While Bryant published “Thanatopsis” and Irving made his studies for the “Sketch-Book,” another American of genius perhaps superior to theirs—Washington Allston—was painting in London, before returning to pass the remainder of his life in the neighborhood of Boston and Harvard College. Between thirty and forty years of age, Allston was then in the prime of his powers; and even in a circle of artists which included Turner, Wilkie, Mulready, Constable, Callcott, Crome, Cotman, and a swarm of others equally famous, Allston was distinguished. Other Americans took rank in the same society. Leslie and Stuart Newton were adopted into it, and Copley died only in 1815, while Trumbull painted in London till 1816; but remarkable though they were for the quality of their art, they belonged to a British school, and could be claimed as American only by blood. Allston stood in a relation somewhat different. In part, his apparent Americanism was due to his later return, and to his identification with American society; but the return itself was probably caused by a peculiar bent of character. His mind was not wholly English.
Allston’s art and his originality were not such as might have been expected from an American, or such as Americans were likely to admire; and the same might be said of Leslie and Stuart Newton. Perhaps the strongest instance of all was Edward Malbone, whose grace of execution was not more remarkable than his talent for elevating the subject of his exquisite work. So far from sharing the imagination of Shawanee Indians or even of Democrats, these men instinctively reverted to the most refined and elevated schools of art. Not only did Allston show from the beginning of his career a passion for the nobler standards of his profession, but also for technical quality,—a taste less usual. Washington Irving met him in Rome in 1805, when both were unknown; and they became warm friends.
“I do not think I have ever been more captivated on a first acquaintance,” wrote Irving long afterward. “He was of a light and graceful form, with large blue eyes and black silken hair. Everything about him bespoke the man of intellect and refinement.... He was exquisitely sensitive to the graceful and the beautiful, and took great delight in paintings which excelled in color; yet he was strongly moved and aroused by objects of grandeur. I well recollect the admiration with which he contemplated the sublime statue of Moses, by Michael Angelo.”
The same tastes characterized his life, and gave to his work a distinction that might be Italian, but was certainly not English or usual.
“It was Allston,” said Leslie, “who first awakened what little sensibility I may possess to the beauties of color. For long time I took the merit of the Venetians on trust, and if left to myself should have preferred works which I now feel to be comparatively worthless. I remember when the picture of ‘The Ages’ by Titian was first pointed out to me by Allston as an exquisite work, I thought he was laughing at me.” Leslie, if not a great colorist, was seldom incorrect; Stuart Newton had a fine eye for color, and Malbone was emphatically a colorist; but Allston’s sensibility to color was rare among artists, and the refinement of his mind was as unusual as the delicacy of his eye.
Allston was also singular in the liberality of his sympathies. “I am by nature, as it respects the arts, a wide liker,” he said. In Rome he became acquainted with Coleridge; and the remark of Coleridge which seemed to make most impression on him in their walks “under the pines of the Villa Borghese” was evidently agreeable because it expressed his own feelings. “It was there he taught me this golden rule: never to judge of any work of art by its defects.” His admiration for the classics did not prevent him from admiring his contemporaries; his journey through Switzerland not only showed him a new world of Nature, but also “the truth of Turner’s Swiss scenes,—the poetic truth,—which none before or since have given.” For a young American art-student in 1804, such sympathies were remarkable; not so much because they were correct, as because they were neither American nor English. Neither in America nor in Europe at that day could art-schools give to every young man, at the age of twenty-five, eyes to see the color of Titian, or imagination to feel the “poetic truth” of Turner.
Other painters, besides those whose names have been mentioned, were American or worked in America, as other writers besides Bryant and Irving, and other preachers besides Buckminster and Channing, were active in their professions; but for national comparisons, types alone serve. In the course of sixteen years certain Americans became distinguished. Among these, suitable for types, were Calhoun and Clay in Congress, Pinkney and Webster at the bar, Buckminster and Channing in the pulpit, Bryant and Irving in literature, Allston and Malbone in painting. These men varied greatly in character and qualities. Some possessed strength, and some showed more delicacy than vigor; some were humorists, and some were incapable of a thought that was not serious; but all were marked by a keen sense of form and style. So little was this quality expected, that the world inclined to regard them as un-American because of their refinement. Frenchmen and Italians, and even Englishmen who knew nothing of America but its wildness, were disappointed that American oratory should be only a variation from Fox and Burke; that American literature should reproduce Steele and Wordsworth; and that American art should, at its first bound, go back to the ideals of Raphael and Titian. The incongruity was evident. The Americans themselves called persistently for a statesmanship, religion, literature, and art which should be American; and they made a number of experiments to produce what they thought their ideals. In substance they continued to approve nothing which was not marked by style as its chief merit. The oratory of Webster and Calhoun, and even of John Randolph, bore the same general and common character of style. The poetry of Bryant, the humor of Irving, the sermons of Channing, and the painting of Allston were the objects of permanent approval to the national mind. Style remained its admiration, even when every newspaper protested against the imitation of outworn forms. Dennie and Jefferson, agreeing in nothing else, agreed in this; the South Carolinian Allston saw color as naturally as the New Englander Bryant heard rhythm; and a people which seemed devoid of sense or standards of beauty, showed more ambition than older societies to acquire both.
Nothing seemed more certain than that the Americans were not artistic, that they had as a people little instinct of beauty; but their intelligence in its higher as in its lower forms was both quick and refined. Such literature and art as they produced, showed qualities akin to those which produced the swift-sailing schooner, the triumph of naval architecture. If the artistic instinct weakened, the quickness of intelligence increased.
CHAPTER X.
Until 1815 nothing in the future of the American Union was regarded as settled. As late as January, 1815, division into several nationalities was still thought to be possible. Such a destiny, repeating the usual experience of history, was not necessarily more unfortunate than the career of a single nationality wholly American; for if the effects of divided nationality were certain to be unhappy, those of a single society with equal certainty defied experience or sound speculation. One uniform and harmonious system appealed to the imagination as a triumph of human progress, offering prospects of peace and ease, contentment and philanthropy, such as the world had not seen; but it invited dangers, formidable because unusual or altogether unknown. The corruption of such a system might prove to be proportionate with its dimensions, and uniformity might lead to evils as serious as were commonly ascribed to diversity.