Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

by Maturin M. Ballou

Upon beginning the chapter before us, we were thinking of John Opie, the distinguished English painter, born in Cornwall in 1761. When Opie was only ten years of age[179] he saw a person who was somewhat accomplished with the pencil draw a butterfly. The boy watched the process with marked interest, and as soon as the draughtsman had departed, produced upon a shingle a drawing equally good, which he showed to his mother. She, good woman, encouraged him, as Mrs. West did her son on a similar occasion; but the father, being a harsh, rude, low-bred man, was constantly punishing the boy for laziness, and for chalking figures, faces, and animals on every stray bit of board or flat surface at hand. The boy had genius, however; what he required was opportunity. Good fortune sent Dr. Wolcott, better known as "Peter Pindar," that way. He saw the boy's dawning genius, and helped him with suitable material and some useful suggestions. It was not long before the lad got away from home, quietly aided by his good friend Wolcott, and soon earned money enough to clothe himself decently and to make a start in life. He finally married Amelia, daughter of James Alderson, who afterwards became the well-known authoress Amelia Opie. The husband developed into a distinguished artist, whose historical pictures, "The Death of Rizzio" and "Jephthah's Vow," were stepping-stones to his election as President of the Royal Academy. Does not this truthful sketch from life, of a poor wood-sawyer's son, read like romance?

Genius will assert itself; it seems useless to strive against it. The secret suggestions of the soul are true, lead us whither they will. Salvator Rosa was the son of a poor architect who made ineffectual efforts to thwart his son's predilection for art, but all in vain. The young man, finding that he could not hope for any assistance from his father, strove all the harder to earn a livelihood by painting, but nearly starved before he reached his majority. About this time the patrons of art in Rome offered a grand prize for the best painting to be submitted at an exhibition to be held in the Eternal City. The young Neapolitan saw his chance, and painted a picture into which he infused all the glowing spirit of the art which burned within him. If it failed, he resolved that no one should know aught of its authorship. It was forwarded anonymously, and received the recognition of being hung in the most favorable position. That picture took the grand prize, the unknown artist being lauded as above Titian. Nought was to be heard for it but praise. This decided the fate of Rosa. He left his humble home near Naples and settled in Rome, where he secured the friendship and intimacy of the greatest men of the day.

Numerous and grand were the pictures sent forth from Rosa's hand; orders pressed upon him faster than he could fill them, and thus he stepped at once into the highest contemporary fame and fortune.[180] "Salvator possessed real genius," says Ruskin, "but was crushed by misery in his youth." He was not only a painter, but also a poet and a musician; nearly all cultured Italians are the latter. At the grand Carnival of the year 1639 there appeared upon the Corso and in the squares of Rome an actor of fantastic dress, who was marked like all the other revellers on such occasions, but whose name was given as one Formica, of Southern Italy. He attracted both public and private attention by his brilliant wit, his eloquence, and especially by his songs, as he accompanied himself on the lute. He was the hero of the Carnival of that season. By and by the appointed hour arrived when all the revellers unmasked, and lo! the stranger proved to be Salvator Rosa.

Among painters, Rubens is one of the greatest and most familiar names, though Ruskin disparages him by saying that "he is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal, without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints children." Rubens became an artist from love of art, and his career was one in which there was far more of sunshine than usually falls to the lot of genius. He throve greatly in a business point of view as well as in art, and became a man of wealth in his native city of Antwerp, where he built a comfortable house and adorned it inside with pencil and brush—the whole, as he estimated it, worth about a thousand pounds sterling. Presently there came to Antwerp the Duke of Buckingham, who coveted the artist's house. A negotiation was opened, and Rubens sold it to the Duke for twelve times what it cost, or say in our currency sixty thousand dollars.

Rubens must have possessed wonderful industry, as we judge by the fact that a hundred of his paintings may be found in the Munich Gallery alone, not to mention those contained in other European collections. Undoubtedly his "Descent from the Cross," now in the Antwerp Cathedral, is his grandest work. Our artist was by no means without his vein of vanity, as evinced by the family picture which he painted, and in which he gives himself due prominence. This picture is placed just above his tomb, back of the altar, in the Church of St. Jacques, at Antwerp. The presumptuousness is increased by the fact that the combined portraits of his first and second wife, his daughter, with his father, grandfather, and himself, are intended to represent a Holy Family, and the painting is typical of that idea. The whole is incongruous and in bad taste. Vandyke, Teniers, and Denis Calvart, the instructor of Guido Reni, were all natives of Antwerp. The city owes its attraction to travellers almost solely to the fact that here are so many masterpieces of painting.

William Hogarth was a great and original genius, who wrote comedies pictorially, satirized vice, and depicted all phases of life more in detail than is possible with the pen. He was early apprenticed to a silversmith; but the natural bent of his genius was too apparent and promising not to be encouraged by the study of art. In the dramatic and satirical departments of design he has never been excelled. It has been objected that his pictures are vulgar; but when we remember the period in which they appeared, and also the fact that they undoubtedly convey useful lessons of morality, we shall find ample excuse if not commendation for the artist. In 1753 he published his "Analysis of Beauty," in which he maintains that a waving line is essential to beauty. Hogarth composed comedies just as much as did Molière. It was a singular characteristic of this able designer and artist that he could not successfully illustrate another's work; he is known utterly to have failed in the attempt, though never in the successful illustration of his own ideas. Hogarth was also a historian, inasmuch as every picture he produced represented the manners and customs of the period. The interior scenes give us the exact style of the furniture and minutest domestic surroundings; while out of doors we have all the various modes of conveyance in use, and a faithful picture of the street architecture. Hogarth died in 1764.

James Spencer, who was a personal friend of Hogarth, began life as a London footman; but the genius of an artist was born in him, and it gradually forced its way to the front. At odd moments he practised drawing and even painting with oils, whenever and wherever he could seize upon a brief chance. It happened that a professional portrait-painter was engaged to make a portrait of the head of the family where Spencer had long acted as footman. When the likeness was finished, he heard his master express some just dissatisfaction at its want of resemblance to the original. Spencer very humbly asked permission of his master to copy the painting and see if he could not get a good likeness. After expressing some astonishment at the request, his master assented. In a much briefer period than the first artist occupied, and without a single sitting on the part of his employer, Spencer astonished the family by producing not only a remarkable likeness, but an entirely satisfactory painting. With such a start the footman became a professional portrait-painter, and accumulated the means ere long to set up a fine London establishment.

In an earlier part of this volume we gave numerous instances of genius being at its best in early youth, when, as Burke says, "the senses are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." Of this early development we know of no more striking instance in art than that of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who at the age of ten years surpassed most of the London portrait-painters both in his certain likenesses and in the general effect of his portraits. He was a remarkable genius, and for a considerable period was the talk of all London.[181] Added to his ability as an artist, young Lawrence was remarkably handsome. Prince Hoare saw something so angelic in his face that he desired to paint him in the character of Christ. In about seven minutes Lawrence scarcely ever failed of producing in crayon an excellent likeness of any person present, and in a manner expressive of both grace and freedom. He succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds, in due time, as first painter to the king, was knighted in 1815, and five years later became President of the Royal Academy.

To realize under what shadows many an artist has lived, worked, and died, yet who is known to us of the highest genius, we have only to recall some familiar names. Correggio was of very humble birth: and though one of the most original of all the brilliant masters of the sixteenth century, he enjoyed little contemporary fame. His works to-day are held at as high a valuation as those of Raphael, Titian, or Murillo.[182] His modesty was characteristic; his pretension, nothing. His pictures speak for him, and exhibit the softness, tenderness, and harmony of his nature. Nearly all his work was done at his native city of Correggio and at Parma; nor is he believed ever to have visited Rome. It was he who, after gazing on one of Raphael's finest productions, exclaimed, "I also am a painter!"

Correggio was chosen by the canons of the cathedral at Parma to paint for them the "Assumption of the Virgin." It was a subject well fitted to his style, and his conception and execution of the painting were beyond criticism. It may be seen, mellowed by age, in the Parma Cathedral to-day. When the work was done, the priests meanly haggled and found fault with it, in order to reduce the price, which had been previously agreed upon. Finally, they only paid the artist half the promised sum, stealing the balance to supply their secret luxuries. To add insult to their meanness, the priests paid the artist the price in copper coin. He could not refuse the money, for his poverty-stricken family awaited his return with it to supply their pressing needs. Correggio took the heavy burden on his shoulders and bore it two leagues and more, under a broiling Italian sun, to reach his home. On arriving there he was completely exhausted, and drank freely of the water his children brought to him; then, disheartened at his ill-fortune and broken down by fatigue, he went sadly to his rude bed, to awake on the following morning in a burning fever and delirious. In two days Correggio was no more.