I. PAINTING
At no period since the Renaissance has there been such marked progress in certain walks of art as during the period of reconstruction in the political, social, economic, and æsthetic world immediately following the French Revolution of 1798. The armies of France, returning from the conquest of Europe, brought home to Paris the treasures of art ravished from the great capital cities. The vast public galleries and numerous private collections established under the first Empire contained accumulations of pictures, marbles, bronzes, tapestries, decorations, and bric-à-brac brought from Italy, from Germany, from the Low Countries, from Spain, and even from Russia and Egypt, of extent and value unparalleled in the history of the human race. These treasures were dispersed under the Restoration and returned to their former owners; but, in the meantime, their educational influence upon the people of France, and especially of Paris, had produced profound and permanent impressions which abide to this day. To this practical education afforded by the models and examples of all that is noble and exalted, gathered from the galleries and safe deposits of the civilized world, France is primarily indebted for that cultured skill and that refinement of good taste which have enabled her to take and hold her acknowledged position as the leading nation in the realm of art in the nineteenth century.
At the beginning of the century the art of France was resting inert in the bonds of classic tradition. Academic conventionality held almost undisputed sway; only a few painters of portraits, as, for example, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Isabey, and decorative artists like Greuze, venturing beyond the limits of the hard and fast rules prescribed by scholastic pedants. The only subjects regarded as legitimate for artistic treatment were illustrations of mythology or of Greek or Roman literature. Sacred pictures illustrating the Biblical narratives and lives of the saints were permitted for church adornment and for religious purposes; but historic and story-telling pictures of the order now known as genre were classic in subject and academic in treatment. Even in portraiture, where a likeness was the main consideration, military heroes were represented in Greek armor and distinguished civilians were invested with the dignity of the Roman toga.
The high priest of ancient pagan worship in France during the first quarter of the century was Jacques Louis David (1748–1825). David was a master of such real power that he was court painter to Louis XVI., director of Fine Arts under the Republic, and again court painter to the Emperor Napoleon. His great work, “The Oath of the Horatii,” now in the Louvre, first exhibited in 1784, was universally admired and is still highly esteemed. This was followed by a triumphal procession of classic compositions, the most notable of which were “The Rape of the Sabines,” usually considered to be his masterpiece, “The Death of Socrates,” “Paris and Helen,” and “Brutus and His Sons,” all of which have been reproduced many times in prints. David was influenced, late in his career, by the romantic reaction, as shown by his “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” and his “Floating Martyr,” but he championed classic art all his life, his last words expressing an aspiration to paint the head of Leonidas.
The downfall of the classic dominion in France was brought about by the revolt of Géricault and Delacroix, about 1820. Jean Louis Géricault (1791–1824) was declared by Viardot to have revealed an era when liberty in art was revived together with political liberty, joining the general movement of the human spirit in the march of progress toward independence. His epoch-marking picture, “The Raft of the Medusa,” in the Salon of 1819, created an intense excitement not only in artistic circles, where it opened the battle between romance and classic tradition, but also among the people. Instead of Greek heroes, posing like antique statues, this thrilling picture portrayed a group of French sailors, perishing amid the horrors of shipwreck and starvation, the subject being a scene in the awful tragedy incident to the loss of the frigate Medusa in 1816, a calamity which the nation was then mourning with unspeakable grief. Women wept and strong men paled before this terrible illustration of human agonies endured unto death, but the academicians attacked the work and the artist with almost savage fury. Géricault, a genius, sensitive and nervous, quailing before the storm which beat upon him, fled to England, but, pining in exile, returned home, only to die, crushed and broken-hearted.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a man of firmer fibre than his friend and fellow-student, and his was the strong hand to take up the gage of battle when Géricault fell in the fight. For daring to depart from the classic traditions, these two young painters of the commonplace subjects of every-day human tragedy and romantic drama were savagely denounced by the academicians as traitors, as charlatans, as assassins seeking to murder art. The persecution killed Géricault, but Delacroix laughed at it. As Théophile Souvestre said of him: “The blindness of ignorance, the intrigues and clamors of envy, have not arrested him for an instant in his valiant and glorious course.” By the splendor of his genius and the virility of his work, as shown in his great pictures, “The Bride of Abydos,” “The Two Foscari,” “The Amende Honorable,” and the magnificent series of Oriental studies by which he is best known, he established the romantic school on a firm basis and attracted to it nearly all the talented and promising young painters of Paris.
Among these students and unknown painters were many whose names subsequently became famous, as Horace Vernet, Paul Delaroche, Baron Gros, Ary Scheffer, Alexandre Decamps,—artists whose noble productions gave to the romantic school its finest triumphs. In the mean time, classic art was ably and effectively supported by the distinguished labors of Doménique Ingres, pupil and successor of David, Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, Hippolyte Flandrin, and Jean Baptiste Regnault. The Academy, though defeated, still lives, and modern lovers of art find that, especially in decorative design, there is much to admire in classic subjects.
After the revolt of the romanticists the most important movement in the world of art also took place in France, and is known as the “Revolution of 1830.” To understand this movement it is necessary to consider the state of art in England, as the “men of 1830” in France derived their inspiration from John Constable, an English landscape painter. At the beginning of the century the two great artists of England were Sir David Wilkie and J. M. W. Turner. David Wilkie (1785–1841) was a portrait, historic, and genre painter, and no English artist up to his time had ever attained such wide popularity as he enjoyed. His pictures are all known the world over, as witness such titles as “The Rent Day,” “Village Politicians,” “The Blind Fiddler,” “King Alfred in the Neatherd’s Cottage,” “The Village Festival,” “Reading the Will,” “The Chelsea Pensioners,” “Blind Man’s Buff,” “The Village School,” and “John Knox preaching.”
THE HOLY WOMEN AT THE TOMB.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most remarkable artists that ever lived; a most original genius, “without ancestors and without heirs.” He was a landscape painter and a most earnest and faithful student of nature, as shown by his wonderful illustrations, in black and white, of the scenery of England and Wales. In his paintings, however, he interpreted rather than portrayed nature, investing his subjects with the grandeur and glory of his imagination. His pictures were “golden dreams,” revealing the beauty, the majesty, the sadness, and the terror inspired by nature, not from observed details “but from the image or ideal in his own mind.” Of his many masterworks mention can only be made here of “Crossing the Brook,” “Dido in Carthage,” “Palestrina,” “The Golden Bough,” “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” “The Slave Ship,” “Battle of the Nile,” “Burial of Sir David Wilkie at Sea,” and perhaps the greatest of all, “The Fighting Téméraire.”
Turner created no school and left no successor, but he made a distinct impression on the art of England by stimulating an active interest in landscape painting. Patrick Nasmyth, Augustus Wall Callcott, John Linnell, and a score of artists turned to the study of rural scenery, with the result that they succeeded in establishing what is known as the Norwich school of landscape art. By far the most important name in the annals of this period, after Turner’s, is that of John Constable (1776–1837). Constable presents the contrast of diametric opposition to Turner. His pictures, so far from being “golden dreams,” are more like cast-iron realities. When Turner was an idealist, Constable was an uncompromising realist. If the one painted poetry, the other painted prose, and often very rugged, plain prose indeed. While Turner subordinated fact to fancy, illuminating his subjects with the glow of his fervid imagination, Constable devoutly stood before nature in the attitude of a worshiper, and faithfully labored to represent as truthfully as his powers permitted exactly what he beheld. In contrast with the shining canvases of his brilliant contemporary, Constable’s pictures seemed dark, dull, and heavy to the British public, and the original genius of the conscientious artist was not recognized. His greatest works, “Dedham Vale,” “The White Horse,” “The Hay Cart,” “Stratford Mill,” “Salisbury Cathedral,” “The Rainbow,” and others were exhibited in succession during the second decade of the century, before an indifferent public, only his fellow artists and a few connoisseurs caring for them, the painter meanwhile starving in neglect.
In 1824 two of his pictures were shown in Paris, and were then instantly understood and appreciated. They created a profound impression and, as has been justly said, inaugurated the second revolution of the century in the realm of art. By this revolution the artists were driven out of their studios and out of the city, to study nature in the spirit of humble sincerity shown by John Constable. Among the young students who went forth to encounter poverty, hardship, and the severest toil were the “men of 1830,” the founders of the Barbizon school of painting. Millet, Rousseau, Diaz, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, and Dupré left Paris and the ways that then led to success, and sacrificed themselves to what they saw to be the truth in art. They carried the study of out-door nature further than ever before; created the standard of modern landscape art, and attained immortal fame, though not until their leader and prototype had perished in poverty.
CHRISTMAS CHIMES. (BLASHFIELD.)
WHISPERS OF LOVE. (BOUGUEREAU.)
Jean François Millet (1815–1875) has been called the greatest painter of the nineteenth century, and his masterpiece, “The Angelus,” is regarded by many as second only to the “Sistine Madonna” of Raphael in the brief catalogue of the world’s artistic treasures. He lived the life of a poor peasant in the rural village of Barbizon, attracting around him, late in life, the ablest of the “men of 1830,” and producing there those works which have placed his name first on the annals of our time: “The Sower,” “Waiting,” “Sheep-shearers,” “Woman Carding,” “The Gleaners,” “Shepherdess and Flock,” and the few others that constitute the tale of his exceedingly careful and long-considered compositions.
Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) was declared, by Edmond About, to be the Moses who led the landscape painters of France out of the Egyptian bondage of academic convention into the promised land of liberty, where rivers ran water, where trees were rooted in the ground, and where animals lived, moved, and had their being. As late as 1848 the Salon rejected Rousseau’s noble work, “The Alley of Chestnut Trees,” one of the finest landscapes ever painted; but this was the last act of the academic tyrants, the foolish offense against the great master causing the old classic pedants to be relegated to oblivion. Rousseau took up his residence in Barbizon, and in the forest of Fontainebleau and the adjoining country studied those rural and pastoral scenes that have given him his place as one of the first, if not the very first, of landscape painters. Of these magnificent examples of landscape art, mention can only be made here of “The Village,” “A Pool under Oaks,” “Edge of the Forest at Barbizon,” “A Forest Interior,” “Water Course at Sologne,” and “Hoar Frost,” these being the pictures best known to the public through reproductions in black and white.
If Turner was a painter of “golden dreams,” Corot was a painter of silver dreams; the pearly haze of early morning, the pale sky and misty tree-forms of a gray day, and the soft, low tones of a still, cloudy afternoon attracting his loving devotion and commanding the conscientious exercise of his skill. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875) was certainly one of the happiest artists that ever lived. Like the other “men of 1830,” he was ostracized by the Academy, and he was never allowed to receive the first medal of the Salon, but he had every other honor and compensation, and, late in life, was given a magnificent gold medal by popular subscription. For many years he could not sell a single picture, but, being fortunately independent, in a modest way, he continued to paint the subjects which, as he said, delighted his heart, and to treat them, as he again said, “with truth to your own instincts, to your own method of seeing, with what I call conscientiousness and sincerity.” In due time Corot conquered his world and, in the height of his career, was earning not less than $50,000 a year by his brush. He was a constant visitor at Barbizon, maintained a close intimacy with his friends, there, and studied in the vicinity many of the hundreds of landscapes his industrious and tireless hand rejoicingly produced.
Jules Dupré (1812–1889) and Charles François Daubigny (1817–1878) are distinguished members of the “1830” group, each standing at the head of the department of landscape art to which he was especially devoted. Narcisse-Virgil Diaz de la Peña, called Diaz (1807–1876), another of the fraternity, was not technically so thoroughly trained as his fellows, but he was a stronger colorist than any of them and a romanticist of the most pronounced type. Constant Troyon (1810–1865) was the most eminent cattle-painter of the century. He came on the scene after the revolt of Géricault was accomplished, but was in full sympathy with the movement, and is usually accounted as one of the revolutionists. So also with Jean Leon Gérôme (1824), an artist surviving to the close of the century.
He first exhibited in 1847, but he took up the line of Oriental romance, following Delacroix, and made so strong an impression with his illustrations of the splendors and glories of the East that his influence in art will be felt for generations to come. After attaining fame as a painter, Gérôme also developed marked ability as a sculptor.
In strict chronological order the birth of the pre-Raphaelite movement in art preceded the “revolution of 1830,” as the event actually occurred in Rome, about 1812. The movement was not originally known by the name subsequently given it, and it did not attain to more than local importance until it was fully developed in England, about 1850. It is to the great German artist, Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867), that the honor of originating the pre-Raphaelite revolution must be given. In 1811 Cornelius went to Rome and soon became the master spirit of the “Brotherhood of Painters,” popularly called “Nazarites,” banded together for the study of the thirteenth-century Italians, Cimabue and Giotto, and their successors in the century following, Gaddi, Simoni, and Orcagna. This Brotherhood was afterward imitated by Rossetti in London, and its purposes more fully developed; but it was the young German enthusiasts of the previous generation who affected a revival of the pure religious spirit, the devout simplicity, and the absolute sincerity of the Italian artists before the era of Raphael.
GREEK GIRLS PLAYING AT BALL. (LEIGHTON.)
Cornelius returned to Germany in 1816, became the founder of what is known as the Munich school of painting, and was made director of the Art Institute of that city. He exercised a controlling influence in the evolution of modern German art and, indirectly, on art in England and in America. His pupil and successor, Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805–1874), imparted vitality and power to the Munich school, attracting to his classes students from all civilized countries. During the second and third quarters of this century, Kaulbach reigned as the first artist of Germany and one of the first in the world.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) founded his pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London, with John Everett Millais—subsequently president of the Royal Academy—and William Holman Hunt, in 1848. The pre-Raphaelite movement gave a richer and stronger color to English painting in the latter half of the century, and also awakened general interest in early Christian art, that is, the art of the Italian Renaissance. Beyond this, Rossetti’s new departure, though widely advertised by John Ruskin, had very little permanent effect. Millais soon left the Brotherhood and produced his master-works, the greatest historic-genre pictures of his time, in England, after outliving pre-Raphaelite influences.
Little known outside of England, that movement did not entirely absorb British art, as proved by such a man as G. F. Watts, a master of portraiture, who made studies of many of the most notable men of the century in England, besides many imaginative works of great interest. Others were Holman Hunt, with his powerful religious conceptions, and the talented Landseer family, the youngest member of which, Edwin, is world-famous for his animal pictures. The critic and philosopher, John Ruskin, studied art and became a proficient draughtsman, although never using his skill professionally. His literary works on art, however, have had so wide an influence that it seems just to include him in the list of contributors to art’s progress in this era. His criticism of the fantastic productions of James McNeill Whistler brought forth a controversy and law suit, resulting in a verdict of damages of one farthing to the injured artist, and enough advertising gratis to secure his fame. The genius of the latter for achieving artistic effects and personal notoriety are equal to his skill in avoiding oblivion. He is a unique and interesting figure, despite his abnormal vanity, for his unquestionable talent in many lines of art, and is American by birth, English by adoption, and now French by force of circumstances. Edwin Abbey is also an adopted son of Britain, although born in America. He is better known through illustrative work in black and white, but his superb decorations in the Boston Public Library testify to his great skill as a colorist. The most illustrious growth of foreign seed on British soil has been Lorenz Alma Tadema, whose wonderful representations of Greek and Roman life place him hors concours as an artist, and hold before our eyes a mirror of ancient days. Sir Frederick Leighton, the recently deceased president of the Royal Academy, was a true Briton and a leader of modern art in England, as also was Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson Butler, with her patriotic war pictures, as vigorous as any man’s could be. A talented young artist, whose untimely death cut short a promising career, was Frederick Walker, who is said to have been the original of “Little Billee” in Du Maurier’s famous novel of student life in the Latin Quarter, “Trilby.” That masterpiece takes us into the art atmosphere of Paris, and we readily understand why there is the centre of the artistic circle.
LANDSEER AND HIS FAVORITES. (BY HIMSELF.)
From thence have risen most of the great modern names, one of the greatest and most honored being that of Rosa Bonheur, who has received all possible distinction as an artist and reverence as a woman. Her animal pictures, especially horses and cattle, are known the world over, and the story of her early struggle for study, disguised as a boy, that she might work unmolested where a girl could hardly have gone, is well known, yet she never renounced an atom of her womanliness in adopting masculine attire. It is hard to avoid dwelling on the lives and works of the modern masters, but we must pass over the intermediate period between the revolt of 1830 and our own day, touching only an especially shining light here and there, such as Jules Breton, with his sturdy peasants; Léon Bonnat, Alexandre Cabanel, and Carolus Duran, with their elegant distingué portraiture. Besides these are Edouard Détaille and Alphonse de Neuville, showing faithful studies of soldier life and action; Eugène Fromentin, with his picturesque Arabs; and the decorative allegories of Puvis de Chavannes. The brilliant Spaniards, Mariano Fortuny and Don Frederick Madrazo, are practically Frenchmen in their art, although each is distinctly individual in manner. We must also mention Vibert, with his delightful little satires on the human frailities of the holy fathers of the Church, and Meissonier, the master of exquisite finish in detail, and Passini, with his small canvases crowded with Oriental figures glowing with color. In addition to the great French names of this time are Defregger, of the Munich School; Israels of Amsterdam, Schreyer of Frankfort, whose works all hold that quality dear to the popular heart, but despised by the high priests of lofty criticism nowadays, that is, they have a story to tell, and they tell it.
At the time these men were telling their artistic tales in Europe, such men as Washington Allston, the first great painter in this country; Thomas Sully, whose rare works in portraiture entitled him to paint the Queen of England, Victoria, when a girl; Henry Inman, also a great portrait painter; George Fuller, a painter of poetic dreams; and many others of talent, had said their say in America. Almost with the beginning of the new country, public interest had been roused in the fine arts by the efforts of such men as Gilbert Stuart and the Peales, Charles and Rembrandt, who bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries together, and labored to advance the cause of art. Schools and academies, with adequate galleries for exhibition purposes, became necessary; and such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design in New York were established. The latter was started in 1802, but did not receive its charter until 1808; so the Pennsylvania Academy, which was incorporated in Philadelphia in 1806, was really the first of its kind in the country. In 1807, the minutes bearing the date of October 8 record as follows: “Until the funds of the institution will admit of opening a school on a more extended plan, persons of good character shall be permitted to make drawings from the statues and busts belonging to the Academy,” thus showing the humble beginning of art education in America. Naturally, for many years the facilities for learning were too limited to supply more than rudimentary instruction, and the pilgrimage to Paris was a necessity before an artist could feel qualified to launch out professionally. In these latter days that need no longer exists, for the great art schools of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis can amply provide all that is required; but the charm of the Latin Quarter still draws as a magnet all who can afford to go there.
THE HORSE FAIR. (ROSA BONHEUR.)
In that centre is a constant mingling of ideas from all sources seeking new forms of expression, out of which proceed the impulses that vibrate through the world of current art. Naturally enough many of the new departures are futile experiments, short lived and not sufficiently important to discuss; but within recent years the movement known as impressionism has been so widespread in influence, so radical in method, and so vital in result, that it has doubtless produced a permanent effect on art. Like its predecessor, the renaissance after the dark ages, this mouvement moderne was an upheaval of all forms of expression; and in painting it seemed as if a wave of dazzling color had burst over the studios, drenching the canvases with rainbow tints, flooding the exhibition galleries with bewildering brilliance. The unaccustomed eye was overwhelmed, and the confused and wondering public burst into loud outcry against the insane folly of these mad young painters, who showed purple and green gridirons, speckled with green and streaked with scarlet, and called them landscapes, marines, and figure studies as they chose. Of course the pendulum swung to its limit, the radicals carrying things to extremes after the fashion of their kind, and making foolish caricatures of work that was really great. By degrees, however, sober sense prevailed, the new ideas became better understood, the public point of view changed, and it was seen that there was method in this madness. The new movement was intended simply to interpret what the artist saw most forcibly expressed by any given subject, or, as the name implies, to record his first impression and convey the idea rather by suggestion than by explicit statement and detail. Applied to out-of-door subjects, these principles were carried out by the plein air colorists, as they were styled, from their efforts to suggest atmosphere glowing with light, a feeling of space and sunshine. Edouard Manet was the leader of the new school in figure work, and Claude Monet in landscape. No two styles could be more widely different save in their mutual abhorrence of detail; the first dark, heavy, and sombre in color; the latter luminous and palpitating, every conceivable tint vibrating into harmony, an example which is followed in this country by Childe Hassam, often successfully, but sometimes with extravagance. After reaching extreme high-water mark, the flood of brilliance has somewhat subsided, and latter-day painters do not find it necessary to observe the world through a prism. While returning to more sober statements of simple truth, without trying to copy a kaleidoscope, the vision men have had of pure color sparkling with light has given them an insight into Mother Nature’s method that has left a lasting impression upon the minds and manners of the best workers and lifted the whole tone of modern painting. Whether one was prepared to enjoy truly impressionistic pictures or not, the force of them in a collection of works in the old manner of hard outline and heavy shadow could not fail to be felt like a beam of light in a dark room. However one might protest against the invader, the old friends looked dull and flat after a time, in spite of the most determined loyalty. The style of the Hudson River school was narrow and petty, full of trifling little details, the color often being forced and theatrical in effect. The striking scenery of that noble stream inspired the efforts of American landscape painters of the two decades from 1830 to 1850. Asher B. Durand was a leader among them, and for many years the manner of a generation past held sway until the new method forced a place for itself. It was an amusing experience in following exhibitions of late years to see, one after another, the leaders, long established in their own particular methods, finally breaking away from lifelong habits and coming into line with the new movement, some keeping step bravely with the vigorous newcomers, some halting along with pitiful attempts at a jaunty stride. The strong men neither hung back in sulky indifference nor flung themselves wildly about in exuberant freedom, but kept quietly on the even tenor of their way, absorbing what was best in the new, holding fast to what was best in the old, and producing the kind of work that is independent of schools and eras, but intrinsically great in itself. In Paris, the younger workers who began sending strange wild landscape and figure pictures to the exhibition at the Salon of the Champs Elysées, the most important annual exhibition in the world, were indignantly rejected by the horrified jury of selection. Equally indignant at their treatment, the young painters, who felt themselves to be the coming men, gathered their rejected treasures together in an independent exhibition of their own, and established a rival salon in the Champ de Mars, which has come to hold an equal footing in the world of art with the older institution.
By reference to “men” we do not at all exclude women, for there is no sex in art, and women of our time paint as well as men, folding equal rank in the exhibitions, equal places on the juries of selection, and receiving equal honors and awards. One of the foremost women of the day is a Philadelphian, Miss Cecilia Beaux, whose portraiture ranks among the highest. Miss Mary D. Cassatt is also a Philadelphian, although long resident in Paris, and highly esteemed there. Her name is mentioned in a recent notice of a Salon exhibition among those of distinguished men, which concluded with the words “and other strong men,” meaning thereby no grain of disrespect to the woman, but only honor to the artist, classifying her as among the first painters of the time. Important exhibitions nowadays are likely to contain strong works by many women, such as portraits by Mrs. Sarah Sears of Boston or Mrs. Rosina Emmet Sherwood of New York, child studies by Ellen K. Baker, or animal studies by Mrs. Helen C. Hovenden, widow of the late master of modern genre, Thomas Hovenden, whose untimely death the art-loving public of this country has not ceased to mourn. His faithful studies of American domestic life have touched the people, who are, after all, the final art critics, despite the claims of those who feel themselves especially qualified by taste and training to tell others what they must and must not like. Many times public opinion has been unduly slow in setting the seal of its approval on worthy works, but once established in the heart of the populace, immortality is assured, and that place belongs preëminently to Thomas Hovenden, as proved by the throngs that stood before his picture “Breaking the Home Ties,” at the World’s Fair in Chicago. That cosmopolitan collection showed, among other interesting developments, a strong school of vigorous young Norsemen, hardy vikings of art from Scandinavia, of whom Anders Zorn was the leader, with a variety of figure subjects, studied indoors and out, with an unconventional freedom and dash as inspiring as the breezes of his native fjords. Prince Eugene, the handsome popular second son of the King of Sweden, was no mean contributor to this school. Fritz von Thaulow is a Norwegian by birth, but being well recognized in France he has taken up his abode at Dieppe, although still finding inspiration in his native land. He is an exponent of the theory of tone in painting, as it is technically termed. This refers to the quality of harmony, or perfect balance of light and shade and color. It does not depend upon the key of the picture, whether light and bright or dark and sombre, but consists in keeping the relations of the different masses of color true to each other, the small details subdued to their proper places, yet each having its correct value in the whole.
The Scotch painters, stimulated no doubt by the success of their literary brethren, have established the Glasgow school of art, most original in its methods, and in some cases highly peculiar in its results, but with unquestionable strength in its more serious and less fantastic work. John Lavery is a leader among these men. Germany prides herself on one of the greatest painters of modern times in the person of Adolph Friedrich Menzel, a Prussian, born 1815, contemporary with Meissonier. As the latter was devoted to the Emperor of the French, so was Menzel to his hero, Frederick the Great, and their vivid portrayals of their respective sovereigns will keep the personality of these conquerors fresh as long as art lasts. For many years Menzel has been artist laureate to the court at Berlin, painting Hohenzollern family portraits, battle pieces and scenes of court splendor in the most masterly manner. The Hungarian, Munkacsy, has been widely known by his huge religious works, lately exhibited in this country,—“Christ before Pilate” and the “Crucifixion.” His work shows great power and much originality in conception, although often somewhat morbid, a not unnatural condition, as the unfortunate artist has become hopelessly insane. The opposite extreme of expression is to be found in the gorgeous coloring and superb compositions of Hans Makart of Vienna, notably his “Coronation of Catherine Cornaro at Venice.” A revival of interest in religious subjects has recently appeared, possibly stimulated by the work of Mr. James Tissot, a Parisian, who has given ten years to the production of a series of careful studies of the life of Christ. These little paintings, numbering some five hundred in all, are the result of close research in the Holy Land into the conditions of life and customs which prevailed at the time of Christ, and are a tribute of religious devotion. Whether through this influence or not, Dagnan-Bouveret has been inspired to paint a number of strong scenes of biblical subjects, two conceptions of the Last Supper being very powerful. A young colored man, H. O. Tanner, has achieved success on similar lines, an “Annunciation” recently shown giving evidence of deep and original thought. Curiously enough, the women painters of distinction do not seem to be given to religious subjects. One serious lack in most of the work exhibited in recent years is the absence of any importance in subject. The artists have been so concerned to express what they saw in the simplest manner, that they have carefully avoided seeing or thinking about anything but the simplest things to be expressed. While some powerful work has resulted, it has often been labor worthy of a better cause, for the pictures produced have had little to tell beyond the skill of the painter. A nobly painted cabbage field, or a superbly handled stone wall with the tail of a woman’s skirt disappearing around a corner, may be masterly painting, but it is not great art; and it is to be hoped that the day of meaningless canvases will soon pass, and the coming painters will not be content to discourse grandly about nothing.
AT THE SHRINE OF VENUS. (ALMA TADEMA.)
Among the leaders of current art in America, the place of honor in portraiture belongs to John S. Sargent, who easily ranks with Boldini and Benjamin Constant in Paris. He is closely followed by Edmund C. Tarbell, John H. Alexander, with his love for long flowing graceful lines of drapery, Robert Vonnoh, and William M. Chase. John McClure Hamilton has made some striking studies of some of the most prominent people of our time, among them Gladstone and Pope Leo XIII. Elihu Vedder, John LaFarge, Will H. Low, Carroll Beckwith, Abbott Thayer, and E. H. Blashfield are figure painters whose subjects are frequently of a decorative or semi-religious character. The latter is noted for his literary as well as artistic ability. George H. Boughton, though called an American, really belongs to England, where he paints interior genre subjects usually of olden times. John Swan, the animal painter, is also English. The names of Moran and Sartain are distinguished in the history of American art, each family having contributed several generations of talented painters. The elders were contemporary with Daniel Huntington, long president of the National Academy of Design, and Eastman Johnson, whose “Old Kentucky Home” was famous. William T. Dannat, Herbert Denman, Frederick Bridgman, and F. L. Weeks are all strong figure painters, the last two being especially given to Oriental subjects. Winslow Homer includes figures with his marine studies, often presenting groups of peasants on a stormy shore, while Alexander Harrison and W. T. Richards usually confine themselves to marines pure and simple. The ragged, dirty little street Arabs of J. G. Brown have been exceedingly popular, and so have the landscapes of H. Bolton Jones. The list of modern landscape painters really deserving of mention is far too long to give in anything like complete mention. A few leaders, such as Charles H. Davis, Homer Martin, the late William T. Picknell, and George Inness must suffice to close our talk on the painters of this century.