Another thing for which Doré is praised is his wonderful memory. Mr. Jerrold repeats more than once Doré's phrase, "I have lots of collodion in my head," and recounts how he could scarcely be induced to make sketches from nature, but relied upon his memory. He also speaks of Doré's system of dividing and subdividing a subject, and noting the details in their places, so that he could reproduce the whole afterward. This question of work from memory is one of the most vital for an understanding of Doré, and one of general interest in all matters of art, and is worth attention. Of course, a man who made hundreds of drawings every year could not work much from nature, and came to rely upon his memory. But what is the nature of artistic memory, and how does it perform its task? We think the truth is, that the artist who habitually works from memory, fills in his details, not from memory of the object, but from memory of the way he has formerly drawn similar objects. He reverts to a series of formulæ that he has gradually accumulated. This man must have a cloak. This is the way a cloak is done. A hand? Nothing can be easier; the hand formula is ready. The stock in trade of the professional illustrator and caricaturist is made up of a thousand such formulæ—methods of expression that convey the idea readily enough to the spectator, but have little relation to fact. So it is that Doré never learned, in the true sense, to draw. He had made for himself a sort of artistic shorthand, which enabled him to convey his superabundant ideas quickly and certainly to his public, but his drawing is what is called mannered in the extreme. It is not representation of nature at all, but pure formula and chic. He is said to be a master of drapery, but he never drew a single fold correctly. He is said to show great knowledge of Gothic architecture, but he never drew well a single column or finial. In his later years he studied anatomy with great perseverance, and advocated the necessity of dissection, saying, "Il faut fourrer la main dedans" (You must stick your hand in it); but the manner was formed, and he never drew a leg with a bone in it.
With this equipment he illustrated Don Quixote, Dante, the Bible. Is it strange that he shows no sympathy with the grand simplicity of Dante, or the subtle humor of Cervantes, and that we can only be thankful that he never completed his projected illustrations to Shakespeare? Doré, the illustrator, was fecund beyond precedent, possessed a certain strange drollery, had a wonderful flow of ideas, but was superficial, theatrical, and mannered, and as far from expressing real horror as from expressing real fun. What shall we say of Doré the painter and sculptor?
Mr. Jerrold reports a discussion between Doré and Théophile Gautier, in which the roles of artist and man of letters are strangely reversed. "Gautier and Doré," he says, "disagreed fundamentally on the aims and methods of art. Gautier loved correctness, perfect form—the technique, in short, of art; whereas Doré contended that art which said nothing, which conveyed no idea, albeit perfect in form and color, missed the highest quality and raison d'être of art." What is plain from this is, that Gautier was an artist and cared first of all for art, while Doré was never an artist, properly speaking, at all, and never understood the artist's passion for perfection. To Doré, what was necessary was to express himself anyhow—who cared if the style was defective, the drawing bad, the color crude? The idea was the thing. His admirers can defend him only on this ground, and they adopt of necessity the Philistine point of view. The artists of Doré's time and country were very clear in their opinion. "The painters," says Mr. Jerrold, "said he could not paint."
The sculptors admitted that he had ideas in his groups, but he was not sculpturesque. His friends protest against this judgment, and attribute it, ad nauseam, to "malevolence" and "envy." What if his technique was less brilliant than that of Hals, they say; what if his shadows are less transparent than those of Rembrandt (and they will make no meaner comparison)? He is "teeming with noble thoughts," and these will put his work "on a level with the masterpieces of the Italian masters of the sixteenth century." It is the conception, the creation—not the perfect painting of legs and arms and heads, the harmonious grouping, the happy and delicate combination of color—by which the observer is held spell bound. All these qualities, which his admirers grudgingly admit that Doré had not, are classed as "mere dexterity," and are not considered worth a second thought.
This is the true literary gospel of art, but it is one that no artist, and no critic who has any true feeling of art, has ever accepted or will ever accept. Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, may enhance the value of a work of art, provided it is first of all a piece of beautiful art in itself, but they have never preserved, and never will preserve from oblivion bad painting or bad sculpture. The style is the artist, if not the man; and of the two, beautiful painting with no idea at all (granting, for the sake of argument, that it exists), will ever be infinitely more valuable to the world than the lame expression of the noblest thoughts. What may be the real value of Doré's thoughts is therefore a question with which we have no concern. As painter and sculptor, his lack of education and his great technical imperfections—his bad drawing, false light and shade, and crude color—relegate him forever to a rank far below mediocrity. Such reputation as he has is the result of the admiration of those altogether ignorant of art, but possessed of enough literary ability to trumpet abroad their praises of "great conceptions," and will as surely fade away to nothing as the reputation of such simple painters as Van Der Meer or Chardin will continue to grow, while painting as an art is loved and understood.[Back to Contents]
COMPOSERS
HANDEL
By C. E. Bourne
(1685-1759)
George Frederick Handel, of whom Haydn once reverently said, "He is the master of us all," was born at Halle, in Lower Saxony, on February 23, 1685. His father was a surgeon, and sixty-three years of age at the time of his birth—a terribly severe old man, who, almost before his son was born, had determined that he should be a lawyer. The little child knew nothing of the fate before him, he only found that he was never allowed to go near a musical instrument, much as he wanted to hear its sweet sounds, and the obstinate father even took him away from the public day-school for the simple reason that the musical gamut was taught there in addition to ordinary reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But love always "finds out the way," and his mother or nurse managed to procure for him the forbidden delights; a small clavichord, or dumb spinet, with the strings covered with strips of cloth to deaden the sound, was found for the child, and this he used to keep hidden in the garret, creeping away to play it in the night-time, when everyone was asleep, or whenever his father was away from home doctoring his patients.