Fuller’s life was a romance of more than usual human import, characterized by a singular unity of purpose. He is not to be considered, on the one hand as a man, and on the other as an artist, with qualities, as is not unusual, respectively dissimilar and conflicting. His art was of himself, truly an ingredient, nourished, disciplined, chastened, always sweetly wholesome, modest and noble, like his life. He lived the latter well, and in this high ideal of manhood realized the ideal of his art.
VIII
HOMER D. MARTIN
HOMER D. MARTIN has been called the first of American impressionists—doubtless not with reference to his manner of painting, but to the way in which he formulated his conception of the landscape. He was not concerned so much with its obvious phenomena as with the impression that it aroused in his own imagination.
The distinction is a very general one. Everywhere there are those to whom the obvious appeals with undisturbed frankness; they have an instinct for facts, and for confronting them singly and directly; always, too, there are others to whom the facts are but a basis of suggestion. A lamppost on the sidewalk implies another one beyond, still others farther on, and on and on; and, by inference, the endless footsteps in both directions, passing and repassing.
Martin’s earliest study, as a young man at Albany, was with William Hart, a literalist of very engaging qualities. Hart was faithful to the forms of nature, as every true landscapist is, and dwelt upon the details of the scene with a lingering appreciation that did not, however, prevent him from coördinating them into a very charming ensemble. But his joy in the latter was of the obvious kind, such as any intelligent lover of the country shares; a joy in the pleasantness of generous pastures, dotted with cattle, and pervaded with a quiet prosperity; in the smiling sunshine and grateful shade, in cosey woodland retreats, that a man might seek in order to bury himself in the attractions of a book. Always it was the domestic happiness of the country side that won him, much, indeed, as it won Daubigny; for such choice of subject is not a consequence of a painter’s particular way of painting, but of his temperament. The much or little of suggestion that he receives from the landscape, the quality of personal feeling that he puts into his pictures, depend upon his character as a man; and the loyalty with which he follows his own true bias determines very largely the value of his work. Certainly this is a truism, and yet how often it is ignored; painters and amateurs establishing, each for himself, some particular basis of appreciation.
For example, to look for poetic quality in a landscape picture has become with many an axiom of standard, and they find its expression chiefly in the manner of tone. So they have no eyes for one of Monet’s naturalistic studies; its subtle fidelity to a phase of nature does not interest them. He has found the truth of nature to be enough for his own enjoyment, and as he has striven to make nature speak direct through his picture without any promptings to sentiment on his own part, they miss the suggestion of some special sentiment such as another painter will enforce, and find Monet unintelligible; much the same, presumably, as nature itself would be to them a sealed book. The text to them is unsuggestive; they need a commentator. And how scarce good commentators are! The vogue of poetic landscape has called into activity many whose sentiment is merest sentimentality; minor poets of the brush with a pretty knack of tone and tenderness that passes for poeticalness. It is necessary to clear the air of any such mild pretence of poetry before venturing to speak of Homer Martin as essentially the most poetic of all American landscape painters.
It has been said that there is a Homeric quality in his landscapes. Clearly this is no attempt to place him in relation to other painters, as we regard Homer among other poets; but is a reference to the big significance of his work, to those elemental qualities which we habitually associate with the poetry of Homer. The bigness of Martin was principally that of a big intellect. It had its inner shrine, where he kept to himself the sacredness of his deepest artistic inspiration; an outer court, wherein he mingled with other men of intellect, and its sunny entrance steps, where, beyond the shadow of what was to him most real, he could prove himself to be “a fellow of infinite jest,” a brilliant raconteur, one that all who knew him loved. And the love for Martin one finds to have been greatest among those who knew him best, and were most aware of the deeper qualities that underlay his wit and jollity.
There is, indeed, a rare attractiveness in this combination of depth and brilliant surface. It is so easy to take life seriously or hilariously, if one is formed that way; but to be big with seriousness in season, and big with sportiveness betimes, is the quality of an extra large-souled man. Of a man, indeed; for the quality is essentially a masculine one, and rare even among men, particularly in art, so large a portion of which is feminine in significance. I suppose most of us feel this in comparing, for example, Tennyson with Browning; and, consciously or unconsciously, have had a feeling of it in the presence of many pictures, even by acknowledged masters. Not improbably it is the latent reason of so much indifference toward pictures in this country by persons otherwise cultivated. Our past history, as well as the immediate present, has demanded qualities essentially masculine, and so many people instinctively suspect the superabundance of the feminine in painting, or have regarded it merely as a pastime on the part of the painter, and as suitable chiefly for decorating the walls of a drawing-room. The one class has ignored the claims of painting; the other committed itself unreservedly to that kind of picture, which is least of all the product of intellect, or likely to make any demand upon the intelligence. They have found it difficult to take a painter and his work seriously, or would be, perhaps, surprised to find that such an attitude toward art could ever be expected of them. They would find incomprehensible the suggestion that a man may be found who puts into a picture as much mind and force of mind as another man puts into the upbuilding of a great business; that the qualities of mind expended in each case may be similar in degree, and not altogether different in kind; power to forecast the issue, and to labour strenuously for it, with a capacity for organization, for selecting, rejecting, and coördinating; a gift of distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials, and of converting sources of weakness into strength, so that the issue becomes in each case a monument to the intellect of its creator. And when one finds, as with Martin, that these big qualities of mind have been directed to the expression of what is grand in nature, least transitory, most fundamental, one begins to have that respect for his art which must precede all true appreciation, and to discover that it has a close relation to what is noble and most endearing in life—a deep, abiding reality. During his lifetime comparatively few appreciated the significance of his work, but it is of the kind that time is justifying.