Overbeck, after the goodly habit of the old masters, was fond of introducing himself as a spectator in the sacred scenes he depicted, and thus the above list of portraits is considerably extended. The painter appears personally in Christ's Entry into Jerusalem; also, in company with his friends Cornelius and Veit, he joins the general assembly of artists in The Triumph of Religion. Again, in The Gospels the devout painter is present at the Crucifixion, bent on his knees, the hands clasped, his eyes gazing on Christ upon the Cross. Overbeck was not thus the egotist or a man craving for glory, but merely the humblest of servants seeking some inconspicuous place among the followers of Christ, and desiring to be numbered with God's elect.
I have endeavoured, though perhaps very imperfectly, to lay before the reader a picture of Overbeck as the artist and the man, and now little remains save a few general conclusions. I have anxiously tried to ascertain the painter's mode of work, and the successive steps by which he matured his compositions. This inquiry has proved all the more difficult, because drawings in their early stages were persistently kept out of view. The artist had two studios, the one strictly private for quiet incubation apart; the other public, wherein only finished products were shown. The question is, how consummate designs such as The Gospels were elaborated. I find that Overbeck first revolved a subject in his thoughts until he had formed a distinct mental conception; this inward vision he would sometimes for months carry about with him, within the house and in his walks abroad. At last, when it had taken shape, he sketched out the idea with lead pencil on a small piece of paper; and, just in proportion as the first process had been tentative and slow, so was the final act swift and certain. In these supreme moments he had the power of throwing off his innermost thoughts without aids from the outer world: the lines flowed from his pencil rapidly when he had made up his mind what to do, and the forms once set down were seldom changed. The facility increased rather than lessened with years; thus we read, "At the age of seventy‑two I create with undiminished freshness and pleasure." As soon as the first small sketch was complete, the usual method was followed of squaring out the surface with lines, in order to reproduce in charcoal, chalk, or sepia the design on the full scale required—often the size of life. For the important figures, for the heads, hands, and draperies, studies from the life were diligently made. Such drawings and cartoons have been and are greatly prized by connoisseurs; for example, The Seven Years of Famine was acquired by Sir Thomas Lawrence for his collection. The reader will understand how difficult it was for the painter to find assistants who could help in this directly personal work, in this concentration of individual thought; hence the prolonged time needed, extending, as we have seen, to periods of five or ten years. Separate studies of colour were also sometimes, if not always, made. The ultimate stage of painting upon canvas or wall was comparatively a mechanical process.
Furthermore, we have to consider and make allowance for certain technical notions of Overbeck and his school. The opinion upheld was that the idea or mental conception constituted the chief value of any art work, that outline or form was the direct language or vehicle of such idea, and that colour, light, shade, surface‑texture, or realism, were subordinate, if not derogatory, elements. Thus it is that the works of the master cannot be judged by ordinary standards: hence likewise the drawings and cartoons are superior to the pictures.
Especially does Overbeck's colour stand in need of explanation or apology. In the first place we have to take into account how far the artist was bound to tradition; we have, for instance, to bear in mind that in painting The Assumption, he was enjoined by the Church to clothe the Madonna in white. Then comes the whole question of symbolism, or the inherent or accepted relation between colour and thought and feeling. Now, I think it probable that Overbeck sacrificed harmonies pleasing to the eye for the sake of arrangements that might inculcate doctrines or impress emotions. Certain it is that he looked on colour as something carnal: the example of the Venetian painters warned him against passionate excess, and so as a religious artist he felt it a duty to use sombre pigments, tertiary tints, and low, shadowy tones. Thus much needs explanation, yet it must always be cause for regret that Overbeck did not take for examples such masters of colour as Fra Angelico and Perugino, and thus gain the heavenly radiance begotten of religion.
The art of Overbeck will live by its merits despite its defects; it is vital and enduring in the three mental elements of thought, form, and composition. The last he matured and mastered with the certainty of a science and the beauty of an art. His compositions have the exactitude, and occasionally the complexity, of geometric problems, neither are they without the rhythm of a stanza, or the music of a song.
How much and in what manner the art of Overbeck was due to direct inspiration from heaven is not easy to determine. But, at all events, the modern master, like his forerunners in the spiritual school of Umbria, watched and waited, fasted, prayed, and painted. One who observed him closely testifies how, while making the drawings for The Gospels and The Seven Sacraments, he was penetrated with the life of Christ. From deep wells the infinite soul flowed into the finite mind, and the art conceived in the spirit of prayer issued as a renewed prayer to God.
The reader, I trust, has formed a judgment as to the three‑fold relation in which Overbeck and his works stand to nature, to historic precedent, and lastly, to inward consciousness or individual character. We have seen that the notion prevalent in Rome, that the living model was wholly discarded, is inaccurate; bearing on this moot point may be here told an anecdote. It is related how one morning, when the artist was engaged on the Tasso frescoes, in the Villa Massimo, he had need of the life for a muscular arm, and so sallied forth into the neighbouring Piazza of the Lateran and made appeal to some men who were breaking stones on the road. One of the number, of amazing muscle, consented to sit, but, to the disgust of the purist painter, the man turned out to be a public executioner, who only took to stone breaking when slack of usual work. Another story is to the effect that, one day a fellow of terrific aspect entered the studio, declaring he was without food, and demanding engagement as a model. He turned out a villain, and so the aversion grew to coming in contact with common and unclean nature. Another reason assigned for the non‑employment of models is the lack of sufficient strength to sustain protracted study from the life. Hence recourse to other methods: for instance, both mental and pencil notes were taken of casual figures and incidents in society or in the public streets. John Gibson, the sculptor, cultivated a like habit. Also a remarkable memory, of which much might be told, served as a storehouse of pictorial materials. It is recounted now on Sunday evenings, after the reception in the studio of fifty or a hundred guests, the meditative artist would recall and describe the visitors one by one, and after many years, and perhaps in a distant place, meeting some person, otherwise unknown, he would say, "I remember to have seen that face once in my painting‑room." In like manner his memory was peopled with figures, whose acquaintance he had made only in pictures: thus, when he came to paint The Assumption for Cologne Cathedral, he had recourse to the mental vision of the Madonna, derived from an old Sienese panel, and, when charged with the plagiarism, he replied: "The figure realises my idea, and I do not see why I should search further." Thus, however, it came to pass that he borrowed more and more from others, just in proportion as he took less from nature. But in coming to a fair judgment, we have to remember that the accidents in nature, and the grosser materialism in man, were foreign to this super‑sensuous art, the aim being to reach the hidden meaning and the inner life. Hence the favourite practice of placing and posing in the painting‑room some well‑chosen figure which was quietly looked at, carefully considered, and taken in; thus the irrelevant elements were eliminated, and only the essential truths assimilated. This was for Overbeck the saving study of nature: he made extracts and essences, elaborated generic types, and thus his art became supreme in beauty. However, the beautiful is not always new, neither is the new always beautiful.
The painter's relation to the historic schools of Christian Art has been so fully stated, that little more remains to be said. The old masters were studied much in the same way as nature: their spirit was inhaled, and just as John Gibson was accustomed to ask, What would the Greeks have done? so Overbeck put himself in the place of the early Italian painters, and desired that his pencil might be guided by their spirit. Like Raphael, what he borrowed he made his own, and often added an aspect and a grace peculiar to himself. A gallery of pictures was for him what a well‑stored library is to a literary student, who takes from the shelves the author best supplying the intellectual food needed. The method is not new or strange: Bacon teaches how the moderns inherit the wisdom of the ancients, and surely if for art, as for learning, there be advancement in store, old pictures, like old books, must give up the treasure of a life beyond life. Overbeck in the past sought not for the dead, but for the living and enduring.
Given a painter's genius and surroundings, his art usually follows under the law of cause and effect. Overbeck's pictures, as those of others, yield under analysis as their component parts, nature plus tradition, plus individual self. As to the individual man, we have found Overbeck the poet and philosopher, the mystic, somewhat the sentimentalist, and, above all, the devout Catholic. The character is singularly interesting, and the products are unusually complex. He had forerunners and many imitators, yet he stands alone, and were his pencil lost, a blank would be felt in the realm of art. His genius was denied grandeur: he did not rise to the epic, and scarcely expanded into the dramatic; his path was comparatively narrow; his kingdom remained small, yet where he stands is hallowed ground; his art is musical, altogether lyrical, yet toned with pathos, as if the lamentations of The Holy Women at the Sepulchre mingled with the angel‑voices of The Nativity. The man and his work are among the most striking and unaccustomed phenomena of the century, and so far as his art is true to God, humanity, and nature, it must endure. His own assurance is left on record: he held that knowledge and doing are of value only so far as they ennoble humanity, and lead to that which is eternal. He believed in the dependence of art on personal character, on elevation of mind and purity of motive. The noblest destiny of the race was ceaselessly before him, and he looked to Christian Art as the means of showing to the world the everlasting truth, and of raising the reality of life to the ideal. In conclusion, I think it not too much to claim Overbeck as the most perfect example, in our time, of the Christian Artist.
The pecuniary rewards of the painter were in no fair proportion to his talents or his industry. His labour, as we have seen, was primarily for the honour of art and religion, and his protracted modes of study, as well as the esoteric character of his compositions, were little likely to meet with adequate return. Overbeck never realised large sums; his prices measured by present standards were ridiculously low, and even when overcrowded with commissions, he is known to have fallen short of ready cash. Happily, after early struggles, he became relieved from pressing anxieties, yet he remained comparatively poor.