Turning his back upon Paris and the greatness of the Empire, he directed his steps towards Italy, the enchanted ground of literature, history, and art,—strown with richest memorials of the Past,—filled with scenes memorable in the Progress of Man,—teaching by the pages of philosophers and historians,—vocal with the melody of poets,—ringing with the music which St. Cecilia protects,—glowing with the living marble and canvas,—beneath a sky of heavenly purity and brightness,—with the sunsets which Claude has painted,—parted by the Apennines, early witnesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civilization,—surrounded by the snow-capped Alps, and the blue, classic waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The deluge of war submerging Europe had subsided here, and our Artist took up his peaceful abode in Rome, the modern home of Art. Strange vicissitude of condition! Rome, sole surviving city of Antiquity, once disdaining all that could be wrought by the cunning hand of sculpture,—
"Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,
Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus,"—
who has commanded the world by her arms, her jurisprudence, her church,—now sways it further by her arts. Pilgrims from afar, where her eagles, her prætors, her interdicts never reached, become willing subjects of this new empire; and the Vatican, stored with the priceless remains of Antiquity, and the touching creations of modern art, has succeeded to the Vatican whose thunders intermingled with the strifes of modern Europe.
At Rome he was happy in the friendship of Coleridge, and in long walks cheered by his companionship. We can well imagine that the author of "Genevieve" and "The Ancient Mariner" would find sympathy with Allston. It is easy to recall these two natures, tremblingly alive to beauty of all kinds, looking together upon those majestic ruins, upon the manifold accumulations of Time, upon the marble which almost speaks, and upon the warmer canvas,—listening together to the flow of perpetual fountains, fed by ancient aqueducts,—musing together in the Forum on the mighty footprints of History,—and entering together, with sympathetic awe, that grand Christian church whose dome rises a majestic symbol of the comprehensive Christianity which is the promise of the Future. "Never judge a work of art by its defects," was a lesson of Coleridge to his companion, which, when extended, by natural expansion, to the other things of life, is a sentiment of justice and charity, more precious than a statue of Praxiteles or a picture of Raphael.
In England, where our Artist afterwards passed several years, his intercourse with Coleridge was renewed, and he became the friend and companion of Lamb and Wordsworth also. Returning to his own country, he spoke of them with fondness, and often dwelt upon their genius and virtue.
In considering his character as an Artist, we may regard him in three different respects,—drawing, color, and expression or sentiment. It has already been seen that he devoted himself with uncommon zeal to drawing. His works bear witness to this excellence. There are chalk outlines by him, sketched on canvas, which are clear and definite as anything from the classic touch of Flaxman.
His excellence in color was remarkable. This seeming mystery, which is a distinguishing characteristic of artists in different schools, periods, and countries, is not unlike that of language in literature. Color is to the painter what words are to the author; and as the writers of one age or place arrive at a peculiar mastery in language, so do artists excel in color. It would be difficult to account satisfactorily for the rich idiom suddenly assumed by our English tongue in the contemporaneous prose of Sidney, Hooker, and Bacon, and in the unapproached affluence of Shakespeare. It might be as difficult to account for the unequalled tints which shone on the canvas of Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and Titian, masters of what is called the Venetian School. Ignorance has sometimes referred these glories to concealed or lost artistic rules in combinations of color, not thinking that they can be traced only to a native talent for color, prompted into activity by circumstances difficult at this late period to determine. As some possess a peculiar, untaught felicity and copiousness of words without accurate knowledge of grammar, so there are artists excelling in rich and splendid color, but ignorant of drawing, and, on the other hand, accurate drawing is sometimes coldly clad in unsatisfactory color.
Allston was largely endowed by Nature with the talent for color, which was strongly developed under the influence of Italian art. While in Rome, he was remarked for his excellence in this respect, and received from German painters there the flattering title of "American Titian." Critics of authority have said that the clearness and vigor of his color approached that of the elder masters.[174] Rich and harmonious as the verses of the "Faëry Queen," it was uniformly soft, mellow, and appropriate, without the garish brilliancy of the modern French School, calling to mind the saying of the blind man, that red resembles the notes of a trumpet.
He affected no secret or mystery in the preparation of colors. What he knew he was ready to impart: his genius he could not impart. With simple pigments, accessible to all alike, he reproduced, with glowing brush, the tints of Nature. All that his eyes looked upon furnished a lesson. The flowers of the field, the foliage of the forest, the sunset glories of our western horizon, the transparent azure above, the blackness of the storm, the soft gray of twilight, the haze of an Indian summer, the human countenance animate with thought, and that finest color in Nature, according to the ancient Greek, the blush of ingenuous youth,—these were the sources from which he drew. With a discerning spirit he mixed them on his palette, and with the eye of sympathy saw them again on his canvas.