Neft, Helio.
SCHWIND.FROM THE STORY OF THE SEVEN RAVENS.

Yet Schwind was one of the first to feel and give expression to that modern sense of longing desire which turns back from a nervous, colourless age, from the prosiness of everyday life, towards a vanished Saturnian era, when man still lived at peace and undisturbed in happy union with nature. For even this proclaims him our contemporary, that the temper of his pictures develops itself from the landscape. A landscape painter through and through—almost in Bœcklin’s sense, who transformed the temper of Nature into the contemplation of living beings—he spoke of the rest and peace of German forests, of that hour of summer’s night when no wind blows, no leaflet moves, when to the solitary wanderer in the woods the mists rising from the meadows are transformed into white veils of the elves, and the gold-rimmed waves of the sea into the yellow hair of mermaids frolicking in the moonlight to the magic notes of their golden harps. He felt and loved his landscapes rather than studied them, yet they are saturated with an entirely modern sentiment for Nature. No German, at that time, had caught and understood the interweaving of the forest boughs with such intimate familiarity. The fresh sunshine of the morning breaks through the light green of the young beeches, and leaps from bough to bough, transforming the glittering dewdrops into diamonds, and the beetle, creeping comfortably over the soft moss, into gold and precious stones. “Da gehet leise nach seiner Weise der liebe Herrgott durch den Wald” (“The dear God holy, He passeth slowly, as His wont is, through the wood”). With a few boldly drawn lines and light colours we are transported into the midst of the forest world, and all around us opening buds and verdurous green, sweet scents, and the murmur of leaves. “When one has set one’s love and joy on a beautiful tree so fully,” he said to Ludwig Richter, “one depicts all one’s love and joy with it, and then the tree looks quite different from an ass’s fine daub of what he thinks it should be.”

Albert, Helio.
SCHWIND.A HERMIT LEADING HORSES TO A POOL.

Only so intimate a connection with Nature could enable Schwind to imagine landscapes, which in their virginal old-world mood form at once the echo of the figures and of their actions. These green meadows and flower-besprent hills, these gloomy wooded slopes, these smooth valleys through which glittering waters glide murmuring along, are fit and suitable dwelling-places for the delicate fabulous beings of the flower-entwined old fairy legends. Schwind lived with Nature. He gave the name of Tanneck (Fir-tree Corner) to the little country house which he built for himself on the Starnberger See, and the fresh scent of pinewood, the rustling sound of German forests, pour forth from his pictures. Like young Siegfried, he understood the language of birds, and went eavesdropping to hear what the pine trees whispered to one another.

SCHWIND.THE WEDDING JOURNEY.

Still freer, more spontaneous, and lighter than in his oil paintings was his touch in his water-colours, in which the colour is only breathed over the forms like a delicate vapour; and quite especially in his illustrations—so far as the word may be employed with respect to him, for he never illustrated, he gave shape to his own thoughts, and that only which moved his innermost being he brought fully formed before one’s eye. The Bilderbogen and the Fliegende Blätter of Munich obtained from him witty and humorous inventions, such as “The Almond Tree,” “Puss in Boots,” “The Peasant and the Donkey,” “Herr Winter,” and “The Acrobat Games.” His fairest legacy consists of three cyclic works: “Cinderella,” “The Seven Ravens,” and “The Beautiful Melusina”; wherein he glorified with praise the beauty and fidelity of women, and their capacity for self-sacrifice. “Cinderella,” which appeared in 1855, at the Munich Exhibition, is a fairy-tale, than which poet has seldom, indeed, narrated a chaster, tenderer, or more fragrant. In 1858 followed the touching story of the good sister who releases her brothers by dint of unspeakable suffering and endurance, to-day the priceless pearl among the gems of the Weimar collection. For twenty years, as he said, the work had been in his thoughts. So far back as in 1844 he wrote to Genelli: “I believe that it will give something which may please people who have a sense for love and faithfulness, and for a touch of the power of enchantment.” When an acquaintance of his gazed upon it with dismay, and ingenuously asked for whom the thing was intended, and whither it was to go, Schwind turned his penetrating, flashing little eyes upon him, and then said: “Do you know, I painted that for myself; it is the dream of my life; no one shall buy it; some day I shall give it to a friend.” It is an imperishable work, full of grace, modesty, and charm.

Schwind takes the story up at the fateful moment when the lonely maiden, who is determined to release her enchanted brothers by assiduous spinning and constant silence, is discovered by a hunting party. There, amid the enchantment of the forest solitude, she sits in the hollow of a tree and spins away at the seven shirts, to free her seven brothers. Thus the king’s son catches sight of her. The fire of love kindles in his eyes. In one long kiss the maiden gives herself to him. The wedding takes place, and like another St. Elizabeth she is seen standing, soon afterwards, distributing alms to starving beggars. Yet, meanwhile, she has fallen under suspicion owing to her continuous silence; even her husband becomes distrustful, because in the quiet of night he has observed that she is not resting by his side, but is quietly up and spinning. And the catastrophe comes when the silent queen gives birth to twins, who, to the horror of all around, fly off in the form of ravens. Tranquil and affectionate, the young mother awaits her fate. Then follow the sentence of the Vehm-tribunal, the pathetic parting from her husband, the preparation for death. There is only one hour more to pass by before the seven years are over and the spellbound brothers set free. The good fairy appears in the air, hour-glass in hand, and brings solace to the hard-pressed heroine. The beggars, too, whose benefactress she had been, bring help, and hold the gate of the dungeon in force. So the time runs out, the spell is broken, and the brothers hasten, on milk-white horses, to save their sister from the stake. In Schwind’s marvellous drawings the story passes quickly on, stroke by stroke, deeply moving and soul-stirring in its dramatic force.

The “Beautiful Melusina” was the kiss of the water-nymph, with which Romanticism led her faithful knight to his death, only to disappear together with him out of German art. “The winter has dealt me a sore blow; I shall never be able to do anything more.” Carl Maria von Weber and Uhland had already gone before; Schwind was lying on his sick-bed when the German victories created a German fatherland. He learned, however, all the long series of glorious tidings that came from the field of war, saw the tumultuous joy and the dazzling sea of fire which surged through Munich in January 1871, and heard the joyful news that Germany was at last united. Then he had a glass of champagne poured out for him, and drank it to the new empire and the future of the nation.