The Intellectual Life

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

LETTER III.

TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFICENT NEW STUDIO.

Pleasure of planning a studio—Opinions of an outsider—Saint Bernard—Father Ravignan—Goethe’s study and bed-room—Gustave Doré’s studio—Leslie’s painting-room—Turner’s opinion—Habits of Scott and Dickens—Extremes good—Vulgar mediocrity not so good—Value of beautiful views to literary men—Montaigne—Views from the author’s windows.

Nothing in the life of an artist is more agreeable than the building and furnishing of the studio in which he hopes to produce his most mature and perfect work. It is so pleasant to labor when we are surrounded by beauty and convenience, that painters find a large and handsome studio to be an addition to the happiness of their lives, and they usually dream of it, and plan it, several years before the dream is realized.

Only a few days ago I was talking on this very subject with an intellectual friend who is not an artist, and who maintained that the love of fine studios is in great part a mere illusion. He admitted the necessity for size, and for a proper kind of light, but laughed at carved oak, and tapestry, and armor, and the knicknacks that artists encumber themselves with. He would have it that a mind thoroughly occupied with its own business knew nothing whatever of the objects that surrounded it, and he cited two examples—Saint Bernard, who travelled all day by the shore of Lake Leman without seeing it, and the père Ravignan, who worked in a bare little room with a common table of blackened pine and a cheap rush-bottomed chair. On this I translated to him, from Goethe’s life by Lewes, a passage which was new to him and delighted him as a confirmation of his theory. The biographer describes the poet’s study as “a low-roofed narrow room, somewhat dark, for it is lighted only through two tiny windows, and furnished with a simplicity quite touching to behold. In the centre stands a plain oval table of unpolished oak. No arm-chair is to be seen, no sofa, nothing which speaks of ease. A plain hard chair has beside it the basket in which he used to place his handkerchief. Against the wall, on the right, is a long pear-tree table, with bookshelves, on which stand lexicons and manuals.... On the side-wall again, a bookcase with some works of poets. On the wall to the left is a long desk of soft wood, at which he was wont to write. A sheet of paper with notes of contemporary history is fastened near the door. The same door leads into a bed-room, if bed-room it can be called, which no maid-of-all-work in England would accept without a murmur: it is a closet with a window. A simple bed, an armchair by its side, and a tiny washing-table with a small white basin on it, and a sponge, is all the furniture. To enter this room with any feeling for the greatness and goodness of him who slept here, and who here slept his last sleep, brings tears into our eyes, and makes the breathing deep.”

When I had finished reading this passage, my friend exclaimed triumphantly, “There! don’t you see that it was just because Goethe had imaginative power of a strong and active kind that he cared nothing about what surrounded him when he worked? He had statues and pictures to occupy his mind when it was disengaged, but when he wrote he preferred that bare little cell where nothing was to be seen that could distract his attention for an instant. Depend upon it, Goethe acted in this matter either from a deliberate and most wise calculation, or else from the sure instinct of genius.”

Whilst we were on this subject I thought over other instances, and remembered my surprise on visiting Gustave Doré in his painting-room in Paris. Doré has a Gothic exuberance of imagination, so I expected a painting-room something like Victor Hugo’s house, rather barbarous, but very rich and interesting, with plenty of carved cabinets, and tapestry, and biblos, as they call picturesque curiosities in Paris. To my surprise, there was nothing (except canvases and easels) but a small deal table, on which tubes of oil-color were thrown in disorder, and two cheap chairs. Here, evidently, the pleasure of painting was sufficient to occupy the artist; and in the room where he made his illustrations the characteristics were simplicity and good practical arrangements for order, but there was nothing to amuse the imagination. Mr. Leslie used to paint in a room which was just like any other in the house, and had none of the peculiarities of a studio. Turner did not care in the least what sort of a room he painted in, provided it had a door, and a bolt on the inside. Scott could write anywhere, even in the family sitting-room, with talk going forward as usual; and after he had finished Abbotsford, he did not write in any of its rich and noble rooms, but in a simple closet with book-shelves round it. Dickens wrote in a comfortable room, well lighted and cheerful, and he liked to have funny little bronzes on his writing-table.

The best way appears to be to surround ourselves, whenever it can be conveniently done, with whatever we know by experience to be favorable to our work. I think the barest cell monk ever prayed in would be a good place for imaginative composition, and so too would be the most magnificent rooms in Chatsworth or Blenheim. A middling sort of place with a Philistine character, vulgar upholstery, and vulgar pictures or engravings, is really dangerous, because these things often attract attention in the intervals of labor and occupy it in a mean way. An artist is always the better for having something that may profitably amuse and occupy his eye when he quits his picture, and I think it is a right instinct which leads artists to surround themselves with many picturesque and beautiful things, not too orderly in their arrangement, so that there may be pleasant surprises for the eye, as there are in nature.

For literary men there is nothing so valuable as a window with a cheerful and beautiful prospect. It is good for us to have this refreshment for the eye when we leave off working, and Montaigne did wisely to have his study up in a tower from which he had extensive views.

There is a well-known objection to extensive views, as wanting in snugness and comfort, but this objection scarcely applies to the especial case of literary men. What we want is not so much snugness as relief, refreshment, suggestion, and we get these, as a general rule, much better from wide prospects than from limited ones. I have just alluded to Montaigne,—will you permit me to imitate that dear old philosopher in his egotism and describe to you the view from the room I write in, which cheers and amuses me continually? But before describing this let me describe another of which the recollection is very dear to me and as vivid as a freshly-painted picture. In years gone by, I had only to look up from my desk and see a noble loch in its inexhaustible loveliness, and a mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and hourly delight to watch the breezes play about the enchanted isles, on the delicate silvery surface, dimming some clear reflection, or trailing it out in length, or cutting sharply across it with acres of rippling blue. It was a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play about the crest of Cruachan and Ben Vorich’s golden head, gray mists that crept upwards from the valleys till the sunshine suddenly caught them and made them brighter than the snows they shaded. And the leagues and leagues of heather on the lower land to the southward that became like the aniline dyes of deepest purple and blue, when the sky was gray in the evening—all save one orange-streak! Ah, those were spectacles never to be forgotten, splendors of light and glory, and sadness of deepening gloom when the eyes grew moist in the twilight and secretly drank their tears.