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PROMENADES

OF AN

IMPRESSIONIST

BY JAMES HUN6KER

MEZ20TIMTS IN MCDERN MUBIC (int)
CHOPm: THE MAN AND HIS ICUBIC at60)
MSLOMANIACS QMO
OVSBTONBB aMO

iconoclasts: a book of dbamatists atMC

TmioNABiEs am)

egoists: a book of sxtpebmen awn

FBOMBNADES OF AN nfFBESSIONIBT aM«»

FRANK UBBT. ILLUSTRATED QMI)

THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE ttMO

NEW COBIIOPOLIS a»15)

lYOBT APES AND PEACOCKS (MIB)

UNICORNS (1917)

BEDOUINS (IfM)

STBEPLEJAdL TWO VOLUMES (IWm)

VARIATIONS (IWI)

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TO
FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

^* lUt lii promeiialif out prffuHicf*/'— Stendhal (?)

Pdblxsbxd Maxcb, 19x0

niNTED AT

TBE SCRIBNER PRESS

NEW YORK, U. 8. A.

TO
FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

^* lUt lii pfomenalif oin picfuHicfii*"— Stendhal (?)

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Paul CtzANNE i

II. Rops THE Etcher 24

III. MONTICELLI 38

IV. Rodin . 50

V. Eugene Carriere 66

VI. Degas 76

VII. Botticelli 84

VIII. Six Spaniards 96

" El Greco *'

" Velasquez '*

Goya

Fortuny

SoroUa

Zuloaga

IX. Chardin 152

X. Black and White 160

Piranesi

Meryon

John Martin

Zom

Brangwyn

Daumier

Lalanne

Legrand

Guys

CONTENTS

fAOl

XI. Impressionism 228

Monet
Renoir
Manet

XII. A New Study op Watteau 259

XIII. Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec . . . • 269

XIV. Literature and Art 277

XV. MxTSEUM Promenades 291

Pictures at The Hague
The Mesdag Museum
Hals of Haarlem
Pictures in Amsterdam
Art in Antwerp
Museums of Brussels
Bruges the Beautiful
The Moreau Museum
Pictures. in Madrid
El Greco at Toledo
Velasquez in the Prado

Coda ••••• 389

PAUL CEZANNE

Atter prolonged study of the art shown at
the Paris Autumn Salon you ask yourself: This
whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours,
still crazier drawing and composition — whither
does it tend? Is there any strain of tendency,
any central current to be detected ? Is it yoimg
genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of suc-
cess to ripen its somewhat terrifying gifts ? Or is
the exhibition a huge, mystifying blague? What,
you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your
weary eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity
to so many blazing canvases, does the Autimm
Salon mean to French art?

There are many canvases the subjects of which
are more pathologic than artistic, subjects only fit
for the confessional or the privacy of the clinic.
But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the
main note of the Salon is a riotous energy, the
noisy ebullition of a gang of students let loose in
the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, yelling
from sheer delight in their limg power, and if you
are rudely jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon
and your hat clapped down on your ears, you con-
sole youiBelf with the timid phrase: Youth must
have its fling.

PROMENADES

And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint
pots in the sacred features of tradition. It needs
little efifort of the imagination to see hovering about
the galleries the faces of — no, not G&6me, Bon-
nat, Jules Leffevre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend
seigneurs of the old Salon — but the reproachful
countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and
Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of yoimgsters
are as violently radical, as violently secessionistic,
as were their immediate forebears. Each chap
has started a little revolution of his own, and
takes no heed of the very men from whom he
steals his thunder, now sadly hollow in the trans-
position. The pretty classic notion of the torch
of artistic tradition gendy burning as it is passed
on from generation to generation receives a shock
when confronted by the methods of the hopeful
yoimg anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance of
all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth.
Compared to their fulgurant colour schemes the
work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and re-
treats into the Pantheon of the past. They are
become classic. Another king has usurped their
throne — his name is Paul C&anne.

No need now to recapitulate the story of the New
Salon and the defection from it of these Indepen-
dents. It is a fashion to revolt in Paris, and no
doubt some day there will arise a new group that
will start the August Salon or the January Salon.

"Independent of the Independents" is a mag-
nificent motto with which to assault any intrenched
organisation.

PAUL CEZANNE

If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note
of many of these hot, hasty, and often clever pic-
tures, it must be sadly stated that of genuine orig-
inality there are few traces. To the very masters
they pretend to revile they owe everything. In
vain one looks for a tradition older than Courbet;
a few have attempted to stammer in the suave
speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau;
but 1863, the year of the Salon des Refuses, is
really the year of their artistic ancestor's birth.
The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prud-
hon; the romanticism of G^ricault, Delacroix,
Decamps; the tender poetry of those true Watd-
menschen, Millet, Dupr^, Diaz, Daubigny, or of
that wild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the mar-
vellous colour virtuoso who "painted music,"
Monticelli — all these men might never have been
bom except for their possible impact upon the
so-called " BatignoUes " school. Alas! such in-
gratitude must rankle. To see the major portion
of this band of young painters, with talent in
plenty, occupying itself in a frantic burlesque of
second-hand C&annes, with here and there a
shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas,
or an impertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to
the older men.

And now we reach the holy precincts. If ar-
dent youths sneered at the l)n'ic ecstasy of Re-
noir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at the
poetic mystery of Carrifere, their lips were hushed
as they tiptoed into the Salle C&anne. Sacred
ground, mdeed, we trod as we gazed and wondered

PROMENADES

before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bi-
zarre canvases. Here was the very hub of the In-
dependents' universe. Here the results of a hard-
labouring painter, without taste, without the fac-
ulty of selection, without vision, culture — one is
tempted to add, intellect — who with dogged per*
sistency has painted in the face of mockery, paint-
ed portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, 6giu:es,
painted everything, painted himself. And what
paint! Stubborn, with an instinctive hatred of
academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio,
of the hired model, of "literary," or of mere dig-
ital cleverness, Cezanne has dropped out of his
scheme harmony, melody, beauty — classic, ro-
mantic, symbolic, what you will ! — and doggedly
represented the ugliness of things. But there is
a brutal strength, a tang of the soil that is bitter^
and also strangely invigorating, after the false,
perfumed boudoir art of so many of his contem-
poraries.

Think of Bouguereau and you^ have his antith-
esis in C&anne — C&anne whose stark figures
of bathers, male and female, evoke a shuddering
sense of the bestial. Not that there is offence
intended in his badly huddled nudes; he only
delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrors
of some undressed humans. His landscapes are
primitive though suffused by perceptible atmos-
phere; while the rough architecture, shambling
figures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the
impression of general vitality. You could not say
with Walt Whitman that his stunted trees were

PAUL CEZANNE

"uttering joyous leaves of dark green.*' They
utter, if anything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do
the self-portraits — exceedingly well nxoddled,
however. C&anne's still-life attracts by its whole-
souled absorption; these fruits and vegetables
really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets
still-life with realistic beauty; if he had ever
painted an onion it would have revealed a certain
grace. When Paul C&anne paints an onion you
smell it. Nevertheless, he has captured the affec-
tions of the rebels and is their god. And next
season it may be some one else.

It may interest readers of Zola's L'CEuvre
to learn about one of the characters, who per-
force sat for his portrait in that clever novel (a
direct imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon) .
Paul C&anne bitterly resented the liberty taken
by his old school friend Zola. They both hailed
from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris;
Cezanne remained in his birthplace but finally
persuaded his father to let him study art at the
capital. His father was both rich and wise, for
he settled a small allowance on Paul, who, poor
chap, as he said, would never earn a franc from
his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified.
Cezanne was almost laughed off the artistic map
of Paris. Manet they could stand, even Claude
Monet; but C&anne — commimard and anar-
chist he must be (so said the wise ones in official
circles), for he was such a villainous painter!
Cezanne died, but not before his apotheosis by the
new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by

PROMENADES

admirers of Zola how much he did for his neglected
and struggling fellow-townsman; how the novelist
opened his arms to Cezanne. Cezanne says quite
the contrary. In the first place he had more
money than Zola when they started, and Zola,
after he had become a celebrity, was a great man
and very haughty.

''A mediocre intelligence and a detestable
friend" is the way the prototype of Claude Lantier
puts the case. "A bad book and a completely
false one, " he added, when speaking to the painter
Emile Bernard on the disagreeable theme. Natu-
rally Zola did not pose his old friend for the entire
figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, Claude.
It was a study composed of Cezanne, Bazille, and
one other, a poor, wretched lad who had been em-
ployed to clean Manet's studio, entertained ar-
tistic ambitions, but hanged himself. The con-
versations Cezanne had with Zola, his extreme
theories of light, are all in the novel — by the way,
one of Zola's most finished efforts. C^anne, an
honest, hard-working man, bourgeois in habits if
not by temperament, was grievously wounded by
the treachery of Zola; and he did not fail to de-
nounce this treachery to Bernard.

Paul Cdzanne was bom January 19, 1839. His
father was a rich bourgeois, and while he was dis-
appointed when his son refused to prosecute further
his law studies, he, being a sensible parent and
justly estimating Paul's steadiness of character,
allowed him to go to Paris in 1862, giving him an
income of a hundred and fifty francs a month,

PAUL CEZANNE

wbich was shortly after doubled. With sixty
dollars a month an art student of twenty-three
could, in those days, live comfortably, study
at leisure, and see the world. C&anne from
the start was in earnest Instinctively he real-
ised that for him was not the rapid ascent of the
rocky path that leads to Parnassus. He mis-
trusted his own talent, though apt his powers of
application. At first he frequented the Academic
Suisse, where he encountered as fellow-workers
Pissarro and Guillaumin. He soon transferred his
easel to the Beaux-Arts and became an admirer
of Delacroix and Courbet It seems strange in
the presence of a C^anne picture to realise that
he, too, suffered his little term of lyric madness
and wrestled with huge m)rthologic themes —
giant men carrying off monstrous women. Con-
noisseurs at the sale of Zda's art treasures were
astonished by the sight of a canvas signed Cdzanne,
the subject of which was L'Enlfevement, a ro-
mantic subject, not lacking in the spirit of Dela-
croix. The Courbet influence persisted, despite
the development of the younger painter in other
I schools. Cdzanne can claim Courbet and the
Dutchmen as artistic ancestors.

When Cezanne arrived in Paris the first com-
rade to greet him was Zola. The pair became in-
separable; they fought for naturalism, and it was
to Cezanne that Zola dedicated his Salons which
are now to be foimd in a volume of essays on art
and literature bearing the soothing title of Mes
Haines. Zola, pitching overboard many friends,

PROMENADES

wrote his famous eulogy of Manet in the EvenC'
metUf and the row he raised was so fierce that he
was forced to resign as art critic from that joumaL
The fight then began in earnest The story is a
thrice-told one. It may be read in Th6Ddore
Diu'et's study of Manet and, as regards Cdzanne,
in the same critic's volume on Impressionism.
Cdzanne exhibited in 1874 with Manet and the rest
at the impressionists' salon, held at the studio of
Nadar the photographer. He had earlier submit-
ted at once to Manet's magic method of painting,
but in 1873, ** Auvers-siu--Oise, he began painting
in the plein air style and with certain modifications
adhered to that manner until the time of his death.
The amazing part of it all is that he produced for
more than thirty years and seldom sold a canvas,
seldom exhibited. His solitary appearance at an
official salon was in 1882, and he would not have
succeeded then if it had not been for his friend
Guillaiunini a member of the selecting jury, who
claimed his rights and passed in, amid execra-
tions, both mock and real, a portrait by C&anne.
Called a communard in 1874, Cezanne was
saluted with the title of anarchist in 1904, when
his vogue had begun; these titles being a species
of official nomenclature for all rebels. Thiers,
once President of the French Republic, made
a bon mot when he exclaimed: "A Romantic —
that is to say, Commimist!" During his entire
career this mild, reserved gentleman from Aix
came imder the ban of the critics and the authori-
ties, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as

PAUL CEZANNE

did Manet, as did Bazille, — who, like Henri
Regnault, was killed in a skirmish.

His most virulent enemies were forced to admit
that Edouard Manet had a certain facility with the
brush; his quality and beauty of sheer paint could
not be winked away even by Albert WolfiF. But
to Cezanne there was no quarter shown. He was
called the " Ape of Manet" ; he was hissed, cursed,
abused; his canvases were spat upon, and as late
as 1902, when M. Roujon, the Director of the
Beaux-Arts, was asked by Octave Mirbeau to
decorate Cdzanne, he nearly fainted from aston-
ishment. Cezanne! That barbarian! The ami-
able director suggested mstead the name of Claude
Monet. Time had enjoyed its little whirligig with
that great painter of vibrating light and water,
but Monet blandly refused the long-protracted
honour. Another anecdote is related by M.
Duret William H of Germany in 1899 wished
to examine with his own eyes, trained by the
black, muddy painting of Germany, the canvases
of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, C&anne, and Manet,
acquired by Director Tschudi for the Berlin Na-
tional Gallery. He saw them all except the Ce-
zanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat
would be in the imperial fire if the C&anne picture
appeared. So he hid it. As it was his Majesty
nodded in emphatic disapproval of the imported
purchases. If he had viewed the C&anne!

At first blush, for those whose schooling has
been academic, the Cezanne productions are
shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, though a

PROMENADES

heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not
a great painter; he lacks imagination, invention,
fantasy; but his palette is his own. He is a master
of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly ob-
serves, a very intense one. He avoids the anec-
dote, historic or domestic. He detests design, pre-
arranged composition. His studio is an open field,
light the chief actor of his palette. He is never con-
ventionally decorative unless you can call his own
particular scheme decorative. He paints what he
sees without flattery, without flinching from any
ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensu-
ous as Correggio. He does not seek for the cor-
respondences of light with surroimding objects or
the atmosphere in which Eugfene Carrifere bathes
his portraits, Rodin his marbles. The C&anne
picture does not modulate, does not flow; is too
often hard, though always veracious — C^zannish
veracity, be it imderstood. But it is an inescap-
able veracity. There is, too, great vitality and a
peculiar reserved passion, like that of a Delacroix it
rebourSf and in his still-life he is as great even as
Manet.

His landscapes are real, though without the
subtle poetry of Corot or the blazing l)nncism of
Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch:
Van der Neer, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutch-
man ever painted so imcompromisingly, so close
to the border line that divides the rigid definitions
of old-fashioned photography — the "new" pho-
tography hugs closely the mellow mezzotint — and
the vision of the painter. An eye — nothing more,

PAUL CEZANNE

is C&anne. He refuses to see in nature either a
symbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are
poignant in their reality. They are like the gril-
lage one notes in ancient French coimtry houses
^little casemates cut in the windows through
which you may see in vivid outline a little section
of the landscape. C&anne marvellously renders
certain surfaces, china, fruit, tapestry.

Slowly grew his fame as a sober, sincere, im-
afifected workman of art. Disciples rallied aroimd
him. He accepted changing fortimes with his ac-
customed equanimity. Maurice Denis painted
for the Champ de Mars Salon of 1901 a picture
entitled Hommage k C&anne, after the well-
known hommages of Fantin-Latour. This hom-
mage had its uses. The disciples became a swell-
ing, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the C&anne room
was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who
would have offered violence to the first critical
dissident. The older men, the followers of
Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if
the end of the world had arrived. Art is a seri-
ous affair in Paris. However, after C&anne ap-
peared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky
genius, Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal
Gauguin. And in the face of such offerings Ce-
zanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, achieve
the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is
certainly as far removed from Van Gogh and
Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manet and
Courbet on the other. Huysmans does not hesi-
tate to assert that C&anne contributed more to ac-

PROMENADES

celerate the impressionist movement than Manet
Paul Cezanne died in Aix, in Provence, October
23, 1906.

Emile Bernard, an admirer, a quasi-pupil of
C&anne's and a painter of established reputation,
discoursed at length in the Mercure de France upon
the methods and the man. His anecdotes are in-
teresting. Without the genius of Flaubert, Ce-
zanne had something of the great novelist's ab-
horrence of life — fear would be a better word.
He voluntarily left Paris to immure himself in his
native town of Aix, there to work out in peace
long-planned projects, which would, he believed,
revolutionise the technique of painting. Whether
for good or evil, his influence on the yoimger men
in Paris has been powerful, though it is now on the
wane. How far they have gone astray in imitathig
him is the most significant thing related by Emile
Bernard, a friend of Paul Gauguin and a member
of his Pont-Aven school.

In February, 1904, Bernard landed in Marseilles
after a trip to the Orient. A chance word told
him that there had been installed an electric tram-
way between Marseilles and Aix. Instantly the
name of Cdzanne came to his memory; he had
known for some years that the old painter was in
Aix. He resolved to visit him, and fearing a
doubtful reception he carried with him a pamphlet
he had written in 1889, an eulogium of the painter.
On the way he asked his fellow-travellers for
C&anne's address, but in vain; the name was
unknown. In Aix he met with little success.

PAUL CEZANNE

Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reached
his birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go
to the Mayor's office, where he would find an elec-
toral list Among the voters he discovered a Paul
Cfeanne, who was bom January 19, 1839, who
lived at 25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time
and reached a simple dwelling house with the name
of the painter on the door. He rang. The door
opened. He entered and mounted a staircase.
Ahead of him, slowly toiling upward, was an old
man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. It was
Cdzanne. After he had explained the reason for
his visit, the old painter cried: "You are Emile
Bernard! You are a maker of biographies! Sig-
nac" — an impressionist — "told me of you. You
are also a painter?" Bernard, who had been
painting for years, and was a friend of Signac, was
nonplussed at his sudden literary reputation, but
he explained the matter to C&anne, who, how-
ever, was in doubt until he saw later the work of
his admirer.

He had another atelier a short distance from the
town; he called it "The Motive." There, facing
Moimt Sainte-Victoire, he painted every afternoon
in the open; the majority of his later landscapes
were inspired by the views in that charming valley.
Bernard was so glad to meet Cdzanne that he
moved to Aix.

In C&anne's studio at Aix Bernard endoimtered
some extraordinary studies in flower painting and
three death heads; also monstrous nudes, giant-
like women whose flesh appeared parboiled. On

PROMENADES

the streets Cezanne was always annoyed by boys
or beggars; the former were attracted by his bohe-
mian exterior and to express their admiration
shouted at him or else threw stones; the beggars
knew their man to be easy and were rewarded by
small coin. Although C&anne lived like a bache-
lor, his surviving sister saw that his household was
comfortable. His wife and son lived in Paris and
often visited him. He was rich; his father, a suc-
cessful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of
money; but a fanatic on the subject of art, cease-
lessly searching for new tonal combinations, he
preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he was
considered eccentric though harmless. His pride
was doubled by a morbid sh3mess. Strangers
he avoided. So sensitive was he that once when
he stumbled over a rock Bernard attempted to
help him by seizing his arm. A terrible scene
ensued. The painter, livid with fright, cursed the
imhappy young Parisian and finally ran away.
An explanation came when the housekeeper told
Bernard that her master was a little peculiar.
Early in life he had been kicked by some rascal and
ever afterward was nervous. He was very irritable
and not hi good health.

In Bernard's presence he threw a bust made of
him by Sdari to the ground, smashing it. It
didn't please him. In argument he lost his
temper, though he recovered it rapidly. Zola's
name was anathema. He said that Daumier
drank too much; hence his failure to attain verita-
ble greatness. C&anne worked from six to ten or

PAUL CEZANNE

eleven in the morning at his atelier; then he break-
fasted, repaired to the "Motive," there to remain
until five in the evening. Returning to Aix, he
dined and retired immediately. And he had
kept up this life of toil and abnegation for years.
He compared himself to Balzac's Frenhofer (in
The Unknown Masterpiece) , who painted out each
day the work of the previous day. C&anne
adored the Venetians — which is curious — and
admitted that he lacked the power to realise his
inward vision; hence the continual experimenting.
He most admired Veronese, and was ambitious of
being received at what he called the "Salon de
Bouguereau." The truth is, despite C&anne's
long residence in Paris, he remained provincial
to the end; his father before becoming a banker
had been a hairdresser, and his son was proud of
the fact. He never concealed it. He loved his
father's memory and had wet eyes when he spoke
of him.

Bernard thinks that the vision of his master was
defective; hence the sometime shocking deforma-
tions he indulged in. "His opiique was more in
his brain than in his eye. " He lacked imagination
\absolutely, and worked slowly, laboriously, his
: method one of excessive complication. He began
with a shadow, then a touch, superimposing tone
upon tone, modelling his paint somewhat like
Monticelli, but without a hint of that artist's lyr-
icism. Sober, without rhetoric, a realist, yet with
a singularly rich and often harmonious palette,
C&anne reported faithfully what his eyes told him.

PROMENADES

It angered him to see himself imitated and he
was wrathful when he heard that his still-life pic-
tures were praised in Paris. " That stuflF they like
up there, do they? Their taste must be low," he
would repeat, his eyes sparkling with malice. He
disliked the work of Paul Gauguin and repudiated
the claim of being his artistic ancestor. "He did
not understand me," grumbled C&anne. He
praised Thomas Couture, who was, he asserted, a
true master, one who had formed such excellent
pupils as Courbet, Manet, and Puvis. This rather
staggered Bernard, as weU it might; the paintings
of Couture and C&anne are poles apart.

He had, he said, wasted much time in his youth
— particularly in literature. A lettered man, he
read to Bernard a poem in imitation of Baudelaire,
one would say very Baudelairian. He had begun
too late, had submitted himself to other men's
influence, and wished for half a century that he
might "realise" — his favourite expression — his
theories. When he saw Bernard painting he told
him that his palette was too restricted; he needed
at least twenty colours. Bernard gives the list of
yellows, reds, greens, and blues, with variations.
"Don't make Chinese images like Gauguin,"
he said another time. "All nature must be mod-
elled after the sphere, cone, and cylinder; as for
colour, the more the colours harmonise the more
the design becomes precise." Never a devotee
of form — he did not draw from the model — his
philosophy can be summed up thus: Look out
for the contrasts and correspondence of tones, and

PAUL CEZANNE

the design will take care of itself. He hated
" literary " painting and art criticism. He strongly
advised Bernard to stick to his paint and let the pen
alone. The moment an artist begins to explain his
work he is done for; painting is concrete, litera-
ture deals with the abstract. He loved music,
especially Wagner's, which he did not understand,
but the sound of Wagner's name was sympathetic,
and that had at first attracted him! Pissarro he
admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffermg
from diabetes, which kiUed him, his nervous ten-
sion is excusable. He was in reality an amiable,
kind-hearted, religious man. Above all, simple.
He sought for the simple motive in nature. He
would not paint a Christ head because he did
not believe himself a worthy enough Christian.
Chardui he studied and had a theory that the
big spectacles and visor which the Little Master
(the Velasquez of vegetables) wore had helped
his vision. Certainly the still-life of Cfeanne's is
the only modem still-life that may be compared
to Chardin's; not Manet, Vollon, Chase has ex-
celled this humble painter of Aix. He called the
Ecoles des Beaux- Arts the " Bozards," .and reviled
as farceurs the German secessionists who imitated
him. He considered Ingres, notwithstanding his
science, a small painter in comparison with the
Venetians and Spaniards.

A painter by compulsion, a contemplative rather
than a creative temperament, a fumbler and
seeker, nevertheless Paul Cezanne has formed a
schooli has left a considerable body of work. His

PROMENADES

optic nerve was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or
sink on his canvas; he often complained, but his
patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his
friend Zola his genius — if genius there is in either
man — was largely a matter of protracted labour,
and has it not been said that genius is a long
labour ?

From the sympathetic pen of Emile Bernard
we learn of a character living in the real bohemia of
Paris painters who might have figured in any of the
novels referred to, or, better still, might have been
interpreted by Victor Hugo or Ivan TurgenieflF. But
the Frenchman would have made of Pfere Tanguy
a species of poor M)nnel; the Russian would have
painted him as he was, a saint in humility, spring-
ing from the soil, the friend of poor painters, a
socialist in theory, but a Christian in practice.
After following the humble itinerary of his life you
realise the uselessness of "literary" invention.
Here was character for a novelist to be had for
the asking. The Crainquebille of Anatole France
occurs to the lover of that writer after reading
Emile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy.

His name was Julien Tanguy. He was bom
in 1825 at Pl&Iran, in the north of France. He
was a plasterer when he married. The young
couple, accustomed to hardships of all kinds,
left Saint-Brieuc for Paris. This was in i860.
After various vicissitudes the man became a
colour grinder in the house of Edouard, Rue
Clauzel. The position was meagre. The Tan-
guys moved up in the social scale by accepting the

PAUL CEZANNE

job of concierge somewhere on the Butte Mont-
martre. This gave Pfere Tanguy liberty, his wife
looking after the house. He went into business on
his own account, vending colours in the quarter
and the suburbs. He traversed the country from
Argenteuil to Barbizon, from Ecouen to Sarcelle.
He met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, C&anne, all
youthful and confident and boiling over with ad-
miration for Corot, Courbet, and Millet. They
patronised the honest, pleasant pedlar of colours
and brushes, and when they didn't have the
money he trusted them. It was his prime quality
that he trusted people. He cared not enough for
money, as his too often sufiFering wife averred, and
his heart, always on his sleeve, he was an easy mark
for the designing. This supreme simplicity led
him into joining the Commimists in 1871, and then
he had a nasty adventure. One day, while dream-
ing on sentry duty, a band from. Versailles sud-
denly descended upon the outposts. Pfere Tanguy
lost his head. He could not fire on a fellow-being,
and he threw away his musket. For this act of
"treachery" he was sentenced to serve two years
in the gaUeys at Brest. Released by friendly in-
tervention he had still to remain without Paris for
two years more. Finally, entering his beloved
quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, and
hearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved
from the Rue Clauzel he rented a little shop,
where he sold material to artists, bought pictures,
and entertained in his humble manner any friend
or luckless devil who happened that way.

PROMENADES

Cezanne and Vignon were his best customers.
Guillemin, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh,
Oiler, Messurer, Augustin, Signac, De Lautrec,
symbolists of the Pont-Aven school, neo-impres-
sionists, and the young fumistes of schools as yet
unborn, revolutionaries with one shirt to their back,
swearing at the official Sdhn and also swearing by
the brotherhood of man (with a capital), assem-
bled in this dingy old shop. Tanguy was a rally-
ing point. He was full of the milk of human kind-
ness, and robbed himself to give a worthless fellow
with a hard-luck story some of the sous that should
have gone to his wife. Fortunately she was a phil-
osopher as well as an admirable housekeeper. If
the rent was paid and there was some soup-meat
for dinner she was content More she could not
expect from a man who gave away with both
hands. But — and here is the curious part of
this narrative of M. Bemard*s — Tanguy was the
only person in Paris who bought and owned pic-
tures by Cezanne. He had dozens of his can-
vases stacked away in the rear of his establishment
— C&amie often parted with a canvas for a few
francs. When Tanguy was hard up he would go
to some discerning amateur and sell for two hun-
dred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thou-
sand francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his
Cdzannes. Artists came to see them. His shop
was the scene of many a wordy critical battle.
Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothmg so re-
sembles a daub as a masterpiece," and the novel-
ist El^mir Bourges cried, ''This is the painting of

PAUL CEZANNE

a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the pres-
ence of the Cfoannes, Anquetin admired; but, as
Bernard adds, Jacques Blanche bought. So did
Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine
Cfoanne to-day is a difficult fish to hook. The
great public won't have him, and the amateurs
who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes.

The socialism of Pfere Tanguy was of a mild
order. He pitied with a Tolstoyan pity the suf-
ferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, nor
did he stand at street comers preaching the beau-
ties of torch and bomb. A simple soul, unedu-
cated, not critical, yet with an instinctive ^ir for
the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused
the cause of his clients because they were poverty-
stricken, xmknown, and revolutionists — an aes-
thetic revolution was his wildest dream. He said of
Cfoanne that " Papa Cfoanne always quits a pic-
ture before he finishes it. If he moves he lets his
canvases lie in the vacated studio. " He no doubt
benefited by this carelessness of the painter.
Cfoanne worked slowly, but he never stopped
working; he left nothing to hazard, and, astonish-
ing fact, he spent every morning at the Louvre.
There he practised his daily scales, optically
speaking, before taking up the brush for the day's
work. Many of Vincent von Gogh's pictures
Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The
eccentric, gifted Dutchman attracted the poor
merchant by his ferocious socialism. He was,
indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like a
madman, painting with his colour tubes* when he

PROMENADES

had no brushes, and literally living in the boutique
of Tanguy. The latter always read Le Cri du
Peuple and UltUransigeatU, and believed all he
read. He did not care much for Van Gogh's
compositions, no doubt agreeing with Cezanne,
who, viewing them for the first time, calmly re-
marked to the youth, "Sincerely, you paint like
a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van Gogh
frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an
Italian woman. It bore the romantic title of The
Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his bills he
would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers
of tropical exuberance, landscapes that must have
been seen in a nightmare. He was painting at
this time three pictures a day. He would part
with a canvas at the extortionate price of a franc.

Tanguy was the possessor of a large portrait by
Cfeanne, done in his earliest manner. This he
had to sell on account of pressing need. Dark
days followed. He moved across the street into
smaller quarters. The old crowd began to drift
away; some died, some had become famous, and
one. Van Gogh, shot himself in an access of mania.
This was a shock to his friend. A second followed
when Van Gogh's devoted brother went mad.
Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately
called, sickened. He entered a hospital. He
suffered from a cancerous trouble of the stomach.
One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him:
"I am bored here. ... I won't die here. ... I
mean to die in my own home." He went home
and died shortly afterward. In 1894 Octave

PAUL CEZANNE

Mirbeau wrote a moving article for the Journal
about the man who had never spoken ill of any
one, who had never turned from his door a himgry
person. The result was a sale organised at the
H6tel Drouot, to which prominent artists and lit-
erary folk contributed works. Cazin, Guillemet,
G)rp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro,Rochegrosse,
Sisley, Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot,
Renoir, Jongkind, RafiFaelli, Helleu, Rodin, and
many others participated in this noble charity,
which brought the widow ten thousand francs.
She soon died.

Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about
1886. It is said to belong to Rodin. It repre-
sents the naive man with his irregular features and
placid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished
face, but unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who
had loved his neighbour better than himself
(therefore he died in misery). He it was who
may be remembered by those who knew him —
and also a few future historians of the futility of
things in general — as the man who first made
known to Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate
Paul C€zanne. An odd fish, indeed, was this
same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters.

ROPS THE ETCHER

That personality in art counts, next to actual
genius, heavier than all other qualities, is such a
truism that it is often forgotten. In the enormous
mass of mediocre work which is turned out an-
nually by artists of technical talent seldom is there
encoimtered a strong, well-defined personality.
Imitation has been called the bane of originality;
suppress it as a factor, and nine-tenths of living
painters, sculptors, etchers would have to shut up
shop. The stencil is the support of many men
who otherwise might have become useful citizens,
shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents.
For this reason the phrase "academic" should
be more elastic in its meanings. There are aca-
demic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli,
as well as by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The
"academic" Rodin has appeared in contempo-
rary sculpture; the great Frenchman foimd for
himself his formula, and the lesser men have ap-
propriated it to their own uses. This is consid-
ered legitimate, though not a high order of art;
however, the second-rate rules in the market-place,
let the genius rage as he will. He must be tamed.

ROPS THE ETCHER

He must be softened; his divine fire shaded by the
friendly screens of more prudent, more conven-
tional talent Even among men of genius up on
the heights it is the personality of each that enters
largely into the equation of their work. No one
can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher
Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman.
Yet what individuality there is in the plates of
the American! What personality! Now^ Fdicien
Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver,
designer, and painter, occupies about the same
relative position to Honors Daumier as Whistler
does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of
Rops. Why ? He was a man of genius, one of the
greatest etchers and lithographers of his century,
an artist with an intense personal line, a colossal
workman and versatile inventor — why has he
been passed over and inferior men praised?

His pornographic plates cannot be the only
reason, because his representative work is free from
licence or suggestion. Giulio Romano's illustra-
tions to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as the
representative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are
the vulgarities of Rowlandson, Hogarth, George
Morland set against their better attempts. Col-
lectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-
century editions des fermiers-generaux for their
capital workmanship, not for their licentious
themes. But Rops is always the Rops of the
Pomocrates! After discussing him with some
amateurs you are forced to realise that it is his
plates in which he gives rein to an unparalleled

PROMENADES

flow of animal spirits and gauloiserie that are the
more esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big
and subtle style, the etcher of the Sataniques, of
Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d' Absinthe and half
a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the
witty illustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and
the cynicism of Chamfort And even on this side
of his genius he has never been excelled, the Jap-
anese alone being his equals in daring of invention,
while he tops them in the expression of broad
hiunour.

In the Luxemboxng galleries there is a picture of
an interesting man, in an etcher's atelier. It is
the portrait of Rops by Mathey, and shows him
examining at a window, through which the light
pours in, a freshly pulled proof. It depicts with
skill the intense expressicm upon his handsome
face, the expression of an artist absolutely ab-
sorbed in his work. That is the real Rops. His
master quality was intensity. It traversed like a
fine keen flame his entire production from seem-
ingly insignificant tail-pieces to his agonised de-
signs, in which luxiuy and pain are inextricably
commingled.

He was bom at Namur, Belgium, July lo, 1833,
and died at Essonnes, near Paris, August 23, 1898.
He was the son of wealthy parents, and on one side
stemmed directly from Himgary. His grand-
father was Rops Lajos, of the province called
Alfod. The Maygar predominated. He was as
proud and fierce as Goya. A fighter from the
beginning, still in warrior^s harness at the close,

ROPS THE ETCHER

when, ''cardiac and impenitent," as he put it, he
died of heart trouble. He received at the hands
of the Jesuits a classical education. A Latinist,
he was erudite as were few of his artistic ccmtem-
poraries. The m3^tic strain in him did not betray
itself imtil his third period. He was an accom-
plished humourist and could generally cap Latin
verses with D'Aurevilly or Huysmans. Tertul-
lian's De Cultu Feminarum he must have read,
for many of his plates are illustrations of the
learned Bishop of Carthage's attitude toward
womankind. The hot crossings of blood, Belgian
andHimgarian, may be responsible for a peculiarly
forceful, rebellious, sensual, and boisterous tem-
perament

Doubtless the three stadia of an artist's career
axe the arbitrary classification of critics; never-
theless they are well marked in many cases.
Balzac was a romantic, a realist, a mystic; Flau-
bert was alternately romantic and realist Tolstoi
was never a romantic, but a realist he was, and he
is a m)rstic. Dostoievski, from whom he absorbed
so much, taught him the formulas of his mysticism
— though Tolstoi has never felt the life of the soul
so profoimdly as this predecessor. Ibsen passed
through the three stages. Huysmans, never ro-
mantic, began as a realistic pessimist and ended
as a pessimistic mystic. Fflicien Rops could
never have been a romantic, though the macabre
romanticism of 1830 may be found in his de-
signs. A realist, brutal, bitter, be was in his
youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so often

PROMENADES

lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire
doubled by a Rabelais. There is honest and also
shocking laughter in these early illustrations. A
fafUaisiskf graceful, delicate — and indelicate —
emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he
had stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops
summed up in his book plates, title-pages, and
wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious speed, all
the elegance, the courtly corruption, and Boucher-
like luxuriousness that may be detected in the
moral marquetrie of the Goncourts. He had not yet
said, "Evil, be thou my Good," nor had the mystic
delirium of the last period set in. All his aiter-
noons must have been those of a faim — a faim who
with impeccable solicitude put on paper what he
saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the
banks of secret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the
casuistry of concupiscence, the ironic discoloura-
tions and feverish delving into subterranean moral
stratifications were as yet afar. He was young,
handsome, with a lithe, vigorous body and the
head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, a head all
profile, like the heads of Hungary — Himgary
itself, which is all profile. Need we add that after
the death of his father he soon wasted a fortune?
But the reckless bohemian in him was subjugated
by necessity. He set to work to earn his bread.
Some conception of his labours for thirty-five years
may be gleaned from the catalogue of his work by
Erast^e Ramiro (whose real name is Eug^e
Rodrigues). Nearly three thousand plates he
etched, lithographed, or en^aved, not including

ROPS THE ETCHER

his paintings or his experiments in various me-
diums, such as vernis mou and wood-engraving.
The coarse legends of old Flanders foimd in
Rops their pictorial interpreter. Less cerebral in
his abounding youth he made Paris laugh with
his comical travesties of political persons, persons
in high finance, and also by his shrewd eye for the
homely traits in the life of the people. His street
scenes are miracles of detail, satire, and fim. The
one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy
of hate, inherited from the 1830 poets, of the
bourgeois, was a merry play for Rops. He is the
third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumier
and Gavami being the other two. The liberal
pinch of Gallic salt in the earlier plates need not
annoy one. Deliberately vulgar he never is,
though he sports with things hallowed, and always
goes out of his way to insult the religion he first
professed. There is in this Satanist a reh'gious
fond; the very fierceness of his attacks, of his blas-
phemies, betrays the Catholic at heart. If he did
not believe, why should he have displayed such
continual scorn? No, Rops was not as sincere
as his friends would have us believe. He made
his Pegasus plod in too deep mud, and often in his
most winged flights he darkened the blue with his
satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle
period his pages overflow with decorative Cupids
and tiny devils, joyful girls, dainty amourettes, and
Parisian ptdti — they blithely kick their legs over
the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a
snowball jest or a game at forfeits. They are

PROMENADES

adorable. His women are usually strong-backed,
robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and a
Rubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Be-
fore these majestic idols men prostrate them*
selves.

In his turbulent later visions there is no sus-
picion of the opium that gave its inspiration to
Coleridge, Poe, De Quincey, James Thomson, or
Baudelaire. The city of dreadful night shown
us by Rops is the city through whose streets he has
passed his life long. Not the dream cities of James
Ensor or De Groux, the Paris of Rops is at cmce
an abode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of
sheer ecstasy and morbid hallucinations. The
opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by a man-
ual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master
of linear design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct
ever. Fabulous and absurd, delicious and abom-
inable as he may be, his spirit sits critically aloft^
never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he
handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a
philosopher and the indifiference of a destroying
angel. There is a diabolic spleen more strongly
developed in Rops than in any of his contempo-
raries, with the sole exception of Baudelaire, who
inspired and spurred him on to astounding
atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism,
this worship of Satan and his works, are sincere
iA the etcher. A relic of rotten Romanticism, it
glows like phosphorescent fire during his last
period. The Church has in its wisdom employed
a phrase for frigid depravity of the Rops kind/

ROPS THE ETCHER

naming it ''morose delectation." Morose Rops
became as he developed. His private life he hid.
We know little or nothing of it save that he was
not unhappy in his companionships or choice of
friends. He loathed the promiscuous methods by
which some men achieve admiration. But secret
spleen there must have been — a twist of a
painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became
a solitary and ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral
as he is, his discovery of the human soul shows
it as ill at ease before its maker. Flaubert has
said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower
slope." But no man may sim himself on this
slope by the flames of hell without his soul shrivel-
ling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has
been greatly influenced by him; Rodin, as an
artist superior to the Belgian, has revealed less
preoccupation with the ignoble; at least, despite
his excursions into questionable territory, he has
never been carried completely away. He always
returns to the sane, to the normal life; but over
the volcanic landscapes of Rops are strewn many
moral abysses.

He had no illusions as to the intelligence and
sincerity of those men who, denying free-will, yet
call themselves free-thinkers. Rops frankly made
of Satan his chief religion. He is the psychologist
of the exotic. Cruel, fantastic, nonchalant, and
shivering attrociously, his female Satan worship-
pers go to their greedy master in fatidical and

PROMENADES

shuddering attitudes; they submit to his glacial
embrace. The acrid perfume of Rops's maleficent
genius makes itself manifest in his Sataniques.
No longer are his women the embodiment of Cor-
biire's "Etemel f^minin de Tftemel jocrisse."
Ninnies, simperers, and simpletons have vanished.
The poor, suflFering human frame becomes a hor-
rible musical instrument from which the artist ex-
torts exquisite and sinister music. We turn our
heads away, but the time of cracking souls haunts
our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire,
Victor Hugo could have said that he had evoked a
new shudder. And singularly enough Rops is in
these plates the voice of the mediaeval preacher
crying out that Satan is alive, a tangible being,
going about the earth devouring us; that Woman
is a vase of iniquity, a tower of wrath, a menace,
not a salvation. His readings of the early fathers
and his pessimistic temperamental bent contributed
to this truly morose judgment of his mother's sex.
He drives cowering to her comer, after her earlier
triumphs, his unhappy victim of love, absinthe,
and diabolism. Not for an instant does he par-
ticipate personally in the strained voluptuousness
or terrific chastisements of his designs. He has
all the old monachal contempt of woman. He is
cerebrally chaste. Huysmans, in his admirable
essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a de rfeUement
obscfenes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat
bit of special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops
did not lead the life of a saint, though his devotion
to his art was Balzacian. It would be a more

ROPS THE ETCHER

subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism.
"There is," he writes, "from the metaphysical ob-
server's point of view, neither disease nor health
of the soul; there are only psychological states."
The ekUs cPames of Fflicien Rops, then, may or
may not have been morbid. But he has con-
trived that his wit in its effect upon his spectators
is too often profoundly depressing and morbid
and disquieting.

The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers
comprises the most critical names in France and
Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J. K. Huysmans,
Pradelle, Jos^phin Pfladan — once the Sar of
Babylonian fame — Eugfene Demolder, Emile
Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier,
Champsaur, Arsfene Alexandre, Fromentin, Vit-
torio Pica, De H&&iia, Mallarm^, Octave Uzanne,
Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro and
Charles Baudelaire. The last first recognised
him, though he never finished the projected study
of him as man and artist In the newly published
letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one ad-
dressed to Rops, who saw much of the unhappy
poet during his disastrous sojourn in Brussels. It
was the author of Les Fleurs du Mai who made
the clever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre
Monsieur Rops , . . Qui n'est pas im grand prix
de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme la
pyramide de Chfops. "

A French critic has called Rops " a false genius,"
probably alluding to the malign characters of the
majority of his engraved works rather than to

PROMENADES

his marvellous and fecund powers of invention.
Perverse idealist as he was, he never relaxed his
pursuit of the perfection of form. He tells us that
in 1862 he went to Paris, after much preliminary
skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to
"learn his art" with Bracquemcmd and Jacque-
mart, both of whom he never ceased praising. He
was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher,
and with Courbet, Flameng, and Thfrond.

He admired Calmatta and his school — Bal,
Franck, Biot, Meimier, Flameng. He belonged
to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He
worked in aquatint and successfully revived the
old process, vernis mau. A sober workman, he
spent at least foiurteen hours a day at his desk.
Being musical, he designed some genre pieces,
notably that of the truthfully observed Bassoon-
ist And though not originating he certainly car-
ried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous those
progressive pictures of goats dissolving into pian-
ists; of Liszt tearing passion and grand pianos into
tatters. He has contributed to the gaiety of na-
tions with his celebrated design : Ma fille ! Monsieur
Cabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother present-
ing her nude daughter as a model for that painter.
The malicious ingenuity of Rops never failed him.
He produced for years numerous anecdotes in
black and white. The elasticity of his line, its
variety and richness, the harmonies, elliptical and
condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery move-
ment, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal
gradations, his caressing touch by which the metal

ROPS THE ETCHER

reproduced muscular crispations of his dry-point
and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms,
above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his
balanced ensembles — these prove him to be one
of the masters of modem etching. And from his
cynical yet truthful motto: " J'appelle im chat un
chat," he never swerved.

A student and follower of Jean Fransois Millet,
several landscapes and pastorals of Rops recall the
French painter's style. In his Belgian out-of-
doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of
Rops projects itself unmistakably. Such a pic-
ture as Scandal, for example, might have been
signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet,
and beautifuUy drawn. The scheme is trite.
Two peasants, a young woman and a young man
holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very
simple, very expressive. His portraits of women,
Walloons, and of Antwerp are solidly built, replete
with character and quaint charm. Charming, too,
is the portrait of his great-aunt. Scandal is an
ambitious design. A group of women strongly
dififerentiated as to tjrpes and ages are enjoying over
a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal.
The situation is seized; it is a picture that appeals.
Ghastly is his portrait of a wretched young woman
ravaged by absinthe. Her lips are blistered by the
wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is de-
spair. Another delineation of disease, a grinning,
skull-like head with a scythe back of it, is a tribute
to the artist's power of rendering the repulsive.
His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon,

PROMENADES

and La Femme au Pantin should be studied. He
has painted scissors grinders, flower girls, "old
guards, " incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in
the streets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and
peacocks, and a notable figure piece. An Interment
in the Walloon Country, which would have pleased
Courbet

It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is im-
approachable. Satan Sowing the Tares of Evil is
a sublime conception, truly Miltonic. The bony-
legged demon strides across Paris. One foot is
posed on Notre Dame. He quite touches the sky.
Upon his head is a broad-brimmed peasant's hat,
Quaker in shape. Hair streams over his skeleton
shoulders. His eyes are gleaming with infernal
malice — it is the most diabolic face ever drawn
of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck's Satan has
eyes so full of liquid danmation. Scattering min-
iature female figures, like dolls, to the winds, this
monster passes over Paris, a baleful typhoon.
The moral is not far to seek; indeed, there is gen-
erally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the
Rops etchings. Order Reigns at Warsaw is a
grim commentary on Russian politics quite op-
portune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used
by Socialists as a protest against capital pimish-
ment. Les Diables Froids personifies the impas-
sible artist. It is a page torn from the book of
hell. Rops had read Dante; he knew the meaning
of the lines: "As the rill that nms from Bulicame
to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and
more than once he explored the frozen circles of

ROPS THE ETCHER

Gehenna. Victor Hugo was much stirred by the
design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpse
swinging under a huge bell in some vast and im-
memorial, raven-haunted, decaying tower, whose
bizarre and gloomy outlines might have been
created by the brain of a Piranesi. , An apoca-
lyptic imagination had F^icien Rops.

Ill

MONTICELLI

Poor "Fada"! The "innocent," the inof-
fensive fool — ^as they christened that unfortunate
man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect
of the South, the slang of Marseilles — where he
spent the last sixteen years of his life. The richest
colourist of the nineteenth century, obsessed by
colour, little is known of this Monticelli, even in
these days when an artist's life is subjected to
inquisitorial methods. Few had written of him in
English before W. E. Henley and W. C. Brownell.
In France eulogised by Thfophile Gautier, in
favour at the court, admired by Diaz, Daubigny,
Troyon, and Delacroix, his hopes were cracked
by the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war.
He escaped to Marseilles, there to die poor, neg-
lected, half mad. Perhaps he was to blame for
his failures; perhaps his temperament was his
fate. Yet to-day his pictures are sought for as
were those of Diaz two decades ago, though there
was a tacit conspiracy among dealers and ama-
teurs not to drag his merits too soon before the
foot-lights. In 1900 at the Paris Exposition a col-
lection of his works, four being representative,

MONTICELLI

opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It
was realised that Monticelli had not received his
proper ranking in the nineteenth-century theatre of
painting; that while he owed much to Watteau,
to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could
stand or fall on his own merits. Since then the
Monticelli pictures have been steadily growing in
favour.

There is a Monticelli cult. America can boast
of many of his most distinguished specimens, while
the Louvre and the Luxembourg are without a
single one. The Mus& de Lille at Marseilles has
several examples; the private collections of M.
Delpiano at Cannes and a few collections in Paris
make up a meagre list. The Comparative Ex-
hibition in New York, 1904, revealed to many ac-
customed to overpraising Diaz and Fromentin
the fact that Monticelli was their superior as a
colourist, and a decorator of singularly fascinating
characteristics, one who was not always a mere
contriver of baccahanalian riots of fancy, but who
could exhibit when at his best a jusiesse of vision
and a controlled imagination.

The dictionaries oflFer small help to the student
as to the doings of this erratic painter. He was
bom October 24, 1824. He died Jime 29, 1886.
He was of mixed blood, Italian and French. His
father was a ganger, though Adolphe declared
that he was an authentic descendant of the
Crusader, Godefroy Monticelli, who married in
1 100 Aurea Castelli, daughter of the Duca of
Spoleto. Without doubt his Italian blood counted

PROMENADES

heavily in his work, but whether of noble issue
matters little. Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers
de Plsle Adam, two men of letters, indulged in
similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty and
tribulations the oriflamme of aristocraqr which
they bravely bore into the caf6 life of Paris was a
source of consolation to them. But it is with
brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments,
and the legend of high birth can go with the other
fictions reported by Henley that Monticelli was an
illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that he was
the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a pris-
oner for years, to "steal the secret of his colours. "
Like mauy another of his temperament, he had
himself to thank for his woes, though it was a
streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussiaus bore
down on Paris. He was beginning to be known.
A pupil of Ra)maond Aubert (1781-1857), he was
at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres." Dela-
croix and his violently harmonised colour masses
settled the future colourist He met Diaz and the>
got on very well together. A Southerner, hand-
some, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with the
eloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his
musical name made friends at court and among
powerful artists. In 1870 he started on his walk
of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He
literally painted his way. In every inn he shed
masterpieces. Precious gold dripped from his
palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there
are, it is whispered — by white-haired old men the
memory of whose significaut phrases awakes one

MONTICELLI

in the middle of the night longing for the valley of
Durance — that if a resolute, keen-eyed adven-
turer would traverse unostentatiously the route
taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey the rewards
might be great It is an idea that grips one's
imagination, but imfortimately it is an idea that
gripped the imagination of others thirty years
ago. Not an aubergCy hotel, cnt hamlet has been
left xmexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar
parlance has been sedulously used by interested
pers(Mis. If there are any Monticellis unsold now-
adays they are for sale at the dealers'.

In him was incarnate all that we can conceive
as bohemian, with a training that gave him the
high-bred manner of a seigneur. He was a ro-
mantic, like his friend Fflix Ziem — Ziem, Mar-
cellin, Deboutin, and Monticelli represented a caste
that no longer exists; bohemians, yes, but gentle-
men, refined and fastidious. Yet, after his return
to his beloved Marseilles, Monticelli led the life of
an august vagabond. In his velvet coat, a big-
rimmed hat slouched over his eyes, he patrolled
the quays, singing, joking, an artless creature, so
good-hearted and irresponsible that he was called
"Fada," more in affection than contempt. He
painted rapidly, a picture daily, sold it on the
terrassesoi the caf^sfor a hundred francs, and when
he couldn't get a hundred he would take sixty.
Now one must pay thousands for a canvas. His
most loving critic, Camille Mauclair, who, above
any one, has battled valiantly for his art, tells us
that Monticelli once took eighteen francs for a small

PROMENADES

canvas because the purchaser had no more in his
pocket! In this manner he disposed of a gallery.
He smoked happy pipes and sipped his absinthe —
in his case as desperate an enemy as it had
proved to De Musset. He would always doff his
hat at the mention of Watteau or Rubens. They
were his gods.

When Monticelli arrived in Marseilles after his
tramp down from Paris he was literally in rags.
M. Chave, a good Samaritan, took him to a shop
and togged him out in royal raiment. They left
for a promenade, and then the painter begged his
friend to let him walk alone so as not to attenuate
the effect he was bound to produce on the passers-
by, such a childish, harmless vanity had he. His
delight was to gather a few chosen ones over a
bottle of old vintage, and thus with spasmodic
attempts at work his days rolled by. He was
feeble, semi-paralysed. With the advent of bad
health vanished the cunning of his hand. His
paint coarsened, his colours became crazier. His
pictures at this period were caricatures of his
former art. Many of the early ones were sold as the
productions of Diaz, just as to-day some Diazs
are palmed off as Monticellis. After four years of
decadence he died, repeating for months before his
taking off: " Je viens de la lune." He was one
whose brain a lunar ray had penetrated; but this
ray was transposed to a spectrum of gorgeous hues.
Capable of depicting the rainbow, he died of the
opalescence that clouded his glass of absinthe.
Pauvre Fadal

MONTICELU

It is only a coincidence, yet a curious one, that
two such dissimilar spirits as Stendhal and Monti-
ceili should have predicted their future popularity.
Stendhal said: "About r88o I shaO be understood."
Monticelli said in 1870: "I paint for thirty years
hence." Both prophecies have been realised.
After the exhibition at Edinburgh and Glasgow in
1890 Monticelli was placed by a few discerning
critics above Diaz in quality of paint. In 1892 Mr.
Brownell said of Monticelli in his French Art —
a book that every student and amateur of paint-
ing should possess — that the touch of Diaz, pa-
trician as it was, lacked the exquisiteness of Monti-
celli's; though he admits the "exaggeration of the
decorative impulse" in that master. For Henley
Monticelli's art was purely sensuous; "his fairy
meadows and enchanted gardens are that sweet
word 'Mesopotamia' in two dimensions." Hen-
ley speaks of his "clangours of bronze and gold
and scarlet" and admits that "there are moments
when his work is as infallibly decorative as a Per-
sian crock or a Japanese brocade." D. S. Mac-
Coll, in his study of Nineteenth-Century Painting,
gives discriminating praise: "Monticelli's own
exquisite sense of grace in women and mvention in
grouping add the positive new part without which
his art would be the mannerising of Rousseau, "
while Arthur Symons in his Studies in Seven
Arts declares all Monticelli's art "tends toward
43

PROMENADES

the effect of music ... his colour is mood . . .
his mood is colour."

It remained, however, for Camille Mauclair, a
Parisian critic in sympathy with the arts of design,
literature, and music, to place Monticelli in his
proper niche. This Mauclair has done with criti-
cal tact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of
which is evidently strained in favour of the impres-
sionistic school, in his L'Impressionisme, and in his
monograph on Watteau this critic declares that
Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little
and Watteau even more by its sentiment, and
Turner and Bonington by its colour. . . . His
work has the same subtlety of gradations, the same
division into fragments of tones (as in Watteau's
"Embarkment for Cythera"), the same variety of
execution, which has sometimes the opaqueness of
china and enamel and sometimes the translucence
of precious stones or the brilliancy of glass, metal,
or oxides and seems to be the result of some mys-
terious chemistry. . . . Monticelli had an ab-
solutely unique perception ot tonalities, and his
glance took in certain shades which had not been
observed before, which the optic and chromatic
science of the day has placed either by proof or hy-
pothesis between the principal tones of the solar
spectrum thirty years after Monticelli had fixed
them. There is magic and high l)n:ic poetry in his
art. " I wrote of the Monticellis exhibited at the
Comparative Exhibition in New York: "At the op-
posite end of the room there is A Summer Day's
Idyll, upon which Monticelli had squeezed all his

MONTICELLI

flaming tubes. It seems orchestrated in crushed
pomegranate, the light suffusing the reclining
figures like a jewelled benediction. Marvellous,
too, are the colour-bathed creatures in this No
Man's Land of drugged dreams. ... Do not the
walls fairly vibrate with this wealth of fairy tints
and fantasy?" But it must not be forgotten that
he struck other chords besides blazing sun-wor-
shipping. We often encounter landscapes of va-
porous melancholy, twilights of reverie.

Monticelli once told an admiring yoimg ama-
teur that in his canvases "the objects are the
decorations, the touches are the scales, and the
light is the tenor," thereby acknowledging him-
self that he felt colour as music. There was hy-
peraesthesia in his case; his eyes were protuberant
and, like the ears of violinists, capable of distin-
guishing quarter tones, even sixteenths. There are
affiliations with Watteau; the same gem-like style
of laying on the thick fute, the same delight in
fairy-like patches of paint to represent figures. In
i860 he literally resuscitated Watteau's manner,
addmg a personal note and a richness hitherto un-
known to French paint. Mauclair thinks that to
Watteau can be traced back the beginnings of
modem Impressionism; the division of tones, the
juxtaposition of tonalities. Monticelli was the
connecting link between Watteau and Monet
The same critic does not hesitate to name Monti-
celli as one of the great quartet of harmonists,
Claude, Turner, Monet being the other three.
Taine it was who voiced the philosophy of Impres-

PROMENADES

sionism when he announced in his Philosophic
de TArt that the principal personage in a picture
is the light in which all things are plunged.
Eugfene Carrifere also asserted that a "picture is
the logical development of light" Monticelli
before him had said: "In a painting one must
sound the C Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, all
the great ones have soimded the C" His C, his
key-note, was the magic touch of luminosity that
dominated his picture. Like Berlioz, he adored
colour for colour's sake. He had a touch all Ve-
netian in his relation of tones; at times he went in
search of chromatic adventures, returning with
the most marvellous trophies. No man before
or since, not even those practitioners of dissonance
and martyrs to the enharmonic scale, C&anne,
Gauguin, or Van Gogh, ever matched and modu-
lated such widely disparate tints; no man before
could extract such magnificent harmonies from
such apparently irreconcilable tones. Monticelli
thought in colour and was a master of orchestra-
tion, one who went further than Liszt

The simple-minded Monticelli had no psychol-
ogy to speak of — he was a reversion, a "throw
back" to the Venetians, the decorative Venetians,
and if he had possessed the money or the leisure —
he hadn't enough money to buy any but small can-
vases — he might have become a French Tiepolo,
and perhaps the greatest decorative artist of
France. Even his most delicate pictures are largely
felt and sonorously executed; not "finished" in the
studio sense, but complete — two diflFerent things.

MONTICELLI

Fate was against him, and the position he might
have had was won by the gentle Puvis de Cha-
vannes, who exhibited a genius for decorating
monumental spaces. With his fiery vision, his
brio of execution, his palette charged with jewelled
radiance, Monticelli would have been the man to
have changed the official interiors of Paris. His
energy at one period was enormous, consuming,
though short-lived — 1865-75. His lack of self-
control and at times his Italian superficiality, never
backed by a commanding intellect, produced the
Monticelli we know. In truth his soul was not
complicated. He could never have attacked the
psychology of Zarathustra, Hamlet, or Peer Gynt.
A Salome from him would have been a delightfully
decorative minx, set blithely dancing in some
many-hued and enchanted garden of Armida.
She would never have worn the air of hieratic las-
civiousness with which Gustave Moreau inevitably
dowered her. There was too much joy of the
south in Monticelli's bones to concern himself with
the cruel imaginings of the Orient or the grisly
visions of the north. He was Oriental au fond;
but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and
One Nights. He painted scenes from the De-
cameron, and his fetes galantes may be matched
with Watteau's in tone. His first period was his
most graceful; ivory-toned languorous dames,
garbed in Second Empire style, languidly stroll in
charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or
stately cavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is
here at its topmost. In his second period we get

PROMENADES

the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust,
the Don Quixote — recall, if you can, that glori-
ous tableau with its Spanish group and the long,
grave don and merry, rotund squire entering on
the scene, a fantastic sky behind them.

Painted music! The ruins, fountains, statues,
and mellow herbage abound in this middle period.
The third is less known. Extravagance began to
rule; scarlet fanfares are sounded; amethysts and
emeralds sparkle; yet there is more thematic
variety. Voluptuous, perfumed, and semi-tragic
notes were uttered by this dainty poet of the carni-
val of life. The canvas glowed with more rever-
berating and infernal lights, but l)n:ic ever. Tech-
nique, fabulous and feverish, expended itself on
flowers that were explosions of colours, on seduc-
tive marines, on landscapes of a rhythmic, haimt-
ing beauty — the Italian temperament had become
imleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and
echoed in Monticelli's canvases. Irony, like an
insinuating serpent, began to creep into this para-
dise of melting hues. The masterful gradations
of tone became bewildered. Poison was eating the
man's nerves. He discarded the brush, and stand-
ing before his canvas he squeezed his tubes upon
it, literally modelling his paint with his thumb
until it almost assumed the relief of sculpture.
What a touch he had! What a subtle prevision
of modulations to be effected by the careless
scratch of his nail or the whip of a knife's edge!
Remember, too, that originally he had been an
adept in the art of design; he could draw as well

MONTICELLI

as his peers. But he sacrificed form and obser-
vation and psychology to sheer colour. He, a
veritable discoverer of tones — aided thereto by
an abnormal vision — became the hasty im-
proviser, who at the last daubed his canvases
with a pasty mixture, as hot and crazy as his
ruined soul. The end did not come too soon. A
chromatic genius went under, leaving but a tithe
of the gleams that illuminated. his brain. Alas,
poor Fada!

IV
RODIN

Rodin, the French sculptor, deserves well of our
new century; the old one did so incontinently
batter him. The anguish of his own HelPs Portal
he endured before he moulded its clay between his
thick clairvoyant fingers. Misunderstood, there-
fore misrepresented, he with his pride and obsti-
nacy aroused — the one buttressing the other — '
was not to be budged from his formulas and
practice of sculpture. Then the world of art swung
unwillingly and unamiably toward him, perhaps
more from curiosity than conviction. Rodin
became famous. And he is more misimderstood
than ever. His very name, with its memory of
Eugfene Sue's romantic rancour — you recall that
impossible and diabolic Jesuit Rodin in The
Mysteries of Paris ? — has been thrown in his
teeth. He has been called ruse, even a fraud;
while the wholesale denimciation of his work as
erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. The
sculptor, who in 1877 was accused of "faking" his
life-like Age of Brass — now at the Luxembourg
— by taking a mould from the living model, also
experienced the discomfiture of being assured

RODIN

some years later that, not knowing the art of
modelling, his statue of Balzac was only an eva-
sion of difficulties. And this to the man who had
in the interim wrought so many masterpieces.

To give him his due he stands prosperity not
quite as well as he did poverty. In every great
artist there is a large area of self-esteem; it is the
reservou- which he must, during years of drought
and defeat, draw upon to keep his soul fresh.
Without the consoling fluid of egoism, genius must
perish in the dust of despair. But fill this source
to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and
artistic deterioration may ensue. Rodin has been
called, fatuously, the second Michael Angelo — as
if there could ever be a replica of any human. He
has been hailed as a modem Praxiteles. And he is
often damned as a myopic decadent whose insensi-
bility to pure line and deficiency in constructional
power have been elevated by his admirers into
sorry virtues. Yet is Rodin justly appraised ? Do
his friends not overdo their glorification, his critics
their censure? Nothing so stales a demigod's
image as the perfumes burned before it by his wor-
shippers; the denser the smoke the sooner crum-
ble the feet of their idol.

However, in the case of Rodin the fates have so
contrived their malicious game that at no point of
his career has he been without the company of
envy, chagrin, and slander. Often, when he had
attained a summit, he would find himself thrust
down into a deeper valley. He has moimted to
triumphs and fallen to humiliations, but his spirit

PROMENADES

has never been quelled, and if each acdivity he
scales is steeper, the air atop has grown purer,
more stimulating) and the landscape spreads
wider before him. He can say with Dante: "La
montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti. "
Rodin's moimtain has always straightened in him
what the world made crooked. The name of his
moimtain is Art A bom non-comformist, Rodin
makes the fourth of that group of nineteenth-cen-
tury artists — Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and
Exlouard Manet — who taught a deaf and blind
world to hear and see and think and fed.

Is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his
work alone should count, that his life is negligible ?
Though Rodin has followed Flaubert's advice to
artists to lead ascetic lives that their art might be
the more violent, nevertheless his career, colour-
less as it may seem to those who better love stage
players and the watery comedies of society — this
laborious life of a poor sculptor — is not to be
passed over if we are to make any estimate of his
art He, it is related, always becomes enraged at
the word "inspiration," enraged at the common
notion that fire descends from heaven upon the
head of the favoured neophyte of art Rodin
believes in but one inspiration — nature. He
swears he does not invent, but copies nature. He
despises improvisation, has contemptuous words
for "fatal facility," and, being a slow-moving,
slow-thinking man, he admits to his councils those
who have conquered art, not by assault, but by
stealth and after years of hard work. He sym-

RODIN

pathises with Flaubert's patient toiling days, he
praises Holland because after Paris it seemed slow.
"Slowness is a beauty," he declared. In a word,
Rodin has evolved a theory and practice of his art
that is the outcome — like all theories, all tech-
niques — of his own temperament. And that
temperament is giant-like, massive, ironic, grave,
strangely perverse at times; and it is the tempera-
ment of a magician doubled by that of a mathema-
tician.

Books are written about him. De Maupassant
describes him in Notre Coeur with picturesque
precision. He is tempting as a psychologic study.
He appeals to the literary, though he is not "liter-
ary." His modelling arouses tempests, either of ^^^
dispraise or idolatry. To see him steadily, criti-
cally, after a visit to his studios in Paris or Meudon,
is difficult. If the master be there then you feel
the impact of a personality that is as cloudy as the
clouds about the base of a mountain and as impres-
sive as the mountain. Yet a pleasant, unassum-
ing, sane man, interested in his clay — absolutely
— that is, unless you discover him to be more in-
terested in humanity. If you watch him well you
may find yourself well watched; those peering
eyes possess a vision that plunges into your soul.
And the soul this master of marbles sees as nude
as he sees the human body. It is the union of
artist and psychologist that places Rodin apart.
These two arts he practises in a medium that has
hitherto not betrayed potentialities for such almost
miraculous performances. Walter Pater is quite

PROMENADES

right in maintaining that each art has its separate
subject-matter; nevertheless, in the debatable
province of Rodin's sculpture we find strange
emotional power, hints of the art of painting and a
'■ rare musical suggestiveness. But this is not play-
ing the game according to the rules of Lessing and
his Laocodn.

Let us drop this old aesthetic rule of thumb and
confess that during the last century a new race
of artists sprang up from some strange element
and, like flying-fish, revealed to a wondering world
their composite structures. Thus we find Berlioz
painting with his instrumentation; Franz Liszt,
Tschaikowsky, and Richard Strauss filling their
sjrmphonic poems with drama and poetry, and
Richard Wagner inventing an art which he be-
lieved to embrace the seven arts. And there is
Ibsen, who used the dramatic form as a vehicle
for his anarchistic ideas; and Nietzsche, who was
such a poet that he was able to sing a mad phil-
osophy into life; and Rossetti, who painted poems
and made poetry that is pictorial. Sculpture was
the only art that had resisted this imiversal disin-
tegration, this imbroglio of the arts. No sculptor
before Rodin had dared to break the line, dared
to shiver the syntax of stone. For sculpture is a
static, not a dynamic art — is it not ? Let us ob-
serve the rules, though we preserve the chill spirit
of the cemetery. What Mallarm^ attempted to
do with Frwich poetry Rodin accomplished in clay.
His marbles do not represent but present emotion,
are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music,

RODIN

form and substance coalesce. If he does not, as
did Mallarm^, arouse " the sflent thunder afloat in
the leaves, " he can summon from the vasty deep
the spirits of love, hate, pain, despair, sin, beauty,
ecstasy; above all, ecstasy. Now the primal gift
of ecstasy is bestowed upon few. In our age Keats
had it, and Shelley; Byron, despite his passion,
missed it, and so did Wordsworth. We find it in
Swinburne, he had it from the first; but few French
poets have it. Like the "cold devils" of Fdicien
Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the blasts of hell
about them, Charles Baudelaire can boast the
dangerous attribute. Poe and Heine knew ecsta-
sy, and Liszt also; Wagner was the master adept
of his century. Tschaikowsky followed him close;
and in the tiny piano scores of Chopin ecstasy is
pinioned in a few bars, the soul often rapt to
heaven in a phrase. Richard Strauss has shown
a rare variation on the theme of ecstasy; vo-
luptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormented
by stranger nuances.

Rodin is of this tormented choir; he is master of
its psychology. It may be the decadence, as any
art is in decadence which stakes the parts against
the whole. The same was said of Beethoven by the
followers of Haydn, and the successors of Richard
Strauss will be surely abused quite as violently as
the Wagnerites abuse Strauss to-day — employing
against him the same critical artillery employed
against Wagner. That this ecstasy should be
aroused by pictures of love and death, as in the
case of Poe and Baudelaire, Wagner and Strauss,

PROMENADES

must not be adjudged as a black crime. In the
Far East they hypnotise neophytes with a bit of
broken mirror, for in the kingdom of art, as in the
Kingdom of Heaven, there are many mansions.
Possibly it was a reh'c of his early admiration and
study of Baudelaire that set Wagner to e^orting
ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and
love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks
such combinations — a temperament commoner
in mediaeval days than oiurs — was inherent in
Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing momnfully
and madly over a corpse and, throwing herself
upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the
sweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely
patterns after Wagner in his Salome, there is the
head of a dead man, and there is the same dis-
solving ecstasy. Both men play with similar coun-
ters — love and death, and death and love. And
so Rodin. In Pisa we may see (attributed by
Vasari) Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death.
The sting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are
inextricably blended in Rodin's Gate of Hell.
His principal reading for forty years has been
Dante and Baudelaire. The Divine Comedy
and Les Fleurs du Mai are the key-notes in this
white symphony of Auguste Rodin's. Love and
life and bitterness and death rule the themes of his
marbles. Like Beethoven and Wagner he breaks
the academic laws of his art, but then he is Rodin,
and where he achieves magnificently lesser men
would miserably perish. His large tumultuous
music is for his chisel alone to ring out and sing.

RODIN

The first and still the best study of Rodin as
man and thinker is to be found in a book by Judith
Cladel, the daughter of the novelist (author of Mes
Paysans). She named it Auguste Rodki, pris sur
la vie, and her pages are filled with surprisingly
vital sketches of the workaday Rodhi. His con-
versations are recorded; altogether this little
picture has much charm and proves what Rodin
asserts — that women imderstand him better than
men. There is a fiuid, feminine, disturbing side
to his art and nature very appealing to emotional
women. Mile. Cladel's book has also been treas-
lure-trove for the anecdote hunters; all have visited
her pages. Camille Mauclair admits his indebt-
edness; so does Frederick Lawton, whose big vol-
ume is the most complete life (probably official)
that has thus far appeared, either in French or
En^ish. It is written on the side of Rodin, like
Mauclair's more subtle study, and like the masterly
criticism of Roger Marx. Bom at Paris in 1840 —
the natal year of his friends Claude Monet, and
Zda — aiKl in humble circumstances, not enjoy-
ing a liberal educaticHi, the young Rodin had to
fight from the beginning, fight for bread as well as
an art schooling. He was not even sure of a vo-
cation. An accident determined it He became
a workman in the atelier of Carrier-Bellease, the
sculptor, but not until he had failed at the Beaux-
Arts (which was a stroke of luck for his genius) and

PROMENADES

after he had enjoyed some tentative instruction
under the great animal sculptor, Barye. He was
never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he long
remain with him. He went to Belgium and
"ghosted" for other sculptors; indeed, it was a
privilege, or misfortune, to have been the "ghost"

— anonjrmous assistant — for half a dozen
sculptors. He learned his technique by the sweat
of his brow before he began to make music upon
his own instrument

How his first work, The Man With the
Broken Nose, was refused by the Salon jury is
history. He designed for the Sfevres porcdain
works; he made portrait busts, architectural orna-
ments for sculptbrs, caryatides; all styles that are
huddled in the yards and studios of sculptors he
had essayed and conquered. No man knew his
trade better, although we are informed that with
the chisel of the practicien Rodin was never pro-
&cient — he could not or would not work at the
marble en bloc. His works to-day are in the lead-
ing museums of the world and he is admitted to
have "talent" by the academic men. Rivals he
has none, nor will he have successors. His pro-
duction is too personal. Like Richard Wagner,
Rodin has proved a Upas tree for many lesser men

— he has reflected or else absorbed them. His
closest friend, the late Eugfene Carrifere, warned
yoimg sculptors not to study Rodin too curiously.
Carrifere was wise, but his own art of portraiture
was influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow,
his enigmatic heads have a suspicion of the quality

RODIN

of sculpture — Rodin's — not the mortuary art of
so much academic sculpture.

A profound student of light and of movement,
Rodin, by deliberate amplification of the surfaces
of his statues, avoiding dryness and harshness of
outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity,
which creates the illusion of reality. He handles
values in clay as a painter does his tones. He
gets the design of the outline by movement which
continually modifies the anatomy — the secret, he
believes, of the Greeks. He studies his profiles
successively in full light, obtaining volume — or
planes — at once and together; successive views
of one movement. The light plays with more
freedom upon his amplified surfaces — intensified
in the modelling by enlarging the lines. The
edges of certain parts are amplified, deformed,
falsified, and we see that light-swept eCFect, that
appearance as if of luminous emanations. This
deformation, he declares, was practised by the
great sculptors to snare the undulating appearance
of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the "art of the
hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed,
unmodelled figures." Finish kills vitality. Yet
Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph for you if he so
wills, but her flesh will ripple and nm in the sim-
light. His art is one of accents. He works by
profile in depth, not by surfaces. He swears by
what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is a
mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance,
i. e.y the oppositions of volume produced by move-
ment. Unity haimts him. He is a believer in the

PROMENADES

oOTespoadences of things, of the continuity in
nature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet
such a realist is he that he quarrels with any artist
who does not see '' the latoxt heroic in every natural
movement "

Therefore be does not force the pose of his
modd, {^referring attitudes or gestures voluntarily
adopted. His sketch-books, as copious, as vivid
as the drawings cA Hokusai — he is very studious
of Japanese art — are swift memoranda of the hu-
man machine as it dispenses its normal muscular
moticms. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surj^jsuog
and original as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a
human foot for months, not to copy it, but to pos-
sess the secret of its rhythms. His drawings are
the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never
satisfied, whose desire to pin on paper the most
evanescent movements of the himian machine is
almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids
studied poses. The modd tumbles down any-
wh^e, in any contorticHi or rdaxation he or she
wishes. Practkally instantaneous is the method
adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting atti-
tudes, the first shiver of sur&Lces. He draws
rapidly with his eye on the modd. It is a mere
scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But
vitality is in it; and for his purposes a mere mem-
orandum ol a motion. A sculptor has made these
extra(»dinary drawings not a painter. It will be
well to obsorve the distinction. He is the most
rhythmic sculptor of them all. And rhythm is the
codification of beauty. Because he has observed

RODIN

with ^ visicm quite virginal he insiste that he has
9JiUiation$ with the Greeks. But if his vision is
Gi^^k his models are Parisian, while his forms
are more Gothic than the pseudo-Greek of the
academy. As W. C. BrowneU wrote years ago:
'' Rodin reveals rather than constructs beauty . • •
no sculptor has carried expression further^ and
expi:es»k)n means individual character completely
eidiibited rather than conventionally suggested. "
Mr* BrowneU was also the first critic to point out
timX Rodin's art was more nearly related to Dona*
teUo than to Michael Angelo. He is in the legiti*
mate line of French sculpture, the line of Goujon,
Puget, Rude, Barye.. Dalou did not hesitate to
assert that the Dante portal is " one of the most,
if not the most, original and astonishing pieces of
sculpture of the nineteenth century."

This Dante Gate, begim more than twenty years
ago, not finished yet, and probably never to be,
is an astoimding fugue, with death, the devil, hell,
aiod the passions as a horribly beautiful four-
voiced theme. I saw the composition a few years
ago at the Rue de I'Universit^ atelier. It is as terri-
fying a conception as the X^ast Judgment; nor
does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur
of the Medici Tombs. Yet how diflEerent, how
feverish, bow tragic! Like aU great men working
in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the
did technique of sculpture so that it would serve
him as pjiastically as does sound a musical com-
poser. A deep lover of music, his inner ear may
dictote the vibrating rhythms of his forms — his

PROMENADES

marbles are ever musical; not "frozen music" as
Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but silent
swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris,
as deeply significant of modem aspiration and
sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze is the sjrmbol of
the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired
this monstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but
Baudelaire filled many of its chinks and crannies
with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky
fire that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf
of fears, wave ineffectual desperate hands. Heine
in his Deutschland asks:

Kennst du die H5lle des Dante nlcht,

Die schreckliche Terzetten?
Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt

Den kann kein Gott mehr retten.

And from the "singing flames" of Rodin there
is no rescue.

But he is not all tragedy and hell fire. Of
singular delicacy, of exquisite proportions are his
marbles of youth, of springtide, and the desire of
life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris,
Europe, and America awoke to these haimting
visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne has love
been simg so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely.
Though he disclaims imderstanding the Celtic
spirit, one could say that there is Celtic magic,
Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the
core the frenzy and joy of love and translates
them in beautiful s)mibols. Nature is for him the
sole theme; his works are but variations on her

RODIN

promptings. He knows the emerald route and
all the semitones of sensuousness. Fantasy,
passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yet
what elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic
first homo painfully heaves himself up from the
earth to that posture which diCFerentiates him
from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures
are at strife. And Mother Eve, her expression
suggesting the sorrows and shames that are to be
the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushed
by the ages that are hidden within them. You
may walk freely about the burghers of Calais, as
did Rodin when he modelled them; that is one
secret of the group's vital quality. About all his
statues you may walk — he is not a sculptor of
one attitude, but a hewer of men and women.
Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer
of novels, but Balzac the prophet, the seer, the
great natural force — like Rodin himself. That
is why these kindred spirits converse across the
years, as do the Alpine peaks in that striking par-
able of Turgenieflf's. No doubt in bronze the
Balzac will arouse less wrath from the imimagina-
tive; in plaster it produces the eflfect of some surg-
ing monolith of snow.

As a portraitist of his contemporaries Rodin is
the imique master of character. His women are
gracious, delicious masks; his men cover many
octaves in virility and variety. That he is ex-
tremely short-sighted has not been dealt with in
proportion to the significance of this fact. It ac-
counts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his

PROMENADES

formless extravagance, his indefiniteness in struc-
tural design; possibly, too, for bis inability, or let
us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental.
He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emo-
tions; he delineates passion as a psychologist; and
while we think of him as a cyclops wielding a huge
hammer destructively, be is often ardent in bis
search of subtle nuance. But there is breadth even
when he models an eyelid. Size is only relative.
We are confronted by the paradox of an artist as
torrential, as apocalyptic as Rubens and Wagner,
carving with a style whoUy charming a segment
of a baby's back so that you exclaim, '^ Donatello
come to life!" His slow, defective vision, then, may
have been his salvation; he seems to rely as nwch
on his delicate tactile sense as on his eyes. His
fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. At times
he seems to model tone and colour. A marvel-
lous poet, a precise sober workman of art, with a
peasant strain in him like Millet, and, like Millet,
very near to the soil; a natural man, yet crossed
by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of
a sensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-
nerved, and as introspective as Heine; a visionary
and a lover of life, very close to the periphery of
things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's
alter ego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity,
in his passionate fling at nature; withal a sculptor,
always profound and tortiu-ed, translating rhythm
and motion into the terms of sculpture. Rodin
is a statuary who, while having affinities with both
the classic and romantic schools, is the most start-

RODIN

ling artistic apparition of his century. And to the
century he has summed up so plastically and
emotionally he has also propounded questions that
only the imbom years may answer. He has a
himdred faults to which he opposes one imperi-
ous excellence — a genius, scnnbre, magical, and
overwhelming.

EUGENE CARRIERE

Death has consecrated the genius of three great
painters happily neglected and persecuted durmg
their lifetime — Manet, Monticelli, and Carrifere.
Though furiously opposed, Manet was admitted
to the Luxembourg by the conditions of the
Caillebotte legacy. There that ironic master-
piece, Olympe — otherwise known as the Cat and
Cocotte — has hung for the edification of inteUi-
gent amateurs, though it was only a bequest of
triumphant hatred in official eyes. And now the
lady with her cat and negress is in the Louvre, in
which sacrosanct region she, with her meagre,
subtle figure, competes among the masterpieces.
Yet there were few dissenting voices. Despite its
temperamental oscillations France is at bottom
sound in the matter of art. Genius may starve,
but genius once recognised, the apotheosis is
logically bound to follow. No fear of halls of
fame with a French Poe absent

Eugfene Carrifere was more fortimate than his
two famous predecessors. He toiled and suf-
fered hardship, but before his death he was offi-
cially acknowledged though never altogether ap-
proved by the Salon in which he exhibited;
approved or imderstood. He fought under no

EUGENE CARRIERE

banner. He was not an impressionist. He was
not a realist. Certainly he could be claimed by
neither the classics nor romantics. A "solitary''
they agreed to call him; but his is not the her-
metic art of such a solitary as Gustave Moreau.
Carrifere, on the contrary, was a man of marked
social impulses, and when in 1889 he received the
Legion of Honour, he was enabled to mingle with
his equals — he had been almost unknown until
then. He was the most progressive spirit among
his brethren. Nowadays he is classed as an Inti-
mist, in which category and with such men as
Simon Bussy, Menard, Henri le Sidaner, Emile
W^ry, Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, Edouard
VuiUard, the Griveaus, Lomont, Lobre, and
others, he is still their master, still the possessor
of a highly individualised style, and in portraiture
the successor to such diverse painters as Prudhon,
Ricard, and Whistler.

Gabriel Seailles has written a study, Eugfene
Carrifere, I'Homme et FArtiste, and Charles
Morice has published another, Eugfene Carrifere.
The latter deals with the personality and ideas of
one of the most original thinkers among modem
French painters. We have spoken of the acerbity
of Degas, of his wit, so of te^ borrowed by Whistler
and Manet; we have read Eugfene Fromentin's
delightful, stimulating studies of the old masters,
but we doubt if Fromentin was as profound a
thinker as Carrifere. Degas is not, though he deals
in a more acid and dangerous form of aphorism.
It is one of the charms of the eulogy of M. Morice

PROMENADES

to find embalmed therein so many phrases and
speeches of the dead painter. He was both poet
and philosopher, let us call him a seer, for his work
fully bears out this appellation. A grand vis-
ionary, he well deserves Jean Dolent's description
of his pictures as '' realities having the magic of a
dream."

Carrifere's career was in no wise «traoidinaiy.
He fled to no exotic climes as did Paul Gauguin.
His only tragedy was the manner of his death.
For three years previous he suffered the agonies of
a cancer. His bravery was admirable. No one
heard him complain. He worked to the last,
worked as he had worked his life Icmg, untir-
ingly. Morice gives a "succinct biography" at
the close of his study. From it we learn that
Eugfene Carrifere was bom January 29, 1849, •*
Goumay (Seine-Inf^rieure); that he made his
first steps in art at the Strasbourg Academy; in
1869 he entered the Beaux- Arts, in Cabanel's class.
Penniless, he earned a precarious existence in
designing industrial objects. In 1870 he was
made prisoner by the Prussians, with the garrison
of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he
was confined in prison. After peace had been
declared he resumed his studies at the Beaux-Arts.
In 1877 he married — an important event in his
art; thenceforward Madame Carri^e and the
children bom to them were his continual models,
both by preference and also by force of circum-
stances — he was too poor in the beginning to
hire professional models. He spent six months

EUGENE CARRIERE

in London, which may or may not account for his
brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty
years old, he exposed in the Salon of that year
his Young Mother, the first of a long series of
Maternities. He was violently attacked by the
critics, and as violently defended. During the
same year he attempted to win the "prix de
Rome" and gained honours for his sketch.
Luckily he did not attain this prize; and, still
more luck, he left the school.

In 1884 he received an honourable mention for
a child^s portrait; in 1885 a medal for his Sick
Child, bought by the State; in 1886 Le Premier
voile was bought by the State and he was pro-
posed for a medal of honour and — singular
dream of Frenchmen — he was decorated in 1889.
He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full
life, a happy one, and at the last, glory — "/e soleil
des tnartSy'^ as Balzac said — and a competence
for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such
writers as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel,
Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, GefiFroy, that they
recognised the genius of Carrifere from the be-
ginning. In 1904 Carrifere was made honorary
president of the Autimm Salon and was the chief
guest of these young painters, who really adored
Paul C&anne, and not the painter of an illusive
psychology. I wrote at that time: "Carrifere,
whose delicately clouded portraits, so intimate
in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was
not seen at his best. He oflFered a large decora-
tive panel for the Mairie of the Thirteenth Arron-

PROMENADES

dissement, entitled Les Fianc^s^ a sad-looking
betrothal party ... the landscape timid^ the
decorative scheme not very eflFective. . . . His
tender notations of maternity, and his heads,
painted with the smoky enchantments of his pearly
gray and soft russet, are more credible than this
panneau.^^ Was Carrifere a decorative painter
by nature — setting aside training? We doubt
it, though Morice does not hesitate to name him
after Puvis de Chavannes in this field. The
trouble is that he did not make many excursions
into the larger forms. He painted a huge canvas,
Les Th^tres Populaires, in which the interest is
more intimate than epical. He also did some dec-
orations for the H6tel de ViUe, The Four Ages for
a Mairie, and the Christ at the Luxemboiu-g and
a view of Paris. Nevertheless, it is his portraits
that will live.

Carri^re was, first and last, a symbolist. There
he is related to the Dutch Seer, Rembrandt; both
men strove to seek for the eternal correspondence
of things material and spiritual; both sought to
bring into harmony the dissonance of flesh and the
spirit. Both succeeded, each in his own way —
though we need not couple their efforts on the
technical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There
is more of the reflective poet in Carrifere. He is a
mystic. His mothers, his children, are dreams
made real — the magic of which Dolent speaks is
always there. To disengage the personality of
his sitter was his first idea. Slowly he built up
those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, the

EUGENE CARRIERE

solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim:
''Carrie is also a sculptor!" Slowly and from
the most unwilling sitter he extorted the secret of a
soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master
psychologist among portraitists^ a superiority he
himself has never assumed; but that magnificent
virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives
us the indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the
epidermis of poor, Sniggling himianity as does
Eugene Carri^re. Sargent is too magisterial a
painter to dwell upon the infinite little soul-stigmata
of men and women. Who can tell the remmcia-
tions made by the Frenchman in his endeavour to
wrest the enigma oi personality from its abysmal
depths?

As Camille Mauclair says: "Carri^re was
first influenced by the Spaniards, then by Ver
Meer and Chardin . . . formerly he coloured his
canvas with exquisite delicacy and with a dis-
tinction of harmonies that came very near to
Whistler's. Now he confines himself to bistre,
black and white, to evoke those dream pictures,
true images of souls, which make him inimitable
in our epoch and go back to Rembrandt's chiaros-
euro. " Colour went by the board at the last, and
the painter was dominated by expression alone.
His gamut of tones became contracted. '' Physi-
cal magnetism" is exactly the phrase that illumi-
nates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone,
sooty in his blacks, he nevertheless contrives a
fluid atmosphere, the shadows floating, the figiu-e
floating, that arrests instant attention. He became

PROMENADES

almost sculptural, handled bis planes with im-
posing breadth, his sense of values was strong, his
gradations and degradation of tones masterly;
and he escaped the influences of the new men in
their researches after luminosity at all hazards.
He considered impressionism a transition; after
purifying muddy palettes of the academics, the
division-of-tones painters must necessarily return
to lofty composition, to a poetic simplicity with
nature, to a more rarefied psychology.

Carri^re, notwithstanding his nocturnal reve-
ries, his sombre colouring, was not a pessimist.
Indeed, the reverse. His philosophy of life was
exalted — an exalted socialism. He was, to em-
ploy Nietzsche's pithy phrase, a " Yes-Sayer"; he
said "Yes" to the imiverse. A man of vigorous
affirmations, he worshipped nature, not for its pic-
torial aspects, but for the god which is the leaf and
rock and animal, for the god that beats in our
pulses and shines in the clear sunlight. Nor was
it vague, windy pantheism, this; he was a believer
— a glance at his Christ reveals his reverence for
the Man of Sorrows — and his religious love and
pity for mankind was only excelled by his hatred of
wrong and oppression. He detested cruelty. His
canvases of childhood, in which he exposes the
most evanescent gesture, exposes the unconscious
helplessness of babyhood, are so many tracts — if
you choose to see them after that fashion — in be-
half of mercy to aU tender and living things. He is
not, however, a sentimentalist. His family groups
prove the absence of theatrical pity. Because of his

EUGENE CARRIERE

subtle technical method, his manner of building up
his heads in a misty medium and then abstracting
their physical non-essentials, his portraits have a
metaphysical meaning — they are a Becoming, not
a Being, tangible though they be. Their fluid
rhythms lend to them almost the quality of a per-
petual rejuvenescence. This may be an illusion,
but it tells us of the primary intensity of the
painter's vision. Withal, there is no scene of
the merely spectral, no optical trickery. The
waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats
in space, seemingly compelled by its frame into
limits. Gustave Geffroy once wrote that, in com-
mon with the great masters, Carri^re, on his
canvas, gives a sense of volume and weight.
Whatever he sacrificed, it was not actuality. His
draughtsmanship never falters, his touch is never
infirm.

I have seen his portraits of Verlaine, Daudet,
Edmond de Goncourt, Geffroy, of the artist
himself and many others. The Verlame is a
veritable evocation. It was painted at one seance
of several hours, and the poet, it is said, did not
sit still or keep silence for a moment. He was
hardly conscious that he was being painted.
What a head! Not that of the old faun and ab-
sinthe-sipping vagabond of the Latin quarter, but
the soul tfiat lurked somewhere in Verlaine; the
dreamer, not the mystifier, the man crucified to
the cross of aspiration by his imhappy tempera-
ment. Musician and child, here is the head of
one of those pious, irresponsible mendicants who

PROMENADES

walked dusty roads in the Middle Ages. It needed
an unusual painter to interpret an unusual poet.

The Daudet face is not alone full of surface
character, but explains the racial affinities of the
romancer. Here he is David, not Daudet. The
head of De Goncourt gives in a few touches —
Carrifere is ever master of the essential — the
irritable pontiff of literary impressiom'sm. Car-
rifere was fond of repeating: "For the artist
the forms evoke ideas, sensations, and sentiments;
for the poet, sensations, ideas, sentiments evoke
forms." Never expansively lyrical as was Mon-
ticelli, Carrifere declared that a picture is the logi-
cal development of light. And on the external side
his art is a continual variation with light as a
theme. Morice contends that he was a colourist;
that the blond of Rubens and the russet of Car-
rifere are not monochromes; that polychromy is
not the true way of seeing nature coloiu-ed. Cer-
tainly Carri^e does not sacrifice style, expression,
composition for splashing hues. Yet his illiuni-
nating strokes appear to proceed from within, not
from without. He interrogates nature, but her
answer is a sober, not a brilliant one. Let us
rather say that his colouring is adequate — he
always asserted that a sense of proportion was
success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he
paints expressions, the fleeting shades that cross
the face of a man, a woman, a child. He pa-
tiently awaits the master trait of a soul and never
misses it, though never displaying it with the
happy cruelty of Sargent and always judging

EUGENE CARRIERE

mercifully. Notwithstanding his humble attitude
in the presence of nature, he is the most self-
revealing of painters. Few before him ever in-
terpreted maternity as he has done.

Carrifere is not a virtuoso. He is an initiator
— a man of rare imagination. Above all, he
escapes the rhetoric of the schools. His apprehen-
sion of character is that of sympathetic genius.
He divines the emotions, especially in those souls
made melancholy by sorrow; imeasy, complex,
feverish souls; them that hide their griefe, and
souls saturated with the ennuis of existence — to
all he is interpreter and consoler. He has pictured
the Wdtschmerz of his age; and without morbid
self-enjo)rment. A noble soul, an elevating ex-
ample to those artists who believe that art and
life may be dissociated. Carrifere has left no
school, though his spiritual influence has been
great. A self-contained artist, going his own
way, meditating deeply on art, on life, his can-
vases stand for his singleness and purity of pur-
pose. On the purely pictorial side he is, to quote
M. Mauclair, "an absolutely surprising painter
of hands and glances."

In the sad and anxious rectitude of his attire the
artistic interest in modem man is concentrated
upon his head and hands; and upon these salient
points Carrifere focussed his art. Peaceful or dis-
quieted, his men and women belong to our
century. Spiritually Eugfene Carrifere is the lineal
descendant of the Rembrandt school — but one
who has read Dostoievsky.

VI
DEGAS

Let us suppose that gay old misogynist Arthur
Schopenhauer persuaded to cross the Styx and
revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if
forced to listen to the music of his self -elected dis-
ciple Richard Wagner, what painted work would
be likely to attract him ? Remember he it was who
named Woman the knock-kneed sex — since the
new woman is here it matters litde if her figure
conforms to old-fashioned, stupid, masculine stan-
dards of beauty. But wouldn't the nudes of
Degas confirm the Frankfort philosopher in his
theories regarding the "long-haired, short-brained,
imaesthetic sex," and also confirm his hatred for
the exaggerations of poet and painter when de-
scribing or depicting her ? We fear that Schopen-
hauer would smile his malicious smile and ex-
claim: "At last the hiunble truth!" It is the
presentation of the hiunble truth that early snared
the a£Fections of Degas, who has with a passionate
calm pursued the evanescent appearances of things
his entire life. No doubt death will find him
pencil in hand. You think of Hokusai, the old
man mad with paint, when the name of Degas is
mentioned. He was bom in Paris July 19, 1834
— his full name is Hilaire Germain Edgard (or

DEGAS

Edgar) — and there is one phrase that will b^t
describe his career: He painted. Like Flaubert,
he never married, but lived in companionship with
his art. Such a mania could have been described
by Balzac. Yet no saner art ever issued from a
Parisian atelier; sane, clear, and beautiful.

Degas is a painter's painter. For him the sub-
ject is a peg upon which to hang superb work-
manship. In amazement the public asked: How
could a man in the possession of his powers shut
himself up in a studio to paint ballet girls,
washerwomen, jockeys, drabs of Montmartre,
shopgirls, and horses? Even Zola, who should
have known better, would not admit that Degas
was an artist fit to be compared with such men
as Flaubert and Goncourt; but Zola was never
the realist that is Degas. Now it is difficult to
keep asimder the names of Goncourt and Degas.
To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The
style of the painter has been judged as analogous
to the novelist's; yet, apart from a preference for
the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris,
there is not much in Degas that recalls Groncourt's
staccato, febrile, sparkling, "decomposed," impres-
sionistic prose. Both men are brilliant, though
not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent
to Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and im-
personality of the great classic painters. He is
himself a classic.

His legend is slender. Possessing a private in-
come, he never was preoccupied with the anxieties
of selling his work. He first entered the atelier

PROMENADES

of Lamotte, but his stay was brief. In the studio
of Ingres he was, so Geoi^e Moore declares, the
student who carried out the lifeless body of the
painter when Ingres fell in his izXal fit. Th^e is
something peculiarly interesting about this anec-
dote for the tradition of Ingres hits been carried on
by Degas. The greatest master of pure line, in his
portraits and nudes — we have forgotten his chilly
pastiches of Raphael — of the past century, Ingres
has been and still is for Degas a god on the peaks
of Parnassus. Degas is an Ingres who has studied
the Japanese. Only such men as Pcdiajuolo and
Botticelli rank with Degas in the mastery of
rhythmic line. He is not academic, yet he stems
from purest academic traditions. He is not of the
impressionists, at least not in his technical proc-
esses, but he associated with them, exhibited
with them (though rarely), and is as a rule con*
fused with them. He never exhibited in the
Salons, he has no disciples, yet it is doubtful if any
painter's fashion of seeing things has had such an
influence on the generation following him. The
name of Degas, the pastels of Degas, the miracu-
lous draughtsmanship of Degas created an im-
ponderable fluid which still permeates Paris.
Naturally, after the egg trick was discovered we
encounter scores of young Colimibuses, who paint
ballet girls' legs and the heads of orchestral mu-
sicians and scenes from the racing paddock.

Degas had three painters who, if any, might
truthfully call themselves his pupils. These are
Mary Cassatt, Alexis Rouart, and Forain. The

DEGAS

first has achieved solid fame. The last is a re-
markable illustrator, who '' vulgarised" the au-
stere methods of his master for popular Parisian
consumption. That Renoir, RaflFaelli, and Tou-
louse-Lautrec owe much to Degas is the secret of
Polichinello, This patient student of the Tuscan
Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres,
and Manet — the precepts of Manet taught him to
sweeten the wiriness of his modelling and modify
his tendency to a certain hardness — was willing
to trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He
associated daily with Manet, Monet, Pissarro,
Whisfler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and the crowd
that first went to the Caf^ Guerbois in the Ba-
tignolles — hence the derisive nickname, "The
Batignolles School*' ; later to the Nouvelle Athfenes,
finally to the Caf^ de la Rochefoucauld. A her-
mit he was during the dozen hours a day he toiled,
but he was a sociable man, nevertheless, a cultured
man fond of music, possessing a tongue that was
feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr.
Moore has printed many specimens of his caustic
wit. Whisfler actually kept silent in his presence
— possibly expecting a repetition of the mol: " My
Wear friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if
•you had no talent at all. " Manet good-naturedly
took a browbeating, but the Academic set were
outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What
hard sayings were his ! Poor Bastien-Lepage, too,
came in for a scoring. Barricaded in his studio, it
was a brave man who attempted to force an en-
trance. The littie, round-shouldered artist, gen-

PROMENADES

erally good-tempered, would pour a stream of
verbal vitriol over the head of the unlucky im-
pertinent.

In i860 or thereabout he visited America, and
in New Orleans he saw the subject of his Interior
of a Cotton Factory, which was shown as an his-
torical curiosity at the Paris exposition in 1900.
While it is implacably realistic there is little hint
of the future Degas. The name of the painter
was in every French painter's mouth, and the brill-
iant article of Huysmans concentrated his iame.
Huysmans it was who furst saw that Degas had
treated the nude as Rembrandt would if he had
been alive — ^making allowances for temperament-
al variations. Degas knew that to grasp the true
meaning of the nude it must be represented in
postiures, movements which are natiural, not studio
attitudes. As Monet exposed the fallacy of studio
lighting, so Degas revealed the inanity of its
poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with
the foiuth wall removed; Degas preferred the
key-hole through which we seem to peep upon the
privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing
their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrel-
ling, and walking. The simian and frog-like ges-
tures and sprawling attitudes are far from arous-
ing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women,
hard-working laundresses, shopgirls, are not allur-
ing, though they are not as hideous as the women
of C&anne or Edvard Miinch; but the veracity of
the "human document" (overworked phrase!) is
there. Charles Morice has said that to C6sanne

DEGAS

a potato was as significant as a human counte-
nance. The pattern interested him in both. For
Degas the beauty of life lies in the moving line.
He captures with ease the swift, unconscious
gesture. His models are never posed. They
are nature caught in the act. There is said to be
a difference between the epidermis of the pro-
fessional model and the human who undresses
only to go to bed. Degas has recorded this dif-
ference. What an arraignment of the corset are
the creased backs and goosefiesh of his nudes!
What lurking cynicism there is in some of his
interiors! Voilh Vanimalel he exclaims as he
shows us the far from enchanting antics of some
girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the
feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer
of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a
douche for the romantic humbug painter, the
painter of sleek bayaderes and of drawing-room
portraiture.

Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never
tender, yet there is veiled s)mapathy in the ballet-
girl series. Behind the scenes, in the waiting-
rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-
eyed mother, his girls are all painfully real. No
"glamour of the foot-lights,'* generally the pro-
saic side of their life. He has, however, painted
the glorification of the danseuse, of that lady
grandiloquently described as prima donna as-
soltUa. What magic he evokes as he pictures her
floating down stage ! The pastel in the Lux-
embourg, L'Etoile, is the reincarnation of the

PROMENADES

precise moment when the aerial creature on
one foot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in
the glow of the lights, while about her beats — you
are sure — the noisy, insistent music. It is in the
pinning down of such climaxes of movement that
Degas stirs our admiration. He draws move-
ment. He can paint rhythms. His canvases
are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile val-
ues is profound. His is true atmospheric colour.
A feeling of exhilaration comes while contem-
plating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys,
race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neigh-
bouring concourse. Unexcelled as a painter of
horses, as a delineator of witching horsemanship,
of vivid landscapes — true integral decorations —
and of the casual movements and gestures of
common folk. Degas is also a psychologist, an
ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugli-
ness of daily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical
snobberies and shocking hypocrisies; and all ex-
pressed without a melodramatic elevation of the
voice, without the false sentimentalism of 2k)la
or the morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There
is much Baudelaire in Degas, as there is also in
Rodin. All three men despised academic rhetoric;
all three dealt with new material in a new manner.
It is the fashion to admire Degas, but it is
doubtful if he will ever gain the suffrage of the
general. He does not retail anecdotes, though to
the imaginative every line of his nudes relates
their history. His irony is unremitting. It suf-
fuses the ballet-girl series and the nude sets.

DEGAS

Irony is an illuminating mode, but it is seldom
pleasant; the public is always suspicious of an
ironist, particularly of the Degas variety. Care-
less of reputation, laughing at the vanity of his
contemporaries who were eager to arrive, con-
temptuous of critics and criticism, of collectors
who buy low to sell high (in the heart of every
picture collector there is a bargain counter). Degas
has defied the artistic world for a half-century.
His genius compelled the Mountain to come to
Mahomet. The rhythmic articulations, the vol-
imie, contours, and bounding supple line of Degas
are the despair of artists. Like the Japanese,
he indulges in abridgments, deformations, falsifi-
cations. His enormous faculty of attention has
counted heavily in his synthetical canvases. He
joys in the representation of artificial light; his
theatres are flooded with it, and he is equally
successful in creating the illusion of cold, cheer-
less daylight in a salle where rehearse the little
"rats" and the older coryph6es on their wiry,
muscular, ugly legs. His vast production is domi-
nated by his nervous, resilient vital line and by
supremacy in the handling of values.

The Degas palette is never gorgeous, consisting
as it does of cool grays, discreet blues and greens,
Chardin-like whites and Manet-blacks. His pro-
cedure is all his own. His second manner is a
combination of drawing, painting, and pastel.
"He has invented a kind of engraving mixed
with wash drawing, pastel crayon crushed with
brushes of special pattern."

VII
BOTTICELLI

The common identity of the arts was a master
theory of Richard Wagner, which he attempted to
put into practice. Walter Pater in his essay on
The School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same
theme, declaring music the archetype of the arts.
In his Essays Speculative JohnAddingtonSymonds
said some pertinent things on this subject. Camilla
Mauclair in his ld6es Vivantes proposes in all
seriousness a scheme for the fusion of the seven
arts, though he deplored Wagner's eflforts to reach
a solution. Mauclair's theory is that the fusion
can only be a cerebral one, that actually mingling
sculpture, architecture, music, drama, acting,
colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of
unity. S)^thesis is not thus to be attained. It
must be in the idea of the arts rather than their
material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet one
that has piqued the world of art in almost every
century. It was the half -crazy E. T. W. Hoffmann,
composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stage manager,
and a dozen other professions, including that of
genius and dnmkard, who set off a train of ideas
which buzzed in the brains of Poe, Baudelaire, and
the symbolists. People who hear painting, see
music, enjoy odorous poems, taste symphonies, and

BOTTICELLI

write perfumes are now classed by the omnipotent
psychical police as decadents, though such notions
are as old as literature. Suarez de Mendoza in
his L' Audition Colore has said that the sensation
of colour hearing, the faculty of associating tones
and colours, is often a consequence of an associa-
tion of ideas established in youth. The coloured
vowels of Arthur Rimbaud, which must be taken
as a poet's crazy prank; the elaborate treatises by
Ren^ Ghil, which are terribly earnest; the re-
marks that one often hears, such as '' scarlet is like
a tnunpet blast"; certain pages of Huysmans, all
furnish examples of this curious muddling of the
senses and mixing of genres. Naturally, it has
invaded criticism, which, limited in imagery, some-
times seeks to transfer the technical terms of one
art to another.

Whistler with his nocturnes, notes, symphonies
in rose and silver, his colour-sonatas, boldly an-
nexed well-worn musical phrases, that in their
new estate took on fresher meanings even if re-
maming knee-deep in the kingdom of the nebu-
lous. It must be confessed modem composers
have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having
its vogue, while poets are desperately pictorial.
Soul landscapes and etched sonnets are not un-
pleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean
much ? There was a time when to say a " sweet
voice" would arouse a smile. What has sugar
to do with sound ? It may be erratic symbolism,
this confusing of terminologies; yet, once in a
while, it strikes sparks. There is a deeply rooted

PROMENADES

feeling in us that the arts have a common matrix,
that they are emotionally akin. " Her slow smile ' '
in fiction has had marked success with young
people, but a "slow landscape" is still regarded
suspiciously. The bravest critic of art was Huys-
mans. He pitched pell-mell into the hell-broth of
his criticism any image that assaulted his fecund
brain. He forced one to see his picture — for he
was primarily concerned not with the ear, but
the eye.

And Botticelli ? Was Botticelli a " comprehen-
sive" — as those with the sixth or synthetic sense
have been named by Lombroso? Botticelli, be-
ginning as a goldsmith's apprentice (Botticello, the
little bottle), ended as a painter, the most original
in all Italy. His canvases have a rare, m)rsterious
power of evocation. He was a visionary, this
Sandro Filipepi, pupil of the mercurial Fra Lippo
Lippi and the brothers Pollajuolo, and his inward
vision must have been something more than
paint and pattern and subject. A palimpsest
may be discerned by the imaginative — or, let us
say, fanciful, since Coleridge long ago set forth
the categories — whose secrets are not to be de-
ciphered easily, yet are something more than those
portrayed by the artist on the flat surface of his
picture. He painted the usual number of Ma-
donnas, like any artist of his period; yet he did
not convince his world, or the generations suc-
ceeding, that this piety was orthodox. Suspected
during his lifetime of strange heresies, this anno-
tator and illustrator of Dante, this disciple of

BOTTICELLI

Savonarola, has in our times been definitely
ranged as a spirit saturated with paganism, and
still a mystic. Doesn't the perverse clash in such
a complex temperament give us exotic dissonances ?
All Florence was a sounding-board of the arts
when Botticelli walked its narrow ways and lived
its splendid coloured life. His sensitive nature
absorbed as a sponge does water the impulses and
motives of his contemporaries. The lurking
secrets of the "new learning" — doctrines that
made for damnation, such as the recrudescence of
the mediaeval conception of an angelic neuter host,
neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of
Lucifer nor with the starry hosts — were said to
have been mirrored in his pictures. Its note is
in Cittk di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses,
and it goes as far back as Origen. Those who
read his paintings, and there were clairvoyant
liieologians abroad in Florence, could make of
them what they would. Painted music is less
understandable than painted heresy. Matteo Pal-
mieri is said to have dragged Botticelli with him
into dark comers of disbelief; there was in the
Medicean days a cruel order of intelligence that
delighted to toy with the vital faith and ideals of
liie yoimg. It was more savage and cunning
when Machiavelli, shrewdest of men, wrote and
lived. A nature like Botticelli's, which surren-
dered firankly to ideas if they but wore the mask
of subtlety, could not fail to have been swept away
in the eddying cross-currents of Florentine intel-
lectual movements. Never mere instinct, for he

PROMENADES

was a sexless sort of man, moved him from his
moral anchorage. Always the vision ! He did not
palter with the voluptuousness of his fellow-artists,
yet his canvases are feverishly disquieting; the
sting of the flesh is remote; love is transfigured,
not spiritually and not served to us as a barren
parable, but made more intense by the breaking
down of the thin partition between the sexes; a
consuming emotion not quite of this world nor of
the next. The barren rebellion which stirred
Botticelli's bosom never quite assumed the con-
crete. His religious subjects are Hellenised, not
after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible
method, but like those of a philosophic Athenian
who has read and comprehended Dante. Yet the
illustrations show us a different Dante, one who
would not have altogether pleased the gloomy
exile. William Blake's transpositions of the
Divine Comedy seem to sound the depths; Botti-
celli, notwithstanding the grace of his "baby
centaurs" and the wreathed car of Beatrice, is the
profounder man of the two.

His life, veiled toward the last, was not a happy
one, though he was recognised as a great painter.
Watteau concealed some cankering secret; so
Botticelli. Both belong to the band of the Dis-
quieted. Melancholy was at the base of the
Florentine's work. He created as a young man
in joy and freedom, but the wings of Diirer's bat
were outstretched over his head: Melencolia!
There is more poignant music in the Primavera,
in the weary, indifferent coimtenances of his

BOTTICELLI

lean, neuropathic Madonnas — Pater calls them
"peevish" — in his Venus of the UflSzi, than in the
paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The
veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite
art missing in the lacerated realistic holy people of
the Flemish Primitives. Joyfulness cannot be
denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joy of
Giorgione. An emaciated music emanates from
the eyes of that sad, restless Venus, to whom love
has become a scourge of the senses. Music?
Yes, here is the "coloured hearing" of Mendoza.
These canvases of Botticelli seem to give forth the
opalescent over-tones of an imearthly composition.
Is this Spring, this tender, tremulous virgin whose
right hand, deprecatingly raised, signals as a con-
ductor at the head of an invisible orchestra its
rh)rthms ? Hermes, supremely impassive, hand on
thigh, plucks the fruit as the eternal trio of maidens
with woven paces tread the measures of a dance
whose music we but overhear. Garlanded with
blossoms, a glorious girl keeps time with the puls-
ing atmospheric moods; her gesture, surely a divine
one, shows her casting flowers upon the richly
embroidered floor of the earth. The light filters
through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid as
candles. The nymph in the brake is threatening.
Another epicene creature flies by her. Love
shoots his bolt in midair. Is it from Paphos
or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked
down from the vibrating skies and made visi-
ble to the senses. A mere masque laden with
the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not.

PROMENADES

Vasari, blunt soul, saw but its surfaces. Politian,
the poet, got closer to the core. Centiuies later
our perceptions, sharpened by the stations of pain
and experience traversed, lend to this immortal
canvas a more sympathetic, less literal interpre-
tation.

Music, too, in the Anadyomene of the Uffizi.
Still stranger music. Those sudden little waves
that lap an immemorial strand; that shimmering
shell, its fan-spokes converging to the parted feet
of the goddess; her hieratic pose, its modesty
symbolic, the hair that serpentines about her
foam-bom face, thin shoulders that slope into de-
licious arms; the Japanese group, blowing tiny,
gem-like buds with puflFed-out cheeks; the rh)rthmic
female on tiptoe offering her mantle to Venus; and
enveloping them all vernal breezes, unseen, yet
sensed on every inch of the canvas — what are
these things but the music of an art original at its
birth and never since reborn ? The larger rhythms
of the greater men do not sweep us along with
them in Botticelli. But his voice is irresistible.

Modem as is his spirit, as modem as Watteau,
Chopin, or Shelley, he is no less ethereal than any
one of these three; ethereal and also realistic. We
may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he
became could never have been predicted. Tech-
nically, as one critic has written, "he was the first
to understand the charm of silhouettes, the first to
linger in expressing the joining of the arm and
body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of
the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little

BOTTICELLI

shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and
above all the carving of the hand; but even more
he understood 4e prestige insolent des grands
yeux.'"

For Pater his colour was cold, cadaverous, " and
yet the more you come to understand what imagin-
ative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere
delightful quality of natural things but a spirit
upon them by which they become expressive to
the spirit, the better you like this peculiar qxiality
of colour. " Bernard Berenson goes further. For
him the entire picture, Venus Rising From the
Sea, presents us with the quintessence of all that
is pleasurable to our imagination of touch and
movement. . . . The vivid appeal to our tactile
sense, the life communicating movement, is always
there. And writmg of the Pallas in the Pitti he
most eloquently said: "As to the hair — imagine
shapes having the supreme life of line you may see
in the contours of licking flames and yet pos-
sessed of all the plasticity of something which
caresses the hand that models it to its own desire!'*

And after speaking of Botticelli's stimulating
line, he continues: "Imagine an art made up en-
tirely of these quintessences of movement-values
and you will have something that holds the same
relation to representation that music holds to
speech — and this art exists and is called lineal
decoration. In this art of arts Sandro Botticelli
may have had rivals in Japan and elsewhere in the
East, but in Europe never! . . . He is the greatest
master of lineal design that Europe ever bad. '!

PROMENADES

Again music, not the music nor the symbolism
of the emotions, but the abstract music of design.
Botticelli's appeal is also an auditive one. Other
painters have spun more intricate, more beautiful
scrolls of line; other painters soimded more sensu-
ous colour music, but the subtle sarabands of
Botticelli they have not composed. There is here
a pleasing problem for the psychiatrist. Mani-
festations in pamt of this species may be set down
to some mental lesion; that is how Maurice
Spronck classifies the sensation in writing about
the verbal sensitivity of the Goncourts and Flau-
bert. The latter, you may remember, said that
Salammbo was purple to him, and L'Education
Sentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris — a char-
acteristic fancy ! But why is it that these scientific
gentlemen who account for genius by eye-strain
do not reprove* the poets for their sensibility to the
sound of words, the shape and cadences of the
phrase? It appears that only prose-men are the
culpable ones when they hear the harping of invis-
ible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise
the colour of Zarathustra's thoughts. In reality
not one but thousands sit listening in the chill
galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick,
nervous music of Botticelli; this testimony of the
years is for the dissenters to explain.

FantasticOy SlravagatUe, as Vasari nicknamed
Botticelli, has literally created an audience that
has learned to see as he did, fantastically and
extravagantly. He passed through the three
stages dear to arbitrary criticism. Serene in his

9«

BOTTICELLI

youthful years; troubled, voluptuous, visionary
during the Medicean period; sombre, mystic,
a convert to Savonarola at the end. He passed
through, not untouched, a great crisis. Certain
pditical assassinations and the Pazzi conspiracy
hint him to the quick. He noted the turbulence
of Rome and Florence, saw behind the gay-tinted
arras of the Renaissance the sinister figures of
its supermen and criminals. He never married.
When Tommaso Soderini begged him to take a
wife, he responded : ** The other night I dreamed
I was married. I awoke in such horror and
chagrin that I could not fall asleep again. I
arose and wandered about Florence like one
possessed." Evidently not intended by nature
as a husband or father. Like Watteau, like
Nietzsche, grand visionaries abiding on the other
side of the dear common joys of life, these men
were not tempted by the usual baits of happmess.
The great Calumnia in the Uffizi might be con-
strued as an image of Botticelli's soul. Truth,
naked and scorned — again we note the matchless
silhouette of his Venus — misimderstood and ca-
lumniated, stands in the hall of a great palace.
She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation
mark, Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored.
But understood? An enigmatic malady ravaged
his being. He died poor and alone, did this com-
poser of luminous chants and pagan poems, this
moulder of exotic dreams and of angels who long
for other gods than those of Good and Evil. A
grievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the

PROMENADES

portals of paradise^ but without the courage to
enter or withdraw. He had visions that rapt him
up into the seventh heaven^ and when he reported
them in the speech of his design his harassed, di-
vided spirit chilled the ardoius of his art And
thus it is that many do not worship at his shrine as
at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbra-
tion of a paganism long since dead, but revived by
a miracle for a brief Botticellian hour. Madonna
and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus!
Under which king? The artist never frankly
tells us. The legends of founs turned mcrnks,
of the gods at servile labour in a world that
had forgotten them, are revived, but with more
sublimated ecstasy than by Heine, when we stand
before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, muted
music.

He was bom at Florence in 1446; he died May
27, 1510; in 1515, according to Vasari. A study
of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of the French
Academy. It is erudite, although oddly enough
it ignores the researches of Morelli and Berensoa*
Gebhart attributes to Alessandro di Mariano
Filipepi about eighty*£ive pictures, many of which
w^e long ago in Morelli's taboo list — that terri*
ble Morelli, the learned iconoclast who brought
many sleefdess nights to Dr. Wilhehn Bode of
Berlin. Time has vmdicated the Bergamese
critic. B^enson win allow only forty-five origi-^
nals to BotticdJi's credit Furthermore, Get>*
hart does not mention in his catalogue the two
Bottiqellia btk)nging to Mrs. Gardner of Bos^

BOTTICELLI

ton, a lamentable oversight for a volume brought
out in 1907. Need we add that this French
author by no means sees Botticelli in the musical
sense? He is chiefly concerned with his his-
toric environment. Gebhart's authorities are the
Memoriale of Francesco Albertini ; Anonyme Gad-
diano, the manuscript of the Magliabecchiana,
which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life of
Botticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the
most complete, he avers, being that of Hermann
Ulmann of Munich, whose Sandro Botticelli,
which appeared in 1893, is rigorously critical.
Nevertheless, it is not as critical as Morelli's
Italian Painters. Details about the typical ears,
hands, and noses of the painter may be foimd
therein. The last word concerning Botticelli will
not be uttered imtil his last line has vanished.
And, even then, his archaic harmonies may con-
tinue to sound in the ears of mankind.

VIII

SIX SPANIARDS
I

" EL GRECO "

Large or small, there has been a Greco cult
ever since the Greek-Spanish painter died, April 7,
1614, but during the last decade it has grown into
a species of worship. One hears the names of
Velasquez and El Greco coupled. His profound
influence on the greatest of the realists is blithely
assumed, and for these worshippers, Ribera,
Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with
the painter of the Burial of the Count of Orgdz.
While this undiscriminating admiration may be
deplored, there are reasons enough for the canon-
isation of El Greco in the church of art. Violent
to exaggeration in competition, morbidly mystic,
there are power and emotional quality revealed in
his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez
in his use of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at
least a disciple of Titian he is, as his latest bio-
grapher, Senor Manuel B. Cossio, names him,
"the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance."
But of the man we know almost nothing.

We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over
seven hundred pages fortified by a supplementary

SIX SPANIARDS

volume containing one hundred and ninety-three
illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco's ac-
credited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio).
Senor Cossio has so well accomplished his task
that his book may be set down as definitive. A
glance at the bibliography he compiled shows
that not many writers on art have seen fit to pay
particular attention to El Greco. A few Span-
iards, Senor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm,
Carl Justi (in his Diego Velasquez) ; Paul Lafond,
William Ritter, Arthur Symons, William Stirling,
Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, Havelock
EUis, and the inimitable Th^ophile Gautier —
whose Travels in Spain, though published in
1840, is, as Mr. Ellis truthfully remarks, still a
storehouse of original exploration. But the Cossio
work, naturally, tops them all. He is an adorer,
though not fanatical, of his hero, and it is safe to
assert that all that is known to-day of El Greco will
be foimd in these pages. The origins of the
painter, his visit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo,
are described with references to original docu-
ments — few as they are.

Then follows a searching and vivid exposition
of the pictures in Madrid, Toledo, and elsewhere,
a technical and psychological analysis which dis-
plays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth
sense of sympathy. No pictures, sketches, sculp-
tures, or relablos escape Cossio. He considers El
Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modem
art. He has all the authorities at his tongue's tip;
he views the man and artist from every angle.

PROMENADES

** Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years
before his contemporary Cervantes," says Cossio.
Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his original
name, which was softened into Domenico Theoto-
copuli — which, no doubt proving too much of a
tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quickly
superseded by a capital nickname, "The Greek."
His birthplace was the island of Crete and his birth-
year between 1545 and 1550. Justi was the first to
demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was cor-
roborated in 1893 by Bikelas. In 1570, we learn
through a letter written by Giulio Clovio to Cardi-
nal Famese, El Greco had astonished Roman
artists by his skill in portraiture. He was said to
be a pupil of Titian, on Clovio's authority. Why
he went to Spain has not been discovered. He had
a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor and
architect. Who the mother was history does not
say. The painter took up his abode in Toledo and
is not known to have left Spain thereafter. Pacheco
visited him at Toledo and reported him to be as
singular as his paintings and of an extravagant dis-
position. He was also called a wit and a philos-
opher. He wrote on painting, sculpture, and arch-
itecture,[it is said. He made money ; was, like most
of his adopted countrymen, fond of litigation; lived
well, loved music — and at his meals ! — and that
is all we may ever record of a busy life; for he
painted many pictures, a careful enumeration of
which makes Cossio's book valuable.

There are Grecos scattered over Europe and
the two Americas. Madrid and Toledo boast of

SIX SPANIARDS

his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg and
Bucharest he is represented. In the United States
there are eleven examples, soon to be increased by
Mr. Archer M. Huntington's recent acquisition
from the Kann collection. In Boston at the Mu-
seum there is the portrait of Fray Paravicino, a
brilliant picture. (The worthy monk wrote four
sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he
calls "Divino Griego." Quoted in one of the
Cossio appendices.) There is an Assimiption of
the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and an
Apostle, belonging to Charles Deering. In Phila-
delphia Mr. "J. Widner" (read P. A. B. Widener)
owns a St. Francis, and at the Metropolitan Mu-
seum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Ado-
ration of the Shepherds, a characteristic specimen
of Greco's last manner, and in excellent condition.
The gallery of the late H. O. Havemeyer contains
one of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal
Inquisitor D. Fernando Nino de Guevara, painted
during the second' epoch, 1594 to 1604. It fur-
nishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume. The
same dignitary was again painted, a variant, which
Rudolph Kann owned, and now in the possession
of Mrs. Himtington. The cardinal's head is
strong, intellectual, and his expression proud and
cold. Mr. Frick, at a private club exhibition,
showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject of which
the painter was almost as fond as of St. Francis
(of Assisi). The National Gallery, London, owns
a St. Jerome, Madrid another. Mr. Frick's ex-
ample belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594. Mr.

PROMENADES

Erich in New York possesses three pictures, St.
Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingo de Guzman
and a Deposition. El Greco is a painter admired
by painters for his salt individualism. Zuloaga,
the Spaniard, has several; Degas, two; the critic
Duret, two; John S. Sargent, one — a St. Martin.
Durand-Ruel once owned the Annimciation, but
sold it to Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, and the Du-
veens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ.
At the National Gallery there are two.

Gautier wrote that El Greco surpassed Monk
Lewis and Mrs. RaddiflFe in his pell-mell of hor-
rors; "extravagant and bizarre" are the adjec-
tives he employs (said of most painters whose
style is unfamiliar or out of the beaten track).
In the Baptism of Christ he finds a depraved
energy, a maleficent puissance; but the ardent
colours, the tonal vivacity, and the large, free
handling excite the Frenchman's admiration.
Justi avers that Greco's "craving for originality
developed incredible mannerisms. In his por-
traits he has delineated the peculiar dignity
of the Castilian hidalgos and the beauty of
Toledan dames with a success attained by few."
R. A. Stevenson devotes to him a paragraph in his
Velasquez. Referring to the influence of El
Greco upon the greater painter, he wrote: "While
Greco certainly adopted a Spanish gravity of col-
ouring, neither that nor his modelling was ever
subtle or thoroughly natural. . . . Velasquez
ripened with age and practice; Greco was rather
inclined to get rotten with facility." Mr. Ricketts

TOO

SIX SPANIARDS

says that " his pictures might at times have been
painted by torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition."
Richard Ford in his handbook of Spain does not
mince words: " Greco was very unequal. ... He
was often more lengthy and extravagant than
Fuseli, and as leaden as cholera morbus. " Ritter
speaks of his "symphonies in blue minor" (evi-
dently imitating Gautier's poem, Symphony in
White-Major). In Havelock Ellis's suggestive
The Soul of Spain there is mention of Greco —
see chapter Art of Spain. Ellis says: "In his
more purely religious and supernatural scenes
Greco was sometimes imaginative, but more
often Bizarre in design and disconcerting in his
colouring with its insistence on chalky white, his
violet shadows on pale faces, his love of green.
[Mr. Ellis finds this "predilection for green" sig-
nificant as anticipating one of the characteristics
of the Spanish palette.] His distorted fever of
movement — the lean, twisted bodies, the frenzied,
gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves
that taper down to pointed toes — usually fails
to convince us. But in the audacities of his colour-
ing he revealed the possibilities of new harmonies,
of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count
Orgaz burial scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not
rank among the world's great pictures.

There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco;
Goya is sane and healthy by comparison. Greco's
big church pieces are full of religious sentiment,
but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Cu-
rious it was that a stranger from Greece should

lOI

PROMENADES

have absorbed certain not particularly healthy,
even sinister, Spanish traits and developed them
to such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur
Symons says, his portraits '^ have aU the brooding
Spanish soul with its proud self-repression."
SefLor Cossio siuns up in effect by declaring that
Venice educated Greco in his art; Titian taught
him technique; Tintoretto gave him his sense of
dramatic form; Angelo his virility. But of the
strong personality which assimilated these various
influences there is no doubt when confronted with
one of his canvases, every inch of which is signed
El Greco.

II
" VELASQUEZ "

Why so well-known and authoritative a work
as Velasquez, by Aureliano de Beruete, should
have been so long in reaching America is a puzzle
when you consider the velocity with which the
Atlantic Ocean is traversed by so many mediocre
books on art. .The first Spanish edition of the
Beruete monograph appeared about 1897; the
same year saw it in French, and from the latter
tongue it was translated into English by Hugh E.
Po)mter in 1906. Senor Beruete is considered with
reason as the prime living authority on the great
Spanish realist, though his study is not so volumi-
nous as that of Carl Justi. The Bonn professor,
however, took all Spain for his province. Velas-
quez and His Times is the title of his work, the first

102

SIX SPANIARDS

edition of which came out in 1888, the second in
1903. Beruete (whose portrait by SoroUa was
one of that master's most characteristic pictures
at the recent Hispanic Society exhibition in New
York) is not at odds on many points with
Justi; but more sceptical he is, and to R. A. M.
Stevenson's list of Velasquez pictures, two hun-
dred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes the com-
paratively meagre number of eighty-nine. He
reduces the nimiber of sketches and waves away
as spurious the Velasquez "originals" in Italy,
several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the
collection; and of the eleven in that famous cabinet
of the Vienna Imperial Museum — to which we
went as to a divine service of eye and soul — he
allows only seven as authentic. The portrait of
Innocent X in the Doria palace, Rome, is nat-
urally a masterpiece, as is the bust portrait of the
same subject at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg;
but the Boston Museum full-length of Philip IV
IS discredited as a copy, only the Prince Don Bal-
tasar Carlos Attended by a Dwarf being admitted
in the company of the true Velasquezes.

Of the "supposed portrait of Cardinal Pam-
phili," a real Velasquez, now hanging in the His-
panic Society, 156th Street, Beruete writes: "In
the winter of 1902 there appeared in Paris a bust
portrait of a cardinal brought from Italy by
Messrs. Trotty & Co., which had been alluded to
by Professor A. Venturi of Rome in VArt. It is
life size, representing a person about thirty years
of age in the dress of a cardinal, with smiling face

103

PROMENADES

and black hair, moustache and pointed beard, good
carriage and a touch of levity not in keeping with
the dignity and austerity of a prince of the Church.
The beretta and cape, of a fine red colour, the
latter painted in a uniform tone and without a
crease, harmonise with the roseate hue of the
features, and the plain gray background. Every
detail reveals the hand of Velasquez, and it can be
classed without hesitation among the character-
istic works of his second style. It is on that ground
that I make mention of it here. However, in
Rome, at the house in which this picture was
found, it was held to be the portrait of Cardinal
Pamphili, nephew of Innocent X, who according
to Palomino was painted in Rome by Velasquez
at the same time as the Pontiff, that is in
1650."

Beruete believes Palomino was wrong in de-
claring that Velasquez painted the young cardinal
in Rome; Madrid was the likelier city. The style
proves an earlier date than 1650. The cardinal
withdrew from the cardinalate after three years,
1644-47, and married. The portrait was acquired
by the American artist the late Francis Lathrop.
Stevenson grants to the Metropolitan Musemn a
fruit-piece by Velasquez. Not so Beruete. J. H.
McFadden of Philadelphia once owned the Dofia
Mariana of Austria, second wife of Philip IV, in
a white-and-black dress, gold chain over her
shoulder, hair adorned with red bows and red-and-
white feather, from the Lyne-Stephens collection
in the New Gallery, 1895 — ^md is so quoted by

104

SIX SPANIARDS

Stevenson; but he sold the picture and Beruete has
lost track of it.

Whereas Stevenson in his invaluable book
studies his subject broadly in chapters devoted to
the dignity of the Velasquez technique, his colour,
modelling, brushwork, and his impressionism,
Beruete follows a more detailed yet simpler method.
Picture by picture, in each of the three styles — he
adopts Justi's and Stevenson's classification — he
follows the painter, dealing less with the man than
his work. Not that biographical data are missing
— on the contrary, there are many pages of anec-
dotes as well as the usual facts — but Beruete
is principally concerned with the chronology and
attribution of the pictures. He has dug up some
fresh material concerning the miserable pay
Velasquez received, rather fought for, at the court
of Philip, where he was on a, par with the dwarfs,
barbers, comedians, servants, and other de-
pendants of the royal household.

The painter has been criticised for his attach-
ment to the king; but as he was not of a religious
nature and did not paint religious pieces with the
gusto of his contemporaries, the court was his only
hope of existence; either court or church. He
made his choice early, and while we must regret
the enormous wasting of the hours consequent
upon the fulfilment of his duties as a functionary,
master of the revels, and what not, we should not
forget how extremely precarious would have been
his lot as a painter without royal favour in the
Spain of those days. He had his bed, board,

105

PROMENADES

house, and though he died penniless — his good
wife Juana only survived him seven days — he
had the satisfaction of knowing that he owed no
man, and that his daughter had married his pupil
Mazo. Velasquez was bom at Seville in 1599;
died at Madrid, 1660. His real name was Diego
Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez. He was a Silva
— for the "de" was acquired from the king after
much pettifoggery on the part of that monarch
with the prognathic jaw — and he was of Portu-
guese blood. He signed Velasquez — a magic
grouping of letters for the lovers of art — though
bom as he was in Spain his forefathers came from
Portugal. The mixed blood has led to furious
disputes among hot-headed citizens of the two
kingdoms. As if it much mattered. Velasquez's
son-in-law, by the way, Juan Mazo, was the
author of a number of imitations and forgeries.
He was a tme friend of the pictiu-e-dealers.

Velasquez belonged to that rare family of
sane genius. He was eminendy the painter of
daylight and not a nocturnal visionary, as was
Rembrandt. Shakespeare, who had all the strings
to his lyre, had also many daylight moments.
Mozart always sang them, and how blithely! No
one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe —
to name three widely disparate men of genius —
saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is a mag-
nificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who
swear to you that genius is a disease. Remem-
ber, too, that the limitations of Velasquez are
dearly defined. Imagination was denied to him,

106

SIX SPANIARDS

asserts Beruete; he had neither the turbulent tem-
perament of Rubens nor possessed the strained,
harsh mysticism of El Greco — a painter of
imagination and the only painter allowed by
Beruete to have affected the Velasquez palette. In
a word, Velasquez was a puzzling comminglement
of the classic and the realist. He had the repose
and the firm, virile line of the classics, while his
vision of actuality has never been surpassed. The
Dutch Terburg, Vermeer, Van der Heist, Frans
Hals saw as vividly the surfaces of things material;
the last alone was the match of Velasquez in brush-
work, but not Rembrandt recorded in his Anatomy
Lesson the facts of the case as did Velasquez.

Senor Beruete wittily remarks that Los Bor-
rachos (The Topers) of Velasquez is the truer
anatomy lesson of the two. A realist, an impres-
sionist, as Stevenson has it, the Spaniard was; but
he was also something more. He had a magic
hand to define, the rendering of the magical mys-
tery of space and atmosphere. Grant that he was
not a colourist in the sense the Venetians were, or
Rubens, yet how much more subtle, more noble,
more intellectual, is his restricted tonal gamut.
Those silver-grays, resonant blacks, browns, blues,
and reds sing in your memory long after you have
forgotten the tumultuous golden waves breaking
upon the decorative coasts of Rubens. We are
constrained to question the easy way Beruete and
other critics deny the attributes of imagination
and poetry to Velasquez. There is, perhaps, a
more sublimated poetry in his pictures than in the

107

PROMENADES

obvious religious and mythological and allegorical
set pieces of Rubens, Murillo, and how many
others. His realism did not run to seed in the
delineation of subject. He was as natural as Cer-
vantes — the one great man of Spain who may be
compared to him — and he saw the larger patterns
of life, while never forgetting that the chief function
of a painter is to paint, not to ''think," not to
rhapsodise, not to be ''literary" on canvas. His
cool, measuring eye did more than record sordid
facts. He had a sort of enraptured vision of the
earth as beautiful, the innocence of the eye we en-
counter in children only. Stevenson rages at those
who say that Velasquez was not a colourist — and
Beruete is of them, though he quotes with consid-
erable satisfaction the critical pronouncement of
Royal Cortissoz (in Harper^s Magazine, May,
1895) that Las Meninas is " the most perfect study
of colour and values which exists."

The truth is, Stevenson, Cortissoz, and Beruete
are all three in the right. That Velasquez, when
in Rome, studied the pictures there; that he didn't
care for Raphael; that he had very much admired
the Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto; that he had
admired Rubens, with whom he associated daily
on the occasion of the Flemish master's visit of
nine months to Madrid — these are truths not to
be denied. Beruete claims that the Rubens in-
j9uence is not to be seen in Velasquez, only El
Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that
swam through the eyeballs of the Spaniard —
surely the most wonderful pair of eyes in history

108

SIX SPANIARDS

— was never forgotten. His powers of assimila-
tion were unexcelled. He saw and made note
of everything, but when he painted his spectators
saw nothing of any other man, living or dead.
Was not the spiritual impidse missing in this
man ? He cotddn't paint angels, because he only
painted what he saw; and as he never saw angels
he only painted mankind. Life, not the "sub-
ject," appealed to him. He had little talent, less
taste, for the florid decorative art of Rubens and
the Venetians; but give him a simple, himian
theme (not pretty or sentimental) and he recreated
it, not merely interpreted the scene; so that Las
Meninas, The Spinners (Las Hilanderas), the
himting pictures, the various portraits of royalty,
buffoons, beggars, outcasts, are the chronicles of
his time, and he its master psychologist.

Beruete says that Ribera more than Zurbaran af-
fected Velasquez; " El Greco taught him the use of
delicate grays in the colouring of the flesh. " Hot,
hard, and dry in his first period (Borrachos), he
becomes more fluid and atmospheric in the Breda
composition (The Lances), and in the third period
he has attained absolute mastery of his material.
His salary at the court was two and sixpence a day
in 1628. Even Haydn and Mozart did better as
menials. Yet some historians speak of the liber-
ality of Philip IV. An "immortal employee"
indeed, as Beruete names his idol. Luca Gior-
dano called Las Meninas the " theology of paint-
ing.'* Wilkie declared that the Velasquez land-
scapes possessed " the real sun which lights us, the

109

PROMENADES

air which we breathe, and the soul and spirit of
nature." "To see the Prado/' exclaims Steven-
son, " is to modify one's opinion of the novelty of
recent art." To-day the impressionists and real-
ists claim Velasquez as their patron saint as well
as artistic progenitor. The profoundest master of
harmonies and the possessor of a vision of the real
world not second to Leonardo's, the place of the
Spaniard in history will never be taken from him.

Velasquez is more modem than all the modems;
more modem than to-morrow. That sense of the
liberation of the spirit which Mr. Berenson is fond
of adducing as the grandest attribute of the Space
Composers, Raphael and the rest, may be dis-
covered in Las Meninas, or in The Spinners, space
overhead, with mystery superadded. The bru-
mous North was the home of m)rsticism, of Gothic
architecture. The note of tragic m)rstery was
seldom sounded by the Italians. Faith itself seems
more real in the North. It remained for Rem-
brandt to give it out in his chords of chiaroscuro.
And is there more noble, more virile music in all
art than The Surrender of Breda ?

Mr. Berenson refers only once to Velasquez and
then as an "impersonal" painter. As a counter-
blast to his theory of impersonality let us quote a
few lines from R. A. M. Stevenson's Velasquez
(that most inspiring of all art monographs) : " Is it
wonderful, " he asks, " that you can apply Morelli's
principles of criticism to the Pre-Raphaelite Italian
schools; that you can point to the thumbs, fingers,
poses of the head, ovals of the face and schemes of

SIX SPANIARDS

colour that the painters learned by heart, and can
even say from whom they learned? The later
Venetians broke away, and when you come to
Velasquez the s)rstem holds good as little as it can
in our own day. " But this charge holds good for
many painters of the Renaissance, painters of
patterns. Velasquez, like the great prose-master
of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always in modu-
lation. No two canvases are rh)rthmically alike,
except in the matter of masterfulness. He, too,
was a master of magnificent prose painting, paint-
ing worth a wilderness of makers of frozen medi-
aeval patterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author
of the Chevalier di Pensieri-Vani, once spoke
of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Vision of
Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by
describing the pictures of Velasquez as boxed-in
eternities. Dostoievsky knew such a sensation
when he wrote of "a species of eternity within the
space of a square foot." But there are many
connoisseurs who find evidences of profounder and
more naive faith in the angular loveliness of the
Flemish Primitives than in all the religious art of
Italy or Spain.

Ill

GOYA

Goya was a Titan among artists. He once
boasted that " Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt
are my masters." It was an excellent self-criticism.
He not only played the Velasquez gambit in his

III

PROMENADES

portraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre
imaginative pieces, but he boldly annexed all Spain
for his sinister and turbulent art. He was more
truly Spanish in the range and variety of his per-
formances than any Spanish-bom painter since
Velasquez. Without the sanity, solidity, nobility
of Velasquez, whose vision and voice he never
possessed; without the luscious sweetness of Mu-
rillo, whose sweetness he lacked, he had something
of El Greco's fierceness, and much of the vigour
of Ribera. He added to these influences a tem-
perament that was exuberant, fantastic, morose,
and pessimistic yet himiorous, sarcastic, some-
times melting, and ever masterful. He reminds one
of an overwhelming force. The man dominates
the painter. A dozen comparisons force them-
selves upon you when the name of Goya is pro-
nounced: comets, cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild
animals. Anarch and courtier, atheist and deca
rator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bull-
fight," says Richard Muther. One might improve
on this by calling him a subtle bull, a Hercules
who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, and
Rembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief sum-
mary. "How inadequate the list! Lucifer, Beel-
zebub, and Legion had a hand in the teaching."
Goya incarnated the renaissance of old Spain
and its art. Spanish art has always come from
without, for its foundations were northern and
Flemish. The Van Eycks and Van der Weyden
were studied closely; Jan Van Eyck visited Madrid.
The Venetian influence was strong, and El Greco

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SIX SPANIARDS

his life long, and a pupil of Titian as he was, this
gloomy painter with the awkward name of TheO-
tocopoulo endeavoured to forget his master and
became more Spanish than the Spanish. Ribera,
emotional, dramatic, realistic, religious, could
sound the chords of tenderness without the senti-
mentalism of Murillo. Goya stems more from
Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his
predecessors, except Velasquez. The presence of
Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, in Spain may
have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs,
the "Saxon pedant," did not — Mengs associated
with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is in company with
the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa,
that Goya is closely affiliated. We must go to
Gustave Courbet for a like violence of tempera-
ment; both men painted con furia; both were
capable of debauches in work; Goya could have
covered the walls of hell with diabolic frescoes.
In music three men are of a like ilk: Berlioz,
Paganini, Liszt. Demoniacal, charged with elec-
tric energy, was this trinity, and Goya could have
made it a quartet.

But if Spain was not a country of original
artists — as was Italy, for example — she devel-
oped powerful and astounding individualities.
Character is her leU motiv in the s)rmphony of the
nations. The rich virility and majestic seriousness
of her men, their aptitudes for war, statesman-
ship, and drama, are borne out in her national
history. Perhaps the climate plays its part.
Havelock Ellis thinks so. " The hard and violent

PROMENADES

effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the
stained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in
pigment, may well have affected the imagination of
the artist," he writes. Certainly the landscapes
of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than
they are; and, disagreeing with those who say
that he had no feeling for nature, the bits of coim-
tryside and mountain Goya shows are truly penin-
sular in their sternness. It may be well to remark
here that the softness of Tuscany is not to be foimd
in the lean and often arid aspects of Spain. Spain,
too, is romantic — but after its own fashion. Goya
revived the best traditions of his country's art; he
was the last of the great masters and the first of
the modems. Something neurotic, modem, dis-
quieting, threads his work with devilish irregu-
larity. He had not the massive temper of Velas-
quez, of those men who could paint day after day,
year after year, until death knocked at their
ateliers. As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches,
Goya had not the steady, slow nerves of that
master. He was very unequal. His life was as
disorderly as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving
phlegm was missing. In an eloquent passage —
somewhere in his English Literature — Taine
speaks of the sanity of genius as instanced by
Shakespeare. Genius narrowly escapes nowadays
being a cerebral disorder, though there was Mar-
lowe to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even
of Michael Angelo's mental health and morals his
prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not speak
in reassuring terms.

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SIX SPANIARDS

Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easily
angered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irri-
table motor centres when aroused. A knife was
always within reach. He drove the Duke of Wel-
lington from his presence because the inquisitive
soldier asked too many questions while his portrait
was being blocked out. A sword or a dagger did
the business; but Wellington returned to the studio
and, as Mr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was
finished and is now at Strathfieldsaye. A san-
guine is in the British Museum. His exploits in
Rome may have been exaggerated, though he was
quite capable of eloping with a nun from a convent,
as is related, or going aroimd the top of the Cecilia
Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs. The
agility and strength of Goya were notorious, though
in a land where physical prowess is not the excep-
tion. He was picador, matador, banderillero by
turns in the bull-ring. After a stabbing afifray he
escaped in the disguise of a bull-fighter.

If he was a dompteur of dames and cattle, he was
the same before his canvas. An)rthing that came
to hand served him as a brush, an old brown stick
wrapped up in cloth, a spoon — with the latter he
executed that thrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in
the Prado. He could have painted with a sabre
or on all fours. Reckless to the degree of insanity,
he never feared king or devil, man or the Inquisi-
tion. The latter reached out for him, but he had
disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrust in the
back. When on the very roof of his prosperity, he
often slipped downstairs to the company of varlets

IIS

PROMENADES

and wenches; this friend of the Duchess of Alba
seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in the
suburbs with base-bom people and gipsies. A
genre painter, Goya delighted in depicting the
volatile, joyous life of a now-vanished epoch. He
was a historian of manner as well as of disordered
souls, and an avowed foe of hypocrisy.

Not "poignantly genteel," to use a Borrovian
phrase, was he. Yet he could play the silken
courtier with success. The Arabs say that "one
who has been stimg by a snake shivers at a string,"
and perhaps the violence with which the painter
attacked the religious may be set down to the score
of his youthful fears and flights when the Inqui-
sition was after him. He was a sort of Voltaire in
black and white. The corruption of churchmen
and court at this epoch seems almost incredible.
Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but one
thing — friends high in power. This was the case.
He was admired by the king, Charles IV, and ad-
mired — who knows how much! — by his queen,
Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their por-
traits; also painted the portraits of the royal
favourite and prime minister and Prince de la
Paz, Manuel Godoy — favourite of both king and
queen. Him, Goya left in efiSgy for the scorn of
generations to come. "A grocer's family who
have won the big lottery prize, " was the witty
description of Th^ophile Gautier when he saw
the picture of the royal family.

Curiously enough, this Goya, who from the first
plucked success from its thorny setting, was soon

ii6

SIX SPANIARDS

forgotten, and until Gautier in 1840 recorded his
impressions in his brilliant Voyage en Espagne,
critical literature did not much concern itself with
the versatile Spaniard. And Gautier's sketch of a
few pages still remains the most comprehensive
estimate. From it all have been forced to borrow;
Richard Muther in his briskly enthusiastic mono-
graph and the section in his valuable History of
Modem Painting; Charles Yriarte, Will Rothen-
stein, Lafond, Lef ort, Cond^ de la Vinaza — aU
have read Gautier to advantage. Valerian von
Loga has devoted a study to the etchings, and Don
Juan de la Rada has made a study of the frescoes
in the church of San Antonio de la Florida; Carl
Justi, Stirling Maxwell, C. G. Hartley should
also be consulted. Yriarte is interesting, inas-
much as he deals with the apparition of Goya in
Rome, an outlaw, but a blithe one, who, notebook
in hand, went through the Trastevere district
sketching with ferocious rapidity the attitudes and
gestures of the vivacious population. A man after
Stendhal's heart, this Spaniard. And in view of
his private life one is tempted to add — and after
the heart, too, of Casanova. Notwithstanding,
he was an imrivalled interpreter of child-life. Some
of his painted children are of a dazzling sweetness.

Francisco Jos6 de Goya y Lucientes was bom
March 30 (or 31), 1746, at Fuentetodos, near
Saragossa, Aragon. He died at Bordeaux, France^

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PROMENADES

where he had gone for his health, April i6, 1828 —
Calvert, possibly by a pen slip, makes him expire
a month earlier. He saw the beginnings of
French romanticism, as he was himself a witness
of the decadence of Spanish art. But his spirit
has lived on in Manet and Zuloaga. Decadent
he was; a romantic before French romanticism,
he yet had borrowed from an earlier France. Some
of his gay F6tes Champfetres recall the influence of
Watteau — a Watteau without the sweet elegiac
strain. He has been called a Spanish Hogarth —
not a happy simile. Hogarth preaches; Goya
never; satirists both, Goya never deepened by a
pen stroke the didactic side. His youth was not
extraordinary in promise; his father and mother
were poor peasants. The story of his discovery
by a monk of Saragosela — Father Felix Salvador
of the Carthusian convent of Aula Dei — is not
missing. He studied with Jos^ Martinez. He ran
away in 1766. He remained, say some, in Italy
from 1769 to 1774; but in 1771 he appeared in
Saragossa again, and the year 1772 saw him com-
peting for the painting about to be xmdertaken in
the cathedral. He married Josefa Bayeu, the sister
of the court painter. He has told us what he
thought of his jealous, intriguing brother-in-law in
a portrait. In 1775 he was at Madrid. From 1776
he executed forty-six tapestry cartoons. In 1 7 79 he
presented to the king his etchings after Velasquez.
His rise was rapid. He painted the queen, with
her false teeth, false hair, and her infernal simper,
and this portrait was acclaimed a masterpiece.

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SIX SPANIARDS

His religious frescoes, supposed to be ad
majorem Dei gloriam, were really for the greater
glory of Groya. They are something more than
secular, often little short of blasphemous. That
they were tolerated proves the cynical temper of
his times. When the fat old scoimdrel of a Bour-
bon king ran away with all his court and the pusil-
lanimous Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene,
Goya swerved and went through the motions of
loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers
of the supposedly sturdy republican. But he was
only marking time. He left a terrific arraignment
of war and its horrors. Nor did he spare the
French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in
these swift, ghasUy memoranda of misery, bar-
barity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocrite Ferdi-
nand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father
than Goya, hat in hand but sneer on lip and
twinkle in eye, approached him, and after some
parlejdng was restored to royal favour. Goya
declared that as an artist he was not personally
concerned in the pranks of the whirligig politic.
Nevertheless he was bitterly chagrined at the twist
of events, and, an old man, he retired to his coun-
try house, where he etched and designed upon its
walls startling fancies. He died disillusioned,
and though nursed by some noble countrymen, his
career seemed to illustrate that terrifying picture
of his invention — a skeleton lifts its gravestone
and grinningly traces with bony finger in the dust
the word Nada — Nothing! Overtaxed by the vio-
lence of his life and labours — he left a prodigious

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PROMENADES

amount of work bdund him — soured by satiety,
all spleen and rage, he was a bix)Len-down Lucifer,
who had trailed his wings in the mud. But who
shall pass judgment upon this imhappy man?
Perhaps, as he saw the " glimmering square" grow
less, the lament of Cardinal Wolsey mi^ have
come to a brain teeming wi& memories. Goya
had always put his king before his God. But in
his heart he loved the old romantic faith — the
faith that hovered in the background of his art.
Go3ra is not the first son of his mother church
who denied her from sheer perversity. What
a nation! Cervantes and Lope da Vega, Teresa
deCepeda y Ahumada — moist glorious of her
sex, saint and genius — and Goya! Spain is the
land of great and diverse personalities. But
with Calderon we must now say: "Let us to our
ship, for here all is shadowy and unsettled. "

Gi03ra, as Bauddaire pointed out more than half
a century ago, executed his etchings by combining
aquatint and the use of the dry point. A few
years before his death he took up litho^^phy, then
a novelty. His Caprices, Proverbs, and Horrors
of War may outlive his paintings. His colour
scheme was not a wide one, blacks, reds, browns,
and yellows often playing solo; but all modem
impressionism may be seen on his canvases —
harsh dissonances, dots, dabs, spots, patches,
heavy planes, strong rhythmic effects of lighting,
heavy impasto, luminous atmosphere, air,, sun-
shine, and vibrating movanents; also the strange-
ness of his material. Manet vreat to him a

I20

SIX SPANIARDS

heginner. After stud3ring the Maja de^wda at the
Prado Museum he returned to France and painted
the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in
the Louvre. The balcony scenes of Goya, with
their manolas — old-fashioned griscttes — must
have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's
Balcony. And the bull-fights? Oh! what an
iron-souled master was there — Goya vrhm he
slashed a bull in the arena tormented by the
hiunan brutes! None of his successors matches
him. The same is the case with that diverting,
(fevilish, savoury, and obscene series he called
Caprices. It is worth remembering that Delacroix
was one of the first artists in Paris who secured
a set of these mre plates. The witch's sabbaths
and the modem version of them, prostitution and
its symbolism, filled the brain of Goya. Q)e
always shocks any but robust nervest with his
hybrid creatures red in claw and foaming at
mouth as they fight in midair, hideous and unr
namable phantoms of the dark. His owls arse
theologians. The females he often shows make
us turn aside our head and shudder. With imr
placable fidelity he displayed the reverse of war's
heroic shield. It is something more than hell.

Sattler, Charlet, Raflfet, James Ensor, Retbiel,
De Groux, Rops, Edvard Miinch (did you ever
see his woman wooed by a skeleton?), and ihQ
rest of these delineators of the morbid and maca^
bre acknowledge Goya as their progenitor. He
must have been a devil-worshipper. He pictures
the goat devil, horns and hoofs. Gautier com^

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PROMENADES

pares him to E. T. W. Hoffmann — Poe not being
known in Paris at that time — but it is a rather
laboured comparison, for there was a profoundly
human side to the Spaniard. His perception of
reality was of the solidest. He had lived and
loved and knew before Flaubert that if the god of
the Romantics was an upholsterer the god of
eighteenth-century Spain was an executioner.
The professed lover of the Duchess of Alba, he
paint^ her nude, and then, hearing that the Duke
might not like the theme so handled, he painted her
again, and clothed, but more insolently imcovered
than before. At the Spanish museum in New York
you may see another portrait of this bold beauty
with the name of Goya scratched in the earth at
her feet. Her attitude is characteristic of the in-
trigue, which all Madrid knew and approved. At
home sat Mrs. Goya with her twenty children.
Goya was a man of striking appearance.
Slender in youth, a graceful dancer, in middle life
be had the wide shoulders and bull neck of an
athlete. He was the terror of Madrilenan hus-
bands. His voice had seductive charm. He
could twang the guitar and fence like ten devils.
A gamester, too. In a word, a figure out of the
Renaissance, when the deed trod hard on the heels
of the word. One of his self-portraits shows him
in a Byronic collar, the brow finely proportioned,
marked mobile featiu*es, sombre eyes — the ideal
Don Juan Tenorio to win the foolish heart of an
Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another,
with its savage eye — it is a profile — and big

122

SIX SPANIARDS

beaver head-covering, recalls Walt Whitman's "I
wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. " A giant
egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as
Spain ever begot, Goya is only hinted at in
Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning:
"Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues."
Fleurs du Mai would be a happy title for the work
of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of Evil"
were added "and Wisdom." Goya is often cruel
and lascivious and vulgar, but he is as great a
philosopher as painter. And to oflFset his pas-
sionate gloom there are his visions of a golden
Spain no longer in existence; happy, gorgeous of
costume, the Spain of sudden coquetries, of fans,
masques, bull-fights, and fandangos, of a people
dancing on the rim of a fire-filled mountain, pious,
capricious, child-like, romantic, and patriotic —
the Spain of the eighteenth century. Goya is its
spokesman, as is Velasquez the mirror of Philip's
more spacious times. Velasquez — Groya! poles
asimder, yet both bom to the artistic purple.
And the stately aristocrat who signed himself
Velasquez is not more in tune with the twentieth-
century Zeitgeist than that coarse-fibred democrat
of genius, Francisco Goya.

IV
FORTUNY

Mariano Fortuny: what a magic-breeding
name! The motto of this lucky Spanish painter
might have been "Fortimy Fortunatus." Even

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MIOMENADES

his sudden death, at the early age of thirty-«ix, came
after he had executed a number of masterpieces,
an enormous quantity of water-colours, etchings,
ceramics, damascene swords and chased oma-
n^nts; it followed on the heels of sudden glory.
His name was in the mouth of artistic Europe, and
the sale of the contents of his studio at Rome in
187 s brought eight hundred thousand francs. Yet
so slippery is fame that Fortuny's name to-day is
sddom without a brace of epithets, such as
" garish, " or " empty. " His work is neither. He
is a virtuoso. So was Tiepolo. He is a Romantic;
so the generation preceding him. The Orientalist
par excellence, he has somehow been confounded
with Meissonier and G^rdme, has been called glit-
tering like the former, hard as was the latter. It is
true there are no emotional imdertones in his tem-
perament, the brilliapt overtones predominating;
but it is ako true that when he died his manner was
changing. He had said that he was tired of tixe
"gay rags" xjf the eighteenth century, and his
Strand of Portici shows a new line of departure.
Edouard Manet made special appeal to Fortimy;
Manet, who:had derived from Goya, whose Span-
ish fond is undeniable. Perhaps the thrice-
brilliant Fortuny's conscience smote him when he
saw a Frenchman so successfully absorbing the
traditions of Goya; but it was not to be. He
passed away at the very top of his renown, truly
a &voarite of the gods. He was admired, imi-
tated, above all parodied; though, jealously as
are bis pictures guarded, he has been put on

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SEX SPANIARDS

ibe sbdf like one of the amazing painted bibelots
iniiis work.

The injustice of tiiis is patent. Between For-
iuny and Meissonier tibere lies the giiS that sepa-
lates the genius and the hard-working man of
talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the
garden of the Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as
a master, while Fortimy is usually described in pa-
tronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is
thetruth. No one has painted simlight witii more
intensity; he was an impressionist before the word
was coined. He is a colourist almost as sumptu-
ous, as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never
attained by the Marseilles rhapsodist. His figures
are as delicious as Watteau's or Debucourt's — he
recalls the latter frequently — and as an Oriental-
ist he ranks all but a few. G^r6me, Guillaumet,
Fromentin, Huguet are not to be mentioned in the
same breath with Fortuny as to the manipulation
of material; and has Guillaumet done anything
savouring more of the mysterious East than For-
tuny's At the Gate of the Seraglio ? The magician
of jewelled tcmes, he knew all the subtler modula-
tions. His csuivases vibrate, they emit sparks of
simlight, his shadows are velvety and warm.
Ccnnpared with such a picture as The Choice of a
Model, the most laboriously minute Meissonier is
as cold and dead as a photograph — Meissonier,
who was a capital fan painter, a patient miniaturist
witiiout colour talent, a myopic delineater of cos-
tumes, who, as Manet said; pasted paper soldiers
on canvas and called the machine a battle-field.

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PROMENADES

The writer recalls the sensations once evoked
by a close view of Fortuny's Choice of a Model at
Paris years ago, and at that time in the possession
of Mr. Stewart. Psychology is not missing in this
miracle of virtuosity; the nude posing on the
marble table, the absolute beauty of the drawing,
the colouring, the contrast of the richly varie-
gated marble pillars in the background, the
eighteenth-century costimies of the Academicians
so scrupulously yet so easily set forth, all made a
dazzling ensemble. Since Fortimy turned the
trick a host of spurious pictiures has come over-
seas, and we now say "Vibert" at the same time
as "Fortuny," just as some enlightened persons
couple the names of Ingres and Bouguereau. In
the kingdom of the third rate the mediocre is con-
queror.

Listen to this description of La Vicaria (The
Spanish Wedding), which first won for its painter
his reputation. Begim in 1868, it was exhibited
at GoupiPs, Paris, the spring of 1870 (some say
1869), when the artist was thirty-two years old.
Th^phile Gautier — whose genius and Th&dore
de Banville's have analogies with Fortuny's in thie
matter of surfaces and astounding virtuosity —
went up in the air when he saw the work, and wrote
a feuilleton that is still recalled by the old guard.
The following, however, is not by Gautier, but
from the pen of Dr. Richard Muther, the erudite
German critic: "A marriage is taking place in the
sacristy of a rococo church in Madrid. The walls
are covered with faded Cordova leather hangings

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SIX SPANIARDS

figured in gold and dull colours, and a magnificent
rococo screen separates the sacristy from the mid-
dle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from
the ceiling, pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in
carved oval frames hang on the wall, richly orna-
mented wooden benches and a library of missals
and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining
marble tables and glistening braziers form part of
the scene in which the marriage contract is being
signed. The costimies are those of the time of
Goya. An old beau is marrying a young and
beautiful girl. With afifected grace and a skip-
ping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered
hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put
his signature in the place which the escribano points
out with an obsequious bow. He is arrayed in
delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white
silk dress trimmed with flowered lace and has a
wreath of orange blossoms in her luxuriant black
hair. As a girl friend is talking to her she ex-
amines with abstracted attention the pretty little
pictures upon her fan, the finest she ever possessed.
A very piquant litfle head she has, with her long
lashes and black eyes. Then, in the background,
follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady
in a swelling silk dress of the brightest rose colour.
Beside her is one of the bridegroom's friends in a
cabbage-green coat with long flaps and a shming
belt, from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The
whole picture is a marvellous assemblage of colours
in which tones of Venetian glow and strength, the
tender pearly gray beloved of the Japanese, and a

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PROMENADES

melting neutral brown each sets off the other and
gives a shimmering effect to the entire mass. "

Fortimy was a gay master of diaracter and
comedy as well as of bric-a-brac. Still life he
painted as no one before or after him; if Chardin
is the Velasquez of vegetables, Fortimy is the
Rossini of the rococo; such lace-like filigrees,
fiorturij marbles that are of stone, men and women
that are alive, not of marble (like Alma-Tadema's).
The artificiality of his work is principally in the
choice of a subject, not in the performance. How
luminous and silky are his blacks may be noted at
the Metropolitan Museum in his portrait d a
Spanish lady. There is nothing of the petU^mcnire
in the sensitive and adroit handling of values.
The rather triste expression, the veiled look of the
eyes, the morbidezza of the flesh tones, and the gen-
eral sense of amplitude and grace give us a For-
tuny who knew how to paint broadly. The more
obvious and dashing side of him is present in tiie
Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery. It
must be remembered that he spent some time copy-
ing, at Madrid, Velasquez and Goya, and as
Camille Mauclair enthusiastically declares, these
copies are literal "identifications." They are
highly prized by the Marquise Carcano (who
owned the Vicaria), Madrazo, and the Baron
Davillieu — the last named the chief critical au-
thority on Fortimy.

In the history of the arts there are cases such as
Fortuny's, of Mozart, Chopin, Raphael, and some
others, whose precocity and prodigious powers of

128

H.;.

SIX SPANIARDS

p^uction astonished their contemporaries. For-
tuny, whose full name was Mariano ]os6 Maria
Bernardo Fortuny y Carbd, was bom at Reus, a
little town in the province of Tarragona, near
Barcelona. He was very poor, and at the age of
twelve an orphan. His grandfather, a carpenter,
went with the lad on foot through the towns of
Catalonia exhibiting a cabinet containing wax
figures painted by Mariano and perhaps modelled
by him. He began carving and daubing at the age
of five; a regular little fingersmith, his hands were
never idle. He secured by the promise of talent a
pension of forty-two francs a month and went to
Barcelona to study at the Academy. Winning
the prize of Rome in 1857, he went there and copied
old masters until i860, when, the war between
Spain and Morocco breaking out, he went to
Morocco on General Prim's stafiF, and for five or six
months his brain was saturated with the wonders of
Eastern simlight, exotic hues, beggars, gorgeous
nigs, snake-charmers, Arabs afoot or circling on
horseback with the velocity of birds, fakirs, all the
huge^stening febrile life he was later to interpret
with sucth charm and exactitude.

He returned to Ropie. He made a second trip
to Africa. He returned to Spain. Barcelona gave
him a pension of a himdred and thirty-two francs
a month, which amount was kept up later by the
Duke de Rianzar^ until 1867. He went to Paris
in 1866, was taken up by the Goupils, knew
Meissonier and worked occasionally with G^rdme.
His rococo pictures, his Oriental work set Paris

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PROMENADES

ablaze. He married the daughter of the Spanish
painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid,
Granada, Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London.
He contracted a pernicious fever at Rome and died
there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six.
His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the
world of art participating. He was buried in the
Campo Varano.

In 1866 at Rome he began etching, and in fifteen
months finished a series of masterpieces. His
line, surprisingly agile and sinuous, has the fi-
nesse of Goya — whom he resembled at certain
points. He used aquatint with full knowledge of
effects to be produced, and at times he recalls
Rembrandt in the depth of his shadows. His
friend the painter Henri Regnault despaired in
the presence of such versatility, such speed and
ease of workmanship. He wrote: "The time I
spent with Fortuny is haunting me still. What a
magnificent fellow he is! He paints the most
marvellous things, and is the master of us all. I
wish I could show you the two or three pictures he
has in his hand or his etchings and water-colours.
They inspired me with a real disgust of my own.
Ah, Fortuny, you spoil my sleep!"

Standing aloof from the ideas and tendencies of
his times and not a sweeper of the chords that stir
in human nature the heroic or the pathetic, it is
none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as a
brainless technician. Everything is relative, and
the scale on which Fortuny worked was as true a
mediiun for the exhibition of his genius as a mu-

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SIX SPANIARDS

seum panorama. Let us not be misled by the wor-
ship of the elephantine. It is characteristic of his
temperament that the big battle piece he was
commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint
was never finished. Not every one who goes to
Rome does as the Romans do. Dowered by nature
with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a roman-
tic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny
was bound to become a great painter. His
manual technique bordered on the fabulous; he
had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman
Pablo de Sarasate had the bom hand of the violin-
ist. That he spent the brief years of his life in
painting the subjects he did is not a problem to be
posed, for, as Henry James has said, it is always
dangerous to challenge an artist's selection of sub-
ject. Why did Goya conceive his Ca/Tic/w5? The
love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not be-
dimmed by criticism. He had the lust of eye
which not the treasures of Ormuz and Ind, or ivory,
apes, and peacocks, could satisfy. If he loved the
kaleidoscopic East, he also knew his Spain. We
have seen at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts a tiny picture, the court-yard of a Spanish
inn through which passes a blinding shaft of sun-
light, which would make envious Senor Sorolla.
Fortimy has personal charm, a quality usually
missing nowadays, for painters in their desire to be
truthful are timibling head over heels into the
prosaic. Individuality is vanishing in the wastes
of an over-anxious realism. If Fortuny is a daring
virtuoso on one or two strings, his palette is ever

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PROMENADES

enchanting. Personally he was a handsome manf
with a distinguished head, his body broad and
muscular and capable of enduring b.tigues that
would have killed most painters. Allied to this
powerful physique was a seductive sensibility*
This peasant-bom painter was an aristocrat of wet
Old Mother Nature is an implacable ironist.

SOROLLA Y BASTroA

We might say of the Spanish painter Joaquin
Sorolla y Bastida that he was one of diose who
came into the world with a ray of sunshine in their
brains — altering the phrase of Villiers de I'lslc
Adam. Sefior Sorolla is also one of the half^ozen
(are there so many?) great living painters. He
belongs to the line of Velasquez and Goya, and he
seldom recalls either. Under the auspices of the
Hispanic Society of America there was an esM^
bition of his works in 1909, some two hundred and
fifty in all, himg in the museum of the society,
West is6th Street, near Broadway. The liveliest
interest was manifested by the public and profes-
sional people in this display. Those who saw
Sorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 190&, and at
the Georges Petit Gallery, Paris, a few years ago
need not be reminded of his virile quality and
masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city
are aware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of
Mr. John E. Berwind, which has been hung in the
Simday-school room of the Ascension Chiuxdi,

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SIX SPANIARDS

Fiffb Avenue and Tenth Street. It is one of the
artist's few pictures in which he feels the WeUsch-
meim. His is a nature bubbling over with health
and happiness.

He is a Valencian, was bom in 1863 of poor
parents, and by reason of his native genius and
stubborn will power he became what he is — the
painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let
there be no mincing of comparisons in this asser-
tion. Not Turner, not Monet painted so directly
blinding shafts of simlight as has this Spaniard.
He is an impressionist, but not of the school of
Monet. His manner is his own, cimningly com-
pounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen
artists. His trip to Rome resulted in nothing but
a large eclectic canvas without individuality; what
had this pagan in common with saints or sinners!
He relates that in Paris Bastien-Lepage and Menzel
affected him profoundly. This statement is not
to be contradicted; nevertheless Sorolla is the
master of those two masters in his proper province
of the portrayal of outdoor life. Degas was too
cruel when he called Bastien the " Bouguereau of
the modem movement"; Bastien academicised
Manet and other modems. He said nothing new.
As for Menzel, it would be well here to correct the
notion bandied about town that he discovered
impressionism before the French. He did not.
He went to Paris in 1867. Meissonier at first,
and later Coiubet, influenced him. His Rolling
Mill was painted in 1870. It is very Courbet.
The Paris Exposition, 1867, picture shows the in-

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PROMENADES

fluence of Monet — who was in the Salon of 1864;
and Monet was begat by Boudin, who stemmed
from Jongkind; and Jongkind studied with Isa-
bey; and they came from Turner, idolater of the
Sun. Remember, too, that Corot and Courbet
called Eugfene Boudin " roi des ciels. " Monet not
only studied with him but openly admitted that he
had learned everything from him, while Boudin
himibly remarked that he had but entered the door
forced by the Dutchman Jongkind. Doubfless
Sorolla foimd what he was looking for in Bastien,
though it would be nearer the truth to say that he
studied the Barbizons and impressionists and
took what he needed from them all.

He is a temperament impressionable to the sim,
air, trees, children, women, men, catfle, landscapes,
the ocean. Such swift, vivid notation of the fluid
life about him is rare; it would be photographic
were it not the personal memoranda of a selecting
eye; it would be transitory impressionism were it
not for a hand magical in its manipulation of
pigments. Brain and brush collaborate with an
instantaneity that does not perplex because the re-
sult is so convincing. We do not intend to quote
that musty flower of rhetoric which was a favourite
with our grandfathers. It was the fashion then
to say that Nature — capitalised — took the
brush from the hand of the painter, meaning
some old duffer who saw varnish instead of clear
colour, and painted the picture for him. Sorolla
is receptive; he does not attempt to impose upon
nature an arbitrary pattern, but he sees nature

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SIX SPANIARDS

with his own eyes, modified by the thousand subtle
experiences in which he has steeped his brain. He
has the tact of omission very well developed.
After years of labour he has achieved a personal
vision. It is so completely his that to copy it
would be to perpetrate a burlesque. He em-
ploys the divisional laches of Monet, spots, cross-
hatchings, big sabre-like strokes k la John Sar-
gent, indulges in smooth sinuous silhouettes, or
huge splotches, refulgent patches, explosions, vi-
brating surfaces; surfaces that are smooth and
Cttly sur&ces, as in his waters, that are exquisitely
translucent. You can't pin him down to a particu-
lar formula. His technique in other hands would
be coarse, crashing, brassy, bald, and too fortis^
simo. It sometimes is all these discouraging
things. It is too often deficient in the finer modu-
lations. But he makes one forget this by his
eiflfoiie, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject.
As a composer be is less satisfactory; it is the first
impression or nothing in his art. Apart from his
luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator of
facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little
Valendan with a big heart and a hand that reaches
out and grabs down clouds, skies, scoops up the
sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joy-
ful band of naked bojrs and giris over the golden
summer sands in a sort of ecstatic symphony of
pantheism.

How does he secure such mtensity of pitch in his
painting of atmosphere, of sunshine? By a con-
venticm, just as the falsification of shadows by

135

PROMENADES

rendering them darker than nature made the nec-
essary contrasts in the old formula. Brightness
in clear-coloured shadows is the key-note of im-
pressionistic open-air effects. W. C. Brownell
— French Art — puts it m this way: "Take
a landscape with a cloudy sky, which means
diffused light in the old sense of the term, and
observe the effect upon it of a sudden biu^t of
sunlight. What is the effect where consider-
able portions of the scene are suddenly thrown
into marked shadow, as well as others illumi-
nated with intense light? Is the absolute value
of the parts in shadow lowered or raised ?
Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly,
to get the contrast between simlight and shad-
ow in proper scale the painter would have
painted tiie shadows darker than they were before
the sun appeared. Relatively they are darker,
since their value, though heightened, is raised
infinitely less than the parts in simlight. Abso-
lutely, their value is raised considerably. If,
therefore, they are painted lighter than they were
before the sun appeared they in themselves seem
truer. The part of Monet's pictures that is in
shadow is measurably true, far truer than it would
have been if painted imder the old theory of cor-
respondence, and had been imnatiuully darkened
to express the relation of contrast between shadow
and sunlight. "

Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his
shadows, as MacColl points out, and like Monet,
Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows — but

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SIX SPANIARDS

what a compeller of beautiful shadows — forces
the key to the very verge of the luminous abyss.
Senor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, truthfully
sa3rs of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain
a great variety of blues and violets, balanced and
juxtaposed with reds and yellows. These, and
tiie skilful use of white, provide him with a colour
scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty."
There are no non-transparent shadows, and his
handling of blacks reveals a sensitive feeling for
values. Consider that black-gowned portrait of
his wife. His imderlying structural sense is never
obscured by his fat, flowing brush.

It must not be supposed that because of So-
rolla's enormous brio his general way of entrapping
nature is brutal. He is masculine and absolutely
free from the neurasthenic morbidezza of his
fellow-countryman Zuloaga. (And far from at-
taining that painter's inches as a psychologist.)
For the delineation of moods nocturnal, of poetic
melancholy, of the contemplative aspect of life we
must not go to Sorolla. He is not a thinker. He
is the painter of bright mornings and brisk salt
breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckel-
mann's HeUerkeU, blitheness, in his groups of
romping children, in their unashamed bare skins
and naive attitudes. Boys on Valencian beaches
evidenfly believe in Adamic imdress. Nor do the
girls seem to care. Stretched upon his stomach
on the beach, a youth, straw-hatted, stares at the
spiune of the rollers. His companion is not so
unconventionally disarrayed, and as she has evi-

137

PROMENADES

dently not eaten of the poisonous apple of wisdom
she is free from embarrassment. Balzac's two in-
fants, innocent of their sex, could not be less care-
free than the Sorolla children. How tenderly,
sensitively, he models the hardly nubile forms of
maidens. The movement of their legs as they
race the strand, their dash into the water, or their
nervous pausing at the rim of the wet — here is
poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days in youth-
land. Curiously enough his types are for the most
part more international than racial; tiiat is, racial
as are Zuloaga's Basque brigands, manolas^ and
gipsies.

But only this? Can't he paint anything but
massive oxen wading to their buttocks in the sea;
or fisher boats with swelling sails blotting out the
horizon; or a girl after a dip standing, as her boy-
ish cavalier covers her with a robe — you see the
dear, pink flesh through her garb; or vistas of
flower gardens with roguish maidens and courtly
parks; peasants harvesting, working women sort-
ing raisins; sailors mending nets, boys at rope-
making — is all this great art ? Where are the
polished surfaces of the cultured studio worker;
where the bric-a-brac which we inseparably con-
nect with pseudo-Spanish art ? You will not find
any of them. Sorolla, with good red blood in his
veins, the blood of a great, misimderstood race,
paints what he sees on the top of God's earth. He
is not a book but a normal nature-lover. He is in
love with light, and by his treatment of relative
values creates the illusion of sun-flooded land-

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SIX SPANIARDS

scapes. He does not cry for the "sun," as did
Oswald Alving; it comes to him at the beckoning
of his brush. His many limitations are but the
defects of his good qualities.

Sorolla is sympathetic. He adores babies and
delights in dancing. His babies are irresistible.
He can sound the MUleid motive without a sus-
picion of odious sentimentality. What charm
there is in some of his tiny children as they lean
their heads on their mothers! They fear the
ocean, yet are fascinated by it. Near by is a
mother and child in bed. They sleep. The
right hand of the mother stretches, instinctively,
toward the infant. It is the sweet, unconscious
gesture of millions of mothers. On one finger of
the hand there is just a hint of gold from a ring.
The values of the white coimterpane and the
contrast of dark-brown hair on the pillow are
truthfully expressed. One mother and babe, all
mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to
that old rascal in a brown cloak, who is about to
taste a glass of wine. A snag gleams white in his
sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh ! You
recaU Goya. As for the boys swimming, the
sensations of darting and weaving through vel-
vety waters are produced as if by wizardry.
But you never think of Sorolla's line, for line,
colour, idea, actuality are merged. The trans-
lucence of this sea in which the boys plash
and plimge is another witness to the verisimilitude
of Sorolla's vision. Boecklin's large canvas at the
new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited as a tour

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PROMENADES

de force of water painting. We allude to the mer-
maids and mermen playing ih the trough of a
greenish «ea. It is mere "property" water when
compared to Sorolla's closely observed and clearly
reproduced waves. Rhythm — that is the prime
secret of his vitality.

His portraiture, when he is interested in his
sitters, is excellent. Beruete is real, so Cossio, the
author of the El Greco biography; so the realistic
novelist Blanco Ibanez; but the best, after those of
his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen,
a photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb.
It is a frank characterisation. The various roy-
alties and high-bom persons whose counterfeit
presentments are accomplished with such genuine
eflFort are interesting; but the heart is missing.
Cleverness there is in the portraits of Alphonse;
and his wife's gorgeous costimie should be the
envy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers.
It is under the skies that Sorolla is at ease. Monet,
it must not be forgotten, had two years' military
service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived,
saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and
painted beneath the hard blue dome of Spanish
skies.

Sorolla is a painting temperament, and the
freshening breezes and sunshine that emanate
from his canvases should drive away the odours of
the various chemical cook-shops which are called
studios in our " world of art. "

One cannot speak too much of the large-minded
and cultivated spirit of Archer Milton Himtington.

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SIX SPANIARDS

who is the projector and patron of the exhibitions
at the Hispanic Society Museum. SoroUa y Bas-
tida, through the invitation of Mr. Huntington,
made this exhibition.

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

We are no longer with SoroUa and his vibrating
sunshine on Valencian sands, or under the hard
blue dome of San Sebastian; the two-score can-
vases on view in 1909 at the Hispanic Museum
were painted by a man of profoimder intellect, of
equally sensual but more restrained temperament
than Sorolla; above all, by an artist with different
ideals — a realist, not an impressionist, Ignacio
Zuloaga. It would not be the entire truth to say
that his masterpieces were seen; several notable
pictures, unhappily, were not; but the exhibition
was finely representative. Zuloaga showed us
the height and depth of his powers in at least one
picture, and the longer you know him the more
secrets he yields up.

In Paris they say of Sorolla that he paints too
fast and too much; of Zuloaga that he is too lazy
to paint. Half truths, these. The yoimger man
is more deliberate in his methods. He composes
more elaborately, executes at a slower gait. He
resents the imputation of realism. The fire and
fury of Sorolla are not his, but he selects, weighs,
analyses, reconstructs — in a word, he composes
and does not improvise. He is, nevertheless, a

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PROMENADES

realist — a veristi as be prefers to be ddled. flie
is not oosmopolitan, and SoroUa is: the types of
boys and girls racing along the beaches of watering
places which Sorolla paints are cosmopditan.
Passionate vivacity and the blinding sunshine are
not qualities that appeal to Zuloaga. He portrays
darkest — let us rather say greenest, brownest
Spain. The Basque in him is die strongest strain.
He is artistically a lineal descendant of El Greco,
Velasquez, Goya; and the map (rf his memory has
been traversed by Manet He is more racial,
more truly Spanish, than any painter since Goya.
He possesses the genius of place.

Havelock Ellis's book. The Soul ci Spain, is an
exceUent corrective for the (^)eratic Spain, and
George Borrow is equally sound despite his big-
otry, while Gautier is invaluable. Arshie Alex-
andre in writing of Zuloaga acutely remarks of the
Spanish conspiracy in allowing the chance tourist
only to scratch the soil ''of this country too well
known but not cdou^ exjdored." Therefore
when feoe to &ce with the pictures of Zuloaga, with
romantic notions of a Spain where castles grow in
the douds and moonshine on every bush, prepare
to be shocked, to be disappointed. He will show
you the real Spain — the sun-soaked soO, the lean,
sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and the
swift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers
and dames of fashion, but his heart is in the com-
mon people. He knows the bourgeois and he
knows the gipsy. He basset forth the pride of the
vagabond and the garish fascinations of the gitana.

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SIX SPANIARDS

Sioce Goya, you say, and then wonder whether it
might not be wiser to add : Goya never had so com-
plicated a psychology. A better craftsman than
Goya, a more varied colourist, a more patient
student of Velasquez, of life, though without
Goya's invention, caprice, satanism, and fougue.
Zuloag^ was not bom poor, but with genius;
and genius always spells discontent. He would
not become an engineer and he would paint. His
&mily, artists and artisans, did not favour his
bent. He visited Italy, almost starved in Paris,
and after he knew how to handle his tools he starved
for recognition. It is only a few years since he ex-
hibited the portrait of his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga,
and his cousins. It now hangs in the Luxem-
bourg; but Madrid would have none of him; a
Spanish jury rejected him at Paris in 1900, and not
possessing the means of Edouard Manet he could
not hire a gallery and show the world the stufiE
that was in him. He did not sulk; he painted.
Barcelona took him up; Paris, the world, followed
suit. To-day he is rich, famous, and forty. He
was bom at Eibar, 1870, in the Basque province
of Viscaya. He is a collector of rare taste and has
housed his treasures in a gallery at his birthplace.
He paints chiefly at Segovia, in an old church,
though he wanders over Spain, sometimes afoot,
sometimes in his motor car, often accompanied by
Rodin in the latter, and wherever he finds himself
he is at home and paints. A bull-fighter in the ring,
as was Goya — perhaps the legend stirred him to
imitation — he is a healthy athlete. His vitality,

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PROMENADES

indeed, is enormous, though it does not manifest
itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. The de-
merits of literary^comparisons are obvious, yet we
dare to think of Sorolla and Zuloaga as we should
of Th^ophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire. In
one is the clear day flame of impersonality; the
other is all personality, given to nocturnal moods,
to diabolism and perversities, cruelties and fierce
voluptuousness. Sorolla is pagan; Gothic is
Zuloaga, a Goth of modem Spain. He has
more variety than Sorolla, more intellect. The
Baudelairian strain grows in his work; it is un-
mistakable. The crowds that went to see the
"healthy" art of Sorolla (as if art had anything in
common with pulse, temperature, and respiration)
did not like, or indeed understand, many of Zu-
loaga's magnificent pictorial ideas.

He paints in large coupSy but his broad, slashing
planes are not impressionistic. He swims in the
traditional Spanish current with joy. Green with
him is almost an obsession — a national symbol
certainly. His greens, browns, blacks, scarlets
are rich, sonorous, and magnetic. He is a col-
ourist. He also is master of a restrained palette
and can sound the silver grays of Velasquez. His
tonalities are massive. The essential bigness of
his conceptions, his structural forms, are the
properties of an eye swift, subtle, and all-em-
bracing. It seems an image that is at once solidly
rooted in mother earth and is as fluctuating as life.
No painter to-day has a greater sense of character,
except Degas. The Frenchman is the superior

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SIX SPANIARDS

draughtsman, but he is no more vital in his inter-
pretation of his ballet girls, washerwomen, and
grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations of
peasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zeal-
ots, pilgrims, beggars, drunkards, and working
girls. What verve, what grip, what bowels of hu-
manity has this Spaniard! A man, not a profes-
sor of academic methods. He has no school, and
he is a school in himself. That the more serene,
poetic aspects and readings of life have escaped
him is merely to say that he is not constituted a
contemplative philosopher. The sinister skein to
be seen in some of his canvases does not argue
the existence of a spiritual bias but is the recog-
nition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor
is it reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted
deep in his Spanish soul along with the harsh irony
and a cruel spirit of mockery. He refuses to
foUow the ideals of other men, and he paints a
spade a spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal,
is not lascivious. A cold, impartial eye observes
and registers the corruption of cities small and
great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the
open country. Sometimes Zuloaga's conmients
are witty, sometimes pessimistic. If he has
studied Goya and Manet, he also knows F^licien
Rops.

The only picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that
grazes the border-land of the unconventional is
Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarth
and as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre
days of the artist when he was acquainted with

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PROMENADES

Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Two wom-
en are crossing a bridge. Their actuality is im-
pressed upon the retina in a marvellously definite
way. They live, they move. One is gowned
in dotted green, the other in black. There is a
little landscape with water beyond the iron railing.
A venerable minotaur is in pursuit. He wears
evening clothes, an overcoat is thrown across his
left arm, under his right he carries waggishly a
cane. His white tie and hat of sober silk are in
respectable contrast with his air of fatuousness —
the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero
of Mansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron
Hulot. The alert expression of the girls, who ap-
pear to be loitering, tells us more at a glance than
a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is
it necessary to add that the handling takes your
breath away because of its consummate ease and
its realisation of the effects sought? Note the
white of the old party's spats, echoed by the bit of
stocking showing a low shoe worn by one of the
girls; note the values of the blacks in the hat, coat,
trousers, shoe tips of the man. The very unpleas-
antness of the theme is forgotten in the supreme
art of its presentation.

M. Alexandre, the French critic, may argue
valiantly that Zuloaga must not be compared with
Goya, that their methods and themes are dissimi-
lar. True, but those witches (Les Sorciferes de
San Millan) are in the key of Goya, not manner,
but subject-matter — a hideous crew. At once
you think of the Caprichos of Goya. The hag with

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SIX SPANIARDS

the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity
worthy of Holbein; the monkey profile of the
witch crouching near the lantern^ that repulsive
creatiure in spectacles — Goya spectacles; the
pattern hasn't varied since his days — these ladies
and their companions, especially that anonymous
one in a hood, coupled with the desperate dreari-
ness of the background, a country dry and hard as
a volcanic cinder, make a formidable ensemble.
Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched and
fought in his studio when he posed them. You
exclaim while looking at them: "How now, you
secret black and midnight hags!'* Hell hovers
hard by; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil
eye.

As a painter of dwar& Zuloaga has not been
surpassed by any one but Velasquez. His
Gregorio, the monster with the huge head, the
sickening, livid, globular eye, the comical pose —
you exclaim: What a brush! The picture palpi-
tates with reality, an ugly reality, for the tall old
couple are not prepossessing. The topography of
the country is minutely observed. But this painter
does not wreak himself in ugliness or morbidities;
he is singularly happy in catching the attitudes
and gestures of the peasants as they retiun from
the vintage; of picadors, matadors, chulos, in
the ring or lounging, smoking, awaiting the
signal. The large and celebrated family group of
the matador Gallito — which is to remain perma-
nently in the Hispanic Society's musexmi — is a su-
perb exemplar of the synthetic and rhythmic art

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PROMENADES

of the Spaniard. Each character is seized and ren-
dered. The strong silhouettes melt into a har-
monious arabesque; the tonal gamut is nervous,
strong, fiery; the dull gold background is a foil for
the scale of colour notes. It is a striking picture.
Very striking, too, is the portrait of Breval as
Carmen, though it is the least Spanish picture in
the collection; Breval is pictured on the stage,
the lights from below playing over her features.
The problem is solved, as Besnard or Degas has
solved it, successfully, but in piurely personal man-
ner. It is the pictiure in the Metropolitan Museiun
that is bound to attract attention, as it is a tech-
nical triumph; but it is not very characteristic.

We saw dark-eyed, graceful manolas on bal-
conies — this truly Spanish motive in art, as
Spanish as is the Madonna Italian — over which
are thrown gorgeous shawls, smiling, flirting;
with languorous eyes and provocative fans, they sit
ensconced as they sat in Goya's time and centuries
before Goya, the Eternal Feminine of Spain.
Zuloaga is her latest interpreter. Isn't Candida
delicious in green, with black head-dress of lace —
isn't she bewitching? Her stockings are green.
The wall is a most miraculous adimibration of
green. Across the room is another agent of dis-
quiet in Nile green, Mercedes by name. Her
aquiline nose, black eyes, and the flowers she wears
at the side of her head bewilder; the sky, clouds,
and landscape are all very lovely. This is a singu-
larly limpid, loose, flowing picture. It has the
paint quality sometimes missing in the bold, iaX

148

SIX SPANIARDS

massing of the Zuloaga colour chords. The
Montmartre Caf^ concert singer is a sterling speci-
men of Zuloaga's portraiture. He is unconven-
tional in his poses; he will jam a figure against
the right side of the frame (as in the portrait of
Marthe Morineau) or stand a young lady beside an
ornamental iron gate in an open park (not a re-
markable portrait, but one that pleases the ladies
because of the textures). The head of the old
actor capitally suggests the Spanish munmier.
And the painter's cousin, Esperanza! What
cousins he boasts ! We recall The Three Cousins,
with its laughing trio and the rich colour
scheme. Our recollection, too, of The Piquant
Retort, and its brown and scarlet harmonies; of
the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has the
classical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez;
and that startling Street of Love overbalances any
picture except one in this exhibition, and that is
The Bull-fighter's family. The measuring eye of
Zuloaga, his tremendous vitality, his sharp, superb
transference to canvas of the life he has elected to
represent and interpret are at first sight dazzling.
The performance is so supreme — remember, not
in a niggling, technical sense — a half-dozen men
beat him at mere pyrotechnics and lace fioriiura —
that his limitations, very marked in his case, are
overlooked. You have drunk a hearty Spanish
wine; oil to the throat, confusion to the senses.
You do not at first miss the soul; it is not included
in the categories of Senor Zuloaga. Zuloaga, like
his contemporary farther north, Anders Zom, is

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PROMENADES

a man as well as a painter; the conjunction is not
too frequent The grand manner is surety his.
He has the modulatory sense, and Christian
Brinton notes his sonorous acid effects. He
paints beggars, dwarfs, work-girls, noUem»,
bandits, dogs, horses, lovely women, gitanas, in-
dolent Carmens; but real, not the pasteboard and
foot-lights variety of Merim6e and Bizet. Zuloa-
ga's Spain is not a second-hand Italy, like that of
so many Spanish painters. It is not all bric-a-brac
and moonlight and chivakic tinpot helmets. It is
the real Spain of to-day, the Spain that has at last
awakened to the light of the twentieth century
after sleeping so long, after sleeping, notwithstand-
ing the desperate nudging it was given a century
ago by the realist Goya. Now, Zuloaga is not only
stepping on his country's toes, but he is recording
the impressions he makes. He, too, is a realist,
a realist with such magic in his brush that it
would make us forgive him if he painted the
odoiu* of garlic.

Have you seen his Spanish Dancers? Not the
dramatic Carmencita of Sargent, but the creature
as she is, with her simian gestures, her insolence,
her vulgarity, her teeth — and the shrill scarlet
of the bare gum above the gleaming white. His
street scenes are a transcript of the actual facts,
and inextricably woven with the facts is a sense of
the strange beauty of them all. His wine har-
vesters, venders of sacred images, cwr that fasci-
nating canvas My Three Cousins — before these,
also before the Promenade After the Bull-fight,

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SIX SPANIARDS

y<m realise that by some miracle of nature the in-
tensity of Goya and his sense of life, the charm of
Velasquez and his sober dignity are recalled by the
painting of a young Spanish artist who a decade
ago was imknown. Nor is Zuloaga an eclectic.
His force and individuality are too patent for us to
entertain such a heresy. A glance at Jacques-
Emile Blanche's portrait of the Spanish painter
explains other things. There is the physique of a
man who can work many hours a day before an
easel; there are the penetrating eyes of an ob-
server, spying eyes, slightly cruel; the head is an
intellectual one, the general conformation of the
face harmonious and handsome. The body is
tiiat of an athlete, but not of the bull-necked sort
we see ui Goya. The temperament suggested is
impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been
fined down by study and the enforced renuncia-
tions of poverty-haimted youth. Above all, there
is race; race in the proud, resolute bearing, race
in the large, firm, supple, and nervous hands.
Indeed, the work of Zuloaga is all race. He is the
most Spanish painter since Goya.

151

IX
CHARDIN

Zola, as reported by George Moore, said of
Degas: " I cannot accept a man who shuts himself
up all his life to draw a ballet girl as ranking co-
equal in dignity and power with Flaubert, Daudet,
and Goncourt. " This remark gives us the cue for
Zola's critical endowment; despite his assevera-
tions his naturalism was only skin deep. He, too,
was swayed by his literary notions concerning the
importance of the subject. In painting the theme
may count for little and yet a great picture re-
sult; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable
subject, else no fiction. But what cant it is to
talk about "dignity." Zola admits ingrained ro-
manticism. He would not see, for instance, that
the Degas ballet girls are on the same plane as the
Ingres odalisques; that a still-life by Chardin out-
weighs a big canvas by David; and it must be ad-
mitted that the world is on the side of Zola. The
heresy of the subject will never be stamped out,
the painted anecdote will always win the eye of the
easily satisfied majority.

It may be remembered that the great Spaniard
began his apprenticeship to art by copying still-life,
which he did in a superlative manner; his Bo-
degones, or kitchen pieces, testify to this. Chardin,

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CHARDIN

who led as laborious an existence as Degas, shut-
ting himself away from the world, studied surfaces
with an intensity that Zola, the apostle of realism,
would have misimderstood. Later the French
painter devoted himself with equal success to
genre and figure subjects; but for him there was
no such category as still-life. Everything of sub-
stance, shape, weight, and colour is alive for the
eye that observes, and, except Velasquez, Vermeer,
and a few others, no man was endowed with the
eye of Jean Baptiste Simfen Chardin, an eye mi-
croscopic in intensity and that saw the beautiful in
the homely.

Edmond Pilon has published a comprehensive
little monograph in the series Les Mattres de
L'Art. M. Pilon is as sympathetic as he is just
in his critical estimates of the man and his work.
There is not much to relate of the quotidian life of
the artist. His was not a romantic or a graceful
figure among his contemporaries, the pastellist
La Tour, Fragonard, and the rest, nor had his per-
sonality a jot of the mysterious melancholy of
Watteau, His artistic ancestry was Dutch; in the
footsteps of De Hooch, the younger Teniers, Ver-
meer, Terburg, Kalf, he trod, rather plodded,
producing miracles of light, colour, finish. A long
patience his career, he never indulged in brilliancy
for the mere sake of brilliancy; nevertheless he
was an amazing virtuoso of the brush. He was
bom in the Rue de Seine, Paris, November 2, 1699.
His father, Jean Chardin, a joiner, was a man of
artistic instinct whose furniture and marquetrie

153

PROMENADES

were admired and in donand. Tlie lad began his
tuition under Cazes, but socm went to the atelier
of Cojrpd. Later he worked under the eye of
Carle Vanloo in the restoration of the larg^ gallery
at Fontainebleau. His painting of a barber-
chirurgeon's sign drew upcm him the notice of
several artists of influence and he became a mem-
ber of the Academy of St. Luc. When he ex-
hibited for the first time in public, in the Viace
Dauphine, 1728, Watteau had been dead seven
years; Coypel, All^rain, Vanloo, Troy, and the
imitators of the pompous art of Le Brun were the
vogue. Colour had become a conventional abstrac-
tion; design, of the most artificial sort, the prime
requisite for a soimding reputation. The unob-
trusive art of Chardin, who went to nature not to
books for his inspiration, was not appreciated.
He was considered a belated Dutchman, though
his superior knowledge of values ought to have
proved him something else. Diderot, alone am<»ig
the critics of his epoch, saluted him in company
with the great Buffon as a man whom nature had
taken into her confidence.

In 1728 he was received at the Academy as
painter of fruit and flowers. He married his first
wife. Marguerite Saintan, in 1731, and his son,
J. B. Chardin, was bom the same year. In 1735
he lost his wife and infant daughter, and the double
blow drove him into retirement, but he exposed his
pictures from time to time. He was made coun-
sellor of the Academy in 1743, and in 1744 married
the seomd time, a widow, Fran^oise Marguerite

154

CHARDIN

Pouget by name. This was a happy marriage;
Madame Chardin, a sensible, good-tempered
bourgeoise, regulated the household accounts, and
brought order and peace into the life of the lonely
artist. Hereafter he painted without interruptions.
He received from the king a pension of five him-
dred francs, his son obtained the prix de Rome for
a meritorious canvas, and if he had had his father's
stable temperament he would have ended an ad-
mirable artist. But he was reckless, and died at
Venice in a mysterious manner, drowned in a
canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew.
Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock.
The king oflFered him lodging in the gallery of the
Louvre (Logement No. 12). This was accepted,
as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable
little house in the Rue Princesse. As he aged he
suffered from various ailments and his eyes began
to give him trouble; then it was he took up pastels.
December 6, 1779, he died, his wife surviving him
imtil 1791.

He was a man of short stature, broad-shouldered
and muscular. Liked by his friends and col-
leagues for his frankness, there was a salt savour
in his forthright speech — he never learned to play
the courtier. His manners were not polished, a
certain rusticity climg to him always, but his hon-
esty was appreciated and he held positions of
trust, ^ectionate, slow — with the Dutch slow-
ness praised by Rodin — and tenacious, he set out
to conquer a small comer in the kingdom of art,
and to-day he is first among the Little Masters.

15s

PROMENADES

This too convenient appellation must not class him
with such myopic miniaturists as Meissonier.
There are breadth of style, rich humanity, large-
ness of feeling, apart from his remarkable tech-
nique, that place him in the company of famous
portrait painters. He does not possess what are
called "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic
chords; he has no spoor of poetry, but he sees the
exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, and
he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic do-
main and of character. His palette is as aristo-
cratic as that of Velasquez: the music he makes,
like that of the string quartet, borders on per-
fection.

At his ddbut he so undervalued his work that
Vanloo, after reproaching the youth for his mod-
esty, paid him double for a picture. Another
time he gave a still-life to a friend in exchange for
a waistcoat whose flowery pattern appealed to him.
His pictures did not fetch fair prices during his
lifetime; after more than half a century of hard
work he left little for his widow. Nor in the years
immediately subsequent to that of his death did
values advance much. The engraver Wille bought
a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-day
would sell for thousands of dollars. At the begin-
ning of the last century, in 1810, when David was
ruler of the arts in Paris, the two masterpieces in
pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardin
aux besides, and the portrait of Marguerite
Pouget, his second spouse, could have been
bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at the

156

CHARDIN

Laperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four
thousand and fifty francs to the Louvre, and forty
years later the Louvre gave three hundred and
fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Tr^pard
for Le Jeune Homme au Violon and FEnfant au
Toton. Diderot truly prophesied that the hour
of reparation would come.

He is a master of discreet tonalities and a
draughtsman of the first order. His lighting,
more diCFused than Rembrandt's, is the chief actor
in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical
eCFects, with it he makes beautiful copper cal-
drons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots, potatoes,
onions, shining roimds of beef, hares, and fish
become eloquent witnesses to the fact that there is
nothing dead or ugly in nature if the vision that in-
terprets is artistic. It is said that no one ever
saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method,
his facture has been ferreted out though never ex-
celled. He employs the division of tones, his
couches are fat and his colour is laid on lusciously.
His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his
chief allurement. Greuze, passing one of his
canvases at an exhibition, a long time regarded it
and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The
frivolous " Frago," who studied with Chardin for a
brief period, even though he left him for Boucher,
admired his former master without imderstanding
him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre:
"The whites of Chardin! I don't know how to
recapture them. " He might have added the sil-
very grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case

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PROMENADES

of Venneer the secret of Chardin tones has never
been surprised. The French painter knew the
art of modulation, while his transitions are bold;
he enveloped his objects in atmosphete and gave
his shadows a due diare of luminosity. He placed
his colours so diat at times his work resanbles
mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before
the modem impressionists the knack of juxta-
position, of opposition, of tonal division; his
science was profound. He must have studied
Watteau and the Dutchmen closely. Diderot was
amazed to find that his surpassing whites wer6
neither black ncn- white, but a neuter — but by a
subtle transposition of tones looked white. Char^
worked from an acciunulation of notes, but there
are few sketches of his in existence, a sanguine or
two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketdies has
piqued criticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was
of a reflective temperament, a slow wdrkman eoid
a patient corrector.

The intimate charm of the Chardin interiors is
not equalled even in the Vermeer canvases. At tiie
Louvre, which contains at least thirty of the mas-
terpieces, consider the sweetness ot Le Benedidte,
or the three pastels, and then turn to the fruitSi
flowers, kitchen utensils, game, or to La Raie
Ouverte, that magnificent portrait of a skat^h,
with its cat slyly stealing over opened oysters, the
table-cloth of such vraisemblance that the knife
balanced on the edge seems to lie in a crease.
What bulk, what destiny, what chtOoyani tones 1
Here are qualities of paint and vision pictorial.

CHARDIN

vision that has never been approached; paint
without rhetoric^ paint sincere, and the expression
in terms of beautiful paint of natural truths. In
Chardin's case — by him the relativity of mun-
dane things was accepted with philosophic phlegm
— an onion was more inq)ortant than an angel, a
copper stew^n as thrilling as an epic. And then
Jhe humanity of his youth holding a fiddle and
bow, the exquisite textures of skin and hair, and
the glance of the eyes. You believe the story told
of his advice to his confrere: "Paint with senti-
ment." But he mixed his sentiment with lovely
colours, he is one of the chief glories of France as
a colourist

159

BLACK AND WHITE

Some Frenchman has called the theatre a book
reversed. It is a happy epigram. By a similar
analogy the engraving or mezzotint might be de-
scribed as a reversed picture. And with still more
propriety black and white reproductions may be
compared to the pianoforte in the hands of a
skilful artist. The pianoforte can interpret in
cooler tones orchestral scores. It gives in its aU-
formal severity the line; the colour is only sug-
gested. But such is the tendency of modem music
toward painting that the success of a pianoforte
virtuoso to-day depends upon his ability to arouse
within his listeners' imagination the idea of colour
— in reality, the emotional element. The engraver
evokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and
cross hatching; the mezzotinter by his disposition
of dark masses and white spaces. Indeed, the
mezzotint by reason of its warm, more S3anpa-
thetic, and ductile mediiun has always seemed
more colourful in his plates than the most labori-
ously executed steel engravings. In this sense the
scraper beats the burin, while the etcher, espe-
ciaUy if he be a painter, attains a more personal

i6o

'•K.

BLACK AND WHITE

vision than either one of these processes. "The
stone was made for the mystics," say the Pen-
neUs. The revival of lithography by contempo-
rary artists of fame is very welcome.

Above all, the appeal of engraving, mezzotint,
and etching is to the refined. It is an art of a pecu-
liarly intimate character. Just as some prefer the
exquisite tonal purity and fijiished performances
of the Kneisel String Quartet to the blare and
thimder of the Philharmonic Society; just as some
enjoy in silence beautiful prose more than our
crude drama, so the lovers of black and white may
feel themselves a distinctive class. They have at
their elbow disposed in portfolios or spaced on
walls the eloquent portraiture, the world's master-
pieces, marine views, and landscapes. There is
no better way to study painting historically than
in the cabinet of an engraving collector. Further-
more, divested of bad or mediocre paint — many
famous pictures by famous names are mere car-
toons, the paint peeled or peeling ofiE — the stu-
dent and amateur penetrates to the very marrow
of the painter's conception, to the very skeleton of
his technical methods.

PIRANESI

" Battlements that on their restless fronts bore
stars" is a line from Wordsworth that Thomas
de Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to his
opium-induced "architectural dreams," and, aptly

i6i

PROMENADES

enough, immediately after a page devoted to
Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and visionary. You
may find this page*in The Confessions of an Eng-
lish Opiimi Eater, that book of terror, beauty,
mystification, and fudge (De Quincey deluded
himself quite as much as his readers in this auto-
biography, which, like the confessions of most
distinguished men, must not be taken too literally) :
"Many years ago," he wrote, "when I was
looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr.
Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a
set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams,
which record the scenery of his own soul durii^
the deliriiun of a fever. Some of them (described
only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account)
represented vast Gothic halls, on, the floor of which
stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive
of enormous power put forth and resistance over-
come. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you
perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way
upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs
a little farther and you perceive it to come to a
sudden, abrupt termination, without any balus-
trade, and allowing no step onward to him who
had reached the extremity, except into the depths
below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi ?
You suppose, at least, that his labours must in
some way terminate here. But raise your eyes,
and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on
which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time
standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again
elevate your eyes, and a still more aoml flight of

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BLACK AND WHITE

stairs is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi on his
aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinished
stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom
of the hall."

This plate was evidently one of the Carceri set
— sixteen in all — which the etcher improvised
after some severe cerebral malady. What would
we not give to have heard the poet of Kubla Khan
describing the fantastic visions of the Venetian
artist to the English opium eater! The eloquence
of the prose passage we have transcribed has in it
some faint echoes of Coleridge's golden rumble.
That these two men appreciated the Italian is
something; perhaps they saw chiefly in his work
its fantastic side. There was no saner craftsman
than Piranesi apart from certain of his plates; no
more solid construction in a print can be shown
than his various interpretations of the classic ruins
of Rome, the temples at Paestum. He was a great
engraver and etcher whose passion was the an-
tique. He deliberately withdrew from all com-
merce with the ideas and art of his own times.
He loved architecture for architecture's sake; not
as a decoration, not as a backgroimd for human-
ity, but as something personal. It was for him
what the human face was for Rembrandt and
Velasquez. That he was called the Rembrandt
of Architecture is but another testimony to the im-
pression he made upon his contemporaries, though
the title is an unhappy one. Piranesi even in his
own little fenced-oCF coign of art is not comparable
to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor

163

PROMENADES

are there close analogies in their respective hand-
ling of darks and lights.

It might be nearer the mark to call Piranesi —
though all such comparisons are thorns in the
critical flesh — the Salvator Rosa of architecture,
for there is much of Salvator's unbridled violence,
fantasy, and genius for deforming the actual that
is to be encountered in some of Piranesi's works.
His was not a classic temperament. The serene,
airy, sim-bathed palaces and temples which Claude
introduced into his foregrounds are seldom en-
countered in Piranesi. A dark Gothic imagina-
tion his, Gothic and often cruel. In his etching of
public buildings at Rome or elsewhere, while he is
not always faultless in drawing or scrupulous in
observation, such was the sincerity and passion of
the man that he has left us the noblest transcrip-
tions of these stately edifices and monuments. It
is in the rhythmic expression of his personal moods
that his sinister romantic imaginings are revealed,
and with a detail and fulness that are positively
overwhehning.

It should not be forgotten that in the eighteenth
and in the early part of the nineteenth centuries
Piranesi achieved widespread popularity. He was
admired outside of Italy, in England, in France,
and Germany. A generation that in England read
Vathek and Mrs. Radcliffe, supped on the horrors
of Melmoth and Frankenstein, knew E. T. W.
Hoffmann and the German romantic literature,
could be relied on to take up Piranesi, and for his
lesser artistic side. Poe knew his work and

164

BLACK AND WHITE

Baudelaire; we see that for De Quincey he was a
kindred spirit. The English mezzotinter John
Martin must have studied him closely, also Gus-
tave Dor^.

The Careen (1750) of Piranesi are indoor com-
positions, enclosed spaces in which wander aim-
lessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned men,
not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's
immemorial mob. Piranesi shows us cavernous
abodes where appalling engines of torture fill the
foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights,
we barely discern perilous passageways, haimted
windows peering out upon the high heavens, stone-
fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. By
a sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts
our eye from these dizzy angles and granitic con-
volutions down tortuous and tumultuous staircases
that seemingly wind about the axis of eternity.
To traverse them would demand an eternity and
the nerves of a madman. Lower barbaric devices
reveal this artist's temperament. He is said to
have executed the prison set "during the deliriiun
of fever. " This is of the same calibre as the clotted
nonsense about Poe composing when intoxicated
or Liszt playing after champagne. It is a credible
anecdote for Philistines who do not realise that
even the maddest caprice, whether in black and
white, marble, music, or verse, must be executed
in silence and cold blood. Piranesi simply gave
wing to his fancy, recalling the more vivid of his
nightmares — as did Coleridge, De Quincey, Poe,
Baudelaire, and the rest of the drug-steeped choir.

165

PROMENADES

We recall one plate of Piranesi's in which a nus*
erable devil climbs a staircase suspended over an
abyss; as he mounts each step the lower one
crumbles into the depths below.

The agony of the man (do you recall The Tor-
ture by Hope of Villiers de TIsle-Adam?) is shown
in his tense, crouching attitude, his hands clawing
the masonry above him. Nature is become a
monstrous fever, existence a shivering dread.
You overhear the crash of stone into the infernal
cellarage — where awaits the himted wretch per-
haps a worse fate than on the pinnacles above. It
is a companion piece to Martin's Sadak searching
for the Waters of Oblivion. Another plate de-
picts with ingenuity terraces superimposed upon
terraces, archways spaced like massive music,
narrow footways across which race ape-like men,
half naked, eagerly preparing some terrible pim-
ishments for criminals handcuffed and guarded.
They are to walk a sharp-spiked bridge. Gigan-
tic chains swing across stony precipices, a lamp
depends from a roof whose outlines are merged in
the gray dusk of dreams. There is cruelty, horror,
and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in the
ensemble. What crimes were committed to
merit such atrocious pimishment? The boldness
and clearness of it all! With perspicacity George
Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint
Anthony: "It is the best example of dream litera-
ture that I know — most writers who have tried
this style have erred, inasmuch as they have en-
deavoured to throw a portion of the mystery with

i66

• BLACK AND WHITE

which the waking mind invests dreams over the
dream itself. Any one's experience is siifl5cient
to show that this is wrong. The events of dreams,
as they happen, are quite plain and matter of fact^
and it is only in the intervals that any suspicion
occurs to the dreamer. "

Certainly Piranesi remembered his dreams.
He is a realist in his delineation of details, though
the sweep and breadth of an ideal design are never
absent. He portrays ladders that scale bulky
joists, poles of incredible thickness, cyclopean
block and tackling. They are of wood, not metal
nor marble, for the art of Piranesi is full of dis-
criminations. Finally, you weary. The eye
gorged by all the mystic engines, hieroglyphs
of pain from some impossible inquisition —
though not once do we see a monkish figure — all
these anonymous monkey men scurrying on what
errand Piranesi alone knows; these towering
arches, their foimdations resting on the crest of
hell (you feel the tremendous impact of the archi-
tectural mass upon the earth — no mean feat to
represent or rather to evoke the sense of weight, of
pressure on a flat surface); the muflBed atmos-
phere in these prisons from which no living pris-
oner emerges; of them all you weary, for the nor-
mal brain can only stand a certain dose of the de-
lirious and the melancholy. This aspect, then,
of Piranesi's art, black magic in all its potency,
need no longer detain us. His Temples of
Paestum soimd a less morbid key than his Carceri,
and as etchings quite outrank them.

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Giambattista Piranesi was bom at Venice in
1720. Bryan says that about 1738 his father sent
him to Rome, where he studied imder Valeriani,
through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani's
master, Marco Ricci of Belluno. With Vasi, a
Sicilian engraver, he learned that art Ricci and
Pannini were much in vogue, following the example
of Claude in his employment of ruins as a pictu-
resque element in a composition. But Piranesi
excelled both Ricci and Pannini. He was an
architect, too, helping to restore churches, and thb
accounts for the proud title, Architect of Venice,
which may be seen on some of his plates. He
lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to
her with an imperious call. And, notwithstand-
ing the opposition of his father, to Rome he went,
and for forty years devoted himself to his master
passion, the pictorial record of the beloved city,
the ancient portions of which were fast vanishing
owing to time and the greed of their owners.
This was Piranesi's self-imposed mission, begun
as an exalted youth, finished as an irritable old
man. Among his architectural restorations, made
at the request of Clement XHI, were the two
churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and H
Priorato. Lanciani says that II Priorato is ''a
mass of monstrosities inside and out. " It is his
etching, not his labour as an architect, that will
make Piranesi immortal. He seems to have felt

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this, for he wrote that he had "executed a work
which will descend to posterity and will last so long
as there will be men desirous of knowing all that
has survived the ruins of the most famous city of
tiie universe."

In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by
F. Polonzani, we see a full-cheeked man with a
well-developed forehead, the features of the classic
Roman order, the general expression not far re-
moved from a sort of sullen self-satisfaction. But
the eyes redeem. They are full, lustrous, pene-
trating, and introspective. The portrait etched by
the son of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him
posed in a toga, the general effect being classic
and consular. His life, like that of all good
workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one. He
married precipitately and his wife bore him two
sons (Francesco, the etcher, bom at Rome, 1748
— Bryan gives the date as 1756 — died at Paris,
1810) and a daughter (Laura, bom at Rome,
ly JO — date of death tmknown). These children
were a consolation to him. Both were engravers.
Francesco frequently assisted his father in his
work, and Bryan says that Laura's work re-
sembled her father's. She went to Paris with
her brother and probably died there. She left
some views of Rome. Francesco, with his brother
Pietro, attempted to found an academy in Paris
and later a terra cotta manufactory.

The elder Piranesi was of a quarrelsome dispo-
sition. He wrangled with an English patron.
Viscount Charlemont, and, like Beethoven, de-

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stroyed title-pages when he became displeased
with the subject of his dedications. He was deco-
rated with the Order of Christ and was proud of
his membership in the London Society of Anti-
quaries. It is said that the original copper plates
of his works were captured by a British man-of-
war during the Napoleonic conflict. This prob-
ably accounts for the dissemination of so many
revamped and coarsely executed versions of his
compositions. His besetting fault was a tendency
toward an Eg3rptian blackness in his composition.
Fond of strong contrasts as was John Martin, he is,
at times, as great a sinner in the handling of his
blacks. An experimenter of audacity, Piranesi's
mastery of the technique of etching has seldom
been equalled, and even in his inferior work the
skilful printing atones for many defects. The
remarkable richness and depth of tone, brought
about by continuous and innumerable bitings,
and other secret processes known only to himself,
make his plates warm and brilliant. Nobility of
form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that is
positively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and
tower, are the characteristic marks of this unique
etcher. He could not resist the temptation of
dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins.
They dance or recline or indulge in uncouth ges-
tures. His shadows are luminous — you may gaze
into them; his high lights caught on some projec-
tion or salient cornice or silvering tiie august porti-
coes of a vanished past, all these demonstrate his
feeling for the dramatic. And dramatic is the im-

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pression evoked as you study the majestic temples
that were Paestum, the bare, ruined arches and
pillars that were Rome. It is Paestiun that is the
more vivid. It tallies, too, with the Piranesi plates;
while Rome has visibly changed since his day.
His original designs for chimneys. Diverse Maniere
d'Adomare i Camini, are pronounced by several
critics as "foolish and vulgar." He left nearly
two thousand etchings, and died at Rome No-
vember 9, 1778. His son erected a. mediocre
statue by Angolin for his tomb in II Priorato.
A manuscript life of Piranesi, which was in Lon-
don about 1830, is now lost. Bryan's dictionary
gives a partial list of his works "as published
both by himself in Rome and by his sons in Paris.
The plates passed from his sons first to Firmin-
Didot, and ultimately into the hands of the
Papal Government."

De Quincey's quotation of Wordsworth is ap-
posite in describing Piranesi's creations: "Battle-
ments that on their restless fronts bore stars";
from sheer brutal masonry, gray, aged, and moss-
encrusted, he invented a precise pattern and one
both passionate and magical.

MERYON

Until tTie recent appearance of the Baudelaire
letters (1841-66) all that we knew of Meryon's
personality and art was to be found in the mon-
ograph by Philippe Burty and B&aldi's Les
Graveurs du XIX Sifecle. Hamerton had written

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of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching and Etch-
ers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric
behaviour were public property. Frederick Wed-
more, in his Etching in England, did not hesitate
to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and
Jacquemart's (one feels Uke employing the Whist-
lerian formula and asking: Why drag in Jacque-
mart?); and to-day, after years of critical indif-
ference, the imhappy copper-scratcher has come
into his own. You may find him mentioned in
such company as Durer, Rembrandt, and Whistler.
The man who first acclaimed him as worthy of
associating with Rembrandt was the critic Charles
Baudelaire; and we are indebted to him for
new material dealing with the troubled life of
Charles Meryon.

On January 8, i860, Baudelaire wrote to his
friend and publisher, Poulet-Malassis, that what
he intends to say is worth the bother of writing.
Meryon had called, first sending a card upon which
he scrawled: "You live in a hotel the name of
which doubtless attracted you because of your
tastes." Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, the
poet then noted that the address read: Charles
Baudelau-e, Hdtd de Thebes. He did not stop
at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancying him a
Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted.
This letter was forwarded. Meryon appeared.
His first question would have startled any but
Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others.
The etcher, looking as desperate and forlorn as
in the Bracquemond etched portrait (1853), de-

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manded news of a certain Edgar Poe. Baude-
laire responded sadly that he had not known Poe
personally. Then he was eagerly asked if he
believed in the reality of this Poe. Charles began
to suspect the sanity of his visitor. "Because,"
added Meryon, "there is a society of litterateurs,
very clever, very powerful, and knowing all the
ropes." His reasons for suspecting a cabal
formed against him under the guise of Poe's
name were these: The Murders in the Rue
Morgue. I made a design of the Morgue —
an orang-outang. I have been often compared
to a monkey. This orang-outang assassinated
two women, a mother and daughter. Et moi
aussi, j'ai assassin^ moralement deux femmes,
la mfere et sa fille. I have always taken this
story as an allusion to my misfortunes. You, M.
Baudelaire, would do me a great favour if you
could find the date when Edgar Poe, supposing
he was not assisted by any one, wrote his tale. I
wish to see if this date coincides with my adven-
tures." After that Baudelaire knew his man.

Meryon spoke with admirati(»i of Michelet's
Jeanne d'Arc, though he swore the book was not
written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot,
though not correct in this particular instance, for
the world has since discovered that several books
posthimiously attributed to Michelet were written
by his widow.) The etcher was interested in the
cabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew
some eagles, and when Baudelaire objected that
these birds did not frequent Parisian skies he

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mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuil-
eries" often launched as a rite the sacred eagles
to study the omens and presages. He was firmly
convinced of this. After the termination of the
trying visit Baudelaire, with acrid irony, asks him-
self why he, with his nerves usually imstrung, did
not go quite mad, and he concludes, " Seriously I
address^ to Heaven the grateful prayers of a
pharisee. "

In March the same year he assures the same
correspondent that decidedly Meryon does not
know how to conduct himself. He knows nothing
of life, neither does he know how to sell his plates
or find an editor. His work is very easy to sell.
Baudelaire was hardly a practical business man,
but, like Poe, he had sense enough to follow his
market. He instantly recognised the commercial
value of Meryon's Paris set, but knew the etcher
was a hopeless character. He wrote to Poulet-
Malassis concerning a proposed purchase of
Meryon's work by the publisher. It never came
to an)rthing. The etcher was very suspicious as
to paper and printing. He grew violent when the
poet asked him to illustrate some little poems and
sonnets. Had he, Meryon, not written poems
himself? Had not the mighty Victor Hugo ad-
dressed flattering words to him? Baudelaire,
without losing interest, then thought of Daumier
as an illustrator for a new edition of Les Fleurs du
Mai. It must not be supposed, however, that
Meryon was ungrateful. He was deeply affected
by the praise accorded him in Baudelaire's Salon of

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1859. He wrote in February, i860, sending his
Views of Paris to the critic as a feeble acknowl-
edgment of the pleasure he had enjoyed when
reading the brilliant interpretative criticism. He
said that he had created an epoch in etching —
which was the literal truth — and he had saved a
rapidly vanishing Paris for the pious curiosity of
future generations. He speaks of his "naive
heart" and hoped that Baudelaire in turn would
dream as he did over the plates. This letter was
signed simply "Meryon, 20 Rue Duperr^." The
acute accent placed over the "e" in his name by
the French poet and by biographers, critics, and
editors since was never used by the etcher. It
took years before Baudelaire could persuade the
Parisians that Poe did not spell his name " Edgard
Poe." And we remember the fate of Liszt and
Whistler, who were until recently known in Paris
as "Litz'' and "WishUer." With the aid of
Champfleury and Banville, Baudelaire tried to
bring Meryon's art to the cognisance of the Min-
ister of Beaux-Arts, but to no avail. Why?

There was a reason. Bohemian as was the
artist during the last decade of his life, he did not
always haunt low caf^s and drink absinthe. His
beginnings were as romantic as a page of Balzac.
He was bom a gentleman a la main gatiche. His
father was the doctor and private secretary of
Lady Stanhope. Charles Lewis Meryon was an
English physician, who, falling in love with a ballet
dancer at the Op^ra, Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux,
persuaded her that it would be less selfish on her

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part if she would not bind him to her legally.
November 23, 1821, a sickly, nervous, and wizened
son was bom to the pair and baptised with his
father's name, who, being an alien, generously
conceded that much. There his interest ceased.
On the mother fell the burden of the boy*s educa-
tion. At five he was sent to school at Passy and
later went to the south of France. In 1837 he en-
tered the Brest naval school, and 1839 saw him
going on his maiden voyage. This first trip was
marred by the black sorrow that fell upon him
when informed of his illegitimate birth. "I was
mad from the time I was told of my birth," he
wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered
from a " wounded imagination. " He was morbid,
shy, and irritable, and his energy — the explosive
energy of this frail youth was amazing; because he
had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted
three months digging out a canoe from a log of
wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw many coun-
tries, and his eyes were trained to form, though not
colour — he suffered from Daltonism — for when
he began to paint he discovered he was totally
colour-blind. The visible world for him existed
as a contrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes,
contours, or heavy dark masses. When a sailor he
sketched. Meryon tells of the drawing of a littie
fimgus he found in Akaroa. '^Distorted in form
and pinched and puny from its birth, I could not
but pity it; it seemed to me so entirely typical of
the inclemency and at the same time of the whim-
sicality of an incomplete and sickly creation that I

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could not deny it a place in my souvenirs lie voyage,
and so I drew it carefully.'' This bit of fungus
was to him a symbol of his own gnarled existence.
Tiring of ship life, he finally decided to study art.
He had seen New Zealand, Australia, Italy, New
Caledonia, and if his splendid plate — No. 22 in
M. Burty's list — is evidence, he must have
visited San Francisco. Baudelaire, in L'Art
Romantique, speaks of this perspective of San
Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design.
In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre
health, and though from a cadet he had attained
the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he would
ever rise higher. His mother had left him four
thousand dollars, so he went over to the Latin
Quarter and began to study painting. That he
was imfitted for, and meeting Eugfene Bl^ry he
became interested in etching. A Dutch seven-
teenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner
Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too,
Ducereau and Nicolle. "An etching by the
latter of a riverside view through the arch of
a bridge is like a Unk between Meryon and
Piranesi," says D. S. MacCoU. Meryon also
studied under the tuition of a painter named
Phelippes. He went to Belgiiun in 1856 on
the invitation of the Due d'Aremberg, and in
1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from
mdancholy and delusions. He left in a year
and returned to Paris and work; but, as Baude-
laire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain
of the artist. A mystic delirium set in. He ceased

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to etch, and evidently suffered from the persecution
madness. In every comer he believed conspir-
acies were hatching. He often disappeared, often
changed his abode. Sometimes he would appear
dressed gorgeously at a boulevard caf^ in company
with brilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen
slinking through mean streets in meaner rags.
There are episodes in his life that recall the career
of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval,
poet, noctambulist, suicide. It is known that
Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but not in a
mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was
a perfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer
from rehiring, so he quite sensibly sawed up the
plates into tiny strips. That he was suspicious of
his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told by
Sir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his
etchings from him at a fair price. Two miles
away from the atelier the Englishman was over-
taken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had
sold, "as they were of a natiure to compromise
him"; besides, from what he knew of Haden's
etchings he was determined that his proofs should
not go to England. Sir Seymoiu: at once returned
the etchings. Now, whether Meryon's words
were meant as a compliment or the reverse is
doubtful. He was half crazy, but he may have
seen through a hole in the millstone.

Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old
printer named Beillet who did work for Meryon.
He could not always pay for the printing of his
celebrated Abside de Notre Dame, a masterpiece,

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as he hadn't the necessary ten cents. "I never
got my money!" exclaimed the thrifty printer.
Enormous endurance, enormous vanity, diseased
pride, outraged human sentiment, hatred of the
Second Empire because of the particular clause in
the old Napoleonic code relating to the research
of paternity; an irregular life, possibly drugs,
certainly alcoholism, repeated rejections by the
academic authorities, critics, and dealers of his
work — these and a feeble constitution sent the
imfortunate back to Charenton, where he died
February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, his critical dis-
coverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's
grave six months earlier. Inasmuch as there is a
certain family likeness among men of genius with
disordered minds and instincts, several com-
parisons might be made between Meryon and
Baudelaire. Both were great artists and both
were bom with flawed, neurotic systems. Dissi-
pation and misery followed as a matter of course.
Charles Meryon was, nevertheless, a sane and
a magnificent etcher. He executed about a him-
dred plates, according to Burty. He did not avoid
portraiture, and to live he sometimes manufac-
tured pot-boilers for the trade. To his supreme
vision was joined a miraculous surety of touch.
Baudelaire was right — those plates, the Paris set,
so dramatic and truthful in particulars, could have
been sold if Meryon, with his wolfish visage, his
fierce, haggard eyes, his gruff manner, had not
offered them in person. He looked like a vaga-
bond very often and too often acted like a brigand.

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The Salon juries were prejudiced against his work
because of his legend. Verlaine over again ! The
etchings were classic when they were bom. Wc
wonder they did not appeal immediately. To-day,
if you are lucky enough to come across one, you are
asked a staggering price. They sold for a song —
when they did sell — during the lifetime of the
artist. Louis Napoleon and Baron Haussmann
destroyed pictiu'esque Paris to the consternation
of Meryon, who to the eye of an archaeologist
imited the soul of an artist. He loved old Paris.
We can evoke it to-day, thanks to these etchings,
just as the Paris of 1848 is forever etched in the
pages of Flaubert's L' Education Sentimoitale.

But there is hallucination in these etchings,
beginning with Le Stryge, and its demoniac leer,
"insatiable vampire, I'etemelle luxure." That
gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flying
through the slim pillars from a dream city bathed
in sinister light, is not the only striking conception
of the poet-etcher. The grip of reality is shown
in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseran-
derie, and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are
hallucinations translated into the actual terms of
art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness
of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air,
clouds that make you realise the jusUsse of
Berenson's phrase — tactile values. With Meryon
the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clair-
voyant of images, he could transcribe the actual
with an almost cruel precision. Telescopic eyes
his, as MacCoU has it, and an imagination that

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perceived the spectre lurking behind the door, the
horror of enclosed spaces, and the mystic fear of
shadows — a Poe imagination, romantic, with
madness as an accomplice m the horrible game of
his life. One is tempted to add that the romantic
imagination is always slightly mad. It runs to
seed in darkness and despair. The fugitive verse
of Meryon is bitter, ironical, defiant; a whifif from
an underground prison, where seems to sit in
tortured solitude some wretch abandoned by hu-
manity, a stranger even at the gates of hell.

Sir Seymour Haden has told us that Meryon's
method was to make a number of sketches, two
or three inches square, of parts of his picture, which
he put together and arranged into a harmonious
whole. Herkomer says that he "used the burin
in finishing his bitten work with marvellous skill.
No better combination can be found of the har-
monious combination of the two.*' Burty declared
that "Meryon preserves the characteristic detail of
architecture. . . . Wthout modif3ring the aspect
of the moniunent he causes it to express its hidden
meaning, and gives it a broader significance by
associating it with his own thought." His em-
ployment of a dull green paper at times showed his
intimate feeling for tonalities. He is, more so than
Piranesi, the Rembrandt of architecture. Hamer-
ton admits that the French etcher was "one of
the greatest and most original artists who have
appeared in Europe," and berates the public of
the '60s for not discovering this. Then this wri-
ter, copying in an astonishingly wretched manner

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several of Meryon's etchings, analysing their
defects as he proceeds, asserts that there is false
tonality in Le Stryge. "The intense black
in the street under the tower of St. Jacques
destroys the impression of atmosphere, though
at a considerable distance it is as dark as the
nearest raven's wing, which cannot relieve itself
against it. This may have been done in order
to obtain a certain arrangement of black and
white patches," etc. This was done for the sheer
purpose of oppositional effects. Did Hamerton
see a fine plate? The shadow is heavy; the
street is in demi, not total, obscurity; the values of
the flying ravens and the shadow are dearly enun-
ciated. The passage is powerful, even sensational,
and in the Romantic, Hugoesque key. Hamerton
is wrong. Meryon seldom erred. His was a tem-
perament of steel and fire.

JOHN MARTIN, MEZZOTINTER

The sitting-room was long and narrow. A hair-
cloth sofa of uncompromising rectitude was pushed
so close to the wall that the imprints of at least
two generations of heads might be discerned upon
the flowered wall-paper — flowers and grapes of
monstrous size from some country akin to that
visited by the Israelitish spies as related in the
Good Book. A mahogany sideboard stood at the
upper end of the room; in one window hung a
cage which contained a feeble canary. As you
entered yoiur eyes fell upon an ornamental wax

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fruit piece under a conical glass. A stuffed bird,
a robin redbreast, perched on a frosted tree in
the midst of these pale tropical offerings, glared
at you with beady eyes. Antimacassars and other
things of horror were in the room. Also a centre
table upon which might have been found Cowper's
poems, the Bible, Beecher's sermons, and an illus-
trated book about the Holy Land by some hard-
working reverend. It was Aunt Jane's living-
room; in it she had rocked and knitted for more
than half a century. There were a few pictures on
the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank president
with a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead,
and in his eyes a stem expression of percentage.
Over the dull white marble mantelpiece himg a
huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and
white, a picture whose subject had without doubt
given it the place of honour in this old-fashioned,
tasteless, homely, comfortable room. It bore for
a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed
and mezzotinted by John Martin.

Let us look at this pictiure. It depicts the down-
fall of the great city upon which the wrath of God
is visited. There are ghastly gleams of lightning
above the doomed vicinity. A fierce tempest is in
progress as the invading hosts break down the
great waterways and enter dry-shod into the vast
and immemorial temples and palaces. The trag-
edy, the hmnan quality of the design, is summed
up by the agitated groups in the foreground; the
king, surrounded by his harem, makes a gesture of
despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies,

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surround him like frightened swans. A hig^
priest raises his hand to the stormy heavens, upon
which he is evidendy invoking as stormy maledic-
tions. A warrior swings his blade; to his neck
clings a fair helpless one, half nude. There are
other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the
foe in futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble
terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals
of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms af-
frighted humanity. The impression is grandiose
and terrific. Exotic architecture, ebon night, an
event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of
legend or history — these and a hundred other de-
tails are enclosed within the frame of this compo-
sition. Another picture which hangs hard by, the
Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colour-
less in comparison. The Englishman had greater
imagination than the German, though he lacked
the latter's anatomical science. To-day in the
Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of
honour. You may search in vain at the London
National Gallery for the paintings of a man who
cmce was on the crest of popularity in England,
whose Biblical subjects attracted multitudes,
whose mezzotints and engravings were sold wher-
ever the English Bible was read. John Martin,
painter, mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination,
second to De Quincey or the author of Vathek, is
to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself.

Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic
School, said that ''the history of literature is a
great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead who

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are near or dear to him." Into what morgue fell
John Martin before his death ? How account for
the violent changes in popular taste? Martin
suffered from too great early success. The star of
Turner was in the ascendant. John Ruskin denied
merit to the mezzotinter, and so it is to-day that if
you go to our print-shops you will seldom j&nd one
of his big or little plates. He has gone out of
fashion — fatal phrase! — and only in the cabinets
of old collectors can you get a peep at his archaic
and astoimding productions. William Blake is
in vogue; perhaps Martin — ? And then those
who have garnered his plates will reap a harvest.
Facts concerning him or his work are slight.
Bryan's dictionary accords him a few paragraphs*
When at the British Museum, a few years ago, I
asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his
print-room. There are not many, not so many as
in a certain private collection here. But Mr. Col-
vin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monk-
house in the Dictionary of National Biography,
and from it we are enabled to present a few
items about the man's career. He was bom at
Hayden Bridge, near Hexham, Northumberland,
July 19, 1789. His father, Fenwick Martin, a
fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor's
Head, Newcastle. His brothers, Jonathan (1782-
1838) and William (1772-1851), have some claim
on our notice, for the first was an insane prophet
and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster
in 1829; William was a natural philosopher
and poet who published many works to prove

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the theory of perpetual motion. "After having
convinced himself by 'means of thirty-six experi-
ments of the impossibility of demonstrating it
scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dream
that God had chosen him to discover the great
cause of all things, and this he made the subject
of many works" (Jasnot, V^ritfe positives, 1854).
Verily, as Lombroso hath it, "A hundred fanatics
are foimd for a theological or metaphysical state-
ment, but not one for a geometric problem."

The Martin stock was, without doubt, neuras-
thenic. John was apprenticed when fourteen to
Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, but ran away
after a dispute over wages. He met Bonifacio
Musso, an Italian china painter, and in 1806 went
with him to London. There he supported him-
self painting china and glass while he studied per-
spective and architecture. At nineteen he married
and in 181 2 lived in High Street, Marylebone, and
from there sent to the Academy his first picture,
Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from
Tales of the Genii). The figure of Sadak was so
small that the framers disputed as to the top of the
picture. It sold to Mr. Manning for fifty guineas.
Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy,
encouraged Martin, and next year he painted
Adam's First Sight of Eve, which he sold for
seventy guineas. In 1814 his Clytis was shown
in an ante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly
complained of his treatment. Joshua, in 1816, was
as indifferently hung, and he never forgave the
Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw

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from its annual functions. In 1817 he was ap-
pointed historical painter to Princess Charlotte
and Prince Leopold. He etched about this time
Character of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at
the Academy. In 1818 he removed to Allsop
Terrace, New (Marylebone road). In 1819 came
The Fall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshaz-
zar's Feast (1821), which, "excluded" from the
Academy, yet won the ;S20o prize. A poem by
T. S. Hughes started Martin on this picture.
It was a national success and was exhibited
in the Strand behind a glass transparency. It
went the round of the provinces and large cities
and attracted thousands. Martin joined the
Society of British Artists at its foundation and
exhibited with them from 1824 to 183 1, and also
in 1837 ^^d 1838, after which he sent his impor-
tant pictures to the Royal Academy.

In 1833 The Fall of Nineveh went to Brussels,
where it was bought by the Government. Martin
was elected member of the Belgian Academy and
the Order of Leopold was conferred on him. His
old quarrels with the Academy broke out in 1836,
and he testified before a committee as to favourit-
ism. Then followed The Death of Moses, The
Deluge, The Eve of the Deluge, The Assuaging of
the Waters, Pandemonium. He painted land-
scapes and water-colours, scenes on the Thames,
Brent, Wandle, Wey, Stillingboume, and the hills
and eminences about London. About this time
he began scheming for a method of supplying Lon-
don with water and one that would improve the

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PROMENADES

docks and sewers. He engraved many of his own
workSy Belshazzar, Joshua, Nineveh, Fall of Baby-
lon. The first two named, with The Deluge, were
presented by the French Academy to Louis Phi-
lippe, for which courtesy a medal was struck off in
Martin's honour. The Ascent of Elijah, Christ
Tempted in the Wilderness, and Martin's illustra-
tions (with Westall's) to Milton's Paradise Lost
were all completed at this period. For the latter
Martin received £2poo. He removed to Lindsey
House, Chelsea, in 1848 or 1849, ^^^ ^^ living
there in 1852, when he sent to the Academy his
last contribution, Destruction of Sodom and Go-
morrah. November 1 2 , 1853 , while engaged upon
his last large canvases. The Last Judgment, The
Great Day of Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven,
he was paralysed on his right side. He was re-
moved to the Isle of Man, and obstinately refusing
proper nourishment, died at Douglas February 17,
1854. After his death three pictures, scenes &om
the Apocalypse, were exhibited at the Hall of
Commerce. His portrait by Wangemann ap-
peared in the Magazine of Fine Arts. A second
son, Leopold Charles, writer, and godson of Leo-
pold, ELing of Belgium, was an authority on cos-
tumes and numismatics (1817-89). His wife was
a sister of Sir John Tenniel of Punch.

John Martin was slightly cracked; at least he
was so considered by his contemporaries. He was
easily affronted, yet he was a veiy generous man.
He bought Etty's picture, The Combat, in 1825 for
two or three himdred guineas. There are at the

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South Kensington Museum three Martins, water-
cohnirs, and one oil; at Newcastle, an oil. At the
time of his decease his principal works were in the
collections of Lord de Tabley, Dukes of Bucking-
ham and Sutherland, Messrs. Hope and Scans-
bruck, Earl Grey and Prince Albert. The Ley-
land family of Nantchvyd, North Wales, owns the
Joshua and several typical works of Martin.
Wilkie, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, de-
scribes Belshazzar's Feast as a ''phenomenon.''
Bulwer declared that Martin was ''more original
and self-dependent than Raphael or Michael
Ai^elo." Li the Last Essays of Elia there is one
I^ Charles Lamb entitled Barrenness of the Imag-
inative Faculty in the Production of Modem Art.
The name of Martin is not mentioned, but several
of his works are unmistakably described. "His
towered architecture [Lamb is writing of Belshaz-
zar's Feast] are of the highest order of the material
sublime. Whether they were dreams or tran-
scripts of some elder workmanship — Assyrian
ruins old — restored by this mighty artist, they
satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions
of the glories of the antique world. It is a pity
that they were ever peopled." "Literary" art
critic as he was. Lamb put his finger on Martin's
weakest spot — his figure painting. The entire
essay shoidd be read, for it contains a study of the
Joshua in which this most delicious of English
prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of
the great masters. Before his death the critics,
tiring of him sooner than the public, called Martin

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tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, his
drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; never-
theless, he was not a charlatan. As David Wilkie
wrote: "Weak in all these points in which he
can be compared to other artists," he had the com-
pensating quality of an imposing, if at times
operatic, imagination. Monkhouse justly says
that in Martin's illustrations to Milton the small-
ness of scale and absence of colour enable us to
appreciate the grandeur of his conceptions with a
minimum of his defects.

In sooth he lacked variety. His pictiures are
sooty and apocalyptic. We have seen the Moun-
tain Landscape, at South Kensington, The De-
struction of Herculaneum, at Manchester, another
at Newcastle whose subject escapes us, and we
confess that we prefer the mezzotints of Martin,
particularly those engraved by Le Keux — whose
fine line and keen sense of balance corrected the
incoherence of Martin's too blackened shadows
and harsh explosions of whites. One looks in
vain for the velvety tone of Earlom, or the vivid
freshness of Valentine Green, in Martin. H% was
not a colourist; his mastery consisted in trans-
ferring to his huge cartoons a sense of the awful,
of the catastrophic. He excelled in the delinea-
tion of massive architecture, and if Piranesi was
his superior in exactitude, he equalled the Italian
in majesty and fantasy of design. No such cata-
clysmic pictures were ever before painted, nor
since, though Gustave Dor^, who without doubt
made a study of Martin, has incorporated in his

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Biblical illustrations many of Martin's overwhelm^
ing ideas — the Deluge, for example. James
Ensor, the Belgian illustrator, is an artist of fecund
fancy who, alone among the new men, has be-
trayed a feeling for the strange architecture, dream
architecture, we encounter in Martin. Coleridge
in Kubla Khan, De Quincey in opium reveries,
Poe and Baudelaire are among the writers who
seem nearest to the English mezzotinter. William
Beckford's Vathek, that most Oriental of tales,
first written in French by a millionaire of genius,
should have inspired Martin. Perhaps its mad
fantasy did, for all we know — there is no authen-
tic compilation of his compositions. Heine has
spoken of Martin, as has Th^ophile Gautier; and
his name, by some kink of destiny, is best known
to the present generation because of Macaulay's
mention of it in an essay.

The Vale of Tempe is one of Martin's larger
plates seldom seen in the collector's catalogue.
We have viewed it and other rare prints in the
choice collection referred to already. Satan hold-
ing council, after Milton, is a striking conception.
The Prince of Eblis sits on a vast globe of ebony.
About him are tier upon tier of faces, the faces of
devils. Infernal chandeliers depend from remote
ceilings. Light gashes the globe and the face and
figure of Satan; both are of supernal beauty.
Could this mezzotint, so small in size, so vast in
its shadowy suggestiveness, have stirred Baude-
laire to lines that shine with a metallic poisonous
lustre?

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PROMENADES

And there is that tiny mezzotint in which we find
ourselves at the base of a rude little hill. The
shock of the quaking earth, the silent passmg of
the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted
multitudes tell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand.
In a flare of lightning we see silhouetted against
an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sad
little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real,
more intense than Dora's. Another scene —
also engraved by Le Keux: On a stony plat-
form, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sack-
cloth and ashes; the heavens thimder over the
weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lord of
Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the
clouds are black basaltic battlements, and above
rear white-terraced palaces as swans that strain
their throats to the sky. The mighty East is in
penitence. Or, Elijah is rapt to heaven in a fiery
whirlwind; or God creates light. This latter is one
of the most extraordinary conceptions of a great
visionary and worthy of William Blake. Or Sadak
searching for the waters of oblivion. Alas, poor
hiunanity! is here the allegory. A man, a midget
amid the terrifying altitudes of barren stone, lifts
himself painfully over a ledge of rock. Above him
are vertiginous heights; below him, deadly preci-
pices. Nothing helps him but himself — a page
torn from Max Stimer is this parable. Light
streams upon the struggling egoist as he toils to the
summit of consciousness. Among the designs of
nineteenth-century artists we can recall none so
touching, so powerful, so modem as this picture.

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Martin was not equally successful in portray-
ing celestial episodes, though his paradises are
enormous panoramas replete with architectural
beauties. His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic
illustrations, are more conventional than Fuseli's
and never naively original as are Blake's. Indeed,
of Blake's m)rstic poetry and divination Martin
betrays no trace. He is not so much the seer
as the inventor of infernal harmonies. Satan
reviewing his army of devils is truly magnifi-
cent in its depiction of the serried host armed
for battle; behind glistens burning Tophet in all
its smoky splendour. Satan in shining armour
must be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of
scale. So, too, in the quarrel of Michael and
Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blake is
here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous
figures. Bathos is in the design of Lucifer swim-
ming in deepest hell upon waves of fire and filth;
yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the
perspective reveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to
respond to external stimuli. Martin saw the earth
as in an apocal3rptic swoon, its forms distorted, its
meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an
older theogony. But if there was little hiunan in
his visions, he is enormously impersonal; if he as-
sailed heaven's gates on wings of melting wax, or
dived deep into the pool of iniquity, he none the
less caught glimpses in his breathless flights of
strange coimtries across whose sill no human being
ever passes. There is genuine hallucination. He
must have seen his ghosts so often that in the end

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they petrified him, as did the Statue Don Giovanni.
Martin was a species of reversed Turner. He
spied the good that was in evil, the beauty in
bituminous blacks. He is the painter of black
music, the deifier of Beelzebub, and also one
who caught the surge and thimder of the Old
Testament, its majesty and its savagery. As
an illustrator of sacr^ history, the world may
one day return to John Martin.

ZORN

Anders Zom — what's in a name? Possibly
the learned and amiable father of Tristram Shandy
or that formidable pedant Professor Slawken-
bergius might find much to arouse his interest in
the patronymic of the great Swedish painter and
etcher. What Zom means in his native tongue we
do not profess to know; but in German it signifies
anger, wrath, rage. Now, the Zom in life is not an
enraged person — ^unless some lady sitter asks him
to paint her as she is not. He is, as all will testify
who have met him, a man of rare personal charm
and sprightly humour. He, it may be added, calls
yellow yellow, and he never paints a policeman like
a poet. In a word, a man of robust, normal vision,
a realist and an artist. False realism with its hectic,
Zola-like romanticism is distasteful to Zom. He
is near Degas among the Frenchmen and Zuloaga
among the new Spaniards; near them in a certain
forthright quality of depicting life, though imlike
them in technical and individual methods.

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Yes, Zom, that crisp, bold, short name, which
begins with a letter that abruptly cuts both eye and
ear, quite fits the painter's personality, fits his art.
He is often ironic. Some fanciful theorist has
said that the letters Z and K are important factors
in the career of the men who possess them in their
names. Camille Saint-Saens has spoken of Franz
Liszt and his lucky letter. It is a very pretty idea,
especially when one stakes on zero at Monte Carlo;
but no doubt Anders Zom would be the first to
laugh the idea out of doors.

We recall an exhibition a few years ago at
Venice in the art gallery of the Giardino Reale.
Zom had a place of honour among the boiling and
bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a
large room. And what work! Such a giant's
revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, sinister,
and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for
breath. Zom's conception of womanhood has
given offence to many idealists, who do not realise
that once upon a time our forebears were furry and
indulged in arboreal habits. Zom can paint a
lady; he has signed many gentle and aristocratic
canvases.

But Zom is also too sincere not to paint what
he sees. Some of his models are of the earth,
earthy; others step toward you with the candid
majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and
regal. They are all vital. We recall, too, the
expressions, shocked, amazed, even dazed, of some
American art students who, fresh from their golden
Venetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pic-

I9S

PROMENADES

tures of a man who had faced the everyday life of
his day. For these belated visionaries, whose
ideal in art is to painfully imitate Gior-
gione, Titian, or Tiepolo, this modem, with
his rude assault upon the nerves, must seem
a very iconoclast. Yet Zom only attempts to re-
produce the life encircling him. He is a child of
his age. He, too, has a perception of beauty, but
it is the beauty that may be foimd by the artist
with an ardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, dis-
quieting beauty of our time. Whistler saw it in
old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea
way or at Rotherhithe. Zom sees it in some cor-
ner of a wood, in some sudden flex of musde or
intimate firelit interior. And he loves to depict
the glistening curves of his big model as she stands
in the simlight, a solid reproach to physical and
moral anaemia. A pagan, by Apollo!

As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's
paw is the principal quality that meets the eye,
notwithstanding the broad execution. Etching is
essentially an impressionistic art. Zom is an im-
pressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his
plate not with the finesse of a meticulous fencing-
master but like a Viking, with a broad Berserker
blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is ;
blood in his veins, and he does not spare the ink.
But examine closely these little prints — some of '
them miracles of printing — and you may discern
their delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of
gesture. Fitzroy Carrington quotes the Parisian
critic Henri Marcel, who among other things wrote

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of the Zom etchings: ''Let us only say that
these etchings — paradoxical in their coarseness
of means and fineness of effect — manifest the
master at his best."

Coarseness of means and fineness of effect —
the phrase is a happy one. Coarse is sometimes
flie needle-work of Zom, but the end justifies the
means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sar-
gent. His portraits prove it. He has etched all
his friends, some of whom must have felt honoured
and amused — or else offended. The late Paid
Verlaine, for example, would not have been pleased
with the story of his life as etched by the Swede.
It is as biting a commentary — one is tempted to
say as acid — as a page from Strindberg. Yes,
without a touch of Strindberg's mad fantasy, Zom
is kin to him in his ironic, witty way of saying
things about his friends and in front of their faces.
Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one
so told the tmth concerning the ex-seminarian,
casuist, and marvellous prose writer of France?
The large, loosdy modelled head with its fleshy
curves, its super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze
veiled, the bland, pontifical expression, the ex-
pression of the man who spoke of "the mania
of certitude" — here is Emest Renan, voluptu-
ous disdainer of democracies, and planner of
a phalanstery of superior men years before
Nietzsche's superman appeared. Zom in no
unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; also the
author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is some-
thing, is it not, to evoke with needle, acid,

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paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain
and temperament as was Kenan's?

He is not flattering to himself, Zom. The
Henry G. Marquand, two impressions, leaves one
rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in its
suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens
and his model is excellent; we prefer the portrait
The Evening Girl Bathing is rare in treatment —
simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her
back, and we are grateful, for it is a beautiful
back. The landscape is as evanescent as Whistler,
the printing is in a delicate key. The Berlin Gal-
lery contains a 2^m, a portrait striking in its
reality. It represents Miss Maja von Heyne
wearing a collar of skins. She could represent the
Maja of Ibsen's epilogue. When We Dreamers
Awake; Maja, the companion of the bear hunter,
Ulfheim. As etched, we miss the massiveness, the
rich, vivid coloiu:, yet it is a plate of distinction.

Among his portraits are the Hon. Daniel S.
Lamont, Senator "Billy" Mason, the Hon. John
Hay, Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis, and several
big-wigs of several nations. An oil-painting is an
impressionistic aCFair, showing some overblown
girls dressing after their bath. The sim flecks
their shoulders, but otherwise seems rather in-
clined to retire modestly. Evidently not the mid-
night sun.

We have barely indicated the beauties in which
the virile spirit of Anders Zom comes out at you
from the wall — a healthy, large-hearted, gifted
Swede is this man with the Z.

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BRANGWYN

The name of Frank Brangwyn may fall upon
unresponsive ears; yet he has a Continental reputa-
tion and is easily the foremost English impression-
ist. New York has seen but little of his work; if
we mistake not, there was a large piece of his, a
Gipsy Tinker in the open air, hung several
seasons ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts. Mr. Kennedy shows extraordinary etchings
of his at the Wunderlich Galleries. We call them
extraordinary not alone because of their size, but
also because Brangwyn is practically the first
among latter-day artists to apply boldly to etching
the methods of the impressionists. Etching in its
essential nature is an impressionistic art. We do
not mean to assert that Brangwyn uses the dot or
dash or broken dabs in his plates, for the very good
reason that be is working in black and white;
nevertheless a glance at his plates will show you a
new way of conquering old prejudices. Whistler
it was who railed at large etchings. He was not
far wrong. In the hands of the majority of etchers
a large plate is an abomination, diffused in inter-
est, coarse of line; but Brangwyn is not to*be con-
sidered among this majority. He is a big fellow
in everything. Besides, Whistler was using the
familiar argument, pro dama sua. The same may
be said of Poe, who simply would not hear of a
long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, who
lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out

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in the gorgeous tropical land, the thither side of
sonatas and other tonal animals.

Because Catullus and Sappho did not write
epics that is no reason why Dante should not. It is
the old story of the tailless fox. Brangwyn as
well as Anders Zom has been called a rough-and-
ready artist. For exquisite tone and pattern we
must go to Whistler and his school. Brangwyn is
never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even
epical. Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle. It
is noble in outline, lovely in atmosphere. Or at
the Old Hammersmith — "swell," as the artist
slang goes. The Mine is in feeling and mass
Rembrandtish; and as we have used the name of
the great Dutchman we may as well admit that
to him, despite a world of difference, Brangwyn
owes much. He has the sense of mass. What
could be more tangibly massive than the plate
called Breaking Up of the Hannibal ? Here is a
theme which Turner in The Fighting T^m^raire
made truly poetic, and Se5maour Haden in his
Agamemnon preserved more than a moiety of
sentiment, not to mention the technical prowess
displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly old vessel
of Brangw3m's there is no beauty. However, it is
hugely impressive. His landscapes are not too
seldom hell-scapes.

The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed
lettering. The Road to Montreuil is warm in
colour and finely handled. How many have
realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria
Salute? It is one of the most interesting of

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Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision of Saint
Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we
find in the Dutchman Bauer's plates. A Church
at Montreuil attracts the eye; London Bridge is
positively dramatic; the Old Kew Bridge has
delicacy; the Sawyers with their burly figures
loom up monstrously; the Building of the New
Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington,
recalls, as treated by the impressionistic brush of
Brangwyn (for the needle seems transformed into
a paint-loaded spike), one of H. G. Wells's terrific
socialistic structures of the year 2009. Remember
that Brangwyn is primarily a painter, an impres-
sionist. He sees largely. His dream of the visible
world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world in-
visible with him) is one of patches and masses, of
luminous shadows, of animated rhythms, of rich
arabesques. He is sib to the Scotch. His father
is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled
in Bruges. Frank saw much of the world before
settling in London. He was bom at Bruges, 1867.
The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-
time disciple of William Morris. He has manu-
factured glass, furniture, wall-paper, pottery. His
curiosity is insatiable. He is a mural decorator
who in a frenzy could cover miles of space if some
kind civic corporation would but provide the walls.
As the writer of the graceful preface to. the Wun-
derlich catalogue has it: "He gets the character
of his theme. His art is itself full of character."
Temperament, overflowing, passionate, and irre-
sistible, is his key-note. In music he might have

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been a Fritz Delius, a Richard Strauss. He is an
eclectic. He knows all schook, all methods.
He is Spanish in his fierce relish of the open air,
of the sights — and we almost said sounds — of
many lands, but the Belgian strain, the touch of
the mystic and morose, creeps into his work. We
have caught it more in his oils than etchings. It is
not singular, then, that his small etched plates do
not hold the eye; they lack magnetic quality. It
is the Titan, rude and raging, dashing ink over an
acre of white paper, that rivets you. The stock at-
titudes and gestures he does not give you; and it is
doubtful if he will have an audience soon in Amer-
ica, where the sleek is king and prettiness is exalted
over power.

DAUMIER

Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, the curator of the
Lenox Library print department, shows nineteen
portfolios which hold about seven hundred litho-
graphs by Honors Daumier. This collection is a
bequest of the late Mr. Lawrence, and we doubt if
the Biblioth^ue Nationale at Paris surpasses it;
that is, in the number of detached examples.
There the works of the great artist are imbedded in
the various publications for which he laboured so
many years — such at La Caricature, Les Beaux
Arts, U Artiste, Les Modes Parisiennes, La Gazette
Musicale, Le Boulevard, and Masques et Visages.
The Lawrence lithographs are representatives,
though not complete; the catalogue compiled by
Loys Delteil comprises 3,958 plates; the paintings

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and drawings are also numerous. But an ad-
mirable idea of Daumier's versatile genius may be
gleaned at the Lenox Library, as all the celebrated
series are there: Paris Bohemians, the Blue
Stockings, the Railways, La Caricature, Croquis
4' Expressions, Emotions Parisiennes, Actualitfe,
Les Baigneurs, Pastorales, Moeurs Conjugales,
the Don Quixote plates. Silhouettes, Souvenirs
d' Artistes, Types Parisiens, the Advocates and
Judges, and a goodly number of the miscellanies.
Altogether an adequate exhibition.

Honors Daumier, who died February ii, 1879,
was almost the last of the giants of 1830, though
he outlived many of them. Not afl&liated with the
Barbizon group — though he was a romantic in
his hatred of the bourgeois — several of these
painters were intimate friends; indeed, Corot was
his benefactor, making him a present of a cottage
at Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise), where the illus-
trator died. He was blind and lonely at the end.
Corot died 1875; Daubigny, his companion, 1878;
Millet, 1875, and Rousseau, with whom he corre-
sponded, died 1867. In 1879 Flaubert still lived,
working heroically upon that monument of himaan
inanity, Bouvard et P&uchet; Maupassant, his
disciple, had just published a volume of verse;
Manet was regarded as a dangerous charlatan,
Monet looked on as a madtnan; while poor
C&anne was only a bad joke. The indurated
critical judgment of the academic forces pro-
nounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velas-
quez, and G^rdme and his mock antiques and

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PROMENADES

mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and
Chasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for medioc-
rity. And Daumier, in whom there was some-
thing of Michael Angelo and Courbet, was admired
only as a clever caricaturist, the significance of his
paintings escaping all except a few. Corot knew,
Daubigny knew, as earlier Delacroix knew; and
Balzac had said: "There is something of the
Michael Angelo in this man!"

Baudelaire, whose critical flair never failed him,
wrote in his Curiositfe Esth^tiques: "Daumier's
distinguishing note as an artist is his certainty.
His drawing is fiuent and easy; it is a continuous
improvisation. His powers of observation are
such that in his work we never find a single head
that is out of character with the figure beneath it.
. . . Here, in these animalised faces, may be seen
and read clearly all the meannesses of soul, all the
absurdities, all the aberrations of intelligence, all
the vices of the heart; yet at the same time all is
broadly drawn and accentuated." Nevertheless
one must not look at too many of these caricatures.
At first the Rabelaisian side of the man appeals;
presently his bitterness becomes too acrid. Human-
ity is silly, repulsive; it is goat, pig, snake, monkey,
and tiger; but there is something else. Daumier
would see several sides. His pessimism, like Flau-
bert's, is deadly, but at times reaches the pitch
of the heroic. He could have echoed Flaubert's
famous sentence: "The ignoble is the sublime of
the lower slope." Yet what wit, what humour,
what humanity in Daimiier! His Don Quixote

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and Sancho Panza are worth a wilderness of
Dor^s. And the Good Samaritan or The Drink-
ers. The latter is as jovial as Steen or Hals.

A story went the rounds after his death which
neatly illustrates his lack of worldliness. His
modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on
introducing him to an American picture dealer,
warned him not to ask less than five thousand
francs for the first picture he sold to the man.
The American went to Daumier's atelier, and see-
ing a picture on the easel, asked, "How much?"
The artist, remembering Daubigny's warning, an-
swered, "Five thousand francs." The dealer im-
mediately bought it, and on demanding to see
something else, Daumier put another canvas on
the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yan-
kee again asked the price. The poor artist was
perplexed. He had received no instructions from
Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when the
question was repeated he hesitated, and his timidi-
ty getting the better of him, he replied: " Five hun-
dred francs." "Don't want it; woiddn't take it
as a gift," said the dealer. " I like the other better.
Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures,"
and he went away satisfied that a man who sold so
cheaply was not much of an artist. This anecdote,
which we heard second hand from Daubigny, may
be a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny
into fits of laughter. It may be surmised that, de-
spite his herculean labours, extending over more
than half a century, Daimiier never knew how to
make or save money.

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PROMENADES

He was bom &t Marseilles in i8oS. His father
was a third-rate poet who, suspecting his own gift,
doubted the talent of his son, though this talent
was both precocious and prodigious. The usual
thing happened. Daiunier would stick at nothing
but his drawing; the attempt to force him into
law studies only made him hate the law and lawyers
and that hatred he never ceased to vent in his
caricatures. He knocked about until he learned
in 1829 the technics of lithography; then he soon
became self-supporting. His progress was rapid.
He illustrated for the Boulevard journals; he cari-
catured Louis Philippe and was sent to jail, Sainte^
P^gie, for six months. Many years afterward
he attacked with a like ferocity Napoleon HI.
Look at his frontispiece — rather an advertisement
— of Victor Hugo's Les Chfttiments. It is as
sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book, title
displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a
travesty of the Napoleonic beak. Daumier was a
power in Paris. Albert WolflF, the critic of Figaro ,
tells how he earned five francs each time he pro^
vided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and
Philipon, who founded several journals, actually
claimed a share in Daumier's success because he
wrote some of the silly dialogues to his plates.

Daiunier was the artistic progenitor of the
Caran d' Aches, the Forains — who was it that
called Forain " Degas en caricature " ? -— Willettes,
and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political
pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a
pictorial muck-raker of genius. His mockery of

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the classic in art was later paralleled by OflFenbach
in La Belle H^l^ne. But there were other sides
to his genius. Tiring of the hurly-burly of jour-
nalism, he retired in i860 to devote himself to
painting.

His style has been pronounced akin to that of
Eugfene Carrifere; his sense of values on a par with
Goya's and Rembrandt's (that Shop Window of
his in the Durand-Ruel collection is truly Rem-
brandtesque). This feeling for values was so re-
markable that it enabled him to produce an
impression with three or four tones. The colours
he preferred were grays, browns, and he manipu-
lated his blacks like a master. Mauclair does not
hesitate to put Daiunier among the great painters
of the past century on the score of his small can-
vases. "They contain *all his gifts of bitter and
profound observation, all the mastery of his draw-
ings, to which they add the attractions of rich and
intense colour," declares Mauclair. Doubtless he
was affected by the influence of Henri Monnier,
but Daumier really comes from no one. He be-
longs to the fierce tribe of synics and men of
exuberant powers, like Goya and Courbet. A
bom anarch of art, he submitted to no yoke. He
* would have said with Anacharsis Cloots: "I
belong to the party of indignation." He was a
proud individualist. That he had a tender side,
a talent for friendship, may be noted in the affec-
tionate intercourse he maintained for years with
Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Dupr6, Geoffroy, the
sculptor Pascal, and others. He was very im-

207

PROMENADES

pulsive and had a good heart with all his misan-
thropy, for he was an idealist reversed. The etch-
ing of him by Loys Delteil is thus described by
a s)anpathetic commentator: " Daumier was very
broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightly
simken eyes, which must, however, have had an
extraordinary power of penetration. Though the
nose is a little heavy and inelegant, the projecting
forehead, imusually massive like that of Victor
Hugo or of Beethoven and barred with a deter-
mined furrow, reveals the great thinker, the man
of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long
hair, thrown backward, adds to the expression of
the fine head; and finally the beard worn collar-
wise, according to the prevailing fashion, gives to
Daumier's face the distinctive mark of his period."
This etched portrait may be seen in several states
at the Lenox Library.

LALANNE'S ETCHINGS

How heavily personality counts in etching may
be noted in the etched work of Maxime Lalanne
which is at the Keppel Galleries. This skilful
artist, so deft with his needle, so ingenious in fancy,
escapes great distinction by a hair's breadth. He
is without that salt of individuality that is so attrac-
tive in Whistler. Of him Hamerton wrote : " No
one ever etched so gracefully as Maxime Lalanne;
... he is essentially a true etcher. . . . There
have been etchers of greater power, of more strik-
ing originality, but there has never been an etcher

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equal to him in a certain delicate elegance." This
is very amiable, and Joseph Pennell is quite as
favourable in his judgment. "His ability," wrote
Mr. Pennell in Pen Drawing and Pen Draughts-
men, " to express a great building, a vast town, or
a delicate little landscape has never been equalled,
I think, by anybody but Whistler." Mr. Pennell
modestly omits his own name; but the truth is
that Pennell is as excellent if not more individual
a draughtsman as Lalanne, and when it comes
to vision, to invention, and to the manipulation
of the metal he is the superior of the Frenchman.
The American etcher rates Lalanne's lines above
Titian's. Whistler and Titian would be big
companions indeed for the clever-mannered and
rather pedantic Lalanne.

Let us admit without balking at Hamerton that
his line is graceful. He belongs to the old-fashioned
school which did not dream, much less approve, of
modem tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne
etching is as clean and vivid as a photograph (not
an "art" photograph). It is also as hard. At-
mosphere, in the material as well as the poetic
sense, is missing. His skies are disappointing.
Those curly-cue clouds are meaningless, and the
artist succeeds better when he leaves a blank. At
least some can fill it with the imagination. Another
grave defect is the absence of modulation in his
treatment of a landscape and its linear perspective.
Everything seems to be on the same plane of
interest, nor does he vary the values of his blacks
— in foregroimdi middle distance, and the upper

209

PROMENADES

planes the inking is often in the same violent kqr.
Such a capital plate, for example, which depicts
a fire in the port of Bordeaux is actually untrue in
its values. Dramatic in feeling and not without a
note here and there of Rembrandt, this particular
composition fails, just fails to hit the bull Veye.

After all, we must judge a man in his genre, as
Keppel pere puts it. Maxime Lalanne's style is
that of a vanished generation in etching. He was
a contemporary of Meryon, but that imhappy man
of genius taught him nothing. Bom at Bordeaux
in 1827, Lalanne died in 1886. He was a pupil of
Jean Gigoux (1806-94), a painter whose gossipy
souvenirs (1885) pleased Paris and still please the
curious. (Gigoux it was who remained in Balzac's
house when the novelist died; though he was not
visiting the master of the house.) From this
painter Lalanne evidently imbibed certain theories
of his art which he set forth in his Treatise on
Etching (1866).

Strangely enough, illustrator as he was, his
transpositions into black and white of subjects by
Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and many
others are not so striking either in actual technique
or individual grasp as his original pieces. Consta-
ble, for instance, is thin, diffuse, and without rich-
ness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a man
as Lucas, we recognise the real medium for trans-
lating the English painter. A master of the limpid
line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bit of Amster-
dam or a distant view of Bordeaux, or that deli-
cious prospect taken on a spot somewhere below

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BLACK AND WHITE

the Pont Saint-Michel, with the Pont Neuf and the
Louvre in the background. He had a feeling for
those formal gardens which have captured within
their enclosure a moiety of nature's unstudied ease.
The plate called Aux Environs de Paris reveals
this. And what slightly melancholy tenderness
there is in Le Canal h, Pont Sainte-Maxence.
There are several states of the " Villers" etching,
an attractive land and seascape, marred, however,
by the clumsy sameness of the blacks in the fore-
ground.

Without possessing Meryon's grim power in the
presentation of old Paris streets and tumble-down
houses, Lalanne has achieved several remarkable
plates of this order. One is his ^ell-known Rue
des Marmousets. This street is almost as repel-
lent-looking as Rue Mouffetard at its worst period.
Ancient and sinister, its reputation was not entic-
ing. In it once dwelt a pastry cook who, taking
hi$ crony the barber into his confidence, literally
made mince-meat of a stranger and sold the pies
to the neighbours.

Messire Jacques du Breul, in his Le Th64tre
des Antiquitfe de Paris (1612), remarks, not with-
out critical unction, in his quaint French: "De la
chair d'icelui faisit des pastez qui se trouvoient
meilleurs que les aultres, d'autant que la chair de
Phomme est plus delicate h, cause de la nourriture
que celle des aultres animaux." Every one to his
taste, as the old politician said when he kissed the
donkey. When you study the Lalanne etching of
this gruesome alley you almost expect to see at the

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PROMENADES

comer Anatole France's famous cook-shop with its
delectable odours and fascinating company.

The scenes of Thames water-side, Nogent,
Houlgate Beach, at Richmond, or at Cusset are
very attractive. His larger plates are not con-
vincing, the composition does not hang together;
the eye vainly seeks focussing centres of interest.
Beraldi was right when he said that Lalanne has
not left one surpassing plate, one of which the
world can say: There is a masterpiece! Yet is
Maxime Lalanne among the Little Masters of
characteristic etching. His appeal is popular, he
is easily comprehended of the people.

LOUIS LEGRAND

The etched work of the brilliant Frenchman
Louis Legrand is at last beginning to be appreci-
ated in this coimtry. French etchings, imless
by painter-etchers, have never been very popular
with us. We admire Meryon and Helleu's dry-
points, Bracquemond, Jacquemartj Fdlix Buhot
has a following; Lalanne and Daubigny too; but
in comparison with the demand for Rembrandt,
Whistler, Seymour Haden, or Zom the Paris men
are not in the lead. There is Rops, for example,
whose etchings may be compared to Meryon's;
yet who except a few amateurs seeks Rops ? Louis
Legrand is now about forty-five, at the crest of his
career, a versatile, spontaneous artist who is equal-
ly happy with pigments or the needle. His pastels
are much sought, but his dry-points have gained

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for him celebrity. Though a bom colourist, the
primary gift of the man is his draughtsmanship.
His designs, swift and supple notations of the life
around him, delight the eye by reason of their
personal touch and because of the intensely himian
feeling that he infuses into every plate. Legrand
was one of the few pupils of F^licien Rops, and
technically he has learned much of his master;
but his way of viewing men and women and life
is different from that of the Belgian genius. He
has irony and wit and humour — the two we
seldom bracket — and he has pity also; he loves
the humble and despised. His portraits of ba-
bies, the babies of the people, are captivating.
Imagine a Rops who has some of Millet's
boundless S5mapathy for his fellow-hmnans and
you have approximately an imderstanding of
Louis Legrand.

He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth
to Bossuet, but Legrand is not that kind of Bur-
gundian. Several critics pretend to see in his work
the characteristics of his native C6te d'Or; that,
however, may be simply a desire to frame the pic-
ture appropriately. Legrand might have hailed
from the south, from Daudet's country; he is
exuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that
he has abimdant brains and in sheer craftsman-
ship fears few equals. Like Whistler, his princi-
pal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of
technical procedures. His method of work is said
to be simplicity itself; obsessed by his very definite
visions, he transfers them to the scratched plate

213

PROMENADES

with admirable celerity. Dry-point etching is his
principal medium. With his needle he has etched
Montmartre, its cabarets, its angels — in very
earthly disguise — its orators, poets, and cast-
aways, and its visiting tourists — ''God's silly
sheep." He has illustrated a voliune of Edgar
Poe's tales that displays a macabre imagination.
His dancers are only second to those of Edgar
Degas, and seen from an opposite side. His
peasants, mothers, and children, above all, babies,
reveal an eye that observes and a brain that can
co-ordinate the results of this piercing vision.
Withal, he is a poet who extracts his symbols from
everyday life.

This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at
the time of his d^ut:

''An admirably skilful etcher, a drau^tsman of
keen vision, and a painter of curious character,
who has in many ways forestalled the artists of
to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent
Manet and Degas have revolutionised the art of
illustration, in freeing the painters from obsolete
laws and guiding them toward truth and frank
psychological study. Legrand is full of them
without resembling them. We must not forget
that besides the technical innovation [division of
tones, study of complementary colours] impression-
ism has brought us novelty of composition, realism
of character, and great liberty in the choice of sub-
jects. From this point of view Rops himself, in
spite of his s3rmbolist tendencies, could not be
classed with any other group if it were not that any

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kind of classification in art is useless and inaccu-
rate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has
signed some volumes with the most seductive
qualities."

Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was
introduced to the English reading world in one of
the most eloquent pages of George Moore, thinks
that Legrand is frankly a sjonbolist. We side
with Maudair in not trying to pin this etcher down
to any particular formula. He is anything he
happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet,
and also shockingly frank at times. Take the
plate with a pun for a title, Le paing quotidien
("paing" is slang for "poing," a blow from the
fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A mas-
culine brute is with clinched fist about to give his
unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He is
well dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache
curled in the true Adolphe fashion. His face is
vile. The woman cries aloud and protects herself
with her hands. In Marthe Baraquin, by Rosny
senior^ you will find the material for this picture,
though Legrand found it years ago in the streets.
Unpleasant, truly, yet a more potent sermon on
man's cruelty to woman than may be foimd in a
dozen preachments, fictions, or the excited out-
pourings at a feminist congress. Legrand presents
the facts of the case without comment, except the
irony — such dismal irony! — of the title. In this
he is the true pupil of Rops.

However, he does not revel long among such
dreary sUces of life. The Poe illustrations are

215

PROMENADES

grotesque and shuddering, but after all make
believe. The plate of The Black Cat piles horror
on horror's head (literally, for the demon cat
perches on the head of the corpse) and is, all said,
pictorial melodrama. The Berenice illustration is,
we confess, a little too much for the nerves, simply
because in a masterly manner Legrand has ex-
posed the most dreadful moment of the story
(untold by Poe, who could be an artist in his tact
of omission). The dental smile of the cataleptic
Berenice as her necrophilic cousin bends over the
coffin is a testimony to a needle that in this instance
matches Goya's and Rops's in its evocation of the
horrific. We turn with relief to the ballet-girl
series. The impression gained from this album
is that Legrand S3rmpathises with, nay loves, his
subject. Degas, the greater and more objective
artist, nevertheless allows to sift through his lines
an inextinguishable hatred of these girls who labour
so long for so little; and Degas did hate them, as
he hated all that was ugly in daily life, though he
set forth this ugliness, this mediocrity, this hatred
in terms of beautiful art. Legrand sees the ugli-
ness, but he also sees the humanity of the balla-
teuse. She is a woman who is brought up to her
profession with malice aforethought by her parents.
These parents are usually noted for their cupidity.
We need not read the witty history of the Cardinal
family to discover this repellent fact. Legrand
sketches the dancer from the moment when her
mother brings her, a child, to imdergo the ordeal
of the first lesson.

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BLACK AND WHITE

The tender tot stands hesitating in the doorway;
one hand while holding the door open seems to
grasp it as the last barrier of defence that stands
between her and the strange new world. She is
attired in the classical figurante's costume. Be-
hind, evidently pushing her forward, is the grim
guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although
you do not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine
the roomful of girls and dancing master all staring
at the new-comer. The expression on the child's
face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality
of embarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her
head. In less than a minute she will weep.

Another plate, L'ami des Danseuses, is charged
with humanity. The violinist who pla)rs for the
ballet rehearsals sits resting, and facing him are
two yoimg dancers, also sitting, but stooping to
relieve their strained spines and the tendons of
their musciJar legs. The old fellow is giving ad-
vice from the fulness of a life that has been not too
easy. The girls are all attention. It is a genre
bit of distinction. Upon the technical virtuosity
in which this etcher excels we shall not dwell.
Some of his single figures are marvels. The
economy of line, the massing of lights and darks,
the vitality he infuses into a woman who walks, a
man who works in the fields, a child at its mother's
breast, are not easily dealt with in a brief study.
We prefer to note his more general qualities. His
humour, whether in delineating a stupid soldier
about to be exploited by camp followers, or in his
Animales, is unforced. It can be Rabelaisian and

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PROMENADES

it can be a record of simple animal life, as in the
example with the above title. A cow stands on
a grassy shore; near by a stolid peasant girl sits
slicing bread and eating it Cow and girl, grass
and sky and water are woven into one natural
pattern. The humour inheres in several sly
touches. It is a comical Millet Very Millet-like
too is the large picture, Beau Soir, in which a field
labourer bends over to kiss his wife, who has a child
at her breast A cow nuzs^es her apron, the fourth
member of this happy group. The Son of the
Carpenter is another peasant study, but the trans-
position of the Holy Family to our century. A
slight nimbus about the mother's head is the only
indication that this is not a hmnble household
somewhere in France. Maternal Joy, Mater In-
violata are specimens of a sane, lovely art which
celebrate the joys, dolors, and exaltations of
motherhood. We prefer this side of the art of
Legrand to his studies of sinister jail-birds,
hdairai, noctambules, high kickers, and private
bars, the horrors of Parisian night life. Whatever
he touches he vivifies. His leaping, audacious
line is like the narrative prose of a Maupassant
or a Joseph Qmrad. Eveiy stroke tells.

His symbolical pictures please us least They
doubtless signify no end of profound things, ye^
to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We go
back to die tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who
sit on a so& veaiting to be called. Poor babies!
Or to the plate entitled Douleur. Or to die por-
traits of sweet English misses — as did Constantin

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Guys, Legrand has caught the precise English
note — or any of the children pieces. If he knows
the psychology of passion, knows the most inti-
mate detail of the daily life of les filles, Legrand is
master too of the psychology of child life. This
will endear him to English and American lovers
of art, though it is only one of his many endow-
ments. His wit keeps him from extremes, though
some of his plates are not for puritans; his vivid
sympathies prevent him from falling into the
sterile eccentricities of so many of his contempora-
ries; if he is C3niical he is by the same taken soft-
hearted. His superb handling of his material,
with a s)aithetic vision superadded, sets apart
Louis Legrand in a profession which to-day is
filled with farceurs and fakers and with too few
artists by the grace of God.

GUYS, THE ILLUSTRATOR

Practitioners of the noble art of illustration are,
.as we know, modest men, but no matter the degree
of their modesty they are all distanced by the
record in sh)aiess still maintained by Constantin
Guys. This artist was once a living protest against
Goethe's assertion that only fools are modest, and
the moniunent recently erected to his memory in
Paris is provocation enough to bring him ferrying
across the Styx to enter a disclaimer in the very
teeth of his admirers. So set in his anonymity was
he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer,
was forced to write a long essay about his work

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PROMENADES

and only refer to the artist as C. G. The poet
relates lliat once when Thackeray spoke to Guys
in a London newspaper office and congratulated
him on his bold sketches in the Illustrated London
NewSy the fiery little man resented the praise as an
outrage. Nor was this hiunility a pose. His life
long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as
was Cezanne; but he was neither half mad, like
the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as was the painter
of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did
Guys. To employ the phrase of TurgenieflF, life,
like grass, grew over his head. In the Crimean
camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London
parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true re-
porter of things seen and an ardent lover of horses,
soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. Baudelaire
called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his
restless wanderings Poe's man of the multitude,
and at the end of a long life he still drew, as did
Hokusai.

Who was he ? Where did he receive his artistic
training? Baudelaire did not tell, nor Th^ophile
Gautier. He went through the Crimean cam-
paign; he lived in the East, in London and Paris.
Not so long ago the art critic Roger Marx, while
stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered his
baptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Emes-
tus Adolphus Hyacinthus Constantinus Guys, bom
at Flushing December 3, 1805, of Elizabeth Bdtin
and Francois Lazare Guys, Commissary of the
French Marine." The baptism occurred January
26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he had lor

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godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position.
Guys told his friends that his full family name was
Guys de Saihte-H^lfene — which may have been an
amiable weakness of the same order as that of
Barbey d'Aurevilly and of Villiers de Tlsle Adam,
both of whom boasted noble parentage. How-
ever, Guys was little given to talk of any sort.
He was loquacious only with his pencil, and from
being absolutely forgotten after the downfall of
the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his work
is being collected, even fought for, by French and
German collectors. Yet when the Nadar collec-
tion was dispersed, Jime, 1909, in Paris, his aqua-
relles went for a few francs. F6lix P6n6on and
several others now own complete sets. In New
York there are a few specimens in the possession
of private collectors, though the Lenox Library,
as a rule rich in such prints, has only reproduc-
tions to show.

The essay of Charles Baudelaire, entitled Le
Peintre de la Vie Modeme, to be foimd in Volmne
III of his collected works (L'Art Romantique), re-
mains thus far the standard reference study con-
cerning Guys, though deficient in biographical
details. Other critical studies are by Camille
Mauclair, Roger Marx, Richard Muther, and
George Grappe; and recently Elizabeth Luther
Cary in a too short but admirably succinct article
characterised the Guys method in this fashion:
'^ He defined his forms sharply and delicately, and
used within his bounding line the subtlest varia-
tion of light and shade. His workmanship every-

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PROMENADES

where is of the most elusive character^ and he is
a master of the art of reticence." Miss Gary
further speaks of his ''gentle gusto of line in
motion, which lately has captivated us m the paint-^
ings of the Spaniard Sorolkiy and long ago gave
Botticelli and Carlo Crivelli the particular distinc-
tion they had in common." Mauclair mixtions
"the most animated water-odour drawings of
Guys, his curious vision of nervous elegance and
expressive skill," and names it the impressionism
of 1845, while Dr. Muther christened him the
Verlaine of the crayon because, like Verlaine, he
spent his life between the almshouse and a hospital,
so said the German critic. Furthermore, Muther
believes it was no mere chance that made of Bau-
delaire his admirer; in both the decadent predomi-
nated — which is getting the cart before the horse.
Rops, too, is recalled by Guys, who depicted the
gay grisette of the faubourgs as well as the noc-
turnal pierreuse of the fortifications. " Guys exer-
cised on Gavami an influence which brought into
being his Invalides du sentiment, his Lorettes
vielles, and his Fourberies de femmes."

It is not quite fair to compare Guys with Rops,
or indeed with either Gavami or Daumier. These
were the giants of French illustration at that epoch.
Guys was more the skirmisher, the sharpshooter,
the reporter of the moment, than a creative master
of his art. The street or the battle-field was his
atelier; speed and grace and fidelity his chief
claims to fame. He never practised his art within
the walls of academies; the matmal he so vivicUjfi

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BLACK AND WHITE

dealt with was the stuflF of life. The very absence
of school in his illustrations is their chief charm;
a man of genius this, self-taught, and a dangerous
precedent for fumblers or those of less executive
ability. From the huge mass of his work being
imearthed from year to year he may be said to
have lived crayon in hand. He is the first of a
long line of newspaper illustrators. His profes-
sion was soldiering, and legend has it that he ac-
companied Byron to Missolonghi. The official
career of his father enabled the youth to see much
of the world — Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, Per-
sia, and perhaps India. On returning to France
he became an officer of dragoons and for some
time led the life of a dandy and man about town.
With his memory, of which extraordinary tales
are told, he must have stored up coimtless films
of impressions, all of which were utilised years
later.

In 1845 ^^ ^d him installed at Paris, though
no longer in the army. Then it was he began to
design. He became contributor to many period-
icals, among the rest the Illustrated London News
and Punch. For the former journal he went to
the Crimean war as accredited art correspondent.
The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now
most sought for by his admirers. He is said to
have originated the expression "taken on the
spot," in the title of one of his instantaneous
sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure
eye and manual dexterity. The Balaklava illus-
tration is as striking in its way as Tennyson's

223

PROMENADES

lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and
more ugly realism. Like the trained reporter that
he was, Guys followed a battle, recording the sali-
ent incidents of the engagement, not overempha-
sising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot
or Goya or RaflFet, but telling the truth as he saw
it, with a phlegm more British and German than
French. Though he had no Dutch blood in his
veins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of
Amsterdam than the man of Paris. He noted the
changing and shocking scenes of hospital life, and
S3mipathy without sentimentality drops from his
pen. He is drily himiorous as he shows us some
pliunaged General peacocking on foot, or swelling
with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his
horse. And such horses! Without a hint of the
photographic realism of a Muybridge and his suc-
cessors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those
seen by the normal vision. The witching move-
ment of beautiful Arabian steeds has not had many
such sympathetic interpreters.

In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of
the courts of the Sublime Porte itself, of the f^te
of Bairam, which closes the fast of Ramadan.
His Turkish women are not all houris, but they
bear the stamp of close study. They are pretty,
indolent, brainless creatures. In his most hurried
crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles
Guys is ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch
that arrests attention and atones for technical
shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his
drawings are a species of shorthand notations made

224

BLACK AND WHITE

at red-hot tempo, yet catching the soul of a situa-
tion. He repeats himself continually, but, as M.
Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with
movement, with picturesque massing, and broad
simple colour schemes, he naturally gravitated to
battiie-fields. In Europe society out of doors be-
came his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at
Brighton or at Baden-Baden, the sinuous fugues
of his pencil reveal to succeeding generations how
the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself
to death. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys.
They were kindred spirits; both recognised and
portrayed the snob mimdane.

As he grew older Guys became an apparition
in the life of Paris. The smash-up of the Empire
destroyed the beloved world he knew so well.
Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he
couldn't actually enjoy the luxiuy of the rich he
could reproduce its images on his drawing-pad.
The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went
about dressed in a shabby military frock-coat.
He had no longer a nodding acquaintance with the
fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's reign,
yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial
politeness to all comers, nor his daily promenade
in the Bois. A Barmecide feast this watching the
pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys
did not waste the fruits of his observation. At
sixty-five he began to go down-hill. His habits
had never been those of a prudent citizen, and as
his earning powers grew less some imp of the per-
verse entered his all too solitary life. With this

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PROMENADES

change of habits came a change of theme. Hence-
forth he drew fiUes, the outcasts, the scamps and
convicts and the poor wretches of the night. He
is now a forerunner of Toulouse-Lautrec and an
entire school. This side of his career probably
caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul
Verlaine. Absinthe, the green fairy of so many
poets and artists, was no stranger to Guys.

In 1885, after dining With Nadar, his most faith-
ful friend, Guys was run over m the Rue du Havre
and had his legs crushed. He was taken to the
Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer,
dying at the venerable age of eighty-seven, though
far from being a venerable person. Astonishing
vitality! He did not begin to draw, that is, for a
living, until past forty. His method of work was
simplicity itself, declare those who watched him at
work. He seemingly improvised his aquarelles;
his colour^ sober, delicate, was broadly washed in;
his line, graceful and modulated, does not suggest
the swiftness of his execution. He could be rank
and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refined child
that sees the spectacle of life for the first time.
The bitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he
escaped until he was in senile decadence. In the
press of active life he registered the shock of con-
flicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and
the mere joy of living, all in a sane manner that
will ever endear him to lovers of art.

George Moore tells the following anecdote of
Degas: Somebody was saying he did not like
Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long

236

BLACK AND WHITE

while. " If you were to show Raphael," he said at
last, "a Daumier, he would admire it; he would
take oflf his hat; but if you were to show him a
Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, 'That is my
fault.'"

If you could show Raphael a croquis by Con-
stantin Guys he would probably look the other
way, but Degas would certainly admire and buy
the drawing.

327

IMPRESSIONISM
I

MONET

The impressionists claim as their common an-
cestors Claude Lorraine, Watteau, Turner, Monti-
celli. Watteau, Latour, Largilli^re, Fragonard,
Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors
in the matters of design, subject, realism, study
of life, new conceptions of beauty and portraitiu^.
Mythology, allegory, historic themes, the neo-
Greek and the academic are under the ban — above
all, the so-called '^ grand style." Impressionism
has actually elevated genre painting to the position
occupied by those vast, empty, pompous, frigid,
smoky, classic pieces of the early nineteenth cen-
tury. However, it must not be forgotten that
modem impressionism is only a new technique, a
new method of execution — we say new, though
that is not exactly the case. The home of impres-
sionism is in the East; it may be found in the vivid
patterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its
latest avatar it is the expression of contempora-
neous reality. Therein lies its true power. The
artist who turns his face only to the past — his work
will never be anything but an echo. To depict the

228

IMPRESSIONISM

faces and things and pen the manners of the pres-
ent is the task of great painters and novelists.
Actualists alone count in the future. The mills
of the antique grind swiftly — like the rich, they
will be always with us — but they only grind out
imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles and
pseudo-" beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the
Lord of Flies, deliver us.

That able and s)rmpathetic writer D. S. MacCoU
has tersely simuned up in his Vision of the Cen-
tury the difiFerence between the old and new
manner of seeing things. "The old vision had
beaten out three separate acts — the determina-
tion of the edges and limits of things, the shadings
and the modellings of the spaces in between with
black and white, and the tintings of those spaces
with their local colour. The new vision that had
been growing up among the landscape painters
simplifies as well as complicates the old. For
purposes of analysis it sees the world as a mosaic of
patches of colour, such and such a hue, such and
such a tone, such and such a shape. . . . The
new analysis looked first for colour and for a
difiFerent colour in each patch of shade or light.
The old painting followed the old vision by its
three processes of drawing the contours, modelling
the chiaroscura in dead colour, and finally in
colouring this black-and-white preparation. The
new analysis left the contours to be determined by
the junction, more or less fused, of the colour
patches, instead of rigidly defining them as they
are known to be defined when seen near at hand

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PROMENADES

or felt. . . . 'Local colour' in light or shade
becomes different not only in tone but in hue."

To the layman who asked, "What is impres-
sionism?" Mauclair has given the most succinct
answer in his book L'Impressionisme: "In na-
ture," he declares, "no colour exists by itself.
The colouring of the object is pure illusion; the
only creative source of colour is the simlight, which
envelops all things and reveals them, according to
the hours, with inJSnite modifications. . . . The
idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given
us by darker or lighter colours; this is the sense
of values; a value is the degree of light or dark
intensity which permits our eyes to comprehend
that one object is further or nearer than anoth^.
And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation
of nature, but merely her artificial interpretation,
since it has only at its disposal two out of three
dimensions, the values are the only means that
remain for expressing depth on a fiat surface.
Colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. . . .
Colours vary with the intensity of light. . • .
Local colour is an error; a leaf is not green, a tree
trunk is not brown. . . . According to the time
of day, i. c, according to the greater or smaller
inclination of the rays (scientifically called the
angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the
brown of the tree are modified. . . . The com-
position of the atmosphere . . . is the real subject
of the picture. . . . Shadow is not absence of light,
but light of a different quality and of a different
value. Shadow is not part of the landscape where

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IMPRESSIONISM

light ceases, but where it is subordinated to a light
which appears to us more intense. In the shadow
the rays of the spectrum vibrate with a difiFerent
speed. Painting should therefore try to discover
here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms
of solar light, instead of representing shadows
with ready-made tones composed of bitumen and
black. ... In a picture representing an interior
the source of light [windows] may not be indicated;
the light circulating, circling around the picture,
will then be composed of the reflections of rays
whose source is invisible, and all the objects, acting
as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently
influence each other. Their colours will afiFect
each other even if the surfaces be dull. A red
vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very
subtle but mathematically exact exchange be-
tween this blue and this red; and this exchange of
luminous waves will create between the two colours
a tone of reflections composed of both. These
composite reflections will form a scale of tones
complementary of the two principal colours.

"The painter will have to paint with only the
seven colours of the solar spectrum and discard
all the others; ... he will, furthermore, instead
of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon
his canvas touches of none but the seven colours
juxtaposed [Claude Monet has added black and
white] and leave the individual ra3rs of each of
these colours to blend at a certain distance, so
as to act like sunlight upon the eye of the
beholder." This is called dissociation of tones;

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PROMENADES

and here is a new convention; why banish all
save the spectrum? We paint nature, not the
solar spectnmL

Claude Monet has been thus far the most suc-
cessful practitioner of impressionism; this by
reason of his extraordinary analytical power of
vision and native genius rather than the researches
of Helmholtz, Chevreul, and Rood. They gave
him his scientific formulas after he had worked out
the problems. He studied Turner in London,
1870; then his manner changed. He had been a
devoted pupil of Eugene Boudin and could paint
the discreet, pearly gray seascapes of his master.
But Turner and Watteau and Monticelli modified
his style, changed his way of envisaging the land-
scape. Not Edouard A^net but Claude Monet
was the initiator of the impressionistic movement
in France, and after witnessing the rout and con-
fusion that followed in its wake one is tempted to
misquote Nietzsche (who said that the first and
only Christian died on the cross) and boldly assert
that there has been but one impressionist; his
name, Monet. "He has arrived at painting by
means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a
quantity of colour spots which dissociate the tones
of the spectnun and draw the forms of objects
through the arabesque of their vibrations." How
his landscapes shinmier with the heat of a smnmer
day! Truly, you can say of these pictures that
"the dawn comes up like thimder." How his
fogs, wet and clinging, seem to be the first real
fogs that ever made misty a canvas! What hot

232

IMPRESSIONISM

July nights, with few large stars, has Monet not
painted! His series of hayricks, cathedrals, the
Thames are precious notations of contemporary
life; they state facts in terms of exquisite artistic
value; they resume an epoch. It is therefore no
surprise to learn that in 1874 Monet gave the name
(so variously abused) to the entire movement when
he exhibited a water piece on the Boulevard des
Capucines entitled Impression: Soleil Levant.
That title became a catchword usually employed
in a derisive manner. Manet earlier had resented
the intrusion of a man with a name so like, his,
but succumbed to the influence of Monet. One
thing can no longer be controverted — Claude
Monet is the greatest landscape and marine painter
of the second half of the last century. Perhaps
time may alter this limit clause.

What Turgenieflf most condemned in his great
contemporary, Dostoievsky — if the gentle Rus-
sian giant ever condemned any one — was Feodor
Mikhailovitch's taste for "psychological mole
runs"; an inveterate burrowing into the dark
places of humanity's soul. Now, if there is a dark
spot in a highly lighted subject it is the question.
Who was the first impressionist? According to
Charles de Kay, Whistler once told him that he,
James the Butterfly, began the movement; which
is a capital and characteristic anecdote, especially
if one recalls Whistler's boast made to a young
etcher as to the initiative of Corot. Whistler
practically said : " Before Corot was, I am ! " And
he adduced certain canvases painted with the

233

PROMENADES

misty-edged trees long before — but why continue ?
Whistler didn't start Corot — apart from the
chronological difficulties in the way — any more
than Courbet and Manet started Whistler; yet
both these painters played important rdles in the
American master's art. So let us accept Mau-
clair's dictum as to Claude Monet's priority in the
field of impressionism. Certainly he attained his
marked style before he met Manet. Later he
modified his own paint to show his sympathy with
the new school. Monet went to Watteau, Con-
stable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London,
about 1870, he studied Turner with an interest that
finally bordered on worship. And why not ? In
Turner, at the National Gallery, you may find the
principles of impressionism carried to extravagant
lengths, and years before Monet. Consider Rain,
Steam and Speed — the Great Western Railway,
that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge
in chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the
James Orrock collection — a welter of cross-
hatchings in variegated hues wherein any school
of impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to
Monet's latest manner or the pcnntUlisme of Signac
and Seurat may be recognised. And there is a
water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery
called Honfleur, which has anticipated many
traits of Boudin and the Manet we know when he
had not forgotten Eugfene Boudin's influence.

Let us enjoy our Monet without too many
"mole runs." As De Kay pointed out, it was not
necessary for Monet to go to London to see Con-

234

IMPRESSIONISM

stables. In the Louvre he could gaze upon them
at leisure, also upon Bonington; not to mention
the Venetians and such a Dutchman as Vermeer.
It is therefore doubly interesting to study the
Monets at Durand-RuePs. There are twenty-
seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Prome-
nade k Trouville, and come down to the Charing
Cross Bridge, 1904, and the two Waterloo Bridge
efiFects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment and
technique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as
cool and composed as Boudin. Sincerity and
beauty are in the picture — for we do not agree
with those who see in Monet only an imemotional
recorder of variations in light and tone. He can
compose a background as well as any of his con-
temporaries, and an important fact is overlooked
when Monet is jumbled indiscriminately with a lot
of inferior men. Monet knew how to draw before
he handled pigment. Some lansdcape painters do
not; many impressionists trust to God and their
palette-knife; so the big men are sufferers. Monet,
it may be noted, essayed many keys; his composi-
tions are not nearly so monotonous as has been
asserted. What does often exhaust the optic
nerve is the violent impinging thereon of his lights.
He has an eagle eye, we have not. Wagner had
the faculty of attention developed to such an
extraordinary pitch that with our more normal
and weaker nerves he soon exhausts us in his
flights. Too much Monet is like too much Wagner
or too much sunshine.
The breezy efifect with the poplars painted flat

23s

PROMENADES

is an example very unlike Monet. The church of
Varengeville at Dieppe (1880) is a classic speci-
men; so is the Pourville beach (1882). What
delicate greens in the Spring (1885)! What fine
distance, an ocean view, in the Pourville picture!
Or, if you care for subdued harmonies, there is the
ice floe at Vftheuil (1881).

The London pictures tell of the older artist —
not so vigorous, a yein of tenderness beginning to
show instead of his youthful blazing optimism.
Claude Monet must have had a happy life — he
is still a robust man painting daily in the fields,
leading the glorious life of a landscapist, one of the
few romantic professions in this prosaic age. Not
so vain, so irritable as either Manet or Whistler,
Monet's nerves have never prompted him to ex-
travagances. Backbiters declare that Monet is
suffering from an optical degeneration — poor,
overworked word! Monet sees better, sees more
keenly than his fellow-men. What a misfortune!
Ibsen and Wagner suflFered, too, from superior
brains. If Monet ever suflFered seriously from a
danger to his art it was — success. He was abused
in the beginning, but not as severely as Manet.
But success perched on Monet's palette. His
pictures never seem to suggest any time but high
noon, in spirit, at least. And he is never sad. Yet,
is there anything sadder under the sun than a soul
incapable of sadness ?

In his very valuable contribution to the history
of the cause, Th&dore Duret, the biographer and
friend of Whistler and Manet has in his Les

236

IMPRESSIONISM

Peintres Impressionistes held the scales very much
in favour of Manet's priority in the field over
Monet. It is true that in 1863 Manet had drawn
upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris by
exhibiting his Dejeuner sur I'Herbe and Olympe
— by no means a representative effort of the
painter's genius, despite its diabolic cleverness.
(It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach,
and Goya.) But his vision was in reality synthetic,
not analytic; he was a primitive; he belongs to
the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. He stud-
ied Hals — and with what glorious results in Le
Bon Bock! He manipulated paint like an '^old
master" and did astounding things with the higher
tones of the colour scale. He was not an im-
pressionist imtil he met Monet. Then in audac-
ity he outstripped his associates. Discouraged by
critical attacks, his courage had been revived by
Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wag-
ner as well as for Poe and Manet. To the painter
the poet scornfully wrote: "You complain about
attacks? But are you the first to endure them?
Have you more genius than Chateaubriand and
Wagner? They were not killed by derision. And
in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you
that they are models, each in his own way, and in
a very rich world, while you are only the first in
the decrepitude of your art." Sinister and dis-
quieting that last phrase, and for those who see in
impressionism the decadence of painting (because
of the predominance given to the parts over the
whole) it is a phrase prophetic.

237

PROMENADES

Manet is a classic. His genuine power —
technically speaking — lies in the broad, sabre-
like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling
taches of the impressionists — of which the re-
duetto ad absurdum is poifUUlisme. He la3rs on
his pigments in sweeping slashes and his divisions
are large. His significance for us does not alone
reside in his consummate mastery of form and
colour, but in his forthright expression of the life
that hmnmed about him. He is as actual as Hals.
Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan
Museum — is there anything superficial about
it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez, in its
beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober han-
dling of values. The truth is that Manet dearly
loved a fight, and being chej d^ecole, he naturally
drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it is
significant that Duret did not give this virile
spirit a place in his new volimie, confining the
estimate of his genius to the preface. Mauclair,
on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his
more comprehensive and more scientific study, as
he also includes the name of Edgar Degas —
Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and
a new psychology.

The title of impressionism has been a mislead-
ing one. If Degas is an impressionist, pray what
then is Monet ? Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne are im-
pressionists, and in America there is no impro-
priety in attaching this handle to the works of
Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W. L. Metcalf,
Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reidj

238

IMPRESSIONISM

Ernest Lawson, Paul Comoyer, Colin Campbell
Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. But
Manet, Degas! It would have been a happier in-
vention to have called the 1877 group indepen-
dents; independent they were, each man pursuing
his own rainbow. We may note an identical con-
fusion in the mind of the public regarding the
Barbizon school. Never was a group composed
of such dissimilar spirits. Yet people talk about
Millet and Breton, Corot and Daubigny, Rousseau
and Dupr^. They still say Goethe and Schiller,
Beethoven and Mozart, B)n:on and Shelley. It
is the result of mental inertia, this coupling of
such widely disparate temperaments.

Nevertheless, divided tones and "screaming"
palette do not always a picture make; mediocrity
loves to mask itself behind artistic innovations.
For the world at large impressionism spells impro-
visation — an easy-going, slatternly, down-at-the-
heel process, facile as well as factitious. Albert
Wolflf must have thought these things when he
sat for his portrait to Manet. His surprise was
great when the artist demanded as many sittings
as would have done the painstaking Bonnat.
Whistler shocked Ruskin when he confessed to
having painted a nocturne in two days, but with a
lifetime experience in each stroke of the brush.
Whistler was a swift worker, and while he claimed
the honour of being the originator of impres-
sionism — didn't he " originate " Velasquez ? — he
really belongs to the preceding generation. He
was impressionistic, if you will, yet not an impres-

239

PROMENADES

sionist. He was Japanese and Spanish, never
Watteau, Monticelli, Turner, or Monet.

MacCoU has pointed out the weakness of the
scientific side of impressionism. Its values are
strictly aesthetic; attempts to paint on a purely
scientific basis have proved both monotonous and
ludicrous. The experiments of the neo-impres-
sionists (the 1885 group), of Signac, Seurat, were
not very convincing. Van Rhysselberge, one of the
few painters to-day who practise pointiUisme^ or
the system of dots, is a gifted artist; so is Anquetin.
The feminine group is headed by the name of
Berthe Morisot (the wife of Eug^e Manet, a
brother of Edouard and the great granddaughter
of Fragonard), a pupil of Manet, the most indi-
vidual woman painter that ever lived; and Mary
Cassatt, a pupil of Degas, though more closely
allied to the open-air school in her methods. Miss
Cassatt possesses a distinguished talent. As a
school impres^onism has run down to a thin rill in
a waste of sand. It is more technical than personal,
and while it was lucky to have such an exponent as
Claude Monet, there is every reason to believe that
Monet's impressionism is largely the result of a
peculiar penetrating vision. He has been imitated,
and Mauf ra and Moret are carrying on his tradi-
tion — yet there is but one Monet.

We know that the spectral palette is a mild de-
lusion and sometimes a dangerous snare, that im-
pressionism is in the remotest analysis but a new
convention supplanting an old. Painters will never
go back to the muddy palette of the past. The

240

IMPRESSIONISM

trick has been turned. The egg of Columbus has
been once more stood on end. Claude Monet has
taught us the "innocence of the eye," has shown
us how to paint air that circulates, water that
sparkles. The sun was the centre of the impres-
sionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun." A
higher pitch in key cotour has been attained,
shadows have been endowed with vital hues. (And
Leonardo da Vinci, wonderful landscapist, cen-
turies ago wrote learnedly of coloured shadows;
every new discovery is only a rediscovery.) The
"dim, religious light" of the studio has been ban-
ished; the average palette is lighter, is more brill-
iant. And Rembrandt is still worshipped; Ra-
phael is still on his pedestal, and the millionaire on
the street continues to buy Bouguereau. The
amateur who honestly wishes to purge his vision of
encrusted painted prejudices we warn not tb go
too close to an impressionistic canvas — any more
than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg of
gunpowder. And let him forget those tooth-
some critical terms, decomposition, recomposition.
His eyes, if permitted, will act for themselves;
there is no den)dng that the principles of impres-
sionism soimdly applied, especially to landscape,
catch the fleeting, many-hued charm of nature. It
is a system of coloured stenography — in the hands
of a master. Woe betide the fumblerl

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PROMENADES

II
RENOIR

The secret of success is never to be satisfied;
that is, never to be satisfied with your work or your
success. And this idea seems to have animated
Auguste Renoir during his long, honourable career
of painter. In common with several members of
the impressionistic group to which he belonged,
he suffered from hunger, neglect, obloquy; but
when prosperity did at last appear he did not
succumb to the most dangerous enemy that besets
the artist. He fought success as he conquered
failure, and his continual dissatisfaction with him<
self, the true critical spirit, has led him to many
fields — he has been portraitist, genre painter,
landscapist, delineator of nudes, a marine painter
and a master of still-life. This versatility, amaz-
ing and incontrovertible, has perhaps clouded the
real worth of Renoir for the public. Even after
acknowledging his indubitable gifts, the usual
critical doubting Thomas grudgingly remarks that
if Renoir could not draw like Degas, paint land
and water like Monet or figures like Manet, he was
a natiurally endowed colourist. How great a col-
ourist he was may be seen at the Metropolitan
Museum, where his big canvas, La Famille Char-
pentier, is now hung.

Charpentier was the publisher of Zola, Gon-
court, Flaubert, and of the newer realists. He was

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IMPRESSIONISM

a man of taste, who cultivated friendships with
distinguished artists and writers. Some disap-
pointment was experienced at the recent public
sale of his collection in Paris. The clou of the sale
was imdoubtedly the portrait of his wife and two
children. It was sold for the surprising sum of
84,000 francs to M. Durand-Ruel, who acted in
behalf of the Metropolitan Museimi. Another
canvas by Renoir fetched 14,050 francs. A san-
guine of Puvis de Chavannes brought 2,050
francs, and 4,700 francs was paid for a C&anne
picture.

The Charpentier Family, originally entitled Por-
trait de Madame Charpentier et Ses Filles, was
painted in 1878, first exhibited at the Salon of 1879,
and there we saw and admired it. The passage of
the years has tempered the glistening brilliancies
and audacious chromatic modulations to a suave
harmony that is absolutely fascinating. The back-
ground is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated
on a canopy surrounded by furniture, flowers;
under foot a carpet with arabesque designs. She
throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the
hand is painted with masterly precision. The other
arm has dropped in her lap. She is an interesting
woman of that fine maternal t3rpe so often en-
countered in real France — though not in French
fiction, alas! Her gaze is upon her children, two
adorable little girls. A superb dog, a St. Bernard,
with head resting on paws, looks at you with
watchful eyes. One of the girls sits upon his
shaggy hide. The mother is in black, a mellow

243

PROMENADES

reception robe, tulle and lace. White and blue
are the contrasting tones of the girk — the blue is
tender. A chair is at the side of a lacquer table,
upon which are flowers. Renoir flowers, dewy,
blushing. You exclaim: ''How charming I" It
is normal French painting, not the painting of the
schook with their false ideal of pseudo-Greek
beauty, but the intimate, clear, refined, and logical
style of a man who does not possess the genius of
Manet, Degas, or Monet, but is nevertheless an
artist of copiousness, charm, and originality.
Charm; yes, that is the word. There is a vo-
luptuous magnetism in his colour that draws you
to him whether you approve of his capricious de-
signs or not. The museum paid $18,480 for
the Charpentier portrait, and in 1877, after an
exposition in the rue Le Peletier, sixteen of his
paintings, many of them masterpieces, netted the
mortifying sum of 2,005 f raises.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was bom at Limoges,
February 25, 1840. His father was a poor tailor
with five children who went to Paris hoping to
better his condition. At the age of twelve the boy
was painting on porcelain — his father had picked
up some rudiments of the art at Limoges. Auguste
did so well, displayed such energy and taste, that
he soon fell to decorating blinds, and saved, in the
course of four years, enough money to enable him
to enter the atelier of Gleyre. There he met Sisley,
Bazille — afterward shot in the Franco-Prussian
war — and Claude Monet. They became friends
and later allies in the conflict with the Parisian

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IMPRESSIONISM

picture public. Renoir made his first offering to
the Salon in 1863. It was refused. It was a
romantic bit — a nude lady reclining on a bed
listening to the plucked music of a guitar. It
seems that the guitarist, and not the lady, was the
cause of offence. It is a convention that a thou-
sand living beings may look at an undressed female
in a picture, but no painted man may be allowed
to occupy with her the same apartment. In 1864
Renoir tried again — after all, the Salon, like our
own academy, is a market-place — and was ad-
mitted. He sent in an Esmeralda dancing. Both
these canvases were destroyed by the painter when
he began to use his eyes. In 1868 his Lise be-
trayed direct observation of nature, influenced by
Courbet. Until 1873 he sent pictures to the
Salon; that year he was shut out with considerable
unanimity, for his offering happened to be an
Algerian subject, a Parisian woman dressed in
Oriental costiune, and — horrors! — the shadows
were coloured. He was become an impressionist.
He had listened, or rather looked at the baleful
pyrotechnics of Monet, and so he joined the seces-
sionists, though not disdaining to contribute annu-
ally to the Salon. In 1874 his L'allee Cavalifere
au Bois de Boulogne was rejected, an act that was
evidently inspired by a desire to sacrifice Renoir
because of the artistic " crimes " of Edouard Manet.
Otherwise how explain why this easily compre-
hended composition, with its attractive figures,
daring hues, and brilliant technique, came to have
the door of the Salon closed upon it ?

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PROMENADES

The historic exposition at Nadar's photographic
studio, on the Boulevard des Capucines, of the im-
pressionists, saw Renoir in company with Monet,
Sisley, and the others. His La Danseuse and La
Loge were received with laughter by the discerning
critics. Wasn't this the exhibition of which Albert
WolfiF wrote that some limatics were showing their
wares, which they called pictures, etc.? (No, it
was in 1875.) From 1868 to 1877 Renoir closely
studied nature and his landscapes took on those
violet tones which gave him the nickname of
Monsieur Violette. Previously he had employed
the usual clear green with the yellow touches in the
shadows of conventional paysagistes. But Hssarro,
Monet, Sisley, and Renoir had discovered each for
himself that the light and shade in the open air
vary according to the hours, the seasons, the atmos-
pheric conditions. Monet and Pissarro in painting
snow and frost effects under the sun did not hesi-
tate to put blue tones in the shadows. Sisley was
fond of rose tones, Renoir saw violet in the shad-
ows. He enraged his spectators quite as much as
did Monet with his purple turkeys. His striking
Avant le bain was sold for one hundred and forty
francs in 1875. Any one who has been lucky
enough to see it at Durand-Ruel's will cry out at
the stupidity which did not recognise a masterly
bit of painting with its glowing, nacreous flesh
tints, its admirable modelling, its pervading air of
vitality. Renoir was never a difficult painter; that
is, in the sense of Monet or Manet or Gauguin.
He offended the eyes of 1875, ^^ doubt, but there

246

IMPRESSIONISM

was in him during his first period much of Bou-
cher; his female nudes are, as Camille Mauclair
writes, of the eighteenth century; his technique is
Boucher-like: " fat and sleek paint of soft brilliancy
laid on with the palette-knife with precise strokes
around the principal values; pink and ivory tints
relieved by strong blues similar to those of enamels;
the light distributed ever3rwhere and almost ex-
cluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious
attitudes and decorative convention."

Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has
thus far shown no hint of the bitter psychology of
Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women
full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, imreasom'ng. His
genre tableaux are personal enough, though in the
most commonplace themes, such as Dejeuner and
The Box — both have been exhibited in New
York — the limiinous envelope, the gorgeous riot
of opposed tones, the delicious dissonances literally
transfigure the themes. In his second manner his
affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are
more marked. His landscapes are more atmos-
pheric, division of tones inevitably practised.
Ever]rthing swims in aerial tones. His portraits,
once his only means of subsistence, are the personi-
fication of frankness. The touch is broad, flowing.
Without doubt, as Th&xiore Duret asserts, Renoir
is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters;
the first to apply imflinchingly the methods of
Manet and Monet to the human face — for Manet,
while painting in clear tones (what magic there
is in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed

247

PROMENADES

the hatchings of colours, except in his landscapes,
and only since 1870, when he had come under
the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair
points out that fifteen years before poiniiUisme
(the SjTStem of dots, like eruptive small-pox, in-
stead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Re-
noir in his portrait of Sisley used the stipplings.
He painted Richard Wagner at Palermo in 1882.
In his third manner — an arbitrary classification
— he combines the two earlier techniques, paint-
ing with the palette-knife and in divided tones.
Flowers, barbaric designs for rugs, the fantastic,
vibrating waters, these appear among that long and
varied series of canvases in which we see Paris
enjoying itself at Bougival, dancing on the heights
of Montmartre, strolling among the trees at
Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys,
Paris in outdoor himiour — and not a discordant
or vicious note in all this psychology of love and
sport. The lively man who in shirt sleeves dances
with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the simlight drip-
ping through the vivid green of the tree leaves,
lending dazzling edges to profiles, tips of noses, or
fingers, is not the sullen ouvrier of Zola or Tou-
louse-Lautrec — nor are the girls kin to Huys-
mans's Soeurs Vatard or the " himian document" of
Degas. Renoir's philosophy is not profound; for
him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say
in the old Swinburne days. He is a painter of
joyous surfaces and he is an incorrigible optimist.
He is also a poet. The poet of air, sunshine, and
beautiful women — can we ever forget his Jeanne

248

IMPRESSIONISM

Samary? A pantheist, withal a poet and a direct
descendant in the line of Watteau, Boucher, Monti-
celli, with an individual touch of mundane grace
and elegance.

Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engi-
neered the portrait of herself and children and the
portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879 Salon.
The authorities did not dare to refuse two such
distinguished women. Renoir's prospects became
brighter. He married. He made money. Pa-
trons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn
Salon, he was given a special sallcy and homage was
done him by the yoimg men. No sweeter gift can
come to a French painter than the unbidden ad-
miration of the rising artistic generation. Renoir
appreciated his honoxurs; he had worked labo-
riously, had known poverty and its attendant bed-
fellows, and had won the race run in the heat and
dust of his younger years. In 1904, describing the
autimm exhibition, I wrote : "In the Renoir salle a
few of the better things of this luscious brush were
to be found, paintings of his middle period, that
first won him favour. For example, Sur la Ter-
rasse, with its audacious crimson, like the imperi-
ous challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gor-
geous fabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme;
the quaint head of Jeanne Samary — a rival por-
trait to Besnard's faun-like R^jane — and a lot of
Renoir's later experimentings, as fugitive as music;
exploding bouquets of iridescence; swirling panels,
depicting scenes from Tannhauser; a flower gar-
den composed of buds and blossoms in colour

249

PROMENADES

scales that begin at a bass-emerald and ascend to
an altitudinous green where green is no longer
green but an opaline reverberation. We know
how exquisitely Renoir moulds his female heads,
building up, cell by cell, the entire mask. The
simple gestures of daily life have been recorded by
Renoir for the past forty years with a fidelity and
a vitality that shames the anaemic imaginings and
puling pessimisms of his younger contemporaries.
What versatility, what undaunted desire to conquer
new problems ! He has in turn painted landscapes
as full of distinction as Monet's. The nervous
vivacity of his brush, his love of rendered surfaces,
of melting Boucher-like heads, and of a dazzling
Watteau colour synthesis have endeared him to the
discriminating." He may be deficient in spiritual
elevation — as were Manet, Monet, and the other
Impressionists; but as they were primarily inter-
ested in problems of lighting, in painting the sim
and driving the old mud gods of academic art
from their thrones, it is not strange that the new
men became so enamoured of the coloured ap-
pearances of life that they left out the ghosts of
the ideal (that dusty, battered phrase) and pro-
claimed themselves rank sun-worshippers. The
generation that succeeded them is endeavouring to
restore the balance between unblushing pantheism
and the earlier mysticism. But wherever a Renoir
hangs there will be eyes to feast upon his opulent
and sonorous colour music.

2SO

IMPRESSIONISM

III

MANET

In the autumn of 1865 Th&xiore Buret, the
Parisian critic, found himself in the city of Madrid
after a tour of Portugal on horseback. A new
hotel on the Puerta del Sol was, he wrote in his life
of Manet, a veritable haven after roughing it in
the adjacent kingdom. At the mid-day breakfast
he ate as if he had never encountered good cooking
in his life. Presently his attention was attracted
by the behaviour of a stranger who sat next to him.
The unknown was a Frenchman who abused the
food, the service, and the country. He was so irri-
table when he noticed Duret enjoying the very
plats he had passed that he turned on him and de-
manded if insult was meant. The horrible cuisine,
he explained, made him sick, and he could not
understand the appetite of Duret. Good-naturedly
Duret explained he had just arrived from Portu-
gal and that the breakfast was a veritable feast.
"And I have just arrived from Paris," he answered,
and gave his name, Edouard Manet. He added
that he had been so persecuted that he suspected
his neighbour of some evil pleasantry. The pair
became friends, and went to look at the pictures
of Velasquez at the Prado. Fresh from Paris,
Manet was still smarting from the attacks made
on him after the hanging of his Olympia in the
Salon of 1865. Little wonder his nerves were on

251

PROMENADES

edge. A dozen days later, after he had studied
Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco, Manet, in com-
pany with Duret, returned to Paris. It was the
beginning of a lifelong friendship.

About eight years ago Buret's definitive biog-
raphy of Manet appeared, Histoire de Edouard
Manet et de Son (Euvre. No one was better
qualified to write of the dead painter than Thfo-
dore Duret. A critic of perspicacity, his enthu-
siasm was kindled during the birth throes of im-
pressionism and has never been quenched. Only
a few years ago, after a tribute to Whistler, he
wrote of Manet in the introduction to his volume
on Impressionism, and while no one may deny
his estimate, yet through zeal for the name of his
dead friend he attributed to him the discoveries
of the impressionists. Manet was their leader;
he would have been a leader of men in any art
epoch; but he did not invent the fulminating
palette of Monet, and, in reality, he joined the in-
surgents after they had waged their earlier battles.
His ^impressionistic" painting, so called, did not
date until later; before that he had fought for his
own independence, and his method was different
from that of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, C&anne and
the rest. Nevertheless, because of his notoriety —
fame is hardly the word — he may be fairly called
the leader of the school.

As a rule he was not an irascible man, if the
impleasant nature of the attacks upon him is taktxx
into consideration. With the exception of Rich-
ard Wagner and Ibsen, I know of no artist who

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IMPRESSIONISM

was vilified during his lifetime as was Manet. A
gentleman, be was the reverse of the bohemian.
Duret writes of him that he was shocked at the
attempt to make of him a monster. He did not
desire to become chef (Tecohj nor did he set up as
an eccentric. When he gave his special exhibition
his catalogue contained a modest declaration of the
right of the artist to his personal vision. He. did
not pretend to have created a new school, and he
asked the public to judge his work as that of a
sincere painter; but even that mild pronuncia-
mento was received with jeers. The press, with a
few exceptions, was against him, and so were
nearly all the artists of influence. Zola's aggres-
sive articles only made the situation worse. Who
was this Zola but a writer of doubtful taste and
sensational style! The whole crowd of realists,
naturalists, and impressionists — the Batignolles
school was the mocking title given the latter —
were dumped into the conmion vat of infamy and
critical vitriol poured over them.

The main facts of Manet's career may be soon
disposed of. His mother was Eugenie D6sir6e
Foumier; she was the goddaughter of Charles
Bemadotte, King of Sweden. Her father, a pre-
fect at Pau, had rendered services to Bemadotte
which the latter did not forget. When she mar-
ried, in 1 83 1, Auguste Manet, a distinguished judge
of the Seine tribunal, Bemadotte made her many
valuable presents and a dowry. Her three sons
were Edouard, Eugfene, and Gustave. They in-
herited from their rich grandfather, Foumier.

253

PROMENADES

Edouard was bom at Paris, Rue Bonaparte, Janu-
ary 23, 1832. His brother Eugfene became a doc-
tor of medicine and later married one of the most
gifted of women painters, Berthe Morisot, who
died in 1895, after winning the praise of the most
critical pens in all Europe. Edouard was intended
for the bar, but he threw up his studies and swore
he would become a painter. Then he was sent
abroad. He visited South America and other
countries, and kept his eyes wide open, as his sea-
pieces proved. After his mother became a widow
he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft,
Holland. She was one of the early admirers of
Schiunann in Paris and played the A minor piano
concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, with
success. She was an admirer of her husband's
genius, and during all the turmoil of his existence
she was a friend and counsellor.

The young couple lived with the elder Mme.
Manet in the Rue de Saint-P^tersbourg, and their
weekly reception became a rallying centre for not
only les Jeunes, but also for such men as Gam-
betta, Emile Ollivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust,
De Banville, Baudelaire, Duranty — with whom
Manet fought a duel over a trifle — Zola, Mal-
larm^, Abb€ Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic
group. Edouard entertained great devotion for
his mother. She saw two of her sons die, Edouard
in 1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was
an advocate and took Clemenceau's place as mu-
nicipal councillor when the latter was elected Dep-
^ uty.) Mme. Manet died in 1885. The painter was

254

IMPRESSIONISM

stricken with locomotor ataxia, brought on by pro-
tracted toil, in 1881. For nearly three years he
suffered, and after the^amputation of a leg he suc-
ciunbed. His obsequies were almost of national
significance. His widow lived imtil 1906.

Manet et manehU was the motto of the artist.
He lived to paint and he painted much after his
paralytic seizure. He was a brilliant raconteur,
and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known
in Paris as Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth
is, Manet, after being forced with his back to the
wall, became the active combatant in the duel with
press and public. He was unhappy if people on
the boulevard did not turn to look at him. "The
most notorious painter in Paris" was a description
which he finally grew to enjoy. It may not be
denied that he painted several pictures as a direct
challenge to the world, but a painter of offensive
pictures he never was. The execrated Picnic,
proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was
shown in the Salon des Refuses (in company with
works by Bracquemond, Cazin, Fantin-Latour,
Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Legros,
Pissarro, Vollon, Whistler — the mildest-mannered
crew of pirates that ever attempted to scuttle the
bark of art), and a howl arose. What was this
shocking canvas like ? A group of people at a pic-
nic, several nudes among them. In vain it was
pointed out to the modest Parisians (who at the
time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Caba-
nel, G6r6me, Bouguereau, and other delineators of
the chaste) that in the Louvre the Concert of

255

PROMENADES

Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the
mixture of dressed and undressed was appalling,
and Manet became a man marked for vengeance.
Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and
his imconventional manner of putting it on his
canvas had as much to do with the obloquy as his
theme. And then he would paint the life aroimd
him instead of producing pastiches of old masters
or sickly evocations of an unreal past

He finished Olympia the year of his marriage,
and refused to exhibit it; Baudelaire insisted to
the contrary. It was shown at the Salon of 1865
(where Monet exhibited for the first time) and be-
came the scandal of the day. Again the painter
was bombarded with invectives. This awful
nude, to be sure, was no more imclothed than is
Cabanel's Venus, but the latter is pretty and
painted with soap-suds and sentimentality. The
Venus of Titian is not a whit more exposed than
the slim, bony, young woman who has just awak-
ened in time to receive a bouquet at the hands of
her negress, while a black cat looks on this matu-
tinal proceeding as a matter of coiurse. The sil-
houette has the firmness of Holbein; the meagre
girl recalls a Cranach. It is not the greatest of
Manet; one could say, despite the bravura of the
performances, that the painter was indulging in an
ironic joke. It was a paint pot flung in the face
of Paris. Olympia figured at the 1887 exhibition
in the Pavilion Manet. An American (the late
William M. Laffan) tried to buy her. John
Sargent intervened, and a number ot the painter's

256

IMPRESSIONISM

friends, headed by Claude Monet, subscribed a
purse of twenty thousand francs. In 1890 Monet
and Camille Pelletan presented to M. Falliferes,
then Minister of Instruction, the picture for the
Luxembourg, and in 1907 (January 6), thanks to
the prompt action of Clemenceau, one of Manet's
earliest admirers, the hated Olympia was hung in
the Louvre. The admission was a shock, even at
that late day when the din of the battle had passed.
When in 1884 there was held at the 6cole des
Beaux-Arts a memorial exposition of Manet's
works, Edmond About wrote that the place ought
to be fxmiigated, and G^rdme "brandished his
little cane" with indignation. Why all the excite-
ment in official circles ? Only this : Manet was a
great painter, the greatest painter in France during
the latter half of the nineteenth century. Beauti-
ful paint always provokes hatred. Manet won.
Nothing succeeds like the success which follows
death. (Our only fear nowadays is that his imi-
tators won't die. Second-rate Manet is as bad
as second-rate Bouguereau.) If he began by pat-
terning after Hals, Velasquez, and Goya, he ended
quite Edouard Manet; above all, he gave his
generation a new vision. There will be always the
battle of methods. As Mr. MacColl says: " Paint-
ing is continually swaying between the chiaroscuro
reading of the world which gives it depth and the
colour reading which reduces it to flatness. Manet
takes all that the modem inquisition of shadows
will give to strike his compromise near the singing
colours of the Japanese mosaic.''

^57

PROMENADES

What a wit this Parisian painter possessed!
Duret tells of a passage at arms between Manet
and Alfred Stevens at the period when the former's
Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable
reception at the Salon of 1873. This portrait of
the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, his fingers
encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that
the man in the picture "drank the beer of Haar-
lem." The mot nettled Manet, whose admiration
for Frans Hals is unmistakably visible in this mag-
nificent portrait. He waited his chance for re-
venge, and it came when Stevens exhibited a pic-
ture in the Rue Lafitte portraying a young woman
of fashion in street dress standing before a portifere
which she seems about to push aside in order to
enter another room. Manet studied the composi-
tion for a while, and noting a feather duster
elaborately painted which lies on the floor beside
the lady, exclaimed: "Tiens! elle a done im
rendezvous avec le valet de cbambre?'!

258

XII
A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

New biographical details concerning Jean An-
toine Watteau (1684-1721) may never be forth-
coming, though theories of his enigmatic personal-
ity and fascinating art will always find exponents.
Our knowledge of Watteau is confined to a few
authorities: the notes in D'Argenville's Abr^g^ de
la Vie des Plus Fameux Peintres; Catalogue
Raisonn^, by Gersaint; Julienne's introduction to
the Life of Watteau by Coimt de Caylus — dis-
covered by the Goncourts and published in their
brilliant study of eighteenth-century art. Since
then have appeared monographs, Etudes, and arti-
cles by CeUier, Mollet, Hanover, Dohme, Miintz,
S&iilles, Claude Phillips, Charles Blanc, Virgile
Joez, F. Staley, Tdodor de Wyzewa, and Camille
Mauclair. Mauclair is the latest and one of the
most interesting commentators, his principal con-
tribution being De Watteau k Whistler, a chapter
of which has been afterward expanded into a
compact little study entitled Watteau and trans-
lated from the French text by Mme. Simon Bussy,
the wife of that intimate painter of twilight and
poetic reverie, Simon Bussy, to whom the book is
dedicated.

259

PROMENADES

It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained
by Mauclair that interests us more than his suc-
cinct notation of the painter's life. It is not so
novel as it is just and moderate in its application.
The pathologic theory of genius has been over-
worked. In literature nowadays "psychiatrists"
rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahomet was
an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of
epilepsy, said his friends; nevertheless, Ren^
Dumesnil has proved that his sudden decease was
caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neuras-
thenia. Eye strain played hob with the happiness
of Carlyle, and an apostle of sweetness and light
declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate" — Ibsen,
who led the humdrum exterior life of a healthy
bourgeois. Lombroso has demonstrated — to his
own satisfaction — that Dante's m)rstic illumina-
tion was due to some brand of mental disorder.
In fact, this self-styled psychologist mapped anew
the topography of the human spirit. Few have
escaped his fine-tooth-comb criticism except medi-
ocrity. Painters, poets, patriots, musicians, sci-
entists, philosophers, novelists, statesmen, drama-
tists, all who ever participated in the Seven Arts,
were damned as limatics, decadents, criminals, and
fools. It was a convenient inferno in which to
dump the men who succeeded in the field wherein
you were a failure. The height of the paradox '
was achieved when a silly nomenclature was de-
vised to meet every vacillation of the himian
temperament. If you feared to cross the street
you suffered from agoraphobia; if you didn't fear

260

A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

to cross the street, that too was a very bad sign.
If you painted like Monet, paral)rsis of the optical
centre had set in — but why continue ?

It is a pity that this theory of genius has been so
thoroughly discredited, for it is a field which
promises many harvestings; there is mad genius
as there are stupid folk. Besides, normality doesn't
mean the conmionplace. A normal man is a
superior man. The degenerate man is the fellow
of low instincts, rickety health, and a drunkard,
criminal, or idiot. The comical part of the craze

— which was short-lived, yet finds adherents
among the half-baked in culture and the ignorant

— is that it deliberately twisted the truth, making
men of fine brain and high-strung temperament
seem crazy or depraved, when the reverse is usually
the case. Since the advent of Lombroso "brain-
storms" are the possession of the privileged. Nat-
urally your grocer, tailor, or politician may display
many of the above s)rmptoms, but no one studies
them. They are not "geniuses."

All this to assure you that when Camille Mau-
clair assiunes that the malady from which Antoine
Watteau died was also a determining factor in his
art, the French critic is not aping some modem
men of science who denoimce the writings of Dos-
toievsky because he suffered from epileptic fits.
But there is a happy mean in this effort to corre-
late mind and body. If we are what we think or
what we eat — and it is not necessary to subscribe
to such a belief — then the sickness of the body is
reflected in the soul, or vice versa. B)rron was a

261

PROMENADES

healthy man naturally, when he didn't dissipate,
and Byron's poems are full of magnificent energy,
though seldom in the key of optimism. The revolt,
the passion, the scorn, were they all the result of
his health? Or of his liver? Or of his soul?
Goethe, the imperial the m)niad-minded Goethe,
the apostle of culture, the model European man of
the nineteenth century — what of him? Serenity
he is said to have attained, yet from the simmiit of
eighty years he confessed to four weeks of happi-
ness in a long lifetime. Nor was he with all his
superb manhood free from neurotic disorders,
neurotic and erotic. Shelley? Ah! he is a pro-
noimced case for the specialists. Any man who
could eat dry bread, drink water, and write such
angelic poetry must have been quite mad. Ad-
mitted. Would there were more Shelleys. Brown-
ing is a fair specimen of genius and normality; as
his wife illustrated an imstable nervous tempera-
ment allied to genius. George Borrow was a
rover, a difficult man to keep as a friend, happy
only when thinking of the gipsies and quarrelling
when with them. Would Baudelaire's magic
verse and prose soimd its faint, acrid, sinister music
if the French poet had led a sensible life? Cruel
question of the dilettante for whom the world, all
its splendor, all its art, is but a spectacle. It is
needless to continue, the list is too large; too large
and too contradictory. The Variations of Genius
would be as profoimd and as vast a book as Lord
Acton's projected History of Human Thought.
The truth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of

262

A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

humanitir; through some inexplicable transposition
genius bears the burdens of mankind; afflicted by
the burden of the flesh intensified many times, bur-
dened with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a
pitch abnormal, the unhappy man of genius is
stoned because he staggers beneath the load of his
sensitive temperam^it or wavors from the straight
and narrow path usually blocked l^ bores too thick-
headed and too obese to realise the flower-fringed
abysses on either side of the road. And having
sent genius in general amcmg the goats, let us turn
to consumptive genius in particular.

Watteau was a consimiptive; he died of the
disease; A consumptive genius! It is a hard
saying. People of average health whose pulse-
hesit is normal in tempo luckily never realise the
febrile velocity with which flows the blood in the
veins of a siick man of genius. But there is a
paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the
case of Chopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Steven-
son. The painter of Valenciennes gave little sign
of his malady on his joyous l}rrica} canvases.
Keats sang of faSry landscapes and Chopin's was
a virile spirit; the most cheerful writer under the
Sim was Stevenson, who even in his Pulvis et
Umbra conjured up images of hope after a most
pitiless arraignment of the imiverse and man.
And here is the paradox. This quartet of genius
suffered from and were slafai by consumption.
(Stevenson died directly of brain congestion; he
was, however, a victim to lung trouble.) That the
poets turn their sorrow into song is an axioms

263

PROMENADES

Yet these men met death, or what is worse, met
life, with defiance or impassible fronts. And the
world which loves the lilting rhythms of Chopin's
mazourkas seldom cares to peep behind the screen
of notes for the anguish ambushed there. Watteau
has painted the gayest scenes of pastoral elegance
in a land out of time, a No-Man's Land of blue
skies, beautiful women, gallant men, and lovely
landscapes, while his life was haimted by thoughts
of death.

The riddle is solved by Mauclair : These flights
into the azure, these evocations of a coimtry west
of the sun and east of the moon, these graceful
creatures of Watteau, the rich brocade of Chopin's
harmonies, the exquisite pictxu^es of Keats, the
youthful joy in far-away coimtries of Stevenson,
all, all are so many stigmata of their terrible
aflSiction. They sought by the magic of their art
to create a realm of enchantment, a realm wherein
their ailing bodies and wounded spirits might find
peace and solace. This is the secret of Watteau,,
says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the
eighteenth century, not even to his followers.
Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagan
gaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the
veiled melancholy of Watteau. As we see Chopin,
a slender man, morbid, sickly, strike the martial
chord in an unparalleled manner, Chopin the
timid, the composer of the Heroic Polonaise, so
Watteau, morbid, sickly, timid, slender, composes
that masterpiece of delicate and decorative joyous-
ness, The Embarkment for Cythera, which hangs

264

A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

in the Louvre (a gorgeous sketch, the final version,
is at Potsdam in the collection of the German
Emperor). In these works we find the aura of
consumption.

None of Watteau's contemporaries fathomed
the meaning of his art: not Count de Caylus, not
his successors, who all recognised the masterly
draughtsman, the marvellous colourist, the com-
poser of pastoral ballets, of matchless fetes galantes,
of conversations, of miniatures depicting camp life,
and fanciful decorations in the true style of his
times. But the melancholy poet that was in the
man, his lyric pessimism, and his unassuaged thirst
for the infinite — these things they did not see.
Caylus, who has left the only data of value, speaks
of Watteau's hatred of life, his aversion at times
from the human face, his restlessness that caused
him to seek new abodes — Chopin was always
dissatisfied with his lodgings and always changing
them. The painter made friends in plenty, only
to break with them because of some fancied slight.
Chopin was of umbrageous nature, Liszt tells us.
Watteau never married and never, as far as is
known, had a love affair. He is an inspired painter
of women. (Perhaps, because of his celibacy.)
He loved to depict them in delicious poses, imder
waving trees in romantic parks or in the nude. A
gallant artist, he was not a gallant man. He had
the genius of friendship but not the talent for in-
suring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he
suffered from the nostalgia of the open road. He
disappeared frequently. His whereabouts was a

265

PROMENADES

mystery to his friends. He did not care for money
or for honours. He was elected without volition
on his part as a member of the Academy. Yet he
did not use this powerful lever to further his wel-
fare. Silent, a man of continent speech, he never
convinced his friends that his art was chaste; yet
he never painted an inddicate stroke. His per-
sonages, sdl disillusionised, vaguely suffer, make
love without desire — disillusioned souls all.
L'Indiff&ent, that young man in the Louvre
who treads the earth with such light disdain,
with such an airy expression of sweetness and
ennui, that picture, Mauclair remarks, is the soul
of Watteau. And, perhaps, spills his secret.

Mauclair does not like the coupling of Watteau's
name with those of Boucher, Pater, Lancret, De
Troy, Coypel, or Vanloo. They imitated him as
to externals; the spirit of him they could not en-
snare. If Watteau stemmed artistically from Ru-
bens, from Ruysdael, from Titian (or Tiepolo, as
Kenyon Cox acutely hints) he is the father of a
great school, the true French school, though his
stock is Flemish. Turner knew him; so did
Bonington. Delacroix understood him. So did
Chardin, himself a solitary in his century. With-
out Watteau's initiative Monticelli might not be
the Monticelli we know, while Claude Monet,
Manet, Renoir are the genuine flowering of his
experiments in the division of tones and the com-
position of liuninous skies.

Mauclair smiles at Caylus for speaking of
Watteau's mannerisms, the mannerisms that pro-

266

A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

claim his originality. Only your academic, colour-
less painter lacks personal style and always paints
like somebody he is not. Watteau's art is pecu-
liarly personal. Its peculiarity — apart from its
brilliancy and vivacity — is, as Mauclair remarks,
"the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid ex-
pression." Morbidezza is the precise phrase; mor-
bidezza may be found in Chopin's art, in the very
feverish moments when he seems brimming over
with high spirits. Watteau was not a consump-
tive of the Pole's type. He did not alternate be-
tween ecstasy and languor. He was cold, self-
contained, suspicious, and inveterately hid the
state of his health. He might have been cured,
but he never reached Italy, and that far-ofif dream
and his longing to realise it may have been the
basis of his last manner — those excursions into a
gorgeous dreamland. He yearned for an impossi-
ble region. His visions on canvas are the shadowy
sketches of this secret desire that burned him up.
It may have been constunption — and Mauclair
makes out a strong case — and it may have been
the expression of a rare poetic temperament.
Watteau was a poet of excessive sensibility as
well as the contriver of dainty masques and ballets.
In literature one man at least has understood
him, Walter Pater. Readers of his Imaginary
Portraits need not be reminded of A Prince of
Court Painters, that imaginative reconstruction of
an almost obscure personality. "His words as
he spoke of them [the paintings of Rubens] seemed
full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving

267

PROMENADES

glory within it." This was the Watteau who is
summed by Pater (a distant kinsman, perhaps, of
the Pater Watteau tutored) as a man who had
been "a sick man all his life. He was always a
seeker after something in the world, that is there
in no satisfying measure, or not at all." Camille
'" Mauclair eloquently ends his study with the con-
fession that the mere utterance of Watteau's name
"suffices to evoke in men's minds a memory of
the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments
of azure and rose. Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose
smile is akin to tears!"

268

XIII

GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-

LAUTREC

GAUGUIN

The key-note to the character of Paul Gauguin,
painter and sculptor, may be found in his dec-
laration that in art there are only revolutionists
or plagiarists. A brave speech. And a proud
man who uttered it; for imless he wished to avoid
its implications he must needs prove his sincerity.
In the short, adventurous, crowded life vouch-
safed him, Paul Gauguin proved himself indeed a
revolutionary painter. His maxim was the result
of hard-won experiences. He was bom at Paris
Jime 7, 1848 — a stormy year for France; he
died at Dominique May 9, 1904. His father
was a native of Brittany, while on his mother's
side he was Peruvian. This mixed blood may
accoimt for his wandering proclivities and his
love for exotic colouring and manners. To fur-
ther accentuate the rebellious instincts of the
youth his maternal grandmother was that Flora
Tristan, friend of the anarchistic thinker Proud-
hon. She was a socialist later and a prime mover

269

PROMENADES

in the Workman's Union; she allied herself with
P^re Enfantin and helped him to found his re-
ligion, " Mapa," of which he was the god, Ma,
and she the goddess, Pa. Enfantin's career and
end may be recalled by students of St. Simon
and the socialistic movements of those times.
Paul's father, Qovis Gauguin, wrote in 1848 the
political chronicle on the National^ but previous
to the coup d^ekU he left for Lima, there to found
a journal. He died of an aneurism in the Straits
of Magellan, a malady that was to carry off his
son. After four years in Lima the younger Gau-
guin returned to France. In 1856 s^ Peruvian
grand-uncle died at the extraordinary age of one
hundred and thirteen. His name was Don Pio
de Tristan, and he was reported very rich. But
Paul got none of this wealth, and at fourteen he was
a cabin-boy, feeble of health but extremely curious
about life. He saw much of l^ife and strange lands
in the years that followed, and he developed into
a powerfully built yoimg sailor and no doubt stored
his brain with sumptuous images of tropical
scenery whidi reappeared in his canvases. He
traversed the globe several times* He married
and took a portion m a bank. On Simdays he
painted. His hand had itched for years to repro-
duce the landscapes he had seen. He made
friends with Degas, Cdzanne, Pissarro, Renoir,
Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He called him-
self an amateur and a ''Sunday painter," but as
he was received on terms of equality with these
famous artists it may be presumed that, auto-

270

GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

cUdact as he was, his versatile talent — for it lit-
erally was versatile — did not escape their scru-
tiny. He submitted himself to various influences;
he Imitated the Lnpressionists, became a Neo-
Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went
sketching with C&anne and Van Gogh, that im-
fortunate Dutchman, and finally annoimced to his
friends and family that '^henceforward I shall
paint every day." He gave up his bank, and
Charles Morice has said that his life became one
of misery, solitude, and herculean labours.

He painted in Brittany, Provence, at Mar-
tinique, in the Marquesas and Tahiti. He had
parted with the Impressionists and sought for a
new asthetik of art; to achieve this he broke away
not only from tradition, even the tradition of the
Impressionists, but from Europe and its civilisa-
tion. To this half-savage temperament devoured
by the nostalgia of the tropics the pictures of his
contemporaries bore the fatal stamp of the obvious,
of the thrice done and used up. France, Holland,
Spain, Italy — what comer was there left in these
countries that had not been painted thousands of
times and by great masters! The South Seas,
bapan, China — anywhere away from the con-
ventional studio landscape, studio models, poses,
grimaces! At Pont-Aven in 1888, between trips
made to Martinique and Provence, Gauguin had
attained mastery of himself; Cezanne had taught
him simplicity; Degas, his avowed admirer, had
shown him the potency of the line; Renoir's
warm colouring had spurred him to a still richer

271

PROMENADES

palette; and Manet had given him sound advice.
A copy of the 01)rmpe, by Gauguin, finished about
this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with
Degas he was closer than the others. A natural-
bom writer, his criticisms of the modem French
school are pregnant with wit and just observation.
What was nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven
was the outcome of Gauguin's imperious person-
ality. A decorative impulse, a largeness of style,
and a belief that everything in daily life should be
beautiful and characteristic sent the painters to
modelling, to ceramics and decoration. Armand
Seguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Filiger,
Serusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Chamaillard, Ver-
kade, O'Conor, Durio, Maufra, Ranson, Mayol,
Roy, and others are to-day happy to call themselves
associates of Paul Gauguin in this little movement
in which the idolatry of the line and the harmonies
of the arabesque were pursued with joyous fanati-
cism.

Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his inter-
course with Vincent Van Gogh, who went mad
and killed himself, not, however, before attempting
the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van
Gogh that he "left to the world some violent and
strange works, in which Impressionism appears to
have reached the limit of its audacity. Their
value lies in their naive frankness and in the un-
dauntable determination which tried to fix without
trickery the sincerest feelings. Amid many faulty
and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left some
really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went

272

GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

to Tahiti his Breton peasants were almost as
monstrous as his later Polynesian types. His
representations of trees also seem monstrous. His
endeavour was to get beyond the other side of
good and evil in art and create a new synthesis, and
thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless
reign oft in his work — the ugly and formless ac-
cording to the old order of envisaging the world.
In 1891 and 1892, at Tahiti, Gauguin painted
many pictures — masterpieces his friends and dis-
ciples call them — which were later shown at an
exhibition held in the Durand-Ruel Galleries.
Paris shuddered or went into ecstasy over these
blazing transcriptions of the tropics; over these
massive men and women, nude savages who stared
with such sinister magnetism from the frames.
The violent deformations, the intensity of vision,
the explosive hues — a novel gamut of rich tones
— and the strangeness of the subject-matter caused
a nine days' gossip; yet the exhibition was not a
great success. Gauguin was too new, too startling,
too original for his generation; he is yet for the
majority, though he may be the Paint God of the
twentieth century. Cut to the heart by his failure
to make a dazzling reputation, also make a little
money — for he was always a poor man — he left
Paris forever in 1895. He was sick and his life
among the Marquisians did not improve his
health. He took the part of the natives against
the whites and was denounced as a moral cast-
away. In 1904 he wrote Charles Morice: "I am
a savage." But a savage of talent. In reality

273

PROMENADES

he was a cultivated man, an attractive man, and a
billiard player and a fencer. Paint was his pas-
sion. If you live by the pen you may perish by the
pen« The same is too often the case with the
palette and brush hero.

Though Paul Gauguin failed in his search for a
synthesis of the ugly and the beautiful, he was
nevertheless a bold initiator, one who shipwrecked
himself in his efforts to fully express his art. With
all his realism he was a symbolist, a master of deco-
ration. A not too sympathetic conmientator has
written of him: "Paul Gauguin's robust talent
found its first motives in Breton landscapes, in
which the method of coloiu: spots may be found
employed with delicacy and placed at the service
of a rather heavy but very interesting harmony.
Then the artist spent a long time in Tahiti^
whence he returned with a completely trans-
formed manner. He brought back from those
regions some landscapes treated in intentionally
clumsy and almost wild fashion. The figures are
outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat
tints on canvas that has the textiure of tapestry.
Many of these works are made repulsive by their
aspect of multicoloiured, crude, and barbarous
imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the
fundamental qualities, the lovely values, the orna-
mental taste, and the impression of primitive
animalism. On the whole, Paul Gauguin has a
beautiful, artistic temperament which, in its aver-
sion to virtuosity, has perhaps not sufficiently
understood that the fear of formulas, if exagger-

274

GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

ated, may lead to other formulas, to a false igno-
rance which is as dangerous as false knowledge."
All of which is true; yet Paul Gauguin was a
painter who had something new to say, and he
said it in a very personal fashion.

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

I once attended at Paris an exhibition devoted
to the work of the late Goimt Toulouse-Lautrec.
There the perverse genius of an unhappy man
who owes allegiance to no one but Degas and the
Japanese was seen at its best. His astonishing
qualities of invention, draughtsmanship, and a
diabolic ingenuity in soimding the sinister music
of decayed souls have never been before assem-
bled imder one roof. Power there is and a
saturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Tou-
louse-Lautrec had not the impersonal vision of
Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony of
Degas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night
birds that he pencilled and painted in old Mont-
martre before the foreign invasion destroyed its
native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a re-
sort for easily bamboozled English and Americans,
the earlier Montmartre was a rich mine for painter-
explorers. Raffaelli went there and so did Renoir;
but the former was impartially impressionistic;
the latter, ever ravished by a stray shaft of sunshine
flecking the faces of the dancers, set it all down in

PROMENADES

charming tints. Not so Toulouse-Lautrec. Com-
bined with a chronic pessimism, he exhibited a
divination of character that, if he had lived and
worked hard, might have placed him not far below
Degas. He is savant. He has a line that pro-
claims the master. And unlike Aubrey Beardsley,
his aflinity to the Japanese never seduced him into
the exercise of the decorative abnormal which
sometimes distinguished the efforts of the English-
man. We see the Moulin Rouge with its hosts of
deadly parasites, La Goulue and her vile retainers.
The brutality here is one of contempt, as a blow
struck full in the face. Vice has never before been
so harshly arraigned. This art makes of Hogarth
a pleasing preacher, so drastic is it, so deliberately
searching in its insults. And never the faintest
exaggeration or burlesque. These brigands and
cut-throats, pimps and pickpurses are set before us
without bravado, without the genteel glaze of the
timid painter, without an attempt to call a prosti-
tute a cocoUe. Indeed, persons are called by their
true names in these hasty sketches of Lautrec's,
and so clearly sounded are the names that some-
times you are compelled to close your ears and
eyes. His models, with their cavernous glance,
their emaciated figures, and vicious expression, are
a commentary on atelier life in those days and
regions. Toulouse-Lautrec is like a page from
Ecclesiastes.

276

XIV
LITERATURE AND ART

CONCERNING CRITICS

The annual rotation of the earth brings to us
at least once during its period the threadbare,
thricewom, stale, flat, and academic discussion of
critic and artist. We believe comparisons of crea-
tor and critic are unprofitable, being for the most
part a confounding of intellectual substances. The
painter paints, the composer makes music, the
sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the
industrious crow the critic hops after these sowers
of beauty, content to peck up in the furrows the
chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least,
is the popular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli,
asked: "After all, what are the critics? Men
who have failed in literature and art." And Mas-
cagni, notwithstanding the laurels he wore after
his first success, cried aloud in agony that a critic
was composUore mancaio. These be pleasing
quotations for them whose early opus has failed
to score. The trouble is that every one is a critic,
your gallery-god as well as the most stately prac-
titioner of the art severe. Balzac was an excellent

277

PROMENADES

critic when he saluted Stendhal's Chartreuse de
Parme as a masterpiece; as was Emerson when
he wrote to Walt Whitman. What the mid-
century critics of the United States, what Sainte-
Beuve, master critic of France, did not see, Balzac
and Emerson saw and, better still, spoke out. In
his light-hearted fashion Oscar Wilde asserted that
the critic was also a creator — apart from his
literary worth — and we confess that we know of
cases where the critic has created the artist. But
that a serious doubt can be entertained as to the
relative value of creator and critic is hardly worth
denying.

Consider the painters. Time and time again
you read or hear the indignant denimciation of
some artist whose canvas has been ripped-up in
print. If the offender happens to be a man who
doesn't paint, then he is called an ignoramus; if
he paints or etches, or even sketches in crayon, he
is well within the Balzac definition — poor, miser-
able imbecile, he is only jealous of work that he
could never have achieved. As for literary critics,
it may be set down once and for all that they are
"suspect." They write; ergo, they must be im-
just. The dilemma has branching horns. Is
there no midway spot, no safety ground for that
weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape
being gored? Naturally any expression of per-
sonal feeling on his part is set down to mental
arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move
over the face of the waters, but he must remain
unseen. We have always thought that the en-

278

LITERATURE AND ART

thusili&tic Dublin man in the th^tre gallery was
after a critic when he cried aloud at tht sight of a
toppling companion: "Don't waste him. Kill a
fiddler with him!" It seeins more in consonance
with the Celtic character; besides, the Irish are
music-lovers.

If one cbuld draw up the list of critical and crea-
tive men in art the scale would not tip evenly. The
number of painters who have written of their art
is not large, though what they have said is always
pregnant. Critics outnumber them — though the
battle IS really a matter of quality, not quantity.
There is Da Vind. For his complete writings
some of us would sacrifice miles of gawky
pale and florid mediaeval paintings. What we
have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom is
prophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip
Vasari, a very biassed critic and not too nice to his
contemporaries. He need not indulge in what is
called the wo^d argument; we shaVt go back to
the early Britons for our authorities. Let us come
to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose Discourses are in-
valuable — and also to be taken well salted; he
was encrusted with fine old English prejudices.
One of his magnificent sayings and one appreciated
by the entire artistic tribe was his ejaculation:
"Damii paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish
that Velasquez had. What William Blake said
of great artists threw much light on William Blake.
Ingres uttered things, principally in a rage,
about hi^ contemporaries. Delacroix was a think-
er. He literally antidpated Chevf eul'S discoveries

279

PROMENADES

in the law of simultaneous contrasts of colour.
Furthermore, he wrote profoundly of his art. He
appreciated Chopin before many critics and musi-
cians — which would have been an impossible
thing for Ingres, though he played the violin —
and he was kind to the younger men.

Need we say that Degas is a great wit, though
not a writer; a wit and a critic? Rousseau, the
landscapist, made notes, and Corot is often quoted.
If Millet had never written another sentence but
"There is no isolated truth," he would still have
been a critic. Constable with his " A good thing
is never done twice"; and Alfred Stevens's defi-
nition of art, "Nature seen through the prism of
an emotion," forestalled Zola's pompous pro-
nouncement in The Experimental Novel. To
jump over the stile to literature, Wordsworth wrote
critical prefaces, and Shelley, too; Poe was a
critic; and what of Coleridge, who called painting
"a middle quality between a thought and a thing
— the imion of that which is nature with that
which is exclusively human"? There are plenty
of examples on the side of the angels. Whistler!
What a critic, wielding a finely chased rapier!
Thomas Coutiure wrote and discoursed much of
his art. Sick man as he was, I heard him talk of
art at his country home, Villiers-le-Bel, on the
Northern Railway, near Paris. This was in 1878.
William M. Hunt's talks on art were fruitful. So
are John Lafarge's. The discreet Gigoux of Bal-
zac notoriety has an entertaining book to his
credit; while Rodin is often coaxed into utterances

280

LITERATURE AND ART

about his and other men's work. There are many
French, English, and American artists who write
and paint with equal facility. In New York,
Kenyon'Cox is an instance. But the chiefest
among all the painters alive and dead, one who
shines and will continue to shine when his can-
vases are faded — and they are fading — is Eugfene
Fromentin, whose Maltres d'autrefois is a classic
of criticism. Since his day two critics, who are
also painters, have essayed both crafts, George
Clausen and D. S. MacColl.

Professor Clausen is a temperate critic, MacColl
a brilliant, revolutionary one. The critical temper
in either man is not dogmatic. Seurat, the French
Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; in-
deed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint
well and write with style as well as substance is
amazing. Rossetti would no longer be a rare bird
in these days of piping painters, musicians who are
poets, and sculptors who are painters. The un-
fortimate critic occasionally writes a play or an
opera (particularly in Paris), but as a rule he is con-
tent to echo that old German who desperately ex-
claimed: '^ Even if I am nothing else, I am at least
a contemporary."

Let us now swing around the obverse side of the
medal. A good showing. You may begin with
Wincklemann or Goethe — we refer entirely to
critics of paint and painters — or run down the
line to Diderot, Blanc, Gautier, Baudelaire, Zola,
Goncourt, who introduced to Europe Japanese
art; Roger Marx, GeoflFroy, Huysmans, Camille

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PROMENADES

Mauclair, Charles Morice, and Octave Mirbeau.
Zola was not a painter, but he praised Edouard
Manet. These are a few names hastily selected. In
England, Ruskin too long ruled the critical roast;
full of thunder-words like Isaiah, his vaticinations
led a generation astray. He was a prophet, not
a critic, and he was a victim to his own abhorred
"pathetic fallacy." Henley was right in declaring
that imtil R. A. M. Stevenson appeared there was
no great art criticism in England or English. The
" Velasquez " is a marking stone in critical litera-
ture. It is the one big book by a big temperament
that may be opposed page by page to Fromentin's
critical masterpiece. Shall we further adduce the
names of Morelli, Sturge Moore, Roger Fry, Per-
kins, Cortissoz, Lionel Cust, Colvin, Ricci, Van
Dyke, Mather, Berenson, Brownell, and George
Moore — who said of Ruskin that his imcritical
blindness regarding Whistler will constitute his
passport to fame, "the lot of critics is to be re-
membered by what they have failed to under-
stand. " Walter Pater wrote criticism that is beau-
tiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is
in good company, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of
critics, missed Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and to
Victor Hugo was imfair. Yet, consider the Osrics
embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style.
He, like many another critic, was superior to his
subject. And that is always fatal to the water-flies.
George HI once asked in wonderment how the
apples get inside the dumplings. How can a
critic criticise a creator ? The man who looks on

2S2

LITERATURE AND ART

writing things about the man who does things.
But he criticises and artists owe him much.
Neither in "ink-horn terms'* nor in an "upstart
Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions.
He must be an artist in temperament and he
must have a credo. He need not be a painter to
write of painting, for his primary appeal is to
the public. He is the middle-man, the interpre-
ter, the vulgariser. The psycho-physiological
processes need not concern us. One thing is cer-
tain — a man writing in terms of literature about
painting, an art in two dimensions, cannot inter-
pret fully the meanings of the canvas, nor can
he be sure that his opinion, such as it is, when
it reaches the reader, will truthfully exiH-ess either
painter or critic. Such are the limitations of one
art when it comes to deal with the ideas or ma^
terial of another. Criticism b at two removes
bom its theme. Therefore criticism is a make-
shift. Therefore, let critics be modest and allow
criticism to become an amiable art.

But where now is the painter critic and the yso-
fessional critic? "Stands Ulster where it did?"
Yes, the written and rq)orted words of artists are
precious alike to layman and critic. That tbej
prefer painting to writing is only natural; so would
the critic if he had the pictorial gift. However, as
art is art and not nature, criticism is criticism and
not art. It professes to interpret the artist's work,
and at best it mirrors his art mingled with die per-
sonal temperament of the critic. At the worst the
critic lacks temperament (artistic trainii^ ts^ of

283

PROMENADES

course, an understood requisite), and when this is
the case, God help the artist! As the greater in-
cludes the lesser, the artist should permit the critic
to enter, with all due reverence, his sacred domain.
Without vanity the one, sympathetic the other.
Then the ideal collaboration ensues. Sainte-
Beuve says that " criticism by itself can do nothing.
The best of it can act only in concert with public
feeling ... we never find more than half the
article in print — the other half was written only
in the reader's mind." And Professor Walter
Raleigh would further limit the "gentle art."
"Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, nor to
classify, but to raise the dead." The relations
between the critic and his public open another
vista of the everlasting discussion. Let it be a
negligible one now. That painters can get along
without professional criticism we know from his-
tory, but that they will themselves play the critic
is doubtful. And are they any fairer to young
talent than official critics ? It is an inquiry fraught
with significance. Great and small artists have
sent forth into the world their pupils. Have they
always — as befits honest critics — recognised the
pupils of other men, pupils and men both at the
opposite pole of their own theories ? Recall what
Velasquez is reported to have said to Salvator
Rosa, according to Boschini and Carl Justi.
Salvator had asked the incomparable Spaniard
whether he did not think Raphael the best of all
the .painters he had seen in Italy. Velasquez
answered: "Raphael, to be plain with you, for

284

LITERATURE AND ART

I like to be candid and outspoken, does not please
me at all." This, purely temperamental judg-
ment does not make of Velasquez either a good or
a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that
even a master cannot always render justice to an-
other. Difference engenders hatred, as Stendhal
would say.

Can the record of criticism made by plastic ar-
tists show a generous Robert Schumann? Schu-
mann discovered many composers from Chopin
to Brahms and made their fortunes by his enthu-
siastic writing about them. In Wagner he met his
Waterloo, but every critic has his limitations.
There is no Schumann, let the fact be emphasised,
among the painter-critics, though quite as much
discrimination, ardour of discovery, and acumen
may be found among the writings of the men whose
names rank high in professional criticism. And
this hedge, we humbly submit, is a rather stiflF one
to vault for the adherents of criticism written by
artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his hum-
ble career must the critic pen his apologia pro
vita sua.

II
ART IN FICTION

Fiction about art and artists is rare — that is,
good fiction, not the stuff ground out daily by the
publishing mills for the gallery-gods. It is to
France that we must look for the classic novel
dealing with painters and their painting, Manette

285

PROMENADES

Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James has written
several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The
Real Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artiste
appear. But it is the particular psychological
problem involved rather than theories of art or
personalities that steer Mr. Jama's cunning pen.
We all remember the woman who destroyed a por-
trait of her husband which seemed to reveal his
moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited
with being the psychologist of the brush in thi^
story. There is a nice, fresh young fellow in Th^
Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined a,s he is, prefers
at the last his painting to Julia Dallow and a polit-
ical career. In The Real Thing we recognise one
of those unerring strokes that prove James to be
the master psychologist among English writers.
Any discerning painter realises the value of a
model who can take the pose that will give him
the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the po$e,
not an attempt at crude naturalism. With this
thesis the novelist has built up an amusixig, semi^
pathetic, and striking faW^.

There are painters scattered through English
fiction — can we ever forget Thackeray! Ouida
has not missed weaving her Tynan purples into
the exalted pattern of her roniantic painters. And
George Eliot. And Disraeli. And Bernard Shaw
— there is a painting creature in Love Among the
Artists. Qeorge Moore, however, has devoted
more of his pages to paint and painters than any
other of the latter-day writers. The reason is
this: Qeorge Moore went to Paris to study mrt

286

LITERATURE AND ART

And h^ drifted into the Julian atelier like any other
likely young fellow with hazy notions about art and
a well-filled purse. But these early experiences
were not lost. They cropped up in many of his
stories and studies. He became the critical pio-
neer of the impressionistic movement and first told
London about Manet, Monet, Degas. He even —
in an article remarkable for critical acumen —
declared that if Jimmy Whistler had been a
heavier man, a man of beef, brawn, and beer, like
Rubens, he would have been as great a painter as
Velasquez. To the weighing scales, fellow-artists !
retorted Whistler; yet the bolt did not miss the
mark. Whistler's remarks about Mr. Moore, es-
pecially after the Eden lawsuit, were, so it is
reported, not fit to print

III Mr. Moore's first volume of the half-forgotten
trilogy, Spring Days, we see a young painter who,
it iP9y be 3aid, thinks more of petticoats than paint.
There is paint talk in Mike Fletcher, Moore's
mo^t virile book. In A Modem Lover the hero
i$ an artist who succeeds in the fashionable world
by Jointing pretty, artificial portraits and faded
cla3^cal allegories, thereby winning the love of
women, much wealth, popular applause, and the
stamp of oflScial approbation. This Lewis Sey-
mour still livQs and paints modish London in rose-
colQur, Moore's irony would have entered the
soul of a hundred "celebrated" artists if th^ had
had any SP^1 to flesh it in. When he wrote this
novel, one that shocked Mrs. Gnmdy, Mo^;^ was
under the influence of Paris. However, that mas-

287

PROMENADES

terpiece of description and analysis, Mildred Law-
son in Celibates — very Balzacian title, by the
way — deals with hardly an)rthing else but art.
Mildred, who is an English girl without soul,
heart, or talent, studies in the Julian atelier and
goes to Fontainebleau during the summer. No
one, naturally, will ever describe Fontainebleau
better than Flaubert, in whose L'Education Senti-
mentale there are marvellous pictures; also a semi-
burlesque painter, Pellerin, who reads all the
works on aesthetics before he draws a line, and
not forgetting that imperishable portrait of Jacques
Amoux, art dealer. Goncourt, too, has excelled
in his impression of the forest and its painters,
Millet in particular. Nevertheless, let us say in
passing that you cannot find Mildred Lawson in
Flaubert or Goncourt; no, not even in Balzac,
whose work is the matrix of modem fiction. She
is her own perverse, cruel Mooresque self, and she
lives in New York as well as London.

In both Daudet and Maupassant — Strong as
Death is the latter's contribution to painter-psy-
chology — there are stories clustered about the
guild. Daudet has described a Salon on varnish-
ing day with his accustomed facile, febrile skill;
you feel that it comes from Goncourt and Zola.
It is not within our scope to go back as far as
Balzac, whose Frenhofer in The Unknown Mas-
terpiece has been a model for the younger man.
Foe, Hawthorne, Wilde, and Robert Louis Steven-
son have dealt with the theme pictorial. Zola's
The Masterpiece (L'CEuvre) is one of the better

288

LITERATURE AND ART

written books of Zola. It was a favourite of his.
The much-read and belauded fifth chapter is a
faithful transcription of the first Salon of the
Rejected Painters (Salon des Refusfe) at Paris,
1863. Napoleon III, after pressure had been
brought to bear upon him, consented to a special
salon within the official Salon, at the Palais de
Plndustrie, which would harbour the work of the
young lunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys,
green water, red grass, and black sunsets. (Lie
down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag your
carmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It
is an enormously clever book, this, deriving in the
main as it does from Manette Salomon and Bal-
zac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic .veracity
by Claude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in
Manet's lifetime. The Breakfast on the Grass,
described by Zola, was actually the title and the
subject of a Manet picture that scandalised Paris
about this epoch. The fantastic idea of a nude
female stretched on the grass, while the other
figures were clothed and in their right minds, was
too much for public and critic, and unquestionably
Manet did paint the affair to create notoriety.
Like Richard Wagner, he knew the value of ad-
vertising.

All the then novel theories of plein air impres-
sionism are discussed in the Zola novel, yet the
work seems clumsy after Goncourt's Manette
Salomon, that breviary for painters which so far
back as 1867 anticipated — in print, of course —
the discoveries, the experiments, the practice of

289

PROMENADES

the naturalistic-impressionistic groups from Cour-
bet to Cezanne, Monet to Maufra, Manet to Paul
Gauguin. There are verbal pictures ot student
life, of salons, of atelier and open air. No such
psychdogic naanual of the painter's art has ever
appeared before or since Manette Salomon. It
was the Goncourts who introduced Japanese art to
European literature — they were friends of the late
M. Bing, a pioneer collector in Paris. And they
foresaw the f utiue of painting as well as of fiction.

290

MUSEUM PROMENADES

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries
of the Mauritshuis, lent by Prof. A. Bredius, direc-
tor of the Royal Picture Gallery at The Hague.
Neither is an "important" picture in the profes-
sional sense of that word, but they are Rem-
brandts — at least one is indubitable — and that
suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small
canvas depicting Andromeda manacled to the
rocks. Her figure is draped to the waist; it is a
solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's
wife (in an etching by Rembrandt), and no de-
liverer is in sight. The flesh tones are rather cold,
a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt white.
The picture as a whole is sketchy and without
charm or mystery. Nevertheless, the lion's paws
are there. The other shows us a woman reading
at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-
life accessories are richly and minutely painted.
Not a likely Rembrandt, either in theme or nota-
bly so in treatment. We must bow, however, to
the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the
ascription. These two works are not as yet in the
catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to this gallery

291

PROMENADES

is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum.
To visitors they oflfer an abridged one, dated 1904.
There are since then many new pictures, notably
a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, and an
excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of
Dr. Bredius.

Otherwise this little collection is as choice and
as entertaining as ever. The usual tourist makes
at once for the overrated Young Bull by Paul Pot-
ter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix
across the room, the Dead Swan, with its velvety
tones. The head of a young girl by Vermeer, with
its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is
charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh
as the day it was painted. The long facade of the
houses and warehouses and the churches and
towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity
of colour, a solidity in drawing, and an absence of
too marked literalism which prove that this gifted
artist had more than one style. The envelope
is rich; there is air, though it be stagnant.
Down-stairs is an allegorical subject, The New
Testament, which is not very convincing as a com-
position, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her
Companions must have inspired Diaz and many
other painters. But the real Vermeer, the Ver-
meer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive
lighting, is at Amsterdam.

No place is better than The Hague for the study
of the earlier Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical
Lecture is, after the Potter bull, the most gazed-at
canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good

292

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

condition. There are evidences of over-vamishing
and cobbling; nor is it a very inspiring canvas.
The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in characterisa-
tion, and there is one other head, that of a man
with inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head
strained forward (his name is given in the critical
works on Rembrandt), which arrests the attention.
An early composition, we are far from the perfec-
tion of The S)nidics. The self-portrait of the
painter (1629) is a favourite, though the much-
vaimted feather in the head-gear is stiflF; perhaps
feathers in Holland were stiflF in those days. But
the painters flock to this portrait and never tire
of copying its noble silhouette. The two little
studies of the painter's father and mother are
characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr.
Bredius. Rembrandt's brother (study of an old
man's head) shows a large old chap with a nose
of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone
and without charm. The Susanna Bathing is
famous, but it is not as attractive as Simeon in the
Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the
gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the
cockles of the imagination. What bulk! What a
wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big
Saul listening to the pla)ring of David is still
mystifying. Is Saul smiling or crying behind
the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in his
neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a
whizzing lance? His sunken cheeks, vague yet
sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its irides-
cence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten.

293

PROMENADES

David is not so striking. From afar the large
canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is miraculous.

The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight
Into Egypt, the small, laughing man, the negroes,
and the study of an old woman, the latter wearing
a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the stu-
dent. The sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede
de Groot, the art expert.

There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in
Holland out of the five hundred and fifty he
painted. Of this niunber eighteen are in the
Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous
formerly of her masters. Nowadays sentiment has
changed and there is a gratif3ring outcry whenever
a stranger secures a genuine old master. As lot
the copies, they, like the poor, are alwajrs with us.
America is flooded every year with forged pictures,
especially of the minor Dutch masters, and excel-
lent are these imitations, it must be confessed.

There are only four specimens of Frans Hals
here; portraits of Jacob Pieterez, Aletta Hane-
mans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of
a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style.
The lace collar is genuine Hals.

Let us close our catalogue and wander about the
galleries. German and English are the tongues
one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally.
The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at
by hundreds. As a picture painted by a very
young man it is noteworthy. The head of the
beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remain-
der of this insignificant composition with its toad

294

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

and cows, its meaningless landscape ? The Weenix
swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins are
— two anyhow — of splendid quality. Of the
Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Ant-
werp is reached. They are of imequal value.
The same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look
at that baby girl standing by a chair. A Govert
Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are ex-
cellent fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the
Huysums, Hondecoeters, and Weenixes. There is
a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is
as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small
Memlic, or Memling, and, naturally, the Metsus,
Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin and
Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in
colour. It hangs near the solitary Velasquez of
the museum, a portrait of Charles-Baltasar, son
of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a remark-
able Velasquez.

The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus,
is of interest because this painter was a preceptor
of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life is admi-
rable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene
(purchased 1903) is a lovely example of this artist.
Indeed, all the minor Dutchmen are well repre-
sented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water
is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over
at our own Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen
waterscapes are not all of prime quality, but there
are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels
in both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The
Distant View of Haarlem of the latter proved a

295

PROMENADES

disappointment The cdour is vanished quite^
the general effect Sat. The Bol portrait of Ad-
miral de Ruyter is a sterling specimen. The Van
de Veldes'and Wouvermans are excellent. The
Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture,
with its tricky light and dark. The Teniers and
Ostades no longer interest us as they did. Perhaps
one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable
toper, the perambulating musician, the old woman
standing in a doorway, the gossips, the children,
and the d(^ not house-broken may stand for the
eternal Ostade, while the n^rry-makings of David
Teniers are too much alike. However, this touch
of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many bitimii-
nous canvases.

Probably in no other painter's name have so
many sins been committed as in Rembrandt's.
His chiaroscuro is to blame for thousands of pic-
tures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All
the muddy browns of the studio, with the yellow
smear that passes for Rembrandtish light, are but
the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often
made a mess of it, and they were renowned.
Terburg's Despatch is an interesting anecdote;
so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are
the average niunber of Dutch Italianate painters,
Jan Both and the rest, men who employed south-
em backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian
figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not
missing, though Dou leads in this rather artificial
genre. And every tourist led by a guide hears
that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse

296

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

somewhere in his picture. You leave Holland
obsessed by that white animal.

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the
surface of the artistic attractions in this Hague
gallery. Not the least of them is to look out on
the V3rver lake and watch the swans placidly swim-
ming around the emerald islet in the middle. The
Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and months
could not stale its variety. There are important
omissions, and some of the names in the catalogue
are not represented at top-notch. But the Rem-
brandts are there, and there are the Potters, the
Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens — his
Oj^ter Feast is here — the landscape and marine
painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Muril-
lo, Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single
Roger van der Weyden, an attribution, is a
Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an
interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not
much to write. Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser,
Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and Xavcry
make up a meagre list.

At Baron Steengracht's house — admission by
personal card — on the V)rverberg there is a won-
derful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a
golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over
at the Mauritshuis. It was painted in 1643, about
a year after he had finished The Night Watch, a
jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collec-
tion. There are some weak modem pictures and
examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, Jordaens,
Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer — the smoker, a fine work j

397

PROMENADES

a Hobbema mill and others. In the Municipal
Museum, full of curiosities in furniture, armour,
and costmnes, there is a gallery of modem paint-
ings — Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys,
Bisschop, J. Maris, Weissenbruch, Bosboom,
Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Miere-
velts, Jan Ravenste)ms, Honthorst, Van Goyen,
Van Ceulen, and a lot of shooting-gallery (Doelen)
and guild panoramas; there are miles of them in
Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der
Heist, Elias, and a few others are shining things of
horror, full of staring eyes, and a jumble of hands,
weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed
with religious awe by the Dutch, whose master
passion is patriotic sentiment.

There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the
Wood), the royal villa, a little over a mile from
The Ifegue, in which De Wit's grisailles may be
seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charm-
ing; the portraits by Everdingen, Honthorst, Jor-
daens, and others are of historic interest.

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag
Museum had just opened (1903). There was no
catalogue, and while the nature of this great gift
to the city was felt it was not until a second visit
(in 1909) that its extraordinary value was realised.
The catalogue numbers three hundred and forty-
four pictures by modem artists, and there is also
a valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pot-

298

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

tery, furniture, and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a
well-known Dutch etcher) in his introduction
calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag
Museum and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag
van Houten bought for their own pleasure without
any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch
nation. That came later. W. H. Mesdag is the
well-known marine painter whose paintings may
be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent.
A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under
Roelofs and while in Brussels lived with his rel-
ative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a Frieslander.
Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of
waters with breadth and simplicity. His palette
is cool and restrained, his rhythmic sense well de-
veloped, and his feeling for outdoors truly Dutch.
He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marin-
ists, to Van der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van
Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and culture,
died in the spring of last year. She signed her
work S. Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the
delineation of forest views, interiors, portraits, and
still-life. Her colour is deep and rich.

A cursory walk aroimd the various rooms on the
Laan van Meerdervoort impresses one with this
idea: with what envy must any curator of any
musemn in the world study this collection. Mes-
dag began gathering his treasures at a time when
the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a
himdred other painters had not been tempted by
the dealers into overproduction; when, in a word,
fancy prices were not dreamed of. The Alma-

299

PROMENADES

Tademas are among his best, little as we admire
his vital marbles and lifeless humans. An early
portrait of his wife is here. Bastien-Lepage has a
preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the
Mesdag Museum is rich in froiiis, painted-in
pictures, by such men as Rousseau, Daubigny,
Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupr^. As we admire the
etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to
see half a dozen of his paintings, chiefly scenes in
the Orient. The same misty, fantastic quality is
present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on,
as if it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impres-
sionistic as are these canvases, there is a subdued
splendor in them all. Bauer feels the East. His
etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings
are miles away in sentiment and handling. Biss-
chop (1828-1904) is represented by a fine still-life,
and among the various Blommers is one with
children playing in the water and on the sands;
vividly seized, this example.

The late Thfophile de Bock was an interpreter
of nature and his brush-work was fat and rich. His
work is well known in America and gains in value
every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen
specimens here of his best period. The Emile
Bretons are early and therefore diflFerent from his
commercial productions. Of the Corots, twelve in
number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a
weak one. The famous EsLvly Morning and View
at Villeneuve-lfes-Avignon are hung. The first
depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow
stream in which is reflected a cloudless sky. In

300

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

the centre two women in white caps. The second
is more elaborate in composition. The middle
distance is occupied by picturesque buildings dat-
ing probably from the Middle Ages. In the fore-
ground four persons are under the shadow of some
trees. An unusual scheme for Corot His well-
known characteristics are present in the dozen;
the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, the
Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-
dozen Courbets, all of his strong period, land-
scapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead roe, a sunlit
path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not
numerous, and these are good. The nude is a
woman recumbent upon draperies. The pcUe is
heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the
silhouette firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the
artist by himself is massive. It was probably
painted in Ste. Pdagie.

Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one
of his son Karl. Daubigny the elder is here in all
his manners, dark pictures with big foregrounds,
intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills,
streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening ef-
fects, sunsets at sea, twilights, sheep, broken
rocks, and a study in crayon.

Decamps and Delacroix come next in order.
There are three of the former, among the rest his
Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a portrait
of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his
colour was most sonorous and brilliant, are here,
with a study of an undraped female figure. La
Mare is a swdight effect in the forest of Fontaine-

301

PROMENADES

bleau. Dupr6 has seven to his account, several of
great tonal beauty. The one Fortxmy is an elab-
orate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels
are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinken-
berg's view of the Binnenhof ; Mancini's bewilder-
ing chromatic blurs and sensuously rich gamut,
and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom
encountered in America. He should be better
known; while his ideas are not particularly signifi-
cant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was
Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob,
Willem, and Matthys (the latter living in London),
are to be seen here in unexampled states. Mauve,
too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags,
Taco Mesdag, a brother and his wife are present.
Also Ter Meiden, a gifted Dutch artist. We have
seldom seen better George Michels. The Monti-
celli up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a moun-
tain path in the south of France. The sun is dis-
appearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in the
foreground. The scheme of colour is low for
Monticelli, the forms sharply accented. He could
see line when he wished. The smaller example is
an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay
the colours on.

Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture
Hagar and Ishmael, another the wonderfid Resting
Vintager. Alone these Millets would cause a sen-
sation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a
trifle too rhetorical for the simple-minded painter.
Brown predominates in the colour scale, the com-
position is rather conventional, an echo, perhaps,

302

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the
Vintager is a masterpiece. Seated among the vines
in the blaze of the sim, he is resting and has re-
moved his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude
after arduous labour is wonderfully expressed.
The atmosphere indicates stifling sultriness.

Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau — halt!
There are twelve of this French master, dramatic
and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is the
celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But
it is too bituminous in parts. A greater composi-
tion, though only a drawing, is Les grands chines
du vieux Bas-Br^au. Four large trees illumined
by sim-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk
and pastel; Storm Van's Gravesande; seven
Troyons, one, Le retour du March^, a master-
piece; Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets;
Weissenbruchs; Zilcken etchings and two De
Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, de-
signed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and
Gothic brass, Oriental portiferes and brass, old
Delft, Japanese armour, various weapons and
lanterns. Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch
and Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment
of Satsuma pottery, ^mail cloisonne, Japanese
' bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, majolica
and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin,
Meunier, and Van Wijk — the list fills a pamphlet.
Next door is the studio of the aged Mesdag, a hale
old Dutchman who paints daily and looks forward
to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octoge-
narians are not few. The climate is propitious;

303

PROMENADES

above all, the abs^ice of hurry and worry. To see
The Hague without visiting this collection woidd
be a regrettable omission.

HALS OF HAARLEM

In writing of Holland more is said of its wind-
mills than its flowers. It is a land of flowers.
Consider the roll-call of its painters who their life
long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces.
Both the De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose
work still lives in the mezzotints of Earlom — like
David de Heem, he was fond of introducing in^
sects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety
peaches and roses — Seghers, Van Aelst and his
talented pupil Rachel Ru]rsch, Cuyp, Breughel
(Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den
Broeck, Margaretha Rosenboom, Maria Vos,
Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf , and many oth^a
who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their can-
vases are faded, the colours oxidised, but on the
highways and by-ways the miracle is daily renewed
— flowers bloom at every comer, fill the window-
boxes of residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and
are bunched in the hands of the peddlers. A cart
goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses,
chrysanthemiuns, dahlias, daisies, tufts of un-
familiar species, leaves that are as tranqparmt
lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy is
used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht
Carsjens at Leyden a wind screen is composted of
ivy; you feel enclosed in a floating garden. Along

HALS OF HAARLEM

the Vivjer Herg, fronting the house of Baron Steen-
gntcht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone.
It is full of ivy growing low. Dutch landscape
gardeners are fertile in invention. They break the
flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingeni-
ous surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, ehn-
trees pared away to imitate the processional pop-
lars of Belgium and France, sudden little leafy
lanes — what quips and quirks we have come
across a few miles away from the town! To see
Haarlem and its environs in June when the bulb
farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful
spectacle. In the fall of the year you are perforce
content to read the names of the various farms as
the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable
carts remind you that Snyders and Van Steen
painted here.

The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a
noble pile with a tall tower. One of its attractions
is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Miil-
ler; it was until a few years ago the largest in the
world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops
and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the long-
est) when manipulated by a skilful organist pro-
duce adequate musical results. We had the pleas-
ure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an
hour. He began with a few Bach chorales, then
came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by
the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge
fugue. The general diapasonic quality is noble,
the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy
squealingi and the full organ sends a thrill down

305

PROMENADES

your spine, so mellow is its thunder. Modem or-
gans do not thus sound. Is the secret of the orgaa
tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles
and the blue of the old Delft china? There are
no fancy "barnyard stops," as John Rimciman
has named the combinations often to be found
in latter-day instruments. You understood after
hearing the Haarlem organ why Bach wrote his
organ preludes and fugues. Modem music, with
its orchestral registration, its swiftness and stac-
cato, would be a sacrilege on this key-board.

The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly
excite us. The Dutch claim him as the inventor
of printing, but the Germans hang on to Guten-
berg. At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-
aan-See; at Haarlem you may ride out to Zand-
voort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal.
But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish
mightily in the United States we did not feel curi-
ous enough to make the effort at either town.
Regrettable as was the burning of the old church
at Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it
out of numerous pictures painted in that pictu-
resque region. Of course it will be, or has been,
rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and
did not once think of i2Sth Street; the old town
is slightly unlike its modem namesake. What a
charm tiiere is in this venerable forest. The
Dutch of Amsterdam, less than half an hour away,
come down here on Sunday aftemoons for the
tranquillity and the shade. You must know that
the sim-rays can be very disturbing in July. The

306

HALS OF HAARLEM

canals intersecting the town are pretty. They
may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look so.
Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though
the people won't acknowledge it. It is the case
in Venice, which on hot August afternoons is not
at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget
it all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float
by, steered by a blond youngster of ten and poled
by his brothers. From the chinmey comes a light
smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old
simlit towpath of your boyhood; a tightening at
your heart warns you of homesickness, or hay
fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim,
as you sneeze.

But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is
the glory of Haarlem as the Rijks Museum is the
glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the
bell and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and
you are free to the room where are hung ten large
paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. Here are
the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in
chronological order. Drop the catalogue and use
your own eyes. The first impression is profound;
not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rem-
brandt's profimdity, but because of the almost
terrifying vitality of these portraits. Prosaic men
tod women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge
pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-
tankards, they live with such vitality on the can-
vases of Hals that you instinctively lower your
voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly
officers, sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-look-

307

PROMENADES

ing old women regents are not so disquieting as
Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands
with you across the centuries, and finally you
wonder why they don't step out the frame and
greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of ob-
vious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid
paint, but handled by the greatest master of the
brush that ever lived — save Velasquez. How
thin and unsubstantial modem painting is if com-
pared to this magician, how even his greatest fol-
lowers, Manet and Sargent, seem incomplete.
Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his
elliptical handling, never had the smiling cemfi-
dence of Hals in facing a problem. The French-
man is more subtle, also more evasive; and there
is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact
that we encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist
— himself a great painter. Hals had not the poetic
vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more
dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according
to the rubric of sheer paint, sheer brush-work, not
Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a virtuoso. De-
spite his almost incredible swiftness of execution,
Hals got closer to the surfaces of what is called
"actual" life than any of the masters with the ex-
ception of the supreme Spaniard.

At Haarlem you may follow his development;
his first big picture painted in 1616; his last in
1664. He died at eighty-four. But at eighty odd
he painted two important canvases, the portraits
of the regents and of the lady regents. More sum-
mary as regards the execution, with a manifest

308

HALS OF HAARLEM

tendency toward simplifications^ these two pictures
are very noble. The group of ladies, each a por-
trait of character, pleases some more than the
male group. They are not so firmly modelled,
and into them all has crept a certain weariness as
of old age; but what justness of expression, what
adjustment of puzzling relations! One lady fol-
lows you over the gallery with her stem gaze. It
recalls to us the last judgment look which a
maiden aunt was wont to bestow upon us years
ago. The men regents will live into eternity if the
canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleas-
ing, yet it cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere
that circulates about the vigorously nKxielled
figures at the table. What a colourist! What
nuances he produces on a restrained key-board!
The tones modulate, their juxtaposition causes no
harsh discords. The velvet black, silvery grays,
whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the
reds and yellows do not fiare out like scarlet tnun-
pets; an aristrocratic palette. Really you begin
to realise that what you formerly considered
grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters
have been and are not with us to-day. It is not a
consoling pill to swallow for apostles of " modern-
ity." Hals is more modem than Sargent.

These corporation and regent pieces are chro-
nologically arranged. No. 88 is considered the
masterpiece. It shows the officers of the Arque-
busiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures.
Again each man is a portrait. This was painted
in 1633, The Regents of the Elizabeth Hospital

309

PROMENADES

(1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style;
nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that cham-
ber is alone worth the journey across the Atlantic.
Hals shows us not the magic of life but the normal
life of daylight in which move with dignity men
and women imdismayed by the mysteries that hem
them about. He has a daylight soul, a sane if not
poetic soul, and few painters before him so cele-
brated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of
the real.

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representa*
tive home of old Dutch art. The Louvre, the
Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety,
but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The
Syndics and The Night Watch are worth a wilder-
ness of other painters' work. The Night Watch
has been removed from the old room, where it
used to hang, facing the large Van der Hekt,
Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is
only in temporary quarters; the gallery destined
for it is being completed. We were permitted to
peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one
gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De
Stallmeesters. Better lighted than in its old quar-
ters. The Night Watch now shows more clearly
the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the
background, and the cracks of the canvas are ill-
concealed by the heavy coating of varnish. If all
the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly

310

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

revealed its excellences are magnified. How there
could have been any dispute as to the lighting is
incredible. The new catalogue, the appendices of
which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes
the picture thus:

"The Night Watch, or the Company of Cap-
tain Frans Banning Cocq and of Lieutenant van
Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad
daylight, leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers.
At their head, standing in the foreground about
the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant
conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the
latter a yellow costume with a white sash, causing
a brilliant effect of light. Near the Captain, also
standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead
white cock hanging from her waistband."

Then follow the names of the other personages
in this strange scene.

A commonplace happening is transfigured by
the magic of a seer into a significant moment ar-
rested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window look-
ing out upon eternity. It was quite like the log-
ical minded Frenchman, Eugfene Fromentin, him-
self an admirable painter, to pick this canvas full of
flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled
and confused. The draughtsmanship leaves much
to be desired; hands are carelessly painted, the
grouping haphazard, without sjnnmetry, the gen-
eral rh3rthm full of syncopations, cross accents, and
perverse pauses — empty spaces, transitions not
accounted for. And yet this painting without per-
sonal charm — it is almost impersonal — grips

311

PROMENADES

your soul. It is not alone the emotional quality
of the paint. There are greater colourists than
Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in
monochrome, modelling with light. No, not the
paint alone, not the mystery of the envelope, not
the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all com-
bined makes an assault upon nerves and imagina-
tion. You feel that Captain C9cq is a prosaic
personage and is much too tall in proportion to the
spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested
with some strange attribute by the genius of the
painter, this Dutchman becomes the protagonist
in a soundless symphony of light and shadow.
The waves that emanate from the canvas suffuse
your senses but do not soothe or satisfy. The
modem nervous intensity, missing absolutely in
Hals and his substantial humans, is present in
Rembrandt. We say "modem'' as a sop to our
vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no
mode of thought, no mood that has not been
experienced and expressed by our ancestors.
Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter —
Hals, Vermeer, Teniers, Van der Heist — what
have these in common with the miller's son?
But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius
is only attached to his age through his faults,
said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal
as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach,
a Hungarian by descent, as Michael Angelo
and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo
da Vinci if we wish to find a brother soul to
Rembrandt's.

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

There is a second child back of that iridescent
and enigmatic giri with the dead fowl. And the
dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles his drum,
what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The
Night Watch is insoluble, because it is the dream
of a poet. Its light is morning light, yet it is the
mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or
land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-
drapers, Rembrandt shows with what supreme
ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe
actuality. Now, according to the accustomed
order of development, The Night Watch should
have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by
two decades, and the later work contains far better
painting and a sharper presentment of the real.
The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth sympho-
ny; but composed before his Fifth, The S3mdics.
One figure in this latter picture has always fasci-
nated us. It is of the man, Volkert Janz, accord-
ing to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand
poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted
with more sensitiveness eyes, subtle comers of the
mouth, and intimate expression. This syndic is
evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible
Dutch men of affairs.

There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone
bridge, lighted by rays darting through heavy
storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the etch-
ings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of
rank, though the Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery,
will alwa)rs be the masterpiece in portraiture if for
nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is

313

PROMENADES

bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent
gleams of the apparel the chief attraction. The
Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the anatomical
lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse
is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened
dead body in the picture on anatomy at The
Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a
portrait of his father, is an ancient copy and a
capital one. Old dame Elizabeth Bas, with her
coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handker-
chief, is a picture you return to each day of your
stay.

Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the
so-called portrait of the painter and his wife, two
full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, half-length
figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass;
and the insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by
Dirck Hals, the original in the possession of Baron
Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine copy

It IS.

The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled
period. One is a young woman reading a letter;
she is seen in profile, standing near a table, and is
dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket.
The Letter shows us in the centre of a paved room
a seated lady, lute in hand. She has been inter-
rupted in her playing by a servant bringing a letter.
To the right a tapestry curtain 6as been looped
up to give a view of the scene. The new Vermeer
— purchased from the Six gallery in 1908 — is now
called The Cook; it was formerly known as The
Milkmaid. A stoutly built servant is standing be-

314

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

hind a table covered with a green cloth, on which
are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau
, earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is
pouring milk from a can. The figure, painted al-
most full length, stands out against the white wall
and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-
brown petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back,
and a white cap on the head. The light falls on the
scene through a window to the left, above the table.
This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet gal-
leries. It displa)rs more breadth than the Lady
Reading a Letter, and its colouring is absolutely
magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality.
Greater art is the windmill and moonlit scene of
Hobbema, as great a favourite as his Mill, though
both must give the precedence to the Alley of Mid-
dlehamais in the Royal Academy, London. But
where to begin, where to end in this high carnival
of over three thousand pictures! The ticketed
favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes
lag behind their reputation. The great Van der
Heist — and a prime portraitist he is, as may be
seen over and over again — is The Company of
Captain Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget
Hals and Rembrandt it is not difficult to conjure
up admiration for this work. The N. Maes
Spinner is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van
Goyen are here; the latter's view of Dordrecht is
celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of Honde-
coester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is
the least part of the picture. Asselijn's angry
swan is an excellent companion piece. We wish

315

PROMENADES

that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous,
the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters.
There is the gallery of Dutch and Flemish prim-
itives about which a volume might be written;
their emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness
the later men did not excel them. The newest
acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue sup-
plementSy is the work of an imknown seven-
teenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though
the figures, backgroimd, and accessories are
Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit
at table. Across their knees are napkins. The
white is bom a Spanish palette. A youth attired
in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spec-
tators, is pouring out wine or water. The canvas
is large, the execution flowing; perhaps it portrays
the disciples at Emmaus.

The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife
Geertruyt van Erp, by Hals, in one of the cab-
inets, are painted with such consummate artistry
that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke
of which sings out, sets you to thinking of John
Sargent and how he has caught the trick of brush-
work — at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent
could have produced the collar and cuffs. A
Whistler, a full-length, in another gallery, looks
like an imsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two
weeks' daily attendance at this exceJlently planned
collection did no more than fix the position of the
exhibits in the mind. There is a goodly gathering
of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and
others at the Rijks, but the display of modem

316

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

Dutch pictures at the Municipal Museum is more
representative. The greatest Josef Israels we ever
saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway
of a house, a most eloquent testimony to Israels'
powers of seizing the "race" and the individual.
Old David Bks is here, and Blommers, De
Bock, Bosboom, Valk^iburg, Alma-^Tadema, Ary
Scheffer — of Dutch descent — Roelofs, Mesdag,
Mauve, Jakob Maris, Joaotgkind, and some of the
Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupr^, and others.
The Six gallery is not so accessible as it was
stmt years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts and
Vermeers will eventually find their way into the
Rijks Museum.

Who was Herri met de Bl^? Nearly all the
large European galleries contain specimens of his
work and in the majority of cases the pictures are
queried. That fatal ( ?) which, since curators are
more erudite and conscientious, is appearing more
frequently than in former years, sets one to musing
over the mutability of pictorial fortimes. Also, it
awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint.
Re6t<Hrations, another fatal wcH'd, is usually a
euphuism for overpainting. Between varnish and
retouching it is difficult to tell where the old mas-
ter leaves off and the " restorer" b^ns. Bles, for
example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fasci-
nating subject to the student; but are we really
looking at his work ? The solitary picture of bis

317

PROMENADES

iiere, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might
have been painted a year ago. (It is an attribu-
tion.) Yet this painter is supposed to have been
bom at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at
Lifege, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for
Hendrick, met de Bles, because he had a tuft of
white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). The
French called him Henri k la Houppe; the Italians
"Civetta" — because of the tiny owl he always
introduced into his work. He was a landscapist,
and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles
has had many works saddled upon him by un-
known imitators of Metsu, Joost van Elleef , Lucas,
and Diirer — who worked at Antwerp between
1520 and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imi-
tator. In the old Pinakothek, Mimich, there is a
Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a counterfeit,
and others are in ELarlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and
at the Prado.

The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in
various episodes Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden from the Creation imtil the Fall. Around
the edge are signs of the zodiac. The coloiu* is
rich, the figiures delicate. The story is clearly told
and is not imlike a "continuous performance."
You see Adam asleep, and over him stoops the
Almighty; then Eve is shown. The apple scandal
and the angel with the flaming sword are portrayed
with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A
rare painter.

Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we con-
fess, was not known to us imtil we saw his work in

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

the Rijks. The rich paie and bouquet-like quality
of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions
are composed^ like Monticelli's, but much more
spirited than the latter. A stag hunt, a poet
crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah fed by the
ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows
prove the man's versatility. He was bom about
1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A pupil of his
father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino
Judith holding the head of Holophemes is a copy,
the original hanging in the Pitti Palace. At
Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cor-
nells, 1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meule-
naer and his wife, Maria Rey, attract because of
their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across
the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard
ter Borch (1617-81). Who doesn't remember
that young lady dressed in white satin and stand-
ing with her back to you? The man in oflScer's
imiform, admonishing her, is seated next to a
woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture
of the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the
delight of amateurs. As a composition it is not
remarkable. The man is much too young to be
the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the
other one is her mother, both parents must have
retained their youth. The portrait of Helena van
der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child stand-
ing; a serious little body carrying a basket on her
right arm like a good housewife. It is a capital
Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are
painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On

319

PROMENADES

one side two merchants stand at a wharf; on the
other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar. The
colour is singularly luminous.

Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard
Dous. Dou's self-portrait is familiar. He leans
out of a window and smokes a clay pipe. The
candle-light pictures always attract an audience.
Govert Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt)
is a painter who, if he lived to-day, would be a
popular portraitist Wherever you go you see his
handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest,
skilful, and genial. Look at the head of the tax-
collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered with a
black cap. So excellent is it that it has been at-
tributed to Rembrandt Boland, we believe, en-
graved it as genuine Rembrandt. Gerard van
Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of
prime quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoog*
stratten's Sick Lady is an anecdote. The yoxmg
woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor
gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel
the dread moment is at hand. How to persuade
the patient to swallow the dose ? She is stubbom-
looUng. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the
same gallery with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride.
These interiors, painted with a minute, hard finish,
lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer.
With simlight Hooch is successful, but his figures
do not move freely in an atmospheric envelope, as
is the case with VCTmeer's. The Small Country
House is the ^vourite. In front of a house a well-
dressed man and woman are seated at a table.

320

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

She is squeezing lemon juice into a glass. Behind
her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and
farther away a girl cleans pots and pans. The
composition is the apotheosis of domestic com-
fort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much
more The Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug
to her little girl. The adjoining room, flooded
with light, is real.

There is one Van der Heist we could not pass.
It looks like the portrait of a corpulent womaii, but
is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff of Muiden. A
half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a
well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand
which he presses against his Gargantuan chest.
His hair is long and curly. The fabrics are finely
wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by
the portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but
doubtless a copy or an imitation. To view five
Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an every-
day event. His engravings are rare enough —
that is, in good states; "ghosts" are aplenty —
and his paintings rarer. Here they are chiefly por-
traits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a
superior in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals.
She was bom at Haarlem, or Zaandam, about
1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan
Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the
same theme, in a cabinet, and reveals its artistic
ancestry. Judith had the gift of reproducing sur-
faces. Wc need not return to the various Maeses;
indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the
less wdl-known pictures. Consider the beads of

321

PROMENADES

Van Mierevdt; those of Henrick Hooft, burgo-
master of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his
wife Aegje Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and
lace collar are wonderfully set forth. Must we
stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of
the Dutch school, seventeenth centiuy ? A Monti-
celli seems out of key here, and the subject is an
unusual one for him, Christ With the Little Chil-
dren. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has
the honour, after Rembrandt, of being the most
frequently copied pictiu^ in the Ri jks. The theme
is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed,
is seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose
jewelled collar gives the impression of a dog with
four eyes. In Vermeer*s Young Woman Reading
a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for
the iminstructed spectator. She wears her hair
over her ear, an ornament clasping the hair. At
first view this is not clear, principally because this
fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes
of a stranger.

Jan van Scorel was bom at Schoorl, near Alk-
maar, 1495. He studied imder Jacob Comelis at
Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at
Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travel-
ling in Germany he visited Diirer at Nuremberg;
resided for a time in Italy. The Italian influence
is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen,
which formerly hung in the town-hall of Haarlem.
A replica is in the residence of the head-master of
Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated,
richly attired. She holds in her right hand a box

322

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

of perfume, her left hand, beautifully painted,
rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous land-
scape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The
head is north Lombardian in character and colour-
ing, the glance of the eyes enigmatic. A curiously
winning composition, not without morbidezza.
Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The
Bathsheba is not a masterpiece. Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the Harpsi-
chord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a
Bronzino. Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel.
It is unlike his brush-work. The Painting of a
Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which
represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The
portrait of Emperor Charles V. as Pharaoh is
pointed out by the gallery attendant, who then
retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle
distance.

The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W. H.
Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing. A little girl
stands in a miserable room; mice run over the
floor. The colouring is rich. There are admi-
rable Jakob Marises; but we wish to follow in the
track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's
Baker is so popular that it is used for advertising
purposes in Holland. The baker leans out of his
door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn.
Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture
many times. An interior with figures, seated and
standing; same faces, poses, accessories. Same
valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A
Merry Party is the usual title. At The Hague in

3^3

PROMENADES

the Mauritshuis there is another such subject;
also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter.
Steen and Teniers we may sidestep, ^so the
artificial though graceful Tischbein. There is a
Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable por-
trait painter (he painted the Empress Eugenie),
and let us leave the Titians to the experts. When
you are in Holland look at the Dutch pictures. A
De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto,
and there is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of
violence. Fancy Vollon Sowers in the midst of
these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an ex-
traordinary feeling for still-life, though more in the
decorative Venetian manner than in Chardin's
serene pafette, or the literalism of Kalf. Whist-
ler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager
Baroness R. van Lynden in 1900, is not one of that
master's most successful efforts. It is a whole-
length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feel-
ing sentimental, im-Whistlerian, and, as we before
remarked, wraith-like and lacking in substance
when compared to Hals.

There is actually a Wouverman in which no
white horse is to be discovered. On Van der
WerflF and the romantic landscapist Wynants we
need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and{
framed drawings are of goodly array. Of the
former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles U.),
John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Lau-
rence Crosse, and others. English, Dutch, and
French may be found. The Liotard and Tisch-
bein pastels are charming. In the supplements of

324

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

the catalogue we find underscored a Descent from
the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish
school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead
Christ is being lowered into the arms of his mother.
It is evidently a copy from a lost original in the
style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such
copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another com-
position is labelled as an anonymous work of im-
determined school. The Christ hangs on the
cross, on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy
women and St. John; on His left jeering soldiers
and scribes. On either side of the composition is
the figure of a saint much larger in size than the
other figures; St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian
on the right. The background is a hilly land-
scape. An authority ascribes the work to the
Catalonian school, date about 1440. There were
giants in those days. Antonello da Messina has
the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution,
yet not without some claim to authenticity. The
Jan Provosts are mostly of close study, especially
The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter Dubor-
dieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (bom
in Touraine), painted the portraits of a man and a
woman, dated 1638. Vivid portraits. We must
pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the
Lucas Cranach (the elder), and the thousand
other attractive pictures in this gallery. The
Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and
still remain an inexhaustible source of joy.

325

PROMENADES

ART IN ANTWERP

After passing Dordrecht on the way down to
Antwerp the canals and windmills begin to disap-
pear. The country is as flat as Holland, but has
lost its characteristic charm. It has become less
symmetrical; there is disorder in the sky-line,
more trees, the architecture is diflferent. Dutch
precision has vanished. The railway carriages are
not clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem
less prosperous, few speak English, and as you
near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you that you
are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But
Antwerp is so distinctly Flemish that you forget
that bustling modem Brussels is only thirty-six
minutes away by the express — a fast train for
once in this land of snail expresses. No doubt
the best manner of approaching Antwerp is by
the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock
so comfortably along the river. However, a trip
to the vast pramenoir that overlooks the river gives
an excellent idea of this thriving port. The city —
very much modernised dviring the past ten years —
may easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the
museiuns and churches. The quay promenade
brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town
Hall with its salle des marriages, its mural paint-
ings by the industrious Baron Leys — frigid in
style and execution — will repay you for the trou-
ble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy.
We enjoyed the fa^des of the ancient guild houses

326

ART IN ANTWERP

on tlie market-place and watching the light play
upon the old-time scarred front of the cathedral
that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are
the Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museimi, the
Th£&tre Flamand, the various monuments, and
the spectacle of the busy, lively city for those who
do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even
go to Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at
all like the well-known Sunday resort in Jersey.

The Royal Museum is displayed in a large
square. It is a handsome structure and the ar^
rangement of the various galleries is simple. The
Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the piece de
resistance^ and the Flemish and Dutch Primitives
of rare beauty. Bruges is better for Memling,
Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van
Eycks, yet Antwerp can boast a goodly niunber
of them all. She exceeds Brussels in her Rubenses
for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at
Amsterdam the R^nbrandts, while not numerous,
take precedence because of The Syndics and The
Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming
Peter Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think
of some cataclysm when facing these turbulent,
thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens
stims. In the company of Michel Angelo and
Balzac or Richard Wagner he would be their equal
for torrential energy and vibrating humanity.
Not so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as
Balzac, he is their peer in sheer savagery of execu-
tion. Setting aside the miles of pictiu'es signed
by him though painted by his pupils, he must have

327

PROMENADES

covered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his
sort of genius, he ends by making your head buzz
and your eyes bum; and then, the sameness of his
style, the repetition of his wives and children's
portraits, the apotheosis of the Rubens family!
He portrayed Helena Fourment and Isabella
Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He
put them together on the same canvas. He did
not hesitate to show them to the world in all their
opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes
with wide gaze, their lovely children appear in
religious and mythologic pictiu-es at every turn
you make in this museimi. You become too
familiar with them. You learn to know that one
wife was slenderer than the other; you also realise
that other days had other wajrs. Titian painted
the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed
her husband, soberly attired, near by. No one
criticised the taste of this performance. Manet,
who was no Titian, did the same trick and was
voted wicked. He actually dared to show us
Nana dressing in the presence of a gentleman who
sat in the same room with his hat on.

The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the
same order as the Rubens women. The Flemings
are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, good-tem-
pered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as
hard as the Dutch, and they indulge in more
feasting and holidays. The North seems austere
and Protestant when compared with this Roman
Catholic land. Its sons of genius, such as Rubens
and Van Dyck, painted pictures that do not reveal

328

ART IN ANTWERP

the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or
Mary of either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the
poignant note of the Netherlandish unknown mys-
tic masters.

But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads
for the eye ! With him painting reached its apogee,
and in him were the seeds of its decadence. He
shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous
space-composer when he so wished, wielded his
brush at times like a scene-painter on a debauch.
The most shocking, the loveliest things happen
on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of
the Virgin, in this gallery, beside such a work as
Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and you will see
the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and
Parrot, with a child Christ who might have posed
as a youthful Adonis, and the Venus Frigida —
both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all
his religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified be-
tween Two Thieves or the Christ on the Cross,
the single figure, to the more famous Descent at
the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new
about Rubens or Van Dyck ? In the latter may be
noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He is a
softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The por-
traits here are prime, those of the Bishop of Ant-
werp, Jean Malderus, and of the young girl with
the two dogs. His various Christs are more pite-
ous to behold than those of his master, Rubens.
The feminine note is present, and without any of
the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of
the Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his por-

329

PROMENADES

traits or to the little boy standing at a table. There
is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens as
a portraitist and took no odds of him.

Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation
of the picture in the Brussels gallery. A Gossaert
portrait catches the eye, the head and bust of a
man; then you find yourself staring in wonder-
ment at the Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches
with their malodorous fantastic versions of tempta-
tions of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is
thick with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot.
St. Anthony must have had the stomach of an
ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure
such sights and sounds and witches. Such fe-
males! But Peter and his two sons are both
painters of interest. There are better Teniers in
Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable.
Ostade's Smoker is a masterpiece. Only four
Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according
to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia;
a fisherman's boy, the Burgomaster, and the Old
Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two are by
Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius
— the so-called Burgomaster Six — is finely
painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp
Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for
the work. We must not forget mention of a
David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a still-life,
a white dead goose superb in tone.

Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch
gentleman is the better; the other was formerly
known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem and

330

ART IN ANTWERP

shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It
is the head of a saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme
unusual for Hals. The Quentin Matsys pictures
are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gil-
lis with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy.
This is a Matsys town. Every one looks at his old
iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls the
legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers
here Hendrik Conscience and the Lioi;! of Flanders.
Van ReymerswaeFs The Tax Gatherers, some-
times called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in
the museum; that realistic picture with the so
highly individualised heads, a favourite of the
engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, Al-
brecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Fam-
ilies, and both are painters of ineffable grace and
devotion.

Four Mendings of seductive beauty light the
walls. One is a portrait of Nicol6 Spinelli. Christ
and His Angels, the angels playing in praise of the
Eternal and other angels playing various instru-
ments. The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert)
and Jan, are well represented. The St. Bar-
bara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum
The Donateur or Donor is a repetition of the
original at Bruges. The Adoration of the Lamb
is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is
tender beauty in Jan's St. Barbara, and infinite
motherly love expressed in his Holy Virgin. Hugo
van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a
marvel of characterisation. Terburg has a man-
dolin player and Hobbema a mill scene. The Van

331

PROMENADES

Orle3rs are interesting, and also the Van Veens.
Gerard David, a painter of exquisite touch
and feeling, shows a Repose in Egypt. Lucas
Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins trans-
posed to the mythological key. We have barely
indicated the richness of this collection, in which,
of course, Rubens plays first fiddle — rather the
full orchestra. And with what sonority and
luminosity!

At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw
their accustomed audiences with the usual guide
lecturing in three languages, pointing out the
whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the
anatomy in the Ascent. This latter work is always
slighted by sightseers because Baedeker, or some
one else, had pronounced its composition "in-
ferior" to the Descent, but there are many more
difficult problems involved in the Ascent. Its pat-
tern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject
is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There
are more virile accents in the Ascent, though it
would be idle to deny that in paint quality there
is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of
time and the ravages of the restorers. At St.
Jacques, with its wonderfully carved pulpit, the
St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It
has darkened much during the last twenty years.
Also there is another Rubens family group with
wives and other relatives. They thought well of
themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder.

The modem pictures at the museum are of
varying interest — Braekeleer, Stobbaerts, Verlat,

332

ART IN ANTWERP

Scheflfer, Cabanel, David (J. L.), Wiertz, Wauters,
Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock
the landscapist, Clays, Van Beers, Meunier,
Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot of nondescript lum-
ber. In the spacious approach there is one of
Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You re-
joice that he followed Rodin's advice and gave
up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he was
not more than mediocre.

The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of
Primitives are not all of equal merit. The An-
nunciation is the most striking. The early master
of Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in
composition and softness in colouring. Mention
must be made of the De Vos pictures by the
Comelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abra-
ham Grapheus by the first-named is one of the
most striking in the museum, and the self-portrait
of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a
sort of Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing
at Cards recalls Caravaggio. Daniel M}rtens's
portrait of a lady is Rubenesque.

And all that choir of elevated souls unknown
to us by name, merely called after the city they
inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, or by some
odd device or monogram — what cannot be writ-
ten of this small army which praised the Lord,
His mother and the saints in form and colour, on
missals, illuminated manuscripts, or on panels!
The Antwerp Museum has its share of Anony-
mous, that master of whom it has been said that
"he" was probably the master of the masters.

333

PROMENADES

Antwerp is a city of many charms, with its St
Jacques, St. Andres (and its carved pulpit), St.
Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of the
Flemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us
its museimi was aU in alL

MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS

Considering its size and significance, Brussels
has more than its share of museums. At the be-
ginning of the Rue de la R^gence, near the Place
Royale, stands the imposing Royal Museum of old
paintings and sculpture. The Museum of Modem
Art is aroimd the comer and adjoins the National
Library, which is said to harbour over six hundred
thousand volumes. In the gallery of old art the
effect of the sculptors' haU, which is in the centre
and utilises the entire height of the building, is
noble. The best sculpture therein is by Rodin
andMeimier; the remainder is generally academic
or simply bad. Rodin's Thinker, in brcmze, is a
repetition of the original. After the wreathed
prettiness of the conventional school — neither
Greek nor Gothic — and the writhing diablerie of
Rodin imitators the simplicity and directness of
Constantin Meunier is refreshing. He was a man
whose imagination became inflamed at the sight
of suffering and injustice. He is closer to MiUet
than to his friend Rodin, but he lacks the sweet-
ness and strength of Millet. Selecting the Belgian
workman — the miner, the hewer of wood and
drawer of water, the proletarian, in a word — for

334

MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS

bis theme, Meunier observed closely and repro-
duced his vision in terms of rugged beauty. The
sentiment is evidently socialistic. Like Prince
Kropotkm and the brothers R^lus, the Belgian
sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man.
He shows us the miner crouched in a pitiful man-
ner finding a pocket of coal; men naked to the
waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, theu:
small heads on bull necks, are puddlers; other
groups patiently haul heavy carts — labour not in
its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, is the core
of Meimier's art. That he is "literary'* at times
may not be denied, but power he has.

The early Flemish school of the fifteenth cen-
tury is strongly represented in several of the
galleries up-stairs. And Rogier de la Pasture,
otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is
shown in five pictures, and at his best The
Chevalier with the Arrow, a bust portrait, will be
familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Mu-
seum, where a copy hangs. The robe is black,
the hat, conical, is brown, the background blue-
green. The silhouette is vigorously modelled, the
expression one of dignity, the glance penetrating,
severe. What characterisation! The Christ is a
small panel surpassingly rich in colour and
charged with profound pity. The body lies in the
arms of the Mother, Magdalen and John on either
side. The sun is setting. The subject was a
favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin
and a panel at The Hague. This Brussels picture
has evidently been shorn of its wings. There are

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PROMENADES

replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in the
catalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in
the recently dispersed collection of Rudolph Elana.
Another striking tableau is the head of a woman
who weeps. The minutest tear is not missing.

Hubert and Jan Van Eyck's Adam and Eve are
the wings (volets) from the grand composition in
the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent. They are
gigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attrac-
tive, but magnificently painted. These portraits
(they don't look as if they had been finished in
paradise) of our first parents rather favour the
evolutionary theory of development Eve is im-
lovely, her limbs lanky, her bust mediaeval, her
flanks Flemish. In her right hand she holds the
fatal apple. Adam's head is full of character; it
is Christ-like; his torso ugly, his legs wooden.
Yet how superior to the copies which are now at-
tached to the original picture at Ghent. There
the figures are clothed, clumsy, and meaningless.

Dierick Bouts's Justice of Emperor Otho in
is a striking pictiure. The subject has that touch
of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of the times.
Hans Memling's Mart}rrdom of St. Sebastian is
another treasure; with his portraits of a man, of
Guillaume Morel and of Barbara de Vlandenberg
making an immortal quartet. The head of the
man is the favourite in reproduction. Morel is
portrayed as in prayer, his hands clasped, his ex-
pression rapt. A landscape is seen at the back.
The Virgin Surrounded by Virgins, by an unknown
master of the fifteenth century (school of Bruges),

336

MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS

is one of the most amazing pictures in the collec-
tion. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the
hieratic, but the portraits are enchanting in their
cr3rstalline quality. Quentin Matsys' Legend of
St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity we
prefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont.
Gerard David's Adoration of the Magi is no longer
attributed to him. It was always in doubt: now
the name has been removed, though the picture
has much of his meUowness. Dr. Scheuring, the
old man with the shaved upper lip, beard, and
hair over his forehead, by Lucas Cranach, and
Jean Grossaert's Chevalier of the Golden Fleece,
are masterly portraits. Van Cleve, Van Orlay,
Key — perhaps a portrait of the bloody Duke of
Alva — also one of himself, Coello's Maria of
Austria, are among the sterling specimens in this
gallery.

We need not expect to find duplicated here the
Rubens of Antwerp. The most imposing example
is the Adoration of the Magi, while his portraits of
the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isa-
bella, are perhaps the best extant. The Calvary
is a splendid canvas, full of movement and con-
taining several members of the well-known Rubens
family. Such devotion is touching. You find
yourself looking for Isabella Brandt and Helena
Fourment among the angels that hover in the sky
above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro
heads, the Woman Taken in Adultery, a Susanna
(less concerned about her predicament than any
we have encountered), a curious and powerful

337

PROMENADES

portrait of Theophrastus Paracelsus (Broyiming^s
hero), with a dozen others, make a goodly showing
for the Antwerp master. Otho Vaenius (Octave
Van Veen), one of the teachers of Rubens, is himg
here. There are nearly a dozen Van Dycks, of
prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait
of an unknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff
and the winning portrait of a Flemish sculptor,
Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you an
excellent notion of his range, though better Van
Dycks are in France and England.

The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is
beginning to fade, but that of an old woman is a
superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there are
two fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van
Heythusen, is a smaU picture, the figure sitting,
the legs crossed (booted and spurred) and the figure
leaning lazily back. On his head a black felt bat
with a broad upturned brim. The expression of
the bearded man is serious. The only Jan Ver-
meer is one of the best portraits by that singularly
gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with
the Hat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the pic-
ture by Jean Victor, but it has been pronounced
Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a part
of the collection of Humphry Ward. The man
sits, his hand holding a glove resting negligently
over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator,
on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide
brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the
face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy,
inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost

338

MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS

morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of
the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something
disquieting in this portrait, but it is a masterpiece
of paint and character.

The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the
Jan Steen (The Operator) are good though not
remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the
various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as
quality, yet exhibiting enormous muscularity, is
the trait of this gross painter. The King Drinks
— his kings are always drinking or bUnd drunk —
his nudes, which look like the contents of the
butcher shops in Brussels, attract throngs, for the
anecdote is writ large across the wall, and you
don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a
better title for these robust compositions. David
Teniers's La Kermesse is the most important work
he ever finished. It is in good preservation.
Amsterdam has not its superior. There is an
ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and a Ribera
downstairs. The French art is not enlivening.

Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it
has been reproduced frequendy. Jean Baptiste
Hu3rsmans, a landscape with animals; he is said
to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans.
The Mors (Antonio Moro) is of value. But the
lodestone of the collection is the Primitives.

The pictures in the modem gallery are largely
Belgian, some French, and a few Dutch and Eng-
lish. It is not a collection of artistic significance.
In the black-and-white room may be seen a few
original drawings of Rops.

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PROMENADES

The Mus6e Wiertz is worth visiting only as a
chamber of horrors. When Wiertz is not morbid
and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of
genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of
Rubens and Michael Angelo. Wiertz was bom
in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian Govern-
ment, in order to make some sort of reparation for
its neglect of the painter during his troubled and
imhappy lifetime, acquired his country residence
and made it a repository of his art. The pic-
tures are of a scale truly heroic. The painter
pitted himself against Rubens and Michael An-
gelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!"
And there is no denying his power. His tones
recall the pate of Rubens without its warmth
and splendour. When Wiertz was content to
keep within bounds his portraits and feminine
nudes are not without beauty. He was fanciful
rather than poetic, and the pictmre of Napoleon in
hell enduring the reproaches of his victims (why
should they be there?) is startling. Startling,
too, are the tricks played on your nerves by the
peepholes. You see a woman crazed by himger
about to cook one of her murdered children;
beheaded men, men crushed by superior power,
the harnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus
devouring the companions of Ulysses, and other
monstrous conceptions, are all painted with ref-
erence to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph
was a socialist in sentiment. If his executive
ability had been on a par with his ideas, and if
those ideas had been less extravagant, the world

340

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

would have had one more great painter; but his
nervous system was flawed and he died a melan-
cholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to
revive the heroic age at a time of easel pictures.
He, the half genius, saw himself outwitted by the
sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Bom out of his
due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad
example of the futility of looking backward in art.

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is
well to alight at Ghent for a few hours. There are
attractions enough to keep one for several days,
but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or
Sint Baafs) we did not stay more than the allotted
time. And an adventurous time it was. The
Ostend express landed its passengers at the St.
Pierre station and that meant the loss of half an
hour. The Cathedral is reached by the tramway,
and there we found that as an ofi&ce was about to
be sung no one would be allowed in the ambula-
tory imtil after its completion.' It was pouring
live Belgian rain without; already the choristers
in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a
moment to be spared! The sacristan was a prac-
tical man. He hustled us into a side chapel,
locked the heavy doors, and left us in company
with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and
Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in prayer outside,
the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We
were hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of

341

PROMENADES

grace. The chanting began. Atmosphere was
not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only
more light. Gradually the picture began to bum
through the artificial dusk, gradually its glories
became more perceptible. Begun by Hubert in
1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine
splendour has vanished; and the loss of the wings
— the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, the remain-
ing volets in the Berlin Museum — is irreparable
despite the copies. But this Adoration of the
Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled figures of the
Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the
central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted
in sumptuous tones, the lamb on the altar, the
prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the singing
angels, is truly an angelic composition.

The ram had ceased. A shaft of sunshine
pierced the rosy glass windows and feU upon the
hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed
supemally. In the chancel the Psalms had died
away and the only soimd was that of sandals
shuffling over marble floors. The man turned ike
lock. It was a return to the world as if one had
participated in a sacred ceremony.

Bruges is invariably caUed Bruges-la-Morte, but
it is far from being dead, or even desperatdy
melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nine o'clock
at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead ?
No, Bruges the Beautiful is nearer the truth. After
reading Rodenbach's morbid romance of Bruges-
la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would
be like a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience

342

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

dispelled this unpleasant illusion. Bruges is in
daylight a bustling and in certain spots a noisy
place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of
visage, but wideawake, practical pe(^le, close at a
bargain, curious like aU Belgians, and on f6te days
given to much feasting. Bruges is infinitely more
interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modem
Brussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more
pictiuresque, the food is as well flavoured, there are
several resorts where ripe old Burgimdy may be
had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk
are less grasping, more hearty than in Brussek.

The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but
of Venice there is naught, jexcept the scimi on the
canal waters. The secular odour of Bruges was not
impleasant in October; in August it may have
been. We know that the glory of the city hath
departed, but there remain the Memlings, the
Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to
mention several magnificent old churches.

Let us stroll to the B^guinage. Reproductions
, of Memling and Van Eyck are in almost every
window. The caffe on the square, where stands
the Belfry of Longfellow's poem, are overflowing
with people at table. It is Friday, and to-morrow
wiU be market day; with perhaps a fair or a pro-
cession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of
St. Sauveur (Sint Salvator), erected in the tenth
century, though the foimdations date back to
the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds
around the rear of the church. Presently an-
other church is discerned with a tower that must

343

PROMENADES

be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn,
some time between the tenth and fourteenth cen-
turies. Notre Dame contains the tombs of
Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgimdy, a lovely
white marble statue of the Virgin and Child as-
cribed with justice to Michael Angelo, and a
fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St.
Jean, tiim up an aUey full of cobblestones and
children, and finally see the canal that passes
the houses of the B^guinage. The view is of
exceeding charm. The spire of Notre Dame
and the apsis may be seen up (or is it down?)
stream. A bridge cuts the river precisely where
it should; weeping willows to the left lend an
elegiac note to the ensemble, and there is a gabled
house to the right which seems to have entered
the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance
for his composition. Nature and the handicraft
of man paint pictures all over Bruges.

We enter the enclosure with the little houses
of the b^guines, or lay sisterhood. There is
nothing particular to see, except a man imder a
tree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog
sleeps. The sense of peace is profound. Even
Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday compared
with the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels
is as noisy as a boiler shop. The Minnewater
(Lac d' Amour) is another pretty stretch, and so
we spent the entire day through shy aUeys, down
crooked streets, twisting every few feet and form-
ing deceptive vistas innumerable, leading tired legs
into chiuxAes, out of museums, up tower steps.

344

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

That first hard stroll told us how little we could
know of Bruges in a day, a week or a month.
Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels and
wished that the clock and the calendar could be
set back several centuries. At twilight the un-
usual happened: the Sandman appeared with his
hour-glass and beckoned to bed. There is no
night in Bruges for the visitor within the gates;
there is only slumber. Perhaps that is why the
cockneys call it Bruges the Dead. The old horse
that drags the hotel bus was stamping its hoofs in
the court-yard; the wall of St. Jacques, eaten
away by the years, faced us. The sun, some-
where, was trying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour
of omelet was in the air, and all was well. This
is the home-like side of its life. It may still harbour
artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but
we met none of them. Poetic images are aroused
at dusk along the banks of canals, bathed in
spectral light. Here Georges Rodenbach, that
poet of delicate images, placed his hero, a man
who had lost a beloved wife. He saw her wraith-
like form in the mist and at the end went mad.

The Memlings hang in a chamber at the Hos-
pital St. Jean; the ChS^sse of St. Ursula is a
reliquary, Gothic in design. They consist of a
dozen tiny panels painted in exquisite fashion,
with all the bright clarity and precision of a min-
iaturist, coupled with a solidity of form and l)rric
elegance of expression. They represent the side
of Memling's art which might be compared to
the illuminators of manuscripts or to the arti-

345

PROMENADES

ficeis in gold and precious stones. There is a
jewelled quality in this illustration of the pious life
and martyrdom of St. Ursula at Cologne. But it
is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking. A
portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the dona-
tor of the diptych, La Vierge aux Pommes, is as
superb a Mending as one could wish for. The
little hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush. It is
the modelling, the rich manipulation of tones (yes,
values were known in those barbarous times),
the graceful faU of the hair treated quite as much
en masse as with microscopic finish; the almost
miraculous painting of the folded hands, and the
general expression of pious reverie, that count
most. The ductile, glowing colours make this a
portrait to be compared to any of the master's we
have studied at London, Berlin, Dresden, Liibeck,
Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. But Bruges is
the natural frame for his exalted genius.

K the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-
colour — a fable, it is said — Memling, who fol-
lowed them, taught many great Italian painters
the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint.
There is the portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the
serious girl with the lace veil. Did any of the later
Dutch conjurers in paint attain such transparency ?
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych
with its wings representing the beheading of St.
John the Baptist — the Salome is quite melan-
choly — and St. John at Patmos, is one of the
world pictures. The Adoration of the Magi, with
its wings. The Nativity, and Presentation in the

346

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

remple, is equally touching. For me Memling's
Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than
Rubens — which is operatic in comparison. The
Virgin type of Van Eyck is less insipid than
the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in
the conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more
fiercely in the breasts of these Primitive artists.
They felt Christ's Passion and the sorrow of the
Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians
of the golden renaissance. We have always held
a. brief for the Art for Art theory. The artist
must think first of his material and its technical
manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to
spiritual rhythms then his work may attain the
heights. It is not painting that is the lost art,
but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der
Weyden, Memling, and Gerard David were
princes of their craft and saw their religion with
eyes undimmed by doubt.

James Weale has destroyed the legend that Hans
Memling painted his St. Ursula for the benefit of
St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense for treatment
while sick there. He was a burgher living com-
fortably at Bruges. The museum is a short dis-
tance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck (Jan), La
Vierge et I'Enfant — known as the Donator be-
cause of the portrait of George van der Paele — is
its chief treasure, though tKere is the portrait of
Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of King
Cambyses, and the savage execution companion
picture; Memling's triptych, St. Christopher bear-
ing the Christ Child, and David's masterpiece. The

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PROMENADES

Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head
with greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck^s ren-
dering of the Donator. What an eye! What
handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged
skin, the veins in the senile temples, or the thin
soft hair above the ears ! What synthesis ! There
are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in this
multitude of closely observed and recorded facts.
The large eyes gaze devoutly at the vision of the
Child, and if neither Virgin nor Son is comely there
is character delineated. The accessories must fill
the latter-day painter avid of siurface loveliness
with consuming envy.

But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks
have crowed, the sim is setting, and eyelids are
lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evoke
the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the
Primitives of Bruges the Beautiful.

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not
noticed with particular favour by the guide-books,
the museum founded by Gustave Moreau at 14
Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only
to a comparatively few artists and amateiu^. You
seldom hear Americans speak of this rare coUec-
tion, it is never written about in the magazines.
In September, 1897, Moreau made a wiU leaving
his house and its contents to the State. He died
in 1898 (not in 1902, as Bryan's dictionary has it),
and in 1902 President Loubet authorised the Min*>

348

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

ister of Public Instruction to accept this rich
legax:y in the name of the republic. The artist
was not known to stranger countries; indeed he
was little known to his fellow-countr3mien. Huys-
mans had cried him up in a revolutionary article;
but to be praised by Huysmans was not always a
certificate of fame. That critic was more success-
ful in attracting public attention to Degas and
Rops; and Moreau, a bom eclectic, though with-
out any intention of carrying water on both
shoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his asso-
ciates at the Beaux-Arts, while the new men he
praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, Monet, would
hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion
is divided as to his merits, he being called a
pasticheur or else a great painter-poet. Huysmans
saw straight into the heart of the enigma — Gus-
tave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed
man who had the pictorial vision in' an unusual
degree; whose brush responded to the ardent brain
that directed it, the skilled hand that manipulated
it; always responded, we say, except in the crea-
tion of life. His paintings are, strictly speaking,
magnificent still-life. No vital current animates
their airless, gorgeous, and sometimes cadaverous
surfaces.

Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom
he had so much in common (at least on the
Salammbd side of that writer), Moreau was bom
to affluence. His father was a government archi-
tect; he went early to the Ecole des Beaux- Arts,
and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had a

349

PROMENADES

Pietit in the Salon (he was bom April 6, 1826), and
fcdlowed it the next season with a Darius and a
large canvas depicting an episode from the Song
of Songs. The latter was purchased for the*Dijon
Museum. At the Universal Exhibition of 1855
he showed a monster work, The Athenians and
the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public imtil
1864, when his (Edipus and the Sphinx set Paris
talking. He exhibited imtil 1880 various canvases
illustrative of his studies in classic literatures and
received simdry medals. He was elected a mem*
ber of the Acad^mie des Beaux-Arts in 18881 re-
placing Boulanger. He was decorated in 1875
with the Legion of Honour and made officier in
1883. When a member of the Institute he had
few friends, and as professor at the Beaux-Arts he
disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of the
Primitives. Altogether a career meagre in excit*
ing incident, though singularly rich and significant
on the intimate side.

A first visit to the museum proved startling.
We had seen and admired the fifteen water-colours
at the Luxembourg, among them the &mous Ap*
parition, but for the enormous number of pictures,
oil, water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, stud-
ies, we were imprepared. The bulky catalogue
registers 1,132 pieces, and remember that while
there are some unfinished canvases the amount of
work executed — it is true diuing half a century —
is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau^s muscular
and nervous energy, poetic conception, and inten-
sity of concentration. Even his unfinished pictures

350

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

are carried to a state of elaboration that would
madden many modem improvisers in colouh
Apart from sheer execution, there is a multitude
of visions that must have been struggled for as
Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau's was
not a facile mind. He brooded over his dreams, he
saw them before he gave them shape. He was
familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, and for
him the pantheon of Christian saints must have
been bone of his bone. The Oriental fantasy, the
Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledge of Persian,
Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and cos-
tumes sets us to wondering if this artist wasn't
too cultured ever to be spontaneous. He recalls
Prester John and his composite faiths.

There was besides the profoimd artistic erudi-
tion another stumbling-block to simplicity of style
and tmity of conception. Moreau began by imi-
tating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a
precedure is manifestly dangerous. Huysmans
speaks with contempt of promiscuity in the ad-
miration of art. You can't admire Manet and
Bastien-Lepage — " le Gr^vin de cabaret, le Sir-
audin de banlieue," he names the gentle Bastien;
nor ought you to admire Manet and Moreau, we
may add. And Huysmans did precisely what he
preached against. Moreau was a man of wide
intellectual interests. Devoid of the creative en-
ergy that can eject an individual style at one jet,
as a volcano casts forth a rock, he attempted to
aid nature by the process of an exquisite selection.
His taste was trained, his range wide — too wide,

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PROMENADES

one is tempted to add; and thus by a conscious
act of the will he originated an art that recalls an
antique chryselephantine statue, a being rigid with
precious gems, pasted with strange colours, some-
thing with mineral eyes without the breath of
life — contemporary life — yet charged with its
author's magnetism', bearing a charmed existence,
that might come from a cold, black magic; mon-
strous, withal possessing a strange feverish beauty,
as Flaubert's Salammbd is beautiful, in a remote,
exotic way.

However, it is not fair to deny Moreau human
sympathies. There are many of his paintings and
drawings, notably the latter, that show him as pos-
sessing heart. His handling of his medium though
heavy is never timid, and at times is masterly.
Delacroix inspired many of his landscape back-
groimds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of his
female figures. You continually encounter varia-
tions of Ingres, the sweet, serene line, the tapering
feet and hands. Some critics have discerned the
toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical meas-
urements strain our notion of eclecticism. Cer-
tainly Moreau studied Bellini, Mantegna, and Da
Vinci without ever attaining the freedom and dis-
tinction of any of them. His colour, too, is often
hard and cold, though not in the sumptuous sur-
faces of his fabrics; there Venetian splendour is
apparent. He can be fiery and insipid, metallic
and morbid; his Orientalism is at times transposed
from the work of his old friend the painter Chasse-
riau into the key of a brilliant, if pompous rhetoric.

352

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

This herculean attempt at reassembling mar^
styles in a unique style that would best express a
certain frozen symbolism was the amiable mania
his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits
to come to his bidding. The moment you cross
the threshold of his house the spell begins to work.
It is dissipated by the daylight of Paris, but while
you are under the roof of the museum you can't
escape it. Nor is it as with Rossetti, a mystic
opiate, or with Wiertz, a madman's delirious
fancy. Moreau was a philosophic poet, and
though he disclaimed being a "literary" painter, it
is literature that is the mainspring of his elevated
and decorative art. Open at random the cata-
logue full of quotations from the painter's pen and
you encoimter such titles as Leda and the Swan,
treated with poetic restraint; Jupiter and Semele,
Tyrtaeus Singing During the Combat, St. Elizabeth
and the Miracle of the Roses, Lucretia and Tar-
quin, Pasiphae, the Triumph of Alexander, Sal-
ome, Dante and Virgil, Bathsheba, Jason and the
Golden Fleece. All literatures were ransacked for
themes. This painter suffered from the nostalgia
of the ideal. When a subject coincided with his
technical expression the result approximates per-
fection. Consider the Salome, so marvellously
paraphrased in prose by Huysmans. The aqua-
relle in the Luxembourg is more plastic, more
jewelled than the oil; Moreau often failed in the
working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has a
hallucination been thus set before us with such
uncompromising reality. The sombre, luxurious

353

PROMENADES

decor, the voluptuous silhouette of the dancing
girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the
aureoled head of John, are forgotten in the con-
templation of Salome, who is become cataleptic
at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitude
her flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted
into a mask of death. The lascivious dance seems
suspended in midair. To have painted so im-
possible a picture bears witness to the extraordi-
nary quality of Moreau's complex art. Nor is the
Salome his masterpiece. In the realm of the deco-
rator he must be placed high. His genius is
Byzantine. Jupiter and Semele, with its colossal
and aerian architectures, its gigantic figure of the
god, from whose august head emanate spokes of
light, is Byzantine of a wild luxuriousness in pat-
tern and fancy. Moreau excels in representing
cataracts of nude women, ivory-toned of flesh, ex-
quisite in proportion, set off by radiant jewels and
wonder-breeding brocades. IBs skies are in vio-
lent ignition, or else as soft as Lydian airs. What
could be more grandiose than the Triumph of
Alexander (No. 70 in the catalogue) ? Not John
Martin or Piranesi excelled the Frenchman in
bizarre architectxural backgroimds. And the Chi-
meras, what a Baudelairian imagination! Bau-
delaire of the bitter heart! All luxury, all sin, all
that is the shame and the glory of mankind is here,
as in a tapestry dulled by the smoke of dreams;
but as in his most sanguinary combats not a sound,
not a motion comes from this canvas. When the
slaves, lovely females, are thrown to the fish to

354

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet,
we admire the beauty of colour, the clear static
style, the solidity of the architecture, but we are
unmoved. If there is such a thing as disinterested
art it is the claustral art of Moreau — which can
be both perverse and majestic.

His versatility amazes. He did not always
paint the same picture. The Christ Between Two
Thieves is academic, yet attracts because the ex-
pression of the converted thief is remarkable. The
Three Magi and Moses Within Sight of the
Promised Land do not give one the fullest sense
of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus
or The Rape of Europa; yet they suggest what
might be termed a tragic sort of decoration. Mo-
reau is a painter who could have illustrated Mar-
lowe's fatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades
of Asia," and superbly; or, "See where Christ's
blood streams in the firmament." He is an exotic
blossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory,
apes, and peacocks, purple, gold, and the heavens
aflame with a mystic message. He never trans-
lated that message, for his was an art of silence;
but the painter of The Maiden with the Head of
Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason and Medea, of
Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the ad-
miration and homage of those art lovers who yearn
for dreams of vanished ages, who long to escape
the commonplaces of the present. Gustave Mo-
reau will be their poet-painter by predilection.

Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as
unreal as Rossetti or the Pre-Raphaelites (though

355

PROMENADES

their superior as one who could make palpable his
visions). In the Louvre — where the Salon Carre
is little changed — Manet's Olympe, with her
every-day seductiveness, resolves the phantasies of
Moreau into thin air. Here is reality for you,
familiar as it may be. It is wonderful how long
it took French critics to discover that Manet was
un peifUre de race. He is very French in the
French gallery where he now hangs. He shows
the lineage of David, one of whose declamatory
portraits with beady eyes hangs near by. He is
simpler than David in his methods — Mr. C. S.
Ricketts critically described David as possessing
the mind of a policeman — and as a painter more
greatly endowed. But Goya also peeps out from
the Olympe. After seeing the Maja desnuda at
the Prado you realise that Manef s trip to Madrid
was not without important results. Between the
noble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the
ignoble girl called Olympe there is only the dif-
ference between the respective handlings of Goya
and Manet.

PICTURES IN MADRID

The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on
the Prado. Now every great capital of Europe
boasts its picture or sculptm-e gallery; no need to
enumerate the treasures of art to be f oimd in Lon-
don, Paris, Vienna — the latter too little known

3S6

PICTURES IN MADRID

by the average globe-trotter — Berlin, Dresden,
Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp,
Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Peters-
burg, or Venice. They all boast special excel-
lences, but the Prado collection contains pictures
by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and
others, that cannot be seen elsewhere. Setting
aside Velasquez and the Spanish school, not in
Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of
such quality and in such quantity as in Madrid.
And the Rubenses are of a peculiar lovely order,
not to be foimd in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris.
Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the
Spanish capital is a necessary and exciting expe-
rience for the painter and amateur of art.

The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pic-
tures and is sadly lacking in historical continuity
whether foreign or domestic schools. It is about
ninety years old, having been opened in part (three
rooms) to the public in November, 1819. At that
time there were three himdred and eleven canvases.
Other galleries were respectively added in 182 1,
1828, 1830, and 1839. In 1890 the Queen-mother
had the Sala de la Reina Isabel rearranged and
better lighted. It contained then the master-
pieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez's
birth, a gallery was built to hold his works, with a
special room for that masterpiece among master-
pieces Las Meninas. Many notable pictures that
had himg for years in the Academia de Nobles
Artes de San Fernando, at the Escorial Palace, and
and the collection of the Duke of Osuna are now

357

PROMENADES

housed within the waDs <rf the PtadoL Atdie
trance you encounter a monumental figure of
Gojra, sitdngy m bronze, the work ot the scu^iinr
T. Llaneses.

The Piado has been called a gallery f (mt coo*
noisfieurs, and it is the happiest tide that could be
^ven it, for it is not a great museum in which all
schods are represented. You look in vain lor the
chain historic that holds together disparate styles;
there are omissions, (nninous gaps, and the very
nation that ought to put its best foot foremost, the
Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez.
Of him there are over sixty authentic works; of
Titian over thirty. Bryan only allows him twenty-
three; this is an error. There are fifteen Titians
in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the
Pitti; in Paris, thirteen, but one is the Man with
the Glove. Quality coimts heaviest, therefore the
surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers but
the wonderful quality of so many of them. To
lend additional lustre to the specimens of the
Venetian school, the collection starts off with a
superb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who
taught Titian his magic colour secrets; the painter
whose works are, with a few exceptions, ascribed
to other men — more is the pity! (In this we are
at one with Herbert Cook, who still clings to the
belief that the Concert of the Pitti Palace is Gior-
gione and not Titian. At least the Concert Cham-
pfttre of the Louvre has not been taken from " Big
George.") The Madrid masterpiece is The Virgin
and Child Jesus with St. Anthony and St Roch.

358

PICTURES IN MADRID

It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of
which is the famous Bacchanal. Then there are
The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus,
The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. at
Miihlberg, an equestrian portrait; another por-
trait of the same with figure standing, King Philip,
Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entomb-
ment of Christ, Venus and Adonis, Danae and the
Golden Shower, a variation of this picture is in
the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the
National Museum, Naples; Venus Listening to
Music, two versions, the stately nude evidently a
memory of the Venus reposing in the UflSzi:
Adam and Eve (also a copy of this by Rubens);
Prometheus, Sisyphus — long supposed to be
copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St.
Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom,
Ecce Homo, La Dolorosa, the once admired Allo-
cution; Flight Into Egypt, St. Catalina, a self-
portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Actaeon, The
Sermon on the Mount — the list is much longer.

There are many Goyas; the museum is the home
of this remarkable but uneven painter. We con-
fess to a disappointment in his colour, though his
paint was not new to us; but time has lent no
pleasing patina to his canvases, the majority of
which are rusty-looking, cracked, discoloured,
dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The
nude and dressed full-lengths of the Duchess of
Alba are in excellent preservation, and brilliant
audacious painting it is. A lovely creature, better-
looking when reclining than standing, as a glance

359

PROMENADES

at her full-length portrait m the New Yoric His-
panic Museum proves. One of Goya^s best por-
traits hangs in {he Prado, the seated figure of his
brother-in-law, the painter Bayeu. The Family
of Charles IV, his patron and patroness, with the
sheep-like head of the favourite De la Paz, is
here in aU its bitter humour; it might be called a
satiric pendant to that other Familia, not many
yards away, Las Meninas. There are the designs
for tapestries in the basement; Blind Man's BufiF
and other themes illustrating national traits. The
equestrian portraits of Charles IV and his sweet,
sinister spouse, Queen Maria Luisa, reveal a Goya
not known to the world. He could assimie tiie
grand manner when he so willed. He could play
the dignified master with the same versatility that
he played at bull-fighting. But his colour is often
hot and muddy, and perhaps he will go down to
that doubtful quantity, posterity, as an etcher and
designer of genius. After leaving the Prado you
remember only the Caprices, the Bull-fights, and
the Disaster of War plates; perhaps the Duchess
of Alba, imdressed, and in her dainty toreador cos-
tume. The historic pictures are a tissue of hor-
rors, patriotic as they are meant to be; they
suggest the slaughter-house. Goya has painted a
portrait of Villanueva, the architect of the museimi;
and there is a solidly constructed portrait of Goya
by V. Lopez.

The Raphaels have been reduced to two at the
Prado: The Holy Family with the Lamb, painted
a year after the Ansedei Madonna, and that won-

360

PICTURES IN MADRID

derful head of young Cardinal Bibbiena, keen-
eyed and ascetic of features. Alas! for the scholar-
ship that attributed to the Divine Youth La Perk;
the Madonna of the Fish; Lo Spasimo, Christ
Bearing the Cross, and several other masterpieces.
Giulio Romana, Penni, and perhaps another,
turned out these once celebrated and overpraised
pictures — overpraised even if they had come
from the brush of Raphael himself. The Cardi-
nal's portrait is worth the entire batch of them.
There is a Murillo gallery, full of representative
work, the most important being St. Elizabeth of
Himgary Tending the Sick, formerly in the Esco-
rial. The various Conceptions and saints' heads
are not missing, painted in his familiar colour key
with his familiar false sentiment and always an
eye to the appeal popular. A mighty magnet for
the public is Murillo. The peasants flock to him
on Simdays as to a sanctuary. There the girls
see themselves on a high footing, a heavenly
saraband among woolly clouds, their prettiness
idealised, their costume of exceeding grace. After
a while you tire of the saccharine Murillo and his
studio beggar boys, and turn to his drawings with
relief. His landscapes are more sincere than his
religious canvases, which are almost as sensuous
and earthly as Correggio without the magisterial
brush-work and commanding conception of the
Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be
admitted that Murillo could make a good por-
trait. Both in Madrid and Seville you may
verify this.

361

PROMENADES

A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna
open your eyes, for the Italian Primitives are con-
spicuous by their absence. Correggio is magnifi-
cent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ
Risen, Noli Me Tangere! His Virgin with Jesus
and St John is in his accustomed melting pale.
One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin,
Jesus and St John, called Asunto Mistico at the
Prado. Truly a moving picture, by a painter who
owes much of his fame to Robert Browning. His
Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife.
There are Lotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintor-
etto, Bassano, Veronese, Domenico Tiepolo, and
his celebrated father the fantastic Giambattista
Tiepolo — not startling specimens any of them«

In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the
strongest He was a personality as well as a
powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of St
Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest,
though morbid at times; but of Berragueta,
Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, Coello —
an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro — La
Cruz, Alfonso Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa,
Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de March —
two realistic heads of an old man and an old
woman must be set down to his credit — Ribalta,
influenced by Caravaggio, in turn influencing
Ribera — Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del
Mazo — son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible
for dozens of false attributions — Carreno de
Miranda, Jos^ Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, the
two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the

362

PICTURES IN MADRID

younger a nonentity, and others of the Spanish
school may be dismissed in a word — medioc-
rities.

The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian
secret," was produced, some experts believe, by
first painting a solid monochrome in tempera on
which the picture was finished in oil. Unques-
tionably Titian corrected and amended his work
as much as did Velasquez. It is a pleasing if
somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velas-
quez, duelled with their canvases, their rapier
a brush. After inspecting many of the Hals por-
traits the evidences of direct painting, swift though
calculated, are not to be denied. This may ac- '
count, with the temperamental equation, for the
less profound psychological interest of his por-
traiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian,
Velasquez, and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what su-
periority in brush-work had Hals over Raphael
and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a
rule hard, dry, and lustreless, while Rembrandt's
heavy, troubled paint is no mate for the airy touch
of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto
is l)rric. It sings on the least of his canvases.
No doubt his pictures in the Prado have been
"skinned" of their delicate glaze by the icono-
clastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever
bloom. The Bacchanal, which bears a faint family
resemblance to the Bacchus and Ariadne of the
London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy of

363

PROMENADES

life, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberat-
ing tones, what powers of evocation! The Garden
of the Loves is a vision of childhood at its sweetest;
the surface of the canvas seems alive with festooned
babies. The more voluptuous Venus or Danae
do not so stir your pulse as this immortal choir of
cupids. The two portraits of Charles V — one
equestrian — are charged with the noble> ardent
gravity and splendour of phrasing we expect from
the greatest Venetian of them all. We doubt, how-
ever, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought
as the same subject by Titian in Paris; but it
soimds a poignant note of sorrow. Rembrandt is
more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme.
The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a
figure that is touching and almost tragic. The
Madonna and Child, with St. Bridget and St.
Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St.
Bridget is of the sumptuous Venetian type; the
modelling of her head is lovely, her colouring rich.
Rubens in the Prado is singularly attractive.
There are over fifty, not all of the best quality, but
numbering such works as the Three Graces, the
Rondo, the Garden of Love, and the masterly im-
finished portrait of Marie de Medicis. The
Brazen Serpent is a Van Dyck, though the cata-
logue of 1907 credits it to Rubens. Then there
are the Andromeda and Perseus, the Holy Family
and Diana and Calista. The portrait of Marie de
M^icis, stout, smiling, amiability personified, has
been called one of the finest feminine portraits ex-
tant — which is a slight exaggeration. It is both

364

PICTURES IN MADRID

mellow and magnificent, and unless history or
Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as
mother's milk. The Three Graces, executed dur-
ing the latter years of the Flemish master, is
Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and
handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian
delicacy, include Rubens's second wife, Helena
Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blond flesh
tones, what solidity of human architecture, what
positive beauty of surfaces and nobility of con-
tours! The Rondo is a mad, whirling dance, the
Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath
outdoors, but a picture that might have impelled
Walt Whitman to write a sequel to his Children
of Adam. Such women were bom* not alone to
bear children but to rule the destinies of man-
kind; genuine matriarchs.

Rembrandt fares ill. His Artemisia about to
drink her husband's ashes from a costly cup reveals
a ponderous hand. It is but indifferent Rem-
brandt, despite several jewelled passages. Van
Dyck shows at least one great picture, the Be-
trayal of Christ. The Brazen Serpent only ranks
second to it; both are masterpieces, and Antwerp
must envy the Prado. The Crown of Thorns, and
the portraits, particularly that of the Countess of
Wexford, are arresting. His Musician, being the
portrait of Lanifere the lute-player, and his own
portrait on the same canvas with Count Bristol, are
cherished treasures. The lutist is especially fasci-
nating. That somewhat mysterious Dutch mas-
ter, Moro, or Mor (Antonis; bom in Utrecht, 151 2;

365

PROMENADES

died at Antwerp, 1576 or 1578), is represented by
more than a dozen portraits. To know what a
master of physiognomy he was we need only study
his Mary Queen of England, the Buffoon of the
Beneventas, the Philip 11, and the various heads of
royal and noble bom dames. The subdued fire
and subtlety of this series, the piercing vision and
superior handicraft of the painter have placed him
high in the artistic hierarchy; but not high enough.
At his best he is not far behind Holbein. That
great German's art is shown in a solitary master-
piece, the portrait of an imknown man, with
shrewd cold eyes, an enormous nose, the hands full
of meaning, the fabrics scrupulous as to detail.
Next to this Holbein, whose glance follows you
around the gallery, are the two Diirers, the por-
trait of Hans Imhof, a world-renowned picture,
and his own portrait (1498), a magical rendering
of a Christ-like head, the ringlets curly, the beard
youthful, the hands folded as if in prayer. A mar-
vellous composition. It formerly hung too high,
above the Hans Imhof; it now hangs next to it.
A similar head in the UflSzi is a copy. Sir Walter
Armstrong to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Flemish schools are to be seen in the base-
ment, not altogether a favourable place, though in
the afternoon there is an agreeable light. Like
Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the
impress of his style. But the Van Eycks at the
Prado are now all queried, though several are note-
worthy. The Marriage of the Virgin is discred-
ited. The Virgin, Christ and St. John imder the

366

PICTURES IN MADRID

golden canopy, called a Hubert van Eyck, is
probably by Gossaert de Mabuse, and a clever
transposition of the altar piece in St. Bavon's at
Ghent. The Fountain of Life, also in the cata-
logue as a Jan van Eyck, has been pronounced a
sixteenth-century copy of a lost picture by his
brother Hubert. We may add that not one of
these so-called Van Eycks recalls in all their native
delicacy and richness the real Van Eycks of Bruges,
Ghent, and Brussels; though the Virgin Reading,
given as Jan's handiwork, is of a charm. The
Depositions, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden
(De la Pasture), are acknowledged to be old six-
teenth-century copies of the Deposition in the
Escorial. The altar piece is excellent. But there
is a fine Memling, glowing in pigment and of
beautiful design. The Adoration of the Kings, a
triptych, like the one at Bruges. In the centre
panel we see the kings adoring, one a black man;
the two wings, or doors, respectively depict the
birth of Christ (right) and the presentation in the
temple (left). There is a retablo (reredos) in four
compartments, by Petrus Cristus, and two Jerome
Patinirs, one, a Temptation of St. Anthony, being
lenjoyable. The painter-persecuted saint sits in
3 the foreground of a freshly painted landscape,
harassed by the attentions of witches, several of
them comely and clothed. To be precise, the
composition suggests a much-married man listen-
ing to the reproaches of his spouses. Hanging in
a doorway we found a Herri Met de Bles that is
not marked doubtful. It is a triptych, an Adora-

367

PROMENADES

tion, in which the three kings, the Queen of Sheba
before Solomon, and Herod participate. A brill-
iantly tinted work this, which once hung in the
Escorial, and, mirabile diciUj attributed to Lucas
van Leyden. No need to speak of the later Dutch
and Flemish school, Teniers, Ostade, Dou, Pour-
bus, and the minor masters. There are Breughels
and Bosches aplenty, and none too good. But
there are several Jordaens of quality, a family
group, and three heads of street musicians. We
forgot to mention an attribution to Jan van Eyck,
The Triumph of Religion, which is a curious affair
no matter whose brain conceived it. The attend-
ant always points out its religious features with
ill-concealed glee. A group of ecclesiastics have
confounded a group of rabbis at a foimtain which
is the foundation of an altar; the old fervour
bums in the eyes of the gallery servitor as he shows
you the discomfited Hebrew doctors of the law.
We may dismiss as harmless the Pinturicchio and
other Italian attributions in these basement galler-
ies. There is the usual crew of Anonimos, and a
lot of those fantastic painters who are nicknamed
by critics without a sense of humour as "The
Master of the Fiery Hencoop," "The Master of
the Eccentric Omelet," or some such idiotic title.
Up-stairs familiar names such as Domenichino,
Bassano, Cortona, Crespi, Bellino, Pietra della
Vecchia, Allori, Veronese, Maratta, Guido Reni,
Romano need not detain us. The catalogue
numbers of the Italian school go as high as 628.
The Titians, however, are the glory of flie Prado.

368

PICTURES IN MADRID

The Spanish school begins at 629, ends at 1,029.
The German, Flemish, and Holland schools begin
at 1,146, running to 1,852. There are supplements
to all of the foregoing. The French school nms
from 1,969 to 2,111. But the examples in this
section are not inspiring, the Watteaus excepted.
There is the usual Champagne, Co)rpel, Claude of
Lorraine (10), Largillifere, Lebnm, Van Loo, Mig-
^^rd (5); one of Le Nain — ^by both brothers.
Nattier (4), Nicolas Poussin (20), Rigaud, and
two delicious Watteaus; a rustic betrothal and a
view of the garden of St. Cloud, the two exhaling
melancholy grace and displaying subdued rich-
ness of tone. Tiepolo has been called the last link
in the chain of Venetian colourists, which began
with the Bellini, followed by Giorgione, Titian,
Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio, Bonifazio, Veronese —
and to this list might be added the name of the
Frenchman Watteau. Chardin was also a colour-
ist, and how many of the Poussins at this gallery
might be spared to make room for one of his cool,
charming paintings!

The Pnido about exhausts the art treasures of
Madrid. In the Escorial, that most monstrous
and gloomiest of the tombs of kings, are pictures
that should be seen — some Grecos among the
rest — even if the palace does not win your sym-
pathy. In Madrid what was once called the
Academia de San Fernando is now the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes. It is at 11 Calle de
AlcaUL and contains a Murillo of quality, the
Dream of the Roman Knight, Zurbaran's Carthu-

369

PROMENADES

sians, an Ecce Homo by Ribera, of power; the
Death of Dido by Fragonard; a Rubens, St.
Francis, the work of his pupik; Alonzo Cano, two
Murillos, Domenichino, Tristan, Mengs, Giovanni
Bellini; Goya's bull-fights, mad-house scenes, and
several portraits — one of the Due de la Paz; a
Pereda, a Da Vinci (?), Madrazo, Zurbaran, and
Goya's equestrian portrait of Charles IV. A
minor gathering, the debris of a former superb
collection, and not even catalogued.

There are museimis devoted to artillery, armour,
natural sciences, and archaeology. In the imposing
National Library, full of precious manuscripts, is
the museum of modem art — also without a cata-
logue. It does not make much of an impression
after the Prado. The Fortuny is not character-
istic, though a rarity; a sketch for his Battle of
Tetuan, the original an unfinished painting, is at
Barcelona. There are special galleries such as
the Sala Haes with its seventy pictures, which are
depressing. The modem Spaniards Zuloaga, So-
roUa, Angla-Camarosa are either not represented
or else are not at their best There is a Diaz, who
was of Spanish origin; but the Madrazos, Villegas,
Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or
else feeble and mannered. There are some adroit
water-colours by modem Frenchmen, and there is
a seeming attempt to make the collection contem-
porary in spirit, but it is all as dead as the allegor-
ical dormouse, while over at the Prado there is a
vitality manifested by the old fellows that bids fait
to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests ol

370

EL GRECO AT TOLEDO

many generations. We have not more than al-
luded to the sculpture at the Prado; it is not par-
ticularly distinguished. The best sculpture we
saw in Spain was displayed in wood-carvings. The
pride of the Prado is centred upon its Titians,
Raphaels, Rubenses, Murillos, El Grecos, and,
above all, upon Don Diego de Silva, better known
as Velasquez.

EL GRECO AT TOLEDO

Toledo is less than three hours from Madrid;
it might be three years away for all the resemblance
it bears to the capital. Both situated in New
Castille, Madrid seems sharply modern, as modem
as the early nineteenth century, when compared to
the mediaeval cluster of buildings on the horseshoe-
shaped granite heights ahnost entirely hemmed in
by the river Tagus. It is not only one of the most
original cities in Spain, but in all Europe. No
other boasts its incomparable profile, few the
extraordinary vicissitudes of its history. Not ro-
mantic in the operatic moonlit Grenada fashion,
without the sparkle and colour of Seville or the
mimdane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in
its cold, detached, proud, pious way all that we
feel as Spain the aristocratic, Spain the theocratic.
To this city on a crag there once came, by way of
Venice, a wanderer from Crete. Toledo was the
final frame of the strange genius of El Greco; he
made it the consecrate ground of his new art. It
is difficult to imagine him developing in luxuriant

371

PROMENADES

Italy as be did in Spain* His nature needed a
sombre and magnificent background; this dty
gave it to him; for no artist can entirely isolate
himself from life, can work in vacuo. And El
Greco's shivering, spiritual art could have been
bom on no other soil than Toledo. He is as
original as the dty.

The place shows traces of its masters — Ro-
mans, Goths, Saracens, and Christians. It is,
indeed, as much Moorish as Christian — the nar-
row streets, high, narrow houses often windowless,
the inner court replacing the open squares that are
to be found in Seville. Miscalled the ''Spanish
Rome," Gautier's description still holds good:
Toledo has the character of a convent, a prison,
a fortress with something of a seraglio. The
enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visi-
gothic Christianity, is, next to Seville's, the most
beautiful in Spain. Such a facade, such stained
glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibafiez has written
pages about this structure. The synagogues, the
Moorish mosque, the Alcdzar are picturesque.
And then there are the Puente de Alcantara, the
Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison
of the Inquisition, the Church of Santo Tom6 —
which holds the most precious example of Greco's
art — the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of
San Vicente — with Grecos — Santo Domingo
(more Grecos) ; the Convent, near the Church of
San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Pro-
vincial in which were formerly a number of
Grecos; many of these have bjsen transferred to

372

EL GRECO AT TOLEDO

the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Mar-
quis de la Vega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter.
This museum was once the home of Greco, and
has been restored, so that if the artist returned
he might find himself in familiar quarters. Pic-
tures, furniture, carvings of his are there, while
the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmonious
style of old material. Remain various antique
patios or court-like interiors, the sword manu-
factory, and the general view from the top of the
town. El Greco's romantic portra)nnent of his
adopted city is as true now as the day it was
painted — one catches a glimpse of the scene
when the contrasts of light and shadow are strong.
During a thunderstorm illuminated by blazing
shafts of Peninsular lightning Toledo resembles
a page torn from the Apocalypse.

The cathedral is the usual objective; instead,
we first went to the church of Santo Tom^. It
is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from a mosque
by Count Orgdz. In commemoration of this gift
a large canvas, entitled El Entierro, depicting the
funeral of Orgdz, by El Greco, has made Santo
Tom^ more celebrated than the cathedral. It is
an amazing, a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a
scale that prevents it from giving completely the
quintessence of El Greco. No doubt he was a
pupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gos-
sip when he said that the Greek went mad in his
attempt to emulate his master. But Tintoretto's
influence counts heavier in this picture than
Titian's, a picture assigned by Cossi6 midway

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PROMENADES

between Greco's first and second period. Decora-
tive as is the general scheme, the emotional in-
tensity aroused by the row of portraits in the
second plan, the touching expression of the two
saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gently bear
the corpse of the Coimt, the murky light of the
torches in the backgroimd, while overhead the
saintly hierarchy terminating in a white radiance,
Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right
hand, quiring hosts at His left — all these figures
make an ensemble that at first glance benimibs the
critical faculty. You recall the solemn and spas-
modic music of Michael Angelo (of whom EI
Greco is reported to have irreverently declared
that he couldn't paint); then as your perspective
slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus
a certain personal accent of morbid magnificence,
is the artistic progenitor of this art, an art which
otherwise furiously boik over with Spanish char-
acteristics.

Nothing could be more vivid and various than
the twenty-odd heads near the bottom of the pic-
ture. Eiq)ression, character, race are not pushed
beyond normal limits. The Spaniard, truly noble
here, is seen at a half-dozen periods of life. EI
Greco himself is said to be in the group; the
portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his.
The sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vest-
ments, court costumes, rufiFs, and eloquent hands,
the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chord roll-
ing upon chord of subtle tonah'ties, the supreme
illumination of the scene, with its suggestion of a

374

EL GRECO AT TOLEDO

moment swiftly trapped forever in eternity, hook
this masterpiece firmly to your memory. It is not
one of the greatest pictures in the pantheon of
art, not Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet it stands
close to them all because of its massed effect of
light, hfe, and emotional situation. We confess
to liking it better than the Gloria at the Escorial
Palace. This glorification of a dream of Philip II
does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as
does the Burial of Count Orgiz, though the two
^canvases are similar in architectonic.

The Expolio is in the cathedral; it belongs to
the first period, before El Greco had shaken off
Italian influences. The coloiuing is rather cold.
The St. Maurice in the chapter hall of the Es-
corial is a long step toward a new method of
expression. (A replica is in Bucharest.) The
Ascension altar piece, formerly in Santo Domingo,
now hangs in the Art Institute, Chicago. At To-
ledo there are about eighty pieces of the master,
not including his sculpture, retablos; like Tin-
toretto, he was accustomed to make little models
in clay or wax for the figures in his pictures.
His last manner is best exemplified in the Divine
Love and Profane Love, belonging to Senor
Zuloaga, in The Adoration of the Shepherds, at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the As-
sumption at the Church of St. Vicente, Toledo.
His chalky whites, poisonous greens, violet shad-
ows, discordant passages of lighting are, as
Arthur Symons puts it: Sharp and dim, gray and

375

PROMENADES

green, the colour of Toledo. Greco composed his
paktte with white vermilion, lake, yellow ochre,
ivory black. Sefior Beruete says that ''he gener-
ally laid on an impasto for his flesh, put on in
litde touches, and then added a few definite
strokes with the brush which, though accentuated,
are very delicate. . . . The gradations of the
values is in itself instructive."

His human forms became more elongated as he
aged; this applies only to his males; his women
are of sweetness compoimded and graceful in con-
tour. Some a mere arabesque, or living flames;
some sinister and fantastic; from the sublime to
the silly is with Greco not a wide stride. But in
all his surging, writhing sea of wraiths, saints,
kings, danmed souls and blest, a cerebral grip is
manifest. He knew a hawk from a handsaw
despite his temperament of a mystic. ''He who
carries his own most intimate emotions to their
highest point becomes the first in a file of a long
series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "To be a
leader of men one must turn one's back on men."
El Greco, like Charles Baudelaire, cultivated his
hysteria. He developed his individuality to the
border line across which looms madness. The
transmogrification of his temperament after living
in Toledo was profoimd. Bom Greek, in art a
Venetian, the atmosphere of the Castilian plain
changed the colour of his soul. In him there was
material enough for both a Savonarola or a Tor-
quemada — his piety was at once iconoclastic and
fanatical. And his restlessness, his ceaseless ex-

376

EL GRECO AT TOLEDO

periments, his absolute discoveries of new tonal-
ities, his sense of mystic grandeur — why here
you have, if you will, a Beriioz of paint, a man
of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic,
with a brain like a gloomy cathedral in which
the Tuba Mirum is sonorously chanted. But
Greco is on the side of the angels; Berlioz, like
Goya, too often joined in the infernal antiphonies
of Satan Mekatrig. And Greco is as dramatic as
either.

Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was
affected by the study of El Greco's colouring.
Camille Saint-SaSns, when Liszt and Rubinstein
were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists
who have nothing in common except their superi-
ority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez with
his elder. And Gautier was off the track when
he spoke of Greco's resemblance to the bizarre
romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco was,
but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent
tendencies we side with the opinion of Mr. Frank
Jewett Mather, Jr. : " Certain pedants have writ-
ten as if the world would be better without its dis-
orderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no
sorer error. We need the imbalanced talents, the
pokes damnes of every craft. They strew the
passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own.
They fight valiantly, a little at the expense of their
fame, against the only impardonable sins, stupid-
ity and indifference. Greco should always be an
honoured name in this ill-destined company."

In the Prado Museirai there is a goodly collec-

377

PROMENADES

tion. The Annunciation, The Holy Family, Jesus
Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The Resur-
rection, The Crucifixion — a tremendous concep-
tion; and The Coming of the Holy Ghost; tUs
latter, with its tongues of fire, its flickering torches,
its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded by
a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the aesthetic
pulse. The Prado has two dozen specimens,
though two of them at least — a poor replica of the
Org&z burial, and another — are known to be by
El Greco's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of
the numerous portraits and other pictures dis-
persed by time and chance to the four quarters of
the globe, we have written earlier in this volume,
when dealing with the definitive work on this
Greek by Sefior Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco,
through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce
sincerity, could pluck out from men who had be-
come, because of their apathy and grotesque
pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls
afire; or if stained by crimes, these souls, he shot
them up to God like green meteors. To be
sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed
skull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of
chin and often an atrabilious nature. When old
his saints resemble him, when yoimg he must have
looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin.
With his ardent faith he could have confuted the
Gnostic or the Manichean heresies in colourful
allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahs on
his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His
saints. Perhaps if he had lived in our times he

378

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

might have painted heads of fashionable cour-
tesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether prim-
itive or modem, realist or symbolist, he would
always have been a painter of dramatic genius.
He is the unicorn among artists.

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

Fearful that your eye has lost its innocence
after hearing so much of the picture, you enter
the tiny room at the museum on the Prado in
which is himg Las Meninas — The Maids of
Honour, painted by Velasquez in 1656. My ex-
experience was a t3rpical one. I went hastily
through the larger Velasquez gallery in not only a
challenging but an irritable mood. The holy of
holies I was enraged to find, seemingly, crowded.
There was the picture, but a big easel stood in the
foreground blotting out the left side; some selfish
artist copying, some fellow thrusting himself be-
tween us and the floating illusion of art. In de-
spair I looked into the mirror that reflects the
picture. I suspected trickery. Surely that lit-
tle princess with her wilful, distrait expression,
surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, the sprawl-
ing dog, the painter Velasquez — with his wig —
the heads of the king and queen in the oblong
mirror, the figure of Senor Nieto in the door-
way, the light framing his silhouette — surely
they are all real. Here are the eternal simplic-
ities. You realise that no one is in the room
but these painted effigies of the court and fomily

379

PROMENADES

of Philip IV; that the canvas whose bare ribs
deceived is in the picture, not on the floor; that
Velasquez and the others are eidolons ^ arrested in
space by the white magic of his art. For the
moment all other artists and their works are as
forgotten as the secrets in the lost and sacred
books of the Magi. There is but one painter and
his name is Velasquez.

This mood of ecstatic absorption is never out-
lived; the miracle operates whenever a visit is
made to the shrine. But you soon note that the
canvas has been deprived of its delicate glaze.
There are patches ominously eloquent of the years
that have passed since the birth of this magisterial
composition. The tonal key is said to be higha:
because of restorations; yet to the worshipper these
shortcomings are of minor importance. Even
Giordano's exclamation: "Sire, this is the theol-
ogy of painting," falls flat. Essence of painting,
would have been a truer statement. There is
no other-worldliness here, but something more
normal, a suggestion of solid reality, a vision of
life. The various figures breathe; so potent is
their vitality that my prime impression in entering
the room was a sense of the presence of others.
Perhaps this is not as consummate art as the
voluptuous colour-symphonies of Titian, the gol-
den exuberance of Rubens, the abstract spacing
of Raphael, the mystic opiimi of Rembrandt; but
it is an art more akin to nature, an art that is a
lens through which you may spy upon life. You
recall Ibsen and his ''fourth waU." Velasques

380

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

has let us into the secret of human exfetence.
Not, however, in the realistic order of inanimate
objects copied so faithfully as to fool the eye.
Presentation, not representation, is the heart of
this coloured imagery, and so moving, so redo-
lent of life is it that if the world were shattered
and Las Meninas shot to the coast of Mars, its
inhabitants would be able to reconstruct an idea
of the creatures that once inhabited old Mother
Earth; men, women, children, their shapes, atti-
tudes, gestures, and attributes. The mystery of
sentient beings lurks in this canvas, the illu-
sion of atmosphere has never been so contrived.
In the upper part of the picture space is indi-
cated in a manner that recalls both Rembrandt
and Raphael. Velasquez, too, was a space-com-
poser. Velasquez, too, plucked at the heart
of darkness. But his air is luminous, the logic
of his proporti<m feiultless, his synthesis absolute.
Where other painters jiuctapose he composes.
Despite the countless nuances of his thin, slippery
brush strokes, the picture is always a finely ^un
whole.

When Fragonard was starting for Rome,
Boucher said to him: '^If you take those people
over there seriously you are done for." Luckily
Frago did not, and, despite his two Italian
journeys, Velasquez was not seduced into taking
" those people " seriously. His recorded opinion of
Raphael is corroborative of his attitude toward
Italian art. Titian was bis sole god. For nearly
a year he was in daily intercourse with Rubens,

381

PROMENADES

but of Rubens's influence upon him there is
little trace. Las Meninas is the perfect flowering
of the genius of the Spaniard. It has been called
impressionistic; Velasquez has been claimed as
the father of impressionism as Stendhal was
hailed by Zola as the hterary progenitor of natural-
ism. But Velasquez is too universal to be la-
belled in the interests of any school. His themes
are of this earth, his religious paintings are the
least credible of his efforts. They are Italianate
as if the artist dared not desert the familiar relig-
ious stencil. His art is not correlated to the other
arts. One does not dream of music or poetry
or sculpture or drama in front of his pictures.
One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the
paint. Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he
paint for the sake of making beautiful surfaces as
often does Titian. His practice is not art for art
as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's
is the only name to be coupled with that of Ve-
lasquez. He neither flattered his sitters, as did
Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And
consider the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal
persons he was forced to paint! He has wrung
the neck of banal eloquence, and his prose, sober,
rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is to my taste
preferable to the exalted, versatile volubility and
lofty poetic tumblings in the azure of any school
of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidi-
ously restricted. It has been said that he lacks
imagination, as if creation or evocation of char-
acter is not the loftiest attribute of imagination,

382

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

even though it deals not with the stuflF of which
mythologies are made.

We admire the enthusiasm of Mr. Ricketts for
Velasquez, and his analysis is second to none save
R. A. M. Stevenson's. Yet we do protest the
painter was not the bimdle of negations Mr. Rick-
etts has made of him in his evident anxiety that
some homage may be diverted from Titian. Titian
is incomparable. Velasquez is imique. But to
describe him as an artist who cautiously studied
the work of other men, and then avoided by a
series of masterly omissions and evasions their
faults as well as their excellences, is a statement
that robs Velasquez of his originality. He is
not an eclectic. He is a man of aflSrmations,
Velasquez. A student to his death, he worked
slowly, revised painfully, above all, made heroic
sacrifices. Each new canvas was a discovery.
The things he left out of his pictures would fill
a second Prado Museimi. And the things he
painted in are the glories of the world. Because
of his simplicity, absence of fussiness, avoidance
of the mock-heroic, of the inflated "grand man-
ner," critics have pressed too heavily upon this
same simplicity. There is nothing as subtle as
^ his simplicity, for it is a simplicity that conceals
subtlety. No matter the time of day or season
of the year you visit Velasquez, you never find
him oflF his guard. Aristocratic in his ease, he
disarms you first. You may change your love,
your politics, your religion, but once a Velasquez
worshipper, always one.

383

PROMENADES

Mr. Ricketts, over-anxious at precisely placing
him, writes of his "distinction." He is the most
"distinguished" painter in history. But we con-
tend that this phrase eludes precise definition.
"Distinguished" in what? we ask. Style, char-
acter, paint quality, vision of the beautiful ? Why
not come out plumply with the truth: Velasquez
is the supreme harmonist in art No one ever
approached him m his handling save Hals, and
Hals hardly boasts the artistic mches of Velas-
quez. Both possessed a daylight vision of the
world. Reality came to them in the sharpest guise;
but the vision of Velasquez came m a more beau-
tiful envelope. And his psychology is profounder.
He painted the sparkle of the eyes and also the
look in them, the challenging glance that asks:
"Are we, too, not humans?" Titian saw colour
as a poet, Velasquez as a charmer and a reflective
temperament Hals doesn't think at all. He
slashes out a figure for you and then he is done.
The graver, deeper Spaniard is not satisfied imtil
he has kept his pact with nature. So his vision of
her is more rounded, concrete, and truthful than
the vision of other painters. The balance in his
work of the most disparate and complex relations
of form, space, colour, and rhythm has the im-
premeditated quality of life; yet the massive
harmonic grandeurs of Las Meninas have been
placed by certain critics in the category of
glorified genre.

Some prefer Las Hilanderas in the outer gallery.
After the stately equestrian series, the Philip,

384

^•'►v-

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

the Olivares, the Baltasar Carlos; after the bust
portraits of Philip in the Prado and in the Na-
tional Gallery, the hunting series; after the Cru-
cifixion and its sombre background, you return
to The Spinners and wonder anew. Its sub-
title might be: Variations on the Theme of Sun-
shine. In it the painter pursues the coloured
adventures of a ray of light Rhythmically more
involved and contrapuntal than The Maids, this
canvas, with its brilliant broken lights, its air that
circulates, its tender yet potent conducting of the eye
from the rounded arm of the seductive girl at the
1oo;di to the arched area with its leaning, old-time
bass-viol, its human figures melting dream-like
into the tapestried backgroimd, arouses within the
spectator much more complicated ^cUs d^ame
than does Las Meninas. The silvery sorceries of
that picture soothe the spirit and pose no riddles;
The Spinners is a cathedral crammed with im-
plications. Is it not the last word of the art of
Velasquez — though it preceded The Maids ? Will
the eye ever tire of its glorious gloom, its core of
tonal richness, its virile exaltation of everyday
existence? Is it only a trick of the wrist, a deft
blending of colours by this artist, who has been
called, wrongfully — the "Shakespeare of the
brush"? Is all this nothing more than "dis-
tinguished '' ?

Mr. Ricketts justly calls Las Lanzas the unique
historic picture. Painted at the very flush of his
genius, painted with sympathy for the conquered
and the conqueror — Velasquez accompanied

385

PROMENADES

the Marquis of Spinola to Italy — this Surren-
der of Breda has received the homage of many
generations. Sir Joshua Reynolds asserted that
the greatest picture at Rome was the Velasquez
head of Pope Innocent X in the Doria Palace
(a variant is in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Peters-
burg). What would he have said in the presence
of this captivating evocation of a historic event?
The battle pieces of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci,
and Titian are destroyed; Las Lanzas remains a
testimony to the powers of imaginative recon-
struction and architectonic of Velasquez. It is
the most complete, the most natural picture in
the world. The rh)rthms of the bristling lances are
syncopated by a simple device; they are transposed
to another plane of perspective, there in company
with a lowered batde standard. The acute rh)rthms
of these spears has given to the picture its title of
The Lances, and never was title more appro-
priate. The picture is at once a decorative ara-
besque, an ensemble of tones, and a slice of his-
tory. Spinola receives from the conquered Jus-
tin of Nassau the keys of the beleagured Breda.
Velasquez creates two armies out of eight figures,
a horse and fourteen heads — here is the recipe
of Degas for making a multitude carried to the
height of the incredible. His own portrait, that
of a grave, handsome man, may be seen to the
right of the big horse.

The first period of his art found Velasquez a
realist heavy in colour and brush-work, and with-
out much hint of the transcendental realism to be

386

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buflfoons,
the iEsop and the Menippus are the result of an
effortless art. In the last manner the secret of the
earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, as
Dostoievsky would put it. The Topers, The
Forge of Vulcan, are pictures that enthrall be-
cause of their robust simplicity and vast technical
sweep though they do not possess the creative
invention of the Merciuy and Argus or The An-
chorites. This latter is an amazing performance.
Two hermits — St. Antony the Abbot visiting St.
Paul the Hermit — are shown. A flying raven,
bread in beak, nears them. You could swear
that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas.
This picture breathes peace and sweetness. The
Christ of the Spaniard is a man, not a god,
crucified. His Madonnas, masterly as they are,
do not reach out hands across the frame as do his
flower-like royal children and delicate monsters.

The crinolined princess, Margarita, with her
spangles and furbelows, is a companion to the
Margarita at the Louvre and the one in Vienna.
She is the exquisite and lyric Velasquez. On
his key-board of imbricated tones there are grays
that felicitously sing across alien strawberry tints,
thence modulate into fretworks of dim golden
fire. As a landscapist Velasquez is at his best in
the Prado. The various backgroimds and those
two views painted at Rome in the garden of the
Villa Medici — a liquid comminglement of Corot
and Constable, as has been pointed out — prove
this man of protean rrifts to have anticipated

387

PROMENADES

modem discoveries in vibrating atmospheric ef-
fects and adour-values. But, then, Velasquez
will always be "modem.'' And when time has
obliterated his woric he may become the kgendaiy
Parriiasius of a vanished qxxJi. To see him in
the Piado is to stand eye to eye with die most
enchanting realities of art

3S8

CODA

When a man begins to chatter of his prome-
nades among the masterpieces it may be assumed
that he has crossed the sill of middle-age. Remy
de Gourmont, gentle ironist, calls such a period
Pheure insidieuse. Yet, is it not something — a
vain virtue, perhaps — to possess the courage of
one's windmills! From the Paris of the days
when I haunted the ateliers of G^r6me, Bonnat,
Meissonier, Couture, and spent my enthusiasms
over the colour-schemes of Decamps and Fortuny,
to the Paris of the revolutionists, Manet, Degas,
Monet, now seems a life long. But time fugues
precipitately through the land of art. In reality
both periods overiap; the dichotomy is spiritual,
not temporal.

The foregoing memoranda are frankly in the
key of impressionism. They are a record of some
personal preferences, not attempts at critical re-
valuations. Appearing first in the New York Sutij
the project of their publication in book form met
with the approbation of its proprietor, William
Mackay LaflFan, whose death in 1909 was an
international loss to the Fine Arts. If these opin-
ions read like a medley of hastily crystallised
judgments jotted down after the manner of a
traveller pressed for time, they are none the less

389

PROMENADES

sincere. My garden is only a straggling weedy
plot, but I have traversed it with delight; in it
I have promenaded my dearest prejudices, my
most absurd illusions. And central in this garden
may be found the image of the supreme illusionist
of art, Velasquez.

Since writing the preceding articles on El Greco and
Velasquez the museum of the Hispanic Society, New York,
has been enabled, through the munificent generosity
of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, to exhibit his newly
acquired El Grecos and a Velasquez. The former com-
prise a brilliantly coloured Holy Family, which exhales
an atmosphere of serenity; the St. Joseph is said to be a
portrait of El Greco; and there also is a large canvas
showing Christ with several of his disciples. Notable ex-
amples both. The Velasquez comes from the collecti<Hi
of the late Edouard Kann and is a life-size bust portrait
of a sweetly grave little girl. Sefior Beruete believes her
to represent the daughter of the painter Mazo and his
wife, Frandsca Velasquez, therefore a granddaughter of
Velasquez. The tonalities of this picture are subtly
beautiful, the modelling mysterious, the expression vital
and singularly child-like. It is a fitting companion to a
portrait hanging on the same, wall, that of the aristocratic
young Cardinal Pamphili, a nephew of Pope Innocent X,
also by the great Spaniard

390

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

VARIATIONS

"Hold your breath as you go through this book — touring the
universe with a man who takes all oC life in its everiasting fecundity
And efflorescence for his theme."

SsHjAMts DX CASSEtss, in the New York Herald,

STEEPLEJACK

TWO VOLUMES. ILLUSTIATXD

"Not only interesting because of its record of Mr. Huneker's
career and philosophy, but because it gives an excellent idea of the
developments in art, music, and literature, both in Europe and in
America, during the last forty years.*'

— WxLUAX Lyon Phblps, Yale University.

BEDOUINS

Maty Garden; Debussy; Choinn or the Circus; Botticelli; Poe;
Brahmsody; Anatole France; MLrbeau; Caruso on Wheeb; Calico
Cats; the Artistic Temperament; Idols and Ambergris; With the
Supreme Sin; Grindstones; A Masque of Music, and The Vision
Malefic.

«i

'If there is ever a real culture in this country its roots will run
in many directions; but historians will not dig very far before they
run across the Huneker-root, not only because of its tremendous
vitality and world-tentacles, but because of its stark individualbm
and militant sap. He is tiie greatest of patriots who raises the
intellectual levels of his country; and James Huneker is therefore,
to me, the greatest of living Americans."— IftMico/ America,

IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS

'']^ critical tact is well-nigh infallible. . . . His position am<»g
writers on esthetics is anomalous and incredible: no merchant
traffics in his heart, yet he commands a large, an eager, an affec-
tionate public. Is it because he is both vivid and acute, robust yet
fine-fingered, tolerant yet unyielding, astringent yet tender--a
mellow pcsdmist, a kindly cynic? Or is it rather because he is,
primarily, a temperament — djmamk, contagious, lovable, inveter-
ately alive— expressing itself through the most transparent of the
arts?"

— Laweencb Gxlmam, in Neiik Ammca» Reriem (October, 1915).

BOOKS BT JAMBS HUNBKBR

UNICORNS

^Thft tamyt uc short, f nU of a satMsrinr-ud faarfniHiy—
cnspoflH, both memofabk and ddichtfuL And they are foUof
fancy, too, of the gayeet humor, the quicfceit appradatioa. Um
fcntrnt sympathy, lometimfa of an enrnanting extravagance."

--Nnt York Tima.

MELOMANIACS

"It would be difficnlt to nam up 'Melomaniacs' in a phnae.'
Never did a book, in my o|Mnk>n at any rate, exhibit greater con-
trasts, not. perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of aoumeas and
obscurity."
— Hakoia £. Gom, hi Lomdon Saimday Rnkm (Dec 8, ioq6).

VISIONARIES

"In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of the other stories both fan-
tasy And narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his most
unearthly moods. The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has
cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's Puritanism finds
no echo in these modem souls, all sceptical, wavering, and unbleseed.
But Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his power of sympathy with
a tormented mind do live again in the best of Mr.^Huneker's stories.*'

— London Acadomy {Fth, 3, 1906).

ICONOCLASTS:

A Book of Dramatists

''His stvle is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in which
we are lea to expect some significance, if not wit, in every sentence."

— G. K. QnsiKRTON, in London Daity Ni

MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN

MUSIC

"Mr. Hundcer b, in the best sense, a critic; he Hsteos to the
music and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few wcwds
as possible: or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping
strokes with a magnificent disr^^ard for unimportant details. And
as Mr. Huneker b, as I have said, a ptowerful personality, a man of
qui^ brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and tem-
perament — a string that vibrates and sings in response to music — •
we get in these essays of his a distinctlv original and voy valuable
contribution to the weed's tiny musical literature."

—J. F. Rdncoiam. in London Sainrday RtoUm,

BOOKS BY JAMBS HUNBKBR

What 9ome dliatingui9hod writera^have aaid of
them:

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote, May 15, 1905: "Do
you know tl^at 'Iconoclasts' is the only book of high
and universal critical worth that we have had for
years — ^to be precise, since Georg Brandes. It is at
once strong and fine, supple and firm, indulgent and
sure."

And of "Ivory Apes and Peacocks" he said, among
other things: "I have marvelled at the vigilance and
clarity with which you follow and judge the new liter-
ary and artistic movements in all countries. I do not
know of criticism more pure and sure than yours."
(October, 1915.)

"The Mercure de France translated the other day
from Scribner's one of the best studies which have been
written on Stendhal for a long time, in which there was
no evasion of the question of Stendhal's immorality.
The author of that article, James Himeker, is, among
foreign critics, the one best acquainted with French
Uteratture and the one who judges us with the greatest
S3rmpathy and with the most freedom.- He has pro-
tested with force in numerous American journals
against the campaign of defamation against France and
he has easily proved that those who participate in it
are ignorant and fanatical." — '^Promenades LUUraires**
{Troisihne Sirie), Remy de GourmotU, (Translated by
Burton Rascoe for the Chicago Tribune.)

Paul Bourget wrote, Lundi de Paques, 1909, of
"Egoists": "I have browsed through the pages of
your book and found that you touch in a S3rmpathetic
style on diverse problems, artistic and literary. In the
case of Stendhal your catholicity of treatment is ex-
tremely rare and courageous.'

Dr. Georg Brandes, the versatile and profoimd
Danish critic, wrote: "I find your breadth of view
and its expression more European than American; but
the essential thing is that you are an artist to your very

marrow."

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