PERSONALITIES IN ART

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TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.

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151

r 15 '*

DATS. EA.1E

BOOKS BY ROYAL CORTISSOZ

PERSONALITIES IN ART
AMERICAN ARTISTS
NINE HOLES OF GOLF
LIFE OF WHITELAW REID
ART AND COMMON SENSE

CHARLES SCPJBNER'S SONS

Personalities in Art

HEAD OF THE VIRGIN
PROM THE DRAWING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI

PersonalMe&in Art

By Royal Cortissoz

Author of "American Artists," "Art and Common Sense,"

"John La Farge : A Memoir and a Study,"

"Augustus Saint-Gaudens," etc.

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York - London

MCMXXV

COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1925, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Copyrif ht,'1921, 1922, 1923, bjr THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE, INC.
Copyright, 1924, 1925, by THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, INC.

Printed in the United States of America

BINDERY APR 41949

'> 9

'23

Contents

CHAPTER

I. THE ART OE ART CRITICISM

II. THE ART CRITIC AS ICONOCLAST .... 15

I. PROFESSOR VAN DYKE ON REMBRANDT . 17

H. PROFESSOR VAN DYKE ON VERMEER . . 37

III. THE THIRTY-NINTH VERMEER ..... 45

IV. LEONARDO'S LEGACY or BEAUTY .... 51
V. RAPHAEL AND THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING 63

VI. RELIGIOUS PAINTING ........ 77

VII. THE CULT OF THE DRAWING ..... 93

VIII. VENICE AS A PAINTING-GROUND .... 107

IX. SILHOUETTES OF OLD MASTERS ..... 123

i. VAN DYCK'S "DAEDALUS AND ICARUS" . 125

H. VELASQUEZ'S "DYING SENECA" . . . 128
in. TWO PORTRAITS BY REYNOLDS AND GAINS

BOROUGH ......... 132

X. RAEBURN V .......... 139

XI. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ...... 149

I. HUBERT ROBERT ........ !$!

II. A PORTRAIT BY DAVID ...... 1 59

in. PRUD'HON ......... 165

XII. GAVARNI ........... 167

XIII. DAUMIER *" ........... 181

XIV. COURBET ........... 193

v

vi Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XV. Puvis DE CHAVANNES 203

XVI DEGAS 219

I. AS PAINTER AND DRAFTSMAN . . . 221

IL AS A MAN 232

HI. AS A SCULPTOR 245

IV. AS A COLLECTOR ...... 249

XVII MONET 259

XVIII. SEVEN RENOIRS 273

XIX. ODILON REDON 285

XX. CEZANNE . , , 291

XXI. GAUGUIN 303

XXII VAN GOGH / 315

XXIII. EARLY AMERICAN PORTRAITURE . . . 321

XXIV. THE AMERICAN WING AT THE MF.TROPOLI-

TAN MUSEUM . , p\- .\^if . . . 335
1 <*' ^» '' *

v

XXV. THE AMERICAN BUSINESS BUILDING . . 351

XXVI. AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL ART . : ^ . . . 369

XXVIL THE CENTENARY OP GEORGE INNESS . . 383

XXVIII. J. ALDEN WEIR . 397

XXIX. ROBERT BLUM 407

xxx. "291" 417

XXXI FORTUNY ........... 433

XXXII ZORN . . , . . 437

Illustrations

Head of the Virgin Frontispiece

From, the Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

FACING PAGE

Head of a Young Boy 48

From the Painting by Vermeer

Raphael 66

From the Portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo

Giuliano de Medici, Duke of Nemours ..... 68
From the Portrait by Raphael

The Ascension 88

From the Painting by John La Farge

Paulus Hofhaimer * . „ . . 100

From the Drawing by Albrecht Durer

Venice 118

From the Painting by John Sargent

Daedalus and Icarus 126

From the Painting by Van Dyck

The Dying Seneca * . . . . 130

From the Painting by Velasquez

Mrs. Vere of Stonebyres 144

From the Painting by Raeburn

Lavoisier and His Wife 160

From the Painting by David

Le Cambrioleur 174

From the Drawing by Gavarni

Portrait of a Man in the Studio of an Artist ... 222
From the Painting by Degas

Figure from "The Duo" 232

From the Drawing by Degas

vii

viii Illustrations

TACING PAGE

Dancers 246

From the Bronzes by Degas

Matinee sur la Seine «, , „ 268

From the Painting by Claude Monet

Danseuse 280

From the Painting by Renoir

Mrs. Richard Yates • , . 330

From the Portrait by Gilbert Stuart

Russek's . . 356

From the Building by McKim, Mead & White

The Moorish Knife Grinder 432

From the Painting by Fortuny

Personalities in Art

I

The Art of Art Criticism

I

THE ART OF ART CRITICISM

THE most interesting thing in the world for the
art critic in the summer of 1923 was the play of the
limelight around — the art critic. Ordinarily he is
one of the least conspicuous of mortals. In a prac
tical age he is dedicated to the disinterested pursuit
of ideas having no practical value. He exercises func
tions which have nothing on earth to do with the
affairs engaging the majority of mankind. He is to
a captain of industry what an astronomer is to a
movie star. He could not, if he would, buy an old
master; he can only talk about it. But in the year
1923 this talk of his for a little while shared public
attention with the occupation of the Ruhr, the diva
gations of Signor Mussolini, and all the other high-
erected themes of a distracted period. With the tidy
sum of half a million dollars involved, it was deemed
worth while to call in the art critic, a circumstance
almost giving him a "practical" status, almost ally
ing him with "big business."

I refer to the cause c&lebre of "La Belle Ferron-
niere," the lady otherwise known as Lucrezia Crivelli,
whose portrait by Leonardo da Vinci has long been

Personalities in Art

one of the treasures of the Louvre. Mrs. Andr6e
Halm, of Kansas City, owns a portrait of the same
subject which she attributes to the same master, and
which she proposed to sell to the Kansas City Mu
seum for $500,000. Sir Joseph Duveen's assertion
that the painting 'was not a Leonardo held up the
transaction, whereupon Mrs. Hahn brought suit to
recover from him the amount named. I have not
seen the picture. I have no opinion to express upon
it. But I have been fascinated by that other picture
presented by the situation developed in preparation
for the trial.

Mrs. Hahn's painting was submitted in Paris to
the scrutiny of a galaxy of all the critical talents,
gathered together by Sir Joseph Duveen. Mr. Ber
nard Berenson came over from Italy. Sir Charles
Holmes, of the National Gallery, arrived from Lon
don. Herr Bode was expected from Berlin, but, I be
lieve, could not come. This was, perhaps, as well,
since Mrs. Hahn's attorney, who was present at all
these proceedings, might have dragged in disconcert
ing allusions to another Leonardesque incident, that
of the famous wax bust. But it is not my object to
enumerate here the entire personnel of the critical
clan. The point is simply that the clan was sum
moned, and that the world on both sides of the At
lantic respectfully listened to what it had to say.
And while they waited to see which side should pre
vail, many observers were doubtless moved to reflec-

The Art of Art Criticism

tion and inquiry on the whole broad question of the
role of the critic. If he is to play his part in court
along with the other experts familiar there, with the
authorities on chemistry, engineering, lunacy, and so
on, how far do his credentials go and what is the story
of their establishment?

In the eyes of a multitude of artists the critic is an
enemy of mankind, and it is easy to see how this no
tion has arisen. Consider the difference between the
chemist and the art critic, functioning as experts. It
embraces a crucial element. One deals with insensate
things; the other with the works of human beings.
The chemist hurts no feelings; the art critic some
times rasps them horribly. Judge Parry, in a delight
ful paper on the celebrated case of Whistler vs. Ruskin,
in which his father, Sergeant Parry, appeared for the
plaintiff, recalls an apposite story. Ruskin wrote to
a friend that he hoped a devastating criticism he had
published on that individual's picture would make no
difference in their friendship. "Dear Ruskin," re
plied the artist, "next time I meet you I shall knock
you down, but I hope it will make no difference in
our friendship." There is the nubbin of the question
as it lies between the artist and the critic. Wounded
amour propre has never yet permitted a man to reason
impersonally. The validity of criticism as an art
passes right out of the consciousness of an artist who
has been rubbed the wrong way. This leads to some
droll attitudes. An actor, for example, will tell you

Personalities in Art

that the fate of a play, by which we may suppose
him to mean judgment on its merits, depends upon
the opinions passing in conversation among theatre
goers. He will respect the simple statement of " Good "
or "Rotten," which may be heard as the audience
disperses. The statement, of course, may be made
by an auditor who knows nothing about the art of
the stage, who knows only what he likes, who knows
only whether he has been entertained or bored. On
the other hand, the trained critic who not only says
that the thing is bad but gives his reasons, gets the
actor's goat.

It is in the nature of things. It will always be so.
But it sheds no light on our problem. Let us return
to Whistler. He won damages of but a farthing out
of the trial. Forthwith he set out to get even in his
own way. Summing up what he called "the fin mot
and spirit of this matter/' he proceeded to belabor
Ruskin and, through him, all art critics. He raised
some good laughs, laughs to be enjoyed with him to
this day by any open-minded reader, whether he be
artist or critic; but he failed to contribute a feather's
weight to the philosophy of the subject. I may note
his principal fallacy: "He [the critic] brands himself
as the necessary blister for the health of the painter,
and writes that he may do good to his art." The
critic does nothing of the sort. The point that Whis
tler overlooked is that evaluation is description. To
say that a picture is bad in this or that respect is

The Art of Art Criticism

only incidentally to admonish the artist; the real pur
pose is to tell the lay reader what it is like.

Whistler is the salient exponent of the argument
that the artist alone is the person to tell you what
a work of art is like, or worth. " Shall the painter
then decide upon painting? Shall he be the critic and
sole authority? Aggressive as is this supposition, I
fear that, in the length of time, his assertion alone
has established what even the gentlemen of the quill
accept as the canons of art and recognize as the mas
terpieces of work." It is a plausible dictum and only
gains in plausibility as you turn to some of the say
ings of artists. Read the "Pensees" of Ingres, or
Delacroix, or Rodin. Read one of the most beautiful
books on art ever printed, "Les Maitres d'Autrefois,"
written by Fromentin, an artist. Whistler himself,
in his "Ten o'Clock," delivered some precious ob
servations. In the invaluable " Impressions sur la
Peinture" of Alfred Stevens, the Franco-Belgian mas
ter, there is a reflection which it is impossible to
deny: Un grand artiste est en general un bon critique,
parce qu'il p&netre mieux dans les arcanes des choses.
The most illuminating talk on art to which I have
ever listened was that of John La Farge. I need not
labor the subject. From Leonardo down there have
been artists who were magnificently eloquent and in
structive on their mystery. But that, I maintain,
means simply that from time to time — and not very
Often — the artist has been doubled with the philos-

8 Personalities in Art

opher and the critic. He has happened to possess, in
addition to his artistic gift, the critical faculty, which
is a thing by itself. He has been a good critic not
merely because he has been an artist but because the
gods have given him a dual nature.

There is the familiar hypothesis that the critic is
an artist who has failed, but I need not dwell on this.
It is refuted by the testimony of uncounted exhibi
tions that, along with his betters, the artist who has
failed goes right on painting. Nor is the artist who
has succeeded necessarily a profitable guide. Stevens
has noted the intense preoccupation of the successful
painter with the formulas through which he has won
his success. It is the foible of most artists, standing
forever in the way of their exercising a catholic and
sympathetic judgment in matters of art. They see
things too much in the light of what they have them
selves done. I speak here not from theory but from
observation. No, we must seek elsewhere than among
artists for criticism. Stevens himself gives us a help
ful clew when he says: V opinion d'un connaisseur est
plus flatteuse que Us suffrages de la joule ignorante. In
connoisseurship resides the key to criticism, in knowl
edge, vitalized by natural taste and flair. It corre
sponds in art to what Matthew Arnold was driving
at in letters when he talked about the critic's know
ing the best that had been thought and said in the
world.

In knowing. It is the corner-stone of criticism. I

The Art of Art Criticism 9

have at my elbow one of the classical achievements in
art criticism, the yellowed pages of a series of articles
printed long ago in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. They
were written by the French critic Thor6, over the
name of "W. Burger/' and they announce his recon-
stitution of the works of Vermeer of Delft. Jan Ver-
meer was known before him, but his works were
largely hidden under other names in the galleries of
Europe. Thor6 divined him and restored to him his
lost masterpieces. With inexhaustible patience and
industry in research, with " conviction, ardor, and
passion," as Havard says, with intuition and with
knowledge, he plodded through the museums, spotted
the previously unknown Vermeers, and gave a great
painter to fame. I wonder if any painter, in the r&le
assigned to him by Whistler in the passage I have
quoted, has ever performed a similar service to the
cause of art? How often does the painter have the
time, or the temperament, to delve as the critic
delves? How much pains does he take to know?

There's great coup dates from 1866. It was in the
early seventies that Giovanni Morelli, an Italian
writing in German over a Russian name, that of
"Ivan Lermolieff/' made his first excursions in the
art of art criticism and demonstrated that if it was
an art it was also to some extent susceptible of ap
proximation to an exact science. In studies of the
works of certain masters in German and Italian gal
leries he developed a method as painstaking as that

io Personalities in Art

of Thore, with traits of its own placing the whole
matter upon a firmer basis than it had ever had be
fore. He analyzed the characteristics of a painter
with the systematic thoroughness of an anatomist.
He turned comparison from an odious thing into a
source of illumination. His method has been in use
ever since, and largely through its influence art criti
cism, in the modern sense, has been as fully profes
sionalized as art itself, strong in research and docu
mentation, coming into court with emphasis upon
facts as well as upon imponderables.

Art criticism is not a matter of casual and capri
cious impressionism, but a reasoned activity of the
mind. The indisposition of some commentators to
regard it in that light is partly explained by the fact
that once in so often the critic perpetrates a perfectly
gorgeous howler. In 1909 Bode bought in London,
for f8,ooo, for the Berlin Museum, a wax bust of
"Flora3' which he attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.
It presently turned out to be the work of a deceased
British sculptor named Lucas. When the inside of
it was explored it yielded a fragment of a mid- Vic
torian bed quilt. In 1910 Mr. James Grieg, an Eng
lish critic, tried to persuade the world that the fa-
mous "Rokeby Venus" was painted, not by Velas
quez, but by Raphael Mengs. Decidedly your art
critic is, like everybody else, a fallible creature, and he
is never so near to discrediting himself as when he sets
up to be a pope. But that is an error which may

The Art of Art Criticism n

overtake a man in any walk of life. It doesn't touch
the essentials of valid art criticism, which are knowl
edge, experience, research, scientific system — all
endued with a force sprung from that mysterious
thing called flair. For art criticism is nothing if not,
with all its other resources, clairvoyant. One of
Berenson's comments on the Hahn picture, quoted
in the cables, provides a useful illustration. "It
hasn't," he said, "the severity of a true Leonardo."
Severity, no less. How are you to weigh and measure
that? Can you touch and handle it? How are you
to prove or disprove its presence in a given picture?
You can't settle the question by rule of thumb.
Either you feel Leonardo's severity or you don't. I
remember looking some thirty years ago at the "Ma
donna of San Onofrio," on the Janiculum, and won
dering why it was called a Leonardo. It seemed to
me, as it seemed to others, to have been painted by
Boltraffio. But nobody that I know of has ever been
able conclusively to demonstrate that attribution,
which is nevertheless now generally accepted. Imagine
a drawing, falsely given to BotticelK, and submitted
to a critic of Italian art. Ask him why he rejects it.
If he tells you that the line is rigid, inelastic, where
Botticelli's line is supple, flowing, do you expect him
to tell you how he knows? How, save through a
power of perception residing only partly in his eyes.
Knowledge of Botticelli's drawings helps him. So
does instinct, flair.

12 Personalities in Art

I thought of the effect of the play of that instinct
when the death of Sorolla revived discussion of his
art. Everybody remembers the sensation that he
made when an immense collection of his works was
shown at the Hispanic Museum some years ago. The
foule ignorante hailed him tumultuously as the opener
of a new heaven and a new earth. He was an accom
plished painter. He knew how to depict figures mov
ing in the open air and in the water, under blazing
sunshine, and he turned his clever trick to some
thing like perfection. There never were more joyous
pictures. Only they were not the evidences of a great
creative art. It was the business of the art critic to
enforce that point, to enforce the discrimination
which is the central principle in the enjoyment of
works of art; and as he reflects upon the altered
status of 'Sorolla, abundantly honorable but not by
any means what it was at the Hispanic show, he may
be forgiven if he smiles at the Whistlers of this world,
with their ipse dixits as to who shall and who shall
not open his mouth about painting. I see Berenson
in my mind's eye as he was described in the despatches,
"with immaculately white-gloved hands," pointing
out what he saw in the picture before him. I am
aware of his learning, of his long study of Leonardo.
Speaking of the picture in the Louvre, he said that
forty years ago he had been just ignorant enough to
doubt its authenticity. Now the doubts were all
gone. Greater knowledge had worked the change in

The Art of Art Criticism 13

his opinion. Also the source of his later thought was
that instinct which guided him in the matter of
Leonardo's "severity," a thing not so much to be
seen as felt. This, as I have said, has come to be a
factor in tangible affairs, a factor to be reckoned with
in courts. Study of facts has come to fortify a spiri
tual thing. With the passage of time, a new sanction
has been conferred upon the great saying of Keats:
"When I feel I am right, no external praise can give
me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and
ratification of what is fine."

II

The Art Critic as Iconoclast

I. Professor Van Dyke on Rembrandt
II. Professor Van Dyke on Vermeer

II

THE ART CRITIC AS ICONOCLAST

I
PROFESSOR VAN DYKE ON REMBRANDT

WHEN Professor John C. Van Dyke's "Rembrandt
and His School" was published, it achieved notoriety
in something quicker than the proverbial leap; it made
its sensation even before it was read. On the day of
its appearance in the fall of 1923, the salient point it
assumed to prove was given out to the world, the
point thus succinctly stated on the wrapper: "There
are eight hundred pictures given to Rembrandt by
experts and authorities, but Professor Van Dyke can
give him only a scant fifty." That, by itself, was
enough to excite talk. It was as though some one
had suddenly announced that Shakespeare could
have only six of his plays, Beethoven only three of
his symphonies. The outburst of scepticism provoked
was perfectly natural. But it included remarks which
only served to cloud the issue.

The assertion was made in some quarters that Pro
fessor Van Dyke was not a recognized authority on
Rembrandt, and consequently did not deserve a
hearing. He is not a recognized authority on the

17

1 8 Personalities in Art

subject, it is true. He has not fought in the lists as
such. Previously he had published no formal con
tributions to it of which I had any knowledge. But
he has been known as an intelligent writer on art for
many years, during which he has functioned also as
a teacher of the history of art in Rutgers College. He
tells us in his book that he began to question certain
Rembrandt attributions as far back as 1883 and
that he has ridden the hobby ever since. Humanly
speaking, he ought by this time to have something
to say about the Dutch master, and there is no
earthly reason why he shouldn't say it or why it
shouldn't receive courteous attention. Also, it is ap
posite to point out that the reservation of a topic for
two or three sacrosanct oracles may be overdone.
There is nothing presumptuous, nothing unlawful, in
Professor Van Dyke's differing with Bode, Bredius,
and De Groot. They know their Rembrandt well,
and it is fitting that their judgments should be re
ceived with respect. With respect, yes, but not with
obsequious awe. A cat may look at a king.

The truth is that behind this thwacking of Pro
fessor Van Dyke with names there lies more than the
substantial repute of the men who own them. There
lies also the overweening confidence of the American
in the foreigner. There is a type of collector in the
United States whose conduct in the presence of a
European expert resembles that of a rabbit in the
presence of a hungry boa-constrictor. What impresses

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 19

him about the old master for which he is negotiating
is especially the "certification" from some foreign
authority that is offered with the picture. It would
be interesting to get these experts in a row and ex
tort from them a list of the documents with which
they have thus fortified the art market for the last
thirty or forty years. Their good faith is, of course,
unimpeachable, but, as Doctor Johnson said, the au
thor of a lapidary inscription is not upon oath, and
neither is the author of one of these "certifications."
I wonder, anyhow, if all of them have the value of
Mosaic revelation. Doctor Bode, for example, is the
man who bought a mid-Victorian wax bust of "Flora"
under the impression that it was a Leonardo. The
Kaiser, with his omniscient wisdom, backed him up
in this hypothesis, and, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, the sculpture figures as a Leonardo in the
Berlin Museum to this day. It would be foolish to
regard this episode as invalidating Bode's learning
where Rembrandt is concerned, but it may fairly be
taken as justifying Professor Van Dyke in having
opinions of his own, even though they are not in ex
act harmony with the opinions of the German director.
He has arrived at these opinions by prolonged
study in European and American galleries, public
and private, and he has organized them for the pur
pose of his book by the comparative method. Little
by little the whole Rembrandt &uwe took on for
him the aspect of "a huge snowball that had gathered

2O Personalities in Art

to itself the work of the school/7 and in attempting
to reduce that ball to its original ingredients he would
assign each one to the painter whose characteristics
seemed to him to proclaim themselves. Say he found
a picture given to Rembrandt which struck him as
looking like a Bol. He would turn to the admitted
works of Bol, make a comparison, and, while using
the originals in his study of the subject, he would also
employ photographs, placing them side by side. This
is what he does in the book. He uses the "deadly
parallel." His general discussion occupies only six
brief chapters, filling about forty pages. The bulk of
the volume is made up of tersely annotated lists, ac
companied by plates. Here it is not Rembrandt, but
the pupil, who comes, so to say, into the foreground;
the master is impoverished that the pupil may be
enriched. Take Eeckhout as a specimen. Each one
of four admitted pictures by him has beside it a pic
ture which Professor Van Dyke also assigns to him,
parenthetically noting that it is otherwise "given to
Rembrandt."

This method the author evidently regards as being
so efficacious as practically to take the burden of
proof off his hands. All you have to do is to study his
photographs — with others to be obtained by your
self, for those cases which he does not illustrate —
identify resemblances, and call it a day. "In rearrang
ing the pictures," he says, "I have allowed them to
fall where they would. I have had no theory to en-

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 21

force and have sought merely that pictures of a kind,
aesthetically, mentally, and technically, should go to
gether. Names have not prejudiced me, and in the
distribution Rembrandt has been allowed to fare the
same as Bol or Horst or Eeckhout The result of the
rearrangement has been that thirty or more groups
of pictures have formed themselves rather than been
formed by me." This passage is not altogether per
suasive. "I have had no theory to enforce." Not
consciously, it would appear. But in effect, I should
say, if he has not been ridden by a theory he has
been the victim of an obsession, of an idee fixe. It is
said that we usually have some difficulty in seeing
ourselves as others see us. A red-headed man admits
that he is red-headed. A woman equally rufous will
call herself auburn-haired and think herself into the
conviction. Professor Van Dyke may repudiate the
notion that there is any theory in his book, but it is
hard to see what else has so steadily lured him into
the trick of jamming square pegs into round holes.

Let us turn, however, from his method to his re
sults, endeavoring to make a just test of his findings,
I have studied the book from beginning to end with
the utmost care, not contented to draw alone upon
memories of great numbers of the Rembrandts in
question, but consulting also a voluminous collection
of photographs. I have made endless comparisons in
the manner urged by the author, seeking always to
give his argument the utmost possible weight. It is

22 Personalities in Art

essential in an examination of this kind to meet the
iconoclast half way, to give him every possible ad
vantage, and to keep an open mind. At the same time
one must realize in this case the peculiar gravity of
Professor Van Dyke's assumption. His denudation
of Rembrandt is terrific. It entails a proportionate
responsibility. If he is to be listened to at all he must
advance very solid reasons.

On the principle of allowing Professor Van Dyke
to put his best foot forward I touch first upon the
most plausible comparison he makes. It is between
the portrait of Rembrandt's sister which hangs in
the Liechtenstein gallery at Vienna and the ver
sion of the same subject which hangs in the Brera at
Milan. I may cite part of his analysis:

The Liechtenstein portrait is profound. The face is an
epitome of all that is typical, sensitive, noble, refined in
Dutch girlhood. It is a wonder and a marvel and becomes
more wonderful and marvellous the longer you look at
it. Keep on looking at it for five or ten minutes and let
it unfold to you its own depth, subtlety, and penetration,
No one but a great master could do such a work as that.
Now turn to the Brera portrait and do you not instantly
feel a great loosening of the mental grasp, a falling down
in the mental conception? The personality of the sitter
now appears shallow. She is merely an empty-headed
girl posing for her portrait. She epitomizes nothing,
stands for nothing, reveals nothing but a superficial ex
terior, such as any Dutch girl from the burgher quarter
might show. The emptiness of the conception, the lack
of thought or of reflection in the painter, even the lack

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 23

of comprehensive vision, is too apparent for further argu
ment. That alone might be sufficient to convince one that
the two portraits were not painted by the same man.

The distinctions he draws in the matter of mental
conception he confirms when he discusses the emo
tional significance of the two portraits, and he is
equally shrewd in the discussion of purely technical
differences. His conclusion that the Brera portrait
was painted not by Rembrandt but by Jan Lievens
is so persuasive that one is inclined to regard the mat
ter as settled. Professor Van Dyke is unmistakably
confident in this case, so confident that he puts it in
the forefront of his study. Impressed by it, we go
on to a systematic survey of his lists. Immediately
we begin to scent trouble — not for Rembrandt, but
for his critic. The scheme is alphabetical, so I will
begin with Jacob Backer. The "Young Dutch
woman" by Rembrandt, in the Metropolitan Mu
seum, is placed side by side with a portrait by Backer
in London. The comparison moves Professor Van
Dyke to give the Rembrandt to Backer. What
promptly strikes me about it is that it discloses a
vitality which the Backer conspicuously lacks. An ex
actly similar impression is left when the author com
pares Mrs. Havemeyer's "Portrait of an Old Lady"
with a Backer in Berlin. The New York painting is
alive, the other is not. Then Professor Van Dyke
takes up the famous "Elizabeth Bas," at "Amsterdam.
It has been doubted before. Doctor Bredius advanced

24 Personalities in Art

the hypothesis that it was painted by Bol. Professor
Van Dyke gives it to Backer. If Rembrandt must be
robbed of this great portrait, then Bol might better
have it than Backer. Once in this sheaf of photo
graphs Professor Van Dyke bolsters up his case. The
"Wife of Alenson," in Paris, is far more credible as
the Backer that he calls it than it is as a Rembrandt,
But in the other instances I have cited he carries no
conviction whatever.

The explanation cuts deep into the authority of
the author. In these matters the imponderables are
profoundly important. Models, costumes, modes of
composition, technical methods, may all be related
to the solidarity of a school and period. It is the
subtle, indefinable quality of genius that counts, the
matter that you cannot stick a pin through but that
you feel instinctively. This is what Professor Van
Dyke seems to have missed, a circumstance which I
note not only in the chapter on Backer but elsewhere.
The harshest but, as it seems to me, the truest thing
to say about this book is that it is insensitive, that
it wants imaginative insight. Professor Van Dyke
seems so curiously blind to what jumps to the eye
that his evidence turns against himself. I go on tabu
lating the luckier hits in his illustrative scheme and
I find a few. It is believable that Eeckhout painted
the "Ascension" at Munich, as he says, and not
Rembrandt. I can sympathetically entertain the idea
that the " Portrait of a Man" in the Schwab collection

The Art Critic as Iconoclast

might better be given to Carel Fabritius than to Rem
brandt. The Petrograd "Saskia as Flora" is more
probably by Flinck than by Rembrandt. I can fol
low the argument that gives the "Portrait of an Old
Woman/' likewise in Russia, to Koninck. But there
are two significant points about these various attribu
tions. They make, in the first place, a very slender
group, a mere drop in the great sea of Rembrandt-
esque painting. And secondly they are intrinsically
of no great importance. When Professor Van Dyke
settles down to strip Rembrandt the removals that
seem reasonable have no great meaning. In the
larger sphere of the master's activity he leaves me
absolutely sceptical.

Reverting to the introductory matter in this cata
logue there are one or two remarks that require to
be noticed. In disintegrating his " snowball," in tak
ing apart what he designates "the present hodge
podge" embodied in the Rembrandt ceuvre, Pro
fessor Van Dyke is governed by a strange idea. It
is so strange that I must quote the author's exact
words:

"The Night Watch," more than any other picture,
seems to confirm the tale told by his pictures, that Rem
brandt was a portrait painter and little more. He could
not do the historical picture in a satisfactory way, and
probably after some trials gave it up. I have gone over
the figure pictures assigned to him, again and yet again,
in the hope that I should find in some one of them the
trace of his mind and hand, but I have been almost com-

26 Personalities in Art

pletely disappointed. The dramatic, the pathetic, the
spectacular, the grotesque things set down to him are the
pictures of pupils in which he had no more than a guiding
voice — perhaps not even that. There is doubt about
even the few compositions that can be set down to him.

One picture alone offers sufficient commentary on
this pronouncement, the sublime " Supper at Em-
maus" in the Louvre, a picture which Professor Van
Dyke himself admits is a Rembrandt and character
izes as "of much emotional feeling and great pathos."
If there is one thing more than another which is dis
closed in the Shakespearian pell-mell of Rembrandt's
works it is that he was a master of great creative
imagination, ranging from low comedy to tragic so
lemnity. It is Professor Van Dyke's unawareness of
this that largely vitiates his thesis. This is, I repeat,
an insensitive book. The author's sense is sealed
where the inner fires of Rembrandt's genius are con
cerned. Teasing his mind with surface matters, he
remains untouched by paintings from which great
ness emanates with a kind of tangible electric force.
Repeatedly as I trace his path through the ceuvre I
see how it is just the magic of Rembrandt that is for
ever eluding him.

He does not see that the "Tobias and the Angel/'
in the Louvre, which he would give to Bol, has in
finitely more energy in it than the "Three Marys "
of Bol placed beside it. Over and over again I note
this Rembrandtesque superiority in the picture which

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 27

the author would take from the master and give to
the pupil; there is a perceptible lift in vitality, in
quality, in beauty, and it is particularly noticeable
in those very paintings which, from their subjects,
Professor Van Dyke would give to pupils. The
"Blinding of Samson," at Frankfort, is a case in
point. It is a work of thrilling furia, one of the
most impressively dramatic things Rembrandt ever
painted. Professor Van Dyke finds it coarse and
brutal in technic, and in giving it to Horst adds that
it " represents Horst rather at his worst." Now, that
I differ from Professor Van Dyke on the merits of
this work is not the point on which I would dwell.
What I more especially commend to the reader is a
comparison of the " Samson" with the recognized
works of Horst. How Professor Van Dyke can re
gard it as supporting his argument is simply incom
prehensible. The artist of the Frankfort "Samson"
is obviously a bold, swinging technician, a master of
the brush, a powerful painter. The artist of the
"Isaac Blessing Jacob," reproduced beside the "Sam
son," which is to say Gerrit Horst, is obviously a
mediocrity. He couldn't have painted the "Samson."
Neither could he have painted the Petrograd " Danae,"
which the author would take away from Rembrandt
to give to him.

When I say that at times this critic is merely "in
comprehensible" I am not speaking lightly, but out
of a genuine bewilderment. An instance is supplied

28 Personalities in Art

by his comment on the masterpiece at Dresden,
"Manoah's Offering," I remember that painting as
I might remember a great strain of organ music. The
genius of Rembrandt fairly glows in it. Professor
Van Dyke says: "The picture (as regards the two
figures) is superb. I tried to fit it in the Rembrandt
group again and again, but without success. It is too
black in the shadows, too hard in the contours." He
prefers to think it by an unidentified pupil. All this,
I maintain, is incomprehensible. Suppose we grant,
for the sake of argument (though I am not otherwise
inclined to do so), that the shadows are too black,
the contours too hard, the light uncertain, the angel
poorly drawn. What does all that amount to against
the overwhelmingly Rembrandtesque beauty and
style of the picture? And why assume that he was
impeccable and that an imperfection condemned a
picture as not his? Professor Van Dyke holds oddly
contradictory views on this point. On page 20 we
are permitted to believe that Rembrandt was not
"always and infallibly right." On page 107 we are
told where the real Rembrandts proclaim themselves
— "they are absolutely right from start to finish."
That is a fearfully dangerous attitude to take toward
any master. No master invariably strikes twelve.
Rembrandt didn't do so. But, as Professor Van Dyke
himself observes, "some touch of his genius will be
apparent in his most indifferent performance." Un
fortunately, the author's decisions seem to be based

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 29

on the point of view I have cited from page 107. He
has a preconceived notion of the typical authentic
Rembrandt as a thing "absolutely right from start
to finish/' and apparently when a picture fails to
meet this touchstone he straightway assigns it to
some one else, even if it must be, as in the case of
"Manoah's Offering," an unidentified pupil. All the
time the Rembrandts go on glowing, if I may so
express it, proclaiming their authenticity not by flaw-
lessness in detail but by the organic life in them, the
accent of power they bear.

I cannot too often reiterate that in this "accent of
power" lies the crux of the matter. In the conven
tional and I fear rather superficial view of the matter
the art expert has some sources of knowledge un
available to the vulgar, which enables him to decide
absolutely as to the authenticity of a given picture.
This is a fallacy. Knowledge of a master's works in
detail, extending to nuances of color, habits of com
position, character of surface, peculiarities of brush-
work, and so on, will carry him far and enable him to
dogmatize where the layman is left dumb. But when
he has studied all these things, when he has docu
mented his picture to the utmost, he must admit, if
he is honest, that what finally determines his judg
ment is the operation of his instinct. Bode must de
pend upon that. That, in the long run, is what Pro
fessor Van Dyke must depend upon, and that, I
feel more and more as I study his book, is where he

30 Personalities in Art

is unreliable. I have been at pains to tabulate some
of his attributions and will give the list here, stating
the name of the Rembrandt, the place where it hangs
and the painter to whom Professor Van Dyke ascribes
it:

"Portrait of Titus." Metropolitan Museum. B. Fa-
britius.

"Portrait of Woman." National Gallery, London. B.
Fabritius,

"Hendrickje Stoffels," Metropolitan Museum. B.
Fabritius.

"Portrait of Man." Frick Collection. B. Fabritius.

"Man With Golden Helmet." Berlin Museum. Aert
de Gelder.

"An Oriental." Metropolitan Museum. Solomon
Koninck.

"Old Woman Cutting Her Nails." Metropolitan Mu
seum. Nicolaes Maes.

"Portrait of Woman." National Gallery, London.
Nicolaes Maes.

"An Architect." Cassel Gallery. Nicolaes Maes.

"Portrait of Man." Metropolitan Museum. Nicolaes
Maes.

"Portrait of Girl." Art Institute, Chicago. Uniden
tified pupil.

The list might be extended, but I select the fore
going pictures because they are illustrated in the
book, and may therefore easily be referred to by the
reader. Let him make the comparisons that Pro
fessor Van Dyke makes, and let him be especially
careful to remember the "accent of power" to which

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 3 1

I have ventured to call his attention. I should be
surprised if he did not invariably find it present in
the pictures named, in vivid contrast to the quality
of the pupil in each case cited by the author. On two
pictures in particular I find it irresistible to pause.
One is the exquisite " Portrait of Titus/' at the Metro
politan Museum, given by Professor Van Dyke to
Bernaert Fabritius. It is one of the loveliest por
traits of youth in all European painting. It has ex
traordinary psychological interest, and technically
there rests upon it what I can only describe as a
Rembrandtesque bloom, a fairly magnificent patina.
Bernaert Fabritius never in his life painted anything
half so flowerlike, so masterly. If there is one other
attribution made by Professor Van Dyke which more
than this one falls to the ground as emphatically not
proved, it is that which he essays in the matter of
the "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails."

Professor Van Dyke begins by attacking it — very
unjustly, I think — in technical details. The lights,
he says, are forced and out of value. The shadows
are too dark. The nose "jumps" forward. The
handling is hasty, heavy, ineffective. The drawing is
not correct. Then the model resembles a model used
by Nicolaes Maes many times. Ergo, the "Old
Woman Cutting Her Nails" is by Nicolaes Maes.
To clinch the matter the author reproduces beside
this picture the "Sleeping Woman," by Maes, in the
Brussels Museum. Only he doesn't clinch it at all,

Personalities in Art

for, with that fantastic blindness to which I am com
pelled to allude again and yet again, this critic misses
the perfectly obvious fact that the "Old Woman
Cutting Her Nails" has a breadth, a monumental
majesty, a cloudy splendor, to which Maes never even
remotely approximated, Rembrandt's old woman in
this picture has the imposing grandeur of an antique
statue. Her dignity superbly triumphs over the
technical details which Professor Van Dyke so grossly
exaggerates. And the painting has, above all things,
that indefinable cachet to which I am always return
ing, the cachet of genius, the cachet of Rembrandt.
Do not stop at the comparison the author makes be
tween this work and the three pictures by Maes he
prints on the same page. Consider the ceuvre of
Maes in its length and breadth. Include such thor
oughly characteristic things of his as "The Listening
Girl," at Buckingham Palace. Look to the core of
each painter's character. You cannot avoid the con
clusion that Maes could no more have painted the
"Old Woman Cutting Her Nails" than that he could
have pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

There is something deeply interesting about the
manner in which Professor Van Dyke's comparisons
recoil upon himself. The master is too strong for
him.

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still.

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 33

Thus Shakespeare in Arnold's sonnet. Thus Rem
brandt as the iconoclast seeks to rob him of some of
his noblest achievements.

Traversing the lists of works which Professor Van
Dyke would give to the pupils, I come back with
heightened curiosity to the list to which he would
confine Rembrandt, the restricted list which has oc
casioned all the recent uproar. " Fifty are all that I
can now definitely place to his name/' he says. But
he also says: "The list of Rembrandt pictures which
follows does not pretend to completeness. Some of
the works attributed to Rembrandt are in private
hands, where I have not been able to see them." I
rub my eyes. The thing seems almost incredible.
Here is a book which undertakes to sift the czuvre
of Rembrandt; the author draws up a list of the pic
tures which he " can now definitely place to his name " ;
he assails what may be called the recognized canon
of the master's works, and yet he does not "pretend
to completeness"! Completeness, in the circum
stances, amounts to a point of honor. Is it fair to
attempt to riddle the integrity of the admitted ceuvre
and then to leave quantities of the pictures that
make it outside the inquest, hanging, so to say, in
mid-air? Professor Van Dyke observes that "to gain
a right conception of Rembrandt, Bol, Eeckhout or
Horst it is not necessary to run down and catalogue
every indifferent head or half-finished picture of their
doing." He thinks that his list of fifty "will give a

34 Personalities in Art

comprehension of the man almost as well as a hun
dred." It is as though a literary historian were to
announce a theory that Balzac had been served by a
corps of ghosts and give us for touchstones nothing
but "Pere Goriot" and "Seraphita." It may not be
necessary to run down, as Professor Van Dyke sug
gests, " every indifferent head or half-finished pic
ture," but what of the great masterpieces? What of
"The Shipbuilder and His Wife/' at Buckingham
Palace; the Devonshire and Westminster Rembrandts,
and divers other pieces in England ? What of certain
pictures here, like the marvellous "Scholar With a
Bust of Homer/' in the Huntington collection, or Mr.
Morgan's great "Nicolaes Ruts," or the "Lucrezia"
which the late M. C. D. Borden owned? Professor
Van Dyke knows the Frick collection, adding the
Ilchester Rembrandt therein to his list, but after a
laborious search for anything he might have to say
about "The Polish Rider" I have run to earth nothing
more than an allusion in a note on another picture —
"the £ Polish Rider' which has been attributed to
Eeckhout" To give this cavalier treatment to a can
vas of the eminence of this one is sheer wanton pre
sumption. After all, there is such a thing as "a de- ,
cent respect for the opinions of mankind." If Pro
fessor Van Dyke thinks that that glorious equestrian
portrait is not a Rembrandt, at least he should offer
his reasons. He may be dubious about the authority
of "experts," but he cannot brush them aside in this

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 35

airy fashion — not, at any rate, if he wants his book
to be taken seriously.

I do not believe his canon of Rembrandt can be
taken seriously. It is too slim and sketchy. Specific
subtractions which he would make from the accepted
canon in the majority of cases, as I have indicated,
remain not proven, and the omissions concerning
which he says nothing are too numerous and too im
portant. A canon which merely ignores such out
standing canvases as I have touched upon in the pre
ceding paragraph (and many more could be named)
collapses of its own arbitrariness. There is another
point which demands comment. There is nothing
difficult to believe in the assertion that Rembrandt
painted hundreds of pictures. He was that kind of a
painter and he lived a fairly long life. What is hard
to believe is that that busy career of his produced
only about fifty works. The truth is that Rembrandt
had the power of a force of nature, pouring forth an
immense mass of paintings, drawings, and etchings.
There are things in the mass as we know it which
doubtless he never saw. Professor Van Dyke, as I
have admitted, occasionally bags an error in the
accepted canon. But the great bulk of the mass re
mains unaffected by his book. If there are discrepan
cies between one picture and another as regards abil
ity they are to be accounted for by the elemental
fact that, as I have said, no master always strikes
twelve. But there runs through his art like a ground-

36 Personalities in Art

swell the energy of genius. It leaves upon Ms paint
ings that accent of power which not all the expertise
in the world can rub out.

It is a mistake to pooh-pooh Professor Van Dyke's
book as unworthy of consideration. It is, for the lover
of Rembrandt, an intensely interesting production.
The ceuvre constitutes a cosmos of never-ending
fascination, and it is always stimulating to explore
it anew. Professor Van Dyke is shrewd, ingenious,
and ardent. I am sorry for the reader who gets only
indignation out of its pages. There is genuine inter
est to be got out of them. But to be interested is not
necessarily to be convinced. The author has written,
I imagine, to be discussed. He cannot have the in
ordinate vanity to expect that his arguments will be
swallowed whole simply because he makes them and
supplies some photographs to boot. That would be
to adopt the preposterous attitude of the experts with
whom he so stoutly disagrees. He cannot speak ex
cathedra, and his book embodies no final judgment,
only a series of opinions. They are not by any means
conclusive opinions, largely because, with all his ex
cellent equipment, Professor Van Dyke lacks the
" seeing eye."

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 37

II

PROFESSOR VAN DYKE ON VERMEER

In studying "Rembrandt and His School" I came
upon a chapter relating to Vermeer of Delft, that is
one of the most curious contributions to the litera
ture of Dutch art I have ever encountered. There is
a foreshadowing of it earlier in the book, in the chap
ter on Carel Fabritius, the master of Vermeer. Apro
pos of the "Portrait of a Man" at Munich, which the
author would take from Rembrandt and give to
Fabritius, a reproduction of Vermeer's "Geographer,"
at Frankfort, is printed. "The same model and some
of the pose" were probably used by both painters,
Professor Van Dyke thinks, a far-fetched hypothesis
and one on which we can build no confidence in the
influence which the author here assigns to Fabritius.
But I glance at this matter only in passing. What is
really interesting is the assertion that "this Fabritius
influence is apparent in certain famous portraits put
down to Vermeer of Delft hereafter." I turn with
zest to the Vermeer chapter, wondering what in the
world will develop therein. I find, as has been indi
cated, an amazing bedevihnent of the subject.

The Vermeer ceuvre has been in debate for a long
time. When Burger rescued him from obscurity in
1866 the catalogue terminating his study in the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts ran to more than seventy

38 Personalities in Art

numbers. That has since been cut almost in half.
Van Zype, in his authoritative monograph, gives a list
of but thirty-eight works of incontestable authen
ticity. It may still reasonably be enlarged or dimin
ished. If Professor Van Dyke had some persuasive
things to say about it he would be listened to with
extreme interest. What he actually has to say only
puzzles me. Here is part of it:

Vermeer's pictures have been sought for everywhere —
except in the Rembrandt osuvre. Perhaps it is not strange
that he should appear there, since he was of the Rem
brandt school once removed. He was a pupil of Carel
Fabritius, who, in turn, was a pupil of Rembrandt. It
is by an understanding of Fabritius that we shall possibly
arrive at a better understanding of Vermeer. I frankly
confess to my inability to follow the Vermeer writers and
authorities or agree with the present arrangement of his
pictures. I seem to see several painters in the pictures
put under Vermeer's name. The small pictures given to
him contain things supremely fine and things supremely
thin, small, and hard. Such pictures as the " Girl Read
ing," in the Dresden Gallery, are beyond criticism. The
" Young Woman Reading a Letter" and the "Cook,"
at Amsterdam; the "Lady With a Pearl Necklace," at
Berlin; the "Girl at a Window," of the Marquand Col
lection, Metropolitan Museum, New York, are in the same
class of excellence. There are, perhaps, ten or a dozen
pictures by this hand. I shall call their painter, for con
venience herein, Vermeer No. i. There are, however, as
many more pictures that superficially look to be in the
class, but they are brittle, cardboard affairs with false
high lights, airless rooms, and color that has no quality.
Two pictures, each showing a "Young Woman at the Vir
ginals," in the National Gallery, London; "The Letter,"

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 39

at Amsterdam; the "Allegorical Subject/' at The Hague,
are the illustrations of this latter class. I have called their
painter, in my "New Guides/7 a pseudo-Vermeer, meaning
by that that he may be an imitator — some one like
Verkolje or Ochtervelt — or possibly Venneer himself in
decline and grown hard in manner. These small pictures
form the first group given to Vermeer, and I shall con
sider them as done by a Venneer No. i and a pseudo-
Vermeer.

Vermeer was undoubtedly a pupil of Carel Fabri-
tius, but that is no reason why we should believe that
"it is by an understanding of Fabritius that we shall
possibly arrive at a better understanding of Ver
meer." As well say that, as Whistler was a pupil
of Gleyre, who in turn was a pupil of Ingres, it is
by an understanding of Gleyre that we shall possibly
arrive at a better understanding of Whistler. That
would be absurd. Whistler was his own man. Ver
meer likewise was his own man, and one of the fas
cinating things about his art is its establishment of
him as a figure apart, a figure extraordinarily de
tached from the whole Dutch school. The passage
I have quoted takes on even stranger turnings. In
the game of solitaire that Professor Van Dyke plays,
shuffling the cards about and about to see which of
them match, he makes some staggering combinations.
The pictures which he does not feel sure of he thinks
may be by an imitator, or they may be by Venneer
in a declining phase! It is, perhaps, an amusing
speculation, but why print it? It comes rather under

4-O Personalities in Art

the heading of workshop meditations and has no
tangible value. Especially because of what follows.
Professor Van Dyke goes on to confusion after con
fusion.

The "Diana," at The Hague, he says, "does not
agree with any Vermeer picture of any group," and
forthwith he asserts that "it was not done by Ver
meer, but by Jacob Van Loo," with certain of whose
works he thinks it does agree. It is difficult to be
patient over this question of "agreement." Let us
suppose, for example, that some Van Dyke of the
future were to be set the task of straightening out the
ceuvre of Saint- Gaudens, dislocated by the passage
of two or three hundred years. Grant that he has
pretty satisfactory evidence about the "Lincoln,"
the "Farragut," the "Sherman," the "Stevenson,"
and so on, but has only internal evidence to go on
where the Adams monument is concerned. We can
imagine what would happen to him if he sought for
any obvious "agreement." The Adams monument
occupies a place in the sculptor's ceuvre that is unique.
So it is with the nude "Diana" that he made for the
tower of the Madison Square Garden. But these two
works would, nevertheless, be recognized as his by a
really penetrating analyst of his style. In the case
of Vermeer, as in that of Rembrandt, Professor Van
Dyke uses the most cleverly fabricated machinery
but fails to enliven it by the right instinctive spark.
The painter he cites in this instance gives him simi-

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 41

larities "in subject, type, drawing, grouping." But
we have only to put a Van Loo side by side with a
Vermeer to see that what the minor man lacks is the
master's quality and beauty.

The author proceeds to the great "Procuress," at
Dresden. He will give it neither to his Vermeer No.
i nor to his "pseudo-Vermeer." In order to account
for it he calls into being a painter whom he calls
Vermeer No. 2. To the same unknown he would as
sign the "Young Girl/' formerly at Brussels, which
was in New York for a time, and the "Old Woman"
in the Johnson collection, which figures there as a
Nicolaes Maes. I know all three of these paintings
well and can only feel astonishment at Professor Van
Dyke's attitude toward them. The "Procuress" is a
glorious picture, glorious in color and in what I can
only describe as the Vermeer touch. That is present
also, in more jewel-like mood, in the "Young Girl."
And why the Johnson picture should be dragged in
is a mystery past finding out. Placed beside the
"Procuress" it simply crumples up, a mediocre pic
ture beside a brilliant one. But the author has more
surprises in store.

He passes next to a painter whom he calls Vermeer
No. 3, making great play over the "Portrait of a
Woman" at Budapest. With this painting, a master
piece by Vermeer if ever there was one, he can find
no other picture in the Vermeer ceuvre to "agree,"
except, possibly, the "Head of a Young Girl" at

42- Personalities in Art

The Hague. (So that, also, is to be detached from
the real Vermeer!) Hence the "Number 3." He is
a distinctly obscure person.' "Whether his name is
Vermeer or whether he is some other pupil of Carel
Fabritius or Rembrandt I am not now able to say."
It is extremely doubtful if he will ever be able to
speak with greater certainty. Meanwhile he proposes
that to this painter shall be given Rembrandt's "Por
trait of a Lady" at Petrograd and the two Rem-
brandts in the Widener collection. As for the robbing
of Rembrandt to enrich Vermeer, even an hypotheti
cal Vermeer, I am not for a moment convinced.
The Petrograd and Budapest portraits, placed side
by side, reveal not resemblances (of handling, of
style), but differences. They are clearly not by the
same painter, Professor Van Dyke's "Vermeer Num
ber 3 " or any other single man. Vermeer, the Ver
meer we know, painted the Budapest portrait, and
Rembrandt the other. The new attribution which
Professor Van Dyke would make in respect to the
Widener portraits remains likewise "not proven."
Furthermore, he says something about one of these
portraits that utterly complicates, as in a climax, the
whole complicated business.

We have seen that in the author's view certain
works which he would assign to Vermeer No. i, such
as the Marquand Vermeer, are "beyond criticism."
They are, it is to be inferred, the authentic Vermeers.
But the Widener Rembrandts "are superb portraits,

The Art Critic as Iconoclast 43

perhaps by the same hand that did the ' Portrait of
a Woman' at Budapest — that is, Vermeer No. 3,
the best and greatest of my so-called three Vermeers."
You see where we have arrived ? There is a Vermeer,
a Vermeer we have all known, the Vermeer who
painted what we mean when we talk about Vermeer,
and his works are "beyond criticism." But all the
time there is another Vermeer, one of three, and he,
as it happens, is "the best and greatest" of all of
them. Both of the Widener portraits, we are told,
are "more important in art, more valuable in his
tory, and even in commerce, as Vermeers than as
Rembrandts." But as which Vermeers? The Ver
meers that are valuable in art, in history, and even in
commerce are the Vermeers the world cherishes as
such. How can Professor Van Dyke expect to secure
the same status for an unknown painter he has in
vented, even though he calls him by the same name ?
The Vermeer chapter in this book is, in short, one
of the most unfortunate it contains. It does not
clarify the subject; it only darkens counsel. In at
tempting to revise the Vermeer canon, as in attempt
ing to revise the Rembrandt canon, Professor Van
Dyke leaves his reader a little more than sceptical.

Ill

The Thirty-ninth Vermeer

Ill

THE THIRTY-NINTH VERMEER

EVER since Burger rehabilitated him in the Gazette
des Beaux-Arts in 1866, the ceuwe of Vermeer of
Delft has fluctuated in volume under the sifting
processes of criticism. Burger's catalogue runs to
seventy-three numbers. When Henry Havard pub
lished his brochure in 1888, he cut the list down to
fifty-six. It has been shortened repeatedly in later
years. Van Zype, in the definitive edition of his book,
brought out in 1921, accounted for but thirty-eight
paintings. One of these, the "Young Girl With a
Flute/' was discovered by Doctor Bredius as re
cently as 1906. Vermeer is one of those masters about
whom you can say almost anything save that their
history has been conclusively written. He is an ever-
tantalizing mystery. One never knows when some
thing new of his is going to be brought to light.
Apropos of which I would refer to the thirty-ninth
Vermeer.

The first news of it reached the world as a discov
ery made by Doctor C. Hofstede de Groot, the well
known Dutch connoisseur. He announced his find
in the Nieuwe RotterdamscJte Courant, explaining that
it belonged to M. Yves Perdoux, in Paris. Then it

47

48 Personalities in Art

passed into the possession of Sir Joseph Duveen.
The subject is a curly-haired boy in his teens. The
hair is dark brown, and enframes a face in which the
flesh tints are of a pearly, almost grayish, pallor.
The white collar falls over a doublet of yellowish
silver gray. The cloak, whose folds make the base of
the composition, is of a reddish brown, which Doctor
Hofstede de Groot allies with color in the famous
"Christ at the House of Mary and Martha," which
has always been reckoned an early work of the
master.

The face is drawn and modelled with the fine
suavity always characteristic of Vermeer in paint
ing the features of his sitters, but elsewhere the por
trait is remarkable for its flowing breadth. The col
lar is a little miracle of painter-like notation, brushed
in with a generous but not too thick impasto and very
beautiful in tone. The costume is not otherwise so
rich or so resonant in color quality. In this and in
the handling it departs from the key which might
superficially be assigned to the typical Vermeer.
But as a matter of fact he had more than one man
ner, corresponding to more than one mood. When
he made most of his pictures he labored in the spirit
of still life and gave a special significance to painted
surface as such. The famous Marquand Vermeer in
the Metropolitan Museum is an apposite example.
When he fell into the stride of pure portraiture, as in
the wonderful half-length at Budapest or the curious

HEAD OF A YOUNG BOY
FROM THE PAINTING BY VEEMEER

The Thirty-ninth Fermeer 49

clavecin player in the Beit collection, he got away
from his consummate preciosity and thought not only
of tone but of a large definition of form. This is the
distinguishing point about the Duveen picture.

It hasn't, save in the collar, the jewel-like depth
and density of facture which we usually think of
when we think of Vermeer. That waits upon the
dignity and vitality of the portrait as a whole, upon
the broad swing in the workmanship. The master's
gift for ensemble comes out nowhere more impres
sively than in his dealings with the single figure. His
design is sometimes fairly monumental in such con
tributions to this category as the Budapest portrait
just mentioned or the great "Dentelliere" in the
Louvre. If he is not precisely monumental in the
"Head of a Young Boy" he at any rate reveals in it
a finer sense of scale, a more imposing effect, than is
ordinarily associated with the figures in his more
familiar interiors. Vermeer didn't paint many por
traits. There is a whimsical suggestion in the circum
stance that in "Le Peintre," at Vienna, which he may
have intended as a memorial of himself, the artist is
seated with his back to the spectator. But when he
did essay portraiture he had a way of gripping his
subject. There is no mistaking the character of the
woman at Budapest, or that of the Arenberg " Jeune
Fille," or that of the grave gentleman with the mus
tache in the museum at Brussels. So in the "Head
of a Young Boy" he gives us a personality interest-

50 Personalities in Art

ing even under the simple traits of adolescence.
That is one reason why it is so persuasively a Ver-
meer; it has so subtle a reality. You feel at once the
touch of the master, not only registering a form but
evoking a presence.

IV

Leonardo's Legacy of Beauty

IV
LEONARDO'S LEGACY OF BEAUTY

IN spite of her precoccupation with the problem
of Fiume, Italy found time in 1919 to commemorate
the name and fame of Leonardo da Vinci. He died
in France on May 2, 1519, and in the four centuries
that have elapsed since then there has been only one
man of a kindred type of universal genius known to
the world, Shakespeare, who died almost a hundred
years later. The learned and artistic bodies of Italy
hailed him as one of the supreme memories of the
nation, and everywhere those who care for the things
of the mind shared in their fervor. He is a classic be
yond peradventure, and, like all true classics, he em
bodies ideas and principles in which the most mod
ern of the moderns may renew his artistic vitality.

There are, in a sense, two Leonardos. One is the
property of the scholar whose researches are directed
more especially into the complex aspects of the sub
ject. In Scribner's Magazine at the time of the cele
bration there was an interesting and valuable paper
by Mr. George Sarton, of the Carnegie Institute, on
"The Message of Leonardo." He is engaged on the
establishment of a standard text of Leonardo's writ
ings, and, accordingly, I was not surprised to find his

53

54 Personalities in Art

essay an analysis of the master's "relation to the
birth of modern science." In our time, and in view
of its prevailing drifts of thought and activity, there
are bound to be many tributes to the scientific aspects
of Leonardo's career. Mr. Sarton well brought out
their solid importance. In the anticipation of the
flying machine, we have only one of a host of points
of contact which may be established between the
fifteenth century Florentine and ourselves. But the
other Leonardo is he who is more quickly brought
to mind by mention of his name among people at
large in the twentieth century, and he is the property
of the lover of beauty. When we speak of "the Leo-
nardesque" we think not of his achievements as scien
tist but of the ideal of loveliness which he created.
It towers above all that the scholars may seek to
force upon our attention. It is true that he left be
hind him but a comparatively small number of works
of art, and that he himself, as Mr. Sarton reminds
us, was no less proud of being an engineer than of
being a painter. Nevertheless, for the bulk of man
kind, the paintings and drawings will continue to
mean Leonardo as the plays continue to mean Shake
speare.

The only portrait we have of him is the drawing in
the library at Turin, which shows us the head of an
old man, and the power of the association of ideas is
such that one hardly ever thinks of him save as an
aged type of wisdom. He appeals to the imagination

Leonardo9 s Legacy of Beauty 55

not simply as old in knowledge and thought, indeed,
but as a kind of ancient seer, a mystic, living aloof
from the common world. Yet it is desirable to check
such an impression, to keep a firm grasp upon the
very human foundations of this colossal genius. His
manuscripts yield a helpful passage in the note he
writes apropos of one of the apprentices he was wont
to take into his 'bottega at five lire the month. "Gia-
como came to live with me on the Feast of St. Mary
Magdalen, 1490," he says. "He was ten years old.
The second day I ordered two shirts, a pair of hose,
and a doublet for him. When I put aside the money
to pay for these things he took it out of my purse. I
was never able to make him confess the robbery, al
though I was certain of it. A thieving, lying, pig
headed glutton." Remembrance of the every-day
side of life which these lines illustrate will keep the
student from visualizing Leonardo too much as a
rapt Olympian, with his singing robes always about
him. He went to and fro among men in homespun,
so to say, with an intensely human curiosity about
all the things of the visible world. If he painted the
"Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" he drew also
the most appalling profiles of hideous, malformed
peasants. When Baroncelli was hanged in Florence
for his share in the conspiracy of the Pazzi, Leonardo
made a drawing of him at the end of the rope, and
something of the dispassionately artistic trend of his
temperament is shown by the note he added on the

56 Personalities in Art

sheet: " Small tan-colored cap, black satin doublet,
lined black jerkin, blue cloak lined with fur of foxes'
breasts, and the collar of the cloak covered with
velvet speckled black and red; Bernardo di Bandino
Baroncelli; black hose." A confirmed realist, we say,
must have made that sketch and that note. One can
see 'him ignoring the emotiona] horror of the spec
tacle, looking only to the accurate registration of the
facts. Most characteristic of all is the touch about
the " black hose/' hastily jotted down after he had
thought the portrait complete.

Leonardo was a realist in that he never under
valued what he could see and touch, handle and
measure. He was peculiarly a master of ponderable
things. Here it is interesting to turn for a moment
to the scientist in him, the man of practical affairs, a
famous letter in which he offered his services to the
Duke of Milan supplying just the needed light on
what we might call the prosaic turn of his mind. "I
have a method of constructing very light and porta
ble bridges," he says, "to be used in the pursuit of
or retreat from the enemy. I also have most con
venient and portable bombs, proper for throwing
showers of small missiles, and with the smoke thereof
causing great terror to the enemy, to his imminent
loss and confusion." In these and in other lines he
shows how useful he could be in time of war, and
then he goes on as follows: "In time of peace I be
lieve that I could equal any other as regards works

Leonardo's Legacy of Beauty 57

In architecture. I can prepare designs for buildings,
whether public or private, and also conduct water
from one place to another. Furthermore, I can exe
cute works in sculpture: marble, bronze or terra-cotta.
In painting, also, I can do what may be done as
well as any other, be he who he may." How reveal
ing, and, again, how human, is that return to the
ruling passion, that transition from canal-cutting to
the art of the painter ! It is profoundly inevitable.
The play of Leonardo's intellect knew no boundaries.
He studied acoustics. He was a seasoned anatomist.
Botany fascinated him, and so on through an alpha
betical list one might follow his imagination, ranging
through all the interests of man. But, then, we would
veer toward the Leonardo who is, as I have said, the
property of the scholar. The Leonardo who is the
property of the world is the Leonardo who is the
property of the artist, the man who is remembered
because of the way in which he drew the ripple of a
woman's hair athwart her cheek.

As he drew it the searching observation of the
realist magnificently sustained him, but in the same
instant all that is materialistic in realism fell from
him, and he functioned as a poet. The result was a
work of art that is incomparably beautiful and that
also is, I believe, the most successful manifestation
of Leonardo's genius. There is, after all, a sharp dis
tinction to be recognized between his universality
and the universality cf Shakespeare. The poet, tak-

5 8 Personalities in Art

ing the world for his province, bodied forth creations
in which his purpose is clearly realized. His energy
is concentrated upon a task which he completes.
Leonardo, undeniably putting to his credit specific
achievements in science, at the same time varies them
with an infinite number of inconclusive experiments.
His energy is diffused. It is in his curiosity rather
than in the actual things he accomplished that the
universality of his mind is declared. He survives in
his writings as a Goethe rather than as a Shakespeare.
But as an artist he knows no diffusion, no incertitude.
There it would seem that he most triumphantly ex
pressed himself. A significant testimony to the fact
that he was, indeed, an artist far more centrally than
a scientist lies in the paradox that he needed no
great mass of works to affirm his immortality in the
sphere of painting. The "Leonardesque" lives in a
touch. It is an ideal of beauty communicated through
the channel of a style.

Legend clusters around the "Mona Lisa," and
famous tributes to that portrait, composed by such
skilful writers as Gautier and Pater, have led thou
sands to the conviction that in this painting as in
no other the quintessence of the Leonardesque is to
be found. It is there, of course, but it also is in other
works, and some of them offer perhaps a simpler
path to his secret. It was the secret of exquisitely
subtle expression, of delineating the facts of nature
with so spiritualized a grace that the facts take on a

Leonardo's Legacy of Beauty 59

kind of divinity. Leonardo had it in the time of his
pupilage, when he painted the celebrated angel in the
foreground of Verrocchio's " Baptism of Christ." He
had it all his life long. Through all the multifarious
activities of his career he was the clairvoyant drafts
man, using his art as though it were a sort of magic
in the service of pure beauty. As a painter he em
ployed color and tone as subtly as in the drawings he
employed line. The "Virgin and Child With Saint
Anne," in the Louvre, is even more comprehensible
than the "Mona Lisa" as an instance of his powers
of expression. It is clothed in beauty as in a vaporous
garment. The forms are defined with an almost melt
ing suavity. The style would remain merely sensuous
in another hand. With Leonardo all that is sensuous
in it is raised to a higher power, made spiritual. Be
cause he was a complete technician he could do any
thing, and among the drawings which are indispen
sable to study of his art there are many which reveal
in him a tremendous power. Battle scenes, for exam
ple, notably inspired him. He could draw their broad
movement, and he could draw the faces of individual
fighters, distorted by passion. But it is in his finer
subjects that he leaves the finest impression. The
"Head of Christ" in the Brera is a miracle of beauty
because it is a miracle of tenderness. We are thrilled
by the swinging strength in the great "Head of a
Warrior" in the British Museum, but we are be
witched and haunted by those heads of women and

60 Personalities in Art

maidens, scattered through the galleries of Europe,
in which Leonardo unites to what he sees in life a
beauty of which we feel he must have dreamed.

It is an infinitely delicate beauty, sprung from
truth, but refined to a point which leaves it, indeed,
well-nigh beyond interpretation in words. Leonardo
flings it over the heads of his feminine types; he plays
with it unceasingly, as I have indicated, in defining
the tendrils of their hair. Over mouth and eyes and
other features it hovers like a sacred atmosphere.
A hand or an arm, as he draws it, is more than a
bodily appurtenance; it is the vehicle for a kind of
aesthetic enchantment. Alluding to these studies of
details that he made I feel tempted to linger on the
force of his technic, the superb knowledge at the bot
tom of his treatment of form, of drapery. But every
thing is used by this tremendous realist as a means to
an end — the evocation of beauty. Never did a tech
nician more steadily throw us back upon the subtler
elements of his work. It is in these that the modern
artist has his lesson. Leonardo sets before him an
heroic standard of workmanship. He was, in mas
tery of the processes of art, a positive demigod. As
a draftsman, for example, Michael Angelo alone is
his peer. It is hopeless to try to match him, to bor
row his skill. But "the Leonardesque," considered
as an inspiration, has had and must always have a
marvellously leavening influence. There were Re
naissance painters in Lombardy who recaptured

Leonardo's Legacy of Beauty 61

something of its glow. In the paintings of Boltraffio,
of Cesare da Sesto, of Solario and others you can see
how his tenderness, his grace, his spiritualization of
tangible things were extraordinarily emulated. No
one in his senses could imagine their revival to-day
in terms modelled closely upon Leonardo's practice.
The time for that kind of emulation is gone. But in
recalling us to beauty he performs a service by which
the modern artist can profit as well as did the artist
of the Renaissance. Leonardo, who could delineate
with overwhelming eloquence the ugliness of life and
the terror of death, has left us, more than anything
else, a tradition of the radiant, flower-like loveliness
that is to be found in nature and that can be ex
pressed in art. In my own sense of him I reckon
with nothing as with his unmistakable belief that
beauty is the goal of the artist. The proof of its
validity lies in his works — for all men to see.

Raphael and the Art of Portrait
Painting

V

RAPHAEL AND THE ART OF
PORTRAIT PAINTING

AMONG the anecdotes relating to Ingres winch have
come down to us there is one illustrating the attitude
that he held toward his demigod Raphael. He sat
at dinner with his friend Thiers, and the latter un
dertook to demonstrate that the fame of the Italian
master rested chiefly upon his Madonnas. Ingres
was furious. "I would give them all/' he exclaimed;
"yes, monsieur, all of them, for a fragment of the
'Disputa' or of the 'School of Athens' or of the
'Parnassus.'" The episode is symbolical of a con
flict which has long persisted in the modem world of
taste. If the "Sistine Madonna" is the most famous
painting in the world, it is because it embodies the
most universally appealing of all pictorial ideas of
the mother of Christ. It seems conclusively to exalt
Raphael as an interpreter of sentiment both human
and divine. But that very painting points to the
equally potent element in his genius which accounts
for the enthusiasm of Ingres; the "Sistine Madonna"
is nothing if not a masterpiece of design. It reveals
the same transcendent power of composition which
makes immortal the decorations in the Vatican.

65

66 Personalities in Art

Nevertheless the conflict aforementioned will still
go on. Laymen will think first of the Madonnas.
Artists return to the mural paintings. In the mean
time, of course, Raphael's art remains all of a piece,
and true appreciation of it depends upon our realiza
tion of the unity binding together its different aspects.
He was one of the most versatile men who have ever
lived. The important thing is to follow him sympa
thetically into every field, and then to seize upon the
central force which animated him in them all.

The American student has had the opportunity to
study here one of Raphael's important religious sub
jects ever since Pierpont Morgan placed the Colonna
"Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints" in the
Metropolitan Museum. Now there seems to be every
likelihood that we will have in this country a monu
ment to a very different phase of the master's ac
tivity. In the spring of 1925 there was a tremendous
to-do in the press over the purchase by the Duveens
of a great portrait by Raphael. It belonged to a col
lector in Berlin, Mr. Oscar Huldschinsky. His sale
of it grievously excited the Germans, who looked upon
it as one of the national treasures, and its exporta
tion, if that had been heard of in time, might pos
sibly have been prevented. However, it got to Lon
don, Once in this country it is almost certain to be
acquired by an American collector, and, though it
would then pass to a private gallery, precedent justi
fies the supposition that sooner or later one of our

RAPHAEL

FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO

Raphael and the Art of Portrait Painting 67

museums will possess it. It would be a little more
than welcome, for it would serve to enlighten the
student where most he needs enlightenment as re
gards Raphael, that is, on his purely human side, on
that side which brings him down from the douds
and makes the Prince of Painters one of the raciest
figures of the Renaissance. The Raphael of legend
is a portent, a worker of miracles, who in a brief life
of thirty-seven years achieved a mass of work —
most of it flawless — large enough to have occupied
several giants of art through a period three times as
long. But he was a man like other men, save for his
genius, and his work is to be apprehended in very
human terms. That is where his portraiture helps.

This example of it is a portrait of Giuliano de Medici
to which Vasari refers as one hanging in his time in
the palace of Ottaviano de Medici at Florence. From
that home it disappeared for centuries, nothing being
known of it save a copy by Alessandro Allori in the
Uffizi. Then, some time in 1866 or 1867, the German
critic Liphart went one day with the Grand Duchess
Marie of Russia to the house of a Signor Brini in
Florence, to look at some paintings that he had to
sell. They were struck by this portrait of Giuliano,
and after the dust upon it had been sponged off,
were only the more impressed. Brini apparently did
not regard it as of exceptional importance. He could
not have paid very much for it when he had got it
from the firm of Baldovinetti, for he sold it to the

68 Personalities in Art

Duchess at what Llphart characterizes as a very
modest price. She took it to her villa at Quarto, and
she brought in the restorer Tricca, who transferred
the canvas, and in the process of cleaning it discov
ered the initials of the painter and the fragments of a
date. In 1901 the Duchess sent the portrait to Paris,
where Eugene Muntz, one of the biographers of Raph
ael, pronounced it the lost portrait of Giuliano de
Medici, Duke of Nemours. Later Doctor Bode con
firmed this opinion. We next hear of it as belonging
to the Sedelmeyers in Paris, and then in the gallery
of Mr. Huldschinsky.

Giuliano, the younger brother of Leo X, was lucky
in his artists. Michael Angelo made his stupendous
monument in the sacristy at San Lorenzo, and Raph
ael painted this portrait. I must quote most of
what Crowe and Cavalcaselle have to say about it,
for it revives something of the atmosphere in which
it was produced, besides throwing some light upon
the subject of the painting:

Giuliano de Medici was the highest personage in the
Papal State for whom Raphael could paint a likeness.
All the arts of Leo X had been exerted to raise this prince
to a station worthy of his birth and pretensions. He was
Duke of Nemours in the peerage of France; the Pope had
given him a principality, Louis XII a wife of royal lineage.
The marriage took place early in February, 1515, and
Giuliano returned to Rome to form a court over which
his wife presided. .Within less than five months after
these events occurred, the French Duke was commanding

GUILIANO DE MEDICI, DUKE OF NEMOURS
FROM THE PORTRAIT BY RAPHAEL

Raphael and the Art of Portrait Painting 69

the papal forces against France. Illness alone prevented
him from leading the troops in person, and a fatal decline
soon deprived him of his life. But before leaving Rome,
Giuliano had apparently had the wish to leave a portrait
behind him which should adorn his wife's drawing-room.
Raphael, as the Duke's "familiar," was selected to paint
it. ...

Giuliano's repute is good among the princes of the
Medicean house. He is said to have been weak. Eut he
had a quality which other members of his family wanted.
He was grateful to those who had favored him in adver
sity. His features, handed down to us in several examples,
are of the genuine Medicean type, including a long hooked
nose, almond-shaped eyes, and a beard and mustache
kept short to suit a small chin and upper lip. Great
breadth and flatness marked the plane of the cheeks,
which, in every extant specimen, are seen at three-quar
ters to the left, with an oval black eyeball looking to the
right. According to the fashion of the period, a coif of
golden net drawn obliquely over the head to the level of
the left ear, and a wide toque set aslant over the right
ear, leave the whole of the forehead bare. A ticket of
lozenge shape and three gold buckles are affixed to the
toque. The low dress displays a long neck fringed with
the border of a white shirt covered by a red vest, all but
hidden by a black doublet over which a fawn-colored
watered silk pelisse is thrown, adorned with a collar and
facings of brown fur. A black patch conceals the fore
finger of the left hand, which lies on a table partly hidden
by the right, holding a letter. ... A green hanging half
conceals an opening through which the sky appears cut
out by the broken outline of the Castle of St. Angelo, to
which the secret approach is shown by a covered way.

There is a significant phrase employed in the fore
going passage, the one designating Raphael as the

7O Personalities in Art

duke's " familiar." It recalls us to the splendor of
the painter's life, his intimacy with popes and all
their gorgeous satellites. His biographers glance at
the notabilities who were his sitters, not only the
princes of the church but statesmen, diplomatists,
and poets. He would portray not only such men as
Julius and Leo but a lettered courtier like Casti-
glione. His net embraced all manner of men. He had
but one prejudice as regards a sitter. As Munte re
marks, "the artist was unwilling to transmit to pos
terity the features of any but those who were worthy
of sympathy or admiration." I am strongly tempted
to pause upon this matter of Raphael's discrimination,
and especially to pursue him as a denizen of the high
est circles In Roman society. But it is well to di
verge here upon the foundations of his work in por
traiture. It is well to go back to his pupilage, to
those early years in which he felt the influences of
Timoteo Viti and Perugino. He has left portraits of
both painters, a superb drawing of Viti in the British
Museum, and a similarly moving head and shoulders
of Perugino in the Borghese Gallery at Rome. The
first is particularly to be admired just for its broad,
sweeping draftsmanship, but the thing that still
further touches the imagination in both portraits is
their intense realism. Raphael's portraits, indeed,
from the very beginning, completely expose the fal
lacy of regarding him as even tinctured by that un
reality which we associate with so-called " academic"

Raphael and the Art of Portrait Painting 71

art. I recall an odd conversation about these por
traits with a very capable artist. They were, no
doubt, very fine, he said, but it was a great pity that
Raphael "didn't know how to paint." Seeing me
rather stunned by this cryptic remark, he hastened
to add that, of course, what he meant was that Raph
ael was neither a Rembrandt nor a Manet, that
the Italian didn't know anything about brush-work.
I have to smile a little when I remember that and
think of the sheer technical maestria in the portraits
I have just mentioned, the linear breadth in the
"Viti" and the nervous flowing brush-work in the
"Perugino." The truth is that Raphael is only super
ficially an artist of an academic cast. Essentially he
was as keen a realist as any in the history of art.

Look only to that question of school currents, of
formative influences, of which the exhaustive his
torian is bound to make so much, and you get to
thinking of Raphael as dabbling in more or less ab
stract principles all his life long. Trace him from his
labors in Umbria under Perugino and Pintoricchio,
watch him as he is stirred by the magic of Leonardo,
observe him shrewdly taking a leaf from the book of
Fra Bartolommeo, and study above all the impetus
he draws from contact with the manner of Michael
Angelo. You forthwith call him an eclectic, which
is a freezing enough label to affix to any man, and
you wonder how through all those mutations he had
anything to do with life. He had everything to do

72 Personalities in Art

with it, as the portraits in particular clearly show.
They testify to nothing so much as to the master's
grasp upon the deep sources of vitality, the thrilling
actuality with which he could endue his every stroke.
There is an apposite passage in a letter of Bembo's
to Bibbiena. "Raphael," he says, "has painted a
portrait of our Tebaldeo, which is so natural that it
seems more like him than he is himself." His con
temporaries put his realism among the first of his
merits. Vasari, paying a tribute akin to that of
Bembo, writes these words, in the course of his com
ments on the decorations in the Vatican: "And at
this time, when he had gained a very great name, he
also made a portrait of Pope Julius in a picture in
oils, so true and so lifelike that the portrait caused
all who saw it to tremble, as if it had been the living
man himself." In this matter of embodying a for
midable personality in a portrait I know of nothing
more impressive, not even the great " Innocent X77 of
Velasquez. There must have been something in por
traiture which poignantly appealed to Raphael, for
even when he was dealing with personages long dead
and gone he had a way of lending to his images of
them an extraordinary verisimilitude. When he
painted the Vatican decorations he had to deal with
numerous historical figures, with Sappho and Plato,
with Virgil and Pindar, with Ptolemy. The task never
gave him a moment's hesitation. He painted them
with a vividness that makes them seem almost his

Raphael and the Art of Portrait Painting 73

contemporaries. Speaking of the "Parnassus," Va-
sari says: "There are portraits from nature of all the
most famous poets, ancient and modem, and some
only just dead or still living in his day; which were
taken from statues or medals, and liiany from old
pictures, and some who were still alive, portrayed
from the life by himself/' It is like Vasari to speak of
them all as "portraits from nature," for no matter
what he used, whether a document or the living
model, Raphael made a living and breathing present
ment of his subject. When he had the model before
him he was merely incomparable, as witness the por
trait of Bramante introduced into the foreground of
"The School of Athens." As you may see from the
sheet of drawings in the Louvre, when he came to
study the lineaments of his architectural friend he
got such a grip upon them that they seem fairly to
vibrate with character. Over and over again Vasari
returns to this motive. He loves to speak of the
power that Raphael had "to give such resemblance
to portraits that they seem to be alive, and that it is
known whom they represent." I confess that I find
it hard not to emulate Vasari, lingering repeatedly
on the simple truth, the almost artless animation, in
Raphael's portraits. One point that is pertinent I
cannot neglect. It is the triumph of this truth over
the purely decorative motive pursued as an end in
itself. It is especially noticeable in his portraits of
women, such as the "Maddalena Doni," the "Donna

74 Personalities in Art

Velata," and the "Joanna of Aragon." They have a
freedom and a solidity making them strangely pre
dominant over the typical Florentine profile, con
summately exquisite though that may be.

His genius was too great to wear the shackles of a
convention, to be confined within the linear bounds
of a pattern. But I indicated at the outset of these
remarks that Raphael's genius was all of a piece,
that one pervasive inspiration went to the painting
of the Madonnas, the decorations, and the portraits.
To return to that issue is to enforce the unity of
Raphael's art by exposing its corner-stone where
the portraits are concerned. He couldn't have sus
tained in them that virtue of lifelikeness on which I
have dwelt if he had not known how to build for it
a perfect scaffolding of design. That is where the
painter of three great types of pictorial art affirmed
himself a master of one great secret. It is the secret
of composition. Raphael had it in its simplest form
when he made his early four-square portrait of Peru-
gino. Rapidly he developed it and richly exploited
it, achieving, as he placed a figure within the rec
tangle, the same freshness and felicity which you ob
serve in such a decorative gem of his as the "Juris
prudence." Look at the "Angelo Doni," look at the
"Cardinal Bibbiena," look at the "Baldassare Cas-
tiglione" and look finally at the " Giuliano de Medici."
If they throb with human life, their beauty springs
also from the supreme composition that is in them.

Raphael and the Art of Portrait Painting 75

Raphael could meet, through his grasp upon that art,
the last test of the portrait-painter. He could make
of a portrait a really great picture. The point is ap
preciated by Vasari when he comes to describe the
famous "Leo X with Two Cardinals," now in the
Pitti:

In Rome he made a picture of good size, in which he
portrayed Pope Leo, Cardinal Giulio de Medici, and Car
dinal de Rossi. In this the figures appear to be not painted
but in full relief; there is the pile of the velvet, with the
damask of the Pope's vestments shining and rustling, the
fur of the linings soft and natural, and the gold and silk
so counterfeited that they do not seem to be in color, but
real gold and silk. There is an illuminated book of parch
ment which appears more real than the reality; and a
little bell of wrought silver which is more beautiful than
words can tell. Among other things, also, is a ball of
burnished gold on the Pope's chair, wherein are reflected,
as if it were a mirror (such is its brightness), the light
from the windows, the shoulders of the Pope, and the
walls round the room. And all these things are executed
with such diligence that one may believe without any
manner of doubt that no master is able, or is ever likely
to be able, to do better.

Was any other master ever able to do better?
Muntz seems to have been a little in doubt. "Nor
can we place before him," he says, "any but the
greatest masters of portraiture, such as Jan van
Eyck, Holbein, Titian, Velasquez, Van Dyck, and
Rembrandt." For my own part, I cannot see why
any of these save Rembrandt should be placed "be-

76 Personalities in Art

fore" Raphael in portraiture. The Dutchman, to be
sure, is hors concours. No one in the whole range of
portraiture can touch him for pathos, for the dra
matic, even tragic, presentation of character. But for
the rest, Raphael's portraits seem to me to stand
among the greatest. They do so by virtue of force in
characterization, distinction in design, and, above all,
a certain serene beauty.

VI

Religious Painting

VI
RELIGIOUS PAINTING

AN exhibition held not long ago in New York set
me thinking anew on an old subject. It was one of
pictures by Mr. H. Siddons Mowbray, and the sub
ject they brought up was that of religious painting.
The artist dealt with the life of Christ. He did so
in a remarkably persuasive manner. Mr. Mowbray*
is a good draftsman and a good designer. His epi
sodes were composed with both dignity and vitality,
and his justly organized groups were set against a
deep blue background realistically enough and at
the same time with a decorative felicity recalling the
traditions of Pintoricchio and the earlier Florentines.
This was a fairly long and well-sustained flight in
Biblical illustration. There were fifteen panels given
to the main theme, with several others allied to the
series. They were beautiful and convincing. They
disclosed true devotional emotion. Their technical
merits, too, were impressive, but what especially in
terested me was that they should have been painted
at all, that in the present period, dedicated to the
apotheosis of materialism, an artist should arise de
voting himself to the delineation of purely spiritual
realities. The incident revived the whole problem of

79

8o Personalities in Art

religious art and the change which has come over its
fortunes with the passing of the centuries.

I remember puzzling over this problem years ago
in the sacristy of the cathedral at Montauban before
that "Vow of Louis XIII " which is one of the most
ambitious of the religious paintings of Ingres. I am
an Ingres man and ready, I suppose, if anybody is,
to meet him half-way. But I confess that despite the
elements of grandeur in this composition it would
not occur to me to cite it among the great pictures of
the Madonna. He returned to Scriptural subjects
again and again. Witness the "Christ before the
Doctors" at Montauban. Witness the "Virgin and
the Sacred Host" in its two versions, one of them in
the Louvre, or the "Christ Committing to Peter the
Keys of Paradise" in the same museum. But I have
never seen those things without amusedly recalling
the retort of Ingres, cited earlier in these pages, when
Thiers tried to prove to him that the Madonnas of
Raphael constituted his chief title to fame. "I would
give them all," cried the artist, "for a fragment of
the 'Dispute,'" Who would not give all of the re
ligious paintings by Ingres for one of his nudes?
For my own part I feel that way not only about
Ingres but about most of the more devoutly minded
men of his generation and later in France, and in
England too. Flandrin and Ary Scheffer were ele
vated spirits but never triumphant masters. Puvis
alone climbed the heights, yet, when all is said, one

Religious Painting 81

reveres him rather as a great decorator than as an
interpreter of Scriptural story; his indubitable in
spiration is poetic rather than divine. When you
glance cursorily over the rank and file in France you
are arrested here and there by interesting things.
You note a memorable "Madonna" by Dagnan-Bou-
veret. You find Cazin, of all people in the world, paint
ing a "Hagar and Ishmael." You discover B6raud
portraying a Biblical scene in sensationally modern
terms, or you come upon the famous illustrations
of Tissot. Bouguereau once painted a "Madonna"
in his polished academic way, and it wasn't a bad
picture — in its polished academic way. I could go
on indefinitely enumerating French excursions into
this field. But hardly any of them are fundamentally
pertinent to this discussion. I can recall only two
modern Frenchmen who have seemed to me to be
imbued with authentic religious emotion. One of
them was Millet, when he painted "The Angelus."
The other is that brilliant satirist of our own time,
Forain, who has drawn from the Bible compositions
of a Rembrandtesque poignancy.

The failure of England in this matter is curious,
for the genius of the race, addicted in literature at
least to the play of ideas, would seem to be peculiarly
favorable to the development of religious painting.
Why did not George Frederick Watts conclusively
prove it? To the painter of "Love and Death," to
say nothing of divers other imaginative conceptions,

82 Personalities in Art

it would seem as if anything might have been pos
sible. And why did not the Pre-Raphaelites put the
subject on a firmer basis? Holman Hunt created a
certain furore in his own country with "The Light of
the World," One of the best of Rossetti's paintings
is one of the earliest, his charming "Ecce Ancilla
Domini," of 1850. But in England, as across the
Channel, the status of religious art is essentially sub
ordinate. It is a striking historical circumstance — in
the assertion of which I might or might not have
foreign support — that the greatest religious painting
of our own time was produced by an American, the
late John La Farge. His "Ascension" in the church
of that name in New York is a veritably sublime work
of art. We are a strange people, sometimes very slow
to appreciate our own, and I am not at all sure that
as many Americans know of this masterpiece as know
of, say, Munkicsy's "Christ before Pilate." But I
would defy anybody to name any religious painting
of its epoch anywhere in the world that is compara
ble to it in beauty and grandeur. I can hear some
reader murmuring at this point: "Well, if an American
was the greatest religious painter of his time, why
isn't America the scene of more and better religious
painting?" There is an obvious answer. It is only
once in so often, anywhere, that a John La Farge is
born. Incidentally, that answer excites many re
flections on the broad problem to which I have re
ferred, the relation of religious painting to a givea
period.

Religious Painting 83

It has often, I think, been grievously misunder
stood because of the error made in ascribing to a
given period a talismanic potency that it never pos
sessed. The unwary student, happily beguiled by
the glamour of an innocent world, conceives of medi
aeval mysticism as a kind of holy elixir imbibed by
generations of painters. It is as easy as it is delight
ful to fall into this misconception. Certain types like
the Sienese and Florentine Primitives irresistibly in
vite it. An age of faith and nothing else is mirrored
in the tenderness of a Duccio or a Giotto. There is
something pervadingly celestial about early Italian
art. The pictures of Fra Angelico are of so much
saintliness all compact, and the man is as childlike
as the spirit of his immortal work. Seeing the tre
mendous force of religious exaltation by which his
art and that of a host of his contemporaries were en
ergized, it is natural to assume that exaltation as
exclusively animating a school. The student comes
to think of it as a kind of general, communal posses
sion. It was, as a matter of fact, an element depend
ing for its perfect exploitation wholly upon the indi
vidual, a truism which, as I have said, is sometimes
overlooked.

These observations are assuredly not directed at the
revival of ancient scandals. I have no disposition to
dip the brush in earthquake and eclipse, retelling sad
stories of the death of private reputations. But I
may be permitted to touch upon the classical in-

84 Personalities in Art

stance of Fra Filippo Lippi and his well-known levity.
Vasari has some drastic things to say upon the paint
er's more earthy mood and adds the following pas
sage: "When he was in this humor he gave little or
no attention to the works that he had undertaken;
wherefore, on one occasion Cosimo de Medici, hav
ing commissioned him to paint a picture, shut Mm
up in his own house, in order that he might not go
out and waste his time; but, after staying there for
two whole days, one night he cut some ropes out of
his bed sheets with a pair of scissors and let himself
down from a window, and then abandoned himself
for many days to his pleasures/' A scurvy wretch,
no doubt, as he lives in the pages of Vasari or in
Browning's poem. Human; in short, one of the most
human creatures that ever lived ! It is for that that
I signalize him. It is not Ms peccadilloes that make
him representative but his humanness; he was a man
before he was a mystic.

It is the story of the whole of Renaissance paint
ing. Religious exaltation was a part, but only a part,
of religious painting at its zenith, and sometimes it
was only vicariously present, so to say. I can imagine
the words of John Milton on the lips of Fra Angelico :

— What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the highth of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Religious Painting 85

I cannot for the life of me imagine this cry from
the depths on the lips of, for example, Titian, the
bosom friend of Aretino. One must lay hold of an
other clew to the majesty of great religious painting.
You find it, looking to the human aspect of the ques
tion, in the conception of the painter as primarily a
craftsman and a temperament. The church was there
to supply the theme and the occasion. The artist
was there to make the most of both according as
he was a man of imagination and, transcendently, a
man of his hands. There is no such thing, says
Swinburne, as an inarticulate poet. There is no such
thing as a great painter who cannot paint — and
paint superlatively well. He must feel, too, he must
have creative power, yet the tale of his exploits is all
sound and fury if it is not a tale of his craftsmanship.
I know of no more moving illustration than that sup
plied by the "Sistine Madonna." By some fantastic
slip of the memory Ingres must have forgotten that
when he offered to give all of Raphael's "Madonnas"
for a fragment of the "Disputa." He was thinking of
Raphael as the prodigious designer, draftsman, and
master of form, and he forgot for the moment that
in the " Sistine Madonna" Raphael is the consummate
exemplar of all three elements. The picture survives
as a triumph of religious exaltation and an interpre
tation of divine motherhood chiefly because, to ex
press it bluntly, it is so magnificently and monu
mentally put together, because the man who made
it was so intensely the artist.

86 Personalities in Art

Religious art is so much the more quickly and re
freshingly appreciated if one begins by grasping it
from within in these more tangible aspects of its
character. Its beauty is the more thrilling as it
deepens, and takes on more of spiritual mystery, but
that very mystery only grows the more enkindling as
you search out the fabric of personal and technical
traits on which it rests. It is an article of my belief
that the artist as artist is paramount, that he is
greater than the school, the movement, the epoch,
and I would transpose the familiar phrase "adven
tures among masterpieces " into "adventures among
artists.3' Inevitably and in a measure justly you read
into a painting of a given period the pressure of ex
ternal influences. All the time you have to reckon
also with the strength of personality and the play of
taste. How crushingly this sometimes overrides the
sway of convention ! There hangs in the museum at
Bile one of the masterpieces of Holbein, his "Dead
Christ." It is for me one of the most beautiful things
in sixteenth-century painting, a miracle of drafts
manship and modelling. It has tragic pathos, too.
But it comes straight from the charnel-house, and
you trace in it not so much of religious emotion as
you do of the canny, clear-eyed Holbein, the man
with a passion for form that had about it something
of scientific objectivity. To turn about this phe
nomenon of personalized artistry, like a many-faceted
jewel in one's hand, go from Bale to Milan and hunt

Religious Painting 87

up Mantegna's "Pieta" in tlie Brera. Again you
behold a dead body, but this time the connoisseur
of form who has drawn it is one who has not paused
in the charnel-house but has spent a lifetime in the
company of antique marbles. This painting, too, has
pathos, but it is the personal equation of the artist
that in the long run validates it; what we are first
and last conscious of is just the idiosyncrasy of Man-
tegna, wreaked upon a special accent in the treat
ment of form. The student will be repaid who wiU
pursue this motive as it is exposed in the works of
this or that master. Let him pass from Holbein to
Mantegna and from Mantegna to that ineffable
"Pieta" of Michael Angelo's at St. Peter's. Let him
contrast Michael Angelo's handling of form with
Signorelli's, or with that characteristic j}f Rubens.
Just as one voice in a choir differs from another in
color, so you find the style differing as you go from
one passage in the great symphony of form to an
other. Once in his dosing years La Farge walked
through the Louvre with a medical friend, who, from
time to time, felt his pulse. Afterward the doctor
said that, trusting merely to this indicator, he could
tell which picture had most affected the artist. It
was, he said, the famous "Dead Christ" from Avi
gnon. "And," said La Farge to me, "he was right."
The authorship of that painting has been much in
debate, but I have no doubt about the source of my
friend's emotion. If he owed it to the theme he owed

88 Personalities in Art

it even more to the genius of the French Primitive.
Brander Matthews, by the way, once gave me a
suggestive anecdote on this matter of the invincible,
persistence of personality. He and La Farge were
talking at the dinner table about the Morellian hy
pothesis and the painter said:

Let us suppose the testing of a picture of my own
sometime many years hence. The Morelli of the future
might look at it narrowly and after a while conclude that
the hands and eyes in the picture showed a Japanese
conception of form. He would remember that I had kept
a workshop, a bottega, after the old Italian fashion, and
he would have heard that I had had Japanese people with
me. So he would say that the picture was a studio piece,
the work of a Japanese assistant. Then the Berenson of
that day would come along and look it all over very
carefully and get much interested in the spirituality of
the face. He would say that there was something very
soft, very feminine about it, and he would wind up by
attributing it to Miss So-and-So, another pupil. — But it
would be a La Farge, all the same.

It is by reference to La Farge also and to his ex
perience in the making of his masterpiece, the paint
ing of "The Ascension " I have already mentioned,
that I may throw a little further light on the pro
foundly personal origin of a work of art. He wrote
me a long letter about it, describing his methods,
how he studied the matter of proportioning his fig
ures to the given space, how he pondered over the
naturalistic appearance which he wished to establish
in the landscape, and so on. In the effort to make

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Religious Painting

some of Ms figures look at their ease floating in the
air, "I studied what I could," he wrote me, "of the
people who are swung in ropes and other arrange
ments across theatres and circuses." He had cer
tain geometric conditions in his mind which his com
position had to meet if it was to make the right
pattern in the space awaiting it. The landscape es
pecially troubled him, and on this point there is a
passage in his letter which I must quote intact:

At that moment I was asked to go to Japan by my
friend, Henry Adams, and I went there in 1886. I had a
vague belief that I might find there certain conditions of
line in the mountains which might help me. Of course
the Judean Mountains were entirely out of question, all
the more that they implied a given place. I kept all this
in mind and on one given day I saw before me a space
of mountain and cloud and flat land which seemed to me
to be what was needed. I gave up my other work and
made thereupon a rapid but very careful study, so com
plete that the big picture is only a part of the amount of
work put into the study of that afternoon. There are
turns of the tide which allow you at times to do an amount
of work incredible in sober moments; as you know, there
are very many such cases; I do not understand it myself.
When I returned I was still of the same mind. My studies
of separate figures were almost ready and all I had to
do was to stretch the canvas and begin the work.

Now this artist had one of the richest minds and
one of the subtlest souls ever known in art. His
"Ascension" is the noblest work of Ms extraordinary
imagination. Its appeal is that of religious painting

90 Personalities in Art

in its highest estate. Yet you see from the foregoing
out of what human perplexities and expedients it
was developed. And if I allude to La Farge's pro
cedure it is not of course to deny him a spiritual in
spiration and to contrast his methods with those of
the Old Masters, but, on the contrary, to emphasize
his solidarity with them. A great religious painting
grew under his hands precisely as it grew under the
hands of a Titian or even a Leonardo. We talk about
the man of action as though he had traits decisively
separating him from the artist. The artist is a man
of action in that at least while a dreamer he is also
a doer, a maker. La Farge, slowly fashioning his
picture so that it might become an organic part of
an architectural ensemble, sends me back with a
heightened sympathy to the great company of his
august predecessors. I seem only to apprehend a
more vital character in the beauty of their works
when I trace behind their unquestioned mysticism
endless traits of a more mundane and personal ori
gin."

I love to watch the natural every-day habit of
mind belonging to a Ghirlandajo or a Carpaccio, ad
justing itself to a realistic gait and achieving its
pleasant, friendly narrative effects without any
thought of the emotions indispensable to the Primi
tives. I love to observe Fra Angelico's affection for
the flowers and Crivelli's artless sumptuosity. It is
delightful to savor the wistfulness of Botticelli, the

Religious Painting 91

paganism of Mantegna, the intellectuality of Raphael,
the sheer splendor of Titian, the terriUlita of Michael
Angelo, the dramatic fire in Tintoretto, the inex
haustible bravura of Tiepolo, and so on through the
long list of what I would not call phases of religious
painting but just the individualized moods of men.
Consider the increased intimacy with religious art
which we gain through this mode of approach. It is
a mistake to be too metaphysical, too recondite, in
the study of religious painting. It is a mistake to
assume that at some places in the morning of the
modern world, in Italy, in Flanders, or elsewhere,
art sat at the feet of the church and profited by a
mystical laying on of hands. Even on that hypoth
esis it is to be noted that the religious inspiration
depends for its fortunes utterly upon the caprice of
fate that illumines one man and not the other. Look
at Spain. There is something like religious ecstasy in
the paintings of Zurburan and again in those of El
Greco, whereas the religious compositions of Velas
quez are negligible, though he was, as a painter, the
master of them all. Look at the Low Countries.
They were the scene of the most pronounced realism,
yet the tenderness of the Van Eycks is unsurpassed
and Rembrandt was one of the most moving religious
painters of all time, as witness alone his " Supper at
Emmaus," in the Louvre. It all comes back to the
generosity of the gods, who may or may not project
into the world a man with the genius of religious

92 Personalities in Art

painting in him. A long time ago they dowered the
earth with numbers of such masters. They and not
their time account for what they did. Let us not
forget, either, that most of these men were also great
mural painters, great portrait-painters, as much at
home with a secular as with a sacred subject — in
other words, simply great masters of a craft. This
may not be an age of faith, but if a master arose
to-morrow, a man of ideas and imagination, emo
tional and creative, wielding a compelling brush, he
could fill the churches with immortal illustrations of
the divine story. The case of La Farge's glorious
picture proves that.

VII

The Cult of the Drawing

VII
THE CULT OF THE DRAWING

IN the "Souvenirs du Diner Bixio" of the late
Julps Claretie there is a passage which rather amus
ingly illustrates the attitude occasionally held by one
eminent man toward another, and incidentally it
gives us a clew to the status in French art of one of
its most famous -figures. The passage reports a col
loquy between Meissonier and Ger6me, about Leon
Bonnat, which ran as follows:

MEISSONIER. — Qm va-t-on nommer comme wee-president
aVInstitut?

GE&6ME. — Bonnat.

MEISSOJSHER. — A quel propos? C'est done un peintre?

GER.6ME. — Oui . . . maintenant.

Thus we see that even an Academician may some
times be a little acrid toward another Academician.
But, as I have indicated, besides what is droll in the
anecdote there is a suggestion of Bonnat's character
as an artist. He was one of the salient painters of
his day, but was he, in the esoteric sense of the term,
a painter? He promised to be one when he was a
young man in Italy, a pensionnaire of the Villa Me-
dicis in the early sixties, the ardent soul painted by

95

96 Personalities in Art

Degas at that time in one of the most interesting of
Ms portraits. Bonnat delineated then the models
who hang about the Scala di Spagna in Rome wear
ing their most picturesque garments, and he made
capital pictures out of them. Even then, however,
there was working in him a deleterious influence.
Born at Bayonne and spending part of his youth just
across the border in Spain, he had conceived a great
admiration for Eibera. In one of his Italian pictures
he invented a scene in which that master sat on the
steps of a Roman church drawing the monks issuing
from the edifice; and besides commemorating his
hero in this way he emulated him in method when he
came to paint the portraits that occupied a large
part of his career. He went in for a simple but dra
matic play of light and shade and put forth a series
of extraordinary images. It is resplendent with great
names. He portrayed Pasteur and the Due d'Aumale,
Gounod and Pasta, Thiers and Victor Hugo — in
short, all the celebrities of an epoch. They live mag
nificently upon his canvas. You look, for example,
at such a portrait of his as that of Leon Cogniet and
for a moment you feel that you are looking at a
masterpiece. On second thoughts you revise this
judgment, for you observe that the portrait is as
hard as nails, as rigidly defined as though it were cut
out of iron. What was it, in addition to the vitalizing
characterization in them, that nevertheless gave
them high rank in modem French portraiture ? They

The Cult of the Drawing 97

were superbly drawn, drawn academically, no doubt,
but still with the touch of a master.

Apropos of this matter of Bonnat's draftsmanship
I may recite a very curious incident. Gambetta died
on December 31, 1882. In its issue for February,
1883, the Gazette des Beaux- Arts published an article
about him as a man of taste by Jules Claretie, and
accompanied it by a reproduction of an etching from
the head of the statesman drawn the day after his
death at Ville d'Avray by Bonnat. It was signed
and dated. I tucked it away among my prints and
years afterward, in 1898, when Bodley published Ms
book on France, I reprinted the portrait in a review
of that work. This fell under the eye of my friend
the late Samuel P. Avery, the old art-dealer, con
noisseur, and collector. He wrote to me with aston
ishment, saying that Bonnat himself had aided him
to complete his collection of his (Bonnat's) etchings,
sending him an impression of any new plate he made,
and this one had never turned up. Avery said he
would send my reproduction to his agent in Paris
with instructions to make inquiry. The report came
back stating that Bonnat declared he had never
etched the plate, and scrawled across the reproduc
tion were these words: "Bonnat swore by the point
of his knife that he never made etching of this in his
life." Now what could have caused that amazing
repudiation, made under the most sacred of Basque
oaths? I call it a repudiation because the documen-

98 Personalities in Art

tation of the print is conclusive. Its mere publication
in the Gazette, one of the sedatest periodicals on earth,
would by itself be fairly conclusive, but besides that
it bears the familiar signature and Claretie specifically
ascribes it to Bonnat in his text. That the artist
didn't see it in the magazine at the time is next door
to incredible, and that he never protested to the
Gazette is shown by the fact that when the "Tables
Generates " of the magazine were subsequently com
piled by Charles de Bus the etching was attributed
therein to Bonnat. It will be interesting if some day,
in some passage of social or political reminiscence, a
ray of light is thrown on this little mystery.

Bonnat triumphed, we have seen, through drafts
manship. The point has a dual significance. He not
only drew well himself, but he had a cult for the
drawings of others; and if he left one monument to
his art in the body of portraiture to which I have re
ferred, he left another to his taste in the Mus6e Bon
nat at Bayonne. That little town in the extreme
south of France was good to the artist in his youth,
subsidizing his studies, and he never forgot it. As
he rose in the world and prospered he collected paint
ings and drawings, and he gave a prodigious collec
tion of these to the municipality in 1901. I remember
that when I visited Bayonne the drawings in the mu
seum made me catch my breath. Nowhere else in
the provinces could one encounter quite such riches.
It was as though one were in an annex to the Louvre*

The Cult of the Drawing 99

Bonnat made memorable gifts to that great national
institution — especially one of a priceless sheaf of
Rembrandt drawings — but the Musee Bonnat was
very close to his heart and it possesses most of his
finest gems. These are now being made accessible to
a wider public. There is an admirable co-operative
organization in Paris, Les Presses Universitaires de
France, which exists to supply its members with
books at reasonable prices. It also engages in pub
lishing, and it is issuing a series of portfolios under
the title of "Les Dessins de la Collection Leon Bon
nat." Four times a year subscribers receive a group
of from twenty to twenty-five drawings, and publica
tion will go on until the best at Bayonne have been
reproduced. This means that in the long run we will
have in facsimile some of the greatest drawings of
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo;
Rembrandt, Holbein, and Diirer; Claude, Poussin,
and Watteau. Nor is the collection confined to the
ancient masters. Bonnat had a passion for the draw
ings of Ingres, and, with his fine catholicity, he showed
the same ardor in assembling souvenirs of that mas
ter's romantic rival, Delacroix. Other moderns are
present. The German Menzel, for example, is rep
resented by six beautiful drawings. The first port
folio, which lies before me, well brings out the wide
range of the affair. It opens with Guardi and Signo-
relH. There follows a brilliant sanguine attributed to
Maes, and from this we pass to an exquisite Rem-

loo Personalities in Art

brandt. Then come Diirer and the elder Holbein,
followed unexpectedly by a brilliant drawing in colors
from the hand of Sir Thomas Lawrence. The eigh
teenth-century French School is glitteringly rep
resented by Clodion, Fragonard, Lancret, and Gabriel
de Saint-Aubin. Barye, Corot, Delacroix, G6ricault,
Ingres, and Millet round out the company.

The important thing about these reproductions is
that, thanks to the development of modern processes,
possession of them is tantamount to possession of the
originals, and I note the fact with the more appre
ciation because it plays into the hands, if I may so
express it, of a hobby which I would urge upon every
lover of art. Of course there are, I suppose, people
quite interested in pictures for whom drawings as
such have no great appeal. Well, frankly, I'm sorry
for them, and, indeed, I will go so far as to assert
that their equipment is sadly incomplete. The world
is divided, for me, into two groups, formed respec
tively of those who care for drawings and those who
do not. For those who do care there is nothing so
thrilling as a good drawing. I have ridden this hobby
all my life and I know. Some old Frenchman — it
may have been Mariette — once said that in a draw
ing you get an artist's idea in its premiere edosion*
You get more than that. You get in its most reveal
ing autographic expression the very breath and pres
sure of his individuality, you come into the most
intimate possible contact with the very essence of

PATJLUS HOFHAIMER

FROM THE DRAWING BY ALBRECHT DURER

The Cult of the Drawing 101

Ms genius. Pater and the rest of them have uttered
their dithyrambs in celebration of the "Mona Lisa."
They seek thereby to draw nearer to the secret of
La Gioconda. But if you want to draw nearer to the
secret of Leonardo, the secret of that almost un
earthly beauty, impalpable and evanescent, which
he brought forth from the recesses of his soul, you
go to the drawings. There is eloquence enough in his
few paintings to carry us far, but in the final inter
pretation of Leonardo's magic the drawings are so
indispensable that without them criticism would be
gravely handicapped.

It is so with all the masters. When the Diirer So
ciety issued its first portfolio, in 1898, it specialized
necessarily in the prints, but it included a few draw
ings and multiplied the number of them as it went
on with its ten years of devoted reproduction. More
and more have facilities for the study of drawings
been made the object of a beneficent activity among
artistic associations. Long ago, before he dispersed
his renowned eighteenth-century collections, M.
Doucet took me through them in his house in the
rue Spontini. I lingered especially over his drawings
by Watteau and the others of that school. Doucet
smiled sympathetically and said: "Wait. You shall
have, them." What he meant, as he proceeded to ex
plain, was that he was about to found his now famous
library of art, and with it the Societe de Reproduc
tions des Dessins de Maitres. I joined it, of course,

IO2 Personalities in Art

when it started, in 1909, and remained a member un
til the concluding portfolio appeared, only the other
day. Annually I was enriched by a large group of
masterpieces, practically, as I have said before,
originals. That Societe has done precious things. As
a separate venture it reproduced in four large port
folios all the drawings by Pisanello and his school in
the Codex Vallardi in the Louvre. It also made
some six or seven volumes out of the old Salon cata
logues annotated with pencil sketches by Gabriel de
Saint-Aubin. Anything more adorable — there is no
other word — than those pictorial memoranda of the
eighteenth-century draftsman it would be impossible
to find, and the facsimiles are so exact that you get
the very spirit of his page. I must mention also the
fine work done by the late M. Demotte in making a
series of facsimiles from the drawings of Degas, a
series continued by his son. Degas could have no
more eloquent memorial.

The French have been the most brilliant miracle-
workers in this matter of facsimile reproduction.
The English, however, have been close behind them*
Their Vasari Society, created in London to do what
Doucet did in Paris, has issued and is still issuing
beautiful plates. The Germans have not, in my ex
perience, been so successful. Everybody knows that
their book work and color work are exceptional, but
I was disappointed in the drawings I got from a
society in Frankfort before the war broke out. I

The Cult of the Drawing 103

have found better plates in two volumes by Detlev
von Hadeln on the drawings of Tintoretto and Titian,
but these recent books, good as they are, might be
better. They certainly don't challenge the supremacy
of the French. While I am speaking of that I ought
to mention another source of valuable reproductions
for the amateur to whom the cost of original draw
ings is prohibitive. I mean the sale catalogue as it
is issued in Paris. Some remarkable French collec
tions of drawings have passed under the hammer,
Doucet's, the Muhlbacher collection, and that of the
Goncourts. The drawings of the great Heseltine col
lection have also been reproduced to a certain extent;
and, in fact, more instances crowd upon my memory
than I can enumerate here. Some of my best prizes
have come fiom the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. It is not
at all an unexciting sensation to buy a bundle of back
numbers of the Gazette at auction, to buy it "unsight
unseen," and then to sift out of it a handful of su
perb drawings, perhaps a new Leonardo or a Dtirer of
the first water. The browsing among books is almost
illimitable since photography came to the aid of illus
tration. There are monumental folios like Berenson's
classic work on the drawings of the Florentine mas
ters and there are popular inexpensive collections like
the one which the Scribners imported from England
some years ago, each thin volume in which was given
to excellent full-page plates from the drawings of a
single master. Decidedly the collector who gives his

IO4 Personalities in Art

mind to it may go on indefinitely adding to his port
folios. In one way and another the reproductions of
drawings in the last twenty or thirty years have been
run up into the thousands.

There is more in this circumstance than its refer
ence to the collector's purse. He has one great ad
vantage besides that of gathering unto himself trea
sures available only to the millionaire before the me
chanical processes involved in the matter were per
fected. He is absolutely unrestricted in his choice.
The luckiest of millionaires is helpless before the fact
that a given drawing is lodged forever in the British
Museum or in the Louvre, in the Uffizi or in the
Albertina. On the -other hand, the collector who
could not dream of possessing an original Leonardo,
may little by little assemble facsimiles of virtually all
the Leonardos. And I cannot too often reiterate the
tremendous meaning of that word " facsimile." A
photograph of a painting is one thing; a facsimile of
a drawing is quite another, often giving you not only
the drawing but the color and texture of the paper
and even the stains thereon. In other words, the
judicious collector having the modest status to which
I allude, may make himself the master of the whole
cosmos of historic draftsmanship. He will ride his
hobby, of course, in accordance with his own taste.
He may specialize in this or that school. He may con
centrate on Botticelli, say, or on Rubens, and be
utterly indifferent to Degas. But on one point, I

The Cult of the Drawing 105

think, all amateurs of this subject will agree. The
drawing for which they care will be not only the
drawing of a true artist, but it will be a chip from a
workshop, a study, a preliminary step toward some
thing else, a natural gesture which we surprise look
ing over the artist's shoulder. There are exceptions,
to be sure. Ingres made some of his finest drawings
as finished portraits. I might cite other illustrations
from types old and modern, but I need not go into
this phase of the subject. The drawing I have par
ticularly in mind is just the drawing that I might
describe as the informal fragment of personality, the
drawing in which the painter or sculptor feels his
way toward the creation of a work of art and thinks
aloud, as it were, unfettered by those conditions
which confront him when he is functioning in full
dress.

If this character is important to the drawing there
is also much emphasis to be placed upon the distinc
tive quality of the artist, his flair for draftsmanship,
his way of giving to line a special power and enchant
ment. Where the drawings of some painters are full
of the subtlest elements, disclosing beauties that fre
quently evaporate when they work with the brush,
the drawings of others are negligible, even though
those others can paint like masters. Sargent, for ex
ample, is more of a technical virtuoso on canvas
than John La Farge ever dreamed of being, but his
drawings, as drawings, haven't a tithe of the felicity

106 Personalities in Art

belonging to those of La Farge. It is strange, by the
way, that the drawings of the modern painter seldom
have the virtue residing in the drawings of the past.
Occasionally draftsmen turn up. In England they
have Charles Shannon, Augustus John, and William
Orpen. Here we have a consummate draftsman like
Arthur B. Davies, who is as unique in black-and-
white as in color. But men like these are excessively
rare. And the most singular circumstance is that the
draftsmen who professionalize the subject, the artists
who draw strictly for publication, make scarcely any
contribution at all to our subject. A master like
Forain is only the exception that proves the rule.
Great illustrators like Abbey and Howard Pyle may
draw with unqualified authority, but there is a crucial
distinction between their draftsmanship and the kind
of draftsmanship that I have been talking about. It
is the great paradox of this cult for the drawing that
the connoisseurs who have followed it from the Re
naissance down have almost invariably sought the
drawing which was not so much a masterpiece in it
self as a stroke on the way to one. The typical draw
ing of superlative interest and beauty is a kind of
sublime by-product of art.

VIII

Venice as a Painting-Ground

VIII

VENICE AS A PAINTING-GROUND

THE most paintable city on earth rests, as a matter
of fact, upon the sea. I refer of course to Venice.
There are other places in the world that rival it in
what is commonly called picturesqueness, but they
haven't won the painter as Venice has won him.
Some pedantic statistician might here arise and point
out that Holland has been having its portrait painted
for centuries. I would grant him his figures but I
would still go on stubbornly to assert that for the
artist the Venetian glamour has been incomparable.
And now the artist must look to the defense of his
favorite painting-ground, for it is grievously threat
ened by so-called modern progress. Pompeo Mol-
menti, the Carpaccio man, who has all his life been
a champion of Venetian integrity, has assembled in
a book, "I Nemici di Venezia," the papers in which
he has repeatedly returned to the castigation of the
city's foes. The latter are as varied in the nature of
their attacks as they are numerically strong. One in
sidious enemy is the man with the purse who, against
the law, secretly contrives to detach from Venice
some of its most characteristic art treasures. Then

109

no Personalities in Art

there are the more candid souls who would erect
tasteless new buildings cheek by jowl with the his
toric monuments. But, indeed, the schemes of the
promoters are endless.

Once she did hold the gorgeous East in fee — and
now she is the sport of the speculator ! In The Liv
ing Age one day I found some passages quoted from
an indignant Italian journal on some of the "sense
less projects conceived by Venetians and non- Vene
tians." I used to wince when I floated about the
lagoons in a gondola or a sandola in the early days of
the steamboats and had to take the wash of those
impertinent little craft. But they were as nothing
compared to the sort of thing proposed by the van
dals mentioned in the Revista d' Italia :

A few of them would like to improve part of the lagoon
shore so as to enable people to raise cabbages and po
tatoes upon it. Others have more varied and also more
persistent ideas. They want to join Venice to the main
land by means of a grand bridge for pedestrians and
vehicles. In a near future it might be possible thus to
leave a villa in Venice and go directly by motor-car or
tramway to the gardens of Bottenighi. As it is plain
enough that the tramways, automobiles, and carriages
could not stop short and accumulate at the town limit, a
way will be naturally found to give them easy access to
the streets of the interior, and that is all that will be
needed to change the aspect of the city and the general
run of its life. . . .

An invention & la Jules Verne! A street which will
reach over and across canals, marshes, and islands is going
to unite Venetia with the station of Mestre. It will be

Venice as a Painting-Ground in

an iron construction, a huge road of steel beginning at
the station of Mestre, crossing the lagoon, flanking Venice
along the new Fondamenta; then at the farther extremity
of the latter it will divide into two branches, of which
the left one, passing close to the celebrated island of San
Francesco del deserto (beata solitude!) and over more
bridges and embankments, will reach Burano; the right
branch will fly over the port of Lido, run along the shore,
cross the canal of the port of Malamocco, go all the way
along the shore of Pellestino and end at Chioggia.

The worst thing about this campaign to Trill the
goose that lays the golden eggs — for surely the tide
of money-laden tourists will slacken as the city loses
its charm — is that it has been gathering momentum
for such a long time, it has been so deadly in its per
sistence. I have seen something of the gradual de
terioration myself. When I first used to go down to
the Lido for my daily dip the whole place was sim
plicity itself, and after coining out of the sea it was
only a few steps away from the pavilions to stretches
of what seemed like isolated serenity. My friend
Eugene Benson would be painting a picture only a
few hundred yards off. I would lie in the sand at his
side among the primroses scattered about, and I
would be aware of nothing save sea and sky. In suc
cessive summers after that I saw the Lido grow more
and more like Coney Island, and the last time I was
there it had become so raucous and shoddy a resort
that I fled in disgust and never went back. Imagine
how a host of Venice-lovers will feel if the city itself

112 Personalities in Art

suffers a kindred transformation ! In two ways the
disaster may be thwarted. In the first place, propa
ganda may drive it into the heads of the Venetians
that their so-called " improvements75 can only di
vert from the lagoons that army of travellers which
now means so much to their prosperity. Generations
still to come will be repelled from visiting the city
which their forefathers frequented as a shrine. Sec
ondly, if "local pride " is non-existent in Venice,
the Italian Government might conceivably do some
thinking for the city fathers, and protect them from
their own stupid obduracy by declaring Venice a
national monument, to be tampered with only under
heavy penalties. Signor Mussolini is, they say, a
very busy man, occasionally in trouble even with his
own Fascisti, but those all over the world who care
for Venice will hope that in some happy moment he
may come to the rescue of their dream city.

I call it a dream city advisedly, for I firmly believe
that there is no other city in the world which to the
sensitive traveller is more an affair of poetized visions,
of romantic moods. The unimaginative can find no
welcome on the lagoons. Have we not all met the
man who remembered nothing in particular about
Venice save that there were bad smells on some of
its canals and that its mosquitoes had a lethal bite?
I know all about the smells and I have fought the
mosquitoes, but I know, nevertheless, that Venice
is Beauty Incarnate. So she has been to a glorious

Venice as a Painting-Ground 113

company of painters, the immortal spirits for whose
f eelings I have suffered whenever I have encountered
signs of the encroachment of ugliness and vulgarity
upon her domain. One could weep with Veronese,
enthroning Venice upon the world itself in the ducal
palace. He gave her attributes of imperial grace and
strength. He placed the Lion of St. Mark's at her
feet between figures of Justice and Peace. He saw
her, in a word, reigning in fadeless splendor. Poor
Paolo ! How could he anticipate the era of the tin
Lizzie ?

The old painters knew well the unique beauty of
their town and paid jealous tribute to its genius and
its monuments. When Gentile Bellini delineated a
great religious procession in the piazza he gave the
upper half of his canvas to a magnificent portrait of
the Cathedral. The city gave him backgrounds for
more than one picture, and repeatedly you find mas
ters like Carpaccio and Mansueti drawing for their
compositions upon the scenes they saw about them.
There is, however, an interesting distinction to be
observed where the attitude of the older Venetian
masters toward their beloved city is concerned. They
did not regard her precisely in the way of the Im
pressionists. Their pride in her was rooted in a
strong sense of her material pomp and power, of her
political ascendancy, and it was strongly tinctured
by religious emotion. Hence the personification of
Venice as a queenly figure, hence the portrayal of

H4 Personalities in Art

even St. Mark's itself as a background rather than
for its own sake. Somehow the old Venetian master
could not think of Venice as a mere spectacle. He
was forever glutting his eyes upon pageants, but be
hind the color and the movement he saw the might
of state or church, and he commemorated ideas as
much as appearances. Jt is a curious circumstance
that Venice in its more mundane and social aspect,
as an arrangement of form and color appealing sen
suously to the eye, practically shorn of all symbolism,
did not really come into its own until the eighteenth
century.

It is then that one recognizes the stirring of a new
impulse, the impulse to paint the Venetian scene out of
sheer delight in its corporeal loveliness. In Tiepolo
the earlier conception of the city as a mine of back
grounds still lingers, and the pillared schemes in his
mural decorations revive the sumptuous note of
Veronese with a new and flashing accent. But Tiepolo
kindled now and then to the pure elegance of the
Venetian social picture; and among all the paint
ings of this period I know of none more humanly en
gaging than his fascinating "Consilium in Arena/7 in
the museum at Udine, a spacious interior with figures
recalling the very essence of eighteenth-century Vene
tian life. Life, customs, and manners, the Venetian
as well as his background, may be said to fill the Vene
tian art of that time. Longhi painted the fashionable
types that he knew, the lady of Venice and her cava-

Venice as a Painting-Ground 115

Here, and lie did not disdain either to study the apoth
ecary or the fortune-teller. Step from his scenes
into those of Guardi. Go with the latter to a concert
in the house of some noble, to a ball in the theatre
of San Benedetto, to a masquerade at the Ridotto, to
a festival on the Grand Canal, or to an ordinary
gathering in the Piazza of St. Mark's. Wherever you
follow Tirm you behold indoor or outdoor Venice,
clothed in brocade or in marble and animated by
figures which, whether in gleaming satins or dark
velvet cloaks, are the very images of Venetian piq
uancy and pictorial charm. There are times when
Canaletto will strike you as the more solid painter
of the two, as, especially, the stronger draftsman.
But Guardi is the great triumphant exemplar in his
age of that Impressionism which I have mentioned
as neglected by his ancestors. His lagoon pictures
sparkle with a living light. There are drawings of his
which show that he went about sketch-book in hand,
and swiftly jotted down fugitive effects. His paint
ings clearly profited by this habit. They have ex
traordinary freshness and spontaneity.

Chronologically the next arresting figure amongst
the painters of Venice is Turner. Sir Walter Arm
strong, his definitive biographer, was unable to ferret
out the exact date of the artist's first contact with the
Venetian scene, but he has traced sketches of the
city which seem earlier than 1832, and that is re
garded as roughly the significant year. A point be-

n6 Personalities in Art

yond cavil is that the English master had a peculiar
flair for the subject. What Armstrong says about it
is so concisely illuminating that I may cite him here:

His almost unbroken stream of "Vertices" began to
flow on to the Academy walls in 1833. Between that year
and 1846, he only twice — in 1838 and 1839 — missed
having at least one in the exhibition. . . . According to
my view of his personality, Turner had been waiting all
his life for Venice. It gave him exactly what he wanted.
It afforded an opportunity to combine the particular
view of the world's envelope which appealed to himself,
with a skeleton, a supporting structure, which was at
once strange, picturesque, and entirely human. It was
therefore not surprising that he fastened upon it as he
did, and that between 1833 and his death he sent no fewer
than twenty-five pictures of Venice to the annual exhibi
tion.

There is a useful dew in this fragment to the whole
drift of what I may call Turner's Venetian hypothesis:
"The particular view of the world's envelope which
appealed to him." It is the artist with such a view
who has always made the most of Venice. After all,
a "dream city" is hardly the place for a crass realist.
More than of any other city in Europe it may be
said of Venice that everything that an artist finds
there depends upon what he brings there. Turner
brought a fine constructive vision, the power to build
up upon the Venetian "skeleton" a prodigiously ro
mantic fabric of atmosphere and color. It is not ex
actly a ghostly city that he paints, but one in which

s Venice as a Painting-Ground, 117

richly decorated facades and the towers and domes
lifted above them take on an intangible beauty.
They are bathed in a golden luminosity, in a light
that never was on sea or land. In the foreground
gondolas, sailboats, or ceremonial craft float in a
strange immobility. You look on not at life but at
a kind of tableau, and though the place is unmistak
ably Venice the key might be that of some legendary
Babylon. It is all magnificently unreal, of dubious
value as a record but inestimable as an interpreta
tion.

Turner's worthiest successors have been Americans,
two of whom have linked their names with the city
with something of his creative magic, equalling him
in the originality of their work. When Armstrong said
that Turner had been waiting all his life for Venice
he expressed an idea that may be applied to Whistler.
Our American painter never found himself in any
environment more favorable to the exercise of his
genius than was the Venetian. There he made many
of the most brilliant of his etchings. There were pro
duced some of the most exquisite of his Nocturnes.
Otto Bacher, in his delightful book, "With Whistler
in Venice," tells how his friend once joined him in his
gondola where Bacher was at work on a plate of the
Ponte del Pistor. Said the older man: "This is a good
subject. When you find one like this you should not
do it, but come and tell Whistler." There was noth
ing of Whistlerian arrogance in that. He was simply

u8 Personalities in Art

expressing what every one who knows his work will
admit, that Venice was his, that he was born to inter
pret her secret with a special inspiration, etching her
beauty by day and painting it by night with a touch
so personal and so new that his portraits of Venice
stand forever apart. The Nocturnes are extraordi
narily tender and beautiful. No one ever saw Venice
looking just as she looks in these paintings, but that
is only another way of saying that no one was ever
inspired by a Grecian urn as Keats was inspired by
one. If Whistler was sent into the world for any pur
pose that no one else could fulfil it was to make a
Venetian Nocturne.

The only contemporary of his approaching him in
this singularity and exquisiteness of achievement was
William Gedney Bunce, whose characteristic design
was composed of a long, low horizon line separating
a tremulous lagoon from a vibrating sky, with a cam
panile or two lifted into the air and a group of sail
boats shrewdly placed to right or left in the fore
ground. Out of these few materials he fashioned the
most amazing opalescent effects. Like Whistler's,
they are very new and personal, but Bunce differs
from Whistler and from Turner in being a little more
realistic than either of them. You can't quite see
Bunces for yourself in Venice, unless you have been
born with something of his genius, but he is not so
mysterious as the other men are. John Sargent, of
course, is never mysterious, and you enter a totally

W

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0

H-l

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s

Venice as a Painting-Ground 119

different world when you enter Ms Venice. But don't
imagine for a moment that it is a negligible world.
On the contrary, Sargent's Venice is one of the most
interesting that I know. I remember a Venetian
street scene of his, another picture of an interior with
bead-stringers at their work, and a strong study of
San Giovanni Evangelista. Then there are the num
berless water-colors in which architecture, gondolas,
and all manner of motives are drawn with uncanny
precision. Sargent did an immense mass of work
in Venice and all of it is superbly brilliant, the vivid
record of a Venice that every one can see and touch.
Every one can see it, but only Sargent could paint
it with that supreme virtuosity of his. So he, too,
though in so different a way, affirmed like Whistler
certain inalienable rights in Venetian territory. He
knew the city all his life as an intimate of the Cur-
tises, and when, on his election to the Royal Acad
emy, he brought forward, as is customary, a picture
for the Diploma Gallery there, he made it one of his
masterpieces, a study of the Curtis family grouped
in one of the great rooms of the Palazzo Barbaro,
their Venetian home.

F. Hopkinson Smith did good work in Venice. He
did it with a marked economy of means, so that for
some time his work looked a little thin. A. B. Frost
once caricatured it uproariously, appending to his
funny drawing lines at which no one laughed more
heartily than Smith himself:

I2O Personalities in Art

You can bet your bottom dollar
We're onto the Venice caper,
A little paint, a little work,
And lots of empty paper.

But "Hop" got over that and as the years went
on brought back from his summers in Venice more
and more substantial and delightful impressions.
They were realistic. All the American artists who
have painted Venice this side of Whistler and Bunce
have been realists, mixing next to no poetic emotion
with their colors. The only exception I can think of
is the late Robert Blum, who painted Venice with a
subtle delicacy. He was always a sterling artist and
on the lagoons he, too, dreamed dreams.

What of the men on the spot? When I saw the
earlier international exhibitions at Venice, many years
ago, it was, paradoxically, the Spaniards rather than
the Italians who seemed to be most active on the
scene. I used to foregather with them for dinner at
a dingy old trattoria, tucked away somewhere not
far from the piazza. It was a jolly crew. Martin
Rico would be there in a pirate's mustachio, the inky
blackness of which I surmised came out of a dye
bottle. He was a portentous being, clothed in shep
herd's plaid, altogether one of the most noticeable
figures I ever encountered. It surprised me when I
ran across him, painting away in some corner of
Venice, that nobody paid any attention to him. Prob
ably they had got used to him as he had been at it

Venice as a Painting-Ground 121

for a long lifetime. And Villegas dined with us every
night, bearded, a little bald, dapper, and with an in
describable air about him of solvency and authority.
I remember him also in his handsome villa just out
side one of the gates of Rome, the place crowded
with paintings and antiquities. He was enormously
successful. American millionaires visiting Rome
bought his pictures. Prosperity got him, perhaps, a
little expectant of consideration. One summer he
sent to the international a huge "Marriage of a
Dogaressa." It contained an abundance of a pecu
liarly flagrant red, and I noticed at dinner that one
of the subjects nobody talked about was the "Mar
riage of a Dogaressa." Then came some inspections
by the cognoscenti of the European press and all that
red paint was freely damned. Villegas forthwith
shook the dust of Venice from his feet — if there is
any dust in those watery thoroughfares — and went
off to Spain. All Italy came under his displeasure.
He abandoned his Roman villa and stuck to his na
tive land. For some years before he died he was
Director of the Prado at Madrid.

Rico, Villegas, Gallegos, and others of their com
pany whose names I have forgotten painted the
Venetian glitter and not much else. There used to
be a time when an American collection was incom
plete without a "Venice" by Martin Rico. His pic
tures still figure in the auction-room occasionally, but
I wonder where they go. Those clever Spaniards were

122 Personalities in Art

not quite clever enough to carry on the torch lit by
Fortuny. He, by the way, would have painted a
marvellous Venice if he had ever given his mind to
it. But amongst the old sketch-books I have pored
over in old days at Madame Fortuny's Venetian
palazzo I recollect no souvenirs of the lagoons. Very
recently two or three young Italians have arisen who,
without doing anything really memorable, are still
doing something to restore the tradition of Venice
as a place productive of art. Perhaps the most tal
ented of them is Favai. Italico Brass is another
fairly auspicious type. Emma Ciardi is a Venetian
artist of really distinguished capacity, but she paints
chiefly the villas on the mainland, peopling them with
figures in eighteenth-century costume. It would be
interesting to see her at work on the lagoons.

If she did good things there, as I believe she would,
it would be because she possessed that quality to
which I have alluded as inseparable from the true
artist in this field, the personal quality, the singular
quality, the something original and, if ever so faintly,
creative. That is indispensable to the painter any
where, but it is necessary nowhere more conclusively
than in Venice. If the city is, as I said at the begin
ning, the most paintable on earth, it is also the most
exacting.

IX

Silhouettes of Old Masters

I. Van Dyck's "Daedalus and Icarus"
II. Velasquez's "Dying Seneca"
III. Two Portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough

IX

SILHOUETTES OF OLD MASTERS

I

VAN DYCK'S "D^DALUS AND ICARUS"

SINCE New York has become the world's clearing
house for the great works of the old masters that
emerge slowly into the market, there is, from time to
time, in the galleries an episode to be marked with a
white stone. A chef d'ceuwe is placed momentarily
on exhibition. Then it is purchased by some collector
and passes, forthwith, from the public view. I cannot
forbear preserving in this place my memories of one
or two such apparitions, brief records of delightful
passages in critical experience. One such memory I
retain of a picture at the Duveen Gallery, an ex
traordinary Van Dyck out of Earl Spencer's collec
tion. This "Daedalus and Icarus" is an amazing
work, illustrating the painter in a vein unfamiliar in
the United States. It is through his portraiture that
Van Dyck is chiefly known among our collectors, and
there he is held in honor for certain specific traits
which the practice of the portrait painter, especially
in his period, was exactly calculated to bring out. I

125

126 Personalities in Art

refer more particularly to the courtly elegance in
separable from the world in which he was called to
move. Van Dyck's innate refinement made him the
predestined commemorator of lordly types. It is in
teresting to reflect on his significance as an exemplar
of that natural instinct which persists through all the
vicissitudes of training and experience and stamps
an artist's work as with the inevitability of a thumb-
print. Consider the difference between Van Dyck
and his master, Rubens. The latter undoubtedly con
quered for himself the status of a great gentleman,
rose to ambassadorial rank, foregathered with kings
and princes, and altogether was so circumstanced as
to interpret their characteristics, as it were, from
within. But that full-bodied Flemish habit of his
which was in his blood would not down, and when he
let himself go on some royal theme, as in the brilliant
Medici canvases at the Louvre, his brilliance is that
of the surface of a pageant. I recall his gorgeous
state portrait of the Earl of Arundel. The earl and
his wife are very tangibly portrayed, but somehow
the ensemble is that of a factitious tableau, packed
with £tofage. It was not so with Van Dyck. He
was, by gift of the gods, free of the language of courts,
and when he painted figures of incomparable polish
and grace those elements of charm flowed with easy
magic through hi$ brush. It is no wonder that his
portraits are cherished or that they have caused his
name to be associated with one transcendent virtue,

DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
FROM THE PAINTING BY VAN DYCK

Silhouettes of Old Masters 127

that of high-bred delicacy. But he had other strings
to his bow.

That glorious strength in Rubens which so often
took the bit between its teeth and ran away with
him, landing him in earthiness, was present in Van
Dyck in rich measure, but held in check by a finer
taste. You have a manifestation of it in the "Daeda
lus and Icarus." It is tempting to speculate on the
mood in which he painted it. For my own part I can
imagine him saying to himself: "I think I'll paint a
nude. Just to show them." Being what he was, he
was bound to give penetrating thought to the sub
ject, and this picture is impressive just as an em
bodiment of a legend. The myth is vividly realized.
Youthful pride and daring are superbly put before
us, and made the more effective through their con
trast with admonitory age. What he has to say, too,
Van Dyck says with all the power of scholarly design.
The poise of the principal figure, the exact relation to
it of Daedalus in the background, the placing of the
wings and the arrangement of the drapery — all
these things are consummately handled. But what
makes the glory of this picture is the painting of the
body of Icarus. A photographic reproduction shows
something of the perfection with which the beautiful
young form is drawn, the faultless construction of the
torso and the arms, the fine drawing about the face,
head, and hair. But the marvel of the flesh painting
must be seen at first hand to be appreciated. It is

128 Personalities in Art

nothing short of a miracle of pearly, luminous tone,
the skin palpitating over the ribs and muscles in a
glow as forceful as it is tender.

It is not direct painting in the sense that Manet,
for example, would have given to the term; but, on
the other hand, this nude is singularly free from signs
of any kneading or fumbling. The impasto is not
too thick and the tone has great fineness, great
purity. It has, of course, great unity also, yet within
that unity there are countless modulations of the ut
most exquisiteness, nuances that Velasquez might
have envied. Memory goes back to that master's
"Rokeby Venus." It is a lovely thing in its dusky
brilliance, but in that particular instance the Spanish
painter seems not only a little pallid beside Van Dyck,
but a little less subtle. Yes, he showed them. In a
burst of technical maestria the suave painter of
knights and ladies in their satins and laces put forth
all his strength upon the problem involved in the
treatment of the nude, and produced a glittering
masterpiece. It is a great Van Dyck, one of the
greatest in the world.

II

VELASQUEZ'S "DYING SENECA"

Two early paintings by Velasquez have recently
come to this country. One of them, the "St. John in
the Wilderness," was bought by a private collector

Silhouettes of Old Masters 129

in Chicago and has been lent by him to the Art In
stitute in that city. The other, a "Dying Seneca,"
was not long ago at the Ehrich Gallery. It is one of
the most interesting souvenirs of the Spanish master
I have ever seen, illustrating his art in its formative
period when he was a student under Pacheco, in
Seville. That sterling craftsman taught him, above
all things, "the true way to imitate nature." Beruete,
in his precious monograph, cites from Pacheco 7s
"Art of Painting," a passage which richly illuminates
the early art of Velasquez. Speaking of the lodegones,
with their conscientious realism, the artist says: "It
is in this belief that my son-in-law, Diego Velasquez
de Silva, was brought up from childhood. He sketched
a little peasant child who was a model for him in
various poses and attitudes, sometimes weeping,
sometimes laughing, without attempting to avoid
any of the difficulties. And from this boy and others
he made numerous studies on blue paper in charcoal
heightened with white, which enabled him to arrive
at truthfulness in his portraits." You can trace the
splendor of his greatest works to that first devoted
discipline.

Realistic truth is the foundation and corner-stone
of the bodegones. Perhaps the most characteristic ex
pressions of it are those which you find in the two
famous pictures at Apsley House, the "Young Men
at a Meal" and "The Water-Carrier of Seville."
They disclose his habit of taking his material where

130 Personalities in Art

he found it, in the streets and taverns, amongst
peasant types. He was never endowed with the crea
tive imagination that seeks an outlet in terms of
high invention. Even when he tackled religious
themes he kept his feet upon the solid earth, as wit
ness the fine early "Supper at Emmaus" in the Alt-
man collection. This is a dignified interpretation of
the theme, but it remains essentially a page from
seventeenth-century Sevillan life, the devotional
spirit of the painting being subordinate to its frank
realism. You get in it the force of a thing seen rather
than the mystery of a scene imagined. Its simplicity
is purer, a little weightier than that of Tiepolo, say,
treating the same subject. He avoids the slightly
theatrical turn of the Venetian. Compared with
Rembrandt's "Supper at Emmaus," on the other
hand, the Spanish picture is as hollow as a drum.
Velasquez knew nothing of the tragic pathos which
the Dutch master had at his finger-tips. For Velas
quez there was nothing on earth so important as just
"the true way to imitate nature."

His preoccupation with that standard comes out
superbly in the "Dying Seneca." It is a well-nigh
flawless "academy," the coolly considered, pains
taking work of a student set by Pacheco to study the
nude for the good of his artistic soul. Every detail is
drawn and modelled with the most searching care.
The fact is reproduced as in a mirror. One can
imagine Pacheco's sigh of satisfaction as he looked

THE DYING SENECA

FROM THE PAINTING BY VELASQUEZ

Silhouettes of Old Masters 131

over the shoulder of this miraculously precocious
pupil, and the words of discreetly judicious approval
lie spoke. No wonder he gave him his daughter for
a bride ! He must have felt that here was a young
man of genius. For that is the interesting thing about
the "Dying Seneca" — its proclamation of a new
and phenomenally gifted painter. The theme and the
idiom speak of Caravaggio and Ribera. But in the
grain of the execution one perceives an individual
touch that is unique, and with it that flair for beauty
which does so much to give the Spaniard a place
apart. Look to the beauty of the drawing, observe
the tact with which the drapery is arranged, and note
especially the charm of the whites and grays. Re
mark also the magical strokes which bring out the
character of the model's beard. They play over the
canvas with astounding ease and certainty. A born
painter, you say, if ever there was one.

A born technician, with an instinct for the por
trayal of life. The title of this canvas is, in a sense,
irrelevant. Pacheco was doubtless responsible for it.
He, as Beruete tells us, was "a great lover of Latin
literature/5 and I can hear him talking to Velasquez
about Seneca and giving him the inscription to place
upon the canvas. But they had only to step out of
doors to find the model and we may be sure that
when Velasquez got him posed he thought of noth
ing save of his painting. It is in its realism, pure and
simple, that the "Dying Seneca" foreshadows such

132 Personalities in Art

later pictures as "The Forge of Vulcan/' and, in fact,
the whole long story of the master's career. Yet its
true lesson lies in the circumstance that realism, pure
and simple, is effective only in proportion to the ad
mixture with it of certain other qualities. Without
the technical rectitude of Velasquez the truth in the
" Dying Seneca " would lose half its vitality. And the
other half would go if it were not for his unsleeping
feeling for beauty.

Ill

TWO PORTRAITS BY REYNOLDS AND
GAINSBOROUGH

Besides the Van Dyck I have described in this
chapter the Duveens got from Earl Spencer two other
masterpieces, constituting an imposing dramatization
of an historic moment in eighteenth-century English
portraiture. Both are of the same subject — that
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Wai-
pole said that she "effaced all without being a beauty."
She was eighteen when Sir Joshua painted her in the
full-length brought to this country, he being then in
his prime. Eight years later she posed for Gains
borough, when he, too, like his great rival, was at
the height of his powers. Turning from one of the
tall canvases to the other, the mind reverts for a
moment to the situation in the artistic London of
that day, to the two leaders supporting each in his

Silhouettes of Old Masters 133

different way the identical tradition. "We are all
going to heaven," said Gainsborough on his death
bed, "and Van Dyck is of the company/' The sol
idarity of the school is one of the outstanding phe
nomena of history. "They" were all united in carry
ing on the dignity, the elegance, the courtly grace
which had come down to them from the famous
Fleming. But the first lesson one draws from these
portraits is the lesson of individuality. Genius over
rides the very formula on which it rests. Reynolds
and Gainsborough, both allied to the academic prin
ciple, engage in a rivalry determined by the most
personal of inspirations, and each transcends the
academy,

A remarkable felicity attends upon the portraits,
taken together. How fortunate was this duchess, this
"irresistible queen/' the friend of Sheridan and Fox,
the embodiment of charm ! Reynolds painted her in
a moment of animation, a figure of arrested move
ment, poised at the head of some steps. When it
came Gainsborough's turn he studied her in medita
tive repose, a little older, a little more mature and in
a graver mood. Merely as human documents the
portraits have a deep interest, merely as interpreta
tions of a woman who enchanted her contemporaries.
If legend is to be believed, her painters flattered her,
but it would seem that they did no more than heighten
what they found in her features. Perhaps she was
not as beautiful as they made her. But the witchery

134 Personalities in Art

they gave her is, by all accounts, authentic. The
memoirs teem with tributes to her personality. She
had an illuminating mentality. In her girlhood she
listened with unaffected interest to the sayings of
Doctor Johnson, and from that august company she
could pass to spirited combat with the fashionable
wits of her world. She must have been a gra
cious, lambent being, and so the two masters painted
her.

But it is with their technical triumphs that I am
first concerned; and here, again, one is tempted to
the use of superlatives. Looking at the Reynolds I
thought instinctively of "The Tragic Muse" and,
frankly, I must confess to finding the "Georgiana"
more extraordinary than the "Mrs. Siddons." The
latter is undoubtedly Sir Joshua's masterpiece in aus
terely monumental portraiture. It comes back to the
memory as a portentous achievement in design, the
figure, the throne, and all the subordinate details
being welded together in superb unity. But, perhaps
by virtue of this very perfection of balance, of schol
arly ordonnance, the "Mrs. Siddons" remains a little
cold. In it Reynolds is utterly the academician, mag
nificent, and at the same time a little chillingly formal.
In the "Georgiana" he is the consummate brushman,
glorying in his mastery over his instruments, moved
to enthusiasm by his theme, and producing in a burst
of energy a canvas in which we feel that his soul
must have rejoiced as he laid down the brush. For

Silhouettes of Old Masters 135

sheer splendor it is the most thrilling thing of his I
have ever seen.

The lady's dress is white save where, at the shoul
ders and waist, and in the veil flung across the out
stretched arm, there are powerful accents of brown
ish gold. Crowning the grayish headdress there are
feathers of vivid pink and white. There are autumnal
glints in the rich foliage filling part of the background,
and notes of strong blue appear in the sky beyond*
There is great force in the color scheme, but it is
kept wonderfully in hand, a flawless harmony, rich
and mellow, save where the feathers lift the key.
The tone of the dress is merely miraculous, one of
those studies of white in which an ordinarily lifeless
hue is made fairly to sing. In sensuous beauty, in
the magic of pigment made eloquent, Sir Joshua
surely never did anything in his life to beat the pas
sages of gold. They are as discreet as they are reso
nant, the quintessence of painter's painting. He
matches the tour de force of this ornamentation and
of those incomparably vivacious feathers with the
maestria that you feel in the drapery, with the supple
polish that marks the drawing of the arms, the hands,
and everything about the face and hair, and with a
marvellous play of light over the whole canvas.
More often than not Reynolds impresses you by the
cool, measured nature of his art, the cerebral origin
of his design, and the similarly calculated movement
of every phase of his technic. In this portrait he

136 Personalities in Art

seems to paint, rather, with a kind of passion. I
have alluded to formula. There is something of it
in the "Georgiana." The well-worn eighteenth-cen
tury convention is there, the lovely attitude, the
parklike background, the adjustment of the whole
affair to a definitely fixed social hypo thesis. But the
wine of inspiration bursts the vessel that would con
tain it. Reynolds gets, as it were, outside of himself,
the academician yielding to the painter. The result
is a glittering, breath-taking masterpiece, a portrait
vibrating with the emotion that is attuned to beauty,
It is a case of the grand style made intimate and search
ing, of the Olympian Sir Joshua forgetting his wonted
calm in the ardor of creative painting.

After the overpowering success of his "Georgiana"
one feels a certain drop on turning to Gainsborough's,
and the experience is odd, for, as a rule, it is the other
way around. Gainsborough's natural habit was far
more that of the virtuoso than was Sir Joshua's.
Even with this "Georgiana" of his before us we
know that Sir Joshua could never have painted "The
Blue Boy" or the "Perdita Robinson." Neither, for
that matter, could he have done the portrait confront
ing his "Georgiana" in this study, yet we have to
reckon with that drop. For once Gainsborough seems,
at any rate, less powerful. He has not that moving
splendor to which I have alluded. But I note it only
in passing. Make the transition, forget the difference
in question, and think only of that individuality

Silhouettes of Old Masters 137

which I mentioned at the outset. There Gainsbor
ough is potent enough, in all conscience. It tells not
so much in design, where he follows convention
with marked docility, as in the solid construction of
the figure and in the painting of the dress. That, too,
is white, ever so faintly flushed. The girdle and the
scarf the Duchess holds are of the tint of an aqua
marine, hesitating between blue and green. It is an
ineffably delicate arrangement of tone, one that would
have fascinated Whistler. And every nuance in it is
developed with that necromancy of brushwork that
has done more than anything else to make Gains
borough immortal. " Feathery " is the canonical word
for it, and the only one adequately connoting the
artist's lightness, his deft translation of insensate
pigment into something incredibly exquisite and mo
bile. The painting has the tremulous beauty of an
opal and, withal, an unmistakable force, even plan-
gency. The dress had to be strongly painted, in fact,
to withstand the competition of the heavy mass of
red drapery above, half revealing the stately gray
pillars. The landscape in this portrait is compara
tively unimportant, but it includes an effective sky.

There is a curious contrast to be remarked in the
study of these two canvases. They were painted by
contemporaries, who, as I have said, adhered to the
same broad tradition and were in many ways com
mitted to the same practices. Doubtless, for exam
ple, they patronized the same color man. But their

138 Personalities in Art

methods differed. Sir Joshua painted with a full
brush, kept his surfaces fairly solid, and was histori
cally careful of his medium. Gainsborough followed
a more liquid mode, used a thinner medium, and, by
the same token, was apparently less learned in the
matter than his rival, though he, too, was solicitous
as to what went onto his palette. In the upshot each
tells a different story. Reynolds's surface has the
purer integrity, has better withstood the passage of
time. The essential tones, I gather, preserve their
values with equal tenacity. The carnations in both
portraits are singularly true and gleaming. But Rey
nolds fabricates the solider, more steadfast lacquer.
Less subtle by half in the modulation of tone he yet,
in this instance, retains a tenderer bloom. It raises
an absorbing technical problem.

X

Raeburn

X

RAEBURN

RAEBUBN occupies a place apart in the firmament
of British art. In London the leaders carry on a
clearly defined tradition. Developing the courtly
mode of Van Dyck in the atmosphere of the Georgian
period, they give it a decisively academic turn. Even
Gainsborough, with that flying "feathery" brash of
his, subscribes to much the same theory of ordonnance
that is most resplendently illustrated in Reynolds.
The school has a certain solidarity, based on respect
for discipline. The men of genius in it affirm marked
individuality, but all have a kindred accent. Raeburn
ploughed his own furrow. There seems to have been
some virtue in the very fact that he grew up scarcely
touched by the pressure of that sort of corporate in
fluence, if I may so designate it, that bore upon his
English confreres.

He was the son of a Scots miller who was pros
perous enough to see that he had some schooling, but
this did not last long, and he was still a lad when he
was apprenticed to one Gilliland, a jeweller and gold
smith. By him he was by and by introduced to a
fashionable portrait painter, David Martin, who

141

142 Personalities in Art

gave him the run of his studio, allowed him to copy
some of his studies, and presumably benefited him
through some practical instruction, though on this
point the various biographers are not very illumi
nating. "Bob " Stevenson, one of the best of his com
mentators, surmises that at Martin's he must have
"picked up enough knowledge to go on with." He
"went on" with judgment and rapidity. In 1778,
when he was twenty-two, he married a widow with
some fortune, and it is noted that "he improved his
wife's property by intelligent management." Thence
forth he was much at his ease in Edinburgh. Steven
son characterizes him, with the painter's portrait of
himself to aid him in the vignette, as "a large, bold
Scot, full of humor and intelligence, fit to swallow a
lot of work and yet keep an appetite for social pleas
ure, for golf, for archery, for fishing, for expeditions
with friends, and for the somewhat heady after-dinner
conversation which pleased the northern man."

Six years of married life found him a happy and
sufficiently successful man, visited by compunctions
as to his artistic equipment, and he went for two
years in Rome where the dilettanti Gavin Hamilton
and James Byres gave him guidance and advice. It
is recorded that when he returned to Scotland he
came straight through, with no obvious thought of
Paris or the Low Countries. It may have been from
economic motives, but it is possible also that he was
merely incurious. By this time he had beaten out a

Raeburn 143

mode of his own, and Ms cHef thought seems to have
been to get back to his own land and exploit it.
Scotland was ripe for his appearance upon the scene.
It abounded in types and notabilities. They liked
the handsome, self-confident, accomplished painter,
and he became, in his turn, one of the salient figures
of the Northern Athens. England took note of his
prowess, and in due course he was elected to the
Royal Academy. He was honored by other artistic
bodies, and in 1822, when George IV visited Edin
burgh, he knighted the painter and made him "His
Majesty's Limner for Scotland." He was a friend of
Scott, whose portrait he painted, and was engaged
upon an excursion with him, Miss Edgeworth, and
others only a few weeks before he died, in 1823.

He exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy,
and, as I have said, became a member; but though
he was in it, he was never precisely of it. The ex
planation is readily enough accessible in the tall
canvas dedicated to the Drummond children, one of
them mounted upon a pony. It reveals at once, in
contrast to similar designs of English origin, a certain
naturalistic directness, moving persistently away
from the formality characteristic of the more aca
demic painters. Byres is somewhere credited with
having done Raeburn a crucial service in urging him
always to "keep his eye on the object." It constitutes
his leading merit. Over the masterpieces of the Eng
lish school there is flung a thin veil of a certain mun-

144 Personalities in Aft

dane elegance, one of that school's finest qualities.
Raeburn had little to do with it. A realistic approach
was instinctive with him. He could be ineffably
graceful when he chose, as witness the exquisite "Mrs.
Vere of Stonebyres," in the collection of the late Sen
ator Clark. But this very portrait, in its animation,
its spontaneity, shows how much more vigorous than
courtly Raeburn was wont to be. No painter of his
time was defter than he was in the fixing of a pose.
His red-coated sitters, like " Captain David Birrell"
and " General Sir William Maxwell/7 are unmistaka
bly martial, on parade. But he gets his pictorial
point, so to say, essentially from the individual he
portrays, not through accessories or background,
through that ordonnance to which I have referred
as more typical of the English craftsmen.

There are two or three celebrated full-lengths by
Raeburn which denote his ability to get the last
ounce of picturesqueness out of costume and attitude.
They are the portraits of "Dr. Nathaniel Spens,"
"Sir John Sinclair," and "The Macnab." The na
tional dress counts heavily in all of them. But in
these, top, he is direct, completely free from that im
mobility which dogs the merely academic portrait,
and it is the personality of his sitter that dominates
the composition. In the bulk of his portraits he is
far nearer to Manet than to Reynolds. Stevenson
has rescued from the archives some interesting data
on his method:

MRS. VERE OF STONEBYRES
FROM THE PAINTING BY RAEBURN

Raeburn 145

He seldom kept a sitter more than an hour and a half
or two hours. He never gave more than four or five sit
tings to a head or bust portrait. He did not draw in his
subject first with the chalk point, but directly with the
brush on the blank canvas. Forehead, chin and mouth
were his first touches. He placed the easel behind the
sitter and went away to look at the picture and poser to
gether. A fold of drapery often cost him more trouble
than the build or expression of a head. He never used a
mahlstick.

The critic adds that these were the habits of the
French painters a premier coup, and points out,
justly, that while it does not leave each touch final
it means that "the work was searched out and fin
ished in one direct painting." To this habit, which
more than anything else stamps Raeburn as an essen
tially modern artist, the commentator must always
return. The enchantment of his pprtraits lies in
their fresh, crisp handling, in brushwork that states
the fact with a positively exhilarating precision.
Does it state that fact with charm? Yes, where the
portraits of women are concerned. The lovely "Mrs.
Campbell," in the Byers collection at Pittsburgh;
the portrait that is almost French in its elegance, of
"Margaretta Henrietta, Lady Hepburn"; the dainty
"Miss Eleanor Urqiihart," are above all things charm
ing. His portraits of men are above all things simple
and forceful. Here again you find Raeburn gaining
a little by comparison with his English rivals. He
escapes the somewhat excessive suavity which occa-

146 Personalities in Art

sionally betrayed them. He bears down on character
rather than on worldly demeanor. His handsome
Scots are strong as well as handsome men.

Looking to the mint and cummin of technic, on the
other hand, Raeburn has what might not unfairly be
called the defects of his qualities. His draftsmanship,
so swift, so sure, so cannily adroit, is a little thin and
hard. His line is not exactly wiry, but sometimes it
almost extorts the epithet, and is then undoubtedly
wanting in distinction. Then, too, though he models
a head with superb aplomb and defines the structure
of a face with all the clean-cut simplicity of that
ever-present directness of his, you cannot help wish
ing — especially when you are in the company of
numerous portraits by him — that he would not
manipulate the light and shade with quite such in
curable sophistication. It brings an incongruous ele
ment of something very like theatricalness into his
fundamentally sincere art, his sole approach to the
pit of formula. In other words, Raeburn did not
wholly avoid the dangers of facility. It brings him
near to mannerism in some of his heads and it leaves
him sometimes, in his handling of textures, a little
papery. There are moments in which this powerful
Scot falls into the trap that engulfed Lawrence and
is merely " slick. "

But they are only moments. When he is in the
vein, and he was generally in the vein, he is as whole
somely forthright as a Scot could be, as honest as

Raelurn 147

he is direct, and, withal, a painter with some notable
reaches of tenderness in him, for all his granitelike
force and veracity. It would be hard to beat, for
the sweetness of adolescence, the Drummond picture
to which I have already alluded, and it is beautifully
matched, in the matter of feeling, by the famous
"John Tait and His Grandson," a study of old age
and childhood. That gives, indeed, the final measure
of Raeburn's ability as a portrait painter, disclosing
not only his sterling technic, but his grasp upon
character, his emotional capability and his art in
carrying design very far yet well this side of formal
convention. If an English master had painted it you
would perhaps call it "monumental." The term is a
shade too imposing for Raeburn. He is too intimately
human for it.

XI

The Eighteenth Century

I. Hubert Robert
II. A Portrait by David
III. Prud'hon

XI
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

I
HUBERT ROBERT

THE French school of the eighteenth century was
of sophistication all compact. It was a growth of
the studio, brought to perfection for the drawing-
room and the boudoir. Never was an art more sym
pathetically social than the art of this period. It is
at c;ice the mirror of French manners and their monu
ment. It reproduces with exactitude the color and
movement of a life in which human relations were
codified to an extreme degree, and its all-pervasive
law was one essentially urban. The wholesome airs
of the countryside seem to have been excluded from
this fabric as by general consent. But genius domi
nates the surroundings from which it draws the
breath of life. In the paintings and drawings of Wat-
teau you see how his instinct for nature made him
superior to mere artifice. Chardin, delineating kitchen-
maids and other humble domestic figures, developed
a style as robust as his themes and rose masterfully
above the insincerity of his time. From the influence
illustrated by these men there developed in the eigh-

152 Personalities in Art

teenth century a feeling for nature counterbalancing
the hothouse atmosphere that everywhere controlled.
Artists who would not have known what to do with
a ploughed field, such as Millet was later to make
beautiful, were at home in a stately park. They
recognized the value of a tree, at least as a decorative
value. Hence, they arrived at the formation of some
thing like a landscape tradition. They exploited it
in a subordinate capacity. Their landscape was never
painted for its own sake, but only as a background.
Nevertheless, they made it fascinating. It was this
tradition that produced Hubert Robert.

He was born in 1733, a light, gay personality, not
in the least a man of genius, but indubitably a man of
talent. He was altogether in harmony with his pe
riod. When he died in 1808 and they buried him in
the cemetery at Auteuil, the inscription upon his tomb
commemorated him as an Academician formally enreg-
istered as such, not only in his native France, but in
the then St. Petersburg, where the Russian aristocracy
had long followed a cult for his works. Stress has
been laid upon his cheerfulness, which persisted even
under the imprisonment which he suffered during the
Terror. He is described as a bold athlete in his youth.
At Rome he risked his life promenading the cornice
of the dome of St. Peter's. He did this on a wager
of a few sheets of drawing-paper. Vigee-Lebrun, who
painted his portrait when he was a young man, rep
resents a full-blooded, energetic being, who, with the

The Eighteenth Century 153

temperament that we know lie possessed, ought to
have become something like a romanticist. He be
came, instead, an archselogue. He never could throw
off, he probably never wanted to throw off, the habit
of the Academy. At the same time, there was at the
bottom of his academic predilection a certain realistic
strain. In the foreground of his " Staircase and Foyer
of the Villa Medici," a purely architectural subject,
as formal in design as a work by Pannini or Piranesi,
a washerwoman has hung up her linen. The incident
is characteristic of Robert, of his taste for everyday
accents upon his monumental schemes. He did not
always draw his figures himself. Boucher, Fragonard,
and others drew them for him. But he wanted them
there. It is the mark of his archaeological world that
nature is always creeping in.

There have been curious fluctuations in the repute
of Hubert Robert. He was enormously prosperous
while he lived. Allusion has been made to his Russian
vogue. Catherine II invited him, in 1782, and again
in 1791, to come to St. Petersburg. He no longer had,
however, the gusto for travel which had sustained
him in his youthful Italian wanderings. He would
not go north himself, but was content to paint quan
tities of canvases for his admirers there. M. Louis
Reau estimated in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, some
time ago, that there were easily a hundred examples
of Hubert Robert in the public and private collec
tions of Russia. At home he always had abundant

154 Personalities in Art

support. In the official world he held high rank. On
the tombstone aforementioned he is honored as
"Conseillier de TAcademie Royale." In 1778 he was
a member of the committee appointed to supervise
the alterations in the Louvre required by the estab
lishment there of the King's pictures. It was not un
til 1895 that M. Gabillot published his monograph on
the painter. This was followed in 1910 by M. de
Nolhac's admirable volume, and a few years later M.
Tristan Leclerc celebrated him and the landscapists
of his time in a contribution to a series of popular
handbooks. To-day Hubert Robert is once more on
the crest of the wave. His works fetch high prices in
the auction-room in Paris. Collectors are finding him
worth while. Why should there ever have been any
interruption to appreciation of his art?

It is partly explained by the nature of that art it
self, as it is unconsciously criticised by Vigee Lebrun,
who held him in high esteem. She notes in her "Sou
venirs" that it was fashionable to have one's salon
painted by Hubert Robert. Fashion is a perilous task-
mistress, leading particularly to the cultivation of
that facile method which is one of the most specious
of all crutches. Vigee Lebrun again records the du
bious proficiency of her friend, "II peignait un ta
bleau" she says, "aussi mte qu'il ecrivait une lettre"
Facility like that implies scores of "pot boilers,"
and Hubert Robert painted them, not simply by
the score, but, I might even say, by the hundred.

The Eighteenth Century 155

It is significant, too, that he has been bracketed for
popularity with Greuze, which is tantamount to
saying that he had in him a vein of rather too sac
charine sentiment. Even now the commentator occa
sionally patronizes him. M. Louis Hourticq says that
he "trifled with the noble ruins of Rome and Pro
vence." Well, perhaps he did. But, like divers other
men, he trifled to good purpose. There is a kind of
artist in the history of landscape painting notable for
a scenic handling of nature and for a treatment of
architectural motives that is perhaps to be charac
terized as trifling. Claude had the grand style. Pous-
sin had it. But Wilson, the Englishman, is a good
example of the old classical hypothesis made a little
less than majestic. Guardi, too, made the rains in
some of his pictures charming rather than impressive.
This was the function of Hubert Robert not to im
press, but to charm.

The eighteenth-century French painter who made
landscapes more than a background in his pictures
was Joseph Vernet. He revived the architectural
tradition of Claude, but his classicism did not keep
him from loving nature for itself; and if he was capa
ble of building an academic composition in the heroic
manner, he was also capable of painting a recogniza
ble portrait of a place. Hubert Robert, who formed
himself to some extent upon Vernet, inclined less to
portraiture in landscape and more to a theatrical
ideal. In an easel picture, therefore, which exists in

156 Personalities in Art

isolation, he has less weight than his master. But
when he has a purely decorative aim he more than
rivals Vernet; he achieves, if anything, a finer role.
There are some delightful easel pictures of his. They
are serene, limpid impressions, their picturesqueness
carried just so far, their naturalism held in check by
a polished elegance. Taken as a group apart, they
would be sufficient to justify Hubert Robert as a
minor figure of distinction in his school. But the
decorative panels almost give him major rank in that
school.

His paintings are meant to enter into the integrity
of a wall. They do this. As I have said, he was not
a man of genius, but his talent was consummate. He
"trifled" with his ancient luins in the sense that he
relieved them of all unduly weighty and forbidding
effects. He painted them with a kind of suavity.
They are masses of hoary stone, yet he contrives,
without doing violence to their antique dignity, to
make pillar and frieze, crumbling staircase or half-
wrecked cornice, no more overpowering than the
same things are when they are simulated in the opera-
house. These are, indeed, bewitchingly operatic
scenes, these scenes of Hubert Robert's. A classical
ruin of his, a Renaissance palazzo still intact, as in
"A F6te at the Villa Medici/' is relieved by trees
which hint not of the forest but of the garden. Even
when he paints a wilder subject as a pendant to the
villa picture just mentioned, he makes it, "The Tor-

The Eighteenth Century 157

rent/7 an altogether gracious impression of a shattered
temple lifted above a rocky gorge. He is never tragic.
From the blithe morning or noonday light in which
he generaEy bathes the first canvas in a pair he passes
to a more subdued key without indulging in any
thing graver than a sort of mild, sunset revery. His
characteristic mood is cheerful. Long before the im
pressionists he was interested in problems of illumina
tion. He had no science with which to solve them,
but he had what was almost as good, an exquisite
taste. He had, too, the instinctive ability of a born
craftsman.

His craftsmanship tells primarily in the building
up of his compositions. He knows what to leave out
and how to bring what is left into a happy unity.
See Tn'rn in the two panels dedicated to the baths
founded by Count Vigier on the Seine. He puts the
prosaic elements of his subject into a most beguiling
perspective. The enveloppe is as graceful as the sub
stance of the work is not. But look even more atten
tively at a couple of decorations, like "The Fountain
of the Temple of Vesta" and "The Rest in the Park."
There his subjects meet him half way, they are clas
sical, but nature has her chance, and the painter can
put forth without handicap the peculiar strength
that is his.

He can make his ancient ruin a light, romantic
fabric. He can make his trees like the accessories in
some comedy of the period, all grace and slender

158 Personalities in Art

beauty. Over everything he can throw the glamor
of a bright, cool, luminous sky. The sky in a good
Hubert Robert comes near to making the painting
a masterpiece, it is so deep and airy, so blandly spa
cious, so full of clear, fine color. I say a "good"
Hubert Robert. The pot-boilers tell a different story.
At its best his work is a source of sheer delight,
making known, in an ideal way, the best qualities
of a deeply interesting type whose traits need to be
better understood in the United States. It is full of
suggestion for the student of decorative painting. It
shows how nature and art may be fused together,
how landscape may be introduced into formal schemes
without pedantry, withput sacrifice of the beauty be
longing to greensward and trees. The net result is,
as I am bound to repeat, a shade theatrical, but it is
theatricality refined to a point of loveliness. Think of
it in close association with the social world of eigh
teenth-century France and one cannot help making
much of the glittering artifice which was a second
nature to Hubert Robert, as it was to all the painters
of that epoch save such portents as Chardin and
Watteau. Think of it more abstractly, as just a
mode of decorating a wall in any period, and you
forget the glitter, you recognize only the urbanity of
Hubert Robert's tradition, its eternal freshness and
fitness, its easy adaptation to the atmosphere of
beautiful houses, its kinship to the art of living. To
many a modern artist, I dare say, panels like Hubert

The Eighteenth Century 159

Robert's must appear to belong to a bygone era,
frozen within the confines of an outmoded system of
design and technic. But I am sorry for the decora
tive painter who could not see the advantage of
taking a leaf from Hubert Robert's book, who could
not learn something about blending landscape and
architecture from the Frenchman's brilliant example.

II
A PORTRAIT BY DAVID

Just once in so often there comes into view a
masterpiece of painting that is absolutely hors con-
cours, a work so perfect in all its relations that one
looks upon it with a sigh of contentment. Such a
work I saw at the Wildenstein Gallery one winter
in a great portrait by Jacques Louis David of the
eighteenth-century chemist, Lavoisier, and his wife.
It is a huge canvas, perhaps eight feet tall. In its
superb frame of contemporary origin it brought back
all the splendor of the old regime, that period of
courtly brilliance in which a serene sense of balance,
of order, was tempered by an innate feeling for the
sensuous beauty of life. The portrait has a rich sig
nificance, from both the historical and the artistic
point of view.

In the matter of history it gets its status from La
voisier as well as from David. The former was a re
markable personality, a born chemist, who in Ms

160 Personalities in Art

hours deviated into finance and thereby invited ulti
mate disaster. Bom in Paris in 1743, of humble
parents, he nevertheless received a thorough educa
tion and developed an extraordinary genius for chem
istry. Along that path he might have proceeded in
safety through a long career. But an evil fate gave
him specious advancement, making him while he
was still in his twenties one of those fermiers-generaux
upon whom the bitterest hatred of the Revolution
was to fall. Though he had been out of that office
• for some years when the storm broke, his alliance with
governmental error was remembered against him, and
in 1794, while he was still in his prime, the Tribunal
sent him to the guillotine. His life had been very
happy. In Marie- Anne-Perrette Paulze, the daughter
of another farmer-general, he had married an ideal
wife, with talents for the very laboratory work upon
which he was engaged. When David painted them
together he painted comrades in chemical research as
well as in all the private relations of life.

He painted them in 1788, when he was himself
forty, back in Paris from his experience as a winner
of the Prix de Rome, a full Academician, classically
minded, a portent of everything that ought to spell
a reactionary and arid type of art. He was a court
painter, and the very soul of tradition. But this por
trait, like certain others by David, constitutes a warn
ing to the student to beware of the lure that lies in
labels. To call a thing "academic" in our own day

LAVOISIER AND His WIFE

FROM THE PAINTING BY DAVID

The Eighteenth Century 161

is often foolishly to misrepresent it. What of the
power of genius? That will utterly destroy the
meaning of a mere label. David had a broad streak
of genius in him. He painted, beyond question, some
of the deadest canvases that exist in French museums,
vast tableaux of antique life which are as remote
from our comprehension as the myths they com
memorate. But he who would get at the truth about
David, eschewing conventional disparagement, would
do well to consider his portraits, especially those
which date from the period just prior to the Revolu
tion and from the time of conflict itself.

Despite Ms academic affiliations David was a hu
man being if ever there was one. When the Revolu
tion came he broke with his past, morally at least.
He who had labored with all the good will in the
world for Louis XVI threw himself so ardently into
the company of royalty's foes that when the critical
moment arrived he could cast his vote for the death
of the King. He was intimate enough with Robe
spierre to suffer imprisonment on the collapse of that
leader.- He was to breathe again, in due course, and
sympathetically enough, the atmosphere that en
velops a throne. If he had had Louis XVI for a mas
ter he could adapt himself complaisantly to the ser
vice of Napoleon. It isn't, perhaps, a pretty record.
But it is, we repeat, very human, and you feel this
in his art. On one calamitous day, looking out of the
window of his friend Jullien's studio, he saw the

1 62 Personalities in Art

tumbril go by — Marie Antoinette upon the bench
within it, her hands corded behind her back, her face
disfigured by suffering and tears, all her majesty in
ruins. So he drew her, in a few spare lines, and the
sketch remains one of the most poignant souvenirs
we have of that tragic time. It was characteristic of
David. With the same unflinching directness he drew
the dead Marat and afterward painted the terrible
portrait that is in the Brussels Museum. It was his
true genius working in him, the genius for seeing and
recording.

There are divers thrilling examples of this realistic
eloquence of his. One of the most memorable of them
is the powerful profile of Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau,
a strange, original head, drawn with the swift and
almost brutal veracity ' of a Hals. To talk of the
Academy in the presence of such vitality is to winnow
the wind. It would be as essentially inapposite in
the presence of the portrait of Lavoisier and his wife.
What, after all, is the test of a work of art, academic
or of some other sort ? It is that it should live, that
beneath the technic there should throb an immortal
animation. That is unmistakable in the portrait of
the Lavoisiers. Is the design at all formal? Remem
ber that in that particular it registers the very walk
and demeanor of the time. Here is eighteenth-century
propriety, grace, elegance, mirrored in perfect realism.
Then consult the attitudes in detail. They are ar
ranged with unfaltering respect to the laws of com-

The Eighteenth Century 163

position. The four hands, for example, are woven
into what I can only describe as a pondered felicity.
But the effect of the whole is the effect of life.

There is a curious fusion in this painting of an in
timate sentiment with the dignity of the grand style.
All that we know of this pair is suggested in their
grouping, we feel the charm of their personalities, ac
cented by the professional interest they had in com
mon, and at the same time what is personal in the
portrait is lifted to a higher power by the force of
David's art. I have alluded to the symmetrical
beauty of the design. I turn next to the magnificent
drawing, observable not alone in the hands, for ex
ample, where it tells most obviously, but in the dress
of Mme. Lavoisier and in the form of her husband.
Then I go on to the color, to the beautiful whites in
the dress aforesaid, to the black costume of M. La
voisier, to the glowing rose of the heavy table-cover
ing, and, finally, to the discreet grays in the back
ground. The still life gives an emotion apart, it is
so exquisitely and yet so unobtrusively handled, and
all through the canvas you come upon marvellous
little passages of pure painting, in the lace across the
lady's bosom, in the quill feathers, in the easel thrust
into the shadows* and in other details. It all displays
that quality which Ingres so loved, "the rectitude of
art," workmanship supremely mastered, distinction,
beauty. And with all this there goes convincing
truth.

164 Personalities in Art

It is, above all, the proud vitality of the thing that
most moves us. This portrait gives an overwhelming
answer to those who ignorantly decry tradition. It is
the calibre of the individual artist that settles the
business. Let him be a master, let him truly know
his trade and respect it, and in tradition he uses not
a formula but a language, a living language whose
potentialities are limitless. Neither Rembrandt nor
Velasquez has given us a more veracious evocation
than this portrait of the Lavoisiers. In certain ways
they are obviously as different from David as it is
possible for them to be. His technic is removed as
far from theirs as pole is from pole. But in this one
matter of truth he is their peer, and by truth I mean
not the reproduction of fact as so much still life, but
the transference of it upon canvas so that it remains
genuinely sentient and sympathetic. And David, in
his "academic" way, works another magic which
ranks the portrait as indubitably a great work of
art. He imparts to his painting the cachet of style.
There, as in his design and his draftsmanship, he
triumphantly expresses the genius of the old French
school. Thinking of that, I do not forget the clap
trap of "La Distribution des Aigles," or the dreary
theatricality of, say, the "Antiochus et Stratonice"
— only I put those pieces in their place. I come away
from the portrait of the Lavoisiers thinking simply
of David at his best.

The Eighteenth Century 165

III
PRUD'HON

Though PrucThon lived in an era that thought a
good deal of the grand style, he was himself not so
much for grandeur as for charm. That is Prud'hon's
special gift, the envelopment of his themes in a gra
cious, subtly endearing air. Touch was everything
with him. He was musical, lyrical, the master of an
essentially tender and fragile quality. He may be
studied in portraiture, in the treatment of the nude,
and in the role of draftsman pure and simple. What
ever he does is eloquent of the same romantic loveli
ness, the same charm. Fully to appreciate Prad'hon
you must have some sense of his background. You
must see him in that period which marks the tran
sition from the eighteenth century to the nine
teenth, from the old regime to the Napoleonic. The
decorative spirit of the court of Louis XVI has died
out. The classical severity of David has come in. The
moment is one for the antique virtues. Prud'hon has
them, in a measure. He has a positively pagan de
light in form. He has the academician's feeling for
stately composition. But there is a poetic instinct
struggling about in him. He would be a classicist
only he happens to have been born a romanticist.
So he filters the formulas of David through his tem
perament, looks at the nude not as at a marble in a
museum, but through rose-colored spectacles, which

1 66 Personalities in Art

leave it with the animation of life heightened and
made somehow more gracious. He adds to the clas
sical tradition something akin to "the Correggiosity
of Correggio," that melting tenderness which, when
it escapes sentimentality, is one of the most entranc
ing things in the world.

It invests with a new grace the linear purity and
dignity of his portraits. It softens, makes exquisitely
sensuous, the forms in a wonderful little grisaille of
his, "Venus, FHymen et F Amour." It flings a kind
of bloom upon his bewitching drawing, the "Young
Woman and Cupids/' Prud'hon's portraits are fine
things, but it is in his drawings that we come nearest
to his central enchantment. It is the elegance of the
earlier eighteenth century come back, poetized, en
dued with more of the fresh loveliness of spring, more
of the glamour of romance. He knew nothing of that
rich breadth which Watte^u took over from Rubens.
Where he was allied to the painter of "The Departure
for the Island of Love'7 was in his passion for the
beauty that is fleeting, diaphanous, fairylike. The
drawing I have just cited is one of his masterpieces,
one in which his fusion of classical motive with ro
mantic fervor and style is consummately achieved.
He is a comparatively minor figure in the history of
French art, but he is one of the most seductive.

XII

Gavarni

XII
GAVARNI

IT happened once in Paris, long ago, that M.
Guillaume-Sulpice Chevalier, then a young artist at
the outset of his career, sold a design to the publisher
Susse. The latter noticed that it was unsigned and re
marked that for the benefit of the public this omission
should be corrected* The artist pondered for a mo
ment and then, taking up the pen, made a decision
which was to have far-reaching consequences. Per
haps he thought that his name was too long. Perhaps
a flood of sentiment rushed through him as there just
then rose to his memory the lovely valley of Gavarnie,
where he had spent a happy period within the glamour
of the Pyrenees. At all events, upon this occasion he
signed himself "Gavarnl" and thus gave immortal
syllables to the trumpet of Fame.

It is a name around which cluster some of the most
beguiling and suggestive associations in the history of
French art, one which has engaged the ardent activity
of one pen after another. None was ever more elo
quent than that of Sainte-Beuve, who as far back as
1863 consecrated three of his luminous "Lundis" to
Gavarni, then within only three years of his death.

169

170 Personalities in Art

Not too long after that event the Goncourts wrote
their invaluable book, invaluable for the intimate lore
which it contains and for the superb etching which
Flameng made as frontispiece from Gavarni's cele
brated portrait of himself, "L'Homme a la Cigarette."
Beraldi gave a particularly skilful little memoir to
Gavarni in his well-known catalogue published in the
eighties. Only the other day there appeared in Paris
under the imprint of Floury the first volume of a work
in which M. Paul-Andre Lemoisne obviously proposes
to go most exhaustively into the subject. It is study
of his pages that has specifically set me to thinking
about Gavarni, but the man and the period have al
ways seemed to me to repay reflection.

The period is one of those which, in their very con
tradictions, have a particular attraction for the ana
lyst. "Victorian," for example, has become a by
word, yet if it connotes much that was commonplace,
dull, and even ugly, the apotheosis of mediocrity, it
also designates a period marked by a positively Eliza
bethan expansion of the British genius. So it is in
France, during that time of transition which stretches
from the break-up of the Ancien Regime to the estab
lishment of the Third Republic. Gavarni was born in
1804 and died in 1866. Between those dates French
art is constantly in travail, having to reckon with un
toward influences. One great classical type survives in
Ingres to fertilize one so modern as that which we have
in Degas, but in general there blows from the old years

Gavarni

171

of David and the Napoleonic interval a dulling wind
inimical in the last degree to the rise of the Romanti
cists and the naturalistic painters of Barbizon. It was
in the sixties and for some time later that the Impres
sionists had to fight for whatever ground they won.
The Second Empire remains a pinchbeck affair in the
eyes of most commentators, and the artist could hardly
be expected to come to its defense in view of the fact
that its favorite portrait-painter was the sentimental,
insipid Winterhalter. Yet even while that saccharine
journeyman prevailed, there were great spirits on
earth sojourning, and they were not without oppor
tunity and stimulus. It is a droll paradox that it was
Napoleon III himself who authorized the organization
of the Salon des Refuses in the same building that
housed the official Salon in 1863. Men like Manet and
Whistler, after all, had their chance, and yet I balk a
little at the word " chance." Genius has never yet
been fortuitously kept down. It will affirm itself, no
matter what its surroundings. Sometimes, too, it will
ally itself with those surroundings, extracting from
them its natural sustenance. Nor is it subdued to
the stuff in which it works. On the contrary, it forces
the material at its hand to its own purposes. This
was the way of Gavarni. You do not think of his era
as one precisely favorable in France to the develop
ment of art, but it was favorable to him, and he was
a great artist.
It was favorable to him because he was born to illus-

172 Personalities in Art

trate its most picturesque traits, and then, too, cir
cumstances were kind to Mm. He came into the world
along with a great company of brilliant men. Think
for a moment of the writers of those days, with most
of whom he was destined to be thrown. It was the
period of Dumas, of Balzac, of Victor Hugo, of Gau-
tier. The artists of ability are past counting. It is
enough to note here that if you would see him in a
group you would recognize Daumier on his right and
Constantin Guys on his left. There was "atmos
phere" enough and to be spared for the evolution of
his talent in the work and companionship of his con
temporaries. He was born in Paris, and save for cer
tain absences of his youth he breathed for most of his
life the airs of the capital. There is nothing more evo
cative of the spirit of Gavarni than the introduction
to that Journal des Gens du Monde which he started
in 1833 with the collaboration of a veritable squadron
of celebrities. The essence of this Journal Artiste-
Fashionable is untranslatable, and so I must give as
they were printed the words proclaiming its debut:

i

Voyez, Messieurs! Voyez, Mesdamesl Void Paris la
Capitate t Paris la belle! Paris la mile aux gens d' esprit!
Paris la mile aux bonnes manures! Paris la mile ou Von
sait marcher, oil Von sait saluer, ou Von sait sourire, ou Von
sait faillir, oil Von sait tout faire comme it faut! Void
Paris! Voyez! Voyez, gens de la province; voyez, gens
d'outremerl Voyez, Allemands; voyez y Russiens; wyez,
gens de tons lieux; gens qui voulez apprendre & wus coiffer,
& wus parfumer, & wus presenter; gens qui voulez bien dire,

Gavarni 173

qui wulez. Uen rire, qui voulez Men voir, qui voulez lien
viwe: void Paris!

Les voix de Paris!
Les yeux de Paris!
Les mots de Paris!
Les airs de Paris!
Les Ids de Paris!
Les chapeaux de Paris!
Les rubans de Paris!
Les odeurs de Paris!
Les adr esses de Paris!
Les moqueries de Paris!

Tous les riens de Paris Paris, Paris, voici Paris!

To qualify as the pictorial laureate, so to say, of
this Paris he had instinct rather than training. In his
youth he oscillated briefly between architecture and
science, showing the while a strong mathematical
bent. All his life long this last persisted in him, so
that he would often work out a problem on the mar
gin of a drawing. It is not unreasonable to infer that
this taste of his had something to do with his devel
opment as a draftsman, partially accounting for his
exactitude in matters of form and perspective and for
the crisp purity of his line. He was precocious with
the pencil and, in fact, was still in his twenties when
he was making drawings for publication. I will not
pretend to trace all the steps in his career as a pictorial
satirist. Beraldi thinks that he made perhaps eight
thousand drawings, water-colors, lithographs, and so
on. His designs were published in periodicals and al-

174 Personalities in Art

bums. A fairly full catalogue was made by Maherault
and Bocher in 1873, but doubtless M. Lemoisne will
frame an even more conclusive list by the time he gets
through. I am not concerned with its minutiae here.
It is rather of the broad cosmos it represents that I am
thinking, Gavarni's cosmos of life and movement. It
was his cosmos in a very deep spiritual sense. Sainte-
Beuve says of him that "he was observation itself/7
but in another passage he expresses his belief that Ga-
varni did not need to have a subject actually under his
eyes in order justly to entitle it "After Nature."
Memory and imagination, and that gift which we call
genius, reinforced physical observation. // a son monde
en lui. With that seeing eye of his there went a philo
sophical habit <\f mind, commenting, differentiating,
enriching, and so making it possible for him to give
instant form to the visions of revery. The inexhausti
ble spectacle which was Paris passed, as it were, like
so much ore through his mind to be poured forth in
the pure minted gold of his designs. It came forth
pure gold because, for one thing — a point which
might ordinarily seem irrelevant — Gavarni was very
much of a gentleman. Sainte-Beuve, as I have just
noted, says that il est V observation meme. Beraldi,
adopting a similar locution, says that ilfut la distinc
tion meme, adding that he gave distinction to every
thing which passed under his crayon or his pen. All
his commentators unite in the conclusion that, no mat
ter from what slum or backwater he drew his subject,

LE CAHBRIOLEUR
FROM THE DRAV.'ING BY GAVARNI

Gavarni 175

he did not know how to be common or vulgar. From
his early manhood he was interested in clothes. He
used to design theatrical costumes for Mile. Georges,
Carlotta Grisi, Dejazet, and other great ladies of the
stage, he improved upon the fantasies of the carnival
in his time, and he gave his attention to the dress of
the man of the world, which he wore himself with an
air at once gaittard and exquisitely conventional. Hu
mana, the tailor whose name is preserved, like the
proverbial fly in amber, in the serene prose of Sainte-
Beuve, respectfully took off his hat to Gavarni as to
a man with an incomparable flair for un "habit now.

We see him, then, contemplating Paris, the Gavarni
cosmos, very much from within, living its life as an
initiate, understanding the tone and sentiment of its
dinners and its dances, swinging with a natural grace
into its extraordinarily graceful movement — above
all, participating in its movement. There has never
been anything to beat the brilliant rhythm of Paris in
Gavarni's time. Life swept on to a light, waltzlike
measure. The very dress of the period was expressive
of its hectic pace. Crinoline has gone down the wind
as, among other things, cumbrous and thereby awk
ward, but for the artist there was an element as of
quicksilver in its flowing lines. How Gavarni could
draw the animated elegance, if I may so describe it,
of a Parisienne's toilet ! He caught the rustle of frou
frou as hardly any other pictorial connoisseur has ever
caught it. He has his rivals in this field, I know.

176 Personalities in Art

Eugene Lami was an artist with a singularly delicate
touch, and when he painted a courtly pageant, like
that enveloping the marriage of the Due d'0r!6ans, or
delineated the notables in the foyer de la danse at the
opera, he placed upon his picture exactly the right
accent of mundane distinction. Guys was another
mirror of the social world in which its forms and color
flash and gleam with extraordinary charm. Yet Lami
always strikes me as uninspired and Guys as a little
thin and mannered beside the supreme vitality and
beauty of Gavarni. Gavarni has an elan to which
neither of the others can quite lay claim; he is infi
nitely more various and he has in far greater measure
the attribute of style. His secret lies, I suppose, in the
fact that he knew so magnificently how to draw.

Any final estimate of his genius must reckon, no
doubt, with his substance as much as with his form.
The legend beneath the drawing is of equal impor
tance with the latter. Sainte-Beuve was profoundly
impressed by the cynical wit and wisdom of these
legends. He loved to observe the evolution of a
Gavarni who was a kind of Fragonard into a Gavarni
who was a kind of La Bruyere. A great deal of the
entertainment to be got out of the lithographs lies
in the concisely eloquent words accompanying them.
They are as concise as they are biting. In one of the
numerous designs given to his ragged philosopher,
Vireloque, Gavarni has him contemplating a fallen
drunkard, and the legend says simply: Sa Majeste

Gavarni 177

le Roi des Animaux. Under the portrait of a pompous
oracle is placed this edifying dialogue:

"L'homme est le chef-d'oeuvre de la creation.
Etqui aditqa?
Uhomme.

He moralizes life as he goes along and if he does
so with something of the cynic's1 mordant tone, with
a lucidity that is sometimes a little bleak, he never
theless preserves in the main that precious Ban to
which I have alluded. Even in his pathos there is
grace, and here I come back to his line. I have glanced
at his philosophical function, at the moralist, the
satirist, because, as I say, this side of him cannot be
ignored. It is easy to understand how the legends
appealed to a mind like that of Sainte-Beuve. It
could not have been otherwise. In a country like
France, given to the play of ideas, Gavarni could not
have been Gavarni without a deep fund of gnomic
intelligence. But neither could he have been Gavarni
without his linear power, and I must confess that to
that, as an art critic, I turn with immeasurable gusto.
I have often been struck, in thinking of this period,
by -the characteristic good fortune of France in her
two princes of black and white. If you cannot think
of the period without Gavarni neither can you think
of it without Daumier. They offer you the two sides
of the one medal. Each supplies what the other
lacks. For Daumier the crushing philippic; for Ga~

178 Personalities in Art

varni the airy, lightly stinging mot. And as it was
with their satirical texture so it was with their tech
nical equipment. The puissant Daumier is a modern
Michael Angelo in his massive treatment of form.
The delicately effective Gavarni has beside him a
Raphaelesque polish and suavity. He is withal, like
Daumier, one of the most original spirits in the his
tory of art. No other draftsman in the host of clever
illustrators and caricaturists adorning his time had
anything like his richness of individuality. That fe
cundity at which I have glanced in citing Beraldi's
figure of eight thousand designs is significant of the
type of creative artist that Gavarni was. He oper
ated like a force of nature, spontaneously, abundantly,
and with a sort of sublime certainty. His touch has
about it a wonderful ease and precision. Consider
too how free he is from surplusage, with what perfect
balance and economy he puts his compositions to
gether. I would not press this matter of his felicity
in design too far. He is in no wise Raphaelesque as
a weaver of linear patterns. On the other hand, noth
ing could be more discreet or more pointedly right
than his placing of a figure. There he has that virtue
for which Matthew Arnold had such appreciation in
his word " inevitability." He realizes a scene, a
group, or an isolated figure, always in what seem to
be both the terms of life and the terms of pictorial
unity.
He led a long, successful, and, in the main, unad-

Gavarni 179

venturous life. One rather surprising episode arrests
Ms biographers. Once he went to London, to spend
a few weeks, and remained there for several years.
He had introductions to smooth his way into the
presence of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
but for some occult reason he scamped his courtly
opportunities and devoted himself to observation of
the ordinary walks of life. He had his misanthropic
moods, and latterly the philosopher in him knew
some sad moments. The death of a son bore heavily
upon his spirit and he suffered a material vexation
which sorely exasperated him. Gavami was an im
passioned lover of flowers and trees, and he was happy
in cultivating his Auteuil garden. But the Hauss-
mannization of Paris spoiled all that, a new railway
cutting right into his domain. Still, there was the
success of which I have spoken. It was piled up
steadily. Gavarni soon became in Paris something
like an institution. He did not struggle for his re
nown. There is a pretty story of a colloquy between
him and M. Cave, Director of Fine Arts, about the
cross of the Legion of Honor. The official wondered
if he cared to have it and on Gavarni's making an
affirmative reply, offered him pen and paper with
which to make a request for the honor. If the cross
depended on his asking for it, said Gavami, he would
never receive it. Later, in 1852, Comte de Nieu-
werkerke saw to it that he got the decoration without
pleading. He had lacked nothing of appreciation and

180 Personalities in Art

recognition when he closed his eyes in 1866, and he
could close them with the resignation of an artist
who had enjoyed life and left behind him a body of
work calculated, in the nature of things, to keep his
name alive. The pictures of a painter are compara
tively limited in number, and remain more or less
stationary. The prints of a lithographer are pro
digiously multiplied and carry his art everywhere.
The traits of Gavarni are like those of an author, sus
ceptible of the widest circulation. His repute is, I
should say, fairly universal now. Is it matched by
as extensive an influence? Hardly. Pictorial satire
since his day has rarely developed that vein of gaiety
which was peculiarly characteristic of him. The other
day with this subject in my mind I looked through
the "Feu Pierrot'7 of that jocund humorist, Willette,
who should have recaptured something of Gavarni's
verve if any modern Frenchman could have done so.
But the book left a rather dubious taste in my mouth.
After the high-bred art of Gavarni the fun of Mont-
martre seemed a little coarse, the levities of the Chat
Noir a little vulgar. It was breeding, yes, that set
Gavarni upon such an eminence; it was his distinc
tion and his genius. Also it was something that the
modern draftsman strangely neglects, perhaps be
cause he thinks that it lies outside his bailiwick. It
was the sense of beauty. It was his possession of
that, I think, that made Gavarni what he was, not
only a great satirist but a great artist.

XIII

Daumier

XIII
DAUMIER

WHEN Henri Beraldi came to Daumier in the com
pilation of his invaluable catalogue of "Les Graveurs
du XIXe Siecle" he was a little amused to find what
commentators on the subject had already done in
the way of comparison. They had discovered points
of contact between Daumier and about thirty differ
ent masters, to say nothing of the traditions of the
Flemish, the Dutch, the Venetian, and the Florentine
schools. Daubigny, visiting Rome and seeing the
"Moses/' cries with enthusiasm: C'est un Daumier!
Above all things, the draftsman of Charivari was the
Michel-Ange de la caricature. One may be, with Be
raldi, a little amused — until one sees that there is
in all this but the reflection of a very simple truth.
It is that Daumier is of the elect, a mighty artist
"with the mark of the gods upon him/' to borrow
Whistler's phrase. He made his fame primarily as a
satirist in black and white, but he triumphed through
the possession of a genius transcending his main voca
tion. Champfleury, who catalogued his works in
1878, the year before he died, wrote his best epitaph:
Dans le moindre croquis de Daumier on sent h gri/e
du lion.

183

184 Personalities in Art

It is none the less fitting because the lion had some
of the traits of the bourgeois. Born at Marseilles, in
1808, he had for father an humble glazier who by
some extraordinary paradox nourished the ambitions
of a poet! It is tempting, of course, to infer from
that latter circumstance the germ of a certain roman
ticism in Daumier, only the romanticism is not there.
When he was brought up to Paris as a child it was to
enter upon a rather humdrum existence. In his teens
he was inducted into a clerkship in a book-shop.
However poetically inclined the elder Daumier may
have been, he was slow to give way to his son's ar
tistic predilections. These received some encourage
ment, however, from the functionary, Alexandre
Lenoir, and presently we find him commencing lith
ographer under one Zephyrin Belliard. In 1829 he
was launched as a caricaturist. He had one charac
teristic alone calculated to carry him far; he had
courage. It was even in ttus formative period that
his "Gargantua," a terrific lampoon upon Louis-
Philippe, procured him six months in jail. But he
emerged with a career in his hands. Falling under
the notice of Charles Philopon, founder of the weekly
Caricature and the daily Charivari, he was closely as
sociated with those publications for years. Some
time in the late forties he began to function as a
painter also, and this continued until his death, but
he never lost touch with the satirical arena. In 1878
there was a memorable exhibition of his works at the

Daumier 185

Durand-Ruel Gallery which had a qualified success.
He died in retirement at Valmondois in the following
year, old, sightless, and in poor circumstances. He
had been offered the ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur
but had quietly refused it, not caring, like his friend
Courbet, to make a theatrical fuss about his de
clination.

Where do the bourgeois traits come in, in the life
thus rapidly surveyed? In a certain almost prosaic
steadiness of activity. As a satirist he did his job
and that was enough. He had among his friends
men whose names are like so many challenging ban
ners against a French sky that in his time was noth
ing if not turbulent. He knew Delacroix and Corot,
Barye and Diaz. He lived at the very heart of revo
lution in French painting, peculiarly at the heart of
the romantic movement. But he stayed of unroman-
tic temperament. It is curious, when you look down
the vista of his long life, to reckon with the events
that made his background. As a child he was old
enough to sense the reverberations of Waterloo. He
grew up to witness the brief reign of Charles X, the
coming of Louis-Philippe, the rise of the Second Em
pire, and the disasters of 1870. An instinctive repub
lican, he was on the side of liberalism and fought for
it through all these permutations with passion and
even with venom, so long as the governing powers
let the freedom of the press alone. Yet, when that
freedom was curtailed, he turned readily enough from

1 86 Personalities in Art

the castigation of politicians to the satirizing of man
ners, and in the long run you feel that the march of
history had comparatively little to do with the devel
opment of his genius. The break-up of the old Napo
leonic r6gime and the organization of a new France
may have involved him in some cerebral activity,
but it did not so inflame his imagination as to give a
distinctive color to his work. The inference might
be that he remained just a ready journalist. But it is
more fitting to deduce, I think, that he remained just
a great artist.

Criticism has often diverted itself drawing paral
lels between Daumier and Gavarni, despite the plausi
ble observation of Philippe de Chennevieres that you
might as well waste your time drawing a parallel
between Poussin and Watteau. The two satirists had
this at least in common — they knew how to draw.
In spirit, no doubt, they were poles apart. I have
before me as I write a design of Daumier's illustrating
the "Galop Final" at a masquerade ball. The de
licious lightness and gayety that Gavarni would have
given it are somehow missing. In none of the draw
ings that Daumier dedicated to the feminine levities
in the Parisian spectacle is there anything of the ex
quisite frou-frou in which Gavarni excelled. On the
other hand, there is composition, there is movement,
and there is superbly puissant line. At a dinner at
Daubigny's a fellow artist once said to Daumier that
a lithograph of his, the famous "Ventre Legislatif,"

Daumier 187

made him think of the Sistine Chapel. It sounds like
a boutade, but one can understand that the design
made him think at least of the grand style. That was
Daumier's great resource, that is where you recog
nize the claw of the lion. He drew with a certain
largeness and sweep, a certain noble force. I say
" noble" advisedly, because, while the end of the
artist was ridicule, and he would exaggerate the
points of a physiognomy sometimes to an almost re
pulsive degree, there is something which you can
only designate as grandeur about the linear simplicity
and power through which he gains his effect. You
see this magic of his working supremely in Ms carica
tures, and the mere bulk of them, the mere salience
they possess in his life, would be sufficient justifica
tion for those who prefer to see their Daumier in
black-and-white. I can feel with them. There are
lithographs of his that rejoice my soul, partly through
their great draftsmanship, and partly through their
magnificent affirmation of the very genius of lithog
raphy. Daumier knew all the secrets of the stone.
But, thinking of him as I most like to think of him,
thinking of the satirist as artist, I care for him es
pecially as a painter.

He was more than the Michael Angelo of carica
ture. He was something of a Michael Angelo in
paint. He was that inasmuch as he was a great
master of form. In 1848 the proclamation of the Re
public gave occasion for the opening at the Beaux-

1 88 Personalities in Art

Arts of a competition for a symbolical decoration.
More than five hundred artists entered. Daumier's
sketch was marked the eleventh in the group of
twenty chosen as indicating the painters to take part
in the definitive concours. I will not assert that it is
a portentous conception, but there is no denying the
monumental force and unity of the design. It invites
not unreasonably, I believe, the assumption that if
fate had so ordained it Daurnier might have devel
oped into a remarkable mural painter. But it is not
obvious that fate ever dowered him with the grandi
ose imaginative faculties that would have filled out
his grandiose mode of tackling composition and the
figure. He had no traffic with Olympus. He kept his
feet upon the solid earth and found his inspiration
in obscure humanity. Banville has pictured him in
his big, austere attic on the He St. Louis, watching
for hours the scenes below him along the banks of the
Seine. He did for the workaday figures of' the city
what Millet did for their brethren of the fields. Like
Millet, he found a measure of pathos in the lives of
the humble, and he would paint a poor washer
woman trudging along with her burden and her child,
mixing positive tenderness with his sympathy. For
the submerged this bitter satirist always had sym
pathy. But, again like Millet, he utterly escapes
mawkishness in his idyls of the pave. It is his feel
ing for form that is essentially his safeguard against
sentimentality. He sees the figure simply and grandly,

Daumier 189

gets the elements of structure with a broad, synthetic
stroke, and finally, with that composer's felicity of
his, places his form consummately within the rec
tangle. His range was not very wide, yet it was suffi
ciently varied. Besides the life of the riverside he
would paint the habitues of the law-courts, the peo
ple of the circus, the doctor and his patient, the trav
ellers on the railroad, and, occasionally, the amateur
turning over his prints. Once or twice he dealt with
scenes in the theatre, and there is a considerable series
of his pictures given to the celebration of Don Quixote
and his adventures. These last represent, of course,
imaginative excursions, but, as I have indicated, it is
not imagination but observation and human interest
that especially denote his genius. He had a strong
grip upon character. With his lifelong study of phys
iognomy in the political world it was inevitable that
when he came to paint his pictures he would paint
them with the "seeing eye." The interesting thing is
that as a painter he kept that eye so free from jaun
dice. The ferocity of the caricatures falls from him
like a garment when he takes up the brush. A trace
of the old bitterness will creep into the studies of
the avocat, but when he paints his Seine folk or the
homespun types of the troisieme dasse on the rail
road he is only the friendly bourgeois depicting his
own kind. Only that, plus the great artist enveloping
his people in the glamour of line and mass, flinging
over them the mysterious beauty that flows from

I go Personalities in Art

light and shadow, and adding to them that which
sums up all the rest — the accent of style.

His style is in the key of all those traits of largeness
and nobility which I have endeavored to point out in
his draftsmanship and his composition. It is, too,
intensely personal. That disposition among his com
mentators, which I have noted, to ally him with one
master or another, does not leave him, as a matter
of fact, in any sense an eclectic type. You may say
that there is an Hogarthian amplitude about his
humor. You may find a savagery in him akin to
Goya. But these and other strains in Daumier are
in nowise derivative. He is his own man. His tech-
nic, his energy, and pre-eminently his style are new-
minted and "of the centre." There is a Daumier
cult, and its divagations are sometimes a little over
done. Beraldi, as I have remarked, found the rap
prochements merely droll. If one were to swallow
whole the ideas of the eulogists, one would, as he
says, have to retouch Delaroche's famous hemicycle
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and, erasing the heads
of aE the masters portrayed, substitute for each one
the head of Daumier. The funniest of these oddities
in criticism is that of the recent biographer who would
see in Daumier a forefather of the Post-Impression
ists, as naive a piece of body-snatching as the erec
tion of Ingres into a spiritual ancestor of Matisse.
The truth is that there is nothing recondite or mys
terious about the status of this artist. He was a good

Daumier 191

craftsman. He knew how to draw and How to paint.
He looked at the life about him and mirrored it
truthfully in his art. He surcharged it with no ro
mantic fervors. This comrade of Delacroix had noth
ing of his friend's emotion and nothing of his flair for
color, but was content with a quiet tonality in which
he leaned far more toward the "brown sauce" of
Rembrandt than toward the luminous hues which
the Impressionists were bringing into view just as he
was about to pass from the scene. Exactly as he was
unaffected by the splendors of Delacroix, so he did
nothing to emulate the silvery vibrations of his be
loved Corot. I may remark in passing that he was
as sensitive as Corot in the delineation of landscape.
His backgrounds of earth, trees, and sky are always
just, true, and well designed, and sometimes they are
very beautiful. Did he care for beauty in the sense
of grace, of charm, of that subtle enrichment which
makes a picture one of the poetic things of life? I
hardly think so. It may be that his spirit was too
much subdued to the sardonic stuff in which he
worked for so many years. When he touches the an
tique, it leaves him cold. There are some repellent
profiles among his "Physionomies Tragico-Clas-
siques." The beauty in Daumier is of a grave, even
stem, order. Beside the suavity of Ingres his rugged-
ness seems that of granite. It is, in its way, as be
guiling. Baudelaire noted that a long time ago, when
he associated Daumier as a draftsman with Ingres

192 Personalities in Art

and Delacroix. Each was different from the others,
but he doffed his hat to all of them. Each, to return
to our leading motive, had style, the indefinable ele
vation which imbues workmanship with a personal,
distinguishing mark and lifts it to a higher power.
It is the mark of the creative artist, the original, born
artist. That is why nobody can write about Dau-
mier without seeking to illuminate his analysis here
and there by alluding to one or the other of the mas
ters. There is a kind of solidarity among them. They
stand for one idiom, one tradition. Daumier is not
the tremendous portent that some of the zealous
would represent him to be. He had limitations, as I
have sought to indicate. None the less he used the
idiom of the masters, belonged to their tradition, and
he is of their glorious company.

XIV

Courbet

XIV

COURBET

ON June 10, 1819, Gustave Courbet was born at
Ornans, in a then almost sequestered corner of east
ern France. In manhood he became the friend of
Corot. As a landscape painter who was the contem
porary of the Barbizon group, it would have been
natural enough for Mm to have adopted its romanti
cized naturalism. But Courbet followed his own gait,
developed a body of independent ideas, and emerged
from an extraordinary clash of personalities with a
clearly defined celebrity. He remains a singular fig
ure in the history of French painting, one to whom
artists all over the world have reason for paying cor
dial tribute. The fact was happily recognized in 1919
at the Metropolitan Museum, where Mr. Bryson
Burroughs, curator of paintings, had the inspiration
to invent and organize an exhibition commemorative
of Courbet's centenary. From private and public col
lections he drew important examples, assembling
some two score pictures in one of the stateliest rooms
in the museum. Hung in a single line, they made a
noble effect. Nowhere else, save in Paris, could so
brilliant a memorial have been arranged. And not
even in Paris could a collection of this kind meet

196 Personalities in Art

with warmer appreciation than in New York. Cour-
bet's qualities are peculiarly sympathetic to us. There
are marked points of contact between the genius of
Courbet and the genius of American painting.

The character of Courbet as a man — and it is
forced upon every commentator who approaches his
works — is hardly as lovable as one would like it to
be. Thirty-odd years ago an American enthusiast,
Mr. Titus Munson Coan, made a pilgrimage to the
painter's old haunts in Franche-Comte, and printed
in The Century some interesting impressions received
from friends and neighbors who had known Courbet
well. "He is not very kindly remembered," said one
of these former comrades of his. In Paris he had some
notable associates. Sainte-Beuve, we are told, was
one of his faithful friends. But this son of a farmer
never quite adjusted himself to the suaver modes of
urban life. He was eccentric to the point of violence.
"In 1864," his friend Buchon recalled, "when cold
weather came, he bought a bed-quilt from a Jew.
He made a hole in the middle of it for his head. That
was his winter overcoat." He was prosperous enough
to have gone abroad in furs if he had so chosen. But
the bed-quilt attracted attention, which he craved.
He had, indeed, a passion for reclame, and posed as a
wiontagnard because it brought him notoriety. Late
in life this histrionic disposition led to the one tragic
episode of his career. When the Vendome column
was pulled down under the Commune his flamboyant

Courbet

197

radicalism had so far involved Him with the vandals
who actually brought it to the dust that in the up
shot he was held responsible by the authorities. The
reconstruction of the column, under the Republic,
was at his cost, and he had a taste of jail into the
bargain before flight into Switzerland gave him a
few more years of broken life. I allude to his personal
traits and adventures chiefly for the sake of contrast.
They are antithetical to Courbet's r61e as an artist
There he was, paradoxically, nothing if not simple
and sincere. There is only one point at which it is
necessary to consider the man and the painter together.
That is the point at which we have to reckon with his
taste.

In the definitive biography of Courbet, by M.
Georges Eiat, there is an amusing anecdote of the
Empress Euggnie. She went to see Rosa Bonheur's
"Horse Fair" one day, and after admiring its mag
nificent Percherons turned to "Les Baigneuses," of
Courbet. Looking at the powerful semi-nude woman,
whose back is turned to us in this picture, she asked,
"Is this also a Percheron?" It was a fair epigram,
one directing attention to a strain in Courbet which
cannot be ignored. He was no super-refined searcher
after beauty, but took nature as he found it, and his
instinct, his taste, was to find it rather plain. There
is a picture of his which might seem to contradict this
observation. It is "The Woman in the Waves,"
which has the sensuous charm of a Boucher. Con-

198 Personalities in Art

sider also "The Woman with the Mirror," better
known as "La Belle Mandaise." When he painted
this portrait of Whistler's famous model he responded
as sensitively as Whistler could have done to the
gracious appeal of his sitter. But pictures like these
are the exceptions which prove the rule. Courbet
had no abstract ideas of beauty* It was the visible
fact, not the dream, that concerned him. A far more
significant painting is the sylvan nude, "The Source,"
which immediately makes one think of the great
study of the same subject by Ingres in the Louvre.
In the work of Ingres the young model is synthesized
into a classically elevated design. In the work of
Courbet she is delineated as in a portrait. Convention
is utterly excluded from the painter's thought. I
might cite other individual pieces which, like "The
Source," add to the light needed for a thorough ap
preciation of Courbet; but the most useful clew is,
perhaps, to be developed by a survey of his work as a
whole.

Is not its outstanding virtue the virtue of variety?
There are landscapes and nudes, portraits, marines,
flower studies and hunting pictures in Courbet's
cosmos. And the special merit of this variety is
one taking us to the very core of Courbet's art.
Every artist accepts the peril of repeating himself.
Indeed, it is not necessarily a peril. Who could dis
parage Corot, for example, because he spent long
years in painting " Corots," which is to say landscapes

Courbet 199

sharing in such a strong family likeness that one
could tell them in the dark. Corot was richer in sheer
genius than was Courbet. But in this particular
matter Courbet was the stronger artist. In all his
life he scarcely ever painted a "Courbet/' You know
him, it is true, for certain notes of color, and, of course,
for certain technical methods, but variety, with him,
means the transmutation of each new picture into
a new adventure. He had small patience with crystal
lized pattern in other painters, and he had no patience
with it at all in his own work. M. Riat teHs us that
in the artist's student days he was all for the great
realists, for Ribera, Zurburan, Velasquez, Von Os-
tade, Holbein, and Rembrandt. When he had an ex
hibition of his own in the '505 he inscribed the words
Le Realisme on the door. It introduced not so much
a type of picture as a point of view. That is what
made the exhibition at the Museum so interesting.
It was composed not of forty " Courbets," but of
forty works of art in which you could see reflected a
broad attitude, the attitude of an artist whose sole
conception of picture-making was the recording of
the truth.

Consider how isolated he was in this philosophy.
Truth was precious to the men of 1830, but it was
all interwoven with romantic emotion. Even a type
as austere as Millet tended to heighten the truth with
grandiose elements of design and style. Courbet ad
hered to the bedrock of realism. Design, for exam-

2OO Personalities in Art

pie, as he cultivated it, was on the whole a rather
accidental factor. His pictures are well enough put
together, but we feel that this is due to a lucky selec
tion of motives. It never comes from the interven
tion of a definite principle of composition. In the
absence of such a principle, in fact, Courbet's most
ambitious schemes are curiously defective. Witness
the famous "Enterrement a Ornans," in the Louvre.
Balance is left, as it were, to take care of itself. But
the truth of life is unmistakable. To note the fact
is to pose Courbet's whole case. In the arts of com
position, in the refinements of draftsmanship and
color, in the magic of style, he may not be one of the
demigods; but in the matter of a kind of central
vitality he is one of the great men of the nineteenth
century. It is the vitality, moreover, of an original
painter. There is nothing of the photographer about
Courbet's realism. It is too personal for that, too
artistic. There was, after all, an element of charm
in that rough temperament of his, which seems nomi
nally to have held charm at arm's length. He was
indifferent to beauty as Ingres saw it, with his pas
sion for Raphaelesque form. He cared nothing for
the lyrical inspiration of a Corot. But he transmogri
fied his facts in spite of himself, made his realism the
vehicle for impressions that sometimes, at all events,
are merely lovely.

A good example is supplied in the "Spring Flowers,"
painted in the prison of Sainte-Pelagie in 1871, when

Courbet 201

he was obliged to ruminate in seclusion on Ms ill-
fated connection with the destruction of the Vendome
Column. Fantin-Latour himself never painted a
more exquisite mass of blooms. Notable, too, for its
vein of aesthetic delicacy is one of his marines, the
picture called simply "The Mediterranean." There
are some of the earlier pictures of Whistler of which
it may be said that "Courbet might have painted
them." By the same token we may say of "The
Mediterranean" that "Whistler might have painted
it." In color, particularly, this is an almost poetic
piece of work. I have spoken of Courbet's variety.
The museum exhibition afforded really extraordinary
illustrations of the theme. From a marine like "The
Mediterranean" you could turn to a full-length por
trait like the "Madame Crocq: La Femme au Gant,"
or to a nude like "The Woman with the Parrot," or
to a major hunting scene like the brilliant picture of
"The Quarry," lent by the Boston Museum. To this
diversity in Courbet we are bound to return, over
and over again. But always I would emphasize more
especially the significance of his landscapes, for these,
more perhaps than any other of his paintings, typify
Courbet's influence at large.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to make
invidious comparisons here, to speak of what he
missed on the subjective side of landscape painting.
He missed whole worlds of such enchantment a
Corot and Dupre, Diaz and Rousseau, made their

202 Personalities in Art

own. But the "natural magic" wHch he gained in
stead is a thing of almost thrilling power. In such a
landscape as "The Fringe of the Forest," in which
design, as such, is well nigh negligible, the expression
of woodland depths, of tree forms and ground tex
tures is nothing less than superb. Nature is given
her chance. She is interpreted with the least pos
sible interposition of a personal habit of painting.
It is as though she guided Courbet's brush and, in
the process, communicated to him something of her
own energy. He never founded a school, in the sense
of passing on a technical method. But he has been
a tremendous fertilizing force in that he has pointed
the way to an honest, clear-eyed mode of attack.
Because he dealt in low tones, knowing nothing of the
luminosity of the Impressionists, his paintings leave
a curious impression of old-masterish sobriety. But
it is not in his forest greens, dull blacks, and tawny
hues generally that Courbet alone denotes his alliance
with the past. It is Ms truth that fixes his rank, that
makes him an old master, and places him also among
the most progressive of the moderns.

XV
Puvis de Chavannes

XV
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES

A BRIEF note in Le Gaulois one day reported certain
ceremonies which had, as a matter of fact, a high

significance. They were held at Lyons, in the house
in wHch Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was born on
December 14, 1824. Faithful as always to the mem
ory of her illustrious dead, France officially recog
nized the centenary of one of her greatest painters.
We, too, have reason to remember him. He did some
of his finest work for the walls of the Boston Public
Library, and many of our artists have profited by
study of his genius. To the mural decorator and to
every student of art who cares for monumental de
sign he is one of the outstanding European figures, an
incomparable master. Why, I wonder, has not a
more voluminous literature gathered about Ms fame?
Marius Vachon published a good book on his work
in 1895. A condensed monograph has since appeared
from the pen of M. Andre Michel, really a collection
of illustrations with sketchy text. The exhaustive
work by M. Leonce Benedite has not, that I know of,
as yet been published. Marcelle Adam made an
amusing brochure out of his numerous caricatures,
and of course 'there has been much writing on the

205

206 Personalities in Art

subject in the French periodicals. But very little
has been done to bring the man as well as the artist
into view, and from all the printed matter available
I have gathered less than I have received from M.
Joseph Durand-Ruel, who from his boyhood was in
timately acquainted with Puvis de Chavannes. I
regret my own lost opportunities. He was a painter
I greatly desired to meet; I was frequently in Paris
prior to his death in 1898, and I knew men like
Rodin, who could easily have taken me to his home
on the Place Pigalle or out to the studio at Neuilly.
Perhaps I was a little hesitant about tackling his
Olympian aloofness.

It is a trait which disengages itself decisively enough
from the facts that have been made known about
him. Puvis de Chavannes seems to have been a man
apart, from the beginning. He came from the old
Burgundian noblesse, and he was not unconscious of
it, reserved, a man of a kind of hauteur, giving of
himself freely to those he loved but on the whole
keeping himself to himself. The portrait which he
painted at twenty-five shows a lean, aristocratic
visage, very thoughtful in expression. More expres
sive of his legend is the portentous full-length painted
by his friend Bonnat It is that of a stately acade
mician. There was nothing academic about him, it
is true, but the canvas is eloquent of his dignity, his
gravity, his mundane weight.

His father was an engineer and he was destined to

Puvis de Chamnnes 207

foEow in the paternal footsteps, but illness inter
rupted the preliminaries and a journey to Italy gave
a new direction to Ms ideas. Initiated into the world
of pictures, he came back resolved to be an artist.

He threw himself upon his chosen career not only
with artistic ardor, but with the warm, human en
ergy of youth, and said, long afterward, that he did
not know more about the tedmic of Ms craft at this

time than he knew about the argot of the rapin. He
liked to tell the story of Ms encounter with the wife
of Lamartine, when he was spending a vacation at
Macon. She asked Mm if he painted, and, on Ms re
plying in the affirmative, wanted to know if he drew
"the figure/' meaning did he draw a portrait. "The
face?" he answered. "I draw the entire man." His
master then was the now fairly forgotten painter,
Henri Scheffer, but later, following a second trip to
Italy, in the company of Ms friend Beauderon de
Vermeron, he was for a short time in the studio of
Delacroix, and after that enjoyed the criticism of
Couture. I cannot trace in detail the history of Ms
contacts with that remarkable painter and decorator,
Theodore Chasseriau, but I know they were dose,
on the authority of John La Farge, who told me
about them long ago. It used to amuse La Farge, by
the way, to recall the time when Puvis de Chavannes
came into the studio of Couture, where the young
American was working, and picked him out to pose
for one of Ms figures. La Farge couldn't remember

208 Personalities in Art

wHch one it was, and would joke about some day
getting a lot of photographs together and hunting
up his physiognomy. There is another personal sou
venir of that distant period which I may cite here.
The Princess Cantacuzene belonged to Chasseriau's
circle, and one of the most brilliant of his drawings
is a portrait of her. Puvis de Chavannes succeeded
him ia her friendship and they were married in his
old age.

In some cases these questions of master and pupil
might assume importance. With Puvis de Chavannes
they are of slight moment. He was his own man.
That, to be sure, was one of the reasons why he be
came a great painter. He took his own line and fought
his battle in his own way. He had to fight. They let
him into the Salon of 1850, but in 1852 they refused
him, and for some years he met the same repulse.
There were writers on his side, Theophile Gautier and
Paul de Saint-Victor among them, but there were
others who could not endure his work and in official
dom there were as many malcontents, if not more.
It did not matter. He went on making studies and
painting, especially making studies. The nature of
those compositions on which his renown is based
might well beguile the student to inquire into the
matter of the master's intellectual equipment. Paint
ings like his must necessarily, we say, imply a deep
culture. Vachon gives the best commentary upon
this idea in a passage he quotes from the painter,

Puvis de Chavannes 209

asked about the genesis of Ms designs, "l am ignor
ant," he replied. "I have no philosophy, or history,
or science. I am occupied with my profession. " He
was sheer artist and, into the bargain, a type of ap
palling industry.

When he settled in Paris in 1852, joining with his
friends Bida, Eicard, and one or two others in the
organization of a happy circle, he fixed upon an apart
ment on the Place Pigalle, which was to remain his
home for nearly half a century. He was a rich man,
with an annual income of some 200,000 francs, and
though there was a studio attached to Ms quarters
he did none of Ms work there. Painting on a large
scale from the outset, he built Mmself a great studio
at Neuilly, with all the mechanism required for the
manipulation of vast canvases. Between these two
places he led with unbroken regularity a life partly
Spartan and partly luxurious. Since he wanted a full
day for his work, he would see Ms friends only in the
morning. You could call as early as six but not later
than nine. There were always devotees there. One
of them was the famous Marcelin Desboutin, nomi
nally the oddest of associates, for he was as untidy
a Bohemian as ever lived, and his comrade was
nothing if not the pink of all the amenities. But
Desboutin, like Puvis de Chavannes, was the great
gentleman to his finger-tips. Legend has it, indeed,
that he was really the Marquis des Boutins. M.
C16ment-Janin, in Ms biography of the artist, scouts

2io Personalities in Art

the idea of a noble origin, but it would seem to have
had the sanction of Puvis de Chavannes, at all events.
They were companions from adolescence, and Des-
boutin was nearly always on hand in the mornings
when his friend sat in his white dressing-gown and
"held court." I gather that he warmly welcomed all
manner of artists to these early soirees, but was
rarely intimate with any of them. Besides Desboutin,
among those who knew him well, there was Degas
(who was entitled to call himself the Comte de Gas),
and there were inevitably divers others, but most of
the visitors were, so to say, on professional terms
alone with him.

While he talked — and it is said that he was a
charming, gracious, deeply interesting talker — he
would have his breakfast, consisting of a glass of
milk, without so much as a bit of toast or a biscuit.
Then at nine he would start out for the long walk to
Neuiliy, a matter of about two miles and a half.
Arrived there, he would work, standing, until the
light failed, and without a bite of luncheon. In the
dusk he would walk home, dress with the meticulous
care of a man of fashion, and dine out in the great
world where his personality and his conversational
powers made him a constantly desired guest. He
was a mighty trencherman. With nothing to keep
him going all day but that minute draught of milk
he had a heroic appetite for dinner, and his hosts
took pains to see that his gigantic hunger was satisfied

Pnvis de Chcwannes 211

by food enough for two. He was otherwise sobriety

itself. A very little watered wine was aE that he
wanted to wash down Ms Gargantuan repasts. As
an artist he remained detached from groups as such.
He knew Degas, as I have observed, and Manet,
Monet, Renoir, and the rest. He had friends, too?
in the academic camp. Bonnat was one of his in
timates. But he made few ties and thereby suffered
no losses. A trait to be mentioned appositely here
is his admirable discretion. He never disparaged any
one he disliked. M. Durand-Ruel tells me that he
often saw Mm smile but never knew Mm to laugh.

At Neuilly Ms labors were assisted by a corps of
pupils, who served as instruments in the execution
of Ms paintings. He chose them with great care,
paid them well, and altogether carried himself there,
as elsewhere, with marked poise and dignity. The
circumstances of his whole life seem so ordered, so
measured, so beautifully balanced, and in so many
ways so successful that it seems positively incongru
ous to find that Ms work was long a drag on the
market. He put Mgh prices on Ms paintings, dis
daining to cheapen them, and was unperturbed when
they did not sell. The elder Durand-Ruel bought the
famous "Decollation de Saint Jean-Baptiste" out of
the Salon of 1870 for 5,000 francs, and for fifteen
years was unable to dispose of it. At the end of that
time Puvis de Chavannes, with Ms characteristic
gesture of the grand seigneur, insisted upon buying

212 Personalities in Art

it back. He had that majestic way with him. When
he painted the first of the great decorations in the
Musee de Picardie, at Amiens, he heard that it was
to have neighbors from other hands as yet unde
cided upon. Promptly he offered to fill all the re
maining spaces at his own expense, counting the seri
ous cost as nothing in the balance against the pain
of seeing his work in juxtaposition with things in a
totally different key. The story of the Boston panels
shows delightfully how, for once, the tables were
turned upon Mm. McKim was resolved that Puvis
de Chavannes should do the work, and when the
committee waited upon the artist it was prepared to
make any concessions. He was busy? They could
accept any delay. He had not seen the building in
Boston? They could send him a model. Then came
up the question of cost, and he thought he had them.
He was really overborne with work, he didn't want
to do the thing, and by naming a prohibitive price
he would scare off these importunate Americans.
They blandly met his figure and he surrendered, to
find, as it developed, peculiar happiness in working
out one of the loveliest decorative schemes in his
career.

I have alluded to the modesty with which he spoke
of his resources in the production of all those schemes
of his. The truth is, of course, that he was a born
poet, with a brain teeming with ideas and an imagi
nation that instinctively played in the grand manner

Puvis de Chamnnes 213

around grand themes. Apropos of one of Ms easel
pictures, "L'Enfant Prodigue," he used to say that

what started him painting it was the sheaf of sketches
he had enthusiastically made from a herd of swine
once observed in the country. But we may agree
with M. Michel not to take this loutade too much
au pied de la letire. The composition has too much
tenderness for that, too much elevation. Elevation,
nobility, are inseparable from the work of Puvis de
Chavannes. He had, far more than Chasseriau, whose
powers of ordonnance he otherwise recalls, "the large
utterance of the early gods." There is something
primeval in the sense of space he gives you, of im
posing space peopled by heroic figures. And Ms heroic
forms are always tinctured by beauty. In "Le Tra
vail" and "Le Repos," which date back to the early
sixties, his men and women have an antique ampli
tude and simplicity. They are rather massy figures,
types of almost rude strength. Yet they have grace,
too, the grace that comes from rich contours, full
flowing lines, and, above all, a kind of innate purity.
As time went on his faculty for thus transmogrify
ing life only gained in potency. For whatever he did
he required a generous scale. Gautier noted this
early in the painter's career. He painted many easel
pictures, ch&ialet pieces, as the French call them, and
some of them are among his most felicitous perform
ances, but there can be no question about the essen
tial gravitation of his genius to big wall spaces.

214 Personalities in Art

He found them in divers important French cities
— in Amiens, in Marseilles, and, when once his long
fight with the augurs was over, in Paris. His work
beautifies the Pantheon, the Sorbonne, and the H6tel
de Ville. Once neglected, he became one of the
recognized glories of French art, and with the good
will of the government there went also an increase
in public appreciation. It dated most decisively
from the exhibition that Durand-Ruel organized in
1886. That silenced the scoffers. For the rest of his
life Puvis de Chavannes was a classic in his own
country, and was so accepted throughout the world.
He is a classic, but that is not to say that he is clas
sical. On the contrary, he breaks with the term as it
is impHed in the works of Ingres, say, and cultivates
a spirit far removed from the spirit of that marmoreal
master. There is nothing Greek about Puvis de Cha
vannes save that humanity which you may discern
in the idyls of Theocritus. He lodges his symbolical
figures in landscapes that are Virgilian in their sweet
ness. His groups are freely arranged. There is no
Raphaelesque symmetry to his design. The equilib
rium he establishes is almost naturalistic. He is
nearer to Giotto than he is to the more sophisticated
craftsmen of the high Renaissance. Least of all has
he any points of contact with eighteenth-century
formalism as it was understood in France, and as it
has been carried through more modem phases by
certain of his contemporaries.

Pums de Chavannes 215

THs side of Chasseriau, Flandrin, and Delacroix,
French mural decoration has been largely an affair
of picture-making on a large scale. The huge machin
which is graduated from the Salon to some place in a
provincial museum, even when conceived originally
for its ultimate position, remains very much the
product of a Salon formula. Between Baudry and
Besnard there stretches an immeasurable acreage of
mural decoration which is picturesque, realistic, effec
tive, and in its commemoration of historical episodes
undeniably dever — but it is never an integral part
of an architectural ensemble. Baudiy offered a hand
some solution of this problem in his work for the
Opera, and Besnard has functioned to the same good
purpose, but neither of them ever had the feeling for
a wall that Puvis de Chavannes had. He would
build up a broad, serene landscape background, dis
tribute his figures against it with the happiest fidelity
to that axiom of Whistler's, that the artist is known
by what he omits, and, when he laid down the brash,
he had somehow given to the wall a new integrity,
as just and convincing as it is original His originality
consisted in a grandiose simplicity, a very fresh and
interesting development of symbolic motives, and an
extraordinarily beautiful gamut of color. It was a
gamut of light tones, on the whole, though his love
of landscape sometimes led him into wonderfully
deep and resonant passages, as in the glorious back
ground of "L'Et6," in the H6tel de Vflle. But the

216 Personalities in Art

tints by which you know Puvis de Chavannes are
delicate tints of pale green, quiet violet and rose,
subdued white, and an all-pervading gray. I have
touched upon his tenderness. He is never more ten
der than in his color. He drew with great force and
suppleness. He modeled with the same august au
thority. That ravishing fabric of coloration which
distinguishes his art is superimposed upon a ground
work of superb construction.

He is a type of French industry, of French disci
pline, but he had inspiration if ever a painter had it,
and the splendor of his work lies in nothing more
than in its quality of creative individuality. With
the possible exception of Chasseriau — and that only
in slight degree — he had no predecessors in his
school, and he has left no followers. The accent of
Puvis de Chavannes is as personal as that of Gluck,
with whose music, for some indefinable reason, I am
always inclined to associate his designs. He had, no
doubt, the minor traits that do so much to make us
all kin. He was very sensitive, almost unduly so.
Marcelle Adam tells us what happened after Dalou
had one day permitted himself to speak lightly of a
painting by the master. Several days later Puvis de
Chavannes went to dine at the house of Philippe GiUe
and caught sight of his critic at the foot of the gar
den. He disappeared as if by magic and presently
sent in a note to Madame Gille: "I have seen Dalou.
I could not stay. I could not stay," But there was

Puvis de Chavannes 217

nothing really little in either the man or Ms work.
"To think that he has lived among us !" cried Rodin.
"To think that this genius, worthy of the most radi
ant epochs of art, has spoken to us ! That I have seen
him, have pressed Ms hand! It seems as if I had
pressed the hand of Nicolas Poussin!" The sculptor
made a bust of him, wMch the painter did not like.
He thought it, in fact, a caricature ! But there are
some words of Rodin's, on the other hand, wMch I
may fittingly quote: "He carried Ms head high. His
skull, solid and round, seemed made to wear a hel
met. His arched chest seemed accustomed to carry
the breastplate. It was easy to imagine him at Pavia
fighting for Ms honor by the side of Francis I." Thus
he endures among the Mstoric painters of France,
Mgh-bred, gallant, splendid, doing great things
nobly.

XVI

Degas

I. As Painter and Draftsman

II. As a Man

III. As a Sculptor

IV. As a Collector

XVI
DEGAS

I

AS PAINTER AND DRAFTSMAN

DEGAS was born in Paris in 1834. He died in the
same city in 1917, not only full of years, but quite

literally full of honors^ universally acclaimed as one
of the great masters of French art. He left a prodig
ious body of work behind Mm in his studio. Glancing
over the eight catalogues of the sales through which
it was dispersed in 1918 and 1919, I find that they
run, all told, to nearly three thousand numbers.
For the paintings and drawings in this mass of treasure
there was the keenest competition among collectors
and dealers, competition productive of a fortune — -
over which, by the way, the heirs have had a pretty
quarrel. Several examples of Degas have passed into
the Louvre. In a word, nothing has been lacking to
stamp him as an artist of the type the French like
to call "illustrious/5 His art and Ms ideas come un
der discussion as the art and ideas of a classic.

It is customary to group Degas with the Impres
sionists, and this is natural enough. He was friendly
with thenij and especially with Manet, for whom he

221

222 Personalities in Art

had, Indeed, a deep and lasting affection. He was
allied for long years, as they were, too, with that great
figure among dealers, Paul Durand-Ruel; and where
his potent influence went it carried Degas and Monet,
say, together, thus fortuitously emphasizing an asso
ciation which might not otherwise have appeared to
be particularly close. Yet all the time Degas remained
really an isolated character. The reserve which he
showed in Ms ordinary walk and demeanor indicates
also the aloofness of his art. In a superficial view you
would say that Degas was a man of the world. He
had the right traits for social intercourse, if he chose
to exploit them. He had, to begin with, a vitriolic
wit, and they say that he used to shine in the famous
salon of the Princess Mathilde. As his pictures show,
he frequented the races and the coulisses. Once, when
he was in his prime, an officer of the government
asked him if there was anything he could do for him,
expecting that Degas would want a ribbon or some
thing of that sort. The artist replied that what he
really desired was a free pass for life into the pre
cincts of the Op6ra, so that he could study the ballet
to Ms heart's content. Yes, decidedly, Degas had
plenty of mundane contacts and enjoyed them. But
they left his art in essence untouched. There never
was, spiritually speaking, a more redoubtable reduse.
There are many piquant stories about him, but the
most characteristic one I know is the story disclosing
the hermit in him. Talking with a friend he said:

PORTRAIT OF A MAN ix THE STUDIO OF AN ARTIST

FROM THE PAINTING BY DEGAS

Degas , 223

"You know Forain? Well, he has a telephone."
"Yes," replied the friend, "I suppose he has." "Do
you know what they do?" continued Degas, "They
ring him up and they ring him up." "Naturally/*
said the other. "What of it?" "Sacre nom de
Dieu!" exclaimed the master. "But he answers
them ! " A telephone is unthinkable in the apartment
in which Degas barricaded himself for years, sealing
his door to all save a few friends like Rouart, Durand-
Ruel, Forain, or Manet. It would be a mistake to
infer from all this that he was just a curmudgeon.
He could be not only friendly, but helpful. To Mary
Cassatt, for example, he was a stimulating comrade,
and only the other day, when I met in New York
the Parisianized Spaniard, Jose Maria Sert, I was
interested to learn that he owed his good drawing in
a measure to his having profited by the kindly coun
sel of Degas. When he came out of his shell he
could be delightful. Only he preferred mostly to
stay in it, to stay detached from the ordinary cur
rents of contemporary art.

Look to Ms origins and you look to influences
which persisted in him all his life long. This in
tensely modern artist, a progressive of the progres
sives, the very antithesis of all tMngs academic^ was
one of the loyalest disciples of the old masters that
ever lived* In Ms formative period as a young man
he haunted the Louvre and the great Italian galleries.
There is a story that Ms copy of Poussln's "Rape of

224 Personalities in Art

the Sabines" cost him a year's labor. He copied
Clouet and Holbein and sat reverently at the feet
of Ghirlandajo. He adored the Primitives. His mas
ter at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts had been Lamothe,
who had been the pupil of Ingres and Flandrin. A
framer of artistic pedigrees might say that Ingres
begat Lamothe and Lamothe begat Degas. He went
to Rome in the fifties and foregathered with men like
Elie Delaunay, Bonnat; and the sculptors Chapu
and Paul Dubois. He knew also in Rome the ro
manticist Gustave Moreau and the composer Bizet,
but theirs was not the spirit that communicated it
self to him. He was altogether on the side of those
conservative ideas which prevailed at the Villa Me-
dicis. I remember coming upon a striking portrait
in the museum at Bayonne that he painted of Bon-
nat, the young Bonnat in a monumental top hat.
It is the souvenir of a friendship rooted in a mutual
respect for certain ideals of art. Nevertheless they
did not tread a common path. Bonnat returned from
Italy a predestined Salonnier. Degas was ever to
disdain the official standard under which his com
rade enlisted. But they were united irrevocably in a
passion for research into form. The direction Degas
took is interestingly suggested by one of the earliest
incidents in Ms career. In 1861 he tackled a subject
which, as a subject, was well calculated to qualify
him for the Salon, "Semirainis Building the Walls of
Babylon." The picture is no masterpiece. But that

Degas 225

is tie only epithet to be applied to one of the studies

lie made for it, the famous study for a virtually head
less draped figure seen in profile. That proclaims —

as early as 1861 — the true Degas, the consummate
disciple of Ingres.

George Moore has a charming story of a visit of
his to the dusty apartment in the Rue Pigalle. His
eye went straight to a drawing placed upon the side
board, a faint drawing in red chalk, and Ms quids:
movement toward it brought an exclamation from
Degas. "Ah ! look at it," he said. "I bought it only
a few days ago; it is a drawing of a female hand by
Ingres; look at those finger-nails, see how they are
indicated. That's my idea of genius, a man who
finds a hand so lovely, so difficult to render, that he
will shut himself up all his life, content to do nothing
else but indicate finger-nails." As Moore says, the
whole of the artist's life is summed up in this pas
sage. And, apropos, there is an important distinction
to observe, I have gone down to Montauban to
study the vast collection of the drawings by Ingres
there preserved. I have seen almost as many of the
drawings of Degas. Both masters are equally free
from the implication that might, in error, be drawn
from the foregoing anecdote. Neither of them, shut
ting himself up all his life to indicate finger-nails,
worked in the spirit of the Oriental spending years
in tie carving of a cherry stone. Both, on the con
trary, drew with extraordinary gusto for the vital

226 Personalities in Art

elements in life. They were miraculous craftsmen
absorbed in the study of nature.

Degas didn't take over from Ingres a style, a mode
of draftsmanship. What the older man stimulated
in him, rather, was an inborn instinct for truth and
for the rectitude of drawing. It is this that links
him with the old masters, explains his youthful devo
tion to them. He was a true Frenchman, which is
to say a true child of tradition. Nothing is more
foolish than to think of tradition as an academic
formula. It is simply the tribute which the genuine
artist pays to the wisdom of the finer spirits in the
art of all ages. Degas, with tradition in his blood,
proceeded in perfect freedom to express himself. The
mood in which he designed his Semiramis picture
went down the wind. The mood in which he drew
his incomparable studies for it governed the develop
ment of his entire career, and he was never more
essentially classical, more essentially the disciple of
Ingres, than when he used his great draftsmanship
to define the most modern of forms.

What did Degas mate of life in his art? What did
he see, by preference, in the great human spectacle,
and what were his thoughts about it? Dip into the
first of those catalogues to which I have referred, the
one given to paintings he possessed from other hands,
and you will find Delacroix as well as Ingres, Puvis
de Chavannes as well as Manet. But appreciation
of the chief of the Romantics had no more effect upon

Degas 227

the detenninatlon of Ms own gait than had the tran
quil Inspiration of the great mural painter. The actu
ality of the moment was the object upon which Degas
kept his eye. A cool spirit, as of scientific inquiry,
presides over practically everything that he ever did,
the exceptions to the rule being so few as to be al
most negligible. The outstanding exception is, of
course, the celebrated "Interieur" in the Pope col
lection. The story, if it has one to tell, remains
singularly obscure, a characteristic negation of that
anecdotic vein so common in the Salon that the mas
ter hated. He may have started to paint the picture
in the key of Balzac, but he wound up in the key of
Degas — undramaticj passionless, prosaic, I have
thought sometimes of the naturalistic school of
French fiction when I have stood before the painting
that passed with the Camondo collection into the
Louvre, "L'Absintlie," it is so Zolaesque a transcript
from, life, but nothing is done by Degas to underline
such tragic ingredients as may belong to the com
position. He paints what he sees and leaves the
moral to take care of itself, obviously having no
emotion whatever to spend on the subject. I recall
a third painting lying off his beaten track, an unfin
ished canvas which appeared in the Paris sale and
was then sold over again in New York, going into
the possession of an American artist. It was a racing
scene in which a thrown jockey lay with a deadly
pallor upon his face while the field thundered over

228 Personalities in Art

him. It was an accident, pure and simple, that the
artist portrayed; not drama thought out. It is one
of the delightfulest paradoxes that this denizen of
the theatre, who was forever looking at the stage,
depicting the movement of the ballet, studying sing-
ers across the footlights, painting "Miss Lola" as
she hung from the ceiling of the circus, clinging to
the cord's end by her teeth, never brought into his
art the faintest trace of theatricality. In the theatre
and out of it he looked at life from a point of view
sublimely disinterested.

It is hard to name the first and most lastingly sig
nificant landmark in the career of Degas, for the posi
tion is disputed by several works of outstanding
beauty. He painted, for example, as far back as
1865, that fascinating medley of portraiture and
flower-painting which is known as "La Femme aux
Chrysanthemes." Two years later came "La Femme
aux Mains Jointes," now in the Gardner collection,
which is as brilliant as a Velasquez in its handling of
blacks. From 1872 dates the wonderful "Ballet de
'Robert le Diable/" with which the English are
doubtless well content as an illustration of Degas at
his best when they see it in the Victoria and Albert
Museum. All three of these paintings show Degas at
his best, a young but puissant master. Yet for my
own part, if I had to choose one of the earlier paint
ings as constituting a kind of canon of Degas, I would
choose "Le Bureau de Coton." He painted it at New

Degas 229

Orleans in 1873, when he spent some long months on
an unde's plantation in the vicinity. As an artist
he was never more triumphantly on the crest of the
wave than in this picture. It is twenty-five years
since I saw it, in the Paris Exposition of 1900, but
my vision of it has never lost its clear outlines.
Some time every day, through the weeks that I spent
in the galleries, I would go and? with unchanging joy,
fairly memorize the perfectly balanced design^ the
limpid tones, and the matchless drawing — the ever
lasting truth and beauty of the thing. In it you have,
as it seems to me. Degas in excelsis, the master who
observes life with absolute fidelity and lifts it to a
higher power through the distinction of his technic.
M. Henri Riviere, the latest editor of his drawings,
calls him un grand styliste. The phrase exactly fits the
painter of "Le Bureau de Coton," which makes him
the peer of the old masters he so humbly and so
steadfastly followed. Yet with this very thought
there come intimations of certain differences betwixt
him and them.

They turn upon the matter of imagination,, which,
for the present purpose, I conceive not as implying
invention, not as promoting adventures in design,
but as a transforming element,, one enriching the
thing seen even beyond the enrichment of technic.
To make the point immediately concrete I would
compare "Le Pedicure" by Degas, painted in the
same year as "Le Bureau de Coton/' with Rem-

230 Personalities in Art

brandt's "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails.7 ' Both
subjects are disgusting, but when you look at Rem
brandt's picture disgust is swallowed up in the emo
tion which only majestic beauty can evoke. With
massy form and imposing drapery, with heroic con
tours and with grand light and shade, with rich color,
but, above all, with the indescribable play of imagi
native power, the artist lends to his commonplace
figure the interest and the elevation of a Greek mar
ble. When Degas painted "Le Pedicure" he took
what was commonplace and left it utterly as he
found it. The distinction indicated here is felt wher
ever you approach his work. He had, I suppose, a
certain amount of human sympathy. You feel it
especially in those studies he made of laundresses
and other obscure toilers whose unlovely bodies are
shaped into even greater unloveliness by grinding
hardship. Yet it might easily be possible to deduce
from these grimy documents a greater degree of sen
sibility than Degas actually had. There are some
lines in "The Strayed Reveller" which irresistibly
come back to me:

"The Gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes,
And see below them
The earth and men.

These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also

Degas 23 1

Behold and sing.
But oh7 what labour !
0 prince, what pain !

They too can see
Tiresias; — but the Gods,
Who give them vision,
Added this law:

That they should bear too
BBs groping blindness,
His dark foreboding,
His scorn Jd white hairs;
Bear Hera's anger
Through a life lengthened
To seven ages."

Degas emphatically was not one of athe wise
bards/' What of it? Does this make him any the
less the master? Hardly , and the reader may be

sure that I have not cited the foregoing fragment
with any idea of its sanctioning a disparaging classi
fication of his art. I cite it simply as an aid to char
acterization. Arnold so beautifully puts Ms finger
upon what was left out of the painter's cosmos. For
Mm rather the happy spectatorsWp of Olympus. He
did not suffer as he watched Ms jockeys, dancers,
caf6 singers, milliners, and all the other passers-by in
Parisian life. He did not share their hopes and sor
rows — or even wonder if they had any. They were
to him merely so many problems in form and move
ment, and where his happiness came in was in Ms

232 Personalities in Art

development of the solution of those problems through
the language of line.

There lies the key to the beauty that is in him.
His line is one of the most beautiful and one of the
most magical In the whole history of European
draftsmanship. It is in his line that he stands be
side Leonardo or Diirer, Michael Angelo or Rem
brandt; it is in his line that he is worthy of the Ingres
whose example he cherished. He drew it on paper
as he painted it on canvas — firmly, flowingly, with
the truthfulness of a surgeon exercising his scalpel,
with tremendous personal force and with that last
creative impulse which endues line with beauty and
with style. One can imagine the replies of divers
great artists, asked at the gates of the Elysian Fields
for their passports to immortality. One can hear
Raphael: "I designed." Or Tintoretto: "I drama
tized." Or Leonardo: "I evoked beauty." Or Velas
quez, using the words that Whistler wrote for him:
"I dipped my brush in light and air and caused my
people to stand upon their legs." And when it came
the turn of Degas, he would say, simply and proudly:
"I drew."

II

AS A MAN

Degas had always what Ms countrymen call "a
good press." He was wont to speak scornfully of
others, which is perhaps one reason why others were

FIGURE FROM "THE Duo"

FROM THE DRAWING BY DEGAS

Degas 233

wont to speak well of him. Nevertheless, there were
few commentators who were able to break through
the barriers with which he surrounded himself, and,
though much has been written about the artist, little
has been written about the man. Even such glimpses
of him as George Moore, for example? has given us
have been colored by the writer's consciousness of
the purely artistic elements in his subject. It is not
so in the case of the model, Pauline, whose impres
sions were communicated to Alice Michel and by her
contributed to the Mercure de France. When she
posed for Degas in the closing years of his life she
knew perfectly well that she was posing for a genius;
but she knew also that her employer was a weary,
half -blind , pathetic old man^ and it is the merely
human side of him that passed into her recollec
tions. I am not sure but that they do more to
us acquainted with his personality than is done by
any of the high erected tributes that have been paid
to him by oracles of much greater pretenses,

It was in the old house at 37 Rue Victor-Mass^
that Pauline posed for the master. "Nora de Dieu !
You pose badly to-day!" is the first saying she
quotes from him,, but it is evident that she was, on
the whole? a satisfactory mode!7 and she had the run
of the studio so long that her descriptions are unmis
takably exact. She pictures a vast, sombre? and^
indeed, rather unsympathetic room. It held many
armoires, tables, easels, tabourets, screens, so

234 Personalities in Art

on, but there was never a bibelot or a hanging to re
lieve the monotony of the dull brown walls. A single
painting, unfinished, one of his dancing scenes, gave
rather grudging indication of the artistic riches piled
within reach, but invisible in portfolios or otherwise
Hdden. A curious note is supplied by the bathtub
lying among the furniture. The toilet subjects with
which Degas so often dealt were not always, after
all, of the "keyhole" origin which has been assigned
to them. Pictures which have seemed like so many
invasions of privacy were really painted in the studio,
with the aid of the bathtub aforesaid. Pauline was
made pretty uncomfortable by the dust lying thick
over everything. Zoe, the old housekeeper, had per
mission to light the fire and give a touch of the broom
to a limited area extending from the small stove.
Otherwise she was forbidden to disturb the accumu
lated dirt of years. There was no dean, tidy spot on
which the model might deposit her clothes, and when
her work was ended she was dismissed to a dark,
cold, and dirty corner which was all that le weux
maniaque allowed his models for a dressing-room. He
deplored the use of a dothes-brush, and was irritated
if Pauline wished to wash her hands. It was ridic
ulous, he thought, to be always dabbling in the water.
Zoe is sympathetic but helpless. She has been with
the master for twenty years, and yet, she asks Pauline,
with tears in her voice, had the model noticed how
Degas had behaved toward her that morning when

Degas 235

the fire had been slow? And he has not wanted to
give up the day's allowance of five francs for the
larder. That Is all she gets to feed Mm, herself , and
her niece. A chicken sent in by one of his friends has
seemed to Mm to cover the situation this time* Yet
for the purchase of paintings or drawings he can
always find the money !

Pauline's first memories are of an Irritable, taciturn
old man, shaking Ms wMte hairs in vexation; his large
nostrils breatMng fury; the mouth obstinately dosed;
the chin, expressive of a hard will. He wears a long
gray blouse, in wMch he takes rapid strides. His
movements are habitually brusque. Absorbed in the
figurine he is modelling — it is altogether as a sculp
tor that Pauline knew Mm — he is exasperated with
the model when, as one suspects, the clay proves in
tractable. " You pose so badly that you will make me
die of rage !" But the very next day aH is changed.
He is stifl at breakfast when Pauline c0me% in a
room almost as bleak as the studio. Zee is reading
him an article from La Libre Parole wMle he eats.
"Ta-ta-ta-ta!" he suddenly cries, in a passion.
"Mon DieUj Zoe, you read badly !" and he bids her
stop. But Pauline notices that Ms expression this
morning is generally serene, and she detects a cer
tain sweetness in Ms eyes. They talk of homely
things. Degas explains that Zoe has been shortening
the sleeves of a jacket he has bought in the Pkce
Clichy for eighteen francs. Was that expensive?

236 Personalities in Art

Pauline reassures Lira. Zoe seizes the moment to re
mind Mm that the time has come for Mm to go to
the Bon Marche and buy some sMrts and socks. He
pretends not to hear and starts for the studio, but
presently gives Zoe ten francs. "Five for Pauline/'
he says, "and five for food. Still, yesterday there was
the cMcken sent in by a friend." In the studio he is
querulous about his ill-health, and impatient of Zoe,
who is forever urging him to buy linen. Hasn't he
just bought that jacket in the Place Clichy? To be
told that Zoe is economical and never wants "him to
buy useless things is not really consoling. He will
wait till the last minute to do Ms shopping, just the
same. Then, when he does it, there will be such a
mob of women ! Why not send Zoe ? Oh, well, he
likes better to go himself. It occupies an afternoon.
He marvels at the emotions of women in the shops.
Is Pauline like that? No, she has no time for shop
ping, though she must soon hunt up a bit of silk for
her mother's birthday. Degas pooh-poohs the silk
idea. When he seeks gifts for Ms sister and her daugh
ters he finds something more useful.

The talk drifts to Ms afternoon promenades. They
are an old habit. He takes the tram from the Place
Pigalle to the Porte de Vincennes and strolls for a
whfle on the fortifications. Then another tram and
another walk and he is home. He goes to Montrouge
and Auteuil. He is especially fond of Montmartre,
for he knows all the streets there and does not need

Degas 237

to ask his way. But It hardly matters where he goes?
with his poor eyes. Pauline warns Mm to be prudent^
reminding him of the taxis and other dangers of the
highway. Yes. He knows. Zoe is always warning
hinij and is in terror if he is late in returning. But he
can't stay eternally at home. He needs the air. She
tells him he moves as swiftly as a rabbit. She has
seen him near the Moulin Rouge? and he went up the
Rue Lepic too quickly for her to overtake him. He
laughs. "Yes, I still have good legs." He does not
like to go out at night. The streets are too badly
lighted. He rarely accepts an invitation to dinner.
Besides^ it would keep him up too late. Pauline re
minds Mm that he goes to bed at nine. He sighs,,
and then breaks out in rebellion against his semi-
blindness. It is hideous not to see clearly. For years
he has had to renounce drawing and paintingj and
has had to content himself with sculpture. If Ms
sight goes on failing he will have to abandon even
that. Then^ what will he do with Ms days? He will
die of ennui and disgust. What has he done that he
should be thus tortured? All his life has been con
secrated to Ms work. Never has he sought honors or
riches. He appeals to Mgh heaven to spare him the
torment of going blind. His model tries to comfort
him. He is not going blind. He is fatigued, and the
day is cold. Finer days will make him better. Does
Pauline think so? The thought cheers Mm. She re
iterates it. The doctors would tell Mm the same

238 Personalities in Art

thing. He is doing very well for a man of seventy-
six. He works every day, even on Sundays and holi
days. Younger artists do not work so hard. He has
a good appetite and a good digestion; he sleeps well
and has no rheumatism like his old friend the col
lector, Rouart. He laughs and goes to work.

Precious, inspiring, rejuvenating work! Degas
sings a fragment from "Don Giovanni" as his fingers
fly; sings in a voice which Pauline finds "sweet and
expressive," and he translates the text for his listener.
He knows the Italian operas by heart, and some days
passes the whole morning singing them over his clay,
pausing to cry out: "Is not this delicious?" He
wanders off into fantastic monologues and sometimes
forgets himself, using words which are enough, Paul
ine tells him, to make a trooper blush. He apologizes
for offending her "chaste ears." He knows not what
he is saying when he is at work. She asks for a rest
from the difficult pose and for the air he has just been
singing. It is the air of a minuet, and as he sings they
face one another in the movement of the dance. He
grows happy. The minuet finished he seizes her hand
and swings her in a ronde, singing the while an old
song. A little giddy at the end of it, he subsides
upon a lounge and asks: "What is prettier or more
gracious than these old French rondes?" Zoe comes
in with a bowl of tisane. He drinks it with laughter
and chuckles over the idea of himself as a Don Juan.
Aside from his lapses into bad language his conduct

Degas 239

with Ms models is impeccable, but he gleefully pleads
with Pauline to see that when she poses in other
studios she gives him a sinister reputation,

To his gayety on one day succeeds gloom on the
next. He thinks always of death. Day or night the
dread of it is before his eyes. How sad it is to be old,
he cries. How lucky for Pauline to be only twenty-
five. She protests against his repimngs. She reminds
him to look at HarpignieSj who is ninety. Whether
the spectacle encourages him or not> he is willing to
change the subject. He tells Pauline that he loves
her name, and goes on to speak of "Edgard/1 Ms own*
"When I was born, in 1834," he says, " the epoch was
one for romantic names, and my parents followed the
fasMon. My grand-parents were old ^mlgres^ who
left Paris under the Revolution for Naples. They be
came bankers there. I still have kinsfolk in that re
gion." Musing over these relations he recalls how he
was often in the south when he was young; speaks of
travelling with Gustave Moreau, but now, alas! he
does not see well enough for such journeys. He re
calls his sojourn in America^ when he spent long
months on his uncle*s plantation. Connoisseurs of
Ms work know this period as it is commemorated in
one of the most brilliant of Ms earlier pictures, the
famous "Bureau de Colon." Degas says nothing of
this. He brings back? instead^ the joyous moment in
wMch he had speech with a French workman on the
New Orleans docks. In it he caught the Parisian

240 Personalities in Art

argot} which he was missing, and it brought tears to
his eyes. Pauline angles for memories of more im
portant people. He smiles at her curiosity, which he
easily detects, girding at her "little elephant feet."
Degas turns the tables and wants to know about M.
Blondin, for whom Pauline also poses. She speaks of
that gentleman's indulging in blague, "like all art
ists/' and as he scornfully repeats that phrase, he
discourses on artists and their models. They both
behave better than the world thinks. He speaks well
of models and of the ballet dancers who have so
often posed for him. Incidentally, he remarks that
he has been several times to call for news of one of
the dancers, Yvonne, who has been down with
typhoid. One senses the kindly, generous feeling in
the old man's heart.

If he grumbles at others, he grumbles at himself.
Pauline notes his chagrin when he finds that one of
his figurines is in bad shape, and realizes that he might
have made it securer if he had not been too solicitous
of the cost of plasteline. But his bitterest outbursts
are against the meretiicious folk in art. How about
M. Blondin ? Is he ambitious ? Has he any medals ?
On learning that the poor man has indeed been recom
pensed in the exhibitions, Degas is furious. "Hein!
They are ridiculous with their medals. These men
do not speak as we do of such a thing happening in
such a year. No, they say, "The year when I had iny
medal, or my premier prix, or my violet ribbon,' as

Degas 241

women say, 'The year when I had my beautiful robe
de ueloursJ And to tHnk that even my friends, my
best friends, run after honors and distinctions; talk
of salons and exhibitions. A true artist does not do
these things. If he really has talent he can show his
works, no matter where? even in the shop of a shoe-
maker; and he will surely find persons to notice and
appreciate him." Pauline points out that he also has
exhibited. She has read about him in a brochure by
Huysmans, This Is the signal for a terrific gust of

contempt. "Huysmans? He is a What has he

to do with painting? He knows nothing. Good
heavens! In what an epoch we are living, when
models come to you to speak of art, of painting^ of
literature^ as if all they had to know was how to
read and write. People were happier without all this
useless instruction. Zoe has two brothers^ one a
butcher and the other a wagoner. They neither
read nor write, and this is not bad for them. To-day
everything is vulgarized — education, and even art.
What a criminal folly to talk of £ popular art'! As
if artists themselves had not enough labor to appre
hend art. But it all comes from these modem
of equality! What infamy to speak of equality!
There will always be the rich and the poor. For
merly each one stayed in Ms place aad dressed ac
cording to Ms condition. To-day the obscurest
grocer's boy must read his newspaper and like

a gentleman. What an infamous century!"

242 Personalities in Art

Pauline knew better than to try to answer this
tirade. She went on posing, in a glacial silence. The
door bell rang and Degas straightened up with his
surliest expression. As he opened the door there
drifted in to Pauline's attentive ear a dulcet "Bon-
jour, dier Mattre" In an instant came the reply 3
"There is no ccker Mattre1 here/' and the door went
to with a bang. In a fury Degas goes back to work,

muttering: "It is one of those art critics." The

unfortunate visitor was one who knew not the habit
of his cker Matire, which was to work undisturbed
in the morning. Even his closest intimates were un
welcome then. Only at meals or in the afternoons
would he see anybody. Once in Pauline's experience
a round, lively, white-haired little gentleman was
received in the morning and spent a long time talk
ing. He waved his arm at the sole picture exposed,
the dancing subject we have cited, and offered to
buy it. "You can see that it is not finished," growled
Degas. "But it is very well as it is," retorted the
other. "Let me have it." The old artist, who had
been amiable enough up to this, took on a crusty
tone. "You know nothing," he replied, and opened
the door wide for his tactless guest to depart.

Where is the searcher after beauty in this atmos
phere of dust, work, and ill-temper? Pauline speaks
of his always giving her difficult poses. He had an
aversion, as it seemed to her, to all gracious move
ment. But his cult for what we may call severity

Degas 243

never blinded Mm to the charm of pure nature. He
was enraged If he caught Pauline using rouge. "When
one is young and fresh there is no need for such frip
peries. Restez done naturelle" She asked Mm why,

then, he loved to draw Ms themes from the theatre,
where there is so much that is factitious, but to this

she got no answer. There are no nuances of Ms artis
tic ideal emerging from the dialogue. One is made
aware cMefly of just Ms passion for art, for work.
Artistic activity was essential to him. He worked on
Christmas Day. "How could I pass the morning
otherwise? God will forgive me for neglecting my
Christian devotions for my work." In Ms absorption
he was merciless to Ms models. There was one of
them, Suzon, who had the hardihood to be a quarter
of an hour late for her morning's work. Degas dis
missed her the moment she turned up, giving her
the five francs due for the sitting, but forbidding her
ever to return. His own hours were as adamant,
Forain found this out when Degas once came to dine
with him- The dinner was for nine o'clock. TMs was
too late for Degas, who said so, and sat down to Ms
soup alone at eight. He never dined there again. He
complained, by the way, that Forain called Mm UM,
Degaz."

Sensitive, brusque, irascible, and, perhaps, capri
cious, Pfire Degas was chancy company. There came
a time when illness interrupted Ms modelling and
Pauline did not see him for months. Thent when, she

244 Personalities in Art

sought him out, she found that the house in the Rue
Victor-Masse in which he had lived for twenty-five
years had been marked for demolition, to make way
for a modern building, and she followed Degas to
new quarters in the Boulevard de Clichy. Zoe re
ceived her with joy and took her at once to the mas
ter, who was at table. He lifted his head and asked
Pauline briefly what she wished. She had only called
to ask after his health, she explained. "Yes," said
he. "Zoe, bring me my tea. Bonjour> Pauline."
That was his farewell, and in its curtness It would
seem to deny to her reminiscences the seal of any
thing like friendship. But they can do without it.
They serve, nevertheless, as I have said, to initiate
us into the presence of the old man, to make us realize
a little what he was like — harsh and gay, variable
but, somehow, "all of a piece/3 He is exasperating,
touching, and, somehow, not unlovable. Through the
play of his saturnine humor you catch the natural
man and see what it is good to see — how even to
Pauline, who took him simply as a human being, he
was the great artist. Does she not make plain his
passion for his work? Month after month she posed
for him, while he wrestled with the clay and fashioned
the little statuettes which were alone left to him in
art. What were they like? He was not an expert in
the manipulation of the sculptor's material The
figurines over which he labored with so much devo
tion would crumble or go away. But a man of his

Degas 245

gifts could not winnow the wind. Something was
certain to come forth from aU that struggle.

in

AS A SCULPTOR

From the moment that I read Pauline's account
of her experiences as a model for some of the figurines
sculptured by Degas, I tried to get on their track.
Inquiry made of M. Durand-Ruel brought me this
letter:

MY DEAR MR. CORTISSOZ: June 7? I919*

It is quite true that Degas has spent a good deal of
time, not only in the later years of his life, but for the

past fifty years, in modelling in clay. Thus, as far as I
can remember — that is to say, perhaps forty years —
whenever I called on Degas I was almost as sure to find

him modelling in clay as painting. He must have made an
enormous number of clay or wax figures. But as he never
took care of them — he never put them in bronze — they
always fell to pieces after a few years, and for that reason
it is only the later ones that now exist.

When I made the inventory of Degases possessions I
found about one hundred and fifty pieces scattered over
his three floors in every possible place. Most of them were
in pieces, some almost reduced to dust. We put apart all
those that we thought might be seen, -which was about
one hundred, and we made an inventory of them. Out
of these, thirty are about valueless; thirty badly brokeE
up and very sketchy; the remaining thirty are quite fine.
They can be cast in bronze. They have ai been intrusted
to the care of the sculptor Bartholome, who was an in
timate friend of Degas, and in the near future the work

246 Personalities in Art

will be started by the founder Hebrard, who will repro
duce them in cire perdue.

It is understood that twenty-five sets of each statuette
will be made. The first set will be given to the Louvre.
The other sets will be sold. y^ sincerely?

J.

It was possible for me to get some idea of what
the figurines were like at the time this letter was
written, studying a sheaf of photographs, but I had
to wait two years and more for a view of the sculp
tures themselves. A set, the first one to reach this
country, was placed on exhibition at the Grolier
Club. It made a group of seventy-two bronzes,
magnificently illustrating the master's work in the
round.

In everything that he did he was an insatiable in
terrogator of form and movement. Modelling these
statuettes, he drew, if anything, closer to the expres
sion of his ideas on these subjects than he could with
the brush. What were his ideas ? Were they those of
a creative artist or those of a craftsman for whom,
in Gautier's phrase, the visible world existed? Just
after his death, when the novelty of the figurines was
in the air, so to say, M. Paul Gsell rose up in "La
Renaissance" to pronounce Degas une statuaire de
g&nie. The phrase seems just, if its implications are
not carried too far. That Degas had genius it would
be idle to deny, but thinking of genius in sculpture
one assumes an element that would seem to be in-

Degas 247

separable from it, the element of design. The Degas
bronzes, on the other hand, are the fruits not of in
vention but of patient observation. When they pos
sess the quality of composition, which is not infre
quent, it would appear to be accidental rather than
intentional. You would say that one of his poised
dancers had the charm of a figurine by Clodion until
you began to ponder it more closely and saw that
the sophisticated balance of the eighteenth century
was not there. There is, in its place, the artless
vitality of the thing seen, the passage from life ar
rested and restated with the touch of the pitiless
realist.

Degas carried over into these plastic studies of his
something of the dry psychology of Ms pictorial work.
He is the inquisitive analyst pursuing some recon
dite movement of form and recording it for its own
sake, not the inventive devotee of beauty weaving
a plastic pattern of loveliness. Because there are both
grace and rhythm in many of the bronzes one may
be momentarily inclined to see in them the disciple
of Ingres. But the impression is superficial and
passes. What remains is the point of view of a man
for whom a gesture, a contour, was by itself exciting,
a truth interesting because it was the truth, rooted
in life, not because it had any subjective envelop
ment. Looking at the photographs mentioned above,
I recalled the figurines of Tanagra, wondering if any
thing of their mood had ever visited Degas, Looking

248 Personalities in Art

at the bronzes, I felt that the spirit of Tanagra was
beside the point. I was not sorry.

Degas is twice as compelling because there is noth
ing of tradition in his sculpture, but just the actuality
to which his whole genius was dedicated. And being
a genius he reached a beauty of his own. The little
torso he modelled is a good illustration. There hangs
about it the sensuous glamour of the antique. Only it
remains, like all the other pieces, intensely modern,
intensely expressive of that analytic passion to which
I have referred. It is so, too, with the studies of
horses. In them the vivid, tangible note of the race
course seems fused with a large dignity that could
only have been added to the bronze by an artist
with the gift of style. That is the final touch, en
riching the whole varied group of nudes, dancers,
and animals. You savor the artist's truth, his energy,
his skill, but above all you savor his style, his distinc
tion of line, his personal touch in the modulation of
surface. The new page that is unfolded in the his
tory of his art is absolutely "of a piece" with the
rest; it raises the stuff of life to a higher power through
the play of that magic which lies simply in great, in
dividualized technic.

Degas 249

IV
AS A COLLECTOR

I have spoken on another page of the obscurity in

which the solitary life of Degas was plunged. For
years his door was sealed to all save a few intimates,
and, once within, not even his old friends could fee!
that they were made really free of all Ms possessions.
In perennial dust and gloom, as Mr. Moore has told
us, the vast canvases of his youth were piled up in
formidable barricades, and though many works from
other hands were visible on the walls no visitor ever
came away with a precise and comprehensive knowl
edge of just what the old^ secretive apartment
contained. All that was generally known was that
Degas had accumulated a lot of fine things, among
which the productions of Ingres were conspicuous.
The rest was legend. For art lovers throughout the
world, fascinated by his own works and doubly inter
ested in the question of his taste because it had its
mysterious aspects, he became a figure not unlike one
of Balzac's cottectionneurs — shadowy, reticent, a little
bizarre, and, in the matter of furnishing surprises*
presumably capable of anything. It is not too much
to say that the public exhibition of no collection of
our time has been awaited with a tithe of the curi
osity excited when the "Collection particuliere E.
Degas" was sold in 1918 and 1919. A bundle of pho
tographs is not, ordinarily, the most eloquent thing

250 Personalities in Art

in the world, but the one wiiich lifted for me the cur
tain hung over a great artist's studio for a lifetime
was fairly thrilling. With its aid, reinforced by the
scant biographical data available, I could reconstruct
something of the artist's inner life and get that much
closer to the secret of his genius.

The small number of old masters in the list — an
early copy after Cuyp, an eighteenth-century French
portrait, a typically elegant Perronneau, a sketch by
Tiepolo, and a couple of pictures of saints by El
Greco — is in no wise to be misunderstood. For his
old masters Degas naturally went to the museums.
He prospered exceedingly, but he was never rich
enough to make for himself another Louvre. How he
haunted that institution and the Italian galleries we
know. In his earlier period he was all for the old
masters and the world well lost. It is said that he
spent a year copying Poussin's " Rape of the Sabines,"
and according to George Moore the copy is as fine as
the original. There are stories, too, of his copying
Clouet and Holbein, and, whether he studied Ghir-
landajo for the same purpose or not, it is known that
he sat reverently at the feet of that Renaissance
Florentine. M. Lemoisne cites also a copy from Sir
Thomas Lawrence, an odd type to be found in this
gallery. What was it that lie sought among the
Primitives? The answer is disclosed the more lumin
ously as we postpone it to the hour of his edosion as
an artist.

Degas 251

It Is tempting to the students of Degas, familiar
with the works characteristic of the greater part of
his life, to see him as so essentially allied to the mod
ern, impressionistic group as to have, otherwise^ no
antecedents. The influence of Ingres is often reck
oned with, by commentators on Mm? as though it
were a deliberately adopted elixir, something poured
out of a bottle. As a matter of fact, the passion for
sound drawing was in Ms blood. It was that that
drew him to the Primitives. His initiation into the
circle of Ingres would appear to have dated from Ms
youth. Degas was born in 1834. He was old enough
when he frequented the house of Mme. Valpingon,
the master's friend , to profit by his few encounters
there with the august potentate. Ingres lived on
until 1867. Doubtless before the end Degas had pre
cept as well as example to make the menage Valpin-
gon memorable to him, counsels for the confirmation
of wMch he had only to turn to the pictures given to
his hostess by her friend, At any rate, it puts no
strain upon the imagination to figure Mm as making,
almost as though under the eye of Ingres^ the famous
"Etude pour Semiramis," which Ingres Mmself would
not have disdained. To think of Degas as exclusively
the painter of jockeys, ballet girls, and laundresses
is to forget the picture on which he labored so devot
edly in 1861, Ms "Semiramis Building the Walls of
Babylon." That mood of Ms, we say, long ago went
down the wind. It stayed with him, to tell the truth.,

252 Personalities in Art

in a sense, down to the day he died. For it was not
an archaeological mood. It was the mood for form,
for contours finely drawn, for draperies handled as
so much sheer linear beauty. It was the mood of
Ingres. Here I resume my bundle of photographs
and look at the list.

Montauban itself could hardly furnish forth a
purer light on the subject. The collection there is
more voluminous, of course, but it contains no finer
things than the works in the Degas collection. There
was, to begin with, a group of the full-dress portraits,
a " Monsieur de Norvins," which seemed almost as
impressive as the "Bertin" in the Louvre; a "Mar
quis de Pastoret," making for it a fit companion,
and, to complete the trio, an unmistakably superb
portrait of a lady, this one "Madame Leblanc."
Evidently in painted portraiture Degas contrived to
get a full and authoritative representation of his
master; in the matter of subject pictures he was no
less fortunate, acquiring a version of the "Roger
deKvrant Angelique," as well as half a dozen other
mythological or historical studies, and then, having
formed a sufficient gallery of the paintings, he pro
ceeded fairly to luxuriate in the drawings. The titles
fill a couple of pages in the list, pointing to a veri
table mine of glorious draftsmanship, and the photo
graphs more than confirmed this impression. He
missed no aspect of the great artist's genius.

A study for the "Roger" gave his measure in the

Degas 253

sphere of pictorial invention; there were portraits^
and dozens of the incomparable nudes, including one
gem-like study for "The Grand Odalisque." I could
dilate upon them aE, one by one. But I turn rather
to their broad significancej visualizing Degas through
out the years of his maturity, coming home to that
quiet studio of Ms to paint a ballet girl — but paint
ing under the influence of these drawings^ drinking
in their inspiration day by day, living constantly in
the spirit of the dassicist he adored. At the bottom
of his work you find Ingres^ which is to say not the
imitation of a style but the application of a principle.
It is an instance of the thinking artist, that always
rare type, the man whose hand is fed by Ms brai%
who practises Ms own method, but is steadily open
to other impressions, allowing them to fertilize Ms
genius without governing it. There axe no contra
dictions in the life of such an artist. He does not
"dislike" one master because he "likes35 another.
All is fish that comes to Ms net

But you find a pretty clearly defined catch when
you look into the net of an artist like Degas. After
Ingres he was enthusiastic for Delacroix, of all men.
I say "of all men" because the antithesis between
Ingres and Delacroix is so strong. Each fairly hated
what the other did. Just why Degas^ loving Ingres,
loved also Ms romantic rival iss I confess^ a little
difficult to surmise, even with the evidence before me.
The evidence, in fact, was so mixed. The early por-

254 Personalities in Art

trait, " Baron de Schwitzer," supplied something in the
nature of a due. It was a simple, beautifully drawn
thing. Ingres would have praised it — if he could
have praised anything by Delacroix. The rest was all
pure romanticism — Delacroix the disciple of Rubens,
Delacroix the Orientalist, Delacroix the painter of
battle scenes, of hunting episodes, of religious sub
jects a la Titian. There were drawings, as in the
Ingres contingent, but one suspects it was the color-
ist in Delacroix that won Degas. At all events, he
was in this collection, as in the days when the two men
were living, the rival of Ingres. They were the twin
pillars bearing the arch, as it were, of that aesthetic
fabric which Degas reared in his home, under which
he dreamed his dreams and did his work. No other
individual loomed quite so large in the list. But just
one came very near to doing so. This was Manet.
There was a curious leap, if I may so define it, from
period to period in the Degas collection. One was
aware in the first place, as I have indicated, of the
pervasive influences of Ingres and Delacroix. Then
a silence befell. It was the Salon and all its works
being haughtily ignored.

Was he attracted at that juncture by the Bar-
bizon men? Yes, by Corot. There were seven of that
master's works in the collection, evidently in more
than one of his manners. The photograph gave an
enchanting account of an early mountain scene done
in the Morvan. There were others, like "Le Pont de

Degas 255

Limy/* which seemed even In a photograph to be
made of the pure gold of Corot. Moore has a note that
is appropriate here, a note on Degas at a Bouglval
dinner, looking at some large trees massed in shadow.
"How beautiful they would be," he said} "if Corot
had painted them." There was one Rousseau, and
I observed a couple of studies by Millet. There was
nothing of Dupre, of Diaz, of Daubigny, as there
was nothing, on the purely romantic side, of Decamps
or G£ricault. Troyon, obviously 3 was likewise absent.
One cannot see Degas ecstatic before a painted cow.
Barbizon^ in short, as Barbizon, and "1830" as a
battle cry, it is plain, meant nothing to Degas. He
was bored by "schools," " movements/" and I know
nothing more characteristic of him. Let me revert
to that leap to which I have just alluded. Barring
his pause upon tie beauty of Corots it took him
straight to the camp of the impressionists, to Manet
and the rest,

The Manets included a number of works tint
were "important," as the jargon of criticism has it,
stunning finished pictures like the "Indienne Fu-
mant," or the half-humorous u Portrait of M. Bran."
masterly stfll-lifes like the " Jambon" and the "Poire"
(which in the photograph had the air of a miracle),
and so on through a group of paintings^ studies, and
pastels, twenty pieces in all. There were in this little
collection some items of quite extraordinary interest,
a strange , fragmentary version of "The Execution of

256 Personalities in Art

Maximilian," a portrait of Berthe Morisot that was
like a sudden flashlight effect thrown upon a screen.
We have heard from Moore and others of the
deep-rooted affection Degas had for Manet. These
pictures seemed echoes of it. Some, possibly all of
them, may have been purchased, but from their
quality one took them to have been fraternal gifts
or exchanges. They had the character of personal
souvenirs. As in the case of Corot, I felt in the
presence of the essential artist. No one else in the
Impressionistic cenade appeared to have had any
thing like the same hold upon Degas. Pissarro turned
up with four or five landscapes, Sisley with one, and
there were traces of Caillebotte and John Lewis
Brown. By Berthe Morisot there was a good sketch,
and by the American impressionist, Mary Cassatt,
there were no fewer than four pictures. Boudin was
present in a couple of sky studies and a water-
color, and Renoir in a good head of a woman. Of
Claude Monet there was no sign at all. Had they
some personal cause of disagreement, or did Degas,
painting ballet girls over and over again, in infinite
variety, rebel against the somewhat monotonous
tendency in his contemporary's similar devotion to
haystacks and cathedrals? The omission was in
dubitably a little odd.

He took with a good will the step from impres
sionism to post-impressionism. One of his Gauguins
was a curious memento of the point of contact be-

Degas 257

tween the twos a copy of Manet's "Olympia," which
in the photograph would easily pass for an original
study. He had at least ten of Gauguin's paintings,
most of them relics of the painters sojourn in Tahiti.
Cezanne was almost as fully represented, with por
traits, figure subjects, and still life, and Van Gogh
also had his modest place, being given three numbers
in the catalogue. Turning over the photographs and
recalling the good old rule that the king can do no
wrong, I realized that I ought to be deeply impressed
by the inclusion of these things In the collection of
Degas. In some pious quarters, I know, it could only
be taken as a kind of pontifical ratification, and I am
quite sure that the episode served in those quarters to
give the post-impressionist hypothesis a new lease of
life. For my own part I could only look upon this
small section In the mass as an incongruous pendant,
difficult to reconcile — even for the "thinking artist"
to whom I have referred • — with the atmosphere and
principles otherwise disclosed. The "going/1 so to
say, was easier in passing to the remaining pieces
In the list, the paintings by Daiimier, Puvis, and
LegroSj the dozen drawings by Forain — one of the
master's peculiar admirations — and a few oddments
by Jeannlot, Guilkumin, Ricard? Bartholom€ (the
sculptor), and the portrait painter of the Second Em
pire, Helm. There was also a single work of German
origin, an example of the great draftsman Menzel.
These things fitted Into the picture, the picture of a

258 Personalities in Art

gallery and a mind. It is an ancient axiom that a
man is known by the company he keeps. An artist
is certainly known by his predilections among other
artists. That is why I found so lively an interest in
a bundle of insensate photographs. In the memories
they awoke of Ingres and Delacroix, Manet and
Corot, Daumier and Forain, they illuminated and
explained Degas. We know him better, and the
better understand his own work, in knowing the mas
ters with whom he most cared to live.

XVII

Monet

XVII

MONET

WHEN despatches from France brought the news
that Claude Monet In his eighty-third year had un
dergone an operation for cataract, the natural thing
to do was to turn to M. Joseph Durand-Ruel for
some light on the subject. Like Ms father before him,
he is close to everything that relates to Impression
ism, and, as usual, he had received from Paris some
interesting communications. "Yesterday," wrote a
member of his family, "we went to Giverny to pay
a visit to Claude Monet, who interrupted Ms game
of backgammon with Clemenceau to greet us most
kindly. He was looking wonderful, with Ms plaited
frills and Ms vest painted by Mme. Albert Andrfi.
His eyes seemed to be all right, but he will undergo
his second operation shortly." Later M. Georges
Durand-Ruel wrote: "I received yesterday a visit
from Michel Monet. Monet underwent Ms second
operation last Wednesday at a clinic at NeuSly. The
operation itself was not much, and he stood It very
well, but for the following three days he was pre
scribed complete immobility; he was given no
food, but was fed only on liquids. He was rather ex
asperated but Is now calm, and Michel Monet told

261

262 Personalities in Art

me I could pay Mm a visit. He will stay a few days
longer in the clinic before he returns to Giverny.
The cataract of the other eye is very advanced; the
surgeon says he could make the operation now, but
he prefers to wait until next year, when Monet has
entirely recovered from the operation." In still an
other note the writer says: "I have just come back
from Monet's clinic. I saw him only a short time,
having been asked not to stay long. Mme. Jean
Monet told me that the night following the opera
tion had been bad. He had been asked to be quiet,
but was very nervous and exasperated." A few days
later he was on his feet again and planning for an
early return to his beloved Giverny.

These details, surely of interest to every admirer
of the great painter, revived in me a precious mem
ory of Claude Monet some twenty-odd years ago. I
saw him then at Givemy, and in the mind's eye I
see again as though it were yesterday that unique
presence, those searching eyes, and a curious im-
maculateness. There was about the burly, bearded
figure something which I can only describe as the
sweetness and freshness of youth. We sat and talked
in the studio, looking over a great collection of im
pressions that Monet had just painted on the Thames,
and, apropos, I shall never forget the serene finality
with which he told me that numbers of them were
doomed to destruction, because they did not satisfy
him. Afterward we joined the family around a table

Monet 265

under the trees and went on talking about pictures
while Madame Monet knitted. He was Interested to
hear about impressionism in the United States. But
most vividly of all do I recall the Monet who pres
ently dropped artistic subjects and took me for a
stroll through his incomparable domain. Part of it
was a garden full of flowers. Part of it was that little
body of water, an arm of the Epte7 thickly framed by
trees? where lilies floated and where the Master
painted those exquisite pictures known as "Les Pay-
sages (TEau," or "Les Nympheas/' Monet's conver
sation then revealed him for what he has always been3
a loving interpreter of Nature^ the man happier in
her companionship than amid any of the attractions
of urban life. I wonder if this had not had something
to do with the freshness^ the inunaculateness to which
I have referred. 1 know that there was something
about Monet, something indescribably wholesome
and fine, suggestive of a spiritual alMance between
him and the clean earth. This impression is ratified
as I turn the pages of the book about him published
by his old friend, Gustave Geffrey,

Geffroy begins, characteristically enough in the
case of a French artist, with allusions to Monet's re
spect for tradition and paints Mm as out of
with his own work when he thinks of the achieve
ments of the past. "All the which 1 have re
ceived," he said one day, "seem out of
when I remember the masters of painting, Titian,

264 Personalities in Art

Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, whose
genius is incontestable. After their works what are
ours, what are mine?" Being a man of genius him
self, his admirations take a wide range. In the salle
of the eighteenth century, at the Louvre, Clemenceau
asked him what picture there he would choose. Wat-
teau's "Embarkation for Cythera," Monet told him,
His reverence for the old masters has been unbounded.
At Madrid he has stood before "Las Meninas" of
Velasquez with his eyes full of tears. But in his ap
preciation of that very picture you have a clue to
the secret of his own creative gift. He told Geffroy
that what he especially admired in "Las Meninas"
was the air bathing the figures. With admirable
judgment his biographer makes the most of that
clue. Monet was born in Paris on November 14,
1840 (the same day as Rodin, who was to become Ms
lifelong friend), but as a young artist he received his
initiation at Havre, There he began as a designer of
caricatures, and in the shop to which he took them
for sale he fell in with Boudin, whom Courbet called
"the Raphael of the skies*3' When we find bun again
in Paris, his vocation well settled, it is with a feeling
for light and air and truth which had unquestionably
been clarified and fixed in him by Boudin.

M. Geffroy draws a charming picture of him as a
young man in the capital, making friends among the
brilliant Bohemians of the Brasserie des Martyrs, his
ardors stimulated by the talk of Champfleury, Dur-

Monet 265

anty, Flrmin Mallard, and a score of others destined
for fame. Courbet, superb In a wMte waistcoat, would
describe a visit to Ingres. Poets would dedalm their
verses. Castagnary would come there, and so would
Alphonse Daudet. Decidedly the Brasserie was rich
in enkindling personalities. Monet refers to some of
them as * mauvais sujets like myself." He looks
anything save a sujet in the portrait of Hm

painted at this time by Deodat de Severac. On the
contrary he appears an unusually grave youth of eigh
teen, with a lofty brow and an altogether serious as
pect. In fact, he was nothing if not serious, as is
shown by his letters to Boudin, full of Judgmatic com
ment on the pictures in the Salon. He is highly appre
ciative, by the way, of Delacrok? Rousseau? Millet,
and Daubigny. In the early sixties came his military
service, but ill health terminated this after two years,
and on his return from Africa, artistically the better
for what he had seen there, he went once more to
Havre, where he painted again with Boudin, and this
time came also under the equally favorable influence
of Jongkind. Coming back definitively to Paris around
1863, he formally entered the atelier of Gleyre. Whis
tler, the reader will recall, made a similar error.
Monet found three young fellows of Ms own
likewise bewildered by an incongruous master. They
drew from the model. Gleyre criticised Monet's work
one day. "It is not bad,11 said he, "but the breast is
heavy, the shoulder too powerful, and the foot too

266 Personalities in Art

large. " Timidly Monet replied that he had to draw
that which he saw. "Praxiteles," Gleyre dryly told
him, "took the best elements from a hundred imper
fect models before he created a masterpiece. When
one would do anything it is well to think of the
antique." That night Monet talked it over with the
three aforesaid, which is to say with Sisley, Renoir,
and Bazille. "This place is unhealthy/7 he said, and
after a fortnight more of vain struggle with an im
possible philosophy they incontinently fled. It is
not surprising that Monet's rebellion against Gleyre
landed him forthwith in the arms of Courbet.

Courbet was very kind and encouraging to the
young man, who, as he said, "painted something be
sides angels/7 giving him good advice and even lending
him money when he was in difficulties. Some of
Geffroy's pleasantest pages relate to this friendship.
I gather that Monet fairly loved the old artist, with
whom he spent some of the happiest days of his life
painting around Havre. It was there that Courbet
made him acquainted with the elder Dumas. Once,
when they were to dine together, Courbet failed to
appear, and Monet, seeking him out, found him asleep.
Dumas was gayly astonished. "I have frequented
kings," he cried, "and they have never kept me wait
ing!" One is always coming back to Havre with
Monet, for that means coming back to the sea, an in
fluence constant in the painter's life. He wanted al
ways to be near it. "When I die," he once said, "I

Monet 267

would wish to be coffined In a buoy"1 — which would
be to be rocked In the cradle of the deep with a
vengeance. It is a singular thing; however, that while
one of the earliest of his pictures Is a shore
painted at Havre In i8667 and wMle divers views in
Paris come down from ihe same year, Monet's role
at the outset was as much that of the figure painter
as that of the landscape or marine artist. His first
considerable paintings were undoubtedly "Le D6-
jeuner sur L'Herbe" and "La Dame i la Robe Verte,"
a full-length portrait of the painter's wife. Geffrey
fixes between 1880 and 1883 that phase in the evolu
tion of Monet which marks him most decisively as
the salient master of impressionism. It is
that this French critic, for many years the
of the master, should use the word "evolution." That
is precisely the right one.

He seems to have abandoned figure painting in
the seventies, and thenceforth Ms landscapes
steadily in atmospheric refinement. Light, always
light, that it is which pro\res more and more an
element in the painter's palette — a thing as defi
nitely controlled as the actual It is a
little disappointing at first to observe that the biog
rapher of Monet had little, if anything, to say
the scientific aspect, so called, of the
movement. But on reflection this circumstance only
serves happily to indorse the view 1 always
maintained that impressionism has really had no

268 Personalities in Art

scientific aspect at all. Claude Monet is an artist — a
great artist — and that, I venture to say, means that
he has arrived at his delineations of nature through
processes of direct observation, instinct, and experi
mentation. Somewhere in this book he is encountered
declining to assume the functions of a teacher. There
is not available anywhere, that I know of, a philos
ophy, a body of ideas, attributable to him. Simply,
across the years he has beaten out a method, a mode,
a style.

One fact, easily accessible, yet, somehow, newly
emphasized by Geffroy, is the variety of Monet's ex
perience. He has been, as I have said, a figure
painter. He has dealt also, and dealt beautifully,
with still life. He has painted rivers and the sea, hay
stacks and poplars. In Rouen, Venice, and London,
as well as in Paris, he has painted architecture with a
peculiar flair for its character. He has been a fairly
active traveller, and Geffroy follows him to many
points of the compass. A full and rich life has been
Monet's, unified by a single-hearted devotion to light,
atmosphere, and color. How has it all fared with him ?
How have the Fates treated his magnificently sus
tained effort? In so far as they have been embodied
in the French critics of his time it may be said that
they took a long time to recognize his abilities. Monet
preserves at Giverny an extraordinary collection of
press cuttings. Geffroy has had access to it, and a
great deal of his space, too much, in fact, is given to

MATiXEi' SVR LA SllXK
PROM THE PAINT IX<» IJV t"LAI*i>i

Monet

citations from these peccant judges. The ineptitude of
one of themj M. Roger Ballu, uimpecteur da Beaux-
ArtS) critique qfficid," may suffice here as a terrible
example. Glancing at an exhibition held by lionet
and Cezanne in 1877^ this worthy said: "One
have seen these lamentable canvases to
they are. They promote laughter. They lie

profoundest ignorance of draftsmanship, of compo
sition, and of color. When children
with paper and a box of colors they do better."

One can sympathize a little with fe ban over

his revolt against Cezanne, but that Monet
have thus affected Mm is^ as Geffrey says,
stupefying. It does not matter. The Ballus, the
ClaretieSj the Albert Wolffs, and al the rest of the
malcontents have gone down the wind. And
in those long years during which they of
influence in the world Monet had Ms backers. He
had Ms friends in what has come to be known as the
Impressionist group — Manet, Degas, and the rest.
He had a tower of in Paul Durand-Rud, and

it is gratifying to meet in quotations from the latter
the liveliest testimony to
''Without America/* he "I

lost, minedj after having bought so and

Renoirs. The two I in

saved me. The American public
it is true, but to public Monet Renoir

were to live, and after the French public

270 Personalities in Art

followed suit." It is interesting to note also that when,
in 1889, Monet launched his campaign for the pur
chase of Manet's "Olympia" as a gift to the state,
two Americans, Alexander Harrison and John Sargent,
were among the subscribers to the fund. While I am
touching upon this subject I may express the wish that
Monet might know something; if he does not already
know it, about the fruits of his influence here. To
say that men like Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, and
John H. Twachtman were worthy of bfm in their
handling of his principles would be to put the matter
mildly. If Monet could have seen the room at the
San Francisco Exposition filled with the paintings
of John Twachtman I feel certain that he would have
doffed his hat as to a fellow master.

Recurring to the "Olympia" episode, I must pause
upon the strength of character in Monet which it illus
trates. When he initiated the plan it was not by any
means easy going where the authorities were concerned.
A squabble that he got into with Antonio. Proust only
needed a spark to explode it into a duel. But with the
aid of all the progressive artists in Paris Monet pulled
the thing through. He got the picture into the Luxem
bourg, at any rate, and in 1907, thanks to the good
offices of Clemenceau, then in power, he saw Manet
established in the Louvre. In his quiet way he has
always been, if not precisely a fighter, at all events the
stanch adherent of a cause. And little by little the
critics, the public, and the government itself have

Monet 271

come round. In 1892, when the decoration of the
H6tel de Vflle was going forward, Jules Breton with
drew, on account of ill health, from participation in the
series of landscapes assigned to him, Harplgnies^
Pelouse, and others. The question of a substitute for
Breton was brought up before a commission. Rodin
and Bracquemond voted for Monet, but there were
only two other voices to support them, and the com
mission went to Pierre Lagarde. So it happened in
1892. Thirty years later the state accepts from Monet
a great series of his "NymphSas" and prepares a
special haH for their reception in the old orangery of
the Tuileries. Thus the sterling old painter at

the creation of his own monument — - a monument to
be one of the glories of France. One muses upon it
with thoughts positively tender as3 in imagination,
one observes the venerable master sitting over his
game of backgammon with Clemenceau there at
Givemy. What memories, what dreams, and fulfil
ments these two veterans must share !

XVIII
Seven Renoirs

XVIII
SEVEN RENOIRS

A YEAR or two ago, I saw assembled in New York,
at the Dturand-Ruel Gallery, a group of seven Renoirs
which through their qualities and through their dates,
which assigned them to a particular period in the life of
the artist, took on something of the nature of an his
torical memorial. They brought back the Renoir who
made an individual entry into French art about fifty
years ago, affirming a new point of view with a new
power. Also, for a student of the movement they
represented, they recalled not Renoir alone but a man
whose alliance with Mm and with lie other leaders of
Impressionism, left, in its turn, an ineffaceable mark.
I cannot think of these pictures without tMnking
of my old friend Paul Durand-Ruel, who preserved
them for many years in Ms home in the Rue de
Rome, rich testimonies to Ms feeling for beauty,

The annals of Impressionism are annals of con
flict, of ideas making slow headway
reaction, of courage maintaining itself
neglect, of faith ultimately triumphant over
and scorn. Renoir^ painting works in the

seventies and early eighties, carried on in the

275

276 Personalities in Art

fight which had had its first notable skirmish when
Manet, Whistler and the rest appeared in the Salon
des Refuses of 1863. Paul Durand-Ruel was a partici
pant, a factor, in that battle. He had ranged himself
with the proud malcontents from the beginning
and soon figured before the world as their propa
gandist. He was the far-seeing merchant who spurred
others on to collect the Impressionists. He was like
wise the disinterested connoisseur, delighting in fine
things because they were delightful. To talk with
him across his table in the Rue de Rome, amid the
paintings of Monet and his companions, always
gave me the sensation, in a very vivid way, of touching
hands with the members of that glorious company.
The rooms had a cachet for me unique. They seemed
to enshrine the spirit of an act of belief, to deserve a
place in the memory akin to that occupied by the
famous Salon to which I have alluded. These Renoirs
were souvenirs of a habitation as well as of the man
who made them, and in approaching them one could
not forbear saluting the discernment and the enthusi
asm of the man who brought them together.

It is one of the happiest circumstances associated
with Impressionism that in its struggle for freedom
it remained consistently free, that in establishing
a new gospel it escaped the blighting influence of
dogma. Every commentator on the school has
presently to explain that it was not, strictly speak
ing, a school at aH; that Manet and Monet went

Seven Renoirs 277

their different gaits; that Degas Is of the group only
on Ms own terms; that, in short, lie solidarity of
Impressionism is a totally different thing from the
solidarity of, say3 the men of 1830. I need not labor
the point here, but I must pause upon it long enough
to characterize the entirely personal attitude of
Renoir toward the Impressionistic hypothesis of
open air light. In Monet the effect of light upon
nature rapidly became an intense preoccupation. I
don't believe, as I have said elsewhere, he had the
specifically scientific bias that has sometimes been at
tributed to him; but in the evidence which we may
be content to draw from Ms works his curiosity as to
purely atmospheric phenomena is unmistakable. With
Renoir the point of attack is different. You do not feel
that he tackled a problem with an overmastering con
cern as to what light would do to it. He does not
want to prove anything. You fed, rather, that he took
light as but an element in his design^ an indispens
able element^ an element previously overlooked and
now to be exploited with militant ardor, but an
element just the same — playing a part in a con
structive whole. His attitude included the handling
of light without Ms being dominated by it. It was
the attitude of a painter, a painter who was primarily
a colorist.

There is no one in the Impressionist group!
with the possible exception of Manet, who has
anything like Renoir's magical^ clairvoyant touch

278 Personalities in Art

In the manipulation of mere pigment, in the enrich
ment of mere surface. Oil paint has a witchery of its
own. The notes in the gamut of tempera can be
made, as the early Florentines so often proved,
extraordinarily pure and beautiful. I would not dis
parage them in order to exalt those of the later
medium. But I would emphasize the difference be
tween the two, and I would cite Renoir as a true
examplar of the tradition of Velasquez and Vermeer.
Manet has his kinship with the Spanish master in the
broad strong masses of his blacks and yellows, and
sometimes in the pearly loveliness of his flesh tints
and the singing quality of his blues. But to Renoir
was left the felicity — one of his most personal con
tributions to Impressionism — of bringing out the
beauty of oil paint in an incomparably precious,
jewel-like way.

Light interpenetrates his color and makes it
lustrous, sensuous, as enchanting to the eye as the
red of a pomegranate. He can paint white with a
lusciousness that — observing all due respect for the
Whistlerians — makes a picture like "The Little
White Girl" look almost cold and hard. If you
doubt this, examine the whites in "La Loge." I
know no others, anywhere, more subtly vitalized.
I have wondered momentarily if his experience
in porcelain painting at Sevres had anything to do
with the brilliance of his color; but this question
arises only to subside. Preternatural insight into

Seven Renoirs 279

the genius of oil paint offers a much more satisfying
explanation, that and a correspondingly exquisite
dexterity. Renoir has this grasp upon a medium as
Rubens had it, though here again the inevitable
qualification, evocative of his originality, forthwith
presents itself. Pigment for Rubens is a means to
an end, the vehicle for headlong statement* There
is something prodigiously virile and even violent
about Ms brushwork; he paints at topmost speed;
he knows his medium, he uses it with gusto — but
does he love it for its own sake ? There is power in his
touch, but no tenderness. He flings his color on the
canvas with a masterful gesture; he does not caress
it. Renoir does this peculiarly painter-like thing.
He can be as "fat" as Rubens, as weighty, as
sumptuous, but some delicacy of taste in him that
Rubens knew nothing about keeps Mm very re
fined. There are passages in "La Loge," as, for
example, in the painting of the gloved hands and
wrists of the woman, which in technical fineness
and grace fairly make your mouth water. And you
will find the same marvellous beauty of facture
developed in certain others of these pictures in a
great fulness and harmony. The "Danseuse" is a
little mirade in pure painting. "Sur la Terrasse"
is another. The reds and the greens in the latter
have the transparent radiance of precious stones.
The tangle of leafage and flowers against which the
figures are placed is a web of jewelled color, its threads

280 Personalities in Art

and its interstices alike lifted to a higher power by
the intervention of light.

All this betokens, as I have said, the painter, the
technician, the virtuoso exercising his brush with a
kind of passion of craftsmanship and exulting in its
precision, its finesse, its searching eloquence. Who
else in the great cirde has wielded so supple an in
strument, one so sure, or one so perfectly adjusted
to the very grain and essence of oil paint? But there
are still other grounds on which this group of pic
tures ascribes to Renoir a position of singularity.
He alone of them all is the hierophant of beauty
existing in and for itself. Manet is enamored of the
truth of life; he is the recorder, not the interpreter.
Monet, in his so different domain, has similar func
tions. Only in the celebrated "Nympheas" of his
later years has he seemed to divine in nature a
grace lying like a benediction on tangible fact.
Degas, if he looked for beauty everywhere, even in
ugliness, fused with the draftmanship that links
him to his beloved Ingres the mordant philosophy
of a cynic. He dreamed dreams of antiquity in his
youth, but as time went on he saw the world as an
essentially prosaic spectacle. Renoir saw it with the
fervid glance of a Giorgione.

In Impressionism, I may say in the whole range
of the French art of his time, he is preeminently
the painter of the jow de mwe^ the sole inspired
singer of proud "hosannas of the flesh" that, by the

DANSEUSE
PROM T3EIE PAINTING BY RENOIR

Seven Renoir s 281

same token, are never fleshly. A pell-meE of Ms nudes
comes to mind with this reflection, glowing blond
figures reviving the Venetian key of Palma, but the
truth is that they are not needed to enforce the point
as we traverse the glorious seven of which I write.
Consider the mundane luxury of "La Loge," the
warmth and well-being of "Sur la Terrasse," the
blithe youth in the "Danseuse," and, above all, the
ebullience, the bodily glow, the happy animation,
of "Le Dejeuner des Canotiers." He takes the
glory of the senses and makes it the guiding principle
of his art, mirrors the splendor of life in the beauty of
light and air and color, records the truth and invests
it with aesthetic charm. It is the truth, the life, of a
sophisticated monde. Once in this series, in the
"P£cheuses de Modes," humanity receives its
commentary in very simple human terms. Hie
fisherf oik are portrayed with all the sincerity in the
world; the accent is altogether one of homely realism.
We are not far from the same sentiment in the
"Femme au Chat." But in the other paintings Me
is an urban affair, rich with the beauty of fair faces,
fine stuffs, the exhilaration of health and pleasure.
The little figurine of the "Danseuse/5 character
istically, is no starveling sparrow of the o?nfeses, as
Degas might have made her. We think not of her
hard-worked young musdes but of her
sweetness. She is doubtless in the ballet but not
wholly of it; she is Renoir's vision of the footlights,

282 Personalities in Art

an image of beauty he has reft from their garishness.
With what melting nuances of tone does he paint the
half-graceful, half-awkward form, and the filmy dress !
His brush seems to hover over the problem, it is so
suave, so infinitely delicate in its pressure. And
behind it all lies the strength of a master. That
is the final impression received from the imposing
seven. They are the works of a great painter, an
authoritative man of his hands. They come down to
us from his golden years, when he was in the f uH flush
of his powers. "La Loge" and the "Danseuse" were
painted in 1874, when he was but thirty-three. Five
years later he painted the "Pecheuses" and then in
1880 "Au Concert" and the "Femme au Chat."
"Sur la Terrasse" came a year later and at about the
same time "Le Dejeuner des Canotiers." The seven
date from a period of seven years. They were years, I
repeat, of unremitting strife. Impressionism was not
by any means in the saddle when these canvases were
thrown into the fray. But the man who painted
them was in the saddle, in complete command of
his high abilities.

He interrogates life with a truly seeing eye. He
grasps the truth with the whole plein air apparatus,
as it were, at his finger-tips. What he sees he defines
with equal force, ease, propriety, and, most interest
ingly of all, with characteristic racial fidelity to the
rectitude of art. A revolutionist, there are never
theless no revolutionary eccentricities or excesses

Seven Renoirs 283

dinging about Ms artistic character. That, for ail
his independence of academic precedent is abso
lutely in harmony with the immemorial tradition of
French painting? the tradition that is the servant of
beauty. Apropos of this significance of the seven
paintings, I come back to the special nature of the
group they make. When there was talk of a monu
ment to Cezanne, and Renoir was appealed to in its
interests, he wrote to Claude Monet expressing his
disgust at the idea of a nude figure for the thing.
He could put up with a bustj a bust would go very
well into the museum at Aix, if it were accompanied
by an example of the artist. But the latter was im
perative. "I feel that a painter ought to be repre
sented by his painting/' said he. His conception is
exactly realized in the present instance. The seven
Renoirs make an ideal monument.

XIX
Odilon Redon

XIX
ODILON REDON

ODILON REDON was bom at Bordeaux in 1840, He

was an impressionable child, and the sentiments pro
moted in Ms nature by early contact with the Pyrenees
and the melancholy region of the Landes appear to
have been fostered by an indulgent father. He loved
art and music when he was a boy. At that time, too —
and the point is significant — he had a proper sense of
" mon originaliti." When the time came he went to
Paris and studied under G6r6me, but straggled in
vain to "render form" with anything like academic
authority. It was not that he was unwilling to learn
how to draw. It was simply that he had an incurable
fondness for doing things in Ms own way, in accordance
with what he believed to be a kind of spiritual
independence. It is a fine gospel^ not without its perils*
The war of 1870 led him away from Ms studies and
Ms dreams, but it did him good. In the dash of arms
he found himself, and on settling down in the studio
again he felt Ms resources stirring within him in a new
way? Ms ideas being clarified. In Ms essay OE Redon,
prefixed to the catalogue of the latter's etchings and
lithographs issued by the Soci6t6 pour PEtude de la
Gravure Fran^aise, M. Andr6 Mellerio has much to

287

288 Personalities in Art

say about the influences accepted by the artist. He
was devoted to Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Diirer.
Among the moderns he preferred Delacroix. In music
he was all for the noblest masters, for Beethoven and
Bach. One thinks, with all these heroical landmarks
in sight, of another Puvis de Chavannes. But there are
some surprises in store.

After the ideals in painting and music to which I
have referred, there came, for Redon, in literature,
the writings of Poe, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Huysmans,
and Stephane Mallarme; which is to say that, after his
instinct for grandeur in art, came a passion for the
macabre. The fall was too far. A great artist was
lost in a decadent. His paintings expose a kind of
dual character. They show us his best side, to begin
with, in the beauty of their color. There are no half
measures about the "inspiration Redonesque" to use
M. Mellerio's rather overwrought phrase. When he
uses a vivid color he gives it its fullest possible value.
But he keeps it very pure, and he sees to it that his reds
and yellows and blues are intrinsically fine. Merely for
their sensuous brilliance Ms paintings would command
a little more than respectful consideration. There is
genuine fire in them. In the next moment, however,
we are on shifting ground, and respect is tinged with
dubiety. We begin to reflect on the ideas embodied
in the pictures, and the problem takes a decidedly
different twist. It is the lovely poetic intention that
we note first, the exquisiteness of the impulse driving

Odilon Redon 280

the artist to paint high-erected themes, "Orpheus/'
"Phaeton/' "Apollo," even " Saint John." Almost,

but not quite, does he succeed with them. The largef
wild romantic gesture is there, the hint of mystery,
the vague echo of "mm origimlM.™ But something
is missing, something that would turn these f ascinatlng
but amorphous sketches into pictures. It is the power
of construction, of sustained imagination, which is the
power of the normal creative master,

Redon has visions, but they are formless and un
wholesome. He invokes the aid of imaginationf but he
cannot rise to its rarefied plane. It is instructive to
turn over the scores of plates in M. Meilerio's admir
able catalogue. Redon has been an ardent^ prolific
lithographer^ and his work on the stone the

full range of his ideas. From beginning to end they
make it pathetically obvious that he has never soared
to the intellectual companionship of Ms beloved
Leonardo and Rembrandt and Diirer? but has re
mained on the merely bizarre, decadent of
Felicien Rops, that Belgian type of Parisian diabolism^
or of Goya in the worst of his charnel-house moods.
Symbolism runs riot in Ms designs and always in a
nightmarish direction. And, while linear
of an extraordinary delicacy not infrequently
in these more than fantastic works of his, the
impression one receives is of the student
in vain, under Gerdme, to "'render form." Is it, then,
by a failure of technic that we are to account for

290 Personalities in Art

his failure convincingly to affirm the "inspiration
Redonesque"? Only in part. The true explanation
lies deeper, in the artist's habit of mind, its sickliness
and its want of veritable imaginative force. Redon is
a type of the modern hunger for release from ordinary,
prosaic thought and conditions. He is another exem
plar of the wistful school, sympathetic, suggestive,
genuinely interesting, but somehow ineffectual.

XX

Cezanne

XX

CEZANNE

A PORTRAIT by Cezanne was once shown to Whistler.
Said he: "If a child of ten were to draw like that upon

his slate, his mother, if she were a good mother, would
spank him for it." But M. Ambroise Voilard, the
Parisian dealer, who tells us the anecdote, is of quite
another mind, and he, in similar circumstances,
would probably frame the slate. He knew the painter
weU, bought as many of Ms works as he could get
hold of , and made them the leading attraction of Ms
gallery in the Rue Laffitte. Then, as a testimony to
the faith that was in him and as a monument to Ms
friend, he himself published "Paul Cezanne/* a truly
sumptuous folio, written with affectionate care and
illustrated with the richest possible array of paintings
and drawings, many of the former reproduced in
photogravures or in color plates. Nor is M. VoUard
by any means alone in his appreciation of this artist.
Theodore Duret, who in Ms book on "Manet and the
Impressionists" wrote the first full biograpMcal sketch
of Cezanne, upon wMch Vollard and all other com
mentators have since freely drawn, speaks of "the
distinctive and isolated nature of Ms art/1 and credits
him with at least one peculiarity "of a very Mgfa
order of merit." Since then the commentators have

293

294 Personalities in Art

been legion. Where, precisely, does the truth reside?

For a hero-worshipper, M. Vollard is delightfully
discreet. His idolatry appears between the lines
rather than in the actual text of his narrative. The
latter makes, indeed, a really charming introduction
to the life of Cezanne, more particularly in its earlier
stages. From M. Duret's book we have long known
how fortunate were the circumstances of the artist,
how the rich banker at Aix who was his father first
frowned upon his ambitions, but soon encouraged
them, sending him to Paris with an allowance, and
how all his life Cezanne was in a position to please
himself. But M. Vollard tells us more and incidentally
paints a pretty picture of the boy Cezanne getting his
first lessons in drawing from an old Spanish monk,
flinging himself with ardor upon his classical studies
at the lycee, and, above all, giving himself up to the
romantic dreams of youth.

Zola was his comrade in those golden days. Another
was one Baptistin Bailie, who appears to have been
of a philosophical turn of mind. He looked after the
profundities while the future author of "Nana" de-
daimed the poems of Musset, Hugo, and Lamartine,
and C6zanne advanced tremendous theories of art,
based on the masterpieces of Veronese, Rubens, and
Rembrandt. The canny Cezanne pere, much bewil
dered and not a little scandalized by all this, was
hardly reconciled to it when his son brought home a
prize for drawing from the local academy. "Enfant,

Cezanne 295

enfant" he would go on murmuring, "songe a Vavcnir!
On meurt avec du genie, el Von mange avec de far gent"

But, as has been said, he relented after a despairing
effort to force the lad into the law, and by the time he
was twenty-two Cezanne's wish was realized. He
joined Zola in Paris, entered himself as a student at
the Academie Suisse, on the Quai des Orfevres (in
1861), and thenceforth to the day of Ms death, in
1906, was the happy painter, practising his profession
with but trifling opposition of a parental nature.

He was of bourgeois origin and remained of a
bourgeois temperament. His strong likes and
were generally expressed with a decisively Bohemian
accent. An old painter, recalling him in Ms young
manhood, describes him as wearing a red waistcoat —
d la Gautier — and always putting his hand in his
pocket to pay for a chum's dinner. He was kindly and,
I surmise, a little coarse^ a point to be inferred, by
the way, as well from certain of Ms works as from
Ms quoted speech. Rejecting the discipline of the
schools in favor of Ms own hypothesis of the art of
painting, he nevertheless frequented the Louvre
sat with a kind of haughty reverence at the feet of
the old masters. Rubens Is echoed^ faintly, in his
earlier works. In the course of his formative years he
fell in with Courbet and emulated him. As the
Impressionists came into view he attached himself to
the group at the Cafe Guerbois and afterward at the
Nouvelle Athenes, but seems to have rebelled against

296 Personalities in Art

the dominating influence of Manet. I may note in
passing Ms observation of Forain, "who knew even
then how to indicate the fold in a garment/' and whom
he once discovered in the Louvre copying Chardin, a
fragment of biography precious to the connoisseur
of the great French draftsman. Delacroix also
touched his sympathies and encouraged in him,
momentarily, a romantic impulse. He had all the
tjme some of the traits of the average artist. He
would have exhibited at the Salon if he could have
obtained admission, but had to wait many a long year
before he was let in. On the other hand, he was faithful
to his inner convictions. He went on painting in his
own way so long as he remained in Paris and was only
confirmed in it when finally he withdrew to his native
town and settled down as more or less of a recluse.
The career described by M. Vollard is honorable and
not without a certain touching dignity. But that it
should appear touching is an indication of the element
of weakness even then threatening the ultimate fame
of Cezanne. When, on his arrival in Paris, he un
successfully sought admission to the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, one of the examiners explained his failure by
saying that he had the temperament of a colorist, but
painted "with excess." He always painted with excess.
M. Vollard cites the current opinion of the sixties on
Cezanne's method. It was that he tackled a piece of
white canvas with a pistol charged to the muzzle with
all sorts of colors. Later he simplified his chromatic

Cezanne 297

scheme. It is the claim of Ms partisans that he
triumphs by virtue of his color. They say he is a
master of values; that with a few tones of green, gray,
and red he achieves immortal things. But those
things, I fear, lie altogether in the eye of the fond
beholder. That individuality of which Cezanne thought
so much possibly struggled along some definitely
thought out lines toward the expression of a high ideal
Unfortunately the last successful phase of the straggle
did not come off, Cezanne stayed what he was at the
beginning, a painter wandering about in worlds un
realized, too imperfectly equipped to say what he had
to say, if, indeed, that was worth saying.

There is a point bearing upon this question of
intrinsic values which I must discuss briefly. The
veteran John Sartain aptly remarked once that the
status of a work of art is determined by the choice
spirits of the world, not by the Philistines. It is an
unanswerable saying. No doubt it savors of a phari-
saical superiority to those who stand by the good old
democratic axiom that one man*s opinion is as good
as another's — but it happens to be true. Also, it is a
truth equally applicable among artists themselves.
They produce great art exactly in proportion to their
inborn alliance with the choice spirits of the world.
Was C6zanne thus allied to them? Neither M.
Vollard nor Cezanne in his works can so persuade
me for the fraction of a second. He was sincere^
yes, and I know with what gusto that trait is

298 Personalities in Art

elevated into an artistic virtue by the backers of a
type like Cezanne. It may be, indeed, a virtue, but
not in tie sense that it is also an asset, a quality
automatically productive of beauty. It is compatible,
of course, with the production of stupid ugliness. If
sincerity by itself were to make a work of art, then it
would enable some inventor of perpetual motion to pull
through. It is important, therefore, to recognize the
fact that Cezanne's sincerity is beside the point. It
does not keep him from being commonplace, mediocre,
a third rate painter. If the reader finds these terms
harsh, let him examine closely into the works by
Cezanne, let him look at them with an open mind
and see what they have to offer to the eye and the
imagination.

The best of them offer, to begin with, a fair enough
approximation to the forms of things seen. I recall a
"Portrait of a Man" as an acceptable bit of ordinary
realism. So is a landscape called "L'Estaque,37 in
which the huddle of red roofs seen between trees
against a gray background provided by the sea is
handled with a mildly engaging sympathy. But what
nonsense to pretend to discover in this picture the
distinction, the beauty, which alone lifts a piece of
painting out of the ruck ! And this is wiiat we have to
reckon, in the mass of Cezanne's work, as really
nothing more than a deviation into something like
success. As a rule he flounders. Far more character
istic is a picture like "The Francois Zola Dam," Ob-

Cezanne 299

sessed by some vague theory — of no earthly interest
to the spectator until It is justified by results — he
gropes among his ground forms and strives painfully
to bring them into some sort of pictorial unity. The
effort fails. The canvas is crude, unlovely. It is the
same with his sketchy water-colors. The Mnts at
form which they contain have no artistic charm.
They are but the shreds and patches of an uncertain
purpose. In those fumblings of his around the secrets
of nature Cezanne may have had glimpses which did
make him less forlorn, but he transmits to us nothing
of the joy he may have derived from them. Partly
this is due to his limitations as a workman^ to the
harsh, uninspired technic which excludes aH hope of
style, of linear felicity. But even more it is due to
the humdrum nature of his vision. Witness his more or
less celebrated picture of "The Two Sisters/9 That
absolutely representative example follows in design
the routine of the Salon. The leaden folds in the
dress of the foremost figure (why didn't he take a leaf
from Foranr s book !) seem calculated to get the ut
most possible dtdness out of a banal motive. The
drawing is as heavy-handed in detail as it is in the
larger contours of the scheme. In the color, where
Cezanne is supposed to be "magisterial/5 this painting
is ineffably dreary, ineffably lacking in quality. It is,
in short, a dolorous performance. Which brings me
to the Cult.
Celebrities like Cezanne are the products of mis-

300 Personalities in Art

taken enthusiasm. Their vogue in Paris is explicable
on the ground of an amiable weakness. Art is the
completely absorbing interest of thousands there, and
participation in a historic moment, nay, even a casual
relation to the affairs of some memorable period, will
secure for quite unimportant individuals a certain
niche. Then the literary man is always grateful for a
topic. In London and in New York a Cezanne is a
doubly welcome theme. He is new and strange. There
are romantic implications in the annals. He was one
of the generation that knew Manet, and so on and so
on. His whole atmosphere is favorable to the envelop
ment of his art in an esoteric mystery. Born, reared
and long neglected in, say, Philadelphia, there would
be no special excitement about discovering him. But
if you can call a man "the great Aixois," you've got
something to go on with. So we have dithyrambs on
Cezanne by rhetoricians who know that he is wonder
ful and feel that he is sublime, and even so clairvoy
ant a critic as Huneker would sententiously remark:
"Think of Bouguereau and you have his antithesis in
Cezanne." Why drag in Bouguereau? To suggest
that, in the antithesis, there is something to be put to
Cezanne's credit? Why not Claude, or Corot, or
Degas, or Ingres, or any master, comparison with
whom exposes the inferiority of C6zanne without
uncovering any nakedness of his own? Well, Mr.
Huneker, who wrote shrewdly if not altogether con
vincingly on Cezanne, had to have his witty gay-

Cezanne 301

eties. But there is really more occasion for sorrow
than for mirth in the facility with which these specious
reputations are drummed up in modern art. The

mission of the painter is to create beautiful pictures.
It is a function which Cezanne pathetically missed.

XXI

Gauguin

XXI
GAUGUIN

IN the book about Paul Gauguin published by Ms
friend Charles Morice in 1919, the best literary me
morial to the artist which exists, there is a section
entitled "Le Maltre de Taiti." To-day there are
many to whom Gauguin is "the master." On the
other hand, Mr, Sargent once had occasion to say
of certain of the pictures painted by this Franco-
Peruvian that they struck him as "admirable in color ;
and in color only." If the matter is still in debate it is
for a rather factitious reason. Would Gauguin remain
"the master" if he had stayed at home? I doubt it*
Half the furore raised about him is traceable to Ms
sequestration in the South Seas, His death there
made Mm the hero of a legend. A contribution was
made to this in the shape of "The Letters of Paul
Gauguin/7 published with a foreword by Frederick
O'Brien, a leading figure in the Tahitian cult. Here
are gathered together the missives of the artist to Ms
friend Daniel Monfreid, who did what he could to
keep him going in Ms self-sought exfle. They give
us further revelations of the life and character of
the man. Incidentally, they help a little to clarify the

subject of his art.

305

306 Personalities in Art

Gauguin was born at Paris In 1848, was, taken to
Peru and brought back to France while still a child,
received some education in a Jesuit seminary, served
briefly in the navy as a common sailor, and in 1871
left the sea to turn stock broker ! He was successful
in finance. Miss Ruth Pielkovo, the translator of
his correspondence and the author, presumably, of
the commentary that accompanies it, remarks that
during his activities in the Rue Laffitte he made
something like thirty or forty thousand francs a year.
Then, with a suddenness of which Mr. Somerset
Maugham made the most when he wrote "The Moon
and Sixpence," he began to paint, shook off his wife
and children, and dedicated himself entirely to the
brush. There was a tune, in the eighties, when he
settled in Brittany and produced, with some talent,
fairly unconventional pictures. Later came a flying
trip to Martinique. On his return to his native land
he had some associations with Van Gogh. In 1891 he
went to Tahiti and thenceforth, save for a visit home,
continued in his remote fastness until he died in the
Marquesas in 1903.

In the South Seas, his disciples would have us
believe, he found the secret of a new heaven and a
new earth. What was it? He himself, as was natural
enough, never formulated it. "You know/' he once
wrote to a friend, "that though others have honored
me by attributing a system to me I have never had
one, and could not condemn myself to it if I had. To

Gauguin 307

paint as I please, bright to-day, dark to-morrow.
The artist must be free or tie is not an artist. *But
you have a technic/ they say. No; I have not, or
rather I have one, but it is a vagabond sort of
thing, and very elastic. It is a technic that changes
constantly, according to the mood I am in, and I use
it to express my thought, without bothering as to
whether it truthfully expresses exterior nature." It
is permissible — for the acolytes — to read into this
the magnificent independence of a great creative
artist. I would read it there myself, probably* if the
works authorized me to do so. But in the light of
what they have to say I am inclined to infer from the
pronouncement aforesaid nothing more nor less than
the wayward egotism of an artist who never quite
mastered his medium or his instruments. As I pointed
out at the time of the celebrated Armory Show, when
Gauguin was one of the "new" men brought to the
fore, the only pertinent question to be asked regarding
him is, "Does he know how to paint?"

What he didn't like is easily seen. In one of Ms
letters he alludes to "Baudry and his crowd." There
is a fleer in another at Bouguereau. He is blighting oa
the subject of "the Seminary of Meissonier and his
like." Study of Baudry, I may note in passing^
would have done Mm good, but one can sympathize
with his repulsion from Bouguereau and Meissonier.
He had, no doubt, the root of the matter in Mm. In a
letter of his Parisian visit in 1893 there is a

308 Personalities in Art

eloquent of an artist sensitive to the true distinctions
of the schools, "I'm just back from a six days' trip
in Belgium," he says. "It was fine. I saw some
Memlings at Bruges — what marvels ! my dear fellow,
and afterward, on seeing Rubens (entering into
naturalism), it's a comedown." Only a man with
authentic taste would have registered "that dis
criminating touch. But, again, Rubens might have
aided him through showing him the value of discipline
and construction. The truth is that there was little
if anything reflected in Gauguin's cosmos. It is
pretty to visualize him as a man of ideas withdrawn
to an exotic solitude and there spinning masterpieces
out of his entrails, but, though it is pretty, it is not
exact. He was a haphazard type. His characteristic
mood is thus hit off to Monfreid:

I am going to let you into my secret a bit. There is a
great deal of logic in it and I act methodically. From the
outset I knew that it would be a day-to-day existence;
so, naturally, I've had to accustom my temperament to
that. Instead of wasting my strength working and worry
ing about to-morrow I put everything into the present,
like a fighter who does not move until the moment of
struggle. When I go to bed at night I say to myself —
" One more day gained, to-morrow I may be dead."

In my work of painting it is the same thing. I only
think of the present. But the methodical way is to ar
range matters so that things follow smoothly, and not do
on the $th what should be done on the 2oth. The madre
pores do the same — and at the end quite a lot of ground
is covered. If only people did not spend so much time in

Gauguin 309

useless and unrelated work ! One stitch a day — that's
the great point.

Is it the programme of a philosopher or of a beach
comber? Does it spell heroic concentration or, at
bottom, an incurable irresponsibility? The answer
lies in the broad drift of Ms letters. uSee what I did
with my household !" he exclaims, UI cut loose from
it without warning. My family will get out of its
scrapes by itself, so far as I am concerned ! I want to
finish my life here, in this house, in perfect quiet. Ah,
yes, I am a great criminal ! What does it matter? So
was Michael Angelo; and I am not Michael Angelo."
I ignore the question of ainnnality and look solely to
the question of art. The diff erence between him and
Michael Angelo was not a matter of morals, but one of
aesthetic principle. I see in Mm the beachcomber
rather than the philosopher, because I see not a maa
of ideas, but a creature of impulse. " So far/1 he writes
in 1899, "I have put nothing on canvas but Intention
and promises." He was not precisely ashamed of the
avowal. It was better, he thought, than "this great
fault of treating all canvases as pictures.11

He had no patience with the men who "try to excuse
their lack of imagination, of creative power, by the
finesse and perfection of their craftsmansMp.11 It is
a good saying, but, I repeat, Gauguin would have
been the better for more of the very and

perfection of CTaffemansMp to which lie alludes*

The explanation of Ms failure lies in a fact which, by

3 ID Personalities in Art

implication, is made sufficiently clear in this book.
Through an inevitable association of ideas we assume
that a man who buries himself among savages in the
South Sea Islands must have something primitive
about him. Gauguin wasn't even in a rudimentary
sense a primitive. He was as worldly-wise and sophis
ticated a being as ever trod the pavements of Paris.
There is much talk about his preferring the natives to
the whites in Tahiti, about his adopting native dress
and habits. Almost any hard-bitten habitue of Mont-
martre might have done the same thing if he had had
the same self-indulgent impulses. If Gauguin made a
mess of his life in Tahiti it was because he hadn't the
courage, hadn't the nature, to "go the whole hog." He
never became whole-heartedly a native. He was from
beginning to end a Parisian type, seeking to live cH
fresco what time he drew an income from picture-selling
at home. His tragedy consisted simply in the fact that
the income was unspeakably hard to get. The letters
to Monfreid make one long plaint over the difficulties
of practical existence and the necessity for remittances
from purchasers. Dip into the correspondence at
random, and you come upon nothing so frequently as
upon the discussion of ways and means. Marooned
(of his own volition) in far-away Tahiti, Gauguin is
forever keeping an eye upon his status at home.
"It seems that my success is growing in the North."
"My Tahitian work has had a moral success among
the artists, but the result, so far as the vulgar public
went, was — not one centime." In one of the longest

Gauguin 311

of Ms letters he frames a scheme for the creation of
an income of 2,400 francs a year. He Is to send over
annually a collection of fifteen pictures and as many
subscribers are to put In 160 francs each, drawing lots

for the painting that in each case is to be the reward,
It is pathetic, obviously. But the "primitive"
by the board.

Lightly to disparage Gauguin's efforts to acquire a
decent return for his labor would be not only cruel
but stupid. It would be to flout the instinct of self-
preservation. But the passages, I have cited are legiti
mate touchstones whereby to test the grain of this
painter's mind. One may deplore his sufferings
still decline to regard them as those of an inspired
artist retiring to the wilderness from exalted motives
and, for the sake of Ms art, holding the world well lost.
For the life of me, I cannot discover that kind of
primitive in the letters to Monfreid. I behold, rather,
a painter of modest talent, who from egotism and wMm
strayed into a strange land, got into a pickle there^ and
paid a grievous penalty. He was a Montmartrois out
of place. He took no spark of esoteric genius with him
to Tahiti, and he found there nothing of the sort,
"To be hard as a stone/* he says, "means to be as
strong as a stone." It did not mean this for Gauguin.
He painted a number of pictures from inherently pic
turesque subjects, painted some of them middling well
and a few with an approach to felicity. The rest, as
I have hinted, is pure legend.

Monfreid told Mm so when, near the end, Gauguin

312 Personalities in Art

proposed to come back to France. This best of friends
then candidly wrote him:

It is to be feared that your return would only derange
the growing and slowly conceived ideas with which public
opinion has surrounded you. Now you are that legendary
artist who, from out of the depths of "Polynesia,, sends
forth Ms disconcerting and inimitable work — the defini
tive work of a man who has disappeared from the world.
Your enemies (and you have many, as have all who trouble
the mediocre) are now silent, do not dare to combat you,
do not even think of it; for you are so far away ! You
must not return. Now you are as are the great dead.
You have passed into the history of art.

1 His friend was right. It is doubtful if Gauguin's
celebrity would have survived his reappearance upon
the Parisian scene. I take leave to doubt if it will
ultimately survive in any serious measure, leaving him
more than an interesting minor type. Sooner or later,
when the present vogue of modernistic tendencies has
passed, it will be recognized that an artist "who has
disappeared from the world " is no more dowered by
that fact with exceptional gifts than an artist who is
good to his wife and mother is made a master in the
process. In the long run the letters will be useful in
bringing about a proper appraisal of "the master of
Tahiti" in that they will help to develop a clearer con
ception of just what his sojourn in the Pacific meant.
They are compiled, of course, to advance the man's re
pute. Among readers unbitten by the Gauguin mania
they will not altogether do this. To be hard as a stone

Gauguin

is not to be really admirable. The letters expose only

too vividly a gross and selfish nature. Yet here and
there a likable trait peeps out. "I want to ask some
thing of you," he writes to Monfreid. "If you have a
bit of good luck with the sales, I wish you would send
me a few bulbs and seeds of flowers. Simple dahlias,
nasturtiums, and sunflowers of various sorts, flowers
that can stand the hot climate — whatever you can
think of. I want to decorate my little plantation;
and, as you know, I adore flowers. What they have
here are mostly shrubs, very few annuals — a few
roses, but they do not do very well." There was a love
of beauty struggling somewhere in his complex make
up. An artless sincerity peeps forth from behind a
brutally cynical and self-centred temperament.

There are a few suggestive passages, too, relating
to the purely artistic side of Gauguin. Writing to
Monfreid about his biggest, most ambitious canvas,
he says:

I look at it by the hour and (Fli admit it to you) I ad

mire it. The more I look at it the more I realize its enor

mous mathematical faults, but I would not retouch It
for anything. It must remain as It is — oiJy a sketch if
you like. Yet this question comes up and perplexes me:
Where does the execution of a painting commence and
where does it end? At that moment when the most in
tense emotions axe in fusion in the depths of one's being,
when they burst forth and when thought comes up like
lava from a volcano, Is there not then something lite an
explosion? The work is created suddenly, brutally if you
like, and is not its appearance great, almost superhuman?

3 14 Personalities in Art

The cold calculations of reason have not presided at
this birth, for who knows when in the depths of early
being the work was commenced? Have you ever noticed
that when recopying a sketch, done in a moment of emo
tion and with which you are content, only an inferior
copy results, especially if you correct the proportions, the
mistakes your reason tells you are there?

This fragment represents the best that was in
Gauguin, the artist, freed for a moment from material
preoccupations, musing imaginatively on the things
that count. It Is interesting to speculate on what he
might have made of his art if he had longer maintained
such a mood. He thought, no doubt, that he was pla
cating his daemon when lie said: "I have come to an
unalterable decision — to go and live forever in Poly
nesia." Perhaps he was right. But I wonder if the
Polynesian adventure did not do him more harm than
good, in leaving him what it found him, an artist in
adequately equipped.

XXII

Van Gogh

XXII
VAN GOGH

is a famous sonnet in which that brilliant
parodist J. K. Stephen once paid his compliments to
Wordsworth. A line from it will serve my purpose
here : " Two voices are there — one is of the deep * * • —
and the other talked rubbish. The criticism is apposite
in approaching the work of Vincent van Gogh.

The first light that is thrown upon the subject by the
evidence I have observed, illuminates what may fairly
be called the conventional bases of Van Gogh's art.
He had at bottom the capacities of an ordinary realistic
contributor to the Salon. There is a picture by Mm of a
large Bible laid open upon a table beside a candlestick.
It might have been painted by almost any clever
young fellow in Paris who had dabbled in the "brown
sauce" of the old Dutch school. In its quiet way it is
almost handsome. It has weight. It is a bit of

painting. It is not, on the other hand, noticeably
beautiful. A certain measure of truth, boldly stated,
would appear to have been the artist's aim. There
are a few other canvases of kindred character which
invite much the same comment, leaving one the
impression that if Van Gogh had on in this

vein we would never have heard much about Mm.

317

3 1 8 Personalities in Art

What would have happened if, instead, he had per
sisted in cultivating the influence of Millet as it is
reflected in several of his paintings and drawings?
He was moved not only to emulate but to copy the
master, A discipleship so pronounced might easily
have carried him, far. There is one of his drawings,
"Woman Digging Potatoes/' which shows that as a
draftsman he could be not unworthy of Millet. For
a moment imagination pauses upon the idea that at
one time Van Gogh must have had in him potentialities
as a delineator of form. Over and over again in his
black-and-whites we come upon testimonies to the fact
that he could draw, not brilliantly, not with the accent
of style, but with the ability of a sound workman.
But then the influence of Millet fades and that of the
Impressionists takes its place.

It is neither from Manet nor from Monet that his
impressionism derives. When we look at the " Moulin
de la Galette" or at the "Restaurant Cristal" or at
the "Garden of Daubigny" we think of Sisley and
Pissarro. He has something of their light touch —
something of their springlike gamut of color. In one of
these paintings, the " Garden of Daubigny," Van Gogh
possesses what Pissarro and Sisley possess. He has
charm, and this peeps out again in the lovely color and
delicate surface of his " Still Life — Jug and Lemons."
But these flashes are few in number compared with the
broad drift of Van Gogh's work and with the develop
ment of what may be classified as his Post-Impression-

Van Gogh 319

ist productions — the productions over which the

zealots uplift their voices — they disappear altogether,
This painter was under forty when he died, and he
was mentally unbalanced before he committed suicide.

It would not be unfair, therefore, to assume that with
years and health he would have beaten out better
conceptions of landscapes and of form than he left

behind him as the fruits of his later period. But
hypothetical guesses, one way or the other, are beside
the point. All that we are justified in considering is
the intrinsic quality of what he actually did. THs is
not impressive. His portraits have the vitality of a
kind of rough truth. They are crude in handling,
commonplace in design, and quite without distinction
of style. A "Self Portrait," which I recall as one of
the best of them all, had a vividness of characteriza
tion not to be denied, and there was some dever
painting in it into the bargain, but it was not a work
of more than ordinary merit.

Taking his later paintings in a group they not

gains, but losses. The old sense of form which Millet
had stirred in him, is gone. So is the resonance of
luminous color, which is characteristic of I
describe as Ms uaadventurous impressionism* He
seems now to be moving about in a world
to be feeling his way toward a solution of Ms
wMch he may have visualized in Ms eye, but

wMch he has failed to place convincingly on the
canvas. He uses a tMck impasto and

32G Personalities in Art

his surface great ridges of claylike pigment. Above
all, he appears to have thrown overboard any feeling
that he may have possessed for pictorial invention and
for beauty. There is pathos in the story of his career,
yet it is only a weak sentimentality which will allow
his personal misfortunes to obscure the truth about his
art. -It- was •Bet-'a-gieat-azrt. Let the open-minded
observer look closely at any of his pictures, ask him
self if they convey anything like the sensation that
he feels when a work of authentic beauty swims into
his ken. When some of the paintings of Van Gogh
appeared in the famous Armory exhibition, I said
that all they had to tell us was that he was " a moder
ately competent impressionist, who was heavy-handed,
had little, if any, sense of beauty, and spoiled a lot of
canvas with crude, quite unimportant pictures." Later
exhibitions give no reason for revising this judgment.
They have shown that he had his lucky moments,
but they have made his fundamental limitations
equally plain.

XXIII

Early American Portraiture

XXIII
EARLY AMERICAN PORTRAITURE

THE origins and earlier developments of American
art have of late been receiving renewed attention. Ar
dent research is bringing highly interesting facts to
light, and the whole subject promises to be seen in a

better and more impressive perspective when its
history comes to be written conclusively. A fresh

impetus was given to this movement in connoisseur-
ship by the American wing of the exhibition which was
organized at the Metropolitan Museum for the Hud
son-Fulton celebration in 1909. That date will always

be remembered as significant of much. The Museum! I

may observe in passing^ has steadily been of service in

what I might call the aggrandizement of the Ameri
can school. I might cite evidences of a growing ap
preciation of our artistic patrimony in the activities
discernible in museums throughout the country, in
the galleries of the dealers^ in the ardor

of private collectors, and in the pubEcation of
helpful books. But I write now with ref

erence to a remarkable contribution to the sub

ject at the Union League Club in Xew York. It de
serves to be recorded as adding uniquely to the
resources of the students giving him an opportunity to

324 Personalities in Art

make a really exhaustive survey of our pioneer portrai
ture.

For many years it has been customary at this club
to hold during the winter monthly exhibitions of works
of art. The committee of members having these
in charge at various times has included men with often
deeply interesting enthusiasms. I remember an occa
sion, long ago, when John Hay was momentarily
drafted into service. He was keen upon Spanish
painting and talked to me in the most zealous fashion
about Goya and Fortuny. He had the intensest con
viction about the debt which the modern man owed
to his predecessor in respect to technic. Another
stimulating figure in former years was Thomas B.
Clarke, long known as a leading collector of American
art. In that r61e he was first concerned with his
contemporaries, but later he turned to the earlier
phases of the school, and more recently his ownership
of one of the greatest of Gilbert Stuart's portraits of
Washington has set a kind of capstone upon his
career as an advocate of the American genius in
painting. To him the Union League Club turned in
the autumn of 1921, and he proceeded to assemble
about a score of American portraits for the exhibition
of November in that year. He made a good group;
but it was obvious that he had only scratched the
surface of the subject. Interested already in the
painters involved, he realized, too, how these portraits
brought back upon the scene personalities frequently

Early American Portraiture 325

conspicuous in the social and intellectual life of our
forefathers, and he saw that he was dealing with one of
the most humanly appealing aspects of American
history. He put twenty-three more portraits on the
walls in the following month and thrice repeated Ms
effort in the winter of 1922. In January, i923? he
contrived another exhibition, and he made two early
in 1924. By the time he had hung his last group he had
shown a total of one hundred and sixty-seven portraits
by sixty-six artists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries. Nothing like this series has ever
been seen elsewhere in this country. It has made
perfectly plain the characteristics of practically all the
founders. It has illuminated dark places, bringing to
the surface men who have hitherto been only
even to the most persistent investigators; and it has
been of immeasurable service in affirming with a new
force the merits of an old tradition. I folowed the
exhibitions with the minutest care, and I can testify
whole-heartedly to their constructive value.

Samuel Isham, in the indispensable book on Ameri
can painting that he published in 1905, opens with an
assertion about the method of our Primitives that the
fundamental and mastering fact concerning it is
it is no way native to America, but was
to these shores from Europe. It is a true judgment,
but it is a mistake to take it as altogether final. Primi
tive American art is, no doubt, a derivative art; but
the interesting thing about it is that if it Inculcated

326 Personalities in Art

foreign ideas of style, it also inculcated a habit of
good painting as such. That was one of the outstand
ing lessons of the Union League Club shows. They
brought forward some astonishing illustrations of
sound technic, a technic which in some instances quite
transcended the matter of an alien origin. Gilbert
Stuart, for example, did more than pay back the
British school in its own coin. I remember one portrait
of his at the Union League which was comparable to
Velasquez rather than to Reynolds. But I anticipate
in making that allusion. Consideration ought to be
given beforehand to what I might call some of Mr.
Clarke's early surprises. He made us acquainted, for
one thing, with Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker, who came
to the New Netherlands in 1651 and died here nearly
thirty-five years later. He was a man of substance and
energy. They made him first a burgher and afterward
an alderman, and he held office as attorney-general
and sheriff. In the intervals of his career as farmer,
trader, magistrate, and office-holder generally he seems
to have functioned as a "limner/' and, by great good
luck, Mr. Clarke was able to run down two of Ms three
known portraits. The first to turn up at the dub was
one of Adrian Van der Donck, the founder of Yonkers.
It is a solid, polished affair, a capable, full-bodied bit
of painting, clearly reminiscent of the school of the
artist's native Holland. It is piquant to know that this,
the earliest portrait painted in America, allies our be
ginnings with the great tradition of Rembrandt. There

Early American Portraiture 327

is even a faint trace of a distant personal tie. Strycker's
wife had the same surname as the lady whose daughter
married the master's son Titus. The other example
of his work was a portrait of his brother Jan, painted
more freely and broadly. Both portraits made fasci
nating foot-notes to the opening pages in the story of
our school.

It is curious to remark the supremacy of portraiture
in those pages. The founders appreciated many of
the friendlier appurtenances of life. They dressed and
lived well. They liked good furniture and silver.
Never was there a people more soigne. But their fas
tidious taste demanded next to no pictorial sustenance,
and the little they had was probably brought with
other household impedimenta from abroad. The typi
cal man of property in our Dutch and English periods
might have all the refinement in the world, but he was
not precisely aesthetic. The work of art he chiefly
sought was the portrait, and he sat for this more
with the idea of obtaining a record than because he
wanted to add beauty to his belongings. It is primarily
for their value as records that the earlier portraits are
to be noticed — for that and for a certain simple sincer
ity. Pieter Vanderlyn's "Johannes Van Vechten,"
dating from 1719, which cropped out about two hun
dred years later in Mr. Clarke's first show, displayed
there the bald rigidity of a map. But the old fellows
were not always so stiff. Another of Mr. Clarke's
rarities was Henri Couturier, who was born as far back

328 Personalities in Art

as 1626. His portrait of Frederick Philipse, the
original owner of Philipse Manor, left a decidedly
good impression. The figure in its courtly dress and
with its dignified gesture, the rocky background, and
the full-rigged ship in the distance, were all painted
with a certain easy sophistication. Couturier, like
Strycker, was not by any means unworthy of the
Dutch tradition. You think from time to time of that
tradition, especially as it was filtered through Kneller,
when you are traversing early American portraiture,
though how direct its influence may have been is
another question. But it was, of course, from the
British school that our more characteristic Primitives
sprang, men like James Claypole, the first native
artist of Pennsylvania, Charles Bridges, Henry Ben-
bridge, Robert Feke, John Wollaston, and John
Smibert. I group these individuals not in exact chron
ological order, but as linked in a broad way by the
traits of our formative period. The group as a group
is, perhaps, nothing to make a song about; but there
linger in my memory the charming passages of color
and brushwork disclosed by Claypole, the faint Hogar-
thian note in Wollaston, and the dignity, the rectitude,
characterizing them all. In the honesty of their work
manship if in nothing else they prefigured the more
creative development of their school. The minor men
are sometimes not so very far from their major con
temporaries or followers. Blackburn is occasionally on
a level with the more formal work of Copley.

Early American Portraiture 329

Copley was one of those rare types in whom is
manifested the principle of growth. He painted por
traits in which he seems merely dry and inert, the
cultivator of an uninspired precision. But even in his
more restrained mood he has elegance and distinction.
His portraits of women have great aristocratic charm,
and occasionally in the portrait of a man he could rise
to heights. His celebrated "Epes Sargent" is a mon
umental design painted with power; it is almost a
masterpiece. That epithet is unreservedly to be
applied to the great "Mrs. Fort" in the Wadsworth
Athenaeum at Hartford. An American must always
feel a thrill of pride in the presence of that canvas.
Almost any of the great Englishmen might have
bettered its color, but none of them could have beaten
its swinging brushwork, its flashing bravura, or the
fine ordonnance which sets the great lady before us
in absolutely final terms. Copley was one of the out
standing painters in Mr. Clarke's array, and if the
fates had allowed him to be represented there by the
"Mrs. Fort" he would have fairly shared the honors
with Gilbert Stuart. Still, even then, it would have
been necessary to admit that he had only his moments
of spectacular triumph. Stuart was not unnaturally
the hero of the whole enterprise, for he came forth
repeatedly as an exemplar of sustained authority.
Superb Stuarts recur to me again and again as I
look back over the Union League exhibitions, a great
"Robert Thew," an even greater "Joseph Anthony,"

33O Personalities in Art

and I cannot resist the temptation to cite another
portrait seen at the Knoedler Gallery, a "William
Constable/' which for gemlike perfection and beauty
might have caused Sir Joshua, or even Gainsborough,
to look to threatened laurels. But the one shining
Stuart episode came in February, 1922, when six
teen of his portraits were hung, among them the
"Mrs. Richard Yates."

This is the portrait I had in mind when I was
moved, just now, to "drag in Velasquez." No one
who cared for pure painting could help thinking of the
Spanish master on seeing this portrait. It combines,
as a portrait by him combines, firm and weighty
statement of fact with a touch equally sure but so
light and flowing that the artist seems to be in abso
lutely effortless command of his instruments. The
brushwork is without a flaw. Not a stroke fails to
fulfil itself in the exact notation of some nuance of
form and tone. And the tone ! It is one consummate
harmony in silvery grays. Add to that some wonder
fully distinguished drawing, a felicitous composition,
and the most sympathetic interpretation of an interest
ing sitter, and you have some idea of the greatness of
this lifelike and beautiful portrait. In the preceding
month's exhibition a Stuart portrait shown was that
of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It looked a little as if it might
have been painted by the great man himself. But you
thought of nothing derivative when you stood before
the "Mrs. Richard Yates "; and if, as I have said, you

MRS. RICHARD YATES
PROM THE PORTRAIT BY GILBERT STUART

Early American Portraiture 331

thought of Velasquez it was only because Stuart and
he were obviously at one in seeking to make painted
surface exquisite.

Apropos of this question of our indebtedness to for
eign influences, the Union League exhibitions demon
strated that in one respect at least we remained
generally indifferent to what the London studios had
to teach. Although we took over from the British
portrait-painters a certain style in the placing of a
figure upon the canvas, we rejected that style when
we painted groups. Different conditions in social life
probably had something to do with it. We had
nothing here, either before or after the Revolution,
quite corresponding to the court pageantry of England.
New York or Philadelphia might have its grande dame,
but she had no occasion for carrying herself like a
duchess, and it never occurred to an American painter
to put her on canvas as though she were one. There is
nothing more pathetic about the magnificent career of
Benjamin West, magnificent in worldly success, but
artistically negligible, than his effort to paint great
English ladies in the great English style. He only fell
upon bathos. Stuart alone caught the trick. He
painted his famous full-length of Washington (the one
known as the Lansdowne type) with all the academic
aplomb of a Reynolds. But that was a tour-de-force.
The average of our response to the demands of the
statelier, more splendid formula in English portraiture
was illustrated at the Union League by Copley in his

332 Personalities in Art

"Henry Laurens." That was all furniture and back
ground, in which a stilted figure was ill at ease if not
quite lost. In the group portraits that Mr. Clarke
secured, "The Washington Family/' by Edward Sav
age, was tolerably well composed, but other examples,
by John Lewis Krimmel, Joseph Wright, and Washing
ton Alston, revealed more especially a kind of naive
naturalism. The point is not without its larger bear
ing. Not only in the group portrait but in the study
of a single sitter, the early American artist was dis
posed to infuse a measure of naturalism into the very
artifice which he brought from British sources to his
aid. That is why, as you follow American portraiture
from its earliest period down into the nineteenth
century, you are struck by its evolution into forms
persistently traditional, yet no longer predominantly
foreign.

I recognized this truth when I saw, for example, the
"Timothy Matlack" of Charles WiUson Peale. This
strong portrait of a homespun type gave forth no echo
of the English school It was racy in its simplicity,
American in its essence. The fact is that that historic
company of Americans over whom Stuart and Copley
preside bequeathed to their successors not so much a
formula as the life-blood of a formula, not so much a
tradition as the wholesome elements residing in that
tradition. The Union League exhibitions proved it.
They showed that what went on after our direct
contacts with England decreased in number was just

Early American Portraiture 333

a Mgh-minded cultivation of the good things in paint
ing: good modelling, drawing and brushwork, good
composition; in short, good artistic manners. To put
it bluntly, the founders had breeding and they passed
it on. The recipients of that precious gift varied in
force and individuality. Some of them have gone
down the wind. But it is impossible to forget Thomas
Sully, say, or John Neagle, or Samuel F. B. Morse, or
Charles Loring Elliott, or John Wesley Jarvis, or
Chester Harding. You can't forget them, because
what they did they did well, because they were not
only conscientious but really adequate craftsmen, and
because ingrained in their portraits is the characteristic
spirit of America. I have glanced at the interest which
the portraits gathered by Mr. Clarke possessed as
relics of bygone generations. Through their interven
tion there seemed to go trooping through the gallery
at the club a memorable procession of statesmen,
orators, soldiers, authors, actors, and men of affairs.
They lived upon the canvas. You knew them in their
walk and demeanor. Sometimes their painted present
ments were not only animated but beautiful. The
spectacle could not but move the observer, giving him
a sense of something fine and vital. Certainly it
could not but impress him with a conviction of the
authentic power of the early American school of
portraiture.

XXIV

The American Wing at the
Metropolitan Museum

XXIV

THE AMERICAN WING AT THE
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

ON NOVEMBER 10, 1924, there occurred in New
York an event always to be underlined in the his
tory of American art. On that day the Metropoli
tan Museum opened the doors of its new American
Wing, the building given to the city by Mr. and
Mrs. Robert W. De Forest. Behind the south fa-
gade, formerly that of the old Assay Office in Wall
Street, are rooms preserved bodily from the past
or constructed in such wise as to revive the environ
ment of the Forefathers. Within them are assembled
furniture and other objects illustrating our aesthetic
beginnings. Paintings and prints complete the en
semble. To explore the American Wing is to appre
hend in singular vividness the spirit in which those
men who made the Colonies and those who founded
the Republic lived their lives at home and superim
posed urbanity upon the site of the primeval wilder
ness. Many museums in the United States are giving
earnest attention to our earlier arts and crafts. But
the Metropolitan was the pioneer in this matter, tak
ing a crucial step when it organized the American
section of its exhibition for the Hudson-Fulton Cele
bration in 1909; it has ever since been unremittingly

337

338 Personalities in Art

active in support of the subject, and now, thanks to
the gift of this building, it makes a demonstration
that is unique not only in this country but in the
world.-

Europe has of course shown us the way where the
honoring of native art is concerned. She has an older
ancestry and in consequence greater riches. Paris,
for example, has so much that it must be divided
among different treasure-houses. She has the Louvre
and the Luxembourg, the Cluny and the Mus6e des
Arts Decoratifs. We gather under one roof the collec
tions in which we emulate all four. The circumstance
gives a delightful opportunity to the student. Here he
may, with extraordinary ease, literally "survey man
kind from China to Peru" and observe the art of his
own country in a perspective embracing all the nations
and all the centuries. For my own part I find the
American Wing more interesting as I see it groping
about for a place of its own in the cosmos that em
braces Egypt and all the rest. It does not hurt but,
rather, aids the imagination to come from antiquity
into this modern world of ours, and the trustees have
done a clever thing in so framing the plan of the new
wing that it is entered from the old main building. The
only fly in the ointment consists in the fact that the
visitor is thus kept from seeing first the Assay Office
facade. This was designed by Thompson about a
hundred years ago. In its classical dignity it proclaims
the severe mood which belonged to our formative

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 339

periods, and there would be a certain fitness in bringing
the spectator into contact with it at the very outset.
However, the scheme is too admirable as it stands for
this point to be stressed, and in the arrangement of the
wing the transition from European to American senti
ment is felicitously marked. In the little gallery
through which the approach is made, there hangs
the big portrait of "The Washington Family" which
Edward Savage painted in 1796. When I first saw
this in an exhibition at the Union League Club I
longed to see it again in the Metropolitan Museum.
It is inspiriting to find it actually there and in an
ideal position.

The American Wing does much the same sort of
thing as was done in the Swiss National Museum at
Zurich a quarter of a century ago. It reconstructs
characteristic interiors, endeavoring to minimize the
conventional museum effect and to renew, instead,
that of a veritable habitation. Space must naturally
be reserved for circulation, but so far as is consistent
with this the furniture, pictures, and so on are so dis
posed as to re-create the atmosphere in which the
original owners of these things had their being. The
only marked concession to the scientific side of mu
seum administration lies in the careful fixing of a
chronological sequence. Thus the entrance (on the
top floor of a three-story building) takes you into
the seventeenth century. Off the central beamed hall,
whose trusses have been modelled after those of

340 Personalities in Art

the Old Ship Meeting-House at Hingham, Mass., are
small rooms in which you may trace our earliest
modes of interior design. The type commemorated is,
of course, the house and not the hovel, the dwelling
which is the mirror, so to say, of the upper middle
class, the merchant class, the prosperous class, which,
if it went in for plain living, was at all events wont to
do its high thinking in simple comfort. It is with a
double purpose that I pause here to pay tribute to
Mr. R. T. H. Halsey, the distinguished collector of
Americana, who has labored heroically over a long
period in supervision of the American Wing. With
his own scholarship and with that of the many ex
perts whom he has whole-heartedly called to his
aid, he has established the wing not only with great
charm, but in what would appear to be remarkable
historical accuracy. We owe him much for that, and
we owe him thanks, too, for those numerous articles
in the Museum Bulletin into which he has packed
the lore of his subject. I shall turn to him for more
than one illuminating passage. He has seen his sub
ject steadily and seen it whole. On the top floor the
seventeenth century is luminously unfolded. The
eighteenth century is also illustrated there, and on
the floor below we are initiated more fully into its
characteristics. On the floor below that there lie per
fectly exposed before us the traits of the early Re
public.
To what do all this reconstruction and elucidation

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 341

lead? To what reflections and conclusions do they
carry us? The visitor to the American Wing will miss
the service it is there to render who fails to grasp it
as the embodiment of an idea. It is based upon ar
chaeological research, but it is concerned essentially
with warm human things. It answers first and last the
question of countless inquirers, the question as to how
the instinct for art was implanted and nourished in
the genius of the American people.

There is pleasant testimony to the frame of mind
with which we started in one of those fragments which
Mr. Halsey has ferreted out. It occurs in Edward
Johnson's "Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's
Saviour in New England" of 1642. " Further the
Lord hath been pleased/' he says, "to turn all the
wigwams, huts, and hovels the English dwelt in at
their first coming, into orderly, fair, and well-built
houses, well- furnished, many of them." You may see
the proof of this in the American Wing, going first
into the room based on the kitchen of the Capen house,
which was built in the seventeenth century at Tops-
field, Mass. It is an affair of the baldest simplicity,
but that simplicity is not rude; it is seemly and
dignified. In the neighboring room, reproducing the
parlor of the Hart house at Ipswich, the level of taste
is slightly lifted. The "summer beam" is chamfered,
taking on thereby a little more interest than attaches
to its prototype, and above the fireplace there is a
moulding on which a pattern of red and black hints at

342 Personalities in Art

an unexpected craving for color. When you get into
the Hampton room, in which the walls are covered with
the original New Hampshire panelling, you note an
extraordinary progress in taste. Primitive as it is in
epoch, this room nevertheless shows in its investiture,
especially in a corner cupboard and in the panelled
ceiling, a strong desire to overlay luxury upon comfort.
The evolution goes on into the eighteenth century
through a room from Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on
this floor, and is continued through the remaining
chambers on the lower floors until we reach a high
pitch of sophistication. In all these developments,
which I make no pretense of following step by step,
for minute details would hopelessly exhaust my few
pages, the derivation of Colonial craftsmanship from
English sources is obvious. You feel it unmistakably
in the furniture. It is the distinction of the American
Wing that it is dedicated absolutely to work of native
origin, but it forcibly brings out our early dependence
in these matters upon the land from which we sprang.
We were English in blood and in habit. We brought
over the old Jacobean and Elizabethan chest or cabi
net, and, when we lacked it, our carpenters and wood-
carvers did their best to copy the old designs and the
old style. I may cite here an apposite passage from
Dunlap:

The artists who visited the Colonies found friends and
employers; they did not need protectors. They exchanged
the products of their skill and labor for the money of the

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 343

rich., and received kindness and hospitality "in the bar
gain." Our first visitors were probably all from Great
Britain; and none stayed long. The Pilgrims who sought
refuge from oppression, and the other pioneers of coloniza
tion, had their thoughts sufficiently employed on the
arts of necessity and the means of subsistence or defence.
Their followers brought wealth and pictures and imported
from home the articles of luxury and the materials for
ornamental architecture. As wealth increased, art and
artists followed; and as the effects of that freedom which
the colonists enjoyed was felt native artists sprang up
and excelled the visitors from the fatherland.

The interesting thing to get at here is the question of
the Colonial point of view, whether it was consciously
artistic or whether it regarded art as wholly related to
that instinct for comfort and luxury to which I have
alluded. Did that liking for what the English liked,
and that disposition to cultivate the same style, flower
in a definite appreciation of art as art? Mr. Halsey
quoted in The Bulletin an advertisement published
by John Smibert, who was a dealer as well as a painter
in Boston, which points to the existence of the amateur.
It runs:

To be sold at Mr. Smiberts in Queen Street on Monday
the 26th instant. A Collection of valuable Prints, en
graved by the best Hands after the finest Pictures in
Italy, France, Holland, and England. Some by Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Poussin, Rubens, and others the greatest
masters, containing a great variety of Subjects as History
&c. Most of the Prints very rare and not to be met with
except in private collections; being what Mr. Smibert
collected in the above mentioned countries, for his own
private use and improvement.

344 Personalities in Art

Mr. Halsey tells me, too, that buyers of prints in
the old days were more than lavish, sometimes fairly
spotting a wall with engravings. The American Wing
happily refrains from reproducing this foible. Both
its paintings and its prints are restrained in number.
Its testimony is, notwithstanding, in confirmation of
the significance of Smibert's advertisement. It is
clear that the Forefathers liked to embellish their walls.
You may see that also in the several rooms in the
wing which are adorned with Chinese painted paper
or with pictorial papers printed in France. Still, the
picture for its own sake was long in coming into its
own. The portrait, painted or engraved, is the charac
teristic thing, and that functioned primarily as a
record, not as a source of sensuous pleasure.

Apropos of the sensuous note it is suggestive to
observe the matter of color in the early American
social fabric. I have glanced at the modest gleam of
decoration in red and black over the mantelpiece in
the reproduction of the Hart parlor. The rudimentary
color-sense there manifested was bound to develop.
It crops out more bravely in imported textiles, in
hangings of painted cotton, and in velvet cushions.
On the rush or wooden seats of some of the old chairs
in the American Wing there are flung cushions of
ruby or emerald velvet. The color sets off the furniture
delectably to the modern eye, and I can imagine the
pleasure it gave to the Colonial housewife, how it
brought something jocund into an otherwise sober

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 345

Interior. But musing in these rooms I have been
greatly impressed by their sobriety. We are apt
to think of the typical Colonial interior as an affair
of brilliant white contrasted with glistening dark
mahogany. That is a misinterpretation. In the seven
teenth century panelling was left the natural color of
the wood, without oiling or polishing, and when it was
painted it was more often gray or blue or green. I
don't think, by the way, that their tints, then or later,
were particularly happy. On the contrary, some of
those in the American Wing are interesting only for
their fidelity to precedent. Intrinsically they are of a
deadly bleakness, some of the coldest, most inartistic
tints I ever saw. The panelling in the room from
Woodbury, Long Island, for example, may have
pleased the farmer for whom it was made, but if the
color he saw was what we see — and there is no reason
to doubt it — we may be sure that he stayed a farmer
unillumined by any of the subtleties of art.

I don't think they were very subtle folk, these
ancestors of ours. I don't think there was anything
recondite about their aesthetic outlook at all. Indeed,
it is an open question as to whether the word "aes
thetic" had any great status in their vocabulary. As
I have indicated, I do not see them as collectors in the
strict sense, even though they had their occasional
collections of prints and ceramics. I see them, rather,
just as people of good breeding and consequent good
taste. Art as the American Wing puts it before us,

346 Personalities in Art

art as it was brought over from England, and some
what artlessly nurtured here, was wreaked upon noth
ing more nor less than social amenity. And in its very
detachment from the milieu of the collector, the con
noisseur, it kept itself free to strengthen the one
quality which was to prove, aesthetically, our salva
tion. The seasoned collector pays a certain penalty
for his r61e. It makes him a complex being and makes
his taste eclectic. We began with a strong tincture of
fairly classical simplicity, and the outstanding lesson
of the American Wing is that it stayed with us for full
two hundred years. We wax in sophistication as time
goes on. We are susceptible to rococo influences now
and then. (There is a piquant instance in the room
with painted decorations on the second floor, brought
from Marmion in Virginia.) But chiefly our sophis
tication finds its efflorescence in grace and elegance.
Our good taste stands firm. Our restraint is unshaken.
You can see our evolution in perhaps its most eloquent
phases if you observe the big ballroom taken out of
Gadsby's Tavern at Alexandria, Virginia, and the
room from the Powel house in Philadelphia. To the
former, I may note in passing, Washington came for
his last birthnight ball, in 1798, riding over from
Mount Vernon, only eight miles away. The Powel
room is richer than the ballroom, serving to show how
wealth asserted itself, but both have the same austere
stateliness.
It is beautiful to see how the purity and reserve

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 347

in matters of style, which we have now to gain
through education, were then practised by our crafts
men and their patrons quite naturally and as a
matter of course. The visitor to the American Wing
will see clearly enough, if he gives his mind to it,
the idea, and the ideal there enshrined. He will
see that the Forefathers liked as part of their
measured, well-mannered mode of carrying them
selves in the world a cool, serene, and handsome
environment. They liked gracious lines, telling par
ticularly in the delicately wrought mouldings of wain
scot, panelling, and cornice. They liked a brilliant
chandelier, a shining lustre. With high appreciation
and always without extravagance, they welcomed
Chippendale and Sheraton, and took to their hearts
the architectural motives of Robert and James Adam.
They were always without extravagance, I have said,
and I repeat the words because they affirm a fastidious
ness at the core of the subject. There was luxury in
that old America beyond a doubt. When John Adams
made a note of the dinner that he had at "Mr. Nick
Boylston's" one winter night in 1766, he added these
words: "Went over the house to view the furniture,
which alone cost a thousand pounds sterling. A seat ft
is for a nobleman, a prince. The Turkey carpets, the
painted hangings, the marble tables, the rich beds
with their crimson damask curtains and counterpanes,
the beautiful chimney-clock, the spacious garden, are
the most magnificent of anything I have ever seen."

348 Personalities in Art

Gorgeous it must have been to leave Adams so breath
less, but it is certain that it had a fundamental sim
plicity infinitely removed from one of those ex
otic interiors in which your modern Maecenas is
lodged.

It is the key to the American Wing, this simplicity,
and with it there goes a kind of beauty. Both elements
pervade the whole broad scheme, the rooms as rooms
and the pictures that they make of our earlier civili
zation. Moreover, the spirit of the place is exemplified
again in those smaller objects which diversify and fill
out the general design. Consider the pottery, the glass,
and the silver, especially the silver. Our craftsmen
were never more judicious or more suave than when
they worked in silver. It is of the craftsmen, to tell
the truth, more than of the artist in the ordinary
acceptation of the term, that you think in the Ameri
can Wing. American painting has its place here, but
the portraits by Stuart, Peale, Trumbull, Morse, and
so on are displayed less for themselves than as details.
Though I am tempted to speak of some of these
canvases, which represent some highly important
painters, beginning with Strycker, and include some
notable pieces in the Charles A. Munn bequest, it
is the grand design which I am more concerned to
emphasize. It has been carried out in the grand style.
In a thousand ways the Metropolitan Museum has
made itself indispensable to the nation, but never
hitherto has it rendered a service so intensely national

The American Wing at the Metropolitan 349

in character. Americans need to know the soil in
which the evolution of their art is rooted. Here, as in a
laboratory, it is made plain to them. The wing has an
educational value beyond measurement.

XXV

The American Business Building

XXV
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS BUILDING

SOME man of imagination, half philologist and half
poet, should give his mind to the renaming of the
categories of architecture. These are, no doubt, ac
curately enough designated as they stand. When you
talk of domestic or ecclesiastical architecture you know
pretty well where you are, though it must be admitted,
as regards the first, that there is a certain organic
difference between a suburban bungalow and a house
like Chatsworth. But what are you to do about that
particular kind of architecture which has been de
veloped by the business conditions in American life?
It is called "commercial," and against that possibly
convenient but nevertheless pinched and inadequate
essay in nomenclature I disgustedly rebel. It takes no
account of the particular and peculiarly artistic charac
teristics of the kind of building to which I wish in this
survey to refer. Within a period of a scant thirty-five
or forty years American architects have been tackling
so-called "commercial" problems in a spirit of their
own and with results unique in the world. They have
taken one of the raciest aspects of the American genius
and interpreted it in terms of beauty, producing a
• body of architecture meet for honorable description.

353

354 Personalities in Art

I want some word which will ally it not only to
the things of the market-place but to the things
of the soul, a word worthy of the new creative art
which it represents, a word as spiritually indicative
as "romantic" or "classical." This architecture is
rooted in the most practical phase of our civilization,
but you cannot call it a prosaic thing, for it has brought
out a fairly inspired audacity in designers and it
constitutes an achievement not only in ingenuity but
in taste. Was there anything partaking of the ordi
nary nature of prose in the imagination of Cass Gilbert
when he conceived the Woolworth Building? He had
there, rather, the poetic inspiration of his life. Yet I
dare say the questions that pressed upon him as he
sat down to his plan began with the hard issues of
engineering and embraced all manner of demands for
those things that are summed up in the phrase "rent-
ing-space." Your "commercial" architecture misses
its destiny if it does not "pay." The triumph of the
American architect has consisted in his extorting from
that obligation a type of architectural beauty.

It has all happened within the memory of living
men. As recently as the eighties, in fact, they were still
putting up terrible facades of cast iron, facades all the
more terrible because they played ducks and drakes
with the classical orders. But it was in that period, too,
that the change began. It was a swift affair, part and
parcel of that instinct for speed and mutability which
is the very life-blood of the American people. We are

The American Business Building 355

nothing if not rapid in our movements, and I recall
with some chagrin an instance of this in the very
chapter of evolution with which I am dealing here.
It was in the eighties that McKim, Mead & White
erected the Columbia Bank on the southeast corner of
Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. The facade
on the avenue was narrow, that on the street was long.
The first stages were rusticated stone. Brick and
terra-cotta carried up to the cornice. The design was
that of a Florentine palazzo with loggias at the top,
and it was a little gem, one of the gracefulest monu
ments the city ever possessed. Where is that building
now ? It was razed to make way for a broader structure
about double its height. But if the reader wants to
see how our renaissance in this field was begun he may
happily still do so by looking at the building of the
De Vinne Press, in Lafayette Street, which dates from
1881. The late Theodore L. De Vinne was himself a
man of high ideals, a printer who took typography
for what it is, one of the greatest of the arts; and when
he set out to house his business he went to architects
of distinction, to Babb, Cook & Willard. They made
him a design which to this day proudly maintains a
standard of beauty amid its commonplace surround
ings. The building is beautiful in its true proportions,
in its distribution of the apertures, in its fine lines,
and in its expression of the strength and the sim
plicity befitting the purpose for which it was con
structed. Consider the dignity and the positive charm

356 Personalities in Art

of this building and then ask if there is not something
lacking in the designation of it as merely "commer
cial" architecture. Of course I'll admit that the
designation is reasonable, but I repeat that I hanker
after a phrase which would somehow transcend the
signification of the term to which we are at present
confined.

Work like that done in the De Vinne Building has
been going on in the United States ever since; and I
make not the smallest pretense of touching in these
brief remarks upon anything like the generous propor
tion of the landmarks in our architectural progress
which industry and business have developed all over
the country. I can, instead, glance at only a few repre
sentative monuments. But those few have tremen
dous meaning. I don't think it would be possible to
exaggerate the import of Russek's, formerly the Gor-
ham Building, which Stanford White completed in
1906 — its intrinsic beauty and its influence upon
American architecture. White built their marble Ve
netian palazzo for the Tiffanys at about the same time,
and for artistic quality it is hard to choose between
the two; but as the years have gone on and I have
gazed with delight upon them both thousands of
times, I have found myself more and more coming
back to the gray stone walls of the old Gorham
Building as making a masterpiece apart. Here, to
begin with, was an inspiring problem: the housing of
a business dedicated to one of the precious metals.

RUSSEK'S

FROM THE BUILDING BY McKIM, MEAD & WHITE

The American Business Building 357

The building had to possess both weight and delica
cy. A certain elegance was to preside over its bulk.
White saw to that with unerring taste and felicity in
the columns and arches with which he started, in the
cornice surmounting them, and in the sculptured dec
oration he introduced. Then he struck the nicest
balance in the four stories above them, using just the
right restrained touch in his shallow pilasters at the
corners, in his balconies, in the sills for the windows,
and in the heraldic ornamentation crowning this part
of the facade; and for his final stage he set his tall
grilled windows between columns that support a deep
and gloriously decorative cornice. The thing is su
perb and it has two especially outstanding merits. In
the first place, it is original, a work of great personal
style, a building unlike anything that had come before
and unsurpassed since. Secondly, it is a consummate
affirmation of the American genius, practical, contem
poraneous, a perfect fulfilment of every-day utilitarian
needs, a work of usefulness which is a work of beauty.
Imagination boggles at the idea of our ever having to
give up this building for a taller one.

The merely tall building will always -be with us, but
it is interesting to note that tallness by itself no
longer has anything talismanic about it, is no longer
an obsessing preoccupation — and this I say in spite of
the fact that rumors about the vast building which is
to take the place of the old Madison Square Garden
promise a higher altitude than that of the Woolworth

358 k Personalities in Art

Building. From the beginning, American architects
have been feeling their way toward a mitigation of
pure vertical dimensions. Years ago I heard a story of
what John W. Root dreamed of when he and his
partner, Dan Burnham, pioneering in the erection of
skyscrapers, built one of their first compositions, I
think it was the Monadnock Building in Chicago.
He wanted to do something about the coloration of
the simple facade which would simulate the upward
rush of flame. Root would have made some interesting
experiments, I imagine, if he had lived; he would have
done something to romanticize the subject. As it
happened, when Burnham went on alone he was some
times grandiose, but only through sheer bulk; and if
there is anything romantic about the Flatiron Build
ing in New York it is an accidental imposition due to
the eccentric nature of the site rather than to the
expression of any emotion in the architect. Burnham
did a great deal of distinguished work, but he did it,
like most of his colleagues, within the rather rigid
confines of an accepted formula. The difference be
tween his regime and the new is defined very effectively
by the Hanna Building in Cleveland, designed by
Charles A. Platt It is not so tall as the Flatiron, but
it is tall enough. Like the Flatiron, it stands at a
corner coming almost to a point; and though the two
fagades extend to a much greater breadth, the idea of
the prow of a ship asserts itself as you stand on Euclid
Avenue and study the great gray mass. This is one

The American Business Building 359

of the major buildings in the country, subtly Renais
sance in style but, like the old Gorham Building,
possessing an essentially personal quality. As a mass
it has great power, great force, and this is tinctured
by a singular beauty in all the linear elements that
lend relief to bulk and add charm to strength. It is
an illustration of " commercial" architecture studied
in the finest spirit, with warmth, delicacy, and
flexibility.

The zoning laws came to lend aid to the architect
in New York when they determined that a facade
should be recessed above a certain height, and the
city is already rich in examples of the taste and skill
which which the new opportunity has been exploited.
Our sky-line has entered upon a period of transfor
mation during which almost any picturesqueness may
be expected. I can cite no better design in illustration
of this latest advance than that which Benjamin
Wistar Morris gave us when he erected the Cunard
Building at that point at which Broadway emerges
from contact with Bowling Green. There is a noble
landmark if ever there was one. He had in the firm and
its great fleet an historic institution to commemorate,
and he went about it matching heroic scale with a
fairly majestic inspiration. The immense f ajade rests
upon a rusticated base, with arches, columns, and
cornice modifying its grimness; and it soars dizzily
until it reaches the prescribed height, then recedes
thrice until it reaches the roof. Twenty-five years

360 Personalities in Art

ago this problem would have bewildered an architect,
and he would have been practically defeated by the
task. Morris grappled with it out of a fund of origin
ality, and — the all-important point — he saw his
gigantic facade as a whole, refused to be baffled by
his necessarily serried windows, and developed an or
ganic unit of architectural interest and beauty. I
don't wonder that our sublime British brethren, so
patronizing in their reception of things like "the great
American novel/' forget to condescend when they are
confronted by such an achievement as the Cunard
Building. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the
world, and I cannot too often point out that what
makes such architecture impressive is not by any
means its scale alone but the superimposition of
beauty upon scale and the exact correspondence be
tween these things and the needs of our time. Could
anything be racier, more modern, more true? It is
the American soul in architecture. We are a busy,
hard-working people, dear-eyed and energetic, wor
shipping efficiency, tending instinctively to bigness in
enterprise, and widely occupied not only in the piling
up of money but in the spending of it with a well-nigh
imperial gesture. You read it all in the might and
splendor of a Cunard Building. There is momentary
amusement in the reflection that here a British organi
zation is subdued to the stuff in which it works. With
its business as American as it is English, the Cunard
Line adjusts its tradition to the New York environ-

The American Business Building 361

ment, falls into step with our whole movement, and
finds itself expressed in the terms of an intensely
American architecture.

I do not mean that there are no gorgeous business
buildings in England. The Cunard offices in Liver
pool are not by any means negligible from an archi
tectural point of view. But they are a flea-bite
compared to the offices in New York. The observer
will smile again if, as he enters the latter, he will
let his mind revert to those canonical quarters with
which, according to generations of English writers,
the English business man has always been content.
If, when you are writing a romance of life in London,
you want to be impeccable as to your "local
color" you know well enough what to do. Pursue
your famous solicitor up a flight of creaking steps
in a dingy little building, follow him down a dark
passage, and, when you have placated a snuffy clerk
in a poverty-stricken anteroom, come to speech with
the great man among japanned boxes looking even
more antique than they are in the light that filters
dimly through unwashed windows. You are in the
presence of the oracle of dukes. That, at all events,
is what we have been led to believe, along with the
circumstance that if an English millionaire sometimes
functions in an office of the American style, he is as
likely to be discovered in a den that would be repu
diated by a small retail merchant in South Bend, Ind.
Well, cherishing these memories, as I say, let the

362 Personalities in Art

reader visit the great hall in the Cunard Building.
I verily believe that if a certain type of British business
man were to do so he would fall in a fit. Almost you
might be in the Vatican. The deep-domed chamber
goes clear through to the back of the building. The
walls are of mellow travertine. The domes rest on
piers which are themselves pierced by arches, so that
repeated swelling curves lighten the austerity of a hall
well over 150 feet deep. On the walls there are huge
maps of the Cunard routes, painted by Barry Faulk
ner, and on ceiling and pendentives Ezra Winter has
brilliantly painted decorations reviving in an enchant
ing harmony the traditions of Raphael and Pintu-
ricchio. This more than spacious room is Medicean
in its stateHness and sumptuous character.

It will be remarked that in this apotheosis of " com
mercial" architecture the enhancement of the interior
has kept pace with the creative development of the
faf ade, and in this the banking business has played a
distinctive part. Every one, I am sure, has noticed
it, and I might cite evidence from almost any direction.
What first impressed it upon me was not, to tell the
truth, a design of spectacular dimensions, but a bijou
of a bank designed by Cross & Cross for a branch of
the Guaranty Trust Company at Madison Avenue
and Sixtieth Street. It is much used by women, and
though it is an absolutely businesslike place, it has the
delicate, even exquisite, traits which would be sympa
thetic to its clientele. The depositor here might come

The American Business Building 363

from her Adam drawing-room or from some such
surroundings to the bank and not feel that she had
stepped out of her atmosphere. The black-and-white
scheme is as cool and serene as flawless taste could
make it, and there is no detail anywhere that does not
fit into the picture. The place has the finish of the
proverbial Swiss watch. One would think that such a
finish was only attainable in a building of limited
dimensions, but, as I have indicated, the note of
grandeur recurs again and again in the architectural
development we are considering, and it strongly marks
the work of the architects who have in some sort
brought the subject to a culmination.

Thirty-odd years ago Philip Sawyer was a young
architect in the office of McKim, Mead & White. So
was Edward P. York. They did together some jobs of
their own and sometime in the late nineties launched
forth definitely as the firm of York & Sawyer. Later
the partnership included Louis Ayres and L. M.
Franklin, both likewise McKim men, and in still
another partner, F. S. Benedict, they have a graduate
from the office of Babb, Cook & Willard. It is perhaps
worth noting that among the five there is a voice which
occasionally remembers the accents of the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, but the important point is denoted in
my allusions to McKim and Babb. This younger force,
in short, has been trained in the American tradition,
its use of Italian Renaissance motives having been
determined chiefly by experience at home. The style

364 Personalities in Art

which York & Sawyer have formed for themselves is
a style pure and scholarly, spiritually classical but
never academic or muscle-bound. It is embodied in
buildings of many kinds and uses, all of them distin
guished; but on this occasion I would pay tribute to
these architects chiefly as designers of banks. Two
of them in New York without question give to York
& Sawyer a status incomparable here or abroad. One
is the Bowery Savings Bank, on Forty-second Street
just east of Park Avenue. The other is the Greenwich
Savings Bank, the site of which stretches from Broad
way to Sixth Avenue on Thirty-sixth Street. The
facades in both cases are beautifully designed. The
three of the Greenwich, of reasonable height, are
purely classical, using the Corinthian order, with a
simple attic rising above the columns. The Bowery
is of Romanesque origin, and for all its historic deriva
tion presents a very fresh and unconventional effect.
You could not pass either building without an im
pulse of admiration. Enter either of them and you
behold banking architecture in excelsis.

I have figured the surprise of the British business
man seeing the Cunard Building for the first time.
Downright stupefaction would overtake old Meyer
Rothschild if the founder of that famous fortune
could revisit the glimpses of the moon and pass into
the building of the Bowery Savings Bank, memories
clustering thick about him of his ancient and obscure
Frankfort lair. "This isn't a banking-room," he

The American Business Building 365

would exclaim in his bewilderment. " It is a hall be
longing to a Roman Emperor/' Only it is a banking-
room, one brought to the highest point of everything
that spells efficiency in banking processes. The room
is 200 feet long and nearly 80 feet in width, but there
isn't an inch of waste space in it. The network of
compartments for the staff is islanded on the great
marble floor, and around it the area for the circulation
of the public is exactly proportioned to the scale of the
whole. The ceiling, 65 feet high, looks down on a
scene in which there is nothing haphazard but in which
each detail has a function and completes a balance.
The ceiling is itself richly decorated. It is borne by
walls in which engaged columns of varied marbles
support massive arches. All along on either side the
walls are panelled in mosaic as discreet in tone as
so much ivory. There is no undue emphasis anywhere.
The columns, as I have said, are of different marbles,
and with the same substance the floor is as richly be-
dight as that of many an Italian church. Gold gleams
from the sculptured counter screen. The architects
have had a perfect Sardanapalian debauch of marble
and bronze, and in the walls themselves they have
sought richness of surface, mixing Ohio sandstone with
Indiana variegated limestone. It sounds of Byzantium.
But it is sanely and magnificently of New York in
1925. These gifted men have always known when and
how to restrain themselves, and they have painted
their glowing picture so harmoniously that as the light

366 Personalities in Art

comes through wide expanses of amber glass at either
end and falls through the lofty roof panes, one is first
aware of it as adequate illumination and then delight
ed with the mellowness of its revelation. The room
falls into one reposeful tone, like a chord of organ
music.

Lovers of art make pilgrimages to see renowned
pictures and cathedrals. I urge them to make a pil
grimage to this work of American architecture, and
when they conclude, as I know they will, that they
never saw a handsomer room, the thing for them to do
is to go down to the Greenwich Savings Bank and to
observe that there York & Sawyer have, if anything,
surpassed themselves. Here again we have a room of
noble dimensions, this time 120 feet long by 86 feet
wide, with a coffered ceiling 72 feet high. Here again
the staff works behind a counter screen islanded as in
the bank further up-town. But this time the room
is elliptical and the result is one of the most beautiful
in the world. It gave me one of the most thrilling
moments I have ever known in architecture. I had a
fleeting impression as of a tour-de-force,I wondered if I
had come upon just a daring "stunt." But the longer
I pondered the design the more I realized how deeply
studied it was. There are, of course, no columns here,
save at the ends. The great curving walls rise in
unfretted simplicity, unbroken save by a few shrewdly
placed false windows, filled with pierced stone. Look
at the individual things that go to make up this lovely

The American Business Building 367

ensemble. Look at the floor, look at the mouldings,
look at the very benches placed here and there against
the walls and at the lighting fixtures, which reproduce
the lines of some ornate Renaissance marvel in metal.
Once more, as at the Bowery, the part plays into the
hands of the unit, and in this case it goes to vitalize
a conception at once massy and graceful, a thing of
exultant strength and of beguiling charm. It is in the
grand style and yet it makes a fairly intimate appeal.
While you are impressed by those antique wall sur
faces you are joyously uplifted by the flowing line of
the ellipse.

How buoyantly and masterfully American it is!
What a stir of creative energy these eloquent walls
proclaim ! Those who care for American architecture
must rejoice when they see a room like this, a room
genuinely worthy of the school to which McKim gave
such impetus when he built the Pennsylvania Ter
minal. And it springs straight from the core of our
national life, straight from the fundamental sources of
the American genius. That is the exciting thing about
our "commercial" architecture. It expresses what we
do and what we are in one of our most characteristic
fields of endeavor. It is full of our spirit, of our
imagination. Does the reader wonder at my wanting
a word, a phrase, which would do new honor to this
new growth in our art?

XXVI

American Industrial Art

XXVI
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL ART

FURNITURE — if I may risk a figure that through
the association of ideas might seem a little absurd —
furniture is in the air. So is wall-paper. So is silver
ware and so are window hangings. In fact, all the
appointments of a well-regulated American home are
being discussed as they never were before. The Ameri
can home is being made over, and the interesting
thing about the transformation is that it is proceeding
not on an artistic impetus alone, in the strict sense,
but from the adjustment of the practical and mechani
cal genius of the country to ends both artistic and
commercial. How irrelevant that last word must
sound in the ear of the dilettante and how whole
somely apposite it really is ! Undoubtedly, when
Benvenuto Cellini fashioned the great saltcellar at
Vienna he made it beautiful because he loved his
craft, but he did the best he could with it, too, be
cause he was "filling a job."

It is possible to be too romantic, too sentimental,
about the ideals of the craftsmen of the past. Good
art in industry has always been a matter of good
business, and disciplinary pressure from without has
been pretty nearly as important as inspiration surging
from within. I do not doubt that when Oeben and

37i

372 Personalities in Art

Eiesener labored across the years on the prodigious
desk in the Louvre they had a salutary consciousness
of the fact that they were carrying out a commission
for the King. In short, artists though they were, they
had a sense of trade responsibility. It is an ancient
faith. Observe, in M. Saglio's concise summary, the
rule of law followed by the mediaeval French huchiers,
or cabinetmakers :

No one could aspire to the title of a master cabinet
maker who had not served an apprenticeship of six years,
at the end of which he would have to submit to an exam
ination before a selected jury, and be called upon to exe
cute in the house of one of them, without any assistance,
a masterpiece on some prescribed theme that should test
to the uttermost his power of dealing successfully with the
difficulties of his profession. The manufacture of any
furniture in wood except in the licensed ateliers was strictly
forbidden, as was also the buying or selling of anything
produced elsewhere. To set against these restrictions,
master cabinetmakers were bound to send forth none but
work of the highest quality, alike of material and execu
tion; it must all be in Ion bois loyal et marchand, under
penalty of having anything inferior publicly burned before
their doors, and having to pay a fine of ten crowns.

Now it would of course be appropriate to dilate
upon the artistic conscience of the cabinetmaker here
suggested; appropriate and just. But do not let us
forget his solicitude for his bill. He knew perfectly
well that if that was to be cheerfully and promptly
paid it would be becaipe he had satisfied a customer,
met an obligation in the open market.

American Industrial Art 373

I keep the economic aspect of the subject in mind
because it has made so deep an impression upon me
when I have seen at the Metropolitan Museum in
New York the remarkable exhibitions of American
industrial art organized there. They are exhibitions of
beautiful things, and what makes them significant is
their representation of that intensely American factor
in modern life, quantity production. They form a
series of shows having a certain historical status. The
American craftsman is no new type. We have had our
famous pioneers in carpentry and cabinetmaking,
in glass and pewter, and so on. Paul Revere is remem
bered not only for his historic ride but for his silver
ware. There are collectors who specialize with some
thing like religious passion in the furniture of Duncan
Phyfe. In 1909, when the Metropolitan Museum held
its great exhibition commemorative of the tercen
tenary of the discovery of our river by Henry Hudson
and the centenary of Fulton's first use of steam in its
navigation, a goodly proportion of the space was
given to early American furniture and utensils. These
things could not promote the revival, out of hand, of
Colonial ideas and types of craftsmanship, but they
did have a constructive influence. They had some
effect upon style in current manufacture and they had
more in setting people thinking. They have been
thinking ever since, and this is where the Museum
again comes in.

Recognizing in the most liberal spirit the force of

374 Personalities in Art

that clause in its charter which dedicates it3 among
other things, to "the application of art to manufac
ture," it has for many years steadily developed its
collections of industrial art. More recently it has
actively pursued the subject in those administrative
ways which can do so much to make an institution of
tangible service in the community. It has done every
thing possible to encourage the practical student. It
has lent all the facilities in the world to the designer
and manufacturer. An extraordinarily rich library
has been placed at their disposal, to reinforce the aid
embodied in the collections. An efficient staff has
always been on the spot to lend willing co-operation,
and in 1918 one of its members, Mr. Richard F. Bach,
was appointed Associate in Industrial Arts to preside
over the department and in every way to further its
usefulness. He frequents shops, factories, and design
ing-rooms, knows machinery as well as men, and in the
presence of a brocade or a cretonne or a wall-paper,
to cite only one or two examples, can tell you how the
thing was made and exactly what progress it stands for
in the history of its particular craft. The Museum
not only has an amazing number of trade papers in its
files but keeps in touch with their editors. It welcomes
the manufacturer, and the manufacturer, it is good
to know, responds with growing enthusiasm, though
it would be, perhaps, too much to say that the trade
in toto is as yet aware of what art can do to bring
culture and commercialism together. The modern

American Industrial Art 375

manufacturers have not by any means renewed the
solidarity of those mediaeval huchiers to whom I have
alluded. Some of them harbor jealousies of their
rivals. Some of them are fearful of exhibiting outside
their own warerooms an object of their making; they
shiver at the thought of the possible snooping of
one of their ideas. The middleman, that portentous
phenomenon, is occasionally an obstructionist. There
are, indeed, divers reactionary elements with which
the Museum has to reckon. But the good work has
gone on in spite of them.

Seven or eight years ago the Museum opened in a
small way an exhibition of manufactures based on
study of the collections. Annually this demonstration
has been repeated, always increasing in scope, until,
in 1922, the largest single gallery in the building, the
familiar one reserved for special exhibitions, was as
signed to the purpose. There were twenty-six exhibi
tors in the first year, thirty-seven in the second,
seventy-eight in the third, and so on through a scale
always rising. Hundreds of pieces are now shown.
Hitherto the policy of the Museum has adhered to the
point that all of the work shown should be work influ
enced by study of its collections. This was a reasonable
and desirable attitude. It was important for the
Metropolitan to affirm the nature and value of its re
sources — as Mr. Bach has expressed it in The Bulletin,
to broadcast Museum usefulness to the manufacturer,
"on the wings of commerce and along the crowded

376 Personalities in Art

channels of sale and purchase." Nothing could do
this better than an annual collection of objects giving
the most tangible possible of evidences of contact
with the collections. I have followed the shows from
the beginning and have seen the remarkable growth
they have registered.

It has been a mixed growth, and I cannot forbear
deviation here into a curious phase in the development
of American taste. That taste, after all, must have a
lot to do with the proceedings of the manufacturer;
and he has been seriously affected by our cult for
Europe. It is a cult that under the right hands may
promote exquisite emulation of a Renaissance Italian
interior, French or English precedent, or under the
wrong hands it may bring about nothing more than
the accumulation of exotic and expensive junk. There
is the classical anecdote of the lady who was showing
her new house to a friend and opened a door, saying:
"This is our Louis Quinze room." Quoth the visitor:
"What makes you think so?" I remember an eigh
teenth-century French room "somewhere in the
United States," a little affair in Reckitt's blue and
chalk-white. It added a new shudder to life. One sees
an "Italian" drawing-room sometimes that looks like
nothing on earth so much as a hotel lobby. I have
detected some reverberations from that meretricious
world in the exhibitions at the Museum. At any rate,
they have indicated a marked dependence upon the
historic model, not so much emulation as imitation.

American Industrial Art 377

But a change has been going on all the time, and the
exhibition of 1924 took memorable account of it. It
released the manufacturer from any obvious alliance
with the Museum collections, permitting him to sub
mit objects simply of American design and manufac
ture, with emphasis on the point that they illustrated
quantity production. This last term was interpreted to
mean either the production of many identical pieces at
one time from a single design or the production of
identical pieces from time to time according to the
same original model or pattern. Finally, I must note
that the exhibition was restricted absolutely to work
falling within the year 1923. The subject was thus
brought up to date in the fullest possible sense. The
public was shown on a large scale what I may call
the high lights in American industrial art.

It is the broad illumination they cast rather than
their character in detail that concerns me here, but I
confess it is tempting to pause upon a few specific
items. I simply can't resist the temptation to pay a
passing tribute to one man whose memory the show
brought back to me, the late Edward F. Caldwell, one
of the most charming artists I ever knew* I used to
know him in the old days when he designed fixtures
in the firm known, I think, as the Archer-Pancoast
Company. He used to do things for Stanford White,
White had a wonderful way of attracting the best
workers. If he designed a panelled room, it was
executed for him by the old Austrian Joseph Cabus,

378 Personalities in Art

one of the finest cabinetmakers we ever had. His
houses were painted by John Sarre, who came from
the Isle of Guernsey, and brought a marvellous French
touch to his work. When White was looking for fix
tures he went to Caldwell, and there was simply
nothing that Caldwell could not do. He knew aU the
historical styles, and he had invention of his own.
Thirty years ago he made chandeliers that are beauti
ful works of art to this day. He started a business of
his own, and this firm, Edward F. Caldwell & Com
pany, splendidly carries on the tradition it owes to
him. In one of the exhibitions I have in mind, it
illustrated his principle of doing many things well.
It sent andirons and a fire-screen, and offered, be
sides, the appointments for a desk, boxes, and so on,
done daintily in "Battersea" enamel. In the one
instance you had strength, in the other delicacy, and
in both you had good design. That was Caldwell all
over. It would have tickled him if he could have
lived to see the idea which he followed in rather lonely
fashion now being recognized by an ever-growing
company. There were other things recalling his
tradition at the Museum. One of them was a chan
delier of hammered pewter and brass, designed by
Walter W. Kantack, and made by his firm, Kantack,
Heath & Warman. It was a shining example of what
has come over American manufacture, the vitalizing
of old European idioms of style in work so sound and
so beautiful that you had no thought of mere imitation

American Industrial Art 379

but were simply conscious of the American designer
and craftsman falling naturally into step with their
predecessors and taking beauty in their stride.

There is surely no reason why they should be
original at the expense of immemorial convention.
That way there often lies nothing but strained fantas
ticality. I remember the splash that was made in the
Salon by the French craftsman Carabin. No wonder
he got himself noticed ! He would carve a goblin atop
a chair-back or reveal him climbing up over the edge
of a table. Then the craze for Vart nouveau set in and
furniture abroad looked more or less like the notorious
"Nude Descending a Staircase." In the earlier exhibi
tions at the Museum there were repetitions, as I have
said, of established motives, but, thank heaven, there
were no freaks. There wasn't even the ghost of one in
the eighth show, the show of 1924. It was sane,
conservative, a model of good taste. Did it disclose
any thing like genius? Hardly that. A William Morris
turns up only once in a generation. There are some
wall-papers of his that have never been rivalled. In
design and in color he made them fairly superb. Yet
there were some fascinating wall-papers at the Metro
politan, shown by fully a dozen firms. And in the
textile field our American manufacturers need hardly
fear comparison with Morris. The makers of rugs and
velvets, tapestries and damasks, cretonnes and silks
came magnificently into the foreground in a group so
large and imposing that I do not pretend to enumerate

Personalities in Art

its members. All I can do is to render homage to the
beauty of their fabrics, the sound design in them, and
the high character of their manufacture.

The matter of design inevitably first attracts at
tention, and this is a matter which is being taken more
and more seriously. A recent incident makes this
manifest. Not long ago Mr. Michael Friedsam, of
the Altaian firm, offered to the Architectural League
an Art and Industry Medal to be awarded annually to
the man doing most to apply artistic ideals to commer
cial production in America. This golden tribute,
which Mr. Friedsam proposes to maintain in perpe
tuity, was bestowed for the first time upon Mr. Henri
Creange, who as Art Director of Cheney Brothers has
had an immense influence upon the creation of beauty
in their fabrics. I saw the result of his activity at the
Museum show and I have observed it elsewhere. The
Cheneys have done enchanting things, and it is patent
that they could not have done them to the same extent
without Mr. Creange. In industrial art, as in painting
or sculpture, you are always coming back to the indi
vidual, and there the subject involves a grave problem,
In his invaluable report on "Art in Industry," a
volume indispensable to the investigator, Mr. Charles
R. Richards has among his " Conclusions " a significant
passage. "We must have better designers," he says;
"not that we have not good designers in the art
industries to-day., but we have not enough of the
highest training or capacity to meet the advancing

American Industrial Art 381

demand. Our manufacturers in certain industries go
to France and other countries for their best designs,
not because they can thus obtain them more cheaply,
not even because of the prestige of Paris, but because
they can find there better designs.57 Mr. Richards
places the emphasis upon the need for more training.
He says that only a minority of the designers in our
art industries have received this aid to development.
It is in the hands of the art schools to a large extent,
but episodes like the exhibitions at the Museum have a
strong contributory influence, and the pioneer work
done at the Metropolitan has been more extended
throughout museums elsewhere in the country than
can be indicated within the limits of this brief essay.
American industrial art has still much to achieve, but
it has already fixed itself on the map.

It must be constrained, no doubt, to recognize the
fact that it has more to learn than to teach in respect
to design. But where manufacture is concerned it may
safely take a bolder stand. I have touched on the sub
ject of " quantity production." It not only means the
taste of industrial art in America but means also our
national traits of energy and ingenuity. The enthusi
ast for taste, for purely aesthetic issues, may wince a bit
when you tell him that the lovely things at the Mu
seum, the films of lace, the exquisite silver and glass,
the handsome furniture, the bewitching cretonnes, rep
resented the triumph of America's mechanical genius.
But that, in cold blood, is precisely what it did; and in

382 Personalities in Art

that, to my mind, lies the hope of American industrial
art. You cannot expect a race that applied the steel-
cage principle to the building of the skyscraper to func
tion in the mood and manner of a mediaeval craftsman.
Now and then some individual may arise in whose
bosom there glows the old fire. Invariably, when I go
to an exhibition of the Architectural League, one of the
first things I do is to see what has been done by Sam
uel Yellin. That masterly worker in wrought metal
is a Renaissance artisan born out of his time. I can
conceive of Yellin as the leader of a group, the founder
of a school, and I would be grateful for such an
eventuality. But he would make a great mistake who,
in appreciation of the maker of a single beautiful
object, would sniff at beautiful objects perfectly pro
duced by machinery in large quantities. Make no
mistake about it, they spell delightfully one of the
finest, most genuine impulses of the American soul.
To undervalue them would be like undervaluing the
railroad, the reaper, the Hoe press, the telephone, and
the flying machine. When I think of American indus
trial art as I have seen it at the Museum and remember
that, thanks to the machinery behind it, it was meant
not for the connoisseur alone but for the multitude, I
feel that I have been in the presence of a truly vital
expression of American life.

XXVII

The Centenary of George Inness

XXVII

THE CENTENARY OF
GEORGE INNESS

THE story of American landscape-painting has a
peculiar interest because it constitutes the most de
cisively national achievement of our school. I have
a particular reason for returning to it. George
Inness was born at Newburgh on May i, 1825. In
commemoration of his centenary the Macbeth Gal
lery in New York City arranged in the spring of
1925 a loan exhibition of about thirty of his works,
ranging from the sixties to his last period. It was a
well-chosen, fairly representative collection, a good
illustration of the art of Inness. I rejoiced in it for its
own sake, and it set me to thinking about the whole
development of American landscape art. It is a sub
ject for which I have a special predilection, for it is one
affirming the American genius in extraordinary fulness
and brilliance. In our earlier history, when we were
learning how to paint, we got our first impetus from
the British tradition of the eighteenth century, and
adjusted that tradition specifically to problems of
portraiture. Our first efforts to deal with the subject-
picture remain, critically speaking, almost negligible.
I have sometimes wondered if our nearness at that

385

386 Personalities in Art

time to the ideas of Puritanism did not have something
to do with it. Such ideas, still lingering in the air, may
possibly have slowed up the attack upon that study of
the nude which bears so heavily upon the treatment
of the figure. The thought persists despite the essays
in the nude which can be discerned here and there in
our formative period. In any case, the fact remains
that the significant disciples of nature in the pioneering
phase of American art are those who sought their
inspiration in field and forest.

They were not, to tell the truth, the most exciting
types in the world! Thomas Doughty, born in 1793,
Aster B. Durand, born in 1796, were distinctly want
ing in the creative fire so indispensable to the found
ers of an authentic school. It seems sometimes as if
their names had been conclusively submerged, and
with them the names of men like Kensett and Mc-
Entee, Whittredge and Bierstadt, S. R. Gifford and
F. E. Church. But I wish the people who hold this
view would now and then, just out of old loyalty, go
to the Metropolitan Museum and renew the impres
sions which the Hudson River men are there to convey.
No doubt they are impressions of a dry, pinched, and
altogether too literal reproduction of the given sub
ject. But these pictures are also exemplars of honest
workmanship, of judicious composition, of sound and
sometimes graceful drawing. They are allied to our
earlier and more successful portraiture by a certain
rectitude which was in itself well calculated to give a

The Centenary of George Inness 387

measure of stimulus to the evolution of a better
movement. It is customary and reasonable to ascribe
their failure to assert themselves more effectively to
the insufficient store of ideas behind them. It is con
venient and not unfair to say that we needed ac
quaintance with the new outlook and the new meth
ods hr ought into play around 1830 by the painters
of France. Of course Barbizon set a new beacon by
which we were in due course bound to profit. But the
crux of the matter resided, as it always does, in the
question of personality. Everything in art depends
upon the calibre of the artist. Consider, for example,
the case of Homer Martin, born in 1836. He was a
pupil of William M. Hart, and when he began was
not only conversant with the Hudson River methods
but whole-heartedly employed them. Yet Martin,
having intensely that gift which we call temperament,
presently emerged from under the handicaps of his
pupilage and painted some of the things most ex
quisite and most modern in American landscape.
Genius does the trick. It did it for George Inness.
Everything about his career points to the power of
originality in him. In the biography written by his
son occurs this statement of the precocity of his aspira
tions toward art:

In speaking of his aims and ambitions, my father once
told me that his desires first began to crystallize when,
as a very little chap, he saw a man painting a picture out
in a field. Immediately a responsive chord was struck,

388 Personalities in Art

and his own nebulous groping for self-expression became
at once a concrete idea. Then and there he made up his
mind that when he grew up he would be a painter. He
told me that he thought it the most wonderful thing in
the world to make with paint the things that he saw
around him, clouds, trees, sunsets, and storms, the very
things that brought him fame in later years. He told me
with what awe he viewed the difficulty of getting a piece
of paper big enough, for he thought that to paint a land
scape one had to have a paper as large as the scene itself
— a thought as naively conceived as it was expressed.

With these emotions seething in his bosom he had
to reckon with a father who was kind and generous,
but whose belief in the virtues of a mercantile career
led him to set the lad up, at the age of fourteen, as
proprietor of a little grocery-store in Newark ! But
almost immediately he escaped from that and was
placed under the instruction of an artist in the town,
named Barker, who in a few months had taught him
about drawing and painting all that he had to teach.
His son says that a little later he did some work in an
engraver's office, but was not interested, and shortly
entered the studio of Regis Gignoux in New York.
There is also mention of his susceptibility to certain
old masters in engravings casually encountered in a
print-shop. In after years he could not remember just
what the pictures were, but he could not forget their
broad lesson. "There was a power of motive, a bigness
of grasp in them," he said. "They were nature, ren
dered grand instead of being belittled by trifling detail
and puny execution. I began to take them out with me

The Centenary of George Inness 389

to compare them with nature as she really appeared,
and the light began to dawn." That light stayed by
him all his Kfe long, and with it there was fused a re
markable inner illumination. "The true use of art/'
he was wont to say, "is, first, to cultivate the artist's
own spiritual nature. . . . The true artistic impulse is
divine."

This is an appropriate point at which to pause upon
the nature of the man. He thought much and could
talk well, but I should say that he was an emotional
and mystical type rather than an intellectual. That
naivete to which his son alludes in the anecdote of his
boyhood was never quite lost. He seems, indeed,
naivete itself when you compare him with a contem
porary of his like the lettered, philosophical, sophis
ticated La Farge. I can find no traces in his biography
of what is surely untraceable in his works — anything
like exhaustive examination of historic schools or aca
demic organization of ideas. Something like the latter
might perhaps be identified in some of his letters or
sayings, and, of course, as a technician he knew what
he was about, following a reasoned method. But his
thought as thought, in such specimens of it as have
come my way, has always seemed to me to be im
pulsive and a little confused by his mysticism. An
instance of his intellectual crudity is supplied in a
letter of his on one of the most momentous develop
ments in modern painting, a letter from which I
take the following passages:

390 Personalities in Art

I am sorry that ... I have come to be classed as a fol
lower of the new fad, "impressionism." . . . Every fad
immediately becomes so involved in its application of its
want of understanding of its mental origin, and that the
great desire of people to label men and things, that one
extreme is made to meet with the other in a muddle of
unseen life application. And as no one is long what he
labels himself, we see realists whose power is in a strong
poetic sense, as with Courbet. And impressionists who
from a desire to give a little objective interest to their
pancake of color, seek aid from the weakness of pre-
Raphaelism, as with Monet — Monet, made by the power
of life through another kind of humbug. For when people
tell me that the painter sees nature in the way the Im
pressionists painted, I say "Humbug!" from the lie of
intent to the lie of ignorance.

On another occasion, alluding to this same bugbear
of impressionism, he declares that he is down on all
that sort of thing, characterizing such "fads" as
shams. I could quote further specimens of what seems
like nothing more nor less than a hopeless obscuran
tism, but it is unnecessary to do so or to linger over the
subject. I touch upon it only to point the fact that
Inness was not precisely a thinker. He was, instead,
all imagination and emotion, all eye and hand. His
essential attitude he thus illuminatingly expressed,
referring to a practice begun at the outset of his
career: "I would sit down before nature, and under the
impulse of a sympathetic feeling, put something on
canvas more or less like what I was aiming at. It
would not be a correct portrait of a scene, perhaps,
but it would have a charm. . . . When I tried to do

The Centenary of George Inness 391

my duty and paint faithfully I didn't get much; when
I didn't care so much for duty I got something more
or less admirable." Add to this his passion for nature,
his insight into her moods, and you have some idea of
the equipment that he took with him when his friend
Ogden Haggerty, an auctioneer in New York, enabled
him to go abroad not long after his marriage in 1850,
when he was stiU in his twenties. He painted and
studied the old masters in Italy for two years. He
remained here as long on his return from abroad, but
in 1854 was on his travels again, this time working
much in France. There followed a long American
period, but once more in the seventies he was under
foreign skies. The remainder of his career down to his
death, in 1894, was spent in this country. The biog
raphy contains one interesting fragment on his con
tact with the Barbizon school, so interesting that I
must quote it intact:

As landscape-painters I consider Rousseau, Daubigny,
and Corot among the very best. Daubigny particularly
and Corot have mastered the relation of things in nature
one to another, and have obtained the greatest works,
representations more or less nearly perfect, though in
their day the science underlying impression was not fully
known. The advance already made is that science, united
to the knowledge of the principles underlying the attempt
made by those artists, will, we may hope, soon bring the
art of landscape-painting to perfection. Rousseau was
perhaps the greatest French landscape-painter, but I have
seen in this country some of the smaller things of Corot
which appeared to me to be truly and thoroughly spon-

392 Personalities in Art

taneous representations of nature, although weak in their
key of color, as Corot always is. But his idea was a pure
one and he had long been a hard student. Daubigny also
had a pure idea, and so had Rousseau. There was no af
fectation in these men, there were no tricks of color.
But the trouble with Rousseau was that he has too much
detail. He's little, he's twopenny. He's little with de
tail, and that takes away from his artistic worth.

From that fantastically inept "twopenny" allusion
it is clear enough that he was no docile pupil sitting at
the feet of the great Frenchmen, and I do not think
it could be said that he was at any time definitely
subject to their influence. But it is undeniable that
the whole European experience was beneficial. It
broadened him and it steadied him, and I think
especially his broodings on French and Italian soil
strengthened him in the art of mere picture-making.
His earliest paintings show a minutely close analysis
of detail. It is obvious from landscapes like his
"Juniata River," or his "Berkshire Hills," or his
"Nook Near Our Village," that he could not throw off
the pressure of the Hudson River tradition all at once.
But in Europe finally he did completely reject it, gain
ing at great strides in largeness and freedom. The big
monumental "Barberini Pines," in the Metropolitan
Museum, shows perhaps most conspicuously what he
drew from the classical environment that he found
in Italy, but I remember a little "Albano" of his that
is even more eloquent of his growth. The composition
is perfect — a foreground with no great incident, a

The Centenary of George Inness 393

bridge in the middle distance, and then beyond that
the gleaming town on its hill. And I recall it, too, as a
superb piece of painting, the brushwork vigorous and
explicit, the handling a blend of force and delicacy
that could have been matched only by Corot. It is
the maestria of this "Albano" that henceforth char
acterizes Inness, only waxing stronger as time goes
on, until at his full maturity he worked like the au
thoritative conductor of a magnificent orchestra.

He was a great colorist. A blazing sky appealed to
him as a stirring theme appeals to a virtuoso. But
even while it wrought him up to a high pitch of enthu
siasm he held his hand and kept his picture on the
safe side of merely sensuous improvisation. Creative
frenzy was thus governed by him in whatever key he
painted. His impulsiveness, it is true, sometimes led
him into strange ways with a canvas. Dissatisfied
with a perfectly good design, he would proceed to
"tickle it up," and not infrequently this meant the
complete transmogrification of it. He was capable of
turning a landscape into a marine overnight, and the
client who wanted to be sure of the picture he bought
did well to carry it off on the spot, before the artist
had a chance to "improve" it. But the important
thing to remember is that the truth of nature never
suffered from any of the changes which he was so
often tempted to make. His memory was a veritable
anthology of the things of the visible world. He was
largely, I gather, a studio painter, but no resolute

394 Personalities in Art

open-air man ever beat him in fundamental veracity.
I do not think that any modern landscape-painter,
either of the Barbizon school or any other, has sur
passed him in truth, in beauty, and in that stamp
of individual genius which gives artistic immortality
to both.

It is a large saying, but I do not hesitate to make it,
for I have a deep sense of the splendor in his work, its
note of organic creative strength. From the thirty
pictures at the Macbeth Gallery my memory travelled
over thrice that number more, and I had a vivid
sense of the might and scope of this great painter.
There was a wonderful amplitude about his genius, a
wonderful energy. He poured forth his designs in
glorious profusion, and they have rich substance, an
abounding vitality. It was in America, too, that he
brought his art to a climax, during the eighties and
the early nineties. He is our own man, his roots going
down deep into our own soil. His landscapes are
among the raciest, most characteristic things American
art has given us. They most faithfully depict the
American scene, and they enrich it with the beauty
that only art could give to it. They do this, curiously,
in spite of the fact that he was not one of the sublimest
technicians that ever lived. The "twopenny" Rous
seau could easily have taught him something about
the drawing of trees, and from the Barbizon men
generally he might have learned something about the
definition of textures. Yet against his limitations in

The Centenary of George Inness 395

technic there must be set the circumstance that he had
an uncanny way of getting the effect that he wanted.
I remember some water-colors of his done on the
Italian border beneath the shadow of the Alps.
Grandiose ground-forms were sketched in them, with
a feeling for structure reminding one of the drawings
of Turner. I go back to that saying of his: "The
true artistic impulse is divine.'5 He had it and had it so
supremely that the niceties of manual dexterity never,
after all, troubled him very much. With his vision he
could afford to be a little careless of technic.

I have spoken of the exhibition of his works as
reviving the question of American landscape art at
large. It does not do so in the sense of drawing
attention to a master and a school. Inness did not
rear up a large company of pupils. But he did leave
an ineffaceable mark because he left American land
scape better than he found it, fixed it in a new status,
and inculcated by example a new point of view. It
would be false and unjust to say that he did this
single-handed. Wyant counted in ushering in a new
regime. Homer Martin counted. So did Winslow
Homer. But for George Inness it was reserved to
illustrate the modern hypothesis of landscape-painting
with an energy, a brilliance, an individuality, and, I
repeat, a splendor, giving him unique salience. His
influence might seem to have been curtailed by the
rise in this country of that very impressionistic move
ment which he so mistakenly contemned. Many of

396 Personalities in Art

his juniors, including some of our best painters, gladly
and profitably derived from Claude Monet the aid
which he disdained. But their interest in problems of
light constituted, in a sense, a detail. Broadly speak
ing, it was from George Inness that they took over
the point of view, the habit of mind, typical of Ameri
can landscape art in the last thirty years and more.
If the old methods of the Hudson River school are no
longer valid, if the " natural magic" that now holds
sway is one concerned in utter freedom with the
everlasting truths of light and air and color, if our
painters and their public explore the intimacies of
nature in a spirit of sympathy and understanding, it
is largely because Inness found the key to a more
beautiful world. He accustomed us to a different kind
of landscape, and he established it as the right one.
He liberated us from an inadequate tradition and
gave us a new standard to live by. Only a man of
genius could have done it.

XXVIII
J. Alden Weir

XXVIII
J. ALDEN WEIR

IT is a testimony to the vital qualities which go to
the making of American art that whenever a memorial
exhibition is held at the Metropolitan Museum it
brings forward work of an intensely personal signif
icance. Consider what similar affairs might mean,
say, in Paris. Man after man, no matter how distin
guished, would affirm his solidarity with the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, with the Salon. Here it is different. A
Winslow Homer stands absolutely by himself. So does
an Abbott Thayer. So does a George Fuller. They
are among the pillars of our school, yet they are in no
wise school types. The same reflection was evoked by
the exhibition opened at the museum in honor of the
late Julian Alden Weir in 1924. Like so many of our
artists, he received his early training in France, and for
a time his work gave the dearest possible evidence of
that circumstance. But in the long run, when he had
got into his own stride, he became utterly American,
Looking back over these memorial episodes at the
museum, noting their differences and yet the essential
unity for which they have stood, I realize anew what
it is that especially marks our art. It is the quality of
genuineness, of a thing fresh and unspoiled by excess
of sophistication. The school is held together as a

399

400 Personalities in Art

school not by a formula, but by the strength of its
various individualities.

If we have ever had a born artist it was Alden Weir.
When he went to Paris in the early seventies, a young
man of twenty-one, it was inevitable that he should
have formed himself more or less upon his master,
G6rome. But it is important to observe that he did so
in a spirit so little imitative that he stated his loyalty
to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in matters of principle,
not through the narrower implications which you
identify in a style deliberately fashioned. He didn't
copy G6rome. He learned from him the virtues of
good drawing, good composition, good workmanship
generally. With this equipment he was prepared to go
on, in readiness for the moment when he 'would say
what he had to say in his own way. Meanwhile he
found an inspiring comrade in Bastien-Lepage. "We
loved Bastien for his honesty, his truth, and his sin
cerity," he said long afterward. The words he chose
to designate the power in his friend are the words to
apply to Weir Mmself .

Bastien's liberalism doubtless hastened his aliena
tion from what was rigidly scholastic in Ger6me, but,
despite the dangers of speculation as to what might
have been, I am confident that Weir would in any
case have moved on from an academic to a personal
point of view. It couldn't have been otherwise, con
sidering the progressive, inquiring mind he had. He
was from the beginning that rare type, the thinking

/. Alden Weir 401

artist, the painter whose exercise of the brush is
energized by aesthetic culture. Though he had a lot
of manual dexterity, he was far from resting his art
upon dexterity alone. It is important to remember
that he didn't slavishly emulate Bastien-Lepage any
more than Ger6me. He was simply stimulated by the
one as he had been stimulated by the other, and in the
period of his pupilage the old masters also contributed
to his growth. He sat at the feet of Velasquez in
Spain, he studied Rembrandt and Hals in Holland,
and when the French Impressionists came into his
view, revolutionists with the novelty of their crusade
still upon them, he found in them too something to
his own profit. And always he stayed Weir, the born
artist bent upon his own evolution.

It would be foolish to assert that this singularity of
his immediately declared itself in triumphant terms.
The most golden of talents has, of course, to mature.
To look at the "Idle Hour," which has been in the
Metropolitan ever since Weir painted it, in 1888, is to
look at a good but not in any way masterly picture of
the old Salon type. But even so, it has a curious
vitality; you would know it anywhere for the work of
a man of great promise. There is an earlier painting of
his in the same rather conventional vein which per
haps more vividly exposes his ingrained ability. It
is the beautiful "Muse of Music/' which dates from
1884. It may have been thanks to Gerome that the
simple pose was so well handled, with such an ad-

402 Personalities in Art

mirable feeling for design, and that such good drafts
manship went to the definition of the form and the
draperies. But the subtle atmosphere of distinction
enveloping the thing is pure Weir. It is, again, his
thoughtful mood operating upon the purely technical
elements in his task. It is, especially, his emotion,
his quick tendency to see a subject finely, beautifully.
None of the men who made the early history of the
Society of American Artists had a broader conception
of the painter's function, and, in fact, there were few
of them with whom it was so broad. "Art for art's
sake" was the slogan in those days. The revolt
against the Academy was all in favor of better paint
ing. Weir added to technical ambition the impulse of
the poet that was somewhere concealed in his cosmos.
It was at that time that he painted some of his
exquisite essays in still life, studies of flowers grouped
with objects in porcelain or metal. He could paint a
rose with a magical touch that no one else has had
save John La Farge and Maria Oakey Dewing. He
could express the very last essence of fragility and
evanescent loveliness in the form and texture of a
petal. Weir's flowers, indeed, occupy a place apart in
the body of his work. They are the outstanding
souvenirs of his tenderness, his delicacy, his interpre
tation of beauty as a factor in art half ponderable and
half spiritual. There was, it may be repeated, a poet
in him. Not, however, in the inventive sense that the
term sometimes connotes. His emotions, his imagina-

/. Alden Weir 403

tion, could not but be stirred by beauty, and ulti
mately in his dealings with landscape he would drift
now and then into a markedly subjective frame of
mind. But if he had any dreams of a dramatic
nature he kept them to himself. The "Muse of
Music" prefigured no further symbolism in his work.
Run over the titles of his works. A few of them point
to the human interest, the sentiment, which infre
quently engaged him — " Children Burying a Bird/'
for example — and once he painted a mythological
subject, "Pan and the Wolf." In the main he was
content with the observant role of that familiar type
in modern art, the man for whom the visible world
exists.

He was always that, always a faithful recorder of
the fact, yet with his individuality he could not for
the life of him have remained a prosaic realist. His
numerous portraits of women, young women set in
some decorative arrangement, steadily confirm the
point. He pretended to no psychological interest in
them. He painted not Miss X, but "The Gray
Bodice/7 "The Black Hat," "A Lady with a Vene
tian Vase," "Peacock Feathers," and so on. It did
not matter. From every one of these canvases there
exhales a fragrance, a charm, which denotes a vision
as well as a tangible truth. While he kept his eye on
the object that sensitive mind of his was at work,
recognizing impalpable beauty and translating it into
form and color. For years, I have watched these

404 Personalities in Art

apparitions in the exhibitions of the Ten and elsewhere.
They varied in their approach to the painter's ideal
For some obscure reason pigment appears to have
turned more or less intractable under Weir's fingers
when he was otherwise on the crest of the wave.
The rich and suave tonality which he had formerly
obtained as a matter of course would now and then,
in the most capricious manner, give place to a surface
distinctly cold and harsh. With a heavier impasto
something of his more transparent beauty, the beauty
that was in his roses, would strangely elude him. But
even at his coldest his portraits of women had dis
tinction.

In landscape he had a far more uniform success,
after he had once conquered the problems to which the
impressionistic hypothesis directed him. It is vain to
regret that an artist of Weir's achievements did not
restrict them to a certain field, but it is legitimate
to surmise that if he had dedicated himself to land
scape alone he would have won a rank akin to that
of George Inness. As it was, he approached his great
senior in the quality of his work, and even outdis
tanced him in one respect, in the treatment of diffused
light. With an extended range of color, almost any
thing in landscape art might have been possible in his
experience. His development in this domain was at
the outset rather slow. The first exhibition that he
made of impressionistic studies from nature was not
precisely impressive, and it took time for him to

/. Alden Weir 405

emerge from a tentative stage. He felt his way
instead of launching himself masterfully upon it. He
wanted to get away from the close analysis of forms
which had contented him in the eighties, and the
transition was difficult. He had, at any rate, to start
with, that "honesty, truth, and sincerity" which he
so commended in Bastien-Lepage, and for a certain
fidelity to nature his earlier landscapes and his latest
are "all of a piece.'' I have alluded to the subjective
strain in some of them. It is obvious in a landscape
like "The Return of the Fishing Party/7 in which
there is a fairly romantic beauty saturating the sylvan
tangle beneath which the figures are assembled. But
Weir's status in this region of painting is, above all,
that of a veracious observer — doubled with the lover
of beauty.

Inness himself never interpreted more convincingly
the charm of the American countryside. Though
Weir was born at West Point, he settled down in
Connecticut early in his career, and, whether from
that fact or from the mysterious sources which feed
an artist's temperament, he became a clairvoyant New
Englander in the delineation of New England scenes.
Mr. William A. Coffin has related what happened
years ago at the Society of American Artists when
"The Factory Village" was placed on the easel. "The
jury acclaimed it with shouts of delight and much
hand-clapping." One can understand that enthusiasm.
I have never seen that picture without a thrill of

406 Personalities in Art

pleasure. In lesser hands the motive might easily
have fallen upon disaster, the tall chimney on the left
lifting a challenge of ugliness against the majesty of
the great oak in the foreground. Weir brought the
two things into perfect harmony and expressed the
indubitable unity of the scene. He expressed, too,
its indescribable Americanism, the homely charm
which belongs to our own land.

There wasn't a trace of mere rhetoric in him, yet
he could be positively eloquent in his depiction of a
stony pasture, a meadow bounded by straggling fences,
a barn" yard, an orchard, any of the places that have
for the native an unforgettable and endearing raciness.
Weir registered these truths because he profoundly
respected their character as such and because he was
an honest workman. He placed them in enduring
form upon his canvas also because he felt the beauty
in them and painted with a kind of imaginative,
poetic ardor. I end as I began, reflecting on the power
ful personality in him, the original creative force.

XXIX

Robert Blum

XXIX
ROBERT BLUM

THE art of Robert Blum offers some amusingly
disconcerting food for thought to those who make
much of the influence of heredity. Both his parents
came from Germany. He was born in Cincinnati
when that city was peculiarly a centre of Germanism.
When he first came in contact with the migratory
impulse of American art, on visiting the Philadelphia
exposition of 1876, the stimulus to travel in search of
a new standard which was stirring many of his young
countrymen should have led him straight to Munich.
Yet in the midst of the influences making for Teutonic
ideals, with Teutonic blood in his veins, he gravitated
irresistibly toward a Latin point of view. He had
seen in his youth photographs from Fortuny and his
followers, and at the Centennial he beheld original
works by the Spaniard which profoundly touched him.
He never lost traces of the inspiration then received.

He received elementary instruction in Philadelphia
for a short time in the seventies, but no other city
appears to have offered him any schooling of an
artistic sort. He went to school in Europe instead,
painting in Venice, in Holland, in Spain, but most of
all in Venice. Blum was an ardent traveller. In his
earlier years he did much work as an illustrator. For

409

4io Personalities in Art

Scribner's Magazine, he made a memorable series
of drawings in Japan. From The Century I recall some
consummate pen drawings of his, a portrait of Irving
as Vanderdecken and one of Joe Jefferson as Bob
Acres. What a draftsman he was! But he could
handle any medium — oils, water-color, pastel. Also
he etched some superb plates. In short, Blum had
a flair for pure craftsmanship. We have never had
any artist more imbued than he was with enthusiasm
for technic, technic animated by a blithe and fascinat
ing vivacity.

The vivacity of Blum is what fixes him firmly in
American art. It would not make him distinguished
were it not tempered by feeling. He was dazzled by
the witchery of Fortuny's school, and he paralleled it,
importing into his work a certain dainty movement,
a certain glitter, half of surface and half of alert,
delicate movement, which makes him always elegant,
always entertaining, always an ideal of grace and re
fined piquancy. But you have to add emotion to this
enchantment and subtract the last hint of artificiality
before you have quite apprehended the secret of
Blum's art. He began with some reliance upon chic, a
quality toward which it is almost inevitable for a
beginner to drift when he has had his fancy excited by
the audacious brio of the modern Spaniards. But with
Blum the reaction was swift, and his work shows none
of the signs of mere surface cleverness. This was due
to his penetrating appreciation of Fortuny. He saw

Robert Blum 411

that the Spaniard was a type of veracity, as well as of
brilliancy, and he carried on Ms own work in a simi
larly serious vein. He was always serious. That is
why I attach a serious value to his vivacity. It is not
shallow vivacity of manner, of color. It is vivacity of
spirit, of feeling, a very different matter, and a very
precious thing in modern art. To see nature in a
sunny, wholesome light, to interpret her with gladness
and natural ease, to leave an impression that the
world is full of loveliness and flowers, pleasant to live
in and even pleasanter to see, this is a scheme of
artistic development for which we can never be too
strenuously grateful, and it is the scheme to which
Blum unfailingly adhered. It made him a charming
painter. It made him also something of a poet.
Certainly, the first pictures of Venice and Spain which
he produced had much more in them than the sparkle
due to contact with the Roman school of painters; they
were generally exquisite, and he progressed higher and
higher in the difficult art of making nature light and
dainty without sacrificing an iota of her dignity and
freshness. No painter of Venice has surpassed Blum
in the fragility of his impressions, in their delicacy of
fibre, in their ravishing precision, but no painter either
has employed so decorative a style with such complete
absence of sophistication. I say decorative, because
Blum had many of the qualities which are expressed
in that epithet. He had picturesqueness of design,
brilliancy of light and shade; he had, above all, the

412 Personalities in Art

vivid color and the executive fluency which often
make an easel picture a decorative unit. But no love
of a brilliantly sensuous effect, no predilection for a
note of color, of merely picturesque beauty ever won
Blum from his veracity; he was never more realistic
than when he was lavishing upon a composition all
the attributes of color and pure pictorial design which
assured him a decorative climax. It is on that merit,
on the solidity which goes with his most flashing and
debonair studies that it is perhaps most significant
to dwell.

Blum can be praised, and praised lavishly, for the
sunshine which belongs to his art, for his blue skies
and the vividness they bring into his canvases. His
picturesqueness is in itself bewitching. The turn of
an arm, the fling of a drapery, the poise of a head,
nay, the accent of a shadow, these things have been
handled in numberless instances by him with the
rapid sureness of touch, the deftness, the animation,
of an extraordinary brush man, and his work is full of
passages over which it is tempting to pause, with no
thought of anything but their charm as matters of
form, of color. Side by side with his facility and
accomplishment, however, there goes, as I have indi
cated in more than one relation, the substantial motive,
the sincere aim by virtue of which he is lifted up to the
first rank. His Venice is a dreamy pageant, a place
of such scenes as only an observer of imagination as
well as of skill could have arrested upon the canvas.

Robert Blum 413

To his Holland lie gave a reality which is none the
less real because it is streaked with vague suggestions
of a colorist's enthusiasm, a draftsman's passion for
what is quaint and effective in a strictly pictorial
sense. Lastly, and most important of all in some
respects, his Japan brings to the eyes of the West one
of the most convincing and beautiful interpretations
of the East which American art can show, and it is to
America, to La Farge, for example, that we are in
debted for the most remarkable of artistic impressions
of the Orient. Blum's impression is intensely artistic
and intensely real* It is true, and it is beautiful. It is
full of color, full of movement, full of Japanese feel
ing, always picturesque and yet never so in any bald
melodramatic sense. He seems to have resolved that
he would get all the color possible out of his strangely
lovely models, that he would make Japanese land
scape yield him the most original of tones, yet he
never departed from the facts before Mm; he captured
the visage of Japanese life while he added the un-
capturable essences which an imagination takes to
Japan.

When Blum died, in 1903, his sister, Mrs. Haller,
generously decided that the works left in his studio
should be given to various public institutions. "The
Vintage Festival/' a panel ten feet long, went to
Cooper Institute, with nearly a hundred figure and
drapery studies. The Academy of Design received
about four-score studies made for the "Moods of

414 Personalities in Art

Music/' one of the mural decorations to which I will
presently return. There were other gifts to museums
in New York and Cincinnati- All of Blum's etched
plates and his bust, modelled by Niehaus, went to the
city of his birth. He is thus well represented in
divers public galleries. Through force of circum
stance, however, his most important paintings have
for some time been witheld from view. These are the
designs which he painted for the concert hall of the
Mendelssohn Glee Club, a building demolished since
he adorned it in the nineties.

I used to watch him at work upon this frieze when he
was painting it in his Grove Street studio under heart
breaking difficulties. The room was only the merest
tithe of the size of that hall in which the decorations
were to be placed. His fifty foot canvas was stretched
on rollers and only a third of it could be exposed to
view at one time. But I never saw a happier man.
Think of what it meant to an artist who at one time
had been confined to the dimensions of a magazine
page to be painting for a great wall ! Blum was over
joyed and he went at it with all that ardor for tech
nical virtuosity which I have indicated as part of
his artistic make-up. He produced an enchanting
piece of work.

The first panel is dedicated to the elusive side of
music, a company of advancing swaying figures, while
falling into something like the rhythm of a dance,
nevertheless typifying quite as much musical elements

Robert Blum 415

meditative, poetic, and even metaphysical. The eyes
are ravished by the sensuous charm of the color, the
mind grasps the strength and artistic beauty of the
composition, the first impulse of one's brain is to rec
ognize the joyous maidens for dancers pure and simple,
but almost instantly the subtle inspiration which
animates the whole takes a firm hold of the imagina
tion and launches one upon the broad tide of musical
delight which is too broad and too complex to be
crystallized in a single emotion. In painting his
second panel the artist sought to substitute the
tangible for the evanescent, to be more plastic and
explicit. It might be said of the first panel that it is
imbued with the spirit of a Mozart andante. The
second I would be disposed to liken to a piece of
Wagnerian programme music — if the note were not a
little more delicate, a little purer, a little more classic,
than the characteristic note of Wagner. Perhaps the
contrast may be more effectively elucidated by noting
that the earlier decoration has a background of trees,
while the later one contains an abundance of archi
tectural details. Against these details, against massive
marble pillars, which rise white and gleaming into an
Italian sky, a procession of priests and bacchic revellers
marches across the mosaic pavement toward what we
may assume to be the entrance to a temple. An altar
is in the centre of the composition, and the instruments
of sacrifice are observed near the end of the colonnade,
but the moment is without any sanguinary signif-

41 6 Personalities in Art

icance. Mere delight in life seems to animate the
entire body of laughing worshippers. Some of the
women are dancing to the sound of their own timbrels.
A youth clad in a leopard's skin leaps from the ground
in sheer exuberance of feeling, and the people who
watch the pageant from either side reveal subtly the
tension of excitement which holds the whole scene in
its grip. Here are the sights upon which one might
look in the midst of operatic music and never feel
the slightest jar between the two. It stands for the
passion and glow and sensual worldly pomp of music,
while its companion celebrates the tenderness and
mystery of the divinest of all the arts. Surely the
principle of growth was in the painter who could rise to
these heights from the level of picturesque illustration
on which he began his career.

XXX
" 291 "

XXX

«29l"

THERE was an exhibition in New York not long ago
which was amusing for more than one reason. It was
fathered by Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, who "presented"
as the work of seven Americans " 159 paintings, photo
graphs and things." It was one of those affairs which
involve a certain amount of explanation, and no fewer
than four signatures were attached to as many pref
atory flourishes in the catalogue. But the most
significant words appeared at the back of that pam
phlet, words proclaiming that the show marked the
twentieth anniversary of the opening of "291," the
little gallery in Fifth Avenue where Mr. Stieglitz
made his beautiful photographs and found an outlet
for his generous enthusiasm by organizing displays of
things ignored elsewhere. I do not recall ever having
missed one of those exhibitions, beginning with the
collection of Rodin's drawings that was put on the
walls in 1908. There I saw similarly pioneering
exhibitions of Matisse, John Marin, Marius de Zayas,
Max Weber, Picabia, Brancusi, Picasso, Gino Severini,
and so on. Looking at the exhibition inviting these
remarks I found myself thinking of it partly for its
own sake and partly for its commemorative meaning.

419

42O Personalities in Art

And I fell to meditating on the principle, as it were,
of "291."

It was, in the first place, the admirable principle of
open-mindedness. Alfred Stieglitz, who clings to his
own ideas with the stanchest tenacity, has never pre
tended to impose them upon anybody else. All he has
desired to do has been to make known the ideas in
which he believes and, for the rest, to watch their
fortunes. The atmosphere of "291" was thus always
one of the right kind of liberalism. The place was a
laboratory for the exposition of this or that experi
ment in contemporary art. It was valuable because it
was the only source of information on subjects it was
necessary to know. I have always maintained that it
was wrong merely to scorn modernism, deserving
though it be of scorn. The indispensable thing is to
look it in the face, analyze it, grasp it for what it
is. It waxes fat on ignorance. Condemnation of its
vagaries must be based on the most patient of studies.
For this Stieglitz supplied precious documents and
thereby performed a memorable service to art. The
only pang involved in frequentation of his museum, if
I may so describe it, was that of disagreeing with so
high-minded and devoted an advocate. But disagree
with him I generally did, and, looking over the long
list of exhibitions appended to his latest catalogue, I
was in no wise moved to alter old impressions.

That some of the names enumerated are to-day held
in greater honor — in some quarters — than they

"291

were when Stieglitz first made them known here, has
no great evidential weight. Twenty years make a very
short period. It remains to be seen how these names
will be wearing when still another twenty years have
passed, and in the meantime I doubt if the tendency is
in the direction given by the men represented in the
list. In fact, the movement is rather the other way,
rather toward a return to conservative modes. I
cannot dogmatize from the list. It is too heterogeneous.
But there is one thought emerging from revery on its
variegated types on which I venture to pause. Is
not Stieglitz himself, as photographer, the one figure
of them all inspiring a certain confidence? And why?
Because he has known absolutely what he was about.
He has known the camera with the thoroughness of a
master, has exercised his instrument with complete
understanding and authority. In a word, he has been
a sound workman. Is it not one of the secrets, on the
other hand, of good art?

Revisiting "291" in memory with this catalogue
before me and realizing that so many of its ghosts have
been indeed ghosts, frail, insubstantial apparitions
blown by the wind, I surmise that the explanation of
their futility has resided in their refusal to make good
workmen of themselves, their failure to play the game.
Yes, I know all about their "purpose." It has been
to express themselves. But they have babbled in
strange, outlandish idioms, missing the language of
art. That language is, among other things, a language

422 Personalities in Art

of craftsmanship. Painting is a craft, like any other.
Flout it and you land in uncouth obscurity.

Stieglite is a courageous, resourceful man. I wish
he would undertake the organization of an exhibition
such as has never been held by any modernist. Let
him supply each one of his friends with canvases
divided in the middle by a straight line. Let them
paint to the left of the line pictures after their own
hearts, expressing themselves in their own way. And
to the right let them paint the same subjects according
to Hoyle, which is to say, with all the elements of
perspective, texture, light and shade, line, form, color,
handled with competence. This might show whether
the modernist really knows how to paint or if the
fearful and wonderful expedients he adopts make the
refuge of inadequacy. If he needed inspiration he
could easily get it from Stieglitz. Look at the latter's
photographs of cloud forms and trees. How beautiful
they are ! Because, for one thing, they are well done.

XXXI

Fortuny

XXXI
FORTUNY

ON THE death of Senator W. A. Clark, it developed
that he had bequeathed his collections to the Metro
politan Museum, subject to the condition that they be
preserved by themselves somewhere within the vast
building in Central Park. The condition was in con
flict with the policy of the museum, and the gift was
declined, wisely, I think, both in view of the policy
aforesaid and because the collections, while containing
many treasures, do not form precisely a unit. It was
natural while the subject was in the air to think over
the collections and to find this or that reason for form
ing one's own opinion as to their disposition. As I
went over them in memory I could see how certain
pieces would practically duplicate others in the Metro
politan; how one old picture or another modern one
might really enrich the museum or leave it not appre
ciably strengthened. The reader may be a little
puzzled by my own choice of the one picture which I
hated to have the Metropolitan miss. It was Fortuny 's
" Choice of the Model." I could perfectly understand
anybody's being surprised by this selection, for if there
is one tradition in painting that is nominally played
out it is the tradition of Fortuny. Our modern ideas
date peculiarly from the rediscovery of Velasquez

425

426 Personalities in Art

and Hals, and the demigods of our own time have
been such followers of theirs as Manet and Sargent.
But latter-day enthusiasm for technic has, if I may
so express it, the defect of its quality; it is a little
narrow, though it is all for breadth and the world
well lost. When Kipling wrote his ballad, "In the
Neolithic Age/' he inserted in it two oft-quoted lines
whose axiomatic wisdom may well commend itself to
the student of painting:

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And — every — single — one — of — them — is — right.

One of the " right" ways of painting is the way of
Mariano Jose-Maria Bernardo Fortuny. I like to give
him Ms full Spanish style, if only for old sake's sake, in
memory of the day long ago when I was all set to write
his biography. In Paris I fell in with Philip Gilbert
Hamerton, and he asked me to write one of those
"Portfolio Monographs" which he was editing in
place of the old miscellaneous "Portfolio." We dis
cussed subjects and had about decided on Canaletto
when I said: "Why not do a modern man who has
not been done in English? Why not do For tuny?"
Hamerton was delighted with the idea, and when,
soon after, I went to Venice, I found that it met with
the cordialest approval of the artist's widow. Neither
of the publications by Yriarte and the Baron Davillier
had exhaustively covered the ground, and repeatedly
among her innumerable sketches, studies, and other

Fortuny 427

souvenirs, Madame Fortuny and I talked over the
book which, was to be the final record of a brilliant
life. We were to go over the letters together. Mari-
anito, the painter's son, was himself practising a very
different sort of art; he had studied at Munich, and
rumor had it that he was painting huge Wagnerian
compositions. But he, too, was in the liveliest sym
pathy with my plan and would himself gladly photo
graph a lot of the unpublished paintings that adorned
the beautiful old palazzo on the Grand Canal. As
can be imagined, I was well content. At Rome, I
hunted up Fortuny's only pupil, Simonetti, and
learned that he also had a sheaf of letters. In private
collections in Spain I looked at Fortunys that had
never before been reproduced, and in Paris the late
William H. Stewart readily gave me access to that
incomparable collection of Fortuny's works which was
afterward dispersed at auction in New York. When I
talked it all over with Hamerton again we were both
more than pleased with the outlook; but when, in the
following summer, I had renewed my explorations and
we returned to the project, we were suddenly aware of
another color in our dream. It was a stern, practical
issue that put it there. It used to amuse me to count
up, as I went along, the sums required for the purchase
of documents, copyright fees, and the manufacture of
copperplates. By the time I had gone over the
balance sheet with Hamerton and with the publisher
in London, we calculated that it would cost a good

428 Personalities in Art

deal more to produce the book than would be returned
by the complete sale of a generous edition. Wherefore
the classical biography of Fortuny, as I had fondly
imagined it would be, incontinently went aglimmering.
But, as the reader may surmise, the episode left me
with a certain weakness for Fortuny.

It isn't a matter of sentiment alone, either. I
wouldn't have launched upon that task if I hadn't
had a deep feeling for Fortuny as a painter, nor would
I revert to his art now if I did not still preserve a
vivid sense of his extraordinary ability. He was one
of those painters who are born, not made, even though
it must be admitted that as a lad he did not show
the precocity usual in a master. He was born at
Reus, in the northeastern part of Spain, the child of
obscure parents, who died when he was still very
young. The grandfather who brought him up used to
travel about as the owner of a little puppet show.
He would take Fortuny with him when he gave a
performance in the market-place at Tarragona, and at
home they used to work together over the wax figures
employed in the tiny theatre. They made votive
figurines for the churches, too, and Fortuny must have
shown some talent in them, for presently the grand
father sent him to the academy presided over by
Domingo Soberano, and there he made such progress
that while still in his teens he was fitted for the much
more pretentious academy at Barcelona. At twenty
he won the Grand Prix, which sent him to Rome for

Fortuny 429

two years, with an allowance of about five hundred
dollars a year. It was not very much, yet it must
be said that Barcelona was, on the whole, Hnd to him.
The municipal authorities recalled him from Rome
for the highly honorable purpose of sending him to
make a big military picture in Morocco, where the
Spaniards were at war. He saw the decisive battle of
Tetouan, or Wad-Ras, and made from it ultimately a
remarkable canvas. Incidentally, his contact with
the Moorish scene brought his art to a swift efflores
cence. I shall not wickedly resume, in this place, the
details accumulating in the course of those researches
to which I have referred. It is enough to state that
thenceforth Fortuny's prosperity advanced with
phenomenal rapidity. He worked variously in
Morocco and at Rome, in Madrid, Grenada, and Paris.
I say "worked" advisedly, for he did very little else.
Possessed of a delightful personality, he had the
world at his feet, especially when he married the
daughter of Federigo Madrazo, when the Goupils
took him up, and Mr. Stewart became not only his
patron but his friend. He was intimate with some of
the leading French artists of his time. Gerome, upon
one occasion, lent him his studio. But he had few
social tastes, finding his chief relaxation in the collect
ing of beautiful objects of art and craftsmanship, and
his life was one long labor until he died of Roman
fever in 1874.
What is the story of his labor, what were its origins,

430 Personalities in Art

and what are the special characteristics of its fruits?
I once went all the way to Barcelona to see what his
early work was like, and found that it was nothing if
not academic. The bacchantes which figure in the
rather conventional designs of his pupilage might
have been drawn by any of the carefully trained
young types of the Paris Salon. Form, as he depicts
it, is form as it is understood in disciplinary studios.
But the Moroccan experience, as I have indicated,
changed all that. It confirmed in him an instinct for
going straight to nature for the truth, and in Morocco,
too, the effects of dazzling sunlight brought a vivifying
element into his work. What I feel was the specially
invigorating and illuminating force in Fortuny's art
was what I can only describe as the genius of sheer
painting, the innate disposition of a man to express
himself through consummate draftsmanship and a
fairly magical manipulation of pigment. Both in oils
and in water-colors, once he had got into his stride, he
became like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat.
Connoisseurship to-day is a little impatient of such
triumphs as his, counting rabbits as but small game,
and I haven't the least intention of placing this
artist in a false perspective for purposes of eulogy.
On the other hand, I think that those who would dis
parage Fortuny on account of his glitter overlook the
firm foundation on which the glitter rests. They con
fuse spiritual with technical values. He himself had
misgivings as to the precise depth of his art. In a

Fortuny 43 1

letter to Davillier, written at the zenith of Ms career,
he says: "I continue to work, but truly I begin to
tire (morally) of the kind of art and of the pictures
which success has imposed upon me, and which (be
tween ourselves) are not the true expression of my.
taste." Very well, let us agree as regards the matter
of taste. I am not at all sure that I could live happily
sitting opposite "The Choice of the Model/' day after
day, and year after year. But if it were hanging in the
Metropolitan Museum I know that I would pause
before it just once in so often, not only with admiration
and respect, but with a particular zest for the kind of
technical virtuosity that Fortuny exhibits in the
picture.

And the kind of virtuosity that is there is, I repeat,
the kind that has its roots deep in true painter's
painting. He was no mere meretricious juggler with
the brush, but a serious technician, who looked to the
graver side of his art. There is nothing about him
more significant than a certain passage in one of Ms
early letters, written when as a student of twenty he
was settled in Rome, From this it appears that
Raphael's decorations in the Vatican bowled him over,
and when it came to the tableau Uen peint, he pre
ferred above all others the great portrait of Innocent
X, by Velasquez. He had always a passion for the old
masters. At the Prado, in Madrid, he made copies of
Titian, Tintoretto, El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya,
What Velasquez meant to him you may see from the

432 Personalities in Art

"Spanish Lady," in the Metropolitan Museum, which
he painted at Rome in 1865. There is no glitter in
that. On the contrary, it is a broadly painted, really
noble thing, an altogether worthy pendant to the
tradition of Velasquez, of Goya. However, do not let
us strain the point. It was not by work of this sort
that Fortuny lived. His metier was for a lighter,
more sparkling type of painting. What it is important
to remember is that the knowledge and authority
affirmed in the " Spanish Lady" are carried over into
the field in which it was his destiny to shine. They
tell there primarily in his strong, swift, flashing
draftsmanship, and then in his diabolically sure han
dling of pigment. There is no one like him for a kind
of blazing fluency, for the plastic evocation of a
figure or a bit of still-life, for the perfect denotement
of a lacy or shimmering stuff. And over all his ma
terial, whether he be dealing with the sunlit pictur-
esqueness of Morocco or Spain, or with romantic
costumes in a stylized French interior, he causes the
light to play in a staccato manner that is merely
ravishing. The commentator who cannot get away
from Manet, says "Bric-a-brac ! " For my part, when
I am confronted by Fortuny I can momentarily forget
my Manet and my Velasquez and my Rembrandt,
and say simply "What painting!"

When they tell me it has lost its hold upon connois-
seurship I permit myself a chuckle. As a matter of
fact, I do not believe the world will ever willingly let

THE MOORISH KNIFE GRINDER
FROM THE PAINTING BY FORTCJNY

Fortuny 433

the work of Fortuny die. Its intrinsic brilliance is too
much for that. It is too superbly eloquent of a man
who exhaustively knew his craft. It has too much
verve ; it is too finished and gaittard in style. There is a
measure of confirmation for its validity, too, in the cir
cumstance that it left a deep mark upon its time. For
tuny founded something like a school, though I can re
member little recognition of this among his followers.
I have foregathered with flocks of them, and it always
made me laugh a little inwardly to see how indis
posed they were to admit any debt at all to the dead
master. It was one thing to join in praise of his
qualities; it was another to grant that without their
influence the speakers would have taken a different
line. I could understand the attitude of those Span
iards and Italians; they hadn't studied under Fortuny ,
but under other men, and doubtless they had gone
their own gaits. Nevertheless he had put something
in the air which they had not been able to resist. It
was the glamour of romantic picturesqueness and
with it the lure of sleight-of-hand, of miraculous
dexterity. Villegas was one of the pillars of the school.
He travelled far enough from Fortuny when he
painted the more celebrated canvases of his ma
turity, "The Death of the Bull-Fighter" and "The
Marriage of the Dogaressa." But if you want to
get the pure flavor of Villegas you will get it in
some such bits of piquant genre as he painted when
he, in his turn, sojourned in Morocco. It was so

434 Personalities in Art

again with Pradilla. He made his fame through big
compositions like "The Surrender of Boabdil at
Grenada/' which were far more elaborate than any
thing in Fortuny's monde, but there are many smaller
things of his in which you come obviously upon the
trail of Fortuny. There have been any number of
them, Gallegos, Viniegra, Domingo, Barbudo, Casa
nova, Garcia y Ramos, Pelayo, and more others than
it is perhaps worth citing, for if some of them are
good, some of them are very brittle and bad.

The man who more than all the rest rivalled
Fortuny on his own ground was the Italian Boldini
in his earlier period. He also had an incredible facility,
incredible sleight-of-hand. I can see him painting my
own portrait in two or three sittings. He did it like a
man dashing off a note. But Boldini, like Fortuny, is
both draftsman and brushman, an authentic master
of paint, and in older days, before he had got com
mitted to the portraiture that we know, he was wont
to tackle the same sort of theme that had attracted his
Spanish contemporary. He would paint the women
at a Moorish bath, or the buildings around the
Place Clichy, or a long road gleaming beneath a
hard blue sky, or a coquette lying on a sofa in the
studio, all grace and frou-frou. They date from the
seventies, these dazzling tours-de-force, a long time ago,
and Boldini, I have gathered, has no great opinion of
them himself* Just the same, they are among the very
best things he has ever done. Though they date from

Fortuny 435

the seventies, they are still, praise be, very much
alive. The whole Fortuny tradition, I maintain, still
possesses this unmistakable vitality. Every now and
then I find that I have to break a lance for it. I can
recall one that I bore in the fray, against Elihu Ved-
der. At a dinner-table in Rome he nearly suffocated
at the idea of my asserting that Fortuny knew how
to paint. It was all a trick, he said. There was no
glamour about Fortuny, for him, though he had
known the artist in the days of his triumph. But the
glamour is there for me, and precisely for the reason
that, in spite of Vedder, he knew ineffably how to
paint. That is why I remain incorrigible and wish
that, by hook or by crook, the Metropolitan had been
able to salvage "The Choice of the Model."

XXXII
Zora

XXXII
ZORN

ZORN'S etchings are far more familiar in the United
States than works of his done with the brush. They
have been enormously popular, too, but this without
really establishing him as a permanent figure. The
vogue of the prints, indeed, has always seemed to me
to illustrate nothing more nor less than a curious
aberration of taste. He knew nothing about the
genius of etching. His line is that of a pen draftsman,
clever, no doubt, but in no wise qualified to rank with
the line of the masters of the needle. Is he, on the
other hand, a master of painting? The answer is of a
mixed nature.

Scandinavia has never produced a major school of
art in the strict European sense of the term. It has
had Its successful figures, of course. Denmark has
had .what we may call an international representative
in Kroyer. Norway has given good painters to the
world in Thaulow and Edelfelt. From Sweden have
come Zorn, Carl Larsson, and Bruno Liljefors. But I
well remember how at the Chicago fair in 1893 the
efforts of these men, and of a few others, failed to lift
their countries to a plane of strong racial affirmation,
and in 1900, at Paris, the three groups made no
better effect. In fact, I found then that the three had

439

44° Personalities in Art

settled down to the level of one and that the whole
company had forthwith stood still. Nothing was
changed, in essentials, when the American-Scandi
navian Society brought over about one hundred and
fifty paintings a few years ago and showed them
in New York. The feeling persisted that no truly
national force had developed in Danish, Norwegian or
Swedish art, that each country continued to depend
for its aesthetic distinction upon some lucky individual.
And the odd thing is that the individual would not
turn out to be a precisely great artist. He would have
talent rather than genius. That is the case as regards
Zorn.

Born at Mora in 1860, the son of a Bavarian
brewer, he gave every evidence of artistic precocity.
He began as a boy to carve wooden figures, coloring
them with the juice of berries. It was as a sculptor
that he made his first studies in the Academy at
Stockholm, to which he was admitted while still in his
teens, but he soon turned to the brush and is said to
have attracted considerable attention by his deftness
as a water-colorist. He was a young man when he
set out upon his travels, painting in Spain and Italy,
in Constantinople and Morocco. He settled for a
time in London and was much in Paris. At the time
of our exposition in Chicago he visited the United
States, where he painted a number of good portraits,
including those of Grover Cleveland and Andrew
Carnegie. He died in 1920 after a life of triumph.

Zorn 441

Fortune had smiled upon him almost from the begin
ning, and it never left him. Of all the Scandinavian
artists he had the widest European fame. His por
trait painted by himself is that of a powerful, squarely
built man, resolute, aggressive. He wears clothes of
brick red, and the audacity seems characteristic of
him. He was a type to carry off a flourish of that
kind. Yet — and this is the crucial point — as you
look about among his paintings you do not find quite
the personality you expect after that stalwart figure
and those romantic garments.

The Scandinavians are, as artists, a race of simple,
straightforward, and even commonplace observers.
They are not men of dreams, or, in the main, men of
theories, academic or of any other sort. The material
of Scandinavian art is found in the every-day walks
of Scandinavian life, and it is handled with a sincere
effort for a truthful expression of every-day .appear
ances. Zorn represents this art in its most normal
aspect. He paints what he can see and touch and
handle. He illustrates Swedish life and its types, the
process of breadmaking as it is made picturesque by
environment and costume, the traits of an old clock-
maker in his portrait of "Djos Mats/' the peasants in
their distinctive dress. His "Rowing to Church" is
like a page from the familiar movement of things
Swedish; as a characterization, in color and in atmos
phere, it carries absolute conviction. Very rarely does
he seem merely photographic, either, as he does in

442 Personalities in Art

his banal "Butcher Shop/' The veracity of the
painting has always its artistic accent, its hint of the
craftsman who has his own way of expressing himself.
It is a prodigiously swift, sure, and vivacious way.
That is what has given Zorn his high status.

He was, a long way behind Sargent, the kind of
virtuoso that Sargent was, the man of exact vision and
an accomplished, even brilliant, hand. He had the
technic of an adroit Salonnier, raised to a higher
power. There is a French precision about his work
manship, enriched by a greater flexibility, a lighter
touch, than is always characteristic of the Parisian
school with which he is somehow affiliated. But he
remains the Salonnier, the clever, inordinately clever,
type, rather than the master of a style. That is
where you recognize the superiority of Sargent.
The technic of the American has in it an extraor
dinary originality and elevation; it has the stamp of
genius upon it. Zorn's impresses you without any
enchantment; it is effective enough to be called
brilliant, but it is not fine enough to be called dis
tinguished. All the time you are aware of certain
limitations that clog his footsteps and keep him upon
a very mundane level.

They were limitations of taste. We do not look in
him for the beauty that implies imagination. With
the latter quality he simply had nothing whatever to
do, and to regret its absence would be beside the point,
to ask Zorn to be somebody else. But it is fairly

Zorn 443

puzzling to see an artist with such a passion for the joy
in life as he had remaining insensitive to the grace,
the subtle charm, that go with it. His color, on which
some commentators grow oddly fervid, seems to me
to be singularly wanting in quality. It is vivid and it
is pure, but it has no original grain or glow, and it is
totally devoid of those transparencies and those ex
quisite nuances of tone which proclaim the authentic
colorist. In water-color he sometimes draws nearer to
the delicacy which I have in mind, but even in that
medium his really beguiling passages are only epi
sodical, and in oils the most that can be said is that he
is not, like so many Scandinavians, merely crude. A
defect of taste stood between him and sheer loveliness
of color, just as it dogged his labors in the matter of
pure painted surface. He had technical force and
authority, he had positive exhilaration in attack. He
did not know how to caress a canvas, to give it sen
suous beauty, a rare patina.

If such taste as he possessed is anywhere discon
certing it is in his treatment of the nude. I have
occasionally observed in him a happy fusion of the
picture-making faculty with a response to the supple
grace of form. I recall in his "Summer Evening"
a composition in which an unwonted elegance presided
over the painter's customary realism. But in most of
his nudes you get the full measure of his inherent
coarseness. The advocate of truth at any price may
retort that the coarseness does not matter, that what

444 Personalities in Art

actually counts is Zorn's superbly accurate, full-bodied
recording of the visible fact. I am quite conscious of
its value. But I cannot ignore the gross materialism
in work of this kind or its broad significance. It
points, after all, to the central character of the artist,
which is what we are bound to pursue; it points to the
essential Zorn. He belongs to that band of artists who
conquer by virtue of the eye and the hand alone, who
are technicians and nothing more. Look at his por
traits. The tangible, obviously perceptible facts are
unmistakably there, but nothing is added to them,
no suggestion of special insight, no stylistic glamour,
no distinction. Taking Zorn's art in its length and
breadth we are interested but not deeply impressed.
It has enormous vitality, yet, by some strange paradox,
there seems nothing creative about it, nothing in
spiring. Where great art seems to transcend the
idiom of the country in which it was produced, this
art remains, for all its workmanlike merits, rather
narrowly Scandinavian,

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