A Sale
The sale of the late Sir John Day’s pictures was particularly interesting to me, since it happens that I have the satisfaction of sharing that good judge’s predilections. His gods are for the most part mine. I, too, would choose for my walls (if I had any) Corots and Daubignys, Marises and Mauves, Millets and Bosbooms, Rousseaus and De Wints. I, too, prefer the wistful crepuscule to the vivid noon. Hence I entered Christie’s at a quarter to one on 13 May, 1909, and took the place that a boy messenger was keeping for me, with feelings of peculiar excitement and enthusiasm.
The seated company at a big sale at Christie’s is as unchanging as an ordinary congregation. A few strangers may be there, looking in for the first time, but the rest, the regular attendants, the pew-owners, so to speak, know each other, and are known to the auctioneer, so that the bids of those who engage in the contest are, as at most sales where dealers congregate, often imperceptible to others, although to him clear as speech.
We opened modestly. Lot 1 was a seascape by De Bock, and the first bid was five guineas. It little thought, that bid, what a huge total would be built upon it. The De Bock reached 160 guineas, and then made room for a Bosboom. Bosboom is a modern Dutch painter, now dead (you may see his palette in the Museum at the Hague), whose ecclesiastical interiors have a grave and sombre beauty that I suppose has never been equalled. Among collectors he is becoming more and more desired.
After the Bosbooms we came to the Corots, of which there were a round dozen, and a little anticipatory flutter was perceptible in the room. There are better Corots in the world than Sir John Day possessed; but this procession of twelve of the tender, serene canvases from the Ville d’Avray studio was very wonderful, and one lost the bidding in the quietude of the paint. Among them were three early works, when the artist liked a more rarefied air than later in life. And these one has to know in order to realize fully not only how superb Corot was, but how bewilderingly blind were the connoisseurs of that day to let him languish as they did. Of course it is easy to recognize his greatness now, when the very name Corot carries magic with it; it is difficult to put one’s self back into those times when it meant nothing, and to see the pictures with eyes unassisted by tradition; and yet I find it hard to believe that if one of these early works had come to me suddenly out of a clear sky, I should have failed to be arrested by it.
Well, there we sat, packed together like excursionists, while the giant picture-dealers of Europe fought for these pacific landscapes—these sweet lark songs among the light clouds of the grey day, to quote Corot’s own description of his ideal—until the dozen had reached a total of nearly £12,000.
To Corot succeeded his friend Charles Daubigny, whose vast and luminous “Harvest Moon” produced the instant bid of 1000 guineas, to which, after a long interval of silence, it fell. His “Bords de l’Oise,” a great wet landscape, with Daubigny’s stern, sincere beauty drenching it, brought 1800 guineas. Others followed, and then five rich scenes by Diaz, also a citizen of the white village of Barbizon, whose home you may see to-day, with a tablet on the gate, almost opposite the rambling house of Jean François Millet. The first of these Diazes was an evening picture with cattle coming down to drink beneath a stormy sky; not unlike the superb moorland scene from the same brush which Mr. Salting left to the National Gallery. It began at fifty guineas and reached 850. (By the way, the starting of safe pictures at fifty and a hundred guineas would be a pleasant task for a reduced gentleman of the Captain Jackson type, who, able no longer to collect, wished still to sun himself in the illusion of prosperity and connoisseurship. To make in a loud voice a bid of 100 or 500 guineas, whether one has such a sum in the bank or not, must do something for the spirit. It cannot leave one quite where one was.)
After Diaz, Jules Dupré, another great and sincere painter of landscape, a direct disciple of Constable (who was a founder of the Barbizon school) and the friend of Corot, Rousseau, and their friends. It was Dupré who said beautifully of Corot that he might—it was within the bounds of possibility—be replaced as a painter, but never as a man. There were five Duprés, upon the first of which a sanguine friend of mine, unconscious of the growing value of this master, had placed the sum of £100, for which I was to try and get it for him. It was too little, I had suggested; but no, Dupré was not much considered, he fondly replied. His face fell when I told him how the first bid had been 200 guineas and the last 520.
It is one of the charms of Christie’s that you never can tell. Pictures fetch every day unexpected prices, both high and low. Good pictures slip through, taking the room unawares, and bad pictures occasionally reach absurd figures, for various reasons. This Dupré, however, was fine. I once bought at Christie’s for two guineas two water-colour drawings attributed to Clarkson Stanfield, and, behold, on stripping them to be framed again, one was revealed, by a minute history on its back, to be a David Cox worth many times what I gave for it. Let no one despair of a bargain, even when all the dealers from the Continent and all the dollars from America are present. The dealers’ idea, it must be remembered, is to sell again, and they buy accordingly. Many a good picture does not appeal to the commercial eye. At this sale, for instance, five examples of the, to me, impressive art of Georges Michel, the rich and sombre painter of windmills, a French Crome, brought together only a little more than 100 guineas, while on the second or water-colour day, there were many lots that went far too cheaply. In a sale where competition is concentrated upon the great works, the humble collector has often a chance.
After the Duprés came the Harpignies’, in which Sir John Day was peculiarly rich. This grand old man, who is still (1911) hale, at the age of 92, has been painting all his life in oil and water-colour, and has never put forth a meretricious or hurried thing. He is the link between Barbizon and the present day. Less charming, perhaps, than the greatest men of that school, he is more of a realist, and trees and foliage have no closer or more inspired student. His great lack, I suppose, is tenderness; everything else he has. It is good to know that in this fine, sure hand the blood still flows; that this artist, who has loved the world of beauty so long, is still able to enjoy it; and that he can watch himself becoming an Old Master, and the quarry of the collector, while he is still living.
The old age of artists was a theme on which Hazlitt wrote one of his best essays, and just now, were he to be still among us, he would find new subjects for study—for not only is there Harpignies at ninety-two in France, but Sir John Tenniel at ninety-two in London; while it is only a year or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, and W. P. Frith at ninety-one. An artist—particularly an open-air artist, like Harpignies and Callow—has, one would say, every opportunity of attaining to a great age. Given a strong constitution and the absence of such harassments as, for example, bowed prematurely the head of Haydon, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties or physique. By the conditions of his art he cannot work at night. He is a daylight man: he lives upon light and air; he is in direct rapport with the sun; he watches the skies (and how few of us do that!); his eye, searching for beauty and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly being rewarded in the best way—and that must make for the content that in its turn must make for longevity. When the painter’s temperament has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the happiest of all.
Harpignies’ prices at Sir John Day’s sale were far in advance of anything he had previously made at Christies’. The largest picture produced 1800 guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week later, however, the old man’s English record rose to 2000 guineas at the Cuthbertson sale.
So far all the important work had been French, but now (the arrangement was alphabetical) came in an illustrious Dutchman, another Nestor—Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 87. Mr. Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto had been silent, began now to be busy. For the most important picture, “Bonheur Maternel,” 1080 guineas were paid, and for five others 2470 guineas—among them “The Fisher,” which fell to Mr. Drücker and added yet another to a collection of Israels’ which has overflowed both into our National Gallery and into the City Museum at Amsterdam.
After the “Shepherdess” of Charles Jacque, who painted sheep more brilliantly than any hand ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas, we entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by the three Marises, Mauve, and Mesdag; and once again the room fluttered, for the name of Maris grows more powerful every year. There is, indeed, perhaps no recent prolific painter so certain of a great financial future as the late James Maris. On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set against him in rivalry, because Matthew stands apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. To him we come soon.
James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has been restrained; and this makes the huge figures that his work now commands, and will, I believe, increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir John Day had fifteen of his oils and thirteen of his water-colours, all of which he bought during the artist’s life (only recently ended) through dealers at modest enough sums, averaging for the oils something about £80, and for the water-colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged £1000 and the water-colours £400. The highest sum paid for a single oil was 1600 guineas for a view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the following week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James Maris brought 4000 guineas.
These prices may sound absurd, but they are not. An artist now and then becomes the fashion and excites competition beyond his deserts; but not so James Maris. James Maris was a great painter of skies, a great painter of river-side towns, a great painter of his native land. He saw things largely and painted them largely (now and then a little in the manner of the most beautiful landscape in the world—Vermeer’s “View of Delft”), and these facts are now known. His future, I fancy, is as secure as that of Constable and Crome. It gave me immense pleasure to see the brave, candid painter so popular.
And then Matthew Maris, and the first thrill of the sale. James’s rich and buoyant canvases, one by one on the easel, and the competition of the bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we had not broken into applause. The first applause—no small thing at Christie’s, where impassivity is cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit but also from motives of commercial self-protection—the first applause was won by Lot 77.
What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange, exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky: solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here he lives, painting a little every day,—but they are pictures for no one to see,—and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.
Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I know—that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”—a little blue girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works, including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned Montmartre souvenirs.
Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns, or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting “such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description, with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course, is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.
Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it—100 francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore, being sold for the third time.
“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”
“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Twelve.”
“Thirteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Fifteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen fifty.”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen fifty.”
“Nineteen.” (The red roofs are getting redder, the brown mills browner! The peace of it all!)
“Two thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“Three hundred.”
“Four hundred.”
“Five hundred.”
“Six hundred.”
“Seven hundred.”
“Eight hundred.”
“Nine hundred.” (How quiet and beautiful, and above all price, all struggle, all commercialism, the picture is!)
“Three thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred and fifty.” (Strange reading for old Matthew Maris in his London lodgings to-morrow morning!)
“Three hundred.”
A pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
A longer pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
And the hammer falls and the room vibrates with the tapping of sticks and clapping of hands; and “The Four Mills” disappears, bound for the house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to an English connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I envy. He is the right kind of connoisseur, too; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee enamoured of American dollars, but a simple gentleman who has already given pictures to the nation and intends (I am told) to give more—perhaps this very Dutch masterpiece.
Lot 78. “Feeding Chickens.” This also is by Matthew Maris, and was painted in 1872. “A Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding chickens with some grain which she holds in the fold of her white apron; foliage background.” Such is the Christie description, and it serves to recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it says nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of it, or the richness and delicacy and sweetness of it, or even of the fascinating mediæval city in the distance.
For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale it began at a thousand guineas and reached three, falling also to a Scotch purse—and it is now, I hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred saxpences never went bang to better purpose. This second picture, by the way, was painted from the same model that lends such charm to “The Girl at the Well,” feeding pigeons, in the McCulloch collection.
Six William Marises[1] follow, and then we come to another Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of collectors—Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of starving before the tide turns his way.
[1] William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 1911, one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie’s.
Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven in water-colour. The first oil, “Troupeau de Moutons sous Bois,” he bought in 1888, immediately after the artist’s death. It was a picture of which Mauve was very fond; Sir John Day gave £150 for it. At the sale it began at 500 guineas, and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr. Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures with sheep in them, it has been said, always find buyers; but when the sheep are painted as these are, not with the brio of Jacque, but so quietly and lovingly...!
Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what he found around him and made it beautiful. He was one of the artists of whom the Creator must be most proud, in whom He must take most delight, for his whole life was given up to the demonstration of how beautiful everything is—and never with the faintest whisper of the words, “and how skilful am I!” Never. Anton Mauve stands with the greatest in his sincerity, his genius, and his self-effacement. American collectors have always appreciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, has long been a settlement of American painters.
Our first thrill was with the Matthew Maris; the next was with J. F. Millet’s “Goose Maiden”—one of the most lovely pieces of colour that can ever have leaned against Christie’s historic post. The merest trifle in size—12¼ by 9½ inches—an old master—a jewel of paint—from the moment it was born. Millet was no less a great colourist than a great draughtsman and a great lover of the earth, and here, in this tiny canvas, all his virtues meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in his time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. The bidding began at 500 guineas and mounted by hundreds to 5000.
After the Millet the most beautiful picture was a little landscape by Rousseau, the painter who left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers as a chapel. “River Scene: with a man fishing from a punt” was the description; but that omitted the wonder of the work—the evening light and stillness. It literally hushed the room. This picture is now in the National Gallery, for all to see. A week later (observe what it is to have the Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a richer but not more beautiful afternoon light in it, and some trees painted as only Rousseau could paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If forests can think, if villages have thoughts, what must be the reflection of Fontainebleau and Barbizon when they receive the news of these Christie contests!)
And so the day finished, some £75,000 having changed hands in three hours—a large sum for a little paint. A little paint, do I say? That is true; but a new world, too—a world of wistful beauty. And that, of course, cannot be appraised: it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do not want it—if your taste is unlike Sir John Day’s; it is cheap at all you have, if you desire it sufficiently.