PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST

By JAMES HUNEKER

1910

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

 Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

 Promenades of an Impressionist. 12mo, (_Postage_ 15 cents_), _net_, $1. 50. 

 Egoists: A Book of Supermen. 12mo, _net_, $1. 50. 

 Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 12mo, _net_, $1. 50. 

 Overtones: A Book of Temperaments. 12mo, _net_, $1. 50. 

 Mezzotints in Modern Music. 12mo, $1. 50. 

 Chopin: The Man and His Music. With Portrait. L2mo, $2. 00. 

 Visionaries. 12mo, $1. 50. 

 Melomaniacs. 12mo, $1. 50

TO: FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

 -"Let us promenade our prejudices. "--Stendhal(?)

CONTENTS

 I. PAUL CÉZANNE

 II. ROPS THE ETCHER

 III. MONTICELLI

 IV. RODIN

 V. EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE

 VI. DEGAS

 VII. BOTTICELLI

VIII. SIX SPANIARDS:

 "EL GRECO"

 "VELASQUEZ"

 GOYA

 FORTUNY

 SOROLLA

 ZULOAGA

 IX. CHARDIN

 X. BLACK AND WHITE:

 PIRANESI

 MERYON

 JOHN MARTIN

 ZORN

 BRANGWYN

 DAUMIER

 LALANNE

 LEGRAND

 GUYS

 XI. IMPRESSIONISM:

 MONET

 RENOIR

 MANET

 XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

 XIV. LITERATURE AND ART

 XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES:

 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

PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST

I. PAUL CÉZANNE

After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon youask yourself: This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, still crazier drawing and composition--whither does it tend? Is thereany strain of tendency, any central current to be detected? Is ityoung genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of success to ripen itssomewhat terrifying gifts? Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying_blague_? What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your wearyeyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazingcanvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art?

There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic thanartistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of theclinic. But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note ofthe Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang ofstudents let loose in the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudelyjostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down onyour ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase: Youth must haveits fling. 

PROMENADES

And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacredfeatures of tradition. It needs little effort of the imagination tosee hovering about the galleries the faces of--no, not Gérôme, Bonnat, Jules Lefèvre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend _seigneurs_ of the oldSalon--but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, andMonet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violentlyradical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediateforebears. Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, andtakes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, nowsadly hollow in the transposition. The pretty classic notion of thetorch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on fromgeneration to generation receives a shock when confronted by themethods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance ofall critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth. Compared to theirfulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales andretreats into the Pantheon of the past. They are become classic. Another king has usurped their throne--his name is Paul Cézanne. 

No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and thedefection from it of these Independents. It is a fashion to revolt inParis, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that willstart the August Salon or the January Salon. 

"Independent of the Independents" is a magnificent motto with which toassault any intrenched organisation. 

PAUL CÉZANNE

If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note of many of thesehot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that ofgenuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters theypretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for atradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in thesuave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the yearof the _Salon des Refusés_, is really the year of their artisticancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon;the romanticism of Géricault, Delacroix, Decamps; the tender poetry ofthose true _Waldmenschen_, Millet, Dupré, Diaz, Daubigny, or of thatwild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the marvellous colour virtuoso who"painted music, " Monticelli--all these men might never have been bornexcept for their possible impact upon the so-called "Batignolles"school. Alas! such ingratitude must rankle. To see the major portionof this band of young painters, with talent in plenty, occupyingitself in a frantic burlesque of second-hand Cézannes, with here andthere a shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas, or animpertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to the older men. 

And now we reach the holy precincts. If ardent youths sneered at thelyric ecstasy of Renoir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at thepoetic mystery of Carrière, their lips were hushed as they tiptoedinto the Salle Cézanne. Sacred ground, indeed, we trod as we gazed andwondered before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bizarrecanvases. Here was the very hub of the Independents' universe. Herethe results of a hard-labouring painter, without taste, without thefaculty of selection, without vision, culture--one is tempted to add, intellect--who with dogged persistency has painted in the face ofmockery, painted portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, figures, painted everything, painted himself. And what paint! Stubborn, with aninstinctive hatred of academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio, of the hired model, of "literary, " or of mere digital cleverness, Cézanne has dropped out of his scheme harmony, melody, beauty--classic, romantic, symbolic, what you will!--and doggedlyrepresented the ugliness of things. But there is a brutal strength, atang of the soil that is bitter, and also strangely invigorating, after the false, perfumed boudoir art of so many of hiscontemporaries. 

Think of Bouguereau and you have his antithesis in Cézanne--Cézannewhose stark figures of bathers, male and female, evoke a shudderingsense of the bestial. Not that there is offence intended in his badlyhuddled nudes; he only delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrorsof some undressed humans. His landscapes are primitive though suffusedby perceptible atmosphere; while the rough architecture, shamblingfigures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the impression ofgeneral vitality. You could not say with Walt Whitman that his stuntedtrees were "uttering joyous leaves of dark green. " They utter, ifanything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do theself-portraits--exceedingly well modelled, however. Cézanne'sstill-life attracts by its whole-souled absorption; these fruits andvegetables really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-lifewith realistic beauty; if he had ever painted an onion it would haverevealed a certain grace. When Paul Cézanne paints an onion you smellit. Nevertheless, he has captured the affections of the rebels and istheir god. And next season it may be some one else. 

It may interest readers of Zola's L'Oeuvre to learn about one of thecharacters, who perforce sat for his portrait in that clever novel (adirect imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon). Paul Cézanne bitterlyresented the liberty taken by his old school friend Zola. They bothhailed from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris; Cézanne remainedin his birthplace but finally persuaded his father to let him studyart at the capital. His father was both rich and wise, for he settleda small allowance on Paul, who, poor chap, as he said, would neverearn a franc from his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified. Cézanne was almost laughed off the artistic map of Paris. Manet theycould stand, even Claude Monet; but Cézanne--communard and anarchisthe must be (so said the wise ones in official circles), for he wassuch a villainous painter! Cézanne died, but not before his apotheosisby the new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by admirers of Zolahow much he did for his neglected and struggling fellow-townsman; howthe novelist opened his arms to Cézanne. Cézanne says quite thecontrary. In the first place he had more money than Zola when theystarted, and Zola, after he had become a celebrity, was a great manand very haughty. 

"A mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend" is the way theprototype of Claude Lantier puts the case. "A bad book and acompletely false one, " he added, when speaking to the painter EmileBernard on the disagreeable theme. Naturally Zola did not pose his oldfriend for the entire figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, Claude. It was a study composed of Cézanne, Bazille, and one other, apoor, wretched lad who had been employed to clean Manet's studio, entertained artistic ambitions, but hanged himself. The conversationsCézanne had with Zola, his extreme theories of light, are all in thenovel--by the way, one of Zola's most finished efforts. Cézanne, anhonest, hard-working man, bourgeois in habits if not by temperament, was grievously wounded by the treachery of Zola; and he did not failto denounce this treachery to Bernard. 

Paul Cézanne was born January 19, 1839. His father was a richbourgeois, and while he was disappointed when his son refused toprosecute further his law studies, he, being a sensible parent andjustly estimating Paul's steadiness of character, allowed him to go toParis in 1862, giving him an income of a hundred and fifty francs amonth, which was shortly after doubled. With sixty dollars a month anart student of twenty-three could, in those days, live comfortably, study at leisure, and see the world. Cézanne from the start was inearnest. Instinctively he realised that for him was not the rapidascent of the rocky path that leads to Parnassus. He mistrusted hisown talent, though not his powers of application. At first hefrequented the Académie Suisse, where he encountered as fellow-workersPissarro and Guillaumin. He soon transferred his easel to theBeaux-Arts and became an admirer of Delacroix and Courbet. It seemsstrange in the presence of a Cézanne picture to realise that he, too, suffered his little term of lyric madness and wrestled with hugemythologic themes--giant men carrying off monstrous women. Connoisseurs at the sale of Zola's art treasures were astonished bythe sight of a canvas signed Cézanne, the subject of which wasL'Enlèvement, a romantic subject, not lacking in the spirit ofDelacroix. The Courbet influence persisted, despite the development ofthe younger painter in other schools. Cézanne can claim Courbet andthe Dutchmen as artistic ancestors. 

When Cézanne arrived in Paris the first comrade to greet him was Zola. The pair became inseparable; they fought for naturalism, and it was toCézanne that Zola dedicated his _Salons_ which are now to be found ina volume of essays on art and literature bearing the soothing title ofMes Haines. Zola, pitching overboard many friends, wrote his famouseulogy of Manet in the _Evenement_, and the row he raised was sofierce that he was forced to resign as art critic from that journal. The fight then began in earnest. The story is a thrice-told one. Itmay be read in Théodore Duret's study of Manet and, as regardsCézanne, in the same critic's volume on Impressionism. Cézanneexhibited in 1874 with Manet and the rest at the impressionists'salon, held at the studio of Nadar the photographer. He had earliersubmitted at once to Manet's magic method of painting, but in 1873, atAuvers-sur-Oise, he began painting in the _plein air_ style and withcertain modifications adhered to that manner until the time of hisdeath. The amazing part of it all is that he produced for more thanthirty years and seldom sold a canvas, seldom exhibited. His solitaryappearance at an official salon was in 1882, and he would not havesucceeded then if it had not been for his friend Guillaumin, a memberof the selecting jury, who claimed his rights and passed in, amidexecrations, both mock and real, a portrait by Cézanne. 

Called a _communard_ in 1874, Cézanne was saluted with the title ofanarchist in 1904, when his vogue had begun; these titles being aspecies of official nomenclature for all rebels. Thiers, oncePresident of the French Republic, made a _bon mot_ when he exclaimed:"A Romantic--that is to say, Communist!" During his entire career thismild, reserved gentleman from Aix came under the ban of the criticsand the authorities, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as didManet, as did Bazille, --who, like Henri Regnault, was killed in askirmish. 

His most virulent enemies were forced to admit that Edouard Manet hada certain facility with the brush; his quality and beauty of sheerpaint could not be winked away even by Albert Wolff. But to Cézannethere was no quarter shown. He was called the "Ape of Manet"; he washissed, cursed, abused; his canvases were spat upon, and as late as1902, when M. Roujon, the Director of the Beaux-Arts, was asked byOctave Mirbeau to decorate Cézanne, he nearly fainted fromastonishment. Cézanne! That barbarian! The amiable director suggestedinstead the name of Claude Monet. Time had enjoyed its littlewhirligig with that great painter of vibrating light and water, butMonet blandly refused the long-protracted honour. Another anecdote isrelated by M. Duret. William II of Germany in 1899 wished to examinewith his own eyes, trained by the black, muddy painting of Germany, the canvases of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, and Manet, acquiredby Director Tschudi for the Berlin National Gallery. He saw them allexcept the Cézanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat would bein the imperial fire if the Cézanne picture appeared. So he hid it. Asit was his Majesty nodded in emphatic disapproval of the importedpurchases. If he had viewed the Cézanne!

At first blush, for those whose schooling has been academic, theCézanne productions are shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, thougha heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not a great painter; helacks imagination, invention, fantasy; but his palette is his own. Heis a master of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly observes, a very intense one. He avoids the anecdote, historic or domestic. Hedetests design, prearranged composition. His studio is an open field, light the chief actor of his palette. He is never conventionallydecorative unless you can call his own particular scheme decorative. He paints what he sees without flattery, without flinching from anyugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. Hedoes not seek for the correspondences of light with surroundingobjects or the atmosphere in which Eugène Carrière bathes hisportraits, Rodin his marbles. The Cézanne picture does not modulate, does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious--Cézannesveracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. Thereis, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that ofa Delacroix _à ribbers_, and in his still-life he is as great even asManet. 

His landscapes are real, though without the subtle poetry of Corot orthe blazing lyricism of Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch: Vander Near, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutchman ever painted souncompromisingly, so close to the border line that divides the rigiddefinitions of old-fashioned photography--the "new" photography hugsclosely the mellow mezzotint--and the vision of the painter. Aneye--nothing more, is Cézanne. He refuses to see in nature either asymbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are poignant in theirreality. They are like the grill age one notes in ancient Frenchcountry houses--little caseate cut in the windows through which youmay see in vivid outline a little section of the landscape. Cézannemarvellously renders certain surfaces, china, fruit, tapestry. 

Slowly grew his fame as a sober, sincere, unaffected workman of art. Disciples rallied around him. He accepted changing fortunes with hisaccustomed equanimity. Maurice Denis painted for the Champ de MarsSalon of 1901 a picture entitled Homage à Cézanne, after thewell-known _hommages_ of Fantin-Latour. This _homage_ had its uses. The disciples became a swelling, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the Cézanneroom was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who would have offeredviolence to the first critical dissident. The older men, the followersof Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of theworld had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, afterCézanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the faceof such offerings Cézanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as farremoved from Van Gogh and Gauguin on the one side as he is from Manetand Courbet on the other. Huysmans does not hesitate to assert thatCézanne contributed more to accelerate the impressionist movement thanManet. Paul Cézanne died in Aix, in Provence, October 23, 1906. 

Emile Bernard, an admirer, a quasi-pupil of Cézanne's and a painter ofestablished reputation, discoursed at length in the _Mercure deFrance_ upon the methods and the man. His anecdotes are interesting. Without the genius of Flaubert, Cézanne had something of the greatnovelist's abhorrence of life--fear would be a better word. Hevoluntarily left Paris to immure himself in his native town of Aix, there to work out in peace long-planned projects, which would, hebelieved, revolutionise the technique of painting. Whether for good orevil, his influence on the younger men in Paris has been powerful, though it is now on the wane. How far they have gone astray inimitating 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 theOrient. A chance word told him that there had been installed anelectric tramway between Marseilles and Aix. Instantly the name ofCézanne came to his memory; he had known for some years that the oldpainter was in Aix. He resolved to visit him, and fearing a doubtfulreception he carried with him a pamphlet he had written in 1889, aneulogium of the painter. On the way he asked his fellow-travellers forCézanne's address, but in vain; the name was unknown. In Aix he metwith little success. Evidently the fame of the recluse had not reachedhis birthplace. At last Bernard was advised to go to the Mayor'soffice, where he would find an electoral list. Among the voters hediscovered a Paul Cézanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a simple dwellinghouse with the name of the painter on the door. He rang. The dooropened. He entered and mounted a staircase. Ahead of him, slowlytoiling upward, was an old man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. Itwas Cézanne. After he had explained the reason for his visit, the oldpainter cried: "You are Emile Bernard! You are a maker of biographies!Signac"--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 thematter to Cézanne, who, however, was in doubt until he saw later thework of his admirer. 

He had another atelier a short distance from the town; he called it"The Motive. " There, facing Mount Sainte-Victoire, he painted everyafternoon in the open; the majority of his later landscapes wereinspired by the views in that charming valley. Bernard was so glad tomeet Cézanne that he moved to Aix. 

In Cézanne's studio at Aix Bernard encountered some extraordinarystudies in flower painting and three death heads; also monstrousnudes, giant-like women whose flesh appeared parboiled. On the streetsCézanne was always annoyed by boys or beggars; the former wereattracted by his bohemian exterior and to express their admirationshouted at him or else threw stones; the beggars knew their man to beeasy and were rewarded by small coin. Although Cézanne lived like abachelor, 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 successful banker at Aix, had left him plenty of money;but a fanatic on the subject of art, ceaselessly searching for newtonal combinations, he preferred a hermit's existence. In Aix he wasconsidered eccentric though harmless. His pride was doubled by amorbid shyness. Strangers he avoided. So sensitive was he that oncewhen he stumbled over a rock Bernard attempted to help him by seizinghis arm. A terrible scene ensued. The painter, livid with fright, cursed the unhappy young Parisian and finally ran away. An explanationcame when the housekeeper told Bernard that her master was a littlepeculiar. Early in life he had been kicked by some rascal and everafterward was nervous. He was very irritable and not in good health. 

In Bernard's presence he threw a bust made of him by Solari to theground, smashing it. It didn't please him. In argument he lost histemper, though he recovered it rapidly. Zola's name was anathema. Hesaid that Daumier drank too much; hence his failure to attainveritable greatness. Cézanne worked from six to ten or eleven in themorning at his atelier; then he breakfasted, repaired to the "Motive, "there to remain until five in the evening. Returning to Aix, he dinedand retired immediately. And he had kept up this life of toil andabnegation for years. He compared himself to Balzac's Frenhofer (inThe Unknown Masterpiece), who painted out each day the work of theprevious day. Cézanne adored the Venetians--which is curious--andadmitted that he lacked the power to realise his inward vision; hencethe continual experimenting. He most admired Veronese, and wasambitious of being received at what he called the "Salon deBouguereau. " The truth is, despite Cézanne's long residence in Paris, he remained provincial to the end; his father before becoming a bankerhad been a hairdresser, and his son was proud of the fact. He neverconcealed it. He loved his father's memory and had wet eyes when hespoke of him. 

Bernard thinks that the vision of his master was defective; hence thesometime shocking deformations he indulged in. "His _optique_ was morein his brain than in his eye. " He lacked imagination absolutely, andworked 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 ofthat artist's lyricism. Sober, without rhetoric, a realist, yet with asingularly rich and often harmonious palette, Cézanne reportedfaithfully what his eyes told him. 

It angered him to see himself imitated and he was wrathful when heheard that his still-life pictures were praised in Paris. "That stuffthey like up there, do they? Their taste must be low, " he wouldrepeat, his eyes sparkling with malice. He disliked the work of PaulGauguin and repudiated the claim of being his artistic ancestor. "Hedid not understand me, " grumbled Cézanne. He praised Thomas Couture, who was, he asserted, a true master, one who had formed such excellentpupils as Courbet, Manet, and Puvis. This rather staggered Bernard, aswell it might; the paintings of Couture and Cézanne are poles apart. 

He had, he said, wasted much time in his youth--particularly inliterature. A lettered man, he read to Bernard a poem in imitation ofBaudelaire, one would say very Baudelairian. He had begun too late, had submitted himself to other men's influence, and wished for half acentury that he might "realise"--his favourite expression--histheories. When he saw Bernard painting he told him that his palettewas too restricted; he needed at least twenty colours. Bernard givesthe list of yellows, reds, greens, and blues, with variations. "Don'tmake Chinese images like Gauguin, " he said another time. "All naturemust be modelled 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--hisphilosophy can be summed up thus: Look out for the contrasts andcorrespondence of tones, and the design will take care of itself. Hehated "literary" painting and art criticism. He strongly advisedBernard to stick to his paint and let the pen alone. The moment anartist begins to explain his work he is done for; painting isconcrete, literature deals with the abstract. He loved music, especially Wagner's, which he did not understand, but the sound ofWagner's name was sympathetic, and that had at first attracted him!Pissarro he admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffering fromdiabetes, which killed him, his nervous tension is excusable. He wasin reality an amiable, kind-hearted, religious man. Above all, simple. He sought for the simple motive in nature. He would not paint a Christhead because he did not believe himself a worthy enough Christian. Chardin he studied and had a theory that the big spectacles and visorwhich the Little Master (the Velasquez of vegetables) wore had helpedhis vision. Certainly the still-life of Cézanne's is the only modernstill-life that may be compared to Chardin's; not Manet, Vollon, Chasehas excelled this humble painter of Aix. He called the Écoles desBeaux-Arts the "Bozards, " and reviled as farceurs the Germansecessionists who imitated him. He considered Ingres, notwithstandinghis science, a small painter in comparison with the Venetians andSpaniards. 

A painter by compulsion, a contemplative rather than a creativetemperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Cézanne hasformed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nervewas abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he oftencomplained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like hisfriend Zola his genius--if genius there is in either man--was largelya matter of protracted labour, and has it not been said that genius isa long labour?

From the sympathetic pen of Emile Bernard we learn of a characterliving in the real bohemia of Paris painters who might have figured inany of the novels referred to, or, better still, might have beeninterpreted by Victor Hugo or Ivan Turgenieff. But the Frenchman wouldhave made of Père Tanguy a species of poor Myriel; the Russian wouldhave painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from thesoil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but aChristian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of hislife you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention. Here wascharacter for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebilleof Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after readingEmile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy. 

His name was Julien Tanguy. He was born in 1825 at Plédran, in thenorth 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 1860. After various vicissitudes the man became a colourgrinder in the house of Edouard, Rue Clauzel. The position was meagre. The Tanguys moved up in the social scale by accepting the job ofconcierge somewhere on the Butte Montmartre. This gave Père Tanguyliberty, his wife looking after the house. He went into business onhis own account, vending colours in the quarter and the suburbs. Hetraversed the country from Argenteuil to Barbizon, from Ecouen toSarcelle. He met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, all youthful andconfident and boiling over with admiration for Corot, Courbet, andMillet. They patronised the honest, pleasant pedlar of colours andbrushes, and when they didn't have the money he trusted them. It washis prime quality that he trusted people. He cared not enough formoney, as his too often suffering wife averred, and his heart, alwayson his sleeve, he was an easy mark for the designing. This supremesimplicity led him into joining the Communists in 1871, and then hehad a nasty adventure. One day, while dreaming on sentry duty, a bandfrom Versailles suddenly descended upon the outposts. Père Tanguy losthis head. He could not fire on a fellow-being, and he threw away hismusket. For this act of "treachery" he was sentenced to serve twoyears in the galleys at Brest. Released by friendly intervention hehad still to remain without Paris for two years more. Finally, entering his beloved quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, andhearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved from the Rue Clauzel herented a little shop, where he sold material to artists, boughtpictures, and entertained in his humble manner any friend or lucklessdevil who happened that way. Cézanne and Vignon were his bestcustomers. Guillemin, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Oller, Messurer, Augustin, Signac, De Lautrec, symbolists of the Pont-Avenschool, neo-impressionists, and the young _fumistes_ of schools as yetunborn, revolutionaries with one shirt to their back, swearing at theofficial _Salon_ and also swearing by the brotherhood of man (with acapital), assembled in this dingy old shop. Tanguy was a rallyingpoint. He was full of the milk of human kindness, and robbed himselfto give a worthless fellow with a hard-luck story some of the sousthat should have gone to his wife. Fortunately she was a philosopheras well as an admirable housekeeper. If the rent was paid and therewas some soup-meat for dinner she was content. More she could notexpect from a man who gave away with both hands. But--and here is thecurious part of this narrative of M. Bernard's--Tanguy was the onlyperson in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Cézanne. He haddozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of hisestablishment--Cézanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur andsell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousandfrancs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Cézannes. Artists came tosee them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle. Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles a daub as amasterpiece, " and the novelist Elémir Bourges cried, "This is thepainting of a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the presence of theCézannes, Anquetin admired; but, as Bernard adds, Jacques Blanchebought. So did Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine Cézanneto-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 Père Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with aTolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch andbomb. A simple soul, uneducated, not critical, yet with an instinctive_flair_ for the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused thecause of his clients because they were poverty-stricken, unknown, andrevolutionists--an æsthetic revolution was his wildest dream. He saidof Cézanne that "Papa Cézanne always quits a picture before hefinishes it. If he moves he lets his canvases lie in the vacatedstudio. " He no doubt benefited by this carelessness of the painter. Cézanne worked slowly, but he never stopped working; he left nothingto hazard, and, astonishing fact, he spent every morning at theLouvre. There he practised his daily scales, optically speaking, before taking up the brush for the day's work. Many of Vincent vonGogh's pictures Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The eccentric, gifted Dutchman attracted the poor merchant by his ferocioussocialism. He was, indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like amadman, painting with his colour tubes when he had no brushes, andliterally living in the _boutique_ of Tanguy. The latter always read_Le Cri du Peuple_ and _L'Intransigeant_, and believed all he read. Hedid not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing withCézanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to theyouth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man. " A prophetic note! VanGogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. Itbore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay hisbills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers oftropical exuberance, landscapes that must have been seen in anightmare. He was painting at this time three pictures a day. He wouldpart with a canvas at the extortionate price of a franc. 

Tanguy was the possessor of a large portrait by Cézanne, done in hisearliest manner. This he had to sell on account of pressing need. Darkdays followed. He moved across the street into smaller quarters. Theold crowd began to drift away; some died, some had become famous, andone, Van Gogh, shot himself in an access of mania. This was a shock tohis friend. A second followed when Van Gogh's devoted brother wentmad. Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately called, sickened. Heentered a hospital. He suffered from a cancerous trouble of thestomach. One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him: "I ambored here... I won't die here... I mean to die in my own home. " Hewent home and died shortly afterward. In 1894 Octave Mirbeau wrote amoving article for the _Journal_ about the man who had never spokenill of any one, who had never turned from his door a hungry person. The result was a sale organised at the Hôtel Drouot, to whichprominent artists and literary folk contributed works. Cazin, Guillemet, Gyp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro, Rochegrosse, Sisley, Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Jongkind, Raffaelli, *Helleu, Rodin, and many others participated in this noblecharity, which brought the widow ten thousand francs. She soon died. 

Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belongto Rodin. It represents the naïve man with his irregular features andplacid expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, butunmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour betterthan himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may beremembered by those who knew him--and also a few future historians ofthe futility of things in general--as the man who first made known toParis the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cézanne. An odd fish, indeed, was this same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters. 

II. ROPS THE ETCHER

I

That personality in art counts, next to actual genius, heavier thanall other qualities, is such a truism that it is often forgotten. Inthe enormous mass of mediocre work which is turned out annually byartists of technical talent seldom is there encountered a strong, well-defined personality. Imitation has been called the bane oforiginality; suppress it as a factor, and nine-tenths of livingpainters, sculptors, etchers would have to shut up shop. The stencilis the support of many men who otherwise might have become usefulcitizens, shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents. For thisreason the phrase "academic" should be more elastic in its meanings. There are academic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli, as wellas by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The "academic" Rodin has appeared incontemporary sculpture; the great Frenchman found for himself hisformula, and the lesser men have appropriated it to their own uses. This is considered legitimate, though not a high order of art;however, the second-rate rules in the market-place, let the geniusrage as he will. He must be tamed. He must be softened; his divinefire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventionaltalent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is thepersonality of each that enters largely into the equation of theirwork. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcherRembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individualitythere is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, Félicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, and painter, occupies about the same relative position to HonoréDaumier as Whistler does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of Rops. Why? He was a man of genius, one of the greatest etchers andlithographers of his century, an artist with an intense personal line, a colossal workman and versatile inventor--why has he been passed overand inferior men praised?

His pornographic plates cannot be the only reason, because hisrepresentative work is free from licence or suggestion. GiulioRomano's illustrations to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as therepresentative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are the vulgaritiesof Rowlandson, Hogarth, George Morland set against their betterattempts. Collectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-century_éditions des fermiers-généraux_ for their capital workmanship, notfor their licentious themes. But Rops is always the Rops of thePornocrates! After discussing him with some amateurs you are forced torealise that it is his plates in which he gives rein to anunparalleled flow of animal spirits and _gauloiserie_ that are themore esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big and subtle style, theetcher of the Sataniques, of Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d'Absinthe andhalf a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the wittyillustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and the cynicism ofChamfort. And even on this side of his genius he has never beenexcelled, the Japanese alone being his equals in daring of invention, while he tops them in the expression of broad humour. 

In the Luxembourg galleries there is a picture of an interesting man, in an etcher's atelier. It is the portrait of Rops by Mathey, andshows him examining at a window, through which the light pours in, afreshly pulled proof. It depicts with skill the intense expressionupon his handsome face, the expression of an artist absolutelyabsorbed in his work. That is the real Rops. His master quality wasintensity. It traversed like a fine keen flame his entire productionfrom seemingly insignificant tail-pieces to his agonised designs, inwhich luxury and pain are inextricably commingled. 

He was born at Namur, Belgium, July 10, 1833, and died at Essonnes, near Paris, August 23, 1898. He was the son of wealthy parents, and onone side stemmed directly from Hungary. His grandfather was RopsLajos, of the province called Alfod. The Maygar predominated. He wasas proud and fierce as Goya. A fighter from the beginning, still inwarrior's harness at the close, when, "cardiac and impenitent, " as heput it, he died of heart trouble. He received at the hands of theJesuits a classical education. A Latinist, he was erudite as were fewof his artistic contemporaries. The mystic strain in him did notbetray itself until his third period. He was an accomplished humouristand could generally cap Latin verses with D'Aurevilly or Huysmans. Tertullian's De Cultu Feminarum he must have read, for many of hisplates are illustrations of the learned Bishop of Carthage's attitudetoward womankind. The hot crossings of blood, Belgian and Hungarian, may be responsible for a peculiarly forceful, rebellious, sensual, andboisterous temperament. 

Doubtless the three stadia of an artist's career are the arbitraryclassification of critics; nevertheless they are well marked in manycases. Balzac was a romantic, a realist, a mystic; Flaubert wasalternately romantic and realist. Tolstoi was never a romantic, but arealist he was, and he is a mystic. Dostoïevski, from whom he absorbedso much, taught him the formulas of his mysticism--though Tolstoi hasnever felt the life of the soul so profoundly as this predecessor. Ibsen passed through the three stages. Huysmans, never romantic, beganas a realistic pessimist and ended as a pessimistic mystic. FélicienRops could never have been a romantic, though the _macabre_romanticism of 1830 may be found in his designs. A realist, brutal, bitter, he was in his youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, sooften lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by aRabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these earlyillustrations. A _fantaisiste_, graceful, delicate--andindelicate--emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he hadstepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his bookplates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furiousspeed, all the elegance, the courtly corruption, and Boucher-likeluxuriousness that may be detected in the moral _marquetrie_ of theGoncourts. He had not yet said, "Evil, be thou my Good, " nor had themystic delirium of the last period set in. All his afternoons musthave been those of a faun--a faun who with impeccable solicitude puton paper what he saw in the heart of the bosk or down by the banks ofsecret rivers. The sad turpitudes, the casuistry of concupiscence, theironic discolourations and feverish delving into subterranean moralstratifications were as yet afar. He was young, handsome, with alithe, vigorous body and the head of an aristocratic Mephistopheles, ahead all profile, like the heads of Hungary--Hungary itself, which isall profile. Need we add that after the death of his father he soonwasted a fortune? But the reckless bohemian in him was subjugated bynecessity. He set to work to earn his bread. Some conception of hislabours for thirty-five years may be gleaned from the catalogue of hiswork by Erastène Ramiro (whose real name is Eugène Rodrigues). Nearlythree thousand plates he etched, lithographed, or engraved, notincluding his paintings or his experiments in various mediums, such as_vernis mou_ and wood-engraving. 

The coarse legends of old Flanders found in Rops their pictorialinterpreter. Less cerebral in his abounding youth he made Paris laughwith his comical travesties of political persons, persons in highfinance, and also by his shrewd eye for the homely traits in the lifeof the people. His street scenes are miracles of detail, satire, andfun. The one entitled Spring is the most noted. That legacy of hate, inherited from the 1830 poets, of the bourgeois, was a merry play forRops. He is the third of the trinity of caricature artists, Daumierand Gavarni being the other two. The liberal pinch of Gallic salt inthe earlier plates need not annoy one. Deliberately vulgar he neveris, though he sports with things hallowed, and always goes out of hisway to insult the religion he first professed. There is in thisSatanist a religious _fond_; the very fierceness of his attacks, ofhis blasphemies, betrays the Catholic at heart. If he did not believe, why should he have displayed such continual scorn? No, Rops was not assincere as his friends would have us believe. He made his Pegasus plodin too deep mud, and often in his most winged flights he darkened theblue with his satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle period hispages overflow with decorative Cupids and tiny devils, joyful girls, dainty amourettes, and Parisian _putti_--they blithely kick their legsover the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a snowball jestor a game at forfeits. They are adorable. His women are usuallystrong-backed, robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and aRubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Before these majestic idolsmen prostrate themselves. 

In his turbulent later visions there is no suspicion of the opium thatgave its inspiration to Coleridge, Poe, De Quincey, James Thomson, orBaudelaire. The city of dreadful night shown us by Rops is the citythrough whose streets he has passed his life long. Not the dreamcities of James Ensor or De Groux, the Paris of Rops is at once anabode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of sheer ecstasy and morbidhallucinations. The opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by amanual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master of lineardesign. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous andabsurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sitscritically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, hehandles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and theindifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen morestrongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with thesole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on toastounding atrocities of the needle and acid. This diabolism, thisworship of Satan and his works, are sincere in the etcher. A relic ofrotten Romanticism, it glows like phosphorescent fire during his lastperiod. The Church has in its wisdom employed a phrase for frigiddepravity of the Rops kind, naming it "morose delectation. " MoroseRops became as he developed. His private life he hid. We know littleor nothing of it save that he was not unhappy in his companionships orchoice of friends. He loathed the promiscuous methods by which somemen achieve admiration. But secret spleen there must have been--atwist of a painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became a solitaryand ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral as he is, his discoveryof the human soul shows it as ill at ease before its maker. Flauberthas said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope. " But noman may sun himself on this slope by the flames of hell without hissoul shrivelling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has been greatlyinfluenced by him; Rodin, as an artist superior to the Belgian, hasrevealed less preoccupation with the ignoble; at least, despite hisexcursions into questionable territory, he has never been carriedcompletely away. He always returns to the sane, to the normal life;but over the volcanic landscapes of Rops are strewn many moralabysses. 

II

He had no illusions as to the intelligence and sincerity of those menwho, denying free-will, yet call themselves free-thinkers. Ropsfrankly made of Satan his chief religion. He is the psychologist ofthe exotic. Cruel, fantastic, nonchalant, and shivering atrociously, his female Satan worshippers go to their greedy master in *fatidicaland shuddering attitudes; they submit to his glacial embrace. Theacrid perfume of Rops's maleficent genius makes itself manifest in hisSataniques. No longer are his women the embodiment of Corbière's"Éternel féminin de l'éternel jocrisse. " Ninnies, simperers, andsimpletons have vanished. The poor, suffering human frame becomes ahorrible musical instrument from which the artist extorts exquisiteand sinister music. We turn our heads away, but the tune of crackingsouls haunts our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire, Victor Hugocould have said that he had evoked a new shudder. And singularlyenough Rops is in these plates the voice of the mediæval preachercrying out that Satan is alive, a tangible being, going about theearth devouring us; that Woman is a vase of iniquity, a tower ofwrath, a menace, not a salvation. His readings of the early fathersand his pessimistic temperamental bent contributed to this trulymorose judgment of his mother's sex. He drives cowering to her corner, after her earlier triumphs, his unhappy victim of love, absinthe, anddiabolism. Not for an instant does he participate personally in thestrained voluptuousness or terrific chastisements of his designs. Hehas all the old monachal contempt of woman. He is cerebrally chaste. Huysmans, in his admirable essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a deréellement obscènes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit ofspecial pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life ofa saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be amore subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is, " hewrites, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neitherdisease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states. "The _états d'âmes_ of Félicien Rops, then, may or may not have beenmorbid. But he has contrived that his wit in its effect upon hisspectators is too often profoundly depressing and morbid anddisquieting. 

The triumphant chorus of Rops's admirers comprises the most criticalnames in France and Italy: Barbey d'Aurevilly, J. K. Huysmans, Pradelle, Joséphin Péladan--once the _Sâr_ of Babylonian fame--EugèneDemolder, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet; Camille Lemonnier, Champsaur, Arsène Alexandre, Fromentin, Vittorio Pica, De Hérédia, Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau, the biographer Ramiro andCharles Baudelaire. The last first recognised him, though he neverfinished the projected study of him as man and artist. In the newlypublished letters (1841-66) of Baudelaire there is one addressed toRops, who saw much of the unhappy poet during his disastrous sojournin Brussels. It was the author of Les Fleurs du Mal who made theclever little verse about "Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops... Qui n'estpas un grand prix de Rome, mais dont le talent est haut, comme lapyramide de Chéops. "

A French critic has called Rops "a false genius, " probably alluding tothe malign characters of the majority of his engraved works ratherthan to his marvellous and fecund powers of invention. Perverseidealist as he was, he never relaxed his pursuit of the perfection ofform. He tells us that in 1862 he went to Paris, after muchpreliminary skirmishing in Belgian reviews and magazines, to "learnhis art" with Bracquemond and Jacquemart, both of whom he never ceasedpraising. He was associated with Daubigny, painter and etcher, andwith Courbet, Flameng, and Thérond. 

He admired Calmatta and his school--Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier, Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. Heworked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, _vernismou_. A sober workman, he spent at least fourteen hours a day at hisdesk. Being musical, he designed some genre pieces, notably that ofthe truthfully observed Bassoonist. And though not originating hecertainly carried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous thoseprogressive pictures of goats dissolving into pianists; of Liszttearing passion and grand pianos into tatters. He has contributed tothe gaiety of nations with his celebrated design: Ma fille! MonsieurCabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother presenting her nude daughteras a model for that painter. The malicious ingenuity of Rops neverfailed him. He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black andwhite. The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, theharmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fierymovement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispationsof his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balancedensembles--these prove him to be one of the masters of modern etching. And from his cynical yet truthful motto: "J'appelle un chat un chat, "he never swerved. 

A student and follower of Jean Francois Millet, several landscapes andpastorals of Rops recall the French painter's style. In his Belgianout-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Ropsprojects itself unmistakably. Such a picture as Scandal, for example, might have been signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, andbeautifully drawn. The scheme is trite. Two peasants, a young womanand a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very simple, very expressive. His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp aresolidly built, replete with character and quaint charm. Charming, too, is the portrait of his great-aunt. Scandal is an ambitious design. Agroup of women strongly differentiated as to types and ages areenjoying over a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal. Thesituation is seized; it is a picture that appeals. Ghastly is hisportrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe. Her lips areblistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair. Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with ascythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist's power of rendering therepulsive. His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femmeau Pantin should be studied. He has painted scissors grinders, flowergirls, "old guards, " incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in thestreets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and peacocks, and a notablefigure piece, An Interment in the Walloon Country, which would havepleased Courbet. 

It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is unapproachable. SatanSowing the Tares of Evil is a sublime conception, truly Miltonic. Thebony-legged demon strides across Paris. One foot is posed on NotreDame. He quite touches the sky. Upon his head is a broad-brimmedpeasant's hat, Quaker in shape. Hair streams over his skeletonshoulders. His eyes are gleaming with infernal malice--it is the mostdiabolic face ever drawn of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck's Satanhas eyes so full of liquid damnation. Scattering miniature femalefigures, like dolls, to the winds, this monster passes over Paris, abaleful typhoon. The moral is not far to seek; indeed, there isgenerally a moral, sometimes an inverted one, in the Rops etchings. Order Reigns at Warsaw is a grim commentary on Russian politics quiteopportune to-day. La Peine de Mort has been used by Socialists as aprotest against capital punishment. Les Diables Froids personifies theimpassible artist. It is a page torn from the book of hell. Rops hadread Dante; he knew the meaning of the lines: "As the rill that runsfrom Bulicame to be portioned out amid the sinful women"; and morethan once he explored the frozen circles of Gehenna. Victor Hugo wasmuch stirred by the design, Le Pendu, which depicts a man's corpseswinging under a huge bell in some vast and immemorial, raven-haunted, decaying tower, whose bizarre and gloomy outlines might have beencreated by the brain of a Piranesi. An apocalyptic imagination hadFélicien Rops. 

III. MONTICELLI

I

Poor "Fada"! The "innocent, " the inoffensive fool--as they christenedthat unfortunate man of genius, Adolphe Monticelli, in the dialect ofthe South, the slang of Marseilles--where he spent the last sixteenyears of his life. The richest colourist of the nineteenth century, obsessed by colour, little is known of this Monticelli, even in thesedays when an artist's life is subjected to inquisitorial methods. Fewhad written of him in English before W. E. Henley and W. C. Brownell. InFrance eulogised by Théophile Gautier, in favour at the court, admiredby Diaz, Daubigny, Troyon, and Delacroix, his hopes were cracked bythe catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian war. He escaped to Marseilles, there to die poor, neglected, half mad. Perhaps he was to blame forhis failures; perhaps his temperament was his fate. Yet to-day hispictures are sought for as were those of Diaz two decades ago, thoughthere was a tacit conspiracy among dealers and amateurs not to draghis merits too soon before the foot-lights. In 1900 at the ParisExposition a collection of his works, four being representative, opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It was realised thatMonticelli had not received his proper ranking in thenineteenth-century theatre of painting; that while he owed much toWatteau, to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could stand orfall on his own merits. Since then the Monticelli pictures have beensteadily growing in favour. 

There is a Monticelli cult. America can boast of many of his mostdistinguished specimens, while the Louvre and the Luxembourg arewithout a single one. The Musée de Lille at Marseilles has severalexamples; the private collections of M. Delpiano at Cannes and a fewcollections in Paris make up a meagre list. The Comparative Exhibitionin New York, 1904, revealed to many accustomed to overpraising Diazand Fromentin the fact that Monticelli was their superior as acolourist, and a decorator of singularly fascinating characteristics, one who was not always a mere contriver of bacchanalian riots offancy, but who could exhibit when at his best a _justesse_ of visionand a controlled imagination. 

The dictionaries offer small help to the student as to the doings ofthis erratic painter. He was born October 24, 1824. He died June 29, 1886. He was of mixed blood, Italian and French. His father was agauger, though Adolphe declared that he was an authentic descendant ofthe Crusader, Godefroy Monticelli, who married in 1100 Aurea Castelli, daughter of the Duca of Spoleto. Without doubt his Italian bloodcounted heavily in his work, but whether of noble issue matterslittle. Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers de l'Isle Adam, two men ofletters, indulged in similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty andtribulations the oriflamme of aristocracy which they bravely bore intothe café life of Paris was a source of consolation to them. But it iswith brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments, and thelegend of high birth can go with the other fictions reported by Henleythat Monticelli was an illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that hewas the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a prisoner for years, to "steal the secret of his colours. "

Like many another of his temperament, he had himself to thank for hiswoes, though it was a streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussiansbore down on Paris. He was beginning to be known. A pupil of RaymondAubert (1781-1857), he was at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres. "Delacroix and his violently harmonised colour masses settled thefuture colourist. He met Diaz and they got on very well together. ASoutherner, handsome, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with theeloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his musical name madefriends at court and among powerful artists. In 1870 he started on hiswalk of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He literally paintedhis way. In every inn he shed masterpieces. Precious gold dripped fromhis palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there are, it iswhispered--by white-haired old men the memory of whose significantphrases awakes one in the middle of the night longing for the valleyof Durance--that if a resolute, keen-eyed adventurer would traverseunostentatiously the route taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey therewards might be great. It is an idea that grips one's imagination, but unfortunately it is an idea that gripped the imagination of othersthirty years ago. Not an _auberge_, hotel, or hamlet has been leftunexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar parlance has beensedulously used by interested persons. If there are any Monticellisunsold nowadays they are for sale at the dealers'. 

In him was incarnate all that we can conceive as bohemian, with atraining that gave him the high-bred manner of a seigneur. He was aromantic, like his friend Félix Ziem--Ziem, Marcellin, Deboutin, andMonticelli represented a caste that no longer exists; bohemians, yes, but gentlemen, refined and fastidious. Yet, after his return to hisbeloved Marseilles, Monticelli led the life of an August vagabond. Inhis velvet coat, a big-rimmed hat slouched over his eyes, he patrolledthe quays, singing, joking, an artless creature, so good-hearted andirresponsible that he was called "Fada, " more in affection thancontempt. He painted rapidly, a picture daily, sold it on the_terrasses_ of the cafés for a hundred francs, and when he couldn'tget a hundred he would take sixty. Now one must pay thousands for acanvas. His most loving critic, Camille Mauclair, who, above any one, has battled valiantly for his art, tells us that Monticelli once tookeighteen francs for a small canvas because the purchaser had no morein his pocket! In this manner he disposed of a gallery. He smokedhappy pipes and sipped his absinthe--in his case as desperate an enemyas it had proved to De Musset. He would always doff his hat at themention of Watteau or Rubens. They were his gods. 

When Monticelli arrived in Marseilles after his tramp down from Parishe was literally in rags. M. Chave, a good Samaritan, took him to ashop 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 notto attenuate the effect he was bound to produce on the passersby, sucha childish, harmless vanity had he. His delight was to gather a fewchosen ones over a bottle of old vintage, and thus with spasmodicattempts at work his days rolled by. He was feeble, semi-paralysed. With the advent of bad health vanished the cunning of his hand. Hispaint coarsened, his colours became crazier. His pictures at thisperiod were caricatures of his former art. Many of the early ones weresold as the productions of Diaz, just as to-day some Diazs are palmedoff as Monticellis. After four years of decadence he died, repeatingfor months before his taking off: "Je viens de la lune. " He was onewhose brain a lunar ray had penetrated; but this ray was transposed toa spectrum of gorgeous hues. Capable of depicting the rainbow, he diedof the opalescence that clouded his glass of absinthe. _Pauvre Fada!_

II

It is only a coincidence, yet a curious one, that two such dissimilarspirits as Stendhal and Monticelli should have predicted their futurepopularity. Stendhal said: "About 1880 I shall be understood. "Monticelli said in 1870: "I paint for thirty years hence. " Bothprophecies have been realised. After the exhibition at Edinburgh andGlasgow in 1890 Monticelli was placed by a few discerning criticsabove Diaz in quality of paint. In 1892 Mr. Brownell said ofMonticelli in his French Art--a book that every student and amateur ofpainting should possess--that the touch of Diaz, patrician as it was, lacked the exquisiteness of Monticelli's; though he admits the"exaggeration of the decorative impulse" in that master. For HenleyMonticelli's art was purely sensuous; "his fairy meadows and enchantedgardens are that sweet word 'Mesopotamia' in two dimensions. " Henleyspeaks of his "clangours of bronze and gold and scarlet" and admitsthat "there are moments when his work is as infallibly decorative as aPersian crock or a Japanese brocade. " D. S. MacColl, in his study ofNineteenth-Century Painting, gives discriminating praise:"Monticelli's own exquisite sense of grace in women and invention ingrouping add the positive new part without which his art would be themannerising of Rousseau, " while Arthur Symons in his Studies in SevenArts declares all Monticelli's art "tends toward the effect ofmusic... His colour is mood ... His mood is colour. "

It remained, however, for Camille Mauclair, a Parisian critic insympathy with the arts of design, literature, and music, to placeMonticelli in his proper niche. This Mauclair has done with criticaltact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of which is evidentlystrained in favour of the impressionistic school, in hisL'Impressionisme, and in his monograph on Watteau this critic declaresthat Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little and Watteaueven more by its sentiment, and Turner and Bonington by its colour... His work has the same subtlety of gradations, the same division intofragments of tones (as in Watteau's 'Embarkment for Cythera'), thesame variety of execution, which has sometimes the opaqueness of chinaand enamel and sometimes the translucence of precious stones or thebrilliancy of glass, metal, or oxides and seems to be the result ofsome mysterious chemistry... Monticelli had an absolutely uniqueperception of tonalities, and his glance took in certain shades whichhad not been observed before, which the optic and chromatic science ofthe day has placed either by proof or hypothesis between the principaltones of the solar spectrum thirty years after Monticelli had fixedthem. There is magic and high lyric poetry in his art. " I wrote of theMonticellis exhibited at the Comparative Exhibition in New York: "Atthe opposite end of the room there is A Summer Day's Idyll, upon whichMonticelli had squeezed all his flaming tubes. It seems orchestratedin crushed pomegranate, the light suffusing the reclining figures likea jewelled benediction. Marvellous, too, are the colour-bathedcreatures in this No Man's Land of drugged dreams... Do not the wallsfairly vibrate with this wealth of fairy tints and fantasy?" But itmust not be forgotten that he struck other chords besides blazingsun-worshipping. We often encounter landscapes of vaporous melancholy, twilights of reverie. 8888Monticelli once told an admiring young amateur that in his canvases"the objects are the decorations, the touches are the scales, and thelight is the tenor, " thereby acknowledging himself that he felt colouras music. There was hyperæsthesia in his case; his eyes wereprotuberant and, like the ears of violinists, capable ofdistinguishing quarter tones, even sixteenths. There are affiliationswith Watteau; the same gem-like style of laying on the thick pâte, thesame delight in fairy-like patches of paint to represent figures. In1860 he literally resuscitated Watteau's manner, adding a personalnote and a richness hitherto unknown to French paint. Mauclair thinksthat to Watteau can be traced back the beginnings of modernImpressionism; the division of tones, the juxtaposition of tonalities. Monticelli was the connecting link between Watteau and Monet. The samecritic does not hesitate to name Monticelli as one of the greatquartet of harmonists, Claude, Turner, Monet being the other three. Taine it was who voiced the philosophy of Impressionism when heannounced in his Philosophie de l'Art that the principal personage ina picture is the light in which all things are plunged. EugèneCarrière also asserted that a "picture is the logical development oflight. " Monticelli before him had said: "In a painting one must soundthe _C_. Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, all the great ones have soundedthe C. " His C, his key-note, was the magic touch of luminosity thatdominated his picture. Like Berlioz, he adored colour for colour'ssake. He had a touch all Venetian in his relation of tones; at timeshe went in search of chromatic adventures, returning with the mostmarvellous trophies. No man before or since, not even thosepractitioners of dissonance and martyrs to the enharmonic scale, Cézanne, Gauguin, or Van Gogh, ever matched and modulated such widelydisparate tints; no man before could extract such magnificentharmonies from such apparently irreconcilable tones. Monticellithought in colour and was a master of orchestration, one who wentfurther than Liszt. 

The simple-minded Monticelli had no psychology to speak of--he was areversion, a "throw back" to the Venetians, the decorative Venetians, and if he had possessed the money or the leisure--he hadn't enoughmoney to buy any but small canvases--he might have become a FrenchTiepolo, and perhaps the greatest decorative artist of France. Evenhis most delicate pictures are largely felt and sonorously executed;not "finished" in the studio sense, but complete--two differentthings. 

Fate was against him, and the position he might have had was won bythe gentle Puvis de Chavannes, who exhibited a genius for decoratingmonumental spaces. With his fiery vision, his brio of execution, hispalette charged with jewelled radiance, Monticelli would have been theman to have changed the official interiors of Paris. His energy at oneperiod was enormous, consuming, though short-lived--1865-75. His lackof self-control and at times his Italian superficiality, never backedby a commanding intellect, produced the Monticelli we know. In truthhis soul was not complicated. He could never have attacked thepsychology of Zarathustra, Hamlet, or Peer Gynt. A Salome from himwould have been a delightfully decorative minx, set blithely dancingin some many-hued and enchanted garden of Armida. She would never haveworn the air of hieratic lasciviousness with which Gustave Moreauinevitably dowered her. There was too much joy of the south inMonticelli's bones to concern himself with the cruel imaginings of theOrient or the grisly visions of the north. He was Oriental _au fond_;but it was the Orientalism of the Thousand and One Nights. He paintedscenes from the Decameron, and his _fêtes galantes_ may be matchedwith Watteau's in tone. His first period was his most graceful;ivory-toned languorous dames, garbed in Second Empire style, languidlystroll in charming parks escorted by fluttering Cupids or statelycavaliers. The "decorative impulse" is here at its topmost. In hissecond period we get the Decameron series, the episodes from Faust, the Don Quixote--recall, if you can, that glorious tableau with itsSpanish group and the long, grave don and merry, rotund squireentering on the scene, a fantastic sky behind them. 

Painted music! The ruins, fountains, statues, and mellow herbageabound in this middle period. The third is less known. Extravagancebegan to rule; scarlet fanfares are sounded; amethysts and emeraldssparkle; yet there is more thematic variety. Voluptuous, perfumed, andsemi-tragic notes were uttered by this dainty poet of the carnival oflife. The canvas glowed with more reverberating and infernal lights, but lyric ever. Technique, fabulous and feverish, expended itself onflowers that were explosions of colours, on seductive marines, onlandscapes of a rhythmic, haunting beauty--the Italian temperament hadbecome unleashed. Fire, gold, and purple flickered and echoed inMonticelli's canvases. Irony, like an insinuating serpent, began tocreep into this paradise of melting hues. The masterful gradations oftone became bewildered. Poison was eating the man's nerves. Hediscarded the brush, and standing before his canvas he squeezed histubes upon it, literally modelling his paint with his thumb until italmost assumed the relief of sculpture. What a touch he had! What asubtle prevision of modulations to be effected by the careless scratchof his nail or the whip of a knife's edge! Remember, too, thatoriginally he had been an adept in the art of design; he could draw aswell as his peers. But he sacrificed form and observation andpsychology to sheer colour. He, a veritable discoverer of tones--aidedthereto by an abnormal vision--became the hasty improviser, who at thelast daubed his canvases with a pasty mixture, as hot and crazy as hisruined soul. The end did not come too soon. A chromatic genius wentunder, leaving but a tithe of the gleams that illuminated his brain. Alas, poor Fada!

IV. RODIN

I

Rodin, the French sculptor, deserves well of our new century; the oldone did so incontinently batter him. The anguish of his own Hell'sPortal he endured before he moulded its clay between his thickclairvoyant fingers. Misunderstood, therefore misrepresented, he withhis pride and obstinacy aroused--the one buttressing the other--wasnot to be budged from his formulas and practice of sculpture. Then theworld of art swung unwillingly and unamiably toward him, perhaps morefrom curiosity than conviction. Rodin became famous. And he is moremisunderstood than ever. His very name, with its memory of EugèneSue's romantic rancour--you recall that impossible and diabolic JesuitRodin in The Mysteries of Paris?--has been thrown in his teeth. He hasbeen called _rusé_, even a fraud; while the wholesale denunciation ofhis work as erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. Thesculptor, who in 1877 was accused of "faking" his life-like Age ofBrass--now at the Luxembourg--by taking a mould from the living model, also experienced the discomfiture of being assured some years laterthat, not knowing the art of modelling, his statue of Balzac was onlyan evasion of difficulties. And this to the man who had in the interimwrought so many masterpieces. 

To give him his due he stands prosperity not quite as well as he didpoverty. In every great artist there is a large area of self-esteem;it is the reservoir which he must, during years of drought and defeat, draw upon to keep his soul fresh. Without the consoling fluid ofegoism, genius must perish in the dust of despair. But fill thissource to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and artisticdeterioration may ensue. Rodin has been called, fatuously, the secondMichael Angelo--as if there could ever be a replica of any human. Hehas been hailed as a modern Praxiteles. And he is often damned as amyopic decadent whose insensibility to pure line and deficiency inconstructional power have been elevated by his admirers into sorryvirtues. Yet is Rodin justly appraised? Do his friends not overdotheir glorification, his critics their censure? Nothing so stales ademigod's image as the perfumes burned before it by his worshippers;the denser the smoke the sooner crumble the feet of their idol. 

However, in the case of Rodin the fates have so contrived theirmalicious game that at no point of his career has he been without thecompany of envy, chagrin, and slander. Often, when he had attained asummit, he would find himself thrust down into a deeper valley. He hasmounted to triumphs and fallen to humiliations, but his spirit hasnever been quelled, and if each acclivity he scales is steeper, theair atop has grown purer, more stimulating, and the landscape spreadswider before him. He can say with Dante: "La montagna che drizza voiche il mondo fece torti. " Rodin's mountain has always straightened inhim what the world made crooked. The name of his mountain is Art. Aborn non-conformist, Rodin makes the fourth of that group ofnineteenth-century artists--Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and EdouardManet--who taught a deaf and blind world to hear and see and think andfeel. 

Is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his work alone shouldcount, that his life is negligible? Though Rodin has followedFlaubert's advice to artists to lead ascetic lives that their artmight be the more violent, nevertheless his career, colourless as itmay seem to those who better love stage players and the waterycomedies of society--this laborious life of a poor sculptor--is not tobe passed over if we are to make any estimate of his art. He, it isrelated, always becomes enraged at the word "inspiration, " enraged atthe common notion that fire descends from heaven upon the head of thefavoured neophyte of art. Rodin believes in but oneinspiration--nature. He swears he does not invent, but copies nature. He despises improvisation, has contemptuous words for "fatalfacility, " and, being a slow-moving, slow-thinking man, he admits tohis councils those who have conquered art, not by assault, but bystealth and after years of hard work. He sympathises with Flaubert'spatient toiling days, he praises Holland because after Paris it seemedslow. "Slowness is a beauty, " he declared. In a word, Rodin hasevolved a theory and practice of his art that is the outcome--like alltheories, all techniques--of his own temperament. And that temperamentis giant-like, massive, ironic, grave, strangely perverse at times;and it is the temperament of a magician doubled by that of amathematician. 

Books are written about him. De Maupassant describes him in NotreCoeur with picturesque precision. He is tempting as a psychologicstudy. He appeals to the literary, though he is not "literary. " Hismodelling arouses tempests, either of dispraise or idolatry. To seehim steadily, critically, after a visit to his studios in Paris orMeudon, is difficult. If the master be there then you feel the impactof a personality that is as cloudy as the clouds about the base of amountain and as impressive as the mountain. Yet a pleasant, unassuming, sane man, interested in his clay--absolutely--that is, unless you discover him to be more interested in humanity. If youwatch him well you may find yourself well watched; those peering eyespossess a vision that plunges into your soul. And the soul this masterof marbles sees as nude as he sees the human body. It is the union ofartist and psychologist that places Rodin apart. These two arts hepractises in a medium that has hitherto not betrayed potentialitiesfor such almost miraculous performances. Walter Pater is quite rightin maintaining that each art has its separate subject-matter;nevertheless, in the debatable province of Rodin's sculpture we findstrange emotional power, hints of the art of painting and a raremusical suggestiveness. But this is not playing the game according tothe rules of Lessing and his Laocoön. 

Let us drop this old æsthetic rule of thumb and confess that duringthe last century a new race of artists sprang up from some strangeelement and, like flying-fish, revealed to a wondering world theircomposite structures. Thus we find Berlioz painting with hisinstrumentation; Franz Liszt, Tschaikowsky, and Richard Straussfilling their symphonic poems with drama and poetry, and RichardWagner inventing an art which he believed to embrace the seven arts. And there is Ibsen, who used the dramatic form as a vehicle for hisanarchistic ideas; and Nietzsche, who was such a poet that he was ableto sing a mad philosophy into life; and Rossetti, who painted poemsand made poetry that is pictorial. Sculpture was the only art that hadresisted this universal disintegration, this imbroglio of the arts. Nosculptor before Rodin had dared to break the line, dared to shiver thesyntax of stone. For sculpture is a static, not a dynamic art--is itnot? Let us observe the rules, though we preserve the chill spirit ofthe cemetery. What Mallarmé attempted to do with French poetry Rodinaccomplished in clay. His marbles do not represent but presentemotion, are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music, form andsubstance coalesce. If he does not, as did Mallarmé, arouse "thesilent thunder afloat in the leaves, " he can summon from the vastydeep the spirits of love, hate, pain, despair, sin, beauty, ecstasy;above all, ecstasy. Now the primal gift of ecstasy is bestowed uponfew. 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 itfrom the first; but few French poets have it. Like the "cold devils"of Félicien Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the blasts of hell aboutthem, Charles Baudelaire can boast the dangerous attribute. Poe andHeine knew ecstasy, and Liszt also; Wagner was the master adept of hiscentury. Tschaikowsky followed him close; and in the tiny piano scoresof Chopin ecstasy is pinioned in a few bars, the soul often rapt toheaven in a phrase. Richard Strauss has shown a rare variation on thetheme of ecstasy; voluptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormentedby stranger nuances. 

Rodin is of this tormented choir; he is master of its psychology. Itmay be the decadence, as any art is in decadence which stakes theparts against the whole. The same was said of Beethoven by thefollowers of Haydn, and the successors of Richard Strauss will besurely abused quite as violently as the Wagnerites abuse Straussto-day--employing against him the same critical artillery employedagainst Wagner. That this ecstasy should be aroused by pictures oflove and death, as in the case of Poe and Baudelaire, Wagner andStrauss, must not be adjudged as a black crime. In the Far East theyhypnotise neophytes with a bit of broken mirror, for in the kingdom ofart, as in the Kingdom of Heaven, there are many mansions. Possibly itwas a relic of his early admiration and study of Baudelaire that setWagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death andlove; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations--atemperament commoner in mediæval days than ours--was inherent inWagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpseand, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by thesweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely patterns afterWagner in his Salome, there is the head of a dead man, and there isthe same dissolving ecstasy. Both men play with similar counters--loveand death, and death and love. And so Rodin. In Pisa we may see(attributed by Vasari) Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death. Thesting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are inextricably blendedin Rodin's Gate of Hell. His principal reading for forty years hasbeen Dante and Baudelaire. The Divine Comedy and Les Fleurs du Mal arethe key-notes in this white symphony of Auguste Rodin's. Love and lifeand bitterness and death rule the themes of his marbles. LikeBeethoven and Wagner he breaks the academic laws of his art, but thenhe is Rodin, and where he achieves magnificently lesser men wouldmiserably perish. His large tumultuous music is for his chisel aloneto ring out and sing. 

II

The first and still the best study of Rodin as man and thinker is tobe found in a book by Judith Cladel, the daughter of the novelist(author of Mes Paysans). She named it Auguste Rodin, pris sur la vie, and her pages are filled with surprisingly vital sketches of theworkaday Rodin. His conversations are recorded; altogether this littlepicture has much charm and proves what Rodin asserts--that womenunderstand him better than men. There is a fluid, feminine, disturbingside to his art and nature very appealing to emotional women. Mlle. Cladel's book has also been treasure-trove for the anecdote hunters;all have visited her pages. Camille Mauclair admits his indebtedness;so does Frederick Lawton, whose big volume is the most complete life(probably official) that has thus far appeared, either in French orEnglish. It is written on the side of Rodin, like Mauclair's moresubtle study, and like the masterly criticism of Roger Marx. Born atParis in 1840--the natal year of his friends Claude Monet andZola--and in humble circumstances, not enjoying a liberal education, the young Rodin had to fight from the beginning, fight for bread aswell as an art schooling. He was not even sure of a vocation. Anaccident determined it. He became a workman in the atelier ofCarrier-Belleuse, the sculptor, but not until he had failed at theBeaux-Arts (which was a stroke of luck for his genius) and after hehad enjoyed some tentative instruction under the great animalsculptor, Barye. He was never a steady pupil of Barye, nor did he longremain with him. He went to Belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors;indeed, it was a privilege, or misfortune, to have been the"ghost"--anonymous assistant--for half a dozen sculptors. He learnedhis technique by the sweat of his brow before he began to make musicupon his own instrument. 

How his first work, The Man With the Broken Nose, was refused by theSalon jury is history. He designed for the Sèvres porcelain works; hemade portrait busts, architectural ornaments for sculptors, caryatides; all styles that are huddled in the yards and studios ofsculptors 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 proficient--he could not or would not work at themarble _en bloc_. His works to-day are in the leading museums of theworld and he is admitted to have "talent" by the academic men. Rivalshe has none, nor will he have successors. His production is toopersonal. Like Richard Wagner, Rodin has proved a Upas tree for manylesser men--he has reflected or else absorbed them. His closestfriend, the late Eugène Carrière, warned young sculptors not to studyRodin too curiously. Carrière was wise, but his own art of portraiturewas influenced by Rodin; swimming in shadow, his enigmatic heads havea suspicion of the quality of sculpture--Rodin's--not the mortuary artof so much academic sculpture. 

A profound student of light and of movement, Rodin, by deliberateamplification of the surfaces of his statues, avoiding dryness andharshness of outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity, whichcreates the illusion of reality. He handles values in clay as apainter does his tones. He gets the design of the outline by movementwhich continually modifies the anatomy--the secret, he believes, ofthe Greeks. He studies his profiles successively in full light, obtaining volume--or planes--at once and together; successive views ofone movement. The light plays with more freedom upon his amplifiedsurfaces--intensified in the modelling by enlarging the lines. Theedges of certain parts are amplified, deformed, falsified, and we seethat light-swept effect, that appearance as if of luminous emanations. This deformation, he declares, was practised by the great sculptors tosnare the undulating appearance of life. Sculpture, he asserts, is the"art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelledfigures. " Finish kills vitality. Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymphfor you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in thesunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, notby surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern isa mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, _i. E. _, theoppositions of volume produced by movement. Unity haunts him. He is abeliever in the correspondences of things, of the continuity innature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet such a realist is hethat he quarrels with any artist who does not see "the latent heroicin every natural movement. "

Therefore he does not force the pose of his model, preferringattitudes or gestures voluntarily adopted. His sketch-books, ascopious, as vivid as the drawings of Hokusai--he is very studious ofJapanese art--are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispensesits normal muscular motions. Rodin, draughtsman, is as surprising andoriginal as Rodin, sculptor. He will study a human foot for months, not to copy it, but to possess the secret of its rhythms. His drawingsare the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of thehuman machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studiedposes. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion orrelaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the methodadopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiverof surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a merescrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it;and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor hasmade these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well toobserve the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor of them all. And rhythm is the codification of beauty. Because he has observed witha vision quite virginal he insists that he has affiliations with theGreeks. But if his vision is Greek his models are Parisian, while hisforms are more Gothic than the pseudo-Greek of the academy. As W. C. Brownell wrote years ago: "Rodin reveals rather than constructsbeauty... No sculptor has carried expression further; and expressionmeans individual character completely exhibited rather thanconventionally suggested. " Mr. Brownell was also the first critic topoint out that Rodin's art was more nearly related to Donatello thanto Michael Angelo. He is in the legitimate line of French sculpture, the line of Goujon, Puget, Rude, Barye. Dalou did not hesitate toassert that the Dante portal is "one of the most, if not the most, original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenthcentury. "

This Dante Gate, begun more than twenty years ago, not finished yet, and probably never to be, is an astounding fugue, with death, thedevil, hell, and the passions as a horribly beautiful four-voicedtheme. I saw the composition a few years ago at the Rue del'Université atelier. It is as terrifying a conception as the LastJudgment; nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of theMedici Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like allgreat men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified theold technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plasticallyas does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner earmay dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms--his marbles are evermusical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, butsilent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris, as deeplysignificant of modern aspiration and sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze isthe symbol of the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired thismonstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but Baudelaire filled many of itschinks and crannies with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky firethat, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fears, waveineffectual desperate hands. Heine in his Deutschland asks:

 Kennst du die Hölle des Dante nicht, 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, ofexquisite proportions are his marbles of youth, of springtide, and thedesire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, andAmerica awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburnehas love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though hedisclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there isCeltic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core thefrenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols. Nature is for him the sole theme; his works are but variations on herpromptings. He knows the emerald route and all the semitones ofsensuousness. Fantasy, passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yetwhat elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic first _homo_painfully heaves himself up from the earth to that posture whichdifferentiates him from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures areat strife. And Mother Eve, her expression suggesting the sorrows andshames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushedby the ages that are hidden within them. You may walk freely about theburghers of Calais, as did Rodin when he modelled them; that is onesecret of the group's vital quality. About all his statues you maywalk--he is not a sculptor of one attitude, but a hewer of men andwomen. Consider the Balzac. It is not Balzac the writer of novels, butBalzac the prophet, the seer, the great natural force--like Rodinhimself. That is why these kindred spirits converse across the years, as do the Alpine peaks in that striking parable of Turgenieff's. Nodoubt in bronze the Balzac will arouse less wrath from theunimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of some surgingmonolith of snow. 

As a portraitist of his contemporaries Rodin is the unique master ofcharacter. His women are gracious, delicious masks; his men cover manyoctaves in virility and variety. That he is extremely short-sightedhas not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of thisfact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formlessextravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineatespassion as a psychologist; and while we think of him as a cyclopswielding a huge hammer destructively, he is often ardent in his searchof subtle nuance. But there is breadth even when he models an eyelid. Size is only relative. We are confronted by the paradox of an artistas torrential, as apocalyptic as Rubens and Wagner, carving with astyle wholly charming a segment of a baby's back so that you exclaim, "Donatello come to life!" His slow, defective vision, then, may havebeen his salvation; he seems to rely as much on his delicate tactilesense as on his eyes. His fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. At times he seems to model tone and colour. A marvellous poet, aprecise sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him likeMillet, and, like Millet, very near to the soil; a natural man, yetcrossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of asensibility exalted, and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and asintrospective as Heine; a visionary and a lover of life, very close tothe periphery of things; an interpreter of Baudelaire; Dante's alterego in his vast grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionatefling at nature; withal a sculptor, always profound and tortured, translating rhythm and motion into the terms of sculpture. Rodin is astatuary who, while having affinities with both the classic andromantic schools, is the most startling artistic apparition of hiscentury. And to the century he has summed up so plastically andemotionally he has also propounded questions that only the unbornyears may answer. He has a hundred faults to which he opposes oneimperious excellence--a genius, sombre, magical, and overwhelming. 

V. EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE

Death has consecrated the genius of three great painters happilyneglected and persecuted during their lifetime--Manet, Monticelli, andCarrière. Though furiously opposed, Manet was admitted to theLuxembourg by the conditions of the Caillebotte legacy. There thatironic masterpiece, Olympe--otherwise known as the Cat andCocotte--has hung for the edification of intelligent amateurs, thoughit was only a bequest of triumphant hatred in official eyes. And nowthe lady with her cat and negress is in the Louvre, in whichsacrosanct region she, with her meagre, subtle figure, competes amongthe masterpieces. Yet there were few dissenting voices. Despite itstemperamental oscillations France is at bottom sound in the matter ofart. Genius may starve, but genius once recognised, the apotheosis islogically bound to follow. No fear of halls of fame with a French Poeabsent. 

Eugène Carrière was more fortunate than his two famous predecessors. He toiled and suffered hardship, but before his death he wasofficially acknowledged though never altogether approved by the Salonin which he exhibited; approved or understood. He fought under nobanner. He was not an impressionist. He was not a realist. Certainlyhe could be claimed by neither the classics nor romantics. A"solitary" they agreed to call him; but his is not the hermetic art ofsuch a solitary as Gustave Moreau. Carrière, on the contrary, was aman of marked social impulses, and when in 1889 he received the Legionof Honour, he was enabled to mingle with his equals--he had beenalmost unknown until then. He was the most progressive spirit amonghis brethren. Nowadays he is classed as an Intimist, in which categoryand with such men as Simon Bussy, Ménard, Henri le Sidaner, EmileWéry, Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, Edouard Vuillard, the Griveaus, Lomont, Lobre, and others, he is still their master, still thepossessor of a highly individualised style, and in portraiture thesuccessor to such diverse painters as Prudhon, Ricard, and Whistler. 

Gabriel Seailles has written a study, Eugène Carrière, l'Homme etl'Artiste, and Charles Morice has published another, Eugène Carrière. The latter deals with the personality and ideas of one of the mostoriginal thinkers among modern French painters. We have spoken of theacerbity of Degas, of his wit, so often borrowed by Whistler andManet; we have read Eugène Fromentin's delightful, stimulating studiesof the old masters, but we doubt if Fromentin was as profound athinker as Carrière. Degas is not, though he deals in a more acid anddangerous form of aphorism. It is one of the charms of the eulogy ofM. Morice to find embalmed therein so many phrases and speeches of thedead painter. He was both poet and philosopher, let us call him aseer, for his work fully bears out this appellation. A grandvisionary, he well deserves Jean Dolent's description of his picturesas "realities having the magic of a dream. "

Carrière's career was in no wise extraordinary. He fled to no exoticclimes as did Paul Gauguin. His only tragedy was the manner of hisdeath. For three years previous he suffered the agonies of a cancer. His bravery was admirable. No one heard him complain. He worked to thelast, worked as he had worked his life long, untiringly. Morice givesa "succinct biography" at the close of his study. From it we learnthat Eugène Carrière was born January 29, 1849, at Gournay(Seine-Inférieure); that he made his first steps in art at theStrasbourg Academy; in 1869 he entered the Beaux-Arts, in Cabanel'sclass. Penniless, he earned a precarious existence in designingindustrial objects. In 1870 he was made prisoner by the Prussians, with the garrison of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he wasconfined in prison. After peace had been declared he resumed hisstudies at the Beaux-Arts. In 1877 he married--an important event inhis art; thenceforward Madame Carrière and the children born to themwere his continual models, both by preference and also by force ofcircumstances--he was too poor in the beginning to hire professionalmodels. He spent six months in London, which may or may not accountfor his brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty years old, heexposed in the Salon of that year his Young Mother, the first of along series of Maternities. He was violently attacked by the critics, and as violently defended. During the same year he attempted to winthe "prix de Rome" and gained honours for his sketch. Luckily he didnot attain this prize; and, still more luck, he left the school. 

In 1884 he received an honourable mention for a child's portrait; in1885 a medal for his Sick Child, bought by the State; in 1886 LePremier voile was bought by the State and he was proposed for a medalof 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, andat the last, glory--"_le soleil des morts_, " as Balzac said--and acompetence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writersas Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carrière from thebeginning. In 1904 Carrière was made honorary president of the AutumnSalon and was the chief guest of these young painters, who reallyadored Paul Cézanne, and not the painter of an illusive psychology. Iwrote at that time: "Carrière, whose delicately clouded portraits, sointimate in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was not seenat his best. He offered a large decorative panel for the Mairie of theThirteenth Arrondissement, entitled Les Fiancés, a sad-lookingbetrothal party ... The landscape timid, the decorative scheme notvery effective... His tender notations of maternity, and his heads, painted with the smoky enchantments of his pearly gray and softrusset, are more credible than this _panneau_. " Was Carrière adecorative painter by nature--setting aside training? We doubt it, though Morice does not hesitate to name him after Puvis de Chavannesin this field. The trouble is that he did not make many excursionsinto the larger forms. He painted a huge canvas, Les ThéâtresPopulaires, in which the interest is more intimate than epical. Healso did some decorations for the Hotel de Ville, The Four Ages for aMairie, and the Christ at the Luxembourg and a view of Paris. Nevertheless, it is his portraits that will live. 

Carrière was, first and last, a symbolist. There he is related to theDutch Seer, Rembrandt; both men strove to seek for the eternalcorrespondence of things material and spiritual; both sought to bringinto harmony the dissonance of flesh and the spirit. Both succeeded, each in his own way--though we need not couple their efforts on thetechnical side. Rembrandt was a prophet. There is more of thereflective poet in Carrière. He is a mystic. His mothers, hischildren, are dreams made real--the magic of which Dolent speaks isalways there. To disengage the personality of his sitter was his firstidea. Slowly he built up those volumes of colour, light, and shadow, the solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim: "Carrière is also asculptor!" Slowly and from the most unwilling sitter he extorted thesecret of a soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master psychologistamong portraitists, a superiority he himself has never assumed; butthat magnificent virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives usthe indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the epidermis of poor, struggling humanity as does Eugène Carrière. Sargent is toomagisterial a painter to dwell upon the infinite little soul-stigmataof men and women. Who can tell the renunciations made by the Frenchmanin his endeavour to wrest the enigma of personality from its abysmaldepths?

As Canaille Mauclair says: "Carrière was first influenced by theSpaniards, then by Ver Meer and Chardin ... Formerly he coloured hiscanvas with exquisite delicacy and with a distinction of harmoniesthat 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'schiaroscuro. " Colour went by the board at the last, and the painterwas dominated by expression alone. His gamut of tones becamecontracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase thatilluminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in hisblacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadowsfloating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. Hebecame almost sculptural, handled his planes with imposing breadth, his sense of values was strong, his gradations and degradation oftones masterly; and he escaped the influences of the new men in theirresearches after luminosity at all hazards. He consideredimpressionism a transition; after purifying muddy palettes of theacademics, the division-of-tones painters must necessarily return tolofty composition, to a poetic simplicity with nature, to a morerarefied psychology. 

Carrière, notwithstanding his nocturnal reveries, his sombrecolouring, was not a pessimist. Indeed, the reverse. His philosophy oflife was exalted--an exalted socialism. He was, to employ Nietzsche'spithy phrase, a "Yes-Sayer"; he said "Yes" to the universe. A man ofvigorous affirmations, he worshipped nature, not for its pictorialaspects, but for the god which is the leaf and rock and animal, forthe god that beats in our pulses and shines in the clear sunlight. Norwas it vague, windy pantheism, this; he was a believer--a glance athis Christ reveals his reverence for the Man of Sorrows--and hisreligious love and pity for mankind was only excelled by his hatred ofwrong and oppression. He detested cruelty. His canvases of childhood, in which he exposes the most evanescent gesture, exposes theunconscious helplessness of babyhood, are so many tracts--if youchoose to see them after that fashion--in behalf of mercy to alltender and living things. He is not, however, a sentimentalist. Hisfamily groups prove the absence of theatrical pity. Because of hissubtle technical method, his manner of building up his heads in amisty medium and then abstracting their physical non-essentials, hisportraits have a metaphysical meaning--they are a _Becoming_, not a_Being_, tangible though they be. Their fluid rhythms lend to themalmost the quality of a perpetual rejuvenescence. This may be anillusion, but it tells us of the primary intensity of the painter'svision. Withal, there is no scene of the merely spectral, no opticaltrickery. The waves of light are magnetic. The picture floats inspace, seemingly compelled by its frame into limits. Gustave Geffroyonce wrote that, in common with the great masters, Carrière, on hiscanvas, gives a sense of volume and weight. Whatever he sacrificed, itwas not actuality. His draughtsmanship never falters, his touch isnever infirm. 

I have seen his portraits of Verlaine, Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, Geffroy, of the artist himself and many others. The Verlaine is averitable evocation. It was painted at one _séance_ of several hours, and the poet, it is said, did not sit still or keep silence for amoment. He was hardly conscious that he was being painted. What ahead! Not that of the old faun and absinthe-sipping vagabond of theLatin quarter, but the soul that lurked somewhere in Verlaine; thedreamer, not the mystifier, the man crucified to the cross ofaspiration by his unhappy temperament. Musician and child, here is thehead of one of those pious, irresponsible mendicants who walked dustyroads in the Middle Ages. It needed an unusual painter to interpret anunusual poet. 

The Daudet face is not alone full of surface character, but explainsthe racial affinities of the romancer. Here he is David, not Daudet. The head of De Goncourt gives in a few touches--Carrière is evermaster of the essential--the irritable pontiff of literaryimpressionism. Carrière was fond of repeating: "For the artist theforms evoke ideas, sensations, and sentiments; for the poet, sensations, ideas, sentiments evoke forms. " Never expansively lyricalas was Monticelli, Carrière declared that a picture is the logicaldevelopment of light. And on the external side his art is a continualvariation with light as a theme. Morice contends that he was acolourist; that the blond of Rubens and the russet of Carrière are notmonochromes; that polychromy is not the true way of seeing naturecoloured. Certainly Carrière does not sacrifice style, expression, composition for splashing hues. Yet his illuminating strokes appear toproceed from within, not from without. He interrogates nature, but heranswer is a sober, not a brilliant one. Let us rather say that hiscolouring is adequate--he always asserted that a sense of proportionwas success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he paintsexpressions, the fleeting shades that cross the face of a man, awoman, a child. He patiently awaits the master trait of a soul andnever misses it, though never displaying it with the happy cruelty ofSargent and always judging mercifully. Notwithstanding his humbleattitude in the presence of nature, he is the most self-revealing ofpainters. Few before him ever interpreted maternity as he has done. 

Carrière is not a virtuoso. He is an initiator--a man of rareimagination. Above all, he escapes the rhetoric of the schools. Hisapprehension of character is that of sympathetic genius. He divinesthe emotions, especially in those souls made melancholy by sorrow;uneasy, complex, feverish souls; them that hide their griefs, andsouls saturated with the ennuis of existence--to all he is interpreterand consoler. He has pictured the _Weltschmerz_ of his age; andwithout morbid self-enjoyment. A noble soul, an elevating example tothose artists who believe that art and life may be dissociated. Carrière has left no school, though his spiritual influence has beengreat. A self-contained artist, going his own way, meditating deeplyon art, on life, his canvases stand for his singleness and purity ofpurpose. On the purely pictorial side he is, to quote M. Mauclair, "anabsolutely surprising painter of hands and glances. "

In the sad and anxious rectitude of his attire the artistic interestin modern man is concentrated upon his head and hands; and upon thesesalient points Carrière focussed his art. Peaceful or disquieted, hismen and women belong to our century. Spiritually Eugène Carrière isthe lineal descendant of the Rembrandt school--but one who has readDostoïevsky. 

VI. DEGAS

Let us suppose that gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuadedto cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust ifforced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple RichardWagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember heit was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex--since the new woman ishere it matters little if her figure conforms to old-fashioned, stupid, masculine standards of beauty. But wouldn't the nudes of Degasconfirm the Frankfort philosopher in his theories regarding the"long-haired, short-brained, unæsthetic sex, " and also confirm hishatred for the exaggerations of poet and painter when describing ordepicting her? We fear that Schopenhauer would smile his malicioussmile and exclaim: "At last the humble truth!" It is the presentationof the humble truth that early snared the affections of Degas, who haswith a passionate calm pursued the evanescent appearances of thingshis entire life. No doubt death will find him pencil in hand. Youthink of Hokusai, the old man mad with paint, when the name of Degasis mentioned. He was born in Paris July 19, 1834--his full name isHilaire Germain Edgard (or Edgar)--and there is one phrase that willbest describe his career: He painted. Like Flaubert, he never married, but lived in companionship with his art. Such a mania could have beendescribed by Balzac. Yet no saner art ever issued from a Parisianatelier; sane, clear, and beautiful. 

Degas is a painter's painter. For him the subject is a peg upon whichto hang superb workmanship. In amazement the public asked: How could aman in the possession of his powers shut himself up in a studio topaint ballet girls, washerwomen, jockeys, drabs of Montmartre, shopgirls, and horses? Even Zola, who should have known better, wouldnot admit that Degas was an artist fit to be compared with such men asFlaubert and Goncourt; but Zola was never the realist that is Degas. Now it is difficult to keep asunder the names of Goncourt and Degas. To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The style of the painterhas been judged as analogous to the novelist's; yet, apart from apreference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, thereis not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men arebrilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent toDegas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the greatclassic painters. He is himself a classic. 

His legend is slender. Possessing a private income, he never waspreoccupied with the anxieties of selling his work. He first enteredthe atelier of Lamotte, but his stay was brief. In the studio ofIngres he was, so George Moore declares, the student who carried outthe lifeless body of the painter when Ingres fell in his fatal fit. There is something peculiarly interesting about this anecdote for thetradition of Ingres has been carried on by Degas. The greatest masterof pure line, in his portraits and nudes--we have forgotten his chilly_pastiches_ of Raphael--of the past century, Ingres has been and stillis for Degas a god on the peaks of Parnassus. Degas is an Ingres whohas studied the Japanese. Only such men as Pollajuolo and Botticellirank with Degas in the mastery of rhythmic line. He is not academic, yet he stems from purest academic traditions. He is not of theimpressionists, at least not in his technical processes, but heassociated with them, exhibited with them (though rarely), and is as arule confused with them. He never exhibited in the Salons, he has nodisciples, yet it is doubtful if any painter's fashion of seeingthings has had such an influence on the generation following him. Thename of Degas, the pastels of Degas, the miraculous draughtsmanship ofDegas created an imponderable fluid which still permeates Paris. Naturally, after the egg trick was discovered we encounter scores ofyoung Columbuses, who paint ballet girls' legs and the heads oforchestral musicians and scenes from the racing paddock. 

Degas had three painters who, if any, might truthfully call themselveshis pupils. These are Mary Cassatt, Alexis Rouart, and Forain. Thefirst has achieved solid fame. The last is a remarkable illustrator, who "vulgarised" the austere methods of his master for popularParisian consumption. That Renoir, Raffaelli, and Toulouse-Lautrec owemuch to Degas is the secret of Polichinello. This patient student ofthe Tuscan Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres, andManet--the precepts of Manet taught him to sweeten the wiriness of hismodelling and modify his tendency to a certain hardness--was willingto trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He associated dailywith Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Whistler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and thecrowd that first went to the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles--hencethe derisive nickname, "The Batignolles School"; later to the NouvelleAthènes, finally to the Café de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he wasduring the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue thatwas feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed manyspecimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in hispresence--possibly expecting a repetition of the _mot_: "My dearfriend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent atall. " Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic setwere outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his!Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring. Barricaded in hisstudio, it was a brave man who attempted to force an entrance. Thelittle, round-shouldered artist, generally good-tempered, would pour astream of verbal vitriol over the head of the unlucky impertinent. 

In 1860 or thereabout he visited America, and in New Orleans he sawthe subject of his Interior of a Cotton Factory, which was shown as anhistorical curiosity at the Paris exposition in 1900. While it isimplacably realistic there is little hint of the future Degas. Thename of the painter was in every French painter's mouth, and thebrilliant article of Huysmans concentrated his fame. Huysmans it waswho first saw that Degas had treated the nude as Rembrandt would if hehad been alive--making allowances for temperamental variations. Degasknew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be representedin postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. AsMonet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed theinanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with thefourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which weseem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combingtheir hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrelling, and walking. The simian and frog-like gestures and sprawling attitudes are far fromarousing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women, hard-workinglaundresses, shopgirls, are not alluring, though they are not ashideous as the women of Cézanne or Edvard Münch; but the veracity ofthe "human document" (overworked phrase!) is there. Charles Morice hassaid that to Cézanne a potato was as significant as a humancountenance. The pattern interested him in both. For Degas the beautyof life lies in the moving line. He captures with ease the swift, unconscious gesture. His models are never posed. They are naturecaught in the act. There is said to be a difference between theepidermis of the professional model and the human who undresses onlyto go to bed. Degas has recorded this difference. What an arraignmentof the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! Whatlurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! _Voilà l'animale!_he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of somegirl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas!Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is adouche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayadèresand of drawing-room portraiture. 

Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there isveiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in thewaiting-rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-eyed mother, hisgirls are all painfully real. No "glamour of the foot-lights, "generally the prosaic side of their life. He has, however, painted theglorification of the danseuse, of that lady grandiloquently describedas _prima donna assoluta_. What magic he evokes as he pictures herfloating down stage! The pastel in the Luxembourg, L'Etoile, is thereincarnation of the precise moment when the aerial creature on onefoot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in the glow of thelights, while about her beats--you are sure--the noisy, insistentmusic. It is in the pinning down of such climaxes of movement thatDegas stirs our admiration. He draws movement. He can paint rhythms. His canvases are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile values isprofound. His is true atmospheric colour. A feeling of exhilarationcomes while contemplating one of his open-air scenes with jockeys, race-horses, and the incidental bustle of a neighbouring concourse. Unexcelled as a painter of horses, as a delineator of witchinghorsemanship, of vivid landscapes--true integral decorations--and ofthe casual movements and gestures of common folk, Degas is also apsychologist, an ironical commentator on the pettiness and ugliness ofdaily life, of its unheroic aspects, its comical snobberies andshocking hypocrisies; and all expressed without a melodramaticelevation of the voice, without the false sentimentalism of Zola orthe morbidities of Toulouse-Lautrec. There is much Baudelaire inDegas, as there is also in Rodin. All three men despised academicrhetoric; all three dealt with new material in a new manner. 

It is the fashion to admire Degas, but it is doubtful if he will evergain the suffrage of the general. He does not retail anecdotes, thoughto the imaginative every line of his nudes relates their history. Hisirony is unremitting. It suffuses the ballet-girl series and the nudesets. Irony is an illuminating mode, but it is seldom pleasant; thepublic is always suspicious of an ironist, particularly of the Degasvariety. Careless of reputation, laughing at the vanity of hiscontemporaries who were eager to arrive, contemptuous of critics andcriticism, of collectors who buy low to sell high (in the heart ofevery picture collector there is a bargain counter), Degas has defiedthe artistic world for a half-century. His genius compelled theMountain to come to Mahomet. The rhythmic articulations, the volume, contours, and bounding supple line of Degas are the despair ofartists. Like the Japanese, he indulges in abridgments, deformations, falsifications. His enormous faculty of attention has counted heavilyin his synthetical canvases. He joys in the representation ofartificial light; his theatres are flooded with it, and he is equallysuccessful in creating the illusion of cold, cheerless daylight in asalle where rehearse the little "rats" and the older coryphées ontheir wiry, muscular, ugly legs. His vast production is dominated byhis nervous, resilient vital line and by supremacy in the handling ofvalues. 

The Degas palette is never gorgeous, consisting as it does of coolgrays, discreet blues and greens, Chardin-like whites andManet-blacks. His procedure is all his own. His second manner is acombination of drawing, painting, and pastel. "He has invented a kindof engraving mixed with wash drawing, pastel crayon crushed withbrushes 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 onThe School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same theme, declaring musicthe archetype of the arts. In his Essays Speculative John AddingtonSymonds said some pertinent things on this subject. Camille Mauclairin his Idées Vivantes proposes in all seriousness a scheme for thefusion of the seven arts, though he deplored Wagner's efforts to reacha solution. Mauclair's theory is that the fusion can only be acerebral one, that actually mingling sculpture, architecture, music, drama, acting, colour, dancing can never evoke the sensation of unity. Synthesis is not thus to be attained. It must be in the _idea_ of thearts rather than their material realisation. A pretty chimera! Yet onethat has piqued the world of art in almost every century. It was thehalf-crazy E. T. W. Hoffmann, composer, dramatist, painter, poet, stagemanager, and a dozen other professions, including that of genius anddrunkard, who set off a train of ideas which buzzed in the brains ofPoe, Baudelaire, and the symbolists. People who hear painting, seemusic, enjoy odorous poems, taste symphonies, and write perfumes arenow classed by the omnipotent psychical police as decadents, thoughsuch notions are as old as literature. Suarez de Mendoza in hisL'Audition Colorée has said that the sensation of colour hearing, thefaculty of associating tones and colours, is often a consequence of anassociation of ideas established in youth. The coloured vowels ofArthur Rimbaud, which must be taken as a poet's crazy prank; theelaborate treatises by René Ghil, which are terribly earnest; theremarks that one often hears, such as "scarlet is like a trumpetblast"; certain pages of Huysmans, all furnish examples of thiscurious muddling of the senses and mixing of genres. Naturally, it hasinvaded criticism, which, limited in imagery, sometimes seeks totransfer the technical terms of one art to another. 

Whistler with his nocturnes, notes, symphonies in rose and silver, hiscolour-sonatas, boldly annexed well-worn musical phrases, that intheir new estate took on fresher meanings even if remaining knee-deepin the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composershave retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, whilepoets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnetsare not unpleasing to the ear. What if they do not mean much? Therewas a time when to say a "sweet voice" would arouse a smile. What hassugar to do with sound? It may be erratic symbolism, this confusing ofterminologies; yet, once in a while, it strikes sparks. There is adeeply rooted feeling in us that the arts have a common matrix, thatthey are emotionally akin. "Her slow smile" in fiction has had markedsuccess with young people, but a "slow landscape" is still regardedsuspiciously. The bravest critic of art was Huysmans. He pitchedpell-mell into the hell-broth of his criticism any image thatassaulted his fecund brain. He forced one to _see_ his picture--for hewas primarily concerned not with the ear, but the eye. 

And Botticelli? Was Botticelli a "comprehensive"--as those with thesixth or synthetic sense have been named by Lombroso? Botticelli, beginning as a goldsmith's apprentice (Botticello, the little bottle), ended as a painter, the most original in all Italy. His canvases havea rare, mysterious power of evocation. He was a visionary, this SandroFilipepi, pupil of the mercurial Fra Lippo Lippi and the brothersPollajuolo, and his inward vision must have been something more thanpaint and pattern and subject. A palimpsest may be discerned by theimaginative--or, let us say, fanciful, since Coleridge long ago setforth the categories--whose secrets are not to be deciphered easily, yet are something more than those portrayed by the artist on the flatsurface of his picture. He painted the usual number of Madonnas, likeany artist of his period; yet he did not convince his world, or thegenerations succeeding, that this piety was orthodox. Suspected duringhis lifetime of strange heresies, this annotator and illustrator ofDante, this disciple of Savonarola, has in our times been definitelyranged as a spirit saturated with paganism, and still a mystic. Doesn't the perverse clash in such a complex temperament give usexotic dissonances? All Florence was a sounding-board of the arts whenBotticelli walked its narrow ways and lived its splendid colouredlife. His sensitive nature absorbed as a sponge does water theimpulses and motives of his contemporaries. The lurking secrets of the"new learning"--doctrines that made for damnation, such as therecrudescence of the mediæval conception of an angelic neuter host, neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of Lucifer nor with thestarry hosts--were said to have been mirrored in his pictures. Itsnote is in Città di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses, and it goesas far back as Origen. Those who read his paintings, and there wereclairvoyant theologians abroad in Florence, could make of them whatthey would. Painted music is less understandable than painted heresy. Matteo Palmieri is said to have dragged Botticelli with him into darkcorners of disbelief; there was in the Medicean days a cruel order ofintelligence that delighted to toy with the vital faith and ideals ofthe young. It was more savage and cunning when Machiavelli, shrewdestof men, wrote and lived. A nature like Botticelli's, which surrenderedfrankly to ideas if they but wore the mask of subtlety, could not failto have been swept away in the eddying cross-currents of Florentineintellectual movements. Never mere instinct, for he was a sexless sortof man, moved him from his moral anchorage. Always the vision! He didnot palter with the voluptuousness of his fellow-artists, yet hiscanvases are feverishly disquieting; the sting of the flesh is remote;love is transfigured, not spiritually and not served to us as a barrenparable, but made more intense by the breaking down of the thinpartition between the sexes; a consuming emotion not quite of thisworld nor of the next. The barren rebellion which stirred Botticelli'sbosom never quite assumed the concrete. His religious subjects areHellenised, not after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible method, but like those of a philosophic Athenian who has read and comprehendedDante. Yet the illustrations show us a different Dante, one who wouldnot have altogether pleased the gloomy exile. William Blake'stranspositions of the Divine Comedy seem to sound the depths;Botticelli, notwithstanding the grace of his "baby centaurs" and thewreathed car of Beatrice, is the profounder man of the two. 

His life, veiled toward the last, was not a happy one, though he wasrecognised as a great painter. Watteau concealed some cankeringsecret; so Botticelli. Both belong to the band of the Disquieted. Melancholy was at the base of the Florentine's work. He created as ayoung man in joy and freedom, but the wings of Dürer's bat wereoutstretched over his head: Melencolia! There is more poignant musicin the Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, neuropathic Madonnas--Pater calls them "peevish"--in his Venus of theUffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. Theveils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing inthe lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives. Joyfulness cannot be denied Botticelli, but it is not the golden joyof 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 canvasesof Botticelli seem to give forth the opalescent over-tones of anunearthly composition. Is this Spring, this tender, tremulous virginwhose right hand, deprecatingly raised, signals as a conductor at thehead of an invisible orchestra its rhythms? Hermes, supremelyimpassive, hand on thigh, plucks the fruit as the eternal trio ofmaidens with woven paces tread the measures of a dance whose music webut overhear. Garlanded with blossoms, a glorious girl keeps time withthe pulsing atmospheric moods; her gesture, surely a divine one, showsher casting flowers upon the richly embroidered floor of the earth. The light filters through the thick trees; its rifts are as rigid ascandles. The nymph in the brake is threatening. Another epicenecreature flies by her. Love shoots his bolt in midair. Is it fromPaphos or Mitylene! What the fable! Music plucked down from thevibrating skies and made visible to the senses. A mere masque ladenwith the sweet, prim allegories of the day it is not. Vasari, bluntsoul, saw but its surfaces. Politian, the poet, got closer to thecore. Centuries later our perceptions, sharpened by the stations ofpain and experience traversed, lend to this immortal canvas a moresympathetic, less literal interpretation. 

Music, too, in the Anadyomene of the Uffizi. Still stranger music. Those sudden little waves that lap an immemorial strand; thatshimmering shell, its fan-spokes converging to the parted feet of thegoddess; her hieratic pose, its modesty symbolic, the hair thatserpentines about her foam-born face, thin shoulders that slope intodelicious arms; the Japanese group, blowing tiny, gem-like buds withpuffed-out cheeks; the rhythmic female on tiptoe offering her mantleto Venus; and enveloping them all vernal breezes, unseen, yet sensedon every inch of the canvas--what are these things but the music of anart original at its birth and never since reborn? The larger rhythmsof the greater men do not sweep us along with them in Botticelli. Buthis voice is irresistible. 

Modern as is his spirit, as modern as Watteau, Chopin, or Shelley, heis no less ethereal than any one of these three; ethereal and alsorealistic. We may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he becamecould never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic haswritten, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, thefirst to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, theflexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the eleganceof the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'leprestige insolent des grands yeux. '"

For Pater his colour was cold, cadaverous, "and yet the more you cometo understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour isno mere delightful quality of natural things but a spirit upon them bywhich they become expressive to the spirit, the better you like thispeculiar quality of colour. " Bernard Berenson goes further. For himthe entire picture, Venus Rising From the Sea, presents us with thequintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touchand movement... The vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the lifecommunicating movement, is always there. And writing of the Pallas inthe Pitti he most eloquently said: "As to the hair--imagine shapeshaving the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of lickingflames and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something whichcaresses the hand that models it to its own desire!"

And after speaking of Botticelli's stimulating line, he continues:"Imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences ofmovement-values and you will have something that holds the samerelation to representation that music holds to speech--and this artexists and is called lineal decoration. In this art of arts SandroBotticelli may have had rivals in Japan and elsewhere in the East, butin Europe never!... He is the greatest master of lineal design thatEurope ever had. "

Again music, not the music nor the symbolism of the emotions, but theabstract music of design. Botticelli's appeal is also an auditive one. Other painters have spun more intricate, more beautiful scrolls ofline; other painters sounded more sensuous colour music, but thesubtle sarabands of Botticelli they have not composed. There is here apleasing problem for the psychiatrist. Manifestations in paint of thisspecies may be set down to some mental lesion; that is how MauriceSpronck classifies the sensation in writing about the verbalsensitivity of the Goncourts and Flaubert. The latter, you mayremember, said that Salammbo was purple to him, and L'EducationSentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris--a characteristic fancy! But whyis it that these scientific gentlemen who account for genius byeye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the soundof words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It appears that onlyprose-men are the culpable ones when they hear the harping ofinvisible harps from Ibsen steeplejacks, or recognise the colour ofZarathustra's thoughts. In reality not one but thousands sit listeningin the chill galleries of Florence because of the sweet, sick, nervousmusic of Botticelli; this testimony of the years is for the dissentersto explain. 

_Fantastico, Stravaganie_, as Vasari nicknamed Botticelli, hasliterally created an audience that has learned to see as he did, fantastically and extravagantly. He passed through the three stagesdear to arbitrary criticism. Serene in his youthful years; troubled, voluptuous, visionary during the Medicean period; sombre, mystic, aconvert to Savonarola at the end. He passed through, not untouched, agreat crisis. Certain political assassinations and the Pazziconspiracy hurt him to the quick. He noted the turbulence of Rome andFlorence, saw behind the gay-tinted arras of the Renaissance thesinister figures of its supermen and criminals. He never married. WhenTommaso Soderini begged him to take a wife, he responded: "The othernight I dreamed I was married. I awoke in such horror and chagrin thatI could not fall asleep again. I arose and wandered about Florencelike one possessed. " Evidently not intended by nature as a husband orfather. Like Watteau, like Nietzsche, grand visionaries abiding on theother side of the dear common joys of life, these men were not temptedby the usual baits of happiness. The great Calumnia in the Uffizimight be construed as an image of Botticelli's soul. Truth, naked andscorned--again we note the matchless silhouette of hisVenus--misunderstood and calumniated, stands in the hall of a greatpalace. She points to the heavens; she is an interrogation mark, Pilate's question. Botticelli was adored. But understood? An enigmaticmalady ravaged his being. He died poor and alone, did this composer ofluminous chants and pagan poems, this moulder of exotic dreams and ofangels who long for other gods than those of Good and Evil. Agrievously wounded, timid soul, an intruder at the portals ofparadise, but without the courage to enter or withdraw. He had visionsthat rapt him up into the seventh heaven, and when he reported them inthe speech of his design his harassed, divided spirit chilled theardours of his art. And thus it is that many do not worship at hisshrine as at the shrine of Raphael, for they see the adumbration of apaganism long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a briefBotticellian hour. Madonna and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus!Under which king? The artist never frankly tells us. The legends offauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that hadforgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than byHeine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to his pallid, mutedmusic. 

He was born at Florence in 1446; he died May 27, 1510; in 1515, according to Vasari. A study of him is by Emile Gebhart, late of theFrench Academy. It is erudite, although oddly enough it ignores theresearches of Morelli and Berenson. Gebhart attributes to Alessandrodi Mariano Filipepi about eighty-five pictures, many of which werelong ago in Morelli's taboo list--that terrible Morelli, the learnediconoclast who brought many sleepless nights to Dr. Wilhelm Bode ofBerlin. Time has vindicated the Bergamese critic. Berenson will allowonly forty-five originals to Botticelli's credit. Furthermore, Gebhartdoes not mention in his catalogue the two Botticellis belonging toMrs. Gardner of Boston, a lamentable oversight for a volume broughtout in 1907. Need we add that this French author by no means seesBotticelli in the musical sense? He is chiefly concerned with hishistoric environment. Gebhart's authorities are the Memoriale ofFrancesco Albertini; Anonyme Gaddiano, the manuscript of theMagliabecchiana, which precedes the Vasari edition; the Life ofBotticelli, by Vasari, and many later studies, the most complete, heavers, being that of Hermann Ulmann of Munich, whose SandroBotticelli, 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 befound therein. The last word concerning Botticelli will not be uttereduntil his last line has vanished. And, even then, his archaicharmonies may continue to sound in the ears of mankind. 

VIII. SIX SPANIARDS

"EL GRECO"

Large or small, there has been a Greco cult ever since theGreek-Spanish painter died, April 7, 1614, but during the last decadeit has grown into a species of worship. One hears the names ofVelasquez and El Greco coupled. His profound influence on the greatestof the realists is blithely assumed, and for these worshippers, Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter ofthe Burial of the Count of Orgáz. While this undiscriminatingadmiration may be deplored, there are reasons enough for thecanonisation of El Greco in the church of art. Violent to exaggerationin composition, morbidly mystic, there are power and emotional qualityrevealed in his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez in hisuse of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at least a disciple ofTitian he is, as his latest biographer, Señor Manuel B. Cossio, nameshim, "the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance. " But of the man weknow almost nothing. 

We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over seven hundred pagesfortified by a supplementary volume containing one hundred andninety-three illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco'saccredited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio). Señor Cossio has sowell accomplished his task that his book may be set down asdefinitive. A glance at the bibliography he compiled shows that notmany writers on art have seen fit to pay particular attention to ElGreco. A few Spaniards, Señor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm, CarlJusti (in his Diego Velasquez); Paul Lafond, William Ritter, ArthurSymons, William Stirling, Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, Havelock Ellis, and the inimitable Théophile Gautier--whose Travels inSpain, 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, ofhis hero, and it is safe to assert that all that is known to-day of ElGreco will be found in these pages. The origins of the painter, hisvisit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo, are described with referencesto original documents--few as they are. 

Then follows a searching and vivid exposition of the pictures inMadrid, Toledo, and elsewhere, a technical and psychological analysiswhich displays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth sense ofsympathy. No pictures, sketches, sculptures, or _retablos_ escapeCossio. He considers El Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modernart. He has all the authorities at his tongue's tip; he views the manand artist from every angle. 

"Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years before his contemporaryCervantes, " says Cossio. Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his originalname, which was softened into Domenico Theotocopuli--which, no doubtproving too much of a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quicklysuperseded by a capital nickname, "The Greek. " His birthplace was theisland of Crete and his birth-year between 1545 and 1550. Justi wasthe first to demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was corroboratedin 1893 by Bikelas. In 1570, we learn through a letter written byGiulio Clovio to Cardinal Farnese, El Greco had astonished Romanartists by his skill in portraiture. He was said to be a pupil ofTitian, on Clovio's authority. Why he went to Spain has not beendiscovered. He had a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor andarchitect. Who the mother was history does not say. The painter tookup 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 ashis paintings and of an extravagant disposition. He was also called awit and a philosopher. He wrote on painting, sculpture, andarchitecture, it is said. He made money; was, like most of his adoptedcountrymen, fond of litigation; lived well, loved music--and at hismeals!--and that is all we may ever record of a busy life; for hepainted many pictures, a careful enumeration of which makes Cossio'sbook valuable. 

There are Grecos scattered over Europe and the two Americas. Madridand Toledo boast of his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg andBucharest he is represented. In the United States there are elevenexamples, soon to be increased by Mr. Archer M. Huntington's recentacquisition from the Kann collection. In Boston at the Museum there isthe portrait of Fray Paravicino, a brilliant picture. (The worthy monkwrote four sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he calls"Divino Griego. " Quoted in one of the Cossio appendices. ) There is anAssumption of the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and anApostle, belonging to Charles Deering. In Philadelphia Mr. "J. Widner"(read P. A. B. Widener) owns a St. Francis, and at the MetropolitanMuseum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Adoration of theShepherds, a characteristic specimen of Greco's last manner, and inexcellent condition. The gallery of the late H. O. Havemeyer containsone of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal Inquisitor D. FernandoNino de Guevara, painted during the second epoch, 1594 to 1604. Itfurnishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume. The same dignitary wasagain painted, a variant, which Rudolph Kann owned, and now in thepossession of Mrs. Huntington. The cardinal's head is strong, intellectual, and his expression proud and cold. Mr. Frick, at aprivate club exhibition, showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject ofwhich 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 example belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594. Mr. Erich in NewYork possesses three pictures, St. Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingode Guzman and a Deposition. El Greco is a painter admired by paintersfor 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 Annunciation, but sold it to Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, and the Duveens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ. Atthe National Gallery there are two. 

Gautier wrote that El Greco surpassed Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe inhis pell-mell of horrors; "extravagant and bizarre" are the adjectiveshe employs (said of most painters whose style is unfamiliar or out ofthe beaten track). In the Baptism of Christ he finds a depravedenergy, a maleficent puissance; but the ardent colours, the tonalvivacity, and the large, free handling excite the Frenchman'sadmiration. Justi avers that Greco's "craving for originalitydeveloped incredible mannerisms. In his portraits he has delineatedthe peculiar dignity of the Castilian hidalgos and the beauty ofToledan dames with a success attained by few. " R. A. Stevenson devotesto him a paragraph in his Velasquez. Referring to the influence of ElGreco upon the greater painter, he wrote: "While Greco certainlyadopted a Spanish gravity of colouring, neither that nor his modellingwas ever subtle or thoroughly natural... Velasquez ripened with ageand practice; Greco was rather inclined to get rotten with facility. "Mr. Ricketts says that "his pictures might at times have been paintedby torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition. " Richard Ford in hishandbook of Spain does not mince words: "Greco was very unequal... Hewas often more lengthy and extravagant than Fuseli, and as leaden ascholera morbus. " Ritter speaks of his "symphonies in blue minor"(evidently imitating Gautier's poem, Symphony in White-Major). InHavelock Ellis's suggestive The Soul of Spain there is mention ofGreco--see chapter Art of Spain. Ellis says: "In his more purelyreligious and supernatural scenes Greco was sometimes imaginative, butmore often bizarre in design and disconcerting in his colouring withits insistence on chalky white, his violet shadows on pale faces, hislove of green. [Mr. Ellis finds this 'predilection for green'significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanishpalette. ] His distorted fever of movement--the lean, twisted bodies, the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves thattaper down to pointed toes--usually fails to convince us. But in theaudacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of newharmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys. " The Count Orgaz burialscene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank among the world's greatpictures. 

There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco; Goya is sane andhealthy by comparison. Greco's big church pieces are full of religioussentiment, but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Curious it wasthat a stranger from Greece should have absorbed certain notparticularly healthy, even sinister, Spanish traits and developed themto such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur Symons says, hisportraits "have all the brooding Spanish soul with its proudself-repression. " Señor Cossio sums up in effect by declaring thatVenice 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 variousinfluences there is no doubt when confronted with one of his canvases, every inch of which is signed El Greco. 

"VELASQUEZ"

Why so well-known and authoritative a work as Velasquez, by Aurelianode Beruete, should have been so long in reaching America is a puzzlewhen you consider the velocity with which the Atlantic Ocean istraversed by so many mediocre books on art. The first Spanish editionof the Beruete monograph appeared about 1897; the same year saw it inFrench, and from the latter tongue it was translated into English byHugh E. Poynter in 1906. Señor Beruete is considered with reason asthe prime living authority on the great Spanish realist, though hisstudy is not so voluminous as that of Carl Justi. The Bonn professor, however, took all Spain for his province. Velasquez and His Times isthe title of his work, the first edition of which came out in 1888, the second in 1903. Beruete (whose portrait by Sorolla was one of thatmaster's most characteristic pictures at the recent Hispanic Societyexhibition in New York) is not at odds on many points with Justi; butmore sceptical he is, and to R. A. M. Stevenson's list of Velasquezpictures, two hundred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes thecomparatively meagre number of eighty-nine. He reduces the number ofsketches and waves away as spurious the Velasquez "originals" inItaly, several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the collection;and of the eleven in that famous cabinet of the Vienna ImperialMuseum--to which we went as to a divine service of eye and soul--heallows only seven as authentic. The portrait of Innocent X in theDoria palace, Rome, is naturally a masterpiece, as is the bustportrait of the same subject at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; but theBoston Museum full-length of Philip IV is discredited as a copy, onlythe Prince Don Baltasar Carlos Attended by a Dwarf being admitted inthe company of the true Velasquezes. 

Of the "supposed portrait of Cardinal Pamphili, " a real Velasquez, nowhanging in the Hispanic Society, 156th Street, Beruete writes: "In thewinter of 1902 there appeared in Paris a bust portrait of a cardinalbrought from Italy by Messrs. Trotty & Co. , which had been alluded toby Professor A. Venturi of Rome in _L'Art_. It is life size, representing a person about thirty years of age in the dress of acardinal, with smiling face and black hair, moustache and pointedbeard, good carriage and a touch of levity not in keeping with thedignity 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 withouta crease, harmonise with the roseate hue of the features, and theplain gray background. Every detail reveals the hand of Velasquez, andit can be classed without hesitation among the characteristic works ofhis 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 washeld to be the portrait of Cardinal Pamphili, nephew of Innocent X, who according to Palomino was painted in Rome by Velasquez at the sametime as the Pontiff, that is in 1650. "

Beruete believes Palomino was wrong in declaring that Velasquezpainted the young cardinal in Rome; Madrid was the likelier city. Thestyle proves an earlier date than 1650. The cardinal withdrew from thecardinalate after three years, 1644-47 > and married. The portrait wasacquired by the American artist the late Francis Lathrop. Stevensongrants to the Metropolitan Museum a fruit-piece by Velasquez. Not soBeruete. J. H. McFadden of Philadelphia once owned the Doña Mariana ofAustria, second wife of Philip IV, in a white-and-black dress, goldchain over her shoulder, hair adorned with red bows and red-and-whitefeather, from the Lyne-Stephens collection in the New Gallery, 1895--and is so quoted by Stevenson; but he sold the picture andBeruete has lost track of it. 

Whereas Stevenson in his invaluable book studies his subject broadlyin chapters devoted to the dignity of the Velasquez technique, hiscolour, modelling, brushwork, and his impressionism, Beruete follows amore detailed yet simpler method. Picture by picture, in each of thethree styles--he adopts Justi's and Stevenson's classification--hefollows the painter, dealing less with the man than his work. Not thatbiographical data are missing--on the contrary, there are many pagesof anecdotes as well as the usual facts--but Beruete is principallyconcerned with the chronology and attribution of the pictures. He hasdug up some fresh material concerning the miserable pay Velasquezreceived, rather fought for, at the court of Philip, where he was on apar with the dwarfs, barbers, comedians, servants, and otherdependants of the royal household. 

The painter has been criticised for his attachment to the king; but ashe was not of a religious nature and did not paint religious pieceswith the gusto of his contemporaries, the court was his only hope ofexistence; either court or church. He made his choice early, and whilewe must regret the enormous wasting of the hours consequent upon thefulfilment of his duties as a functionary, master of the revels, andwhat not, we should not forget how extremely precarious would havebeen his lot as a painter without royal favour in the Spain of thosedays. He had his bed, board, house, and though he died penniless--hisgood wife Juana only survived him seven days--he had the satisfactionof knowing that he owed no man, and that his daughter had married hispupil Mazo. Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599; died at Madrid, 1660. His real name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez. He was aSilva--for the "de" was acquired from the king after much pettifoggeryon the part of that monarch with the prognathic jaw--and he was ofPortuguese blood. He signed Velasquez--a magic grouping of letters forthe lovers of art--though born as he was in Spain his forefathers camefrom Portugal. The mixed blood has led to furious disputes amonghot-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 anumber of imitations and forgeries. He was a true friend of thepicture-dealers. 

Velasquez belonged to that rare family of sane genius. He waseminently the painter of daylight and not a nocturnal visionary, aswas Rembrandt. Shakespeare, who had all the strings to his lyre, hadalso many daylight moments. Mozart always sang them, and how blithely!No one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe--to name three widelydisparate men of genius--saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is amagnificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who swear to you thatgenius is a disease. Remember, too, that the limitations of Velasquezare clearly defined. Imagination was denied to him, asserts Beruete;he had neither the turbulent temperament of Rubens nor possessed thestrained, harsh mysticism of El Greco--a painter of imagination andthe only painter allowed by Beruete to have affected the Velasquezpalette. In a word, Velasquez was a puzzling comminglement of theclassic and the realist. He had the repose and the firm, virile lineof the classics, while his vision of actuality has never beensurpassed. The Dutch Terburg, Vermeer, Van der Helst, Frans Hals sawas vividly the surfaces of things material; the last alone was thematch of Velasquez in brushwork, but not Rembrandt recorded in hisAnatomy Lesson the facts of the case as did Velasquez. 

Señor Beruete wittily remarks that Los Borrachos (The Topers) ofVelasquez is the truer anatomy lesson of the two. A realist, animpressionist, as Stevenson has it, the Spaniard was; but he was alsosomething more. He had a magic hand to define, the rendering of themagical mystery of space and atmosphere. Grant that he was not acolourist in the sense the Venetians were, or Rubens, yet how muchmore subtle, more noble, more intellectual, is his restricted tonalgamut. Those silver-grays, resonant blacks, browns, blues, and redssing in your memory long after you have forgotten the tumultuousgolden waves breaking upon the decorative coasts of Rubens. We areconstrained to question the easy way Beruete and other critics denythe attributes of imagination and poetry to Velasquez. There is, perhaps, a more sublimated poetry in his pictures than in the obviousreligious and mythological and allegorical set pieces of Rubens, Murillo, and how many others. His realism did not run to seed in thedelineation of subject. He was as natural as Cervantes--the one greatman of Spain who may be compared to him--and he saw the largerpatterns of life, while never forgetting that the chief function of apainter is to paint, not to "think, " not to rhapsodise, not to be"literary" on canvas. His cool, measuring eye did more than recordsordid facts. He had a sort of enraptured vision of the earth asbeautiful, the innocence of the eye we encounter in children only. Stevenson rages at those who say that Velasquez was not acolourist--and Beruete is of them, though he quotes with considerablesatisfaction the critical pronouncement of Royal Cortissoz (in_Harper's Magazine_, May, 1895) that Las Meninas is "the most perfectstudy of colour and values which exists. "

The truth is, Stevenson, Cortissoz, and Beruete are all three in theright. That Velasquez, when in Rome, studied the pictures there; thathe didn't care for Raphael; that he had very much admired theVenetians, Titian, Tintoretto; that he had admired Rubens, with whomhe associated daily on the occasion of the Flemish master's visit ofnine months to Madrid--these are truths not to be denied. Berueteclaims that the Rubens influence is not to be seen in Velasquez, onlyEl Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that swam through theeyeballs of the Spaniard--surely the most wonderful pair of eyes inhistory--was never forgotten. His powers of assimilation wereunexcelled. He saw and made note of everything, but when he paintedhis spectators saw nothing of any other man, living or dead. Was notthe spiritual impulse missing in this man? He couldn't paint angels, because he only painted what he saw; and as he never saw angels heonly painted mankind. Life, not the "subject, " appealed to him. He hadlittle talent, less taste, for the florid decorative art of Rubens andthe Venetians; but give him a simple, human theme (not pretty orsentimental) and he recreated it, not merely interpreted the scene; sothat Las Meninas, The Spinners (Las Hilanderas), the hunting pictures, the various portraits of royalty, buffoons, beggars, outcasts, are thechronicles of his time, and he its master psychologist. 

Beruete says that Ribera more than Zurbaran affected Velasquez; "ElGreco taught him the use of delicate grays in the colouring of theflesh. " Hot, hard, and dry in his first period (Borrachos), he becomesmore fluid and atmospheric in the Breda composition (The Lances), andin 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 Haydnand Mozart did better as menials. Yet some historians speak of theliberality of Philip IV. An "immortal employee" indeed, as Beruetenames his idol. Luca Giordano called Las Meninas the "theology ofpainting. " Wilkie declared that the Velasquez landscapes possessed"the real sun which lights us, the air which we breathe, and the souland spirit of nature. " "To see the Prado, " exclaims Stevenson, "is tomodify one's opinion of the novelty of recent art. " To-day theimpressionists and realists claim Velasquez as their patron saint aswell as artistic progenitor. The profoundest master of harmonies andthe 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 modern than all the moderns; more modern thanto-morrow. That sense of the liberation of the spirit which Mr. Berenson is fond of adducing as the grandest attribute of the SpaceComposers, Raphael and the rest, may be discovered in Las Meninas, orin The Spinners, space overhead, with mystery superadded. The brumousNorth was the home of mysticism, of Gothic architecture. The note oftragic mystery was seldom sounded by the Italians. Faith itself seemsmore real in the North. It remained for Rembrandt to give it out inhis chords of _chiaroscuro_. And is there more noble, more virilemusic in all art than The Surrender of Breda?

Mr. Berenson refers only once to Velasquez and then as an "impersonal"painter. As a counterblast to his theory of impersonality let us quotea few lines from R. A. M. Stevenson's Velasquez (that most inspiring ofall art monographs): "Is it wonderful, " he asks, "that you can applyMorelli's principles of criticism to the Pre-Raphaelite Italianschools; that you can point to the thumbs, fingers, poses of the head, ovals of the face and schemes of colour that the painters learned byheart, and can even say from whom they learned? The later Venetiansbroke away, and when you come to Velasquez the system holds good aslittle as it can in our own day. " But this charge holds good for manypainters of the Renaissance, painters of patterns. Velasquez, like thegreat prose-master of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always inmodulation. No two canvases are rhythmically alike, except in thematter of masterfulness. He, too, was a master of magnificent prosepainting, painting worth a wilderness of makers of frozen mediævalpatterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author of the Chevalier diPensieri-Vani, once spoke of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Visionof Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by describing thepictures of Velasquez as boxed-in eternities. Dostoïevsky knew such asensation when he wrote of "a species of eternity within the space ofa square foot. " But there are many connoisseurs who find evidences ofprofounder and more naïve faith in the angular loveliness of theFlemish Primitives than in all the religious art of Italy or Spain. 

GOYA

I

Goya was a Titan among artists. He once boasted that "Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt are my masters. " It was an excellentself-criticism. He not only played the Velasquez gambit in hisportraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre imaginative pieces, but he boldly annexed all Spain for his sinister and turbulent art. Hewas more truly Spanish in the range and variety of his performancesthan any Spanish-born painter since Velasquez. Without the sanity, solidity, nobility of Velasquez, whose vision and voice he neverpossessed; without the luscious sweetness of Murillo, whose sweetnesshe lacked, he had something of El Greco's fierceness, and much of thevigour of Ribera. He added to these influences a temperament that wasexuberant, fantastic, morose, and pessimistic yet humorous, sarcastic, sometimes melting, and ever masterful. He reminds one of anoverwhelming force. The man dominates the painter. A dozen comparisonsforce themselves upon you when the name of Goya is pronounced: comets, cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild animals. Anarch and courtier, atheistand decorator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bullfight, "says Richard Muther. One might improve on this by calling him a subtlebull, a Hercules who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, andRembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief summary. "How inadequate thelist! Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Legion had a hand in the teaching. "

Goya incarnated the renaissance of old Spain and its art. Spanish arthas always come from without, for its foundations were northern andFlemish. The Van Eycks and Van der Weyden were studied closely; JanVan Eyck visited Madrid. The Venetian influence was strong, and ElGreco his life long, and a pupil of Titian as he was, this gloomypainter with the awkward name of Theotocopoulo endeavoured to forgethis master and became more Spanish than the Spanish. Ribera, emotional, dramatic, realistic, religious, could sound the chords oftenderness without the sentimentalism of Murillo. Goya stems more fromCaravaggio and Salvator Rosa than from any of his predecessors, exceptVelasquez. The presence of Tiepolo, the last of the Venetians, inSpain may have influenced him. Certainly Raphael Mengs, the "Saxonpedant, " did not--Mengs associated with Tiepolo at Madrid. It is incompany with the bravos of the brush, Caravaggio and Rosa, that Goyais closely affiliated. We must go to Gustave Courbet for a likeviolence of temperament; both men painted _con furia_; both werecapable of debauches in work; Goya could have covered the walls ofhell with diabolic frescoes. In music three men are of a like ilk:Berlioz, Paganini, Liszt. Demoniacal, charged with electric 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, forexample--she developed powerful and astounding individualities. Character is her _leit motìv_ in the symphony of the nations. The richvirility and majestic seriousness of her men, their aptitudes for war, statesmanship, and drama, are borne out in her national history. Perhaps the climate plays its part. Havelock Ellis thinks so. "Thehard and violent effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, thestained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pigment, may wellhave affected the imagination of the artist, " he writes. Certainly thelandscapes of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than they are; and, disagreeing with those who say that he had no feeling for nature, thebits of countryside and mountain Goya shows are truly peninsular intheir sternness. It may be well to remark here that the softness ofTuscany is not to be found in the lean and often arid aspects ofSpain. Spain, too, is romantic--but after its own fashion. Goyarevived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last ofthe great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic, modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. Hehad not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paintday after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slownerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderlyas Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In aneloquent passage--somewhere in his English Literature--Taine speaks ofthe sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowlyescapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marloweto set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo'smental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does notspeak in reassuring terms. Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easilyangered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irritable motor centreswhen aroused. A knife was always within reach. He drove the Duke ofWellington from his presence because the inquisitive soldier asked toomany questions while his portrait was being blocked out. A sword or adagger did the business; but Wellington returned to the studio and, asMr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was finished and is now atStrathfieldsaye. A sanguine is in the British Museum. His exploits inRome may have been exaggerated, though he was quite capable of elopingwith a nun from a convent, as is related, or going around the top ofthe Cecilia Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs. The agility andstrength of Goya were notorious, though in a land where physicalprowess is not the exception. He was picador, matador, banderillero byturns in the bull ring. After a stabbing affray he escaped in thedisguise of a bull-fighter. 

If he was a _dompteur_ of dames and cattle, he was the same before hiscanvas. Anything that came to hand served him as a brush, an old brownstick wrapped up in cloth, a spoon--with the latter he executed thatthrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in the Prado. He could have paintedwith a sabre or on all fours. Reckless to the degree of insanity, henever feared king or devil, man or the Inquisition. The latter reachedout for him, but he had disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrustin the back. When on the very roof of his prosperity, he often slippeddownstairs to the company of varlets and wenches; this friend of theDuchess of Alba seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in thesuburbs with base-born people and gipsies. A _genre_ painter, Goyadelighted in depicting the volatile, joyous life of a now-vanishedepoch. 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 hecould play the silken courtier with success. The Arabs say that "onewho has been stung by a snake shivers at a string, " and perhaps theviolence with which the painter attacked the religious may be set downto the score of his youthful fears and flights when the Inquisitionwas after him. He was a sort of Voltaire in black and white. Thecorruption of churchmen and court at this epoch seems almostincredible. Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but onething--friends high in power. This was the case. He was admired by theking, Charles IV, and admired--who knows how much!--by his queen, Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their portraits; also painted theportraits of the royal favourite and prime minister and Prince de laPaz, Manuel Godoy--favourite of both king and queen. Him, Goya left ineffigy for the scorn of generations to come. "A grocer's family whohave won the big lottery prize, " was the witty description ofThéophile Gautier when he saw the picture of the royal family. 

Curiously enough, this Goya, who from the first plucked success fromits thorny setting, was soon forgotten, and until Gautier in 1840recorded his impressions in his brilliant Voyage en Espagne, criticalliterature did not much concern itself with the versatile Spaniard. And Gautier's sketch of a few pages still remains the mostcomprehensive estimate. From it all have been forced to borrow;Richard Muther in his briskly enthusiastic monograph and the sectionin his valuable History of Modern Painting; Charles Yriarte, WillRothenstein, Lafond, Lefort, Condé de la Vinaza--all have read Gautierto 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 churchof San Antonio de la Florida; Carl Justi, Stirling Maxwell, C. G. Hartley should also be consulted. Yriarte is interesting, inasmuch ashe deals with the apparition of Goya in Rome, an outlaw, but a blitheone, who, notebook in hand, went through the Trastevere districtsketching with ferocious rapidity the attitudes and gestures of thevivacious population. A man after Stendhal's heart, this Spaniard. Andin view of his private life one is tempted to add--and after theheart, too, of Casanova. Notwithstanding, he was an unrivalledinterpreter of child-life. Some of his painted children are of adazzling sweetness. 

GOYA

II

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born March 30 (or 31), 1746, atFuentetodos, near Saragossa, Aragon. He died at Bordeaux, France, where he had gone for his health, April 16, 1828--Calvert, possibly bya pen slip, makes him expire a month earlier. He saw the beginnings ofFrench romanticism, as he was himself a witness of the decadence ofSpanish art. But his spirit has lived on in Manet and Zuloaga. Decadent he was; a romantic before French romanticism, he yet hadborrowed from an earlier France. Some of his gay Fêtes Champêtresrecall the influence of Watteau--a Watteau without the sweet elegiacstrain. He has been called a Spanish Hogarth--not a happy simile. Hogarth preaches; Goya never; satirists both, Goya never deepened by apen stroke the didactic side. His youth was not extraordinary inpromise; his father and mother were poor peasants. The story of hisdiscovery by a monk of Saragosela--Father Felix Salvador of theCarthusian convent of Aula Dei--is not missing. He studied with JoséMartinez. He ran away in 1766. He remained, say some, in Italy from1769 to 1774; but in 1771 he appeared in Saragossa again, and the year1772 saw him competing for the painting about to be undertaken in thecathedral. He married Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the court painter. He has told us what he thought of his jealous, intriguingbrother-in-law in a portrait. In 1775 he was at Madrid. From 1776 heexecuted forty-six tapestry cartoons. In 1779 he presented to the kinghis etchings after Velasquez. His rise was rapid. He painted thequeen, with her false teeth, false hair, and her infernal simper, andthis portrait was acclaimed a masterpiece. 

His religious frescoes, supposed to be _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, werereally for the greater glory of Goya. They are something more thansecular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were toleratedproves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel ofa Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimousJoseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went throughthe motions of loyalty, a thing that rather disturbs the admirers ofthe supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. Heleft a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor did he sparethe French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in these swift, ghastlymemoranda of misery, barbarity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocriteFerdinand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father than Goya, hatin hand but sneer on lip and twinkle in eye, approached him, and aftersome parleying was restored to royal favour. Goya declared that as anartist he was not personally concerned in the pranks of the whirligigpolitic. Nevertheless he was bitterly chagrined at the twist ofevents, and, an old man, he retired to his country house, where heetched and designed upon its walls startling fancies. He dieddisillusioned, and though nursed by some noble countrymen, his careerseemed to illustrate that terrifying picture of his invention--askeleton lifts its gravestone and grinningly traces with bony fingerin the dust the word _Nada_--Nothing! Overtaxed by the violence of hislife and labours--he left a prodigious amount of work behindhim--soured by satiety, all spleen and rage, he was a broken-downLucifer, who had trailed his wings in the mud. But who shall passjudgment upon this unhappy man? Perhaps, as he saw the "glimmeringsquare" grow less, the lament of Cardinal Wolsey may have come to abrain teeming with memories. Goya had always put his king before hisGod. But in his heart he loved the old romantic faith--the faith thathovered in the background of his art. Goya is not the first son of hismother church who denied her from sheer perversity. What a nation!Cervantes and Lope da Vega, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada--most gloriousof her sex, saint and genius--and Goya! Spain is the land of great anddiverse personalities. But with Calderon we must now say: "Let us toour ship, for here all is shadowy and unsettled. "

Goya, as Baudelaire pointed out more than half a century ago, executedhis etchings by combining aquatint and the use of the dry point. A fewyears before his death he took up lithography, then a novelty. HisCaprices, Proverbs, and Horrors of War may outlive his paintings. Hiscolour scheme was not a wide one, blacks, reds, browns, and yellowsoften playing solo; but all modern impressionism may be seen on hiscanvases--harsh dissonances, dots, dabs, spots, patches, heavy planes, strong rhythmic effects of lighting, heavy impasto, luminousatmosphere, air, sunshine, and vibrating movements; also thestrangeness of his material. Manet went to him a beginner. Afterstudying the Maja desnuda at the Prado Museum he returned to Franceand painted the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre. Thebalcony scenes of Goya, with their manolas--old-fashionedgrisettes--must have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's Balcony. And the bull-fights? Oh! what an iron-souled master was there--Goyawhen he slashed a bull in the arena tormented by the human brutes!None of his successors matches him. The same is the case with thatdiverting, devilish, savoury, and obscene series he called Caprices. It is worth remembering that Delacroix was one of the first artists inParis who secured a set of these rare plates. The witch's sabbaths andthe modern version of them, prostitution and its symbolism, filled thebrain of Goya. He always shocks any but robust nerves with his hybridcreatures red in claw and foaming at mouth as they fight in midair, hideous and unnamable phantoms of the dark. His owls are theologians. The females he often shows make us turn aside our head and shudder. With implacable fidelity he displayed the reverse of war's heroicshield. It is something more than hell. 

Sattler, Charlet, Raffet, James Ensor, Rethel, De Groux, Rops, EdvardMünch (did you ever see his woman wooed by a skeleton?), and the restof these delineators of the morbid and macabre acknowledge Goya astheir progenitor. He must have been a devil-worshipper. He picturesthe goat devil, horns and hoofs. Gautier compares him to E. T. W. Hoffmann--Poe not being known in Paris at that time--but it is arather laboured comparison, for there was a profoundly human side tothe Spaniard. His perception of reality was of the solidest. He hadlived and loved and knew before Flaubert that if the god of theRomantics was an upholsterer the god of eighteenth-century Spain wasan executioner. The professed lover of the Duchess of Alba, he paintedher nude, and then, hearing that the Duke might not like the theme sohandled, he painted her again, and clothed, but more insolentlyuncovered than before. At the Spanish museum in New York you may seeanother portrait of this bold beauty with the name of Goya scratchedin the earth at her feet. Her attitude is characteristic of theintrigue, which all Madrid knew and approved. At home sat Mrs. Goyawith her twenty children. 

Goya was a man of striking appearance. Slender in youth, a gracefuldancer, in middle life he had the wide shoulders and bull neck of anathlete. He was the terror of Madrileñan husbands. His voice hadseductive charm. He could twang the guitar and fence like ten devils. A gamester, too. In a word, a figure out of the Renaissance, when thedeed trod hard on the heels of the word. One of his self-portraitsshows him in a Byronic collar, the brow finely proportioned, markedmobile features, sombre eyes--the ideal Don Juan Tenorio to win thefoolish heart of an Emma Bovary or a bored noblewoman. Another, withits savage eye--it is a profile--and big beaver head-covering, recallsWalt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. " A giantegoist, 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 Mal_ would bea happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers ofEvil" were added "and Wisdom. " Goya is often cruel and lascivious andvulgar, but he is as great a philosopher as painter. And to offset hispassionate gloom there are his visions of a golden Spain no longer inexistence; happy, gorgeous of costume, the Spain of sudden coquetries, of fans, masques, bull-fights, and fandangos, of a people dancing onthe rim of a fire-filled mountain, pious, capricious, child-like, romantic, and patriotic--the Spain of the eighteenth century. Goya isits spokesman, as is Velasquez the mirror of Philip's more spacioustimes. Velasquez--Goya! poles asunder, yet both born to the artisticpurple. And the stately aristocrat who signed himself Velasquez is notmore in tune with the twentieth-century _Zeitgeist_ than thatcoarse-fibred democrat of genius, Francisco Goya. 

FORTUNY

Mariano Fortuny: what a magic-breeding name! The motto of this luckySpanish painter might have been "Fortuny Fortunatus. " Even his suddendeath, at the early age of thirty-six, came after he had executed anumber of masterpieces, an enormous quantity of water-colours, etchings, ceramics, damascene swords and chased ornaments; it followedon the heels of sudden glory. His name was in the mouth of artisticEurope, and the sale of the contents of his studio at Rome in 1875brought eight hundred thousand francs. Yet so slippery is fame thatFortuny's name to-day is seldom without a brace of epithets, such as"garish, " or "empty. " His work is neither. He is a virtuoso. So wasTiepolo. He is a Romantic; so the generation preceding him. TheOrientalist par excellence, he has somehow been confounded withMeissonier and Gérôme, has been called glittering like the former, hard as was the latter. It is true there are no emotional undertonesin his temperament, the brilliant overtones predominating; but it isalso true that when he died his manner was changing. He had said thathe was tired of the "gay rags" of the eighteenth century, and hisStrand of Portici shows a new line of departure. Edouard Manet madespecial appeal to Fortuny; Manet, who had derived from Goya, whoseSpanish _fond_ is undeniable. Perhaps the thrice-brilliant Fortuny'sconscience smote him when he saw a Frenchman so successfully absorbingthe traditions of Goya; but it was not to be. He passed away at thevery top of his renown, truly a favourite of the gods. He was admired, imitated, above all parodied; though, jealously as are his picturesguarded, he has been put on the shelf like one of the amazing paintedbibelots in his work. 

The injustice of this is patent. Between Fortuny and Meissonier therelies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man oftalent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of theLouvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usuallydescribed in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is thetruth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was animpressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost assumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained bythe Marseilles rhapsodist. His figures are as delicious as Watteau'sor Debucourt's--he recalls the latter frequently--and as anOrientalist he ranks all but a few. Gérôme, Guillaumet, Fromentin, Huguet are not to be mentioned in the same breath with Fortuny as tothe manipulation of material; and has Guillaumet done anythingsavouring more of the mysterious East than Fortuny's At the Gate ofthe Seraglio? The magician of jewelled tones, he knew all the subtlermodulations. His canvases vibrate, they emit sparks of sunlight, hisshadows are velvety and warm. Compared with such a picture as TheChoice of a Model, the most laboriously minute Meissonier is as coldand dead as a photograph--Meissonier, who was a capital fan painter, apatient miniaturist without colour talent, a myopic delineator ofcostumes, who, as Manet said, pasted paper soldiers on canvas andcalled the machine a battle-field. 

The writer recalls the sensations once evoked by a close view ofFortuny's Choice of a Model at Paris years ago, and at that time inthe possession of Mr. Stewart. Psychology is not missing in thismiracle of virtuosity; the nude posing on the marble table, theabsolute beauty of the drawing, the colouring, the contrast of therichly variegated marble pillars in the background, theeighteenth-century costumes of the Academicians so scrupulously yet soeasily set forth, all made a dazzling ensemble. Since Fortuny turnedthe trick a host of spurious pictures has come overseas, and we nowsay "Vibert" at the same time as "Fortuny, " just as some enlightenedpersons couple the names of Ingres and Bouguereau. In the kingdom ofthe third rate the mediocre is conqueror. 

Listen to this description of La Vicaria (The Spanish Wedding), whichfirst won for its painter his reputation. Begun in 1868, it wasexhibited at Goupil's, Paris, the spring of 1870 (some say 1869), whenthe artist was thirty-two years old. Théophile Gautier--whose geniusand Théodore de Banville's have analogies with Fortuny's in the matterof surfaces and astounding virtuosity--went up in the air when he sawthe work, and wrote a feuilleton that is still recalled by the oldguard. The following, however, is not by Gautier, but from the pen ofDr. Richard Muther, the erudite German critic: "A marriage is takingplace in the sacristy of a rococo church in Madrid. The walls arecovered with faded Cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dullcolours, and a magnificent rococo screen separates the sacristy fromthe middle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling, pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang onthe wall, richly ornamented wooden benches and a library of missalsand gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables andglistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriagecontract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. An old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affectedgrace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hatunder his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in theplace which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. He isarrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silkdress trimmed with flowered lace and has a wreath of orange blossomsin her luxuriant black hair. As a girl friend is talking to her sheexamines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon herfan, the finest she ever possessed. A very piquant little head shehas, with her long lashes and black eyes. Then, in the background, follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silkdress of the brightest rose colour. Beside her is one of thebridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps and ashining belt, from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The whole picture isa marvellous assemblage of colours in which tones of Venetian glow andstrength, the tender pearly gray beloved of the Japanese, and amelting neutral brown each sets off the other and gives a shimmeringeffect to the entire mass. "

Fortuny was a gay master of character and comedy as well as ofbric-a-brac. Still life he painted as no one before or after him; ifChardin is the Velasquez of vegetables, Fortuny is the Rossini of therococo; such lace-like filigrees, _fiorturi_, marbles that are ofstone, men and women that are alive, not of marble (likeAlma-Tadema's). The artificiality of his work is principally in thechoice of a subject, not in the performance. How luminous and silkyare his blacks may be noted at the Metropolitan Museum in his portraitof a Spanish lady. There is nothing of the _petit-maître_ in thesensitive and adroit handling of values. The rather triste expression, the veiled look of the eyes, the _morbidezza_ of the flesh tones, andthe general sense of amplitude and grace give us a Fortuny who knewhow to paint broadly. The more obvious and dashing side of him ispresent in the Arabian Fantaisie of the Vanderbilt Gallery. It must beremembered that he spent some time copying, at Madrid, Velasquez andGoya, and as Camille Mauclair enthusiastically declares, these copiesare literal "identifications. " They are highly prized by the MarquiseCarcano (who owned the Vicaria), Madrazo, and the Baron Davillieu--thelast named the chief critical authority on Fortuny. 

In the history of the arts there are cases such as Fortuny's, ofMozart, Chopin, Raphael, and some others, whose precocity andprodigious powers of production astonished their contemporaries. Fortuny, whose full name was Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny yCarbó, was born 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 thetowns of Catalonia exhibiting a cabinet containing wax figures paintedby Mariano and perhaps modelled by him. He began carving and daubingat the age of five; a regular little fingersmith, his hands were neveridle. He secured by the promise of talent a pension of forty-twofrancs a month and went to Barcelona to study at the Academy. Winningthe prize of Rome in 1857, he went there and copied old masters until1860, when, the war between Spain and Morocco breaking out, he went toMorocco on General Prim's staff, and for five or six months his brainwas saturated with the wonders of Eastern sunlight, exotic hues, beggars, gorgeous rugs, snake-charmers, Arabs afoot or circling onhorseback with the velocity of birds, fakirs, all the huge glisteningfebrile life he was later to interpret with such charm and exactitude. 

He returned to Rome. He made a second trip to Africa. He returned toSpain. Barcelona gave him a pension of a hundred and thirty-two francsa month, which amount was kept up later by the Duke de Rianzarès until1867. He went to Paris in 1866, was taken up by the Goupils, knewMeissonier and worked occasionally with Gérôme. His rococo pictures, his Oriental work set Paris ablaze. He married the daughter of theSpanish painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid, Granada, Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London. He contracted a pernicious feverat Rome and died there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six. His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the world of artparticipating. He was buried in the Campo Varano. 

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

Standing aloof from the ideas and tendencies of his times and not asweeper of the chords that stir in human nature the heroic or thepathetic, it is none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as abrainless technician. Everything is relative, and the scale on whichFortuny worked was as true a medium for the exhibition of his geniusas a museum panorama. Let us not be misled by the worship of theelephantine. It is characteristic of his temperament that the bigbattle piece he was commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint wasnever finished. Not every one who goes to Rome does as the Romans do. Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with aromantic, passionate nature and a will of steel, Fortuny was bound tobecome a great painter. His manual technique bordered on the fabulous;he had the painter's hand, as his fellow-countryman Pablo de Sarasatehad the born hand of the violinist. That he spent the brief years ofhis 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 anartist's selection of subject. Why did Goya conceive his _Caprichos_?The love of decorative beauty in Fortuny was not bedimmed bycriticism. He had the lust of eye which not the treasures of Ormuz andInd, or ivory, apes, and peacocks, could satisfy. If he loved thekaleidoscopic East, he also knew his Spain. We have seen at thePennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts a tiny picture, the court-yard of aSpanish inn through which passes a blinding shaft of sunlight, whichwould make envious Señor Sorolla. Fortuny has personal charm, aquality usually missing nowadays, for painters in their desire to betruthful are tumbling head over heels into the prosaic. Individualityis vanishing in the wastes of an over-anxious realism. If Fortuny is adaring virtuoso on one or two strings, his palette is ever enchanting. Personally he was a handsome man, with a distinguished head, his bodybroad and muscular and capable of enduring fatigues that would havekilled most painters. Allied to this powerful physique was a seductivesensibility. This peasant-born painter was an aristocrat of art. OldMother Nature is an implacable ironist. 

SOROLLA Y BASTIDA

We might say of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida that hewas one of those who came into the world with a ray of sunshine intheir brains--altering the phrase of Villiers de l'Isle Adam. SeñorSorolla is also one of the half-dozen (are there so many?) greatliving painters. He belongs to the line of Velasquez and Goya, and heseldom recalls either. Under the auspices of the Hispanic Society ofAmerica there was an exhibition of his works in 1909, some two hundredand fifty in all, hung in the museum of the society, West 156thStreet, near Broadway. The liveliest interest was manifested by thepublic and professional people in this display. Those who sawSorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 1900, and at the Georges PetitGallery, Paris, a few years ago need not be reminded of his virilequality and masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city areaware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of Mr. John E. Berwind, which has been hung in the Sunday-school room of the Ascension Church, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. It is one of the artist's few picturesin which he feels the _Weltschmerz_. His is a nature bubbling overwith health and happiness. 

He is a Valencian, was born in 1863 of poor parents, and by reason ofhis native genius and stubborn will power he became what he is--thepainter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincingof comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet painted sodirectly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. He is animpressionist, but not of the school of Monet. His manner is his own, cunningly compounded as it is of the proceeds of half a dozen artists. His trip to Rome resulted in nothing but a large eclectic canvaswithout individuality; what had this pagan in common with saints orsinners! He relates that in Paris Bastien-Lepage and Menzel affectedhim profoundly. This statement is not to be contradicted; neverthelessSorolla is the master of those two masters in his proper province ofthe portrayal of outdoor life. Degas was too cruel when he calledBastien the "Bouguereau of the modern movement"; Bastien academicisedManet and other moderns. He said nothing new. As for Menzel, it wouldbe well here to correct the notion bandied about town that hediscovered impressionism before the French. He did not. He went toParis in 1867. Meissonier at first, and later Courbet, influenced him. His Rolling Mill was painted in 1876. It is very Courbet. The ParisExposition, 1867, picture shows the influence of Monet--who was in theSalon of 1864; and Monet was begat by Boudin, who stemmed fromJongkind; and Jongkind studied with Isabey; and they came from Turner, idolater of the Sun. Remember, too, that Corot and Courbet calledEugène Boudin "roi des ciels. " Monet not only studied with him butopenly admitted that he had learned everything from him, while Boudinhumbly remarked that he had but entered the door forced by theDutchman Jongkind. Doubtless Sorolla found what he was looking for inBastien, though it would be nearer the truth to say that he studiedthe Barbizons and impressionists and took what he needed from themall. 

He is a temperament impressionable to the sun, air, trees, children, women, men, cattle, landscapes, the ocean. Such swift, vivid notationof the fluid life about him is rare; it would be photographic were itnot the personal memoranda of a selecting eye; it would be transitoryimpressionism were it not for a hand magical in its manipulation ofpigments. Brain and brush collaborate with an instantaneity that doesnot perplex because the result is so convincing. We do not intend toquote that musty flower of rhetoric which was a favourite with ourgrandfathers. It was the fashion then to say thatNature--capitalised--took the brush from the hand of the painter, meaning some old duffer who saw varnish instead of clear colour, andpainted the picture for him. Sorolla is receptive; he does not attemptto impose upon nature an arbitrary pattern, but he sees nature withhis own eyes, modified by the thousand subtle experiences in which hehas steeped his brain. He has the tact of omission very welldeveloped. After years of labour he has achieved a personal vision. Itis so completely his that to copy it would be to perpetrate aburlesque. He employs ploys the divisional _taches_ of Monet, spots, cross-hatchings, big sabre-like strokes à la John Sargent, indulges insmooth sinuous silhouettes, or huge splotches, refulgent patches, explosions, vibrating surfaces; surfaces that are smooth and oilysurfaces, as in his waters, that are exquisitely translucent. Youcan't pin him down to a particular formula. His technique in otherhands would be coarse, crashing, brassy, bald, and too fortissimo. Itsometimes is all these discouraging things. It is too often deficientin the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his_entrain_, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer heis less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in hisart. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narratorof facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian witha big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyfulband of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort ofecstatic symphony of pantheism. 

How does he secure such intensity of pitch in his painting ofatmosphere, of sunshine? By a convention, just as the falsification ofshadows by rendering them darker than nature made the necessarycontrasts in the old formula. Brightness in clear-coloured shadows isthe key-note of impressionistic open-air effects. W. C. Brownell--French Art--puts it in this way: "Take a landscape with acloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What isthe effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenlythrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intenselight? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised?Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrastbetween sunlight and shadow in proper scale the painter would havepainted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared. Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, israised infinitely less than the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, theirvalue is raised considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighterthan they were before the sun appeared they in themselves seem truer. The part of Monet's pictures that is in shadow is measurably true, fartruer than it would have been if painted under the old theory ofcorrespondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express therelation of contrast between shadow and sunlight. "

Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his shadows, as MacColl pointsout, and like Monet, Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows--butwhat a compeller of beautiful shadows--forces the key to the veryverge of the luminous abyss. Señor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, truthfully says of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain a greatvariety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds andyellows. These, and the skilful use of white, provide him with acolour scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty. " There areno non-transparent shadows, and his handling of blacks reveals asensitive feeling for values. Consider that black-gowned portrait ofhis wife. His underlying structural sense is never obscured by hisfat, flowing brush. 

It must not be supposed that because of Sorolla's enormous _brio_ hisgeneral way of entrapping nature is brutal. He is masculine andabsolutely free from the neurasthenic _morbidezza_ of hisfellow-countryman Zuloaga. (And far from attaining that painter'sinches as a psychologist. ) For the delineation of moods nocturnal, ofpoetic melancholy, of the contemplative aspect of life we must not goto Sorolla. He is not a thinker. He is the painter of bright morningsand brisk salt breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckelmann's_Heiterkeit_, blitheness, in his groups of romping children, in theirunashamed bare skins and naïve attitudes. Boys on Valencian beachesevidently believe in Adamic undress. Nor do the girls seem to care. Stretched upon his stomach on the beach, a youth, straw-hatted, staresat the spume of the rollers. His companion is not so unconventionallydisarrayed, and as she has evidently not eaten of the poisonous appleof wisdom she is free from embarrassment. Balzac's two infants, innocent of their sex, could not be less carefree than the Sorollachildren. How tenderly, sensitively, he models the hardly nubile formsof maidens. The movement of their legs as they race the strand, theirdash into the water, or their nervous pausing at the rim of thewet--here is poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days inyouth-land. Curiously enough his types are for the most part moreinternational than racial; that is, racial as are Zuloaga's Basquebrigands, _manolas_, and gipsies. 

But only this? Can't he paint anything but massive oxen wading totheir buttocks in the sea; or fisher boats with swelling sailsblotting out the horizon; or a girl after a dip standing, as herboyish cavalier covers her with a robe--you see the clear, pink fleshthrough her garb; or vistas of flower gardens with roguish maidens andcourtly parks; peasants harvesting, working women sorting raisins;sailors mending nets, boys at rope-making--is all this great art?Where are the polished surfaces of the cultured studio worker; wherethe bric-a-brac which we inseparably connect with pseudo-Spanish art?You will not find any of them. Sorolla, with good red blood in hisveins, the blood of a great, misunderstood race, paints what he seeson 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 valuescreates the illusion of sun-flooded landscapes. He does not cry forthe "sun, " as did Oswald Alving; it comes to him at the beckoning ofhis brush. His many limitations are but the defects of his goodqualities. 

Sorolla is sympathetic. He adores babies and delights in dancing. Hisbabies are irresistible. He can sound the _Mitleid_ motive without asuspicion of odious sentimentality. What charm there is in some of histiny children as they lean their heads on their mothers! They fear theocean, 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 ofmothers. On one finger of the hand there is just a hint of gold from aring. The values of the white counterpane and the contrast ofdark-brown hair on the pillow are truthfully expressed. One mother andbabe, all mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to that oldrascal in a brown cloak, who is about to taste a glass of wine. A snaggleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! Yourecall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting andweaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But younever think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality aremerged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash andplunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision. Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often citedas a _tour_ _de force_ of water painting. We allude to the mermaidsand mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere"property" water when compared to Sorolla's closely observed andclearly reproduced waves. Rhythm--that is the prime secret of hisvitality. 

His portraiture, when he is interested in his sitters, is excellent. Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; sothe realistic novelist Blanco Ibañez; but the best, after those ofhis, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, aphotographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frankcharacterisation. The various royalties and high-born persons whosecounterfeit presentments are accomplished with such genuine effort areinteresting; but the heart is missing. Cleverness there is in theportraits of Alphonse; and his wife's gorgeous costume should be theenvy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers. It is under the skiesthat Sorolla is at ease. Monet, it must not be forgotten, had twoyears' military service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived, saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and painted beneath thehard blue dome of Spanish skies. 

Sorolla is a painting temperament, and the freshening breezes andsunshine that emanate from his canvases should drive away the odoursof 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 ofArcher Milton Huntington, who is the projector and patron of theexhibitions at the Hispanic Society Museum. Sorolla y Bastida, throughthe invitation of Mr. Huntington, made this exhibition. 

IGNACIO ZULOAGA

We are no longer with Sorolla and his vibrating sunshine on Valenciansands, or under the hard blue dome of San Sebastian; the two-scorecanvases on view in 1909 at the Hispanic Museum were painted by a manof profounder intellect, of equally sensual but more restrainedtemperament than Sorolla; above all, by an artist with differentideals--a realist, not an impressionist, Ignacio Zuloaga. It would notbe the entire truth to say that his masterpieces were seen; severalnotable pictures, unhappily, were not; but the exhibition was finelyrepresentative. Zuloaga showed us the height and depth of his powersin at least one picture, and the longer you know him the more secretshe yields up. 

In Paris they say of Sorolla that he paints too fast and too much; ofZuloaga that he is too lazy to paint. Half truths, these. The youngerman is more deliberate in his methods. He composes more elaborately, executes at a slower gait. He resents the imputation of realism. Thefire 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 realist--a verist, as he prefers to be called. He is not cosmopolitan, and Sorolla is: the types of boys and girlsracing along the beaches of watering places which Sorolla paints arecosmopolitan. Passionate vivacity and the blinding sunshine are notqualities that appeal to Zuloaga. He portrays darkest--let us rathersay greenest, brownest Spain. The Basque in him is the strongeststrain. He is artistically a lineal descendant of El Greco, Velasquez, Goya; and the map of his memory has been traversed by Manet. He ismore racial, more truly Spanish, than any painter since Goya. Hepossesses the genius of place. 

Havelock Ellis's book, The Soul of Spain, is an excellent correctivefor the operatic Spain, and George Borrow is equally sound despite hisbigotry, while Gautier is invaluable. Arsène Alexandre in writing ofZuloaga acutely remarks of the Spanish conspiracy in allowing thechance tourist only to scratch the soil "of this country too wellknown but not enough explored. " Therefore when face to face with thepictures of Zuloaga, with romantic notions of a Spain where castlesgrow in the clouds and moonshine on every bush, prepare to be shocked, to be disappointed. He will show you the real Spain--the sun-soakedsoil, the lean, sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and theswift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers and dames offashion, but his heart is in the common people. He knows the bourgeoisand he knows the gipsy. He has set forth the pride of the vagabond andthe garish fascinations of the gitana. Since Goya, you say, and thenwonder whether it might not be wiser to add: Goya never had socomplicated a psychology. A better craftsman than Goya, a more variedcolourist, a more patient student of Velasquez, of life, thoughwithout Goya's invention, caprice, satanism, and _fougue_. 

Zuloaga was not born poor, but with genius; and genius always spellsdiscontent. He would not become an engineer and he would paint. Hisfamily, artists and artisans, did not favour his bent. He visitedItaly, almost starved in Paris, and after he knew how to handle histools he starved for recognition. It is only a few years since heexhibited the portrait of his uncle, Daniel Zuloaga, and his cousins. It now hangs in the Luxembourg; but Madrid would have none of him; aSpanish jury rejected him at Paris in 1900, and not possessing themeans of Edouard Manet he could not hire a gallery and show the worldthe stuff that was in him. He did not sulk; he painted. Barcelona tookhim up; Paris, the world, followed suit. To-day he is rich, famous, and forty. He was born at Eibar, 1870, in the Basque province ofViscaya. He is a collector of rare taste and has housed his treasuresin a gallery at his birthplace. He paints chiefly at Segovia, in anold church, though he wanders over Spain, sometimes afoot, sometimesin his motor car, often accompanied by Rodin in the latter, andwherever he finds himself he is at home and paints. A bull-fighter inthe ring, as was Goya--perhaps the legend stirred him to imitation--heis a healthy athlete. His vitality, indeed, is enormous, though itdoes not manifest itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. Thedemerits of literary comparisons are obvious, yet we dare to think ofSorolla and Zuloaga as we should of Théophile Gautier and CharlesBaudelaire. In one is the clear day flame of impersonality; the otheris all personality, given to nocturnal moods, to diabolism andperversities, cruelties and fierce voluptuousness. Sorolla is pagan;Gothic is Zuloaga, a Goth of modern Spain. He has more variety thanSorolla, more intellect. The Baudelairian strain grows in his work; itis unmistakable. The crowds that went to see the "healthy" art ofSorolla (as if art had anything in common with pulse, temperature, andrespiration) did not like, or indeed understand, many of Zuloaga'smagnificent pictorial ideas. 

He paints in large _coups_, but his broad, slashing planes are notimpressionistic. 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 colourist. He also is master of a restrained palette and cansound the silver grays of Velasquez. His tonalities are massive. Theessential bigness of his conceptions, his structural forms, are theproperties of an eye swift, subtle, and all-embracing. It seems animage that is at once solidly rooted in mother earth and is asfluctuating as life. No painter to-day has a greater sense ofcharacter, except Degas. The Frenchman is the superior draughtsman, but he is no more vital in his interpretation of his ballet girls, washerwomen, and grisettes than is Zuloaga in his delineations ofpeasants, dwarfs, dogs, courtesans, scamps, zealots, pilgrims, beggars, drunkards, and working girls. What verve, what grip, whatbowels of humanity has this Spaniard! A man, not a professor ofacademic methods. He has no school, and he is a school in himself. That the more serene, poetic aspects and readings of life have escapedhim is merely to say that he is not constituted a contemplativephilosopher. The sinister skein to be seen in some of his canvasesdoes not argue the existence of a spiritual bias but is therecognition of evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is itreassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanishsoul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. Herefuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade aspade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. Acold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of citiessmall and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the opencountry. Sometimes Zuloaga's comments are witty, sometimespessimistic. If he has studied Goya and Manet, he also knows FélicienRops. 

The only picture in the Zuloaga exhibition that grazes the border-landof the unconventional is Le Vieux Marcheur. It is as moral as Hogarthand as bitter as Rops. It recalls the Montmartre days of the artistwhen he was acquainted with Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Twowomen are crossing a bridge. Their actuality is impressed upon theretina in a marvellous ly definite way. They live, they move. One isgowned in dotted green, the other in black. There is a littlelandscape with water beyond the iron railing. A venerable minotaur isin pursuit. He wears evening clothes, an overcoat is thrown across hisleft arm, under his right he carries waggishly a cane. His white tieand hat of sober silk are in respectable contrast with his air offatuousness--the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero ofMansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron Hulot. The alert expressionof the girls, who appear to be loitering, tells us more at a glancethan a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is it necessary toadd that the handling takes your breath away because of its consummateease and its realisation of the effects sought? Note the white of theold party's spats, echoed by the bit of stocking showing a low shoeworn by one of the girls; note the values of the blacks in the hat, coat, trousers, shoe tips of the man. The very unpleasantness of thetheme is forgotten in the supreme art of its presentation. 

M. Alexandre, the French critic, may argue valiantly that Zuloaga mustnot be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes aredissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcières de San Millan) arein the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter--a hideous crew. Atonce you think of the _Caprichos_ of Goya. The hag with the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkeyprofile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsivecreature in spectacles--Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't variedsince his days--these ladies and their companions, especially thatanonymous one in a hood, coupled with the desperate dreariness of thebackground, a country dry and hard as a volcanic cinder, make aformidable ensemble. Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched andfought in his studio when he posed them. You exclaim while looking atthem: "How now, you secret black and midnight hags!" Hell hovers hardby; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil eye. 

As a painter of dwarfs Zuloaga has not been surpassed by any one butVelasquez. His Gregorio, the monster with the huge head, thesickening, livid, globular eye, the comical pose--you exclaim: What abrush! The picture palpitates with reality, an ugly reality, for thetall old couple are not prepossessing. The topography of the countryis minutely observed. But this painter does not wreak himself inugliness or morbidities; he is singularly happy in catching theattitudes and gestures of the peasants as they return from thevintage; of picadors, matadors, chulos, in the ring or lounging, smoking, awaiting the signal. The large and celebrated family group ofthe matador Gallito--which is to remain permanently in the HispanicSociety's museum--is a superb exemplar of the synthetic and rhythmicart of the Spaniard. Each character is seized and rendered. The strongsilhouettes melt into a harmonious arabesque; the tonal gamut isnervous, strong, fiery; the dull gold background is a foil for thescale of colour notes. It is a striking picture. Very striking, too, is the portrait of Breval as Carmen, though it is the least Spanishpicture in the collection; Breval is pictured on the stage, the lightsfrom below playing over her features. The problem is solved, asBesnard or Degas has solved it, successfully, but in purely personalmanner. It is the picture in the Metropolitan Museum that is bound toattract attention, as it is a technical triumph; but it is not verycharacteristic. 

We saw dark-eyed, graceful manolas on balconies--this truly Spanishmotive in art, as Spanish as is the Madonna Italian--over which arethrown gorgeous shawls, smiling, flirting; with languorous eyes andprovocative fans, they sit ensconced as they sat in Goya's time andcenturies before Goya, the Eternal Feminine of Spain. Zuloaga is herlatest interpreter. Isn't Candida delicious in green, with blackhead-dress of lace--isn't she bewitching? Her stockings are green. Thewall is a most miraculous adumbration of green. Across the room isanother agent of disquiet in Nile green, Mercedes by name. Heraquiline nose, black eyes, and the flowers she wears at the side ofher head bewilder; the sky, clouds, and landscape are all very lovely. This is a singularly limpid, loose, flowing picture. It has the paintquality sometimes missing in the bold, fat massing of the Zuloagacolour chords. The Montmartre Café concert singer is a sterlingspecimen of Zuloaga's portraiture. He is unconventional in his poses;he will jam a figure against the right side of the frame (as in theportrait of Marthe Morineau) or stand a young lady beside anornamental iron gate in an open park (not a remarkable portrait, butone that pleases the ladies because of the textures). The head of theold actor capitally suggests the Spanish mummer. And the painter'scousin, Esperanza! What cousins he boasts! We recall The ThreeCousins, with its laughing trio and the rich colour scheme. Ourrecollection, too, of The Piquant Retort, and its brown and scarletharmonies; of the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has theclassical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez; and that startlingStreet 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 ofthe life he has elected to represent and interpret are at first sightdazzling. The performance is so supreme--remember, not in a niggling, technical sense--a half-dozen men beat him at mere pyrotechnics andlace _fioritura_--that his limitations, very marked in his case, areoverlooked. 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 notincluded in the categories of Señor Zuloaga. Zuloaga, like hiscontemporary farther north, Anders Zorn, is a man as well as apainter; the conjunction is not too frequent. The grand manner issurely his. He has the modulatory sense, and Christian Brinton noteshis sonorous acid effects. He paints beggars, dwarfs, work-girls, noblemen, bandits, dogs, horses, lovely women, gitanas, indolentCarmens; but real, not the pasteboard and foot-lights variety ofMerimée and Bizet. Zuloaga's Spain is not a second-hand Italy, likethat of so many Spanish painters. It is not all bric-a-brac andmoonlight and chivalric tinpot helmets. It is the real Spain ofto-day, the Spain that has at last awakened to the light of thetwentieth century after sleeping so long, after sleeping, notwithstanding the desperate nudging it was given a century ago bythe realist Goya. Now, Zuloaga is not only stepping on his country'stoes, but he is recording the impressions he makes. He, too, is arealist, a realist with such magic in his brush that it would make usforgive him if he painted the odour of garlic. 

Have you seen his Spanish Dancers? Not the dramatic Carmencita ofSargent, but the creature as she is, with her simian gestures, herinsolence, her vulgarity, her teeth--and the shrill scarlet of thebare gum above the gleaming white, His street scenes are a transcriptof the actual facts, and inextricably woven with the facts is a senseof the strange beauty of them all. His wine harvesters, venders ofsacred images, or that fascinating canvas My Three Cousins--beforethese, also before the Promenade After the Bull-fight, you realisethat by some miracle of nature the intensity of Goya and his sense oflife, the charm of Velasquez and his sober dignity are recalled by thepainting of a young Spanish artist who a decade ago was unknown. Noris Zuloaga an eclectic. His force and individuality are too patent forus to entertain such a heresy. A glance at Jacques-Emile Blanche'sportrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is thephysique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; thereare the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel;the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the faceharmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not ofthe bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested isimpetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down bystudy and the enforced renunciations of poverty-haunted youth. Aboveall, there is race; race in the proud, resolute bearing, race in thelarge, firm, supple, and nervous hands. Indeed, the work of Zuloaga isall race. He is the most Spanish painter since Goya. 

IX. CHARDIN

Zola, as reported by George Moore, said of Degas: "I cannot accept aman who shuts himself up all his life to draw a ballet girl as rankingco-equal in dignity and power with Flaubert, Daudet, and Goncourt. "This remark gives us the cue for Zola's critical endowment; despitehis asseverations his naturalism was only skin deep. He, too, wasswayed by his literary notions concerning the importance of thesubject. In painting the theme may count for little and yet a greatpicture result; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable subject, else no fiction. But what cant it is to talk about "dignity. " Zolaadmits ingrained romanticism. He would not see, for instance, that theDegas ballet girls are on the same plane as the Ingres odalisques;that a still-life by Chardin outweighs a big canvas by David; and itmust be admitted that the world is on the side of Zola. The heresy ofthe subject will never be stamped out, the painted anecdote willalways win the eye of the easily satisfied majority. 

It may be remembered that the great Spaniard began his apprenticeshipto art by copying still-life, which he did in a superlative manner;his Bodegones, or kitchen pieces, testify to this. Chardin, who led aslaborious an existence as Degas, shutting himself away from the world, studied surfaces with an intensity that Zola, the apostle of realism, would have misunderstood. Later the French painter devoted himselfwith equal success to genre and figure subjects; but for him there wasno such category as still-life. Everything of substance, shape, weight, and colour is alive for the eye that observes, and, exceptVelasquez, Vermeer, and a few others, no man was endowed with the eyeof Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, an eye microscopic in intensity andthat saw the beautiful in the homely. 

Edmond Pilon has published a comprehensive little monograph in theseries Les Maîtres de L'Art. M. Pilon is as sympathetic as he is justin his critical estimates of the man and his work. There is not muchto relate of the quotidian life of the artist. His was not a romanticor a graceful figure among his contemporaries, the pastellist La Tour, Fragonard, and the rest, nor had his personality a jot of themysterious melancholy of Watteau. His artistic ancestry was Dutch; inthe footsteps of De Hooch, the younger Teniers, Vermeer, Terburg, Kalf, he trod, rather plodded, producing miracles of light, colour, finish. A long patience his career, he never indulged in brilliancyfor the mere sake of brilliancy; nevertheless he was an amazingvirtuoso of the brush. He was born in the Rue de Seine, Paris, November 2, 1699. His father, Jean Chardin, a joiner, was a man ofartistic instinct whose furniture and marquetrie were admired and indemand. The lad began his tuition under Cazes, but soon went to theatelier of Coypel. Later he worked under the eye of Carle Vanloo inthe restoration of the large gallery at Fontainebleau. His painting ofa barber-chirurgeon's sign drew upon him the notice of several artistsof influence and he became a member of the Academy of St. Luc. When heexhibited for the first time in public, in the Place Dauphine, 1728, Watteau had been dead seven years; Coypel, Allegrain, Vanloo, Troy, and the imitators of the pompous art of Le Brun were the vogue. Colourhad become a conventional abstraction; design, of the most artificialsort, the prime requisite for a sounding reputation. The unobtrusiveart of Chardin, who went to nature not to books for his inspiration, was not appreciated. He was considered a belated Dutchman, though hissuperior knowledge of values ought to have proved him something else. Diderot, alone among the critics of his epoch, saluted him in companywith the great Buffon as a man whom nature had taken into herconfidence. 

In 1728 he was received at the Academy as painter of fruit andflowers. He married his first wife, Marguerite Saintan, in 1731, andhis son, J. B. Chardin, was born the same year. In 1735 he lost hiswife and infant daughter, and the double blow drove him intoretirement, but he exposed his pictures from time to time. He was madecounsellor of the Academy in 1743, and in 1744 married the secondtime, a widow, Françoise Marguerite Pouget by name. This was a happymarriage; Madame Chardin, a sensible, good-tempered bourgeoise, regulated the household accounts, and brought order and peace into thelife of the lonely artist. Hereafter he painted without interruptions. He received from the king a pension of five hundred francs, his sonobtained the prix de Rome for a meritorious canvas, and if he had hadhis father's stable temperament he would have ended an admirableartist. But he was reckless, and died at Venice in a mysteriousmanner, drowned in a canal, whether by murder or suicide no one knew. Chardin never recovered his spirits after this shock. The king offeredhim lodging in the gallery of the Louvre (Logement No. 12). This wasaccepted, as much as he disliked leaving his comfortable little housein the Rue Princesse. As he aged he suffered from various ailments andhis eyes began to give him trouble; then it was he took up pastels. December 6, 1779, he died, his wife surviving him until 1791. 

He was a man of short stature, broad-shouldered and muscular. Liked byhis friends and colleagues for his frankness, there was a salt savourin his forthright speech--he never learned to play the courtier. Hismanners were not polished, a certain rusticity clung to him always, but his honesty was appreciated and he held positions of trust. Affectionate, slow--with the Dutch slowness praised by Rodin--andtenacious, he set out to conquer a small corner in the kingdom of art, and to-day he is first among the Little Masters. This too convenientappellation must not class him with such myopic miniaturists asMeissonier. There are breadth of style, rich humanity, largeness offeeling, apart from his remarkable technique, that place him in thecompany of famous portrait painters. He does not possess what arecalled "general ideas"; he sounds no tragic chords; he has no spoor ofpoetry, but he sees the exterior world steadily; he is never obvious, and he is a sympathetic interpreter in the domestic domain and ofcharacter. His palette is as aristocratic as that of Velasquez: themusic he makes, like that of the string quartet, borders onperfection. 

At his début he so undervalued his work that Vanloo, after reproachingthe youth for his modesty, paid him double for a picture. Another timehe gave a still-life to a friend in exchange for a waistcoat whoseflowery pattern appealed to him. His pictures did not fetch fairprices during his lifetime; after more than half a century of hardwork he left little for his widow. Nor in the years immediatelysubsequent to that of his death did values advance much. The engraverWille bought a still-life for thirty-six livres, a picture that to-daywould sell for thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the lastcentury, in 1810, when David was ruler of the arts in Paris, the twomasterpieces in pastel, now in the Louvre, the portraits of Chardinaux besicles, and the portrait of Marguerite Pouget, his secondspouse, could have been bought for twenty-four francs. In 1867 at theLaperlier sale the Pourvoyeuse was sold for four thousand and fiftyfrancs to the Louvre, and forty years later the Louvre gave threehundred and fifty thousand francs to Madame Emile Trépard for Le JeuneHomme au Violon and l'Enfant au Toton. Diderot truly prophesied thatthe hour of reparation would come. 

He is a master of discreet tonalities and a draughtsman of the firstorder. His lighting, more diffused than Rembrandt's, is the chiefactor in his scene. With it he accomplishes magical effects, with ithe makes beautiful copper caldrons, humble vegetables, leeks, carrots, potatoes, onions, shining rounds of beef, hares, and fish becomeeloquent witnesses to the fact that there is nothing dead or ugly innature if the vision that interprets is artistic. It is said that noone ever saw Chardin at work in his atelier, but his method, his_facture_ has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs thedivision of tones, his _couches_ are fat and his colour is laid onlusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chiefallurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, along time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. Thefrivolous "Frago, " who studied with Chardin for a brief period, eventhough he left him for Boucher, admired his former master withoutunderstanding him. Decamps later exclaimed in the Louvre: "The whitesof Chardin! I don't know how to recapture them. " He might have addedthe silvery grays. M. Pilon remarks that as in the case of Vermeer thesecret of Chardin tones has never been surprised. The French painterknew the art of modulation, while his transitions are bold; heenveloped his objects in atmosphere and gave his shadows a due shareof luminosity. He placed his colours so that at times his workresembles mosaic or tapestry. He knew a century before the modernimpressionists the knack of juxtaposition, of opposition, of tonaldivision; his science was profound. He must have studied Watteau andthe Dutchmen closely. Diderot was amazed to find that his surpassingwhites were neither black nor white, but a neuter--but by a subtletransposition of tones looked white. Chardin worked from anaccumulation of notes, but there are few sketches of his in existence, a _sanguine_ or two. The paucity of the Velasquez sketches has piquedcriticism. Like Velasquez, Chardin was of a reflective temperament, aslow workman and a patient corrector. 

The intimate charm of the Chardin interiors is not equalled even inthe Vermeer canvases. At the Louvre, which contains at least thirty ofthe masterpieces, consider the sweetness of Le Benedicite, or thethree pastels, and then turn to the fruits, flowers, kitchen utensils, game, or to La Raie Ouverte, that magnificent portrait of a skatefish, with its cat slyly stealing over opened oysters, the table-cloth ofsuch vraisemblance that the knife balanced on the edge seems to lie ina crease. What bulk, what destiny, what _chatoyant_ tones! Here arequalities of paint and vision pictorial, vision that has never beenapproached; paint without rhetoric, paint sincere, and the expressionin terms of beautiful paint of natural truths. In Chardin's case--byhim the relativity of mundane things was accepted with philosophicphlegm--an onion was more important than an angel, a copper stew-panas thrilling as an epic. And then the humanity of his youth holding afiddle and bow, the exquisite textures of skin and hair, and theglance of the eyes. You believe the story told of his advice to hisconfrère: "Paint with sentiment. " But he mixed his sentiment withlovely colours, he is one of the chief glories of France as acolourist. 

X. BLACK AND WHITE. 

I

Some Frenchman has called the theatre a book reversed. It is a happyepigram. By a similar analogy the engraving or mezzotint might bedescribed as a reversed picture. And with still more propriety blackand white reproductions may be compared to the pianoforte in the handsof a skilful artist. The pianoforte can interpret in cooler tonesorchestral scores. It gives in its all-formal severity the line; thecolour is only suggested. But such is the tendency of modern musictoward painting that the success of a pianoforte virtuoso to-daydepends upon his ability to arouse within his listeners' imaginationthe idea of colour--in reality, the emotional element. The engraverevokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and cross hatching; themezzotinter by his disposition of dark masses and white spaces. Indeed, the mezzotint by reason of its warm, more sympathetic, andductile medium has always seemed more colourful in his plates than themost laboriously executed steel engravings. In this sense the scraperbeats the burin, while the etcher, especially if he be a painter, attains a more personal vision than either one of these processes. "The stone was made for the mystics, " say the Pennells. The revival oflithography by contemporary artists of fame is very welcome. 

Above all, the appeal of engraving, mezzotint, and etching is to therefined. It is an art of a peculiarly intimate character. Just as someprefer the exquisite tonal purity and finished performances of theKneisel String Quartet to the blare and thunder of the PhilharmonicSociety; just as some enjoy in silence beautiful prose more than ourcrude drama, so the lovers of black and white may feel themselves adistinctive class. They have at their elbow disposed in portfolios orspaced on walls the eloquent portraiture, the world's masterpieces, marine views, and landscapes. There is no better way to study paintinghistorically than in the cabinet of an engraving collector. Furthermore, divested of bad or mediocre paint--many famous picturesby famous names are mere cartoons, the paint peeled or peelingoff--the student and amateur penetrates to the very marrow of thepainter's conception, to the very skeleton of his technical methods. 

PIRANESI

I

"Battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars" is a line fromWordsworth that Thomas de Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to hisopium-induced "architectural dreams, " and, aptly enough, immediatelyafter a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, andvisionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an EnglishOpium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (DeQuincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in thisautobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago, " he wrote, "when Iwas looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, whowas standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, which record the scenery of his own soul during thedelirium of a fever. Some of them (described only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor ofwhich stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive of enormouspower put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides ofthe walls, you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his wayupward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther andyou perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without anybalustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached theextremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poorPiranesi? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some wayterminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight ofstairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by thistime standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poorPiranesi on his aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinishedstairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. "

This plate was evidently one of the Carceri set--sixteen in all--whichthe etcher improvised after some severe cerebral malady. What would wenot give to have heard the poet of Kubla Khan describing the fantasticvisions of the Venetian artist to the English opium eater! Theeloquence of the prose passage we have transcribed has in it somefaint echoes of Coleridge's golden rumble. That these two menappreciated the Italian is something; perhaps they saw chiefly in hiswork its fantastic side. There was no saner craftsman than Piranesiapart from certain of his plates; no more solid construction in aprint can be shown than his various interpretations of the classicruins of Rome, the temples at Pæstum. He was a great engraver andetcher whose passion was the antique. He deliberately withdrew fromall commerce with the ideas and art of his own times. He lovedarchitecture for architecture's sake; not as a decoration, not as abackground for humanity, but as something personal. It was for himwhat the human face was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he wascalled the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to theimpression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is anunhappy one. Piranesi even in his own little fenced-off coign of artis not comparable to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor arethere close analogies in their respective handling of darks andlights. 

It might be nearer the mark to call Piranesi--though all suchcomparisons are thorns in the critical flesh--the Salvator Rosa ofarchitecture, for there is much of Salvator's unbridled violence, fantasy, and genius for deforming the actual that is to be encounteredin some of Piranesi's works. His was not a classic temperament. Theserene, airy, sun-bathed palaces and temples which Claude introducedinto his foregrounds are seldom encountered in Piranesi. A dark Gothicimagination his, Gothic and often cruel. In his etching of publicbuildings at Rome or elsewhere, while he is not always faultless indrawing or scrupulous in observation, such was the sincerity andpassion of the man that he has left us the noblest transcriptions ofthese stately edifices and monuments. It is in the rhythmic expressionof his personal moods that his sinister romantic imaginings arerevealed, and with a detail and fulness that are positivelyoverwhelming. 

It should not be forgotten that in the eighteenth and in the earlypart of the nineteenth centuries Piranesi achieved widespreadpopularity. 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, knewE. T. W. Hoffmann and the German romantic literature, could be relied onto take up Piranesi, and for his lesser artistic side. Poe knew hiswork and Baudelaire; we see that for De Quincey he was a kindredspirit. The English mezzotinter John Martin must have studied himclosely, also Gustave Doré. 

The Carceri (1750) of Piranesi are indoor compositions, enclosedspaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damnedmen, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torturefill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barelydiscern perilous passageways, haunted windows peering out upon thehigh heavens, stone-fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. Bya sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts our eye from thesedizzy angles and granitic convolutions down tortuous and tumultuousstaircases that seemingly wind about the axis of eternity. To traversethem would demand an eternity and the nerves of a madman. Lowerbarbaric devices reveal this artist's temperament. He is said to haveexecuted the prison set "during the delirium of fever. " This is of thesame calibre as the clotted nonsense about Poe composing whenintoxicated or Liszt playing after champagne. It is a credibleanecdote for Philistines who do not realise that even the maddestcaprice, whether in black and white, marble, music, or verse, must beexecuted in silence and cold blood. Piranesi simply gave wing to hisfancy, recalling the more vivid of his nightmares--as did Coleridge, De Quincey, Poe, Baudelaire, and the rest of the drug-steeped choir. We recall one plate of Piranesi's in which a miserable devil climbs astaircase suspended over an abyss; as he mounts each step the lowerone crumbles into the depths below. 

The agony of the man (do you recall The Torture by Hope of Villiers del'Isle-Adam?) is shown in his tense, crouching attitude, his handsclawing the masonry above him. Nature is become a monstrous fever, existence a shivering dread. You overhear the crash of stone into theinfernal cellarage--where awaits the hunted wretch perhaps a worsefate than on the pinnacles above. It is a companion piece to Martin'sSadak searching for the Waters of Oblivion. Another plate depicts withingenuity terraces superimposed upon terraces, archways spaced likemassive music, narrow footways across which race ape-like men, halfnaked, eagerly preparing some terrible punishments for criminalshandcuffed and guarded. They are to walk a sharp-spiked bridge. Gigantic chains swing across stony precipices, a lamp depends from aroof whose outlines are merged in the gray dusk of dreams. There iscruelty, horror, and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in theensemble. What crimes were committed to merit such atrociouspunishment? The boldness and clearness of it all! With perspicacityGeorge Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony: "Itis the best example of dream literature that I know--most writers whohave tried this style have erred, inasmuch as they have endeavoured tothrow a portion of the mystery with which the waking mind investsdreams over the dream itself. Any one's experience is sufficient toshow that this is wrong. The events of dreams, as they happen, arequite plain and matter of fact, and it is only in the intervals thatany suspicion occurs to the dreamer. "

Certainly Piranesi remembered his dreams. He is a realist in hisdelineation of details, though the sweep and breadth of an idealdesign are never absent. He portrays ladders that scale bulky joists, poles of incredible thickness, cyclopean block and tackling. They areof wood, not metal nor marble, for the art of Piranesi is full ofdiscriminations. Finally, you weary. The eye gorged by all the mysticengines, hieroglyphs of pain from some impossible inquisition--thoughnot once do we see a monkish figure--all these anonymous monkey menscurrying on what errand Piranesi alone knows; these towering arches, their foundations resting on the crest of hell (you feel thetremendous impact of the architectural mass upon the earth--no meanfeat to represent or rather to evoke the sense of weight, of pressureon a flat surface); the muffled atmosphere in these prisons from whichno living prisoner emerges; of them all you weary, for the normalbrain can only stand a certain dose of the delirious and themelancholy. This aspect, then, of Piranesi's art, black magic in allits potency, need no longer detain us. His Temples of Pæstum sound aless morbid key than his Carceri, and as etchings quite outrank them. 

II

Giambattista Piranesi was born at Venice in 1720. Bryan says thatabout 1738 his father sent him to Rome, where he studied underValeriani, through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani's master, Marco Ricci of Belluno. With Vasi, a Sicilian engraver, he learnedthat art. Ricci and Pannini were much in vogue, following the exampleof Claude in his employment of ruins as a picturesque element in acomposition. But Piranesi excelled both Ricci and Pannini. He was anarchitect, too, helping to restore churches, and this accounts for theproud title, Architect of Venice, which may be seen on some of hisplates. He lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to her withan imperious call. And, notwithstanding the opposition of his father, to Rome he went, and for forty years devoted himself to his masterpassion, the pictorial record of the beloved city, the ancientportions of which were fast vanishing owing to time and the greed oftheir owners. This was Piranesi's self-imposed mission, begun as anexalted youth, finished as an irritable old man. Among hisarchitectural restorations, made at the request of Clement XIII, werethe two churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Il Priorato. Lancianisays that Il Priorato is "a mass of monstrosities inside and out. " Itis his etching, not his labour as an architect, that will makePiranesi immortal. He seems to have felt this, for he wrote that hehad "executed a work which will descend to posterity and will last solong as there will be men desirous of knowing all that has survivedthe ruins of the most famous city of the universe. "

In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by F. Polonzani, we seea full-cheeked man with a well-developed forehead, the features of theclassic Roman order, the general expression not far removed from asort of sullen self-satisfaction. But the eyes redeem. They are full, lustrous, penetrating, and introspective. The portrait etched by theson of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him posed in a toga, thegeneral effect being classic and consular. His life, like that of allgood workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one. He marriedprecipitately and his wife bore him two sons (Francesco, the etcher, born at Rome, 1748--Bryan gives the date as 1756--died at Paris, 1810)and a daughter (Laura, born at Rome, 1750--date of death unknown). These children were a consolation to him. Both were engravers. Francesco frequently assisted his father in his work, and Bryan saysthat Laura's work resembled her father's. She went to Paris with herbrother and probably died there. She left some views of Rome. Francesco, with his brother Pietro, attempted to found an academy inParis and later a terra cotta manufactory. 

The elder Piranesi was of a quarrelsome disposition. He wrangled withan English patron, Viscount Charlemont, and, like Beethoven, destroyedtitle-pages when he became displeased with the subject of hisdedications. He was decorated with the Order of Christ and was proudof his membership in the London Society of Antiquaries. It is saidthat the original copper plates of his works were captured by aBritish man-of-war during the Napoleonic conflict. This probablyaccounts for the dissemination of so many revamped and coarselyexecuted versions of his compositions. His besetting fault was atendency toward an Egyptian blackness in his composition. Fond ofstrong contrasts as was John Martin, he is, at times, as great asinner in the handling of his blacks. An experimenter of audacity, Piranesi's mastery of the technique of etching has seldom beenequalled, and even in his inferior work the skilful printing atonesfor many defects. The remarkable richness and depth of tone, broughtabout by continuous and innumerable bitings, and other secretprocesses known only to himself, make his plates warm and brilliant. Nobility of form, grandeur of mass, a light and shade that ispositively dramatic in its dispersion over wall and tower, are thecharacteristic marks of this unique etcher. He could not resist thetemptation of dotting with figures the huge spaces of his ruins. Theydance or recline or indulge in uncouth gestures. His shadows areluminous--you may gaze into them; his high lights caught on someprojection or salient cornice or silvering the August porticoes of avanished past, all these demonstrate his feeling for the dramatic. Anddramatic is the impression evoked as you study the majestic templesthat were Pæstum, the bare, ruined arches and pillars that were Rome. It is Pæstum that is the more vivid. It tallies, too, with thePiranesi plates; while Rome has visibly changed since his day. Hisoriginal designs for chimneys, Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Camini, are pronounced by several critics as "foolish and vulgar. " He leftnearly two thousand etchings, and died at Rome November 9, 1778. Hisson erected a mediocre statue by Angolin for his tomb in Il Priorato. A manuscript life of Piranesi, which was in London about 1830, is nowlost. Bryan's dictionary gives a partial list of his works "aspublished both by himself in Rome and by his sons in Paris. The platespassed from his sons first to Firmin-Didot, and ultimately into thehands of the Papal Government. "

De Quincey's quotation of Wordsworth is apposite in describingPiranesi's creations: "Battlements that on their restless fronts borestars"; from sheer brutal masonry, gray, aged, and moss-encrusted, heinvented a precise pattern and one both passionate and magical. 

MERYON

Until the recent appearance of the Baudelaire letters (1841-66) allthat we knew of Meryon's personality and art was to be found in themonograph by Philippe Burty and Béraldi's Les Graveurs du XIX Siècle. Hamerton had written of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching andEtchers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour werepublic property. Frederick Wedmore, in his Etching in England, did nothesitate to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and Jacquemart's (onefeels like employing the Whistlerian formula and asking: Why drag inJacquemart?); and to-day, after years of critical indifference, theunhappy copper-scratcher has come into his own. You may find himmentioned in such company as Dürer, Rembrandt, and Whistler. The manwho first acclaimed him as worthy of associating with Rembrandt wasthe critic Charles Baudelaire; and we are indebted to him for newmaterial dealing with the troubled life of Charles Meryon. 

On January 8, 1860, Baudelaire wrote to his friend and publisher, Poulet-Malassis, that what he intends to say is worth the bother ofwriting. Meryon had called, first sending a card upon which hescrawled: "You live in a hotel the name of which doubtless attractedyou because of your tastes. " Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, thepoet then noted that the address read: Charles Baudelaire, Hôtel deThébes. He did not stop at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancyinghim a Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted. This letter wasforwarded. Meryon appeared. His first question would have startled anybut Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others. The etcher, looking as desperate and forlorn as in the Bracquemond etched portrait(1853), demanded news of a certain Edgar Poe. Baudelaire respondedsadly that he had not known Poe personally. Then he was eagerly askedif he believed in the reality of this Poe. Charles began to suspectthe sanity of his visitor. "Because, " added Meryon, "there is asociety of littérateurs, very clever, very powerful, and knowing allthe ropes. " His reasons for suspecting a cabal formed against himunder the guise of Poe's name were these: The Murders in the RueMorgue. "I made a design of the Morgue--an orang-outang. I have beenoften compared to a monkey. This orang-outang assassinated two women, a mother and daughter. Et moi aussi, j'ai assassiné moralement deuxfemmes, la mère et sa fille. I have always taken this story as anallusion to my misfortunes. You, M. Baudelaire, would do me a greatfavour if you could find the date when Edgar Poe, supposing he was notassisted by any one, wrote his tale. I wish to see if this datecoincides with my adventures. " After that Baudelaire knew his man. 

Meryon spoke with admiration of Michelet's Jeanne d'Arc, though heswore the book was not written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot, though not correct in this particular instance, for the world hassince discovered that several books posthumously attributed toMichelet were written by his widow. ) The etcher was interested in thecabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew some eagles, andwhen Baudelaire objected that these birds did not frequent Parisianskies he mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuileries" oftenlaunched as a rite the sacred eagles to study the omens and presages. He was firmly convinced of this. After the termination of the tryingvisit Baudelaire, with acrid irony, asks himself why he, with hisnerves usually unstrung, did not go quite mad, and he concludes, "Seriously I addressed to Heaven the grateful prayers of a pharisee. "

In March the same year he assures the same correspondent thatdecidedly Meryon does not know how to conduct himself. He knowsnothing of life, neither does he know how to sell his plates or findan editor. His work is very easy to sell. Baudelaire was hardly apractical business man, but, like Poe, he had sense enough to followhis market. He instantly recognised the commercial value of Meryon'sParis set, but knew the etcher was a hopeless character. He wrote toPoulet-Malassis concerning a proposed purchase of Meryon's work by thepublisher. It never came to anything. The etcher was very suspiciousas to paper and printing. He grew violent when the poet asked him toillustrate some little poems and sonnets. Had he, Meryon, not writtenpoems himself? Had not the mighty Victor Hugo addressed flatteringwords to him? Baudelaire, without losing interest, then thought ofDaumier as an illustrator for a new edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. Itmust not be supposed, however, that Meryon was ungrateful. He wasdeeply affected by the praise accorded him in Baudelaire's Salon of1859. He wrote in February, 1860, sending his Views of Paris to thecritic as a feeble acknowledgment of the pleasure he had enjoyed whenreading the brilliant interpretative criticism. He said that he hadcreated an epoch in etching--which was the literal truth--and he hadsaved a rapidly vanishing Paris for the pious curiosity of futuregenerations. He speaks of his "naïve heart" and hoped that Baudelairein turn would dream as he did over the plates. This letter was signedsimply "Meryon, 20 Rue Duperré. " The acute accent placed over the "e"in his name by the French poet and by biographers, critics, andeditors since was never used by the etcher. It took years beforeBaudelaire could persuade the Parisians that Poe did not spell hisname "Edgard Poë. " And we remember the fate of Liszt and Whistler, whowere until recently known in Paris as "Litz" and "Whistler. " With theaid of Champfleury and Banville, Baudelaire tried to bring Meryon'sart to the cognisance of the Minister of Beaux-Arts, but to no avail. Why?

There was a reason. Bohemian as was the artist during the last decadeof his life, he did not always haunt low cafés and drink absinthe. Hisbeginnings were as romantic as a page of Balzac. He was born agentleman _à la main gauche_. His father was the doctor and privatesecretary of Lady Stanhope. Charles Lewis Meryon was an Englishphysician, who, falling in love with a ballet dancer at the Opéra, Pierre Narcisse Chaspoux, persuaded her that it would be less selfishon her part if she would not bind him to her legally. November23, 1821, a sickly, nervous, and wizened son was born to the pair andbaptised with his father's name, who, being an alien, generouslyconceded that much. There his interest ceased. On the mother fell theburden of the boy's education. At five he was sent to school at Passyand later went to the south of France. In 1837 he entered the Brestnaval school, and 1839 saw him going on his maiden voyage. This firsttrip was marred by the black sorrow that fell upon him when informedof his illegitimate birth. "I was mad from the time I was told of mybirth, " he wrote, and until madness supervened he suffered from a"wounded imagination. " He was morbid, shy, and irritable, and hisenergy--the explosive energy of this frail youth was amazing; becausehe had been refused the use of a ship boat he wasted three monthsdigging out a canoe from a log of wood. Like Paul Gauguin, he saw manycountries, and his eyes were trained to form, though not colour--hesuffered from Daltonism--for when he began to paint he discovered hewas totally colour-blind. The visible world for him existed as acontrapuntal net-work of lines, silhouettes, contours, or heavy darkmasses. When a sailor he sketched. Meryon tells of the drawing of alittle fungus he found in Akaroa. "Distorted in form and pinched andpuny from its birth, I could not but pity it; it seemed to me soentirely typical of the inclemency and at the same time of thewhimsicality of an incomplete and sickly creation that I could notdeny it a place in my _souvenirs de voyage_, and so I drew itcarefully. " This bit of fungus was to him a symbol of his own gnarledexistence. 

Tiring of ship life, he finally decided to study art. He had seen NewZealand, Australia, Italy, New Caledonia, and if his splendidplate--No. 22 in M. Burty's list--is evidence, he must have visitedSan Francisco. Baudelaire, in L'Art Romantique, speaks of thisperspective of San Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design. In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though froma cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if hewould ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. Thathe was unfitted for, and meeting Eugène Bléry he became interested inetching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, ReinerZeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. "An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of abridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi, " says D. S. MacColl. Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes. Hewent to Belgium in 1856 on the invitation of the Duc d'Aremberg, andin 1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from melancholy anddelusions. He left in a year and returned to Paris and work; but, asBaudelaire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain of the artist. Amystic delirium set in. He ceased to etch, and evidently suffered fromthe persecution madness. In every corner he believed conspiracies werehatching. He often disappeared, often changed his abode. Sometimes hewould appear dressed gorgeously at a boulevard café in company withbrilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen slinking through meanstreets in meaner rags. There are episodes in his life that recall thecareer of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval, poet, noctambulist, suicide. It is known that Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but notin a mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was aperfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer from rebiting, sohe quite sensibly sawed up the plates into tiny strips. That he wassuspicious of his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told bySir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his etchings from him at afair price. Two miles away from the atelier the Englishman wasovertaken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had sold, "as theywere of a nature to compromise him"; besides, from what he knew ofHaden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go toEngland. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whetherMeryon'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 themillstone. 

Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old printer named Beillet whodid work for Meryon. He could not always pay for the printing of hiscelebrated Abside de Notre Dame, a masterpiece, as he hadn't thenecessary ten cents. "I never got my money!" exclaimed the thriftyprinter. Enormous endurance, enormous vanity, diseased pride, outragedhuman sentiment, hatred of the Second Empire because of the particularclause in the old Napoleonic code relating to the research ofpaternity; an irregular life, possibly drugs, certainly alcoholism, repeated rejections by the academic authorities, critics, and dealersof his work--these and a feeble constitution sent the unfortunate backto Charenton, where he died February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, hiscritical discoverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's grave sixmonths earlier. Inasmuch as there is a certain family likeness amongmen of genius with disordered minds and instincts, several comparisonsmight be made between Meryon and Baudelaire. Both were great artistsand both were born with flawed, neurotic systems. Dissipation andmisery followed as a matter of course. 

Charles Meryon was, nevertheless, a sane and a magnificent etcher. Heexecuted about a hundred plates, according to Burty. He did not avoidportraiture, and to live he sometimes manufactured pot-boilers for thetrade. To his supreme vision was joined a miraculous surety of touch. Baudelaire was right--those plates, the Paris set, so dramatic andtruthful in particulars, could have been sold if Meryon, with hiswolfish visage, his fierce, haggard eyes, his gruff manner, had notoffered them in person. He looked like a vagabond very often and toooften acted like a brigand. The Salon juries were prejudiced againsthis work because of his legend. Verlaine over again! The etchings wereclassic when they were born. We wonder they did not appealimmediately. To-day, if you are lucky enough to come across one, youare asked a staggering price. They sold for a song--when they didsell--during the lifetime of the artist. Louis Napoleon and BaronHaussmann destroyed picturesque Paris to the consternation of Meryon, who to the eye of an archæologist united the soul of an artist. Heloved 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'sL'Education Sentimentale. 

But there is hallucination in these etchings, beginning with LeStryge, and its demoniac leer, "insatiable vampire, l'eternelleluxure. " That gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flyingthrough the slim pillars from a dream city bathed in sinister light, is not the only striking conception of the poet-etcher. The grip ofreality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into theactual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpnessof definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds thatmake you realise the _justesse_ of Berenson's phrase--tactile values. With Meryon the tactile perception was a sixth sense. Clairvoyant ofimages, he could transcribe the actual with an almost cruel precision. Telescopic eyes his, as MacColl has it, and an imagination thatperceived the spectre lurking behind the door, the horror of enclosedspaces, and the mystic fear of shadows--a Poe imagination, romantic, with madness as an accomplice in the horrible game of his life. One istempted to add that the romantic imagination is always slightly mad. It runs to seed in darkness and despair. The fugitive verse of Meryonis bitter, ironical, defiant; a whiff from an underground prison, where seems to sit in tortured solitude some wretch abandoned byhumanity, a stranger even at the gates of hell. 

Sir Seymour Haden has told us that Meryon's method was to make anumber of sketches, two or three inches square, of parts of hispicture, which he put together and arranged into a harmonious whole. Herkomer says that he "used the burin in finishing his bitten workwith marvellous skill. No better combination can be found of theharmonious combination of the two. " Burty declared that "Meryonpreserves the characteristic detail of architecture... Withoutmodifying the aspect of the monument he causes it to express itshidden meaning, and gives it a broader significance by associating itwith his own thought. " His employment of a dull green paper at timesshowed his intimate feeling for tonalities. He is, more so thanPiranesi, the Rembrandt of architecture. Hamerton admits that theFrench etcher was "one of the greatest and most original artists whohave appeared in Europe, " and berates the public of the '60s for notdiscovering this. Then this writer, copying in an astonishinglywretched manner several of Meryon's etchings, analysing their defectsas he proceeds, asserts that there is false tonality in Le Stryge. "The intense black in the street under the tower of St. Jacquesdestroys the impression of atmosphere, though at a considerabledistance it is as dark as the nearest raven's wing, which cannotrelieve itself against it. This may have been done in order to obtaina certain arrangement of black and white patches, " etc. This was donefor the sheer purpose of oppositional effects. Did Hamerton see a fineplate? The shadow is heavy; the street is in demi, not total, obscurity; the values of the flying ravens and the shadow are clearlyenunciated. The passage is powerful, even sensational, and in theRomantic, Hugoesque key. Hamerton is wrong. Meryon seldom erred. Hiswas a temperament of steel and fire. 

JOHN MARTIN, MEZZOTINTER

The sitting-room was long and narrow. A haircloth sofa ofuncompromising rectitude was pushed so close to the wall that theimprints of at least two generations of heads might be discerned uponthe flowered wall-paper--flowers and grapes of monstrous size fromsome country akin to that visited by the Israelitish spies as relatedin the Good Book. A mahogany sideboard stood at the upper end of theroom; in one window hung a cage which contained a feeble canary. Asyou entered your eyes fell upon an ornamental wax fruit piece under aconical glass. A stuffed bird, a robin redbreast, perched on a frostedtree in the midst of these pale tropical offerings, glared at you withbeady 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 illustrated book about the HolyLand by some hardworking reverend. It was Aunt Jane's living-room; init she had rocked and knitted for more than half a century. There werea few pictures on the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank presidentwith a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead, and in his eyes astern expression of percentage. Over the dull white marble mantelpiecehung a huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and white, apicture whose subject had without doubt given it the place of honourin this old-fashioned, tasteless, homely, comfortable room. It borefor a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed and mezzotintedby John Martin. 

Let us look at this picture. It depicts the downfall of the great cityupon which the wrath of God is visited. There are ghastly gleams oflightning above the doomed vicinity. A fierce tempest is in progressas the invading hosts break down the great waterways and enterdry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces. Thetragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitatedgroups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes agesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surroundhim like frightened swans. A high priest raises his hand to the stormyheavens, upon which he is evidently invoking as stormy maledictions. Awarrior swings his blade; to his neck clings a fair helpless one, halfnude. There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe infutile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, onthe efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarmsaffrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exoticarchitecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dustycorridors of legend or history--these and a hundred other details areenclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture whichhangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, iscolourless in comparison. The Englishman had greater imagination thanthe German, though he lacked the latter's anatomical science. To-dayin the Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of honour. You maysearch in vain at the London National Gallery for the paintings of aman who once was on the crest of popularity in England, whose Biblicalsubjects attracted multitudes, whose mezzotints and engravings weresold wherever the English Bible was read. John Martin, painter, mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination, second to De Quincey or theauthor of Vathek, is to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself. 

Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic School, said that "thehistory of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the deadwho are near or dear to him. " Into what morgue fell John Martin beforehis death? How account for the violent changes in popular taste?Martin suffered from too great early success. The star of Turner wasin the ascendant. John Ruskin denied merit to the mezzotinter, and soit is to-day that if you go to our print-shops you will seldom findone of his big or little plates. He has gone out of fashion--fatalphrase!--and only in the cabinets of old collectors can you get a peepat his archaic and astounding productions. William Blake is in vogue;perhaps Martin--? And then those who have garnered his plates willreap a harvest. 

Facts concerning him or his work are slight. Bryan's dictionaryaccords him a few paragraphs. When at the British Museum, a few yearsago, I asked Mr. Sidney Colvin about the Martins in his print-room. There are not many, not so many as in a certain private collectionhere. But Mr. Colvin told me of the article written by Cosmo Monkhousein the Dictionary of National Biography, and from it we are enabled topresent a few items about the man's career. He was born at HaydenBridge, near Hexham, Northumberland, July 19, 1789. His father, Fenwick Martin, a fencing-master, held classes at the Chancellor'sHead, Newcastle. His brothers, Jonathan (1782-1838) and William(1772-1851), have some claim on our notice, for the first was aninsane prophet and incendiary, having set fire to York Minster in1829; William was a natural philosopher and poet who published manyworks to prove the theory of perpetual motion. "After having convincedhimself by means of thirty-six experiments of the impossibility ofdemonstrating it scientifically, it was revealed to him in a dreamthat God had chosen him to discover the great cause of all things, andthis he made the subject of many works" (Jasnot, Vérités positives, 1854). Verily, as Lombroso hath it, "A hundred fanatics are found fora theological or metaphysical statement, but not one for a geometricproblem. "

The Martin stock was, without doubt, neurasthenic. John wasapprenticed when fourteen to Wilson, a Newcastle coach painter, butran away after a dispute over wages. He met Bonifacio Musso, anItalian china painter, and in 1806 went with him to London. There hesupported himself painting china and glass while he studiedperspective and architecture. At nineteen he married and in 1812 livedin High Street, Marylebone, and from there sent to the Academy hisfirst picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (from Talesof the Genii). The figure of Sadak was so small that the framersdisputed as to the top of the picture. It sold to Mr. Manning forfifty 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 anante-room of the exhibition, and he bitterly complained of histreatment. Joshua, in 1816, was as indifferently hung, and he neverforgave the Academy the insult, though he did not withdraw from itsannual functions. In 1817 he was appointed historical painter toPrincess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. He etched about this timeCharacter of Trees (seven plates) and the Bard at the Academy. In 1818he removed to Allsop Terrace, New (Marylebone road). In 1819 came TheFall of Babylon, Macbeth (1820), Belshazzar's Feast (1821), which, "excluded" from the Academy, yet won the £200 prize. A poem by T. S. Hughes started Martin on this picture. It was a national success andwas exhibited in the Strand behind a glass transparency. It went theround of the provinces and large cities and attracted thousands. Martin joined the Society of British Artists at its foundation andexhibited with them from 1824 to 1831, and also in 1837 and 1838, after which he sent his important pictures to the Royal Academy. 

In 1833 The Fall of Nineveh went to Brussels, where it was bought bythe Government. Martin was elected member of the Belgian Academy andthe Order of Leopold was conferred on him. His old quarrels with theAcademy broke out in 1836, and he testified before a committee as tofavouritism. Then followed The Death of Moses, The Deluge, The Eve ofthe Deluge, The Assuaging of the Waters, Pandemonium. He paintedlandscapes and water-colours, scenes on the Thames, Brent, Wandle, Wey, Stillingbourne, and the hills and eminences about London. Aboutthis time he began scheming for a method of supplying London withwater and one that would improve the docks and sewers. He engravedmany of his own works, Belshazzar, Joshua, Nineveh, Fall of Babylon. The first two named, with The Deluge, were presented by the FrenchAcademy to Louis Philippe, for which courtesy a medal was struck offin Martin's honour. The Ascent of Elijah, Christ Tempted in theWilderness, and Martin's illustrations (with Westall's) to Milton'sParadise Lost were all completed at this period. For the latter Martinreceived £2, 000. He removed to Lindsey House, Chelsea, in 1848 or1849, and was living there in 1852, when he sent to the Academy hislast contribution, Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. November 12, 1853, while engaged upon his last large canvases, The Last Judgment, The Great Day of Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven, he was paralysed onhis right side. He was removed to the Isle of Man, and obstinatelyrefusing proper nourishment, died at Douglas February 17, 1854. Afterhis death three pictures, scenes from the Apocalypse, were exhibitedat the Hall of Commerce. His portrait by Wangemann appeared in the_Magazine of Fine Arts_. A second son, Leopold Charles, writer, andgodson of Leopold, King of Belgium, was an authority on costumes andnumismatics (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 hiscontemporaries. He was easily affronted, yet he was a very generousman. He bought Etty's picture, The Combat, in 1825 for two or threehundred guineas. There are at the South Kensington Museum threeMartins, watercolours, and one oil; at Newcastle, an oil. At the timeof his decease his principal works were in the collections of Lord deTabley, Dukes of Buckingham and Sutherland, Messrs. Hope andScarisbruck, Earl Grey and Prince Albert. The Leyland family ofNantchvyd, North Wales, owns the Joshua and several typical works ofMartin. Wilkie, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, describesBelshazzar's Feast as a "phenomenon. " Bulwer declared that Martin was"more original and self-dependent than Raphael or Michael Angelo. " Inthe Last Essays of Elia there is one by Charles Lamb entitledBarrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art. The name of Martin is not mentioned, but several of his works areunmistakably described. "His towered architecture [Lamb is writing ofBelshazzar's Feast] are of the highest order of the material sublime. Whether they were dreams or transcripts of some elderworkmanship--Assyrian ruins old--restored by this mighty artist, theysatisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories ofthe antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled. ""Literary" art critic as he was, Lamb put his finger on Martin'sweakest spot--his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious ofEnglish prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the greatmasters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than thepublic, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he wasnot a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points inwhich he can be compared to other artists, " he had the compensatingquality of an imposing, if at times operatic, imagination. Monkhousejustly says that in Martin's illustrations to Milton the smallness ofscale and absence of colour enable us to appreciate the grandeur ofhis conceptions with a minimum of his defects. 

In sooth he lacked variety. His pictures are sooty and apocalyptic. Wehave seen the Mountain Landscape, at South Kensington, The Destructionof Herculaneum, at Manchester, another at Newcastle whose subjectescapes us, and we confess that we prefer the mezzotints of Martin, particularly those engraved by Le Keux--whose fine line and keen senseof balance corrected the incoherence of Martin's too blackened shadowsand harsh explosions of whites. One looks in vain for the velvety toneof Earlom, or the vivid freshness of Valentine Green, in Martin. Hewas not a colourist; his mastery consisted in transferring to his hugecartoons a sense of the awful, of the catastrophic. He excelled in thedelineation of massive architecture, and if Piranesi was his superiorin exactitude, he equalled the Italian in majesty and fantasy ofdesign. No such cataclysmic pictures were ever before painted, norsince, though Gustave Doré, who without doubt made a study of Martin, has incorporated in his Biblical illustrations many of Martin'soverwhelming ideas--the Deluge, for example. James Ensor, the Belgianillustrator, is an artist of fecund fancy who, alone among the newmen, has betrayed a feeling for the strange architecture, dreamarchitecture, we encounter in Martin. Coleridge in Kubla Khan, DeQuincey in opium reveries, Poe and Baudelaire are among the writerswho seem nearest to the English mezzotinter. William Beckford'sVathek, that most Oriental of tales, first written in French by amillionaire of genius, should have inspired Martin. Perhaps its madfantasy did, for all we know--there is no authentic compilation of hiscompositions. Heine has spoken of Martin, as has Théophile Gautier;and his name, by some kink of destiny, is best known to the presentgeneration because of Macaulay's mention of it in an essay. 

The Vale of Tempe is one of Martin's larger plates seldom seen in thecollector's catalogue. We have viewed it and other rare prints in thechoice collection referred to already. Satan holding council, afterMilton, is a striking conception. The Prince of Eblis sits on a vastglobe of ebony. About him are tier upon tier of faces, the faces ofdevils. Infernal chandeliers depend from remote ceilings. Light gashesthe globe and the face and figure of Satan; both are of supernalbeauty. Could this mezzotint, so small in size, so vast in its shadowysuggestiveness, have stirred Baudelaire to lines that shine with ametallic poisonous lustre?

And there is that tiny mezzotint in which we find ourselves at thebase of a rude little hill. The shock of the quaking earth, the silentpassing of the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted multitudestell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand. In a flare of lightning wesee silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sadlittle hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intensethan Doré's. Another scene--also engraved by Le Keux: On a stonyplatform, vast and crowded, the people kneel in sackcloth and ashes;the heavens thunder over the weeping millions of Nineveh, and the Lordof Hosts will not be appeased. Stretching to the clouds are blackbasaltic battlements, and above rear white-terraced palaces as swansthat strain their throats to the sky. The mighty East is in penitence. Or, Elijah is rapt to heaven in a fiery whirlwind; or God createslight. This latter is one of the most extraordinary conceptions of agreat visionary and worthy of William Blake. Or Sadak searching forthe waters of oblivion. Alas, poor humanity! is here the allegory. Aman, a midget amid the terrifying altitudes of barren stone, liftshimself painfully over a ledge of rock. Above him are vertiginousheights; below him, deadly precipices. Nothing helps him buthimself--a page torn from Max Stirner is this parable. Light streamsupon the struggling egoist as he toils to the summit of consciousness. Among the designs of nineteenth-century artists we can recall none sotouching, so powerful, so modern as this picture. Martin was notequally successful in portraying celestial episodes, though hisparadises are enormous panoramas replete with architectural beauties. His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic illustrations, are moreconventional than Fuseli's and never naively original as are Blake's. Indeed, of Blake's mystic poetry and divination Martin betrays notrace. He is not so much the seer as the inventor of infernalharmonies. Satan reviewing his army of devils is truly magnificent inits depiction of the serried host armed for battle; behind glistensburning Tophet in all its smoky splendour. Satan in shining armourmust be a thousand feet high; he is sadly out of scale. So, too, inthe quarrel of Michael and Satan over the sleeping Adam and Eve. Blakeis here recalled in the rhythms of the monstrous figures. Bathos is inthe design of Lucifer swimming in deepest hell upon waves of fire andfilth; yet the lugubrious arches of the caverns in the perspectivereveal Blake's fantasy, so quick to respond to external stimuli. Martin saw the earth as in an apocalyptic swoon, its forms distorted, its meanings inverted; a mad world, the world of an older theogony. But if there was little human in his visions, he is enormouslyimpersonal; if he assailed heaven's gates on wings of melting wax, ordived deep into the pool of iniquity, he none the less caught glimpsesin his breathless flights of strange countries across whose sill nohuman being ever passes. There is genuine hallucination. He must haveseen his ghosts so often that in the end they petrified him, as didthe Statue Don Giovanni. Martin was a species of reversed Turner. Hespied the good that was in evil, the beauty in bituminous blacks. Heis the painter of black music, the deifier of Beelzebub, and also onewho caught the surge and thunder of the Old Testament, its majesty andits savagery. As an illustrator of sacred history, the world may oneday return to John Martin. 

ZORN

Anders Zorn--what's in a name? Possibly the learned and amiable fatherof Tristram Shandy or that formidable pedant Professor Slawkenbergiusmight find much to arouse his interest in the patronymic of the greatSwedish painter and etcher. What Zorn means in his native tongue we donot profess to know; but in German it signifies anger, wrath, rage. Now, the Zorn in life is not an enraged person--unless some ladysitter asks him to paint her as she is not. He is, as all will testifywho have met him, a man of rare personal charm and sprightly humour. He, it may be added, calls yellow yellow, and he never paints apoliceman like a poet. In a word, a man of robust, normal vision, arealist and an artist. False realism with its hectic, Zola-likeromanticism is distasteful to Zorn. He is near Degas among theFrenchmen and Zuloaga among the new Spaniards; near them in a certainforthright quality of depicting life, though unlike them in technicaland individual methods. 

Yes, Zorn, that crisp, bold, short name, which begins with a letterthat abruptly cuts both eye and ear, quite fits the painter'spersonality, fits his art. He is often ironic. Some fanciful theoristhas said that the letters Z and K are important factors in the careerof the men who possess them in their names. Camille Saint-Saëns hasspoken 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 AndersZorn would be the first to laugh the idea out of doors. 

We recall an exhibition a few years ago at Venice in the art galleryof the Giardino Reale. Zorn had a place of honour among the boilingand bubbling Secessionists; indeed, his work filled a large room. Andwhat work! Such a giant's revel of energy. Such landscapes, riotous, sinister, and lovely. Such women! Here we pause for breath. Zorn'sconception of womanhood has given offence to many idealists, who donot realise that once upon a time our forebears were furry andindulged in arboreal habits. Zorn can paint a lady; he has signed manygentle and aristocratic canvases. 

But Zorn is also too sincere not to paint what he sees. Some of hismodels are of the earth, earthy; others step toward you with thecandid majesty of a Brunhilda, naked, unashamed, and regal. They areall vital. We recall, too, the expressions, shocked, amazed, evendazed, of some American art students who, fresh from their goldenVenetian dreams, faced the uncompromising pictures of a man who hadfaced the everyday life of his day. For these belated visionaries, whose ideal in art is to painfully imitate Giorgione, Titian, orTiepolo, this modern, with his rude assault upon the nerves, must seema very iconoclast. Yet Zorn only attempts to reproduce the lifeencircling him. He is a child of his age. He, too, has a perception ofbeauty, but it is the beauty that may be found by the artist with anardent, unspoiled gaze, the curious, disquieting beauty of our time. Whistler saw it in old Venetian doorways as well as down Chelsea wayor at Rotherhithe. Zorn sees it in some corner of a wood, in somesudden flex of muscle or intimate firelit interior. And he loves todepict the glistening curves of his big model as she stands in thesunlight, a solid reproach to physical and moral anæmia. A pagan, byApollo!

As an etcher the delicacy of his sheathed lion's paw is the principalquality that meets the eye, notwithstanding the broad execution. Etching is essentially an impressionistic art. Zorn is animpressionist among etchers. He seems to attack his plate not with thefinesse of a meticulous fencing-master but like a Viking, with a broadBerserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in hisveins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these littleprints--some of them miracles of printing--and you may discern theirdelicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. FitzroyCarrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among otherthings wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that theseetchings--paradoxical in their coarseness of means and fineness ofeffect--manifest the master at his best. "

Coarseness of means and fineness of effect--the phrase is a happy one. Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies themeans. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits proveit. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felthonoured and amused--or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, forexample, would not have been pleased with the story of his life asetched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary--one is tempted tosay as acid--as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch ofStrindberg's mad fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty wayof saying things about his friends and in front of their faces. Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truthconcerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer ofFrance? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, itssuper-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontificalexpression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania ofcertitude"--here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche'ssuperman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker;also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brainand temperament as was Renan's?

He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, twoimpressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb inits suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens and his model isexcellent; we prefer the portrait. The Evening Girl Bathing is rare intreatment--simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her back, and weare grateful, for it is a beautiful back. The landscape is asevanescent as Whistler, the printing is in a delicate key. The BerlinGallery contains a Zorn, a portrait striking in its reality. Itrepresents Miss Maja von Heyne wearing a collar of skins. She couldrepresent the Maja of Ibsen's epilogue, When We Dreamers Awake; Maja, the companion of the bear hunter, Ulfheim. As etched, we miss themassiveness, the rich, vivid colour, 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 severalbig-wigs of several nations. An oil-painting is an impressionisticaffair, showing some overblown girls dressing after their bath. Thesun flecks their shoulders, but otherwise seems rather inclined toretire modestly. Evidently not the midnight sun. 

We have barely indicated the beauties in which the virile spirit ofAnders Zorn comes out at you from the wall--a healthy, large-hearted, girted Swede is this man with the Z. 

BRANGWYN

The name of Frank Brangwyn may fall upon unresponsive ears; yet he hasa Continental reputation and is easily the foremost Englishimpressionist. New York has seen but little of his work; if we mistakenot, 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 WunderlichGalleries. We call them extraordinary not alone because of their size, but also because Brangwyn is practically the first among latter-dayartists to apply boldly to etching the methods of the impressionists. Etching in its essential nature is an impressionistic art. We do notmean to assert that Brangwyn uses the dot or dash or broken dabs inhis plates, for the very good reason that he is working in black andwhite; nevertheless a glance at his plates will show you a new way ofconquering old prejudices. Whistler it was who railed at largeetchings. He was not far wrong. In the hands of the majority ofetchers a large plate is an abomination, diffused in interest, coarseof line; but Brangwyn is not to be considered among this majority. Heis a big fellow in everything. Besides, Whistler was using thefamiliar argument, _pro doma sua_. The same may be said of Poe, whosimply would not hear of a long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, who lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out in the gorgeoustropical land, the thither side of sonatas and other tonal animals. 

Because Catullus and Sappho did not write epics that is no reason whyDante should not. It is the old story of the tailless fox. Brangwyn aswell as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist. Forexquisite 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 inatmosphere. Or at the Old Hammersmith--"swell, " as the artist slanggoes. The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we haveused 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 ofmass. What could be more tangibly massive than the plate calledBreaking Up of the Hannibal? Here is a theme which Turner in TheFighting Téméraire made truly poetic, and Seymour Haden in hisAgamemnon preserved more than a moiety of sentiment, not to mentionthe technical prowess displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly oldvessel of Brangwyn's there is no beauty. However, it is hugelyimpressive. His landscapes are not too seldom hell-scapes. 

The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering. The Roadto Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled. How many haverealised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute? It is oneof the most interesting of Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision ofSaint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in theDutchman 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 Buildingof the New Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, recalls, astreated by the impressionistic brush of Brangwyn (for the needle seemstransformed into a paint-loaded spike), one of H. G. Wells's terrificsocialistic structures of the year 2009. Remember that Brangwyn isprimarily a painter, an impressionist. He sees largely. His dream ofthe visible world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world invisiblewith him) is one of patches and masses, of luminous shadows, ofanimated rhythms, of rich arabesques. He is sib to the Scotch. Hisfather is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled in Bruges. Frank saw much of the world before settling in London. He was born atBruges, 1867. The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-timedisciple of William Morris. He has manufactured glass, furniture, wall-paper, pottery. His curiosity is insatiable. He is a muraldecorator who in a frenzy could cover miles of space if some kindcivic corporation would but provide the walls. As the writer of thegraceful preface to the Wunderlich catalogue has it: "He gets thecharacter of his theme. His art is itself full of character. "Temperament, overflowing, passionate, and irresistible, is hiskey-note. In music he might have been a Fritz Delius, a RichardStrauss. He is an eclectic. He knows all schools, all methods. He isSpanish in his fierce relish of the open air, of the sights--and wealmost said sounds--of many lands, but the Belgian strain, the touchof the mystic and morose, creeps into his work. We have caught it morein his oils than etchings. It is not singular, then, that his smalletched plates do not hold the eye; they lack magnetic quality. It isthe Titan, rude and raging, dashing ink over an acre of white paper, that rivets you. The stock attitudes and gestures he does not giveyou; and it is doubtful if he will have an audience soon in America, where the sleek is king and prettiness is exalted over power. 

DAUMIER

Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, the curator of the Lenox Library printdepartment, shows nineteen portfolios which hold about seven hundredlithographs by Honoré Daumier. This collection is a bequest of thelate Mr. Lawrence, and we doubt if the Bibliothèque Nationale at Parissurpasses it; that is, in the number of detached examples. There theworks of the great artist are imbedded in the various publications forwhich he laboured so many years--such at _La Caricature, Les BeauxArts, L'Artiste, Les Modes Parisiennes, La Gazette Musicale, LeBoulevard, _ and _Masques et Visages_. The Lawrence lithographs arerepresentatives, though not complete; the catalogue compiled by LoysDelteil comprises 3, 958 plates; the paintings and drawings are alsonumerous. But an admirable idea of Daumier's versatile genius may begleaned at the Lenox Library, as all the celebrated series are there:Paris Bohemians, the Blue Stockings, the Railways, La Caricature, Croquis d'Expressions, Emotions Parisiennes, Actualités, LesBaigneurs, Pastorales, Moeurs Conjugales, the Don Quixote plates, Silhouettes, Souvenirs d'Artistes, Types Parisiens, the Advocates andJudges, and a goodly number of the miscellanies. Altogether anadequate exhibition. 

Honoré Daumier, who died February 11, 1879, was almost the last of thegiants of 1830, though he outlived many of them. Not affiliated withthe Barbizon group--though he was a romantic in his hatred of thebourgeois--several of these painters were intimate friends; indeed, Corot was his benefactor, making him a present of a cottage atValmondois (Seine-et-Oise), where the illustrator died. He was blindand lonely at the end. Corot died 1875; Daubigny, his companion, 1878;Millet, 1875, and Rousseau, with whom he corresponded, died 1867. In1879 Flaubert still lived, working heroically upon that monument ofhuman inanity, Bouvard et Pécuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had justpublished a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerouscharlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Cézanne was only abad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forcespronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Gérôme andhis mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin andChasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for mediocrity. And Daumier, inwhom there was something of Michael Angelo and Courbet, was admiredonly as a clever caricaturist, the significance of his paintingsescaping all except a few. Corot knew, Daubigny knew, as earlierDelacroix knew; and Balzac had said: "There is something of theMichael Angelo in this man!"

Baudelaire, whose critical _flair_ never failed him, wrote in hisCuriosités Esthétiques: "Daumier's distinguishing note as an artist ishis certainty. His drawing is fluent and easy; it is a continuousimprovisation. His powers of observation are such that in his work wenever find a single head that is out of character with the figurebeneath it. ... Here, in these animalised faces, may be seen and readclearly all the meannesses of soul, all the absurdities, all theaberrations of intelligence, all the vices of the heart; yet at thesame time all is broadly drawn and accentuated. " Nevertheless one mustnot look at too many of these caricatures. At first the Rabelaisianside of the man appeals; presently his bitterness becomes too acrid. Humanity is silly, repulsive; it is goat, pig, snake, monkey, andtiger; but there is something else. Daumier would see several sides. His pessimism, like Flaubert's, is deadly, but at times reaches thepitch of the heroic. He could have echoed Flaubert's famous sentence:"The ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope. " Yet what wit, whathumour, what humanity in Daumier! His Don Quixote and Sancho Panza areworth a wilderness of Dorés. And the Good Samaritan or The Drinkers. The latter is as jovial as Steen or Hals. 

A story went the rounds after his death which neatly illustrates hislack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, onintroducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to askless than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to theman. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture onthe easel, asked, "How much?" The artist, remembering Daubigny'swarning, answered, "Five thousand francs. " The dealer immediatelybought it, and on demanding to see something else, Daumier put anothercanvas on the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yankee againasked the price. The poor artist was perplexed. He had received noinstructions from Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when thequestion was repeated he hesitated, and his timidity getting thebetter of him, he replied: "Five hundred francs. " "Don't want it;wouldn't take it as a gift, " said the dealer. "I like the otherbetter. Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures, " and he wentaway satisfied that a man who sold so cheaply was not much of anartist. This anecdote, which we heard second hand from Daubigny, maybe a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny into fits oflaughter. It may be surmised that, despite his herculean labours, extending over more than half a century, Daumier never knew how tomake or save money. 

He was born at Marseilles in 1808. His father was a third-rate poetwho, suspecting his own gift, doubted the talent of his son, thoughthis talent was both precocious and prodigious. The usual thinghappened. Daumier would stick at nothing but his drawing; the attemptto force him into law studies only made him hate the law and lawyersand that hatred he never ceased to vent in his caricatures. He knockedabout until he learned in 1829 the technics of lithography; then hesoon became self-supporting. His progress was rapid. He illustratedfor the Boulevard journals; he caricatured Louis Philippe and was sentto jail, Sainte-Pélagie, for six months. Many years afterward heattacked with a like ferocity Napoleon III. 

Look at his frontispiece--rather an advertisement--of Victor Hugo'sLes Châtiments. It is as sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book, title displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a travesty of theNapoleonic beak. Daumier was a power in Paris. Albert Wolff, thecritic of _Figaro_, tells how he earned five francs each time heprovided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and Philipon, who foundedseveral journals, actually claimed a share in Daumier's successbecause he wrote some of the silly dialogues to his plates. 

Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, theForains--who was it that called Forain "Degas encaricature"?--Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a politicalpamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-rakerof genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled byOffenbach in La Belle Hélène. But there were other sides to hisgenius. Tiring of the hurly-burly of journalism, he retired in 1860 todevote himself to painting. 

His style has been pronounced akin to that of Eugène Carrière; hissense of values on a par with Goya's and Rembrandt's (that Shop Windowof his in the Durand-Ruel collection is truly Rembrandtesque). Thisfeeling for values was so remarkable that it enabled him to produce animpression with three or four tones. The colours he preferred weregrays, browns, and he manipulated his blacks like a master. Mauclairdoes not hesitate to put Daumier among the great painters of the pastcentury on the score of his small canvases. "They contain all hisgifts of bitter and profound observation, all the mastery of hisdrawings, to which they add the attractions of rich and intensecolour, " declares Mauclair. Doubtless he was affected by the influenceof Henri Monnier, but Daumier really comes from no one. He belongs tothe fierce tribe of synics and men of exuberant powers, like Goya andCourbet. A born anarch of art, he submitted to no yoke. He would havesaid with Anacharsis Cloots: "I belong to the party of indignation. "He was a proud individualist. That he had a tender side, a talent forfriendship, may be noted in the affectionate intercourse he maintainedfor years with Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Dupré, Geoffroy, the sculptorPascal, and others. He was very impulsive and had a good heart withall his misanthropy, for he was an idealist reversed. The etching ofhim by Loys Delteil is thus described by a sympathetic commentator:"Daumier was very broad-shouldered, his head rather big, with slightlysunken eyes, which must, however, have had an extraordinary power ofpenetration. Though the nose is a little heavy and inelegant, theprojecting forehead, unusually massive like that of Victor Hugo or ofBeethoven and barred with a determined furrow, reveals the greatthinker, the man of lofty and noble aspirations. The rather long hair, thrown backward, adds to the expression of the fine head; and finallythe beard worn collarwise, according to the prevailing fashion, givesto Daumier's face the distinctive mark of his period. " This etchedportrait may be seen in several states at the Lenox Library. 

LALANNE'S ETCHINGS

How heavily personality counts in etching may be noted in the etchedwork of Maxime Lalanne which is at the Keppel Galleries. This skilfulartist, so deft with his needle, so ingenious in fancy, escapes greatdistinction by a hair's breadth. He is without that salt ofindividuality that is so attractive in Whistler. Of him Hamertonwrote: "No one ever etched so gracefully as Maxime Lalanne; ... He isessentially a true etcher... There have been etchers of greater power, of more striking originality, but there has never been an etcher equalto him in a certain delicate elegance. " This is very amiable, andJoseph Pennell is quite as favourable in his judgment. "His ability, "wrote Mr. Pennell in Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, "to express agreat building, a vast town, or a delicate little landscape has neverbeen equalled, I think, by anybody but Whistler. " Mr. Pennell modestlyomits his own name; but the truth is that Pennell is as excellent ifnot more individual a draughtsman as Lalanne, and when it comes tovision, to invention, and to the manipulation of the metal he is thesuperior of the Frenchman. The American etcher rates Lalanne's linesabove Titian's. Whistler and Titian would be big companions indeed forthe clever-mannered and rather pedantic Lalanne. 

Let us admit without balking at Hamerton that his line is graceful. Hebelongs to the old-fashioned school which did not dream, much lessapprove, of modern tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne etching isas clean and vivid as a photograph (not an "art" photograph). It isalso as hard. Atmosphere, in the material as well as the poetic sense, is missing. His skies are disappointing. Those curly-cue clouds aremeaningless, and the artist succeeds better when he leaves a blank. Atleast some can fill it with the imagination. Another grave defect isthe absence of modulation in his treatment of a landscape and itslinear perspective. Everything seems to be on the same plane ofinterest, nor does he vary the values of his blacks--in foreground, middle distance, and the upper planes the inking is often in the sameviolent key. Such a capital plate, for example, which depicts a firein the port of Bordeaux is actually untrue in its values. Dramatic infeeling and not without a note here and there of Rembrandt, thisparticular composition fails, just fails to hit the bull's-eye. 

After all, we must judge a man in his genre, as Keppel _père_ puts it. Maxime Lalanne's style is that of a vanished generation in etching. Hewas a contemporary of Meryon, but that unhappy man of genius taughthim nothing. Born at Bordeaux in 1827, Lalanne died in 1886. He was apupil of Jean Gigoux (1806-94), a painter whose gossipy souvenirs(1885) pleased Paris and still please the curious. (Gigoux it was whoremained in Balzac's house when the novelist died; though he was notvisiting the master of the house. ) From this painter Lalanne evidentlyimbibed certain theories of his art which he set forth in his Treatiseon Etching (1866). 

Strangely enough, illustrator as he was, his transpositions into blackand white of subjects by Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and manyothers are not so striking either in actual technique or individualgrasp as his original pieces. Constable, for instance, is thin, diffuse, and without richness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a manas Lucas, we recognise the real medium for translating the Englishpainter. A master of the limpid line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bitof Amsterdam or a distant view of Bordeaux, or that delicious prospecttaken on a spot somewhere below the Pont Saint-Michel, with the PontNeuf and the Louvre in the background. He had a feeling for thoseformal gardens which have captured within their enclosure a moiety ofnature's unstudied ease. The plate called Aux Environs de Parisreveals this. And what slightly melancholy tenderness there is in LeCanal à Pont Sainte-Maxence. There are several states of the "Villers"etching, an attractive land and seascape, marred, however, by theclumsy sameness of the blacks in the foreground. 

Without possessing Meryon's grim power in the presentation of oldParis streets and tumble-down houses, Lalanne has achieved severalremarkable plates of this order. One is his well-known Rue desMarmousets. This street is almost as repellent-looking as RueMouffetard at its worst period. Ancient and sinister, its reputationwas not enticing. In it once dwelt a pastry cook who, taking his cronythe barber into his confidence, literally made mince-meat of astranger and sold the pies to the neighbours. 

Messire Jacques du Breul, in his Le Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris(1612), remarks, not without critical unction, in his quaint French:"De la chair d'icelui faisit des pastez qui se trouvoient meilleursque les aultres, d'autant que la chair de l'homme est plus délicate àcause de la nourriture que celle des aultres animaux. " Every one tohis taste, as the old politician said when he kissed the donkey. Whenyou study the Lalanne etching of this gruesome alley you almost expectto see at the corner Anatole France's famous cook-shop with itsdelectable 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 notconvincing, the composition does not hang together; the eye vainlyseeks focussing centres of interest. Beraldi was right when he saidthat Lalanne has not left one surpassing plate, one of which the worldcan say: There is a masterpiece! Yet is Maxime Lalanne among theLittle Masters of characteristic etching. His appeal is popular, he iseasily comprehended of the people. 

LOUIS LEGRAND

The etched work of the brilliant Frenchman Louis Legrand is at lastbeginning to be appreciated in this country. French etchings, unlessby painter-etchers, have never been very popular with us. We admireMeryon and Helleu's drypoints, Bracquemond, Jacquemart; Félix Buhothas a following; Lalanne and Daubigny too; but in comparison with thedemand for Rembrandt, Whistler, Seymour Haden, or Zorn the Paris menare not in the lead. There is Rops, for example, whose etchings may becompared to Meryon's; yet who except a few amateurs seeks Rops? LouisLegrand is now about forty-five, at the crest of his career, aversatile, spontaneous artist who is equally happy with pigments orthe needle. His pastels are much sought, but his dry-points havegained for him celebrity. Though a born colourist, the primary gift ofthe man is his draughtsmanship. His designs, swift and supplenotations of the life around him, delight the eye by reason of theirpersonal touch and because of the intensely human feeling that heinfuses into every plate. Legrand was one of the few pupils ofFélicien Rops, and technically he has learned much of his master; buthis way of viewing men and women and life is different from that ofthe Belgian genius. He has irony and wit and humour--the two we seldombracket--and he has pity also; he loves the humble and despised. Hisportraits of babies, the babies of the people, are captivating. Imagine a Rops who has some of Millet's boundless sympathy for hisfellow-humans and you have approximately an understanding of LouisLegrand. 

He is a native of Dijon, the city that gave birth to Bossuet, butLegrand is not that kind of Burgundian. Several critics pretend to seein his work the characteristics of his native Côte d'Or; that, however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he isexuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that he has abundantbrains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals. Like Whistler, hisprincipal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technicalprocedures. His method of work is said to be simplicity itself;obsessed by his very definite visions, he transfers them to thescratched plate with admirable celerity. Dry-point etching is hisprincipal medium. With his needle he has etched Montmartre, itscabarets, its angels--in very earthly disguise--its orators, poets, and castaways, and its visiting tourists--"God's silly sheep. " He hasillustrated a volume of Edgar Poe's tales that displays a _macabre_imagination. His dancers are only second to those of Edgar Degas, andseen from an opposite side. His peasants, mothers, and children, aboveall, babies, reveal an eye that observes and a brain that canco-ordinate the results of this piercing vision. Withal, he is a poetwho extracts his symbols from everyday life. 

This is what Camille Mauclair said of him at the time of his début:

"An admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and apainter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled theartists of to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet andDegas have revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing thepainters from obsolete laws and guiding them toward truth and frankpsychological study. Legrand is full of them without resembling them. We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division oftones, study of complementary colours] impressionism has brought usnovelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in thechoice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite ofhis symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group ifit were not that any kind of classification in art is useless andinaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumeswith the most seductive qualities. "

Gustave Kahn, the symbolist poet who was introduced to the Englishreading world in one of the most eloquent pages of George Moore, thinks that Legrand is frankly a symbolist. We side with Mauclair innot trying to pin this etcher down to any particular formula. He isanything he happens to will at the moment, symbolist, poet, and alsoshockingly frank at times. Take the plate with a pun for a title, Lepaing quotidien ("paing" is slang for "poing, " a blow from the fist, and may also mean the daily bread). A masculine brute is with clinchedfist about to give his unfortunate partner her daily drubbing. He iswell dressed. His silk hat is shiny, his mustache curled in the trueAdolphe fashion. His face is vile. The woman cries aloud and protectsherself with her hands. In Marthe Baraquin, by Rosny senior, you willfind the material for this picture, though Legrand found it years agoin the streets. Unpleasant, truly, yet a more potent sermon on man'scruelty to woman than may be found in a dozen preachments, fictions, or the excited outpourings at a feminist congress. Legrand presentsthe facts of the case without comment, except the irony--such dismalirony!--of the title. In this he is the true pupil of Rops. 

However, he does not revel long among such dreary slices of life. ThePoe illustrations are grotesque and shuddering, but after all makebelieve. The plate of The Black Cat piles horror on horror's head(literally, for the demon cat perches on the head of the corpse) andis, all said, pictorial melodrama. The Berenice illustration is, weconfess, a little too much for the nerves, simply because in amasterly manner Legrand has exposed the most dreadful moment of thestory (untold by Poe, who could be an artist in his tact of omission). The dental smile of the cataleptic Berenice as her necrophilic cousinbends over the coffin is a testimony to a needle that in this instancematches Goya's and Rops's in its evocation of the horrific. We turnwith relief to the ballet-girl series. The impression gained from thisalbum is that Legrand sympathises with, nay loves, his subject. Degas, the greater and more objective artist, nevertheless allows to siftthrough his lines an inextinguishable hatred of these girls who labourso long for so little; and Degas did hate them, as he hated all thatwas ugly in daily life, though he set forth this ugliness, thismediocrity, this hatred in terms of beautiful art. Legrand sees theugliness, but he also sees the humanity of the _ballateuse_. She is awoman who is brought up to her profession with malice aforethought byher parents. These parents are usually noted for their cupidity. Weneed not read the witty history of the Cardinal family to discoverthis repellent fact. Legrand sketches the dancer from the moment whenher mother brings her, a child, to undergo the ordeal of the firstlesson. 

The tender tot stands hesitating in the doorway; one hand whileholding the door open seems to grasp it as the last barrier of defencethat stands between her and the strange new world. She is attired inthe classical figurante's costume. Behind, evidently pushing herforward, is the grim guardian, a bony, forbidding female. Although youdo not see them, it is an easy feat to imagine the roomful of girlsand dancing master all staring at the new-comer. The expression on thechild's face betrays it; instinctively, like the generality ofembarrassed little girls, her hand clasps her head. In less than aminute she will weep. 

Another plate, L'ami des Danseuses, is charged with humanity. Theviolinist who plays for the ballet rehearsals sits resting, and facinghim are two young dancers, also sitting, but stooping to relieve theirstrained spines and the tendons of their muscular legs. The old fellowis giving advice from the fulness of a life that has been not tooeasy. The girls are all attention. It is a genre bit of distinction. Upon the technical virtuosity in which this etcher excels we shall notdwell. Some of his single figures are marvels. The economy of line, the massing of lights and darks, the vitality he infuses into a womanwho walks, a man who works in the fields, a child at its mother'sbreast, are not easily dealt with in a brief study. We prefer to notehis more general qualities. His humour, whether in delineating astupid soldier about to be exploited by camp followers, or in hisAnimales, is unforced. It can be Rabelaisian and it can be a record ofsimple animal life, as in the example with the above title. A cowstands on a grassy shore; near by a stolid peasant girl sits slicingbread and eating it. Cow and girl, grass and sky and water are woveninto 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, whohas a child at her breast. A cow nuzzles her apron, the fourth memberof this happy group. The Son of the Carpenter is another peasantstudy, but the transposition of the Holy Family to our century. Aslight nimbus about the mother's head is the only indication that thisis not a humble household somewhere in France. Maternal Joy, MaterInviolata are specimens of a sane, lovely art which celebrate thejoys, dolors, and exaltations of motherhood. We prefer this side ofthe art of Legrand to his studies of sinister jail-birds, _hetairai_, noctambules, high kickers, and private bars, the horrors of Parisiannight life. Whatever he touches he vivifies. His leaping, audaciousline is like the narrative prose of a Maupassant or a Joseph Conrad. Every stroke tells. 

His symbolical pictures please us least. They doubtless signify no endof profound things, yet to us they seem both exotic and puerile. We goback to the tiny dancers, tired to sleepiness, who sit on a sofawaiting to be called. Poor babies! Or to the plate entitled Douleur. Or to the portraits of sweet English misses--as did Constantin Guys, Legrand has caught the precise English note--or any of the childrenpieces. If he knows the psychology of passion, knows the most intimatedetail of the daily life of _les filles_, Legrand is master too of thepsychology of child life. This will endear him to English and Americanlovers of art, though it is only one of his many endowments. His witkeeps him from extremes, though some of his plates are not forpuritans; his vivid sympathies prevent him from falling into thesterile eccentricities of so many of his contemporaries; if he iscynical he is by the same taken soft-hearted. His superb handling ofhis material, with a synthetic vision superadded, sets apart LouisLegrand in a profession which to-day is filled with farceurs andfakers and with too few artists by the grace of God. 

GUYS, THE ILLUSTRATOR

Practitioners of the noble art of illustration are, as we know, modestmen, but no matter the degree of their modesty they are all distancedby the record in shyness still maintained by Constantin Guys. Thisartist was once a living protest against Goethe's assertion that onlyfools are modest, and the monument recently erected to his memory inParis is provocation enough to bring him ferrying across the Styx toenter a disclaimer in the very teeth of his admirers. So set in hisanonymity was he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, wasforced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to theartist as C. G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guysin a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his boldsketches in the _Illustrated London News_, the fiery little manresented the praise as an outrage. Nor was this humility a pose. Hislife long he was morbidly nervous, as was Meryon, as was Cézanne; buthe was neither half mad, like the great etcher, nor a cenobite, as wasthe painter of Aix. Few have lived in the thick of life as did Guys. To employ the phrase of Turgenieff, life, like grass, grew over hishead. In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in Londonparks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seenand an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restlesswanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long lifehe still drew, as did Hokusai. 

Who was he? Where did he receive his artistic training? Baudelaire didnot tell, nor Théophile Gautier. He went through the Crimean campaign;he lived in the East, in London and Paris. Not so long ago the artcritic Roger Marx, while stopping at Flushing, Holland, discovered hisbaptismal certificate, which reads thus: "Ernestus Adolphus HyacinthusConstantinus Guys, born at Flushing December 3, 1805, of ElizabethBétin and François Lazare Guys, Commissary of the French Marine. " Thebaptism occurred January 26, 1806, and revealed the fact that he hadfor godfather an uncle who held a diplomatic position. Guys told hisfriends that his full family name was Guys de Sainte-Hélène--which mayhave been an amiable weakness of the same order as that of Barbeyd'Aurevilly and of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, both of whom boasted nobleparentage. However, Guys was little given to talk of any sort. He wasloquacious only with his pencil, and from being absolutely forgottenafter the downfall of the Second Empire to-day every scrap of his workis being collected, even fought for, by French and German collectors. Yet when the Nadar collection was dispersed, June, 1909, in Paris, hisaquarelles went for a few francs. Félix Fénéon and several others nowown complete sets. In New York there are a few specimens in thepossession of private collectors, though the Lenox Library, as a rulerich in such prints, has only reproductions to show. 

The essay of Charles Baudelaire, entitled Le Peintre de la VieModerne, to be found in Volume III of his collected works (L'ArtRomantique), remains thus far the standard reference study concerningGuys, though deficient in biographical details. Other critical studiesare by Camille Mauclair, Roger Marx, Richard Muther, and GeorgeGrappe; and recently Elizabeth Luther Cary in a too short butadmirably succinct article characterised the Guys method in thisfashion: "He defined his forms sharply and delicately, and used withinhis bounding line the subtlest variation of light and shade. Hisworkmanship everywhere is of the most elusive character, and he is amaster of the art of reticence. " Miss Cary further speaks of his"gentle gusto of line in motion, which lately has captivated us in thepaintings of the Spaniard Sorolla, and long ago gave Botticelli andCarlo Crivelli the particular distinction they had in common. "Mauclair mentions "the most animated water-colour drawings of Guys, his curious vision of nervous elegance and expressive skill, " andnames it the impressionism of 1845, while Dr. Muther christened himthe Verlaine of the crayon because, like Verlaine, he spent his lifebetween the almshouse and a hospital, so said the German critic. Furthermore, Muther believes it was no mere chance that made ofBaudelaire his admirer; in both the decadent predominated--which isgetting the cart before the horse. Rops, too, is recalled by Guys, whodepicted the gay grisette of the faubourgs as well as the nocturnalpierreuse of the fortifications. "Guys exercised on Gavarni aninfluence which brought into being his Invalides du sentiment, hisLorettes vielles, and his Fourberies de femmes. "

It is not quite fair to compare Guys with Rops, or indeed with eitherGavarni or Daumier. These were the giants of French illustration atthat epoch. Guys was more the skirmisher, the sharpshooter, thereporter of the moment, than a creative master of his art. The streetor the battle-field was his atelier; speed and grace and fidelity hischief claims to fame. He never practised his art within the walls ofacademies; the material he so vividly dealt with was the stuff oflife. The very absence of school in his illustrations is their chiefcharm; a man of genius this, self-taught, and a dangerous precedentfor fumblers or those of less executive ability. From the huge mass ofhis work being unearthed from year to year he may be said to havelived crayon in hand. He is the first of a long line of newspaperillustrators. His profession was soldiering, and legend has it that heaccompanied Byron to Missolonghi. The official career of his fatherenabled the youth to see much of the world--Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, and perhaps India. On returning to France he became anofficer of dragoons and for some time led the life of a dandy and manabout town. With his memory, of which extraordinary tales are told, hemust have stored up countless films of impressions, all of which wereutilised years later. 

In 1845 we find him installed at Paris, though no longer in the army. Then it was he began to design. He became contributor to manyperiodicals, among the rest the _Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_. For the former journal he went to the Crimean war as accredited artcorrespondent. The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now mostsought for by his admirers. He is said to have originated theexpression "taken on the spot, " in the title of one of hisinstantaneous sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure eye andmanual dexterity. The Balaklava illustration is as striking in its wayas Tennyson's lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and moreugly realism. Like the trained reporter that he was, Guys followed abattle, recording the salient incidents of the engagement, notoveremphasising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot or Goyaor Raffet, but telling the truth as he saw it, with a phlegm moreBritish and German than French. Though he had no Dutch blood in hisveins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of Amsterdam than the manof Paris. He noted the changing and shocking scenes of hospital life, and sympathy without sentimentality drops from his pen. He is drilyhumorous as he shows us some plumaged General peacocking on foot, orswelling with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his horse. Andsuch horses! Without a hint of the photographic realism of a Muybridgeand his successors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those seen bythe normal vision. The witching movement of beautiful Arabian steedshas not had many such sympathetic interpreters. 

In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of the courts of theSublime Porte itself, of the fête of Baïram, which closes the fast ofRamadan. His Turkish women are not all houris, but they bear the stampof close study. They are pretty, indolent, brainless creatures. In hismost hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys isever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention andatones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; hisdrawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo, yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually, but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement, with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, henaturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society out of doorsbecame his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at Brighton or atBaden-Baden, the sinuous fugues of his pencil reveal to succeedinggenerations how the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself todeath. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys. They were kindred spirits;both recognised and portrayed the snob mundane. 

As he grew older Guys became an apparition in the life of Paris. Thesmash-up of the Empire destroyed the beloved world he knew so well. Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he couldn't actuallyenjoy the luxury of the rich he could reproduce its images on hisdrawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went aboutdressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a noddingacquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little'sreign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness toall comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feastthis watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys didnot waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to godown-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, andas his earning powers grew less some imp of the perverse entered hisall too solitary life. With this change of habits came a change oftheme. Henceforth he drew _filles_, the outcasts, the scamps andconvicts and the poor wretches of the night. He is now a forerunner ofToulouse-Lautrec and an entire school. This side of his careerprobably caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul Verlaine. Absinthe, the green fairy of so many poets and artists, was nostranger to Guys. 

In 1885, after dining with Nadar, his most faithful friend, Guys wasrun over in the Rue du Havre and had his legs crushed. He was taken tothe Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer, dying at thevenerable age of eighty-seven, though far from being a venerableperson. Astonishing vitality! He did not begin to draw, that is, for aliving, until past forty. His method of work was simplicity itself, declare those who watched him at work. He seemingly improvised hisaquarelles; his colour, sober, delicate, was broadly washed in; hisline, graceful and modulated, does not suggest the swiftness of hisexecution. He could be rank and vulgar, and he was gentle as a refinedchild that sees the spectacle of life for the first time. Thebitterness of Baudelaire's flowers of evil he escaped until he was insenile decadence. In the press of active life he registered the shockof conflicting arms, the shallow pride of existence and the mere joyof living, all in a sane manner that will ever endear him to lovers ofart. 

George Moore tells the following anecdote of Degas: Somebody wassaying he did not like Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a longwhile. "If you were to show Raphael, " he said at last, "a Daumier, hewould admire it; he would take off his hat; but if you were to showhim a Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, 'That is my fault. '"

If you could show Raphael a croquis by Constantin Guys he wouldprobably look the other way, but Degas would certainly admire and buythe drawing. 

XI. IMPRESSIONISM

I - MONET

The impressionists claim as their common ancestors Claude Lorraine, Watteau, Turner, Monticelli. Watteau, Latour, Largillière, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors in the matters ofdesign, subject, realism, study of life, new conceptions of beauty andportraiture. Mythology, allegory, historic themes, the neo-Greek andthe academic are under the ban--above all, the so-called "grandstyle. " Impressionism has actually elevated genre painting to theposition occupied by those vast, empty, pompous, frigid, smoky, classic pieces of the early nineteenth century. However, it must notbe forgotten that modern impressionism is only a new technique, a newmethod of execution--we say new, though that is not exactly the case. The home of impressionism is in the East; it may be found in the vividpatterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its latest avatar it isthe expression of contemporaneous reality. Therein lies its truepower. The artist who turns his face only to the past--his work willnever be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and penthe manners of the present is the task of great painters andnovelists. Actualists alone count in the future. The mills of theantique grind swiftly--like the rich, they will be always with us--butthey only grind out imitations; and from pseudo-classic marbles andpseudo-"beautiful" pictures may Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, deliverus. 

That able and sympathetic writer D. S. MacColl has tersely summed up inhis Vision of the Century the difference between the old and newmanner of seeing things. "The old vision had beaten out three separateacts--the determination of the edges and limits of things, theshadings and the modellings of the spaces in between with black andwhite, and the tintings of those spaces with their local colour. Thenew vision that had been growing up among the landscape painterssimplifies as well as complicates the old. For purposes of analysis itsees 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 lookedfirst for colour and for a different colour in each patch of shade orlight. The old painting followed the old vision by its three processesof drawing the contours, modelling the chiaroscura in dead colour, andfinally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The newanalysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more orless fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them asthey are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Localcolour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone but inhue. "

To the layman who asked, "What is impressionism?" Mauclair has giventhe most succinct answer in his book L'Impressionisme: "In nature, " hedeclares, "no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the object ispure illusion; the only creative source of colour is the sunlight, which envelops all things and reveals them, according to the hours, with infinite modifications... The idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours; this is the senseof values; a value is the degree of light or dark intensity whichpermits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearerthan another. And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation ofnature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it has only atits disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the onlymeans that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. Colour istherefore the procreatrix of design... Colours vary with the intensityof light... Local colour is an error; a leaf is not green, a treetrunk is not brown... According to the time of day, _i. E. _, accordingto the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientificallycalled the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown ofthe tree are modified... The composition of the atmosphere... Is thereal subject of the picture... Shadow is not absence of light, butlight of a different quality and of a different value. Shadow is notpart of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinatedto a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays ofthe spectrum vibrate with a different speed. Painting should thereforetry to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms ofsolar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tonescomposed of bitumen and black... In a picture representing an interiorthe source of light [windows] may not be indicated; the lightcirculating, 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 influenceeach other. Their colours will affect each other even if the surfacesbe dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a verysubtle but mathematically exact exchange between this blue and thisred; and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the twocolours a tone of reflections composed of both. These compositereflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the twoprincipal colours. 

"The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of thesolar spectrum and discard all the others;... He will, furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvastouches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet hasadded black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of thesecolours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlightupon the eye of the beholder. " This is called _dissociation_ of tones;and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? Wepaint nature, not the solar spectrum. 

Claude Monet has been thus far the most successful practitioner ofimpressionism; this by reason of his extraordinary analytical power ofvision and native genius rather than the researches of Helmholtz, Chevreul, and Rood. They gave him his scientific formulas after he hadworked out the problems. He studied Turner in London, 1870; then hismanner changed. He had been a devoted pupil of Eugène Boudin and couldpaint the discreet, pearly gray seascapes of his master. But Turnerand Watteau and Monticelli modified his style, changed his way ofenvisaging the landscape. Not Edouard Manet but Claude Monet was theinitiator of the impressionistic movement in France, and afterwitnessing the rout and confusion that followed in its wake one istempted to misquote Nietzsche (who said that the first and onlyChristian died on the cross) and boldly assert that there has been butone impressionist; his name, Monet. "He has arrived at painting bymeans of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colourspots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms ofobjects through the arabesque of their vibrations. " How his landscapesshimmer with the heat of a summer day! Truly, you can say of thesepictures that "the dawn comes up like thunder. " How his fogs, wet andclinging, seem to be the first real fogs that ever made misty acanvas! What hot July nights, with few large stars, has Monet notpainted! His series of hayricks, cathedrals, the Thames are preciousnotations of contemporary life; they state facts in terms of exquisiteartistic value; they resume an epoch. It is therefore no surprise tolearn that in 1874 Monet gave the name (so variously abused) to theentire movement when he exhibited a water piece on the Boulevard desCapucines entitled Impression: Soleil Levant. That title became acatchword usually employed in a derisive manner. Monet earlier hadresented the intrusion of a man with a name so like his, but succumbedto the influence of Monet. One thing can no longer becontroverted--Claude Monet is the greatest landscape and marinepainter of the second half of the last century. Perhaps time may alterthis limit clause. 

What Turgenieff most condemned in his great contemporary, Dostoïevsky--if the gentle Russian giant ever condemned any one--wasFeodor Mikhailovitch's taste for "psychological mole runs"; aninveterate burrowing into the dark places of humanity's soul. Now, ifthere is a dark spot in a highly lighted subject it is the question, Who was the first impressionist? According to Charles de Kay, Whistleronce told him that he, James the Butterfly, began the movement; whichis a capital and characteristic anecdote, especially if one recallsWhistler's boast made to a young etcher as to the initiative of Corot. Whistler practically said: "Before Corot was, I am!" And he adducedcertain canvases painted with the misty-edged trees long before--butwhy continue? Whistler didn't start Corot--apart from thechronological difficulties in the way--any more than Courbet and Manetstarted Whistler; yet both these painters played important rôles inthe American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as toClaude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly heattained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified hisown paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went toWatteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered onworship. And why not? In Turner, at the National Gallery, you may findthe principles of impressionism carried to extravagant lengths, andyears before Monet. Consider Rain, Steam and Speed--the Great WesternRailway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge inchromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection--awelter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school ofimpressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner orthe _pointillisme_ of Signac and Seurat may be recognised. And thereis a water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery called Honfleur, which has anticipated many traits of Boudin and the Manet we know whenhe had not forgotten Eugène Boudin's influence. 

Let us enjoy our Monet without too many "mole runs. " As De Kay pointedout, it was not necessary for Monet to go to London to see Constables. 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 istherefore doubly interesting to study the Monets at Durand-Ruel's. There are twenty-seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Promenadeà Trouville, and come down to the Charing Cross Bridge, 1904, and thetwo Waterloo Bridge effects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment andtechnique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as cool and composed asBoudin. Sincerity and beauty are in the picture--for we do not agreewith those who see in Monet only an unemotional recorder of variationsin light and tone. He can compose a background as well as any of hiscontemporaries, and an important fact is overlooked when Monet isjumbled indiscriminately with a lot of inferior men. Monet knew how to_draw_ before he handled pigment. Some lansdcape painters do not; manyimpressionists trust to God and their palette-knife; so the big menare sufferers. Monet, it may be noted, essayed many keys; hiscompositions are not nearly so monotonous as has been asserted. Whatdoes often exhaust the optic nerve is the violent impinging thereon ofhis lights. He has an eagle eye, we have not. Wagner had the facultyof attention developed to such an extraordinary pitch that with ourmore normal and weaker nerves he soon exhausts us in his flights. Toomuch Monet is like too much Wagner or too much sunshine. 

The breezy effect with the poplars painted flat is an example veryunlike Monet. The church of Varengeville at Dieppe (1880) is a classicspecimen; so is the Pourville beach (1882). What delicate greens inthe Spring (1885)! What fine distance, an ocean view, in the Pourvillepicture! Or, if you care for subdued harmonies, there is the ice floeat Vétheuil (1881). 

The London pictures tell of the older artist--not so vigorous, a veinof tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazingoptimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life--he is still arobust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life ofa landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in this prosaicage. Not so vain, so irritable as either Manet or Whistler, Monet'snerves have never prompted him to extravagances. Backbiters declarethat Monet is suffering from an optical degeneration--poor, overworkedword! Monet sees better, sees more keenly than his fellow-men. What amisfortune! Ibsen and Wagner suffered, too, from superior brains. IfMonet ever suffered seriously from a danger to his art itwas--success. He was abused in the beginning, but not as severely asManet. But success perched on Monet's palette. His pictures never seemto suggest any time but high noon, in spirit, at least. And he isnever sad. Yet, is there anything sadder under the sun than a soulincapable of sadness?

In his very valuable contribution to the history of the cause, Théodore Duret, the biographer and friend of Whistler and Manet has inhis Les Peintres Impressionistes held the scales very much in favourof Manet's priority in the field over Monet. It is true that in 1863Manet had drawn upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris byexhibiting his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympe--by no means arepresentative effort of the painter's genius, despite its diaboliccleverness. (It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach, andGoya. ) But his vision was in reality synthetic, not analytic; he was aprimitive; he belongs to the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. Hestudied Hals--and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock! Hemanipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things withthe higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionistuntil he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates. Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived byCharles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poeand Manet. To the painter the poet scornfully wrote: "You complainabout attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you moregenius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed byderision. And in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you thatthey are models, each in his own way, and in a very rich world, whileyou are only the first in the decrepitude of your art. " Sinister anddisquieting that last phrase, and for those who see in impressionismthe decadence of painting (because of the predominance given to theparts over the whole) it is a phrase prophetic. 

Manet is a classic. His genuine power--technically speaking--lies inthe broad, sabre-like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling_taches_ of the impressionists--of which the _reuctio ad absurdum_ ispointillisme. He lays on his pigments in sweeping slashes and hisdivisions are large. His significance for us does not alone reside inhis consummate mastery of form and colour, but in his forthrightexpression of the life that hummed about him. He is as actual as Hals. Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan Museum--is thereanything superficial about it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez, in its beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober handling ofvalues. The truth is that Manet dearly loved a fight, and being _chefd'école_, he naturally drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it issignificant that Duret did not give this virile spirit a place in hisnew volume, confining the estimate of his genius to the preface. Mauclair, on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his morecomprehensive and more scientific study, as he also includes the nameof Edgar Degas--Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and anew psychology. 

The title of impressionism has been a misleading one. If Degas is animpressionist, pray what then is Monet? Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne areimpressionists, and in America there is no impropriety in attachingthis handle to the works of Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W. L. Metcalf, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reid, Ernest Lawson, PaulCornoyer, Colin Campbell Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. ButManet, Degas! It would have been a happier invention to have calledthe 1877 group independents; independent they were, each man pursuinghis own rainbow. We may note an identical confusion in the mind of thepublic regarding the Barbizon school. Never was a group composed ofsuch dissimilar spirits. Yet people talk about Millet _and_ Breton, Corot _and_ Daubigny, Rousseau _and_ Dupré. They still say Goethe_and_ Schiller, Beethoven _and_ Mozart, Byron _and_ Shelley. It is theresult of mental inertia, this coupling of such widely disparatetemperaments. 

Nevertheless, divided tones and "screaming" palette do not always apicture make; mediocrity loves to mask itself behind artisticinnovations. For the world at large impressionism spellsimprovisation--an easy-going, slatternly, down-at-the-heel process, facile as well as factitious. Albert Wolff must have thought thesethings when he sat for his portrait to Manet. His surprise was greatwhen the artist demanded as many sittings as would have done thepainstaking Bonnat. Whistler shocked Ruskin when he confessed tohaving painted a nocturne in two days, but with a lifetime experiencein each stroke of the brush. Whistler was a swift worker, and while heclaimed the honour of being the originator of impressionism--didn't he"originate" Velasquez?--he really belongs to the preceding generation. He was impressionistic, if you will, yet not an impressionist. He wasJapanese and Spanish, never Watteau, Monticelli, Turner, or Monet. 

MacColl has pointed out the weakness of the scientific side ofimpressionism. Its values are strictly æsthetic; attempts to paint ona purely scientific basis have proved both monotonous and ludicrous. The experiments of the neo-impressionists (the 1885 group), of Signac, Seurat, were not very convincing. Van Rhysselberge, one of the fewpainters to-day who practise _pointillisme_, or the system of dots, isa gifted artist; so is Anquetin. The feminine group is headed by thename of Berthe Morisot (the wife of Eugène Manet, a brother of Edouardand the great granddaughter of Fragonard), a pupil of Manet, the mostindividual woman painter that ever lived; and Mary Cassatt, a pupil ofDegas, though more closely allied to the open-air school in hermethods. Miss Cassatt possesses a distinguished talent. As a schoolimpressionism has run down to a thin rill in a waste of sand. It ismore technical than personal, and while it was lucky to have such anexponent as Claude Monet, there is every reason to believe thatMonet's impressionism is largely the result of a peculiar penetratingvision. He has been imitated, and Maufra and Moret are carrying on histradition--yet there is but one Monet. 

We know that the spectral palette is a mild delusion and sometimes adangerous snare, that impressionism is in the remotest analysis but anew convention supplanting an old. Painters will never go back to themuddy palette of the past. The trick has been turned. The egg ofColumbus has been once more stood on end. Claude Monet has taught usthe "innocence of the eye, " has shown us how to paint air thatcirculates, water that sparkles. The sun was the centre of theimpressionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun. " A higher pitch inkey colour has been attained, shadows have been endowed with vitalhues. (And Leonardo da Vinci, wonderful landscapist, centuries agowrote learnedly of coloured shadows; every new discovery is only arediscovery. ) The "dim, religious light" of the studio has beenbanished; the average palette is lighter, is more brilliant. AndRembrandt is still worshipped; Raphael is still on his pedestal, andthe millionaire on the street continues to buy Bouguereau. The amateurwho honestly wishes to purge his vision of encrusted paintedprejudices we warn not to go too close to an impressionisticcanvas--any more than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg ofgunpowder. And let him forget those toothsome critical terms, decomposition, recomposition. His eyes, if permitted, will act forthemselves; there is no denying that the principles of impressionismsoundly applied, especially to landscape, catch the fleeting, many-hued charm of nature. It is a system of coloured stenography--inthe hands of a master. Woe betide the fumbler!

II - RENOIR

The secret of success is never to be satisfied; that is, never to besatisfied with your work or your success. And this idea seems to haveanimated Auguste Renoir during his long, honourable career of painter. In common with several members of the impressionistic group to whichhe belonged, he suffered from hunger, neglect, obloquy; but whenprosperity did at last appear he did not succumb to the most dangerousenemy that besets the artist. He fought success as he conqueredfailure, and his continual dissatisfaction with himself, the truecritical spirit, has led him to many fields--he has been portraitist, genre painter, landscapist, delineator of nudes, a marine painter anda master of still-life. This versatility, amazing andincontrovertible, has perhaps clouded the real worth of Renoir for thepublic. Even after acknowledging his indubitable gifts, the usualcritical doubting Thomas grudgingly remarks that if Renoir could notdraw like Degas, paint land and water like Monet or figures likeManet, he was a naturally endowed colourist. How great a colourist hewas may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum, where his big canvas, LaFamille Charpentier, is now hung. 

Charpentier was the publisher of Zola, Goncourt, Flaubert, and of thenewer realists. He was a man of taste, who cultivated friendships withdistinguished artists and writers. Some disappointment was experiencedat the recent public sale of his collection in Paris. The _clou_ ofthe sale was undoubtedly the portrait of his wife and two children. Itwas sold for the surprising sum of 84, 000 francs to M. Durand-Ruel, who acted in behalf of the Metropolitan Museum. Another canvas byRenoir fetched 14, 050 francs. A _sanguine_ of Puvis de Chavannesbrought 2, 050 francs, and 4, 700 francs was paid for a Cézanne picture. 

The Charpentier Family, originally entitled Portrait de MadameCharpentier et Ses Filles, was painted in 1878, first exhibited at theSalon of 1879, and there we saw and admired it. The passage of theyears has tempered the glistening brilliancies and audacious chromaticmodulations to a suave harmony that is absolutely fascinating. Thebackground is Japanese. Mme. Charpentier is seated on a canopysurrounded by furniture, flowers; under foot a carpet with arabesquedesigns. She throws one arm carelessly over some rich stuff; the handis painted with masterly precision. The other arm has dropped in herlap. She is an interesting woman of that fine maternal type so oftenencountered in real France--though not in French fiction, alas! Hergaze is upon her children, two adorable little girls. A superb dog, aSt. Bernard, with head resting on paws, looks at you with watchfuleyes. One of the girls sits upon his shaggy hide. The mother is inblack, a mellow reception robe, tulle and lace. White and blue are thecontrasting tones of the girls--the blue is tender. A chair is at theside of a lacquer table, upon which are flowers. Renoir flowers, dewy, blushing. You exclaim: "How charming!" It is normal French painting, not the painting of the schools with their false ideal of pseudo-Greekbeauty, but the intimate, clear, refined, and logical style of a manwho does not possess the genius of Manet, Degas, or Monet, but isnevertheless an artist of copiousness, charm, and originality. Charm;yes, that is the word. There is a voluptuous magnetism in his colourthat draws you to him whether you approve of his capricious designs ornot. The museum paid $18, 480 for the Charpentier portrait, and in1877, after an exposition in the rue Le Peletier, sixteen of hispaintings, many of them masterpieces, netted the mortifying sum of2, 005 francs. 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, February 25, 1840. Hisfather was a poor tailor with five children who went to Paris hopingto better his condition. At the age of twelve the boy was painting onporcelain--his father had picked up some rudiments of the art atLimoges. Auguste did so well, displayed such energy and taste, that hesoon fell to decorating blinds, and saved, in the course of fouryears, enough money to enable him to enter the atelier of Gleyre. There he met Sisley, Bazille--afterward shot in the Franco-Prussianwar--and Claude Monet. They became friends and later allies in theconflict with the Parisian picture public. Renoir made his firstoffering to the Salon in 1863. It was refused. It was a romanticbit--a nude lady reclining on a bed listening to the plucked music ofa guitar. It seems that the guitarist, and not the lady, was the causeof offence. It is a convention that a thousand living beings may lookat an undressed female in a picture, but no painted man may be allowedto occupy with her the same apartment. In 1864 Renoir triedagain--after all, the Salon, like our own academy, is amarket-place--and was admitted. He sent in an Esmeralda dancing. Boththese canvases were destroyed by the painter when he began to use hiseyes. In 1868 his Lise betrayed direct observation of nature, influenced by Courbet. Until 1873 he sent pictures to the Salon; thatyear he was shut out with considerable unanimity, for his offeringhappened to be an Algerian subject, a Parisian woman dressed inOriental costume, and--horrors!--the shadows were coloured. He wasbecome an impressionist. He had listened, or rather looked at thebaleful pyrotechnics of Monet, and so he joined the secessionists, though not disdaining to contribute annually to the Salon. In 1874 hisL'allee Cavalière au Bois de Boulogne was rejected, an act that wasevidently inspired by a desire to sacrifice Renoir because of theartistic "crimes" of Edouard Manet. Otherwise how explain why thiseasily comprehended composition, with its attractive figures, daringhues, and brilliant technique, came to have the door of the Salonclosed upon it?

The historic exposition at Nadar's photographic studio, on theBoulevard des Capucines, of the impressionists, saw Renoir in companywith Monet, Sisley, and the others. His La Danseuse and La Loge werereceived with laughter by the discerning critics. Wasn't this theexhibition of which Albert Wolff wrote that some lunatics were showingtheir wares, which they called pictures, etc. ? (No, it was in 1875. )From 1868 to 1877 Renoir closely studied nature and his landscapestook on those violet tones which gave him the nickname of MonsieurViolette. Previously he had employed the usual clear green with theyellow touches in the shadows of conventional _paysagistes_. ButPissarro, Monet, Sisley, and Renoir had discovered each for himselfthat the light and shade in the open air vary according to the hours, the seasons, the atmospheric conditions. Monet and Pissarro inpainting snow and frost effects under the sun did not hesitate to putblue tones in the shadows. Sisley was fond of rose tones, Renoir sawviolet in the shadows. He enraged his spectators quite as much as didMonet with his purple turkeys. His striking Avant le bain was sold forone hundred and forty francs in 1875. Any one who has been luckyenough to see it at Durand-Ruel's will cry out at the stupidity whichdid not recognise a masterly bit of painting with its glowing, nacreous flesh tints, its admirable modelling, its pervading air ofvitality. Renoir was never a difficult painter; that is, in the senseof Monet or Manet or Gauguin. He offended the eyes of 1875, no doubt, but there was in him during his first period much of Boucher; hisfemale nudes are, as Camille Mauclair writes, of the eighteenthcentury; his technique is Boucher-like: "fat and sleek paint of softbrilliancy laid on with the palette-knife with precise strokes aroundthe principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong bluessimilar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere andalmost excluding the opposition of the shadows; vivacious attitudesand decorative convention. "

Vivacious, happy, lyrical, Renoir's work has thus far shown no hint ofthe bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child womenfull of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His _genre_ tableauxare personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such asDéjeuner and The Box--both have been exhibited in New York--theluminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the deliciousdissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner hisaffinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. Hislandscapes are more atmospheric, division of tones inevitablypractised. Everything swims in aerial tones. His portraits, once hisonly means of subsistence, are the personification of frankness. Thetouch is broad, flowing. Without doubt, as Theodore Duret asserts, Renoir is the first of the impressionistic portrait painters; thefirst to apply unflinchingly the methods of Manet and Monet to thehuman face--for Manet, while painting in clear tones (what magic thereis in his gold!), in portraiture seldom employed the hatchings ofcolours, except in his landscapes, and only since 1870, when he hadcome under the influence of Monet's theories. Mauclair points out thatfifteen years before _pointillisme_ (the system of dots, like eruptivesmall-pox, instead of the touches of Monet) was invented, Renoir inhis portrait of Sisley used the stipplings. He painted Richard Wagnerat Palermo in 1882. In his third manner--an arbitraryclassification--he combines the two earlier techniques, painting withthe palette-knife and in divided tones. Flowers, barbaric designs forrugs, the fantastic, vibrating waters, these appear among that longand varied series of canvases in which we see Paris enjoying itself atBougival, dancing on the heights of Montmartre, strolling among thetrees at Armenonville; Paris quivering with holiday joys, Paris inoutdoor humour--and not a discordant or vicious note in all thispsychology of love and sport. The lively man who in shirt sleevesdances with the jolly, plump salesgirl, the sunlight dripping throughthe vivid green of the tree leaves, lending dazzling edges toprofiles, tips of noses, or fingers, is not the sullen _ouvrier_ ofZola or Toulouse-Lautrec--nor are the girls kin to Huysmans's SoeursVatard or the "human document" of Degas. Renoir's philosophy is notprofound; for him life is not a curse or a kiss, as we used to say inthe old Swinburne days. He is a painter of joyous surfaces and he isan incorrigible optimist. He is also a poet. The poet of air, sunshine, and beautiful women--can we ever forget his Jeanne Samary? Apantheist, withal a poet and a direct descendant in the line ofWatteau, Boucher, Monticelli, with an individual touch of mundanegrace and elegance. 

Mme. Charpentier it was who cleverly engineered the portrait ofherself and children and the portrait of Jeanne Samary into the 1879Salon. The authorities did not dare to refuse two such distinguishedwomen. Renoir's prospects became brighter. He married. He made money. Patrons began to appear, and in 1904, at the autumn Salon, he wasgiven a special _salle_, and homage was done him by the young men. Nosweeter gift can come to a French painter than the unbidden admirationof the rising artistic generation. Renoir appreciated his honours; hehad worked laboriously, had known poverty and its attendantbedfellows, and had won the race run in the heat and dust of hisyounger years. In 1904, describing the autumn exhibition, I wrote: "Inthe Renoir _salle_ a few of the better things of this luscious brushwere to be found, paintings of his middle period, that first won himfavour. For example, Sur la Terrasse, with its audacious crimson, likethe imperious challenge of a trumpet; La Loge and its gorgeousfabrics; a Baigneuse in a light-green scheme; the quaint head ofJeanne Samary--a rival portrait to Besnard's faun-like Réjane--and alot of Renoir's later experimentings, as fugitive as music; explodingbouquets of iridescence; swirling panels, depicting scenes fromTannhäuser; a flower garden composed of buds and blossoms in colourscales that begin at a bass-emerald and ascend to an altitudinousgreen where green is no longer green but an opaline reverberation. Weknow how exquisitely Renoir moulds his female heads, building up, cellby cell, the entire mask. The simple gestures of daily life have beenrecorded by Renoir for the past forty years with a fidelity and avitality that shames the anæmic imaginings and puling pessimisms ofhis younger contemporaries. What versatility, what undaunted desire toconquer new problems! He has in turn painted landscapes as full ofdistinction as Monet's. The nervous vivacity of his brush, his love ofrendered surfaces, of melting Boucher-like heads, and of a dazzlingWatteau colour synthesis have endeared him to the discriminating. " Hemay be deficient in spiritual elevation--as were Manet, Monet, and theother Impressionists; but as they were primarily interested inproblems of lighting, in painting the sun and driving the old mud godsof academic art from their thrones, it is not strange that the new menbecame so enamoured of the coloured appearances of life that they leftout the ghosts of the ideal (that dusty, battered phrase) andproclaimed themselves rank sun-worshippers. The generation thatsucceeded them is endeavouring to restore the balance betweenunblushing pantheism and the earlier mysticism. But wherever a Renoirhangs there will be eyes to feast upon his opulent and sonorous colourmusic. 

III - MANET

In the autumn of 1865 Théodore Duret, the Parisian critic, foundhimself in the city of Madrid after a tour of Portugal on horseback. Anew hotel on the Puerta del Sol was, he wrote in his life of Manet, averitable haven after roughing it in the adjacent kingdom. At themid-day breakfast he ate as if he had never encountered good cookingin his life. Presently his attention was attracted by the behaviour ofa stranger who sat next to him. The unknown was a Frenchman who abusedthe food, the service, and the country. He was so irritable when henoticed Duret enjoying the very _plats_ he had passed that he turnedon him and demanded if insult was meant. The horrible cuisine, heexplained, made him sick, and he could not understand the appetite ofDuret. Good-naturedly Duret explained he had just arrived fromPortugal and that the breakfast was a veritable feast. "And I havejust arrived from Paris, " he answered, and gave his name, EdouardManet. He added that he had been so persecuted that he suspected hisneighbour of some evil pleasantry. The pair became friends, and wentto look at the pictures of Velasquez at the Prado. Fresh from Paris, Manet was still smarting from the attacks made on him after thehanging of his Olympia in the Salon of 1865. Little wonder his nerveswere on edge. A dozen days later, after he had studied Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco, Manet, in company with Duret, returned to Paris. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. 

About eight years ago Duret's definitive biography of Manet appeared, Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre. No one was betterqualified to write of the dead painter than Théodore Duret. A criticof perspicacity, his enthusiasm was kindled during the birth throes ofimpressionism and has never been quenched. Only a few years ago, aftera tribute to Whistler, he wrote of Manet in the introduction to hisvolume on Impressionism, and while no one may deny his estimate, yetthrough zeal for the name of his dead friend he attributed to him thediscoveries of the impressionists. Manet was their leader; he wouldhave been a leader of men in any art epoch; but he did not invent thefulminating palette of Monet, and, in reality, he joined theinsurgents 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 wasdifferent from that of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne and the rest. Nevertheless, because of his notoriety--fame is hardly the word--hemay be fairly called the leader of the school. 

As a rule he was not an irascible man, if the unpleasant nature of theattacks upon him is taken into consideration. With the exception ofRichard Wagner and Ibsen, I know of no artist who was vilified duringhis lifetime as was Manet. A gentleman, he was the reverse of thebohemian. Duret writes of him that he was shocked at the attempt tomake of him a monster. He did not desire to become _chef d'école_, nordid he set up as an eccentric. When he gave his special exhibition hiscatalogue contained a modest declaration of the right of the artist tohis 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 sincerepainter; but even that mild pronunciamento was received with jeers. The press, with a few exceptions, was against him, and so were nearlyall the artists of influence. Zola's aggressive articles only made thesituation worse. Who was this Zola but a writer of doubtful taste andsensational style! The whole crowd of realists, naturalists, andimpressionists--the Batignolles school was the mocking title given thelatter--were dumped into the common vat of infamy and critical vitriolpoured over them. 

The main facts of Manet's career may be soon disposed of. His motherwas Eugénie Désirée Fournier; she was the goddaughter of CharlesBernadotte, King of Sweden. Her father, a prefect at Pau, had renderedservices to Bernadotte which the latter did not forget. When shemarried, in 1831, Auguste Manet, a distinguished judge of the Seinetribunal, Bernadotte made her many valuable presents and a dowry. Herthree sons were Edouard, Eugène, and Gustave. They inherited fromtheir rich grandfather, Fournier. Edouard was born at Paris, RueBonaparte, January 23, 1832. His brother Eugène became a doctor ofmedicine and later married one of the most gifted of women painters, Berthe Morisot, who died in 1895, after winning the praise of the mostcritical pens in all Europe. Edouard was intended for the bar, but hethrew up his studies and swore he would become a painter. Then he wassent abroad. He visited South America and other countries, and kepthis eyes wide open, as his sea-pieces proved. After his mother becamea widow he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft, Holland. Shewas one of the early admirers of Schumann in Paris and played the Aminor piano concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, withsuccess. She was an admirer of her husband's genius, and during allthe turmoil of his existence she was a friend and counsellor. 

The young couple lived with the elder Mme. Manet in the Rue deSaint-Pétersbourg, and their weekly reception became a rallying centrefor not only _les Jeunes_, but also for such men as Gambetta, EmileOllivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust, De Banville, Baudelaire, Duranty--with whom Manet fought a duel over a trifle--Zola, Mallarmé, Abbé Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic group. Edouard entertainedgreat devotion for his mother. She saw two of her sons die, Edouard in1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was an advocate and tookClemenceau's place as municipal councillor when the latter was electedDeputy. ) Mme. Manet died in 1885. The painter was stricken withlocomotor ataxia, brought on by protracted toil, in 1881. For nearlythree years he suffered, and after the amputation of a leg hesuccumbed. His obsequies were almost of national significance. Hiswidow lived until 1906. 

_Manet et manebit_ was the motto of the artist. He lived to paint andhe painted much after his paralytic seizure. He was a brilliantraconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Parisas Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth is, Manet, after beingforced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in theduel with press and public. He was unhappy if people on the boulevarddid not turn to look at him. "The most notorious painter in Paris" wasa description which he finally grew to enjoy. It may not be deniedthat he painted several pictures as a direct challenge to the world, but a painter of offensive pictures he never was. The execratedPicnic, proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was shown in theSalon des Refusés (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 everattempted to scuttle the bark of art), and a howl arose. What was thisshocking canvas like? A group of people at a picnic, several nudesamong them. In vain it was pointed out to the modest Parisians (who atthe time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Cabanel, Gérôme, Bouguereau, and other delineators of the chaste) that in the Louvrethe Concert of Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the mixtureof dressed and undressed was appalling, and Manet became a man markedfor vengeance. Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and hisunconventional manner of putting it on his canvas had as much to dowith the obloquy as his theme. And then he would paint the life aroundhim instead of producing _pastiches_ of old masters or sicklyevocations of an unreal past. 

He finished Olympia the year of his marriage, and refused to exhibitit; Baudelaire insisted to the contrary. It was shown at the Salon of1865 (where Monet exhibited for the first time) and became the scandalof the day. Again the painter was bombarded with invectives. Thisawful nude, to be sure, was no more unclothed than is Cabanel's Venus, but the latter is pretty and painted with soap-suds andsentimentality. The Venus of Titian is not a whit more exposed thanthe slim, bony, young woman who has just awakened in time to receive abouquet at the hands of her negress, while a black cat looks on thismatutinal proceeding as a matter of course. The silhouette has thefirmness of Holbein; the meagre girl recalls a Cranach. It is not thegreatest of Manet; one could say, despite the bravura of theperformances, that the painter was indulging in an ironic joke. It wasa paint pot flung in the face of Paris. Olympia figured at the 1887exhibition in the Pavilion Manet. An American (the late William M. Laffan) tried to buy her. John Sargent intervened, and a number of thepainter's friends, headed by Claude Monet, subscribed a purse oftwenty thousand francs. In 1890 Monet and Camille Pelletan presentedto M. Fallières, then Minister of Instruction, the picture for theLuxembourg, and in 1907 (January 6), thanks to the prompt action ofClemenceau, one of Manet's earliest admirers, the hated Olympia washung in the Louvre. The admission was a shock, even at that late daywhen the din of the battle had passed. When in 1884 there was held atthe École des Beaux-Arts a memorial exposition of Manet's works, Edmond About wrote that the place ought to be fumigated, and Gérôme"brandished his little cane" with indignation. Why all the excitementin official circles? Only this: Manet was a great painter, thegreatest painter in France during the latter half of the nineteenthcentury. Beautiful paint always provokes hatred. Manet won. Nothingsucceeds like the success which follows death. (Our only fear nowadaysis that his imitators won't die. Second-rate Manet is as bad assecond-rate Bouguereau. ) If he began by patterning after Hals, Velasquez, and Goya, he ended quite Edouard Manet; above all, he gavehis generation a new vision. There will be always the battle ofmethods. As Mr. MacColl says: "Painting is continually swaying betweenthe _chiaroscuro_ reading of the world which gives it depth and thecolour reading which reduces it to flatness. Manet takes all that themodern inquisition of shadows will give to strike his compromise nearthe singing colours of the Japanese mosaic. "

What a wit this Parisian painter possessed! Duret tells of a passageat arms between Manet and Alfred Stevens at the period when theformer's Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable reception atthe Salon of 1873. This portrait of the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, his fingers encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that the manin the picture "drank the beer of Haarlem. " The _mot_ nettled Manet, whose admiration for Frans Hals is unmistakably visible in thismagnificent portrait. He waited his chance for revenge, and it camewhen Stevens exhibited a picture in the Rue Lafitte portraying a youngwoman of fashion in street dress standing before a portière which sheseems about to push aside in order to enter another room. Manetstudied the composition for a while, and noting a feather dusterelaborately painted which lies on the floor beside the lady, exclaimed: "Tiens! elle a done un rendezvous avec le valet dechambre?"

XII. A NEW STUDY OF WATTEAU

New biographical details concerning Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)may never be forthcoming, though theories of his enigmatic personalityand fascinating art will always find exponents. Our knowledge ofWatteau is confined to a few authorities: the notes in D'Argenville'sAbrégé de la Vie des Plus Fameux Peintres; Catalogue Raisonné, byGersaint; Julienne's introduction to the Life of Watteau by Count deCaylus--discovered by the Goncourts and published in their brilliantstudy of eighteenth-century art. Since then have appeared monographs, études, and articles by Cellier, Mollet, Hanover, Dohme, Müntz, Séailles, Claude Phillips, Charles Blanc, Virgile Joez, F. Staley, Téodor de Wyzewa, and Camille Mauclair. Mauclair is the latest and oneof the most interesting commentators, his principal contribution beingDe Watteau à Whistler, a chapter of which has been afterward expandedinto a compact little study entitled Watteau and translated from theFrench text by Mme. Simon Bussy, the wife of that intimate painter oftwilight and poetic reverie, Simon Bussy, to whom the book isdedicated. 

It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained by Mauclair thatinterests us more than his succinct notation of the painter's life. Itis not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. Thepathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literaturenowadays "psychiatrists" rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahometwas an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of epilepsy, said hisfriends; nevertheless, René Dumesnil has proved that his suddendecease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eyestrain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle ofsweetness and light declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate"--Ibsen, wholed the humdrum exterior life of a healthy _bourgeois_. Lombroso hasdemonstrated--to his own satisfaction--that Dante's mysticillumination was due to some brand of mental disorder. In fact, thisself-styled psychologist mapped anew the topography of the humanspirit. Few have escaped his fine-tooth-comb criticism exceptmediocrity. Painters, poets, patriots, musicians, scientists, philosophers, novelists, statesmen, dramatists, all who everparticipated in the Seven Arts, were damned as lunatics, decadents, criminals, and fools. It was a convenient inferno in which to dump themen who succeeded in the field wherein you were a failure. The heightof the paradox was achieved when a silly nomenclature was devised tomeet every vacillation of the human temperament. If you feared tocross the street you suffered from agoraphobia; if you didn't fear tocross the street, that too was a very bad sign. If you painted likeMonet, paralysis of the optical centre had set in--but why continue?

It is a pity that this theory of genius has been so thoroughlydiscredited, for it is a field which promises many harvestings; thereis mad genius as there are stupid folk. Besides, normality doesn'tmean the commonplace. A normal man is a superior man. The degenerateman is the fellow of low instincts, rickety health, and a drunkard, criminal, or idiot. The comical part of the craze--which wasshort-lived, yet finds adherents among the half-baked in culture andthe ignorant--is that it deliberately twisted the truth, making men offine brain and high-strung temperament seem crazy or depraved, whenthe reverse is usually the case. Since the advent of Lombroso"brainstorms" are the possession of the privileged. Naturally yourgrocer, tailor, or politician may display many of the above symptoms, but no one studies them. They are not "geniuses. "

All this to assure you that when Camille Mauclair assumes that themalady from which Antoine Watteau died was also a determining factorin his art, the French critic is not aping some modern men of sciencewho denounce the writings of Dostoïevsky because he suffered fromepileptic fits. But there is a happy mean in this effort to correlatemind and body. If we are what we think or what we eat--and it is notnecessary to subscribe to such a belief--then the sickness of the bodyis reflected in the soul, or vice versa. Byron was a healthy mannaturally, when he didn't dissipate, and Byron's poems are full ofmagnificent energy, though seldom in the key of optimism. The revolt, the passion, the scorn, were they all the result of his health? Or ofhis liver? Or of his soul? Goethe, the imperial the myriad-mindedGoethe, the apostle of culture, the model European man of thenineteenth century--what of him? Serenity he is said to have attained, yet from the summit of eighty years he confessed to four weeks ofhappiness in a long lifetime. Nor was he with all his superb manhoodfree from neurotic disorders, neurotic and erotic. Shelley? Ah! he isa pronounced case for the specialists. Any man who could eat drybread, drink water, and write such angelic poetry must have been quitemad. Admitted. Would there were more Shelleys. Browning is a fairspecimen of genius and normality; as his wife illustrated an unstablenervous temperament allied to genius. George Borrow was a rover, adifficult man to keep as a friend, happy only when thinking of thegipsies and quarrelling when with them. Would Baudelaire's magic verseand prose sound its faint, acrid, sinister music if the French poethad led a sensible life? Cruel question of the dilettante for whom theworld, all its splendor, all its art, is but a spectacle. It isneedless to continue, the list is too large; too large and toocontradictory. The Variations of Genius would be as profound and asvast a book as Lord Acton's projected History of Human Thought. Thetruth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of humanity; through someinexplicable transposition genius bears the burdens of mankind;afflicted by the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdenedwith the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, theunhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the loadof his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrowpath usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese torealise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. Andhaving sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn toconsumptive genius in particular. 

Watteau was a consumptive; he died of the disease. A consumptivegenius! It is a hard saying. People of average health whose pulse-beatis normal in _tempo_ luckily never realise the febrile velocity withwhich flows the blood in the veins of a sick man of genius. But thereis a paradox in the case of Watteau, as there was in the case ofChopin, of Keats, of Robert Louis Stevenson. The painter ofValenciennes gave little sign of his malady on his joyous lyricalcanvases. Keats sang of faëry landscapes and Chopin's was a virilespirit; the most cheerful writer under the sun was Stevenson, who evenin his Pulvis et Umbra conjured up images of hope after a mostpitiless arraignment of the universe and man. And here is the paradox. This quartet of genius suffered from and were slain by consumption. (Stevenson died directly of brain congestion; he was, however, avictim to lung trouble. ) That the poets turn their sorrow into song isan axiom. Yet these men met death, or what is worse, met life, withdefiance or impassible fronts. And the world which loves the liltingrhythms of Chopin's mazourkas seldom cares to peep behind the screenof notes for the anguish ambushed there. Watteau has painted thegayest scenes of pastoral elegance in a land out of time, a No-Man'sLand of blue skies, beautiful women, gallant men, and lovelylandscapes, while his life was haunted by thoughts of death. 

The riddle is solved by Mauclaìr: These flights into the azure, theseevocations of a country west of the sun and east of the moon, thesegraceful creatures of Watteau, the rich brocade of Chopin's harmonies, the exquisite pictures of Keats, the youthful joy in far-awaycountries of Stevenson, all, all are so many stigmata of theirterrible affliction. They sought by the magic of their art to create arealm of enchantment, a realm wherein their ailing bodies and woundedspirits might find peace and solace. This is the secret of Watteau, says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the eighteenth century, noteven to his followers, Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagangaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the veiled melancholyof Watteau. As we see Chopin, a slender man, morbid, sickly, strikethe martial chord in an unparalleled manner, Chopin the timid, thecomposer of the Heroic Polonaise, so Watteau, morbid, sickly, timid, slender, composes that masterpiece of delicate and decorativejoyousness, The Embarkment for Cythera, which hangs in the Louvre (agorgeous sketch, the final version, is at Potsdam in the collection ofthe German Emperor). In these works we find the aura of consumption. 

None of Watteau's contemporaries fathomed the meaning of his art: notCount de Caylus, not his successors, who all recognised the masterlydraughtsman, the marvellous colourist, the composer of pastoralballets, of matchless _fêtes galantes_, of conversations, ofminiatures depicting camp life, and fanciful decorations in the truestyle of his times. But the melancholy poet that was in the man, hislyric pessimism, and his unassuaged thirst for the infinite--thesethings 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 thehuman face, his restlessness that caused him to seek newabodes--Chopin was always dissatisfied with his lodgings and alwayschanging them. The painter made friends in plenty, only to break withthem 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, under 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 thetalent for insuring its continuity. Like Arthur Rimbaud, he sufferedfrom the nostalgia of the open road. He disappeared frequently. Hiswhereabouts was a mystery to his friends. He did not care for money orfor honours. He was elected without volition on his part as a memberof the Academy. Yet he did not use this powerful lever to further hiswelfare. Silent, a man of continent speech, he never convinced hisfriends that his art was chaste; yet he never painted an indelicatestroke. His personages, all disillusionised, vaguely suffer, make lovewithout desire--disillusioned souls all. L'Indifférent, that young manin the Louvre who treads the earth with such light disdain, with suchan airy expression of sweetness and _ennui_, that picture, Mauclairremarks, is the soul of Watteau. And, perhaps, spills his secret. 

Mauclair does not like the coupling of Watteau's name with those ofBoucher, Pater, Lancret, De Troy, Coypel, or Vanloo. They imitated himas to externals; the spirit of him they could not ensnare. If Watteaustemmed artistically from Rubens, from Ruysdael, from Titian (orTiepolo, as Kenyon Cox acutely hints) he is the father of a greatschool, the true French school, though his stock is Flemish. Turnerknew him; so did Bonington. Delacroix understood him. So did Chardin, himself a solitary in his century. Without Watteau's initiativeMonticelli might not be the Monticelli we know, while Claude Monet, Manet, Renoir are the genuine flowering of his experiments in thedivision of tones and the composition of luminous skies. 

Mauclair smiles at Caylus for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, themannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints likesomebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Itspeculiarity--apart from its brilliancy and vivacity--is, as Mauclairremarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression. "_Morbidezza_ is the precise phrase; _morbidezza_ may be found inChopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming overwith high spirits. Watteau was not a consumptive of the Pole's type. He did not alternate between ecstasy and languor. He was cold, self-contained, suspicious, and inveterately hid the state of hishealth. He might have been cured, but he never reached Italy, and thatfar-off dream and his longing to realise it may have been the basis ofhis last manner--those excursions into a gorgeous dreamland. Heyearned for an impossible region. His visions on canvas are theshadowy sketches of this secret desire that burned him up. It may havebeen consumption--and Mauclair makes out a strong case--and it mayhave been the expression of a rare poetic temperament. Watteau was apoet of excessive sensibility as well as the contriver of daintymasques 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 ofCourt Painters, that imaginative reconstruction of an almost obscurepersonality. "His words as he spoke of them [the paintings of Rubens]seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory withinit. " 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 sickman all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all. " CamilleMauclair eloquently ends his study with the confession that the mereutterance of Watteau's name "suffices to evoke in men's minds a memoryof the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments of azure and rose. Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose smile is akin to tears!"

XIII. GAUGUIN AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

I - GAUGUIN

The key-note to the character of Paul Gauguin, painter and sculptor, may be found in his declaration that in art there are onlyrevolutionists or plagiarists. A brave speech. And a proud man whouttered it; for unless he wished to avoid its implications he mustneeds prove his sincerity. In the short, adventurous, crowded lifevouchsafed him, Paul Gauguin proved himself indeed a revolutionarypainter. His maxim was the result of hard-won experiences. He was bornat Paris June 7, 1848--a stormy year for France; he died at DominiqueMay 9, 1904. His father was a native of Brittany, while on hismother's side he was Peruvian. This mixed blood may account for hiswandering proclivities and his love for exotic colouring and manners. To further accentuate the rebellious instincts of the youth hismaternal grandmother was that Flora Tristan, friend of the anarchisticthinker Proudhon. She was a socialist later and a prime mover in theWorkman's Union; she allied herself with Père Enfantin and helped himto found his religion, "Mapa, " of which he was the god, Ma, and shethe goddess, Pa. Enfantin's career and end may be recalled by studentsof St. Simon and the socialistic movements of those times. Paul'sfather, Clovis Gauguin, wrote in 1848 the political chronicle on the_National_, but previous to the _coup d'etat_ he left for Lima, thereto 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 theyounger Gauguin returned to France. In 1856 a Peruvian grand-uncledied at the extraordinary age of one hundred and thirteen. His namewas Don Pio de Tristan, and he was reported very rich. But Paul gotnone of this wealth, and at fourteen he was a cabin-boy, feeble ofhealth but extremely curious about life. He saw much of life andstrange lands in the years that followed, and he developed into apowerfully built young sailor and no doubt stored his brain withsumptuous images of tropical scenery which reappeared in his canvases. He traversed the globe several times. He married and took a positionin a bank. On Sundays he painted. His hand had itched for years toreproduce the landscapes he had seen. He made friends with Degas, Cézanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He calledhimself an amateur and a "Sunday painter, " but as he was received onterms of equality with these famous artists it may be presumed that, autodidact as he was, his versatile talent--for it literally wasversatile--did not escape their scrutiny. He submitted himself tovarious influences; he imitated the Impressionists, became aNeo-Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went sketching withCézanne and Van Gogh, that unfortunate Dutchman, and finally announcedto his friends and family that "henceforward I shall paint every day. "He gave up his bank, and Charles Morice has said that his life becameone of misery, solitude, and herculean labours. 

He painted in Brittany, Provence, at Martinique, in the Marquesas andTahiti. He had parted with the Impressionists and sought for a new_æsthetik_ of art; to achieve this he broke away not only fromtradition, even the tradition of the Impressionists, but from Europeand its civilisation. To this half-savage temperament devoured by thenostalgia of the tropics the pictures of his contemporaries bore thefatal stamp of the obvious, of the thrice done and used up. France, Holland, Spain, Italy--what corner was there left in these countriesthat had not been painted thousands of times and by great masters! TheSouth Seas, Japan, China--anywhere away from the conventional studiolandscape, studio models, poses, grimaces! At Pont-Aven in 1888, between trips made to Martinique and Provence, Gauguin had attainedmastery of himself; Cézanne had taught him simplicity; Degas, hisavowed admirer, had shown him the potency of the line; Renoir's warmcolouring had spurred him to a still richer palette; and Manet hadgiven him sound advice. A copy of the Olympe, by Gauguin, finishedabout this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with Degas he wascloser than the others. A natural-born writer, his criticisms of themodern French school are pregnant with wit and just observation. Whatwas nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven was the outcome of Gauguin'simperious personality. A decorative impulse, a largeness of style, anda belief that everything in daily life should be beautiful andcharacteristic sent the painters to modelling, to ceramics anddecoration. Armand Seguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Filiger, Serusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Chamaillard, Verkade, O'Conor, Durio, Maufra, Ranson, Mayol, Roy, and others are to-day happy to callthemselves associates of Paul Gauguin in this little movement in whichthe idolatry of the line and the harmonies of the arabesque werepursued with joyous fanaticism. 

Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his intercourse with VincentVan Gogh, who went mad and killed himself, not, however, beforeattempting the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van Gogh thathe "left to the world some violent and strange works, in whichImpressionism appears to have reached the limit of its audacity. Theirvalue lies in their naïve frankness and in the undauntabledetermination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerestfeelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also leftsome really beautiful canvases. " Before Gauguin went to Tahiti hisBreton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesiantypes. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavourwas to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create anew synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formlessreign oft in his work--the ugly and formless according to the oldorder of envisaging the world. 

In 1891 and 1892, at Tahiti, Gauguin painted manypictures--masterpieces his friends and disciples call them--which werelater shown at an exhibition held in the Durand-Ruel Galleries. Parisshuddered or went into ecstasy over these blazing transcriptions ofthe tropics; over these massive men and women, nude savages who staredwith such sinister magnetism from the frames. The violentdeformations, the intensity of vision, the explosive hues--a novelgamut of rich tones--and the strangeness of the subject-matter causeda 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 thetwentieth century. Cut to the heart by his failure to make a dazzlingreputation, also make a little money--for he was always a poor man--heleft Paris forever in 1895. He was sick and his life among theMarquisians did not improve his health. He took the part of thenatives against the whites and was denounced as a moral castaway. In1904 he wrote Charles Morice: "I am a savage. " But a savage of talent. In reality he was a cultivated man, an attractive man, and a billiardplayer and a fencer. Paint was his passion. If you live by the pen youmay perish by the pen. The same is too often the case with the paletteand brush hero. 

Though Paul Gauguin failed in his search for a synthesis of the uglyand the beautiful, he was nevertheless a bold initiator, one whoshipwrecked himself in his efforts to fully express his art. With allhis realism he was a symbolist, a master of decoration. A not toosympathetic commentator has written of him: "Paul Gauguin's robusttalent found its first motives in Breton landscapes, in which themethod of colour spots may be found employed with delicacy and placedat the service of a rather heavy but very interesting harmony. Thenthe artist spent a long time in Tahiti, whence he returned with acompletely transformed manner. He brought back from those regions somelandscapes treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. The figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flattints on canvas that has the texture of tapestry. Many of these worksare made repulsive by their aspect of multicoloured, crude, andbarbarous imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamentalqualities, the lovely values, the ornamental taste, and the impressionof primitive animalism. On the whole, Paul Gauguin has a beautiful, artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosity, has perhapsnot sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerousas false knowledge. "

All of which is true; yet Paul Gauguin was a painter who had somethingnew to say, and he said it in a very personal fashion. 

II - TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

I once attended at Paris an exhibition devoted to the work of the lateCount Toulouse-Lautrec. There the perverse genius of an unhappy manwho owes allegiance to no one but Degas and the Japanese was seen atits best. His astonishing qualities of invention, draughtsmanship, anda diabolic ingenuity in sounding the sinister music of decayed soulshave never been before assembled under one roof. Power there is and asaturnine hatred of his wretched sitters. Toulouse-Lautrec had not theimpersonal vision of Zola nor the repressed and disenchanting irony ofDegas. He loathed the crew of repulsive night birds that he pencilledand painted in old Montmartre before the foreign invasion destroyedits native and spontaneous wickedness. Now a resort for easilybamboozled English and Americans, the earlier Montmartre was a richmine for painter-explorers. Raffaelli went there and so did Renoir;but the former was impartially impressionistic; the latter, everravished by a stray shaft of sunshine flecking the faces of thedancers, set it all down in charming tints. Not so Toulouse-Lautrec. Combined with a chronic pessimism, he exhibited a divination ofcharacter that, if he had lived and worked hard, might have placed himnot far below Degas. He is savant. He has a line that proclaims themaster. And unlike Aubrey Beardsley, his affinity to the Japanesenever seduced him into the exercise of the decorative abnormal whichsometimes distinguished the efforts of the Englishman. We see theMoulin Rouge with its hosts of deadly parasites, La Goulue and hervile retainers. The brutality here is one of contempt, as a blowstruck full in the face. Vice has never before been so harshlyarraigned. This art makes of Hogarth a pleasing preacher, so drasticis it, so deliberately searching in its insults. And never thefaintest exaggeration or burlesque. These brigands and cut-throats, pimps and pickpurses are set before us without bravado, without thegenteel glaze of the timid painter, without an attempt to call aprostitute a _cocotte_. Indeed, persons are called by their true namesin these hasty sketches of Lautrec's, and so clearly sounded are thenames that sometimes you are compelled to close your ears and eyes. His models, with their cavernous glance, their emaciated figures, andvicious expression, are a commentary on atelier life in those days andregions. Toulouse-Lautrec is like a page from Ecclesiastes. 

XIV. LITERATURE AND ART

I - CONCERNING CRITICS

The annual rotation of the earth brings to us at least once during itsperiod the threadbare, thriceworn, stale, flat, and academicdiscussion of critic and artist. We believe comparisons of creator andcritic are unprofitable, being for the most part a confounding ofintellectual substances. The painter paints, the composer makes music, the sculptor models, and the poet sings. Like the industrious crow thecritic hops after these sowers of beauty, content to peck up in thefurrows the chance grains dropped by genius. This, at least, is thepopular notion. Balzac, and later Disraeli, asked: "After all, whatare the critics? Men who have failed in literature and art. " AndMascagni, notwithstanding the laurels he wore after his first success, cried aloud in agony that a critic was _compositore mancato_. These bepleasing quotations for them whose early opus has failed to score. Thetrouble is that every one is a critic, your gallery-god as well as themost stately practitioner of the art severe. Balzac was an excellentcritic when he saluted Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme as amasterpiece; as was Emerson when he wrote to Walt Whitman. What themid-century critics of the United States, what Sainte-Beuve, mastercritic of France, did not see, Balzac and Emerson saw and, betterstill, spoke out. In his light-hearted fashion Oscar Wilde assertedthat the critic was also a creator--apart from his literary worth--andwe confess that we know of cases where the critic has created theartist. But that a serious doubt can be entertained as to the relativevalue of creator and critic is hardly worth denying. 

Consider the painters. Time and time again you read or hear theindignant denunciation of some artist whose canvas has been ripped-upin print. If the offender happens to be a man who doesn't paint, thenhe is called an ignoramus; if he paints or etches, or even sketches incrayon, he is well within the Balzac definition--poor, miserableimbecile, he is only jealous of work that he could never haveachieved. As for literary critics, it may be set down once and for allthat they are "suspect. " They write; ergo, they must be unjust. Thedilemma has branching horns. Is there no midway spot, no safety groundfor that weary Ishmael the professional critic to escape being gored?Naturally any expression of personal feeling on his part is set downto mental arrogance. He is permitted like the wind to move over theface of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We have always thoughtthat the enthusiastic Dublin man in the theatre gallery was after acritic when he cried aloud at the sight of a toppling companion:"Don't waste him. Kill a fiddler with him!" It seems more inconsonance with the Celtic character; besides, the Irish aremusic-lovers. 

If one could draw up the list of critical and creative men in art thescale would not tip evenly. The number of painters who have written oftheir art is not large, though what they have said is always pregnant. Critics outnumber them--though the battle is really a matter ofquality, not quantity. There is Da Vinci. For his complete writingssome of us would sacrifice miles of gawky pale and florid mediævalpaintings. What we have of him is wisdom, and like true wisdom isprophetic. Then there is that immortal gossip Vasari, a very biassedcritic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge inwhat is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back to the earlyBritons for our authorities. Let us come to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whoseDiscourses are invaluable--and also to be taken well salted; he wasencrusted with fine old English prejudices. One of his magnificentsayings and one appreciated by the entire artistic tribe was hisejaculation: "Damn paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish that Velasquezhad. What William Blake said of great artists threw much light onWilliam Blake. Ingres uttered things, principally in a rage, about hiscontemporaries. Delacroix was a thinker. He literally anticipatedChevreul's discoveries in the law of simultaneous contrasts of colour. Furthermore, he wrote profoundly of his art. He appreciated Chopinbefore many critics and musicians--which would have been an impossiblething for Ingres, though he played the violin--and he was kind to theyounger men. 

Need we say that Degas is a great wit, though not a writer; a wit anda critic? Rousseau, the landscapist, made notes, and Corot is oftenquoted. If Millet had never written another sentence but "There is noisolated truth, " he would still have been a critic. Constable with his"A good thing is never done twice"; and Alfred Stevens's definition ofart, "Nature seen through the prism of an emotion, " forestalled Zola'spompous pronouncement in The Experimental Novel. To jump over thestile to literature, Wordsworth wrote critical prefaces, and Shelley, too; Poe was a critic; and what of Coleridge, who called painting "amiddle quality between a thought and a thing--the union of that whichis nature with that which is exclusively human"? There are plenty ofexamples on the side of the angels. Whistler! What a critic, wieldinga finely chased rapier! Thomas Couture wrote and discoursed much ofhis art. Sick man as he was, I heard him talk of art at his countryhome, Villiers-le-Bel, on the Northern Railway, near Paris. This wasin 1878. William M. Hunt's talks on art were fruitful. So are JohnLafarge's. The discreet Gigoux of Balzac notoriety has an entertainingbook to his credit; while Rodin is often coaxed into utterances abouthis and other men's work. There are many French, English, and Americanartists who write and paint with equal facility. In New York, KenyonCox is an instance. But the chiefest among all the painters alive anddead, one who shines and will continue to shine when his canvases arefaded--and they are fading--is Eugène Fromentin, whose Maîtresd'autrefois is a classic of criticism. Since his day two critics, whoare 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;indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write withstyle as well as substance is amazing. Rossetti would no longer be arare bird in these days of piping painters, musicians who are poets, and sculptors who are painters. The unfortunate critic occasionallywrites a play or an opera (particularly in Paris), but as a rule he iscontent to echo that old German who desperately exclaimed: "Even if Iam 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 criticsof paint and painters--or run down the line to Diderot, Blanc, Gautier, Baudelaire, Zola, Goncourt, who introduced to Europe Japaneseart; Roger Marx, Geoffroy, Huysmans, Camille Mauclair, Charles Morice, and Octave Mirbeau. Zola was not a painter, but he praised EdouardManet. These are a few names hastily selected. In England, Ruskin toolong ruled the critical roast; full of thunder-words like Isaiah, hisvaticinations led a generation astray. He was a prophet, not a critic, and he was a victim to his own abhorred "pathetic fallacy. " Henley wasright in declaring that until R. A. M. Stevenson appeared there was nogreat art criticism in England or English. The "Velasquez" is amarking stone in critical literature. It is the one big book by a bigtemperament that may be opposed page by page to Fromentin's criticalmasterpiece. Shall we further adduce the names of Morelli, SturgeMoore, Roger Fry, Perkins, Cortissoz, Lionel Cust, Colvin, Ricci, VanDyke, Mather, Berenson, Brownell, and George Moore--who said of Ruskinthat his uncritical blindness regarding Whistler will constitute hispassport to fame, "the lot of critics is to be remembered by what theyhave failed to understand. " Walter Pater wrote criticism that isbeautiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is in goodcompany, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of critics, missed Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and to Victor Hugo was unfair. Yet, consider theOsrics embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style. He, like manyanother critic, was superior to his subject. And that is always fatalto the water-flies. 

George III once asked in wonderment how the apples get inside thedumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks onwriting things about the man who does things. But he criticises andartists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstartAsiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be anartist in temperament and he must have a _credo_. He need not be apainter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. Thepsycho-physiological processes need not concern us. One thing iscertain--a man writing in terms of literature about painting, an artin two dimensions, cannot interpret fully the meanings of the canvas, nor can he be sure that his opinion, such as it is, when it reachesthe reader, will truthfully express either painter or critic. Such arethe limitations of one art when it comes to deal with the ideas ormaterial of another. Criticism is at two removes from its theme. Therefore criticism is a makeshift. Therefore, let critics be modestand allow criticism to become an amiable art. 

But where now is the painter critic and the professional critic?"Stands Ulster where it did?" Yes, the written and reported words ofartists are precious alike to layman and critic. That they preferpainting to writing is only natural; so would the critic if he had thepictorial gift. However, as art is art and not nature, criticism iscriticism and not art. It professes to interpret the artist's work, and at best it mirrors his art mingled with the personal temperamentof the critic. At the worst the critic lacks temperament (artistictraining is, of course, an understood requisite), and when this is thecase, God help the artist! As the greater includes the lesser, theartist should permit the critic to enter, with all due reverence, hissacred domain. Without vanity the one, sympathetic the other. Then theideal collaboration ensues. Sainte-Beuve says that "criticism byitself can do nothing. The best of it can act only in concert withpublic feeling ... We never find more than half the article inprint--the other half was written only in the reader's mind. " AndProfessor Walter Raleigh would further limit the "gentle art. ""Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, nor to classify, but toraise the dead. " The relations between the critic and his public openanother vista of the everlasting discussion. Let it be a negligibleone now. That painters can get along without professional criticism weknow from history, but that they will themselves play the critic isdoubtful. And are they any fairer to young talent than officialcritics? It is an inquiry fraught with significance. Great and smallartists have sent forth into the world their pupils. Have theyalways--as befits honest critics--recognised the pupils of other men, pupils and men both at the opposite pole of their own theories? Recallwhat Velasquez is reported to have said to Salvator Rosa, according toBoschini and Carl Justi. Salvator had asked the incomparable Spaniardwhether he did not think Raphael the best of all the painters he hadseen in Italy. Velasquez answered: "Raphael, to be plain with you, forI like to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all. " Thispurely temperamental judgment does not make of Velasquez either a goodor a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that even a mastercannot always render justice to another. Difference engenders hatred, as Stendhal would say. 

Can the record of criticism made by plastic artists show a generousRobert Schumann? Schumann discovered many composers from Chopin toBrahms and made their fortunes by his enthusiastic 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 thepainter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour ofdiscovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whosenames rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humblysubmit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticismwritten by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble careermust the critic pen his _apologia pro vita sua_. 

II - ART IN FICTION

Fiction about art and artists is rare--that is, good fiction, not thestuff ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods. It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing withpainters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry Jameshas written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The RealThing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is theparticular psychological problem involved rather than theories of artor personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all rememberthe woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed toreveal his moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited with beingthe psychologist of the brush in this story. There is a nice, freshyoung fellow in The Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers atthe last his painting to Julia Dallow and a political career. In TheReal Thing we recognise one of those unerring strokes that prove Jamesto be the master psychologist among English writers. Any discerningpainter realises the value of a model who can take the pose that willgive him the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the pose, not anattempt at crude naturalism. With this thesis the novelist has builtup an amusing, semi-pathetic, and striking fable. 

There are painters scattered through English fiction--can we everforget Thackeray! Ouida has not missed weaving her Tyrian purples intothe exalted pattern of her romantic painters. And George Eliot. AndDisraeli. And Bernard Shaw--there is a painting creature in Love Amongthe Artists. George Moore, however, has devoted more of his pages topaint and painters than any other of the latter-day writers. Thereason is this: George Moore went to Paris to study art and he driftedinto the Julian atelier like any other likely young fellow with hazynotions about art and a well-filled purse. But these early experienceswere not lost. They cropped up in many of his stories and studies. Hebecame the critical pioneer of the impressionistic movement and firsttold London about Manet, Monet, Degas. He even--in an articleremarkable for critical acumen--declared that if Jimmy Whistler hadbeen a heavier man, a man of beef, brawn, and beer, like Rubens, hewould have been as great a painter as Velasquez. To the weighingscales, fellow-artists! retorted Whistler; yet the bolt did not missthe mark. Whistler's remarks about Mr. Moore, especially after theEden lawsuit, were, so it is reported, not fit to print. 

In Mr. Moore's first volume of the half-forgotten trilogy, SpringDays, we see a young painter who, it may be said, thinks more ofpetticoats than paint. There is paint talk in Mike Fletcher, Moore'smost virile book. In A Modern Lover the hero is an artist who succeedsin the fashionable world by painting pretty, artificial portraits andfaded classical allegories, thereby winning the love of women, muchwealth, popular applause, and the stamp of official approbation. ThisLewis Seymour still lives and paints modish London in rose-colour. Moore's irony would have entered the soul of a hundred "celebrated"artists if they had had any soul to flesh it in. When he wrote thisnovel, one that shocked Mrs. Grundy, Moore was under the influence ofParis. However, that masterpiece of description and analysis, MildredLawson in Celibates--very Balzacian title, by the way--deals withhardly anything else but art. Mildred, who is an English girl withoutsoul, heart, or talent, studies in the Julian atelier and goes toFontainebleau during the summer. No one, naturally, will ever describeFontainebleau better than Flaubert, in whose L'Education Sentimentalethere are marvellous pictures; also a semi-burlesque painter, Pellerin, who reads all the works on æsthetics before he draws a line, and not forgetting that imperishable portrait of Jacques Arnoux, artdealer. Goncourt, too, has excelled in his impression of the forestand its painters, Millet in particular. Nevertheless, let us say inpassing that you cannot find Mildred Lawson in Flaubert or Goncourt;no, not even in Balzac, whose work is the matrix of modern fiction. She is her own perverse, cruel Mooresque self, and she lives in NewYork as well as London. 

In both Daudet and Maupassant--Strong as Death is the latter'scontribution to painter-psychology--there are stories clustered aboutthe guild. Daudet has described a Salon on varnishing day with hisaccustomed facile, febrile skill; you feel that it comes from Goncourtand Zola. It is not within our scope to go back as far as Balzac, whose Frenhofer in The Unknown Masterpiece has been a model for theyounger man. Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson havedealt with the theme pictorial. Zola's The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) isone of the better written books of Zola. It was a favourite of his. The much-read and belauded fifth chapter is a faithful transcriptionof the first Salon of the Rejected Painters (Salon des Refusés) atParis, 1863. Napoleon III, after pressure had been brought to bearupon him, consented to a special salon within the official Salon, atthe Palais de l'Industrie, which would harbour the work of the younglunatics who wished to paint purple turkeys, green water, red grass, and black sunsets. (Lie down, ivory hallucinations, and don't wag yourcarmilion tail on the chrome-yellow carpet!) It is an enormouslyclever book, this, deriving in the main as it does from ManetteSalomon and Balzac's Frenhofer. The fight for artistic veracity byClaude Lantier is a replica of what occurred in Manet's lifetime. TheBreakfast on the Grass, described by Zola, was actually the title andthe subject of a Manet picture that scandalised Paris about thisepoch. The fantastic idea of a nude female stretched on the grass, while the other figures were clothed and in their right minds, was toomuch for public and critic, and unquestionably Manet did paint theaffair to create notoriety. Like Richard Wagner, he knew the value ofadvertising. 

All the then novel theories of _plein air_ impressionism are discussedin the Zola novel, yet the work seems clumsy after Goncourt's ManetteSalomon, that breviary for painters which so far back as 1867anticipated--in print, of course--the discoveries, the experiments, the practice of the naturalistic-impressionistic groups from Courbetto Cézanne, Monet to Maufra, Manet to Paul Gauguin. There are verbalpictures of student life, of salons, of atelier and open air. No suchpsychologic manual of the painter's art has ever appeared before orsince Manette Salomon. It was the Goncourts who introduced Japaneseart to European literature--they were friends of the late M. Bing, apioneer collector in Paris. And they foresaw the future of painting aswell as of fiction. 

XV. MUSEUM PROMENADES

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lentby Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at TheHague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense ofthat word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--andthat suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvasdepicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to thewaist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife(in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The fleshtones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandtwhite. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a womanreading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-lifeaccessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, tothe judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These twoworks are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue tothis gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. Tovisitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since thenmany 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 asever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull byPaul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl byVermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, ischarming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it waspainted. The long façade of the houses and warehouses and the churchesand towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, asolidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism whichprove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope isrich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is anallegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincingas a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions musthave inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, theVermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is atAmsterdam. 

No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlierRembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a goodcondition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor isit a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb incharacterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man withinquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his nameis given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests theattention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of TheSyndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhapsfeathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flockto this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette. Thetwo little studies of the painter's father and mother arecharacteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt'sbrother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with anose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and withoutcharm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive asSimeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in thegloom. The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination. What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The bigSaul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saulsmiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating inhis neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? Hissunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in itsiridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not sostriking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro ismiraculous. 

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

There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the fivehundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in theMauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters. Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcrywhenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every yearwith forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, andexcellent are these imitations, it must be confessed. 

There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of JacobPieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head ofa man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar isgenuine Hals. 

Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German andEnglish are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As apicture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of thebeast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of thisinsignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaninglesslandscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeinsare--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better todefer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. Thesame may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing bya chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellentfruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which isas realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virginand Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangsnear the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait ofCharles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not aremarkable Velasquez. 

The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest becausethis painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-lifeis admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minorDutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Wateris faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our ownAcademy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of primequality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels inboth Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem ofthe latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, thegeneral effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is asterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. TheGood Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky lightand dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did. Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, theperambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, thegossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for theeternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too muchalike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so manybituminous canvases. 

Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committedas in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands ofpictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy brownsof the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtishlight, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often madea mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is aninteresting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are theaverage number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italianfigures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Douleads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by aguide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewherein his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal. 

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artisticattractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to lookout on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around theemerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, andmonths could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, andsome of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscapeand marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single Roger van der Weyden, anattribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is aninteresting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write. Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, andXavery make up a meagre list. 

At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on theVyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, agolden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis. It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The NightWatch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. Thereare some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbemamill and others. In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities infurniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modernpaintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot ofshooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of themin Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and afew others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and ajumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed withreligious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patrioticsentiment. 

There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles maybe seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits byEverdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, 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 greatgift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909)that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers threehundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also avaluable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in hisintroduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museumand tells us that Mr. And Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their ownpleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutchnation. That came later. W. H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painterwhose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent. A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while inBrussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is aFrieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waterswith breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, hisrhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors trulyDutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Vander Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm andculture, 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 around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoortimpresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of anymuseum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering histreasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when ahundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers intooverproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. TheAlma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marblesand lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here. Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, theMesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such menas Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupré. As we admire theetchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen ofhis paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantasticquality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as ifit were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are thesecanvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels theEast. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings aremiles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) isrepresented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers isone with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividlyseized, this example. 

The late Théophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and hisbrush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America andgains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteenspecimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early andtherefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are hung. The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream inwhich is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in whitecaps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distanceis occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the MiddleAges. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of sometrees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics arepresent 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, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a deadroe, 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_pâte_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouettefirm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. It was probably painted in Ste. Pélagie. 

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

Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of theformer, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one aportrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was mostsonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped femalefigure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. Dupré has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The oneFortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israelsare strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of theBinnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously richgamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered inAmerica. He should be better known; while his ideas are notparticularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as wasMonticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (thelatter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, abrother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutchartist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelliup-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south ofFrance. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks inthe foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the formssharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smallerexample is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay thecolours on. 

Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets wouldcause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle toorhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in thecolour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager isa masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he isresting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude afterarduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicatesstifling sultriness. 

Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of thisFrench master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura isthe celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is toobituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, isLes grands chênes du vieux Bas-Bréau. Four large trees illumined bysun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van'sGravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marché, a masterpiece;Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs;Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, Oriental portières and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, variousweapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch andScandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmailcloisonné, 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 ofthe aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looksforward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are notfew. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry andworry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be aregrettable omission. 

HALS OF HAARLEM

In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters whotheir life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both theDe Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in themezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducinginsects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches androses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, MargarethaRosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many otherswho excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, thecolours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is dailyrenewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes ofresidences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands ofthe peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leavesthat are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivyis used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ atLeyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in afloating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of BaronSteengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full ofivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenioussurprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away toimitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden littleleafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few milesaway from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when thebulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. Inthe fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of thevarious farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable cartsremind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here. 

The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a talltower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) byChristian Müller; it was until a few years ago the largest in theworld. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousandpipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilfulorganist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure ofhearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a fewBach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by theA minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonicquality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassysquealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, somellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secretof the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and theblue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops, " asJohn Runciman has named the combinations often to be found inlatter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organwhy Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with itsorchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be asacrilege on this key-board. 

The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claimhim as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you mayride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in theUnited States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort ateither town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church atKatwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerouspictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, orhas been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not oncethink of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modernnamesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch ofAmsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sundayafternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that thesun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting thetown are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't lookso. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won'tacknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot Augustafternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget itall in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blondyoungster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes alight smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath ofyour boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, orhay 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 theRijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the belland the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to theroom where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronologicalorder. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impressionis profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt'sprofundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of theseportraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of hugepasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live withsuch vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively loweryour voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are notso disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands withyou across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't stepout the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, ofobvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handledby the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez. How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to thismagician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seemincomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, hiselliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals infacing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; andthere is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that weencounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Halshad not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a moredexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheerpaint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such avirtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Halsgot closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any ofthe masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard. 

At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picturepainted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But ateighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of theregents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards theexecution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these twopictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait ofcharacter, pleases some more than the male group. They are not sofirmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as ofold age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzlingrelations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze. It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wontto bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternityif the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet itcannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about thevigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! Whatnuances 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 redsand yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocraticpalette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly consideredgrandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and arenot with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostlesof "modernity. " Hals is more modern than Sargent. 

These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No. 88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of theArquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again eachman is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of theElizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style;nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth thejourney across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life butthe normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and womenundismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylightsoul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him socelebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real. 

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

I

The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutchart. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The NightWatch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watchhas been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing thelarge Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is onlyin temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in onegallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Betterlighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows moreclearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, andthe cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating ofvarnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainlyrevealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been anydispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, theappendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes thepicture thus:

"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and ofLieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in theforeground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenantconversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costumewith a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near theCaptain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a deadwhite 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 asignificant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window lookingout upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, Eugène Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvasfull of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused. The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelesslypainted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythmfull of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--emptyspaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting withoutpersonal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is notalone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colouriststhan Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of theenvelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combinedmakes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that CaptainCocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to thespry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strangeattribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes theprotagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The wavesthat emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe orsatisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals andhis substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as asop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients, " and there is no mode ofthought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by ourancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller'sson? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached tohis age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universalas Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinciif we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's. 

There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girlwith the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffleshis drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch isinsoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morninglight, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea orland. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt showswith what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believeactuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, TheNight Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it bytwo decades, and the later work contains far better painting and asharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninthsymphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure inthis latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his handpoised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitivenesseyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. Thissyndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch menof affairs. 

There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted byrays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of theetchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though theElizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece inportraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride isbulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparelthe chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while theanatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is morecorpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture onanatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait ofhis father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame ElizabethBas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, isa picture you return to each day of your stay. 

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

The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a youngwoman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Lettershows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand. She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing aletter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give aview of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. Astoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a greencloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassauearthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from acan. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against thewhite wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brownpetticoat, 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 thetable. 

This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays morebreadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring isabsolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art isthe windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as hisMill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley ofMiddleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, whereto end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! Theticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behindtheir reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist heis, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of CaptainBicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is notdifficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinneris very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's viewof Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather ofHondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least partof the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece. We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch andFlemish primitives about which a volume might be written; theiremaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excelthem. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the cataloguesupplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories areDutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across theirknees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youthattired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, ispouring 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, byHals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummateartistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which singsout, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught thetrick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent couldhave produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, inanother gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Twoweeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did nomore than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is agoodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, andothers at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at theMunicipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels weever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, amost eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" andthe individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutchdescent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some ofthe Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and others. The Six gallery isnot so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandtsand Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum. 

II

Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleriescontain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases thepictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are moreerudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in formeryears, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism foroverpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tellwhere the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, forexample, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to thestudent; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary pictureof his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have beenpainted a year ago. (It is an attribution. ) Yet this painter issupposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died atLiège, 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 à 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. Bleshas had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Dürer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be acounterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at thePrado. 

The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adamand Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Aroundthe edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figuresdelicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuousperformance. " You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty;then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flamingsword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. Arare painter. 

Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known tous until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pâte_ andbouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositionsare composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than thelatter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijahfed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove theman's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. Apupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judithholding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in thePitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, 1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come acrossthe oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Whodoesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standingwith her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture ofthe 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 bethe father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is hermother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait ofHelena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; aserious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a goodhousewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps arepainted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchantsstand 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'sself-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a claypipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. GovertFlinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he livedto-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see hishandiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial. Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, coveredwith a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed toRembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt. Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of primequality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is ananecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctorgravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment isat hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She isstubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallerywith Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. Withsunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in anatmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small CountryHouse is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man andwoman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into aglass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and fartheraway a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis ofdomestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more ThePantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoiningroom, flooded with light, is real. 

There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like theportrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiffof Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff awell-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which hepresses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. Thefabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by theportrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or animitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not aneveryday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in goodstates; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they arechiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superiorin Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, orZaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter JanMolener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in acabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift ofreproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses;indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-knownpictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife AegjeHasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully setforth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of theDutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the LittleChildren. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, afterRembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks. The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, isseated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar givesthe impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young WomanReading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for theuninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornamentclasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principallybecause this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of astranger. 

Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studiedunder Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge atUtrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany hevisited Dürer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italianinfluence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerlyhung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of thehead-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richlyattired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainouslandscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is northLombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyesenigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_. Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not amasterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but theHarpsichord 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 whichrepresent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of EmperorCharles V. As Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, whothen 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. Thecolouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish tofollow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker isso popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. Thebaker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn. Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interiorwith figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories. Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party isthe usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another suchsubject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen andTeniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though gracefulTischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionableportrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugénie), and let us leavethe Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutchpictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and thereis Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowersin the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinaryfeeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian mannerthan in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf. Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. VanLynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts. It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feelingsentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-likeand lacking in substance when compared to Hals. 

There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to bediscovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants weneed not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are ofgoodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II. ), John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others. English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbeinpastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we findunderscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemishschool (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is beinglowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from alost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are suchcopies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as ananonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on Hisleft jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the compositionis 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 ahilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonianschool, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello daMessina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet notwithout some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly ofclose study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain PieterDubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vividportraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the LucasCranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures inthis gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and stillremain an inexhaustible source of joy. 

ART IN ANTWERP

After passing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the canals andwindmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, buthas lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical;there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture isdifferent. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are notclean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, fewspeak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell youthat you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is sodistinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels isonly thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once inthis land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approachingAntwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock socomfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thrivingport. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--mayeasily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches. The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the TownHall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by theindustrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay youfor the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. Weenjoyed the façades of the ancient guild houses on the market-placeand watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of thecathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are theZoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Théâtre Flamand, thevarious monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city forthose who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go toHoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-knownSunday resort in Jersey. 

The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsomestructure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. TheRubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _pièce de résistance_, and theFlemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better forMemling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yetAntwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels inher Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as atAmsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence becauseof The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming PeterPaul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm whenfacing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubensstuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner hewould be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Notso profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is theirpeer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles ofpictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must havecovered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he endsby making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness ofhis style, the repetition of his wives and children's portraits, theapotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment andIsabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put themtogether on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to theworld in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes withwide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologicpictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become toofamiliar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer thanthe other; you also realise that other days had other ways. Titianpainted the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed herhusband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of thisperformance. Manet, who was no Titian, did the same trick and wasvoted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in thepresence 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 Rubenswomen. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as theDutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seemsaustere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land. Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures thatdo not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary ofeither Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of theNetherlandish unknown mystic masters. 

But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With himpainting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of itsdecadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendousspace-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like ascene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest thingshappen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, inthis gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, andyou 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 theVenus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all hisreligion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or theChrist on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent atthe Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or VanDyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. Heis a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here areprime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the younggirl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to beholdthan those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, andwithout any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of thePrimitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boystanding at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubensas a portraitist and took no odds of him. 

Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in theBrussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head andbust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at thePeter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantasticversions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thickwith monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must havehad the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to enduresuch sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and histwo sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers inBrussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is amasterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, accordingto 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 twoare by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-calledBurgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The AntwerpMuseum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must notforget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, astill-life, a white dead goose superb in tone. 

Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is thebetter; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlemand shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of asaucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The QuentinMatsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gilliswith his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town. Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recallsthe legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here HendrikConscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The TaxGatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in themuseum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualisedheads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both arepainters of ineffable grace and devotion. 

Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls. One is a portraitof Nicolò Spinelli. Christ and His Angels, the angels playing inpraise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments. The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented. The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateuror Donor is a repetition of the original at Bruges. The Adoration ofthe Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is tender beauty inJan's St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his HolyVirgin. Hugo van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvelof characterisation. Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a millscene. The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens. GerardDavid, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose inEgypt. Lucas Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to themythological key. We have barely indicated the richness of thiscollection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle--rather thefull orchestra. And with what sonority and luminosity!

At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomedaudiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointingout the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in theAscent. This latter work is always slighted by sightseers becauseBaedeker, or some one else, had pronounced its composition "inferior"to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved inthe Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subjectis less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virileaccents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paintquality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of timeand the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfullycarved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It hasdarkened much during the last twenty years. Also there is anotherRubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought wellof themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder. 

The modern pictures at the museum are of varying interest--Braekeleer, Stobbaerts, Verlat, Scheffer, Cabanel, David (J. L. ), Wiertz, Wauters, Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock the landscapist, Clays, Van Beers, Meunier, Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot ofnondescript lumber. In the spacious approach there is one ofConstantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followedRodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter hewas not more than mediocre. 

The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of Primitives are not all ofequal merit. The Annunciation is the most striking. The early masterof Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in composition and softnessin colouring. Mention must be made of the De Vos pictures by theCornelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abraham Grapheus by thefirst-named is one of the most striking in the museum, and theself-portrait of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a sortof Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing at Cards recalls Caravaggio. Daniel Mytens's portrait of a lady is Rubenesque. 

And all that choir of elevated souls unknown to us by name, merelycalled after the city they inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, orby some odd device or monogram--what cannot be written of this smallarmy which praised the Lord, His mother and the saints in form andcolour, on missals, illuminated manuscripts, or on panels! The AntwerpMuseum has its share of Anonymous, that master of whom it has beensaid that "he" was probably the master of the masters. Antwerp is acity of many charms, with its St. Jacques, St. Andres (and its carvedpulpit), St. Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of theFlemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us its museum was all inall. 

MUSEUMS OF BRUSSELS

Considering its size and significance, Brussels has more than itsshare of museums. At the beginning of the Rue de la Régence, near thePlace Royale, stands the imposing Royal Museum of old paintings andsculpture. The Museum of Modern Art is around the corner and adjoinsthe National Library, which is said to harbour over six hundredthousand volumes. In the gallery of old art the effect of thesculptors' hall, which is in the centre and utilises the entire heightof the building, is noble. The best sculpture therein is by Rodin andMeunier; the remainder is generally academic or simply bad. Rodin'sThinker, in bronze, is a repetition of the original. After thewreathed prettiness of the conventional school--neither Greek norGothic--and the writhing diablerie of Rodin imitators the simplicityand directness of Constantin Meunier is refreshing. He was a man whoseimagination became inflamed at the sight of suffering and injustice. He is closer to Millet than to his friend Rodin, but he lacks thesweetness and strength of Millet. Selecting the Belgian workman--theminer, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, the proletarian, in aword--for his theme, Meunier observed closely and reproduced hisvision in terms of rugged beauty. The sentiment is evidentlysocialistic. Like Prince Kropotkin and the brothers Réclus, theBelgian sculptor revolts against the cruelty of man to man. He showsus the miner crouched in a pitiful manner finding a pocket of coal;men naked to the waist, their torsos bulging with muscles, their smallheads on bull necks, are puddlers; other groups patiently haul heavycarts--labour not in its heroic aspect, but as it is in reality, isthe core of Meunier's art. That he is "literary" at times may not bedenied, but power he has. 

The early Flemish school of the fifteenth century is stronglyrepresented in several of the galleries up-stairs. And Rogier de laPasture, otherwise known as Rogier van der Weyden, is shown in fivepictures, and at his best. The Chevalier with the Arrow, a bustportrait, will be familiar to those who have visited the Rijks Museum, where a copy hangs. The robe is black, the hat, conical, is brown, thebackground blue-green. The silhouette is vigorously modelled, theexpression one of dignity, the glance penetrating, severe. Whatcharacterisation! The Christ is a small panel surpassingly rich incolour and charged with profound pity. The body lies in the arms ofthe Mother, Magdalen and John on either side. The sun is setting. Thesubject was a favourite of Weyden; there is a triptych in Berlin and apanel at The Hague. This Brussels picture has evidently been shorn ofits wings. There are replicas of the Virgin and Child (No. 650 in thecatalogue) at Berlin, Cassel, and Frankfort, also in the recentlydispersed collection of Rudolph Kann. Another striking tableau is thehead 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 thegrand composition in the Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent. They aregigantic figures, nude, neither graceful nor attractive, butmagnificently painted. These portraits (they don't look as if they hadbeen finished in paradise) of our first parents rather favour theevolutionary theory of development. Eve is unlovely, her limbs lanky, her bust mediæval, her flanks Flemish. In her right hand she holds thefatal apple. Adam's head is full of character; it is Christ-like; historso ugly, his legs wooden. Yet how superior to the copies which arenow attached to the original picture at Ghent. There the figures areclothed, clumsy, and meaningless. 

Dierick Bouts's Justice of Emperor Otho III is a striking picture. Thesubject has that touch of repulsive cruelty which was a sign of thetimes. Hans Memling's Martyrdom of St. Sebastian is another treasure;with his portraits of a man, of Guillaume Morel and of Barbara deVlandenberg making an immortal quartet. The head of the man is thefavourite in reproduction. Morel is portrayed as in prayer, his handsclasped, his expression rapt. A landscape is seen at the back. TheVirgin Surrounded by Virgins, by an unknown master of the fifteenthcentury (school of Bruges), is one of the most amazing pictures in thecollection. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the hieratic, butthe portraits are enchanting in their crystalline quality. QuentinMatsys' Legend of St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity weprefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont. Gerard David'sAdoration of the Magi is no longer attributed to him. It was always indoubt: now the name has been removed, though the picture has much ofhis mellowness. Dr. Scheuring, the old man with the shaved upper lip, beard, and hair over his forehead, by Lucas Cranach, and JeanGossaert's Chevalier of the Golden Fleece, are masterly portraits. VanCleve, Van Orlay, Key--perhaps a portrait of the bloody Duke ofAlva--also one of himself, Coello's Maria of Austria, are among thesterling specimens in this gallery. 

We need not expect to find duplicated here the Rubens of Antwerp. Themost imposing example is the Adoration of the Magi, while hisportraits of the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isabella, areperhaps the best extant. The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full ofmovement and containing several members of the well-known Rubensfamily. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking forIsabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in thesky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the WomanTaken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicamentthan any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait ofTheophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make agoodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vænius (Octave Van Veen), one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozenVan Dycks, of prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait of anunknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff and the winning portrait of aFlemish sculptor, Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you anexcellent notion of his range, though better Van Dycks are in Franceand England. 

The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is beginning to fade, butthat of an old woman is a superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there aretwo fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van Heythusen, is asmall picture, the figure sitting, the legs crossed (booted andspurred) and the figure leaning lazily back. On his head a black felthat with a broad upturned brim. The expression of the bearded man isserious. The only Jan Vermeer is one of the best portraits by thatsingularly gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with theHat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the picture by Jean Victor, but ithas been pronounced Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a partof the collection of Humphry Ward. The man sits, his hand holding aglove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces thespectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. Hiscollar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These arerather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almostmorbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and theLetter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is amasterpiece 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 thevarious galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yetexhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter. The King Drinks--his kings are always drinking or blind drunk--hisnudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels, attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, andyou don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title forthese robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the mostimportant work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdamhas not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, anda Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening. 

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

The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French, and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artisticsignificance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few originaldrawings of Rops. 

The Musée Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. WhenWiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man ofgenius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and MichaelAngelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The BelgianGovernment, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglectof the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired hiscountry residence and made it a repository of his art. The picturesare of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubensand Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And thereis no denying his power. His tones recall the _pâte_ of Rubens withoutits warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was content to keep withinbounds his portraits and feminine nudes are not without beauty. He wasfanciful rather than poetic, and the picture of Napoleon in hellenduring the reproaches of his victims (why should they be there?) isstartling. Startling, too, are the tricks played on your nerves by thepeepholes. You see a woman crazed by hunger about to cook one of hermurdered children; beheaded men, men crushed by superior power, theharnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus devouring the companions ofUlysses, and other monstrous conceptions, are all painted withreference to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph was a socialist insentiment. If his executive ability had been on a par with his ideas, and if those ideas had been less extravagant, the world would have hadone more great painter; but his nervous system was flawed and he dieda melancholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to revive theheroic age at a time of easel pictures. He, the half genius, sawhimself outwitted by the sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Born out ofhis due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad example of thefutility of looking backward in art. 

BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL

On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghentfor a few hours. There are attractions enough to keep one for severaldays, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) wedid not stay more than the allotted time. And an adventurous time itwas. The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierrestation and that meant the loss of half an hour. The Cathedral isreached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was aboutto be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after itscompletion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already thechoristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to bespared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a sidechapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the greatpicture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt inprayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We werehemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace. The chanting began. Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only morelight. Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificialdusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible. Begun by Hubertin 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour hasvanished; and the loss of the wings--the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum--is irreparable despite thecopies. But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelledfigures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and thecentral panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, thesinging angels, is truly an angelic composition. 

The rain had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glasswindows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, whichglowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and theonly sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The manturned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one hadparticipated in a sacred ceremony. 

Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from beingdead, or even desperately melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nineo'clock at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead? No, Brugesthe Beautiful is nearer the truth. After reading Rodenbach's morbidromance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would belike a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience dispelled this unpleasantillusion. Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots anoisy place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, butwideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like allBelgians, and on fête days given to much feasting. Bruges isinfinitely more interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modernBrussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more picturesque, the foodis as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe oldBurgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk areless grasping, more hearty than in Brussels. 

The city is nicknamed a Northern Venice, but of Venice there isnaught, except the scum on the canal waters. The secular odour ofBruges was not unpleasant in October; in August it may have been. Weknow that the glory of the city hath departed, but there remain theMemlings, the Gerard Davids, at least one Van Eyck, not to mentionseveral magnificent old churches. 

Let us stroll to the Béguinage. Reproductions of Memling and Van Eyckare in almost every window. The cafés on the square, where stands theBelfry of Longfellow's poem, are overflowing with people at table. Itis Friday, and to-morrow will be market day; with perhaps a fair or aprocession thrown in. You reach the Cathedral of St. Sauveur (SintSalvator), erected in the tenth century, though the foundations dateback to the seventh. The narrow lane-like street winds around the rearof the church. Presently another church is discerned with a tower thatmust be nearly four hundred feet high, built, you learn, some timebetween the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Notre Dame contains thetombs of Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, a lovely white marblestatue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to MichaelAngelo, and a fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turnup an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see thecanal that passes the houses of the Béguinage. The view is ofexceeding 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 itshould; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to theensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which seems to haveentered the scene so as to give an artist the exact balance for hiscomposition. Nature and the handicraft of man paint pictures all overBruges. 

We enter the enclosure with the little houses of the béguines, or laysisterhood. There is nothing particular to see, except a man under atree admiring his daubed canvas, near by a dog sleeps. The sense ofpeace is profound. Even Antwerp seems a creation of yesterday comparedwith the brooding calm of Bruges, while Brussels is as noisy as aboiler shop. The Minnewater (Lac d'Amour) is another pretty stretch, and so we spent the entire day through shy alleys, down crookedstreets, twisting every few feet and forming deceptive vistasinnumerable, leading tired legs into churches, out of museums, uptower steps. 

That first hard stroll told us how little we could know of Bruges in aday, a week or a month. Bag and baggage we moved up from Brussels andwished that the clock and the calendar could be set back severalcenturies. At twilight the unusual happened: the Sandman appeared withhis hour-glass and beckoned to bed. There is no night in Bruges forthe visitor within the gates; there is only slumber. Perhaps that iswhy the cockneys call it Bruges the Dead. The old horse that drags thehotel bus was stamping its hoofs in the court-yard; the wall of St. Jacques, eaten away by the years, faced us. The sun, somewhere, wastrying to rub its sleepy eyes, the odour of omelet was in the air, andall was well. This is the home-like side of its life. It may stillharbour artists who lead a mystic, ecstatic existence, but we met noneof them. Poetic images are aroused at dusk along the banks of canals, bathed in spectral light. Here Georges Rodenbach, that poet ofdelicate 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 Hospital St. Jean; the Châsse ofSt. Ursula is a reliquary, Gothic in design. They consist of a dozentiny panels painted in exquisite fashion, with all the bright clarityand precision of a miniaturist, coupled with a solidity of form andlyric elegance of expression. They represent the side of Memling's artwhich might be compared to the illuminators of manuscripts or to theartificers in gold and precious stones. There is a jewelled quality inthis illustration of the pious life and martyrdom of St. Ursula atCologne. But it is not the greatest Memling, to our thinking. Aportrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, the donator of the diptych, LaVierge aux Pommes, is as superb a Memling as one could wish for. Thelittle hairs are a sign of clever, minute brush. It is the modelling, the rich manipulation of tones (yes, values were known in thosebarbarous times), the graceful fall of the hair treated quite as muchen masse as with microscopic finish; the almost miraculous painting ofthe folded hands, and the general expression of pious reverie, thatcount most. The ductile, glowing colours make this a portrait to becompared to any of the master's we have studied at London, Berlin, Dresden, Lübeck, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. But Bruges is thenatural frame for his exalted genius. 

If the Van Eycks were really the first to use oil-colour--a fable, itis said--Memling, who followed them, taught many great Italianpainters the quality and expressiveness of beautiful paint. There isthe portrait of Sybilla Sambetha, the serious girl with the lace veil. Did any of the later Dutch conjurers in paint attain suchtransparency? The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, a triptych withits wings representing the beheading of St. John the Baptist--theSalome is quite melancholy--and St. John at Patmos, is one of theworld pictures. The Adoration of the Magi, with its wings, TheNativity, and Presentation in the Temple, is equally touching. For meMemling's Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music thanRubens--which is operatic in comparison. The Virgin type of Van Eyckis less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as inthe conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more fiercely in thebreasts of these Primitive artists. They felt Christ's Passion and thesorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians of thegolden renaissance. We have always held a brief for the Art for Arttheory. The artist must think first of his material and its technicalmanipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythmsthen his work may attain the heights. It is not painting that is thelost art, but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw theirreligion with eyes undimmed by doubt. 

James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St. Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense fortreatment while sick there. He was a burgher living comfortably atBruges. The museum is a short distance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck(Jan), La Vierge et l'Enfant--known as the Donator because of theportrait of George van der Paele--is its chief treasure, though thereis the portrait of Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of KingCambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling'striptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David'smasterpiece, The Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head withgreater verisimilitude than Van Eyck's rendering of the Donator. Whatan 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 inthis multitude of closely observed and recorded facts. The large eyesgaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin norSon is comely there is character delineated. The accessories must fillthe latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy. 

But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun issetting, and eyelids are lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evokethe brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Brugesthe Beautiful. 

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed withparticular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded by GustaveMoreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to acomparatively few artists and amateurs. You seldom hear Americansspeak of this rare collection, it is never written about in themagazines. In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his houseand its contents to the State. He died in 1898 (not in 1902, asBryan's dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorisedthe Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in thename of the republic. The artist was not known to stranger countries;indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen. Huysmans hadcried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmanswas not always a certificate of fame. That critic was more successfulin attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a borneclectic, though without any intention of carrying water on bothshoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his associates at theBeaux-Arts, while the new men he praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, Monet, would hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion is dividedas to his merits, he being called a _pasticheur_ or else a greatpainter-poet. Huysmans saw straight into the heart of theenigma--Gustave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed man whohad the pictorial vision in an unusual degree; whose brush respondedto the ardent brain that directed it, the skilled hand thatmanipulated it; always responded, we say, except in the creation oflife. His paintings are, strictly speaking, magnificent still-life. Novital current animates their airless, gorgeous, and sometimescadaverous surfaces. 

Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom he had so much in common(at least on the Salammbô side of that writer), Moreau was born toaffluence. His father was a government architect; he went early to theÊcole des Beaux-Arts, and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had aPietà in the Salon (he was born April 6, 1826), and followed it thenext season with a Darius and a large canvas depicting an episode fromthe Song of Songs. The latter was purchased for the Dijon Museum. Atthe Universal Exhibition of 1855 he showed a monster work, TheAthenians and the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public until 1864, when his Oedipus and the Sphinx set Paris talking. He exhibited until1880 various canvases illustrative of his studies in classicliteratures and received sundry medals. He was elected a member of theAcadémie des Beaux-Arts in 1888, replacing Boulanger. He was decoratedin 1875 with the Legion of Honour and made _officier_ in 1883. When amember of the Institute he had few friends, and as professor at theBeaux-Arts he disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of thePrimitives. Altogether a career meagre in exciting incident, thoughsingularly rich and significant on the intimate side. 

A first visit to the museum proved startling. We had seen and admiredthe fifteen water-colours at the Luxembourg, among them the famousApparition, but for the enormous number of pictures, oil, water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, studies, we were unprepared. The bulky catalogue registers 1, 132 pieces, and remember that whilethere are some unfinished canvases the amount of work executed--it istrue during half a century--is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau'smuscular and nervous energy, poetic conception, and intensity ofconcentration. Even his unfinished pictures are carried to a state ofelaboration that would madden many modern improvisers in colour. Apartfrom sheer execution, there is a multitude of visions that must havebeen struggled for as Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau's wasnot a facile mind. He brooded over his dreams, he saw them before hegave them shape. He was familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, andfor him the pantheon of Christian saints must have been bone of hisbone. The Oriental fantasy, the Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledgeof Persian, Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and costumessets us to wondering if this artist wasn't too cultured ever to bespontaneous. He recalls Prester John and his composite faiths. 

There was besides the profound artistic erudition anotherstumbling-block to simplicity of style and unity of conception. Moreaubegan by imitating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a precedure ismanifestly dangerous. Huysmans speaks with contempt of promiscuity inthe admiration of art. You can't admire Manet and Bastien-Lepage--"leGrévin de cabaret, le Siraudin de banlieue, " he names the gentleBastien; nor ought you to admire Manet and Moreau, we may add. AndHuysmans did precisely what he preached against. Moreau was a man ofwide intellectual interests. Devoid of the creative energy that caneject 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, one is tempted toadd; and thus by a conscious act of the will he originated an art thatrecalls an antique chryselephantine statue, a being rigid withprecious gems, pasted with strange colours, something with mineraleyes without the breath of life--contemporary life--yet charged withits author's magnetism, bearing a charmed existence, that might comefrom a cold, black magic; monstrous, withal possessing a strangefeverish beauty, as Flaubert's Salammbô is beautiful, in a remote, exotic way. 

However, it is not fair to deny Moreau human sympathies. There aremany of his paintings and drawings, notably the latter, that show himas possessing heart. His handling of his medium though heavy is nevertimid, and at times is masterly. Delacroix inspired many of hislandscape backgrounds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of hisfemale figures. You continually encounter variations of Ingres, thesweet, serene line, the tapering feet and hands. Some critics havediscerned the toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical measurementsstrain our notion of eclecticism. Certainly Moreau studied Bellini, Mantegna, and Da Vinci without ever attaining the freedom anddistinction of any of them. His colour, too, is often hard and cold, though not in the sumptuous surfaces of his fabrics; there Venetiansplendour is apparent. He can be fiery and insipid, metallic andmorbid; his Orientalism is at times transposed from the work of hisold friend the painter Chasseriau into the key of a brilliant, ifpompous rhetoric. 

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

This herculean attempt at reassembling many styles in a unique stylethat would best express a certain frozen symbolism was the amiablemania his life long of Moreau. He compelled the spirits to come to hisbidding. The moment you cross the threshold of his house the spellbegins to work. It is dissipated by the daylight of Paris, but whileyou are under the roof of the museum you can't escape it. Nor is it aswith Rossetti, a mystic opiate, or with Wiertz, a madman's deliriousfancy. Moreau was a philosophic poet, and though he disclaimed being a"literary" painter, it is literature that is the mainspring of hiselevated and decorative art. Open at random the catalogue full ofquotations from the painter's pen and you encounter such titles asLeda and the Swan, treated with poetic restraint; Jupiter and Semele, Tyrtæus Singing During the Combat, St. Elizabeth and the Miracle ofthe Roses, Lucretia and Tarquin, Pasiphae, the Triumph of Alexander, Salome, Dante and Virgil, Bathsheba, Jason and the Golden Fleece. Allliteratures were ransacked for themes. This painter suffered from thenostalgia of the ideal. When a subject coincided with his technicalexpression the result approximates perfection. Consider the Salome, somarvellously paraphrased in prose by Huysmans. The aquarelle in theLuxembourg is more plastic, more jewelled than the oil; Moreau oftenfailed in the working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has ahallucination been thus set before us with such uncompromisingreality. The sombre, luxurious _décor_, the voluptuous silhouette ofthe dancing girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the aureoledhead of John, are forgotten in the contemplation of Salome, who isbecome cataleptic at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitudeher flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted into a mask ofdeath. The lascivious dance seems suspended in midair. To have paintedso impossible a picture bears witness to the extraordinary quality ofMoreau's complex art. Nor is the Salome his masterpiece. In the realmof the decorator he must be placed high. His genius is Byzantine. Jupiter and Semele, with its colossal and acrian architectures, itsgigantic figure of the god, from whose august head emanate spokes oflight, is Byzantine of a wild luxuriousness in pattern and fancy. Moreau excels in representing cataracts of nude women, ivory-toned offlesh, exquisite in proportion, set off by radiant jewels andwonder-breeding brocades. His skies are in violent ignition, or elseas soft as Lydian airs. What could be more grandiose than the Triumphof Alexander (No. 70 in the catalogue)? Not John Martin or Piranesiexcelled the Frenchman in bizarre architectural backgrounds. And theChimeras, what a Baudelairian imagination! Baudelaire of the bitterheart! All luxury, all sin, all that is the shame and the glory ofmankind is here, as in a tapestry dulled by the smoke of dreams; butas in his most sanguinary combats not a sound, not a motion comes fromthis canvas. When the slaves, lovely females, are thrown to the fishto fatten them for some Roman patrician's banquet, we admire thebeauty of colour, the clear static style, the solidity of thearchitecture, but we are unmoved. If there is such a thing asdisinterested art it is the claustral art of Moreau--which can be bothperverse and majestic. 

His versatility amazes. He did not always paint the same picture. TheChrist Between Two Thieves is academic, yet attracts because theexpression of the converted thief is remarkable. The Three Magi andMoses Within Sight of the Promised Land do not give one the fullestsense of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus or The Rape ofEuropa; yet they suggest what might be termed a tragic sort ofdecoration. Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe'sfatuous line, "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia, " and superbly; or, "See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament. " He is an exoticblossom on the stem of French art. He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He nevertranslated that message, for his was an art of silence; but thepainter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jasonand Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win theadmiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams ofvanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. Gustave Moreau will be their poet-painter by predilection. 

Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as unreal as Rossetti orthe Pre-Raphaelites (though their superior as one who could makepalpable his visions). In the Louvre--where the _Salon Carré_ islittle changed--Manet's Olympe, with her every-day seductiveness, resolves the phantasies of Moreau into thin air. Here is reality foryou, familiar as it may be. It is wonderful how long it took Frenchcritics to discover that Manet was _un peintre de race_. He is veryFrench in the French gallery where he now hangs. He shows the lineageof David, one of whose declamatory portraits with beady eyes hangsnear by. He is simpler than David in his methods--Mr. C. S. Rickettscritically described David as possessing the mind of a policeman--andas a painter more greatly endowed. But Goya also peeps out from theOlympe. After seeing the Maja desnuda at the Prado you realise thatManet's trip to Madrid was not without important results. Between thenoble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the ignoble girl calledOlympe there is only the difference between the respective handlingsof Goya and Manet. 

PICTURES IN MADRID

I

The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on the Prado. Now everygreat capital of Europe boasts its picture or sculpture gallery; noneed to enumerate the treasures of art to be found in London, Paris, Vienna--the latter too little known by the averageglobe-trotter--Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Petersburg, or Venice. They all boast special excellences, but the Prado collection containspictures by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and others, that cannot be seen elsewhere. Setting aside Velasquez and the Spanishschool, not in Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of suchquality and in such quantity as in Madrid. And the Rubenses are of apeculiar lovely order, not to be found in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris. Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the Spanish capital is anecessary and exciting experience for the painter and amateur of art. 

The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pictures and is sadlylacking 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 hundredand eleven canvases. Other galleries were respectively added in 1821, 1828, 1830, and 1839. In 1890 the Queen-mother had the Sala de laReina Isabel rearranged and better lighted. It contained then themasterpieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez's birth, agallery was built to hold his works, with a special room for thatmasterpiece among masterpieces Las Meninas. Many notable pictures thathad hung for years in the Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, atthe Escorial Palace, and and the collection of the Duke of Osuna arenow housed within the walls of the Prado. At the entrance youencounter a monumental figure of Goya, sitting, in bronze, the work ofthe sculptor J. Llaneses. 

The Prado has been called a gallery for connoisseurs, and it is thehappiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum inwhich all schools are represented. You look in vain for the chainhistoric that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best footforemost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez. Ofhim there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty. Bryanonly allows him twenty-three; this is an error. There are fifteenTitians in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the Pitti; inParis, thirteen, but one is the Man with the Glove. Quality countsheaviest, therefore the surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers butthe wonderful quality of so many of them. To lend additional lustre tothe specimens of the Venetian school, the collection starts off with asuperb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who taught Titian his magiccolour secrets; the painter whose works are, with a few exceptions, ascribed to other men--more is the pity! (In this we are at one withHerbert Cook, who still clings to the belief that the Concert of thePitti Palace is Giorgione and not Titian. At least the ConcertChampêtre of the Louvre has not been taken from "Big George. ") TheMadrid masterpiece is The Virgin and Child Jesus with St. Anthony andSt. Roch. 

It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of which is the famousBacchanal. Then there are The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. At Mühlberg, an equestrianportrait; another portrait of the same with figure standing, KingPhilip, Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entombment of Christ, Venus and Adonis, Danaë and the Golden Shower, a variation of thispicture is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the NationalMuseum, Naples; Venus Listening to Music, two versions, the statelynude evidently a memory of the Venus reposing in the Uffizi: Adam andEve (also a copy of this by Rubens); Prometheus, Sisyphus--longsupposed to be copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St. Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom, Ecce Homo, LaDolorosa, the once admired Allocution; Flight Into Egypt, St. Catalina, a self-portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Actæon, The Sermon onthe Mount--the list is much longer. 

There are many Goyas; the museum is the home of this remarkable butuneven painter. We confess to a disappointment in his colour, thoughhis paint was not new to us; but time has lent no pleasing _patina_ tohis canvases, the majority of which are rusty-looking, cracked, discoloured, dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The nude anddressed full-lengths of the Duchess of Alba are in excellentpreservation, and brilliant audacious painting it is. A lovelycreature, better-looking when reclining than standing, as a glance ather full-length portrait in the New York Hispanic Museum proves. Oneof Goya's best portraits hangs in the Prado, the seated figure of hisbrother-in-law, the painter Bayeu. The Family of Charles IV, hispatron and patroness, with the sheep-like head of the favourite De laPaz, is here in all its bitter humour; it might be called a satiricpendant to that other Familia, not many yards away, Las Meninas. Thereare the designs for tapestries in the basement; Blind Man's Buff andother themes illustrating national traits. The equestrian portraits ofCharles IV and his sweet, sinister spouse, Queen Maria Luisa, reveal aGoya not known to the world. He could assume the grand manner when heso willed. He could play the dignified master with the sameversatility that he played at bull-fighting. But his colour is oftenhot and muddy, and perhaps he will go down to that doubtful quantity, posterity, as an etcher and designer of genius. After leaving thePrado you remember only the Caprices, the Bull-fights, and theDisaster of War plates; perhaps the Duchess of Alba, undressed, and inher dainty toreador costume. The historic pictures are a tissue ofhorrors, patriotic as they are meant to be; they suggest theslaughter-house. Goya has painted a portrait of Villanueva, thearchitect of the museum; and there is a solidly constructed portraitof Goya by V. Lopez. 

The Raphaels have been reduced to two at the Prado: The Holy Familywith the Lamb, painted a year after the Ansedei Madonna, and thatwonderful head of young Cardinal Bibbiena, keen-eyed and ascetic offeatures. Alas! for the scholarship that attributed to the DivineYouth La Perla; the Madonna of the Fish; Lo Spasimo, Christ Bearingthe Cross, and several other masterpieces. Giulio Romana, Penni, andperhaps another, turned out these once celebrated and overpraisedpictures--overpraised even if they had come from the brush of Raphaelhimself. The Cardinal's portrait is worth the entire batch of them. 

There is a Murillo gallery, full of representative work, the mostimportant being St. Elizabeth of Hungary Tending the Sick, formerly inthe Escorial. The various Conceptions and saints' heads are notmissing, painted in his familiar colour key with his familiar falsesentiment and always an eye to the appeal popular. A mighty magnet forthe public is Murillo. The peasants flock to him on Sundays as to asanctuary. There the girls see themselves on a high footing, aheavenly saraband among woolly clouds, their prettiness idealised, their costume of exceeding grace. After a while you tire of thesaccharine Murillo and his studio beggar boys, and turn to hisdrawings with relief. His landscapes are more sincere than hisreligious canvases, which are almost as sensuous and earthly asCorreggio without the magisterial brush-work and commanding conceptionof the Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be admitted thatMurillo could make a good portrait. Both in Madrid and Seville you mayverify this. 

A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna open your eyes, for theItalian Primitives are conspicuous by their absence. Correggio ismagnificent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ Risen, Noli MeTangere! His Virgin with Jesus and St. John is in his accustomedmelting _pâte_. One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin, Jesusand St. John, called Asunto Mistico at the Prado. Truly a movingpicture, by a painter who owes much of his fame to Robert Browning. His Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife. There areLotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintoretto, Bassano, Veronese, DomenicoTiepolo, and his celebrated father the fantastic GiambattistaTiepolo--not startling specimens any of them. 

In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was apersonality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom ofSt. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid attimes; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette, Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, AlfonsoCano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban deMarch--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be setdown to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turninfluencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), DelMazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of falseattributions--Carreño de Miranda, José Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger anonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in aword--mediocrities. 

II

The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret, " was produced, some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in temperaon which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titiancorrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is apleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez, duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspectingmany of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swiftthough calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with thetemperamental equation, for the less profound psychological interestof his portraiture when compared with the Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt heads. Yet, what superiority in brush-work had Hals overRaphael and Rembrandt. The Raphael surfaces are as a rule hard, dry, and lustreless, while Rembrandt's heavy, troubled paint is no mate forthe airy touch of the Mercutio of Haarlem. But Titian's impasto islyric. It sings on the least of his canvases. No doubt his pictures inthe Prado have been "skinned" of their delicate glaze by theiconoclastic restorer; yet they bloom and chant and ever bloom. TheBacchanal, which bears a faint family resemblance to the Bacchus andAriadne of the London National Gallery, fairly exults in its joy oflife, in its frank paganism. What rich reverberating tones, whatpowers of evocation! The Garden of the Loves is a vision of childhoodat its sweetest; the surface of the canvas seems alive with festoonedbabies. The more voluptuous Venus or Danaë do not so stir your pulseas this immortal choir of cupids. The two portraits of Charles V--oneequestrian--are charged with the noble, ardent gravity and splendourof phrasing we expect from the greatest Venetian of them all. Wedoubt, however, if the Prado Entombment is as finely wrought as thesame subject by Titian in Paris; but it sounds a poignant note ofsorrow. Rembrandt is more dramatic when dealing with a similar theme. The St. Margaret with its subtle green gown is a figure that istouching and almost tragic. The Madonna and Child, with St. Bridgetand St. Hulfus, has been called Giorgionesque. St. Bridget is of thesumptuous Venetian type; the modelling of her head is lovely, hercolouring rich. 

Rubens in the Prado is singularly attractive. There are over fifty, not all of the best quality, but numbering such works as the ThreeGraces, the Rondo, the Garden of Love, and the masterly unfinishedportrait of Marie de Medicis. The Brazen Serpent is a Van Dyck, thoughthe catalogue of 1907 credits it to Rubens. Then there are theAndromeda and Perseus, the Holy Family and Diana and Calista. Theportrait of Marie de Médicis, stout, smiling, amiability personified, has been called one of the finest feminine portraits extant--which isa slight exaggeration. It is both mellow and magnificent, and unlesshistory or Rubens lied the lady must have been as mild as mother'smilk. The Three Graces, executed during the latter years of theFlemish master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart andhandsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, includeRubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blondflesh tones, what solidity of human architecture, what positive beautyof surfaces and nobility of contours! The Rondo is a mad, whirlingdance, the Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath outdoors, but a picture that might have impelled Walt Whitman to write a sequelto his Children of Adam. Such women were born not alone to bearchildren but to rule the destinies of mankind; genuine matriarchs. 

Rembrandt fares ill. His Artemisia about to drink her husband's ashesfrom a costly cup reveals a ponderous hand. It is but indifferentRembrandt, despite several jewelled passages. Van Dyck shows at leastone great picture, the Betrayal of Christ. The Brazen Serpent onlyranks second to it; both are masterpieces, and Antwerp must envy thePrado. The Crown of Thorns, and the portraits, particularly that ofthe Countess of Wexford, are arresting. His Musician, being theportrait of Lanière the lute-player, and his own portrait on the samecanvas with Count Bristol, are cherished treasures. The lutist isespecially fascinating. That somewhat mysterious Dutch master, Moro, or Mor (Antonis; born in Utrecht, 1512; died at Antwerp, 1576 or1578), is represented by more than a dozen portraits. To know what amaster of physiognomy he was we need only study his Mary Queen ofEngland, the Buffoon of the Beneventas, the Philip II, and the variousheads of royal and noble born dames. The subdued fire and subtlety ofthis series, the piercing vision and superior handicraft of thepainter have placed him high in the artistic hierarchy; but not highenough. At his best he is not far behind Holbein. That great German'sart is shown in a solitary masterpiece, the portrait of an unknownman, with shrewd cold eyes, an enormous nose, the hands full ofmeaning, the fabrics scrupulous as to detail. Next to this Holbein, whose glance follows you around the gallery, are the two Dürers, theportrait 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 marvellouscomposition. It formerly hung too high, above the Hans Imhof; it nowhangs next to it. A similar head in the Uffizi is a copy, Sir WalterArmstrong to the contrary notwithstanding. 

The Flemish schools are to be seen in the basement, not altogether afavourable place, though in the afternoon there is an agreeable light. Like Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the impress of hisstyle. But the Van Eycks at the Prado are now all queried, thoughseveral are noteworthy. The Marriage of the Virgin is discredited. TheVirgin, Christ and St. John under the golden canopy, called a Hubertvan Eyck, is probably by Gossaert de Mabuse, and a clevertransposition of the altar piece in St. Bavon's at Ghent. The Fountainof Life, also in the catalogue as a Jan van Eyck, has been pronounceda sixteenth-century copy of a lost picture by his brother Hubert. Wemay add that not one of these so-called Van Eycks recalls in all theirnative delicacy and richness the real Van Eycks of Bruges, Ghent, andBrussels; though the Virgin Reading, given as Jan's handiwork, is of acharm. The Depositions, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden (De laPasture), are acknowledged to be old sixteenth-century copies of theDeposition in the Escorial. The altar piece is excellent. But there isa fine Memling, glowing in pigment and of beautiful design, TheAdoration of the Kings, a triptych, like the one at Bruges. In thecentre panel we see the kings adoring, one a black man; the two wings, or doors, respectively depict the birth of Christ (right) and thepresentation in the temple (left). There is a retablo (reredos) infour compartments, by Petrus Cristus, and two Jerome Patinirs, one, aTemptation of St. Anthony, being enjoyable. The painter-persecutedsaint sits in the foreground of a freshly painted landscape, harassedby the attentions of witches, several of them comely and clothed. Tobe precise, the composition suggests a much-married man listening tothe reproaches of his spouses. Hanging in a doorway we found a HerriMet de Bles that is not marked doubtful. It is a triptych, anAdoration, in which the three kings, the Queen of Sheba beforeSolomon, and Herod participate. A brilliantly tinted work this, whichonce hung in the Escorial, and, _mirabile dictu_, attributed to Lucasvan Leyden. No need to speak of the later Dutch and Flemish school, Teniers, Ostade, Dou, Pourbus, and the minor masters. There areBreughels and Bosches aplenty, and none too good. But there areseveral Jordaens of quality, a family group, and three heads of streetmusicians. We forgot to mention an attribution to Jan van Eyck, TheTriumph of Religion, which is a curious affair no matter whose brainconceived it. The attendant always points out its religious featureswith ill-concealed glee. A group of ecclesiastics have confounded agroup of rabbis at a fountain which is the foundation of an altar; theold fervour burns in the eyes of the gallery servitor as he shows youthe discomfited Hebrew doctors of the law. We may dismiss as harmlessthe Pinturicchio and other Italian attributions in these basementgalleries. There is the usual crew of Anonimos, and a lot of thosefantastic painters who are nicknamed by critics without a sense ofhumour as "The Master of the Fiery Hencoop, " "The Master of theEccentric 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 theItalian school go as high as 628. The Titians, however, are the gloryof the Prado. The Spanish school begins at 629, ends at 1, 029. TheGerman, Flemish, and Holland schools begin at 1, 146, running to 1, 852. There are supplements to all of the foregoing. The French school runsfrom 1, 969 to 2, 111. But the examples in this section are notinspiring, the Watteaus excepted. There is the usual Champagne, Coypel, Claude of Lorraine (10), Largillière, Lebrun, Van Loo, Mignard(5); one of Le Nain--by both brothers. Nattier (4), Nicolas Poussin(20), Rigaud, and two delicious Watteaus; a rustic betrothal and aview of the garden of St. Cloud, the two exhaling melancholy grace anddisplaying subdued richness of tone. Tiepolo has been called the lastlink in the chain of Venetian colourists, which began with theBellini, followed by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio, Bonifazio, Veronese--and to this list might be added the name of theFrenchman Watteau. Chardin was also a colourist, and how many of thePoussins at this gallery might be spared to make room for one of hiscool, charming paintings!

The Prado about exhausts the art treasures of Madrid. In the Escorial, that most monstrous and gloomiest of the tombs of kings, are picturesthat should be seen--some Grecos among the rest--even if the palacedoes not win your sympathy. In Madrid what was once called theAcademia de San Fernando is now the Real Academia de Bellas Artes. Itis at 11 Calle de Alcalá and contains a Murillo of quality, the Dreamof the Roman Knight, Zurbaran's Carthusians, an Ecce Homo by Ribera, of power; the Death of Dido by Fragonard; a Rubens, St. Francis, thework of his pupils; Alonzo Cano, two Murillos, Domenichino, Tristan, Mengs, Giovanni Bellini; Goya's bull-fights, mad-house scenes, andseveral portraits--one of the Due de la Paz; a Pereda, a Da Vinci (?), Madrazo, Zurbaran, and Goya's equestrian portrait of Charles IV. Aminor gathering, the débris of a former superb collection, and noteven catalogued. 

There are museums devoted to artillery, armour, natural sciences, andarchæology. In the imposing National Library, full of preciousmanuscripts, is the museum of modern art--also without a catalogue. Itdoes not make much of an impression after the Prado. The Fortuny isnot characteristic, though a rarity; a sketch for his Battle ofTetuan, the original an unfinished painting, is at Barcelona. Thereare special galleries such as the Sala Haes with its seventy pictures, which are depressing. The modern Spaniards Zuloaga, Sorolla, Angla-Camarosa are either not represented or else are not at theirbest. There is a Diaz, who was of Spanish origin; but the Madrazos, Villegas, Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or else feebleand mannered. There are some adroit water-colours by modern Frenchmen, and there is a seeming attempt to make the collection contemporary inspirit, but it is all as dead as the allegorical dormouse, while overat the Prado there is a vitality manifested by the old fellows thatbids fair to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests of manygenerations. We have not more than alluded to the sculpture at thePrado; it is not particularly distinguished. The best sculpture we sawin Spain was displayed in wood-carvings. The pride of the Prado iscentred 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 yearsaway for all the resemblance it bears to the capital. Both situated inNew Castille, Madrid seems sharply modern, as modern as the earlynineteenth century, when compared to the mediæval cluster of buildingson the horseshoe-shaped granite heights almost entirely hemmed in bythe river Tagus. It is not only one of the most original cities inSpain, but in all Europe. No other boasts its incomparable profile, few the extraordinary vicissitudes of its history. Not romantic in theoperatic moonlit Grenada fashion, without the sparkle and colour ofSeville or the mundane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in itscold, detached, proud, pious way all that we feel as Spain thearistocratic, Spain the theocratic. To this city on a crag there oncecame, by way of Venice, a wanderer from Crete. Toledo was the finalframe of the strange genius of El Greco; he made it the consecrateground of his new art. It is difficult to imagine him developing inluxuriant Italy as he did in Spain. His nature needed a sombre andmagnificent background; this city gave it to him; for no artist canentirely isolate himself from life, can work in _vacuo_. And ElGreco's shivering, spiritual art could have been born on no other soilthan Toledo. He is as original as the city. 

The place shows traces of its masters--Romans, Goths, Saracens, andChristians. It is, indeed, as much Moorish as Christian--the narrowstreets, high, narrow houses often windowless, the inner courtreplacing the open squares that are to be found in Seville. Miscalledthe "Spanish Rome, " Gautier's description still holds good: Toledo hasthe character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of aseraglio. The enormous cathedral, which dates back to VisigothicChristianity, is, next to Seville's, the most beautiful in Spain. Sucha façade, such stained glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibañez has writtenpages about this structure. The synagogues, the Moorish mosque, theAlcázar are picturesque. And then there are the Puente de Alcántara, the Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison of theInquisition, the Church of Santo Tomé--which holds the most preciousexample of Greco's art--the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of SanVicente--with Grecos--Santo Domingo (more Grecos); the Convent, nearthe Church of San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Provincial inwhich were formerly a number of Grecos; many of these have beentransferred to the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Marquis de laVega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter. This museum was once the homeof Greco, and has been restored, so that if the artist returned hemight find himself in familiar quarters. Pictures, furniture, carvingsof his are there, while the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmoniousstyle of old material. Remain various antique patios or court-likeinteriors, the sword manufactory, and the general view from the top ofthe town. El Greco's romantic portrayment of his adopted city is astrue now as the day it was painted--one catches a glimpse of the scenewhen the contrasts of light and shadow are strong. During athunderstorm illuminated by blazing shafts of Peninsular lightningToledo resembles a page torn from the Apocalypse. 

The cathedral is the usual objective; instead, we first went to thechurch of Santo Tomé. It is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from amosque by Count Orgáz. In commemoration of this gift a large canvas, entitled El Entierro, depicting the funeral of Orgáz, by El Greco, hasmade Santo Tomé more celebrated than the cathedral. It is an amazing, a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a scale that prevents it fromgiving completely the quintessence of El Greco. No doubt he was apupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gossip when he said thatthe Greek went mad in his attempt to emulate his master. ButTintoretto's influence counts heavier in this picture than Titian's, apicture assigned by Cossió midway between Greco's first and secondperiod. Decorative as is the general scheme, the emotional intensityaroused by the row of portraits in the second _plan_, the touchingexpression of the two saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gentlybear the corpse of the Count, the murky light of the torches in thebackground, while overhead the saintly hierarchy terminating in awhite radiance, Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right hand, quiring hosts at His left--all these figures make an ensemble that atfirst glance benumbs the critical faculty. You recall the solemn andspasmodic music of Michael Angelo (of whom El Greco is reported tohave irreverently declared that he couldn't paint); then as yourperspective slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus acertain personal accent of morbid magnificence, is the artisticprogenitor of this art, an art which otherwise furiously boils overwith Spanish characteristics. 

Nothing could be more vivid and various than the twenty-odd heads nearthe bottom of the picture. Expression, character, race are not pushedbeyond normal limits. The Spaniard, truly noble here, is seen at ahalf-dozen periods of life. El Greco himself is said to be in thegroup; the portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his. Thesumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vestments, court costumes, ruffs, and eloquent hands, the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chordrolling upon chord of subtle tonalities, the supreme illumination ofthe scene, with its suggestion of a moment swiftly trapped forever ineternity, hook this masterpiece firmly to your memory. It is not oneof the greatest pictures in the pantheon of art, not Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet itstands close to them all because of its massed effect of light, life, and emotional situation. We confess to liking it better than theGloria at the Escorial Palace. This glorification of a dream of PhilipII does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as does theBurial of Count Orgáz, though the two canvases are similar inarchitectonic. 

The Expolio is in the cathedral; it belongs to the first period, before El Greco had shaken off Italian influences. The colouring israther cold. The St. Maurice in the chapter hall of the Escorial is along step toward a new method of expression. (A replica is inBucharest. ) The Ascension altar piece, formerly in Santo Domingo, nowhangs in the Art Institute, Chicago. At Toledo there are about eightypieces of the master, not including his sculpture, retablos; likeTintoretto, he was accustomed to make little models in clay or wax forthe figures in his pictures. His last manner is best exemplified inthe Divine Love and Profane Love, belonging to Señor Zuloaga, in TheAdoration of the Shepherds, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and theAssumption at the Church of St. Vicente, Toledo. His chalky whites, poisonous greens, violet shadows, discordant passages of lighting are, as Arthur Symons puts it: Sharp and dim, gray and green, the colour ofToledo. Greco composed his palette with white vermilion, lake, yellowochre, ivory black. Señor Beruete says that "he generally laid on animpasto for his flesh, put on in little touches, and then added a fewdefinite strokes with the brush which, though accentuated, are verydelicate... The gradations of the values is in itself instructive. "

His human forms became more elongated as he aged; this applies only tohis males; his women are of sweetness compounded and graceful incontour. Some a mere arabesque, or living flames; some sinister andfantastic; from the sublime to the silly is with Greco not a widestride. But in all his surging, writhing sea of wraiths, saints, kings, damned souls and blest, a cerebral grip is manifest. He knew ahawk from a handsaw despite his temperament of a mystic. "He whocarries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point becomesthe first in a file of a long series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "Tobe a leader of men one must turn one's back on men. " El Greco, likeCharles Baudelaire, cultivated his hysteria. He developed hisindividuality to the border line across which looms madness. Thetransmogrification of his temperament after living in Toledo wasprofound. Born Greek, in art a Venetian, the atmosphere of theCastilian plain changed the colour of his soul. In him there wasmaterial enough for both a Savonarola or a Torquemada--his piety wasat once iconoclastic and fanatical. And his restlessness, hisceaseless experiments, his absolute discoveries of new tonalities, hissense of mystic grandeur--why here you have, if you will, a Berlioz ofpaint, a man of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic, witha brain like a gloomy cathedral in which the _Tuba Mirum_ issonorously 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 ofEl Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saëns, when Liszt and Rubinsteinwere compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing incommon except their superiority. " It is bootless to bracket Velasquezwith his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco'sresemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Grecowas, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies weside with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. : "Certainpedants have written as if the world would be better without itsdisorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We needthe unbalanced talents, the _poètes damnés_ of every craft. They strewthe passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fightvaliantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the onlyunpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always bean honoured name in this ill-destined company. "

In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection. The Annunciation, The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, TheResurrection, The Crucifixion--a tremendous conception; and The Comingof the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, itsflickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face floodedby a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the æsthetic pulse. ThePrado has two dozen specimens, though two of them at least--a poorreplica of the Orgáz burial, and another--are known to be by ElGreco's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of the numerous portraits andother pictures dispersed by time and chance to the four quarters ofthe globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing withthe definitive work on this Greek by Señor Manuel B. Cossio. El Greco, through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, couldpluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy andgrotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or ifstained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like greenmeteors. To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointedskull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of chin and often anatrabilious nature. When old his saints resemble him, when young hemust have looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin. With hisardent faith he could have confuted the Gnostic or the Manicheanheresies in colourful allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahson his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His saints. Perhapsif he had lived in our times he might have painted heads offashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether primitiveor modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painterof dramatic genius. He is the unicorn among artists. 

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO

Fearful that your eye has lost its innocence after hearing so much ofthe picture, you enter the tiny room at the museum on the Prado inwhich is hung Las Meninas--The Maids of Honour, painted by Velasquezin 1656. My experience was a typical one. I went hastily through thelarger Velasquez gallery in not only a challenging but an irritablemood. The holy of holies I was enraged to find, seemingly, crowded. There was the picture, but a big easel stood in the foregroundblotting out the left side; some selfish artist copying, some fellowthrusting himself between us and the floating illusion of art. Indespair I looked into the mirror that reflects the picture. Isuspected trickery. Surely that little princess with her wilful, _distrait_ expression, surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, thesprawling dog, the painter Velasquez--with his wig--the heads of theking and queen in the oblong mirror, the figure of Señor Nieto in thedoorway, the light framing his silhouette--surely they are all real. Here are the eternal simplicities. You realise that no one is in theroom but these painted effigies of the court and family of Philip IV;that the canvas whose bare ribs deceived is in the picture, not on thefloor; that Velasquez and the others are _eidolons_, arrested in spaceby the white magic of his art. For the moment all other artists andtheir works are as forgotten as the secrets in the lost and sacredbooks of the Magi. There is but one painter and his name is Velasquez. 

This mood of ecstatic absorption is never outlived; the miracleoperates whenever a visit is made to the shrine. But you soon notethat the canvas has been deprived of its delicate glaze. There arepatches ominously eloquent of the years that have passed since thebirth of this magisterial composition. The tonal key is said to behigher because of restorations; yet to the worshipper theseshortcomings are of minor importance. Even Giordano's exclamation:"Sire, this is the theology of painting, " falls flat. Essence ofpainting, would have been a truer statement. There is noother-worldliness here, but something more normal, a suggestion ofsolid reality, a vision of life. The various figures breathe; sopotent is their vitality that my prime impression in entering the roomwas a sense of the presence of others. Perhaps this is not asconsummate art as the voluptuous colour-symphonies of Titian, thegolden exuberance of Rubens, the abstract spacing of Raphael, themystic opium of Rembrandt; but it is an art more akin to nature, anart that is a lens through which you may spy upon life. You recallIbsen and his "fourth wall. " Velasquez has let us into the secret ofhuman existence. Not, however, in the realistic order of inanimateobjects copied so faithfully as to fool the eye. Presentation, notrepresentation, is the heart of this coloured imagery, and so moving, so redolent of life is it that if the world were shattered and LasMeninas shot to the coast of Mars, its inhabitants would be able toreconstruct an idea of the creatures that once inhabited old MotherEarth; men, women, children, their shapes, attitudes, gestures, andattributes. The mystery of sentient beings lurks in this canvas, theillusion of atmosphere has never been so contrived. In the upper partof the picture space is indicated in a manner that recalls bothRembrandt and Raphael. Velasquez, too, was a space-composer. Velasquez, too, plucked at the heart of darkness. But his air isluminous, the logic of his proportion faultless, his synthesisabsolute. Where other painters juxtapose he composes. Despite thecountless nuances of his thin, slippery brush strokes, the picture isalways a finely spun whole. 

When Fragonard was starting for Rome, Boucher said to him: "If youtake those people over there seriously you are done for. " LuckilyFrago did not, and, despite his two Italian journeys, Velasquez wasnot seduced into taking "those people" seriously. His recorded opinionof Raphael is corroborative of his attitude toward Italian art. Titianwas his sole god. For nearly a year he was in daily intercourse withRubens, but of Rubens's influence upon him there is little trace. LasMeninas is the perfect flowering of the genius of the Spaniard. It hasbeen called impressionistic; Velasquez has been claimed as the fatherof impressionism as Stendhal was hailed by Zola as the literaryprogenitor of naturalism. But Velasquez is too universal to belabelled in the interests of any school. His themes are of this earth, his religious paintings are the least credible of his efforts. Theyare Italianate as if the artist dared not desert the familiarreligious stencil. His art is not correlated to the other arts. Onedoes not dream of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front ofhis pictures. One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the paint. Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he paint for the sake ofmaking beautiful surfaces as often does Titian. His practice is notart for art as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's is theonly name to be coupled with that of Velasquez. He neither flatteredhis sitters, as did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And considerthe mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was forced topaint! He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and his prose, sober, rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is to my taste preferable to theexalted, versatile volubility and lofty poetic tumblings in the azureof any school of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidiouslyrestricted. It has been said that he lacks imagination, as if creationor evocation of character is not the loftiest attribute ofimagination, even though it deals not with the stuff of whichmythologies are made. 

We admire the enthusiasm of Mr. Ricketts for Velasquez, and hisanalysis is second to none save R. A. M. Stevenson's. Yet we do protestthe painter was not the bundle of negations Mr. Ricketts has made ofhim in his evident anxiety that some homage may be diverted fromTitian. Titian is incomparable. Velasquez is unique. But to describehim as an artist who cautiously studied the work of other men, andthen avoided by a series of masterly omissions and evasions theirfaults as well as their excellences, is a statement that robsVelasquez of his originality. He is not an eclectic. He is a man ofaffirmations, Velasquez. A student to his death, he worked slowly, revised painfully, above all, made heroic sacrifices. Each new canvaswas a discovery. The things he left out of his pictures would fill asecond Prado Museum. And the things he painted in are the glories ofthe world. Because of his simplicity, absence of fussiness, avoidanceof the mock-heroic, of the inflated "grand manner, " critics havepressed too heavily upon this same simplicity. There is nothing assubtle as his simplicity, for it is a simplicity that concealssubtlety. No matter the time of day or season of the year you visitVelasquez, you never find him off his guard. Aristocratic in his ease, he disarms you first. You may change your love, your politics, yourreligion, but once a Velasquez worshipper, always one. 

Mr. Ricketts, over-anxious at precisely placing him, writes of his"distinction. " He is the most "distinguished" painter in history. Butwe contend that this phrase eludes precise definition. "Distinguished"in what? we ask. Style, character, paint quality, vision of thebeautiful? Why not come out plumply with the truth: Velasquez is thesupreme harmonist in art. No one ever approached him in his handlingsave Hals, and Hals hardly boasts the artistic inches of Velasquez. Both possessed a daylight vision of the world. Reality came to them inthe sharpest guise; but the vision of Velasquez came in a morebeautiful envelope. And his psychology is profounder. He painted thesparkle of the eyes and also the look in them, the challenging glancethat asks: "Are we, too, not humans?" Titian saw colour as a poet, Velasquez as a charmer and a reflective temperament. Hals doesn'tthink at all. He slashes out a figure for you and then he is done. Thegraver, deeper Spaniard is not satisfied until he has kept his pactwith nature. So his vision of her is more rounded, concrete, andtruthful than the vision of other painters. The balance in his work ofthe most disparate and complex relations of form, space, colour, andrhythm has the unpremeditated quality of life; yet the massiveharmonic grandeurs of Las Meninas have been placed by certain criticsin the category of glorified genre. 

Some prefer Las Hilanderas in the outer gallery. After the statelyequestrian series, the Philip, the Olivares, the Baltasar Carlos;after the bust portraits of Philip in the Prado and in the NationalGallery, the hunting series; after the Crucifixion and its sombrebackground, you return to The Spinners and wonder anew. Its subtitlemight be: Variations on the Theme of Sunshine. In it the painterpursues the coloured adventures of a ray of light. Rhythmically moreinvolved and contrapuntal than The Maids, this canvas, with itsbrilliant broken lights, its air that circulates, its tender yetpotent conducting of the eye from the rounded arm of the seductivegirl at the loom to the arched area with its leaning, old-timebass-viol, its human figures melting dream-like into the tapestriedbackground, arouses within the spectator much more complicated _étatsd'âme_ than does Las Meninas. The silvery sorceries of that picturesoothe the spirit and pose no riddles; The Spinners is a cathedralcrammed with implications. Is it not the last word of the art ofVelasquez--though it preceded The Maids? Will the eye ever tire of itsglorious gloom, its core of tonal richness, its virile exaltation ofeveryday existence? Is it only a trick of the wrist, a deft blendingof colours by this artist, who has been called, wrongfully--the"Shakespeare of the brush"? Is all this nothing more than"distinguished"?

Mr. Ricketts justly calls Las Lanzas the unique historic picture. Painted at the very flush of his genius, painted with sympathy for theconquered and the conqueror--Velasquez accompanied the Marquis ofSpinola to Italy--this Surrender of Breda has received the homage ofmany generations. Sir Joshua Reynolds asserted that the greatestpicture at Rome was the Velasquez head of Pope Innocent X in the DoriaPalace (a variant is in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg). Whatwould he have said in the presence of this captivating evocation of ahistoric event? The battle pieces of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, andTitian are destroyed; Las Lanzas remains a testimony to the powers ofimaginative reconstruction and architectonic of Velasquez. It is themost complete, the most natural picture in the world. The rhythms ofthe bristling lances are syncopated by a simple device; they aretransposed to another plane of perspective, there in company with alowered battle standard. The acute rhythms of these spears has givento the picture its title of The Lances, and never was title moreappropriate. The picture is at once a decorative arabesque, anensemble of tones, and a slice of history. Spinola receives from theconquered Justin of Nassau the keys of the beleagured Breda. Velasquezcreates two armies out of eight figures, a horse and fourteenheads--here is the recipe of Degas for making a multitude carried tothe 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 colourand brush-work, and without much hint of the transcendental realism tobe noted in his later style. The dwarfs, buffoons, the Æsop and theMenippus are the result of an effortless art. In the last manner thesecret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars, asDostoïevsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, arepictures that enthrall because of their robust simplicity and vasttechnical sweep though they do not possess the creative invention ofthe Mercury and Argus or The Anchorites. This latter is an amazingperformance. Two hermits--St. Antony the Abbot visiting St. Paul theHermit--are shown. A flying raven, bread in beak, nears them. Youcould swear that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas. Thispicture breathes peace and sweetness. The Christ of the Spaniard is aman, not a god, crucified. His Madonnas, masterly as they are, do notreach out hands across the frame as do his flower-like royal childrenand 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 ofimbricated tones there are grays that felicitously sing across alienstrawberry tints, thence modulate into fretworks of dim golden fire. As a landscapist Velasquez is at his best in the Prado. The variousbackgrounds and those two views painted at Rome in the garden of theVilla Medici--a liquid comminglement of Corot and Constable, as hasbeen pointed out--prove this man of protean gifts to have anticipatedmodern discoveries in vibrating atmospheric effects and colour-values. But, then, Velasquez will always be "modern. " And when time hasobliterated his work he may become the legendary Parrhasius of avanished epoch. To see him in the Prado is to stand eye to eye withthe most enchanting realities of art. 

_CODA_

When a man begins to chatter of his promenades among the masterpiecesit may be assumed that he has crossed the sill of middle-age. Remy deGourmont, gentle ironist, calls such a period _l'heure insidieuse_. Yet, is it not something--a vain virtue, perhaps--to possess thecourage of one's windmills! From the Paris of the days when I hauntedthe ateliers of Gérôme, Bonnat, Meissonier, Couture, and spent myenthusiasms over the colour-schemes of Decamps and Fortuny, to theParis of the revolutionists, Manet, Degas, Monet, now seems a lifelong. But time fugues precipitately through the land of art. Inreality both periods overlap; the dichotomy is spiritual, nottemporal. 

The foregoing memoranda are frankly in the key of impressionism. Theyare a record of some personal preferences, not attempts at criticalrevaluations. Appearing first in the New York _Sun_, the project oftheir publication in book form met with the approbation of itsproprietor, William Mackay Laffan, whose death in 1909 was aninternational loss to the Fine Arts. If these opinions read like amedley of hastily crystallised judgments jotted down after the mannerof a traveller pressed for time, they are none the less sincere. Mygarden is only a straggling weedy plot, but I have traversed it withdelight; in it I have promenaded my dearest prejudices, my most absurdillusions. And central in this garden may be found the image of thesupreme illusionist of art, Velasquez. 

Since writing the preceding articles on El Greco and Velasquez themuseum of the Hispanic Society, New York, has been enabled, throughthe munificent generosity of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, to exhibit hisnewly acquired El Grecos and a Velasquez. The former comprise abrilliantly coloured Holy Family, which exhales an atmosphere ofserenity; the St. Joseph is said to be a portrait of El Greco; andthere also is a large canvas showing Christ with several of hisdisciples. Notable examples both. The Velasquez comes from thecollection of the late Edouard Kann and is a life-size bust portraitof a sweetly grave little girl. Señor Beruete believes her torepresent the daughter of the painter Mazo and his wife, FranciscaVelasquez, therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The tonalities ofthis picture are subtly beautiful, the modelling mysterious, theexpression vital and singularly child-like. It is a fitting companionto a portrait hanging on the same wall, that of the aristocratic youngCardinal Pamphili, a nephew of Pope Innocent X, also by the greatSpaniard. 

 * * * * *

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC

BRAHMS, TSCHAÏKOWSKY, CHOPIN, RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT AND WAGNER

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MELOMANIACS

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Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B--A Son of Liszt--A Chopin of theGutter--The Piper of Dreams--An Emotional Acrobat--Isolde'sMother--The Rim of Finer Issues--An Ibsen Girl--Tannhäuser'sChoice--The Red-Headed Piano Player--Brynhüd's Immolation--The Questof the Elusive--An Involuntary Insurgent--Hunding's Wife--The Corridorof Time--Avatar--The Wegstaffes give a Musicale--The Iron Virgin--Duskof the Gods--Siegfried's Death--Intermezzo--A Spinner of Silence--TheDisenchanted Symphony--Music the Conqueror. 

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ICONOCLASTS:

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EGOISTS

_A BOOK OF SUPERMEN_

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"JAMES HUNEKER: INDIVIDUALIST"

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"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both tostartle and to find true expression. He has not followed those greatnovelists who write French a child may read and understand. He callsthe moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truthbeats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-coloredcymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant. ' Buteven these oddities are significant and to be placed high above theslipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are asmeaningless as the imprint on a worn-out coin. 

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CHOPIN:

The Man and His Music

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