GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN

A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of

THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY.

VOL. VIII.

Copyright, 1894, by SELMAR HESS
Edited By Charles F. Horne

New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher
Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VIII.

PHOTOGRAVURES

ILLUSTRATIONARTISTTo face
page
SARAH BERNHARDT AS CLEOPATRA,Georges Clairin[Frontispiece]
MICHAEL ANGELO AND VITTORIA COLONNA,Hermann Schneider[220]
ALBERT DÜRER VISITS HANS SACHS,Richard Gross[234]
MARIE DE MEDICI AT THE HOUSE OF RUBENS,Florent Willems[240]
CONNOISSEURS AT REMBRANDT'S STUDIO,Adolphe-Alexandre Lesrel[244]
MEISSONIER'S ATELIER,Georges Bretegnier[272]
MOZART SINGING HIS REQUIEM,Thomas W. Shields[314]
AN ANECDOTE ABOUT BEETHOVEN,Paul Leyendecker[322]
FRANZ LISZT,Fortuné-Joseph-Seraphin Layraud[334]
WAGNER AND HIS FRIENDS,Wilhelm Beckmann[340]
RACHEL AS THE MUSE OF GREEK TRAGEDY,Jean Léon Gérôme[368]
JOE JEFFERSON AS BOB ACRES,From life[376]

WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES

RAPHAEL INTRODUCED TO DA VINCI,Brune Pagès[212]
LEO X. AT RAPHAEL'S BIER,Pietro Michis[224]
A FÊTE AT THE HOUSE OF TITIAN,F. Kraus[228]
ALBERT DÜRER'S WEDDING,A. Bodenmüller[232]
HOGARTH SKETCHING THE HIGHWAY OF QUEENBOROUGH, [248]
BENJAMIN WEST, PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY,Sir Thomas Lawrence[258]
ROSA BONHEUR,E. Dubufe[278]
HANDEL'S RIVER-CONCERT FOR GEORGE I.,A. Hamman[304]
HAYDN COMPOSING HIS "CREATION,"A. Hamman[318]
PAGANINI IN PRISON,Louis Boulanger[326]
GARRICK AS RICHARD III.,William Hogarth[346]
FORREST AS METAMORA,From Photograph[352]
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN AS MRS. HALLER,Watkins[360]

PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS

PHIDIAS[1]
By Clarence Cook
(ABOUT 500-432 B.C.)

Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors the world has seen, and whose name has become, as it were, the synonym of his art, was born at Athens about 500 B.C. He belonged to a family of artists, none of whom indeed were distinguished in their profession, but their varied occupations furnished the atmosphere in which such a talent as that of Phidias could best be fostered and brought to maturity. His father was Charmides, who is believed to have been an artist, because the Greeks, in their inscriptions, did not associate the name of the father with that of the son unless both were of the same calling. A brother of Phidias, Panœnos, was a painter, and is mentioned among those artists, twenty or more in number, who in conjunction with Polygnotus, one of the chief painters of his day, were employed in the decoration of the Pœcile or Painted Portico, one of the many beautiful buildings erected by Cimon. The Pœcile was simply a long platform, with a roof supported by a row of columns on one side and by a wall on the other. It was called "the painted," because the wall at the back was covered with a series of large historical pictures containing many figures, and recording some of the chief events of the time, together with others relating to an earlier and more shadowy epoch. The subject of the painting, executed, at least in part, by the brother of Phidias, was the Battle of Marathon, in which great event it is thought he may himself have taken part.

The boyhood of Phidias fell in a time of national revival, when under the influence of an ennobling political excitement, all the arts were quickened to a fresh, original, and splendid growth. The contest between the Greeks and Persians, which had begun with the Ionian revolt, was in full activity at the time of his birth. He was ten years old when the battle of Marathon was fought, and when he was twenty, four of the most striking events in the history of Greece were crowded into a single year; the battle of Thermopylæ, the victory at Salamis, and the twin glories of Platæa and Mycale. His early youth, therefore, was nourished by the inspiring influences that come from the victorious struggle of a people to maintain their national life. He was by no means the only sculptor of his time whom fame remembers, but he alone, rejecting trivial themes, consecrated his talent to the nobler subjects of his country's religious life and the ideal conception of her protecting gods. No doubt, Phidias, like all who are born with the artistic temperament, would be interested from childhood in the progress of the splendid works with which Athens was enriching herself under the rule of Cimon. But his interest must have been greatly increased by the fact that his brother Panœnos was actively engaged in the decoration of one of those buildings. It would be natural that he should be often drawn to the place where his brother was at work, and that the sight of so many artists, most of them young men, filled with the generous ardor of youth, and inspired by the nature of their task, should have stirred in him an answering enthusiasm. It gives us a thrill of pleasure to read in the list of these youths the name of the great tragic poet, Euripides, who began life as a painter, and in whose plays we find more than one reference to the art. It cannot be thought unreasonable to suppose that two such intelligences as these must have had an attraction for one another, and that, as in the case of Dante and Giotto, the great poet and the great artist would be drawn together by a likeness in their taste and aims.

Phidias studied his art first at Athens, with a native sculptor, Hegias, of whom we know nothing except from books. Later, he went to Argos, and there put himself under the instruction of Ageladas, a worker chiefly in bronze, and very famous in his time, of whom, however, nothing remains but the memory of a few of his more notable works. For us, his own works forgotten, he remains in honor as the teacher of Myron, of Polycletus, and of Phidias, the three chief sculptors of the next generation to his own. On leaving the workshop of Ageladas, Phidias executed several statues that brought him prominently before the public. For Delphi, he made a group of thirteen figures in bronze, to celebrate the battle of Marathon and apotheosize the heroes of Attica. In this group, Miltiades was placed in the centre, between Athena, the tutelary goddess of Athens, and Apollo, the guardian of Delphi; while on each side were five Athenian heroes, Theseus and Codrus with others, arranged in a semicircle. This important work was paid for by Athens out of her share in the spoils of Marathon. Another important commission executed by Phidias was a statue of Athena made for her temple at Platæa, and paid for with the eighty talents raised by the contributions of the other Grecian states as a reward for the splendid services of the Platæans at Marathon, where they played somewhat the same part as the Prussians at the battle of Waterloo. The head, hands, and feet of this statue were of marble, but the drapery was of gold; so arranged, probably, as in the case of the great statue of Athena designed later by Phidias for the Parthenon, as to be removable from the marble core at pleasure. Phidias made so many statues of the virgin goddess Athena, that his name became associated with hers, as at a later day that of Raphael was with the Virgin Mary. In the first period of his artistic career, moved perhaps by his patriotic gratitude for her intervention in behalf of his native state, he had represented the goddess as a warlike divinity, as here at Platæa; but in his later conceptions, as in a statue made for the Athenians of Lemnos, Athena appeared invested with milder attributes, and with a graceful and winning type of beauty.

In their invasion of Attica the Persians had destroyed the city of Athens, and the people, who had fled to all quarters of the peninsula to seek refuge from the enemy, returned after the victory at Salamis and the flight of the Persians, to find their homes a heap of ruins. The dwelling-houses of the Greeks were everywhere, even in their largest cities, built of mean materials: walls of stubble overlaid with stucco and gayly painted. It was not long, therefore, before Athens resumed something of her old appearance, with such improvements as always follow the rebuilding of a city. The most important change effected was that brought about in the character of the great plateau, the fortified rock of the Acropolis. Here, as in many Greek cities, the temples of the gods had been erected, and about them, as about the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, there had grown up a swarm of houses and other buildings built by generations of people who sought there at once the protection of the stockade which enclosed the almost inaccessible site, and the still further safeguard of the presence of the divinities in their temples. The destructive hand of the Persian invaders had swept this platform clear of all these multiplied incumbrances, and in the rebuilding of the city it was determined to reserve the Acropolis for military and religious uses alone.

The work of improvement was begun by Cimon, who, however, confined his attention chiefly to the lower city that clustered about the base of the Acropolis. Here, among other structures, he built the temple of Theseus and the Painted Portico, and he also erected, near the summit of the Acropolis, on the western side, the little gem-like temple of the Wingless Victory, Nike Apteros, in commemoration of the success of the Athenian arms at the battle of the Eurymedon. It was from Cimon that Phidias received his first commission for work upon the Acropolis, where later he was to build such a lasting monument to his own fame and to the fame of his native land. The commission given him by Cimon was to erect a bronze statue of Athena which was to stand on the citadel, at once a symbol of the power of Athens and a tribute to the protecting goddess of the city. The work upon the statue was probably begun under Cimon, but according to Ottfried Müller it was not completed at the death of Phidias. It stood in the open air, and nearly opposite the Colonnade at the entrance of the great flight of marble steps that led from the plain to the summit of the Acropolis, and was the first object to meet the eye on passing through the gateway. It represented the goddess, armed, and in a warlike attitude, from which it derived its name, Athena Promachos: Athena, the leader of the battle. With its pedestal it stood about seventy feet high, towering above the roof of the Parthenon, the gilded point of the brazen spear held by the goddess flashing back the sun to the ships as in approaching Athens they rounded the promontory of Sunium. We read that the statue was still standing so late as 395 A.D., and it is said that its towering height and threatening aspect caused a panic terror in Alaric and his horde of barbarians when they climbed the Acropolis to plunder its temple of its treasure.

But it was under the rule of Pericles that Phidias was to find at Athens his richest employment. Pericles had determined, probably by the advice of Phidias, to make the Acropolis the seat and centre of the new and splendid city that was to arise under his administration. The first great undertaking was the building of a temple to Athena Parthenos, Athena the Virgin, a design believed to have been suggested to Pericles by Phidias. The plans were intrusted to Ictinus, an Athenian, one of the best architects of the day; but the general control and superintendence of the work were given to Phidias. As the building rose to completion, workmen in all branches of the arts flocked to Athens from every part of Greece and were given full employment by Phidias in the decoration and furnishing of the temple.

The taste of Phidias controlled the whole scheme of decoration applied to the building, into which color entered, no doubt, to a much greater extent than was formerly believed. Even after time and the destructive hand of man have done their worst, there still remain sufficient traces of color to prove that the sculpture, and the whole upper part of the temple, were painted in bright but harmonious colors, and that metal ornaments and accessories accented the whole scheme with glittering points of light reflected from their shining surfaces.

The sculptures with which the Parthenon was adorned by Phidias, and which were executed under his immediate superintendence, consisted of two great groups that filled the eastern and western pediments; of groups of two figures each in the ninety-two metopes or panels above the outer row of columns; and, finally, the famous frieze that ran completely round the temple itself, just below the ceiling of the colonnade, and at a height of about thirty-nine feet from the floor.

The subject of the group that filled the eastern pediment, the one above the entrance door of the temple, was the birth of Athena. Just how the event was represented we do not know because quite half the group, including the principal figures, disappeared very early in our era, and no description of them remains in any ancient or modern writer. The group in the western pediment represented the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the dominion over Attica. According to the legend, the strife between the two divinities took place in an assembly of the gods on the Acropolis, who were to determine which of the two contestants should be the protector of the city. To prove his power, Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and a salt spring leaped forth, as if the sea itself had obeyed the call of its lord. Athena struck the ground, and an olive-tree sprang up, the emblem of peace and of the victories of commerce, and the assembly awarded the prize to her. The goddess having thus received the sovereignty of Athens, it was but natural that a day should be set apart for her special honor, and a festival instituted to commemorate the great event. This was the greater Panathenaia, or All Athenians Day, which was celebrated every fourth year in honor of the goddess, and which, as its name implies, was taken part in by all the people of the city. It occurred in the early summer and lasted five days. On the fifth day, it closed with a procession which went through all the chief streets of the city and wound its way up the Great Stairway to the Acropolis, bearing the peplos or embroidered robe woven by young virgin ladies of Athens, chosen from the highest families, and known for their skill in this kind of work. After the peplos had been consecrated in the temple it was placed with due solemnities upon the ancient and venerable figure of the goddess, made of olive-wood, and said to have descended from heaven. From its subject, which thus celebrates the Panathenaic procession, the frieze is often called the Panathenaic frieze.

It is carved from Pentelic marble, of which material the marble building is constructed. Its original length, running as it did around the entire building, was 522.80 feet, of which about 410 feet remain. Of this portion, 249 feet are in the British Museum in slabs and fragments; the remainder is chiefly in the Louvre, with scattered fragments in other places. As a connected subject this was the most extensive piece of sculpture ever made in Greece. From all that can be gathered from the study of the fragments that remain, the design of the frieze was of the utmost simplicity and characterized by the union of perfect taste and clear purpose that marks all the work of the great sculptor. The subject begins in the frieze at the western end of the temple, where we watch the assembling of the procession. It then proceeds along the northern and southern sides of the building, in what we are to suppose one continuous line, moving toward the east, since all the faces are turned that way; and at the eastern end, directly over the main entrance to the building, the two parts of the procession meet, in the presence of the magistrates and of the divinities who had places of worship in Athens.

Of the grace, the skill in arrangement, the variety of invention, the happy union of movement and repose shown in this work, not only artists—men best fitted to judge its merits from a technical point of view—but the cultivated portion of the public, and a large and ever-increasing circle of every-day people, have by common consent agreed in praise. By the multiplication of casts, to be found now in all our principal museums, we are enabled to study and to enjoy the long procession even better than it could have been enjoyed in its original place, where it must have been seen at a great disadvantage in spite of the skill shown by Phidias in adapting it to its site; for, as the frieze stood thirty-nine feet from the floor, and as the width of the portico between the wall and the columns was only nine feet, it was seen at a very sharp angle, and owing to the projection of the roof beyond the wall of the temple the frieze received only reflected light from the marble pavement below.

Apart from the marble sculptures on the exterior of the Parthenon, the two most famous works of Phidias were the statues of Athena, made for the interior of the Parthenon, and of Zeus for the temple of the god at Olympia in Elis. Both these statues were of the sort called Chryselephantine, from the Greek chrousous, golden, and elephantinos, of ivory; that is, they were constructed of plates of gold and ivory, laid upon a core of wood or stone. The style was not new, though its invention was at one time ascribed to Phidias. It came from the East, but it was now employed for the first time in Greece in a work of national importance.

In the Athena, the face, neck, arms, hands, and feet were made of ivory, and the drapery and ornaments, the helmet, the shield, and the sandals of gold, which as in the case of the statue made for Platæa, was removable at pleasure. The height of the statue, including the pedestal, was nearly forty feet. The goddess stood erect, clothed with a tunic reaching to the ankles, and showing her richly sandalled feet. She had the ægis on her breast, her head was covered with a helmet, and her shield, richly embossed with the Battle of the Amazons, rested on the ground at her side. In one hand she held a spear, and in the other, an image of Victory six feet high.

A still more splendid work, and one which raised the fame of Phidias to the highest point, was the statue of the Olympian Zeus, made for the Eleans. In this statue, Phidias essayed to embody the Homeric ideal of the supreme divinity of the people of Greece sitting on his throne as a monarch, and in an attitude of majestic repose. The throne, made of cedar-wood, was covered with plates of gold, and enriched with ivory, ebony, and precious stones. It rested on a platform twelve feet high, made of costly marble and carved with the images of the gods who formed the council of Zeus on Olympus. The feet of the god rested on a footstool supported by lions, and with the combat of Theseus and the Amazons in a bas-relief on the front and sides. In one hand Zeus held the sceptre, and in the other a winged Victory. His head was crowned with a laurel wreath; his mantle, falling from one shoulder, left his breast bare and covered the lower part of his person with its ample folds of pure gold enamelled with flowers. The whole height of the statue with the pedestal was about fifty feet; by its very disproportion to the size of the temple it was made to appear still larger than it really was. This statue was reckoned one of the wonders of the world. In it the Greeks seemed to behold Zeus face to face. To see it was a cure for all earthly woes, and to die without having seen it was reckoned a great calamity.

The downfall of Pericles, due to the jealousies of his rivals, carried with it the ruin of Phidias, his close friend, to whom he had entrusted such great undertakings. An indictment was brought against the sculptor, charging him with appropriating to himself a portion of the gold given him for the adornment of the statue of Athena; and according to some authorities Pericles himself was included in the charge. The gold had, however, been attached to the statue in such a manner that it could be taken off and weighed, and in the proof, the charge had to be abandoned. But Phidias did not escape so easily. He was accused of sacrilege in having introduced portraits of himself and Pericles on the shield of the goddess, where, says Plutarch, in the bas-relief of the Battle of the Amazons, he carved his own portrait as a bald old man lifting a stone with both hands, and also introduced an excellent likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon.

Phidias died in prison before the trial came off, and his name must be added to the long list of those whom an ungrateful world has rewarded for their services with ignominy and death.[Back to Contents]

LEONARDO DA VINCI
By Anna Jameson
(1452-1519)

Leonardo da Vinci seems to present in his own person a résumé of all the characteristics of the age in which he lived. He was the miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter—we are not only astounded by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired knowledge, but by the practical direction of his amazing powers. The extracts which have been published from MSS. now existing in his own handwriting show him to have anticipated by the force of his own intellect some of the greatest discoveries made since his time. "These fragments," says Mr. Hallam, "are, according to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli, and other names illustrious; the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature. If any doubt could be harbored, not as to the right of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be by an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record."

It seems at first sight almost incomprehensible that, thus endowed as a philosopher, mechanic, inventor, discoverer, the fame of Leonardo should now rest on the works he has left as a painter. We cannot, within these limits, attempt to explain why and how it is that as the man of science he has been naturally and necessarily left behind by the onward march of intellectual progress, while as the poet-painter he still survives as a presence and a power. We must proceed at once to give some account of him in the character in which he exists to us and for us—that of the great artist.

Leonardo was born at Vinci, near Florence, in the Lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father, Piero da Vinci, was an advocate of Florence—not rich, but in independent circumstances, and possessed of estates in land. The singular talents of his son induced Piero to give him, from an early age, the advantage of the best instructors. As a child he distinguished himself by his proficiency in arithmetic and mathematics. Music he studied early, as a science as well as an art. He invented a species of lyre for himself, and sung his own poetical compositions to his own music, both being frequently extemporaneous. But his favorite pursuit was the art of design in all its branches; he modelled in clay or wax, or attempted to draw every object which struck his fancy. His father sent him to study under Andrea Verrocchio, famous as a sculptor, chaser in metal, and painter. Andrea, who was an excellent and correct designer, but a bad and hard colorist, was soon after engaged to paint a picture of the baptism of our Saviour. He employed Leonardo, then a youth, to execute one of the angels; this he did with so much softness and richness of color, that it far surpassed the rest of the picture; and Verrocchio from that time threw away his palette, and confined himself wholly to his works in sculpture and design, "enraged," says Vessari, "that a child should thus excel him."

The youth of Leonardo thus passed away in the pursuit of science and of art; sometimes he was deeply engaged in astronomical calculations and investigations; sometimes ardent in the study of natural history, botany, and anatomy; sometimes intent on new effects of color, light, shadow, or expression in representing objects animate or inanimate. Versatile, yet persevering, he varied his pursuits, but he never abandoned any. He was quite a young man when he conceived and demonstrated the practicability of two magnificent projects: one was to lift the whole of the church of San Giovanni, by means of immense levers, some feet higher than it now stands, and thus supply the deficient elevation; the other project was to form the Arno into a navigable canal as far as Pisa, which would have added greatly to the commercial advantages of Florence.

It happened about this time that a peasant on the estate of Piero da Vinci brought him a circular piece of wood, cut horizontally from the trunk of a very large old fig-tree, which had been lately felled, and begged to have something painted on it as an ornament for his cottage. The man being an especial favorite, Piero desired his son Leonardo to gratify his request; and Leonardo, inspired by that wildness of fancy which was one of his characteristics, took the panel into his own room, and resolved to astonish his father by a most unlooked-for proof of his art. He determined to compose something which should have an effect similar to that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and almost petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural history, he collected together from the neighboring swamps and the river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders, lizards, toads, serpents: insects, as moths, locusts, and other crawling and flying obscene and obnoxious things; and out of these he composed a sort of monster or chimera, which he represented as about to issue from the shield, with eyes flashing fire, and of an aspect so fearful and abominable that it seemed to infect the very air around. When finished, he led his father into the room in which it was placed, and the terror and horror of Piero proved the success of his attempt. This production, afterward known as the "Rotello del Fico," from the material on which it was painted, was sold by Piero secretly for one hundred ducats to a merchant, who carried it to Milan, and sold it to the duke for three hundred. To the poor peasant, thus cheated of his "Rotello," Piero gave a wooden shield, on which was painted a heart transfixed by a dart, a device better suited to his taste and comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Leonardo's picture disappeared, and was probably destroyed as an object of horror by those who did not understand its value as a work of art.

During this first period of his life, which was wholly passed in Florence and its neighborhood, Leonardo painted several other pictures of a very different character, and designed some beautiful cartoons of sacred and mythological subjects, which showed that his sense of the beautiful, the elevated, and the graceful was not less a part of his mind than that eccentricity and almost perversion of fancy which made him delight in sketching ugly, exaggerated caricatures, and representing the deformed and the terrible.

Leonardo da Vinci was now about thirty years old, in the prime of his life and talents. His taste for pleasure and expense was, however, equal to his genius and indefatigable industry; and anxious to secure a certain provision for the future, as well as a wider field for the exercise of his various talents, he accepted the invitation of Ludovico Sforza il Moro, then regent, afterward Duke of Milan, to reside in his court, and to execute a colossal equestrian statue of his ancestor, Francesco Sforza. Here begins the second period of his artistic career, which includes his sojourn at Milan, that is from 1483 to 1499.

Vasari says that Leonardo was invited to the court of Milan for the Duke Ludovico's amusement, "as a musician and performer on the lyre, and as the greatest singer and improvisatore of his time;" but this is improbable. Leonardo, in his long letter to that prince, in which he recites his own qualifications for employment, dwells chiefly on his skill in engineering and fortification; and sums up his pretensions as an artist in these few brief words: "I understand the different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta. In painting, also, I may esteem myself equal to anyone, let him be who he may." Of his musical talents he makes no mention whatever, though undoubtedly these, as well as his other social accomplishments, his handsome person, his winning address, his wit and eloquence, recommended him to the notice of the prince, by whom he was greatly beloved, and in whose service he remained for about seventeen years. It is not necessary, nor would it be possible here, to give a particular account of all the works in which Leonardo was engaged for his patron, nor of the great political events in which he was involved, more by his position than by his inclination; for instance, the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. of France, and the subsequent invasion of Milan by Louis XII., which ended in the destruction of the Duke Ludovico. The greatest work of all, and by far the grandest picture which, up to that time, had been executed in Italy, was the "Last Supper," painted on the wall of the refectory, or dining-room, of the Dominican convent of the Madonna delle Grazie. It occupied Leonardo about two years, from 1496 to 1498.

The moment selected by the painter is described in the 26th chapter of St. Matthew, 21st and 22d verses: "And as they did eat, he said, Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me: and they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?" The knowledge of character displayed in the heads of the different apostles is even more wonderful than the skilful arrangement of the figures and the amazing beauty of the workmanship. The space occupied by the picture is a wall twenty-eight feet in length and the figures are larger than life.

Of this magnificent creation of art, only the mouldering remains are now visible. It has been so often repaired that almost every vestige of the original painting is annihilated; but from the multiplicity of descriptions, engravings, and copies that exist, no picture is more universally known and celebrated. Perhaps the best judgment we can now form of its merits is from the fine copy executed by one of Leonardo's best pupils, Marco Uggione, for the Certosa at Pavia, and now in London, in the collection of the Royal Academy. Eleven other copies, by various pupils of Leonardo, painted either during his lifetime or within a few years after his death, while the picture was in perfect preservation, exist in different churches and collections.

While engaged on the Cenacolo, Leonardo painted the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, now in the Louvre (No. 483). It has been engraved under the title of La Belle Ferronnière, but later researches leave us no doubt that it represents Lucrezia Crivelli, a beautiful favorite of Ludovico Sforza, and was painted at Milan in 1497. It is, as a work of art, of such extraordinary perfection that all critical admiration is lost in wonder.

Of the grand equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, Leonardo never finished more than the model in clay, which was considered a masterpiece. Some years afterward (in 1499), when Milan was invaded by the French, it was used as a target by the Gascon bowmen, and completely destroyed. The profound anatomical studies which Leonardo made for this work still exist.

Raphael Introduced to Da Vinci.

In the year 1500, the French being in possession of Milan, his patron Ludovico in captivity, and the affairs of the state in utter confusion, Leonardo returned to his native Florence, where he hoped to re-establish his broken fortunes, and to find employment. Here begins the third period of his artistic life, from 1500 to 1513, that is, from his forty-eighth to his sixtieth year. He found the Medici family in exile, but was received by Pietro Soderini (who governed the city as "Gonfaloniêre perpetuo") with great distinction, and a pension was assigned to him as painter in the service of the republic. One of his first works after his return to Florence was the famous portrait of Madonna Lisa del Giocondo, called in French La Joconde, and now in the Louvre (484), which after the death of Leonardo was purchased by Francis I. for 4,000 gold crowns, equal to 45,000 francs or £1,800, an enormous sum in those days; yet who ever thought it too much?

Then began the rivalry between Leonardo and Michael Angelo, which lasted during the remainder of Leonardo's life. The difference of age (for Michael Angelo was twenty-two years younger) ought to have prevented all unseemly jealousy; but Michael Angelo was haughty and impatient of all superiority, or even equality; Leonardo, sensitive, capricious, and naturally disinclined to admit the pretensions of a rival, to whom he could say, and did say, "I was famous before you were born!" With all their admiration of each other's genius, their mutual frailties prevented any real good-will on either side.

Leonardo, during his stay at Florence, painted the portrait of Ginevra Benci, the reigning beauty of her time. We find that in 1502 he was engaged by Cæsar Borgia to visit and report on the fortifications of his territories, and in this office he was employed for two years. In 1503 he formed a plan for turning the course of the Arno, and in the following year he lost his father. In 1505 he modelled the group which we now see over the northern door of the San Giovanni, at Florence. In 1514 he was invited to Rome by Leo X., but more in his character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist, than as a painter. Here Raphael was at the height of his fame, and engaged in his greatest works, the frescos of the Vatican. The younger artist was introduced to the elder; and two pictures which Leonardo painted while at Rome—the "Madonna of St. Onofrio," and the "Holy Family," painted for Filiberta of Savoy, the pope's sister-in-law (which is now at St. Petersburg)—show that even this veteran in art felt the irresistible influence of the genius of his young rival. They are both Raffaelesque in the subject and treatment.

It appears that Leonardo was ill-satisfied with his sojourn at Rome. He had long been accustomed to hold the first rank as an artist wherever he resided; whereas at Rome he found himself only one among many who, if they acknowledged his greatness, affected to consider his day as past. He was conscious that many of the improvements in the arts which were now brought into use, and which enabled the painters of the day to produce such extraordinary effects, were invented or introduced by himself. If he could no longer assert that measureless superiority over all others which he had done in his younger days, it was because he himself had opened to them new paths to excellence. The arrival of his old competitor, Michael Angelo, and some slight on the part of Leo X., who was annoyed by his speculative and dilatory habits in executing the works intrusted to him, all added to his irritation and disgust. He left Rome, and set out for Pavia, where the French king, Francis I., then held his court. He was received by the young monarch with every mark of respect, loaded with favors, and a pension of 700 gold crowns settled on him for life. At the famous conference between Francis I. and Leo X., at Bologna, Leonardo attended his new patron, and was of essential service to him on that occasion. In the following year, 1516, he returned with Francis I. to France, and was attached to the French court as principal painter. It appears, however, that during his residence in France he did not paint a single picture. His health had begun to decline from the time he left Italy; and feeling his end approach, he prepared himself for it by religious meditation, by acts of charity, and by a most conscientious distribution by will of all his worldly possessions to his relatives and friends. At length, after protracted suffering, this great and most extraordinary man died at Cloux, near Amboise, May 2, 1519, being then in his sixty-seventh year. It is to be regretted that we cannot wholly credit the beautiful story of his dying in the arms of Francis I., who, as it is said, had come to visit him on his death-bed. It would indeed have been, as Fuseli expressed it, "an honor to the king, by which destiny would have atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia."[Back to Contents]

MICHAEL ANGELO
By Anna Jameson
(1474-1564)

We have spoken of Leonardo da Vinci. Michael Angelo, the other great luminary of art, was twenty-two years younger, but the more severe and reflective cast of his mind rendered their difference of age far less in effect than in reality. It is usual to compare Michael Angelo with Raphael, but he is more aptly compared with Leonardo da Vinci. All the great artists of that time, even Raphael himself, were influenced more or less by these two extraordinary men, but they exercised no influence on each other. They started from opposite points; they pursued throughout their whole existence, and in all they planned and achieved, a course as different as their respective characters.

Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Setignano, near Florence, in the year 1474. He was descended from a family once noble—even among the noblest of the feudal lords of Northern Italy—the Counts of Canossa; but that branch of it represented by his father, Luigi Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, had for some generations become poorer and poorer, until the last descendant was thankful to accept an office in the law, and had been nominated magistrate or mayor (Podesta) of Chiusi. In this situation he had limited his ambition to the prospect of seeing his eldest son a notary or advocate in his native city. The young Michael Angelo showed the utmost distaste for the studies allotted to him, and was continually escaping from his home and from his desk to haunt the ateliers of the painters, particularly that of Ghirlandajo who was then at the height of his reputation.

The father of Michael Angelo, who found his family increase too rapidly for his means, had destined some of his sons for commerce (it will be recollected that in Genoa and Florence the most powerful nobles were merchants or manufacturers), and others for civil or diplomatic employments; but the fine arts, as being at that time productive of little honor or emolument, he held in no esteem, and treated these tastes of his eldest son sometimes with contempt and sometimes even with harshness. Michael Angelo, however, had formed some friendships among the young painters, and particularly with Francesco Granacci, one of the best pupils of Ghirlandajo; he contrived to borrow models and drawings, and studied them in secret with such persevering assiduity and consequent improvement, that Ghirlandajo, captivated by his genius, undertook to plead his cause to his father, and at length prevailed over the old man's family pride and prejudices. At the age of fourteen Michael Angelo was received into the studio of Ghirlandajo as a regular pupil, and bound to him for three years; and such was the precocious talent of the boy, that, instead of being paid for his instruction, Ghirlandajo undertook to pay the father, Leonardo Buonarroti, for the first, second, and third years, six, eight, and twelve golden florins, as payment for the advantage he expected to derive from the labor of the son. Thus was the vocation of the young artist decided for life.

At that time Lorenzo the Magnificent reigned over Florence. He had formed in his palace and gardens a collection of antique marbles, busts, statues, fragments, which he had converted into an academy for the use of young artists, placing at the head of it as director a sculptor of some eminence, named Bertoldo. Michael Angelo was one of the first who, through the recommendation of Ghirlandajo, was received into this new academy, afterward so famous and so memorable in the history of art. The young man, then not quite sixteen, had hitherto occupied himself chiefly in drawing; but now, fired by the beauties he beheld around him, and by the example and success of a fellow-pupil, Torregiano, he set himself to model in clay, and at length to copy in marble what was before him; but, as was natural in a character and genius so steeped in individuality, his copies became not so much imitations of form as original embodyings of the leading idea. For example: his first attempt in marble, when he was about fifteen, was a copy of an antique mask of an old laughing Faun; he treated this in a manner so different from the original, and so spirited as to excite the astonishment of Lorenzo de Medici, who criticised it, however, saying, "Thou shouldst have remembered that old folks do not retain all their teeth; some of them are always wanting." The boy struck the teeth out, giving it at once the most grotesque expression; and Lorenzo, infinitely amused, sent for his father and offered to attach his son to his own particular service, and to undertake the entire care of his education. The father consented, on condition of receiving for himself an office under the government, and thenceforth Michael Angelo was lodged in the palace of the Medici and treated by Lorenzo as his son.

Michael Angelo continued his studies under the auspices of Lorenzo; but just as he had reached his eighteenth year he lost his generous patron, his second father, and was thenceforth thrown on his own resources. It is true that the son of Lorenzo, Piero de Medici, continued to extend his favor to the young artist, but with so little comprehension of his genius and character, that on one occasion, during the severe winter of 1494, he set him to form a statue of snow for the amusement of his guests.

Michael Angelo, while he yielded, perforce, to the caprices of his protector, turned the energies of his mind to a new study—that of anatomy—and pursued it with all that fervor which belonged to his character. His attention was at the same time directed to literature, by the counsels and conversations of a very celebrated scholar and poet then residing in the court of Piero—Angelo Poliziano; and he pursued at the same time the cultivation of his mind and the practice of his art. Engrossed by his own studies, he was scarcely aware of what was passing around him, nor of the popular intrigues which were preparing the ruin of the Medici; suddenly this powerful family were flung from sovereignty to temporary disgrace and exile; and Michael Angelo, as one of their retainers, was obliged to fly from Florence, and took refuge in the city of Bologna. During the year he spent there he found a friend, who employed him on some works of sculpture; and on his return to Florence he executed a Cupid in marble, of such beauty that it found its way into the cabinet of the Duchess of Mantua as a real antique. On the discovery that the author of this beautiful statue was a young man of two-and-twenty, the Cardinal San Giorgio invited him to Rome, and for some time lodged him in his palace. Here Michael Angelo, surrounded and inspired by the grand remains of antiquity, pursued his studies with unceasing energy; he produced a statue of Bacchus, which added to his reputation; and in 1500, at the age of five-and-twenty, he produced the famous group of the dead Christ on the knees of his Virgin Mother (called the "Pietà"), which is now in the church of St. Peter's, at Rome; this last being frequently copied and imitated, obtained him so much applause and reputation, that he was recalled to Florence, to undertake several public works, and we find him once more established in his native city in the year 1502.

In 1506 Michael Angelo was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II., who, while living, had conceived the idea of erecting a most splendid monument to perpetuate his memory. For this work, which was never completed, Michael Angelo executed the famous statue of Moses, seated, grasping his flowing beard with one hand, and with the other sustaining the tables of the Law. While employed on this tomb, the pope commanded him to undertake also the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Sixtus IV. had, in the year 1473, erected this famous chapel, and summoned the best painters of that time, Signorelli, Cosimo Roselli, Perugino, and Ghirlandajo, to decorate the interior; but down to the year 1508 the ceiling remained without any ornament; and Michael Angelo was called upon to cover this enormous vault, a space of one hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty in breadth, with a series of subjects representing the most important events connected, either literally or typically, with the fall and redemption of mankind.

No part of Michael Angelo's long life is so interesting, so full of characteristic incident, as the history of his intercourse with Pope Julius II., which began in 1505, and ended only with the death of the pope in 1513.

Michael Angelo had at all times a lofty idea of his own dignity as an artist, and never would stoop either to flatter a patron or to conciliate a rival. Julius II., though now seventy-four, was as impatient of contradiction as fiery in temper, as full of magnificent and ambitious projects as if he had been in the prime of life; in his service was the famous architect, Bramante, who beheld with jealousy and alarm the increasing fame of Michael Angelo, and his influence with the pontiff, and set himself by indirect means to lessen both. He insinuated to Julius that it was ominous to erect his own mausoleum during his lifetime, and the pope gradually fell off in his attentions to Michael Angelo, and neglected to supply him with the necessary funds for carrying on the work. On one occasion, Michael Angelo, finding it difficult to obtain access to the pope, sent a message to him to this effect, "that henceforth, if his Holiness desired to see him, he should send to seek him elsewhere;" and the same night, leaving orders with his servants to dispose of his property, he departed for Florence. The pope despatched five couriers after him with threats, persuasions, promises—but in vain. He wrote to the Gonfaloniere Soderini, then at the head of the government of Florence, commanding him, on pain of his extreme displeasure, to send Michael Angelo back to him; but the inflexible artist absolutely refused; three months were spent in vain negotiations. Soderini, at length, fearing the pope's anger, prevailed on Michael Angelo to return, and sent with him his relation, Cardinal Soderini, to make up the quarrel between the high contending powers.

On his return to Rome, Michael Angelo wished to have resumed his work on the mausoleum; but the pope had resolved on the completion of the Sistine Chapel; he commanded Michael Angelo to undertake the decoration of the vaulted ceiling; and the artist was obliged, though reluctantly, to obey. At this time the frescos which Raphael and his pupils were painting in the chambers of the Vatican had excited the admiration of all Rome. Michael Angelo, who had never exercised himself in the mechanical part of the art of fresco, invited from Florence several painters of eminence, to execute his designs under his own superintendence; but they could not reach the grandeur of his conceptions, which became enfeebled under their hands, and one morning, in a mood of impatience, he destroyed all that they had done, closed the doors of the chapel against them, and would not thenceforth admit them to his presence. He then shut himself up, and proceeded with incredible perseverance and energy to accomplish his task alone; he even prepared his colors with his own hands. He began with the end toward the door, and in the two compartments first painted (though not first in the series), the "Deluge," and the "Vineyard of Noah;" he made the figures too numerous and too small to produce their full effect from below, a fault which he corrected in those executed subsequently. When almost half the work was completed, the pope insisted on viewing what was done, and the astonishment and admiration it excited rendered him more and more eager to have the whole completed at once. The progress, however, was not rapid enough to suit the impatient temper of the pontiff. On one occasion he demanded of the artist when he meant to finish it; to which Michael Angelo replied calmly, "When I can." "When thou canst!" exclaimed the fiery old pope, "thou hast a mind that I should have thee thrown from the scaffold!" At length, on the day of All Saints, 1512, the ceiling was uncovered to public view. Michael Angelo had employed on the painting only, without reckoning the time spent in preparing the cartoons, twenty-two months, and he received in payment three thousand crowns.

The collection of engravings after Michael Angelo in the British Museum is very imperfect, but it contains some fine old prints from the Prophets which should be studied by those who wish to understand the true merit of this great master, of whom Sir Joshua Reynolds said that, "to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man!"

When the Sistine Chapel was completed Michael Angelo was in his thirty-ninth year; fifty years of a glorious though troubled career were still before him.

Pope Julius II. died in 1513, and was succeeded by Leo X., the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. As a Florentine and his father's son, we might naturally have expected that he would have gloried in patronizing and employing Michael Angelo; but such was not the case. There was something in the stern, unbending character, and retired and abstemious habits of Michael Angelo, repulsive to the temper of Leo, who preferred the graceful and amiable Raphael, then in the prime of his life and genius; hence arose the memorable rivalry between Michael Angelo and Raphael, which on the part of the latter was merely generous emulation, while it must be confessed that something like scorn mingled with the feelings of Michael Angelo. The pontificate of Leo X., an interval of ten years, was the least productive period of his life. In the year 1519, when the Signoria of Florence was negotiating with Ravenna for the restoration of the remains of Dante, he petitioned the pope that he might be allowed to execute, at his own labor and expense, a monument to the "Divine Poet." He was sent to Florence to superintend the building of the church of San Lorenzo and the completion of Santa Croce; but he differed with the pope on the choice of the marble, quarrelled with the officials, and scarcely anything was accomplished. Clement VII., another Medici, was elected pope in 1523. He had conceived the idea of consecrating a chapel in the church of San Lorenzo, to receive the tombs of his ancestors and relations, and which should be adorned with all the splendor of art. Michael Angelo planned and built the chapel, and for its interior decoration designed and executed six of his greatest works in sculpture.

While Michael Angelo was engaged in these works his progress was interrupted by events which threw all Italy into commotion. Rome was taken and sacked by the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. The Medici were once more expelled from Florence; and Michael Angelo, in the midst of these strange vicissitudes, was employed by the republic to fortify his native city against his former patrons. Great as an engineer, as in every other department of art and science, he defended Florence for nine months. At length the city was given up by treachery, and, fearing the vengeance of the conquerors, Michael Angelo fled and concealed himself; but Clement VII. was too sensible of his merit to allow him to remain long in disgrace and exile. He was pardoned, and continued ever afterward in high favor with the pope, who employed him on the sculptures in the chapel of San Lorenzo during the remainder of his pontificate.

In the year 1531 he had completed the statues of "Night and Morning," and Clement, who heard of his incessant labors, sent him a brief commanding him, on pain of excommunication, to take care of his health, and not to accept of any other work but that which his Holiness had assigned him.

Clement VII. was succeeded by Pope Paul III., of the Farnese family, in 1534. This pope, though nearly seventy when he was elected, was as anxious to immortalize his name by great undertakings as any of his predecessors had been. His first wish was to complete the decoration of the interior of the Sistine Chapel, left unfinished by Julius II. and Leo X. He summoned Michael Angelo, who endeavored to excuse himself, pleading other engagements; but the pope would listen to no excuses which interfered with his sovereign power to dissolve all other obligations; and thus the artist found himself, after an interval of twenty years, most reluctantly forced to abandon sculpture for painting; and, as Vasari expresses it, he consented to serve Pope Paul only because he could not do otherwise.

The same Pope Paul III. had in the meantime constructed a beautiful chapel, which was called after his name the chapel Paolina, and dedicated to St. Peter and St Paul. Michael Angelo was called upon to design the decorations. He painted on one side the "Conversion of St. Paul," and on the other the "Crucifixion of St. Peter," which were completed in 1549. But these fine paintings—of which existing old engravings give a better idea than the blackened and faded remains of the original frescos—were from the first ill-disposed as to the locality, and badly lighted, and at present they excite little interest compared with the more famous works in the Sistine.

With the frescos in the Pauline Chapel ends Michael Angelo's career as a painter. He had been appointed chief architect of St. Peter's, in 1547, by Paul III. He was then in his seventy-second year, and during the remainder of his life, a period of sixteen years, we find him wholly devoted to architecture. His vast and daring genius finding ample scope in the completion of St. Peter's, he has left behind him in his capacity of architect yet greater marvels than he has achieved as painter and sculptor. Who that has seen the cupola of St. Peter's soaring into the skies, but will think almost with awe of the universal and majestic intellect of the man who reared it?

It appears, from the evidence of contemporary writers, that in the last years of his life the acknowledged worth and genius of Michael Angelo, his widespread fame, and his unblemished integrity, combined with his venerable age and the haughtiness and reserve of his deportment to invest him with a sort of princely dignity. It is recorded that, when he waited on Pope Julius III., to receive his commands, the pontiff rose on his approach, seated him, in spite of his excuses, on his right hand, and while a crowd of cardinals, prelates, and ambassadors, were standing round at humble distance, carried on the conference as equal with equal. When the Grand Duke Cosmo was in Rome, in 1560, he visited Michael Angelo, uncovered in his presence, and stood with his hat in his hand while speaking to him; but from the time when he made himself the tyrant of Florence he never could persuade Michael Angelo to visit, even for a day, his native city.

The arrogance imputed to Michael Angelo seems rather to have arisen from a contempt for others than from any overweening opinion of himself. He was too proud to be vain. He had placed his standard of perfection so high, that to the latest hour of his life he considered himself as striving after that ideal excellence which had been revealed to him, but to which he conceived that others were blind or indifferent. In allusion to his own imperfections, he made a drawing, since become famous, which represents an aged man in a go-cart, and underneath the words "Ancora impara" (still learning).

He continued to labor unremittingly, and with the same resolute energy of mind and purpose, till the gradual decay of his strength warned him of his approaching end. He did not suffer from any particular malady, and his mind was strong and clear to the last. He died at Rome, on February 18, 1564, in the ninetieth year of his age. A few days before his death he dictated his will in these few simple words: "I bequeath my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest relations." His nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti, who was his principal heir, by the orders of the Grand Duke Cosmo had his remains secretly conveyed out of Rome and brought to Florence; they were with due honors deposited in the church of Santa Croce, under a costly monument, on which we may see his noble bust surrounded by three very commonplace and ill-executed statues, representing the arts in which he excelled—Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. They might have added Poetry, for Michael Angelo was so fine a poet that his productions would have given him fame, though he had never peopled the Sistine with his giant creations, nor "suspended the Pantheon in the air." The object to whom his poems are chiefly addressed, Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, was the widow of the celebrated commander who overcame Francis I. at the battle of Pavia; herself a poetess, and one of the most celebrated women of her time for beauty, talents, virtue, and piety. She died in 1547.[Back to Contents]

Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna.

RAPHAEL
By Mrs. Lee
(1483-1520)

The solemn and silent season of Lent had passed away; and, on the second evening of the joyful Easter, a house was seen brightly illuminated in one of the streets of Urbino. It was evident that a festival was held there on some happy occasion. The sound of music was heard, and guest after guest entered the mansion. No one, however, was more cordially welcomed than Pietro Perugino, the fellow-student of Leonardo da Vinci, at the school of the good old Andrea Verocchio.

For a moment, general gayety was suspended in honor of the guest. He was considered at that time one of the greatest painters of the age; and the host, Giovanni di Sanzio, though himself only ranking in the second or third order of limners, knew well how to prize the rare talents of his visitor.

The wife of Giovanni came forward, leading her son Raphael. Perugino had the eye of an artist: he gazed upon the mother and son with enthusiastic feeling; the striking resemblance they bore to each other, so exquisitely modulated by years and sex, was indeed a study for this minute copyist of nature.

"Benvenuto, Messer Perugino," said the hostess, with her soft musical voice and graceful Italian accent, and she placed the hand of her boy in that of the artist. Gently he laid the other on the head of the youthful Raphael, and in a solemn and tender manner pronounced a benediction.

"Your blessing is well timed, my honored friend," said Giovanni, "our festival is given to celebrate the birthday of our son."

"Is this his birthday?" inquired Perugino.

"Not so," replied the father, "he was born on April 7th, the evening of Good Friday, and it well befits us to be gay on the joyful Easter that succeeds it."

"My friend," said Perugino, "if thou wilt entrust thy boy to my care, I will take him as my pupil."

The father acceded with delight to this proposal. When the mother became acquainted with the arrangement, and found that her son was to quit his paternal dwelling at the early age of twelve, and reside wholly with Perugino, she could not restrain her tears. With hers the young Raphael's mingled, though ever and anon a bright smile darted like a sunbeam across his face.

He remained with Perugino several years. Raphael was made for affection, and fondly did his heart cling to his instructor. For a time he was content to follow his manner; but at length he began to dwell upon his own beau ideal; he grew impatient of imitation, and felt that his style was deficient in freshness and originality. He longed to pass the narrow bounds to which his invention had been confined.

With the approbation of Perugino and the consent of his parents, he repaired to Siena; here he was solicited to adorn the public library with fresco, and painted there with great success. But while he was busily engaged, his friend, Pinturrichio, one day entered. After looking at his friend's work very attentively, "Bravo!" he exclaimed, "thou hast done well, my Raphael—but I have just returned from Florence—oh, would that thou couldst behold the works of Leonardo da Vinci! Such horses! they paw the ground and shake the foam from their manes. Oh, my poor Raphael! thou hast never seen nature; thou art wasting time on these cartoons. Perugino is a good man and a good painter, I will not deny that—but Leonardo's horses!"

Raphael threw aside his pencil and hastily rose.

"Where now?" asked his friend; "whither art thou going so hastily?"

"To Florence," exclaimed Raphael.

"And what carries you so suddenly?"

"The horses of Leonardo," replied the young artist, sportively; "seriously, however, the desire of excellence implanted in my soul."

When he arrived at Florence he was charmed with the appearance of the city; but his whole mind was absorbed in the works of Leonardo da Vinci and of Michael Angelo, the rival artists of the age. As his stay was to be short, he did not enter upon laborious occupation. His mornings were passed in the reveries of his art; his evenings in the gay and fascinating society of Florence, where the fame of Perugino's beloved pupil had already reached. The frescos at Siena were spoken of; and the beautiful countenance and graceful deportment of Raphael won him the friendship of distinguished men. Taddeo Taddei, the learned friend of Cardinal Bembo, solicited him to reside in his house; he consented, and in return for the courtesy painted for him two pictures, in what is called his first style, that of Perugino.

One evening he retired to his couch at a late hour. He had been the hero of a fête, and love and beauty had heedlessly scattered their flowers in the path of the living Adonis. In vain he sought a few hours of slumber. He had quaffed the juice of the grape, emptying goblet after goblet, till his beating pulse and throbbing temples refused to be quieted. He started from his couch and approached the lattice; the heavens had changed their aspect, the still serenity of the evening had passed away, and the clouds were hurrying over the pale and watery moon. Nothing was heard but the low sighing of the wind, and now and then a sudden gust swept through the lattice, and threatened to extinguish the taper which was burning dimly on the table. A slight noise made him turn his eyes, and he perceived a note that the wind had displaced. He hastily took it up. It was Perugino's handwriting. He cut the silken cord that fastened it, and read:

"On me, my beloved Raffaello, devolves the task of informing you of the events which have taken place at Urbino. May this letter find you prepared for all the changes of life; a wise man will never suffer himself to be taken by surprise; this is true philosophy, and the only philosophy that can serve us! An epidemic has prevailed at Urbino, and has entered your paternal dwelling. Need I say more? Come to me, my son, at Perugia, for I am the only parent that remains to you. Pietro Perugino."

As he hastily arose, a crucifix which his mother had suspended to his neck at parting, fell from his bosom. Even the symbols of religion are sacred where the living principle has been early implanted in the heart. He pressed it to his lips: "Ah!" thought he, "what is the philosophy of Perugino, compared to the faith of which this is the emblem?" His thoughts went back to infancy and childhood, and his grief and remorse grew less intense. He dwelt on the deep and enduring love of his parents till he felt assured death could not extinguish it, and that he should see them again in a brighter sphere.

When morning came it found Raphael calm and composed; the lines of grief and thought were deeply marked on his youthful face; but the whirlwind and the storm had passed. He took leave of his friends, and hastened to Perugino, who received him with the fondness of a parent.

Here he remained some time, and at length collected sufficient resolution to return to Urbino, and once more enter the mansion of his desolated home.

It was necessary for him to reside at his native place for a number of months. During that time he painted several fine pictures. His heart, however, yearned for Florence, and he returned to it once more with the determination of making it his home. With far different sensations did he a second time enter the city of beauty. The freshness of his gayety was blighted; lessons of earthly disappointment were ever present to his mind, and he returned to it with the resolute purpose of devoting himself to serious occupation.

How well he fulfilled this resolution all Italy can bear witness. From this time he adopted what has been called his second manner. He painted for the Duke of Urbino the beautiful picture of the Saviour at sunrise, with the morning light cast over a face resplendent with divinity; the flowers glittering with dew, the two disciples beyond, still buried in slumber, at the time when the Saviour turns his eyes upon them with that tender and sorrowful exclamation, "Could ye not watch one hour?"

Raphael enriched the city of Florence with his works. When asked what had suggested some of the beautiful combinations of his paintings, he said, "They came to me in my sleep." At other times he called them "visions;" and then again said they were the result of "una certa idea che mi viene alla mente." It was this power of drawing from the deep wells of his own mind that gave such character, originality, and freshness to his works. He found that power within which so many seek, and seek in vain, without.

At the age of twenty-five Raphael was summoned by the pope to paint the chambers of the Vatican. The famous frescos of the Vatican need neither enumeration nor description; the world is their judge and their eulogist.

No artist ever consecrated his works more by his affections than Raphael. The same hallowed influence of the heart gave inexpressible charm to Correggio's, afterward. One of Raphael's friends said to him, in looking upon particular figures in his groups, "You have transmitted to posterity your own likeness."

"See you nothing beyond that?" replied the artist.

"I see," said the critic, "the deep-blue eye, and the long, fair hair parted on the forehead."

"Observe," said Raphael, "the feminine softness of expression, the beautiful harmony of thought and feeling. When I take my pencil for high and noble purposes, the spirit of my mother hovers over me. It is her countenance, not my own, of which you trace the resemblance."

This expression is always observable in his Madonnas. His portraits of the Fornarina are widely different. Raphael, in his last and most excellent style, united what was graceful and exquisite in Leonardo with the sublime and noble manner of Michael Angelo. It is the privilege and glory of genius to appropriate to itself whatever is noble and true. The region of thought is thus made a common ground for all, and one master mind becomes a reservoir for the present and future times.

When Raphael was invited to Rome by Pope Julius II., Michael Angelo was at the height of his glory; his character tended to inspire awe rather than affection; he delighted in the majestic and the terrible. In boldness of conception and grandeur of design, he surpassed Leonardo, but never could reach the sweetness and gentleness of his figures. Even his children lose something of their infantine beauty, and look mature; his women are commanding and lofty; his men of gigantic proportions. His painting, like his sculpture, is remarkable for anatomical exactness, and perfect expression of the muscles. For this union of magnificence and sublimity, it was necessary to prepare the mind; the first view was almost harsh, and it was by degrees that his mighty works produced their designed effect. Raphael, while he felt all the greatness of the Florentine, conceived that there might be something more like nature—something that should be harmonious, sweet, and flowing—that should convey the idea of intellectual rather than of external majesty. Without yielding any of the correctness of science, he avoided harshness, and imitated antiquity in uniting grace and elegance with a strict observation of science and of the rules of art.

It was with surprise that Michael Angelo beheld in the youthful Raphael a rival artist; nor did he receive this truth meekly; he treated him with coldness and distance. In the meantime Raphael went on with his works; he completed the frescos of the Vatican, and designed the cartoons. He also produced those exquisite paintings in oil which seem the perfection of human art.

Leo X. at Raphael's Bier.

Human affection is necessary to awaken the sympathy of human beings; and Raphael, in learning how to portray it, had found the way to the heart. In mere grandeur of invention he was surpassed by Michael Angelo. Titian excelled him in coloring, and Correggio in the beautiful gradation of tone; but Raphael knew how to paint the soul; in this he stood alone. This was the great secret of a power which seemed to operate like magic. In his paintings there is something which makes music on the chords of every heart; for they are the expression of a mind attuned to nature, and find answering sympathies in the universal soul.

While Michael Angelo was exalted with the Epic grandeur of his own Dante, Raphael presented the most finished scenes of dramatic life, and might be compared to the immortal Shakespeare—scenes of spiritual beauty, of devotion, and of pastoral simplicity, yet uniting a classic elegance which the poet does not possess. Buonarroti was the wonder of Italy, and Raphael became its idol.

Julius was so much enchanted with his paintings in the halls of the Vatican, that he ordered the frescos of former artists to be destroyed. Among them were some of Perugino's, but Raphael would not suffer these to be removed for his own; he viewed them as the relics of a beloved and honored friend, and they were consecrated by tender and grateful feelings.

Raphael collected from every part of the world medallions of intaglios and antiques to assist him in his designs. He loved splendor and conviviality, and gave offence thereby to the rigid and austere. It was said that he had a prospect of changing the graceful beretta for a cardinal's hat; but this idea might have arisen from the delay which existed in his marriage with Cardinal Bibiano's niece, whose hand her uncle had offered to him. Peremptorily to reject this proposal of the cardinal without giving offence would have been impossible, and Raphael was too gentle in his own feelings voluntarily to injure another's; but he was not one to sacrifice his affections to ambition.

Whatever were the struggles of his heart, they were early terminated. Amid the caresses of the great, the fond and devoted friendship of his equals, the enthusiastic love of his pupils, the adulation of his inferiors, while crowned with wealth, fame, and honor, and regarded as the equal of the hitherto greatest artist in the world, he was suddenly called away. He died on Good Friday, the day of his birth, at the age of thirty-seven, 1520.

We are sometimes impressed with veneration when those who have even drunk the cup of life almost to its dregs resign it with resignation and Christian faith. But Raphael calmly and firmly resigned it when it was full to the brim.

Leo X. and Cardinal Bibiano were by his bedside. The sublime picture of the "Transfiguration," the last and greatest which he painted, was placed opposite to him, by his own desire. How impressive must have been the scene! His dying eye turned from the crucifix he held in his hand to the glory of the beatified Saviour.

His contemporaries speak of him as affectionate, disinterested, modest, and sincere; encouraging humble merit, and freely giving his advice and assistance where it was needed and deserved.[Back to Contents]

TITIAN
By Giorgio Vasari[2]
1477-1576

Titian was born in the year 1480, at Cadore, a small place distant about five miles from the foot of the Alps; he belonged to the family of the Vecelli, which is among the most noble of those parts. Giving early proof of much intelligence, he was sent at the age of ten to an uncle in Venice, an honorable citizen, who, seeing the boy to be much inclined to painting, placed him with the excellent painter, Gian Bellino, then very famous. Under his care, the youth soon proved himself to be endowed by nature with all the gifts of judgment and genius required for the art of painting. Now, Gian Bellino and the other masters of that country, not having the habit of studying the antique, were accustomed to copy only what they saw before them, and that in a dry, hard, labored manner, which Titian also acquired; but about the year 1507, Giorgione da Castel Franco, not being satisfied with that mode of proceeding, began to give to his works an unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner; yet he by no means neglected to draw from the life, or to copy nature with his colors as closely as he could; and in doing the latter he shaded with colder or warmer tints as the living object might demand, but without first making a drawing; since he held that, to paint with the colors only, without any drawing on paper, was the best mode of proceeding, and most perfectly in accord with the true principles of design.

Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of that master, as will be related below. Increasing in age, judgment, and facility of hand, our young artist executed numerous works in fresco which cannot here be named individually, having been dispersed in various places; let it suffice to say, that they were such as to cause experienced men to anticipate the excellence to which he afterward attained. At the time when Titian began to adopt the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the coloring being true and natural, and the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted as might also the stitches in a satin doublet, painted in the same work; it was so well and carefully done, that it would have been taken for a picture by Giorgione, if Titian had not written his name on the dark ground.

Giorgione meanwhile had executed the façade of the German Exchange, when, by the intervention of Barberigo, Titian was appointed to paint certain stories in the same building and over the Merceria. After which he executed a picture with figures the size of life, which is now in the Hall of Messer Andrea Loredano, who dwells near San Marcuola; this work represents "Our Lady" in her flight into Egypt. She is in the midst of a great wood, and the landscape of this picture is well done; Titian having practised that branch of art, and keeping certain Germans, who were excellent masters therein, for several months together in his own house. Within the wood he depicted various animals, all painted from the life, and so natural as to seem almost alive. In the house of Messer Giovanni Danna, a Flemish gentleman and merchant, who was his gossip, he painted a portrait which appears to breathe, with an "Ecce Homo," comprising numerous figures which, by Titian himself, as well as others, is considered to be a very good work. The same artist executed a picture of "Our Lady," with other figures the size of life, men and children being all taken from nature, and portraits of persons belonging to the Danna family.

In the year 1507, when the Emperor Maximilian was making war on the Venetians, Titian, as he relates himself, painted the "Angel Raphael, with Tobit and a Dog," in the Church of San Marziliano. There is a distant landscape in this picture, wherein San Giovanni Battista is seen at prayer in a wood; he is looking up to heaven, and his face is illumined by a light descending thence; some believe this picture to have been done before that on the "Exchange of the Germans," mentioned above, was commenced. Now, it chanced that certain gentlemen, not knowing that Giorgione no longer worked at this façade, and that Titian was doing it (nay, had already given that part over the Merceria to public view), met the former, and began as friends to rejoice with him, declaring that he was acquitting himself better on the side of the Merceria than he had done on that of the "Grand Canal;" which remark caused Giorgione so much vexation, that he would scarcely permit himself to be seen until the whole work was completed, and Titian had become generally known as the painter; nor did he thenceforward hold any intercourse with the latter and they were no longer friends.

In the year 1508, Titian published a wood-engraving of the "Triumph of Faith;" it comprised a vast number of figures: our first Parents, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Sybils, the Innocents, the Martyrs, the Apostles, and Our Saviour Christ borne in triumph by the four Evangelists, and the four Doctors, followed by the holy Confessors; here Titian displayed much boldness, a fine manner, and improving facility. I remember that Fra Bastiano del Piombo, speaking on this subject, told me that if Titian had then gone to Rome, and seen the works of Michael Angelo, with those of Raphael and the ancients, he was convinced, the admirable facility of his coloring considered, that he would have produced works of the most astonishing perfection; seeing that, as he well deserved to be called the most perfect imitator of Nature of our times, as regards coloring, he might thus have rendered himself equal to the Urbinese or Buonarroto, as regarded the great foundation of all, design. At a later period Titian repaired to Vicenza, where he painted "The Judgment of Solomon," on the Loggetta wherein the courts of justice are held; a very beautiful work. Returning to Venice, he then depicted the façade of the Germain; at Padua he painted certain frescos in the Church of Sant' Antonio, the subjects taken from the life of that saint; and in the Church of Santo Spirito he executed a small picture of San Marco seated in the midst of other saints, whose faces are portraits painted in oil with the utmost care; this picture has been taken for a work of Giorgione.

Now, the death of Giovan Bellino had caused a story in the hall of the Great Council to remain unfinished; it was that which represents Federigo Barbarossa kneeling before Pope Alessandro III., who plants his foot on the emperor's neck. This was now finished by Titian, who altered many parts of it, introducing portraits of his friends and others. For this he received from the senate an office in the Exchange of the Germans called the Senseria, which brought him in three hundred crowns yearly, and which those Signori usually give to the most eminent painter of their city, on condition that from time to time he shall take the portrait of their doge, or prince when such shall be created, at the price of eight crowns, which the doge himself pays, the portrait being then preserved in the Palace of San Marco, as a memorial of that doge.

After the completion of these works, our artist painted, for the Church of San Rocco, a figure of Christ bearing his cross; the Saviour has a rope round his neck, and is dragged forward by a Jew; many have thought this a work of Giorgione. It has become an object of the utmost devotion in Venice, and has received more crowns as offerings than have been earned by Titian and Giorgione both, through the whole course of their lives. Now, Titian had taken the portrait of Bembo, then secretary to Pope Leo X., and was by him invited to Rome, that he might see the city, with Raffaello da Urbino and other distinguished persons; but the artist having delayed his journey until 1520, when the pope and Raffaello were both dead, put it off for that time altogether. For the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore he painted a picture of "St. John the Baptist in the wilderness;" there is an angel beside him that appears to be living; and a distant landscape, with trees on the bank of a river, which are very graceful. He took portraits of the Prince Grimani and Loredano, which were considered admirable; and not long afterward he painted the portrait of King Francis, who was then leaving Italy to return to France.

A Fête at the House of Titian.

In 1530, when the Emperor Charles V. was in Bologna, Titian, by the intervention of Pietro Aretino, was invited to that city by the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and there he made a magnificent portrait of his majesty in full armor. This gave so much satisfaction that the artist received a present of a thousand crowns for the same. Out of these he had subsequently to give the half to Alfonso Lombardi, the sculptor, who had made a model of that monarch to be executed in marble.

Having returned to Venice, Titian there found that many gentlemen had begun to favor Pordenone, commending exceedingly the works executed by that artist in the ceiling of the Hall of the Pregai, and elsewhere. They had also procured him the commission for a small picture in the Church of San Giovanni Elemosynario, which they intended him to paint in competition with one representing that saint in his episcopal habits, which had previously been executed there by Titian. But whatever care and pains Pordenone took, he could not equal nor even approach the work of the former. Titian was then appointed to paint a picture of the Annunciation for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, at Murano; but those who gave the commission for the work, not wishing to pay so much as five hundred crowns, which Titian required as its price, he sent it, by the advice of Pietro Aretino, as a gift to Charles V., who being greatly delighted with the work, made him a present of two thousand crowns. The place which the picture was to have occupied at Murano was then filled by one from the hand of Pordenone.

When the emperor, some time after this, returned with his army from Hungary, and was again at Bologna, holding a conference with Clement VII., he desired to have another portrait taken of him by Titian, who, before he departed from the city, also painted that of the Cardinal Ippolito de Medici in the Hungarian dress, with another of the same prelate fully armed, which is somewhat smaller than the first; these are both now in the Guardaroba of Duke Cosimo. He painted the portraits of Alfonso, Marquis of Davalos, and of Pietro Aretino, at the same period, and these things having made him known to Federigo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, he entered the service of the latter, and accompanied him to his states. At Mantua our artist made a portrait of the duke, which appears to breathe, and afterward executed that of his brother, the cardinal. These being finished, he painted twelve beautiful "Heads of the Twelve Cæsars," to decorate one of the rooms erected by Giulio Romano, and when they were done, Giulio painted a "Story from the Lives of the Emperors" beneath each head.

The productions, but more especially the portraits, of Titian are so numerous that it would be almost impossible to make the record of them all. I will, therefore, speak of the principal only, and that without order of time, seeing that it does not much signify to tell which was painted earlier and which later. He took the portrait of Charles V. several times, as we have said, and was finally invited by that monarch to his court; there he painted him as he was in those last years; and so much was that most invincible emperor pleased with the manner of Titian, that once he had been portrayed by him, he would never permit himself to be taken by any other person. Each time that Titian painted the emperor he received a present of a thousand crowns of gold, and the artist was made a cavalier, or knight, by his majesty, with a revenue of two hundred crowns yearly, secured on the treasury of Naples, and attached to his title.

When Titian painted Filippo, King of Spain, the son of Charles, he received another annuity of two hundred crowns; so that these four hundred, added to the three hundred from the German Exchange, make him a fixed income of seven hundred crowns, which he possesses without the necessity of exerting himself in any manner. Titian presented the portraits of Charles V. and his son Filippo to the Duke Cosimo, who has them now in his Guardaroba. He also took the portrait of Ferdinand, King of the Romans, who was afterward emperor, with those of his children, Maximilian, that is to say, now emperor, and his brother; he likewise painted the Queen Maria; and at the command of the Emperor Charles, he portrayed the Duke of Saxony, when the latter was in prison. But what a waste of time is this! when there has scarcely been a noble of high rank, scarcely a prince or lady of great name, whose portrait has not been taken by Titian, who in that branch of art is indeed an excellent painter.

All these works, with many others which I omit to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years. Titian has been always healthy and happy; he has been favored beyond the lot of most men, and has received from Heaven only favors and blessings. In his house he has entertained whatever princes, literati, or men of distinction have gone to or dwelt in Venice; for, to say nothing of his excellence in art, he has always distinguished himself by courtesy, hospitality, and rectitude.

Titian has had some rivals in Venice, but not of any great ability, wherefore he has easily overcome them by the superiority of his art; while he has also rendered himself acceptable to the gentlemen of the city. He has gained a fair amount of wealth, his labors having always been well paid; and it would have been well if he had worked for his amusement alone during these latter years, that he might not have diminished the reputation gained in his best days by works of inferior merit, performed at a period of life when nature tends inevitably to decline, and consequent imperfection.

In the year 1566, when Vasari, the writer of the present history, was at Venice, he went to visit Titian, as one who was his friend, and found him, although then very old, still with the pencils in his hand and painting busily. Great pleasure had Vasari in beholding his works and in conversing with the master.

It may be affirmed, then, that Titian, having adorned Venice, or rather all Italy, and other parts of the world, with excellent paintings, well merits to be loved and respected by artists, and in many things to be admired and imitated also, as one who has produced, and is producing, work of infinite merit; nay, such as must endure while the memory of illustrious men shall remain.[Back to Contents]

ALBERT DÜRER[3]
By W. J. Holland, Chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania
(1471-1528)

It has been given to some men to be not only great in the domain of art by reason of that which they have themselves succeeded in producing, but by reason of that which they have inspired other men to produce. They have been not merely artists, but teachers, who by precept and example have moulded the whole current and drift of artistic thought in the ages and lands to which they have belonged. Among these lofty spirits, who live through the centuries not only in what their hands once fashioned, but still more in what they have inspired others to do, undoubtedly one of the greatest is Albert Dürer. Justly reckoned as the representative artist of Germany, he has the peculiar honor of having raised the craft of the engraver to its true position, as one of the fine arts. As a painter not unworthy to be classified with Titian and Raphael, his contemporaries upon Italian soil, he poured the wealth of his genius into woodcuts and copperplates, and taught men the practically measureless capacity of what before his day had been a rudimentary art.

Dürer was born in Nuremberg on May 21, 1471. The family was of Hungarian origin, though the name is German, and is derived from Thürer, meaning a maker of doors. The ancestral calling of the family probably was that of the carpenter. Albert Dürer, the father of the great artist, was a goldsmith, and settled about 1460 in Nuremberg, where he served as an assistant to Hieronymus Holper, a master goldsmith, whose daughter, Barbara, he married in 1468. He was at the time forty years of age, and she fifteen. As the result of the union eighteen children were born into the world, of whom Albrecht was the second. The lad, as he grew up, became a great favorite with his father, who appeared to discern in him the promise of future ability. The feeling of attachment was reciprocated in the most filial manner, and there are extant two well-authenticated portraits of the father from the facile brush of the son, one in the Uffizi at Florence, the other in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland. It was the original intention of the father of the artist that he should follow the craft of the goldsmith, but after serving a period as an apprentice in his father's shop, his strong predilection for the calling of the painter manifested itself to such a degree that the father reluctantly consented to allow the boy to follow his natural bent, and placed him under the tutelage of Michael Wohlgemuth, the principal painter of Nuremberg. Wohlgemuth was a representative artist of his time, who followed his calling after a mechanical fashion, having a large shop filled with apprentices who, under his direction and with his assistance, busied themselves in turning out for a small consideration altar-pieces and pictures of martyrdoms, which were in vogue as necessary parts of decoration in churches. Numerous examples of the work of Wohlgemuth and his contemporaries survive, attesting, by the wealth of crudities and unintended caricatures with which they abound, the comparatively low stage of development attained by the art of the painter in Germany at that day. According to Dürer, the period of his apprenticeship to Wohlgemuth was spent profitably, and resulted in large acquisitions of technical skill. The period of his preliminary training being ended, he set forth upon his "Wanderjahre," and travelled extensively. Just what points he visited cannot with certainty be determined. It is ascertained beyond doubt that he visited Colmar, where he was hospitably entertained by the family of Martin Schongauer, the greatest painter of his time on German soil, but who had died shortly before the visit of Dürer. He also visited Strasburg, and it is thought by many that he extended his journeyings as far as Venice. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg, and in the month of July was married to Agnes Frey, the daughter of a prosperous merchant of the city. He was twenty-three years of age, and she somewhat younger. They lived together happily, though no children were born to them, and it has been proved that the reputation which has been given her, of being little better than a common scold, who imbittered his life by her termagancy, is the creation of the ill temper of one of the testy friends of Dürer, Willibald Pirkheimer, who, in the spirit of spitefulness, besmirched her character in a letter which unfortunately survives to this day, and in which he accuses her of having led her husband a mad and weary dance by her temper. The reason for this ebullition on the part of Pirkheimer appears to have been that, after Dürer's death, she refused to give him a pair of antlers which had belonged to her husband, and which Pirkheimer had set his heart upon having.

Albert Dürer's Wedding.

The first eleven years of the married life of Dürer were spent in Nuremberg, where he devoted himself with unremitting assiduity to the prosecution of his art. During these years his powers unfolded rapidly, and there are extant two notable pictures, which were undoubtedly produced at this time, the triptych in the Dresden Gallery, and an altar-piece which is in the palace of the Archbishop of Vienna, at Ober St. Veit. These compositions, while remarkable in many respects, still reveal the influence of his master, Wohlgemuth, and give evidence of having been in part executed with the assistance of apprentices. In fact, the peak-gabled house at the foot of the castle-mound in Nuremberg was a picture factory like that of Wohlgemuth, in which, however, work of a higher order than any hitherto produced in Germany was being turned out. We know the names of four or five of those who served as apprentices under Dürer at this time and they are stars of lesser magnitude in the constellation of German art. But Dürer was not contented simply to employ his talents in the production of painted altar-pieces, and we find him turning out a number of engravings, the most noticeable among which are his sixteen great wood-cuts illustrating the Apocalypse, which were published in 1498. The theme was one which had peculiar fascinations for all classes at the time. The breaking up of all pre-existing systems, the wonderful stirrings of a new life which were beginning to be felt everywhere with the close of the Middle Age and the dawning of the Renaissance, had filled the minds of men with wonder, and caused them to turn to the writings of the Apocalyptic Seer with keenest interest. A recent critic, commenting upon his work as represented in these engravings, says: "The energy and undismayed simplicity of his imagination enable him, in this order of creations, to touch the highest point of human achievement. The four angels keeping back the winds that they blow not, the four riders, the loosing of the angels of the Euphrates to slay the third part of men—these and others are conceptions of such force, such grave or tempestuous grandeur, in the midst of grotesqueness, as the art of no other age or hand has produced."

At this period Dürer was also engaged in experimenting upon the art of copper-plate engraving, in which he restricted himself mainly to reproducing copies of the works of other artists, among them those of Jacopo de Barbari, a painter of the Italian school, who was residing in Nuremberg, and who among other things gave the great artist instruction in plastic anatomy. The influence of his instructor is plain, when we compare engravings executed about 1504 with those published at a previous date, and especially when we examine his design of the Passion of our Lord painted in white upon a green ground, commonly known as "The Green Passion," which is treasured in the Albertina at Prague. He also during these twelve years finished seven of the twelve great wood-cuts illustrating the passion, and sixteen of the twenty cuts which compose the series known as "The Life of the Virgin." The activities of Dürer in Nuremberg were temporarily interrupted by a journey to Italy, which he undertook in the fall of the year 1505. What the immediate occasion for undertaking this journey may have been is not plain, though it seems most likely that one of his objects was to enable him to recuperate from the effects of a protracted illness, from which he had suffered during the summer of this year, and also incidentally to secure a market for his wares in Venice, the commercial relationships of which with Nuremberg were very close at this period. A German colony, composed largely of Nuremberg factors and merchants, was located at this time in Venice, and they had secured the privilege of dedicating a great painting in the church of St. Bartholomew. The commission for the execution of this painting was secured by Dürer. It represents the adoration of the Virgin, but has been commonly known under the name of "The Feast of the Rose Garlands." After having undergone many vicissitudes, it is preserved to-day in a highly mutilated condition in the monastery of Strachow, near Prague. Dürer's stay in Venice was signalized not only by the production of this painting, but of three or four other notable works which still exist, and which reflect the great influence upon him of the Italian school of painting, with which he had attained familiarity. His stay in Venice lasted about a year. In the fall of 1506, he returned to Nuremberg, and there remained for the next fourteen years, engaged in the practice of his art. These years were years of success and prosperity. His name and fame had spread over the whole of Europe, and the greatest artists of the day were glad to do him homage. Raphael said of him, when contemplating some of his designs, "Truly this man would have surpassed us all, if he had the masterpieces of ancient art constantly before his eyes as we have." A friendly correspondence was maintained between the immortal Italian and his German contemporary, and in his own country, all men, from the emperor to the peasant, delighted to do honor to his genius, the products of which were found alike in church and palace, and through his printed designs in the homes of the humble poor.

The proud old imperial city of Nuremberg had gathered within its battlemented walls a multitude of men who were distinguished not only for their commercial enterprise and wealth, but many of whom were the exponents of the literary and artistic culture of the time. Among the men with whom Dürer found congenial companionship were Adam Krafft, the sculptor; Veit Stoss, whose exquisite carvings in wood may reflect in some measure in the wild luxuriance of the imagination which they display, the restless, "dare-devil" spirit with which his biographers invest him; Peter Vischer, the bronze founder; and last but not least. Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, whose quaint rhymes are a source of delight to this day, and were a mighty force in the great work of the Reformation, by which the fetters of mediæval traditions and ecclesiastical abuse were thrown off by the German people.

Of the personal appearance of Dürer at this time, we are not left in ignorance. A portrait of himself from his own hands has been preserved and is well known. His features reveal refinement and great intellectuality, united with grace, and his attire shows that he was not oblivious to matters of personal adornment. After the fashion of the time, his hair was worn in long and graceful ringlets, which fell in heavy masses about his shoulders.

The first six years which followed his return from Venice were almost wholly given to painting, and his productions give evidence of the fact that he had dismissed from his employment the retinue of assistants and apprentices, whom he had employed in his earlier years. From this period date most of his great masterpieces, which are still preserved, among them the "Adam and Eve," in the Pitti Palace; the "Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia," in the Imperial Gallery, at Vienna; the "Adoration of the Trinity," at the Belvedere, in Vienna; and "The Assumption of the Virgin," the original of which was destroyed by fire more than three hundred years ago, but of which a good copy is preserved at Frankfort. To this period belong the portraits of Charlemagne and of the Emperor Sigismund, which are preserved in the National German Museum at Nuremberg.

Albert Dürer visits Hans Sachs.

But while prosecuting the work of the painter, he did not neglect the art of the engraver, and in 1511, brought out in complete form his great book of woodcuts in folio, and began to develop that marvellous art of etching which is indissolubly connected with his name. Among the products of the etcher's needle which attest his activity in this direction are those masterpieces which have for centuries been at once the delight and the puzzle of artistic minds: the "Melancholia," "The Knight and the Devil," and "St. Jerome in his Cell." The most reasonable explanation of these weird fancies is that they were intended to represent in allegorical style the three temperaments—the melancholic, the sanguine, and the phlegmatic. The Diet of Augsburg, which was convened in 1518, gave Dürer a passing opportunity to depict the lineaments of the Emperor Maximilian, who gave him several sittings, and who manifested great interest in the painter. The death of the emperor in the following year, the outbreak of an epidemic in Nuremberg, together with the coronation of Charles V. at Aix-la-Chapelle, led Dürer to undertake a journey to the Low Countries, in which he was accompanied by his faithful wife. He was present at the coronation and was one of the distinguished civilians whose appearance added dignity to the occasion. His diary, in which he recounts his experiences upon this journey, and which is accompanied by a multitude of wayside sketches, is still preserved, and contains, besides the dry entries of his current expenditures, most entertaining allusions to the distinguished people whom he met, and who received him with the utmost cordiality. Intermingled with these narrative details are outbursts of feeling, which are provoked by passing political and ecclesiastical events, in which he took a profound interest, though he never appears to have committed himself with positive openness to the party of reform. His sympathies are, however, clearly shown by his writings, as well as by his works of art, to have been with the Reformers, and he lived on terms of intimacy with Erasmus and Melancthon, of both of whom we have portraits from his hand.

Dürer returned from the Netherlands in 1521, about the middle of July, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the prosecution of the art of the engraver, in painting, and in the effort to elucidate the sciences of perspective, geometry, and fortification, upon all of which he has left treatises.

His labors, though they had not brought with them great wealth, had secured for him a competency, and the latter years of his life were devoted more and more to labors which, while dignified, did not tend to add greatly to his already magnificent reputation. These labors were prosecuted in spite of ever-failing health. While in the Netherlands he had contracted a malarial fever, the effects of which clung to him, in spite of the best treatment which could be secured, and left him the wreck of his former self. On April 6, 1528, death suddenly overtook him. There was not even time to summon his friends to his side before his spirit had fled. The city which had been his home from childhood was filled with mourning. They took up his remains and gently laid them to rest in the burial vault of his wife's family in the graveyard of the Church of St. John, where the setting sun pours its last glowing beams at evening over the low Franconian hill-tops. The vault has since been changed and the last resting-place of the remains of the Raphael of the North is a lowly mound, reverently approached by all who visit the quaint imperial city, upon which is a slab, covered with a bronze tablet upon which are the words:

Quicquid Alberti Dureri Mortale
Fuit Sub Hoc Conditum Tumulo.
Emigravit VIII Idus Aprilis, MDXXVIIL

"Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed—for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!" [Back to Contents]

RUBENS
By Mrs. Lee
(1577-1640)

"It is just one hundred and twenty years to-day," said a young artist to his friend, as he stood in the hall of St. Mark, at Venice, contemplating the noble works of Titian. "Time, the destroyer, has here stayed his hand; the colors are as vivid and as fresh as if they were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to the art."

"Just one hundred and twenty years," repeated he, "since Titian was born. Venice was then in its glory, but now it is all falling; its churches and palaces are crumbling to dust, its commerce interrupted. The republic continually harassed by the Porte, and obliged to call on foreign aid; depressed by her internal despotism, her council of ten, and state inquisitors; her decline, though gradual, is sure; yet the splendor of her arts remains, and the genius of Titian, her favorite son, is yet in the bloom and brilliancy of youth!"

Such was the enthusiastic exclamation of Rubens, as he contemplated those paintings which had brought him from Antwerp. How many gifted minds spoke to him from the noble works which were before him! The three Bellinis, the founders of the Venetian school; Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. Then Paolo Veronese, who, though born at Verona, in 1537, adopted Venice as his home, and became the fellow-artist of Tintoretto, and the disciple of Titian. Pordenone, too, who viewed Titian as a rival and an enemy. Palma the young, and Palma the old, born in 1548, and the Bassanos, who died near 1627.

All these were present to the eye of Rubens, their genius embodied on the canvas in the halls of St. Mark. "These," he exclaimed, "have formed the Venetian school, and these shall be my study!"

From this time, the young artist might daily be seen with his sheets of white paper, and his pencil in his hand. A few strokes preserved the outline which his memory filled up; and by an intuitive glance, his genius understood and appropriated every signal beauty.

In Venice he became acquainted with the Archduke Albert, who introduced him to the Duke of Mantua, whither he went for the purpose of studying the works of Julio Romano. From thence he proceeded to Rome; here Raphael was his model, and Michael Angelo his wonder. He devoted himself to painting with a fervor that belongs only to genius; and he soon proved that, whatever he gained by ancient study, the originality of his own conceptions would still remain and appear. To the vivid and splendid coloring of the Venetian school, he was perhaps more indebted than to any other model. The affectionate and constant intercourse, by letters, that subsisted between Rubens and his mother, made his long residence in Italy one of pleasure. At Rome he was employed to adorn, by his paintings, the Church of Santa Croce, and also the "Chiesa Nova."

Rubens had been originally destined by his mother for one of the learned professions. His father was born at Antwerp, and held the honorable office of councillor of state. When the civil war broke out he repaired to Cologne, where his son, Peter Paul Rubens, was born. He died soon after his return to Antwerp, and left his property much diminished from losses occasioned by the civil war. The mother of Rubens put him early to the best schools, where he was initiated in learning and discovered a taste for belles-lettres; but all the intervals of necessary study were devoted to drawing. His mother perceiving it, determined to indulge his inclination, and placed him in the studio of Van Noort.

The correct taste of the scholar soon led him to perceive that he could not adopt this artist's style, and he became the pupil of Otho Venius. Similarity of thought and feeling united them closely, and it was with true disinterestedness that the master urged his pupil to quit his confined circle and repair to Italy, the great school of art.

Time flew rapidly with Rubens, while engaged in his beloved and honorable pursuit; he looked forward to the period when he might return to Antwerp and place his mother in her former affluence. Nearly seven years had passed since he took leave of her. Of late he thought her letters had been less cheerful; she spoke of her declining health, of her earnest hope that she might live to embrace him once more. This hint was enough for his affectionate heart. He immediately broke off all his engagements and prepared to return. Everyone knows what impatience is created when one first begins to contemplate home, after a long absence, and the heart is turned toward it. "Seven years absent?" wrote Rubens to his mother, "how is it possible I have lived so long away from you? It is too long; henceforth I will devote myself to your happiness. Antwerp shall be my future residence. I have acquired a taste for horticulture; our little garden shall be enlarged and cultivated, and our home will be a paradise."

What are human anticipations and projects! the day before he was to quit Rome he received a letter informing him that his mother was very ill, and begging him to return with all speed. With breathless haste he hurried back, without sleep or rest. When he reached the city he dared not make any inquiries. At length he stood before the paternal mansion; he saw the gloomy tiles and half-closed window-shutters. It was the fall of the trees. He observed people going in and out at the door; to speak was impossible. At length he rushed in and heard the appalling sentence, "Too late," a sentence that often strikes desolation to the human heart. His mother had expired that morning.

While he was struggling with the bitterness of sorrow, he met with Elizabeth Brants. There was something in the tone of her voice which infused tranquillity into his mind, and affection came in a new form to assuage his loss. She was the "ladye of his love," and afterward his wife. He built a magnificent house at Antwerp, with a saloon in form of a rotunda, which he ornamented and enriched with antique statues, busts, vases, and pictures by the most celebrated painters. Thus surrounded by the gems of art, he devoted himself to the execution of works which were the pride of his native country, and caused honors and wealth to be heaped upon him.

There were those found who could not endure the splendor of his success; these calumniated. There were others who tried to draw him into visionary speculations. A chemist offered him a share of his laboratory, to join in his search for the philosopher's stone. He carried the visionary to his painting-room, and said, "The offer comes too late. You see I have found out the art of making gold by my palette and pencils."

Rubens was now at the height of prosperity and happiness, a dangerous eminence, and one on which few are permitted to rest. A second time his heart was pierced with sorrow: he lost his young wife, Elizabeth, a few years after their union. Deep as was his sorrow, he had yet resolution enough to feel the necessity of exertion. He left the place which constantly reminded him of domestic enjoyment, the memory of which contrasted so sadly with the present silence and solitude, and travelled for some time in Holland. After his return, he received a commission from Mary de Medici, of France, to adorn the palace of the Luxembourg. He executed for this purpose a number of paintings at Antwerp, and instructed several pupils in his art.

At this time Rubens devoted himself wholly to painting, and scarcely allowed himself time for recreation. He considered it one of the most effectual means of instruction, to allow his pupils to observe his method of using his paints. He therefore had them with him while he worked on his large pictures. Teniers, Snyders, Jordaens, and Vandyke were among his pupils—all names well known.

When Rubens had executed the commission given him by Mary de Medici, wife of Henry IV., he repaired to Paris to arrange his pictures at the Luxembourg palace, and there painted two more, and likewise the galleries, representing passages of her life.

Here he became acquainted with the Duke of Buckingham, as that nobleman was on his way to Madrid with Prince Charles. On his return to Antwerp, he was summoned to the presence of the Infanta Isabella, who had, through Buckingham, become interested in his character. She thought him worthy of a political mission to the court of Madrid, where he was most graciously received by Philip. While at Madrid he painted four pictures for the convent of the Carmelites, and a fine portrait of the king on horseback, with many other pictures; for these extraordinary productions he was richly rewarded, received the honor of knighthood, and was presented with the golden key.

While in Spain, Don John, Duke of Braganza, who was afterward king of Portugal, sent and invited him to visit him at Villa Vitiosa, the place of his residence. Rubens, perhaps, might at this time have been a little dazzled with his uncommon elevation. He was now Sir Paul and celebrated all over Europe. It was proper he should make the visit as one person of high rank visits another. His preparations were great to appear in a becoming style, and not to shame his noble host. At length the morning arrived, and, attended by a numerous train of courteous friends and hired attendants, the long cavalcade began the journey. When not far distant from Villa Vitiosa, Rubens learned that Don John had sent an embassy to meet him. Such an honor had seldom been accorded to a private gentleman, and Rubens schooled himself to receive it with suitable humility and becoming dignity.

He put up at a little distance from Villa Vitiosa, awaiting the arrival of the embassy; finally it came, in the form of a single gentleman, who civilly told him that the duke, his master, had been obliged to leave home on business that could not be dispensed with, and therefore must deny himself the pleasure of the visit; but as he had probably been at some extra expense in coming so far, he begged him to accept of fifty pistoles as a remuneration.

Rubens refused the pistoles, and could not forbear adding that he had "brought two thousand along with him, which he had meant to spend at his court during the fifteen days he was to spend there."

The truth was, that when Don John was informed that Rubens was coming in the style of a prince to see him, it was wholly foreign to his plan; he was a great lover of painting, and had wished to see him as an artist. He therefore determined to prevent the visit.

The second marriage of Rubens, with Helena Forman, was, no less than the first, one of affection; she had great beauty, and became a model for his pencil. His favor with the great continued. Mary de Medici visited him at his own home more than once; and the Infanta Isabella was so much satisfied with his mission in Spain, that she sent him to England, to sound the disposition of the government on the subject of a peace.

Rubens disclosed in this embassy his diplomatic talents; he first appeared there in his character of artist, and insensibly won upon the confidence of Charles. The king requested him to paint the ceiling of the banqueting-house at Whitehall. While he was employed upon it, Charles frequently visited him and criticised the work. Rubens, very naturally introducing the subject, and finding, from the tenor of his conversation, that he was by no means averse to a peace with Spain, at length produced his credentials. The king received his mission most graciously, and Rubens returned to the Netherlands crowned with honors and success.

He had passed his fiftieth year when his health began to fail, and he was attacked with a severe fit of the gout. Those who have witnessed the irritation attendant upon that disorder will appreciate the perfect harmony and gentleness that existed between Rubens and his wife. With untiring tenderness she devoted herself to him, and was ingenious in devising alleviations and comforts.

The severe attacks of Rubens' disorder debilitated his frame, yet he continued painting at his easel almost to the last; and, amid suffering and sickness, never failed in giving the energy of intellect to his pictures. He died at the age of sixty-three, in the year 1640, leaving great wealth. The pomp and circumstance of funeral rite can only be of consequence as showing the estimation in which a departed citizen is held. Public funeral honors were awarded, and men of every rank were eager to manifest their respect to his memory. He was buried in the Church of St. James, at Antwerp, under the altar of his private chapel, which was decorated with one of his own noble pictures.[Back to Contents]

REMBRANDT[4]
By Elizabeth Robins Pennell
(1606-1669)

A heretic in art Rembrandt was to many of his Dutch contemporaries; to us, he is the master, supreme alike in genius and accomplishment. Because, as time went on, he broke completely from tradition and in his work gave full play to his originality, his pictures were looked at askance; because he chose to live his own life, indifferent to accepted conventions, he himself was misunderstood. It was his cruel fate to enjoy prosperity and popularity in his earlier years, only to meet with neglect in his old age. But this he felt probably less than other men; he was not a courtier, with Velasquez, nor vowed to worldly success, with Rubens. His pleasure and his reward, he found in his work. So long as easel and canvas, brushes and paints were left to him, he demanded no greater happiness.

Marie De Medici at the House of Rubens.

In Leyden, a town already made famous by another master, Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt was born in 1606; though this date has been disputed, some authorities suggesting 1607, others, 1608. His family were respectable, if not distinguished, burghers, his father, Harmen Gerritszoon, being a miller by trade, his mother, Neeltjen Willems of Zuitbroeck, the daughter of a baker. Not until early in the seventeenth century did permanent surnames become common among Dutchmen; hitherto children had been given their father's, in addition to their own Christian name; Rembrandt for many years was known as Rembrandt Harmenzoon, or the son of Harmen. But the miller, to be in the growing fashion, had called himself Van Ryn—of the Rhine—and thus, later on, Rembrandt also signed himself. Harmen was well-to-do; he owned houses in Leyden, and beyond the walls, gardens, and fields, and the mill where Rembrandt, because he once drew a mill, was supposed to have been born. But there was no reason for Neeltjen to move from a comfortable house in town into such rustic quarters, and it is more likely that Rembrandt's birthplace was the house pointed out in the Nordeinde Street. A commercial career had been chosen for his four older brothers. But Harmen, his means allowing the luxury, decided to make of his fifth son a man of letters and learning, and Rembrandt was sent to the University of Leyden. That letters, however, had small charm for him, was clear from the first. Better than his books he loved the engravings of Swanenburch, better still, the pictures of Lucas van Leyden, which he could look at to his heart's content on gala days, when the Town Hall, where they hung, was thrown open to the public. His hours of study were less profitable than his hours of recreation when he rambled in the country, through his father's estate, and, sometimes as far as the sea, a sketch-book, the chances are, for sole companion. Certainly, by the time he was fifteen, so strong were the proofs of his indifference to the classics and his love for art, that his father, sacrificing his own ambitions, allowed Rembrandt to leave the university for the studio of Van Swanenburch. From this day forth, his life's history is told in the single word—work; his indeed was the genius of industry.

Van Swanenburch had studied in Italy; but his own painting, to judge by the few examples still in existence, was entirely commonplace. Three years were more than enough to be passed under his tuition. At the end of the third, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, and there entered the studio of Lastman. His second master also had studied in Italy, and also was a painter of mediocre talent, popular in his own times—the Apelles of the day, he was called—but remembered now chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first, Rembrandt, even if obliged to paint the stock subjects of the day, was determined to treat them in his own way, and not to follow set forms that happened to be adopted in the schools. He used real men and women for models, and painted them as he saw them, not as he was bidden to look at them through his teacher's spectacles. In six months he had learned at least one thing, that Lastman had nothing more to teach him. The man of genius must ever be his own master, though he remain the hard-working student all his days. Back to Leyden and to his father's house, Rembrandt had not returned to lead a life of idleness. He worked tremendously in these early years. Even needed models he found in the members of his family; he has made the face of his mother as familiar as that of a friend; his own, with the heavy features, the thick, bushy hair, the small intelligent eyes, between them the vertical line, fast deepening on the fine forehead, he drew and etched and painted, again and again. More elaborate compositions he also undertook. As in his maturity, it was to the Bible he turned for suggestions: Saint Paul in prison, Samson and Delilah, the Presentation in the Temple—these were the themes then in vogue which he preferred, rendering them with the realism which distinguished his later, more famous Samsons and Abrahams and Christs, making them the motive for a fine arrangement of color, for a striking study of light and shadow. A pleasant picture one can fancy of his life at this period; he was with his own people, for whom his love was tender; busy with brush, pencil, and etching-needle; he was strengthening his powers of observation, developing and perfecting his style, occasionally producing work that won for him renown in Leyden; and, gradually, he gathered round him a small group of earnest fellow-workers, chief among them Lievens, Gerard Dou, and Van Vliet, the last two, though but slightly his juniors, looking up to him as master. These were the years of his true apprenticeship.

Leyden, however, was not the best place for a young painter who had his fortunes to make. It was essentially a university town; interest was concentrated upon letters; art was but of secondary consideration. It was different in Amsterdam, the great commercial centre of Holland. There, all was life and activity and progress; there, was money to be spent, and the liberal patron willing to lavish it upon the artist. Holland just then was in the first flush of prosperity and patriotism, following upon her virtual independence from Spain. Not a citizen but glowed with self-respect at the thought of the victory he had, in one way or another, helped to win; the state, as represented by the good burghers, was supreme in every man's mind. It was natural that individuals and corporations alike should seek to immortalize their greatness by means of the painter's art, which, in Holland, had long since ceased to be a monopoly of the church. Hence the age became essentially one of portrait-painting. Many were the painters whose portraits had already achieved distinction. De Keyser was busy in Amsterdam; a far greater genius, Franz Hals, but fifteen years Rembrandt's senior, was creating his masterpieces in The Hague and Harlem. It was as inevitable that Rembrandt should turn to portraiture, as that he should find commissions less numerous in Leyden than in Amsterdam. Often in the latter town his services were required; so often, indeed, that at last, about 1631, when he was just twenty-five, he settled there permanently and set up a studio of his own.

Success was his from the start. Sitter after sitter sought him out in his house on the Bloemgracht; the most distinguished men in the town hastened to patronize him. His work was liked by the burghers whom he painted, its strength was felt by artists, whose canvases soon showed its influence. Admirers crowded to his studio. He had not been in Amsterdam a twelvemonth when, before he was yet twenty-six, he was entrusted with an order of more than usual importance. This was the portrait of Dr. Tulp and his class of surgeons: the famous "Lesson in Anatomy" now in the Gallery at The Hague. The subject at the time was very popular. Many artists, De Keyser among others, had already, in painting prominent surgeons, placed them around the subject they were dissecting; indeed, this was the arrangement insisted upon by the surgeons themselves, and, as there seems to have been no limit to their vanity, "Lessons in Anatomy" were almost as plentiful in Holland as "Madonnas" in Umbria. Rembrandt in his composition was simply adhering to accepted tradition. It is true that he instilled life into a group hitherto, on other painters' canvases, stiff and perfunctory; but, though the picture was a wonderful production for a man of his years, it is not to be ranked with his greatest work.

Commissions now poured in still faster. It was at this time he painted several of his best known portraits: the "Master Shipbuilder and his Wife," at present in Buckingham Palace; that simply marvellous old woman at the National Gallery in London, made familiar to everyone by countless photographs and other reproductions; the man in ruff and woman in coif at the Brunswick Museum; and a score of others scarce less important. With increasing popularity, he was able to command his own prices, so that only a part of his time was it necessary for him to devote to the portraits which were his chief source of income. During the leisure he reserved, he painted biblical subjects, ever his delight, and made etchings and drawings, today the most prized treasures in the world's great galleries. As in Leyden, he drew about him students; a few, notably Ferdinand Bol and Christophe Paudiss, destined, in their turn, to gain name and fame. Indifferent to social claims and honors—an indifference the burghers, his patrons, found it hard to forgive, his one amusement was in collecting pictures and engravings, old stuffs and jewels, and every kind of bric-à-brac, until his house in Amsterdam was a veritable museum. This amusement later was to cost him dear.

Four years after the "Lesson in Anatomy" was painted, when he was at the height of prosperity, in 1634, he married Saskia van Uylenborch, the Saskia of so many an etching and picture. She was of a good Frisian family, and brought with her a dowry of no mean proportions. Rembrandt's marriage made small changes in his way of living. Into the society, so ready to receive him, he never went, not even now that he had a wife to introduce. It bored him, and he was no toady to waste his time fawning upon possible patrons. "When I desire to rest my spirit, I do not seek honors, but liberty," was his explanation. The companionship of artists he always welcomed; sometimes he visited the humbler burghers, whose ways were as simple as his own; sometimes he sought the humblest classes of all, because of their picturesqueness, and his contemporaries took him to task for his perverted taste for low company. The truth is that always he devoted himself solely and wholly to his art; the only difference, once he was married, was that, when he sat at his easel all day or over his copperplate, and sketchbook all evening, Saskia was with him. She shared all his interests, all his ambitions; she had no will but his. During his working hours, she was his model, obedient to his call. She never tired of posing for him, nor he of painting her now simply as Saskia, now as Delilah feasting with Samson, as Susanna surprised by the Elders, as the Jewish Betrothed at her toilet. Sometimes he represented her alone, sometimes with himself at her side; once, in the famous Dresden portrait, on his knee, as if to proclaim the love they bore for one another. And he, who could render faithfully the ways of the beggar, the austere black of the burgher, for himself and Saskia found no masquerading too gay or extravagant. In inventing costumes for their own portraits, he gave his exuberant fancy free play: in gorgeous embroidered robes, waving plumes, and priceless gems they arrayed themselves, until even the resources of his collection were exhausted: the same rich mantle, the same jewels appear, and reappear in picture after picture.

Rembrandt's short married years were happy, though not without their sorrows. Of Saskia's five children, four died in infancy; the fifth, Titus, was not a year old when, in 1642, the end came for Saskia, and Rembrandt, who had just reached his thirty-seventh year, was left in his great house alone with an infant son and his pupils. Her confidence in him is shown by her will, in which the inheritance of Titus is left in the father's charge, though already Rembrandt's affairs must have given signs of coming complications.

Connoisseurs at Rembrandt's Studio.

Much of his best work remained to be done, but after Saskia's death his worldly fortunes and his popularity never again touched such high-water mark. The reason for this is not far to seek. During all these years, Rembrandt's powers had matured, his methods broadened, and his individuality strengthened. With each new canvas, his originality became more conspicuous. It was not only that the world of nature, and not imagination, supplied his models. Many of the Dutch painters now were no less realists than he. It was not only that he solved certain problems of chiaro oscuro, there were men, like Lievens, who were as eager as he in the study of light and shadow. But Rembrandt brought to his every experiment an independence that startled the average man. He painted well because he saw well. If no one else saw things as he did, the loss was theirs. But he paid for his keener vision; because he did not paint like other artists, his methods were mistrusted. To be misunderstood is the penalty of genius. The picture which, of all his work, is now the most famous, marks the turn in the tide of his affairs. Shortly before Saskia's death, he had been commissioned to paint a portrait group of Banning Cock and the military company which he commanded. These portrait groups of the military corporations rivalled in popularity the "Lessons in Anatomy." Each member, or officer, paid to be included in the composition, and, as a rule, a stiff, formal picture, with each individual posed as for a photograph, was the result. Rembrandt, apparently, was in nowise restricted when he undertook the work for Banning Cock, and so, instead of the stupid, hackneyed arrangement, he made of the portrait of the company a picture of armed men marching forth to beating of drums and waving of banners, "The Night Watch," as it must ever be known—more accurately, "The Sortie of the Company of Banning Cock"—now in the Ryks Museum of Amsterdam. With the men for whom it was painted, it proved a failure. The grouping, the arrangement displeased them. Many of the company were left in deep shadow, which was not the privilege for which they had agreed to pay good money. Rembrandt was not the man to compromise. After this many burghers, who cared much for themselves and their own faces, and not in the least for art, were afraid to entrust their portraits to him lest their importance might be sacrificed to the painter's effects. Certain it is that six years later, in 1648, when the independence of Holland was formally recognized at the Congress of Westphalia, though Terburg and Van der Heist celebrated the event on canvas, Rembrandt's services were not secured. Good friends were left to him—men of intelligence who appreciated his strong individuality and the great originality of his work. Banning Cock himself was not among the discontented. A few leading citizens, like Dr. Tulp and the Burgomeister Six, were ever his devoted patrons. Artists still gathered about him; pupils still crowded to his studio; Nicolas Maes, De Gelder, Kneller among them. Many of his finest portraits—those of Hendrickje Stoffels, of his son, of himself in his old age, of the Burgomeister Six, above all, his masterpiece, "The Syndics of the Guild of Clothmakers," now in Amsterdam; many of his finest etchings, the little landscapes, the famous "Hundred Guilder Print," "Christ Healing the Sick," belong to this later period. There was no falling off, but rather an increase, in his powers, despite the clouds that darkened his years of middle age.

Of these clouds, the darkest was due to his financial troubles. Rembrandt had made large sums of money; Saskia's dowry had been by no means small. But he also spent lavishly. He had absolutely no business capacity. Once he was accused of miserliness; that he would at times lunch on dry bread and a herring served as reproach against him; there was a story current that his pupils would drop bits of paper painted to look like money in order to see him stoop to pick them up. Both charges are too foolish to answer seriously. When he was at work, it mattered little to him what he ate, so that he was not disturbed; who would not stoop to pick up coins apparently scattered on the floor? The money he devoted to his collection is sufficient to show how small a fancy he had for hoarding; upon it a princely fortune had been squandered. To his own people in Leyden, when times were hard, he had not been slow to hold out a generous hand. It was because he was not enough of a miser, because he gave too little heed to business matters, that difficulties at length overwhelmed him. It is too sad a story to tell in detail. Perhaps the beginning was when he bought a house for which he had not the ready money to pay, and borrowed a large sum for the purpose. More and more involved became his affairs. In time his creditors grew clamorous, and at length the blow fell when, in 1657, he was declared bankrupt. The collection of years, the embroidered mantles and draperies, the jewels with which Saskia had been so gayly decked, the plumes and furs and gorgeous robes in which he himself had masqueraded, the armor and plate, the engravings and pictures which had filled his house—all were sold. He, the master, had, at the age of fifty-one, to begin life anew as if he were still but the apprentice.

In the midst of his troubles and losses, Hendrickje Stoffels, whose portrait hangs in the Louvre, was the friend who cheered and comforted him. She had been his servant; afterward she lived with him as his wife, though legally they were not married. To Titus, as to her own children, she was ever a tender mother, and Titus, in return, seems to have loved her no less well. In the end, they together took Rembrandt's business interests into their own hands, the son, probably, using his inheritance in the enterprise. Renting a house in their own name, they became his print and picture dealers.

But as time went on, Rembrandt's work brought lower and lower prices, and he, himself, the last two years of his life, was almost forgotten. Though he still lived in Amsterdam, the town from which he had so seldom journeyed, and then never far, he had fallen into such obscurity, that report now established him in Stockholm as painter to the King of Sweden, now in Hull, or Yarmouth. In his own family nothing but sorrow was in store for him. Hendrickje died, probably about 1664, and he was once more alone; and next he lost Titus, who then had been married but a few short months.

Fortunately for Rembrandt, he did not long survive them. In 1669, at the age of sixty-two, his release came. He was buried in the West Church, quietly and simply. Thirteen florins his funeral cost, and even this small expense had to be met by his daughter-in-law. When an inventory of his possessions was taken, these were found to consist of nothing but his own wardrobe and his painter's tools.

But better than a mere fortune, his work he left as an heirloom for all time; his drawings, not the least among them without the stamp of his genius; his prints, still unsurpassed, though it was he who first developed the possibilities of etching; his pictures, "painted with light," as Fromentin has said. His subjects he may have borrowed from the fashions and traditions of the time; certain mannerisms of technique and arrangement his pupils may have copied. But for all that, his work belongs to no special school or group; like all the world's great masterpieces, whether produced in Spain by a Velasquez, in Venice by a Titian, in England by a Whistler, it stands alone and supreme.[Back to Contents]

WILLIAM HOGARTH
(1697-1764)

"I was born," says Hogarth, in his Memoirs of himself, "in the city of London, November 10, 1697. My father's pen, like that of many authors, did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighboring painter drew my attention from play, and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learned to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me, but for the latter I was particularly distinguished."

To this account of Hogarth's childhood we have only to add that his father, an enthusiastic and laborious scholar, who, like many of his craft, owed little to the favor of fortune, consulted these indications of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his son apprentice to a silver-plate engraver. But Hogarth aspired after something higher than drawing ciphers and coats-of-arms; and before the expiration of his indentures he had made himself a good draughtsman, and obtained considerable knowledge of coloring. It was his ambition to become distinguished as an artist; and not content with being the mere copier of other men's productions, he sought to combine the functions of the painter with those of the engraver, and to gain the power of delineating his own ideas and the fruits of his acute observation. He has himself explained the nature of his views in a passage which is worth attention:

"Many reasons led me to wish that I could find the shorter path—fix forms and characters in my mind—and instead of copying the lines, try to read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art by bringing into one focus the various observations I have made, and then trying by my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice. For this purpose I considered what various ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be applied, and fell upon one most suitable to my situation and idle disposition; laying it down first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and retain in his memory perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-five letters of the alphabet and their infinite combinations." Acting on these principles, he improved, by constant exercise, his natural powers of observation and recollection. We find him roaming through the country, now at Yarmouth and again at Queenborough, sketching everywhere. In his rambles among the motley scenes of London he was ever on the watch for striking features or incidents; and not trusting entirely to memory, he was accustomed, when any face struck him as being peculiarly grotesque or expressive, to sketch it on his thumb-nail, to be treasured up on paper at his return home.

For some time after the expiration of his apprenticeship, Hogarth continued to practise the trade to which he was bred; and his shop-bills, coats-of-arms, engravings upon tankards, etc., have been collected with an eagerness quite disproportionate to their value. Soon he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs for the booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an edition of "Hudibras," published in 1726; but even these are of no distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a portrait-painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures, containing several figures, which he calls "Conversation Pieces," from twelve to fifteen inches high. These for a time were very popular, and his practice was considerable, as his price was low. His life-size portraits are few; the most remarkable are that of Captain Coram, in the "Foundling Hospital," and that of Garrick as King Richard III., which is reproduced in the present volume. But his practice as a portrait-painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting. Although many of his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the representation of beauty, elegance, and high-breeding he was little skilled. The nature of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil. When Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort through his wonderful prints, he abandoned portrait-painting, with a growl at the jealousy of his professional brethren; and the vanity and blindness of the public.

March 25, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of the "Harlot's Progress," a series of six prints, commenced in 1731 and published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of prints won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success encouraged Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the "Rake's Progress," in eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and perhaps the most popular, as it is the least objectionable of these pictorial novels, "Marriage à la Mode," was not engraved till 1745.

Hogarth sketching the Highway of Queenborough.

The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the public: their originality and boldness of design, the force and freedom of their execution, rough as it is, won for them an extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The "Harlot's Progress" was the most eminently successful, from its novelty rather than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers' names were entered for it; it was dramatized in several forms; and we may note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners, that fan-mounts were engraved containing miniature copies of the six plates. The merits of the pictures were less obvious to the few who could afford to spend large sums on works of art, and Hogarth, too proud to let them go for prices much below the value which he put upon them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for a purchaser. At last he determined to commit them to public sale; but instead of the common method of auction, he devised a new and complex plan with the intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men of rank and wealth who wished to purchase to judge and bid for themselves. The scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of Hogarth's best pictures, the "Harlot's Progress," the "Rake's Progress," the "Four Times of the Day," and "Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn" produced only £427 7s., not averaging £22 10s. each. The "Harlot's Progress" was purchased by Mr. Beckford at the rate of fourteen guineas a picture; five of the series perished in the fire at Fonthill. The "Rake's Progress" averaged twenty-two guineas a picture; it has passed into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced price of five hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect became the proprietor of the four pictures of an "Election" for the sum of £1,732. "Marriage à la Mode" was disposed of in a similar way in 1750; and on the day of the sale one bidder appeared, who became master of the six pictures, together with their frames, for £115 10s. Mr. Angerstein purchased them, in 1797, for £1,381, and they now form a striking feature in the National Gallery.

The satire of Hogarth was not often of a personal nature; but he knew his own power, and he sometimes exercised it. Two of his prints, "The Times," produced a memorable quarrel between himself, on one side, and Wilkes and Churchhill, on the other. The satire of the prints of "The Times," which were published in 1762, was directed, not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple; nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly intercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the North Briton, containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious mention of his wife. Hogarth was deeply wounded by this attack; he retorted by the well-known portrait of Wilkes with the cap of liberty, and he afterward represented Churchill as a bear. The quarrel was unworthy the talents either of the painter or poet. It is more to be regretted because its effects, as he himself intimates, were injurious to Hogarth's declining health. The summer of 1764 he spent at Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a partial renovation of his strength. The amendment, however, was but temporary, and he died suddenly, October 26th, the day after his return to his London residence in Leicester Square.[Back to Contents]

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
By Samuel Archer
(1723-1792)

Sir Joshua Reynolds, the celebrated painter, was, on July 16, 1723, born at Plympton, a small town in Devonshire, England. His father was a minister of the parish, and also master of the grammar school; and being a man of learning and philanthropy, he was beloved and respected by all to whom he was known. Such a man, it will naturally be supposed, was assiduous in the cultivation of the minds of his children, among whom his son Joshua shone conspicuous, by displaying at a very early period a superiority of genius and the rudiments of a correct taste. Unlike other boys, who generally content themselves with giving a literal explanation of their author, regardless of his beauties or his faults, young Reynolds attended to both these, displaying a happy knowledge of what he read, and entering with ardor into the spirit of his author. He discovered likewise talents for composition, and a natural propensity to drawing, in which his friends and intimates thought him qualified to excel. Emulation was a distinguishing characteristic of his mind, which his father perceived with the delight natural to a parent; and designing him for the church, in which he hoped that his talents might raise him to eminence, he sent him to one of the universities.

Soon after this period he grew passionately fond of painting; and by the perusal of Richardson's theory of that art was determined to make it his profession through life. At his own earnest request, therefore, he was removed to London; and about the year 1742 became a pupil to Mr. Hudson, who, though not himself an eminent painter, was preceptor to many who afterward excelled in the art. One of the first advices which he gave to Mr. Reynolds was to copy carefully Guercino's drawings. This was done with such skill, that many of the copies are said to be now preserved in the cabinets of the curious as the originals of that very great master.

About the year 1749, Mr. Reynolds went to Italy under the auspices, and in the company, of the late Lord (then Commodore) Keppel, who was appointed to the command of the British squadron in the Mediterranean. In this garden of the world, this magic seat of arts, he failed not to visit the schools of the great masters, to study the productions of different ages, and to contemplate with unwearied attention the various beauties which are characteristic of each. His labor here, as has been observed of another painter, was "the labor of love, not the task of the hireling;" and how much he profited by it is known to all Europe.

Having remained about two years in Italy, and studied the language as well as the arts of the country with great success, he returned to England, improved by travel and refined by education. On the road to London from the port where he landed, he accidentally found in the inn where he lodged Johnson's life of Savage, and was so taken with the charms of composition, and the masterly delineation of character displayed in that work, that, having begun to read it while leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, he continued in that attitude, insensible of pain till he was hardly able to raise his hand to his head. The admiration of the work naturally led him to seek the acquaintance of its author, who continued one of his sincerest admirers and warmest friends till 1784, when they were separated by the stroke of death.

The first thing that distinguished him after his return to his native country was a full-length portrait of Commodore Keppel; which in polite circles was spoken of in terms of the highest encomium, and testified to what a degree of eminence he had arrived in his profession. This was followed by a portrait of Lord Edgecombe, and a few others, which at once introduced him to the first business in portrait-painting; and that branch of the art he cultivated with such success as will forever establish his fame with all descriptions of refined society. Having painted some of the first-rate beauties of the age, the polite world flocked to see the graces and the charms of his pencil; and he soon became the most fashionable painter not only in England, but in all Europe. He has indeed preserved the resemblance of so many illustrious characters, that we feel the less regret at his having left behind him so few historical paintings; though what he has done in that way shows him to have been qualified to excel in both departments. The only landscape, perhaps, which he ever painted, except those beautiful and chaste ones which compose the backgrounds of many of his portraits, is "A View on the Thames from Richmond," which in 1784 was exhibited by the Society for Promoting Painting and Design in Liverpool.

In 1764 Mr. Reynolds had the merit of being the first promoter of that club, which, having long existed without a name, became at last distinguished by the appellation of the Literary Club. Upon the foundation of the Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, he was appointed president; and his acknowledged excellence in his profession made the appointment acceptable to all the lovers of art. To add to the dignity of this new institution, his majesty conferred on the president the honor of knighthood; and Sir Joshua delivered his first discourse at the opening of the Academy, on January 2, 1769. The merit of that discourse has been universally admitted among painters; but it contains some directions, respecting the proper mode of prosecuting their studies, to which every student of every art would do well to pay attention. "I would chiefly recommend (says he) that an implicit obedience to the rules of art, as established by the practice of the great masters, should be exacted from the young students. That those models, which have passed through the approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect and infallible guides, as subjects for their imitation, not their criticism. I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own sense, has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius. They are fetters only to men of no genius; as that armor, which upon the strong becomes an ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen turns into a load, and cripples the body which it was made to protect."

Each succeeding year, on the distribution of the prizes, Sir Joshua delivered to the students a discourse of equal merit with this; and perhaps we do not hazard too much when we say, that from the whole collected, the lovers of belles-lettres and the fine arts will acquire juster notions of what is meant by taste in general, and better rules for acquiring a correct taste, than from the multitude of those volumes which have been professedly written on the subject.

In the autumn of 1785 he went to Brussels, where he expended about £1,000 on the purchase of paintings which, having been taken from the different monasteries and religious houses in Flanders and Germany, were then exposed to sale by the command of the Emperor Joseph. Gainsborough and he had engaged to paint each other's portrait; and the canvas for both being actually stretched, Sir Joshua gave one sitting to his distinguished rival; but to the regret of every admirer of the art, the unexpected death of the latter prevented all further progress.

In 1790 he was anxiously desirous to procure the vacant professorship of perspective in the academy for Mr. Bonomi, an Italian architect; but that artist not having been yet elected an associate, was, of course, no academician, and it became necessary to raise him to those positions, in order to qualify him for being a professor. Mr. Gilpin being his competitor for the associateship, the numbers on the ballot proved equal, when the president, on his casting vote, decided the election in favor of his friend, who was thereby advanced so far toward the professorship. Soon after this, an academic seat being vacant, Sir Joshua exerted all his influence to obtain it for Mr. Bonomi; but finding himself out-voted by a majority of two to one, he quitted the chair with great dissatisfaction, and next day sent to the secretary of the academy a formal resignation of the office, which for twenty-one years he had filled with honor to himself and to his country. His indignation, however, subsiding, he suffered himself to be prevailed upon to return to the chair, which, within a year and a half, he was again desirous to quit for a better reason.

Finding a disease of languor, occasioned by an enlargement of the liver, to which he had for some time been subject, increase, and daily expecting a total loss of sight, he wrote a letter to the academy, intimating his intention to resign the office of president on account of bodily infirmities, which disabled him from executing the duties of it to his own satisfaction. The academy received this intelligence with the respectful concern due to the talents and virtues of their president, and either then did enter, or designed to enter, into a resolution honorable to all parties, namely, that a deputation from the whole body of the academy should wait upon him, and inform him of their wish, that the authority and privileges of the office of president might be his during his life, declaring their willingness to permit the performance of any of its duties which might be irksome to him by a deputy.

From this period Sir Joshua never painted more. The last effort of his pencil was the portrait of the honorable Charles James Fox, which was executed in his best style, and shows that his fancy, his imagination, and his other great powers in the art which he professed, remained unabated to the end of his life. When the last touches were given to this picture,

"The hand of Reynolds fell, to rise no more."

On Thursday, February 23, 1792, the world was deprived of this amiable man and excellent artist, at the age of sixty-eight years; a man than whom no one, according to Johnson, had passed through life with more observations of men and manners. The following character of him is said to be the production of Mr. Burke:

"His illness was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude, without the least mixture of anything irritable or querulous, agreeably to the placid and even tenor of his whole life. He had, from the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution, which he contemplated with that entire composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his tenderness to his family had always merited.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time; he was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in richness and harmony of coloring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that branch of the art in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits reminded the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appears not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings.

"He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.

"In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candor never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse.

"His talents of every kind—powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated in letters—his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow."[Back to Contents]

BENJAMIN WEST
By Martha J. Lamb[5]
(1738-1820)

In the wilds of the new world, a century and a half ago, there was, apparently, no spot less likely to produce a famous painter than the Quaker province of Pennsylvania. And yet, when George Washington was only six years old there was born, in the little town of Springfield, Chester County, a boy whose interesting and remarkable career from infancy to old age has provided one of the most instructive lessons for students in art that America affords.

Perhaps Benjamin West's aptitude for picture-making in his infancy, while he was learning to walk and to talk, did not exceed that of hosts of other children, in like circumstances, in every generation since his time. But many curious things were remembered and told of this baby's performances after he had developed a decided talent for reproducing the beautiful objects that captivated his eye. It was in the summer of 1745, a few months before he was seven years old that his married sister came home for a visit, bringing with her an infant daughter. The next morning after her arrival, little Benjamin was left to keep the flies off the sleeping baby, while his mother and sister went to the garden for flowers. The baby smiled in its sleep, and the boy was captivated. He must catch that smile and keep it. He found some paper on the table, scrambled for a pen, and with red and black ink made a hasty but striking picture of the little beauty. He heard his mother returning, and conscious of having been in mischief, tried to conceal his production; but she detected and captured it, and regarded it long and lovingly, exclaiming as her daughter entered, "He has really made a likeness of little Sally!" She then caught up the boy in her arms, and kissed instead of chiding him, and he—looking up encouraged—told her he could make the flowers, too, if she would permit. The awakening of genius in Benjamin West has been distinctly traced to this incident, as the time when he first discovered that he could imitate the forms of such objects as pleased his sense of sight. And the incident itself has been aptly styled "the birth of fine arts in the New World."

The Quaker boy, in course of years, left the wilderness of America to become the president of the Royal Academy in London. His irreproachable character not less than his excellence as an artist, gave him commanding position among his contemporaries. From first to last he was distinguished for his indefatigable industry. The number of his pictures has been estimated, by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, at three thousand; and Dunlap says that a gallery capable of holding them would be four hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and forty feet high—or a wall a quarter of a mile long.

The parents of Benjamin West were sincere and self-respecting, and in the language of the times, well-to-do. His mother's grandfather was the intimate and confidential friend of William Penn. The family of his father claimed direct descent from the Black Prince and Lord Delaware, of the time of King Edward III. Colonel James West was the friend and companion in arms of John Hampden. When Benjamin West was at work upon his great picture of the "Institution of the Garter," the King of England was delighted when the Duke of Buckingham assured him that West had an ancestral right to a place among the warriors and knights of his own painting. The Quaker associates of the parents of the artist, the patriarchs of Pennsylvania, regarded their asylum in America as the place for affectionate intercourse—free from all the military predilections and political jealousies of Europe. The result was a state of society more contented, peaceful, and pleasing than the world had ever before exhibited. At the time of the birth of Benjamin West the interior settlements in Pennsylvania had attained considerable wealth, and unlimited hospitality formed a part of the regular economy of the principal families. Those who resided near the highways were in the habit, after supper and the religious exercises of the evening, of making a large fire in the hallway, and spreading a table with refreshments for such travellers as might pass in the night, who were expected to step in and help themselves. This was conspicuously the case in Springfield. Other acts of liberality were performed by this community, to an extent that would have beggared the munificence of the old world. Poverty was not known in this region. But whether families traced their lineage to ancient and noble sources, or otherwise, their pride was so tempered with the meekness of their faith, that it lent a singular dignity to their benevolence.

The Indians mingled freely with the people, and when they paid their annual visits to the plantations, raised their wigwams in the fields and orchards without asking permission, and were never molested. Shortly after Benjamin West's first efforts with pen and ink, a party of red men reached and encamped in Springfield. The boy-artist showed them his sketches of birds and flowers, which seemed to amuse them greatly. They at once proceeded to teach him how to prepare the red and yellow colors with which they decorated their ornaments. To these Mrs. West added blue, by contributing a piece of indigo. Thus the boy had three prismatic colors for his use. What could be more picturesque than the scene where the untutored Indian gave the future artist his first lesson in mixing paints! These wild men also taught him archery, that he might shoot birds for models if he wanted their bright plumage to copy.

The neighbors were attracted by the boy's drawings, and finally a relative, Mr. Pennington, a prominent merchant of Philadelphia, came to pay the family a visit. He thought the boy's crude pictures were wonderful, as he was then only entering his eighth year. When he went home he immediately sent the little fellow a box of paints, with six engravings by Grevling. John Gait, who wrote from the artist's own statements, describes the effect of this gift upon the boy. In going to bed he placed the box so near his couch, that he could hug and caress it every time he wakened. Next morning he rose early, and taking his paints and canvas to the garret, began to work. He went to breakfast, and then stole back to his post under the roof, forgetting all about school. When dinnertime came he presented himself at table, as usual, but said nothing of his occupation. He had been absent from school some days before the master called on his parents to inquire what had become of him. This led to the discovery of his secret painting, for his mother proceeded to the garret and found the truant. She was, however, so astonished with the creation upon his canvas, that she took him in her arms and kissed him with transports of affection. He had made a composition of his own out of two of the engravings—which he had colored from his ideas of the proper tints to be used—and so perfect did the picture appear to Mrs. West that, although half the canvas remained to be covered, she would not suffer the child to add another touch with his brush. Sixty-seven years afterward, Mr. Gait saw this production in the exact state in which it was left, and Mr. West himself acknowledged that in subsequent efforts he had never been able to excel some of the touches of invention in this first picture.

The first instruction in art which the artist received was from Mr. William Williams, a painter in Philadelphia. Young West's first attempt at portraiture was at Lancaster, where he painted "The Death of Socrates" for William Henry, a gunsmith. He was not yet sixteen, but other paintings followed which possessed so much genuine merit, that they have been preserved as treasures. One of these is in possession of General Meredith Reed, of Paris, France, a descendant of the signer. West returned to his home in Springfield, in 1754, to discuss the question of his future vocation. He had an inclination for military life, and volunteered as a recruit in the old French war; but military attractions vanished among the hardships involved, and in 1756, when eighteen years old, he established himself in Philadelphia as a portrait-painter, his price being "five guineas a head." Two years later he went to New York, where he passed eleven months, and was liberally employed by the merchants and others. He painted the portrait of Bishop Provoost, those of Gerardus Duyekinck and his wife—full length—one of Mrs. Samuel Breese, and many others, which are in the families of descendants, and characteristic examples of his early work.

In 1760 an opportunity offered for him to visit Rome, Italy. He carried letters to Cardinal Albani and other celebrities, and as he was very handsome and intelligent, and came from a far-away land about which hung the perpetual charm of tradition and romance, he soon became the lion of the day among the imaginative Italians. It was a novelty then for an American to appear in the Eternal City, and the very morning after his arrival a curious party followed his steps to observe his pursuit of art. He remained in Italy until 1763, and while there he painted, among others, his pictures of "Cimon and Iphigenia," and "Angelica and Medora." His portrait of Lord Grantham excited much interest, and that nobleman's introduction facilitated his visit to London, which proved so prolific in results. There was no great living historical painter in England just then; and at first there was no sale for West's pictures, as it was unfashionable to buy any but "old masters." But the young artist was undaunted, and presently attracted attention in high places. His picture of "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus," painted for Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York, secured him the favor of George III., and the commission from his majesty to paint the "Departure of Regulus from Rome." His untiring industry and gentlemanly habits were conspicuous, and may be regarded as among the great secrets of his continual advance and public recognition. His "Parting of Hector and Andromache," and "Return of the Prodigal Son," were among his notable productions of this period. His "Death of General Wolfe" has been, says Tuckerman, "truly declared to have created an era in English art, by the successful example it initiated of the abandonment of classic costume—a reform advocated by Reynolds, who glories in the popular innovation." His characters were clad in the dress of their time. Reynolds said to the Archbishop of York: "I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art." It was purchased by Lord Grosvenor. Among the long list of paintings executed by order of the king were "The Death of Chevalier Bayard;" "Edward III. Embracing his Son on the Field of Battle at Cressy;" "The Installation of the Order of the Garter;" "The Black Prince Receiving the King of France and his Son Prisoners at Poictiers," and "Queen Philippa Interceding with Edward for the Burgesses of Calais." West was one of the founders, in 1768, of the Royal Academy, and succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the institution in 1792, which post he held almost uninterruptedly until 1815.

In the year 1780 he proposed a series of pictures on the progress of revealed religion, of which there were thirty-six subjects in all, but he never executed but twenty-eight of these, owing to the mental trouble which befell the king. He then commenced a new series of important works, of which "Christ Healing the Sick" was purchased by an institution in Great Britain for £3,000, and was subsequently copied for the Pennsylvania Hospital. "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" was painted for Granville Penn, the scene representing the founding of Pennsylvania. West wrote to one of his family that he had taken the liberty of introducing in this painting the likeness of his father and his brother Thomas. "That is the likeness of our brother," he says, "standing immediately behind Penn, leaning on his cane. I need not point out the picture of our father, as I believe you will find it in the print from memory." Tuckerman says that the work which, in the opinion of many critics, best illustrates the skill of West in composition, drawing, expression, and dramatic effect, is his "Death on the Pale Horse." His "Cupid," owned in Philadelphia, is one of his most effective pictures as to color.

The full-length portrait of West, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., represents the great artist in his character as president of the Royal Academy, delivering a lecture on "coloring" to the students. Under his right hand may be noticed, standing on an easel, a copy of Raphael's cartoon of the "Death of Ananias." The picture of West's face has been considered a perfect likeness, but the figure somewhat too large and too tall in its effects. A copy of this portrait was made by Charles R. Leslie; and Washington Allston also painted a portrait of the artist. There exists, it is said, a portrait of West from his own hand, taken apparently at about the age of forty, three-quarter length, in Quaker costume.[Back to Contents]

Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy.

THORWALDSEN
By Hans Christian Andersen
(1770-1844)

It was in Copenhagen, on November 19, 1770, that a carver of figures for ships' heads, by name Gottskalk Thorwaldsen, was presented by his wife, Karen Grönlund, the daughter of a clergyman in Jutland, with a son, who at his baptism received the name of Bertel, or Albert.

The father had come from Iceland, and lived in poor circumstances. They dwelt in Lille Grönnegade (Little Green Street), not far from the Academy of Arts. The moon has often peeped into their poor room; she has told us about it in "A Picture-book without Pictures":

"The father and mother slept, but their little son did not sleep; where the flowered cotton bed-curtains moved I saw the child peep out. I thought at first that he looked at the Bornholm clock, for it was finely painted with red and green, and there was a cuckoo on the top; it had heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass plate went to and fro with a 'tick! tick!' But it was not that he looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stood directly under the clock; this was the dearest piece of furniture in the whole house for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did, he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel, and then he had his own thoughts. Oh! if he only durst spin that wheel! His father and mother slept; he looked at them, he looked at the wheel, and then by degrees a little naked foot was stuck out of bed, and then another naked foot, then there came two small legs, and, with a jump, he stood on the floor. He turned round once more, to see if his parents slept; yes, they did, and so he went softly, quite softly, only in his little shirt, up to the wheel, and began to spin. The cord flew off, and the wheel then ran much quicker. His mother awoke at the same moment; the curtains moved; she looked out and thought of the brownie, or another little spectral being. 'Have mercy on us!' said she, and in her fear she struck her husband in the side; he opened his eyes, rubbed them with his hands, and looked at the busy little fellow. 'It is Bertel, woman,' said he."

What the moon relates we see here as the first picture in Thorwaldsen's life's gallery; for it is a reflection of the reality. Thorwaldsen has himself, when in familiar conversation at Nysöe, told the author almost word for word what he, in his "Picture-book," lets the moon say. It was one of his earliest remembrances, how he, in his little short shirt, sat in the moonlight and spun his mother's wheel, while she, dear soul, took him for a little spectre.

A few years ago there still lived an old ship-carpenter, who remembered the little, light-haired, blue-eyed boy, that came to his father in the carving-house at the dock-yard; he was to learn his father's trade; and as the latter felt how bad it was not to be able to draw, the boy, then eleven years of age, was sent to the drawing-school at the Academy of Arts, where he made rapid progress. Two years afterward, Bertel, or Albert, as we shall in future call him, was of great assistance to his father; nay, he even improved his work.

See the hovering ships on the wharves! The Dannebrog waves, the workmen sit in circle under the shade at their frugal breakfasts; but foremost stands the principal figure in this picture: it is a boy who cuts with a bold hand the lifelike features in the wooden image for the beak-head of the vessel. It is the ship's guardian spirit, and, as the first image from the hand of Albert Thorwaldsen, it shall wander out into the wide world. The eternally swelling sea should baptize it with its waters, and hang its wreaths of wet plants around it.

Our next picture advances a step forward. Unobserved among the other boys, he has now frequented the Academy's school for six years already, where, always taciturn and silent, he stood by his drawing-board. His answer was "yes" or "no," a nod or a shake of the head; but mildness shone from his features, and good-nature was in every expression. The picture shows us Albert as a candidate for confirmation. He is now seventeen years of age—not a very young age to ratify his baptismal compact; his place at the dean's house is the last among the poor boys, for his knowledge is not sufficient to place him higher. There had just at that time been an account in the newspapers, that the pupil Thorwaldsen had gained the Academy's smaller medal for a bas-relief representing a "Cupid Reposing." "Is it your brother that has gained the medal?" inquired the dean. "It is myself," said Albert, and the clergyman looked kindly on him, placed him first among all the boys, and from that time always called him Monsieur Thorwaldsen. Oh! how deeply did that "Monsieur" then sound in his mind! As he has often said since, it sounded far more powerfully than any title that kings could give him; he never afterward forgot it.

In a small house in Aabeuraa—the street where Holberg lets his poor poets dwell—lived Albert Thorwaldsen with his parents, and divided his time between the study of art and assisting his father. The Academy's lesser gold was then the prize to be obtained for sculpture. Our artist was now twenty years of age; his friends knew his abilities better than himself, and they compelled him to enter on the task. The subject proposed was, "Heliodorus Driven out of the Temple."

We are now in Charlottenburg; but the little chamber in which Thorwaldsen lately sat to make his sketch is empty, and he, chased by the demons of fear and distrust, hastens down the narrow back-stairs with the intention not to return. Nothing is accidental in the life of a great genius; an apparent insignificance is a God's guiding finger. Thorwaldsen was to complete his task. Who is it that stops him on the dark stairs? One of the professors just comes that way, speaks to him, questions, admonishes him. He returns, and in four hours the sketch is finished, and the gold medal won. This was on August 15, 1791.

Count Ditlew de Reventlow, minister of state, saw the young artist's work, and became his protector; he placed his own name at the head of a subscription that enabled Thorwaldsen to devote his time to the study of his art. Two years afterward the large gold medal was to be contended for at the Academy, the successful candidate thereby gaining the right to a travelling stipendium. Thorwaldsen was again the first; but before he entered on his travels, it was deemed necessary to extend that knowledge which an indifferent education at school had left him in want of. He read, studied, and the Academy gave him its support; acknowledgment smiled on him, a greater and more spiritual sphere lay open to him.

A portrait figure stands now before us; it is that of a Dane, the learned and severe Zoega, to whom the young artist is specially recommended, but who only sees in him a common talent; whose words are only those of censure, and whose eye sees only a servile imitation of the antique in his works. Strictly honest in his judgment, according to his own ideas, is this man, who should be Thorwaldsen's guide.

We let three years glide away after the arrival of Thorwaldsen, and ask Zoega what he now says of Albert, or, as the Italians call him, Alberto, and the severe man shakes his head and says: "There is much to blame, little to be satisfied with, and diligent he is not!" Yet he was diligent in a high degree; but genius is foreign to a foreign mind. "The snow had just then thawed from my eyes," he has himself often repeated. The drawings of the Danish painter Carstens formed one of those spiritual books that shed its holy baptism over that growing genius. The little atelier looked like a battle-field, for roundabout were broken statues. Genius formed them often in the midnight hours; despondency over their faults broke them in the day.

The three years, for which he had received a stipendium, were as if they had flown away, and as yet he had produced nothing. The time for his return drew nigh. One work, however, he must complete, that it might not with justice be said in Denmark, "Thorwaldsen has quite wasted his time in Rome." Doubting his genius just when it embraced him most affectionately; not expecting a victory, while he already stood on its open road, he modelled "Jason who has Gained the Golden Fleece." It was this that Thorwaldsen would have gained in the kingdom of arts, and which he now thought he must resign. The figure stood there in clay, many eyes looked carelessly on it, and—he broke it to pieces!

It was in April, 1801, that his return home was fixed, in company with Zoega. It was put off until the autumn. During this time "Jason" occupied all his thoughts. A new, a larger figure of the hero was formed, an immortal work; but it had not then been announced to the world, nor understood by it. "Here is something more than common!" was said by many. Even the man to whom all paid homage, the illustrious Canova, started, and exclaimed: "Quest' opera di quel giovane Danese è fatta in uno stilo nuovo, e grandioso!" Zoega smiled. "It is bravely done!" said he. The Danish songstress, Frederikke Brunn, was then in Rome and sang enthusiastically about Thorwaldsen's "Jason." She assisted the artist, so that he was enabled to get this figure cast in plaster; for he himself had no more money than was just sufficient for his expenses home.

The last glass of wine had been already drunk as a farewell, the boxes packed, and the vetturino's carriage was before the door at daybreak; the boxes were fastened behind. Then came a fellow-traveller—the sculptor, Hagemann, who was returning to his native city, Berlin. His passport was not ready. Their departure must be put off until the next day; and Thorwaldsen promised, although the vetturino complained and abused him, to remain so long. He stayed—stayed to win an immortal name on earth, and cast a lustre over Denmark.

Though forty years resident in Rome, rich and independent, he lived and worked with the thought of once returning home to Denmark, there to rest himself; unaccustomed to the great comforts of other rich artists in Rome, he lived a bachelor's life. Was his heart, then, no longer open to love since his first departure from Copenhagen? A thousand beautiful Cupids in marble will tell us how warmly that heart beat. Love belongs to life's mysteries.

We know that Thorwaldsen left a daughter in Rome, whose birth he acknowledged; we also know that more than one female of quality would willingly have given her hand to the great artist. The year before his first return to Denmark he lay ill at Naples, and was nursed by an English lady who felt the most ardent affection for him; and, from that feeling of gratitude which was awakened in him, he immediately consented to their union. When he had recovered and afterward returned to Rome, this promise preyed on his mind, he felt that he was not now formed to be a husband, acknowledged that gratitude was not love, and that they were not suited for each other; after a long combat with himself, he wrote and informed her of his determination. Thorwaldsen was never married.

The following trait is as characteristic of his heart as of his whole personality. One day, while in Rome, there came a poor countryman to him, an artisan, who had long been ill. He came to say farewell, and to thank him for the money that he and others of his countrymen had subscribed together, with which he was to reach home.

"But you will not walk the whole way?" said Thorwaldsen.

"I am obliged to do so," replied the man.

"But you are still too weak to walk—you cannot bear the fatigue, nor must you do it!" said he.

The man assured him of the necessity of doing so.

Thorwaldsen went and opened a drawer, took out a handful of scudi and gave them to him, saying, "See, now you will ride the whole way!"

The man thanked him, but assured him that his gift would not be more than sufficient to carry him to Florence.

"Well!" said Thorwaldsen, clapping him on the shoulder, as he went a second time to the drawer and took out another handful. The man was grateful in the highest degree, and was going. "Now you can ride the whole way home and be comfortable on the way," said he, as he followed the man to the door.

"I am very glad," said the man. "God bless you for it! but to ride the whole way requires a little capital."

"Well, then, tell me how great that must be," he asked, and looked earnestly at him. The man in a modest manner named the requisite sum, and Thorwaldsen went a third time to the drawer, counted out the sum, accompanied him to the door, pressed his hand, and repeated, "But now you will ride, for you have not strength to walk!"

Our artist did not belong to the class of great talkers; it was only in a small circle that he could be brought to say anything, but then it was always with humor and gayety. A few energetic exclamations of his are preserved. A well-known sculptor, expressing himself one day with much self-feeling, entered into a dispute with Thorwaldsen, and set his own works over the latter's. "You may bind my hands behind me," said Thorwaldsen, "and I will bite the marble out with my teeth better than you can carve it."

Thorwaldsen possessed specimens in plaster of all his works; these, together with the rich marble statues and bas-reliefs which he had collected of his own accord, without orders, and the number of paintings that he every year bought of young artists, formed a treasure that he wished to have in his proper home, Copenhagen. Therefore, when the Danish government sent vessels of war to the Mediterranean, in order to fetch the works that were ready for the palace or the churches, he always sent a number of his own things with them. Denmark was to inherit these treasures of art; and, in order to see them collected in a place worthy of them, a zeal was awakened in the nation to build a museum for their reception. A committee of his Danish admirers and friends sent out a requisition to the people, that everyone might give their mite; many a poor servant-girl and many a peasant gave theirs, so that a good sum was soon collected. Frederick VI. gave ground for the building, and the erection thereof was committed to the architect, Bindesbol.

Thorwaldsen, in 1838, had attained universal fame. The frigate Rota was dispatched to bring a cargo of his works to Copenhagen, and he was to arrive at the same time, perhaps to remain in Denmark. Close to Presto Bay, surrounded by wood-grown banks, lies Nysöe, the principal seat of the barony of Stampenborg, a place which, through Thorwaldsen, has become remarkable in Denmark. The open strand, the beautiful beech woods, even the little town seen through the orchards, at some few hundred paces from the mansion, make the place worthy of a visit on account of its truly Danish scenery. Here Thorwaldsen found his best home in Denmark; here he seemed to increase his fame, and here a series of his last beautiful bas-reliefs were produced.

Baron Stampe was one of nature's noblest-minded men; his hospitality and his lady's daughterly affection for Thorwaldsen opened a home for him here, a comfortable and good one. A great energetic power in the baroness incited his activity; she attended him with a daughter's care, elicited from him every little wish, and executed it. Directly after his first visit to Nysöe, a short tour to Moen's chalk cliffs was arranged, and during the few days that were passed there, a little atelier was erected in the garden at Nysöe, close to the canal which half encircles the principal building; here, and in a corner room of the mansion, on the first floor facing the sea, most of Thorwaldsen's works, during the last years of his life, were executed: "Christ Bearing the Cross," "The Entry into Jerusalem," "Rebecca at the Well," his own portrait-statue, Oehlenschlæger's and Holberg's busts, etc. Baroness Stampe was in faithful attendance on him, lent him a helping hand, and read aloud for him from Holberg. Driving abroad, weekly concerts, and in the evenings his fondest play, "The Lottery," were what most easily excited him, and on these occasions he would say many amusing things. He has represented the Stampe family in two bas-reliefs: in the one, representing the mother, the two daughters, and the youngest son, is the artist himself; the other exhibits the father and the two eldest sons.

All circles sought to attract Thorwaldsen; he was at every great festival, in every great society, and every evening in the theatre by the side of Oehlenschlæger. His greatness was allied to a mildness, a straightforwardness, that in the highest degree fascinated the stranger who approached him for the first time. His atelier in Copenhagen was visited daily; he therefore felt himself more comfortable and undisturbed at Nysöe. Baron Stampe and his family accompanied him to Italy in 1841, when he again visited that country. The whole journey, which was by way of Berlin, Dresden, Frankfort, the Rhine towns, and Munich, was a continued triumphal procession. The winter was passed in Rome, and the Danes there had a home in which they found a welcome.

The following year Thorwaldsen was again in Denmark, and at his favorite place, Nysöe. On Christmas eve he here formed his beautiful bas-relief, "Christmas Joys in Heaven," which Oehlenschlæger consecrated with a poem. The last birthday of his life was celebrated here; the performance of one of Holberg's vaudevilles was arranged, and strangers invited; yet the morning of that day was the homeliest, when only the family and the author of this memoir, who had written a merry song for the occasion, which was still wet on the paper, placed themselves outside the artist's door, each with a pair of tongs, a gong, or a bottle on which they rubbed a cork, as an accompaniment, and sung the song as a morning greeting. Thorwaldsen, in his morning gown, opened the door, laughing; he twirled his black Raphael's cap, took a pair of tongs himself, and accompanied us, while he danced round and joined the others in the loud "hurra!"

A charming bas-relief, "The Genius of Poetry," was just completed; it was the same that Thorwaldsen, on the last day of his life, bequeathed to Oehlenschlæger, and said, "It may serve as a medal for you."

On Sunday, March 24, 1844, a small party of friends were assembled at the residence of Baron Stampe, in Copenhagen. Thorwaldsen was there and was unusually lively, told stories, and spoke of a journey that he intended to make to Italy in the course of the summer. Cahn's tragedy of "Griseldis" was to be performed for the first time that evening at the theatre. Tragedy was not his favorite subject, but comedy, and particularly the comedies of Holberg; but it was something new that he was to see, and it had become a sort of habit with him to pass the evening in the theatre. About six o'clock, therefore, he went to the theatre alone. The overture had begun; on entering he shook hands with a few of his friends, took his usual seat, stood up again to allow one to pass him, sat down again, bent his head, and was no more! The music continued. Those nearest to him thought he was only in a swoon, and he was borne out; but he was numbered with the dead.

The mournful intelligence of his death soon spread through the country and through all lands; funeral dirges were sung and funeral festivals were arranged in Berlin and Rome; in the Danish theatre, whence his soul took its flight to God there was a festival; the place where he sat was decorated with crape and laurel wreaths, and a poem by Heiberg was recited, in which his greatness and his death were alluded to.

The day before Thorwaldsen's death the interior of his tomb was finished, for it was his wish that his remains might rest in the centre of the court-yard of the museum; it was then walled round, and he begged that there might be a marble edge around it, and a few rose-trees and flowers planted on it as his monument. The whole building, with the rich treasures which he presented to his fatherland, will be his monument; his works are to be placed in the rooms of the square building that surrounds the open court-yard, and which, both internally and externally, are painted in the Pompeian style. His arrival in the roads of Copenhagen and landing at the custom-house form the subjects depicted in the compartments under the windows of one side of the museum. Through centuries to come will nations wander to Denmark; not allured by our charming green islands, with their fresh beech-woods alone—no, but to see these works and this tomb.

There is, however, one place more that the stranger will visit, the little spot at Nysöe where his atelier stands, and where the tree bends its branches over the canal to the solitary swan which he fed. The name of Thorwaldsen will be remembered in England by his statues of Jason and Byron; in Switzerland, by his "recumbent lion;" in Roeskilde, by his figure of Christian the Fourth. It will live in every breast in which a love of art is enkindled.[Back to Contents]

JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET[6]
By Clarence Cook
(1814-1875)

We read that on one occasion, when a picture by some Dutch artist, representing peasants at their sports, was shown to Louis XIV., he angrily exclaimed, "Take away those vermin!" Such subjects had never been chosen by French artists, nor indeed had they been seen anywhere in Europe before the Dutch artists began to paint them in the seventeenth century. The Italian painters of the early and the later Renaissance, working almost exclusively for the churches, or for the palaces of pleasure-loving princes, did not consider the peasant or the laboring man, by himself, a proper subject for his art. If he were introduced at any time into picture or bas-relief, it was only as a necessary actor in some religious story, such as "The Adoration of the Shepherds," or in the representations of the months or the seasons, as in the Fountain of the Public Square at Perugia, where we see the peasant engaged in the labors of the farm or vineyard: cutting the wheat, gathering in the grapes, and treading out the wine, and, in the later season, dressing the hog he has been killing; for in those less sophisticated times, Art, no more than Poetry, despised the ruder side of rustic life.

The German artists of the sixteenth century introduced peasants and peasant-life into their designs whenever the subject admitted. Albert Dürer was especially given to this, and it often gives a particular savor, sometimes a half-humorous expression, to his treatment of even religious subjects; as where, in his design, "The Repose in Egypt," he shows Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, making a water-trough out of a huge log, and a bevy of cherub-urchins about him gathering up the chips. Mary, meanwhile, as the peasant mother, sits by, spinning and rocking the cradle of the Holy Child with her foot.

But these examples only serve to make clearer the fact that in the earlier times there was no place found in art for the representation of the laboring man, whether in the field or in the shop, except as an illustration of some allegorical or religious theme. Nor in the Dutch pictures that Louis XIV. despised, and that our own time finds so valuable for their artistic qualities, was there anything outside of their beauty or richness of tone or color to redeem their coarseness and vulgarity. There was no poetry in the treatment, nor any sympathy with anything higher than the grossest guzzling, fighting, and horseplay. The great monarch, who, according to his lights, was a man of delicacy and refinement, was certainly right in contemning such subjects, and it is perhaps to his credit that he did not care enough for "Art for Art's sake" to excuse the brutality of the theme for the sake of the beauty of the painting.

The next appearance of the peasant in art was of a very different sort, and represented a very different state of social feeling from the "peasants" of the Dutch painters. In the Salon of 1850 there appeared a picture called "The Sower" and representing a young peasant sowing grain. There was nothing in the subject to connect it particularly with any religious symbolism—not even with the Parable of the Sower who went forth to sow; nor with any series of personifications of the months. This was a simple peasant of the Norman coast, in his red blouse and blue trousers, his legs wrapped in straw, and his weather-beaten hat, full of holes. He marches with the rhythmic step made necessary by his task, over the downs that top the high cliffs, followed by a cloud of crows that pounce upon the grain as he sows it. At first sight there would seem to be nothing in this picture to call for particular notice; but the public, the artists, the critics, were with one accord strongly drawn to it. Something in the picture appealed to feelings deeper than mere curiosity, and an interest was excited such as did not naturally belong to a picture of a man sowing a field of grain. The secret was this: that a man born and bred in the midst of laboring people, struggling with the hard necessities of life—himself a laborer, and one who knew by experience all the lights and shades of the laborer's life—had painted this picture out of his own deep sympathy with his fellows, and to please himself by reproducing the most significant and poetical act in the life of the farmer.

The painter of this picture, the first man of our time to give the laborer in the fields and on the farm a place in art, and to set people to thinking about him, as a man, not merely as an illustration of some sacred text, or an image in a book of allegories, was Jean-François Millet, known as the peasant painter of peasants.

He was born at Gruchy, a small hamlet on the coast of Normandy, where his family, well known in the region for several generations, lived by the labor of their hands, cultivating their fields and exercising the simple virtues of that pastoral life, without ambition and without desire for change. This content was a part of the religion of the country and must not be looked upon as arguing a low state of intelligence or of manners. Of their neighbors we have no account, but the Millet household contained many of the elements that go to sustain the intellectual no less than the spiritual life. If there was plain living, there was high thinking; there were books and of the best, and more than one member of the circle valued learning for its own sake. Millet owed much to his grandmother, a woman of great strength of character and of a deeply religious nature. As his godmother she gave him his name, calling him Jean, after his father, and François, after Saint Francis of Assisi. As is usual in Catholic countries, the boy was called after the name of his patron saint, and in the case of Millet, Saint Francis, the ardent lover of nature, the friend of the birds and of all the animate creation, was well chosen as the guardian of one who was to prove himself, all his life, the passionate lover of nature.

The boyhood of Millet was passed at home. He had no schooling except some small instruction in Latin from the village priest and from a neighboring curate, but he made good use of what he learned. He worked on the farm with his father and his men, ploughing, harrowing, sowing, reaping, mowing, winnowing—in a word, sharing actively and contentedly in all the work that belongs to the farmer's life. And in the long winter evenings or in the few hours of rest that the day afforded, he would hungrily devour the books that were at hand—the "Lives of the Saints," the "Confessions of Saint Augustine," the "Life of Saint Jerome," and especially his letters, which he read and re-read all his life. These and the philosophers of Port Royal, with Bossuet, and Fénelon, with the Bible and Virgil, were his mental food. Virgil and the Bible he read always in the Latin; he was so familiar with them both that, when a man, his biographer, Sensier, says he never met a more eloquent translator of these two books. When the time came, therefore, for Millet to go up to Paris, he was not, as has been said by some writer, an ignorant peasant, but a well-taught man who had read much and digested what he had read, and knew good books from bad. The needs of his narrow life absorbed him so seriously that the seeds of art that lay hid in his nature found a way to the light with difficulty. But his master-passion was soon to assert itself, and, as in all such cases, in an unexpected manner.

Millet's attempts at drawing had hitherto been confined to studies made in hours stolen from rest. He had copied the engravings found in an old family Bible, and he had drawn, from his window, the garden, the stable, the field running down to the edge of the high cliff, and with the sea in the horizon, and he had sometimes tried his hand at sketching the cows and sheep in the pasture. But he was now to take a step in advance. Coming home one day from church, he walked behind an old man bent with age and feebleness, painfully making his way. The foreshortening and the movement of the man's figure struck the boy forcibly, and in a flash he discovered the secret of perspective and the mystery of planes. He ran quickly home, got a pencil and drew from memory a picture of the old man, so lively in its resemblance that as soon as his parents saw it, they recognized it and fell a-laughing. Talk with his boy revealed to the father his son's strong desire to be an artist; but before such a serious step could be taken, it was necessary to consult with some person better able to judge than any one in the Millet household. Cherbourg, the nearest large town, was the natural place where to seek advice; thither Millet and his father repaired, the boy with two drawings under his arm that he had made for the occasion, and these were submitted to the critical eye of Mouchel, an old pupil of David, who eked out the scanty living he got by painting by giving lessons in drawing. When the two drawings made by young Millet were shown him he refused to believe they were the work of the lad of fifteen. The very subjects chosen by the boy showed something out of the common. One was a sort of home idyl: two shepherds were in a little orchard close, one playing on the flute, the other listening; some sheep were browsing near. The men wore the blouse and wooden shoes of Millet's country; the orchard was one that belonged to his father. The other drawing showed a starry night. A man was coming from the house with loaves of bread in his hand which he gave to another man who eagerly received them. Underneath, in Latin, were the words from St. Luke: "Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." A friend of Millet's, who saw these drawings thirty years after, said they were the work of a man who already knew the great significance of art, the effects it was capable of, and what were its resources.

Mouchel consented to receive Millet as a pupil, but, as it proved, he could do little for him in the way of direct teaching. He left the boy free to follow his own devices. He said to him: "Do whatever you wish; choose whatever model you find in my studio that pleases you, and study in the Museum." This might not be the course to follow with every boy, but Mouchel had the artist's penetration and knew with whom he had to deal.

The death of Millet's father interrupted his studies and he returned home for awhile to help his mother on the farm. But it was thought best that he should keep on with the work he had begun. The grandmother urged his return: "My François," she said, "we must accept the will of God. Thy father, my son, Jean-Louis, said that you were to be a painter; obey him, and go back to Cherbourg."

Millet did not need persuasion from his family. Friends in Cherbourg urged him to come back, promised him commissions, and assured him a place in the studio of Langlois, a painter of a higher grade than Mouchel, who had recently set up his easel in the town. Once more established at Cherbourg Millet continued his studies after the same easy fashion with Langlois as with his former master. Langlois, who was as much impressed by his pupil's talent as Mouchel had been and willing to serve him, made a personal appeal to the mayor and council, asking that Millet, as a promising young artist and one likely to do credit to the town, might be assisted in going to Paris to study under better advantages than he could enjoy at home.

On the strength of this appeal, the council of Cherbourg agreed to allow Millet an annuity of four hundred francs, equal to eighty dollars. With this small sum, and the addition of two hundred francs given him at parting by his mother and grandmother, making one hundred and twenty dollars in all, Millet left his quiet life in Normandy behind him and set out for Paris, where, as his biographer, Sensier, says, he was to pass as a captive the richest years of his life.

Millet was twenty-two years old when he went first to Paris and he remained there, with occasional visits to Gruchy and Cherbourg, for the next thirteen years. Paris was, from the first, more than distasteful to him. He was thoroughly unhappy there. Outside the Louvre and the studios of a few artist-friends, he found nothing that appealed to what was deepest in him. His first experiences were unusually bitter. The struggle with poverty was hard to bear, but perhaps a more serious drawback was his want of an aim in art, of a substantial reason, so to speak, for the profession he had chosen, leading him to one false move after another in search of a subject. Unformed and unrecognized in his mind lay the desire to express in art the life he had left behind him in Normandy; but it was long before he arrived at the knowledge of himself and of his true vocation. He seems to have had no one in Paris to guide or direct him, and he rather stumbled into the studio of Delaroche, than entered it deliberately. He made but a brief stay there, and although he won the respect of his master, who would willingly have retained him as pupil and assistant, he was conscious that he learned nothing from Delaroche; and accordingly, in company with another pupil, Marolles, who had taken a great liking to him, he left the studio without much ceremony; and the two friends improvised a studio and a lodging for themselves in a garret in a poor quarter of the city, and began their search for a means of pleasing the public. But the way was not opened to either of them; they could not sell what they painted, and they were reduced to serious straits. It was not the fault of the public. Marolles was but an indifferent painter at any time, and Millet would not have blamed the public for its indifference to subjects in which he himself took no real interest.

Millet was at a loss what to do for bread. His mind ran back continually to his rural life at Gruchy. "What if I should paint men mowing or winnowing?" he said to Marolles; "their movements are picturesque!" "You could not sell them," replied his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy. He made a small picture representing "Charity"—a sad-faced woman cherishing three children in her arms. He carried it to the dealers: not one of them would buy it. He came back to Marolles. "Give me a subject," he said, "and I will paint it."

To this time belong the pictures for which Millet has been much criticised by people who did not appreciate his position. Some of them recall Watteau, others Boucher, but they have a charm, a grace of their own; they are far from being copies of these men. Others were fanciful subjects to which Marolles gave names likely to attract the notice of picture-buyers in search of a subject. But all was in vain. The dealers were obstinate: the public unsympathetic. The highest price that was offered was never above twenty francs, or five dollars. Yet with this in his pocket, Millet deemed himself already on the high road to fortune, and saw the day not distant when he could paint at his pleasure the rustic subjects, memories of his home, that had always been in his mind.

Several times in the course of this hard novitiate, Millet had escaped from Paris for a visit to his own country. At one time he had remained for a year at Cherbourg, where he painted portraits for such small sums as he could get, and here he and one of his sitters, a young girl of Cherbourg, falling in love with one another, were married. The marriage only added, as might have been foreseen, to Millet's troubles: his wife's health was always delicate; after her marriage it became worse, and she died four years after in Paris. Not long after her death Millet married again, and this proved a fortunate venture. His wife came with him to Paris, and the struggle with life began anew. The turning-point in the long period of Millet's uncertainties and disappointments with himself came in 1849, when the political troubles of the time, and the visit of the cholera, combined to drive him and his family from Paris. They took refuge at Barbizon, a small hamlet on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and here, in the place that was to be forever associated with his name and work, Millet passed, with few interruptions, the remaining years of his life.

The phrase so often heard to-day, "The Barbizon School," is rather wider than a strict interpretation would warrant, since Millet and Rousseau were the only ones of the group who lived in the village. Corot was not acquainted with Millet. Decamps was never in Millet's house except as a rare visitor to his studio. Diaz lived in Paris. Jacque, the painter of sheep, was a friend of Millet, and for a time at least lived at Barbizon in the house where he lodged before he procured a home of his own. The artistic relationship between these artists is slight, except in the case of Rousseau and Diaz, and even there it is only occasionally to be detected. All these men, with Dupré, Courbet and Delacroix, were counted heretics in art by the Academy and the official critics, and as Millet was the most marked figure in the group and was greatly admired and respected by all who composed it, it was perhaps natural that they should be considered by the public as disciples of the peasant painter of Barbizon.

Here, then, at Barbizon, Millet lived for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, dividing his day between the labors of his farm in the morning hours, painting in his studio in the afternoon—he always preferred the half-light for painting—and in the evening enjoying the society of his wife and children and of such friends as might join the circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the galleries, and to the studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions, though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in the grandest forms.

But it was in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively shared, that he found the world wherein he could pour all his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the certainty of seeing them emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came to Barbizon that he began truly to live the artist-life as he understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the only things a man really cares for—the things he knows by heart. In the pictures painted at Barbizon, and in the multitude of slight sketches for subjects never painted, with finished drawings and pastels, Millet has composed a series of moral eclogues well worthy of a place with those of Virgil and Theocritus. All the world knows them; all the world loves them: the "Mother Feeding Her Children," "The Peasant Grafting," "The First Step," "Going to Work," "The Sower," "The Gleaners," "The Sheep-Shearing," "The Angelus"—even to name them would carry us far beyond our limits. They made the fame of Millet while he still lived, although the pecuniary reward of his labors was not what they deserved nor what it would have been had he earlier found his true way or had his life been prolonged to the normal limit. He died in 1875 at the age of sixty-one. Since his death more than one of his pictures has been sold at a price exceeding all that he earned during his whole lifetime. Seen from the world's side, there was much in his life that was sad and discouraging, but from the spiritual side there was far more to cheer and uplift. His private life was honorable and happy, his friends were many and among the chosen ones of the time, and he had the happiness of seeing his work accepted and rated at something like its true worth before he left it.[Back to Contents]

MEISSONIER[7]
By Clarence Cook
(1813-1891)

Among the many beautiful paintings collected in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, there is one that always attracts a crowd, on the free-days and holidays when the general public finds admission. This is the picture called simply, "Friedland: 1807," and representing the soldiers of Napoleon saluting the emperor at the battle of Friedland. It was painted by Jean Louis Meissonier for the late A. T. Stewart, of New York, who paid for it what seemed a very large sum, $60,000; but when Mr. Stewart died, and his pictures were sold at auction, this painting brought the still larger sum of $66,000, showing that a great many people admired the work, and were willing to pay a good price for it. The picture was bought by Judge Hilton, of New York, and was presented by him to the Metropolitan Museum as a memorial of the long friendship that had existed between himself and Mr. Stewart. No doubt the facts of the high price paid for the picture, and that a gift of such value should be made to the Museum, have caused a great many people to look at the painting with more interest than they would, had the circumstances been less uncommon. But a great many more people find this picture interesting for its own sake; they are moved rather by the spirited way in which it tells its story, and find their curiosity excited by the studious accuracy shown by the artist in the painting of every detail.

The scene of the action is a field that has been planted with grain which now lies trampled under the feet of men and horses. The turning-point in the battle has been reached, and in the joy of coming victory, the body-guard of the emperor, spurring their jaded horses to the hillock where he sits on his white charger surrounded by his mounted staff, salute him with loud cries as they rush madly by him. Napoleon, calm and self-possessed, returns the salute, but it is plain his thoughts are busier with the battle that is raging in the distance than with these demonstrations of his body-guard's loyalty. This picture was the favorite work of the artist; he calls it, "the life and joy of my studio," and he is said to have worked on it at intervals during fifteen years.

Meissonier's Atelier.

Somebody has said that "genius" means nothing but "taking pains." In that case, Meissonier must have been a man of genius, for, with whatever he painted, were it small or great, he took infinite pains, never content until he had done everything in his power to show things exactly as they were. Thus, in the picture we have just been describing, we may be sure that we know, from looking at it, exactly how Napoleon was dressed on the day of Friedland, and also how each member of his military staff was dressed; not a button, nor a strap, nor any smallest detail but has been faithfully copied from the thing itself, while every head in the group is a trustworthy portrait. When it was not possible to get the actual dress worn by the person he was painting, Meissonier spared no pains nor money to obtain an exact copy. How it was in the case of the "Friedland," we do not know, but when he painted the "March to Paris," Meissonier borrowed from the Museum, in Paris, where relics of all the kings of France are kept (the Musée des Souverains), the famous "little gray riding-coat" worn by Napoleon at the battle of the Pyramids and in other engagements. This coat, Meissonier had copied by a tailor, with the minutest accuracy, and it was then worn by the model while he was painting the picture. The same pains were taken with the cuirassiers who are dashing across the front of the picture in the "Friedland." As will be seen on looking closely, one model served for all the men in the front rank, but as the uniform was the same it was only necessary to vary the attitude. The uniform and all the accoutrements were carefully reproduced by workmen from originals of the time, borrowed by Meissonier for the purpose, and the model was then mounted on a jointed wooden horse and made to take the attitude required: the action of the horse was as carefully studied from that of the living animal. By the time that Meissonier came to paint this picture, he was so famous an artist, and had gained such a place in the world, that he could have almost anything he asked for to aid him in his work. So, when, with the same desire for accuracy that he had shown in painting other parts of the picture, he came to paint the trampled grain, the Government, or so we are told, bought the use of a field of ripe grain and lent Meissonier the services of a company of cuirassiers who were set to dashing about in it until they had got it into proper condition. We can see that the cost of all this accuracy would, in the end, amount to a considerable sum, and when we reckon the time of an artist so distinguished as Meissonier, it is not so surprising as it may have appeared at first, that his picture should have brought so much money.

Of course, Meissonier did not come all at once to fame and prosperity. The rewards he gained were such as are earned only by hard and constant labor. When he came to Paris about the year 1832, from Lyons, where he was born, he was about nineteen years old. His parents were in humble circumstances, and would seem to have been able to do nothing to advance the lad, who arrived in Paris with little money in his pocket, and with no friends at hand. He had, however, the materials out of which friends and money are made: health, a generous spirit, energy, and a clear purpose, and with these he went to work. We do not hear much about his early life in Paris. When he first appears in sight, he is working in the same studio with Daubigny, the landscape-painter, the two painting pictures for a dollar the square yard, religious pictures probably, and probably also copies, to be sent into the country and hung up in the parish churches. Although this may have seemed like hardship at the time, yet there is no doubt it was good practice, for among artists we are told it is an accepted doctrine that in order to paint on a small scale really well, you must be able to paint on a larger. And it is said that Meissonier was in the habit all his life of making life-size studies in order to keep his style from falling into pettiness. So, after all, the painting of these big pictures may have been a useful ordeal for the artist who for the next sixty years was to reap fame by painting small ones.

While he was earning a scanty living by this hack-work, Meissonier found time to paint two pictures which he sent to the Salon of 1836. One of these attracted the attention of a clever artist, Tony Johannot, who introduced him to Léon Cogniet, with whom he studied for a time, but from whom he learned but little. The mechanism of his art he had pretty well mastered already, as was shown by the Salon accepting his early pictures, and the chief advantage he gained from his stay in Cogniet's studio was a wider acquaintance with the world of artists; for Cogniet was a favorite teacher, and had a great many pupils, not a few of whom became distinguished painters. But his style of painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others, who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think only of the skill the artist has shown in painting character. Meissonier was the first artist to bring back into favor the Dutch school of painting of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV., who set the fashion in everything in his day, had set the fashion of despising the Dutch painters, and the French people had never unlearned the lesson. It was Meissonier who brought back the taste, and taught the public to admire these small panels where interest in the subject is for the most part lost in the exquisite beauty of the painting and where the Dutch painters of similar subjects are successfully met on their own ground and equalled in every respect except in the charm of color.

There is an old saying: "Imitation is the sincerest mode of flattery;" and Meissonier's immediate success with the public was the signal for a bevy of imitators to try to win a like success by like methods. Some of these artists were very clever, but an imitator is but an imitator after all, and is more apt to call attention to his model than to himself. It must be admitted that Meissonier himself has suffered somewhat in the same way: the evident fact that his methods of painting were inspired by the study of the Dutch masters has led to his being called an imitator, and his pictures are often compared, and not to their advantage, with those of his models. Meissonier is, however, very much more than an imitator; he was inspired by the Dutch painters, but he soon found a way of his own, and he has put so much of himself into his work, that the charge of imitation long since ceased to be brought against him.

While he was still not much known to the public, the Duke of Orleans bought of him, for six hundred francs, a picture that to-day is worth thirty thousand francs. As is usual in such affairs, the purchase was made, not by the duke in person, but by an agent: in this case, it was his secretary, M. Adaline, who bought the picture from Meissonier, who as an acknowledgment of the service gave the secretary a water-color drawing which, to-day, like everything coming from the hand of Meissonier, would bring the owner a good round sum if offered for sale.

In 1865, Meissonier's son Charles, himself a very good painter, went to a costume-ball dressed like a Fleming of the seventeenth century and looking as if he had stepped out of a picture by Terburg. The costume had been made with the greatest accuracy, and Meissonier was so pleased with his son's appearance that he made a study and sold it for two thousand francs. Twenty years after, in 1884, hearing that it was to be sold at auction, and desiring, out of affection for his son, to have the study back again, he asked his friend, M. Petit, to buy it for him, at whatever cost. A rich Parisian, M. Secretan, who had a collection of pictures since become famous—it was to him that Millet's "L'Angelus" belonged—and who had such an admiration for Meissonier and his work that he had paid no less than four hundred thousand francs for his picture "Les Cuirassiers," hearing from M. Petit of Meissonier's desire for the portrait of his son, bought the picture for twenty-five thousand francs and presented it to the artist. These stories are told only as illustrations of the growth of Meissonier's reputation and of the increased number of people who desire to have an example of his work. The rise in value of a small sketch of a single figure, from $500 to $5,000, in fifteen years, is no greater in proportion than has happened in the case of every one of Meissonier's pictures, drawings, studies, and even his slight sketches, on some of which originally he would have placed no value at all. Yet everything he left behind him, even unconsidered trifles, are found to be of value, and the sale of the contents of his studio just ended in Paris brought nearly five hundred thousand francs, although the collection contained not a single finished picture of importance, but was made up almost entirely of unfinished studies and of sketches.

Meissonier's industry was constant and untiring. It is told of him that he rarely had the pencil or the brush out of his hand when in the house, and that when he called at a friend's house and was kept waiting he used the spare minutes in sketching upon the first piece of paper that he found at hand. One of his friends, who knew of this habit, collected in the course of many visits he received from the artist enough of these scraps to fill a small album; while it is told of another of his friends that he instructed his servant to put beside Meissonier's coffee-cup after dinner a number of bits of paper of the size of cigarette-papers but of better quality on which Meissonier in his absent way would fall to drawing as he chatted with his companions. After dinner these jottings remained as a valuable memorial of his visit. Perhaps if they were all collected, these slight affairs might bring enough at auction to pay for all the dinners to which the prudent host had invited the artist.

The world of subjects included in Meissonier's art was a very narrow one, and was not calculated to interest men and women in general. The nearest that he came to striking the popular note was in his Napoleon subjects, and beside the excellence of the painting, these pictures really make a valuable series of historical documents by reason of their accuracy. But the greater number of the pictures which he left behind him are chiefly interesting from the beautiful way in which they are painted: we accept the subject for the sake of the art. The world rewarded him for all this patient labor, this exquisite workmanship, by an immense fortune that enabled him to live in splendor, and to be generous without stint. From the humble lodgings of his youth in the Rue des Ecouffes, he passed, in time, to the palace in the Place Malsherbes where he spent the latter half of his long life in luxurious surroundings: pictures and statues, rich furniture, tapestries and armor and curiosities of art from every land. But the visitor, after passing through all this splendor, came upon the artist in a studio, ample and well lighted indeed, but furnished only for work, where, to the end of his life, he pursued his industrious calling with all the energy and ardor of youth. He died in 1891, and was buried by the government with all the honors that befitted one of her most illustrious citizens.[Back to Contents]

ROSA BONHEUR[8]
By Clarence Cook
(BORN 1822)

A girl of something over ten, of sturdy build, with a dark complexion, deep blue eyes, and strong features crowned by a head of clustering curls, is sitting in the window of a plainly furnished room, high up in an apartment-house in Paris. In a cage at her side is a parrot, which, with its head on one side, is gravely calling out the letters of the alphabet, while the child as gravely repeats them, interrupting the lesson every now and then by a visit to the other side of the room, where a pet lamb greets its young mistress with a friendly bleat.

This is our first glimpse of Rosalie, known now to all the world as Rosa Bonheur, the painter of "The Horse Fair" and of many another picture, which have earned for her the distinction of the best animal-painter of her time.

Her father's family belonged to Bordeaux. Raymond Bonheur had gone up as a youth to Paris to study art. After the usual apprenticeship to privation which art exacts from her servants, he had become moderately successful, when the condition of his parents, now old and poorly-off, moved him to return to Bordeaux and do what he could to make their life easier. As the chances for a professional artist were small, he adopted the modest employment of drawing-teacher. His skill soon brought him pupils; among them a young lady from Altona, between whom and her teacher a mutual interest sprang up which led to their marriage. Raymond Bonheur brought his wife home to his father's house, where she was welcomed as a daughter, and for the brief term of her life all went well. What the husband earned by his drawing-lessons, the wife supplemented by her lessons in music; but this happiness was not to last. The parents of Raymond Bonheur died, and then, after not more than twelve years of marriage, the wife died, leaving behind her four children, Rosalie, Francois-Auguste, Jules-Isidore, and Juliette.

Rosalie is the best known of these four children of Raymond Bonheur; but each of them has honorably connected his name with the art of modern France. Francois-Auguste has a reputation as an animal-painter almost equal to that of his sister Rosa. A fine picture painted by him, "Cattle in the Forest of Fontainebleau," was once the property of the late A. T. Stewart. His merit secured him the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1867. He died in 1880. The other brother, Jules-Isidore, has gained distinction as a sculptor of animals; most of his work is on a small scale, but he has designed some large pieces that decorate his sister's château near Fontainebleau. Juliette Bonheur married a M. Peyrol, and joining her family-name to his, is known in the art-world as Mme. Peyrol Bonheur. It is thus she signs her pictures, mostly still-life and animal subjects, which have gained for her a good position among the minor artists of France.

Rosa, the eldest of the family, born in 1822, was ten years old when her mother died. Not long after, Raymond Bonheur decided to leave Bordeaux and to return to Paris, where the chances for professional success were better than in a provincial town, and where there were greater opportunities for the education of his young children. The change proved very distasteful, however, to the little ones. Accustomed to the comparative freedom of the town in which they had been brought up, and where their family had been so long rooted that their circle of friends and relatives gave them playmates and companions in plenty, they found themselves very lonely in Paris, where they were reduced for a good part of the time to such amusement as they could find in the narrow quarters of their rooms on the sixth floor of an apartment-house. It is not the custom in Paris for the children, even of the poor, to make a playground of the street, and our little ones had nobody to walk out with them but an old servant who had come with them from Bordeaux, and who was ill-fitted, for all her virtues, to take a mother's place to the children. She was honest and faithful, but like all of her class, she liked routine and order, and she could make no allowances for the restlessness of her bright-minded charge. Rosa was her especial torment; the black sheep of the brood. Household tasks she despised, and study, as it was pursued in the successive schools to which her despairing father sent her, had no charms for her. Her best playmates were animals; the horses and dogs she saw in the streets and which she fearlessly accosted; the sheep that found itself queerly lodged on the top floor of a city house; and the parrot which, as we have seen, was not only her playmate but her schoolmaster.

There came a time when the charge of such a child, so averse to rules and so given to strange ways of passing her time, became too much for the old servant with her orthodox views of life, and she persuaded Rosa's father to put her as a day-scholar with the nuns at Chaillot, a small suburb of Paris. How it happened that she was allowed to go back and forth alone, between home and school, we do not know; but it is not to be wondered at if she were irregular in her hours; if, one day, she set the nuns wondering why she did not appear at school-opening, and another day put the old servant into a twitter because she did not come home in season. The truth was, she had found that there was something better in Paris than streets and shops and tall houses; she had discovered a wood there, a veritable forest, with trees, and pools of water, and birds, and wild flowers, and though this enchanted spot which citizens called the Bois de Boulogne—not then a formal park as it is to-day—was off the road to Chaillot, yet it was not so far that she need fear getting lost in going there or in coming back. No wonder, then, if, once this way discovered of escape from tiresome school duties, it was travelled so often by Rosalie, and that her school-work became in consequence so unsatisfactory that at length the patient nuns remonstrated. They advised Rosa's father, since she neither would nor could learn anything from books, that it would be better to put her to some useful trade by which she might earn her living; and the good sisters suggested—dressmaking! The wisdom of these ladies, who could not see that they were dealing with the last woman in the world to whom dressmaking could be interesting, was matched by that of the father, who showed himself so blind to the character of his daughter that he resolved to act at once upon the advice of the nuns; and without consulting the wishes of poor Rosalie he apprenticed her straightway to a Parisian dressmaker. The docile girl allowed the yoke to be slipped over her head without complaint, but the confinement wore upon her health and spirits, and after a short trial the experiment had to be abandoned. Her father yielded to her entreaties and took her home.

Rosa Bonheur.

The girl was long in coming to a knowledge of herself. Although she was to be, in time, a famous artist, the familiar legend of the biographers is wanting in her case; we read nothing about scribbled books or walls defaced by childish sketches, nor does she appear to have handled a pencil or a brush until she was a girl well grown. Her father's means were not sufficient to give Rosa or his other children an education such as he could wish; but an expedient suggested itself in his perplexity over this latest experiment in providing for his eldest daughter: he proposed to the principal of a young ladies' school where he taught drawing, that his services should be accepted in payment of Rosa's education. The offer was accepted, and in the regular course of study Rosa became a member of her father's drawing-class. It was not long before she surpassed all her school-fellows in that department, and found herself for the first time in her life in possession of the key to that happiness which consists in knowing what we can do, and feeling the strength within us to do it. Some of the biographers of Rosa's life speak of unhappy days at this school: the richer girls made sport of the dress of the drawing-master's daughter, and of her independent, awkward ways. Her progress in drawing, too, was counterbalanced by her slowness in her other studies; in fact her new accomplishment was such a delight to her, that in her devotion to it she became less and less interested in her books; and as for dress—that it should be clean and suited both to her means and to the work she was doing, was all that concerned her, then or since!

At the end of her first year in school, Rosa obtained her father's permission to give up her other studies and to enter his studio as pupil and assistant. From that time, though as yet she had not found the reason of her vocation, yet her true life had begun. She worked diligently under the direction of a master she loved, and her father, in his turn, delighted at the discovery of a talent so long hid, redoubled his efforts to advance his pupil and to make up for lost time.

Rosa worked for some months at copying in the Louvre, but though she worked with such diligence and skill as to win the praise of the director, she came, after a time, to feel that the mere copying of the works of other men, however great, was not the goal she was striving after; so one day she took a sudden determination, left the Louvre, packed up her painting materials, and started off for one of the rural suburbs of Paris, where she sat herself down to sketch from nature. Her love of animals, hitherto an aimless pleasure, now took on a new phase as she saw her beloved cows and sheep in their place in nature giving life and animation to the landscape.

In the winter season, when work out-of-doors was no longer pleasant or profitable, Rosa made what use she could of the few opportunities Paris had to offer for the study of animals. She spent what time she could spare from work at the horse-market; she visited the slaughter-houses, and the suburban fairs where cattle and horses, sheep and pigs compete for prizes, and in these places she filled her portfolios with sketches.

In 1840 she sent her first picture to the Salon, and as it was accepted and well received, she continued to send her work every year; but, up to 1849, her pictures were small, and had little more interest than belongs to simple studies from nature; 1849 was a memorable year to her, as it was to France. In this year her father died of cholera, just as he had been appointed director of the School of Design for Young Girls. Rosa was appointed to succeed him with the title of Honorary Directress, and her sister Juliette was made a teacher in the school. In the same year she exhibited the picture that may be said to have made her reputation with the artists and amateurs, as well as with the general public. This was her "Oxen of Cantal," a picture that combined with no little feeling for landscape the most admirable painting of cattle in repose. Its high qualities were immediately recognized. Horace Vernet, in the name of the Provisional Government, presented her with a handsome vase of Sèvres porcelain, and the gold medal for painting. In 1851, the jury selected for exhibition at the World's Fair in London another picture by Rosa, "Ploughing in the Nivernais," which made the artist's name known to England, where the national love of animals secured for her no end of praise and of substantial reward. In 1856 Rosa painted her most popular picture, "The Horse Fair," now in the Metropolitan Museum. This painting went from Paris to London, where it was bought for rising £1,500, and created such an interest in the artist's personality as would have turned the head of any ordinary woman; but Rosa Bonheur's whole life proves her no ordinary woman.

For many years Mlle. Bonheur lived in Paris in a house surrounded by a large garden where she kept a number of animals, partly for the pleasure of their companionship, partly for the opportunity it gave her of studying their habits, and using them as models. She now resides in the Château By, near Fontainebleau, where she leads the same industrious life in her advancing years that she did in the beginning of her career. She rises early, and works at her painting all day, and often spends the evening in drawing: for she takes but little interest in what is called society, and cares only for the companionship of her intimate friends, which she can enjoy without disarranging her life, or neglecting the studies she loves. She dresses with great simplicity at all times, and even when she accepts invitations, makes no concessions to the caprices of fashion. In her student-days, when visiting the abattoirs, markets, and fairs, she accustomed herself to wear such a modification of man's dress as would permit her to move about among rough men without compromising her sex. But, beside that her dignity was always safe in her own keeping, she bears testimony to the good manners and the good dispositions of the men she came in contact with. Rosa Bonheur has always been an honor to art and an honor to her sex. At seventy-two she finds herself in the enjoyment of many things that go to make a happy life. She has a well-earned fame as an artist; an abundant fortune gained by her own industry and used as honorably as it has been gained; and she has troops of friends drawn to her by her solid worth of character.

Of the great number of pictures Rosa Bonheur has painted, by far the most are of subjects found in France, but a few of the best were painted in Scotland. She has received many public honors in medals and decorations. In 1856, after painting the "Horse Fair," the Empress Eugénie visited her at her studio and bestowed upon her the Cross of the Legion of Honor, fastening the decoration to the artist's dress with her own hands. When the invading army of Prussia reached Paris, the Crown Prince gave orders that the studio of Rosa Bonheur should be respected. But though she, no doubt, holds all these honors at their worth, yet she holds still more dear the art to which she owes, not only these, but all that has made her life a treasury of happy remembrances.[Back to Contents]

GÉRÔME[9]
By Clarence Cook
(BORN 1824)

In the Paris Salon of 1847, a small picture appeared, representing a Greek boy and girl stirring up two game-cocks to fight. Although it was the work of an unknown painter, and had to contend with an unusually brilliant display of pictures, many of them by men already famous, yet it strongly attracted the general public, partly by the novelty of the subject, and partly by the careful and finished manner of the painting. It delighted the critics as well, and one of the most distinguished of them, Théophile Gautier, wrote: "A new Greek is born to us, and his name is Gérôme!"

This picture, which was to prove the first leaf in a laurel-crown to be awarded the painter in his lifetime, and not, as is so often the case, by the tardy hand of Death, was the work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a young man of twenty-three. He had been for six years under the teaching of Paul Delaroche, part of the time in Italy, but most of it in Paris. He was born at Vesoul, a small, dull town in the Department of Haute-Saône, in 1824. His father was a goldsmith, who, like most French fathers in his rank of life, had hoped to bring up his son to succeed him in his business. The boy did for a time, we believe, work in his father's shop, but he had a stronger natural bent for painting; something perhaps in the occupation fostered, or even created, this taste—for not a few distinguished painters have been apprenticed to the goldsmith's trade—and his father, like a wise man, instead of opposing his son's wishes, did what he could to further them. He bought him painting-materials; and instead of sending him to a "school of design," or putting him under the tutelage of some third-rate drawing-master, such as is commonly found in country towns, he bought him a picture by Decamps, an artist since become famous, but then just in the dawn of his fame, and put it before his son as a model. Young Gérôme made a copy of this picture, and an artist from Paris, who happened to be passing through Vesoul, saw it, and discerning the boy's talent, gave him a letter to Paul Delaroche, encouraging him to go to Paris and there to take up the study of art as a profession. At seventeen years of age, with his father's consent and $250 in his pocket, Gérôme went up to Paris, and presenting his letter to Delaroche, was well received by him, and entered the School of Fine Arts (École des Beaux-Arts) as his pupil.

He had been with Delaroche three years and had proved himself one of the most loyal and diligent of his pupils, when an event occurred, insignificant in itself, but which was to have an important influence upon his life and give a new direction to his talent.

French studios are not as a rule very orderly places. The young men who frequent them are left pretty much to themselves, with no one to govern them or to oversee them. The artist they are studying under makes, at the most, a brief daily visit, going the round of the easels, saying a word or two to each pupil, although it often happens that he says nothing, and then departs for his proper work, leaving his pupils to their own devices. The students are for the most part like young men everywhere, a turbulent set, full of animal spirits, which sometimes carry them beyond reasonable bounds. It was a boisterous outbreak of this sort, but far wilder than common, that occurred in the studio of Delaroche, and which brought about the crisis in Gérôme's life to which we have alluded. Fortunately for him, the incident took place while Gérôme was on a visit to his parents at Vesoul, so that he was in no way implicated in the affair. He came back to find the studio closed; Delaroche, deeply disturbed, had dismissed all his pupils and announced his intention to visit Italy. His studio was to be taken during his absence, by Gleyre, and he advised those of his pupils in whom he took a personal interest, to continue their studies under his successor. Gérôme was one of those to whom he gave this advice, but Gérôme was too much attached to his master to leave him for another, and bluntly announced his purpose of following him to Rome. A few of the other pupils of Delaroche were of the same mind, and they all set out for Italy together. Arrived in Rome, Gérôme, always a hard worker, threw himself energetically into his studies; drawing the ancient buildings, the Capitol, the Colosseum; sketching in the Forum and on the Campagna; copying the pictures and the statues, saturating his mind in the spirit of antique art, and schooling his hand in its forms, until he had laid up a rich store of material for use in future pictures. On his return to Paris he worked for a while in Gleyre's studio, but when Delaroche came back from Italy, Gérôme again joined him and renewed his old relation as pupil and assistant—working, among other tasks, on the painting of "Charlemagne Crossing the Alps," a commission given to Delaroche by the Government, for the Grande Galerie des Batailles at Versailles: a vast apartment lined with pictures of all the victories of the French from Soissons to Solferino.

Such work as this, however, had little interest for Gérôme. His mind at this time was full of the Greeks and Romans; his enthusiasm for Napoleon, which later was to give birth to so many pictures, had not yet awakened; nor did he care for the subjects from the histories of France and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that had provided his master, Delaroche, with so many tragic themes for his pencil: "The Death of the Duke of Guise," "The Children of Edward," the "Death of Queen Elizabeth," "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey," "Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles I.," and others of the same strain.

Gérôme's visit to Italy had awakened in him a strong interest in the life of the antique world, and this would naturally be strengthened by all that he would hear and see of the growing interest of the public in the same subject: an interest kindled by the discoveries of archaeologists in classic soil: in Greece and Italy, in Assyria and Egypt. These discoveries had filled the museums and the cabinets of private collectors with beautiful and interesting fragments illustrating the external life of the past, and illuminating its poetry; and it is no wonder that some of the younger artists rejoiced in the new world of anecdote and story that opened so richly before them.

However it came about—whether his own interest in the antique life communicated itself to his fellows, or whether they, all together, simply shared in the interest taken in the subject by the world about them—Gérôme and some of his companions in Delaroche's studio showed such a predilection for classic themes, that they were nicknamed by the critics "The New Greeks." Among Gérôme's fellow-pupils were two young men, Hamon and Aubert, who later gained no small applause by their playful and familiar way of treating classic themes. They are well known to us by engravings from their pictures, which are in all our shops. Hamon's "My Sister is not at home," and Aubert's various pretty fancies of nymphs and cupids, while they are not great works of art, are reasonably sure of a long life, due to their innocent freshness and simplicity.

Delaroche's pupils were working all together in friendly competition for the grand Roman prize which was to give the fortunate one the right to four years' study in Rome at the expense of the state. Gérôme's studio was shared by his friends Picou and Hamon. Hamon, writing in later years about his youthful days, says: "Companions and rivals at the same time, we were all working together for the Grand Prix de Rome. Gérôme inspired us all with the love of hard work, and of hard work to the accompaniment of singing and laughing."

But in the intervals of his hard work for the prize, Gérôme was also working on a picture which he hoped to have accepted for the Salon. This was the picture we spoke of in the beginning of this notice: "Two Young Greeks stirring-up Game-cocks to fight." When it was finished Gérôme showed it to his master with many misgivings; but Delaroche encouraged him to send it to the Salon. It was accepted, and as we have seen, won for Gérôme a great success with the public. The next year, 1848, he again exhibited, but the impression he made was less marked than on the first occasion. His former picture had a subject such as it was, of his own devising. The "Cock-fight" was not an illustration of any passage in Greek poetry, and in spite of its antique setting, it had a modern air, and to this, no doubt, its popularity was largely due. But in 1848 he essayed an illustration of the Greek poet, Anacreon, translating into picture the poem that tells how, one winter evening, sitting by his fire, the old poet was surprised by a sound of weeping outside his door, and opening it, found Cupid wet and shivering and begging for a shelter from the cold. The man takes the pretty, dimpled mischief to his bosom, warms his feet and hands at the fire, dries his bow and arrows, and lets him sip wine from his cup. Then, when Cupid is refreshed and warmed, he tries his arrows, now here, now there, and at last aims one straight at his benefactor's heart, and laughing at the jest, flies out at the open door. Gérôme's picture was in three panels. The first showed the poet opening the door to the sobbing Cupid, with his bedraggled wings and dripping curls; in the next, the rosy ingrate wounds his benefactor; in the third, the poet sits disconsolate by his hearth, musing over the days when Love was his guest, if but for an hour. As the story was an old one, so many an artist before Gérôme had played with it as a subject for a picture. Jean-François Millet himself, another pupil of Delaroche, though earlier than Gérôme, had tried his hand at illustrating Anacreon's fable before he found his proper field of work in portraying the occupations of the men and women about him, the peasants among whom he was born and bred.

Gérôme's picture did nothing to advance his fortunes with the public. 1848 was a stormy time in France and in all Europe, and people were not in the mood to be amused with such trifles as Anacreon and his Cupid. The pictures in that year's Salon that drew the public in crowds about them were Couture's "The Romans of the Decline of the Empire," in which all Paris saw, or thought it saw, the handwriting-on-the-wall for the government of Louis-Philippe; and the "Shipwrecked Sailors in a Bark," of Delacroix, a wild and stormy scene of terror that seemed to echo the prophecies of evil days at hand for France with which the time was rife.

Gérôme's next picture, however, was to bring him once more before the public, and to carry his name beyond his native France even as far as America. Leaving for the nonce his chosen field of antiquity, where yet he was to distinguish himself, he looked for a subject in the Paris of his own day. "The Duel after the Masquerade" opens for us a corner of the Bois de Boulogne—the fashionable park on the outskirts of Paris—where in the still dawn of a winter's day, a group of men are met to witness a duel between two of their companions who have quarrelled at a masked ball. The ground is covered with a light fall of snow; the bare branches of the trees weave their network across the gray sky, and in the distance we see the carriages that have brought the disputants to the field. The duel is over. One of the men, dressed in the costume of Pierrot, the loose white trousers and slippers, the baggy white shirt, and white skull-cap, falls, mortally wounded, into the arms of his second: the pallor of coming death masked by the white-painted face. The other combatant, a Mohawk Indian (once a staple character at every masked-ball in Paris: curious survival of the popularity of Cooper's novels), is led wounded off the field by a friend dressed as Harlequin. Gérôme in this striking picture showed for the first time that talent as a story-teller to which he is so largely indebted for his reputation. Whatever his subject may be, it is always set forth in the clearest manner, so that everyone may understand the story without the need of an interpreter.

Leaving out of view the few pictures he painted illustrating passages in Napoleon's career, it may be said that Gérôme's taste led him away from scenes of modern life; for even his many oriental subjects so relate to forms of life belonging in reality to the past, that they make no exception to the statement. He did not therefore follow up "The Duel" with other comments on the follies of modern society—for in the temper of that time this picture, like Couture's "Roman Orgie" and Millet's "Man with the Hoe," was looked upon as a satire and a warning, and owed its popularity as much to this conviction on the part of the public as to its pictorial merits—but returned to antique times, and showed in his treatment of themes from that source an equal, if not a greater power to interest the public.

Gérôme's two pictures, the "Ave Cæsar! Morituri te Salutant," "Hail, Cæsar! Those about to die, salute Thee," and "The Gladiators," are so universally known as to need no description. Whatever criticism may be made upon them, they will always remain interesting to the world at large; from their subject, from the way in which the discoveries of archæology are made familiar, and, not least, from the impression they make of the artist's own strong interest in what he had to say. In both pictures he succeeded in showing the Colosseum as no longer a ruin, but as, so to speak, a living place peopled by the swarm of the Roman populace, with the emperor and his court, and the College of the Vestal Virgins, and, for chief actors, the hapless wretches who are "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Another picture that greatly increased Gérôme's reputation, was his "Death of Julius Cæsar," though it must be confessed there was a touch of the stage in the arrangement of the scene, and in the action of the body of senators and conspirators leaving the hall with brandished swords and as if singing in chorus, that was absent from the pictures of the amphitheatre. There was also less material for the curiosity of the lovers of archæology; no such striking point, for instance, as the reproduction of the gladiators' helmets and armor recently discovered in Herculaneum; but the body of the dead Cæsar lying "even at the base of Pompey's statue" with his face muffled in his toga, was a masterly performance; some critic, moved by the grandeur of the lines, said it was not a mere piece of foreshortening, it was "a perspective." Gérôme made a life-size painting of the Cæsar in this picture. It is in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington.

Gérôme painted several other pictures from classic subjects, but none of them had the interest for the general public of those we have described. In 1854 he exhibited a huge canvas, called "The Age of Augustus," a picture suggested, perhaps, by the "Hemicycle" of his master Delaroche, on which he himself had painted. It represented heroes, poets, sages, of the Augustan age, grouped about the cradle of the infant Christ; it procured for Gérôme the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and is now, as the artist himself jestingly says, "the 'greatest' picture in the Museum of Amiens." In the same year Gérôme went to Egypt for the first time; since then he has more than once visited it, but it is doubtful if he could renew the pleasure of his youthful experience. "I set out," he says, "with my friends, I the fifth, all of us lightly furnished with money, but full of youthful enthusiasm. Life was then easy in Egypt; we lived at a very moderate rate; we hired a boat and lived four months upon the Nile, hunting, painting, fishing by turns, from Damietta to Philæ. We returned to Cairo and remained there four months longer in a house in the older part of the town, belonging to Soleman Pasha. As Frenchmen, he treated us with cordial hospitality. Happy period of youth, of freedom from care! Hope and the future opened bright before us; the sky was blue!"

Gérôme's pictures of Eastern life make a gallery by themselves. A few of them are historic, such as his "Cleopatra visiting Cæsar," but the most of them are simply scenes and incidents drawn from the daily life of the modern inhabitants of Cairo and the desert, illustrating their manners and customs. The mere titles would fill up a large part of our space. Many of the best of them are owned in this country, and all have been reproduced by engraving or by photography.

In another field Gérôme won great distinction, painting scenes from the history of France in the reign of Louis XIV.; subjects drawn from what may be called the high comedy of court-life, and treated by Gérôme with remarkable refinement and distinction. Among these pictures the best known are: "Molière Breakfasting with Louis XIV.," illustrating the story of the king's rebuke to his courtiers who affected to despise the man of genius; "Père Joseph," the priest who under the guise of humility and self-abnegation reduces the greatest nobles to the state of lackeys; "Louis XIV. Receiving the Great Condé," and "Collaboration," two poets of Louis XIV.'s time working together over a play. Among his accomplishments as an artist we must not forget the talent that Gérôme has shown as a sculptor. He has modelled several figures from his own pictures, with such admirable skill as to prove that he might easily have made sculpture a profession had he not chosen to devote himself to painting.[Back to Contents]

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI[10]
By Edmund Gosse
(1828-1882)

Those whose privilege it was to meet the late Mr. Gabriel Rossetti, at once in the plenitude of his powers and in the freshness of their own impressions, will not expect to be moved again through life by so magnetic a presence. In his dealings with those much younger than himself, his tact and influence were unequalled; he received a shy but ardent youth with such a noble courtesy, with so much sympathy yet with no condescension, with so grand an air and yet so warm a welcome, that his new acquaintance was enslaved at the first sentence. This seems to me to have been in a certain sense the key-note of the man. He was essentially a point of fire; not a peripatetic in any sense, not a person of wide circumference, but a nucleus of pure imagination that never stirred or shifted, but scintillated in all directions. The function of Gabriel Rossetti, or at least his most obvious function, was to sit in isolation, and to have vaguely glimmering spirits presented to him for complete illumination. He was the most prompt in suggestion, the most regal in giving, the most sympathetic in response, of the men I have known or seen; and this without a single touch of the prophetic manner, the air of such professional seers as Coleridge or Carlyle. What he had to give was not mystical or abstract; it was purely concrete. His mind was full of practical artistic schemes, only a few of which were suited to his own practice in painting or poetry; the rest were at the service of whoever would come in a friendly spirit and take them. I find among his letters to me, which I have just been reading once again, a paper of delightful suggestions about the cover of a book of verse; the next youth who waited upon him would perhaps be a painter, and would find that the great genius and master did not disdain the discussion of picture-frames. This was but the undercurrent of his influence; as we shall see more and more every year as the central decades of this century become history, its main stream directed the two great arts of painting and poetry into new channels, and set a score of diverse talents in motion.

But, as far as anything can be seen plainly about Rossetti at present, to me the fact of his immovability, his self-support, his curious reserve, seems to be the most interesting. He held in all things to the essential and not to the accidental; he preferred the dry grain of musk to a diluted flood of perfume. An Italian by birth and deeply moved by all things Italian, he never visited Italy; a lover of ritual and a sympathizer with all the mysteries of the Roman creed, he never joined the Catholic Church; a poet whose form and substance alike influenced almost all the men of his generation, he was more than forty years of age before he gave his verse to the public; a painter who considered the attitude of the past with more ardor and faith than almost any artist of his time, he never chose to visit the churches or galleries of Europe. It has been said, among the many absurd things which his death has provoked, that he shrank from publicity from timidity, or spurned it from ill-temper. One brilliant journalist has described him as sulking like Hector in his tent. It used to be Achilles who sulked when I was at school; but it certainly never was Gabriel Rossetti. Those who only knew him, after his constitution had passed under the yoke of the drug which killed him, cannot judge of his natural reserve from that artificial and morbid reserve which embittered the last years of his life. The former was not connected with any objection to new faces or dislike of cordial society, but with the indomitable characteristic of the man, which made him give out the treasures of the spirit, and never need to receive them. So far from disliking society, it is my impression that he craved it as a necessity, although he chose to select its constituents and narrow its range.

He was born in 1828. The story of his parentage is well known, and has been told in full detail since his death. He was born in London and christened Gabriel Charles Rossetti; it was not, I am told, until he was of age to appreciate the value of the name that he took upon himself the cognomen which his father had borne, the Dante by which the world, though not his friends, have known him. Living with his father in Charlotte street, with two sisters and a brother no less ardently trained in letters than himself, he seems to have been turned to poetry, as he was afterward sustained in it, by the interior flame. The household has been described to me by one who saw it in 1847: the father, titular professor of Italian literature, but with no professional duties, seated the livelong day, with a shade over his eyes, writing devotional or patriotic poetry in his native tongue; the girls reading Dante aloud with their rich maiden voices; Gabriel buried here in his writing, or darting round the corner of the street to the studio where he painted. From this seclusion he wrote to the friend who has kindly helped me in preparing these notes, and whose memories of the poet extend over a longer period than those of any survivor not related to him.

Mr. W. B. Scott, now so well known in more arts than one, had then but just published his first book, his mystical and transcendental poem of "The Year of the World." This seems to have fallen under Rossetti's notice, for on November 25, 1847, he wrote to the author, a perfect stranger to himself, a letter of warm sympathy and acknowledgment. Mr. Scott was living in Newcastle, and, instead of meeting, the young poets at first made acquaintance with each other by correspondence. Rossetti soon mentioned, of course, his own schemes and ambitions, and he sent, as a sample of his powers, his poems of "The Blessed Damozel," and "My Sister's Sleep," which he had written about eighteen months before.

Mr. Scott tells me that his first feeling on receiving these poems, written in English by an Italian boy of eighteen, was one of amazement. I cannot wonder at it. If the "Blessed Damozel," when it was published a quarter of a century later, seemed a masterpiece to those who had, in the meanwhile, read so much that was vaguely inspired by it, what must it have been in 1846? Certain pieces in Tennyson's "Poems," of 1842, and a few fragments of Browning's "Bells and Pomegranates" were the only English poems which can be supposed to have given it birth, even indirectly. In its interpretation of mystical thoughts by concrete images, in its mediæval fervor and consistence of fancy, in its peculiar metrical facility, it was distinctly new—original as few poems except those by the acknowledged masters of the craft can ever be.

"The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the clear weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together."

This was a strange accent in 1846. Miss Barrett and Mr. Tennyson were then the most accepted poets. Mr. Browning spoke fluently and persistently, but only to a very little circle; Mr. Horne's "Orion" and Mr. Bailey's "Festus" were the recent outcomes of Keats and Goethe; the Spasmodic School, to be presently born of much unwise study of "Festus," was still unknown; Mr. Clough, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Patmore were quite unapparent, taking form and voice in solitude; and here was a new singer, utterly unlike them all, pouring out his first notes with the precision and independence of the new-fledged thrush in the woodland chorus.

In painting, the process was somewhat different. In this art, no less than in poetry, Rossetti understood at once what it was that he wished to do himself, and what he desired to see others doing; but the difficulties of technique were in his way. He had begun to write in childhood, but he had taken up design late in his youth, and he had undergone no discipline in it. At the present day, when every student has to pass a somewhat stringent examination in design, Rossetti, at eighteen, could not have entered the schools of the Royal Academy. He did so, however, yet without ever advancing to the Life School. The soul of art, at this early period, interested him far more than the body, especially such a substance as he found under the presidency of Sir Martin Shee and the keepership of George Jones. Let us not forget, meanwhile, that it is easy to sneer at the incompetence of mannered old artists, and yet hard to over-estimate the value of discipline in a school, however conventional. Rossetti was too impatient to learn to draw, and this he lived to regret. His immediate associates, the young men whom he began to lead and impress, were better draughtsmen than he. His first oil picture, I believe, was a portrait of his father, now in possession of the family. But, as far as can be now made out, he did not begin to paint seriously till about January, 1848, when he persuaded another Royal Academy student, W. Holman Hunt, to take a large room close to the paternal house in Charlotte street, and make it their studio. Here Mr. Scott visited them in the early spring of that year; he describes to me the large pictures they were struggling upon, Hunt, on his "Oath of Rienzi," and Rossetti, on his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin." The latter was evidently at present but poorly equipped; the painting was timid and boyish, pale in tone, and with no hint or promise of that radiant color which afterward became Rossetti's main characteristic. But the feeling was identical with that in his far more accomplished early poems. The very pulse and throb of mediæval adoration pervaded the whole conception of the picture, and Mr. Scott's first impression was that, in this marvellous poet and possible painter, the new Tractarian movement had found its expositor in art. Yet this surely was no such feeble or sentimental echo as had inspired the declared Tractarian poets of eight or nine years earlier; there was nothing here that recalled such a book as the "Cherwell Water Lily" of Father Faber. This contained the genuine fleshly mysticism, bodily presentment of a spiritual idea, and intimate knowledge of mediæval sentiment without which the new religious fervor had no intellectual basis. This strong instinct for the forms of the Catholic religion, combined with no attendance on the rites of that church, fostered by no study of ecclesiastical literature or association with teachers or proselytes, but original to himself and self-supported, was at that time without doubt the feature in Rossetti's intellectual character which demands our closest attention. Nor do I believe that this passion for the physical presentation of a mystical idea was ever entirely supplanted by those other views of life and art which came to occupy his maturer mind. In his latest poems—in "Rose Mary," for instance—I see this first impulse returning upon him with more than its early fascination. In his youth, however, the mysticism was very naïve and straightforward. It was fostered by one of the very few excursions which Rossetti ever took—a tour in Belgium in October, 1849. I am told that he and the painter-friend who accompanied him were so purely devoted to the mediæval aspect of all they saw, that, in walking through the galleries, they turned away their heads in approaching modern pictures, and carefully closed their eyes while they were passing Rubens's "Descent from the Cross." In Belgium, or as the result of his tour there, Rossetti wrote several curious poems, which were so harsh and forced that he omitted them from his collection when he first published his "Poems," in 1870.

The effort in these early pieces is too marked. I remember once hearing Rossetti say that he did not mind what people called him, if only they would not call him "quaint." But the fact was that, if quaintness be defined as the inability to conceal the labor of an art, there is no doubt that both his poems and his designs occasionally deserved this epithet. He was so excessively sincere an artist, so determined not to permit anything like trickiness of effect or meaningless smoothness to conceal the direct statement of an idea, that his lack of initial discipline sometimes made itself felt in a curious angular hardness.

And now it would be necessary, if I were attempting a complete study of Gabriel Rossetti's intellectual career, to diverge into a description of what has so much exercised popular curiosity, the pre-Raphaelite movement of 1848. But there is no reason why, in a few notes on character, I should repeat from hearsay what several of the seven brothers have reported from authoritative memory. It is admitted, by them and by all who have understood the movement, that Gabriel Rossetti was the founder and, in the Shakespearian sense, "begetter" of all that was done by this earnest band of young artists. One of them, Mr. Millais, was already distinguished; two others, Mr. Holman Hunt and Mr. Woolner, had at that time more training and technical power than he; but he was, nevertheless, the brain and soul of the enterprise. What these young men proposed was excellently propounded in the sonnet by "W. M. R.," which they prefixed to their little literary venture, the "Germ," in 1850. Plainly to think even a little thought, to express it in natural words which are native to the speaker, to paint even an insignificant object as it is, and not as the old masters or the new masters have said it should be painted, to persevere in looking at truth and at nature without the smallest prejudice for tradition, this was the whole mystery and cabal of the P. R. B. They called themselves "preraphaelite," because they found in the wings of Lippi's angels, and the columbines of Perugino's gardens that loving and exact study of minute things which gave to them a sense of sincerity, and which they missed in the breadth and ease of later work. They had no ambition to "splash as no one splashed before since great Caldasi Polidore;" but they did wish to draw a flower or a cloud so that it should be a portrait of that cloud or flower. In this ambition it would be curious to know, and I do not think that I have ever heard it stated, how far they were influenced by Mr. Ruskin and his "Modern Painters." I should not expect to find Rossetti influenced by any outside force in this any more than in other instances, but at all events Mr. Ruskin eagerly accepted the brotherhood as practical exponents of the theories he had pronounced. None of them, I think, knew him personally when he wrote the famous letter to the Times in 1851, defending Mr. Millais and Mr. Holman Hunt from the abuse of ignorant critics, who, he said, had failed to perceive the very principles on which these "two young men" were proceeding. Somebody wrote to him to explain that there were "three young men," and Mr. Ruskin wrote a note to Gabriel Rossetti, desiring to see his work, and thus the acquaintance of these two remarkable men commenced.

Meanwhile, although the more vigorous members of the brotherhood had shown no special sympathy for Rossetti's religious mysticism, a feebler artist, himself one of the original seven, had taken it up with embarrassing effusion. This was the late James Collinson, whose principal picture, "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," finished in 1851, produced a sort of crisis in Rossetti's career. This painting out-mystified the mystic himself; it was simply maudlin and hysterical, though drawn with some feeling for grace, and in a very earnest spirit. Rossetti, with his strong good sense, recognized that it would be impossible ever to reach the public with art of this unmanly character, and from this time forth he began to abandon the practice of directly sacred art.

For some little time after abandoning the directly sacred field in painting, Rossetti seems to have passed through a disconsolate and dubious period. I am told that he worked for many months over a large picture called "Kate the Queen," from some well-known words by Browning. He made no progress with this, seemed dissatisfied with his own media, felt the weight of his lack of training, and passed, in short, through one of those downcast moods, which Shakespeare has so marvellously described in "Tired with all these," and which are incident, sooner or later, to every man of genius. While his touch in poetry grew constantly more sure and masterly, his power as a draughtsman threatened to leave him altogether. He was to have drawn one of the frontispieces in the "Germ," but, although he toiled with a design, he could not make it "come right." At last a happy accident put him on the true track, and revealed his proper genius to himself. He began to make small drawings of poetical subjects in water-colors—most of those which I have seen are not more than twenty inches by twelve—over which he labored, and into which he poured his exquisite sense of color, inspired without doubt by the glass of mediæval church windows. He travelled so very little, that I do not know whether he ever saw the treasures of radiant jewel-work which fret the gloom of Chartres or of Bourges; but if he never saw them, he divined them, and these are the only pieces of color which in the least degree suggest the drawings of this, Rossetti's second period. As far as one can gather, his method was, first, to become interpenetrated with the sentiment of some ballad or passage of emotional poetry, then to meditate on the scene till he saw it clearly before him; then—and this seems to have always been the difficult and tedious part—to draw in the design, and then with triumphant ease to fill in the outlines with radiant color. He had an almost insuperable difficulty in keeping his composition within the confines of the paper upon which he worked, and at last was content to have a purely accidental limit to the design, no matter what limbs of the dramatis personæ were sheered away by the frame. It would not be the act of a true friend to Rossetti's memory to pretend that these drawings, of which for the next ten or fifteen years he continued to produce a great number, were without faults of a nature which any coxcomb could perceive, or without eccentricities which an untrained eye might easily mistake for faults; but this does not in the least militate against the fact that in two great departments of the painter's faculty, in imaginative sentiment and in wealth of color, they have never been surpassed. They have rarely, indeed, been equalled in the history of painting. A Rossetti drawing of this class hung with specimens of other art, ancient or modern, simply destroys them. I do not mean that it is better or worse than they are, but that it kills them as the electric light puts out a glow-worm. No other man's color will bear these points of ruby-crimson, these expanses of deep turquoise-blue, these flagrant scarlets and thunderous purples. He paints the sleeve of a trumpeter; it is such an orange as the eye can scarce endure to look at. He paints the tiles of a chimney-corner; they are as green as the peacock's eyes in the sunshine.

The world is seldom ready to receive any new thing. These drawings of Rossetti's were scarcely noticed even by those who are habitually on the watch for fresh developments in art. But when the painter next emerges into something like publicity we find him attended by a brilliant company of younger men, all more or less influenced by his teaching and attracted by his gifts. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been a very ephemeral institution; in three years, or four at the most, it had ceased to exist; but its principles and the energy of its founder had left their mark on the whole world of art. In 1849 Rossetti had exhibited his picture, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," at the Portland Gallery, an exhibition in rivalry of the Royal Academy, which existed but a very short time. As far as I can discover, he did not exhibit again in London until 1856, when he and his friends opened a collection of their pictures at 4 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square. We would rather have seen that little gallery than see most of the show-exhibitions of Europe. In it the fine art of the Anglo-Saxon race was seen dawning again after its long and dark night. Rossetti himself was the principal exhibitor, but his two earliest colleagues, now famous painters, Mr. Millais and Mr. Holman Hunt, also contributed. And here were all the new talents whom Rossetti had attracted around him during the last seven years: Mr. Madox Brown, with his fine genius for history; Mr. J. D. Watson, with his strong mediæval affinities; Mr. Boyce, with his delicate portraiture of rustic scenes; Mr. Brett, the finest of our students of the sea; Mr. W. B. Scott himself; besides one or two others, Mr. Charles Collins, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Halliday, Mr. Martineau, whom death or adverse fortune removed before they had quite fulfilled their promise. Gabriel Rossetti contributed to this interesting and historic exhibition five or six of those marvellous drawings of which mention has just been made. "Dante's Dream," the famous vision of June 9, 1290, with its counterpart, "The Anniversary of the Dream," in 1291, were the most prominent of these. A "Mary Magdalene" was perhaps the most moving and exciting. This extremely original design showed the Magdalene pursued by her lovers, but turning away from them all to seek Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The architecture in this drawing was almost childish; the wall of Simon's house is not three inches thick, and there is not room for a grown-up person on the stairs that lead to it; but the tender imagination of the whole, the sweet persuasiveness of Christ, who looks out of a window, the passion of the awakened sinner, who tears the roses out of her hair, the curious novelty of treatment in the heads and draperies, all these combine to make it one of those works, the moral force and directness of which appeal to the heart at once. Perhaps the most brilliant piece of color at the Russell Place Gallery may have been Rossetti's "Blue Closet," a picture which either illustrated or, as I should rather suppose, suggested Mr. Morris's wonderful poem published two years later.

The same year that displayed him to the public already surrounded by a brilliant phalanx of painter-friends, discovered him also, to the judicious, as a centre of poetic light and heat. The circumstances connected with Rossetti's visit to Oxford a little earlier than this are too recent, are fresh in the memories of too many living persons of distinction, to be discussed with propriety by one who was not present. But certain facts are public, and may be mentioned. The Oxford Union still shows around the interior of its cupola strange, shadowy frescoes, melting into nothingness, which are the work of six men, of whom Rossetti was the leader. These youths had enjoyed no practical training in that particularly artificial branch of art, mural painting, and yet it seems strange that Rossetti himself, at least, should not have understood that a vehicle, such as yolk of egg mixed with vinegar, was absolutely necessary to tempera, or that it was proper, in fresco-painting, to prepare the walls, and paint in the fresh wet mortar. They used no vehicle, they fixed their colors in no coat of plaster, but they threw their ineffectual dry paint on the naked brick. The result has been that their interesting boyish efforts are now decayed beyond any chance of restoration. It is impossible, however, to ascend the gallery of the Oxford Union and examine the ghostly frescoes that are fading there, without great interest and even emotion. Of the young men who painted there under Gabriel Rossetti's eye, all have become greatly distinguished. Mr. Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Spencer Stanhope were undergraduates at Oxford. Mr. Valentine Prinsep and Mr. Arthur Hughes, I believe, were Royal Academy students who were invited down by Rossetti. Their work was naïve and queer to the last degree. It is perhaps not fair to say which one of them found so much difficulty in painting the legs of his figures that he drew an impenetrable covert of sunflowers right across his picture, and only showed the faces of his heroes and heroines between the golden disks.

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which also dates from the year 1856, is a still more notable expression of budding genius than the dome of the Oxford Union. It was edited by Mr. Godfrey Lushington, all its articles were anonymous, and it contrived to exist through twelve consecutive monthly numbers. A complete set is now rare, and the periodical itself is much less known than befits such a receptacle of pure literature. It contains three or four of Rossetti's finest poems; a great many of those extraordinary pieces, steeped in mediæval coloring, which Mr. William Morris was to collect in 1858 into his bewitching volume, called "The Defence of Guenevere;" several delightful prose stories of life in the Middle Ages, also by Mr. Morris, which, like certain prose romances by Mr. Burne-Jones, have never been publicly claimed or reprinted by their author; and not a little else that was as new as it was notable. A little later Mr. William Morris's first book was dedicated "To my Friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Painter," and in 1860 Mr. Swinburne followed with a like inscription of his first-fruits, his tragic drama of "The Queen-Mother." Thus in the course of a little more than ten years, Rossetti had become the centre and sun of a galaxy of talent in poetry and painting, more brilliant perhaps than any which has ever acknowledged the beneficent sway of any one Englishman of genius.

But all this while the world outside knew nothing of the matter. One by one the younger men stepped forward on the public stage and secured the plaudits of the discerning, and ascended the slow incline of general reputation. But Rossetti remained obstinately recluse, far preferring to be the priest and confessor of genius to acting himself a public part. To this determination several outward things engaged him still further. He married quite early in life; and his wife, who was herself an artist of rare, if somewhat wild and untrained talent, bore him a son who died at birth, and then shortly after died herself. During his brief married months Rossetti had collected the MSS. of his poems, and thought to publish them; but when he lost his wife, in a paroxysm of grief he placed the sheets of his poems in her coffin, and would hear no more a suggestion of publication. In 1861 he presented the world with a very learned and beautiful anthology of early Italian poetry, and proposed as early as that year to print his original poems. It was his scheme to name the little volume "Dante in Verona, and other Poems;" but it came to nothing. About 1867 the scheme of publication again took possession of him. I have been told that a sudden sentiment of middle age, the fact that he found himself in his fortieth year, led him to conquer his scruples, and finally arrange his pieces. But he was singularly fastidious; the arrangement would never please him; the cover must be cut in brass, the paper at the sides must bear a special design. These niceties were rarer twelve years ago than they are now, and the printers fatigued him with their persistent obstinacy. It was not till early in 1870 that the "Poems" in stately form first appeared, and were hailed with a shout of admiration which was practically universal.

It was about Christmas in that same year, 1870, that he who writes these lines was first presented to Gabriel Rossetti. The impression on my mental eye is as fresh as if it had been made yesterday, instead of twelve years ago. He was a man of average height, commonly loosely clad in black, so as to give one something of the notion of an abbé; the head very full, and domed like that of Shakespeare, as it was then usual to say—to my thinking more like that of Chaucer—in any case a head surcharged with imagination and power, strongly Italian in color and cast. The eyes were exceedingly deep set, in cavernous sockets; they were large, and black, and full of a restless brilliance, a piercing quality which consoled the shy novice by not being stationary. Lastly, a voice of bell-like tone and sonority, a voice capable of expressing without effort every shade of emotion from rage and terror to the most sublime tenderness. I have never heard a voice so fitted for poetical effect, so purely imaginative, and yet, in its absence of rhetoric, so clear and various, as that of Gabriel Rossetti. I retain one special memory of his reading in his own studio the unfinished MS. of "Rose Mary," in 1873, which surpassed in this direction any pleasure which it has been my lot to enjoy; and on various occasions I have listened to his reading of sonnets, his own and those of others, with a sense that his intonation revealed a beauty in the form of that species of verse which it had never been seen to possess before. I have already spoken of his wonderful courtliness to a new acquaintance, his bewitching air of sympathy; on a closer intimacy this stately manner would break up into wild fits of mirth, and any sketch of Rossetti would be incomplete that did not describe his loud and infectious laughter. He lived very much apart from the every-day life of mankind, not ostentatiously, but from a genuine lack of interest in passing events. An old friend tells me that during the French Revolution he burst into Rossetti's studio with the incredible news, "Louis-Philippe has landed in England!" "Has he?" said Rossetti, calmly. "What has he come for?" That certain political events, in which he saw a great symbolic significance, could move him deeply, is easily proved by such sonnets as the noble "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations," and "Czar Alexander II." But such glances out of window into the living street were rare, and formed no characteristic part of his scheme of life.

As a poet in these great years he possessed rare gifts of passionate utterance, and harmony of vision and expression. Mr. Swinburne has characterized these qualities in words which leave no later commentator the chance of distinguishing himself. But it would be totally unjust, even in so cursory and personal a sketch as this, to allow the impression to go undisputed that Rossetti preferred the external form to the inward substance of poetry. This charge was brought against him, as it has always been brought against earnest students of poetic art. I will rather quote a few words from a letter of Rossetti to me, written in 1873, when he was composing his own magnum opus of "Rose Mary." I have always felt them to be very salutary, none the less because it is obvious that the writer did not at all times contrive, or perhaps desire, to make them true in his own work:

"It seems to me that all poetry, to be really enduring, is bound to be as amusing (however trivial the word may sound) as any other class of literature; and I do not think that enough amusement to keep it alive can ever be got out of incidents not amounting to events, or out of travelling experiences of an ordinary kind however agreeably, observantly, or even thoughtfully treated. I would eschew in writing all themes that are not so trenchantly individualized as to leave no margin for discursiveness."

During the last eight years of his life, Rossetti's whole being was clouded by the terrible curse of an excitable temperament—sleeplessness. To overcome this enemy, which interfered with his powers of work and concentration of thought, he accepted the treacherous aid of the new drug, chloral, which was then vaunted as perfectly harmless in its effect upon the health. The doses of chloral became more and more necessary to him, and I am told that at last they became so frequent and excessive that no case has been recorded in the annals of medicine in which one patient has taken so much, or even half so much, chloral as Rossetti took. Under this unwholesome drug his constitution, originally a magnificent one, slipped unconsciously into decay, the more stealthily that the poison seemed to have no effect whatever on the powers of the victim's intellect. He painted until physical force failed him; he wrote brilliantly to the very last, and two sonnets dictated by him on his death-bed are described to me as being entirely worthy of his mature powers. There is something almost melancholy in such a proof of the superior vitality of the brain. If the mind had shared the weakness of the body, the insidious enemy might perhaps have been routed in time to secure the elastic rebound of both. But when the chloral was stoutly met at last, it was too late.

So at the age of fifty-four we have lost a man whom we should have retained, in the nature of things, for twenty years longer in the plentitude of his powers, but for a mistake in hygiene—a medical experiment. His work of inspiring the young, of projecting his fiery originality along the veins of others, was perhaps completed; it is doubtful whether this can ever be continued with advantage through more than two generations. The prophet is apt at last to become a tyrant, and from this ill apotheosis Rossetti was spared. But there was no reason why he should not, for at least a score of years, have produced noble pictures and have written gorgeous poems, emphasizing a personal success which he would have extended, though he hardly could have raised it. Yet he was always a melancholy man; of late years he had become almost a solitary man. Like Charles of Austria, he had disbanded his body-guard, and had retired to the cloister. Perhaps a longer life would not have brought much enjoyment with it. But these are idle speculations, and we have rather to call to our remembrance the fact that one of the brightest and most distinguished of our race, a man whose very existence was a protest against narrowness of aim and feebleness of purpose, one of the great torch-bearers in the procession of English art, has been called from us in the prime of life, before the full significance of his genius had been properly felt. He was the contemporary of some mighty names older than his, yet there scarcely was to be found among them all a spirit more thoroughly original; and surely, when the paltry conflicts of passing taste are laid to rest forever, it will be found that this man has written his signature indelibly on one of the principal pages of the register of our intellectual history.[Back to Contents]

GUSTAVE DORÉ[11]
By Kenyon Cox
(1832-1883)

It is now eleven years since Gustave Doré died. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor, had attained considerable wealth, and was probably more widely known than any other artist of his day. His name was a household word in two continents. Yet he died a disappointed and embittered man, and is proclaimed by his friends as a neglected and misunderstood genius. He was known the world over as the most astonishingly prolific illustrator of books that has ever lived; he wished to be known in France as a great painter and a great sculptor, and because the artists and critics of France never seriously recognized his claims to this glory, he seems to have become a victim of the mania of persecution, and his naturally sunny nature was over-clouded with moroseness and suspicion. Hailed by some as the emulator and equal of the great names of the Italian Renaissance, and considered a great moral force—a "preacher painter"—by others he has been denounced as "designer in chief to the devil," and described as a man wallowing in all foulness and horror, a sort of demon of frightful power. Both these extreme judgments are English. The late Blanchard Jerrold, an intimate friend and collaborator of the artist, takes the first view. Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Hamerton have taken the second. Doré's own countrymen have never accepted either. Just where, between them, the truth lies, as we see it, we shall endeavor to show in this article.

The main facts of Doré's life may be dismissed very briefly. He was born with a caul on January 6, 1832, in the Rue Bleue at Strasbourg, near the Cathedral. About 1841 his father removed to Bourg, in the Department of Ain, where he was chief government engineer of the department. These two residences of the young artist are supposed to account for the mastery of Gothic architecture and of mountain scenery which his admirers find in his mature work. He showed very early in life a passion for drawing, and, as a small child, had always a pencil in his hand, which he begged to have "sharpened at both ends," that he might work longer without interruption. His father intended him for an engineer, but he was determined from the first to be an artist. He was of a gay and jovial disposition, given to pranks and practical jokes, and of an athletic temperament. Théophile Gautier afterward called him a "gamin de génie." In 1847, when he was fifteen years old, being in Paris with his parents, he called upon Phillippon, the publisher, and showed him some of his sketches. M. Phillippon looked at them, and sent a letter to Doré's parents, persuading them to allow the boy to remain in Paris, and promising them to begin using his work at once and to pay for it. Thus, without any study of art whatever, he began his career, and in a few years had produced a prodigious quantity of work, and was a celebrated man before he was twenty. No one knows how many drawings he made. He "lived like an Arab," worked early and late, and with astonishing rapidity made thousands of drawings for the comic papers, besides early beginning the publication of independent books. One estimate, which Mr. Jerrold thinks excessive, credits him with having published forty thousand drawings before he was forty! Mr. Jerrold himself reckons two hundred and sixty-six drawings done in one year. His "Labors of Hercules" was brought out in 1848, when he was sixteen, and before he was twenty-seven he had published his "Holy Russia," his "Wandering Jew," his illustrations to Balzac's "Contes Drôlatiques," to Rabelais, and many other authors. His best work was done at an age when most artists are painfully acquiring the rudiments of their art. We all know the books that followed.

Meanwhile he was determined to be known as a great painter, and, while flooding the market with his countless illustrations, was working at great canvases of Biblical subjects, which, though the French would not accept them, were hugely admired in the Doré Gallery of London. Later he tried sculpture also, and his last work was a monument to Alexandre Dumas, which he made at his own expense, and presented to the city of Paris. He died in the beginning of the year 1883, worn out with excessive production—a great name, but an unsatisfied man.

Mr. Jerrold has divided his book into two parts, dealing first with Doré the illustrator, and then with Doré the painter and sculptor. It is an eminently natural arrangement, and, in our effort to arrive at Doré's true position in art, we cannot do better than to follow it.

Doré's earliest work was frankly that of a caricaturist. He had a quick eye, no training, and a certain extravagant imagination, and caricature was his inevitable field. He was, however, as Mr. Jerrold himself remarks, "a caricaturist who seldom raises a laugh." Not hearty fun, still less delicate humor, was his. In the higher qualities of caricature his contemporaries, Daumier and Gavarni, were vastly his superiors. An exuberance of grotesque fancy and a recklessness of exaggeration were his dominant notes. His earlier work, up to and including the Rabelais, is not really funny—to many minds it is even painful—but it is unmistakably caricature of a dashing, savage sort. To our mind it remains his best work, and that by which he is most likely to live. At least it is the work that formed him and fixed his characteristics, and an understanding of it is essential to any judgment of him. The qualities and the defects of his later work—that which is most praised and most blamed in his production—are inherent in the work of this period, and are best explained by a reference to the latter.

Take, for instance, what has been denounced as his love of horrors and of foulness, his delight in blood and massacre. He is scored for this as if he were one of that modern French school, beginning, perhaps, with Regnault, who have revelled in the realistic presentation of executions and battles, and have sought to effect by sheer sensationalism what they could not by gentler means. It is surprising that his critics have not seen that Doré's battles are always, even to the end, the battles of a caricaturist. His decapitated trunks, cloven heads, smoking hearts, arms still fighting though severed from their bodies, are simply a debauch of grim humor. There is never the slightest attempt to realize carnage—only to convey, by the caricaturist's exaggeration, an idea of colossally impossible bloodthirstiness. One may not enjoy this kind of fun, but to take it seriously, as the emanation of a gloomy and diabolic genius, is absurd.

The same test is equally destructive of much of the praise Doré has received. He is constantly spoken of, even by severe critics of his painting, as a great illustrator who identified himself with the minds of one great writer after another. But Doré identified himself with no one; he was always Doré. Even in these early drawings he cannot keep to the spirit of the text, though the subjects suited him much better than many he tried later. There is a great deal of broad gayety and "Gallic wit" in the "Contes Drôlatiques," but it was not broad enough for Doré, and he has converted its most human characters into impossible grotesques.

Another thing for which Doré is praised is his wonderful memory. Mr. Jerrold repeats more than once Doré's phrase, "I have lots of collodion in my head," and recounts how he could scarcely be induced to make sketches from nature, but relied upon his memory. He also speaks of Doré's system of dividing and subdividing a subject, and noting the details in their places, so that he could reproduce the whole afterward. This question of work from memory is one of the most vital for an understanding of Doré, and one of general interest in all matters of art, and is worth attention. Of course, a man who made hundreds of drawings every year could not work much from nature, and came to rely upon his memory. But what is the nature of artistic memory, and how does it perform its task? We think the truth is, that the artist who habitually works from memory, fills in his details, not from memory of the object, but from memory of the way he has formerly drawn similar objects. He reverts to a series of formulæ that he has gradually accumulated. This man must have a cloak. This is the way a cloak is done. A hand? Nothing can be easier; the hand formula is ready. The stock in trade of the professional illustrator and caricaturist is made up of a thousand such formulæ—methods of expression that convey the idea readily enough to the spectator, but have little relation to fact. So it is that Doré never learned, in the true sense, to draw. He had made for himself a sort of artistic shorthand, which enabled him to convey his superabundant ideas quickly and certainly to his public, but his drawing is what is called mannered in the extreme. It is not representation of nature at all, but pure formula and chic. He is said to be a master of drapery, but he never drew a single fold correctly. He is said to show great knowledge of Gothic architecture, but he never drew well a single column or finial. In his later years he studied anatomy with great perseverance, and advocated the necessity of dissection, saying, "Il faut fourrer la main dedans" (You must stick your hand in it); but the manner was formed, and he never drew a leg with a bone in it.

With this equipment he illustrated Don Quixote, Dante, the Bible. Is it strange that he shows no sympathy with the grand simplicity of Dante, or the subtle humor of Cervantes, and that we can only be thankful that he never completed his projected illustrations to Shakespeare? Doré, the illustrator, was fecund beyond precedent, possessed a certain strange drollery, had a wonderful flow of ideas, but was superficial, theatrical, and mannered, and as far from expressing real horror as from expressing real fun. What shall we say of Doré the painter and sculptor?

Mr. Jerrold reports a discussion between Doré and Théophile Gautier, in which the roles of artist and man of letters are strangely reversed. "Gautier and Doré," he says, "disagreed fundamentally on the aims and methods of art. Gautier loved correctness, perfect form—the technique, in short, of art; whereas Doré contended that art which said nothing, which conveyed no idea, albeit perfect in form and color, missed the highest quality and raison d'être of art." What is plain from this is, that Gautier was an artist and cared first of all for art, while Doré was never an artist, properly speaking, at all, and never understood the artist's passion for perfection. To Doré, what was necessary was to express himself anyhow—who cared if the style was defective, the drawing bad, the color crude? The idea was the thing. His admirers can defend him only on this ground, and they adopt of necessity the Philistine point of view. The artists of Doré's time and country were very clear in their opinion. "The painters," says Mr. Jerrold, "said he could not paint."

The sculptors admitted that he had ideas in his groups, but he was not sculpturesque. His friends protest against this judgment, and attribute it, ad nauseam, to "malevolence" and "envy." What if his technique was less brilliant than that of Hals, they say; what if his shadows are less transparent than those of Rembrandt (and they will make no meaner comparison)? He is "teeming with noble thoughts," and these will put his work "on a level with the masterpieces of the Italian masters of the sixteenth century." It is the conception, the creation—not the perfect painting of legs and arms and heads, the harmonious grouping, the happy and delicate combination of color—by which the observer is held spell bound. All these qualities, which his admirers grudgingly admit that Doré had not, are classed as "mere dexterity," and are not considered worth a second thought.

This is the true literary gospel of art, but it is one that no artist, and no critic who has any true feeling of art, has ever accepted or will ever accept. Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, may enhance the value of a work of art, provided it is first of all a piece of beautiful art in itself, but they have never preserved, and never will preserve from oblivion bad painting or bad sculpture. The style is the artist, if not the man; and of the two, beautiful painting with no idea at all (granting, for the sake of argument, that it exists), will ever be infinitely more valuable to the world than the lame expression of the noblest thoughts. What may be the real value of Doré's thoughts is therefore a question with which we have no concern. As painter and sculptor, his lack of education and his great technical imperfections—his bad drawing, false light and shade, and crude color—relegate him forever to a rank far below mediocrity. Such reputation as he has is the result of the admiration of those altogether ignorant of art, but possessed of enough literary ability to trumpet abroad their praises of "great conceptions," and will as surely fade away to nothing as the reputation of such simple painters as Van Der Meer or Chardin will continue to grow, while painting as an art is loved and understood.[Back to Contents]