Observing his "Flax Barn," in comparison with the work of his compatriots, its fine freedom from triviality of detail was apparent, and the beauty of its cool light, spread over large spaces and diffused throughout the interior of the low shed, made itself felt. One noted also, as elements of the picture's peculiarly dignified appeal, the severe arrangement of the figures with the long row of workers under the windows, the long threads of flax passing over their heads to the women in the foreground, and the almost straight line formed in turn by these women. The composition, quite geometrical in its precision, gave a sense of deep repose in spite of the vitality of the individual figures and the impression they made of being able to turn and move at will, an impression nearly always missed by Leibl, Liebermann's great forerunner in the painting of humble life. We get much the same austere effect from the almshouse pictures of old men and women on benches in the open square, always arranged in a geometrical design, and always calm in gesture and mild in type, which appear from time to time in the foreign exhibitions of Liebermann's work.
Liebermann has done for the Germans something of what Millet did for the French. He has built his art upon the daily life of the poor, but while, like Millet, he has introduced a monumental element into his work, it is clearer, more closely reasoned, more firmly knit than Millet's art, and at the same time less emotional. Liebermann's hospitality to purely technical ideas, his interest in problems of light and air, his diligent analysis of motion, his ability to translate a scene from the life of the laboring class without sentimentality, without prettiness or eloquence or any of the attributes that catch the multitude, give to his art a touch of coldness that is not without its charm for those who care for a highly developed orderly product of the mind.
Most of the Berlin men who are in any degree notable share somewhat in this attribute. Arthur Kampf, although he has less than Liebermann of cool detachment, has both elegance and gravity. He could hardly have had a better representation by any one or two canvases than by the "Charity" and the "Two Sisters" of the American exhibition. In the first he depicts a street scene with its contrasts of poverty and wealth. A man and woman in evening dress, returning from their evening's pleasure, are besought by poor people clustering around a soup stall and drop coin into the insistent hands. The smoking caldron of soup in the center and the circle of sharply differentiated faces form an admirable composition, the apparently accidental lines of which play into a dignified linear scheme. The "Two Sisters" reveals the influence of Velasquez in its flat modeling and subtle characterization, and in its atmospheric grays enlivened with geranium reds. Both of these pictures indicate a modern temper of mind in the fluency of their technique and the realism of their treatment together with the attention paid to the tonal quality and to the character of the space composition. Kampf, however, although a young man—he was born in 1864—has passed through many phases of development which are recorded in his many-sided art. His subjects range from the historical themes of his wall decorations at Magdeburg and Aachen through portraiture in which he grasps characters essentially diverse and suggests with unerring instinct the dominant quality, scenes of labor as in his "Bridge-Building," scenes of brutality and excitement as in his "Bull-fight," scenes from the drama of the Biblical story, scenes of domestic life as in his delicately humorous picture of the absorbed reader eating his breakfast with the morning paper propped up in front of him, and scenes of peaceful holiday-making among the poor as in his idyllic "Sunday Afternoon" which shows a peasant boy playing his harmonicum under the trees, with his old father and mother sitting by in placid enjoyment. Various as these pictures are and closely as the manner has in each case been adapted to the special subject, we nowhere miss the note of individuality, although in such a portrait as that of the Kaiser, which was shown in America, it unquestionably is subdued. Neither do we miss the note of locality. Born at Aachen, Kampf is a true Rheinlander and one of his German critics notes that we must look to this fact for the explanation of his special qualities, declaring that without the Rheinlander's cheerfulness and energetic temperament, and without the background of the ancient Rhenish culture, he would be inconceivable. On the other hand his turning to drama and romance for his inspiration speaks of his Duesseldorfian training and his realism of representation allies him to Menzel. At forty-two he was made president of the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin, and it is probable that the wholesome Rhenish energy of which his critic speaks will save him from sinking into the formalism of the academic tradition.
In his art, however, as in that of his compatriots, it is apparent that the world of ideas is the world in which he lives, and he works to express his mind rather than his soul, his thoughts rather than his emotions, if we follow the indefinite and arbitrary division between thought and feeling that does service as a symbol of a meaning difficult to express clearly.
There were other interesting painters represented in the Berlin group at the American Exhibition, Otto Engel, Fritz Berger, Hans Hartig—and of all it is more or less true that the idea in their work is more important than the feeling. It is true also that the tradition of the peasant Leibl, a great painter, but invariably cold, rests upon most of them. His wonderful manipulation of pigment is equaled by none of them, but his accurate, detached observation, his balanced rendering, the firmness of his method, have entered more or less into their scheme of art. And it is to be noted that his ideas and theirs are ideas appropriate to the painter's medium. Menzel's literary bent is not shared by them, his predilection for a story to illustrate almost never appears among the younger Berlin painters, and he cannot in any real sense be considered their prototype.
When we turn to the older members of the modern Munich school we find the influence of Boecklin dominant. Arnold Boecklin, a Swiss by birth, and possessed of the Swiss ingenuity of mind, has been the subject of endless discussion among the Germans of the present day. He exhausted his very great talent in painting a symbolic world, and by his appreciation of the value of coherence he made his paintings impressive. They are each a perfectly coherent arrangement of parts, making a whole which has the appearance of simplicity, however numerous the elements composing it may be. By a combined generalization and intensity he turned the actual world which he studied closely enough, into his own unreality. Thus, in his Italian landscapes, he reveals the architectonic structure of his scene stripped of all incidental ornament, the upright and horizontal lines left severe and uncompromised, and the blue of the heavens and the sea, and the dark green of the cypresses, pushed to an almost incredible depth. Everything is more significant than in nature, yet nature has provided the elements of significance. It is in his ability to see things whole and to co-ordinate the selected details that Boecklin is most an artist. This largeness of generalization gives him power over the imagination, and is, perhaps the only, certainly the chief source of his power. His color by its very intensity overdoes the intended effect. The imagination instead of being stimulated is sated, and his obvious symbolism fails to pique the curiosity. Moreover, his handling of paint lacks sensitiveness. He has something of the disregard shown by the English painter Watts for the beauty inherent in his material which might as well be clay or textile as pigment in his hands. But his appreciation of the effect upon the mind of noble arrangements of space and mass raises him to a much higher place as an artist than he can be said to occupy as a painter.
