuous rhapsodist, Adolphe
Monticelli. While permanent displays at the Corporation Gal-
leries, and the frequent exhibition of the Donald and similar
collections at the Royal Glasgow Institute did much to quicken
artistic perception, it was the International Exhibitions of 1886
and 1888 at Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively which gave

[173]

MODERN ARTISTS

the present movement its chief impetus. Jointly they exercised
a profound influence upon several of the younger spirits who
were endeavouring to free themselves from the soft tyranny of
the pretty milkmaid school and the cumbersome conservatism
of academic authority. In addition, those few pioneers who
were fortimate enough to study in Paris brought back with
them an invigourating infusion of novel aesthetic principles.
A splendid stand was taken by this handful of enthusiastic
aspirants. Anecdotal pictures were regarded with utter con-
tempt, and the bigwigs of British art were openly derided.
Bound together in common revolt against precedent, the Boys
of Glasgow soon made their presence felt. For the most part
as impecunious and unknown as they were aggressive, they had
everything to win and nothing to lose, and win they did in gen-
erous measure.

It nevertheless took the discerning eye of an observant
Teuton to gauge at its full value Glasgow's initial contribution
to art. The field at home being restricted, and the doors of
Burlington House closed to all that was virile and spontaneous,
the group exhibited for the first time as a body in 1890 at the
Grosvenor Gallery in London. Among the visitors on this oc-
casion chanced to be a certain enlightened Bavarian known as
Herr Adolf Paulus, who was so favourably impressed by what
he saw that he immediately posted off to Glasgow, met several
of the artists in person, and arranged for a still more compre-
hensive display of their work that same season at the Munich
Glaspalast. So complete was their success, and so strongly did
a particular clique resent the appearance of these Scottish in-
vaders, that serious differences arose in official art circles which
eventually led to a separation and the formation of the still
famous though somewhat less radical Secession. At the outset
the Glasgow men painted mainly landscapes; later, under the
influence of Whistler, they devoted more of their time to the

[174]

JOHN LAVERY

figure. They were not to any extent an organized society. They
were merely a number of independent and strongly individual
artists held together by the stimulus of kindred aims and ideals.
While they used often to gather at one another ^s studios to dis-
cuss their pictures and decide which to exhibit, only one formal
meeting was ever held. It proved a signal failure, for they were
painters, not parliamentarians ; and so earnestly did they devote
themselves to the cause in hand, that, with rare exceptions, they
became famous men. A few have gone beyond recall, and others
have long since left their stem, seaborn city, but most of them
are still sending forth into the world solemn, glowing stretches
of wood and meadow or portraits which seem imbued with all
the chaste, wistful magic of the North. As years have slipped
by their prestige on the Continent, and more especially in Ger-
many, has increased, rather than diminished. Their cohesive
power has continued strong. They always exhibit as a compact
unit, and have not failed measurably to influence numerous
foreign artists, among them the landscape painters Ludwig Dill
and Adolf Hoelzel. In a smaller, though none the less important
way, their appearance in Munich suggests the debut of Boning-
ton and Constable at the Paris Salon over three quarters of
a century before. They have, in short, added a chapter to the
history of European art.

It is appropriately whimsical that the most brilliant and ex-
pressive product of the Glasgow School should not be a Scotch-
man at all, but an Irishman. Because he resides in London, and
spends so much of his time abroad, it is customary to speak of
John Lavery as a cosmopolitan. Yet in point of fact he is es-
sentially of the North and West. The artist who, as a mere lad,
drifted across from Belfast to Glasgow still reflects that frank-
ness, that innate charm, and that directness of statement which
are so typically racial and Scotch-Irish. From the very first
the boy seems to have been bent on becoming a painter. In his

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early teens he officiated as " operator '' in the studio of Bell,
of Glasgow, where, in addition decorously to bowing pompous
patrons in and out of the establishment, he also coloured photo-
graphic enlargements by hand. Phenomenally adept at this
branch of work, the latent portraitist could rarely resist widen-
ing his area of activity by giving his subjects a dash of character
here and there in the lines of brow or mouth or the tilt of nose.
Being thrifty, as well as ambitious, it was not long before he
was able to attend the Haldane Academy of Art where, in the
company of Alexander Roche and other future Glasgow paint-
ers, his artistic training was formally begun. The two friends
were totally unlike in temperament, and for that reason perhaps
the better suited. Even in those early, groping days they used
to discuss artistic problems with undisguised zest just as they
afterward did while strolling along the quays by the Seine or
sketching among the Sabine Hills. It was in 1881 that Lavery
and Roche, having rapidly outgrown the restricted facilities of
the Haldane Academy of Art, decided to study in Paris. They
both entered Julian's, Lavery going with Boulanger and Roche
with Lef ebvre. Among their fellow-pupils was Gari Melchers,
and, in common with the youth of the time, they soon forsook
the romantic idealism of the Barbizon masters, passed inevitably
imder the spell of Bastien-Lepage, and dreamed eloquent dreams
concerning the mission of naturalism. It was superb, even
heroic, while it lasted. They gallantly loaned each other five-
franc pieces in the name of artistic or social advancement, and,
in due season, gravitated toward other influences.

Minute fidelity to nature and the mute, homely pathos of
peasant life did not, indeed, long hold Lavery in submission.
He was too volatile, too sparkling, to shoulder the burden of
heavy-handed toil or to share the lot of the labourer. The char-
acteristic quality about him even as a beginner was his positive
genius for progression along just those lines which could best

[176]

MARY IN GREEN
By John Lavery
[Possession of the artist^

re 'ci/i\o\i V'SJ I c'.'c , .-

JOHN LAVERY

contribute to his advancement. With imerring surety he seized
upon the precise things he needed and upon nothing else. Dur-
ing the formative period in Paris, or those subsequent trips
through Holland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, it was impossible
to get this keen-eyed, sagacious youth to betray the remotest
enthusiasm for the robust opulence of Rubens, or the amorphous
richness of Titian. He barely glanced at the Flemish master's
* Descent from the Cross ' in the Antwerp cathedral, and after-
ward, in Rome and Florence, showed scant sympathy for the
emphatic solenmity of Michelangelo. Both in subject and in
treatment his leanings were wholly toward the current and the
contemporary. He detested mythological themes and abhorred
the smoky hues of the galleries. Preferring above all else clarity
of tone, he would stand for hours gazing at the crisp whites and
blacks of Frans Hals in Haarlem or Amsterdam, or the pellucid
sobriety of Velazquez. Neither the historical nor the legendary
possessed the slightest interest for the young painter whose art
was one day to possess so much that is natural and colloquial
and so little that is conventional or artificial. Later, when he
turned to history, as in * The Night after the Battle of Lang-
syde,' which hangs in the Modem Gallery of Brussels, it was
to weave into the incident his own poetic interpretation, and
the sole legend he has ever sought to portray is the legend of
modem femininity.

The struggling, ambitious days at the Julian Academy and
in the none too palatial atmosphere of the Hotel de Saxe were
followed by years of earnest effort and experiment in the sombre
commercial capital of the North. It was the precise period when
the Scotch painters were laying the foundation of their future
success. Lavery, Roche, and Guthrie were back from Paris,
Walton had returned from Diisseldorf , and each man was cul-
tivating his powers with salutary earnestness and enthusiasm.
Although he painted assiduously, and with a ready, almost dis-

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MODERN ARTISTS

concerting facility, La very 's first really important production
was his * Tennis Party ' which to-day shares a place beside
Cameron ^s * Bridge * in the Munich Pinakothek. Shown at the
Royal Academy of 1887, it was sent to the Salon of the succeed-
ing season, where it won a gold medal, later finding a permanent
guardian in the Bavarian Government. It is significant to note
that Leighton, on passing through the Salon, paused approv-
ingly before the * Tennis Party ' and remarked, " Now that^s
the kind of picture we should have for the Academy," calmly
oblivious of the fact that the noble institution of which he was
then president, had, in a moment of unwonted inspiration, ex-
hibited the canvas the previous year. By dint of exceptional
talent and imflagging personal industry the Belfast painter
kept himself constantly before the public. Though he had barely
turned thirty, it was Lavery who was commissioned to depict
the * State Visit of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to the Glasgow
Exhibition of 1888,' and again it was Lavery who, together with
Roche, Walton, and Henry, was chosen to decorate the Banquet-
ing Hall of the Glasgow Municipal Buildings. Busy as he was
during these and the following years, he still found time to take
numerous trips to France, Spain, and Morocco bringing back
with him extraordinarily fresh and vital studies of local types
and scenes. Though he painted in countries notable for vivid
splendour of tint, Lavery never went colour-mad as have cer-
tain of his colleagues. A native subtlety and refinement of per-
ception and presentation mark each of these canvases, whether
they show * A Garden in France,' * The Bridge at Gres ' with
its changing lights upon the water's surface, or the teeming
* Soko ' outside some white-walled African town. It is as though
the artist after all loved best the quiet hues of his own mist-
wrapped land and sought to find them, or their equivalent,
everywhere. At any rate he declined to give us shrill, garish
versions of Mediterranean life and character, bearing in mind

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JOHN LAVERY

the fundamental fact that the sun, however hot and bright,
bleaches all things just as it has Tanger la Blanca.

While his love for colour only mildly increased as time
drifted by, the distinction of Lavery's style became decidedly
more manifest when, after a season or so passed in Rome and
Berlin, he finally, like his friend Henry and other of the Glas-
gow painters, settled in London. For one who had seldom ex-
hibited in the English capital his rise was rapid. In due course
he took the studio in Cromwell Place built for the late Sir Coutts
Lindsay and afterward occupied by Sir James D. Linton, which
is to-day the scene of his multiple activities. Portraiture, in
which he had always shown a keen interest, proved his most
effective introduction. Lady Young being among the first of
that now extensive series of slender, elegant flowers of the Brit-
ish aristocracy whom he depicts with such becoming felicity.
Without influence or the prestige of being a Royal Academician,
he moved quickly forward imtil, by the sheer dexterity of his
brush, he had conquered a firm position beside such established
favourites as Sargent and Shannon. It was realized almost
from the beginning that the newcomer had something to say and
could say it in piquant, unhackneyed terms, and with a caressing
tenderness of accent notably lacking in his most formidable
rival. His attitude toward the world was conciliatory rather
than critical. It would have been impossible for him, being bom
in Ireland, to have been imable to please, if not, in fact, to cap-
tivate. Already well known abroad through the purchase of
several of his pictures for the principal European galleries, he
was appropriately chosen vice-president of the newly organized
International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, the
president being Whistler, who, on his death, was succeeded by
Rodin. It has usually been Lavery's duty, even from the first,
to preside at most of the meetings, formal or otherwise, and
seldom has friend and fellow-craftsman paid more fitting trib-

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MODERN ARTISTS

ute to a departed comrade than that which was contained
in the brief Whistler memorial address delivered by the
vice-president at the annual meeting of the Society on 15
December 1903.

The special appeal of La very 's art, whether you select the
most modest and fragmentary outdoor sketch or the most elabo-
rate of his finished portraits lies in a certain inherent unity of
effect. The whole scene is there clear and scintillant, or bathed
in fluid black, brown, grey, or gold. The particular person in
question stands before you with magnetic finality. Over the
surface of each canvas the eye wanders without encountering
a single distracting note. There is no falsity in attitude, no
forcing of tone. While there is always present an indwelling
wealth of sentiment, there is seldom the slightest attempt at
securing extraneous advantages. The boy who progressed with
so little in the way of external aid was succeeded by the young
artist who needed only a group of people playing tennis on the
greensward, with bits of sunlight flecking the grass, in order to
paint a picture which won the approval of Europe. The aspir-
ing photographer's assistant later learned to pose the most
beautiful women in the kingdom against a plain, neutral wall-
space or seat them naturally side by side. No references lit-
erary or poetical were needed in order to elucidate art such as
this. It was its own commentary and furnished its own reason
for being. Though in his search after the spontaneous and the
inevitable he was leaving behind the beloved, painstaking man-
ner of many of those about him, Lavei^ never faltered. Tact
and intuition — ^the knowledge of just how much to do and how
much to leave undone — always guided his hand. And besides,
somewhere in the background stood a certain bygone Spaniard
who seemed to say that all was well. Consciously or uncon-
sciously there were two separate elements which the sensitive,
eclectic painter was striving to combine — ^the gracious charm

[180]

POLYMNIA
By John Lavery
{^Courtesy of the artist]

JOHN LAVERY

of British art and the grave restraint of Velazquez. He was
seeking to correct Anglo-Saxon looseness and sentimentality
with something of that dignified severity which the painter of
Philip possessed in a higher degree than has any artist the
world has thus far known. In order to see how successful he
was you need but scan almost any of these flowing, instantane-
ous likenesses, not forgetting, of course, his avowed tribute to
the older master in the challenging full-length of R. B. Cun-
ningham Graham, Esquire, in top-coat and riding boots. Some-
thing more than the mere man is here. The picture represents
both personality and protest, and it would be difficult to find a
subject upon whom protest rests more naturally or more con-
genially than it does upon this selfsame literary, political, and
social iconoclast.

It has been jauntily assumed that La very 's portraits owe
much to the portraits of Whistler, that they even too implicitly
suggest the magic invocations of the most subtle of all pictorial
mesmerists. The name of Manet, too, is occasionally mentioned
in connection with that of Lavery. It is well to preserve, if not
to create, distinctions, and the real point appears to be that
Lavery 's territory lies midway between the more trenchant real-
ism of Manet and the elusive spiritism of Whistler. That which
Lavery achieves is not an insistence upon, nor yet an avoidance
of, actuality. Nothing is demanded and nothing given save a
persuasive sense of personality. There is no denying that
Whistler's influence on the Scottish artists was considerable, yet
what he taught them was not how to paint, but how to see. His
precepts were the better placing of the figure upon the canvas,
a surer feeling for decorative pattern, and the faculty of im-
mersing each subject in a quiet, luminous, aerial envelope.
While there is something of Whistler in much contemporary
portraiture, the free, ample handling of Lavery has little in
common with the glazed finish of the painter who has given

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MODERN ARTISTS

us * The Yellow Buskin ' and * Miss Alexander.' Moreover,
La very is neither abstract nor mystical. It is neither the mind
nor the soul to which he preferably devotes himself. The spe-
cial atmosphere which surrounds his sitters is as much of their
own as of his making. He does not endow them with a tremu-
lous, inquisitive supplication. They do not muse or dream, they
vibrate with life and motion. If he can be said to bestow aught
upon these gracious women, thoughtful men, or fresh-faced
children, it is simply a dash of that contagious attraction which
is his in such rich measure and which he cannot help radiating.
The merest glance at * The Violin Player,' * Mother and
Son,' or ^ PoljTnnia ' is sufficient to prove that La very, despite
his popularity, is no formal, conventional painter of pretty
faces. The early canvases in particular reveal a liberal com-
prehension of his calling. They are both portraits and pictures.
Certain of them suggest the sort of thing the early Manet was
fond of doing, and others again recall the interiors of Alfred
Stevens. They linger submissively on the dividing-line between
the exact and the imdefined. The figure seated alone in the dim
music room with her violin bow resting idly across her lap
awakens inmunerable dormant fancies, while the slender blonde,
gowned in black, idly dropping rose-petals on the polished
piano cover breathes an aroma at once luxurious and discreetly
seductive. And even when the painter attempts more concise
delineation, as in * Lady Hamilton,' in the ivory-white and shell-
pink half-length of * Mrs. Wetzlar,' or the artless, unaffected
aristocracy of * The Sisters,' there is usually an air of impro-
visation about the ultimate result. Yet above all, these por-
traits are interpretative. In the precise turn of head, in veil
lightly brushed aside, or the soft gleam of ring, brooch, or brace-
let, you have not only individuality but the secret of that femi-
nine charm which has so disturbed the serenity of the ages.
Although each detail comes easily and imsought, no trick of

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JOHN LAVERY

identity is missed. These women do not all sit, stand, or dress
alike. They have that variety which is the variety of nature,
and which is not the least welcome of the gifts nature has be-
stowed upon her daughters.

It is consoling to know that La very does not exclusively de-
vote his powers to a portrayal of the conscious products of
female artifice. If anything, he appears to prefer those more
ingenuous, less sophisticated types which flourish not alone in
the British Isles but in the presumably buoyant and expectant
heart of man the world over. Happily most of the artists from
across the Border still remain faithful to former scenes and
associations. Just as Roche has given us a series of ^ Bettys '
and * Nancys, ' so La very has painted a nimiber of * Noras ' and
* Marys,' together with a pair of becomingly pictorial embodi-
ments of vernal loveliness, the one entitled * Springtime,' the
other * The Girl in White.' Confident yet unstudied in pose and
invigoratingly clear in tint, these semi-portraits are by no
means maidenly innocence reduced to a formula. While they
reflect, it is true, traces of romantic simplicity, they are the fit-
ting personification of qualities which are distinctively national,
and hence inevitable. Especially in such canvases as * Mary in
Green ' and ^ An Irish Girl ' do you feel that La very is on
ground of his own choosing. They both breathe a freshness
which is flowerlike and instinct with the truest outdoor beauty.
It is a province which is peculiarly the painter's own, nor can
all the mundane elegance of London or Paris extinguish in him
that race kinship which is stronger than any acquired conven-
tion and which cannot fail to betray itself alike in completed
portrait or the slightest, most inadvertent brush-stroke. For a
considerable period the art of La very was somewhat sombre in
its tonality. Colour was there, but it was subdued colour. It is
possible that Velazquez and Whistler had blown upon his palette
the tints of dimly lit palace chamber or the suppressed hues of

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MODERN ARTISTS

the night. Gradually, however, his schemes strengthened and
took on greater chromatic variety. The blacks of the Spaniard,
the browns of the American, and the chalky greys of the pul-
monary Bastien finally disappeared. Perhaps this darker world
was dispelled by the infectious smile of some West Coast * Mary '
or the sparkling eyes and crisp white frocks of an even younger
apparition who sat cosily in a big arm-chair, or stood, reverent
and expectant, dressed for * Her First Communion.' At all
events the painter now delights in sharper contrasts and the
often piquant use of primary colour notes. He is especially
fond of a bright blouse or parasol spotted against a stretch of
green or a blue strip of sky or sea, and such effects he handles
with consummate dash and distinction.

It is consistent with his temperament and training that
Lavery should be a rapid, dexterous workman, happy in his
results and swift in their attainment. In the early Glasgow
days he is said actually to have executed within the space of four
months some fifty finished oils showing various aspects of the
International Exposition, and few of his fellow-artists have ever
known him to hesitate no matter what technical difficulty might
present itself. He is an inspirational, rather than a systematic
or logical craftsman, and though failures are not infrequent,
there is an unassuming air about his successes which redoubles
their charm. While his feeling for structure is by no means
always exact, much may be forgiven one in whose work the pulse
of life so seldom fails to beat or whose art never pretends to be
more than it is. The light by which Lavery paints in the big
studio in Cromwell Place is an east light, coming from the side,
not the customary north, or top light. He uses a large palette
and draws freely in colour directly on the canvas. He is
medium-sized with a mobile, somewhat Celtic cast of counte-
nance, and is as full of wit and genial spirits as the sons of Erin
are rightfully supposed to be. While the records do not so state,

[184]

THE SISTERS
By John Lavery
[Courtesy of the artisf]

JOHN LAVERY

it is more than likely that he originally came from the Moira
district, where abound the " Baun-Laverys," the ** Roe-
Laverys," the *' Trin-Laverys/' and the '^ Hard-La verys." In
any case, throughout those precarious student struggles in Glas-
gow and Paris he was the soul of courage and animation, and
now that success has come in such gratifying measure he con-
tinues as generous and open-hearted as ever. Though he has
long been a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, of which
his friend and associate. Sir James Guthrie, is president, it is
probable that the powers that be would not have been averse
to enrolling him in that other Royal Academy which holds its
annual displays in London. Thus far, however, he has remained
benevolently oblivious of the Burlington House oligarchy, pre-
ferring as a rule to exhibit under the auspices of the Interna-
tional Society, the Society of Portrait Painters, or abroad.

In contrast to the work of many of his countrymen, notably
those of Saxon persuasion, there is nothing either narrative or
didactic in the art of John Lavery, a fact that largely accounts
for the high esteem in which he is held on the Continent. He
is thoroughly modern in his leanings, believing that the mission
of the artist is to deal with things around him and treat them
strictly in terms of his medium. He is instinctive and non-the-
oretical in his attitude toward all forms of art, and when asked
about his own efforts usually smiles with playful deprecation
and says, *^ My pictures are the only opinions I profess." Not
long since, when questioned as to which he considered his best
painting, he replied, with characteristic spirit, " My latest."
That there should be any difficulty in realizing why it is hard
for Lavery to discuss his work is imlikely. This art, which is
at the same time so fugitive and so contained, so full of nervous
daintiness and yet so rigorously restricted to the matter in hand,
is not an art of ideas, but rather an art of impressions. These
flexible, patrician creatures are in no degree the symbols of

[185]

MODEEN ARTISTS

doubt or of self -analysis. No attempt has been made to distort
their bodies, or to dissect their souls. The visible appearance
of things, not their moral or philosophical purport, is La very 's
preoccupation. He is a painter of effects, not, primarily, of
facts. Out of a given number of possibilities he selects a few
gracious contours and discreet, harmonious, or cleverly daring
colours, and these he recombines with directness and propriety.
His message, if he may be said to possess one, is frank and
specific not profound or imaginative. It is purely as a painter
that he claims attention, and as a painter his position is incon-
testable. While he shows intuition, rather than insight, few
who occupy themselves with external aspects betray his ready
sensibility to impressions of every description. That he is also
gifted with the requisite emotional depth and sincerity for the
higher forms of artistic expression is amply proved by the can-
vas known as * Father and Daughter,' an endearing version of
the painter and his little Eileen which thus far marks the
epitome of his supple, assured mastery of the essentials of por-
traiture. Nevertheless, despite its technical charm and its sense
of urbanity, despite the fact that this art occasionally approaches
the sphere of such delicately versatile feminists as Blanche, de
La Gandara, or Helleu, it is, at bottom, an art which is simple,
subjective, and lyrical. Though the least obviously Scotch of
all the Glasgow men, Lavery, after his own fashion, is equally
typical. His Continental training and the detachment which
is supposed to result therefrom have not robbed him of that
touch of knight-errantry which must have been his by right of
birth. Explicit and contemporary as they often are, there seems
gently to cling about these likenesses a hint of bygone chivalry.
It is manifestly impossible for Lavery to depict, or even to see,
ugliness. Beauty is more to him than character, and in his eyes
there is little difference between beggar lass and duchess. Leav-
ing to others the field of history and of myth, he has, in his

[186]

JOHN LAVERY

own particular domain, proved himself not less idealistic and
not less national. He has merely rendered more intimate and
personal that same poetic vision shared so generously by his
brothers of the brush.

The attitude of Lavery toward the Royal Academy is quite
in accord with the stand taken by most of the Scottish chief-
tains. Although fame has been won and their position in the
world of art is secure, they have never wholly forgotten the stiff
uphill fight which was once their lot. A certain number have
established themselves in Edinburgh or in London, yet even
they do not widely diverge either in spirit or in fact from their
original starting-point. While the Glasgow belligerents were
unique in Great Britain, they were not an isolated phenomenon,
but participants in a great movement which came to simultane-
ous focus in numerous European capitals. The organization of
the New Salon in Paris, the founding of the Libre Esthetique
in Brussels, the various Secessionist societies which quickly
sprang up throughout Germany and Austria, and even the
milder demonstration which resulted in the birth of the New
English Art Club in London all belong to the same stirring
epoch. Yet in no quarter have the principles of modem aesthetic
advancement taken firmer root than in the smoky city on the
Clyde. In the decorative and industrial arts as well as in archi-
tecture and painting Glasgow is to-day more positive and pro-
gressive than ever. A distinctly healthy initiative characterizes
all this work. While closely allied to the current elastic, ser-
pentine evolution of various artistic forms, its achievements are
personal, original, and not without commendable sobriety and
stateliness. A new association known as the Glasgow Society
of Artists has recently been inaugurated, and the entire move-
ment is daily gaining strength, continuity, and general, as well
as local importance. For many reasons it is impossible to escape
the conviction that there still remains much that is free and

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MODERN ARTISTS

unfettered about these men of the North. They have been hailed
as ultra modem, they are supposed to have learned not a little
from the Frenchmen and the Japanese, yet one and all they are
eager, daring romanticists. Arthur Melville — King Arthur, as
the boys used to call him — ^had a viking's passion for the South,
and the sonorous canvases of Hornel suggest the richness of an
ancient missal. Countless intimations seem to prove that the
old spirit is not dead, that voices long silent speak again. Nor
is there, after all, such a vast difference between these latter-
day poets in line and tone and the scribes and bards of for-
mer times. For they, too, like those who have gone before,
look upon the present with wondering eyes, their hearts deep-
anchored in the past.

[188]

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

Portrait of the artist painted by himself
[^Courtesy of Signor Gruhicy, Milan\

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

ONE stormy suimner night as two Milanese peasants were
hurrying homeward through the darkness and drench-
ing rain, their lantern chanced to flash upon the form
of a boy crouched at the foot of a tree by the roadside. They
questioned the waif, and finding that he had run away from
home and was trudging to France, they bundled him into a ham-
per in the bottom of the cart and jogged on toward the shelter
of their farm. The boy meanwhile fell asleep, and when he
awoke found himself in a snug cot, being cared for by a stout,
kind woman who gave him dry clothes and a bowl of steaming
soup made of rice and beans. Sitting by the fire were the two
men who had found him along the roadway, and when the wight's
shining black eyes were fully open, they asked him more ques-
tions. He told them of lonely days in a miserable attic room
whence he could only see a patch of sky and the peaked roofs
of the great city. He told them how his father had gone away
and had never come back, and how every morning when his step-
sister went to work she locked him in to spend the long hours
alone until her return at nightfall. From his window perch he
once heard the women below tell of a boy who had gone all the
way to France afoot and f oimd wealth and fame, and that morn-
ing he slipped out and started off toward France to seek his
fortune. Standing in the bright Piazza Castillo his father had
often shown him the straight, white road down which the French
and Piedmontese troops poured into Milan, and that was of

[191]

MODERN ARTISTS

course the way over the mountains and into France. The boy
had only a crust of bread to munch along the highroad, but the
air was brisk and he tramped stoutly on, passing villages and
now and then quenching his thirst at fountains or wayside
streams. The faint blue haze toward the Alps beckoned to him,
and within throbbed the hope of somehow achieving great deeds
once France were reached. But as the day wore along and the
sun beat cruelly on the parched Lombard plain, the little head
began to ache, the legs to grow stiff and weary, and the feet sore.
At iast he sank down in the shade of a near-by tree and fell
asleep, only to awake in fright at the crash of the oncoming
storm. So touched were the simple farm folk by the boy's story
that they had not the heart to take him back to Milan, particu-
larly as he vowed he would run away again if they did. The
following day the women clipped his dark, clustering locks, dis-
closing a face which one of them exclaimed was ** like the son
of a King of France." And, it being agreed that he must tiu-n
his hand to something, they sent him off to tend swine on the
hillside.

This little swineherd, who afterward became known to the
world as Giovanni Segantini, was born 15 January 1858, at
Arco, near the Lago di Garda, in the Austrian Tyrol. Like most
inhabitants of the Trentino he was Italian in race, character,
and language. His rugged peasant father was a carpenter by
trade, and not an overthrifty one, for his delicate yoimg wife
was forced to help matters along by selling fruit and vegetables.
Giovanni's early years were passed in a hut beside the swift-
flowing Scara. He was a frail, pallid child, with great, vivid
eyes which eagerly caught the play of light on brook and meadow
or the changing splendour of giant dolomite peaks that towered
toward the sky. Of those first few years at Arco he remembered
only the sunlit garden, his being rescued from drowning by a
long-limbed mountaineer, and the sad, languid beauty of a

[192]

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

mother who had been an invalid from the boy's birth. ** I can
see her now," he afterward said, ** with my mind's eye ; she was
beautiful, not like the sunrise or midday, but like the sunset in
spring." When he was but five years of age this tender, suffer-
ing being faded from sight, and within a few weeks his father
returned to Milan, where he had left a son and daughter by a
former marriage.

And thus began those bitter, sombre days which were to
weave their loneHness, their vague terror, and their wistful him-
ger for light and love into the web of Giovanni's soul. All he
heard as he played about the bare room or tried to keep himSelf
warm by a miserable charcoal stove were the voices of countless
bells clanging about. All he could see was the leaden sky of a
Milanese winter. To be neglected by his stepsister and flogged
by the house porter for his innocent pranks was hardly the care
Giovanni craved. Small wonder that when spring came he
sighed for the little garden at Arco, the patches of green fields,
the brooks, the sky, the blue waters of the Lago di Garda. Small
wonder that before a second summer dragged past he had slipped
away from the wretched tenement in the Via San Simone, im-
pelled by the aching hope that life must somewhere be brighter
and kinder than it had yet been. During the years he passed as
shepherd with the goodly Lombard contadini the boy grew
strong of frame and limb. He learned to love the flocks he
tended and to note their form, their colour, their ways while
grazing, while at the drinking trough, or in the stall. Before
long he began to trace rough sketches of them on flat stones or
waUs, with bits of charcoal. The plain folk about him were
both puzzled and charmed by these lifeHke efforts. Yet the
real impulse toward expression, the first definite yearning with •
its faint promise of fulfilment, did not come imtil one day when
he chanced to hear a poor peasant mother sighing over her dead
child, — **Ah, if I only had a picture of her, she was so beauti-

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full ^' There is no hint now of what this portrait was like; it
is enough to know that the boy's genius found its earliest un-
folding through love, and sympathy, and pity. And to the very
last he was touched by the sight of suffering in man or beast.-
It is the call to which he always responded with deepest, tender-
est insight.

The desire to make something of himself, coupled with a
longing to see his stepsister, at length drew the runaway back to
Milan, slender in pocket but rich in the wishes of those who bade
him godspeed. After a time he managed to enter the evening
School of Ornament at the Brera and began his career copying
paintings and drawing from bas-reliefs by Donatello. Yet here
in Milan life proved the same cruel struggle it had been in for-
mer years. The boy worked at whatever he could find to do by
day, and at night attended his classes. He was too poor to buy
himself a box of colours, so poor, indeed, that he was arrested
by the police and committed to the Patronato for abandoned
'children. While there they taught him the trade of a cobbler,
but also allowed him to continue his studies. When he left the
Patronato, which still possesses certain of his early efforts, he
would often wander aimlessly about the streets, or from his gar-
ret window watch the sun sink below the dark rim of roofs and
towers. Music aroused in him a sort of fiery ecstasy, and his
whole being was tortured by the caressing, insistent accents of
love. Above all he felt surging within the need for some clearer,
ampler form of expression. Later, while taking a course of ele-
mentary figure drawing at the Accademia and also working for
■ Teltamangi, a local painter of church banners, he executed his
first picture. The colours had been given him by a friendly
grocer for whom he had painted a sign, the canvas was a sugar
bag dipped in oil and stretched on a rough frame, but there was
something fresh and individual about this youth's rendering
♦of the * Choir of the Church of Sant' Antonio.' There was a

[194]

AVE MARIA A TRASBORDO
By Giovanni Segantini
[Private possession, Colognel

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

new vibrancy to the light which streamed in the high window
on the left and bathed the carved stalls, the dark wainscoting,
and the white-surpliced choir boy standing before the lectern.
Though knowing nothing of divisionism, he had instinctively-
placed touches of pure pigment side by side upon the canvas
without first mixing them on the palette, thus allowing the sep-
arate tones to recompose on the retina. He had no scientific
theories on the subject; he merely found that by so doing he
could secure better effects. It was before the practice of Monet
and the French impressionists had become known in Italy, and •
the boy had come independently by a discovery second only in
painting to the employment of perspective.

The picture aroused interest, was exhibited at the Brera in
-1879, and obtained a silver medal. More than this, it enlisted
the notice of Signor Vittore Grubicy, who continued Segantini's
cherished and helpful friend throughout his career. Yet the
young artist did not at the time develop further his conquest of
suffused, palpitating light. He proceeded to paint in the usual
manner, but with crude vigour, studies in still-life and in genre.
Among the former the most notable is ^ The Dead Hero,' vaguely
recalling Mantegna's * Dead Christ, ' which he must have seen on
the dark walls of the Brera. He next took a studio in the Via
San Marco, but was already disgusted with the art of the day
and with its preceptors, and raged hotly at both. His contempt
for his teachers was such that once, on being asked what he would
do if he were as great an artist as his master, he promptly re-
plied, ** Hang myself! " As he acquired grasp and decision he
felt that his lot lay among different scenes. Moreover, the love
of the open was strong upon him ; he longed to be back among
his shepherds and herdsmen. In 1882, having married the sister
of his fellow-artist. Carlo Bugatti, he forsook the fog-ridden
city of Leonardo, where he had known only tribulation and pain,
and settled at Pusiano, in the fertile Brianza, not far from Como.

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MODERN ARTISTS

Here in the fragrant Garden of Lombardy, dotted by cream-
wliite villas, terraces, and redolent parterres, rich in grain and
wine, Segantini perfected the first phase of his development.
He remained in the Brianza four years in all, and each year dis-
played a deeper, more penetrating sympathy with the quiet,
bucolic life about him and a broader, surer translation of its
spirit. If the scenes he now painted were for the most part sad,
it was because the heart of the man had so long been open to
sorrow and suffering. The vision of that which lay without was
transfigured by the pathos from within. His chosen themes were
the weariness of the peasant after a day's toil, the monotony of
his life, his trials, and his cares. More than all he loved to
picture the bond between man and beast and the common feeling
of maternity in both. Despite the fertility of the Brianza the
labourer's lot is a hard one, and its least accent finds reflection in
these hiunble episodes painted with the lingering tenderness of
one who had himself been a shepherd of the flock.

In ^ The Last Task of the Day ' heads are bowed and backs
burdened as two heavy figures carry home their load of faggots
at dusk. * Sad Hours ' is a subtler but not less affecting version
of that utter fatigue which overcomes the peasant when the day's
toil is done and purple shadows creep softly forth to enfold all
things. The pious resignation of the girl's attitude, the lowing
cow in the foreground, the sheep crowding to the shelter, and
the fringe of Brianza hills bathed in opal glow all witness the
delicate, pervading pathos of Segantini 's art. In * One More '
maternity is touched upon in appealing terms with a young shep-
herdess carrying in her arms a lamb which has been bom as the
sheep wind homeward under a threatening sky. Throughout all
the paintings of this period, whether they depict * Potato
Harvest ' or * Sheep-Shearing,' or transcribe the many sorrows
and scant joys of rural life in the Brianza, runs the same
•idyllic melancholy. The note is never forced, but it is never

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GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

absent, even when love is touched upon as in * A Kiss at the
Fountain.' The two canvases which first brought Segantini's
name before the public were * Ave Maria a Trasbordo/ painted-
at Pusiano when the artist was but five-and-twenty, and * At the
Tether/ finished shortly before he left the Brianza. The one
shows what for some time was to embody his deepest reflection
of hmnan sentiment, the other was his earliest and purest ren-
dering of reality. When sent to an exhibition at Milan * Ave
Maria a Trasbordo ' was rejected, but the following year, at the
Amsterdam Exhibition of 1883, it was awarded the gold medal.
The masterly drawing and composition of this picture together
with its wealth of limpid colouring assured success quite apart
from the actual beauty of the scene — a flat lake-boat laden with
sheep, a far-off bell tolling the evening hymn, the shepherd rest-
ing on his oars, and the peasant madonna bending over the child
at her breast and softly murmuring *'Ave Maria, gratia plena.''
In * At the Tether,' which was painted at Caglio, in the Valas-,
sina, and which shows a herd of cattle at the milking ground
with a low range of hills beyond, Segantini displays the breadth,
reserve, and close study of locality which were to distinguish his
later work. He here begins to subordinate the human element,
to find that nature alone suffices, or nearly so. The canvas was
exhibited at Amsterdam in 1887, and at Bologna, and was after-
ward purchased by the Italian Government for the National Gal-
lery of Modem Art at Rome.

All through the Brianza sojourn Segantini had been growing
nearer and nearer to reality, had been catching with more firm-
ness and surety the shifting nuances of form and of colour.
From his windows he watched the lingering sunset radiance, or
among the pastures studied those swift changes of atmospheric
effect which characterize the country around Como and Lecco.
He moved about at will, from Pusiano to Castagnola, from there
to Carella, and thence to Caglio. His life was simple and happy ;

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MODERN ARTISTS

lie saw no one save his own family, and spent his days recording
with new clarity and fullness of vision the nobility of labour,
the beauty of sorrow, and the eternal kinship of all creatures of
the field. He painted only that which he loved, and each brush-
stroke seems a heart-throb. Certain analytical spirits have in-
sisted upon calling this the artist's Millet period, but it requires
more than a similarity of subject to justify the comparison. He
never saw a painting by Millet, and only knew the Barbizon
master's majestic or brutish peasant heroics through a set of
engravings given him by Signer Grubicy. Mauve he knew in the
same way, but resembles him merely in that both painted sheep.
Nor was there in the art of the modem Lombards any message
for him. Cremona he admired, and Ferragutti was perhaps
nearest in feeling, but Segantini lay beyond their sphere of in-
fluence. Like Previati he was bent upon working out his own
artistic salvation, in finding his own emotional language. He
was essentially self-taught, and came into maturity through a
passionate inner necessity which finally broke forth in full power
and effulgence. He recalls no man and owed little to any.

Finding that he was familiar with the pastoral scenes of the
Brianza, Segantini next looked higher and wandered farther.
The Alps with their clear atmosphere and sharp outlines seemed
to lure him from the soft masses of vapour floating over lake
and pasture, from the four caressing winds of Como. He wanted
most of all to seize the secrets of that light which had ever daz-
zled and beckoned him, and which for him was the source and
soul of all beauty. Leaving their children behind for the time
being, the painter and his wife set out on foot and wandered for
weeks in search of some spot where they might be with nature
in her sublimest aspects. In the high, cloud-capped village of
Livigno, northeast of the Bernina Pass, they thought to have
found a haven, but because they failed to attend Mass the day
after their arrival, the bigoted natives drove them from the

[198]

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GIOVANS"! SEGANTINI

place. They then went over the Bernina to Silvaplana, and from
Silvaplana along the Juller Pass to Savognino, on the road to
Coire. Here among the Grisons, where winter frowns forever
and summer is but a fleeting supplication, Segantioi remained
for the next eight years. The Switzerland which he found in
the Engadine, and put upon canvas at all hours and during all
seasons, was not the Switzerland of Chillon and TelPs Chapel.
It was not the Switzerland of mammoth hotels, operatic peas-
ants, cuckoo clocks, and toy cattle. It was something unknown
to the pedantic Calame or the characteristic Topffer. Segan-
tini stood apart from all that had gone before. He had eyes to
see that which lay deep within the faltering heart of man and
strength to look with confidence toward God^s dim eternity.
And what he sought to picture was the one in its relation to the
other — the spectacle of life flickering faintly in the midst of
impassivity and death.

Existence in the Higher Alps has always been and must al-
ways remain a matter of sufferance. Nature is here at her
grandest and her cruellest, and man's struggle for life and live-
lihood is remorselessly intensified. The dull crash of an ava-
lanche or the roar of a devastating torrent quickly change the
song on his lips to a prayer — a prayer often answered by an-
nihilation. It is a bitter, unequal contest for man or beast, and
they inevitably turn to one another, linked together in mute
solicitude, shrinking from nature which seems the enemy of both.
Such is the country into which Segantini had climbed, and such
are the scenes which he found at hand — ^man poor in all save
hope, nature rich in beauty but chary of her blessings. He en-
tered this new and luminous kingdom timidly, painting at first
a few bits in the Brianza manner of broad, flat tones, but soon
modified his method according to prevailing conditions. He
found that the problem of suggesting flower-dotted foregrounds
and the clear, sharp contours of distant ranges boldly outlined

[199]

MODERN ARTISTS

in this translucent atmosphere demanded a new solution. Re-
verting to the path opened with his boyish * Choir of the Church
of Sant' Antonio/ he gradually evolved a procediu*e which com-
bined the brilliant, shimmering effects of impressionism with a
consistency of outline which always made his drawing notable
for strength and continuity. The secret of his triumph over
baffling conditions lay in that, wherever necessary, he broke or
conserved colour and line. The basis of his technique was not,
as with the French pointillists, a series of dots, but a succession
of short, multi-coloured ridges running parallel with each other.
That which helped him equally was an infallible sense of selec-
tion. He never painted the impaintable. Unlike timid gentle-
men such as Baud-Bovy and Robinet who had long pictured the
Alps from the safety of valleys below, Segantini met them
openly, face to face. He painted them from their own level,
where, instead of appearing as isolated peaks, they broke about
him like billows, with now and then a wrinkled brow rising above
the crest.

Studies in sentiment or landscape on a restricted scale, such
as * On the Balcony,' ^ Knitting,' * Rest in the Shade,' or * A
Cow Drinking,' were but the prelude to a series of grand Alpine
panoramas which remain Segantini 's chief contribution to art.
Whatever be the claims of his earlier work, it is certain that
with * Ploughing in the Engadine,' ^ Spring in the Alps,' * Al-
pine Pastures,' and * Spring Pastures ' he attained his fullest
vision of definite, external beauty expressed in its simplest, most
enduring terms. This mountain Hesiod seems in truth the story
which had been given him to tell mankind. The first of these
canvases, * Ploughing in the Engadine,' already proves how ac-
curate was the artist's rendering of all forms of life there among
the stony uplands where nature is so strong and man so weak.
Though details of soil and vegetation, of peak and scarp, are
exactly studied, it is the spirit of the scene which holds the final

[200]

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

appeal. Modern art shows nothing similar to the plastic dignity
of this pair of horses straining at the plough, the labourers guid-
ing their submissive efforts, the rim of cottages in the distance,
and the frame of glistening, blue-white ranges. The austerity
and restraint of such compositions are poetized and humanized
in the succeeding canvases of the series, each of which records
the delicate, transient grace of the Alpine spring. They show
azure skies, carpets of gentians, daisies, and alpenrosen, a few
figures or a grazing herd in the foreground, and always, beyond,
snow-capped moimtains seamed by silent, yellow-rolling glacier
streams. Each blossom, each pebble reflects the scintillating
glory of a sun which bathes and brightens all things, which gives
light in abundance, but, alas, scant heat. So thrilled was the
painter by this iridescent beauty that he would often, in his
mountain walks, sink upon his knees in ecstasy, or bend and kiss
the flowers in his path.

Yet this radiance is short-lived, and for seven or eight months
of each year in the Upper Engadine man and beast are huddled
together in weather-tight shelters. This dark and tedious in-
door existence Segantini has pictured with homely fidelity in
* The Spinning Wheel,' ' The Sheepfold,' and ' Mothers.' In
fact no phase of mountain life escaped him or failed to arouse
his interest and abiding pity. He lived out-of-doors all the while, .
painting direct from nature and rarely making preliminary
studies. He passed his days not shut up in the studio with a
north light, but on the heights of the Grisons, working now at
one subject, now at another, as nature suggested the desired
effect. When fogs floated up from the Val Bregaglia and settled
about him, shrouding nature as with the mantle of God, or when
the afterglow had faded into night he would lock his unfinished
canvases in stout iron cases and tramp downward, guided by
the sound of tinkling bells or the far glow from cottage fireside.
Few of his pictures ever saw the inside of that little chalet whose

[201]

MODERN ARTISTS

windows opened to the skies of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria,
and whose rooms were bare of all artistic pretence. They were
carried down mountain paths on the backs of sturdy herdsmen
and placed in carts to wend their way to Chiavenna and thence
by rail to Milan, Turin, or Venice. By 1894, or about the time
he moved still higher and settled at Maloja, six thousand feet
above sea-level, Segantini's work was becoming better known to
the outside world. Vienna, Mimich, Berlin, and even Paris
gazed with curious eyes upon those unfamiliar scenes executed
with a direct brilliancy of method which recalled the early
mosaics. Yet the personality of the artist continued a mystery.
At Maloja and at Soglio he was even further removed from con-
tact with the public, and never left his mountain home save for
an occasional trip to Milan, where his daughter Bianca was at-
tending school. Few beyond his wife, children, and chance
friends ever caught a glimpse of this dark, stalwart man with
torrents of hair and the beard of an Assyrian king. He naively
wore a grotesque outing suit, and never posed in cafes or paraded
about at picture exhibitions. His only public honours were the
scattered medals awarded his paintings in distant cities, and a
complimentary luncheon given him, during the last year of his
life, by a few admirers in the little town hall of Pontresina,
when he made a speech full of gratitude and frank idealism.
For the rest, he lived alone with nature, his art, and his Maker. •
At first his work had been subjective, but later, under the
influence of prolonged solitude and random reading, its form be-
came more and more symbolistic. Though possessing rich nat-
ural gifts he was singularly illiterate, and until the age of seven-
teen could neither read nor write. In after years he became
something of a bibliophile, was fond of discussing phases of re-
ligion, aesthetics, and socialism, and even wrote for the news-
papers and reviews. Yet it was an inheritance into which he
had come too late. He never acquired maturity of mind; his

[ 202 ]

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GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

ideas were blurred and full of juvenile unreason. As he painted
alone on the heights, often clad in furs and with the colours
actually freezing on the canvas, he wrestled in his untaught way
with questions of duty and destiny, of reward and punishment.
Fantastic counterparts of these concepts rose from the white
wastes or slipped from dark crevices and filled his vision with
beings half human, half mythical. Against an unrelenting
background of mystery and fate he beheld piteous incarnations
of tenderness and of terror. Though he continued to paint with
rigid verity the same Alpine landscapes, they were peopled by
vague, flying forms whose pathos or forlorn anguish add a fresh
note to art. These fleeting creatures with streaming hair and
rose-tipped breasts uncovered to the bitterest winds had come
not from the cypress groves of Italy, the caverns of the Rhine,
or the gardens of Kelmscott Manor. They were bom of a soul
whose torments as well as whose crystal serenity found expres-
sion in terms of the most poignant and individual beauty.
Tentative bits of idealization such as *A Rose Leaf,' the some-
what robust ' Child of Love,' and the delicately Milanese * Angel
of Life,' were succeeded by canvases whose technical perfection
and imaginative force place Segantini among master symbolists.
Despite its richly flowered frame and wealth of vernal sunshine,

* Love at the Fountain of Life ' verges on incongruity, but in

* The Punishment of Luxury,' ^ Captive Mothers,' and * The
Source of Evil, ' the image finds its inevitable form. Each repre-
sents a moral idea, but each holds a haunting beauty and fervour
quite apart from specific morality. Whether they embody
Hindu myth, or Dantesque legend, or spring direct from the
artist's brain, they all reflect nature in the Orisons. The fanci-
ful is given a setting uncompromising in its fidelity to fact.

In * The Punishment of Luxury, ' which pictures the penalty
of sterility, the souls of sinning women, as sorrowful, wingless
creatures, are wafted pitilessly about above an infinitude of ice

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MODERN ARTISTS

and snow, gleaming blue and white, silver and gold, in the sink-
ing Sim. Another vast, snow-covered expanse, dotted with
twisted trees, shows the * Unnatural Mothers ' condenmed to ex-
piate their crime in a bleak, wind-swept eternity of repentance
and suffering. * The Source of Evil,' which has vanity for its
text, reveals Segantini's sense of the nude and the singular
grace with which, when so moved, he eould limn the female
figure. Yet the trials and sorrows of the real world did not fade
before the tortured magic of these evocations. During the
period when he gave fantasy its freest sweep Segantini never
lost touch with the outward, the objective. In * The Sower '
and * Haymaking,' he came as close to nature as before, and in
a series of religious paintings, which number the prophetic * Sor-
row Comforted by Faith ' and * The Home-Coming,' he touched
the deepest emotions of the simple mountain folk whom he knew
so well and whose lot he had so freely shared. Though he gazed
into the unreal he could look upon reality with the same tender
solicitude. Portraiture also occupied his attention at brief
intervals, the best of his attempts in this direction being the
seated three-quarter-length of Signor Vittore Grubicy, and
the two or three mystical versions of his own shaggy head
and searching eyes, each of which recalls the mask of the
Forerunner.

From childhood Segantini had dreamed of France, and early
in 1898 he formed a project for exhibiting at the Paris Exposi-
tion a large circular panorama which would embrace all aspects
of life and nature in the Engadine. Considerable money was
raised among the artist's devoted following, but the plan was
finally abandoned as being unfeasible. He then decided to paint
two large triptychs, one of which he practically finished; the
other never passing beyond the stage of rough sketches. In
order to paint his first triptych direct from nature he chose a
spot on the Schafberg above St. Moritz, whence he might sweep

[204]

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

with a glance the entire Upper Engadine, the soaring peaks of
the Roseg, the Morteratsch, and the Bernina, or watch, shining
beneath like eyes of the sea, the blue lakes of Statz, Campfer,
Silvaplana and Sils. He worked month after month with fervid
exaltation, bringing nearer and nearer completion the panels
entitled * Life,' * Nature,' and * Death,' which were to epitomize
his beloved Engadine in her fresh beauty, her brief maturity,
and her snow-shrouded bereavement. The colouring was more
luminous than ever, the study of natural forms more accurate,
and the human element more consistent and appropriate. With
delicate fancy he added an ornamental frieze showing chamois
perched upon peaks, and medallions wherein decorative nude
figures typify * Alpenrose ' and * Edelweiss,' flowers which had
each season brought him such frank joy. Unfinished though it
stands, the triptych proved his masterwork, his supreme and
final offering.

In September 1899, the panels having meanwhile been
brought down to the chalet, he determined to add a few touches
on the heights where they had originally been painted. Though
it had already begun to snow he would not be deterred by adverse
weather. He must note again the play of light and shifting
cloud, must read closer and closer nature's changing heart. On
the eighteenth the little band started up from Pontresina and
climbed the Schafberg, sturdy mountaineers bearing proudly
and without a murmur their heavy burden. They would have
done anything for this gentle, silent man, who was as intent as
one of the watching Magi. The painter set to work with pa-
thetic ardour, lodgiag in a deserted shepherd's hut, where his
only comforts were a rude bed, a chair, and a portable stove.
Round him lay glistening in the sun or sleeping silently under
the shadow of God's hand the rock- and ice-riven splendour
which he strove to perpetuate. He seemed happy, but was at
times haunted by the image of death. The first night while

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MODERN ARTISTS

wandering on the mountain, he saw a falling star and remarked,
** That means evil fortmie."

Within a day or so he was taken ill, having been forced to
drink melted snow, which induced a chill. Fever set in and a
shepherd was sent below for medical aid. His friend. Dr. Bern-
hard, arrived from Samaden during the night with hands cut
and bleeding from climbing the rocks to reach the stricken man.
Later the painter's family came, bringing everything needful
and simamoning two German physicians who still lingered in the
valley. They found him weak but hopeful, for a fortune-teller
had once assured him that he would live to be the age of Titian.
Symptoms of peritonitis were noted and a tardy operation was
performed, but without avail. On the evening of the twenty-
eighth he begged to be moved to the window that he might see
the fire-tinted heights glowing about him. During the night his
spirit hovered awhile on the borderland between the brightness
which he had known and the vague beyond into which he had
tried to peer. Yet no hand, however gentle or imploring, could
stay the pallid Visitor once she had been summoned. He had
given his life that the world might know what lay within the cold
virginity of those eternal snows. He had striven, vainly it must
be, to penetrate the impenetrable. As they bore him slowly
down the slopes and laid him to rest in the little cemetery of
Maloja, which he had painted with such fidelity in * Sorrow
Comforted by Faith,' every bell in the Engadine tolled sadly.
There was not a pious soul throughout the valley who did not
weep or exchange a heartfelt word with his neighbour. They all
knew and all loved him who had come amongst them, and who
had seemed even as one of themselves.

The path which he trod so firmly yet for so short a time is
to-day being followed by a small but enthusiastic band of artists.
His favourite pupil, Giovanni Giacometti, is continuing the
spirit of his work, and upon his sons, Gottardo and Mario Segan-

[206]

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI

tini, lias in a measure faUen their father's mantle. Across the
German, Austrian, and Italian frontiers he has found numerous
imitators. Throughout the Grisons, and indeed the world, art
has been enriched by this simple, heroic nature whose life has
been fittingly honoured by a monument from the hands of Leon-
ardo Bistolfi, himself as great a mystic naturalist as the man
he has memorialized. From first to last the two guiding im-
pulses of Segantini's being were the lyrical impulse and the
devotional impulse. His whole existence had been spent in
chanting the beauty and mystery of the world, and his eyes had
never failed to look with tender compassion upon those who
dweU therein. To the end he remained a fervent, imaginative
child, loving light, loving colour, and craving that which was
past or that which was yet to come. He was always harking
back to the unfulfilled, or only half -fulfilled, visions and prom-
ises of an eager, wistful heart. Almost his final wishes were
that he might see once again the little simlit garden at Arco
and foUow the white road stretching away toward France.

[207]

GARI MELCHERS

GARI MELCHERS

Portrait of the artist by J. J. Shannon

[^Courtesy of Mr. Shannon]

GAEI MELCHERS

NESTLED among the dunes of North Holland is a prim-
itive and picturesque little studio. The spot is lonely
and isolated. On one side chafes a menacing sea ; on
the other are the quiet waters of a broad canal. Roimd about
wave masses of tall reed-grass ; here and there is a stunted oak
or pine, while above drift continually restless, moist-laden
clouds. Over the doorway of this small, low-browed structure
is written in crude, resolute characters the motto " Wahr und
Klar." It is many years since this device was traced, yet those
who have followed the rise of Gari Melchers still note the fact
that the distinctive features of his art remain truth and clarity.
Never, throughout a varied and productive career, has he for-
gotten either of those simple words which have themselves so
well withstood the change of season and the touch of time. It
was not from mere chance or momentary caprice that such a
text came to be inscribed above the portals of this dune-top
studio which overlooks by turns the tiled roofs of Egmond and
the yellow sands of the North Sea. ** Wahr und Klar " is not
the motto of a single individual. It is the battle-cry of the most
vigorous and salutary manifestation in the history of nineteenth-
century art. The turbulent, intolerant champion of verity, the
man who, more than anyone, demolished convention and estab-
lished the supremacy of free, imf ettered observation — Gustave
Courbet, of course — ^was not a colourist in the present accepta-
tion of the term. He still painted nature in the sooty hues of

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the galleries. He still believed that shadows were black. Al-
though his influence was prodigious, and though for a time he
swept everything before him both in Paris and on that memor-
able visit to Munich on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war, yet
he had f oimd but half the truth. He knew the Wahr but not the
Klar of modem painting. It remained for more sensitive, more
complex talents to apply to the entire range of natural phe-
nomena that power of analysis which Courbet brought to bear
upon the merely objective.

That trembling, translucent simlight which has so long
bathed and brightened the world has been known to art but a
few brief years. It is only since the days of Manet that painters
have studied its changing glimmer or stippled upon canvas its
scintillant glory. For centuries landscape and figure as well
had been smothered in brovni sauce and blackened by layers of
bitmnen. With but few exceptions all painters until Manet's
time looked at nature through the mahogany tints of the mas-
ters. Correggio saw the tender evanescence of light, and Velaz-
quez felt the magic of its respiration, but they stand almost
alone amid a sombre assemblage. Save for such scattered in-
stances ancient art is art in a vacuum. Though Manet in his
early days was himself of this number, the battle had been won
by the time he so pathetically left the field. Close in the wake
of Manet came the stolid, patient Monet, and along with him
Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, and numerous lesser luminarists who
quickly flooded studio and gallery with a radiance ever near at
hand, yet until then so strangely neglected. When Pissarro and
Monet returned from London obscure and unregarded, the cause
had few sponsors. The slender and often dubious little band
used to meet nightly at the cafe de la Nouvelle Athenee in order
to discuss various theories of colour. Though Baudelaire and
Zola manfully aided them, and other recruits stepped forward,
they were for the most part compelled to bear alone the com-

[212]

GARI MELCHERS

bined derision of press and public. What was even more rueful
they were scarcely able to subsist on the proceeds of their sales,
canvases by Sisley, Renoir, and Pissarro bringing with difficulty
twenty francs apiece. By dint of persistence and good fortune
the cause, however, triumphed inside a score or so of years, and
the men who were at first cruelly ridiculed became in due course
the most cherished of modem masters. Yet the conquest of
light was not confined to the palpitating out-of-doors, to purple
haystack or azure strip of water; it was also carried within.
Degas found that it filtered through the windows of the foyer
or flared into the faces of his corps-de-ballet. Besnard caught
its flicker from lamp or fireplace. Thus the normal glare of day
was not enough for experimentalists intoxicated by this new dis-
covery. They annexed artificial light as well, each painter re-
vealing after his own fashion the fluid ambience of an all-per-
vading ether.

While as though through sympathetic magic, spots of light
sprang up in different parts of the world, such as with Segan- ^^
tini in the clear uplands of the Italian Alps, with Emile Claus
in Belgimn, or with SoroUa along the glistening seastrand of
Valencia, Paris continued the chief centre of radiation. To cer-
taiQ American paiaters who at the time were living and studying
in France belongs the honour of having been among the first
foreigners to grasp the significance of a departure which has
revolutionized almost every phase of tonal expression. Miss
Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Edmund C. Tarbell, F. W. Benson, and •-"
George Hitchcock were each pioneer exponents of vibrant,
broken colour. Though none save Hassam went so far as Monet,
or remained so faithful to the exactions of extreme impression-
ism, they were all part of the same movement. Allied to them
through ties of birth, association, and general artistic aims is
Gari Melchers. At first sight this flexible though positive per-
sonality seems to present serious difficulties in the wav of pre-

[213]

MODERN ARTISTS

cise classification. It is at once apparent that lie is neither a
Franco- American imitator nor an implicit disciple of that heroic
little group whose starting-point was a shabby cafe in the
BatignoUes and who have at last forced the portals of the
Louvre. That which differentiates Gari Melchers alike from
the country of his birth and from France, the amiable step-
mother of artistic America, is his complicated ancestry. Ger-
manic, with Dutch, French, and American affiliations, he reverts
perhaps unconsciously to the predominant strain in his nature.
It was from Germany that he originally came, and it was from
a German art atmosphere whence he journeyed, like his com-
patriots once-removed — Max Liebermann and Fritz von Uhde
— to Paris, where he absorbed, as they before him had done, the
gospel of light. It is impossible to explain, except on such
grounds, the sane, straightforward naturalism of Melchers 's
manner brightened as it is by the aurate brilliancy of the
latter-day palette. Any attempt to localize him as an American,
a Frenchman, or a Hollander must necessarily prove inadequate.
He has resided by turns in each country, and from each has
taken something, yet the basis of his aesthetic being is Teutonic.
Because he had long painted Dutch subjects, Americans naively
considered him a Dutchman, but the Germans, with surer artistic
perceptions, knew better. It is in Germany that he is most
esteemed, and it is beside such masters as Liebermann, von
Uhde, Leibl, von Bartels, and their successors that he takes
rank. In the last analysis he stands as a modified Teuton. -

In point of unvarying placidity and uniform success few
careers can compare with that of Gari Melchers. From the be-
ginning there were no harsh parental objections, nor in after
days were there any periods of romantic anguish or pathetic
probation. The stimulus of poverty and the sting of zealous
emulation were equally unnecessary to his development. That
which particularly characterizes his progress has always been

[214]

THE MAN WITH THE CLOAK

By Gari Melchers

[National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome]

GARI MELCHERS

an instinctive consciousness of what lie wished to do and the
way it could best be accomplished. Born in Detroit, 11 August
1860, he seems to have evinced no ambition apart from an early
and resolutely expressed desire to become a painter. His father,
who had been a sculptor, a pupil of Carpeaux and Etex, cordially
sjTnpathized with his son's artistic longings. When, at the age
of seventeen, the boy went abroad to study, the only stipulation
made was that the youthful aspirant should not go to Paris.
The somnolent seclusion of Diisseldorf was deemed less per-
nicious and disturbing, so the first three years of his apprentice-
ship were passed under the guidance of von Gebhardt and other
approved apostles of precedent. Among his fellow-pupils were
Kampf, Vogel, and Hans Herrmann, and while manifestly a
promising student, the yoimg man gave no indication of unusual
ability.

Matters were different, however, when, thoroughly grounded
in the elements of draughtsmanship and painting, Gari Melchers,
at twenty, decided to complete his training in Paris. Taking
no special pains to acquaint the family of his movements, he
quietly entered the Julian Academy. Wholly unawares the ad-
mirable janitor of French art had opened his doors to a remark-
able newcomer, who, in response to the tonic atmosphere of the
capital, soon made his presence felt. His studies were regarded
as exceptional, and both under Boulanger and Lefebvre, and
later at the Beaux- Arts, his advance can best be measured by
the rapidity with which he outdistanced his classmates, Roche-
grosse alone holding his own beside the yoimg Diisseldorfer.
They were picturesque and diverting days, those early 'eighties
when Gari Melchers frequented the Paris ateliers and attended
the famous Cours Yvon. The American girl had not as yet
broken down the barriers of the Quarter and complacently
seated herself beside the youth of her own and other lands. That
spontaneous gaiety which has since fluttered away before her

[215]

L^

MODERN ARTISTS

rumpled skirt and spotted apron was still at its height. If
Melchers and his contemporaries dwell with special fragrance
upon this period it is possibly because they have more to recall
than recent students — or is it the enchantment of a more ex-
tended perspective ?

Meantime there were of course numerous innocuous esca-
pades, notably a trip with two atelier companions to Italy via
Marseilles, when spirits ran so high and funds so low that the
trio were obliged to resort to the most grotesque expedients in
order to complete their journey. But for the most part the
young artist from overseas felt drawn toward more serious mat-
ters. Deeply impressed by the quiet asceticism of monastic life
he passed some weeks in a Trappist monastery at Casamare near
Naples. Possessing a heart always open to the su:ffering no-
bility of toil he naturally came under the influence of Bastien- »
Lepage, whose message was at that period exerting its poignant
though prescribed appeal. It is with particular pleasure, almost
with reverence, that he looks back upon a long and intimate
friendship with Puvis de Chavannes, and to certain Tuesday '
evenings spent in the unpretentious home of Camille Saint-
Saens in the rue Monsieur-le-Prince. At the latter place he used
to meet Mme. Henri GreviUe, the novelist, and the quaint and '
courtly mother of the composer. On these occasions Saint-Saens
would often play his * Danse Macabre ' and other selections with
that same eloquent brilliancy which so charmed the exacting
Wagner circle at Wahnfried. Yet he was meanwhile working
faithfully at his profession, and to the Salon of 1882 sent his
first picture, entitled ^ The Letter,' which had been painted in
Brittany and which already displayed the dominant qualities of
his art — his passion for colour, his accurate powers of observa- *
tion and of characterization, and his supple mastery of light. •
The following season he exhibited two more canvases, which
were well hung and favourably spoken of, and thus, when he

[216]

GARI MELCHERS

decided to return to America for a brief visit during the ensuing
year, it was obvious tbat bis student days bad drawn to tbeir
close.

On again finding bimself in Paris it was Melcbers's inten-
tion to reside some time in Italy, but the cbolera preventing,
be moved nortbward, passing tbrougb Bruges and Ostend, and
finally, toward autumn, settling in Holland. Fascinated by tbe
unspoiled simplicity of tbe place, be acquired two properties
,at Egmond, one being bis residence, at Egmond-aan-den-Hoef, •
tbe otber bis studio, at Egmond-aan-Zee. It was from tbis same
seaside refuge tbat be quickly began sending tbose sincere,
straightforward, and frankly buman canvases wbicb to-day
bang in tbe leading galleries of Europe and America, and wbicb
bave won tbeir author more and higher distinctions than have
thus far fallen to the lot of any American-bom painter. It was
not through mere accident that Gari Melchers came to live and
labour so long and gratefully in the land of Rembrandt, Ruis- '
dael, and Hobbema. fit was not alone the homely picturesque-
ness of peasant or fisherman, the vast, mottled skies, or tbe play
of constantly diffused light which attracted him to Holland. It
was also the sterling artistic traditions of tbe country itself.
There was surely something in his own nature which responded
to that sturdy realistic impetus wbicb, since the seventeenth
century, has proved tbe balance wheel of European painting.
Instinctively be perpetuated and extended this same tradition.
With more robustness, less sentimentality, and a splendid, al- •
most primal colour-sense he painted Holland life and scene as
the Dutch themselves bad never dreamed of doing. Best of all, •
bis palette was clean and fresh. Tbat heavy, golden-brown
opacity wbicb was tbe legacy of Rembrandt and his school did
not darken any of Gari Melchers *s canvases. His Holland was
not the Holland of grey, damp autumn days — the Holland of
convention — ^but a Holland swept by the brisk north wind or

[217]

MODERN ARTISTS

brightened by the pearly radiance of springtime. Even when
he painted a stretch of winter landscape or the whitewashed in-
terior of some bare church the magic of light was always upon
him. It was not in a spirit of half -fulfilled promise, but in a
spirit of resolute accomplishment, that ** Wahr und Klar '' was
traced above that studio door which he opened betimes and sel-
dom closed until nightfall.

The Salon of 1886 witnessed his commanding re-entry with
* The Sermon,' the following year he divided first place with
Segantini at Amsterdam, and 1889 saw the industrious, imob-
trusive painter of Egmond share with Sargent the two medals
of honour allotted the American section of the Paris Interna-
tional Exposition. Not only were the vast majority of Grand
Prix recipients decidedly older than this artist of eight-and-
twenty, most of them were already men of established reputa-
tion, such as Israels, Tadema, Liebermann, von XJhde, and the
like. While Melchers's four contributions were distinctive and
individual, there was an inevitable affinity between his work as
a whole and that of Liebermann and von Uhde. Liebermann,
too, had gone to Holland and had painted Dutch fisherfolk
mending their nets on the sandy, weed-strewn shore of Zand-
voort, or the inmates of those great city hospitals and asylums
dozing or chatting in sunlit courtyard. Von Uhde, also, had
striven to bring home to simple minds not only the spiritual
message, but the bodily presence of our Lord just as He might
gather about Him the poor and stricken children of to-day. It
was not that Gari Melchers in any way imitated these men. He
merely formed part of a symptomatic movement which both
glorified the workmen and endeavoured to restate Scriptural
truths in the most unaffected of modern terms. Champions of
this procedure have been many, one phase of its expression be-
ginning with the immortal painter-etcher of Leyden and Am-
sterdam, and continuing, through Millet, to the naturalistic and

[218]

GARI MELCHERS

mystical Bastien-Lepage. In this category Melchers takes high
rank. It would in fact be difficult to point to any work of its
class more rugged and more devout, more realistic in its outward
setting or more reverent in spirit, than his ^ Supper at Emmaus '
where for a moment the Master seats Himself in the midst of
these humble folk and breaks bread at their rude board.

Nevertheless it is impossible to maintain that these belated
pietists, these Christian socialists of art, achieved exalted re-
sults. The visions which the gentle Bastien saw in the garden
of Damvillers, those touching episodes von Uhde beheld in Ger-
man cottage, or the melodramatic scenes Munkacsy fabricated
in his sumptuous Paris studio are alike unconvincing, alike
wanting in true spiritual naivete. The idea itself involves a
contradiction, a paradox, and hence it was inevitable that when
Gari Melchers confined himself to less problematic themes he
should have attained a more consistent level. Untouched by
personal subjectivity and unclouded by creed he painted Dutch
life in its deepest, most intimate phases. They were mainly
figure compositions sharply seen and exactly recorded. After

* The Sermon ' came * The Communion ' ; after * The Pilots ' —
as notable a performance in its way as Leibl's * Village Politi-
cians ' — came * The Shipbuilder.' Sometimes he went out-of-
doors where he was himself fond of spending a restful hour.

* In the Dunes ' walk two flaxen-haired peasant girls, one carry-
ing a yoke and a pair of blue milk pails, the other a huge basket.
Striding briskly over the crusted snow a couple of * Skaters '
hurry along toward the frozen canal. The whole subdued yet
colourful portrait of Holland is there. Prim interiors are per-
meated with that hard northern glare which suffuses all things
with a note of sadness and resignation. Exterior scenes respond
obediently to shifting season or the precise hour of day. It is
an art which is explicit and veracious. Nothing, surely, could
be more vigorous, more wholesome, or more refreshing in its

[219]

MODERN ARTISTS

calm sanity. The very soundness of its technique bespeaks a
superbly balanced organization. And above all Melchers was
painting air as well as light. He never failed subtly to har-
monize subject and environment. Smoothly and without insist-
ence upon a series of distracting dots he always managed to sug-
gest that intervening aerial mediima between the seer and the
thing seen.

While at first the painter seemed satisfied with accuracy of
vision and fidelity of rendering, a certain gentler touch gradu-
ally crept into his work. Those rigid forms seated in bare
Lutheran churches unbent before the fireside or amid the in-
timacy of the domestic circle. Inflexible truth became mellowed
and modified by a tenderness that flowed straight from the hu-
man heart. Wholly endearing in their frank community of feel-
ing are ^ The Family/ now hanging in the National Gallery of
Berlin, and the * Maternity ^ of the Luxembourg, the latter show-
ing a blonde mother in flowered cap and cape holding in her arms
a serious, blue-eyed infant. It is in pictures such as these as
well as in the later and still more simple and direct * Mother and
Child ' which has found its home in America that Melchers
strikes his truest, most profound note. It is here that he reveals
better than in certain more ambitious canvases the potential
divinity in all humankind. Constant effort and discipline both
moral and technical were necessary in order that such results
might be attained. Through a gradual, unhurried sequence of
development he broadened and deepened that which had come
to him by right of birth. The patient years passed at Egmond
served to bring forth just those qualities which were most sig-
nificant and most enduring alike in the painter and in his chosen
themes.

From the hour he first settled in Holland until he had suc-
cessively won the highest honours in Munich, Paris, and else-
where, he had led an ungregarious, almost obscure existence.

[220]

GARI MELCHERS

Later, one of his whims was to have a number of studios at the
same time in different places, and to drift to each in turn as he
desired a change of view or fresh impetus. No one, in those
bachelor days, ever knew where to find him. He might be at
Egmond, in Paris, in Picardy, or at Bois-le-Roi on the edge of
the forest of Fontainebleau. His mail followed him aimlessly
about or accumulated unregarded in one particular spot. His
friends were amused or annoyed according to their varied dis-
positions, and dealers on the hunt for pictures were driven to
distraction. It is peculiarly characteristic of Melchers that,
after having sent his four big canvases to the Paris Exposition
of 1889, he should have gone off to the coimtry on a sketching
trip, leaving imopened on his return, for several additional days,
the official announcement of his award. Possessing such a tem-
perament it has been impossible for him to grow stale or fall
into a rut. Personally without a trace of the routine or the .f_.
artificial, his vision has continued vivacious and animated, and
artistic enthusiasm has never flagged. Moreover, he has never
been the victim of a system or a theory. While a persistent,
exacting workman he has no special mode of procedure. Each
subject presents new difficulties and new possibilities. He might
well say with Manet, ** Every time I begin a picture it is like
throwing myself into the water and learning how to swim." A
portrait may be finished in a week, and an elaborate composition
within a month, or again it may take him years to achieve the
desired result. Industry and inspiration are his twin, though
not always simultaneous, helpmates.

The Paris studio was situated for a number of years in the
rue Viete, just off the avenue de Villiers, it having previously
belonged to de Nittis, the delicate, spirited painter of street
scenes. At the near-by cafe Drey used to dine regularly most
of the artists and writers of the neighbourhood including Puvis
de Chavannes, Dannat, Edelfeldt, Munkacsy, and Dmnas fils.

[221]

MODERN ARTISTS

Between Puvis de Chavannes and Melchers the most cordial re-
lations were always maintained, the younger man often visiting
the serene, pacific synthesist of art and humanity at his studio
in the place Pigalle. It was Puvis 's custom to receive a few
chosen intimates from eight until nine in the morning, usually
arrayed in a long dressing-gown and slippers, going later to his
quarters at Neuilly^ where he worked in absolute seclusion upon
his limpid, arcadian compositions. On one of these morning
calls it was Melchers's privilege to watch another earnest vision-
ary, Eugene Carriere, paint a portrait-head of Puvis as he stood
by the window in apostolic robe and pantoufles. It was a lesson
the young artist never forgot, nor can he ever fail to recall with
genuine emotion the day he was named a Chevalier of the Legion
of Honour when Puvis affectionately gave him his own cross,
with its bit of faded ribbon, which he had himself received years
before from the hand of Napoleon III. They shared, indeed,
many points in common, among others a dignity, a tolerance
toward varied and diverse forms of artistic expression, and
above all a devotion to their calling which nothing could impede
or belittle. And it was hence with pleasure, rather than the re-
verse, that one later noted in Melchers's mural decorations for
the Congressional Library in Washington a legitimate and sym-
pathetic recognition of that same ample simplicity of conception
> and treatment which had made the art of Puvis de Chavannes
one of the imperishable glories of nineteenth-century painting.

It was but natural, after so long a residence abroad and such
continued Continental success, that Gari Melchers should have
at length turned toward his native country, where he was less
known and where he had so seldom exhibited. Within a short
time he has managed closely to identify himself with local con-
ditions. The medium has been portraiture; nor is portraiture
anything of a departure, for throughout his career he has not
only painted numerous specific likenesses, but has always been

[222]

Copi/right. 7.907, bj/ Detroit PiihUshiniy Company

MOTHER AND CHILD

By Gari Melchers

[Courtesy of James Deering, Esq.l

GARI MELCHERS

a discerning student of human physiognomy. You need only
gaze at the sober, characterful mien of ^ The Man with the
Cloak ' who looks from the walls of the National Gallery of
Rome, or note the appropriately decorative * Braban^onne ' in
order to realize how far he had already carried this particular
branch of art. And still when he finally returned to America he
discovered just that quality which had thus far been lacking,
and which seemed, indeed, there to be awaiting him. During
the early and middle phases of his development he had practised
an almost anti-emotional verity of statement. He had looked
upon life with a certain rigidity, the rigidity of the realist who
adds nothing, who takes nothing away. It remained for him to
acquire a welcome flexibility of interpretation, and this he
attained without sacrificing an iota of his previous conquest. It
was in the nature of the man to give no hostages, to make no con-
cessions, nor has he ever swerved from this rule. There is no
need for inferring that his former work with its fresh, vivid
colour-spots, its grave coimtenances, and enticing glimpses of
landscape — a wood, a garden, or the red roof of some adjacent
cottage — ^was in any degree wanting in a distinct, inherent ap-
peal of its own, yet the more recent canvases display an added
measure of grace. The man who depicted with such resolute
accent the facts of humbler existence grasps no less accurately
the spirit of those more complex beings whose portraits he is
now engaged in painting. While not without their touch of
urbanity they are not facile or frivolous likenesses. They re-
veal, each of them, a rounded, certain mastery and a tonality
as crisp and ringing as it is unconventional. No vague, unsani-
tary landscapes envelop these individuals, nor are they suffo-
cated with costly hangings or imperilled by unsteady bits of
pottery. All is consistent, legitimate, and stimulating. You
never see in this work a touch of drama or a hint of trickery.
There is no convulsive straining after effect. The right result

[223]

I

MODERN ARTISTS

comes through an instinctive, well-nigh infallible, power of
selection. The requisite elements for each picture seem always
to have dwelt here within the limits of the frame.

Although modern in the best interpretation of the word, Gari
Melchers is no restless, precipitate innovator. One of his most
tjrpical characteristics is a respect for his predecessors. As he
himself says, ** Nothing counts in this world with the painter
but a good picture ; and no matter how good a one you may paint,
you have only to go to the galleries and see how many better ones
there are." One of his few theories is that the fine things in art
are nearly always so for the same or similar reasons; and he
also believes that the really big men of all times are strikingly
alike. Wholly imdisturbed by sudden and apparently radical
changes of manner in others, he paints with a breadth and assur-
ance that never fail to convey the desired impression. Behind
the slightest of his sketches or the most ambitious full-length is
visible a sound, disciplined certainty of purpose which can
hardly go astray. Though in glancing at his work you may
vaguely be reminded of this painter or that, you will scarcely
think of anyone not in the highest degree a master-craftsman.
Melchers is not a subjective or an imaginative artist. He be-
longs to the sturdy, positive race of observers. The spirit of his
art, as well as its expression, is frankly objective. He con-
tinues that tradition which is represented with such impregnable
strength and security by some of the foremost painters the world
has ever known — ^by Hals in Holland and Holbein in Germany.

^No change of taste or temper can ever dislodge men whose work
/ is characterized by a similar directness, simplicity, and ample,

/ generous humanity. They offer a splendid counterpoise to
tendencies which are nervous and effete. Their very solidity
defies all transition, all fluctuation. Now that he has returned

, for a portion of each season, it is doubly apparent that Gari

I Melchers 's sojourn abroad has splendidly served its purpose.

[224]

aARI MELCHERS

The years in Egmond and Paris, or the visits to London, where
his friends numbered Watts and Val Prinsep, as well as Shan-
non, have borne rich fruit. He left a mere lad. He has come
back a mature artist bringing to a new country the lessons
taught so well in the old. It was not otherwise that the great
pioneers of the past were wont to do when Diirer wandered
homeward from Italy or van Dyck crossed the Channel to
England.

[225]

J. J. SHANNON

J. J. SHANNON

Portrait of the artist painted by himself

{^Courtesy of Mr. Shannon^

J. J. SHANN"ON^

IT is in portraiture, in the definite transcription of feature
and of form, that the artist is presumably more faithful
to fact than to the allurements of fancy. Yet a certain
proportion of the great portrait painters have from the outset
been fantasists. The brooding mystery of the * Mona Lisa,*
the luminous gloom that shrouds the heads of Rembrandt's
burghers, the matchless tonal unity of Velazquez's * Philip,'
and the silver sheen that plays about the brow of van Dyck's
* Charles ' are all the sheer magic of creative genius. From the
days when the Greeks tinted their marbles and studded them
with jewels to the hour Sargent painted * Mrs. Hamersley ' re-
clining among brocade cushions, artists have striven to lift per-
sonality beyond the realm of mere reality. The part man has
been called upon to play in portraiture is a distinctly obvious
one. I In pietistic days he obediently knelt before a shrine, in
martial times he pranced upon a charger, and in the hour of *
peace he mused by the window or fireside or sat in sunlit door-
way. As occasion demanded he wore robes of state or the white
ruff of a simple townsman. His role has always remained more
or less literal and documentary./ With woman, matters have
been different, and it is because of her evasiveness, her psychic
and emotional flexibility, that she embodies and reflects the
subtler essence of portraiture. Whatever man has wished her
to be she has become; whatever mantle he has cast about her
shoulders she has worn. In the age of allegory she was appro-

[229]

MODERN ARTISTS

priately allegorical, in the days of romance she was radiantly
romantic, while to-day she is as restless and fastidious as man's
own exacting vision. It is impossible not to feel that the listless
evocations of Botticelli, or the dainty divinities of Boucher and
Fragonard, are portraits only by inference. They are not Si-
monetta. Pompadour, or du Barry. They are symbols of a
persistent, though ever changing sense of beauty. By a curious
and piquant contradiction this fluid, unquiet being typifies one
of the enduring elements alike in art and in life — the element
of ideality. With all her complexity, it can hardly be held that
the modem woman is as complex and as diverse as the painter
of the present depicts her. It is rather that he sees her, with
aesthetic and temperamental eye, in this guise or that and paints
her not as she is, but as he would have her. The modish dex-
terity of Sargent, the impalpable synthesis of Whistler, and the
vapoury volutions of Alexander are the specific properties each
artist in turn brings to the delineation of appearance and per-
sonality, and it is these qualities which, after all, constitute the
final impression. There is of course a broad similarity of treat-
ment in all current portraiture. Yet whether she gently emerges
from the fogs of London, the opal haze of Paris, or stands in
New York's relucent sunlight, the woman of to-day, as of for-
mer years, bears the impress of her time and her interpreter.
About her cling not so much the outward accidents of life as the
finer tissues of feeling and aspiration. She impersonates an
ideal, or — to the irreverent and insensitive — a convention.

British art during its richest period — ^that of the later
eighteenth century — ^was pre-eminently dedicated to portrait-
ure. The first president of the Royal Academy, the worthy Sir
Joshua, was almost exclusively a painter of portraits, and
though Gainsborough's landscapes are justly approved, his
fame, as well as that of Romney, Hoppner, and their successors,
rests upon a spirited and characteristic record of the gracious

[230]

J. J. SHANNON

women and gallant men of their day and generation. It was
chiefly, indeed, the arch allure of English womanhood and the
wild-rose bloom of the English girl that these men most loved
to limn upon canvas. No school of painting, and no period of
artistic activity, has left behind a more engaging transcription
of feminine loveliness. Though this eloquent tradition origi-
nated with Rubens, and was carried overseas to the lasting bene-
fit of British art by van Dyck, it quickly became naturalized
in its new surroundings. Moreover, there was nothing either
artificial or illogical in the proceeding, for there was, and still
is, a marked racial affinity between Englishmen of the east and
south and the Teutons of northern Europe. While the painter
of the Stuarts brought with him a certain requisite poise and
worldly stateliness, it was from the winding lanes and green
hedgerows of rural England that was wafted the true morn-
ing-glory of British art. From Plympton, in Devon, where
Reynolds was bom, from Gainsborough's smiling Suffolk, and
the Lancashire, long neglected but never forgotten, of Romney,
there came to painting a new beauty, a fresh fragrance. No
matter whether they passed most of their time immortalizing
great folk, living in imposing mansions in Leicester, or Caven-
dish Square, and mixing with the world of fashion, neither these
men nor their colleagues, Lawrence and Opie, quite lost that
touch of wholesome Saxon charm which radiates alike from
^ The Parson's Daughter,' * Nelly O'Brien,' or * Perdita Rob-
inson ' seated before her screen of springtime foliage. While;'
this particular ideal of beauty, or, if you will, this convention,!
never wholly disappeared, it altered sadly during succeeding)
decades. Now it expanded with the outdoor sentimentalists into\
a smooth, milkmaid buxomness, again, with the Pre-Raphaelites,/ ^
it became vegetative and deciduous. It was close upon a century^v
before the true spirit of this art, with its unstudied distinction l
and its frank worship of fair, sweet faces, again came into vogue.

[231]

MODERN AETISTS

And, odd as it may seem, it was not a native Englishman, but a
young painter from across the water, who has in large measure
revived the graphic felicity of former times.

Apart from theories diverting or informing painting is
primarily a matter of vision. } The vision of Watts was a spir-
itual vision, the vision of Eossetti was sensuous, and that of
Sargent is external and physical. It is not the moral, the langor-
ous and narcotic, or the assertively mundane portrait which J. J.
Shannon paints, but the portrait which may be designated as
pictorial. ^ Though influenced on one side by the native ele-
gance of English eighteenth-century art, and on the other by the
sweeping, comprehensive grasp of Velazquez, the formula which
Shannon employs with such success is none the less his own, and
is one which appeals to him with imperious conviction. What-
ever he has accomplished is personal, for few painters have
studied less, and relied more upon inherent impulse. Other men
may view things vaguely or positively, veiled in mystery or
sharpened by actuality. Shannon belongs to those who will first
and last see an object, and render it, with reference to its value
as a picture, as something possessing, within prescribed limita-
tions, an almost independent existence. With ready, spontane-
ous tact, and with genuine taste, he brings together and har-
monizes various appropriate accessories until he has secured an
effect which is less formal than fanciful, less literal, in short,
than free and instinctive. The idea is not exclusive. It is prac-
tised in a measure by every painter, though few employ it so
consistently, and few attain a similar charm and unity of
impress.

It need not be assumed that Shannon spends feverish days
devising elaborate combinations. He is not one of those indus-
trious individuals who set the stage before beginning a portrait.
Gifts both visual and temperamental enable him to perceive at
a glance the decorative possibilities of a single figure or a group,

[232]

LADY MARJORIE MANNERS
By J. J. Shannon
l^Courtesy of the artist]

J. J. SHANNON

and fluent technical mastery makes it easy for him to translate a
scene in all its animation and vitality. It is in like fashion that
he has painted maid of honour and marchioness, flower girl from
the sun-bright street or blustering master of hounds. Framed
by the roses and hollyhocks of his own garden stands ' Lady
Henry Cavendish-Bentinck. ' On the terrace of Haddon lingers
the slender, high-bred form of little * Lord Ross. ' The priceless
quality of the art to which Shannon and his colleagues are the
heirs is its ability to suggest the special atmosphere and environ-
ment of a given period. This power of placing the sitter in
proper relation to his surroundings should be not the least aim
of portraiture. It is a faculty which Shannon exercises with
singular fitness. To him beauty and beauty's setting are in-
separable, indissoluble.

The man who, for a score and more of years has been paint-
ing such a graceful, aristocratic succession of British naen and
women is not, as many have inferred, either an Englishman or
an Irishman by actual right of nativity. J. J. Shannon was bom ^^
on 3 February 1862, in Auburn, New York. Still, as but one
generation separates him from the British Isles, and since his
boyhood was spent across the border at St. Catherines, in
Canada, he cannot, with ethnic precision, be claimed as an Amer-
ican. Despite a precocious liking for art he does not come from
a race of painters, the nearest approach to the fraternity the
family had previously produced being his grandfather, who was
an architect. As in the case of almost everyone who attains
position, his youth and early struggles have been enriched by
legends picturesque and apocryphal. Needless to say he is
thankful that none of these happenings ever took place outside
the agile brains of biographers and critics in search of local
colour. Never, he smilingly avers, did he wander about rural
Canada painting posters for agricultural shows or selling hand-
tinted copies of Landseer's canine and bovine masterpieces. He

[233]

MODERISr ARTISTS

neither studied in Munich nor starved in Paris. It is true that
he began in a modest way, but the way was wholesome and typi-
cal. In a shop window he often passed hung a still-life composi-
tion which impressed the future exhibitor at the Royal Academy
as being more ambitious than exact. It showed a rabbit and a
partridge dangling on a nail, and though the work of an eminent
resident painter, it failed to satisfy the boy^s maturing ideals.
Craving a more accurate and worthy representation of the same
theme the young realist forthwith sallied out and shot his own
rabbit and bird and suspended them in an unoccupied room at
the rear of the house. There, with nothing better at his disposal
than plain unprepared cardboard and common mixed paint, the
work was begun. The boy had to play truant while thus en-
gaged, so after painting all morning or afternoon, he would put
on his cap and mitts and dash into the house breathless and
aglow, pretending he had been to school. At the end of several
days the game got so " high " that the family was moved to in-
vestigate the situation with the result that the picture, which
had almost reached completion, was finished with full parental
approval. Matters did not, however, end there, for the boy's
effort was subsequently exhibited in the same shop window side
by side with the elder artist's canvas, the concensus of local crit-
ical opinion distinctly favouring the new school of still-life
painting.

The success of his first attempt being so manifest, the latent
Associate was at once placed in the care of Wright, St. Cather-
ines's leading all-around painter. At the end of a few months
the amiable and conscientious Wright, who could paint anything
from a bowl of fruit to a coach and four, confessed that his pupil
had exhausted the artistic resources of St. Catherines. Wright
urged that the boy be sent to London or Paris in order to com-
plete his training, and for family and other reasons London was
the choice. Thus, toward the end of his sixteenth year, J. J.

[234]

J. J. SHANNON

Shannon found himself a student at the South Kensington
Schools, along with Menpes and Clausen. It was his original
intention to have remained for a limited time only, but so excep-
tional was the progress made by the former painter of * A Rab-
bit and a Partridge ' that Mr. (now Sir Edward J.) Poynter
wrote with enthusiasm to the lad's parents commending his abil-
ity and urging that he be allowed to continue at the Schools.
Although he stayed sometime longer, Shannon declined to be
enslaved by preceptor or sterilized by routine. He preferred
to move faster than is customary at South Kensington. He took
the silver medal for his first year's work in the life-room, and
at the close of his second was awarded the gold medal in the
national competition. Portraiture was naturally his chief pre-
occupation, and while still a student he was commissioned to
paint for the queen the likeness of Miss Horatia Stopford, one
of the maids of honour, the canvas being exhibited at the Acad-
emy of 1881 by royal command.

Yet the youth who at eighteen painted his first court beauty,
had still to convince the London public that he possessed both a
manner and a message. Though he forthwith rented a studio
and began work with infectious optimism, it cannot be said that
measurable results were attained until some five years later when
he sent to the Grosvenor Gallery a simple and direct full-length
of Mrs. Shannon, which was catalogued as ^ A Lady in Black.'
The insidious influence of Whistler was apparent, yet the picture
more than established the newcomer's claim to consideration.
With the exhibition at the same gallery the following season of
his standing likeness of * The Late Henry Vigne, Esquire,' Shan-
non's position was assured. Forceful in characterization, af-
firmative in draughtsmanship, and displaying a fulfilling sense
of colour and of design, the canvas was not only received with
enthusiasm in England but subsequently won first honours in
Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. There was no further question as

[235]

MODERN ARTISTS

to the painter's future. Beginning with an order from the
Marchioness of Granby, who was among the first women of title
to discover his talent, commissions rapidly poured in upon the
artist who soon secured, and has since retained, his position as
the most brilliant among the yoimger Anglo-Saxon portraitists.
Within a few brief years — it was in 1897 — ^he was elected an
Associate of the Royal Academy, of which his former professor,
Sir Edward J. Poynter, had just previously been chosen presi-
dent. It proved an unconamonly auspicious occasion for good
men, Sargent having been made an R. A., and Alfred Parsons,
like Shannon, an A. R. A.

It would be superfluous to follow from canvas to canvas the
progress of Shannon's art. Prodigally productive, a mere
enumeration of his portraits would fill defenseless souls with
dismay. It is sufficient to note that he has been represented
season after season at Burlington House, the New Gallery, the
Grafton Gallery, and the Fine Arts Society in London, as well
as various British, Continental, and American exhibitions. In
common with Melchers and Lavery he is especially partial to
the Venice International, being a frequent exhibitor at those
admirable biennial displays in the distant Water City. To the
customary seeker after charm of statement or vigour of analysis,
this vast sequence of canvases drops naturally into three classes
— portraits wherein beauty predominates, portraits wherein
characterization is the chief motive, and compositions revealing
a less restricted play of invention. It is little short of astonish-
ing that the lad whose early attempts were as cautious as the
work of his first master, the estimable Wright of St. Catherines,
should, within a few years, have perfected a manner so supple
and flowing in its expression and imbued with such suavity and
distinction. From that first sweeping portrait of ^ Lady Gran-
by ' to the last canvas standing unfinished in his oak-panelled
London studio he has moved steadily toward a fuller realization

[236]

MISS KITTY

By J. J. Shannon

l^The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh]

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[236]

YTTTVr ^^TM

Copyright, 1902, by Caniegie Institute

J. J. SHANNON

of his pictorial aim. Though haste has here and there told ad-
versely upon his production, and though he has been continually
forced to choose between popularity and good painting, the
vision has daily grown ampler and the tone of his art more
individual. And almost automatic facility of choice and fer-
tility of colouration and composition mark most of the later
work. Whatever there is attractive in the sitter seems spon-
taneously to spring to the eye of the painter and to flow from
the swift, obedient stroke of his brush. It appears at times
perilously easy for him to paint, and in the ease lurks, of course,
the peril.

Although he developed so rapidly he did not advance with-
out constant effort and application. In the imposing full-length
portraits of * Mrs. Prideaux-Brune ' and the * Countess of Duf-
ferin and Ava,' he had but partially mastered that fusion of
sentiment and technique which was later to illumine the sylvan
grace of * Lady Dickson Poynder and her Daughter.' In the
seated likeness of the * Duchess of Portland ' he had not wholly
caught the flexible total gradations of * Spot Red ' and * On the
Stairs.' Among the single figures there is scant choice between
the wistful, unconscious anticipation of * Miss Kitty,' in green
riding-habit and ermine tippet, standing against the dark wall,
and the pensive reverie of * Lady Marjorie Manners ' instinct
with old-world sentiment and modern suggestion. Among the
larger canvases none, perhaps, even to this day, surpasses the
well-nigh faultless distribution and the subdued glimmer of
grey, gold, and blue which distinguish * Lady Carbery and her
Children.' He had early, it appears, learned that propriety of
grouping and arrangement which was the gift of the older men
and which has dignified so few among the younger. Just as the
* Phil May,' which shows the inimitable draughtsman in hunting
coat, with the habitual cigar between his fingers, stands alone
among the character studies so does * The Flower Girl ' occupy

[ 237 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

a place by herself among the more decorative compositions. Un-
dertaken in purely occasional moods, and as a respite from the
strain of routine effort, some of Shannon's best work is seen in
such canvases as the Romney-like * Iris,' the oval * War,' which
Millais himself might have been proud to sign, and, above all,
in * The Flower Girl.' It was certainly not a commission ; it was
something more consistent with inspiration which impelled him
to perpetuate the melting pink, green, gold, and black of this
last scene. As with the others, the picture sprang instinctively
into being. Reality furnished the elements, but it was the
painter who selected and perfected nature's offering. The story
of * The Flower Girl ' is, with slight variations, the story of all
the subjects of this particular class. She used to go about the
streets of Eastbourne, the actual flower girl, wearing a loose,
dotted cotton gown, and carrying on one arm a basket of roses
and on the other a baby. It was only a step from the sidewalk
to the garden, so she came in and sat beneath the spreading
plane trees just as she was — ^baby, basket, and big, feathered
hat. Broadly, sincerely, and with full, liquid brush-strokes, she
was painted during those golden August afternoons, not in a
studio, but outside, with the sunlight filtering through the leaves
on sitter and on canvas. It is small wonder that when the picture
went up to London it proved the success of the Academy, and
was purchased by the trustees of the Chantery Fund for the
Tate Gallery just as Sargent's * Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose '
had found similar favour fourteen years before.

The gifted painter who seems, more than any of his con-
temporaries, to wear with native ease much that remains of the
mantle of British art during its age of glory, resides in Holland
Park Road, London, in a beautiful house adjoining the famous
home of Lord Leighton. Around the house, which is built in the
Dutch Renaissance style, runs a high brick wall broken by orna-
mental wrought-iron gates. At the back stretches a rambling

[238]

J. J. SHANNON

garden brightened by clusters of roses and hollyhocks. Through-
out the interior are quantities of rare fmmiture and tapestries,
and here and there hangs a canvas or two. The studio is a long,
spacious room somewhat resembling the banquet hall of a Tudor
mansion, and it is there that Shannon paints dowager, duchess,
or his own delightful wife and daughter. Despite the daily pro-
cession of distinguished sitters it is the members of his own
household whom he most enjoys putting upon canvas either as
portraits or in some less explicit vein. In certain of these family
groups including * Tales from the Jungle,' * The Fireside,' and
similar subject-pictures his talent finds its most complex, and
perhaps its most appropriate, setting. A little more concentra-
tion, a little less dexterous, though in itself charming, dissem-
ination of interest, and he can here achieve what may prove to
be a permanent artistic expression.

Shannon is a strict intuitionalist in his methods. He is a
rapid, dashing workman using a generous, rich-set palette and
large, square brushes. He scrutinizes his sitter carefully, yet
when he once decides upon the desired effect seldom hesitates
and rarely or never makes a preliminary sketch. Although he
did not learn to paint imder the eye of the facile Carolus he is
not a whit less clever than the cleverest of the Paris-taught men.
A confident, sustained improvisator, he is sometimes exacting
to the point of caprice. As a rule expeditious, it required up-
wards of sixty sittings for him to complete the simple half-
length of * Mrs. Magniac' While his art reflects qualities which
are the reverse of aggressive, it rarely, at its best, lacks the
requisite elements of vigour and certainty of purpose. In gen-
eral these canvases are a reproach to those who exalt the su-
premacy of technique. There is here neither overstatement nor
understatement. One is neither wearied by oppressive fidelity
nor tantalized by vagueness. A singular, and in these days rare,
charm of surface distinguishes most of Shannon's canvases. In

[239]

MODERN ARTISTS

essence tliis art is a sensitive, emotional art, modem, though
looking backward to the days when beauty was still deemed a
necessity. Unlike so much current work it is neither Gallic nor
Japanese, but straightforward and Anglo-Saxon — more a mat-
ter of aspiration than of observation. It is manifestly lacking
in analysis. Its very defects are racial, for in its desire to please
and to prettify it is not above making concessions. This was
the besetting sin of Lawrence. Unless he is vigilant, it may
prove the undoing of Shannon. The battle between the serious
and the saccharine has been a long and wasting fight. It is
England's more than Hundred Years' artistic war.

Although he enjoys a vogue second only to the painter of
* Asher Wertheimer,' and * Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children,'
Shannon continues wholesome and unaffected. His views on
art are temperate and traditional. He believes in little beside
the conquest of beauty. Of aversions he boasts but one, an utter
detestation for the photographic portrait, the portrait which is
a mere copy and not, in so far as possible, a creation. While
he occasionally paints with chromatic opulence, as in * Spring-
time ' and ^ The Flower Girl ' he prefers as a rule the subdued
appeal of softly modulated tones. Faded pinks, pearl-greys,
and silver-blacks are among his favourite hues. Like his friend
and colleague Melchers, he professes a keen admiration for the
work of his contemporaries. He believes that each man who
strives honestly produces something different from his fellows,
and hence diplomatically maintains that there can be no such
thing as rivalry. For several months during the past few sea-
sons Shannon has been living and painting in New York, Boston,
and other American cities. Although he had previously exhib-
ited but seldom away from home, and while he was properly
known only to those who attended the annual displays in Lon-
don, his success in the States has been a repetition of his British
triumphs. Just as in England wealth, beauty, and fashion have

[ 240 ]

THE FLOWER GIRL

By J. J. Shannon

[The National Gallery of British Art, London]

J. J. SHANNON

flocked to his studio and have been in turn painted graciously
and dexterously by the modest, genial man whose sole preoccu-
pation is his art. The types he encounters abroad are of course
akin to those with which he has so long been familiar. Yet while
American prelates, financiers, and flowers of the leisured world
bear a general family resemblance to their English equivalents,
they betray tendencies which are sometimes widely different.
There is little doubt, however, that Shannon is sensible to this
divergence, for he is by nature responsively intuitive. There is
scant reason to fear that, wherever he might go, his work would
suffer material change, for the expressiveness of his style and
the delicate bloom of his colouring are permanent, not acci-
dental characteristics. The enduring elements of his art can
but remain the same whether he depicts the lithe elegance of the
English woman or the nervous, magnetic splendour of her cousin
overseas.

Though the art of J. J. Shannon is, in common with so
much modern work, eclectic in its surface proclivities, there is
little question that its main appeal descends direct from those
eighteenth-century masters who painted the belles, beaux, and
sober statesmen of Georgian days. It is to that superb row of
'* Windsor Beauties " in Hampton Court, to Holland House,
the Wallace Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, and
various great private houses that this specific ideal of beauty
can be traced. There will of course always be an uncertainty
as to just how much the later men owed to the aristocratic, non-
chalant painter of the court of Charles. Yet it is evident that
this love of fair countenances and artless piquancy is not a
foreign, but rather an innate possession. The best things alike
in English art and English verse appear to spring from the
same clear source. The tender magic of Miranda, the romantic
languor of divine Sacharissa, the seductive revelations of Julia,
and the comely wiles of Highland Mary each reflect something

[241]

MODERN ARTISTS

of that radiance which lies at the heart of natural things, that
unspoiled happiness which is the chief light of beauty. While
it is not apparent that British painters or poets hold in any
degree a monopoly of these qualities, they have surely crystal-
lized them into visions typical of purely English loveliness.
That it should be the mission of the artist to increase and to
extend this birthright there is small doubt. And yet no one
knows better than he how difficult it is to add to this dream of
fair women — sl dream born not alone of fact but of the mingled
fancy and illusive yearning of generations.

[242]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

Portrait of the artist by Jacques-Emile Blanche

[^Courtesy of Senor Zuloaga^

IGI^ACIO ZULOAGA

THOUGH her galleys no longer sweep the main or her
soldiers pitch their tents in Italy, in Flanders, or stub-
bornly hold in cheek the armies of the First Consul,
Spain is not, as many fancy, a nation with a past but no future.
Contrary to general opinion, the Spain of to-day is a vigorous,
progressive country, a country which is rapidly advancing po-
litically, commercially, and artistically. Resplendent dreams of
world-conquest have been renounced, the temporal power of the
church is being restricted, and internal dissension has been al-
most wholly eradicated. Everywhere throughout the Peninsula
are signs of regeneration, and everywhere is the fundamental
vitality of the race asserting itself. The State is at last shaking
off the lethargy of centuries, is learning to look within, not with-
out, and is cultivating a sound, inspiring patriotism. The Span-
iard himself is changing. He has in large measure ceased to be
the fatalistic Turk of the West, and Carlist and gypsy are alike
making way for the energetic man of affairs. The social and
economic depression which followed the return of the troops
from the Antilles and the Philippines is righting itself under
the youthful Alphonso, and Spain is now looking toward the
future with mingled hope and confidence. ^* Resucita,'' the
closing note of Galdos's stirring play, * Electra,' is the watch-
word of modern Spain, and Riego's hymn the Marseillaise of
her ardent partisans. This coming to fresh life, this resur-
rection, renaissance, or whatever it may be termed, dates, of

[ 245 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

course, from the Revolution of 'sixty-eight, *^ La Gloriosa," as
it is fondly called, which was logically followed by the adoption .
of the Constitution in 'seventy-six. Since these two recent and
memorable events, to which may be added a third — that of the
Spanish- American war — Spain has substantially become an-
other nation. Though the last European power to feel the
throb of latter-day progress, she is responding with alacrity
to that resistless simimons. She seems bent upon compensat-
ing for the dignified somnolence of the past by taking firm
hold upon the issues of the present.

Both in letters and in art the same tendency is manifest,
and, indeed, here achieves its highest expression. The sensitive,
responsive product of material conditions, it is to the writer and
the painter that one must turn in order to discover the image
of that New Spain so long sought across hostile frontier and
distant sea only to be found at last among the bare sierras, the
purple vineyards, and the stern, proud hearts of the home-coun-
try. No drama since Victor Hugo's * Hernani ' has aroused a,
people to such demonstrations of disfavour and approval as
Galdos's * Electra,' which stands as the symbol of advancement-
and echoes the current revolt against clericalism. In Dona
Emilia Pardo Bazan not only the Spanish woman, but the
woman of the entire Continent, possesses her most liberal and
rational champion. Yet, despite the leading literary figures,
despite the plays of Galdos and Echegaray, or the novels of
Valera and Valdes, it is the younger Spanish artists who best •
reflect the spirit of the hour and the vivid picturesqueness of
contemporary life and scene. It is they who best continue, un-
der actual circumstances, the noblest of all Spanish aesthetic
traditions, the tradition of II Greco, Zurbaran, Velazquez, and
Goya. Nothing less racial or less replete with reality than the
canvases of SoroUa, Rusinol, Zuloaga, Anglada, and Bilbao
could possibly have brought Spanish painting back to the course

[ 246 ]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

whence it had aimlessly meandered after the death of Goya.
The debased classicism of Jose de Madrazo, the brilliant, facile
bric-a-brac of Fortuny, and the theatric naturalism of Pradilla
and Alisal had successively vitiated Peninsular taste almost be-
yond redemption. A great national quickening along all lines
of activity was necessary before art could regain her rightful
position, and it was this movement which alone gave birth to
the men of to-day. They are children of ** La Gloriosa,'* each of
them. Their pictures glow with warmth and intensity. Within
•the past decade they have utterly broken with influences French
and Italian. Names which a few years back loomed large —
'Bico, Zamacois, Villegas, Benlliure — ^have been rapidly fading
before the dazzling outdoor effulgence of Sorolla and the mas-
terly impersonations of Zuloaga. Inspiration has been found at
home, not abroad. The student no longer deems it essential to
go to Paris or to Rome. Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville offer
more consistent and profitable opportunities for self -develop-
ment. A wholesome nationalism has at last replaced an inter-,
nationalism whose fruits are ever scarce and ever bitter-sweet.
On 26 July 1870, the year Fortuny 's * Spanish Marriage !
was first exhibited in Paris, there was bom in a rambling, six-
teenth-century house at Eibar, in the Basque province of Viz-
caya, the foremost of this redoubtable band of Spanish nation-
alists. The short, diverse career of Ignacio Zuloaga throngs
with imusual incident. The Zuloagas are an energetic, creative
family, the direct descendants of that ancient Iberian stock
which early settled on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees and
has never migrated and never been dislodged. Placido Zuloaga,
the father of Ignacio, is widely known as the rediscoverer of the
art of damascene ; his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga, is head of the pot-
tery revival at Segovia, and his ancestors have for generations
been celebrated armourers, his great-grandfather having been
director of the Armeria of Madrid. The atmosphere into which

[ 247 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

Ignacio Zuloaga was born was an atmosphere of vigorous, con-
scious, and skillfully directed effort, tempered always by the
zealous conservatism of the past. As he grew to boyhood his
town was rapidly winning its title as the miniature Toledo of
the North, and on all sides could be heard the hum of fly-wheel
and the sound of the forge. Placido Zuloaga, a typical Cellini,
magnetic, polished, and self-willed, wished his son to study
mathematics and engineering, but the lad rebelled, and as a con-
sequence, and probably also for disciplinary reasons, the future
painter was placed in the foundry to learn the secrets of orna-
mental metal-work. "With the persistence and tenacity of his
race he laboured manfully along until able to support himself.
His life was practically that of a common apprentice. There
was little time for pelota or other favourite games, and though
he attended an occasional bull-fight, and enjoyed watching the
lithe dignity of the workmen and villagers as they passed along
the street or paused by the wayside for a friendly chat, he did
not think, in any definite way, of placing on record that varied
existence which teemed about him in such supple and colourful
beauty.

It is possible that Ignacio Zuloaga might have remained at
Eibar, and eventually have succeeded his father, had it not been
for a certain visit to Madrid where he saw for the first time the
incomparable masterpieces of the Prado. He forthwith felt im-
pelled to become an artist. The arid intricacies of mathematics
and the roar of the furnace were forever obliterated. He im-
mediately bought himself the requisite materials, and day after
day haunted the galleries, finally, without previous instruction,
producing an uncommonly able copy of one of II Greco's aris-
tocratic, black-robed nobles. Instinctively he had gone straight
to the treasure-house of Spanish painting, stepping at once into
that haughty, reticent heritage which had so long been ignored.
From the very beginning he identified himself with that which

[ 248 ]

DANIEL ZULOAGA AND HIS DAUGHTERS
By Ignacio Zuloaga
[The Luxembourg, Paris']

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

was most enduring and most significant in the art of his coun-
try, nor did any subsequent change of scene cause him to forsake
his destined field. Yet notwithstanding this unmistakable proof
of ability, enforced, as it was, by the lad's constantly renewed
pleading, neither Placido Zuloaga nor his wife had any desire
to see their son launched upon a career for which they had scant
sympathy and which had previously been ornamented by an
uncle of somewhat Bohemian propensities. His efforts were
ridiculed, and his ambitions frowned upon. Still he would not
renounce the beckoning promises of ultimate attainment, so was
at last reluctantly permitted to depart for Rome. He was but
eighteen at the time and from thenceforth chose to live upon his -
own resources, aided now and then by the little help a loving
mother could surreptitiously send him. His nature was forceful
and self-reliant. Though he paid homage to certain dominant
figures of the past, yet what he most loved was the restless human
drama which continually unfolded itself before his gaze. His
going to Rome in the footsteps of Fortuny and Villegas, proved,
like SoroUa's Italian interlude, a blunder, for there was little
this bright-eyed Montaiiese could learn under the shadow of
Raphael, or of Michelangelo, the stormy, solitary Titan of the
Renaissance. After floundering about for some weeks he was
threatened with the fever, and at length wisely turned his face
towards Paris. For reasons less picturesque than economic he
settled first on the heights of Montmartre, in the rue Cortot,
directly behind the gleaming basilica of Sacre-Coeur. He began
painting portraits and street views, none of which he could sell,,
and lived in practical isolation, almost his only companions be-
ing two compatriots, a sculptor and a painter, as ambitious and
as poverty-stricken as himself.

Although during the succeeding five years Zuloaga experi-
enced the most utter misery and disappointment, the sturdy
independence of his temper never relaxed. He studied alone,

[ 249 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

refusing to cheapen his ideals or to scramble into recognition by
clinging to the coat-tails of Bouguereau, Lefebvre, or Gerome.
During those dark, hopeless days which the artist cannot, even
now, recall without an involuntary shudder, he moved many
times, invariably by request, living by turns in the rue Durantin
and the rue des Saules, and also frequenting the little Spanish
colony in the ile Saint-Louis of which Rusinol was the most
prominent member. On several occasions Zuloaga collected in
his own humble studio, or in one he borrowed for the purpose,
a number of canvases. These he showed to his friends and a
stray dealer or two, yet invariably without material result.
Though he failed to dispose of a single picture the entire time,
it is possible that this shabby and pathetic probation was, on the
whole, beneficial. It proved at all events that Paris was not
the place for him, so after a brief sojourn in London, where he
painted a few portraits, he returned to Spain, making Seville
his headquarters. It was there, imder the burning blue of his
native sky, not amid the pearl-grey mist which bathes Paris,
that Zuloaga 's powers began to expand. It was the Calle de
las Sierpes and the Paseo de las Delicias, not the Champs-
Elysees or the Bois de Boulogne, which arrested his maturing
fancy. The painter must vaguely have been hungering all the
while for home, for he soon saw afresh the colour and felt anew
the magic fascination of life in each section of the Andalucian
capital. Like a true son of Spain he devoted himself to the
interpretation of character in all its primal flavour and accent.
A pronoimced love of humanity animated even those first some-
what rigid and forbidding attempts which were so instinct with
quiet restraint and histrionic veracity. Retaining meantime
his connections with Paris, he sent to the Salon two portraits,-
one of his grandmother, and one of * The Dwarf, Dom Pedro,'-
and the following year exhibited several canvases imder the
progressive though spasmodic auspices of Le Bare de Boutte-

[ 250 ]

-OLA, THE GITAXA

•y Ignacio Zuloaga

Possession of M. Henry Marcel, Paris]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

ville. Thougli his work was already individual in treatment and
conception, his success was only a fraction more encouraging
than before. The French public was not ready to welcome a
talent which was soon to capture all Europe, nor were the
artist's years of obscure endeavour yet at an end. Moreover,
the Spain which this young Basque painted with such refined,
silver-black severity was not the Spain to which Parisians, or
indeed Spaniards, were accustomed. It had nothing of the
sparkling, rococo daintiness of Fortimy, nor did it suggest the
chromolithography of the industrious Jules Worms. Ignacio
Zuloaga was bridging over an immediate and invertebrate past.
•He was deliberately going back to Goya, and even beyond him.
He was reading Spanish types and traits closer and deeper than
they had been read for at least a century.

Despairing not of his art, but of his ability to earn even a
meagre living by the brush, Zuloaga was for the time being
forced to renoimce painting. Although he might have returned
any moment to that big, sixteenth-century house with its massive
stairway and great, spacious rooms, he was too proud to think
of anything in the nature of a compromise. Possessing a pas-
sion for the past and all that appertains to bygone days, he
struggled along for awhile as a dealer in antiques. Finding few-
clients, he was later compelled to accept a modest clerical posi-.
tion with a mining company, but being inapt at figures, his
services were quickly dispensed with, and he again found him-
self adrift. During the two following years he travelled from
place to place, turning his hand to anything he could find and
enriching his vision through direct contact with humanity in
every quarter of the Peninsula. He lived with the muleteers in
the mountains, with the superstitious fanatics of Anso in Ara-
gon, and with the cutthroats of Las Batuecas on the Portuguese
frontier. There was literally nothing this resolute, voluntary
exile woidd not, and did not, suffer rather than acknowledge

[251]

MODERN ARTISTS

defeat. Finally, like many another of his courageous, clean-
limbed countrymen, he entered the bull-ring as a pupil of the
famous Carmona. The experience was not without precedent,
even for an artist, the volcanic Goya having years before worked
his way to the coast as a picador in his efforts to reach Rome.
In spite of a brilliant beginning Zuloaga was not, however, des-
tined to duplicate the suave triumphs of Cuchares or Lagar-
tijillo. After ceremoniously despatching eighteen bulls the
young espada was severely gored by the nineteenth, and, in con-
sequence, promised his distracted mother never to re-enter the
arena. It was while recuperating at the home of his uncle in
ascetic yet langorous Segovia that he returned to art with re-
ijewed enthusiasm, executing, among other works, the memor-
able triple portrait of * Daniel Zuloaga and his Daughters.* The •
picture proved the turning-point of his career. It was easily
the feature of the Salon of 1899 and was at once purchased for
the Luxembourg, which has since become so partial to the
younger Spanish artists. The painter-bull-fighter's wanderings
were for the time being over. He settled down to his life task
in a mood of manful sincerity and with each effort showed in-
creasing decision of choice and distinction of style. Like For-
tuny, who caught his single gleam of truth and reality from the
sun-scorched battle-fields of Morocco, it required a taste of that
passionate, animated outdoor existence which his countrymen
so love, to vivify the art of Ignacio Zuloaga. The years of wait-
ing had not been wasted. Nothing he had witnessed during that
active, observant period was ever lost or ever went for naught.
The entire cycle of popular life and character was at his fin-
ger-tips. He was at last able to give that intense impression
of things seen which has ever been the dominant note of Span-
ish painting.

It was but natural, after having so long been held in abey-
ance, that the artist's productive powers should have asserted

[252]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

themselves in no halting manner. Encouraged at last by the
fruits of success he devoted himself with ample, masterful
energy to the transcription of those grave or sprightly, those
sullen or vivacious, native types which have since become the
insignia of his work the world over. Once launched upon its
course, his star flashed with dazzling rapidity across the firma-
ment of Continental art. Spain alone hesitated to recognize or
honour him, not the least of his early humiliations being the
refusal of the local jury to accept three important canvases for
admission to the Spanish section at the Paris Exposition of 1900.
His pronounced anti-academic propensities, his unswerving in-
dependence of attitude, and the fact that he had never risked
formalizing his talent by tedious study at the schools were points
which these punctilious gentlemen were incapable of overlook-
ing. Barcelona, with its progressive Catalan initiative, was the
sole Spanish city to open its gates to the newcomer, and for.
Barcelona he has always retained a special fondness, sending,
indeed, to last season *s International Exposition no less than
thirty-four subjects which occupied, in all, two entire rooms.
The check which he had received at the hands of his compatriots
proved only momentary, for his chagrin at not being represented
at Paris was quickly forgotten with the triumphant reception
of the rejected pictures at the Libre Esthetique in Brussels and
the immediate purchase of one of them for the Modem Gallery
of the Belgian capital. During the past half-dozen years Zu-
loaga has been a favourite of each Salon, as well as a frequent
contributor to the annual displays in Berlin, Dresden, Munich,
Vienna, Venice, and London, where he invariably divides notice
with the strongest and most advanced men of the day. At the
Diisseldorf Exhibition of 1904 he was awarded the distinction,
accorded only to Menzel, Rodin, and himself, of being assigned a
special room, where eighteen representative works were placed
on view. Almost a score of European museums possess pictures

[253]

MODERN ARTISTS

from his tireless brush, and there is at the present moment prac-
tically no living artist whose productions are more sought after,
or which command higher figures, than those of this painter of
eight-and-thirty who, a decade ago, was imable to boast a single
patron or purchaser.

There should be no difficulty in accounting for the vogue of
Ignacio Zuloaga. It was an ethnic as well as an aesthetic thrill
which this young Spaniard gave the world of art, a world sati-
ated with studio abstractions and weary of academic conven-
tions. It is to the lasting honour of Zuloaga that he has dedi-
cated his powers to the delineation of episodes and incidents with
which he is familiar, not to themes for which he has little sym-
pathy or of which he possesses scant knowledge. It is because
he touches life at first hand, and because he has never been
paralyzed by routine that his work reflects so abundantly that
racial quality which is its chief characteristic, and, in a sense,
its main reason for existence. Always regional, always topical,
there is about these paintings an ethnographical fidelity which
is unmistakable. Not only is it inmiediately apparent that these
subjects are Spanish, it is also possible to tell from what province
they come and to what particular social stratum they belong.
In the hundred-odd canvases which Zuloaga has placed to his
credit can be studied as nowhere, save from the originals them-
selves, those deep-rooted factors which have moulded into dis-
tinct types the seductive Andaluz, the aggressive Basque, the
haughty Castilian, or the sturdy, half -Moorish Valencian. The
triimaph of this latest recruit to be admitted to the category
of the masters recalls the triumph of Spanish painting in its
days of glory. His art, like that of his great, austere prede-
cessors, is an art which is based upon observation, which is
founded upon the realities of the world external and the world
internal. Like the solemn, disdainful Velazquez, Zuloaga cares
for little beside truth and a compelling manipulative mastery.

[254]

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IGNACIO ZULOAGA

He never leaves the realm of fact or of accurately specialized
feeling. The faces one meets in his huge, affirmative pictures
are the faces known to Spanish art, as well as to Spanish society,
for centuries. Unbroken and scarcely unchanged throughout
the ages have come down to us profiles that are Caesarean, a
dusky beauty that is Saracenic, and the erect carriage of cava-
liers whose insolent grace was the marvel of many a European
battle-field. If Zuloaga's men and women suggest those of II
Greco or Velazquez, it is because he is depicting their very
descendants, not simply imitating the modes of former days.
The grave seigniors of each Pintor del Camara still walk the
streets of Madrid muffled in their dark cloaks, the pallid ascetics
of Zurbaran still live among the Andalucian moimtains, and the
same dwarfs and beggars that look from the walls of the Prado
also shuffle by in tattered swarms or sun themselves beside
church door. Behind Zuloaga^s expressive silhouettes, just as
behind * Philip ^ and * Baltasar Carlos ' sweep the grey-toned
landscapes of Castile and Aragon. From first to last Spanish
» art has remained objective and positive. It was for long periods
.ardently Christian, but was never enslaved by the sensuous
afterglow of paganism nor has it since become sentimental or
fantastic. Painters of other lands have enjoyed the widest lati-
tude. The truly Spanish artist has from the beginning known
but two sources of inspiration — Church and Country. Though •
there is much in Zuloaga^s work which goes further back — ^back
to the noble hauteur of the early manner — ^he continues more
specifically the legacy of the belligerent and mercurial Goya.
The spirit of Goya's * Manolas on the Balcony * is the spirit of
the younger man's production. While Zuloaga's sense of colour
is far richer and more sonorous, he shares both the acidity and
the nervous alertness of the man who was the true parent of
present-day Spanish painting, who was, in fact, the last of old
masters and the first of modems.

[ 255 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

Essentially a rationalist in feeling, Zuloaga is little concerned
.■with sacred or pietistic themes. He is content to portray man
and woman amid the incidental occupations or diversions of
quotidian existence. It is thus to Velazquez and Goya rather
than to the fanatical realism of Ribera or the more chastened
ecstasy of Zurbaran that he reverts in the matter of choice of
subject. It is the world of to-day that he sets in motion before^
the eyes, and to which he adds his brilliant sobriety of tint and
frankly effective taste for composition. Although there is no
phase of contemporary activity with which he is not conversant,
it is the purely exterior aspects that most attract him. A street
scene, a group of women leaning from the window, or a glimpse
of the crowded arena, are sufficient to furnish him with the
requisite graphic essentials. His vision was never bounded by
the grim walls and gloomy corridors of the Alcazar. All Spain
lay open to him, and in his paintings all Spain finds its echo.
During those first wonderfully expansive years when he was
winning his initial laurels in Paris and in Germany, his vivacity
and fecundity were little short of phenomenal. Each effort was
a fresh triumph. The success of * Daniel Zuloaga and his
Daughters,' with its trinity of dark-clad figures standing sharp
against the blue Segovian sky and wide-horizon plain, was
quickly followed by the fluent pictorial elegance of the * Prome-
nade after the Bull-fight,' a canvas which, for versatile beauty
of colouration and flexible, authoritative handling, he has never
surpassed. In the old, lean days, which, in truth, were not so
long since, when he exhibited in the rue Le Peletier, it was
** White Spain " which he chiefly painted. As his eye became
more eager, and his palette more opulent, he added tone after
tone. While affecting none of the crude glitter of certain of
his colleagues he gradually grew enamoured of deep reds, raisin-
browns, olive-greens, orange-yellows, and the cerulean intensity
of cloudless firmament. Not infrequently, when Anglada and

[256]

THE PICADOR, EL CORIANO

By Ignacio Zuloaga
[Courtesy of the artist]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

he would send their throbbing canvases to foreign exhibitions,
it became necessary to redecorate the room in which they were
hung, or at all events to exercise the most scrupulous care re-
specting their entourage. Something in the nature of a subtle
contempt for less lavishly endowed talents seems always to linger
about these pictures which, one and all, pulsate with the torrid
blood of the Peninsula. Though their schemes are often sober
and contained, even black assumes with these men, as it does
with Velazquez, the properties of a colour. With rare excep-
tions they do not employ the broken tones of their French con-
temporaries. While the more Parisian Anglada at times recalls -
Besnard, both SoroUa and Zuloaga prefer full brushes and a
broad, sweeping stroke.

It is not alone society on dress parade which Zuloaga has
portrayed. He has also descended into that dark and semi-
savage underworld of love, passion, and hatred which seethes
about the roots of the Spanish tree of life. He knows intimately
the majas and gitanas of the SeviUian Triana, and naturally
they, too, often figure in his work with their glistening, car-
nivorous teeth, their avid glances, and insinuating gait. Here
also, has he extended the scope of art, and added, at least pic-
torially, to the varied treasury of human emotion. The infec-
tious and somewhat ingenuous coquetry of * Lola ' blends into
a more deliberate and insistent artifice with the painted and
pencilled Carmens of the * Calle del Amor.' The expectant
charm of * Consuelo's ' pose becomes alive with rhjrthmic, fre-
netic fire in * The Spanish Dancers.' A thick coating of rice
powder and a saffron-hued mantilla are the badges of these
wilful, unredeemed creatures who ever lie in wait for the weak
or the unwary yet who never found their true interpreter imtil
Zuloaga rendered them in all their flaunting, instinctive primity.
Although women predominate, it is not woman alone that the
painter depicts, for numerous canvases have been dedicated to

[257]

MODERN ARTISTS

the most obviously masculine creations Spain has thus far pro-
duced— ^the picador, the matador, and the torero. For blunt,-
ruthless power of individualization the scarred, leathery coun-
tenance of * El Coriano ^ occupies a place by itself in this gallery
of corrida heroes, nor has the artist since excelled the stolid
standing likeness of * El Bunolero,' about whom clings the
mingled dust and blood of countless bull-ring combats. Still
another territory has been conquered by this ready pioneer of
tiie brush. It is the shabby, shifting kingdom of laconic dwarfs,
ragged mendicants, bronzed water-carriers, or itinerate fruit-
venders, which forms such an integral portion of Spanish life.
Needless to add, he is as much at home in the province of the
picaresque as anywhere else, since it is a world which has been
peculiarly dear to Peninsular author and artist since the days of
Hurtado de Mendoza and Murillo. For anything comparable
to * Segovians Drinking * or the sun-tanned and doubtless sala-
cious interlocutor in * A Passing Sally ' it is, however, necessary
to go back to * The Topers ' of the Prado. The softly affable
Murillo never had at his command such a fund of sardonic
strength or such stark brutality of statement. In the treatment
of single figure, or of larger composition, in his likeness of the
poet, * Don Miguel,' the dancer, * Lolita,' or in the * Bull-fight
in my Village,' Zuloaga, during those early years, displayed the
same fullness of vision and completeness of suggestion. Char-
acteristic strips of landscape always stretched away from each
group giving that sense of receding space which is one of the>
special charms of these pictures. Each and all, they were su-
premely effective in placing and arrangement. While the
painter made no undue sacrifices to attain an immediate, in-
stantaneous appeal, he seemed to possess, in a superlative de-
-gree, the scenic gift.

Though Zuloaga lives nominally at Eibar, or in Paris, he is
in reality an insatiate wanderer. He owns no regular studio,

'[258]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

but carries about with him over the rugged face of Spain
brushes, colours and canvas, selecting whatever fits his mood or
his feeling for the picturesque. He will hastily install an assort-
ment of local models in a room in his hotel, in sunlit courtyard,
or on sloping sierra-side open to the sky and the four winds of
heaven. It is unknown, and almost inaccessible Spain that he -
constantly seeks, and the most savage and solitary comers of
the kingdom are his familiar haimts. His experiences have been
innumerable, and he does not hesitate to recount them with a
fund of illuminative detail. In the course of these pilgrimages
he has often been forced to subsist upon roots, like the poorest
peasant, and has at times encountered the most irredeemable
ignorance and suspicion. A few years since, in Salamanca, he
was accused, with considerably less authority than was the
irascible Herrera in his day, of being a counterfeiter, and not
long afterward, while alone in his automobile, he was mistaken
for the devil and knocked insensible by a vicious and well-di-
rected hail of missiles. It was his somewhat mixed pleasure to
discover, on a certain memorable occasion, that even in the hid-
den recesses of his beloved country the higher claims of art are
treated seriously. When he was one day disposing his im-
promptu models for a large and important composition the
members of one group did not fancy the way those for another
portion of the scheme were posing, and on expressing their dis-
approval, a conflict was precipitated with the result that not
enough able-bodied participants were left with which to com-
plete the picture. Nor was it without a touch of discretionary
agility that the unwitting cause of the melee rolled up his big,
wet canvas and departed for more pacific surroundings. Of late
these expeditions have increased, rather than diminished, in
number and in frequency. Almost every summer Zuloaga
spends several weeks on tour, often accompanied by his greatest
friend and admirer, Auguste Rodin, who is unfailingly enthusi-

[2591

MODERN ARTISTS

astic over the plastic grace and sculpturesque mien of even the
sorriest wayfarer who, as a rule, comports himself like a soldier
of Spinola or, indeed, some far off Arab tribesman.

Next to painting, Zuloaga prefers the eager joys and unex-
pected triumphs of the antiquary and the collector, the rewards
of recent years having enabled him to accumulate a remarkable
array of Spanish masters numbering some three hundred in all.
With his knowledge of art both classic and contemporary, and
his unequalled opportimities, he has managed to acquire for a
mere pittance several of the foremost existing examples of II
Greco and Goya, the two men in which his gallery is richest.
In order properly to house his purchases he has built himself a
miniature museum in the garden adjoining the family home at
Eibar, and now, as always, the twin sources of his inspiration
remain the simple dignity of the ancient world and the shifting
pageant of modem life. With each year, almost, his field
changes. He has latterly forsaken the bespangled attractions
of Seville's Macarena, and at present prefers the vineyards of
La Rioja where he is engaged in painting the local saturnalia.
Still another departure is a poignant, Dantesque conception en-
titled * The Penitents,' which is full of dramatic, sanguinary
frenzy. Isolated figures of trenchant power and intensity such
as * The Old Hermit ' and * The Image Seller ' add further di-
versity to a production which shows but slight diminution either
in range or in quality. There are, nevertheless, a few dissent-
ing voices among the former devotees of Zuloaga 's work. It is
hinted that he has exhausted his originality and piquancy, that
his more recent types seem pattern-made and lacking in verve
and spontaneity. In a limited degree such strictures are not
without foundation, nor, considering certain factors in his
progress and development, could it hardly be otherwise. He
has seen everything and remembers accurately everything he
has seen. The material for his paintings circles about him in a

[260]

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

contimious series of picturesque and variegated panoramas.
The temptation to arrest the revolutions of this moving picture
apparatus and to repeat given gestures, attitudes, groups, and
scenes has not always been resisted. Touches of the arbitrary
and the automatic are here and there visible. In more than one
instance the human equation has been overemphasized, and now
and then, as for example in * Lassitude,' the scarlet trail of the
serpent spreads itself across an art never, in fact, far removed
from the bypaths of sensuality.

Granting the force of his handling and his manifest faculty
for characterization it is none the less evident that Zuloaga lacks
the splendid, salubrious vitality of his Valencian colleague So-
rolla, whose spirit is ever refreshed by the brisk sea wind and
the inexhaustible fertility of nature. With no such counter-
poise there is a possibility of his entering and remaining inside
that hot prison-house of passion at the doors of which he now
stands. And, moreover, the sudden and widespread vogue
which he has enjoyed has perhaps bred within him a certain lack
of vigilance, a suspicion of that easeful arrogance and superior-
ity which have more than once proved disastrous to the race to
which he belongs. Alike in its virtues and its defects, there are
numerous hereditary affinities between the art of Zuloaga and
the art of his great forebears of the brush, just as there are
between the Spain of yesterday and the Spain of to-day. It
would hence be manifestly absurd to expect a man of Zuloaga *s
birth and training to be other than he is, or to paint other than
he has painted. However insistent and emphatic it may seem
to us, the ardent pictorialism of his manner is essentially true
to Peninsular life and traditions. Those identical qualities
which appear unreal to foreign eyes, are in fact reality of the
most pronounced type; and herein lies the strength of an art
the graphic verity of which, though at times somewhat formal
and summary, must nevertheless remain unquestioned. And,

[261]

MODERN ARTISTS

after all, Zuloaga has amply earned the right to depict his
country and his countrymen as he may see fit. He is a Span-
iard through and through. He has read Spanish character in
its most secret and intimate phases, and no one knows better
than he that behind the laugh of cigarrera and the defiant
bearing of torero lurks a latent diabolism which has not yet
been subdued. Nor does anyone realize more clearly that the
majority of his own virile, sultry figures are stencilled against
a backgroimd which still remains sinister and inscrutable.

[262]

INDEX TO ARTISTS

INDEX TO ARTISTS

Alexander, John W., 230
Alisal, Jose Casado del, 247
Allegrain, Christophe-Gabriel, 10
Allegri, Antonio (Correggio), 212
Alma-Tadema, Laurens, 218
Anglada y Camarosa, Hermen, 246,
256, 257

Barbarelli, Giorgio (Giorgione), 50,

123
Bardi, Donato di Betto (Donatello),

194
Barocci, Federigo, 7
Bartels, Hans von, 214
Bastien-Lepage, Jules, 176, 184, 219
Baud-Bovy, Auguste, 200
Beauvarlet, Jacques-Francois, 20
Begas, Reinhold, 65, 69, 123
Behnes, William, 49
Benlliure y Gil, Jose, 247
Benois, Alexander, 149
Benson, Frank W., 213
Berrettini, Pietro (da Cortona), 7
Besnard, Paul-Albert, 150, 167, 213,

257
Bilbao, Gonzalo, 246
Bistolfi, Leonardo, 207
Blake, William, 38
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, 186
Bocklin, Arnold, 61-77, 119, 123
Bonington, Richard Parkes, 175

Bonnat, Leon-Joseph-Florentin, 119

Bonvin, Frangois, 100

Borch, Gerard ter, the Younger, 13

Borovikovsky, V. L., 136

Boucher, Frangois, 4, 6, 7, 21, 230

Bouguereau, Adolphe-William, 36,
250

Boulanger, Gustave-Rodolphe- Clar-
ence, 176, 215

Boulle, Andre-Charles, 12

Bracquemond, Felix, 100

Braz, J. E., 148

Bree, Matthias Ignatius Van, 29, 31

Brown, Ford Madox, 81, 82

Briick, Paul, 63

Brulov, C. P., 137, 149

Bruni, F. A., 137

Bugatti, Carlo, 195

Buonarroti, Miehelagnolo (Michel-
angelo), 7, 26, 29, 31, 37, 55, 92,
177, 249

Calame, Alexandre, 199
Cals, Adolphe-Felix, 81
Cameron, D. Y., 178
Canale, Antonio (Canaletto), 105
Capronnier, J. B., 86
Carolus-Duran, Charles-Auguste-
Emile, 157, 158, 159, 160, 239
Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste, 215
Carriere, Eugene, 150, 222
[ 265 ]

MODERN ARTISTS

Cassatt, Mary, 213 Ferragutti, Adolfo, 198

CeUini, Benvenuto, 12, 248 Fetodov, P. A., 137

Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon, 6, 13, Feuerbach, Anselm, 62, 65

21
Clone, Andrea di (Orcagna), 50
Claus, Emile, 213
Clausen, George, 235
Constable, John, 175
Cornelius, Peter von, 62
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille, 67

Filipepi, Alessandro di Mariano (Bot-
ticelli), 161,230

Fortuny y Carbo, Mariano Jose Ma-
ria Bernado, 247, 249, 252

Fragonard, Alexandre-Evariste, 12,
18

Fragonard, Jean-Honore, 3-22, 230

Courbet, Gustave, 61, 81, 82, 99, 103, Fraikin, Charles-Auguste, 84

Francesca, Piero della (dei' Fran-

ceschi), 161
FrMeric, Leon, 83

Gainsborough, Thomas, 160, 230, 231
Gebhardt, Karl Franz Eduard von,

215
Gellee, Claude (Lorrain), 67
Gerard, Henri, 12

107, 149, 211, 212
Coysevox, Antoine, 3
Cozette, Pierre-FrauQois, 10
Cremona, Tranquillo, 198

Dannat, William T., 221

David, Jacques-Louis, 12, 15, 18, 19,

21, 25, 136

Decamps, Alexandre-Gabriel, 34

Degas, Hilaire-Germain-Edgard, 165, G^^ard, Marguerite, 12, 14, 18, 19

213 Gericault, Jean -Louis -Andre -Theo-

Delacroix, Ferdinand- Victor-Eugene, ^^^.^ gj^

34, 38, 62 Gerome, Jean-Leon, 250

Delaroche, Hippolyte (Paul), 62 Giacometti, Giovanni, 206

Dill, Ludwig, 175 Qjotto di Bondone, 50

Doyen, Gabriel-Frangois, 9 Girardon, Frangois, 3

Dreber, Heinrich Franz- (Karl Hein- (jieyre, Marc-Charles-Gabriel, 103

rich-Dreber) , 65
Drouais, Frangois-Hubert, 10
Diirer, Albrecht, 225
Dyck, Anthonie van, 4, 120, 163, 225,

229, 231

Edelfeldt, Albert, 221
Etex, Antoine, 215

Fantin-Latour, Ignace-Henri-Jean-
Th6odore, 100, 103, 106, 109

Golovin, A. J., 151

Gouthiere, Pierre-Joseph-D6sire, 10

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose,

165, 246, 251, 252, 255, 256, 260
Grabar, Igor, 149
Grafle, Albert, 122
Greiner, Otto, 63
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 10, 12
Groux, Charles de, 33, 83, 85
Groux, Henry de, 38
[266]

INDEX TO ARTISTS

Gnibicy de Dragon, Yittore, 195, 198,

204
Guthrie, Sir James, 177, 185
Gysis, Nikolas, 76

Hall, Peter Adolf, 12, 15

Halle, Noel, 10

Hals, Frans, the Elder, 167, 177, 224

Hassam, Childe, 213

Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 38

Helleu, Paul-Cesar, 186

Henry, George, 178, 179

Herrera, Francisco de, the Elder, 259

Herreyns, Willem Jacob, 29

Herrmann, Hans, 215

Hildebrand, Theodor, 65

Hiroshige, 110

Hitchcock, George, 213

Hobbema, Meindert, 13, 217

Hoelzel, Adolf, 175

Hofner, Johann Baptist, 121

Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 64, 75,

128, 156, 224
Hoppner, John, 230
Homel, Edward A., 188

larochenko, N. A., 138, 141

Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 62

Israels, Jozef, 218

Ivanov, A. A., 137

Ivanov, M. F., 148

Jeanron, Philippe-Auguste, 81
Juon, Constantin, 149

Kampf, Arthur, 215

Kaulbach, Friedrieh August von, 129

Kaulbach, Wilhelm von, 62

Kempeneer, Pieter de (Pedro Cam-

pana), 86
Khnopff, Fernand, 38
Kiprensky, 0. A., 136
Klinger, Max, 63
KoUer, Rudolf, 65
Korovin, C. A., 149
Kramskoy, I. N., 138, 140, 141

Laermans, Eugene, 38, 83

La Gandara, Antonio de, 186

Lancret, Nicolas, 3

Landseer, Sir Edwin Henry, 233

Landsinger, Sigmund, 63

Lasius, Otto, 72

Launay, Nicolas de, 9, 12, 20

Lavery, 'John, 173-188, 236

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 231, 240

L^bedev, M. J., 138

Le Brun, Charles, 3

Lecomte, Felix, 10

Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 10, 11

Lefebvre, Jules-Joseph, 176, 215, 250

Legros, Alphonse, 100

Leibl, Wilhelm, 214, 219

Leighton, Frederic, Baron of Stret-

ton, 178, 238
Lenbach, Franz von, 69, 117-132, 147
Le Notre, Andre, 3
Lepaute, Jean- Andre, 10
Lesueur, Pierre, 19
Levitan, I. I., 149
Levitzky, D. G., 136
Lieb, Michael (Munkacsy Mihaly),

72, 219, 221
Liebermann, Max, 61, 214, 218
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 179
Linton, Sir James D., 179

[267]

MODERN ARTISTS

Loo, Charles- Andre Van (Carle), 7,

10
Lotto, Lorenzo, 119

Madrazo, Jose de, 247

Makart, Hans, 72, 150

Makovsky, C. G., 147

Maliavin, P. A., 148, 149

Malutin, S. B., 151

Manet, Edouard, 100, 103, 149, 159,

181, 212, 221
Mantegna, Andrea, 195
May, Phil, 237
Meer, Johannes van der, van Delft

(Vermeer), 13
Mehoffer, Joseph, 119
Melehers, Julius Gari, 176, 211-225,

236, 240
Melville, Arthur, 188
Menpes, Mortimer, 235
Menzel, Adolph Friedrich Erdmann

von, 61, 82, 129, 139, 149, 253
Meunier, Constantin, 33, 81-95
Meunier, Jean-Baptiste, 84
Meunier, Karl, 89
Michel, Claude-FrauQois (Clodion),

92
Millais, Sir John Everett, 238
Millet, Jean-Frangois, 81, 82, 93, 198,

218
Minne, George, 83
Monet, Claude-Jean, 150, 166, 195,

212, 213
Monticelli, Adolphe, 173
Moore, Albert, 106
Moreau, Gustave, 61, 62
Morizot, Berthe (Mme. Eugene Ma-
net), 21

Moroni, Giovanni Battista, 119
Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 258

Natoire, Charles-Joseph, 7
Neff, T. A., 137
Nittis, Giuseppe de, 221

Opie, John, 231

Orlovsky, A. J., 137

Overbeck, Johann Friedrich, 62

Pajou, Augustin, 10

Parsons, Alfred, 236

Pasternak, L. J., 137

Pater, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph, 3

Perov, V. G., 137, 141

Phidias, 46

PidoU, Karl von, 63

Piloty, Carl Theodor von, 62, 122,

150
Pissarro, Lucien-Camille, 212, 213
Poussin, Nicolas, 38, 67, 136
Poynter, Sir Edward John, 235, 236
Pradilla, Francisco, 247
Preller, Friedrich, the Elder, 69
Previati, Gaetano, 198
Prinsep, Valentine Cameron (Val),

225
Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre-Cecile,

61, 216, 221, 222

Reni, Guido, 136
Renoir, Firmin-Auguste, 212, 213
Repin, Ilya Efimovitch, 135-152
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 230, 231
Ribera, Jusepe de (Lo Spagnoletto) ,

145, 256
Rico, Martin, 247
Rijn, Rembrandt Harmensz. van, 102,

119, 122, 217, 229

[268]

INDEX TO ARTISTS

Robert, Hubert, 7, 12, 15

Robert, Leopold-Louis, 31

Robinet, Paul-Gustave, 200

Robusti, Jacopo (Tintoretto), 50

Roche, Alexander, 176, 177, 178, 183

Rochegrosse, Georges, 215

Rodin, Frangois-Auguste, 179, 253,

259
Romney, George, 230, 231
Rops, Felicien, 38
Rossetti, Gabriel Charles Dante, 106,

111, 232
Rubens, Petrus Paulus, 13, 21, 26, 29,

31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 71, 95, 120,

122, 123, 167, 177, 231
Ruisdael, Jacob Isaaeksz. van, 13, 217
Rusinol, Santiago, 246, 250

Serov, V. A., 137, 148, 149
Shannon, James Jebusa, 179, 225,

229-242
ShishMn, I., 138
Sisley, Alfred, 212, 213
Solimena, Francesco, 7
Somoff, Constantin, 149
Sorolla y Bastida, Joaquin, 213, 246,

247, 249, 257, 261
Stauffer-Bem, 72
Sternberg, V. J., 137
Stieler, Josef Karl, 125
Stuck, Franz von, 63, 76

Tarbell, Edmund C, 213
Theotocopuli, Domenico (II Greco),

246, 248, 255, 260
Thoma, Hans, 63
Thorvaldsen, Bertel, 31
Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 7, 21
Topffer, J. Rudolf, 199
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 105

Saint-Aubin, Gabriel de, 7
Saint-Non, Jean-Claude-Richard de,

7, 12, 18
Samberger, Leo, 131
Sandreuter, Hans, 63
Santi, Raffaello (Raphael), 4, 7, 35,

37, 95, 128, 136, 249
Sargent, John Singer, 119, 155-169,

179, 218, 229, 230, 232, 236, 238
Savrassov, A. K., 138
Schadow, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 62 Vasse, Louis-Claude, 10

Uhde, Fritz von, 214, 218, 219
Unger, Hans, 63
Urban, Hermann, 63

Schirmer, Johann Wilhelm, 65

Schmarov, P. D., 148

Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius, 62

Schwind, Moritz von, 63

Segantini, Giovanni, 191-207, 213,

218
Segantini, Gottardo, 206, 207
Segantini, Mario, 206, 207
Seidl, Gabriel von, 124

Vecelli, Tiziano (Titian), 50, 120,
122, 123, 131, 156, 162, 177

Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva
y, 106, 109, 123, 128, 159, 160, 167,
177, 181, 183, 212, 229, 232, 246,
254, 255, 256, 257

Venezianov, A. G., 137

Verestchagin, V. V,, 138

Verheyden, Isidore, 95
[269]

MODERN ARTISTS

Vemet, Antoine-Charles-Horace

(Carle), 12
Vemet, Claude-Joseph, 10, 12
Vien, Joseph-Marie, 11
Villegas, Jose de, 247, 249
Vinci, Leonardo da, 156, 195
Vogel, Hugo, 215
Vrubel, M. A., 151

Walton, Edward Arthur, 177, 178
Wappers, Gustaaf, Baron, 33
"Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 3, 4, 21
"Watts, George Frederick, 43-58, 61,

62, 163, 225, 232
Welti, Albert, 63

Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 99-
113, 157, 169, 174, 179, 180, 181,
183, 230, 235

Wiertz, Antoine, 25-40

Winterhalter, Franz Xaver, 122

Worms, Jules, 251

Zamaeois, Edoardo, 247
Zorn, Anders L., 167
Ziigel, Heinrich, 150
Zuloaga, Daniel, 247, 252, 256
Zuloaga, Ignaeio, 245-262
Zuloaga, Placido, 247, 248, 249
Zurbaran, Francisco de, 246, 255, 256

[270]

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