The work of Francis D. Millet has attracted wide attention and is also full of promise and inspiration. Millet has the American versatility—he has been a war-correspondent, an illustrator, has written travels, criticism, and even fiction, has acted as an expert on old pictures, raised carnations, and even, in time of need, performed surgical operations on wounded soldiers—all of it, not as an amateur, but as a professional asking no odds of anyone. In addition to which, he has been a painter, and a painter whose work has shown no sign of haste or distraction. The quiet, human side of English life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is what has most appealed to him, the country parlors and white-washed kitchens, peopled with travellers and buxom serving-maids, and these groups are unusually attractive and well executed.
Allied with Millet in taste and viewpoint, and with a much wider popularity, is Edwin A. Abbey. Beginning his career as an illustrator, he soon reached the front rank in that profession, especially with his illustrations of classic English poems, into whose spirit he has entered so completely that he might better be called their interpreter than their illustrator. From pen-and-ink work, he progressed naturally to oil, and here, too, he has achieved some notable triumphs—so notable, indeed, that, though American, he was chosen by the English government to paint the official picture of the coronation of King Edward VII. It is a curious coincidence that the official picture of the coronation of Queen Victoria was also painted by an American, C. R. Leslie.
More important than Abbey, and perhaps the greatest American artist alive to-day is John Singer Sargent, whose nationality has occasioned no little controversy. Born in Florence of American parents, receiving his artistic training in Paris, residing since in England, though with much travelling through Europe and only two or three trips to the land of his allegiance, he may still be held an American, if descent counts for anything. His paintings have been shown wherever pictures are to be seen and he has received for them all honors that a painter can receive.
Before the freedom and certainty of Sargent's art criticism stands abashed. His portraits have a wonderful effect of vitality, and a purity and brilliancy of color which have never been surpassed; but most noteworthy of all, he achieves the supreme triumph of the portrait painter by comprehending and displaying character. He shows the very soul of his sitter, without malice but also without mercy. Only towards children does he show tenderness, and then he paints with a wonderful and varied charm. Not only of people but of places does he give the character—a room takes on personality; silks, velvets, furniture, bric-à-brac are all eloquent. On the whole, his qualities are such that he may rightly be considered the greatest portrait painter since Reynolds and Gainsborough. The portrait of Edwin Booth, at the beginning of the chapter dealing with the stage, is an excellent specimen of his work.
Sargent's portraits have placed him among the masters of all time, but perhaps he is most widely known by his remarkable decorations in the Boston Public Library, which in the original and in photographic reproductions, have given the keenest delight to thousands and thousands of persons. It is impossible to give any detailed description here of these masterpieces of decorative art, so perfect technically that they might almost serve as a canon to decorative painters.
American painting may be said to have reached its culmination in Sargent, yet there are two other painters, who, if they fall below him in sheer genius, possess a charm and originality all their own. One of these is George de Forest Brush, who, somewhat after the fashion of Holbein, looks for a beauty of spirit independent of form or feature. He paints mothers and children not as young goddesses rollicking with cherubs, but as grave and tender women, who have sacrificed without regret something of their health and youthful freshness to the children they hold in their arms. In such groups there is a note of penetrating peace, a delicate distinction, which give Brush a position by himself.
The other is John W. Alexander, whose work is interesting as introducing a certain new element into art—a concentration of energy on the originality of the first general effect, including nothing that does not interest, and yet giving the effect of completeness. In Alexander's portraits there is nothing to distract the interest from the personality of the sitter, and he usually achieves a delineation of character direct and truthful.
Here this short review of the great personalities of American art must end. There are many other painters alive to-day whose work is full of promise, and who may yet achieve great places in the world's Pantheon. Indeed, it would almost seem that a renascence of American art is at hand. The country has emerged from the crudities of its first years, and from the mediocre conventionality of its middle period, without having lost the freshness and enthusiasm conducive to high achievement. Its face is toward the sunrise.