ART ITEMS.
Among our exchanges is a little periodical entitled 'The New Path, published by the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art.' The members of this Society are otherwise known as 'Pre-Raphaelites,' in other words, as seekers of the Ancient Path, trodden before certain mannerisms had corrupted the minds of many painters and most technical connoisseurs. Their aims and principles are, so far as they go, pure and lofty. Truth in Art is a noble thing. But can these gentlemen find none outside of their own society? The face of nature is very dear to us, and during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiæ may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that while each weed tells its own story, the distant mountains, the atmosphere, the whole picture, in short, may fail to tell us theirs in any interesting or even intelligible manner? In excess of surface details, may we not lose body, roundness; and, in matching exact color rather than the effect of color through the tremulous ether, may not the subtle mysteries of distance, of actually diffused and all-suffusing light, escape the painter? It is possible to possess the body and fail to grasp the life. Give us not blotchy nondescripts for natural objects, fling to the winds all narrow, school-made, conventional ideas, but, in giving us the real, give us the ideal also; otherwise we freeze, missing the spirit which should warm and shine through the letter.
We fear lest in his zeal for truth, many a Pre-Raphaelite may be led to overlook beauty. To a finite mind the two words are by no means synonymous. There can be no real beauty without truth, but many truths are not beautiful, and beauty, no less than truth, is an important ingredient in that complex resultant, Art.
We quote from one of the articles of organization of the above-named Society: 'The right course for young artists is faithful and loving representations of Nature, selecting nothing and rejecting nothing, seeking only to express the greatest possible amount of fact.' Now we all know that the best way to stultify the mind and conception of a youthful student, in any branch of art, is to keep before him commonplace models. Indeed, what student gifted with genius, or even with any high degree of talent, will not (if unrestrained) himself select as studies, not any mere chronicle of desired facts, but the most significant forms (suited to his proficiency) in which he can find those facts embodied?
The article quoted must be based upon the belief that there are no commonplace, ugly objects in nature. If we sit down and reason over, or use our microscopes upon any work of the Almighty, we can find wisdom and beauty therein, but that does not alter the fact that beauty and significance are distributed in degrees of more and less. 'Art is long and time is fleeting,' and the genuine artist has no hours to waste over the less significant and characteristic. Besides, each student deserving the name, has his own individuality, and will naturally select, and the more lovingly paint, objects in accordance with his especial bent of mind. Not that we would have him become one-sided, and neglect the study of matters that might some day be useful; but in this, as in all things else, he must temper feeling with judgment, and make the mechanical execution the simple, faithful handmaiden to truly imaginative conception.
In the moral world we may cheerfully accept physical deformity for the sake of some elevated principle therewith developed; but in the realm of art, man's only sphere of creation, we want the best the artist can give us, the greatest truth with the highest beauty. We are not willing to take the truth without the beauty. If we are to be told that sunlight tipping the edges of trees produces certain effects upon those edges and the shadowed foliage behind, let the fact be worthily represented, and not so prosily set forth that the picture shall be to us simply a matter of curiosity. That those trees did actually stand and grow thus, is small comfort, for the artist might surely have found other and more interesting forms telling the same tale. If light falling through loose foliage does indeed make upon the garments of a lad lying beneath spots at a little distance wonderfully like mildew, then rather let the boy sit for us under a tree of denser foliage, where a pathetic subject will not risk an unintentionally comic treatment. If a stone-breaker's face corrupts in purple spots at a certain period after death, we would prefer him painted before corruption, and consequently hideousness, had begun. If women will wear gowns ugly in color and form, and will sit or stand in graceless positions, we can readily avoid such subjects, and bestow our careful finish upon more worthy models.
Let us not be misunderstood; we well know that the humorous, the grotesque, the sublime may use ugliness to serve their own legitimate purposes, but then that ugliness must be humorous, grotesque, or sublime, and not flat, prosy, or revolting. A blemish is by no means necessarily an ugliness. A leaf nibbled by insects and consequently discolored, a lad with ragged jacket and soiled trowsers, a peasant girl with bent hat and tattered gown, are often more picturesque objects than the perfect leaf or the well-attired child.
Speaking of a certain artist, The New Path says: 'He follows nature as long as she is graceful and does not offend his eye, but once let her make what strikes him as a discord, and which is a discord, of course, for she, the great poet, makes no music without discords—and, straightway, Mr. —— takes out the offending note, smooths it down, and thinks he has bettered nature's work.' Now, in music there are no discords; so soon as a discord is admitted, the sounds cease to be music;—there are dissonances, peculiar and unusual combinations of air vibrations, but these are never long dwelt on, and must always be resolved into the full and satisfactory harmony, of which the beauty is enhanced by the momentary lapse into strangeness. Dissonance is never the prevailing idea, and above all, never the final, closing one; it must always bear a certain relation to the key in which it is used, and the musical composition must be ended by the fullest and most satisfactory chord, or suggestion of a chord, found in that key.
The majority of the Pre-Raphaelite school are willing to admit that 'there is but one Turner, and Ruskin is his prophet.' Let us then hear one of the views which the eloquent oracle has advanced in connection with this subject. After advising the non-imaginative painter to remain in the region of the purely topographical or historical landscape, he continues; 'But, beyond this, let him note that though historical topography forbids alteration (did Turner heed this precept?), it neither forbids sentiment nor choice. So far from doing this, the proper choice of subject is an absolute duty to the topographical painter: he should first take care that it is a subject intensely pleasing to himself, else he will never paint it well; and then also, that it shall be one in some sort pleasurable to the general public, else it is not worth painting at all; and lastly, take care that it be instructive, as well as pleasurable to the public, else it is not worth painting with care. I should particularly insist at present on this careful choice of subject, because the Pre-Raphaelites, taken as a body, have been culpably negligent in this respect, not in humble honor of Nature, but in morbid indulgence of their own impressions. They happen to find their fancies caught by a bit of an oak hedge, or the weeds at the sides of a duck pond, because, perhaps, they remind them of a stanza of Tennyson; and forthwith they sit down to sacrifice the most consummate skill, two or three months of the best summer time available for outdoor work (equivalent to some seventieth or sixtieth of all their lives), and nearly all their credit with the public, to this duck-pond delineation. Now it is indeed quite right that they should see much to be loved in the hedge, nor less in the ditch; but it is utterly and inexcusably wrong that they should neglect the nobler scenery, which is full of majestic interest, or enchanted by historical association; so that, as things go at present, we have all the commonalty, that may be seen whenever we choose, painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we cannot see but at rare intervals, painted vilely: the castles of the Rhine and Rhone made vignettes of for the annuals; and the nettles and mushrooms, which were prepared by nature eminently for nettle porridge and fish sauce, immortalized by art as reverently as if we were Egyptians, and they deities.'
Want of space forbids further extracts, but we recommend the entire chapter: Of Turnerian Topography, Modern Painters, vol. iv., to the perusal of our readers.
We are glad to see the national mind beginning to effervesce on art subjects. The most opposite views, the new and the old, the conventional and the truly imaginative, the severely real and the more latitudinarian, the earnest and the flippant, the pedantic and the broad, far reaching—will continue to clash for a season, while a school of American Landscape is, we think, destined to rise steadily through the chaotic elements, and to reach a height of excellence to which the conscientious efforts of all advocates of the highest Truth in Art will have greatly contributed.
We are indebted to Mr. Cropsey for a pleasant opportunity to visit his studio (No. 625 Broadway), and see such pictures and sketches as he now has by him, the results of a long residence abroad and of his summer work among the hills of Sussex, N. J. A view of Korfe Castle, Dorsetshire, England, is a highly-finished and evidently accurate representation of that interesting spot. We are presumed to be standing amid the ferns, flowers, and vines of the foreground, and looking off toward the castle-crowned hill, the village at its foot, and the far-away downs, with a silver stream winding into the distance. A rainbow quivers among the retreating clouds to the right, and from the left comes the last brilliant light of day, gilding the greenery of the hills, and throwing out the deepened hues of the long shadows. There are also pleasant views of other English scenery, of Italian landscape, and of American lakes and streams. Mr. Cropsey has a high reputation both at home and abroad, and we are glad to learn that for the present, at least, he intends to pursue his art labors within the limits of his native land.
Beethoven's Fidelio.—This noble opera has lately been given us by Mr. Anschütz, with the best use of such means as were at his disposal. The orchestral, choral, and concerted vocal portions are grand and beautiful, highly characteristic and effective. The story is simple, pure, and deeply pathetic. The prison scene affords scope for the finest histrionic abilities. In the solos, however (with the exception of that of Pizarro, where dramatic power satisfies), we miss the lyric genius of the Italians, their long-phrased, passionate, and never-to-be-forgotten melodies, containing the element of beauty per se so richly developed. Cannot the whole world produce one man, who, with all the expanded musical knowledge of the present day, can unite for us Italian gift of melody and German power of orchestral and choral effect, whose endowments shall be both lyric and dramatic, and whose taste shall be pure, refined, and ennobling? Should we recognize such a genius were he actually to stand in our midst, or would both schools reject him because he chanced to possess the best qualities of either?
L. D. P.