BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME " ;. ;. ,, FROM THE " -< SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 ft.l^0.H4^ ujli].!'/.. 3777 Cornell University Library ND 190A54 The study of modern painting, 3 1924 008 742 698 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008742698 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING BY MARGARET STEELE ANDERSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WORK OF EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN ARTISTS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1914) Copyright, 1914, by The Ceittuhy Co. Published, October, 1914 TO MY MOTHER AND TO MY SISTER, ELIZABETH, I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME PREFACE The aim of this book is to find out, and to set down as briefly as possible, the various currents or trends of modern painting, showing each one of these trends as illustrated by the work of a few eminent men. It is addressed to laymen in general, and primarily to the reader who knows something of famous work — some- thing, let us say, of Titian, Watteau, Corot, Turner, and even of a few American painters — ^but who knows very little as to the various tendencies of modern art and is not yet famihar with the names of its leaders. To this layman I have endeavored to bring the move- ments and the significance of modern painting, to- gether with some idea of the work of the great men who stand for it. As America is still too young for any variety of movements, I have considered her art by forms and not by currents, taking, first, landscape painting, the form peculiar to the American genius, and then, in due order, figure-painting, portraiture, the idyl, and mural decoration. The argimient of the book is three-fold. It main- tains, first, that the particular achievement of nine- teenth century painting is its solving of the problem of light, its conquest of the secrets of the air. It maintains, secondly, that the aim of the last twenty years has been towards decorative painting, the best and most appropriate subject of which is the idyl — and this, as is noted more than once, results in a form PREFACE of expression which I have named "the idyllic-deco- rative." Then, thirdly, it maintains that of later years — let us say, since the rise of Manet as an influ- ence — the great aim, technically speaking, has been a fine synthesis, a gathering up of essentials, of fun- damentals, even at the expense of details. With these three matters — the triumph over light, the rise and progress of an ideal purely decorative, and the aim at synthetic presentation — this study is espe- cially concerned as the matters of most significance in the history of modern painting. M. S. A. CONTENTS PART ONE MODERN FRENCH PAINTING OHAFIEB PAGE I THE MODERN CONCEPT— RACIAL QUALITIES 3 n NATURALISM 20 m THE IDYLLIC DECORATIVE 43 IT EXTREMISM 62 PART TWO MODEEN GERMAN PAINTING I BASIC FACTS AND GENERAL TENDENCIES 79 n THE GREAT REALISM— THE GREAT ROMANTICISMS ... 90 m PLEIN-AIRISM.— LIEBERMANN AND SOME FOLLOWERS . .110 IV VARIETY, TENDING TO ECLECTICISM 119 PART THREE MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING I NINETEENTH CENTURY TYPES 145 n NEW MOVEMENTS 172 CONTENTS PART FOUR MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING CHAPTEE PAGE I A FOEM PECULIARLY AMERICAN 197 II THE LANDSOAPISTS OF TO-DAY 215 III OTHER FORMS OF PAINTING 226 PART FIVE MODERN SPANISH AND MODERN ITALIAN PAINTING I MODERN SPANISH PAINTING .... 257 II MODERN ITALIAN PAINTING 286 PART SIX MODERN PAINTING IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES IN HOLLAND . . . . 309 IN BELGIUM ... 321 IN SCANDINAVIA 327 IN AUSTRIA— HUNGARY— BOHEMIA 335 IN RUSSIA 346 IN FINLAND 354 INDEX 359 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Bathing George Seurat 6 La Loge Pierre Auguste Renoir. . 15 The Guitaeist Edouard Manet 26 DECoaATioN Maurice Denis 35 The Bathess Emile Rene Menard .... 46 Tahiti Paul Gauguin 55 The Goddess or Fortune in Distress Gaston La Touche 68 Study of a Woman Henri Matisse 73 Am WALDftUELL Ernst Liehermanm 86 Spatzieeeitt Franz von Stuck 95 The Isle of the Dead Arnold Boecklim 106 From a photogravure ty Bruckmann. The Net-Meudees Max Liehermann 115 By permission of Dodd, Mead and Company. The Siren Arnold Boecklim 121 Adam and Eve LMdmg von Hofmann . . 128 Buegomastee Klein Wilhelm Leibl 137 Master Baby W. Q. Orchardson 144 SuMMEE Night Albert Moore 150 The Sculptress Charles H. Shannon. . . . 159 A Bloomsbury Family William Orpen 169 From a photograph by Paul Laib, Drayton Gardens, London. The Ghjeen Feather Laura Knight 180 The Coming of Spring Charles Sims 186 An Inteeioe James Pryde 191 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGK The Law of Remote An- TiauiTY E. H. Blashfield 202 By permission ot the artist. Portrait Study Cecilia Beaux SOT From a photograph by Peter A. Juley, N. Y. Fishermen and Gulls George W. Bellows 214) By permission of the artist. The Parrakeets Frederick C. Frieseke. . . 223 By permission of William Macbeth. The Mirror Robert Reid 230 By permission of N. E. Montross. The Porter and the Ladies OF Bagdad Bryson Burroughs 236 By permission of the artist. Life and Death E. H. Blashfield ^3 By permission of the artist. The Great Mother Arthur B. Dames 251 By permission of William Macbeth. Daniel Zuloaga and His Daughters Ignacio Zuloaga 274 Ploughing in the Enga- DiNE Giovamd Segantini 283 By permission of Dodd, Mead and Company. The Toilet Camillo Irmocenti 294 Portrait Arturo Noci 303 Winter Afternoon Carlo Fornara 314 By permission of Count Alberto Gubricy de Dragon, Milan. The Holy Family Gaetano Previati 323 By permission of Count Alberto Gubricy de Dragon, Milan. Convalescence Eimar Nielsen 330 Photograph by Paulsen, Copenhagen. The Old Scribe Josef Israels 338 From the collection of Dr. Leslie D. Ward, by permission. Swedish Peasant Girl in Winter Costume Anders L. Zom 343 Photograph by Blomberg, Stockholm. Russian Peasant Dancers. .Ilya I. Ripvn 351 PART ONE MODERN FRENCH PAINTING THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING MODERN FRENCH PAINTING CHAPTER I THE MODERN CONCEPT— RACIAL QUALITIES A Logical Division. — Change in the Conception of Painting Brought About by Impressionism. — Matters of Interest to the Layman: Racial Qualities^ Latin and Gothic; Imagina- tion and Idealism. — Modern Currents Defined. IN a study of modem French painting — ^no matter whether the audience be of artists or of laymen — it is possible to use one hne of division, to part the time roughly, but with some degree of certainty, into the period before the great Impressionists and the period since their arrival. Such a division we main- tain to be wholly legitimate; for, with the rise, prac- tice, and influence of Impressionism, there has come a marked change in the French conception of paint- ing — a conception, it is needless to say, that has made its way from France into all other countries of mod- ern civiHzation, Under the older regime, painting made much of THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING design and of the linear, and accepted, unquestioning, the supposition of fixed color. It was, moreover, an expression of emotion or of belief, a portrayal of character, or a setting forth of episode, fact, or situa- tion. Impressionism, on the contrary, is wholly in- different to subject. To the Impressionist, painting is a matter of optics, the very basis of which implies a denial of fixed color and fixed line, and for which, we safely affirm, design exists not of itself but only as a thing that is bom of color and of light. While the older painters may be said to draw and paint, one may almost say that the Impressionists merely paint. The art of the former appeals to the human intellect and the human sensibility, but the art of the latter appeals to the eye alone, or to such intellect as may be called purely optical. The older men endeavored to say something; the Impressionists have endeavored to find harmonies. Monet's theory of Impressionism, it is true, has not been taken bodily into the practice of all modern Frenchmen, or even into that of the greater number; but the men are few, indeed, whose work bears no sign of the larger Im- pressionism. Even to the general public, reluctant to accept such a change, there has come a vague notion that painting is primarily an appeal to the eye, re- placing the older notion of the art as in some measure illustrating life and character. This one clean division, however, is not of first in- 4 < a 02 H O « o ta o o z; I— I MODERN FRENCH PAINTING terest to the layman ; his concern is with matters quite different, though of much less importance to the painter. He has questions as to racial quality and national quality; he is concerned with such elements as idealism, subjectivity, passion, imagination; he has reached out of late to the significant and fascinating matter of comparative criticism. In the layman's study of an art there is always the factor of philos- ophy, for art, to his thinking, is at once a part of life and its witness. It is unwise, therefore, for him to approach the subject on the basis of a technical divi- sion, no matter how important this line of division in the history and the conception of painting. A knowledge of this changing of ideals, however, is essential to his criticism and his enjoyment — of what he sees by chance and of what he goes forth to see. Selecting an example from home, we may im- agine him in the Metropolitan Museum of New York and intent upon a painting by Besnard, which was loaned, a few years ago, to the French paintings in that gallery. It is the figure of a naked woman, sitting on the floor, idle and listless — and hereto- fore he has seen no beauty in it and has wondered, rather gravely, at its acquirement by the Museum. This knowledge of a changed ideal, while it does not answer his question as to morals, will enable him to understand the raison d'Hrg of the painting. It is not an expression of sentiment or of emotion, it por- 7 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING trays no character, it sets forth no dogma ; it is merely an experiment with flesh in a certain light, an achieve- ment in an art which is purely optic. The layman will miderstand, now, such pictures as the new Alex- ander of the Heam collection, which is entitled "The Ring" and has nothing to do with any ring ever forged by any jeweler — ^being, like the other, the achievement of an optic art, an exquisite game or f roUc, with hght as the most important player. He will know now, as he did not know before, the reason for a host of "Interiors" — ^those of Tarbell in Amer- ica, those of Bail in France, those of the new de Hoog in Holland — some of them quite shut-in and showing reflected light, others with the light from an open casement on the faces and figures of women, sitting at some household task. He will understand, with the aid of this knowledge, why we have from mod- em painters so many a naked figure in green boscage with the play of the stmlight upon it ; it is less, as he will see, to paint us the nymph in the brake, the oread on the mountain, than to exhibit a wonderful dex- terity, to snatch at some fleeting effect of light on naked flesh, or to show us color as "the procreatrix of design." The layman, when he sees the new conception, will compare it, no doubt, with that of an older type of artist. He will recall, perhaps, the severely ethical Millet and his description of one of his own paintings 8 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING as designed to appeal to the spirit, the emotions, the sense of morality and of duty. Again, he will recall the feeling of the simple and devout Corot for the spiritual quality of his morning or evening landscape. To these, of course, he may oppose the famous dic- tum of Manet, "The principal person in the picture is the light"; or, perhaps, some trenchant remark from "Ten O'Clock," emhodying the disdain of Whis- tler for all that looks like subject or emotion. At first, no doubt, he will be confused and wearied, un- able to accept either one of these opinions in its en- tirety. With patience, however, he will find a golden mean, and will see that the ideal conception is the balanced conception — that he cannot have always an expression of the spirit, nor always a mere lovely ren- dering of the ways and caprices of the light. It may be long, indeed, before this balance is achieved, for the love of experiment and the fancy for idyllic dec- oration have all but cast aside and brought to dis- favor the picture of a spiritual intention. This, how- ever, is not strange. The conquest of light is the I great and magnificent triumph of modern painting, and the decorative purpose is a purpose pecuhar to the twentieth century — an era which desires, al- ternately, to experience the joys of living and to escape into a world of golden dream. It is natural, therefore, that the painters of this era should be di- vided between two aims, and natural, also, that the THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING picture of another order should be temporarily neg- lected. The tendency of extremes, however, is to meet, and we hope to see, at no very distant date, a fusion of two ideals: the ideal of Watts, the teacher and messenger, the painter distinctly ethical, and the ideal of Whistler, who disdained all subject, all mes- sage and all interpretation. We may turn now, without more ado, to matters which are of interest to the layman, and which, indeed, are not without interest to the painter. "Man and the intention of his soul," said Leonardo, "are the su- preme themes of the artist." To such a sublime pro- fession, the profession of a very great master, there would seem to be no lawful contradiction. Man and the intention of his soul must still have some meaning for the painter, even for him who despises all "sub- ject." However that may be, such elements as we have named — ^the racial and the national, idealism, imagination, passion — are elements of supreme inter- est to the layman. First, then, let us consider the racial quality of French painting. It is claimed, now and then, that great art has no race and shows no signs of a physical environment. For answer, we call attention, briefly, to Italian art of the various provinces. The painting of the Tuscan is his Tuscany; it is Florence, it is the Apennines, it is a mingling of austerity and delicacy, of the sweet and the stem, of the reserved and the plainly ex- 10 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING quisite. Venetian art is evidently Venice, splendid, sumptuous and earthly; Umbrian art has the calm of the Umbrian landscape; and Roman art, even in the hands of Raphael, has the qualities of imperial Rome. It is so with the art of the North, with Rembrandt and Hals on the one hand and the Little Dutch Mas- ters on the other — in all of which we have the broad and solid sobriety of the Northern country, and that wonderful mundane painting which followed the adoption of the Protestant faith and the expulsion of art from the churches into the world. In all French painting, we maintain, the racial is a very marked element, but it is idle to make such a claim without some discussion of racial qualities. We may say at once, then, that the Frenchman is not pri- marily subjective, that he is not by first intention the idealist. Imaginative he is, but between imagination and idealism the distinction is as firm as it is delicate. Imagination is connected with material — ^with words or notes or marble or pigment — ^but idealism is inde- pendent of material and belongs to the infinite spirit. To illustrate from literature, we may say that the work of Poe is merely imaginative while that of Haw- thorne, his compeer, is not only imaginative but su- perbly idealistic. We may take a much better ex- ample and say that the Elizabethan lyric — ^beautiful and passionate as it is, and charged with the joy of new hfe — ^has imagination but has not idealism, while 11 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING the lyric of the nineteenth century is notable as pos- sessing both qualities. Again, we may contrast the "Creation," that marvel of the Sistine Chapel, with Bareau's statue, "The Awakening of Humanity." The first is idealistic, is charged with a sense of the divine, but the second is merely imaginative realism. Another example we may take from the Rodin mar- bles in New York. That terrible figure, "The Old Courtesan," is simply imaginative, a thing aU piteous- ness and shame; the "Balzac" is that consummate man of the world who gave us the "Comedie Hu- maine"; but "The Hand of God" is idealistic, be- longing to the ultimate divine Will, which cannot be explained yet is felt to be tranquil and compassionate. These examples will emphasize the distinction and will bring it home, perhaps, to the younger and the less experienced reader. The French imagination, then, is objective and stylistic, dealing with concrete things. This is be- cause of a strong Latin element, a blood which makes for form, the very blood which shaped our modem Europe and brought her savage forces into order. The Gothic element, on the other hand, is concerned less with form than with vision, with the great shape- less dream of the universe or of humanity, with the immanent mystery of life. Now, in the veins of the Frenchman the blood of the two is commingled. He has all the energy, all the individualism of the North, 12 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING and we find in his marbles the Northern capacity for the vision ; but his painting, hke the body of his litera- ture, is dominated by the Latin sense of form, the desire, implacable and stern, for the perfect expres- sion of his thought. To turn to his sculpture, we see a straight heritage from the Gothic, a something which existed before the Roman and is traceable from Rheims and Amiens, with their vivid, dramatic, al- most flamboyant figures, through such work as that of Michel Colomb, Goujon, Richier, Clodion, Hou- don in his portrait busts, Rude, Barye, and Carpeaux, on through the years to the marbles of Auguste Rodin. There is never a time, even in the v/orst of a false classicism, when the sharp, personal, visionary strain of the indigenous Gothic is not to be seen in French sculpture. With painting the case is very different. Taken over partly from Flanders but chiefly from Italy, French painting has far less of the indigenous, and we miss, therefore, that intense and glowing individ- ualism, that vivid expression, that quahty sharply personal, which marks the line of sculptm-e to which we have just called attention. The painting of the late seventeenth century, as that of the century pre- ceding it, was a painting distinctly eclectic, and the Gothic quahties, it is needless to say, are not the quali- ties that lend themselves to eclecticism. The paint- ing of these centuries is not a romantic art, and the 13 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING sense of high illusion, hke that of a flaming intensity, is wanting to it, as it is never wanting to sculpture, where the Northern blood is so much more in evidence. When the Frenchman is himself and unconscious, he shows the mingled bloods. When he borrows, he is conscious and deliberate — he is critical, sophisticated, imitative — and, borrowing from Italy with a firm be- lief in the greatness of the Caracci and of Caravaggio, he used his borrowings with fine style but with little of the old Frankish spirit. In Clouet, himself of Flemish origin, and in painters of his order there is clearly a strain of the Northern, but the general effect is Italianate, and the dominating factor is the classic sense of form. On the element of desire aU art is more or less de- pendent, and the desire of the French genius is clearly towards painting and sculpture, as the desire of the German is towards music and that of the Eng- lish towards poetry. The Frenchman, moreover, is enamored of his craft. He, above all other peoples, has a feehng for that side of his art to which belongs the mere workmanship. The men of other races have regarded their meaning more passionately than the Frenchman, but it is he who performs with whitest ardor. This, however, is a fact that we have already intimated; to say that a genius is styhstic is to say that it does its work devoutly, with the flaming pa- tience of a young devotee. 14 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING In the quality of imagination French painting is a leader of the modems. Since Watteau and Frago- nard, with a brief interregnum of David and pseudo- classicism, its imagination appears to the world as at once the richest and most delicate, the subtlest and most various — as great in the classic Ingres as in the romantic Monticelli, as marked in the diabolism of Degas as in the sad humanity of Millet. The French- man, we repeat, makes for form — and imagination is nothing more or less than a great mental forming, the mind's concrete vision. The modem French artist is no seer of the spiritual type, but in the realm of imagination he adventures magnificently and without the least shadow of a rival. His material matters not at all; from myth to history, from nature to dream, from the domestic scenes of Chardin to the latest decorative panel of Maurice Denis, the French imagi- nation is peculiar and unapproachable. Here is the racial delicacy and verve, the glow of the Gothic, the selectiveness of the Latin, the exquisite notion of fit- ness, the poignant apprehension of concrete beauty. In the orderly domain of Apollo, which is distinct from the Dionysian domain of emotion, the French- man is splendidly at home. As to the matter of comparative criticism, this is of less moment to the present chapter than to others, since the Frenchman, in his modern career, is giving much more than he receives. We admit, indeed, cer- 17 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING tain debts to the Spaniards and to the Dutchmen, but the Spaniards are Velasquez and Goya and the Dutchmen are Rembrandt and Hals, while the debt to the moderns is almost negligible. We shall touch necessarily, however, upon points of resemblance and of difference, while in the remaining chapters we shall note the French influence as it acts upon the art of other countries. In technique the French have been leaders and have sailed uncharted seas — and the booty of their voyages, though a very strange booty of late, they have shared with all who have asked of them. The currents of modem French art are currents of one great democratic movement, the tendency towards freedom of thought and of form. This ten- dency is well termed "romantic"; for the spirit of freedom, the spirit of ilhmitable aspiration, is exactly opposed to the classic qualities of order and restraint, while the infinite wonder, the sense of the mystery of life, is the antithesis of a pseudo-classic complacency. This great movement, we repeat, embraces the lesser movements, but for the sake of clearness the lesser shall be separately considered. There is first, then, the tendency towards natural- ism. This is a phase so broad that it includes the romantic spirit of the Barbizon men as well as the brutal realism of Courbet, and may even be said to include our modern Impressionism — ^not, indeed, as a whole, but in so far as the term means the theory of 18 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING Monet and his followers. There is, second, the trend towards the decorative with its two very notable con- comitants — ^the wish for the joy of life and the urgent desire for escape, the desire for repose in the lost world of dream. There is, third, that later form of Impressionism which is reactionary, the exponents of which are painting the effects of in-door light. Such effects, we note, are many and various, ranging from that of the foot-lights on a dancing-girl to that of the Bethlehem stable-lamp on Mary and the heavenly Child. The fourth and last movement, that of the Post-Impressionists, Cubists, and their kind, we define as a curious blend. On one hand, it is an attempt at the expression of emotion, to be achieved by a return to the primitive — to the Egyptian, As- syrian, Byzantine, Etruscan, or another — ^with the simplicity, sincerity, naivete and originality inherent in the early forms of art. On the other hand, it is an effort at abstract design, an effort which has been ac- claimed as "classic" and is, in reality, akin to the Ori- ental. These various trends we must now follow in due order. 19 CHAPTER II NATURALISM a. The Beginnings: Watteau, the Fore-runner; The Pseudo- Classic Re-action; Delacroix; Courbet; The Barbizon Men. h. Impressionism: Monet and His Theory; Manet, the Classic among Impressionists; Renoir, the Most Gallic of the Group; Degas, Independent Ally. c. Japanese Influence. — Conclusions as to Impressionism. THE trend towards freedom of form, which, we repeat, is a part of the democratic movement of the nineteenth century, is expressed first by Antoine Watteau, who anticipates the moderns in more ways than one. Watteau is highly individual — that is, free — alike in his spirit and in his form. He is a ro- mantic who follows a reign of would-be classicism, a painter allied by technique to the Venetians when such alliance was practically unknown. He is, more- over, an airy and exquisite prophet, who foretold the weariness of the moderns and their desire for the world of golden dream — and who did it, not by any expression of grief or of sadness, but by a pensive gaiety, a sort of ethereal wistfulness, which intimated, though in an eighteenth-century fashion, the heart- sickness that is possible to himianity. After Wat- 20 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING teau the cause of freedom languished, for the period which followed was the period of David and pseudo- classicism. France was new-born and born republi- can — and she, like other young folk, was enamored of the sterner virtues. In the limits of practical life this was admirable, but in art it took the form of rigidity, of a classicism that was not really classic but stiff, and inimical by its very nature to freedom. This period, however, is reheved by the purer classi- cism of Ingres, who is akin to the Greeks by his se- vere and absolute beauty of line, and to whose example, indeed, our moderns trace their purity of drawing. Pseudo-classicism, however, is short-lived. With the opening of the nineteenth century comes the tidal- wave of the democratic spirit, which brings us both naturalism and romanticism. So far as painting is concerned, the new spirit finds its first advocate in that big romanticist, Eugene Delacroix, the brilliant Victor Hugo of his art, who comes with new passion, new rhythm, new significance. It is followed into its beautiful youth by the men of the Barbizon School, with their simple, noble, and wholly uplifting natu- ralism, a romantic naturalism, the finest and most delicate in all modern painting. In the Barbizon men — Rousseau, Daubigny, Troyon, Corot, Millet, Diaz — ^we have painters who go back to nature, but to nature in her pleasantest aspects. Even in the fields THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING of Millet, with their solemn, peasant figures, there is nothing ungentle or unlovely. For Corot — ^that ten- der spirit, who has been called the Fra Angelico of modem landscape — ^the morning comes down from God out of heaven, divinely veiled, and adorned like a bride for her husband. For Daubigny the green earth is earthy, but is also very sweet and very dear ; for Rousseau it has some of the old, dark, Flemish, Ruisdael spirit, but is none the less beautiful for that ; and for Troyon it is quite big and simple, charged with the breath of the kine, and lying broad and pa- tient beneath a patient sky. These men of the Barbi- zon forest — ^with whom we count Corot, though he is really too classic for this company — stand together at one end of the naturalistic movement and form its romantic group. At the other end is Gustave Cour- bet, an able draughtsman, with whom the natural is almost invariably the ugly, the dreary, the com- monplace. He is the stem and savage realist, whose genius turns less often to beauty than to the transcript of a terrible plainness. We cannot do better here than to contrast his "Funeral at Omans," a poor, rugged, peasant funeral, with Troyon's "Close of the Day," such a contrast being more effective than criti- cism. In Troyon's great painting, though it is some- thing almost poignant, we see only the world of out- ward nature and of animal existence, while in the "Funeral at Omans" we have something that belongs MODERN FRENCH PAINTING to human Kf e, its last and its most impressive scene, at once so simple and so profound. It is partly for this reason, doubtless, that Courbet stands out boldly in the history of modern French painting. He is the realist, not merely of nature but of human life, and he is this, moreover, quite consciously and by profes- sion. "I am not only a socialist," says the rough and sturdy fellow, "but also a democrat and a republican . . . and I am a sheer realist, which means a loyal adherent to the verite vraie." Realism he fiercely de- clares to be "the negation of the ideal," and with this feeling he paints us his peasants and his market- women, his stone-breakers and his Paris firemen. A spade he sees as a spade, and for him a naked woman is neither a Daphne nor a Flora but a naked woman merely, though drawn with a big and powerful skill. That the ideal also is truth, and truth in its highest form, is something that he never imderstands. To Courbet and his stark realism, however, French paint- ing owes a debt of gratitude, for it was he who em- phasized the fact that the material of art includes the ugly and the commonplace as well as the beautiful and unusual. He is the Zola of French painting, with the virtues and the defects of Zola's fiction. So strong is this trend towards naturalism that it persists side by side with an ardent and popular ro- manticism, and even with that form of it which is so deliberately decorative. We can follow the trend, 23 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING through a dozen different shapes, into the art of a well-remembered yesterday and of an immediate present. There is Gerome, for example, half classic and half realistic, of a genius that is purely academic ; there is the ill-fated Bastien-Lepage, whom we may term an imaginative realist; there is Albert Roll, the President of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, who is chiefly a sane and delightful realist of catholic taste and feehng; and in landscape there is the splen- did old Harpignies, the lovely and musical Cazin. Then, too, there is Charles Cottet, with his tragedies of the coast-people; Lucien Simon, with his Breton peasants and his charming scenes from French family life ; L'Hermitte, the successor of Millet, and akin to the German Uhde; and the staccato Raffaelli, who gives us the varying aspects of Paris from the quays to the debonnair boulevards. There are, also, such new men as Dauchez the sombre landscapist; Gillot, as a rule an uncompromising realist, who loves such things as the factory and the furnace; Prinet, the painter of some charming phases of modernity; and others whose names it is not necessary to mention. These men are essentially naturalists, though by no means of one and the same order. There is, for in- stance, a great gulf fixed between Gerome and Lucien Simon, for Gerome is of the older tradition, as in- sistent upon line as the stem master, Ingres, and with academic standards as to the seeing and the painting THE GUITARIST ^DOUARD MANET METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OP ART MODERN FRENCH PAINTING of light, while Simon is a modern eclectic, learning from both old and new traditions and getting the secrets of light partly from the greater Impression- ists. So, again, there is a difference between Simon and Raffaelli, the staccato touches of the latter being suited to the matter of his street-scenes and not to the charming pictures, made up of women and children, which are now so favored of Simon. Nevertheless, we may group such men together as "Naturalists," or "Reahsts," or under any title which shall intimate to the public that they deal with the actual world and not with the world of dreams. Their first business is to transcribe — ^with poetry, perhaps, or even with a feeling idyllic — ^but to transcribe rather than to inter- pret or to decorate. To name such men at this moment, however, is to run far ahead of the history of modern work. Let us turn back, therefore, and imagine ourselves in Paris in 1865. It was in this year that Manet exhibited his "Olympia," the picture which was dismissed by Cour- bet as "The Queen of Spades going to her bath," the title, it is needless to say, referring to that strange new flatness of which Manet was the first and the sturdiest exponent. Manet, however, was not to be stopped by an epithet. He preferred, he said, to paint a Queen of Spades rather than a billiard-ball, the biUiard-ball being a term of opprobriirai for Courbet's solid modeling. These comments are the 27 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING straws that show the wind. Courbet is the last of the older artists, for whom modeling was half the battle of art, while Manet stands for the new, the type whose flatness is akin to the Japanese, and who, indeed, have taken many lessons from Japan. The name of Manet brings us to the work of the Impressionists, from whom, happily or unhappily, French art gains a new raison d'Hre. We must pause here, however, and acknowledge the value of the Academy at this very critical moment. Gerome, Constant, Cabanel, Bouguereau, Meissonier, and others of their order, masters of drawing and in- sistent upon older methods, were men who served as a check upon new liberties. Acting against the radi- calism of Monet and his followers, they made towards a necessary balance, to deny which or to minimize would be but a feeble sort of criticism. We must note, moreover, that they were painters of a classic order — ^the term "classic" signifying the fixed or es- tablished — and that this new movement was of the romantic type, tending to the free, the unrestrained, the unlimited. Without the conservatism of the Academy, French painting had been lost in a swamp full of will-o'-the-wisps. The best of its art is an art which has learned from both sides, from the ificole des Beaux Arts as well as from the BatignoUes School. The aim of Impressionism, as preached by Monet MODERN FRENCH PAINTING and his immediate followers, is to give us the aspect, not the fact. Color, these men declare, is never fixed and definite but varies with the varying of the light. For example — so runs their argument — ^the bush which is green when one stands near it, or in the light of noon-day or of morning, is blue-green or gray- green at a distance or in the evening. The flesh of the hiunan body is different in different lights. The Cathedral at Rouen, like any other object in the physical universe, has one aspect by morning light, and another under the mid-day sun, and another still by moonlight. This means, of course, that there is no such thing as fixed color and that color is de- pendent upon depth of atmosphere, upon li ght as affected by distan ce and timegf day. Their idea of painting was nothing very new. In the first place there were the Venetians, who painted more than they drew and who fairly shocked the Florentine draughts- men. In the second place, there was the Prado, rich in the work of Velasquez and Goya, whose painting was modern and impressionistic; in the third place, there were Rembrandt and Hals, the teachers and exemplars of the modern; there was Claude Lorraine, "the painter of the sun"; there were Turner and Constable, the former a master of atmosphere; and, last, there was Adolphe MonticeUi, to whom light was a mere jewelled plaything. It was Claude Monet, however, who made aU this practice into theory and THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING who followed it with a far greater consciousness than any of these "natural Impressionists." The seven hues of the spectrum, argued Monet, do not act separately but in a remarkable blend. Analy- sis, however, shows them to be really separated; they are juxtaposed, making parallel vibrations, and these parallels are recomposed by the eye and made into something single and definite. Monet, therefore, de- termined to limit himself to Nature's own procedure ; he no longer mixed the colors on his palette in the , old and time-honored fashion, but juxtaposed them ' on his canvas in minute, parallel lines, these lines, by inevitable temptation, becoming mere spots or touches. The proportion of color he made to differ with his intention. Did he wish the light to come from a fire? Very well: the colors were chiefly red and orange. Did he wish it to come through a screen of foliage with the sun behind it? Then the colors he chose were mainly green and yellow. Even in his treatment of shadow he abandoned the old idea, and his shadow was not the absence of light but merely "light of another value." Having discussed Monet's ideas of color, it is al- most unnecessary to speak of his ideas of line. To quote from a recent criticism, we may say that he volatilizes, line, this word expressing his notion of a contovir that varies with the varying of Hght. To put it briefly, his theory suppresses Jine and does away MODERN FRENCH PAINTING with fixed color. Painting, as we have said, becomes an optic art, a search for beautiful harmonies, a sort of natural poem as distinct from expression. For an example we may quote from Mauclair, and compare an imaginary picturing of the death of Agamenmon, done in the academic style, with one of the same sub- ject as painted by an Impressionist. The former will take Agamemnon as leading the whole composition, then Clytemnestra, then others in accordance with the story. The Impressionist, on the contrary, will pick out his strongest note — let us say a red dress, which may or may not be worn by Clytemnestra — and wiU build up his picture accordingly, the matter ^jeing one of values and not of the tragical figures or of any literary interest. This theory is rightly ascribed to Monet, though in his later years he has not strictly alhered to it but has modified his short, close stroke. Yet Monet was no fighter for his doctrines. It was ]&douard Manet, who, when he had accepted these theories, stood with his back to the wall and met both Academy and news- papers. Manet, however, must not be classed wholly with the others of the Batignolles group — ^the name of which, by-the-way, comes from the meetings at a Batignolles cafe. He is a painter of the big, classic order, and is akin, though distantly, to the great Northerners and the great Spaniards. His "Bon Bock" is like the work of Hals, his "Boy with the 31 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Sword" recalls Velasquez, his "Lola de Valence" is Goya — and these three, chosen at random, are enough to establish hitn as a classic of the grand order. We see in Manet something of the broad and simple splendor of his masters, something of their knowledge of values, their treatment of blacks, browns and grays. He is never the minute Impressionist. No spots or Seurat for him! He will give you, rather, the broad stroke of the big Spanish Impressionists. He is, it need hardly be said, entirely "a painter's painter," a man whose whole interest is in his performance as a performance, and he has been too greatly lauded by a certain species of criticism, some of which has pre- tended to see what it never saw at all. His "Olym- pia," for example, is the subject of much indiscrimi- nate raving, yet the best and sanest critics have acknowledged it as by no means his greatest piece of work and as something really experimental, though a fascinating and impudent performance. The figure has the meagreness of a Cranach and more than one hint of other Primitives, suggesting a white-paper doll pasted on a dark background. It is extreme in its shortening, although of a luminous whiteness ; and the negress, the cat, and the bouquet are as plainly put there for sheer effect as if Manet had written to that purpose on the frame. Yet to complain of these things is merely to find fault in a circle, for all this is of Manet's particular intention. He means to 32 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING paint a flat figure, or, rather, to paint his figure flatly — ^thereby going to an extreme which did not occur to Velasquez when that painter thought out his "Venus," or to Mazo, if he painted it. As to the matter of shortening, Manet intends to shorten; while the cat, the negro woman, and the formal bouquet are each and every one painted for the sake of painting. For what covdd he paint if not for this? He had nothing to tell us, men or women, as to the fatal progress of the life of the courtesan ; he had no intention to illus- trate the fact that the wages of such sin is inevitably death. His intention was to show how the naked flesh of a woman will look in certain lights, against a certain color, and set off by certain accessories. Voila! To do more were surely banal, or, at the least, were bourgeois and old-fashioned! That the result has a measure of charm and conviction we have already plainly admitted, but this is the result of technique, lacking which the picture wbuld be re- pulsive, a thing to be ranked in the Limbo of those creations which are neither moral nor immoral but unmoral, and which carry no significance to the spirit or the mind of humanity. The better Manet, whose work it is pleasant to look upon, is the Manet of the "Boy with the Sword," of "Lola de Valence," of "The Woman with the Parrot," of "The Mirror," and of that very fine study, in which the planes are so ad- mirably treated, "The Bar of the Folies Bergeres." 33 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING To speak of Monet is to speak of the English Sisley and the Anglo-Italian Pissaro, though Pissaro, for a brief period, went farther than Monet and practiced more of pointillisme, painting with Seurat's small spots or touches. Not another of the group has the exquisite brightness, the fragile and delicate charm of Claude Monet. Monet we may safely call "lyric," his quality being that of a lovely song or short poem — simple, single, definite, and imbued with most deli- cate passion. A collection of his pictures, no matter how small it may be, gives a sense of light and air, of grace, of spiritual exquisiteness. We get it from no other painter nor do we expect it of any. Manet, the second of the group, we have described as a painter who is essentially of the grand or classic order; but in Auguste Renoir, the third, we have a dainty temper, a manner which reverts to the graces of the late eighteenth century, a painter who is a sort of modern Fragonard. Like Fragonard, Renoir is descended from Rubens, though the lusty blood of the Fleming grows pale as it courses through the veins of modern men. Renoir is distinctly Gallic, the most thoroughly French, perhaps, of all our modern painters. His tradition, like that of Watteau, La- tour and Fragonard, is the tradition of the sumptuous Venetians translated into terms of modern French. It becomes, however,' much softer and prettier, with the sumptuousness turned into gaiety, into a sort of DECORATION MAURICE DENIS MODERN FRENCH PAINTING dainty opulence. His subjects, too, like those of the Venetians and the eighteenth-century Frenchman, are subjects of pleasure, of ease, of delight. Here are yoving girls at their piano, here are beautiful women at the opera, here is a set of happy working-folk at a dance, or a blithe crowd on a boulevard of Paris. He paints, it is said, somewhat lusciously, and his women have been called "a trifle dropsical" — so plump they are, of flesh so soft and yielding, without enough verve, without enough energy. Yet, on the other hand, they seem quite free and pure; they are well- fed, luxvu-iant creatures, who are yet sweet and ten- der, and no more sensuous than the grass or the darling flowers themselves. Renoir's later period has been criticised as faded and a little too fantastic, but the pictures recently added to the Metropolitan Museum bear no least witness to the epithet "faded." His middle period is his best, and to this belongs the beautiful portrait of Mme. Charpentier and her chil- dren, which is so well known to Americans. It is true that the many-colored background — ^where, by the way, we note the Japanese influence — is just a little crowded and confused. It is true, also, that there is so much in the picture as to make very nearly two pictures; and it is true, again, that this is not modem when compared with the terrible modern- ities of the moment. Yet it is sound, beautiful and durable, and will last, doubtless, when certain re- 37 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING cent fantasies have long been forgotten or con- demned. The name of Degas, a synonym for mastery of line, has so often been coupled with the names of these men that we turn to it here automatically. Yet Degas is not wholly of this order; a pupil of Ingres and prac- tising the precepts of his master, he could not "vola- tilize" his line, he could not see it as something half imaginary. So superb a draughtsman, however, is able to do anything with line, and Degas has come in his later years to a "loose and pulsing drawing" that has its foimdation in stern discipline. With the prob- lems of light, moreover, he is truly and deeply con- cerned. This is witnessed by such things as the pink "Premiere Danseuse" of the CaiUebotte collection in the Luxembourg, where the light is beautifully han- dled — and by others with the same kind of subject, in which the Hght is as big a matter as the wonderful figures themselves. By the painting of such figures Degas has made his sorry fame, his pessimistic and satirical spirit joining with his mastery of hne to por- tray a poverty-bitten world that aflPords so much pleasure to the great world of gaiety. With certain limitations as a colorist, he is the lord of a sorrowful line of poor dancers, whom he paints in the bitter fashion that suits their bitter lot. Degas is so un- usual and such a great master of the linear that we stop, perforce, to speak of him, though he is a man 38 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING who stands aside from common tendency. Of his fol- lowers the most notable is Henri de Toulouse de Lau- trec, of whose work we shall speak farther on, in con- nection with the followers of Cezanne and his school. It is to this time, with the rise of these men and their practice of flat painting, that we date the first phase of Japanese influence, an influence which has been summed up so well by a modem German critic that we venture to break our own rule of no quota- tion. The following lines need neither praise or com- ment: "Japan expanded naturalism, made the brush looser, color more liquid. We owe to it an extension of the surface, a dehght in lovely contrasts, movement in composition . . . and above all, a new pictorial pattern." "Some measures of the tendency fostered by Japan" — ^we quote the same critic here — "were al- ready operative in European art before 'The Japa- nese' was discovered. There is a rapidity in Goya, a lightness of improvisation in Guys, the etcher, and a* certain Japanese effect in Constable, which is akin to the painting of Japan. It must be admitted, how- ever, that the gain of the European artists from the Oriental is what we have stated in the foregoing para- graph." The exigencies of the American and the European will keep them, doubtless, from pursuing too far the example of an alien race. Our manner of thought, the bounds of our expression, the needs 39 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING and capacities of our audience, all are qxiite different from those of Nippon. When the Japanese paints like the Westerner, the West is deeply regretful and does not hesitate to tell him that he is walking on dangerous ground. When the Westerner imitates Japan, the situation is not likely to be different. On the beautiful and finished art of France, however, this influence has never worked havoc; France has taken only what she Uked and has held to her manifest des- tiny. This is the result of a great, severe discipline, a strict tradition, which, laugh as the radicals may, has kept the art of painting from falling into brilliant rags and tatters. What she has gained, nevertheless, is a gain in very truth, more especially that extension of surface, that movement of composition, and that new pictorial pattern the comprehension of which has enlarged the possibilities of European art. The newness of Impressionism is long since over and done with, and we hear no more preachments as to the natural and a return to it. The conquest of light — so often does humanity work in circles! — has led men from the studio to the open, but now the in- door light has its hold upon us, with as much fasci- nation as the sunlight. Men are turning, of late, to the light from a lamp on the table, to the light from a chandelier or gas-jet, from a garden of Japanese lan- terns, from the globes on the comer of the street — and the desire of the average art-student is for 40 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING interior lighting, the decorative, and the successful rendering of the nude. The idea of art as an inter- pretation of life is an idea that has yet to be revived, though we hope, as we said in our first pages, to come at last to a fusion of two ideals. Spiritual and artis- tic ahke. Impressionism is born of the old, democratic, Gothic spirit, with which goes the romantic quality of glamour. Out of this spirit has arisen that "new lan- guage" which has been called by a name that is ad- mirably suited to it. For the desire of the modern, deriving so largely from the Gothic, is impregnated with the love of the mysterious, of a magical and glamorous beauty. It has demanded, not the definite form, but the impression of form, not clarity but inti- mation, not le grand secret but the hint of it. The language of this greater Impressionism is a language that does not reveal all of beauty; it is half a revela- tion and half a concealment. De Bussy, in music, D'Annunzio in drama, Rodin in sculpture — such men and their army of followers have expressed the ex- treme of our desire. To borrow a metaphor from sculpture, they have left the figure too much in the stone; they have guessed, intimated, suggested; they have stated aspect, not fact ; in brief, they have given us impressions. At this very moment, however, we re-act, and from places of authority comes the voice of urgent protest, preaching a Greek reserve, a fine Greek temperance and clarity. We admit, neverthe- 41 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING less, the value of Impressionism in painting. It has increased, for the artist, the powers and possibilities of his instrmnent; through Manet, especially, it has brought back the tradition of Velasquez and of Hals ; it has revealed to both artists and laymen the mys- terious secrets of the light. On the other hand, it has shown us, as we never were shown before, the value of common life as the subject for art; it has shown us the wonder of the world around us as we had not visioned it before; it has even emphasized for us, by the excellent method of contrast, the beauty and the value of the classic ideal. n CHAPTER III THE IDYLLIC DECORATIVE Beasons for the Decorative Tendency. — Giorgione the First of the Idyllic-Decorative. — Tendency to the Decorative Mani- fested in Three Forms; a. The Fantastic, Illustrated by Moreau; 6. The Supposed Classic, Illustrated by de Cha- vannes; c. The New Idyllic, Illustrated by Besnard, La Touche, Menard, Denis, Martin, Chabas, and Others. OUR second current is the trend towards the deco- rative, or, as we put it here, "the idyllic-deco- rative." We have now the garden of the Hesperides, the forest of the German's Blue Flower, the Irish- man's Tir n' an Og, and everybody's Happy Island or Ultima Thule. "But why?" asks the layman. "Why this imiversal revel, this morning and evening frolic of nymphs and oreads and bacchants? Why this repetition of Pan in the forest with his beautiful attendants? Why these many family picnics in lit- tle family gardens? And why these pretty maids, half naked in the sunshine after baths?" Now the answer to this is simple. There are many men, not mural decorators, to whom painting is purely decoration, and for their purpose the idyl is absolutely suited, oifering beautiful and decorative scenes with THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING beautiful and decorative figures, and demanding very little of the intellect. Then, too, the idyllic world of repose is the special and cherished dream of our mod- em, strenuous life. In all this haste and hurry we sadly long for rest; in this noisy and peaceless en- deavor we want peace and quiet. Of such desire the idyl is a very good expression, and the one most proper to the art of painting. We have, therefore, all these enchanted gardens and woodlands, these worlds of beauty and repose, peopled with happy fig- ures which know neither sorrow nor care. Then, too, our desire grows with what it feeds upon. Given a few quiet idyls — even a family picnic and girls in a green- wood! — and we want the whole bright world of nymph and faun. Nor do we lack for painters who will paint it for us, our modern tendency being only too bacchic, and we too proud of our so-called "Greek" joy of living! The first invitation was Giorgione's; he called the Venetians away, out of the splendor of their palaces to woodlands beyond the lagoons ; but from Giorgione to Antoine Watteau there were few repetitions of the idyl. Watteau gives the invitation often; he is "Le Peintre des Fetes Galantes" and his fetes are gallant indeed, with a gallantry all ethereal, with cer- tain qualities of the ancient world of faerie, of inno- cent, lost gayety. After Watteau comes the fasci- nating genius MonticeUi, who is at once a throw-back 44 Q <: •H 03 W H n a B H MODERN FRENCH PAINTING to the Venetians and an Impressionist before Claude Monet, and who dwells in the world of brilliant vision. Monticelli links Watteau to Monet, but following Monticelli comes Corot, who is wholly of this "Other World" except when he turns to the Dutchmen and to Chardin. These men lead to the dream-country and are followed by a bright rout of pilgrims. It is not arbitrary, perhaps, to say of this desire for escape that it is manifested chiefly in three forms : thp fantastic or bizarre, the supposed classic, and the modern or new idyllic. As illustrative of the fan- tastic, we shall take the work of Gustav Moreau, and, though he left the state a houseful of his paintings, we shall use only those of one room in the Museum of the Luxembourg. Though some of the paintings are water-colors, the room holds the gorgeous East in fee upon its walls. The effect is that of superb and thick- crowded jewels, of topaz and emerald, beryl and chrysolite, ruby and amethyst, all massed and crushed together as ia crowns of East Indian princes. Mo- reau, though he seeks the world of rest, achieves a mere rigidity, a strange and Asiatic rigidity, which is very deeply blended with voluptuousness. This is neither the Vale of Tempe nor the garden c>f an early Paradise, but a brilliant, gleaming. Oriental region, which, for all its flame, is forever fixed and still. Let us recall his curious and unearthly rendering of "CEdipus and the Sphinx," comparing it with the ren- 47 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING dering by Ingres. The conception of the latter is not fantastic but vital, the old Greek legend as conceived by the Greek himself. It is simple, faithful, and pure, while Moreau's is phantasmagoric, of a fixed elaboration that recalls the Byzantine ideal. An- other world, truly, is the world of this strange genius, taught by his deep and varied knowledge of the East — of Persia, China, India, Arabia; yet the region is airless and joyless, the flowers are gem-like but odor- less ; it is a place of bizarre and exotic brilliance but a place of peculiar silence ! In this world of the fantastic, Moreau lords it with a very few companions. Eugene Martel, Simon Bussy, Roualt and Desvalheres we note as his chief followers, the two latter going to the Primitives for an expression of the strange and unexplainable. In Germany, where mysticism is at home, he is more ad- mired than in his own country, and it is impossible not to see in the work of Gustav Klimt, the Viennese of decorative genius, a reminder of this brilliant and chryselephantine painting. At present, it would seem, his work is more in favor than it was at the time of its performance. The revival of the sense of mys- tery, the turn towards the various Eastern arts, the interest in experiments with pigment, and, more espe- cially, the trend towards the decorative — ^these, doubt- less, are the reasons for a renewal of interest in such painting. 48 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING To come from Moreau to de Chavamies is to come from a region of phantasmagoria to a region of ex- ceeding placidity, from the Asiatic to a sort of pallid Greek, or to what is generally if mistakenly accepted as such. Consciously or unconsciously, the painter recalls with his figures the description of the old Greek heroes, who are "Ever delicately marching Through the most pellucid air." Yet, in truth, these figures- do not march; they sit, they stand, they bend, they kneel, but movement is forever denied them. A world of repose is this, but a world which is very apt to pall. The garden of the Hesperides is no spot to live in; its fruit, when we make it daily food, will turn to dust and ashes in the mouth! For certain places, however — for the Pan- theon, with its solemn finality, for the deserted splen- dor of an Hotel de ViUe, for the stately Sorbonne, for the quiet and scholarly library — ^this motive of golden quiet is absolutely appropriate. A comparison between Sargent and de Chavannes is not out of place in this connection. With Sargent the idea is paramount but with de Chavannes it is sec- ondary, and it follows, then, that where Sargent's design is obscure, the design of the Frenchman is evident. On the ceiling of religions the decoration is purely intellectual, while the panels on the stairway are decorative only. It is true that we clearly under- 49 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING stand them and that such understanding is an aid to our enjoyment, but, even if we did not understand, we should still have a genuine delight in them. This Chemistry with her fire, this History with her torch, these dim Oceanides encircling their dim hero — they may or may not be fully comprehended, but our pleasure depends very little on the meaning. That pleasure we get from a beautiful, quiet, re- poseful composition, from a pale yet luminous col- oring, and from the fitness of the painting to the place. It is here that we strike a mooted question, the ques- tion as to what is strictly mural. The extremist will answer by pointing to Egyptians and Etruscans, or at least, to the Itahan Primitives, whether Sienese, Florentine, or Paduan. There are others, however, who will point to Veronese, the antithesis of the flat, the straight, the simple. This quarrel, however, we leave to the delight of the quarrelers. For ourselves, we may venture to speak thus : A wall is a thing that is permanent. It is neither a screen nor a curtain; we do not move it; it is. The effect of its decoration, therefore, should be serenity; no scene should be painted upon it that demands too much of our minds or our emotions. Since a wall is broad and clear the composition of a wall-painting should be such; its colors should be luminous though not necessarily brilliant; and its design should be 50 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING suited, absolutely, to the purpose and the character of the room. The idea must not be oppressive, and, as to the figures, they should be either famihar — ^like those of the older decorations, the subjects of which were well-known to the children of the Church — or should be of such a nature that they do not put a strain upon the intellect. Veronese's conception is legiti- mate, the people for whom he painted being thor- oughly familiar with his figures and his legends. The Doges of Venice did not fret about Europa on a ceiling ; they knew her story and troubled themselves not a whit about it. The great matter, then, was de- sign, or decorative pattern — and Veronese's pattern, though the layman may not see it, is not only beautiful but appropriate. Legitimate also, or not very badly out of place, are the mural decorations of Tintoretto, though some folk have argued to the contrary. The monks of the Scuola di San Rocco were familiar with the whole life of Christ, and Tintoretto's pictures on their walls occasioned no least trouble. Involved and pattemless as they were, drilhng big holes in the wall, there was a certain familiarity about the subject which kept the work restful and appropriate to the place. This, it is objected, implies a relative standard; but, at our great risk, we answer, "There is no hard standard for mural painting. The thing that serves for one time, or for one place and one kind of people, will not serve for another time, another place, and 61 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING another kind of people. The standards are neces- sarily relative and variable." It is the great and crowning merit of de Chavannes that he originated a new ideal of decoration. He saw the wall, not as something to be filled, but as some- thing to be beautified, and for this effect he has filled his waU by not filling it. He has left some large bare spaces which are, in truth, a part of the scheme; he has given up the forest for the trees, and he has left out many of the trees to show how well the wide spaces may serve in the decorative scheme. As a painter of the picture de Chavannes is disappointing, neither his drawing nor his composition being wholly satisfactory. It is his work as a decorator which protects him from the future, with its terrible impartiality. The influence of de Chavannes is greater than the number of his followers; in fact, we cannot think of latter-day mural work without the example of his big and broad simplicities. If asked, however, to name the painters who especially illustrate this influence, we should speak of several men, selecting them at ran- dom. There is Maurice Denis, for example; we may note such alluring decorations as his panels in the house of M. Charles Stem, among which are "La Poime, " "La Danse" and "La Cantate." In these, while they are truly original, with a touch of old Flor- entine stiffness such as we never see in de Chavannes, the germ of the impulse is plainly from that master. 52 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING Again, we have his "Nymphs in the Fields of Hya- cinth," which is decidedly on the order of de Ghavan- nes; then, too, his "Orchard," and "Our Lady with the School Children," the last being a combination of de Chavannes and Fra Angelico, the rehgious feel- ing conscious and dehberate. Another and really noted follower is J. Francis Auburtin, from whose work we may cite almost anything as a good ex- ample of this great and pervasive influence. A third is Henri Martin, a pointilliste — though the title is now disclaimed — ^who is de Chavannes translated into terms of present-day Luminarism. A fourth is ]£mile Rene Menard, who has been named "a mod- ern Claude," but who is really de Chavannes plus a hint of the earher painter, and whose classic world is less dream-like than his. There is also Maurice Chabas, whose decorative panels, such as "Le Bain" "Le Golfe" and "Vision Antique" are clearly in the track of de Chavannes. In fact, there are followers innumerable, from men of an equal note to the great mass of students and amateurs. The third division of the decorative we have named "The New Idyllic." That the idyl is so popular, so dear ahke to painter and to spectator, is due, as we have intimated, to two very notable facts: our desire for a world of peace and our tendency towards the decorative, both of which the idyl so well suits. We are a strange folk, we moderns, and we dearly love 53 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING this particular desire. "I do not want to find" — so says a modern Celtic poet — "for, when I find, I know I shall have claspt the wandering wind And built a house of snow." The wandering wind, the dissolving snow, the moon on the slipping water, the bird that stays but a mo- ment and is gone — ^these are the symbols of that rest- lessness, that "desire for desire" which is the mark of our lesser romanticism. In aU our great poetry we hear a greater voice. We hear it in the noble af- firmations of Wordsworth; in the high odes of Shelley, impassioned for unspeakable beauty; in the interpretations of hfe that we get from Robert Browning; in the wistful questioning of Arnold and of Clough ; and from scores of modern poets who are much too familiar to be enumerated. In painting, however, we have the lesser cry, the cry which cor- responds to the Celtic wistfulness, the mysticism of Poe and Symons and Mallarme. This is because painting is an art for the senses. The world of ab- stract idealism is closed to it, while the world that symbohzes the ideal — the Vale of Tempe, the Land of Heart's Desire — is easy enough to portray. It lends itself to the decorative, and the decorative, we repeat, has been for the past twenty years a chief end and aim of the modem Frenchman. There is never any trouble as to time. A Greek Arcadia, an eight- 54 TAHITI PAUL GAUGUIN MODERN FRENCH PAINTING eenth-century park, or some fair spot that never w'as on sea or land — each place is our own earthly para- dise, the realm of eternal youth and of beauty all iromortal. The idyllic world of the modem is neither Giorgione's nor Watteau's but is sui generis, with a spirit and appearance all its own. Here are Daphne and Apollo, here is sweet AmarylUs, and here are the . white nymphs of Dian; but here too, are Colimibine and Pierrot, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, the fays of Celtic legend, the Muses of a purely modern Par- nassus — and these are presented with a peculiar, im- mistakable modernity. Giorgione's "Pastoral Concert" and Fragonard's "Bathers" are the inspiration of many modern Frenchmen, who typify this joy of life, only too often, by naked women in a deep woodland on the banks of a silver stream, their figures being varied by the fig- ures of satyrs and centaurs. The power of these things is not absolute but varies with the genius of the artist. Sometimes the picture is convincing. We say to ourselves, "This is a breath of Arcady, a breath of youth and morning." As often, however, we turn away disheartened. It is not Arcady, it is not youth and morning; it is not a nymph at aU, but a naked Parisian woman! The mingling of mortals with satyrs and centaurs may constitute, at times, a beau- tiful picture, but we question the ultimate effect of such mingling; yes, on the spirit of the painter him- 57 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING self ! It was written long ago — and the writing was not arbitrary but a statement of natural law — that man should be man and not a mongrel. A piece of nature's ethics, Christianity has enforced this upon us, and we cannot lose our sense of its justice and its necessity. There are certain of these painters to whom we commend old Mantegna, who, in his "Vir- tue Repelling the Vices," gives to the vices those now popular shapes of satyr and centaur. We comjnend to them, also, that great Hellenistic marble, the "Bar- berini Faun," a coarse, drunken, animal figure; and, again, the superb fidehty of Rubens and his reeling, grinning satyrs. On the other hand, we would point them to Titian's lovely "Bacchus and Ariadne," to certain quaint German idyls of which we have al- ready spoken, and to Stuck's "Ancient Wood" with its big, terrific, elemental creatures. These things are either all truth or all mythology; they are not mixtures of modem women, satyrs, and centaurs in a tableau of human happiness ! If this be but narrow and Philistine, we hasten to proclaim ourselves such. Examples of our "New Idyllic" are legion, and the paintings of Denis, Menard and Chabas, of which we have already spoken, are excellent illustrations of this idyllic trend as well as of the influence of de Chavannes. We note an idyllic touch even in Fantin- Latour, who does not wholly belong to this current but who turns of his own accord to a region of cloudy 58 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING beauty which he fills with the shapes of modern music. To illustrate, however, from the most eminent French- man of today, we may speak of the work of Besnard. There is, for one thing, his decoration of the Salle des Manages in the Mairie de St. Germain I'Auxerrois — the symbolic "Morning," "Noon," and "Eve," in each of which the effect is distinctly idyllic. For another example we have the flaming yet delicate "Stars," a thing all Parisian, an idyllic creation that smacks alike of absinthe and the boulevards. A third and last we take from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, a painting of which Besnard says, "C'est mm." It is the "Isle of Happiness," on the green grass of which are naked and half -naked women alternating with satyrs and centaurs, and to which, from a faint white town across the lake, come little boats laden with mortal passen- gers. This last is a cross between Watteau and Boecklin, more delicate than the latter, far more sophisticated than either, and something which is subtly and most exquisitely decadent. A final ex- ample of Besnard's work, not half so lovely but very much saner in conception, is his "Astronomy" in the Salon des Sciences of the Hotel de Ville in Paris. This is not a seated woman with a telescope and some mathematical instruments, but a circle of bright, idyUic figures, some of whom move swiftly while others float, but all of whom suggest a world of dream in which the chief inhabitants are the stars. Besnard 59 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING is many-sided, being the painter of women, the painter of horses, the painter of Oriental life, but he is also the decorative painter and one who has many oppor- tunities for his genius. His decoration of a haU in the £cole de Pharmacie in Paris is one of his earhest performances and is characterized in parts by a deli- cate and briUiant sanity, though in other parts it is exaggerated, and in others prosaic. Besnard is the best living exponent of the best modem French paint- ing; he is a master of the effects of light, a striking and even brilliant colorist, and a decorator who is purely modem yet seldom extreme. To name other men of this order — the men whose particular theme is the idyllic — is a task that is not at all difficult. There is La Touche, for example, who has confined himself of late to a bizarre and very fanciful idyUism. In La Touche we have a modern but inferior Watteau, who gives us a "marriage of nature with the opera," a something to which there is no other word as apphcable as the French "confec- tionne," for it is really a candy-like compound. His world is all daintily bizarre, a place of pretty, artifi- cial fountains and lakes, of little boats and white swans, a place which echoes silverly with the laughter of fair women — Parisian ladies all, and very fine! — who are playing the parts of water-nymphs and who greatly like their roles! These are not the dewy meadows of Corot and his dryads; they are the gar- 60 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING dens of Versailles, frequented by the Loves and the Graces, who are gowned and coifed and perfumed with a most suspicious modernity. La Touche's craft is finer than his concepts. His abilities are worthy of a greater field than this Land of Bonbons and Pea- cock-feathers. Another leader here is Aman-Jean, as novel as La Touche and much weightier. Of his mural painting one may say, "Mantegna — Botticelli — Blake in French"; but the rest of his work is highly original, of an idyllic and decorative quality at once bizarre, and disciplined. To mention examples may seem useless, yet, since example is the best of all teachers, we may cite for the American public two beautiful things in the Car- negie Institute of Pittsburgh. The one is "The Judgment of Paris," by Rene Menard. It is a pic- ture both idyllic and realistic, since it is thus that Paris might have met the Idalian Aphrodite, but this idyllic realism is of a fashion purely modern. The second is Aman-Jean's "Mirror in the Vase," the idyl of a delicate French park, at once conscious and ethereal, emptied of aU emotion in order to be abso- lutely decorative. To illustrate this new idyllism we could hardly ask better examples, but there still come to mind the names of Levy-Dhurmer, of Guay, of Mademoiselle Dufau, of Roussel, of Bonnard, and others that are equally illustrative. 61 CHAPTER IV EXTREMISM Leaders: Cezanne, Van Gogh, Odilon Redon. — More Moderate Followers: Bonnard, Vuillard, and RousseL — Matisse, Gau- guin, Zak and Others, Pseudo-Primitives. — Conclusions as to French Painting. TO come from the men whom we have discussed to the Cubists, Futurists, and Post-Impressionists is a shock that is hardly broken even by such painters as Maurice Denis. Between the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists stands Cezanne, who is eyed askance by those one-time heretics, now orthodox, the strict followers of Manet and the other early Im- pressionists. For a discussion of his technique we commend the reader to such critics as Mr. CaflGbti and Mr. Brinton; it is enough for our purpose to say that the effect of his art is- the effect of a crude yet terrible reahsm. He impresses us, at times, as returning di- rectly and deliberately to the Primitives; at times — in "L'Enlevement" for instance — ^he is like the big Delacroix; while at other times he recalls the gro- tesques of Daumier and of Goya. His color is glow- ing yet is also crude and childish, though of this he is apparently unconscious. It is not like the chUd- 62 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING ishness of Gauguin and Matisse, but is, at least, as much a part of himself as Rossetti^s mystery was part of Rossetti's self, or even as Turner's color was of Turner. By a certain element of the jeimesse doree he is worshipped as a master, but this is a youth which is drimken with modernity, a species of absinthe that produces strange obsessions. To decry Cezanne is easy, but it is quite as cheap to exalt him imduly. We do him some justice when we say that he is a master of stiU-lif e, that his color is a remarkable, half- crude, loose mosaic, which yet impresses us as real, and that he has a veracity which is far from the Dutch effect of coolness, tightness, and quiet, yet is faintly akin to that of Vermeer and his compatriots. With regard to the Dutchman Van Gogh, included by temperament with the French, we may borrow a criticism and say that his art is "an animal art," that his harmonies are "physical harmonies," his temper anarchistic and barbaric. To some extent he was a follower of Millet; but, where Millet was gentle. Van Gogh was terrible, a big and imcouth creature who is described by his admirers as "painting tremendous simplicities." To the majority Van Gogh's madness is evinced by his work — color, line, values, all as de- ranged as the man's brain itself! Yet a gift he im- doubtedly has, and there are times when we are truly affected by his big, crude, "physical art." He is like some poor, gigantic child, or some crude and childish 63 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING giant, who does not know how to accommodate him- self to the complex world about him. To mistake such originality for genius is one of the foUies of the modem world, akin to the foUy of proclaiming Walt Whitman's raw material to be the finished product of a great and solemn Muse. Whitman's is great ma- terial, indeed, and his concept is great, but his Muse writes very haltingly — sometimes in superb and con- quering measure, sometimes in a measure as rough and childish as a boy's. It is so with Vincent Van Gogh, who is a species of Whitman, though by no means so big as the poet. In Odilon Redon we have a man with a feeling for line and color which, as a rule, is expressed in a fash- ion very fragmentary. His exquisite "Beatrice," of the Fabre collection in Paris, is reminiscent of the Hellenistic sculptures, though with some faint sug- gestion of the heads of Desiderio di Settignano. He is sufficiently versatile, however, to do things that are equally suggestive of the Gothic. He is a roman- ticist of an extreme order, whose work does not fol- low nature but exceeds her; he finds his best medium in pastel, and his flower-pieces have been hkened to certain early Japanese caskets which are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a sorry figure, in- jured in his youth, we have a genius who ended life ' in madness. Lautrec took the Paris tmder-world as 64 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING his subject, and found there a great deal that suited the severity of his line as well as the looseness of dress and of general effect that went with his im- pressionistic leanings. He was the follower of Seurat for a time, but a man of distinct originality who chose his own paths and who portrayed the under- world and the world of the poor dancers with a satire that preached many sermons. "Lautrec," says a present- day critic, "never mistook Art for Beauty. He ac- cused the whole social fabric through these poor women." Of the same order as Lautrec is Pierre Bonnard, who, however, has chosen much fairer sub- jects. His color is riotous but quite lovely, and it fills all his depths for he practically does away with shadow. To one who recalls a certain pretty experi- ence — the sudden "walking in" upon a Bonnard exhi- bition in the Bemheim gallery — ^there comes with his name the memory of a riot of color, half poetic and half impudent, with just a few touches of absurdity. The figure that suggested itself was that of red roses blooming and quivering under something trans- lucently white — say alabaster, perhaps — and the sub- jects were uniformly gay and joyous. Vuillard is less luminous and less intense, but he is of the same family, the family of Cezanne, of Van Gogh, of Gau- guin. Where Bonnard is the poet, VuiUard makes a delicate prose, especially with his little interiors of still life. Roussel is the most exquisite of all, his 65 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING pastel-landscapes being likened to the wings of lovely butterflies. Both Roussel and Bonnard are of the Golden World, but Bonnard gives us a French bourgeois family at tea in their little garden, where Roussel gives us Hylas, or Narcissus, or the nymphs. The spirit is the same, however, whether Arcadia be found in far-off Greece or at the side-door of a sturdy stone maison of France! Roussel, by the way, has recently done the curtain for a new theatre in Paris, selecting for his subject a Greek pastoral and finding ample room for his decorative talent. All three of these painters have been taught by the art of Japan — Vuillard, perhaps, the most — ^yet they have not fol- lowed the lesson too far nor too ardently, their ac- complishment bemg such that they cannot be greatly influenced by any foreign teaching. Cezanne has been called the link between the Im- pressionists and the Post-Impressionists. Of these, as of the Cubists and Futurists, it is difficult to speak in terms which shall be at all intelligible to the lay- man. Post-Impressionism, we say at once, is not so much Impressionism gone to its limits as Impression- ism gone beyond its limits. To suggest, to intimate, to leave in the haze of glamor — this was the aim of Impressionism, but it did not do away with what men had learned in the discipline of the centuries. These Extremists, however, are throwing their knowledge over-board and are being deliberately childish, though 66 K B o t) o H ?; H o o CO w Q Q O O a H H P H MODERN FRENCH PAINTING they call it being "child-like." Between Claude Monet and such a man as Gauguin, or as Matisse, there is so great a gulf that the name "Post-Impres- sionism" seems misleading. To illustrate: Paul Gau- guin abhorred the divisions and complementary colors of Monet, and considered him — ^with Seurat, the poin- tilliste, who is Monet's extreme — as his natural arch- enemy. To illustrate again: the insistence of Matisse upon pattern, upon design, is exactly opposed to the practice of Monet, who is aiming to reproduce ap- pearance and not to make a design. So far as the relationship is concerned, Post-Impressionism is the old movement pushed to an illogical extreme. The aim of the former was to give us the aspect or efPect of things ; but "effect" is taken by the new men as hav- ing a large and vague significance, of which their predecessors never dreamed, for they include in this term sentiment and sensation in the abstract. The movement has been defined as "the endeavor to ex- press pure sentiment intellectually," (this, again, be- ing opposed to the optic art of Monet), and Lewis Hind claims for Matisse that he is "an audacious ex- plorer in the realm of sensation." In order to ex- plore, however, this Extremist pretends to be a child, assuming an innocence of eye and an innocence of brain that cannot deceive anybody but himself. Gau- guin, indeed, having a strain of tropical blood, went off and lived by himself in a barbarous country; but 69 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING even there, we fancy, was some slight element of self- deceit. Mr. Haldane MacFall, in his "History of Painting," sums up these men as trying to standard- ize the primitive, and refers to their style as "Primi- tive-Academism." This is excellent, and could hardly be bettered. Matisse holds a misshapen Javanese idol to be beautiful because it expresses the author, but on this ground we may exhibit, as beautiful ob- jects, the dough-men made by our five-year-old chil- dren, ecstatically troubling the cook in the kitchen! His reversion, like that of Gauguin's, is to the primi- tive, a deliberate reversion on the part of both, and foolish because of its very consciousness. The sim- phcity of the Primitives is good. When the modern imitates it — the modem, with all his style, his knowl- edge, and his manifold experience! — ^it is not good at all, but ridiculous. It is claimed that this "abstract" work is classic, and that, as classic music seeks for pure sound, so it seeks for pure and abstract pattern. Reference is made, of course to Bach and Mozart, who tell no story and offer no "program," in distinction from Wagner, Strauss, and De Bussy, whose music follows the whirl of the Valkyrie, the passions of Salome, the dreams of Pelleas and MeUsande. The word "clas- sic" here, however, is a title that is surely misapplied ! At any earnest work we do not dare to laugh ; but to claim for these men that they really turn to the classic, 70 MODERN FRENCH PAINTING to the impersonal, monumental quality of the elder Greeks, the quality of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven — this, we think, adds something to the gayety of na- tions! If we grant the desire, the achievement still lags — and achievement, we repeat, is the final and the only reliable test. Of the Futurists we may say that they offer a more comprehensible idea. They aim, it would appear, at an instantaneous rendering of the continuous stages of emotion or action. They would give, as in one piece, the whole flashing impression of a naked figure running down a stair-case; they would give the im- pression of a crowded ball-room or cafe, which makes, for the passing stranger, only a blur of lights and colors, out of which shines a woman's laughing counte- nance. It is the art of rapid transit, the art of the motor and the air-ship, in which there is possibly some reason, though the Futurist, like the others, is unequal to his own big idea. In discussing the principles of Impressionism we have practically touched upon landscape-painting, for in this form, more than in any other, these principles find outlet and utterance. To talk of the theories of Monet, Pissaro, and Seurat is to talk of landscape- work — ^though we have said nothing, as yet, of the exquisite, soft landscape of their comrade, Le Sidaner, the effect of which we might have contrasted with the nervous effect of Raffaelli's street-scenes. The ex- 71 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING travagance of violet and mauve in French landscape is hardly more remarkable than in our own; one may walk through exhibits at the Grand Palais, or through the Bemheim or the Georges Petit gallery, and see no mauve or violet that is much more astonishing than those at Kiioedler's, at Macbeth's, at the Montross or at the Folsom gallery in New York. This is but a fancy and a fad, which will pass away hke others of its kind. That the American is by temperament a landscapist, while the Frenchman is by temperament all things, is a fact that needs no statement, and one, moreover, of which we shall speak in another chap- ter. As to modem French portraiture, this, also, must be practically passed. Our study is a study of ten- dencies, and when we have characterized the whole nineteenth century as romantic, when we have spoken of naturahsm in its various phases — ^which, by all means, includes Impressionism — and when we have talked of the movement towards the decorative, we have intimated something, at least, as to the aims of the modern portraitists. It is needless, therefore, to say that men hke Bonnat, Constant, and Chartran are reahsts of the older and "modeling" order, or that their ideals and methods have been largely superseded. It is equally needless to speak of their superseders, of such men as Jacques il&mile Blanche and ifidouard Aman- Jean whose portraiture has the decorative feel- 72 STUDY OF A WOMAN HENRI MATISSE IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. LOUIS STEIN MODERN FRENCH PAINTING ing very strongly developed; of Boutet de Monvel, also decorative in feeling, who verges upon the illus- trative; of Flameng and his rather hard, rather un- imaginative realism; of Henri Caro-Delvaille, the portraitist who was the vogue of Paris a year or two ago, and who mingles the realistic and the decorative ; of the Alsatian, Honore Umbricht, or of the Swiss Steinlen, both of whom are Parisian by adoption and both of brilliant achievements. If we do not speak of these men at length, it is because the substance of both forms has been indicated in the preceding pages, though portraiture, indeed, is a subject of itself and needs a whole volume for its adequate discussion. In concluding this study we may repeat that the decorative, in its diflPerent forms, has been the chief and most significant element in modern French paint- ing. This element at its best is beautiful and satis- fying; it wears a wreath from Helicon and offers a cup from fair Castaly, At its worst — that is, in cer- tain fleshly forms — ^it is matched by the worst of Baudelaire, and its spirit may be likened to that Belle Dame Sans Merd, whose kiss was deceitful and whose fairy grotto was a dark cave of death. From the exaggeration of this and of other such elements there must speedily come about a change; otherwise, we cannot deny our fears for French painting! The stay, we think, is largely in the £cole des Beaux Arts, or, at least, in the academic quality and element. 75 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Complacent it may be, stiff and deliberate and very hard to influence — but in these selfsame qualities lies the safety and the hope for French art. Without them the whole world of painters would turn radical, and anarchy be the rule of all the world! From such a fate academism perpetually preserves us — standing, as it does, for that great element in the French people which is sane, conservative and reliable. 76 PART TWO MODERN GERMAN PAINTING MODERN GERMAN PAINTING CHAPTER I BASIC FACTS AND GENERAL TENDENCIES Basis for Study. — Racial Qualities. — Revival of Painting and Early Schools. — Main Currents Indicated. FOR a study of modern German work there are six facts, or matters, which together constitute a basis. The first is the fact — involving a compara- tive study of art — ^that German painting is racial to a very marked degree. The second is the fact that from Diirer and Holbein to the middle years of the great nineteenth century there are few famous names in the history of German painting. The third fact, which is really included in the first, is that German expression, of all periods, is subjective and idealistic, as distinct from the objective and stylistic expression of the French. The fourth to be noted is the existence of two dominant types, the Northern or Berlin type, which is impersonal and cosmopolitan alike in its feel- ing and its effect, and the Southern or Munich type, which, by comparison, is baroque, intense, and highly personal. The fifth, which is also intimated by the first, is the fact that line and not color is the true and peculiar expression of the German temper; and the 79 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING sixth is the fact of the German's debt to France for a certain modernity of technique. Of these six facts we make the working-basis for our study. As to racial feeling, the first of our basic matters, we note it as wholly unconscious. It has no knowl- edge of country, it has no patriotism, no feeling of any order. French art, which is not at all national, is yet markedly racial; English art is racial to its hurt ; and American art is racial by virtue of a blend of the conventional with the cosmopolitan, a sugges- tion of new blood which is touched with a reverence for tradition. In the art of none of these, however, is the racial quality more marked than we find it in the art of modem Germany. If asked to name its elements, we might note first the idealism of which we have already spoken, and, second, that strong in- dividualism, that emphasis on the free and personal, as opposed to the general and impersonal, which dis- tinguishes the Gothic from the best Greek. Third, perhaps, is the philosophical quality, which is so Ger- man that the merest schoolboy knows it as such. The fourth is the sense of the mysterious, of beauty touched with strangeness, which is one of the prime factors of romanticism. Next in order we mark the fine Ger- man simplicity; then the ancient touch of the gro- tesque; and, last, the immemorial suggestion of the terrible, which comes like some threatening figure from the dark and primitive forest. 80 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING It is here that we touch another fact, the fifth in our original order but one which connects itself with this and should have been listed with it. That is the strong Northern tendency to line. It is not by mere accident, not by any bald chance of material, that the Gothic style is a style that spells outline. The gaunt- ness of Diirer, the gauntness of the, cathedral at Cologne, is a thing which is intrinsically Northern. When Leibl, in one decade, and Liebermann, in an- other, arranges his lines to produce a fine sense of repose, a sense of the monumental or typical, we find nothing new, but, on the contrary, an old principle and one which expresses Northern blood. Our second fact is the fact that, from Diirer and Holbein to the early part of the nineteenth century, there are no great names in thie ranks of German painters. Painting in the Germany of the eighteenth century we hardly call painting at all, for it was in reality a species of subhmated illustration. It was led by Carstens, who was more a cartoonist than a painter, and its apostle was Winckelmann, that pioneer critic who opened to the modern world the beauty and the glory of Hellas but the trend of whose preaching was greatly towards the dominance of form. In Carstens we have the Gothic importance of line carried to the last degree, and it takes the riotous color of PUoty to counteract his influence. In the earlier nineteenth century, then, a pseudo-classicism was the 81 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING chief German style, and the breaking with this style is the only real achievement of two weak schools, the school of the "Nazarenes" and that of Dusseldorf. "The Nazarenes" were German Pre-Raphaelites and went for inspiration to the sources which, many years later, were springs for Rossetti and his follow- ers — to pre-Renascence painting, with its mystery, its innocence, its simplicity, its profound Cathohc fervor. They hated the "magnificent paganism" of St. Peter's, and they loved Siena and Padua and their effects of simphcity and sincerity. "The Annuncia- tion" is painted by Overbeck in a fashion which re- calls Lippo Lippi, and Fuhrich paints the Prodigal Son somewhat in the spirit of old Giotto. All this is largely imitation, and, like other imitations, it speed- ily passes away. The school of Diisseldorf has been described as "a lyrico-sentimental school of painting, which did Marys and prophets, knights and robbers, gypsies and monks, water-nymphs and nuns, all with the same languishing tenderness." It is, of course, a pseudo-romantic movement, and its relation to mod- ern German art is that of "Lalla Rookh" to modem Enghsh poetry. The great name of this era is that of Cornehus, who painted in a presumably grand style and who led the re-action to color, though he himself began as a classicist. There are certain enthusiasts at this moment who rank him as a very great painter, but to criticism in general he is hardly more than an 82 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING earnest and gifted imitator, "with gestures of would- be greatness." It was not for Cornelius to restore the old-time vision to Germany; nor was it for Wilhelm Kaulbach, a man of similar genius though lesser, and a painter of the historical subject. It is here that we touch on royal influence, the in- fluence of the house of Bavaria. Both Ludwig I. and his mad grandson were patrons of the arts, the former erecting many of the classic buildings of Munich, though his taste in painting was falsely romantic. Those painters worked most ardently, however, who had no royal orders and therefore pleased themselves, and the best romantic of the mad king's era is the in- dependent Schwind, who has met the impartial test of time. With the passing of the Nazarenes and of the Diisseldorf school there passes a weak and false romanticism, but Schwind is a true romantic and stands above the schools. It has been said of this painter that he is a German Fra Angelico, and he has, indeed, the mediseval spirit of simphcity and sincerity. To the heart of so naive a German the morning blooms forever, and the cuckoo, the symbol of romance, is forever calling him onward. He jomneys to the end of the rainbow; he plucks, not the Blue Flower itself, that symbol of the great un- attainable, but what we may know by the name of "The Little Blue Flower," the blossom of a simple and child-like magic, of a gentle and innocent enchant- 83 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING ment. Schwind's color is not always good; in truth, it is sometimes motley and his composition is some- times confused; but he has the gift of vision, he prac- tices like an old German magician, a magician such as Albrecht Diirer at his gentlest. His effect, to put it briefly, is the effect of the old Teutonic legend. In the Schack GaUery in Munich, where there is a num- ber of his fairy landscapes and wood-scenes, the ro- manticist will grow enthusiastic, for here is the real old German spirit. Here, in truth, is the big, dark, German forest, the forest where you might meet Rube- zahl, or Snow-white and Rose-red, or Hansel and Gretel and the witch, or the youngest of the three beautiful princesses, with long golden hair and a real golden crown on her head! This is the spirit of Diirer's wood-cuts, though modernized and softened as befitted the later artist. In connection with our third point, the dominance of subject over form, we may note this preference as essential in the idealist — and the German, above all other Europeans, is the man of the dream, the man of the ideal. To the genius of the Greek the thought and form are equal, and to the genius of the French the form is distinctly paramount, but to those in whom Gothic blood runs pure the subject is the uppermost matter. The German is the dreamer of Europe ; he is essentially the brooder, the philosopher, the strain of the visionary rimning through all his art. 84 ■"V^-ife- ^» r i , 1 r ^SHK''--*-^'^' ' ii-''" 1 A ^ ;.^i L ^^ iiK''^'''' % % ^ ? J J >. ,--g-^.,fe».:J: i^'',^ ^i^v '''"«fc • -7" •e*i-« /^ ,■> ■ ^ * ■■-»«i^SMta ^ ^--3 "J Rf j^^aS^^^^^m M^' .^v ^^g^^l ^^MJ^H r 14^ ,;* ;lss»*'*'" g:^^ ' jm^'^^ ^ ■^!', 1 J^b^' ' *3fc^ -^'^ ' S '^' ■ ^^^^Sk ■ -^ ' S:';-^ ^W^-?^, ■^'■'%--.- ..._^SM 8,^ ■ -"'^^ ^ ■J^teTA :..« ' * "''■ 5r°--' '-:;^>;; PS lii^ ^ i!-5?? ii^' ''■'■■ ■''"' v.. hj^^...'.-^ ^ ..-..^^mI wi """^■•I<«* !!>v>-- ■ ■ w AM WALDQUELL ERNST LIEBERMANN MODERN GERMAN PAINTING Among the new men, it is true, there are many who endeavor to drop this racial preference, thinking to concern themselves with their painting as mere paint- ing; but, happily, they cannot always work against the grain, and they return, now and again, to the true German feehng for the vision. In turning to our fourth point, the fundamental matter of a difference between ideals, we may say, roughly speaking, that modern German art follows three main currents or three distinct examples — un- til, at last, the three have flowed together and have become one stream. The first is the example of Menzel and Leibl, the great reahsts of the seventies and eighties, who work on traditional lines; the sec- ond is that of Boeckhn, a contemporary of their later life, who is the best known, though not the greatest of nineteenth-century German romanticists; while the third is that of Liebermann, the realist of a most modem order, who works on the lines opened up by French plein-airism. This is the usual classification, but is, indeed, only a species of rough sign-board, giving general directions and pretending to nothing more definite. In coming to our last basic fact, the fact of a mod- ern French influence, we see that we have this mo- ment touched upon it in the describing of Liebermann and his followers as affected by the example of French plein-airism. It was not Liebermann but 87 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Gleichen-Russwurm who introduced Monet's line- division, but it was Liebermann who led the move- ment, who stood definitely for secession from aca- demic standards. Under the old regime, as we noted in our opening chapter, much care was given to the subject; with the Impressionists, to quote their best fighter, "the chief personage in a painting is the light" — and the picture is painted, not with regard to the importance of any one figure, but in accord- ance with the highest note to be found in the whole material, be it the pink of a woman's dress, the yel- low of a man's coat, or the red of a bunch of roses on the table. It is because of this influence, doubt- less, that we see among certain German painters a waning in the importance of the subject. The Ger- man, too, is growing very busy as a Luminarist, and the rendering of the effects of artificial light is becoming almost a hobby. An avenue in Berlin at evening, with street-lamps softly glowing; a girl at the piano, with lamp-hght on her hair; the electric light shining through a window on a man's head and face; Maud Allan, the dancer, before a dark curtain, with the foot-lights streaming upward on her figure and her garments — ^these few but actual examples are typical of the many which fill the German studios and exhibition galleries. To these six facts we may now add a seventh, which comes in most appropriately with the name of 88 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING Adolf Menzel, who died but a few years ago and whose life-time is a period which takes in the old art and the new. This is the fact that German national- ism has served as a powerful cause in the fusion of the various elements — of realism and romanticism, of classicism and naturahsm, of Munich and Berlin, of Academy and Rebellion. This is the history of all such unifying forces in their relation to art. The Parthenon was inspired, in some measure, by the glory of united Greece as the conqueror of the Per- sian. It had the large simplicity, the breadth and grandeur of the feeling of that period, a period in which the civic ideal was an ideal dominant and from which the strong hands of War and the trembling hands of Victory had smoothed away the pettiness, the less important passions. This is noted here in connection with the growth of German art since the eighties. The Greek States, having vanquished a common enemy, became a united country, and the guarantee of secm-ity gave an impetus to art. It is so with imperial Germany; after a decade or more of national existence, the effect of security and peace was a new opportunity for the arts, which have flour- ished in the past forty years as they had not for many generations. 89 CHAPTER II THE GREAT REALISM.— THE GREAT ROMANTICISM Realism: Menzel and Leibl. — ^A Contemporary Revival of Color: Piloty; von Kaulbach. — Franz von Lenbach and his Portraiture. — Romanticism: Feurbaeh, Classieo-Romanticist ; Boecklin, von Marees, Thoma, Pure Romanticists. WHEN realism enters modem Germany it finds a world which is divided between Cornelius and Kaulbach, into which comes presently Carl Piloty. Cornelius and Kaulbach stand for "the grand manner," while the gorgeous Piloty, at whom it is now the fashion to sneer, has accomphshed his destiny "by planting the banner of color on the cita- del of ideaUstic cartoon-drawers." In this divided world looms the big figure of Menzel, who is the first of German painters to paint the life around him. He gives us what he sees: a German iron-mill with coarse and heavy workmen; a church filled with wor- shippers; a court-scene, brilUant with gay costumes; a group at the palace of Sans Souci; a busy market- place; or a long street thronged with people. Men- zel is the Berlin type — ^Berlin standing, as we have said, for the cooler qualities, the qualities more north- ern and more cosmopolitan. He is critical and aloof, 90 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING "a pains-taking and almost myopic painter," a painter of no ulterior intent. Menzel has no narrative and no message, but what the eye can see he paints supremely well. He gives us nothing that is spir- itual, but the work is so good and is done with such workman-like pride, such a sense for the beautiful in presentation, that we return to it when we have passed other men who are far more imaginative and even more idealistic. In Menzel we have the old, academic, traditional methods, yet now and again — so original was his genius — ^we iBnd him suggesting modern light-effects and attacking such problems as are, to-day, affected by the Luminarists, We re- call in this connection a picture entitled "An In- terior," which is simply an empty room with a win- dow, its broad white curtain spread out by open shutters. This is remarkable as a bit of painting and for Menzel's particular time. It does not mean any- thing to the layman, but to the painter it is important because of its values, even though the shaft of sun- light may look just a trifle hke whitewash. It is now, at the very height of Menzel's realism, that we have "a side-movement," a decorative revel which began with a recognition of the fact that paint- ing had been a sort of story-book, telling tales and making humorous or instructive points. The object now becomes the pictorial and leads to a study of the great masters of Italian painting, the demi-gods of &1 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING a lost world. To this revel belongs the earlier work of Fritz Albert von Kaulbach, whose painting of women has an effect which is almost bouquet-like. In these later years, however, Kaulbach and his kind have painted things very modern in feeling — a row of bacchantes, for example, dancing on the edge of a woodland, their blue robes gleaming in the blue half- light with an appearance that is absolutely decorative, and decorative, too, after a fashion purely modern. Here, also, belongs Victor Miiller, romantic in spirit but realistic in treatment, and here the work of Diez, robust yet of delicate tone and concerned not a little with out-door subjects. In the same breath with Menzel we think of that greater realist, Wilhelm Leibl, who stands as a Ger- man Courbet. Leibl is his own man, however, and a man of monumental dignity and simplicity in an era when these qualities were lacking to German art — painting his quiet, unforgettable Dachau peasant- women at a time when men painted such subjects as Thusnelda before Germanicus. There is no more idealism in Leibl than in Menzel. He is always the realist,, and at times he impresses us as painting, like Whistler, for the sheer love of doing the thing. He win paint, for instance, a pretty-faced, laughing girl, but he does not paint her because of any pleasiu-e which he has, or expects us to have, in her enjoyment. He paints her thus "because of the lines of her mouth, 92 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING which, taken with the lines of the stove-pipe behind her and the lines of a table at her side, make a very nice study in ellipses!" Yet to Leibl, as to Menzel, we find ourselves continually returning. His big and hearty quiet, which has nothing of the quiet of decadence, his very lack of emotion, the fact that he asks but little of us as spectators — in brief, the large plainness and sanity of his art — are qualities that make for our repose. There is nothing in Leibl that smacks of the extravagant ; he is, in fact, of the older tradition, the older technique. His art is the art that "models," as distinct from the art of flat painting; he is not the plein-airist, he has nothing to do with decoration, or with spots or with cubes or with any other geometric figures. Yet certain things we note in him as modern and very progressive. For example, we mark his bold division of masses and his use of straight lines to obtain a restful effect. This was a principle taken over from the Dutch, and, as we have said, in accord with the Northern genius, but a principle which seemed new because it was really old, and the adoption of which implied a free spirit. Leibl, of all modem Germans except Liebermann, is the one who is most nearly monumental, the word "monumental," as used in this connection, meaning that which is impersonal, general, permanent, essen- tial, as opposed to the personal, the individual, the fugitive. THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING It is somewhat hard to realize, in looking at the clean, sound realism of Leibl, that the work of such men as Piloty belongs to the same era in Germany. Piloty is as pompous as Leibl is simple, and his themes are typified by "Thusnelda Before Germanicus," which we see in the New Pinakothek in Munich. Yet Piloty is not to be sneered at; of an undeniable flash and gorgeousness, he served a good purpose by bring- ing into German art the color that it so much needed. It is true that he brought too much, it is true that we have passed far beyond him, but he is not the mere lump of pomposity which the average art-student is wont to believe and to label him. Of the school of Wilhelm Leibl, yet neither a real- ist like this master, nor a romanticist such as Boeck- lin, is the portraitist, Franz von Lenbach. Lenbach is not so severely soimd as Leibl, nor has he the large and monumental effect which is, apparently, the end and aim of Liebermann; his tone is too brown, per- haps, and is not sufficiently Ivmiinous; nor does he get, as a rule, a very firm hold on the reason of the spectator. Yet such things as his "Wilhelm I." and his famous "Bismarck" are things of a fine and gen- erous treatment, of a big, imaginative realism. It is a peculiarity of Lenbach that he singles out the eyes of his portraits and gives them an emphasis which he gives to nothing else. The eyes of his sombre Bis- marck are memorable the world over, so mysterious 94 SPATZIERRITT FRANZ VON STUCK MODERN GERMAN PAINTING are they, of such infinite sadness, such a questioning of the ultimate meaning of life ! The whole face, we may say, is a face characteristic of Germany, of Ger- many the dreamer, the seer of visions. Lenbach's "Shepherd Boy," which we note in the Schack Gal- lery, was done at a time when the clamor was for such bright and large pomposities as those of Carl Piloty and when the oiit-door world was still un- popular. This humble though enchanting figure, on its hillside of grass and flowers, was imagined when such imaginations were not profitable, when such realism was thought incompatible with dignity, and it is, in a sense, a precursor of German plein-airism. Lenbach in his later years shows a change which is hardly for the better, but in his earlier period he is very stoutly German, and, if he is not quite so great as he once was rated by his pubhc, he is, be- yond question, a painter of vigor, of sincerity, and of a genuine and even glamorous imagina- tion. Having considered the realism of Menzel and Leibl, we must now turn about in order to keep our balance, and consider the chief romantic painters of this middle period of later German art — the men whose work is contemporaneous with Leibl's, and, to some extent, with that of Menzel. The names of Anselm Feurbach, Hans von Marees, and Arnold Boecklin are to be set against the names of these two 97 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING realists as painters of an opposite purpose, painters who have been called "idealists" but whom it is bet- ter to call "romanticists," since they have but little of that rare spiritual quality which is one of the chief elements of ideahsm. It is here, with the use of the term "romanticism," that we pause for a word of explanation. By the word "romantic," which of late years has been some- what loosely used, we mean, not only that which is free and unrestrained as opposed to classic limit, se- verity and restraint, but that, also, which is charged with mystery. It is that "beauty touched with strangeness" which is at once the goal and the start- ing-point, the desire and the despair, of those who apprehend it and endeavor to express it through any medium — the medium of words, or music, or marble, or color. The romantic, we may say, is the thing that forever eludes us, the thing that we never quite hold and conquer, that we never quite possess. Now the classic is something that we do possess. True, its loveliness may grow upon us. The Phidian mar- bles, the Demeter of Praxiteles, a sculptured drum from a colvmm of the temple at Ephesus — ^these, and things like these, may ravish us the more with each succeeding vision. Yet in the last analysis they are not mysterious, and we may say, without vanity, that we grasp them. The romantic, however, is some- thing that we never quite hold. It is the bird unseen 98 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING in the thicket ; it is the flame that runs along the hill- tops at night; it is the nymph in the brake, the half- seen body of the oread; it is the flying hair and flut- tering hem of Dian herself, who eludes us in perpetual virginity. In art it is the thing which cannot be fully said — or sung, or painted, or carved — ^but which, in the end, must rely on the magical quality of sugges- tiveness. Now in literature it is possible for the romantic to rise to the spiritual, for hterature is, itself, the most spiritual of all the arts, depending least upon the human senses. So, in modem German literature this quality is apotheosized and blends with the spirit, while in painting it remains a lesser quality. In lit- erature, as we have said, it is symbolized by the Blue Flower, the sign of perfect beauty, but in painting its emblem is a Little Blue Flower, meaning only a phase of the perfect. From most of these romantic painters — especially from Boecklin, Von Marees and Thoma — ^we get, not the spiritual, but this quality of mystery, of glamor, of "beauty touched with strangeness." The love of this beauty, we main- tain, is distinctly characteristic of the German tem- perament. Scientific, Protestant, military — ^yes, Germany is all this; but at the heart of her — in that big, deep, secluded place — she keeps forever the Rheingold, the beckoning Undine and the Lorelei; she keeps there the gnome and the giant and the fury, 99 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING the old gods of Valhalla, and the old heroic figures, the Siegfrieds and Brunhildas. The first of this group, however, is not of a marked romanticism, but is, rather, a classico-romanticist, mingling the Greek ideal with the true German. This is ABselm Feurbach, who traces chiefly to the Italy of the Renascence, though in part to modern France. In the new Pinakothek in Munich is his beautiful "Medea," by which, as one of his best achievements and as one of the finest of modem Ger- man paintings, it is only honest to judge the possi- bilities of this artist. The "Medea," while its color is somewhat chiU, has the beauty of a Greek relief, being firm, clear and unified, "with a large harmony of form." This finished picture of the Munich gal- lery the student may wish to compare with two very interesting sketches, one in tempera at Breslau and one in the National Gallery in Berlin. In the Bres- lau sketch the departing boat appears the chief theme, while Medea, the nurse, and the children are subordi- nated. In the Berlin sketch there are really two pictures, so sharply is the thing cut in half. It is the Munich picture that triumphs over difiiculties; for here Medea and her children are massed in the foreground at one side, while Jason's boat is a little beyond the group, in the middle of the other side, the figure of the nurse making the connecting mass between the two other masses. The lines of the fig- 100 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING ures and of the draperies, while not so sharp as in a Greek relief, are yet very simple, large and clear; the space between the women's figures and the boat, with its pushing sailors, is clearly and unerringly cal- culated ; and the effect, as we cannot fail to see, is an effect of Hellenic temperance, balance and intel- lectuality. In other paintings with a classic subject — for example, in the "Iphigenia," despite its sim- plicity and despite a classic drapery — ^the Greek feel- ing is something almost imaginary, with Uttle of the real Hellenic about it. We sxxna. up Feurbach's genius when we say of it that it suggests the six- teenth century, and that, with this Renascence feel- ing, there is a certain serene idyllicism which is partly Greek and partly romantic. In the Swiss, Arnold Boecklin, we have a man who lived and worked in Germany, one who stands as a painter completely German, and one, moreover, who founds a modem type. We have, too, the most popular of German painters, or, to be exact, the one who was most popular up to a few years ago. The reasons for this popularity it is easy enough to trace. The first and most evident is not imagination but a personal, original, and vigorous fancy; the second is a tendency to push his colors — ^to make his blue very blue, his pink very pink, and his white very white — a feat which is likely to appeal to the general; the third and most important is the vivid and joyous 101 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING realism with which he takes Greek myth and renders it into his German. We may add to these reasons a fourth — ^his rendering of Italian landscape, in which we have the mingling of austerity and delicacy, of the grave with the exquisite, which is so characteristic of certain parts of Italy. With regard to his fancy, we must insist upon it as fancy, for Herr Miither has called him an idealist and has even ranked him with Watts. Now Watts was truly the ideahst, being full of that spiritual quality which is the first and chiefest element of ideal- ism, but in Boecklin there is not one gleam of spir- ituahty; he is the romantic fantaisiste, from whom we expect no idealism and who is only belittled by such unjust comparison. We would beg our Herr Miithers to take him as he is and not to compare him with any alien genius. From Boecklin we get the classic myth, but we get it in the terms of German realism. His Pan is a wild and hairy fellow, a true denizen of the forest, with nothing of the flower-like loveliness of the faun of Praxiteles — and the Syrinx of the Dresden gal- lery, escaping his embrace in headlong flight, is a figure that is equally realistic. Boecklin, indeed, has been accused of a blatant naturalism. "This," says Meier-Graefe, "is not the vision of the Greek but the vision of Charles Darwin." The criticism is harsh and "Darwin" is not the exact word, but there is, 102 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING we admit, some justice in the arraigranent. This is theatrical naturalism, a combination of Darwin and the footlights. A nereid has the emotions of Cleo- patra, a triton has the humor of old Falstaif, and the nymphs are like ladies of the op6ra bouffe. Boecklin, however, is not always the literalist, and his better work consists of idyls like those of the Schack Gal- lery in Munich. It is in such things as "The Villa by the Sea," an Italian landscape of exquisite se- verity; it is in such things as "An Idyl of Theocri- tus," in which the lyric youth, naked and crowned with pink roses, is playing on a woodland pipe to his fair Amaryllis, who is clumsy but sweet in the back- ground; and in such things, again, as "Pan Fright- ening a Goat-herd," the figures of which do not ap- pear to us as in the paintings left from Pompeii, but as some Greek shepherd might have imagined them who believed in the goat-hoofed Pan and who feared that, at some lone hour, he might come suddenly on the god himself, vine-wreathed and fluting in the boskage, or bent upon a Syrinx or upon Apollo's Daphne. It is urged by two or three people that Boecklin is not really German, but to these unreasonable critics we bring up such things as "The Solitude of the For- est." The forest is dear to the German as the place from which he sprang, and this peculiar sympathy, this feeling for the wild-wood and its silence, is ex- 103 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING pressed here with absolute fidelity. The great, star- ing goat, the dark mass of cave and tree behind him, the solitary figure on his back — it is the old German legend itself, with that very element of terror which Heine so greatly disliked. This, moreover, is but one picture in many; there are other things equally ra- cial. While Boecklin was not out of sympathy with Impressionism, being akin to it by the very nature of his talent, he was lacking in that big command of color which distinguishes all Impressionists, from the Venetians to Turner and Claude Monet. He is praised by certain critics as being a very great color- ist, but this is precisely what he is not. Original, in- tense, and sometimes charming, he is yet bizarre and capricious, and is somewhat uncertain in the handhng of his pigment. His color is, in truth, his weak point, his strongest being his treatment of mass. "Boeck- lin," says one admirer, "composed in colors ; he was a true and great musician in color." We grant that he did so compose, but it does not follow that he com- posed very greatly. To realize the faults of his com- position we need only compare him with others, with painters like Monticelli, Besnard, or Renoir, all of whom compose in color and do it with supreme dis- tinction. Boecklin's color is inferior to his architec- tonics; he builds superbly, his straight lines, hori- zontal and vertical, giving us the desired effect of 104 M o H O Q O Q Q O H J 05 a MODERN GERMAN PAINTING solemnity, darkness, and an almost exquisite mel- ancholy. To see an exhibit of the work of Hans von Marees — or, rather, before seeing that of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, and other modern extremists — ^is to wonder, to dishke, to remember. His elements, we say to ourselves, may be classified thus: One-third the stifPness of the Primitives, one-third something Dutch, and one-third Giorgione gone mad. When this has been hazarded, however, there is something left to say and to explain. Von Marees, we know now, was aiming at that very synthesis which Henri, Glackens, Hawthorne, and other artists, American and European, are practising today. In his Ger- many this was something new; the old tradition, the tradition descended from the Florentines and from many generations of German draughtsmen, was still dominant among his contemporaries, and the aim of that tradition was not a synthetic art, but, rather, an art analytic. This, however, was not what Von Marees actually did, but only what he tried to do. His effects are decorative and they do give a suggestion of synthesis — of slurred detail and emphasized essential, and of all parts bound together into an organic whole; yet we feel the imfinished quality of this art, and we are almost repulsed by these blurred, half-grimacing faces. On the other hand, the simphcity of his fig- 107 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING ures is like that of the very ancient marbles with their simple gestures and attitudes. As idyllic as Giorgione, he is yet as stiflP as the sculptors of the older temples. His experiments with the naked fig- ure are, however, unique for his time and his coun- try. He gives us naked figures plucking oranges from overhanging boughs, or naked and half -naked figures set in a woodland clearing, or naked figures of some symbolic meaning. Yet their nakedness is clothed upon with innocence; they are like the first man and woman in the first garden and do not even know themselves unclothed! Moreover, they are not lovely models ; they are common figures, figures of an every-day reahty, with bones and muscles and sinews very much in evidence. In his later years Von Marees becomes more and more the decorator, though with an insistence on the cubic quality which makes against the decorative — ^and it is in this mural work that we see him at his best and at his worst, the fres- coes at Naples being poor while those of Schleissheim are beautiful. A man who longed for great things yet never mastered the language of his art. Von Marees may be described as a poet but "a poet who stammers his message." We must not leave the romanticists of this period — roughly speaking, of the sixties, seventies and eighties — without some mention of Thoma, though this aged German painter is also of the twentieth cen- 108 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING tury and is exhibiting, even now, with men who were children when he began his work. A man is at his best when he speaks his mother-tongue, and when Thoma is "old German" and speaks the romantic tongue of the Black Forest he is a painter of genuine charm. There is a picture of his in the Metropolitan Museima which is typical of his work at its best. Its colors are the colors of our childhood's paint-boxes, from which, with quiet glee, we painted the little pic- tures of our Primer and First Reader. All naively emphatic, of a delightful and half absurd intensity, they are the colors of an ancient Teutonic fairy-tale. Hans Thoma, as every German knows, spent the earlier years of his life in a little, old, wooden house, shingle-roofed and probably vine-o'er-grown, and, until his twenty-first year, was one with his woodland environment. He is true to his birth and rearing when he paints such things as his circles of dancing peasant-children, his German landscapes and his fairy-tales, and also in some of his etchings for "Pan," that German periodical which numbers among its contributors so many men of genius and marked tal- ent. Here he is sturdy and honest, tender and gay, and just a little clumsy — ^recalling the very qualities of old Northern legend. When he tries to be French, and also when he tries to be Italian, Thoma is at his worst. His gift is strictly German and old German — in simplicity, sincerity, and quaint tenderness. 109 CHAPTER III PLEIN-AIEISM.— LIEBERMANN AND SOME FOLLOWERS The Principles of Impressionism Introduced by Liebermann. — Truebner, a Strict Follower. — Uhde and Stuck, of the Same Derivation. IT is Max Liebermann, a Jewish painter of Ger- man birth, to whom we owe the first firm stand in his comitry for the plein-air movement. Other Germans there were who knew the example of Barbi- zon and its open-air work, but it was Liebermann who brought the German painters to that resolute doctrine of naturalism which has taken such a firm hold on art. This doctrine, it is needless to say, in- cludes the use of every-day sights, of common affairs, of things to be seen in the open. While Menzel had attacked certain problems of light, neither he nor Leibl had been advocates of open-air painting, whereas Liebermann went directly to nature and in- troduced Germany to the srm. Liebermann, like Millet, is apt to select for his subject the character- istic situations in the life of the poor, or, rather, in that of the country-folk, the men and women close to the . soil. He gives us, for example, "The Net- 110 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING Menders," a simple and even stern presentation of the typical work of the coast-people. He gives us, again, the "Home for Old Men at Amsterdam," and the "Orphanage at Amsterdam," in the first of which we have merely a few old pensioners sitting in the sun, while in the second we have an arrangement of young figures in the open space of a court-yard, the straight lines of which are exceedingly decorative. Lieber- mann does not declare himself an apostle of labor, but he, with Wilhelm Leibl, stands in Germany as MiUet stands in France — as a painter of the humble folk, even though he may not love them as Millet loved them. He is a man who aims at the monumen- tal. When he paints a row of poor old men, sitting patiently in the sun, he means to paint the helpless- ness of age and bitter poverty; when he paints his "Net-Menders" he aims at all the fisher-folk in the world; and when he paints his "Orphanage" he has in mind all the pathos of all the lonely children on this earth. He is not always monumental, however, and his use of the straight line is far too conscious. Whether the subject be old men, young girls, flax- spinners, bathers, polo-players or riders, he is apt to use some arrangement of such lines, and this, in time, has an effect that is almost monotonous. His aim, nevertheless, is not infrequently attained, and by vir- tue of this attainment he has earned the place of a leader among German painters. The minor pleasure 111 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING which he gives us may be defined, perhaps, as caused by a delicate elegance, a cool and delightful sobriety, to which we must add a very spiritual rendering of atmosphere. His "Woman with the Goats," a pic- ture in the New Pinakothek in Munich, is one of the delights of that gallery — so keen and so exquisite is our sense of a lone hillside, of a clean, chill air, of re- moteness, of poignant stillness! At first of the school of Leibl, but afterwards in- fluenced by Liebermann, is Wilhelm Truebner, a great portraitist though not so great in other forms of painting. Truebner, who has always been a draughtsman, was in his earlier years the follower of the older tradition, but his later work shows the doc- trines of Impressionism to a degree which is very marked when we take into consideration his qualities as a man and as a painter. Always German in spirit and even a bit clumsy and square-set, he shows, now and then — as in his typical picture, "A Young Girl on a Sofa" — a touch of the Spanish, a hint of the Dutch. Velasquez is in this picture and so is Ter Borch, while the suggestion of Manet comes from the resemblance to these two, for at the time of its paint- ing Manet was unknown to Truebner. It was later on, when Liebermann brought Impressionism over from France, that Truebner came imder French in- fluence and began to be luminous in color. His por- trait of Schuch, in the National Gallery, is conceded 112 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING to be his best piece of work; but the "Young Girl on a Sofa" will be remembered, perhaps, by a greater number of people than this very beautiful portrait. It teUs no tale, it appeals to no emotion, it is not a study of character, but there is that about it which is both permanent and pleasant — a large simplicity, an air of innocent German girlhood, even an air of girlish awkwardness and immaturity, that makes it imforgettable. Truebner is an example of the men who can be true to their own genius while taking the best and making the most of new in- fluences. To return to the followers of Liebermann, we may consider the work of Fritz von Uhde, the Saxon cavalryman. In Uhde we have a man of various phases, who is at first a romanticist of the older type, then a plein-air realist, then what we may call "a preaching romanticist" and a man who appeals very markedly to the public by his treatment of the Chris- tian faith. Though becoming a plein-airist, a fol- lower of Liebermann, he was not bound by the theory of the extreme Naturalists — those fanatics who will paint you a pig but will not even try to paint you Aphrodite ! Like many other moderns, he attacks the great problems of tones and values, but the solving of these problems he brings to the service of his faith, and the light that he studies is the light on the Virgin and her Child. 113 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING In his peculiar treatment of the incidents in the life of Christ, Uhde has for a companion Edouard von Gebhardt, though von Gebhardt is quite the Aca- demic. These men depart from the custom of their time and portray Christ in modern surroundings. Gebhardt, however, does not go so far as Uhde; his disciples are clothed in the garments of the sixteenth century, though their faces are those of the German artisans of today. Uhde is more radical; in his triptych of the Dresden gallery, "Holy Night," his Mary is a German peasant-girl, with two long braids over her shoulders, while the shepherds and the angels belong to the same humble type, the former beiog straight from the Black Forest while the latter are Uttle German madchen with innocent child faces. It is so with his "Sermon on the Lake" in which -^he listeners are coast-folk of the immediate time; and so, too, with his picture entitled "Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest." Here we have a poor, himible and very reverent family, who receive Him with awe but with no great amazement and without any fear. All this is done deliberately — yes; but modern art every- where is deliberate. We have in these pictures of Uhde's the emotion of "The Servant in the House," which, being put into words, is something not unlike this: "I am born anew, I am crucified afresh, and I ascend once more into heaven, with each succeeding generation." This, indeed, is phrased very crudely, 114 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING but it is partly what we mean when we speak of the continuity of the Christian faith. For Franz von Stuck, of the Secession, the begin- ning was industrial art, and we still note, occasionally, a touch of the exaggerated wave and curl that sug- gests the nouveau furniture and button-hooks. When this is once admitted, however, we need not mention it again, for it is, indeed, too small a thing to fret us. Stuck is a painter with whose pictures we could not possibly live; we may like to gaze upon them in museums, we may hke a few, for a time, in some sel- dom-used apartment ; but as things for our daily sur- roimdings — ^no ! This, we grant, can be said of many pictures and doubtless of the majority, but of Stuck's it is particularly true. For Stuck, as we have said, is especially the fantaisiste. His vision is often called "fresh," and it is true that he renews in a literal fash- ion the shapes of the old Greek mythology. With these, however, he has not been wise enough to stop. He will set his faxms dancing in a sort of amphi- theater; he wiU give us the vision of an under- world that is foohshly like Dore; he will paint us a figure of Sin which has been characterized as "a dark lady of a theatrical disposition, carefully arrayed in a python." The Stuck of these pictures is the Stuck that we do not like to see. In "The Listening Faun," however, in the centaurs of "The Ancient Wood," in the two figures of "The Sea-Bride," and in other 117- THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING things of a similar order, he is not too realistic nor is he too fantastic. He is, to some extent, the follower of Rubens, conceiving the myths of satyr, faun, and centaur with the big realism of the Fleming and not with the unhealthy exaggeration of many modem Frenchmen. The name "Secessionists," as we have already noted, has been applied to Liebermann and his fol- lowers, whose methods and ideals constitute a break from the academic order. The Secession, however, has a wide range, including all those painters who have the new vision of light and the new yet old idea of synthetic presentation. Plein-airism is no longer French; it has gone into many countries and has been used according to race and to tradition. In Germany it has met with the profound racial taste for line, which is unsympathetic with any form of expression that results in the apotheosis of color. Nevertheless, the German has tried it, the result being a touch of cosmopolitanism. Between a Leistikow and a Le Sidaner there is the difference between Germany and France; yet the fact of the comparison is indicative of a quality European. Germany is not isolated. She has fallen into line with the rest of modem Eu- rope. 118 CHAPTER IV VARIETY, TENDING TO ECLECTICISM Klinger. — Skarbina. — Landscape-work: Leistikow, Bracht, Dill, Mackensen, Modersohn and Others. — Eclecticism in Munich and Berlin. — Examples from Various Groups: Corinth and Slevogt of the Secession; Erler, Putz and Miinzer of The Scholle; Ernst Liebermann of The Bayem. — The Japanese Influence. — The Extremists. — Typical Men of Various Cities. — Conclusion. UHDE and Stuck, we repeat, are in the line of Liebermann, though departing from it accord- ing to the dictates of individual genius. Max Klinger, on the other hand — so does the modern stream vary and divide — is akin to the intense Boeck- lin, and, like Boecklin, is alternately metaphysical and fanciful. In Klinger we have a man of too many sides, he being a painter, a sculptor, an etcher, an engraver, and a musician. Now your good old-Ger- man artist, it is true, was an etcher and an engraver as well as an excellent painter — and music, it would seem, is the speech of the German people; but when sculpture is added to these we have a gift too various, for sculpture alone is great enough for the energies of one man. Even in Klinger's painting we have a 119 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING wide range of intention, for he is ethical, dramatic, imaginative, and also purely fanciful. The decora- tive tendency he shares with other Germans, and in some of his pictures this tendency is well illustrated. His fertility has amounted to a fault, though a fault so very splendid that to call it such seems mere idle carping. His finest work is to be found in his etch- ings, in which he goes from a world of Hellenic joy— the world of the Greek reliefs in their later and more riotous forms — to fancies so terrible and so grotesque as to recall to us the Caprichos of Goya. From a painter's view-point Klinger is not great for he does not use his mediimi with distinction; but to the layman he is invariably interesting, for he has something big to state and he states it with a real originality. As a sculptor we cannot discuss him in this volume, but we note, in passing, his attempts at polychrome sculpture -r— his Beethoven and his Cassandra, in both of which, we fear, he has relied too much upon the mere differ- ence of colored marbles, not realizing that color iii sculpture is a quahty of pure imagination. It is impossible, at this stage, to keep to one order, for, side by side with Khnger and his baroque art, we have the work of such men as Franz Skarbina, which, though various, tends distinctly to realism. With a technique which follows Liebermann's, Skarbina chose subjects much like Menzel's, and in his later years became especially the Luminarist. He loved, 120 THE SIREN ARNOLD BOECKLIN NATIONAL GALLERY, BERLIN MODERN GERMAN PAINTING like so many moderns, to catch the effect of artificial light — for example, that of the Eiffel Tower at night, in the painting of which he achieved the sophisticated aspect of hard yet fairy sparkle on the blackness which is wonderfully taking to our modern and city- bred fancy. Skarbina followed the French but got something also from Holland. A painter of much variety, he chose the objective side of life, and his firm but light drawing is suited to the social distinction of his subjects. Among the landscapists we may quote especially Walter Leistikow and Eugen Bracht. By the death of the former, which occurred a few years ago, there was lost to German landscape-painting a very dis- tinct personality. Of the two great tendencies of the period — ^the trend to impressionistic statement and the trend to decorative effect — ^he felt the latter most, and especially in the last few years of his life. Poetic in emotion, he had a love for the stiller and more deli- cate moods of Nature, for sim and frost, for quiet afternoons and sober woodlands. At times his effects are not merely sober but severely formal, and his Grunewald scenes have been criticized as "structurally rigid"; yet structurally rigid the scenes are themselves, and the painter is no more blamable than Nature. Leistikow has done for the Mark Brandenburg what Rousseau and Daubigny did for Barbizon, making known to a great public its lovely lakes, its forests of THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING pine and fir, its look of Northern austerity, the beauty of which is not too stern or too severe. Eugen Braeht, his elder by twenty years, may be ranked with him as standing for the best German landscapes. A rich yet restrained colorist, he is also a man of dramatic power, with a hint of the "grand manner" which sometimes calls up Byron by reason of its intensity. We may note, also, such work as that of Hans von Bartels, who is more especially the master of water-color and the painter of the sea ; and that of Ludwig Dill, who is quite German but who paints the beauty of Venice and who nourished in his own country the germ of modern Scotch theories. Nor can we omit from this study — though our object is to take the larger figures and to point out the domi- nating tendencies — the men of the Worpswoede school. The chief among these are Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck, and Fritz Mackenson, all of whom are notable as expressing the spirit of the German landscape. Again, we may take such very recent painting as that of Erler-Samaden, Bechler, and Eichler, all three being of that band of young painters which calls itself "The SchoUe" and the object of which, as the name implies, is to turn to the soil, to the vigor and beauty of the fertile earth itself. The mention of The SchoUe, a group of Munich artists, will remind us of the fact that there is now a number of groups in Germany, of which this South 124 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING Gterman band and The Bayern are merely two. The existence of groups, however, is by no means a sign of great basic dissonance; it indicates a differ- ence in aim and in method but not any radical an- tagonism. This is clearer, perhaps, to the outsider than it can be to the German, but the German himself wiU admit an identity of general character. Now, indeed, we have arrived at a time when the sharp and definite lines begin to soften and the ideals tend towards a fusion. The painting of to-day is fairly eclectic; men take alike from ancient tradition and from the newest movement; they use the Venetian and the Dutchman, the Florentine and the Spaniard, and the Impressionism of modern France in all its various forms — and each man uses as he needs, or as he especially desires. The heresy of yesterday is the orthodoxy of to-day, and Secession itself becomes al- most legitimate ! This means, of course, that German art takes a more cosmopolitan, more European form, and, also, that its painters can no longer be rigidly classified. As examples of this eclecticism we may note such work as that of Albert Keller and Arthur Kampf, one of Munich, the other of Berlin. Keller, who is both a precise draughtsman and a good colorist, began his painting under the old rSgirne, but took from Impressionism all that he chose to take and, certainly, what it meant as to problems of light. 125 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING His "arrangements" are considered by the fastidious as things of great delicacy, though they equal neither the French "confection" nor American things of a similar order. In Arthur Kampf, who has held the high position of President of the Berlin Academy, we have a man who is sufficiently conservative to be permitted by the Emperor to paint the Imperial por- trait — and the Emperor, it need hardly be said, is the flesh-and-blood epitome of all that is conservative in the criticism of art. Yet Kampf, also, is concerned with modern problems and has proved himself no mean scientist. Those who recall his "Charity," in the German exhibit given here a few years ago, wiU remember how the allegory was made secondary and of small consideration by the over-powering treatment of the light, which was diffused on a broken circle of faces. We have mentioned these two as examples, but, having spoken of the SchoUe and other groups, we may speak now of two or three painters selected from these groups, and of a few, also, from cities other than Munich and Berlin. Lovis Corinth, a few years ago, succeeded Max Liebermann as president of the Secession, and it is needless, when we have stated his position, to speak of his dominating principles. Corinth is "the Rubens of the Secession," his bacchic strain robust and healthy. He paints the figures of mythology, not 126 'A < a o w o > I— I Q t) H > H Q < O O < MODERN GERMAN PAINTING with a fancy Boecklinian and not with the realism of Stuck, but with a feeling which ranks between these two. He has something of the real Rubens energy, something of the style, the composition, the dashing brush-work, and the rich, round happiness of the tre- mendous Fleming. In Max Slevogt, who is another pillar of the Seces- sion, we have a man whose pictures are attacked as things which would look quite as well if Slevogt had chosen another medium — and this, of course, is a very serious criticism. One does not wish to be a painter in marble, or, on the other hand, to be a sculptor in colors! "Slevogt," says one critic, "has taken snip- pets from Liebermann, from Truebner, and from Manet, and has imagined these to make up a tech- nique." This is, possibly, too cruel and overbearing; it is enough to say of Slevogt that he is a gifted Im- pressionist, clever, graceful, quick, but lacking in the finish that means patience. Franz Hals is his idol, but, where Hals is direct and sweeping, Slevogt is merely rough or brusque.. The carnival mood is typified by such men as Lud- wig Von Hoffmann. Sensuous in color and full of the joy of life, he is essentially the decorator, though chiefly of such places as a salon des fites, a ball-room, or a play-house. His color is riotous and perhaps too arbitrary; he is a poet of a charming but minor sort, whose counterpart in literature is bloom- 129 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING ing in a hundred magazines. He is named here as typical, but his name might be changed for many another — as his picture called "Adam imd Eva" might as well be called "Venus and Adonis," since it is merely a decorative composition. The mention of Munich's "SchoUe" has brought us to the work of three men who stand especially for new things in modern German painting, these three being Fritz Erler, Leo Putz, and Adolf Miinzer. The aim of The SchoUe, we may say again, is to get into sym- pathy with the earth and with all its healthy activities. To say of its technique that it is forceful and bold is not to describe it to the layman ; we shall better com- prehend it if described as an endeavor, impressionistic in its origin, to conquer the problem of color at the expense, if necessary, of aU strictness of line — an en- deavor which is alien to the German temper and its old linear tendency. Some of its work remains mere experiment; in some of it there is a big, noisy, half- savage and half-Teutonic splendor; while in some we see a genuine achievement, to endure when the rest of it is gone. To those who saw the German exhibit in the spring of 1909 this comment wUl be illustrated by the remembrance of Erler's decorative panel en- titled "Plague." That panel was loud ; it was highly extravagant, badly bizarre; and yet one stood and stared at it, seeing a quality of the old Thiiringer- wald. The figure was a great, striding, yellow-clad 130 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING woman, with an air of joyous fury and of sheer de- light in rage. She was trampling all in her path, king and clown, beggar and great lady, the child and the aged! She took them with a Berserker ferocity, the glow on her face being that of the ancient Furies, at once terrible and irresponsible. The thing had the look of a poster, but this, we admit, was only its proper appearance. A poster is a thing to advertise, and the Plague advertises itself ! For the second of the group, Adolf Miinzer of the Dtisseldorf Academy, the elect motive is the beauty and health of young women, whom he paints with an especial consideration for their picturesque qualities. With the third, Leo Putz, the motive is much the same, his canvas being even fuller of hght and color than Miinzer's, his fancy striking us, at times, as the fancy of a German Bonnard. In the landscapists of the group we note the same principles of technique, though the style varies with individual tempera- ment. From the men of "The Bayem," the Bavaria group, we select Ernst Liebermann, whose romanticism is by turns lofty and charming. Of the first type we may take his "Nymphenburg Castle," which is pre- sented in a palhd yet luminous blue moonlight and with much of that mysterious quaUty which belongs to the subject, to the light, and to the core of the Ger- man temperament. As an example of the charming, 131 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING we take his idyl, "Am Waldquell." This is a nymph, or lovely mortal, bending to a woodland spring, a thing which is charged with the feeling for the forest and its enchantment, though the expression is not pure German but eclectic and might as well have come out of England or America. Again, selecting at random, there is Hugo Vogel of Berlin, whose "Prometheus," done for the German division of the Brussels World Exhibition, is very broadly and even grandly decora- tive. Again, there is Raffael Schuster- Woldan, of Munich, who has painted the wall-pictures for the large haU in Parhament, and who is one of the most intense of modern idealists, though his trend is to darker effects. There is Otto Heichert of Konigs- berg, another painter who is profoimdly idealistic and serious, a pupil of Gebhardt and one who is not af- fected by the modern desire for color as achieved at the expense of drawing. There is Habermann, a painter of modern women, with a certain exquisite grotesqueness ; there is also Hans Unger of Dresden, a painter not quite even but one of distinct fascination, a poet almost Arcadian, and a elassico-romanticist who recalls the Italian Renascence yet does it with a purely modem touch. Then, too, there is Hagemeis- ter, a friend of Truebner and very like him in realistic trend and achievement. Again, though still the choice is random, there is Carl Max Rebel, who vi- brates between absolute modernity and the sixteenth 132 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING centxiry; there is Georg Schuster- Woldan, a por- traitist and a teller of fairy-tales; and there is Otto Greiner, very notably an etcher, whose work is remi- niscent now of Boecklin and now of pre-Raphaelitism, but who shows, also, a trend slightly classical. We might have added to this list the name of Gotthard Kuehl, of the middle and later middle period, a painter who has been described as "a mix- ture of Fortimy, Menzel and Liebermann"; that of Claus Meyer, akin to Vermeer in his purity; that of the accomplished and romantic Leo Bamberger, whose portrait of himself might have been done by Franz Lenbach, and who, indeed, is of the Lenbach order; that of Carl Marr, whose decorations, while a trifle heavy to the mind of the American, are still delight- ful in feeling; that of the versatile Walter Geffcken, especially clever in his treatment of figures in brilliant sun-light; and that of Heinrich Zugel, the painter of animal life, whose work is not xmlike SoroUa's. To this incomplete list we must add the name of Kal- kreuth, a naturalist half -savage in his forceful realism and an artist whose influence has been very notable; the two Hiibners, one a painter of water-sides, one of interiors, and both under French influence; Albert Oppler, who is especially a painter of women; Emil Orlik, of Japanese tendencies; and Angelo Jank, of The SchoUe, who decorated the Reichstag building only a few years ago, and who adds to a profoimd 133 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING knowledge of anatomy an excellent sense for color and a feeling for the monumental, the essential. This, however, is not a chapter of mere names, as it is not a chapter of mere pictures. Our endeavor has been to find the main currents of this art, and to select for special study the men who best typify these streams. One influence, however, we have not yet noted, and of this we must speak, if only very briefly. The Japanese influence is an element of all modem painting since the days of Manet and the early days of Whistler, making its way from France into other European countries and into America. In Germany, where painting is not so accomplished as in France, this Eastern art has not proven a good influence. Happily, however, it is seen far less in the work of the painters than in that of the illustrators and in the decorative arts other than painting. We say "hap- pily" because of the fact that Germany is not ready for Japan. "An art that lives by a breath," so writes a German critic, "an art that has learned to walk with- out legs, is exquisite within its limits, but could exer- cise a favorable influence only upon a perfected art" — and this, he says frankly, German art is not. We see the influence now and then in Stuck, and occa- sionally, though not very often, in mural work; but in such men as the illustrators Wilkie, Paul and Behmer, it appears as a marked element. There seems to be, at present, a re-action from it; there are signs 134 MODERN GERMAN PAINTING that in Germany, as in other countries of the great Western world, men are beginning to realize that the East and the West are two different lands and that the art of one must not be trusted very far in the art of the other. Of the influence of Cubism, Post-Impressionism, Futurism, and all the other phases of Expressionism, we have yet to speak in this chapter. Germany itself, the citadel of sound draughtsmanship, has not escaped this ultra-modernity. So earnest is German art, so fuU of yoimg strength and young enthusiasm, that it tries these new doctrines of expression as youth, every- where, tries new styles and colors. It experiments buoyantly and with joy — Cubism, Futurism, Concep- tionalism, InstinctivismI But experiment, happily, does not always mean adoption, and we cannot be- lieve that Germany, with a linear tradition so splen- did, of such passionate patience and ardor, will lend itself in any great measure to deliberate Primitivism. It is not any weight of opinion, it is not the Emperor and the imperial disfavor, but the genius of the coun- try itself which will keep German painting from such lawlessness, such intentional throwing aside of all the golden harvest of experience. The element of good in this movement we do not attempt to deny; it is, indeed, a reaction from the idea that emotion and sen- sation are apart from painting. On one side a mat- ter of design, it is also a return to the older idea of 135 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING painting as an art to express the painter's feeling — his composition, his line, his color, all indicative of a thought, a sensation, an emotion. That something may be gained from it — a fresh conception of art as an expression of hmnan feehng — is evident even to the layman; but the gravity of its danger outweighs its possible good, and it is therefore with a sense of relief that we recognize in the movement a spirit that is alien to the principles of the German mind. That mind, so far as art is concerned, is expressed most pro- foundly by the great graphic arts — and the essence of the graphic arts is line. In closing our discussion of this painting we may re-state the fact that it is an art which presents to us a very marked difference of ideals, passing from pseudo-classicism to a bombastic realism, from this to a fine, stem realism, then to a naturalistic romanti- cism, and then to a fusion of ideals. This history, as we have said, shows a marked difference between the city on the Isar and the city on the Spree, one standing for individualism and for adventure, the other for the qualities cosmopolitan and European. Then, too, we may insist upon the debt of modern Germany to France ; that is, for the new way of seeing the physical world, for a new and splendid vision of hght, a vision which was not original with France but which she, with her genius for order, was the first to formulate. Finally, we may prophesy great good for German 136 BURGOMASTER KLEIN WILHELM LEIBL MODERN GERMAN PAINTING painting. This art is young — re-born in the great nineteenth century — and has still some youthful crudenesses and insanities, some youthful exaggera- tions and mannerisms. But youth itself means prom- ise, and of promise modern Germany is full and over- flowing. Her painters are not weary, are not ennuye ; they stand, young and strong, on the shores of an infinite ocean, and, looking outward, they have a sense of infinity — realizing that "leagues beyond these leagues, there is more sea" I 139 PART THREE MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING o Q < o M O CQ MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING CHAPTER I NINETEENTH CENTURY TYPES The English Genius. — Turner and Consta,ble, Fore-runners of Impressionism. — The Pre-Raphaelites, their Meaning and Influence. — Other Victorian Types: (a) Mason, Walker, and the Classic Pastoral. — (b) Watts, the Exponent of Nineteenth Century Idealism. — (c) Leighton and Alma- Tadema, Pseudo-Classic. — The Glasgow School and its Qual- ities. THE Englishman, as all the world knows, is not primarily a painter. His genius, so far as the arts are concerned, is especially for the great art of poetry, and he uses the medium of words as the an- cient Greeks used marble and the elder Italians used pigment. As compared with the history of English poetry, that of English painting is brief and unim- portant, the chronicle of an art that does not seem quite natural to the people. The Englishman tells a story and tells it critically, discusses the philosophy of events, and enters on the root facts of every- thing with which he is concerned. Like the German he is subjective, and in his painting he is even more subjective than that Teutonic neighbor. With this art, therefore, he has never been completely at home ; 145 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING it is too static for his literary bent, permitting him no such range as does the art of poetry, in which he leads the world and leads it sublimely. Of late years the form of his painting has become Europeanized, but this is only a softening of antagonism. The record of modern English painting is begun when we come to speak of Hogarth, for Hogarth, despite the fact that he does "conversation-pieces" and adheres more or less to a formal grouping, is a painter who really "lets in the light of common life," dares to contradict the sham antique, and, if he does not go to Nature, at least approaches to a natural feeling, the feeling of the people around him. He is a realist, springing up in the midst of sentimentalism, a natu- ralist at a time when to be natural was thought to be vulgar. Hogarth aside, though in justice he cannot be put aside, we may say of modern English painting that it begins with Constable and Turner, to whose names we may add those of Crome, Cotman and Cox, all of these men being modem in a sense in which Romney and Reynolds are not — that is, by a triumph in the rendering of light and air which heralds the modem triumph. Turner, the wizard, had learned from the Venetians, and he looked upon color, not as something with which to tint a drawing, but as some- thing with which a picture could be made. Turner is not only akin to the Barbizon men but anticipates Monet and his principles. He saw, as Monet did 146 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING years afterwards, that the lines and colors of nature were not hard and fixed but varied with the varying atmosphere. The older men, great painters like Ruysdael and Claude, had painted en bloc; Turner "took the masses apart, found what he wanted, and made them all up again, laying on his color in dots and lines, and juxtaposing different colors so that the eye would re-compose them into beautiful harmonies." This, of course, was Impressionism — ^nothing more or less — and Turner is the father of Impressionism in its modem form. In Constable we have a like genius and one who has been declared the superior of Turner, though with their relative merits we are not here concerned. We note, also, the work of Crome, Cotman and Cox, all of whom are allied to Constable — Crome expressing his own standard and theirs when he said, "Trifles in nature must be overlooked, that we may have our feel- ings raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance, not knowing how or why we are so charmed." This, of course, indicates an impressionistic idea, and, cer- tainly, the modern idea of synthesis, which, as we have said, is a catching up and presenting of the essential, the fundamental. These men were really modern, so modem that England failed to keep pace with them and allowed a reaction from their modernity into pseudo-classicism. Between this group of painters, so distinctly ahead 147 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING of their time, and the movement made by the English Pre-Raphaelites, there is a distance not of years but of rather prosaic art. The period between the two is quite inappreciable as to length, and is really not bar- ren of pictures. We have here a set of men who show marked ability — such men as Leslie, Etty, Mulready, Eastlake, Landseer, Hunt, Lewis, and Maclise — but in most of these there is a sort of would-be classicism, a timidity in following nature, a fear of the big meth- ods of Constable. It was such bondage that was broken by Pre-Raphaelitism. This movement was a movement much greater in its effect on English art than in the whole sum of its canvases. It was far less a painting of pictures than a bursting of bonds, a de- parture from the era of false classicism which, curi- ously enough, followed upon the originality of Turner and of Constable. A part of the romantic and demo- cratic movement of the century, it was chiefly a break for freedom, and its significance in history is its stand for an independent painting. The movement is one which is not very generally understood, and we may therefore give it a few pages of explanation and even of defence. In the year 1848 there appeared in England a band of yoimg enthusiasts, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti at their head, who declared that English painting was insincere and was imitating the grandiose and bom- bastic art of the Italians of the late seventeenth cen- 148 H W O o f-' a td CQ 1-1 < o I— I a 03 CO MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING tury. With Raphael himself they had no quarrel, lodging their complaint against his followers, who, they maintained, had prostituted his serenity, his bal- ance, his peculiar and inimitable mingling of the Christian and the classic. They turned for inspira- tion — that is, for an example of reverence, of faith, of a simple. Catholic fervor — to the painters before Raphael, to Perugino, to Botticelli, to Lippo Lippi, to Era Angelico, to Giotto, finding such qualities to increase as they traveled backward. These they be- lieved to be the essentials of great art, and these they endeavored to imitate, albeit, in their youthful en- thusiasm, they thought themselves sincere. As art- ists they were undoubtedly sincere, as sincere as the boy who plays at soldiering or the little girl who dresses in her mother's garments. They were enam- ored of the mediaeval ideal, of its simplicity, its sin- cerity, its air of childlike reverence ; they were enam- ored, also, of the mediaeval Celtic legends, the story of Arthur and his knights, of Guinevere and Lancelot, of Merlin and Vivian and the rest, all of which are compact of glamour, of magic, of the prismatic letters that spell out romanticism. This grasping at the miracle of the world was, how- ever, but half of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and idea. In the doctrine of "simplicity and sincerity" was involved, as in Wordsworth's, the notion of a re- turn to nature. This did not mean then what it means 151 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING to the artist of today, yet Rossetti, at a time when men painted in their studios, worked at his "Found" out of doors, whUe the group in general returned to the mediaeval fashion of painting every petal of the flower and every separate leaf of the spray — appar- ently believing this to be a fidelity to nature! As a matter of fact, the real Pre-Raphaelites painted thus the petal and the leaf because they had no better knowledge. Our little group made the mistake, pardonable only because they were so young, of putting aside all that the centuries had learned, copying the faults of the Primitives, and re-pro- ducing an archaic straightness and stiffness — as if stiffness made for innocence and straightness for fervor! With the passage of a very few years the move- ment had spent its first force. To a woman who ap- proached Rossetti with a question as to his Pre- Raphaelitism, he answered briefly, "Madam, I am not a Pre-anything. I am a poor painter who works for his living!" His genius has three distinct periods. The first is that in which he follows these primitive ideals, attempting to revive the old Catholic fervor. The second and best is that in which he gives play to his own genius, unhampered by influence, to which period belong many of his fine single figures — for example, "The Loving-Cup" and "The Bride," in which the sumptuous Venetian color, the wealth of 152 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING imagination, and the intensity of romantic feeling atone for the grave faults of draughtsmanship. The third and last is a period marred by ill-health, and is typified by some big, gusty, dark and lowering women, whom we do not very greatly care to see. As a draughtsman Rossetti fails signally, and fails in other things equally important. His success — for we still call him moderately successful — is due in part to his rich, Venetian-like color, in part to that strong and vivid fancy which captivates the multitude, and in part to a personal quality which comes very close to the fanatical. As a rule, this quality is a drawback; it is only at its highest, when it becomes so intense as to be hectic, that it really bums its pathway to fame. Rossetti succeeds precisely because he is narrow, be- cause he is pecuhar, because he is almost violently himself. His art is not nature seen through a tem- perament; it is, we may say, a temperament in terms of paint. That his charm is ephemeral is the verdict — alas! — of less than half a century. The "Beata Beatrix," the "Veronica Veronese," and even the "Loving-Cup," which is so much simpler than these, are things which one cannot keep long in his room or in his study. A year or so, and they pall! He is obliged to take them down ; and he gets in their places — let us say, a portrait of Titian's, a cast of the Hermes of 01ympia,*Raphaers "Madonna del Gran Duca," Watteau's "Clown," Trbyon's "Return to the 163 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Farm," or something else that is equally big and quiet and impersonal! Of the little group of eight it was Hunt alone who adhered to Pre-Raphaelite beliefs, MiUais going over to the Academy, while Rossetti, as we have said, developed on his own particular lines. Burne-Jones, who is frequently reckoned of the group, was in reality but a follower, and at the time of its inception was a mere gifted lad of fifteen. In draughtsmanship he far excels Rossetti, and his decorative effects are truthfully likened to Botticelli's; yet the element of intensity, by which Rossetti thrusts, is one of the very elements which militate against Burne-Jones, for in him this intensity is nerveless and is sentimental to a noticeable degree. Finished and correct as he is, often a charming colorist, and always of a delicate feeling, he has failed while Rossetti has held. There are those of us, indeed, who wiU never give up certain of his figures — such as the straight, decorative shapes of the great cartoons on the stairway of the Kensing- ton Museum. We insist upon this beauty of drawing and of design, yet we admit of the art in general that it seems enervate and that the personal quaUty by which Rossetti succeeds becomes in Burne-Jones a quality by which he fails. The summary dismissal of Burne-Jones, however, is as foolish as the one-time adoration. Stigmatize him "literary," call him "an illustrator," set him down as "languid," he is yet a 154 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING sound draughtsman and a man of excellent decorative feeling. There is no good reason, we maintain, to ac- cept the stiff and hieratic angels of mediaeval art while refusing the stiflp and hieratic angels of Burne- Jones; nor have we any right to object to his use of foliage, flowers, and wings, because — forsooth! — Botticelli has used them much better. Unhappily, however, his figures and his faces have neither a va- riety nor a vitality of expression. He gives us, most beautifully drawn, a series of languid English girls and lads, calhng them "Psyche," "Cupid," "Elaine," "Vivian," or "The Wind of the South"— and then repeats this fair series indefinitely! Now we grant indeed, that all the great painters have their types; we recognize the Lombard type, the Venetian and the Florentine, as well as the Leonardo type, the Titian type, and the Ghirlandajo type, but these have such vitality that they do not pall upon us. Those of Burne-Jones, on the contrary, are types of which we weary, for they are over-personal, over-emphatic and over-emotional. They push the individual to an ex- treme — and if this is false in morals, it is also false in art. Connected with this movement and deeply inspired by it was the movement led by Wilham Morris, which concerned itself with the crafts as well as with paint- ing and poetry. The Morris idea is the idea of sim- plicity and sincerity urged by the Pre-Raphaelites, 155 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING with their sense of wonder and reverence, their feeling for nature, and their dependence on emotion. Mor- ris, we may say, was the apostle of nature, inasmuch as he preached that simple beauty which comes from an absolute utility. He decried the over-done and over- decorated, and, while his doctrines have been carica- tured and made to seem almost sentimental, they have a large element of truth and even of a practical wis- dom. We affirm, then, a Pre-Raphaehte influence through the decorative trend of modem English art, though it shows itself most clearly, perhaps, in the painting of Albert Moore and in the drawing of Walter Crane and Aubrey Beardsley. It may seem strange that Beardsley, whose genius is allied to Greek vase-painting, should owe any debt to this in- fluence ; indeed, the distance from this exquisite art — half faery, half diabohc, and wholly a triiimph of line — ^to the somewhat heavy and honeyed art of Rossetti is what may be called "a far cry." Yet, ex» cept for Rossetti and his revival of the spirit of ro- mance — the spirit of wonder, the spirit of a various and mysterious beauty — ^we should never have come on to Beardsley, in whose work the romantic quahties are essentials. As to Moore, he has lasted where the Pre-Raphaehtes have not, either as Pre-Raphaehte or in their later developments, when the term is no longer apphcable. This, perhaps, is partly because 156 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING of his draughtsmanship, though in part, also, because of a decorative trend which suits the modern taste. While the work of the Pre-Raphaelites is known and made much of in the histories of art, the work and school of Frederick Walker and George Mason, who stand for another ideal, is known, in America at least, oiJy to an interested few. They belong to the ro- mantic movement in its larger significance for they are touched by a feeling for the mystery of life ; but of the personal, the emotional, the vivid, the intense, their art gives no least hint. Their figures, in truth, have been likened to the Greek figures of the fifth cen- tury, impersonal, serene, unemotional, not so much people as types of himianity. They, with their fol- lowers, present the paradoxical sight of a pastoral school which is half realistic and half classic and con- temporaneous with the most pronounced romanticism. They paint the idyUic moods of nature, but the effect is large and impersonal, an effect like that of de Chavannes. We may take, for example. Walker's "Bathers." This is real life and these are real boys, who are naked and half -naked at the stream; but it is also life ideahzed, it is bathing typified, it is the joy and delight of all the open-air bathing and all the boys in the world. So Phidias, on the frieze of the Par- thenon, carved real young men riding real horses, yet achieved, not such and such a procession of Pallas Athene, but all the processions that ever went their 157 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING way on this earth, stating the essentials, the funda- mentals of procession. Walker and Mason, in short, have given us abstractions. Where Burne-Jones personifies the south wind and the hours, and Ros- setti chooses figures from romantic myth and legend, these men take actual forms and idealize them into types. The result is more or less decorative, for such elimination, such refining of the personal into the gen- eral, makes straight for the decorative and cannot be stopped. At that time the decorative had not become a craze, and it is, therefore, the more remark- able that the art of these men should remind us of de Chavannes and his principles. If Walker makes his British peasants to resemble Greek gods and he- roes, it is a fault which we gladly overlook. It is difficult here to follow "schools" and "move- ments," and there is nothing very definite between Pre-Raphaelitism and the modem revolt as expressed by The New English Art Club. At the same time with Rossetti and Bume-Jones, his work being con- temporaneous with that of Walker and of Albert Moore, we have George Frederick Watts, long idol- ized by a large and average public. We pause here to say with genuine pleasure that the average public, and another public as well, has been right in this honest adoration. Watts is truly the public's painter, essaying to help it as it staggers on its way, and hold- ing to its darkness such a torch as he possesses. He 158 THE SCULPTRESS CHARLES H. SHANNON PARIS SALON, 1909 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING is called "didactic" and called "literary"; but is he more didactic than Botticelli when Botticelli paints "Pallas and the Centaur," symbolizing divine wisdom and the lusts of the flesh? And is he more literary than all the elder painters with their Annunciations and Crucifixions and Resurrections and Ascensions? Other men, painting not half so well, have passed as better painters because they did a woman with a fan instead of Eve, and a conversation-scene instead of the "Court of Death." Watts, we grant, is not a past master of his art; he is hereby conceded to the critical as sculpturesque where he ought to be flat^ and as lacking in a certain sensitiveness, though the term is used as to technique alone. But what he is he is magnificently — a painter of things spiritual, addressing himself to the conscience and to the higher aspirations of mankind. Watts' kinship to Rossetti and his group is some- thing that has been over-estimated. He was alive to the beauty of the mysteries, but the Pre-Raphaehtes saw them with an almost Celtic vision, a vision that was wUdly and sadly imaginative, touched by a vague and haunting melancholy — and a vision, moreover, which had to do chiefly with emotions and desires and little with the moral nature of man. Watts, though a Western Celt, paints with the insistent morality of the Saxon imagination; he is not content, like Rossetti and Burne-Jones, with the beautiful alone, but must 161 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING get at the meaning of the beautiful. This is a painter, as Chesterton points out, who belongs to the nine- teenth century, that century of the individual man, which doubted with blood and tears, which believed with trembling, and, which had for itself a profound and painful regard. It is, indeed, a period which the twentieth century — bacchic on the one hand and intensely philanthropic on the other — ^is hardly able to remember or to understand. Watts stood for this century, he painted for it, and he painted the things in which it was interested — Love, Death, Life, the Soul, and God. With a touching and superb behef in the priestliness of his calling, he would have painted, if he could, where all the world might see and learn from him. He did oifer, at one time, to decorate Euston Station, but the oifer was refused by the managers. They failed to see their station as the place it really was, a place where human souls passed each other in darkness and in haste, and from which, had the offer been accepted, they might have gained, in passing, a glimpse of the heavenly vision. To sum up our praise, we tender it to Watts the man, rather than to Watts the painter. The painter has some very serious faults, such as a certain muddi- ness which mars not a few of his big and lofty concep- tions; yet when this is admitted, we may still urge Watts as Venetian in his feeling for the sumptuous. He has been called "a belated Tiepolo," and, while 162 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING this is a forced comparison, he has evidently a touch of Venetian splendor and luxury. He is, we may say, an English Venetian with a sense of the spiritual. When we leave the Pre-Raphaelite group we leave a real dynamo, and a period follows when we have no trend that is strong enough to be given the title of "a movement." For an actual impulse we must come to the later eighties and to the formation of the New English Art Club. In the meantime we mark here, not movements, but classes of painting. Besides the fine pastorals of Mason and of Walker, as serene and impersonal as fifth century marbles, we have, first, the class that was formerly accepted as Greek but is now, with clearer vision and less courtesy, entitled "pseudo-Greek." It is disdained by the extremists and half -cultured, as it once was admired by the gen- eral, and its exponent is Frederick Leighton, of whom it has long been the fashion to be scornful. "English feeling, served with Greek sauce" — this was the comment on his work from a critic with a gentle taste for epigram, and the phrase was too fetching to be readily forgotten. Yet Leighton was the only Englishman of his time who could draw the human figure, his "Psyche," if we only hide her face, being one of the finest things in modern line. As for a wholesale denial of the Greek spirit, we put forth the "Pompeiian Juggling Girl" with the huge and ominous "Clytemnestra," the first being a reminder of 163 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING late Greek marbles, while the "Clytemnestra" harks stiU farther back and recalls, though faintly, the heavy figures of Greek legend and the tragic lines of Sophocles and of ^schylus. Such a thing as Leigh- ton's "Summer Moon," moreover, is not to be thrown aside while we praise and emulate the "Blossoms" of Albert Moore, for being, in truth, not one whit more decorative! Leighton, however, fails to co-ordinate his figures. In his "Greek Girls Playing on the Shore" the separate forms are excellent, but the group is not coherent. Then, too, he is a draughtsman but not a colorist, while the color of Moore is beautiful. It must be admitted, also, that he thinks too much of the story and the subject, while Moore, who is charged with the decorative instinct, concerns him- self neither with story nor with emotion but sees his people in decorative masses, so sculptural in charac- ter as to bring to our minds the curious notion of a Japanese Greek. With Leighton's name goes the name of Alma- Tadema, another excellent draughtsman and one whose study of Greek life went carefully into details. Alma-Tadema, however, was a smaller man than Leighton and had much of the five-o'clock-tea about him. Despite his Greek benches and Greek vases, his flowers of Sappho and his outlook across the JEgean, we fail to be convinced by his Hellenism. Another class is that of historical painting, which 164 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING falls largely into the middle and later part of the Victorian era. The painters are dignified artists of the older ideals, untouched by the ferment of Paris, where, even in their own placid time, the truculent Manet and his group were fighting a big battle. Al- lied to this class is Orchardson, the Scotchman, who is not, however, an historical painter. Orchardson, we may say, is the best of the British eclectics, a man who is modern where others of his age are old- fashioned, an artist both sound and brilliant, both temperate and exquisite, and one to whom the old and the new schools hold out a hand. Than the best work of Orchardson we have nothing in England that is more independent or more self-contained, yet nothing that is more cosmopolitan. As distinctly akin to him, though by no means so gifted a man, we rank Sir Edward Poynter, long president of the Royal Academy, to whose traditionalism we have even less objection than to that of Gerome or Constant. As to aU such men, we may quote once more from Kenyon Cox, who says that the taunt of "academic" is applied to all accomplishment from Raphael to Vermeer, and wiU one day be hurled at our Whistler himself. These are, practically, all the Victorian forms, for the vision and form of the later nineties we cannot call Victorian. It is now, as we reach the middle eighties, that we turn for a very brief space to the 165 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING subject of Scotland and her painting — for the work of the Scottish painters, by which we mean chiefly that of the Glasgow School, is not to be considered as apart from the Enghsh. Here, of course, there is room for comparison, the old but forever interest- ing comparison of the Celtic genius with the Saxon. A category of names is wholly out of place in this study, yet we cannot refrain from a short roll of honor. We mark, as among the most notable, the following names: Guthrie, Cameron, McTaggart, Melville, Lavery, Roche, Dow, Mann, Macaulay- Stevenson, Hornel, Henry, Clausen, Morton, Has- sall, Furse, Hamilton, Law, Pirie, Paterson, Craw- hall and Walton. In the work of these Glasgow men we have the Scottish Celt at his best. His canniness is turned to fine reticence, his dourness to a certain A air of discipline, and his severity to a keenness of artistic statement, while his love of pure reason and of argument — ^which is in part the explanation of his Calvanism — has led him to a grasp of the essential, and so to a larger and more synthetic expression that is common among those of Saxon blood. His art, moreover, has nothing of the narrative element, is not at all literary, but is painting pure and simple. Yet here, again, we note a racial quahty; for there is that in the Scottish genius — an upright sternness, a fidel- ity to the moral law — ^which has kept these painters from the extreme liberty engendered by the theory 166 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING of "art for art's sake." There is a delicacy here that forbids the thought of license. It is as if the Shorter Catechism and the art of France had met and kissed each other — for the Scotchman, indeed, has learned of the wonderful Frenchman while holding himself aloof from the extremes of modern France. In many of these Glasgow men, moreover, there is something of the Celtic poetry, the Celtic quality of the glamorous and mysterious. It is not like the languor of Yeats nor akin in any sense to the ardors of Lionel Johnson; it is more reserved than these, with the reticence of the Scot as distinct from the open intensity of the Irish. One may speak of it as dehcately Celtic, the heavier qualities being con- spicuously absent. In beauty of design and in the decorative quality these Glasgow men are easily first among the British painters. The design, it is true, is rarely so marked as that of Burne-Jones or of painters professedly decorative, its evidence being far more elusive. The layman does not name it "design," nor is he aware of it as such, yet his pleasure is none the less genuine for being nameless and indescribable. Here, again, we have the Celtic genius, which tends so unmistakably to the decorative. Some vestige of this, we think, may be found in the ancient songs and chants, in which the quality shows itself in reds and blues and yellows. We mark, in this connection, the trace of a Japanese influence. We see it in Hornel, 167 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING for example, who has learned not a little from the Japanese painters as to decorative design and effect; we see it also in George Henry, his friend and fellow- traveler in Japan; yet in the mural work of Harring- ton Mann — or at least, in certain panels — ^we per- ceive a distant touch of de Chavannes, which is min- gled with a hint of the Pre-Raphaelite. The most exquisite and most decorative of Scottish landscap- ists is Macaulay- Stevenson, a Scottish Corot, of a lyric yet rather grave delicacy, whose poetic temper is not excelled by that of any other painter. With the English public, however, and with the American also, it is Lavery, an Irishman of Scottish residence, who stands for the Glasgow painters in general. Lavery is equally the draughtsman and the colorist, and, like most of the Celtic school, is a painter pure and simple, with nothing of a narrative intent. As a portraitist he mingles an objective and decora- tive quality with a quality subjective and intellectual. Occasionally — as with the "Bacchante," who is not at aU bacchic, and with the charming portrait of "Mary in Green" — the decorative is predominant, but in most of his portraits we get the real nature of the sitter. In Lavery, as in others of the School, we may see some resemblance to Whistler, and it is interest- ing to recall the likeness between the American painter and that elder Scotchman, Raeburn. It may be acci- dental — ^more accidental, perhaps, than the resem- 168 A BLOOMSBURY FAMILY WILLIAM ORPEN MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING blance between Whistler and Fantin-Latour ; yet, on the other hand, it may indicate some radical and basic likeness between the northern Celt and the more cos- mopolitan American. With all this analysis and talk of the Celtic tem- per, we have not yet expressed to the full the charm of the Scottish painters. "Decorative" — "poetic" — "delicate" — "pure painting" — these words are sugges- tive yet inadequate. We search in vain for the poignant, the perfect description. An exquisiteness that is almost austere, a lyric quality in the landscape, a mingling of breadth and grave discipline — ^we be- think ourselves of such phrases, but only to cast them aside. The symbol that suggests itself is a straight and lovely tree, well-pruned yet absolutely natural, its leafage the leafage of the spring, outlined on a sky that is not too richly blue but clear. This, we maintain, is by no means over-fanciful — ^nor does it exaggerate the beauty of Scottish painting. 171 CHAPTER II NEW MOVEMENTS The Newlyn Men and the New English Art Club. — The Idyllic- Decorative. — The Spirit of Landscape and Portraiture. — Conclusion. WE have had m England, since the period of the late eighties, two distinct types or orders of painting, the one being straitly realistic while the other is idyllic and decorative. We speak of the first as reahstic, for it protested at the outset against a lingering Pre-Raphaelitism, and it has busied itself with no subject which might be set down as "roman- tic." Its interest, most frequently, is the problem of the lighted interior; but, whether in-doors or out, it concerns itself with tones, with values, with all the subtleties of modern technique as it deals with the problems of the light. For this order stands the New English Art Club, founded in 1885, with painting as its definite object — painting pure and simple, as dis- tinct from hterary illustration, from portrayal of character, and from expression of emotion. Its sub- ject, as often as not, is a subject Middle- Victorian. It wUl give us, as McEvoy does, a woman in a frock 172 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING of that period, lying upon her couch, with a look and air that is plainly convalescent; or, as Wilson Steer has given, a Victorian boudoir, with a bright-faced girl in suitable dress ; or, as we get from another man, a Victorian drawing-room, with great pier-glasses and wide spaces, at the table of which sit his actual confreres. This choice of subject, perhaps, is to prove to the public that "the matter itself matters little." "Let us take," the Club would seem to say, "the most complacent, the most deadly comfortable, the most inartistic things, and treat them in the manner of pure artists! Let us show what art can accomphsh with people and with places exactly opposed to those of the Pre-Raphaelites and all their clinging roman- ticism! Let us renounce their Guineveres, their Elaines and Ophelias, and take for our themes the Lucys and EUens and Margarets of a type that was interested in house-keeping, went regularly to visit their cottages, and gardened in the mornings with scissors and gloves and a basket !" To put all such levity aside, the New English Art Club derives from the Impressionists, yet has chosen but very few subjects which suggest a plein-air treat- ment. It would seem to be almost Dutch in its home- liness and to formulate a reaction from the romantic feeling and the story-teUing instinct which so long possessed the art of England. Among the chief painters of this group are Wilson Steer, William 173 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Orpen, William Rothenstein, Ambrose McEvoy, Philip Connard, Charles Stabb, O. Sickert, Mark Fisher, and Augustus John. It must not be thought, however, that from each and every one of these men we have subjects of the Middle- Victorian order. William Orpen, for instance, the most vigorous of the group, ranges from a modern jockey to Italian mountebanks with their traveling bear. A critic, whose name we have not ascertained but to whom we give full credit, has compared for us the three salient figures of Steer, Orpen, and John — and the compari- son, as we cannot fail to see, is one which suggests a resemblance between John and the ardent French Expressionists. "Steer," says thife critic, "has mastered his craft, has mastered it superbly and elaborately, standing for sheer mastery and for naught else. Orpen, placed between Steer and John, is also a master of craft though not with such serenity as Steer's. He, more than Steer, expresses personality through craftsman- ship, as a poet or essayist through vocabulary, style, and composition. Augustus John, on the contrary, would like to conceal his craftsmanship, would prefer to shroud his own brilliancy, and would convey to the spectator a certain temper of mind." This, we take it, is the aim of that most modern group, "The Ex- pressionists," whom we have already discussed in our chapter on modem French painting. With these 174 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING men, according to their own statement, the mood is a vital matter — or the emotion, or sensation, as we may choose to call it — the imparting of which in a rhythmic pattern, is their particular object. It is not always possible, however, to interpret the Expressionists or to find out the meaning of Mr. John. We may take as a recent example the beautiful "Way to the Sea," of which we ourselves have heard no explanation. This may typify a delight in outward nature, or a passing of all mortality to the infinite; yet, again, it may be a mere decoration, the figures of which recall de Chavannes, though the Frenchman is less sculp- turesque. For the laity no interpretation presents itself, yet the picture is suggestive and enjoyable. The folds of the garments recall some antique sculp- ture, and the whole, like the decorative work of de Chavannes, is restful. We observe, in fact, a marked resemblance to his breadth, to his large and quiet sim- plicity, to his effect of a rigorous "leaving out." Yet we see, also, some traces of the rougher and cruder synthesis of Cezanne and Van Gogh — ^by which phrase we mean that too-great slurring of details, that over-insistence on the fundamental, the essential, which marks these half-mad geniuses. Synthesis, in truth, is the especial desire of the period. To gather up essentials, to strike the key-note, to dwell on the fundamental — this is both the aim and the fault of the modem, or, as we may phrase it, his achievement 1^5 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING and his pitfall. In the work of Augustus John this desire is most noticeable. He aims at funda- mentals, at essentials, at vital significance — and he over-reaches his mark. We say this with a plain and hearty grudge, the grudge against that curious per- versity which will not stop with a good independence but rushes on madly to license, to an illegitimate free- dom which, in the end, means nothing less than ruin. Between the motives of The New Enghsh Art Club and those of the Newlyn men there is no great basic difference, and the Club, of later years, has absorbed the Newlyn men. The Club is concerned especially with tones and values as they appear in the problem of the lighted interior, while the chief concern of the Newlyn School — so called from Newlyn in Cornwall, its particular sketching-ground — is landscape, and landscape after Monet. This, however, is a differ- ence less of principles than of matter. If the Club elicits the term "realism," the Newlyn work says "naturalism," which, after all, has a similar import. The Newlyn men may be called the first and the spe- cial plein-airists, the immediate followers of Monet. Their vogue is passing, their methods are no longer new, and they have now no need to fight, for their purpose is long since achieved and is even set aside. In the eighties and nineties, however, such painting as the early work of Stanhope Forbes, Thomas Gotch and Frank Bramley, was distinctly an original effort. 176 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING The Newlyn men, as a rule, gave the atmosphere of the gray English coast, and their chief figures were those of the coast fishermen, with an effect of black and white which was not ill-suited to the character of the fishermen's life and occupation. The idyllic order merges frequently into the decora- tive, for the two, as we have said, were bom of the same emotion, and the idyllic theme is suited to the decorative intent. We note this type as less frequent in England than in France, but it is still an appre- ciable element. We cannot walk through any gal- lery or any exhibit of the Royal Academy without a frequent vision of it. Last year, as they will remem- ber who visited the Academy, one of the few pictures bought by the Chantrey Bequest was Sims' "Wood Beyond the World," a thing which not many Ameri- cans would have voted for, and only a very few Frenchmen, yet a picture which is natural to the English mind and also to the German. It is the pic- ture of a thinly-wooded place, with figures wreathing in a delicate circle, and it might have been inspired, we fancy, by the two last lines of Poe's verses "To One in Paradise": "In what ethereal dances. By what eternal streams !" It is something half nature and half artifice, and is a mingling of Botticelli, Blake, Rossetti and Boecklin, 177 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING such as could not have happened without the Pre- Raphaelite influence. This picture we mention as typical, or, rather, as one out of many of a like idyllic order. We mark here such idyls as those of ■ the Scotchman Strang, a colorist of notable fancy; but for that matter, we have idyls from half the world of painters — to name a few, from men like Sims, Stott, Grieffenhagen, Solomon and Waterhouse, though this is by no means their one or chief est subject. The Enghsh idyl, like the French, the American, and the German, is exceedingly various and ranges from children at a picnic to the great god Pan attended by his immemorial nymphs. It will be said of this book, perhaps, that it harps on the subject of idyllism; yet, on a subject so recurrent, pray what shall we do but harp? The idyllic and the decorative — or, as we may put it, the decorative-idyllic — is at once the theme and the purpose of a large and important branch of mod- ern painting. This purpose, in fact, runs over into forms of painting other than its own; we have actually the decorative portrait such as that of Sims, and as for the idyllic landscape, its very name is coming to be legion. When we speak of the decorative in this connection we use it as signifying a quality, for of mural decora- tion England has very little. The feeling for the Primitives, who were chiefly and intentionally dec- orators, has been kept alive since the period when 178 ■n THE GREEN FEATHER LAURA KNIGHT CARNEGIE INSTITUTE, PITTSBURGH, PA., 1912 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING Rossetti and Burne-Jones were preaching Botticelli. It has gone through various forms since that period, and has shown itself very markedly in the field of illustration, where Beardsley and Crane are still in- fluences ; hut it is only the harest justice to attribute one side of its parentage to Pre-Raphaelitism. We cannot make a full list of Pre-Raphaelite elements; to speak of archaic stiffness, of mysticism, of the Bot- ticelli line, of the quality of tendresse — all this is easy but partial. The resemblance, however, is quite clear, so clear that we leave it without further comment. The decorative, we repeat, combined with the idyllic, is a leading and definite purpose in the English art of to-day. Notwithstanding the fact of English bareness, the suggestion of the mere term "decorative" will lead us to the subject of the mural. In the Pre-Raphaelite period Rossetti and his compeers were painting the Oxford Union and the interiors of a few great houses, such as that of the Earl of Carlisle at Palace Green, adorned by Burne-Jones with the Cupid and Psyche figures; but since that time there has been little use for the great art of mural decoration. Even now, in the twentieth century, this art has no very wide practice. We do not make comparisons with France, but there is less of mural work in England than in America — a curious fact, which illustrates the Eng- lish conservatism and the superb English contentment 181 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING with the ways and habits of the past. There is one name, however — that of Frank Brangwyn, half a Welshman — which is big enough to hide the lack of numbers. Brangwyn has been likened to Mantegna but the likeness is only occasional. He is certainly descended from Venice, however, and with some- thing of the splendid Turner. He has little of the effect of the pallid de Chavannes, though evidently learning from that innovator; his decorations — in the Royal Exchange, in the great railway-sta- tion, and in various other places — are aU good, rich, and voluminous masses. He has given us great shapes and figures: big ships with big-bellied sails, great galleons freighted with great stuffs, the bodies of colossal slaves and laborers, huge crates of fruit and huge barrels full of strange goods; in fact, he conceives gigantically and with such rich colors as suit the gigantesque. Brangwyn is one of the best exponents of "mass-Impressionism." His genius, of course, is one which could not lend itself to "line-Im- pressionism" or to "touch-Impressionism"; it is too big, or too much given to big effects, for anything of so deUcate an order. A second to Brangwyn is Moira, a man whose work is quite different, being reserved where that of Brang- wyn is bold, with a balance which is formal by com- parison with Brangwyn's, and of descent more classic than romantic. Reynolds- Stephen, a versatile artist, 182 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING has done some very notable work, but his gift is primarily that of the sculptor. It is so with Anning Bell and with others; they are illustrators, etchers, what-not; and afterwards they do good mural work. The fact is one of interest, and a versatile talent is admirable ; but, so far as walls are concerned, it would seem to be unfortunate, being a dissipation of that energy which should go entirely to one kind of work. This, however, is no disparagement of Reynolds- Stephen, whose work is very dignified. It is said of the modern Englishman that he lags behind Constable and Turner, and lags, also, behind the great Frenchmen. A certain charm is admitted of him, the charm of a delicate feeling, an apprecia- tion of the spirit of place, but the vigor of those eight- eenth-century Enghshmen is declared to be lacking, as well as the esprit of the Frenchmen. Yet, so far as the seventies and eighties are concerned, we have such fine, serene work as that of Cecil Lawson and James Hook — both Scotchmen, by the way — and we have also the big, spirited, and almost mysterious moods of Cohn Hunter. As to the men who are painting to-day, we might divide them into classes according to their different afiiliations; let us say, for example, Newlyn men, Glasgow men, men of the New English Art Club ; but this would be of little value except to the students of technique. We should do better to take all landscape-work together, to go 183 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING at random through some eminent names, both Enghsh and Scottish, and finally stand off and mark the ef- fect of the whole. We have then, such men as East, with his fondness for the decorative both in subject and in treatment; as Tuke, who sometimes reminds us of Turner; as Adrian Stokes, whose transcription is unusually tender and delicate ; as Alfred Goodwin, who gives us, so often, the actual emotion aroused by his scene; as the big, sober, substantial Arnesby- Brown; as George Clausen, who is very near kin to the Monet group and whose work, now and then, has the shadowy look of Le Sidaner ; and as Walter West, who does such poetic miracles with vapor and mist and cloud, all in a decorative union. These examples we may take for the whole, having previously consid- ered the Glasgow men as being the most delicate in design, the most romantic and yet the most imper- sonal. To make our conclusions from these, we judge the common criticism unjust. Lacking the vigorous newness of Constable, these men have the qualities which belong to our time and our progress. Theirs are the virtues of the practised, the cultivated. It was Constable's task to break the trail; it is the task of the modern to show the possibilities, the beauties and charms of an open and lovely road. The mod- ern, then, is versatile, expert, accomphshed, and he has also an individuality which is by no means weak or negligible. 184 CO m w K O a o 1— I m O iz; o o Ed H D H H o MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING The matter of portrait-painting, as we have said more than once in these pages, is a subject in itself, the treatment of which admits of no middle ground. We must treat it either at length or very slightly, the latter treatment being the only one possible to this volume. It is enough then, since this is a study of currents, to say of the English portrait in general that it is highly earnest and charged with a deep sub- jectivity. With Whistler and his followers the portrait may mean first "an arrangement" and afterwards a portrayal of personality. With the Englishmen of the nineteenth century it meant per- sonahty alone, and the Englishmen of the twentieth century find it difficult not to follow them. To mark but a few recent examples, we take from the Royal Academy of last summer three portraits — Herko- mer's of Viscount Morley, Hacker's of Sir Arthur Liberty, and Shannon's of Mrs. Wynne Chapman. Here there is nothing different from the work of the later nineteenth century, for Herkomer and Hacker have given us the man as they visioned him, though Shannon, we note, reverts to the tradition of Romney and Reynolds and gives us a made-up pictm-e. Even with the Glasgow painters, who incline far more than the English to lovely and decorative effects, we may observe the definite lingering of the Teutonic and subjective method. Mr. Lavery may give us a "Mary in Green," where his green arrangement is 187 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING more than his Mary ; yet another portraitist gives us "The McNab," and another "James Caldwell," and Lavery himself paints "The Master of the Rolls," in all of which we get the man, first, last, and by evi- dent intention. In short, the portraitists of our blood are largely subjective and concerned with the per- sonal and the spiritual. Occasionally they endeavor to get away from it ; occasionally, too, comes an Eng- lishman who is temperamentally French or Whis- tlerian; but these are really the exceptions. As a people, they are stiU most concerned with the spirit, and their portraiture remains largely spiritual. There are many in to-day's list of painters whom, perforce, we have passed without conmient. These men are not lesser in importance, but oui study is a study of tendencies, and one name from each current, or one from each group of men, is as much to our purpose as six names or twelve. Were this in any sense a hst of eminent painters, we should have spoken of many other men. For example, there is Charles Conder, an English Watteau and the master of the fan, who applied a most exquisite art to its right and legitimate uses. With a grace that was truly lyrical he decorated that darling accessory — ^his effects, one may say, suggesting the sophistication of Whistler with the innocence of the young Watteau, the Wat- teau who saw fairy-land in the formal parks and gar- dens of his period. Again, there is Thomas Mostyn, 188 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING who is exceedingly poetic though somewhat bizarre, and whose work recalls distinctly the intense and fantastic painters, his "Domain of Arnheim" and his "Garden of Memory" being reminders of Monti- celli at his best, while his "Casket" has a hint of Rossetti, and his "Strife" a suggestion of Boeck- lin. Mostyn, by the way, achieves the brilliancy of the broken-color Impressionists without any shatter- ing of the prism. Then, also, there are Grieif enhagen and Hardy, whose names we have barely mentioned but whose gifts are rich and decorative, Hardy's be- ing especially spontaneous. There is James Pryde, whose temper is somewhat tragic and whose expres- sion has been hkened to that of Poe, although, on another side, he has something of a Goya-like grim- ness and something of an Hogarthian humor and real- ism. There is Fergusson, too, commended by cer- tain enthusiasts as a young painter who has mastered the craft of Whistler and of Manet. He has ren- dered a myriad different moods of nature, though, of late years, he has turned to the Expressionists and to their primitive craze for pattern. Then there is Harold Speed, portraitist and painter of interiors, whose full and sunny colors have suggested to us that delightful Primitive, Memlinc. There is also Harold Knight, who, like his sister, has given us some charming effects in bright sunlight on bright colors. Again, we have Swan, with his realistic yet 189 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING decorative paintings of the desert and its terrible lords; and we have Byam Shaw, who is touched equally with Pre-Raphaelitism and the modern spirit. These are men whose work is significant, and men, moreover, who are thoroughly modern. If, then, we leave them with this brief and casual notice, we may omit without apology the names and the achievements of others. The men whom we have mentioned are typical of the trend of English art. In conclusion we may claim for English painters that they have not been too narrow or too insular to learn from their neighbors on the Continent. The art of the past thirty years, so far as form is con- cerned, has grown in the quality of cosmopolitanism — in a measure, we insist, which could not have been foreseen by any prophetic criticism. To the spirit of this painting, of course, such a comment does not apply. In spirit English art is always English, and a European form is powerless against that racialism. Alternately admitted and denied, the racial quahty is here — as clear and inimical in this art as it is clear and sympathetic in the art of poetry. To our think- ing, it is a quality that endears and one that we would not give up; but this is a mere personal preference with an element somewhat emotional. Our preju- dice aside, however, there is something admirable in this very fact — that the art of painting, an art not proper to the race, has been conquered, even in a lim- 190 AN INTERIOR JAMES PRYDE OAENEaiB INSTITUTE, PITTSBURGH, PA., 1910 MODERN ENGLISH PAINTING ited measure, by English mind and craft. That the form has been moderately Europeanized is only an- other example of the English genius for conquest. To have achieved this, in the teeth of a racial antagon- ism, is indeed a wonderful thing. It is poetry, not painting, which expresses the English mind, and the triimiph, even to a moderate degree, of disciphne over natural taste is Enghsh in the very finest sense. It was by means of such discipline that the little island became a moving force — with a flag from palm to pine, though the path of the flag was marked with English graves ! 193 PART FOUR MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING CHAPTER I A FORM PECULIARLY AMERICAN Basis of Discussion. — Landscape the Form Peculiar to America. — Five Monumental Landscapists : Inness; Wyant; Tryon; Homer Martin; Winslow Homer. IN the discussion of American painting it is impos- sible to proceed on lines similar to those of the pre- ceding chapters, America being too young, and as yet too conventional, for such a variety of movements. We may say, nevertheless, that, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the work of the early portraitists, we have at least five distinct vehicles. The first is landscape-painting; the second, figure- painting, this including portrait-work; the third is mural decoration; the fourth is the painting of in- teriors, illumined by natural or artificial light; and the fifth is a reflection of that desire for the Golden World, the idyllic world of dream, of which we have said so much in our chapter on the work of modern Frenchmen. -On such a division we may base our study of American painting — and if this is not the division of the artist but purely the division of the layman, the fact is one which demands no apology. 197 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Our study, as we have said more than once, is the work of a lay student and addressed to lay students. In considering these divisions, or before we begin to consider them, we must mention the various influ- ences which appear in American painting. The early portraitists were disciples of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, and Romney. The early landscapists, the men of "The Hudson River School," were largely self-taught, being the more excusable for a chromo- like art because they had, virtually, no assistance. The influence of Munich and of Diisseldorf appears in the fifties and sixties — an influence which came partly through Piloty and tended to brilliant color as well as to the historical genre and to an vmmistakable and rather pompous realism. A little later comes the French influence, which, it is needless to say, has proved the most lasting and most effective. From Enghsh Pre-Raphaelitism, with its pseudo-mediaeval spirit, its would-be-Catholic fervor, American art has escaped with barely a touch. From the recent Eng- lish movement towards realism, led by The New Eng- lish Art Club, she has had no need to borrow, having bred within her own borders a group which has al- ready reached similar conclusions. As to the art of other countries in the present time, the world is now so unified, communication so rapid, the process of re- production so quick and so wonderful, that the differ- ent countries are no longer so different as formerly. 198 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING A movement in one is a movement in all, and what we call "influence" is only a sparkling fluid which runs through various countries hke a flash of mercury. We must ohserve here, moreover, that the particular triumph of modern painting in general — the triumph over light, its customs, its secrets, and its marvelous caprices — is also the triumph of American painting. Then, finally, we must admit that the fault of mod- em painting in general — the tendency towards the "stunt," the mere exhibition of skill — ^has been for some time the great fault of the American. He, like the majority, is afraid of being sentimental, of seem- - ing to preach, or to be vain enough to offer to man- kind an interpretation of life and its mysteries. Just now, it is true — with the coming of the "Expression- ists" — comes a movement that pretends to interpreta- tion, but this is less the interpretation of life than of mere sensation, emotion, or mood. It carries no great message, it expresses no divine or tender pur- pose; yet it has broken with the prevailing doctrine of "art for art's sake," and by so much it has done the world a service. The American's fondness for landscape is due in some measvu'e, doubtless, to the fact that he is oftener of the country than of the city. It is true that the argument implied here is an argument which does not invariably hold good. Corot, Daubigny, Rousseau, Millet, were aU men of the city and came from close 199 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING houses and little shops; but there is something to be said for an early and long intercourse with nature — and our American painters, up to the past few years, have come chiefly from the rural district, from the countryside, from the small, half rustic town or vil- lage. They know well, therefore, the country sights and ways. The approach of morning and evening across the hill-tops, the lights on the moving river, the colors of spring and autumn on the trees, the serenity of the meadow-land, the dear and homely aspect of the barn, the sheep-cote, the mill — these are all well- known sights, and sights that are no less dear because they are so familiar. They are painted, we may guess, partly from an inborn affection, the affection of the son for the dearly-loved face of his mother. It is only of later years that America has had her great cities; our painters, we say again, have come to the world either from the country-side or from those small towns and villages which so closely border upon it. All reasons apart, however, we have the gift of landscape-painting and have it in a very large meas- ure. The first great group of Americans is a group of five men only, yet the work of the five is monimiental. It is composed of George Inness, Alexander Wyant, Dwight Tryon, Winslow Homer, and Homer Mar- tin. These men are the pillars of American land- scape-painting. They are monumental landscapists 200 THE LAW OF REMOTE ANTIQUITY E. H. BLASHFIELD MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING — so broad, so concerned with the essentials of Nature, so bent upon the great type, and so unmindful of all that is little and personal! Moreover, they are dis- tinctly of America, and this does not lessen their value. The Barbizon men were of France, and, in fact, of the country around Paris ; the big, old Italians used their own Italian landscapes ; the Germans paint us Germany, and the Dutchmen their own flat mead- ows on the sea. We might even come to literature and note, for the benefit of those who object to racial quality, that the landscape of Hardy is English, while that of Hawthorne is New England, and that of James Lane Allen is pure Kentucky. This, how- ever, is unnecessary, for the objectors are but few and belong to an era that has already gone out of fash- ion! In the work of George Inness we have something that is practically self-taught, for the schooling of that artist we may regard as a negligible quantity. His ideal, it appears, is the soft and delicate envelope of Corot plus a better or a clearer rendering of details. It is, doubtless, in pursuit of this ideal that he chooses the hours, the places, and the seasons when the beauty of earth is intimated rather than revealed. "He loved," says a recent criticism, "the moisture-laden air and clouds disappearing after rain; he loved the mists and vapors, the rain-bows and the fogs — in short, all phases of the ever-varying atmosphere. He 203 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING loved, also, the dawn and the dusk, moonlight, sun- light, flying shadows, lights half clouded — that is, all phases of illumination. So, too, he sought all kinds of color, those of simrise and sunset, of autumn, of spring, of the sky, of the fields, of the clouds." This means that Inness was instinctively a modern, born to the modern subject, inherently a painter of light, color, air — and seeing his landscape, moreover, as made up of masses of color, and endeavoring to put it on his canvas as he got it, "holding the color-patches together with air and illuminating the whole mass of light and shadow." To see a collection of his pic- tures is to get a purely modern impression, an idea of the capture of elusive beauty, a beauty that flies yet linger;^, a beauty about to go yet caught and held for one eternal moment. Upon these woods and meadows there stays an immortal dewiness; the sun- light slants forever through the rain; the mist lies dreamily and moves not from the hiU-tops! Yet, withal, it is a sort of homely beauty; it is paysage intime, not paysage grand, the country around his own home, not the Rockies nor the Alps nor any wild mountains of the fancy! When Inness came, the American landscape was hardly more than a map apotheosized; when he left, it ranked not far from Barbizon. Of this change he was the pioneer, the man who blazed the trail and broke the way — and who, moreover, was so proudly the artist that he did MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING not disdain to learn from younger men as they had learned from him. It is the glory of Inness that he did break the way, that he actually established in this coimtry the land- scape that was intimate, easily accessible, at one's very door. It was he who followed the fashion of those humble and inspired Frenchmen who merely fared forth to a little wood and painted what they saw; it was he, more than anyone else, who brought young Americans to realize that the materials of art were at their very gates and did not need long search- ing. This was his peculiar gift to American art. His poetic feeling, his effects of mist and dew, the quality of "lingering elusiveness" — all that has been followed and possibly equalled, but the other is his and his alone. In Alexander Wyant we have a painter of a mood that is gentle, and, if we may use the phrase, of a sort of grave melodiousness. His four landscapes in the Metropolitan Museimi have been likened to "the four strings of a violin, each one of a different note, re- verberating to his touch" — and this, we think, is not a bad description. He gives us, in truth, the sugges- tion of music, and of a music not too light nor too gay, but, rather, of a pensive and even dreamy quahty. For especial description we may select a typical can- vas ; a picture which has long been the property of the Public Library of Louisville, Kentucky. This hangs 205 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING at one end of the reference-room and dominates the entire wall, putting aside all other pictures — except, we admit, a very fine copy of Murillo's "Assump- tion." In tone it is dark, though with no affectation of blackness. In surface it is neither over-rough nor over-finished, and in composition it is large and sim- ple and of such an invitation that the eye enters easily and without reluctance. It is pictorial — ^that is, it has been done with regard to the elements and the quali- ties that make a picture, as distinguished from the ele- ments and qualities that belong to aspect merely. It shows smaU sign of Monet and his tenets ; it is, on the whole, a very fine example of the best American land- scape-work of the seventies and eighties, and is some- thing of perpetual refreshment and delight. From exhibits of modern work, held in the same building — where we had our Childe Hassams, our Alexanders, our Doughertys, Harrisons, Johansens, Dabos, and Parrishes — we have returned, not once but many times, to this picture of Wyant's, which has no modern flcdr but which holds us by those tranquil, undisturbed qualities that belong to sound painting and cannot be supplanted. In the work of Tryon the note is more lyrical, the quality of the delicate more marked. The effect of his canvases may be compared to the effect of early spring in New England, where it comes with an ex- quisite shyness, an aloof sweetness that is just touched 206 PORTRAIT STUDY CECILIA BEAUX NATIONAL ACADEMY, 1913 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING with cold, a green that shines through the snow. It is hke the effect of a very young and lovely girl, who has, as yet, no curves and no softnesses — or that of a young moon, hardly more than a slim, little crescent. It reminds us of those beautiful and poignant lines of Marlowe's in which Mephistopheles says of the prom- ised dreams : — "Some come like women or uwwedded maids. Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love." For this painter nature is forever delicate ; his most striking quality is the quality of the tender, the just budding; and he has lived, moreover, to see and to make a certain use of the modern methods of land- scape-painting. His work has been likened by en- thusiasts to the best of the Japanese — and we admit that at times we see in it the delicacy of design which belongs so pecuharly to Japan. It is the glory of Tryon that he grows with age, that he does not crys- tallize but progresses. It has been said of Homer Martin that he pos- sessed to an exceptional degree the power of seizing the essential, of leaving the unnecessary for the neces- sary. This is partly what we mean when we speak of the work of this group as monumental; for a monu- mental art, as we have indicated, gives only the en- during qualities of the subject. Homer Martin left 209 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING the things that did not count and gave himself to the things that did count, his elimination resulting in a delicate austerity. This was natural to the man and not taught — for, like Inness, he had no teachers — and, moreover, it was most unusual for the time, as was also the poetic sense which he shared with the others of his group. The poetry of Inness, as that of Wyant, we may liken to the music of the violin, Tryon's to that of the flute, and Winslow Homer's to the organ ; but Homer Martin's is the music of the harp, with notes from wind-swept spaces whose only dweller is God. During a few years' stay abroad Martin was an occupant of Whistler's studio, but he was always too much his own man to be another's imi- tator. A friend who knows his work has spoken of a "wonderful and glowing night-picture" which might have been reminiscent of Whistler but for the fact that another night-picture of the same dehcate iri- descence had been painted by Martin many years be- fore. Such pictures as "The Harp of the Winds" and "The Sand Dunes of Lake Ontario," both of which are in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, "Lake Sanford," "Newport Neck," and Mr. Unter- meyer's possession, "The Old Church at Criqueboeuf " — the last of which was pronoimced by Boutet de Monrel to be the best American landscape — are typi- cal of Martin's work, and in each of them we mark the sense of lonehness, the exquisite austerity, the delicate 210 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING solemnity of which we have already spoken. His breadth of composition, and his temperate color both tend to this ultimate effect. He, as much as any of the group, is an imaginative realist, a painter who gives us the spiritual beauty of the landscape. At the memorial exhibition of the work of Winslow Homer, held in the Metropohtan in February of 1911, there was seen the whole course of his expres- sion, which varied from "The Gulf Stream" a su- perbly virile piece, comparatively academic, to the flaring colors of Florida and Bermuda, done with a modern spirit. Most people would have cast a vote for "The Gulf Stream" and paintings of its order — for "Cannon Rock," "Eight Bells," "The Fox Hunt," "The Maine Coast" — and these, we believe, are typi- cal of the man at his best. There can be no just com- parison, however, of oil-painting and water-color, and we cannot institute it here. We venture to say only that the one seems Homer at his best and most orig- inal, while the other is also Homer but influenced somewhat by the study of an alien manner. He has been called "the typical American" and has been lik- ened to Walt Whitman, but this seems a very crude comparison. The poet gives us a great deal of raw material; the art of Homer, while of a relative finish only, is yet too finished for comparison with Whitman. To leave this, however, we may note breadth and bigness as his salient, most characteristic note. He 211 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING is big in everything: in the sweep of his brush-work; in his color, whether sombre or bright ; and in his com- position, which, as a rule, is admirably suited to the intention of the picture. There is something rugged about him, something that bespeaks the American pio- neer, sturdy, resolute, and honest to the core. In these five men is summed up a great order of American landscape — an order which may be charac- terized as neither old nor new but as occupying a place between the two orders. It is the work of men who are not appealing merely to the eye, not searching exclusively for harmonies. Their art has been called "intellectual," — a very elastic term, but one which means here that it has another element besides that of mere beauty of transcription. To such an accusation we offer no denial. This element, in very truth, is characteristic of the work of these men, and is a part of their charm and of their address to the spirit. 212 CO o l-J H H O K O H a o Q "A a P3 w CO CHAPTER II THE LANDSCAPISTS OF TO-DAY Grouping and Characterization. — The Conquest of Light. — Discussion of Types. — Hassam^ the Leader of Impression- ism. — Comparisons: Ranger and Metcalf; Murphy and Crane; Redfield and Harrison. — The Independents, Illus- trated by Glackens. — Conclusions as to Landscape. TO group the other landscapists is a task which is really unnecessary, such grouping being for- eign to our method of procedure. Moreover, a crit- icism which appeared in The Studio, only a few years since, made a grouping which is one of great interest and is, indeed, nearly adequate. This assigns to one group Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf and Ernest Lawson, all of whom are noted as distinctly impres- sionistic. In another we have Francis Murphy, Bruce Crane, Emil Carlsen, W. S. Robinson, Leonard Ochtman, and Granville Smith, who are characterized as impressionistic but as dealing almost exclusively with ephemeral effects, and "expressing the several planes of vision without displaying great contrasts of light and shade." The third group is quite differ- ent; according to this commentator, it consists of the 215 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING tonalists. Ranger, Dearth, Dessar, Sartain, Keith and Ballard- Williams, painters in whose work there is one color that is dominant, and in whom, moreover, we see a following of tradition and a sense of the pictorial — that is, of the picture as a picture, not as a decoration nor as an exhibition of skiU, nor as the mere literal transcript of some physical aspect of nature. The fourth group consists of such men as Redfield, Charles H. Davis, Elmer Schofield and W. L. Lathrop. This should come between the second and the third, since it adheres to certain of the tenets of each, but cannot be classed with either. The fifth and last is composed of men who do not yield even to such a broad classing — such men as Eaton, Foster, Dewey, GroU, Coffin, Hoeber, and Parton, all of whom are known for their sturdy independence. This hst, made as far back as 1909, was confessedly rough, and was, moreover, not made as a category but with our own aim of showing the trend of American landscape- work. Had a hst been attempted, we should have put in other names and names of great significance; for nothing was said there of Birge Harrison, Paul Dougherty, Theodore Robinson, George Bellows, Dwight Twachtman, Ralph Blakelock, William Glackens, Rockwell Kent, Gardner Symons, Leon Dabo, Daniel Garber or Charles Young. It is valu- able, however, as describing different trends, and we use it with grateful acknowledgment. Having done 216 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING so, it may be well to speak especially of one or two men of each group, and afterwards of those whose names we have added to the list. These men belong to one class and are linked by a common triumph, the triiunph over the secrets of light — simlight, moon- light, the light of dawn, of eve, and of noon, and all the reflected lights that give the world its glory of color. It is by common consent, American and foreign, that we take as of prime import the work of Childe Hassam. Mr. Hassam is first of all the craftsman, and is skilled in the use of oil, water-color and pastel. He knows what to do with each one ; what is peculiar to the delicate water-color, what suits the soft grace of the pastel, and what may be done with the stronger and more ponderable oil. This discrimination is one of the signs of the true craftsman and true artist, no matter whether he be poet, painter, builder, or mu- sician. "The pastel," says Gaston La Touche, "is the medium for the frou-frou of a woman's silk, the texture of ribbons, the hair and frock of a child" — and one such illustration is worth a page of comment! We speak of Childe Hassam as the landscapist — for, though the figures of women appear in so many of his canvases, they are subordinated to the rendering of nature. His women at their pianos, at their win- dows, at their doors, at their tea-tables, are not pri- marily women; that is, they have no special character; 217 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING they are only figures, set there to show something else — a new-plucked branch of apple-blossom, the hues of a brilUant sunset, or the hundred lovely colors of the garden. Hassam, it is needless to state, is of the im- pressionist order, but he is far too original to copy any master or masters. His problems are solved, not after any set formula, but with experiments as free as they are daring. "I am inclined to believe," says an American critic, "that the amazing satisfaction of his art can best be explained by the accuracy of his accentuation, the perfection of his emphasis in color." If this seem obscure to the layman — as doubtless it will, being technical — we may say that he imagines in color and marvelously relates one color to the other and each to the whole, really "creating design by means of color." It has been said by a nxmaber of laymen that his colors are too far in excess of the ordi- nary vision ; and his later colors certainly — that beau- tiful riot of mauve and violet and dull red and many shades of green — is something which is a trifle discon- certing. We recall, for example, an exhibit in the Montross Gallery in 1911, which fairly took the breath of the lay visitor, so rare were the combinations and so striking! As to this, there will probably re- main two opinions, the one absolutely defending and even lauding it, the other not attacking it but leaving it with a question-mark. For an adequate discussion of it we should need the vocabulary and the atmo- 218 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING sphere of the studio, and this is what cannot be used in such a study as ours. To offer a personal opinion, we may say that we like his moderation. For sheer imaginings in color, however — that is, with no regard to the truth or the falsity of his vision — this later work is the more remarkable. To like the other better is a matter of mere personal preference, against which we set the well-known fact that there are shades which the layman cannot see and for which his eye has yet to be trained. It is not in the plan of this chapter to treat each one of these landscapists separately. To speak of Has- sam's performance is to speak of a general conquest of which he is only a leader, for this triumph over hght, as we have said, is the particular achievement and the pecuhar mark of the later nineteenth and the twentieth century. Others have conquered light as well as he, but he is chosen as the great exponent of this triumph. It remains, now, to speak of two other important elements which did not distinguish the earlier group but which mark the American land- scapist of the immediate day. One is the departure from the effect pictorial to the aspect; the other is a newer element, the desire to interpret. In this connection we may make a few interesting compari- sons, taking men from the different groups and men who belong to the same group. That, we believe, is a method more suggestive than any other. 219 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING We may select, first, such a contrast as that be- tween Ranger and Metcalf — the elder man. Ranger, belonging to the older regime^ while Metcalf follows the Impressionists. Ranger, true to his tradition, has a thought for the pictorial, for the qualities that go towards a beautiful picture, while for Metcalf the pictorial idea is subordinate. He may or may not make a good pictm-e; what he seeks to render is the aspect, though to some extent, also, the spirit of the place. Ranger, moreover, invites us to come into his woodland; Metcalf, lovely and sensitive as he is, bids us to stand outside. This difference illustrates the difference between two ideals of painting, of which we spoke in our opening chapter, for Metcalf 's work is much more an affair of optical harmonies than is Ranger's. We might choose Metcalf again, as an exponent of the new desire to interpret, but, for the sake of variety, we will take two men from another group — Francis Murphy and Bruce Crane, each of whom endeavors to give us the feeling of the place as he experienced it when he was there and saw it for himself. From both men we have a hint of something mysterious, a poignant thrill of the unseen. Murphy shows it in that lovely canvas, "The Road to the Village," which has in it the suggestion of all the lonely roads of this world. Crane shows it in such things as "November Hills," the possession of the Carnegie Institute of 220 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING Pittsburgh, in which we have the homely austerity, the large plainness and delicate quiet of certain well- known Ohio hill-sides, which are at once quite near to humanity yet removed from it. In Murphy there is, perhaps, a subtler atmosphere and a finer "envelope," but we see a decided charm in the bare and homely sweep of Crane's landscapes, for which, naturally, he has a somewhat bolder brush than Murphy's. Again; — as giving us this fine element of interpre- tation, half physical and half mental — let us compare Birge Harrison and Edward W- Redfield, Harrison being poetic and even lyrical while Redfield is a sparkling and vivacious realist. Mr. Harrison, though he chooses frequently the coldness of the snow, will give you its gentler severity; he sees, as a rule, the tender aspect of nature, the aspect that is evidently appealing. "I believe it to be one of the artist's chief functions," he says, "to watch for the rare mood when nature wafts aside the veil of the commonplace and shows us her inner soul in some bewildering vision of poetic beauty" — and, in truth, this moment of vision is the moment that he so often holds! No matter what he paints, however he sees it with that inner eye "which is«the bliss of solitude." He is the imagina- tive realist, while Redfield is the literal realist. Each man has adapted to his own ends the teachings of the Impressionists. Redfield, for years, had used short strokes and broken colors, yet at one time he dropped 221 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING this for a broader and more finished surface. Cer- tainly he has no formula for his literalism, a literalism which has nothing of the faddish about it or of the would-be brutal or of the flamboyant. He has taken notes, it is plain, on the subject of Japanese art, but he has used them with perfect independence. He loves best, as Harrison does, the winter-season, with that lovely sharpness and exquisite austerity so well known and liked of the best Japanese; but, while Harrison gives us winter in its most endearing aspect — sometimes a little sad, nearly always dreamy and tender — Redfield gives it in its starkest effects. His winter is brilliantly sparkling sometimes, sometimes thawing and wet, and, again, appears in a great soft coverlet of new-fallen white, with heavy clouds that portend more to come. Both men appeal to us, but Harrison's appeal has an emotional element, while Redfield's appeal is that of brilliant transcription. Mr. Redfield, we note, belongs to that ardent circle of reahsts which includes such men as George Bellows, WiUiam Glackens, Gardner Symons. AU of these men are realists of Redfield's order and may be ranked under the title of "Independents." They have learned much from the French, notably from Manet and Degas, and something from the Japanese and the Spaniards ; but their spirit and their vision is the new- est and the most independent that we have, being as much of a blend as the American himself, and always 222 THE PARRAKEETS FREDERICK C. FRIESEKE MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING with the American originality as the yeast-like ele- ment that permeates the whole. An eminent figure of this group, and one who stands for the most inde- pendent of Americans, is William J. Glackens. His line is at once fluid and strong, his realism distinct, and his synthesis — ^that is, his ability to gather up the salient and briefly express it — is something very no- ticeable. Such things as his "May-day in Central Park" are distinctly French. They might have been done by Manet or even by a Frenchman of the mo- ment. Yet this one, indeed, smacks of Daumier — who was his own man and comes long before the Im- pressionists — and it smacks, also, of Goya. These resemblances, however, only emphasize the originality of the American landscape, which is not French nor Scottish nor Spanish, but truly our own, no matter what the influences or how numerous. We might go on indefinitely — adding Schofield to Redfield, Bellows to Glackens — ^but this would be whoUy unnecessary. We simi up the difference in types — ^the older and the new — when we say that the former is the more pictorial while the aim of the lat- ter is either transcription or decoration varied by the expression of sentiment. For illustration, compare a Wyant with a Schofield. The man in the street will see the difference! 225 CHAPTER III OTHER FORMS OF PAINTING Figure-painting, Discussed According to Type: Chase, Brush, Weir, Thayer, Dewing; Alexander; Henri; Miller and Friesecke; Hawthorne; Melchers; Other Examples. — Sar- gent and Whistler as Standing for Two Types of Portrai- ture. — The Idyllists. — Mural Decorators Compared. — The Painters of Interiors as Luminists. — Conclusion. THE painting of the figure is second, in time, to American landscape-work — and second, it would seem, as a metier of the American tempera- ment, which nothing else suits as does the landscape. Nevertheless we paint the figure well, with a mingling of sobriety and flairs of the clever and the spirituelle, of the distinctly American and the cosmopohtan, all of which is very interesting to look upon. In dis- cussing this matter we shall take essential types only — and these, it appears, wiU number half a dozen. The basis of cleavage must, of course, be largely tech- nical, though in part imaginative and spiritual. One matter of diflference lies in the adherence and non-ad- herence to the Manet and Whistler idea of a figure as set inside its frame and not allowing the eye to walk around it. Another and very important differ- ence is that between the effect analytic and synthetic. 226 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING The former omits no element of the figure, through comhining all into one good whole, while the latter treats all minor elements by indication, its aim being to get at the essential, to sum up the fundamental, the characteristic, the significant elements or qualities. Still another difference is that between the conception of a figure as a figure — ^with eyes and ears, feet, hands, and a personality — and the conception of it as a spot of color or as an arrangement of lines. Roughly speaking, we may take the earlier figures of three men — Chase, Brush and Weir — as standing for the older type, while such men as Alexander, Richard Miller, Carl Friesecke and Charles Hawthorne stand for the newer and younger type. The types of Chase, Brush and Weir — that is, of their earlier and best-known figures — ^we name "of the older order" merely by comparison. These fig- ures are modern, certainly, but not as those of Henri or Miller and Friesecke are modern. Chase is orig- inally of German teaching, though later a pupil of Carolus-Duran, and his type stands between the older type and the new. He does not permit the eye to "walk around" his figures, neither does he give to these figures any ultra-flatness. He does not lose his de- tails in a synthesis, but occupies a middle ground, neither wholly analytic nor synthetic; and he has, withal, that dignity, serenity, and gentleness which distinguish the moderate path. 227 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Of a second type, but of the same order, are the big, dark figures of George de Forest Brush. They have a massivity which is not heaviness or roundness, and which suits most admirably their aspect of sor- rowful patience. They have not the serenity of Chase's figures nor that air of the pleasantly mun- dane; one recalls them as sad-eyed mothers, with babes who are seldom playful; they are truly "the reminders of an ancient Puritanism, which had a grave work to do and which seldom dared to look upon the face of human pleasure or human gayety." Another type, and of our first order, is that of Alden Weir, who was one of the earliest men to choose the figure as often as the landscape. Weir is naturally modern and his art has tried many ex- periments, nearly all with a measure of success and some with a most distinguished measure. His figures range from the masculine and very masculine to such a delightful feminine as "The Green Bodice," of the Metropolitan, which remains in the midst of newer pictures as a thing of delicate and sensitive pride, not superseded and not even shadowed by the insistence of other and more bizarre conceptions. Still another type of this same temperate order is the figure as con- ceived by Abbot Thayer, a type which recalls the old Itahans. It is a mingling of the Lombards and the Florentines, and is a trifle sculptural, grave and se- 228 THE MIRROR ROBERT REID MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING vere, with a decorative quality that is quite devoid of flatness. Of a very deUcate order, presented in a misty atmos- phere, is the Dewing figure with its suggestion of feminine daintiness and with an ahnost pastel ex- quisiteness. Dewing puts his women in a sort of hazy "envelope," gives them gowns of softest colors, and makes them less women — and less figures! — than beautiful spots to draw and please the eye. They are fragile, these figures, and suggest the American nervousness. Distinctly another type is the Alex- ander figure, which is much less a figure than an ar- rangement. As a rule it has nothing to say ; it is only a decorative thing with a long and sweeping line, so much longer and more sweeping than others that it has come to be known as "the Alexander line." We may take, for example, "Isabella and the Pot of Basil." This is not Isabella at all; it has nothing to do with the legend; it is merely an affair of graceful lines, these lines being finely gathered together and very felicitous and decorative. So it is with the "Black and Gold" of the Metropolitan Museum, with the "Sunlight" of the Carnegie Institute in Pitts- burgh, and with others too many to mention. It is this trend towards the decorative design that makes the man far better in mural work than in figure- painting. Of the strictest modernity is the type of Robert 231 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Henri and of William Glackens, both of whom have given us figures as well as landscapes. These two, as we have said, are exceedingly independent, yet les- soned by Manet, Degas, and the study of Japanese art. They have a mingled fluency and strength of line, a Manet-like flatness and conception of values, and a very fine effect of the synthetic. They give us a summary of the essential elements of their subjects without any emphasis on details and sometimes with too much disdain of details. It is this synthetic vision, perhaps, for which Henri and Glackens are most no- ticeable. In the type represented by Richard Miller and Frederick Carl Friesecke we have figures that are not primarily figures but excuses for studies in color. Both men now give us brilliant color, though Miller began with darker shades, working a good deal with gray. Friesecke's color is even more daring than Miller's, except where he turns to decoration, when he softens and becomes much paler. Both men may be called "painters' painters" — ^because, apparently, they paint for the love of using the pigment and for the appreciation of their fellow-craftsmen only. Their triumph is a triumph over color and light, and over these alone. Their figures, we say again, are not so much figures as arrangements in color. We may ac- cept them, if we like, as signifying gayety and joy, a pleasure in life and lovely things, expressed in the MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING terms of brilliant and beautiful color, and by a bright design, which is not independent but actually the re- sult of color and light. Still another type of figure is that of Charles Haw- thorne, whose synthetic effect is as good as Henri's. He really does get the essentials of his subject and presents them as "all one," giving us an idea of the fundamental character of the thing. His coloring is original and is attractive to the painter, though not to the layman, and his brush is broad and free. By one thing, most especially, does his name stand out among those of modern painters. He is not, as many men are, the exhibitor of mere skill; he concerns him- self with the character of his people, their hopes, am- bitions, passions, strength, desires. He rarely loses sight of the spiritual; he is painting for the great pub- he of men and women, which wants, above all else, an interpretation of the secrets of human existence. As an excellent witness to this we may take. "The Trousseau," one of the late acquisitions of the Metro- politan Museum. The httle bride is ideal, her face being at once ecstatic and serene and so exquisitely virginal that we look upon her with a feehng akin to solemnity. The mother is equally good, with a pa- tience that almost brings tears, while the third of the group is a young woman upon whose face there is only a faint hint of time and of sorrow. The picture is one that holds the casual passer, yet the spiritual THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING quality is no least drawback to the excellence of the painting. It is, in itself, a reproof to the chatter of "painting for the love of painting" ! A fifth type of figure is that of Gari Melchers', which is not hke that of Weir, Dewing, Alexan- der, Miller, Friesecke, or Hawthorne. A good thing is his "Shipwright" in the Dresden Gallery, which has neither the flatness of Manet nor the modelled efPect of the older types. Melchers' fig- ures have a slightly Dutch air which is not due wholly to subject but is owing in a measure to the painter's descent. Less modern than Henri, less so than Mil- ler, Friesecke, and Hawthorne, he stands as the tem- perate modern, the man for the majority, laymen and artists ahke. He has, moreover, a freshness, a vigor and a masculinity which we do not see too frequently in our figure-painting. His feeling for texture is very good, and his flat tints contribute largely to the decorative effect which he often achieves in spite of a refusal to be ultra-modern. These, it would seem, are the chief types, though the names of the painters are few. We might cite, perhaps, such figures as those of Hugh Breckenridge, Alphonse Jongers, and William M. Paxton, but in each case we have a type that is not vitally different from some one of these examples. Of figure-painting in general we may repeat our former criticism. Of less thrust than the French, it has yet a cosmopolitan THE PORTER AND THE LADIES OF BAGDAD BRYSON BURROUGHS MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING quality, a subtlety, and a sort of delicate charm that is made of a mingled sobriety and enthusiasm. It is almost invariably decent, for the American has a tradition of decency and he is not likely to transgress it. Rarely, indeed, does he give us such a painting as the "Bridal Morning" by George Sauter, an Eng- lishman, exhibited at the Carnegie Institute a few years ago and awarded a prize by an American Com- mittee — in which there was nothing of the sacredness of such a time, the stark naked bride being merely an experiment of white against white and white against dark. As a rule, we insist, the American painter is true to his inheritance, in which there is no place for the unwholesome or the unclean imagining, or even for a stunt of naked figures. As portraitists we have not discussed these painters, since portraiture is, in itself, the subject for a separate volume. The qualities of figure-painting, it is urged, are always the same whether the subject be real or imaginary, but the difference seems to us very vital, since in portraiture the grasp of character is an indis- pensable quality. On the work of Sargent we refrain from long comment. That has been discussed so often, so thoroughly, and in so many different places that it is quite unnecessary to speak of it here. This book, moreover, is a discussion of currents, in which the detailed study of a man so well-known would be pretentious and greatly out of place. Sargent as a 237 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING portraitist is one with his own modern era, reflecting its best features in a manner that is superbly com- posite yet never lacking in individuality. He is American in that he has learned of aU nations yet keeps to his own quality. He is at once vigorous and finished, accomplished yet free, original yet never odd or over-personal. As a psychologist, however, he seems to us uncertain, though here, doubtless, we shall meet with rebuke. The superficial things, alike of mind and heart, he sees clearly, but for deeper things he has not the penetrating vision. This man is a scholar, this a statesman, and this a merchant ; but of what else each man may be he gives but little inkling. If we write in such brief terms of Sargent, we may also write briefly of Whistler, concerning whom so much has been written. The genius of Whistler has been amply discussed, and we know him now as a composite but one whose basic quality is American. In analysis, we have first the Englishman touched with Pre-Raphaehtism, who is witnessed by such things as "The White Girl," which, we insist, smacks of a Rossettian influence; we have the Frenchman, who takes alike from Courbet, Manet, and Monet, and is yet his own man ; we have the Spaniard, learn- ing, for his portrait work, certain secrets of that great Spaniard, Velasquez ; and we have also the Japanese, but not so much in pictures like "Die Lange Leizen of the Six Marks," with its deliberately Japanese MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING "effects," as in other things where the Oriental influ- ence is not half so clear to the layman. With all this, however, we have the best of Americans: the cosmo- politan, who is yet a bit Puritan; the fine, who is not without strength; the man of reservations who is also daring; the man of a sane yet lovely vision; and — ^we admit this to be an American quality — a man of egoism, that young and brilliant egoism which has helped to make America. Having said this, we leave the great remainder un- said. Of the poetic quality of his portraits and his landscapes, of the soft and exquisite beauty of his pastel-work, of his effects of sophisticated night — darkness most slenderly illumined ! — ^we wiU not stop here to speak, since to do so would be mere repe- tition. In the world of figure-painting Whistler is xmique, his charm being more delicate and more elusive than that of any other painter, while his faults are the faults of his virtues — an egotism that goes with his delicacy, an exaggerated airiness that goes with his fine evanescence. So far as his portraiture is con- cerned, we content ourselves with noting the very big achievement, "Sarasate," in which we get all that is most characteristic of that musician — ^the passionate, fragile, half -mournful and half -fiery glance being a summary of the man himself, while his figure suggests the stage from which he plays, the air of which has entered into his being. S39 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING In our chapter on modern French painting we have discussed at some length the modem unrest and the re-action therefrom, showing this re-action as a desire for the region of repose, which is typified in painting by the Golden World, the Vale of Tempe, the Gar- den of Eden or of the Hesperides. This we have marked as especially suitable for the decorative — and to the decorative, as we have often said, the painting of the past twenty years has very strongly tended. Our American idyllists are not great but they are, at least, charming. Very notable among them, though not necessarily first, is Frederick Ballard Williams, whose work is a mingling of tradition and modernity. His decorative instinct is largely Venetian, though it has also a touch of the eighteenth-century Frenchmen and of Monticelli. Beheving that the subject of the artist should be beautiful and desiring the lost world of joy, he betakes himself to the idyllic landscape, the landscape with beautiful and joyous figures. Pearly pink, violet, gray, rose and blue — these are his colors and in these he conceives his arrangements. His women are dehcately sumptuous; they are not really mortals but that makes no difi^erence ; they are types of youth and gayety, of serenity and well being. Another idylhst, and one whose reputation is fast growing, is Lilian Genth, whose "Spring," in the Hearn collection of the Metropolitan, is an excellent example of the new idyllic element in painting. Miss MO MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING Genth, it seems, has standardized one form. The name varies; it is "Spring" or "Adagio" or "Depths of the Woods"; but the figure, and really the whole concept, is a variant of one thing — the lovely, naked shape of a woman, set in the midst of green foliage. It is true that Miss Genth and Ballard- Williams are enamored of one theme, but the theme is so fair and the presentation so beautiful and appropriate that we cannot wish them to make any change. Still another of this type is Hugo Ballin, whose decoration of the State Capital Building at Madison involves some figures of a beautiful idyllism. Ballin, like Ballard- Wilhams, returns to the Venetian ideal and strikes us, at times, as consciously sumptuous. An excellent example, though not Mr. Ballin's best work, is "The Portable Organ," an American "Pas- toral Concert" which, in conception, is thoroughly Giorgionesque. Another is the "Sybil," which was formerly in the possession of Judge Evans and is now in the National Gallery at Washington. The color of this latter painting leaves something to be desired, and it really looks better in a simple black and white re-production; but the interest to the lay- man remains imimpaired by this fault' — an interest which consists in the quality of the idyllic plus the ap- pearance of Venetian splendor and gayety. We re- call, as in the same gallery. Church's picture, "The Black Orchid," which, perhaps, we should call "a 241 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING fierce idyl," so dark are its panthers and so wildly innocent its bacchanal figure. We mention this be- cause of the growing popularity of the classic myth — nymph, naiad, oread, and bacchante — which is pre- sented in various forms. The list of our idyllic paint- ers is growing; the trend in America, as in other coun- tries, is towards the Arcadian, and the output, even of the art-schools, is largely idyllic in subject and very largely decorative in feeling. No other shape, it would seem, is more attractive, just now, "than naiad by the side Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere Sole sitting by the shores of old romance." The germ of this liking may be found on Thracian hill-sides or in some lovely plain of Attica, but its latest flowers bloom very happily in the new Western world. Then, too, our idylhsm, like our figure-paint- ing, is apt to be decent. Our nymphs, as a rule, are not women of the opera houffe but free and innocent creatures of the forest; the American taste in this re- spect is intellectually correct and altogether deUcate. From the view-point of the historian of art this idyllic movement should be last in our chapter, for it was preceded by the movement towards mural deco- ration, in which we find a great number of our painters. Between the Washington Library — one of our first buildings to be beautified by painting — and M9. MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING the latest work of Blashfield in the Youngstown Courthouse, there is a difference of ideals that is al- most too plain for comment. The decorations of the Capitol Library were done by men who are doing mural work at the present day, but that is the work of their youth, which was not completely lessoned as to the nature, requirements, and possibilities of deco- ration. Such freedom, such boldness, such largeness of conception as we see in Besnard's work on the ceil- ing and panels of the Salon des Sciences in the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and in his work for the ificole de Pharmacie, we Americans had not dreamed of at that period. Since then we have learned, as witness the difference between the Alexander of the Washington Library and the Alexander of the Carnegie Institute. In the Library the work is good, indeed, but too ana- lytical; in the Institute it is broad, free, sweeping and unified. As another contrast take the work of Blash- field in two places, the Capitol Library and the Youngstown Courthouse. In the first the design is fair but not convincing. The series of Symbolic Law, on the other hand, is large and severely simple, with a broad surface and with lines that emphasize the permanence of the hall and the place. Again, take Sargent's ceiling, and compare it with more recent decorations. That ceiling, while clear to the scholarly and even to an intelligent layman after a study of some hours, is not clear in a primary sense. It is not THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING restful or comfortable, and, though it really has a pattern, it is not strictly mural. In contrast, take Blashfield's "Symbolic Law," or Arthur Hoeber's new work, or Simmons' in the Minnesota State Cap- itol, or portions of the Appellate Court in New York. There is no one of these which equals Sargent's deco- ration in beauty of color, or in an intellectual splen- dor; yet each of them, strictly speaking, has more of the mural quality than we find in his ceiling of reli- gions. We might speak here, if this were a history of painting, of such men as Simmons, who is faintly like Angelo; of Robert Blum, whose painting at Men- delssohn Hall is so exquisite and so appropriate; of the hard yet unique Vedder; of Mowbray, whose work in the Appellate Court is consciously bizarre ; of Reid, with his fresh and pretty figures ; of Peirce, Walker, and others. To these men, however, we merely give a mention ; not that their merit is small, but because we are writing of tendencies and these are already illus- trated. The ideal of this art, until of recent years, has been something much too formal — ^two stiff wings, for instance, with a very stiff center to start from. It is only of late — indeed, it is very recently — that we have learned a lesson from the French, from Besnard and Denis, de Chavannes and Martin. The rendering of hght, both the natural and the artificial, in all its various caprices, is, we repeat, the 244 > O ffi K W CO t— I O MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING supreme achievement of the modern — but at this mo- ment the artificial or modified light is distinctly the more popular. It is for that reason, possibly, that we have so many interiors, with the light falling through window-curtains, or from over-hanging lamps, or from lamps on tables or shelves. Such interiors, with women reading or sewing, have been so frequently selected as subjects that the public has become a little weary of them. We still enjoy them, however, when painted by men like Edmond Tarbell, or by men like W- M. Paxton, Paxton, it seems, has been accused of too great smoothness and tightness, but his critics have forgotten their delight in Vermeer, de Hoog, and others of the Little Dutch Masters. When treated by an inferior hand these themes become very weari- some. The artificial light is something sophisticated, requiring the very best of treatment. Nature, that great and generous mother, will give herself kindly even to her weaklings, but Artifice is a coquette, yield- ing only to a delicate mastery. We have in America no exact match for the French Bail, with his render- ing of light from door and window across gray-tinted chambers — though, undoubtedly, Tarbell approaches him, with his restful interiors where values are so acutely apprehended. The "stunt" of the interior, as we know, is based upon such appreciation. If, in such a picture, there be any motive other than the technical, that motive is likely to be scorned. Of sen- 247 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING timent we have nothing. There is room here, it would seem, for certain of the more delicate emo- tions, but, so far, the painters have not taken this opportunity. - As to the "Expressionists," there is, as yet, no very great show of their influence in the work of American painters. One name, perhaps, will stand for the traces of their doctrine — the name of Arthur B. Davies, which is already known as that of an inno- vator and an evangel of new ideas. Davies, Uke Matisse, Zak, and others, endeavors to express senti- ment or emotion by making the picture identical with them. In a certain largeness of effect he is like Au- gustus John, who, in his turn, derives from de Chavan- nes. For an example of the hkeness to John, we may take his "Golden Stream," though the resemblance to the Frenchman is clearer in other things. Davies, like Matisse, endeavors to be primitive — deliberately, technically, boldly — yet to impart to us such a con- scious passion and emotion as the Primitives never dreamed of imparting. He is a symbohst by every mark and sign, and a decorative symbolist also, in whom some critics declare they see Mantegna. His canvas called "Sleep," exhibited recently at the Carne- gie Institute, is only too clearly like the "Summer" of Eugene Zak, though it is also like Mantegna's pic- ture of the disciples asleep in Gethsemane. The ad- mirers of both of these men will point to de Chavannes 248 MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING as the original influence, but it is de Chavannes very close to caricature. Davies is better and more truly decorative in such things as his "Golden Stream" and "Bud to Blossom." As to what we call "the tapestry style," it is only a phase of the insistent decorative. As excel- lent examples of this we may note the new panels of Henry Golden Dearth, in which we have a Gothic feeUng in a Persian setting. Such work, of course, has something of the pose about it — hke every other form which dehberately harks backward. It is a con- scious and intentional revival of the primitive, and has, undoubtedly, an element of play or pretence. Its effect on the spectator, however, is not the less pleasant. He admires even while he questions. The names omitted here are many- — among them that of the gifted John la Farge, a pioneer in mural decoration. Another painter of whom we might have spoken is Edwin Abbey, who has done us an initial service by his decoration of the Boston Library — a decoration which is not strictly mural but is marked by a poetic and spiritual emotion. Again, we have said nothing of the art of Mary Cassatt, a pupil of Degas, who has something of the large impression- ism of Manet and also some of his down-rightness, though this quahty is mingled with a certain softness which suits her selection of women and children as subjects. Cecilia Beaux, too, we have passed with- 249 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING out special mention, though she has a Gallic elegance, a selectiveness, and a delicate, upright grace. These qualities, by-the-way, are neither lost nor out-of -place in the painting of such a very modern young creature as we have on a page near-by. So far as the younger men are concerned, we should have mentioned, had this been a history of American painting, such names as those of George Luks and W. J. Sloan, whose purpose is much like the purpose of Henri and Glackens — that is, to gather up the essentials of a subject and present them in one big, broad synthesis; to get, as Velasquez did, at the basic qualities, the fundamental, the necessary. We might have said more, also, of the delicate and somewhat esoteric im- pressionism of Twachtman, and of the delightful work of Dewey and Foster, who are among the most ex- pressive of our landscapists ; of the women of Jean Mc Lean, more racy than Mary Cassatt's though not so fine ; and of some vividly luminous figures by Hugh Breckenridge. That these and other very eminent names are not dwelt upon at length means only that this is not a history but a study. Concerning all of these men we repeat a criticism previously used — that they truly belong to themselves, learning what modern theories and modern experiment can teach yet without losing their individuality or their own en- nobling ideas. At the present hour the most striking of our quaU- 250 THE GREAT MOTHER ARTHUR B. DAVIES MODERN AMERICAN PAINTING ties is the decorative. This means, not only Dearth and his Gothic-Persian panels, not only "The Porter and the Ladies of Bagdad" — a cross between a Man- tegna and an old Hieronymus Bosch! — not only the decorative lines of a Schofield landscape, nor such elaborate stiffness as that of Arthur Herter's new mural work at San Francisco, but a great general tendency, of roots psychological, which shows itself in other forms besides that of painting. In France — if we do not mistake the recent Salons — ^the decora- tive fever is subsiding, but here, in America, it has not yet come to its height. To change the figure of speech, it is, with some painters, almost an obsession, under the influence of which they depart from the great things of the spirit. We venture, however, to predict a sure recovery from this craze. America, we believe, has a genius for the spiritual and will not be long in bondage to mere show. PART FIVE MODERN SPANISH AND MODERN ITALIAN PAINTING MODERN SPANISH AND MODERN ITALIAN PAINTING CHAPTER I MODERN SPANISH PAINTING The Modern Revival of the Ancient Spanish Ideal. — That Ideal Defined. — A Glance at Fortuny and "The Little Painters" as Differing From the Elder Spanish. — ^Zuloaga, as Renew- ing the Racial Type. — SoroUa, the Cosmopolitan, The Painter of Light. — Immediate Followers of Zuloaga: Itur- rino, Losada and Others. — Other Examples of the Racial: Anglada, Rusinol, Martinez, Chicharro, the Brothers du Zubiaurre, Benedito, Nieto, Mesquita. — Landscape-work: Morera, Meifren, de Beruete, Rauricha. — Other Notable Men. THERE is an epoch of revival in the history of Spanish painting which begins, roughly speak- ing, in the later years of the nineteenth century, or, to be exact, in the late eighties and the nineties of that century, the time in which those two moderns, SoroUa and Zuloaga, began to be known to the world. That we name this "the era of revival" is due, not to the greatness of these men as the painters of such and such pictures, nor to the success of other painters, their contemporaries. What is sprung up anew is not merely a hne of gifted artists, but the old Spanish tradition, the tradition which has been lost since the 257 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING death of Francesco Goya and which lives anew for Spain in the work of our modern painters and their following, though by no means in all its ancient splen- dor. What that tradition is — its signal qualities and import — we wish to define in these pages, as also the difference between the work of SoroUa and Zuloaga in the present and very marked revival. It is, indeed, the ideal of modem Spanish painting, in its resem- blance to the elder ideal, which makes the first subject of our chapter — and the work of each painter, as we hope to point it out, will serve to illustrate this ideal. From the death of that great Spaniard, Goya, to the middle of the seventeenth century, there is a long and barren interval. Of the painters of this period Herr Miither writes: "Their painting was body without soul, empty histrionic skill. As complete darkness had rested for a century over Spanish art, from the death of Claudio Coello in 1693 to the ap- pearance of Goya, rising Uke a meteor, so the first half of the nineteenth century produced no original artist until Fortuny came forward in the sixties." As to the lack of Spanish atmosphere in painting, the same critic says: "In the grave of Goya there was buried forever, as it seemed, the world of torreros, majas, manolas, monks, smugglers, knaves and witches, and all the local color of the Spanish Penin- sula." To this statement there is something to be added, 258 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING something with regard to the real Spanish quaUties. In Francesco Goya his country had a genius purely Spanish, yet as modern as today itself, Goya being practically an Impressionist, and, moreover, instinct with the feeling which we choose to call "modernity," which cannot be defined or described but is no less real and no less discernible than what we call "style" or what we know as "breeding." With his death, as Miither has weU said, there came a backward swing, a period so barren that it has no history. The Barbizon Diaz is a Spaniard, but he ranks with the French and belongs to the history of French painting. The name of Mariano Fortuny, the dainty virtuoso of the mid- dle nineteenth century, is the first name memorable to the outsider and even to the historian of Spanish painting; but the descent of Fortuny was not from Velasquez or Goya. Those painters were thoroughly Spanish, the qualities of their spirit being the old Spanish dignity and reserve, the old Spanish pride and forthrightness. They had, moreover — and as a chief factor of their genius — a superb abihty to get at the essentials of their subject, to present the funda- mental, the basic; they were, and are, the great Euro- pean masters of synthetic art, Velasquez being at once the example and the despair of those who know and follow him. Fortuny, on the other hand, was some- what less Spanish than French, and in method was wholly analytical, not catching up essentials, but 269 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING bringing details together in a manner very brilliant but aflfording no conception of a whole. The work of the elder men means "Spain": means it by the pride and dignity of which we have spoken ; means it, again, by virtue of this grandly sweeping movement, this "technique of the whole" ; again, by the effect of deep shadow which clouds the Spanish nature, the effect of the terrible which hides beneath all gayety; and, finally, by that touch of the grotesque which results from its stream of Gothic blood. These qualities are the qualities revived in some measure by the two great modem Spaniards, though SoroUa, the cosmopolitan, brings back the synthetic manner only, the other and distinctly racial qualities being restored in the painting of Zuloaga. Let us preface our study of these men by a look at Fortuny and his school, as much for vivid contrast as for any other purpose. Fortuny, we repeat, is more French than Spanish, but rather by his lack of Spanish qualities than by anything definitely Gallic. In contrast with Spanish simplicity he appears as a marvelous charmeur, with a sort of dainty brio, an element of dazzling gayety, a look of the iridescent which is far from the old Span- ish seriousness and austerity. The rage for this painter has subsided, as many a rage before his time and since; but he is still, for the critics, an amazing and even a fascinating flaneur, whose painting "flashes 260 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING like a rocket and is brilliant as a peacock's tail." Fortuny spares us nothing; when he paints a great room he gives us the very least item — ^not only pillar and arch and chair and sparkling figures, but every leaf and blossom of the carving, the velvet of the cushions, the jewels of the women, the sheen and shim- mer of a myriad small beauties. No impressionism this, but the opposite — a precision like the cutting of a gem, and the cutting that of antique exactness ! Some names which are notable here, and contem- porary with that of Fortuny, are those of Pradilla, Casada, Vera, Ramirez, Carbonera, Vilodas, Checa, Amerigo, Villegas, and Jiminez. These men are gen- erally classed as painters of the subject historical, though from each of them, at times, we have some- thing of the order of Fortuny. Considered in the former capacity, there is no great praise to be ac- corded them ; they are accomplished but they are more or less grandiose and lifeless. Their work is dis- tinctly better — it is finer, more nearly genuine, more vital — ^when they follow Fortuny into the realm of "Httle paintings." As painters of this order they have achieved, indeed, some brilliant morceaux, some bold and lovely bits, as flashing as the glass in a kaleido- scope — an apotheosized kaleidoscope, the pebbles of which are no less than ruby, emerald, topaz, sapphire and amethyst! Pradilla has outdone all the others, ranging from palace to carnival and perfectly at home 261 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING with loves and nymphs and graces, albeit these figures are not Nature's but belong to his own robust fancy. Among other followers of Fortuny is Madrazo, who is not only "a little painter" but also a por- traitist of women, to the painting of whom he brings a rococo charm. Others are Zama9ois, Casanova, and Domingo, the last named being a Spanish "Meis- sonier," minutely dainty though with a military dain- tiness. All this brilliancy, it is true, is what has been termed "artificial" in distinction from the natural brilliancy which is the result of a plein-air realism; and yet, artificial as it is, it has a certain dazzle, it has a certain piquancy. To use an inevitable simile, it is like some Spanish dancing, with the click of the bold castanets, the clash of the bright tambourine, the tinkle of the mandolin, the more romantic swing of the guitar. There is a place in music for such bright click and tinkle, and in the other art a place for such bright and gem-like painting. The return to the characteristic Spanish, to that of Velasquez and of Goya, is effected by Ignacio Zu- loaga. Here is a Spaniard of the Spaniards, who reveals in his painting, if not so much of the pride and dignity of Spain, at least her old austerity and som- breness, her terror and her strangeness. Sorolla, who is greater as an artist, seems even more cosmopolite and eclectic than his wont — so marked, so intense, so pecuharly racial is the painting of Zuloaga! "If one 262 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING comes to his paintings," says Mr. Huneker, "with ro- mantic notions of a Spain where castles grow in the clouds and moonshine on every bush, he will be shocked, he wiU be vastly disappointed." Zuloaga has no prettiness. He paints you, on the contrary, the life he has seen in Spain as a roving and adven- turous young artist. He has peasants and gypsies and bull-fighters, tramps, courtesans, tradesmen and pilgrims — a motley rout and a rout entirely Spanish, seen with a Spanish eye and rendered in Spanish colors. An accomphshed colorist he is not — ^in fact he uses his pigment rather heavily; yet his greens and browns, his blacks and grays and scarlets, are notably Spanish to all who have seen them, and Spanish also is his big and slashing stroke. He is an Impression- ist only as Velasquez was an Impressionist, his kin- ship not to Monet and the parallel lines of primary color, but to ijfidouard Manet and his larger and more massy impressionism. We must note here, however, that Zuloaga has not such a mastery of his mediimi as has Manet, and fails, by comparison, in the treatment of his surfaces. The picture of the Metropohtan Museum, "Breval as Carmen," is, indeed, very Span- ish. This "Carmen" is typical; it is she, not Sargent's "Carmencita," who truly stands for Spain — and stands also, though not in technical excellence, for Zuloaga. He is not great as a painter, but racial he is to the core and racial in the highest degree. He is 263 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING not a Parisian, not a cosmopolite, but Spanish by every quality and intention. He is a realist, this Spaniard, though not a realist of the grand manner like Velasquez. A broad, sweep- ing, and vigorous art is his, without the least hint of pyrotechnics, a significant vitality that does not spend itself in any small bravura. He gives us Spain and he gives us Spanish subjects, from the exquisite lady — Candida, Mercedes, or Paulette — to the dwarfed Gregorio, to the family of the gypsy and the bull- fighter, and to those horrible, hag-hke sorceresses of La Millan, of whom he relates that they screamed and fought when he posed them in his studio. To be brief, he has run the whole gamut of Spanish figures and has made us to feel them all Spanish. He por- trays them, moreover, with the Spanish largeness which especially suits these quaUties. Mr. Himeker has spoken of his "big structural forms," "his massive tonalities," and these, we may add, are the only appropriate garments for emotions and qualities which are so elementally racial. Zuloaga is Gothic, romantic, with naught of the impersonal, of the gen- eral; in short, he has no least element that allies him either to the Greek spirit or to the cosmopolitan. In a day when all barriers grow vague, he stands out as highly individual, a genius entirely himself. In contrast with the sombre and half -terrific art of Zuloaga we have the splendid joyousness, the brilliant 264 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING and healthy gayety, of his only equal, SoroUa, whose figures breathe out light. SoroUa makes the sun and air his own — and the ocean of a hundred different colors! He is especially the painter of sea and air and sky, and of radiant young figures superbly at home in these surroundings. We see in his canvases the eternal freshness of youth; here are the bodies of children, naked in the green, translucent water; here are lads about to dive; and here are young girls com- ing from the bath, their limbs half apparent in the bath-sheets, yet with nothing about them that inti- mates the sensuous. He is the painter of the mortal nereid and triton, and he paints them with the fine free innocence, the splendid camaraderie that belongs to our modem ideal. The girl and the lad — as in a picture of the Metropolitan Museum= — ^may come forth together from their swim in the morning sea, but they come as two boys or two girls, with never an emotion or idea that might not be blazoned to the world. We have spoken of SoroUa as cosmopolitan, and this adjective we venture to repeat. We have used it, however, only in the comparison of SoroUa with Zuloaga ; we use it now in a sense that is nearer to the absolute. The work of SoroUa, if exhibited to the inteUigent layman — ^by which we mean, here, the layman who has some knowledge of the history of art but Uttle or none of matters technical — ^would hardly be suggestive of the painter's nationality; 265 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING while that of Zuloaga, as we have said, is eloquent to all the world of Spain and Spanish character. The artist and the critic, doubtless, would place their man without hesitation, but the element of artists and art- critics is small, while the appeal of SoroUa is to a great and various public. We are practically repeating this criticism when we say that the hkeness of Sorolla to Velasquez and to Goya is a hkeness not apparent to the general. It consists of an ability to synthetize, an ability already defined as the power of presenting fundamentals, of setting forth the basic, the essential. This gift is the supreme gift of the older men — ^not theirs exclusively but to a degree which has never been equalled save in the genius of the great Northerners, Rembrandt and Hals. It is also the gift of SoroUa and is, in fact, a necessity for a painter of such subjects. A canvas all sea and sky and air is not at all the canvas for the analyst nor should he even attempt it. It makes the chosen subject of the Luminarist — and, though Sorolla may not tag himself with a name, he is surely the painter of hght and air, a Luminarist of a very great order. SoroUa's arrangement is as free as the water itself, that is, free in appearance, though controlled, as the tides are controlled, by certain inviolable laws. A brilliance of color is his, though by "brilliance" we mean not the bright but the shining. His white is SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING brilliant, and his faint blues also, while the limpid green of his sea waves has a certain marvelous gleam. His white against white — for instance, in "Coming from the Bath," of which we have already spoken — is really a tour le force, so subtle is it, so glowing and yet so agreeable to the eye ! In the gestures and atti- tudes of his people there is a freshness, a vitality, a power, which brings back the youth of the world, or to say the very least of it, suggests the ancient truth that hfe is perpetually renewed, reviving with each gener- ation. Even when he paints a convalescent we feel that her recovery is assured! SoroUa is especially eclectic by his combination of different treatments; the lines and spots of Monet, the big, clear stroke, cross-hatchings, surfaces as smooth as glass, or splotches big and rough — ^they are all his and are combined into a technique peculiarly his own. A Spanish critic says : "His canvases con- tain a great variety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds and yellows. These, and the skillful use of white, provide him with a color-scheme of great simplicity, originahty and beauty." It is needless, after what has been said, to pin to Sorolla's name the much-worn title of "realist." The Spaniard, moreover, is a realist by temper. "Spanish painting," says a modem critic succinctly, "does not express symbols; it records facts." The subjective, the spiritual, the interpretative is alien to the Spanish 267 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING genius; its art is objective and material, the concern of its artists being for life and the human figure. In this objective painting the Spaniards have no su- perior, and, with the exception of Rembrandt and Hals, they have never known an equal. In the mat- ter of technique they lead the modem world, and Im- pressionism of the rarest order displays itself on the walls of The Prado, that truly royal gallery. As for what we call "modernity," we need not go out of its doors. SoroUa, in being modern, is also old Spanish — that is, of the best Spanish order, the student of natural and himian aspect, though he adds to the older knowledge the modem knowledge of light in its thou- sand variations. We may turn, now, from these two leaders to the art of our modem Spain in general. Among the men who are taking up the problems of light are the very men who, in their youth, chose heavy historical theme and essayed to tell in paint the grandiose narrative, neither of which has lent itself easily to plein-airism. To the homely, simple, ordinary subject, which does so lend itself, the Spaniard comes but recently, and he stiU shows his tendency to the story-teUing type. Yet the story of the present, to quote a modern critic, is no longer the historical episode, nor the legend of chivalry, nor any imaginary tale. It is the life of the people in general, and especially of the humbler people; we have now, not the shapes of old Romance, 268 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING but those of an every-day living; the villager has dis- placed the noble Cid; and instead of the gorgeous battle-scene we have peasants at their daily occupa- tions. This is the history of modern painting in all countries, and is the direct result of Impressionism, the ordinary and more simple shapes of life, with their out-of-door enATTonment, being the shapes most suited to its principles. In this painting of their own peo- ple—we quote once more from our critic — ^the Span^ iards are expressing the national genius, each painter according to his type. The Segovians, for instance, are painted by Alcala Galiano, and the Salamaneans by Benedito; BUbao paints the factory women of Seville; Chicharro depicts the CastiUians; and the brothers de Zubiarre are the painters of the Viscayans — ^the result for the thoughtful student being a remarkable study of the Spanish types in gen- eral. The painting of landscape is infrequent, the Span- ish genius having but little fondness for it. In figure- painting, on the contrary, that genius rises to its best. Both Velasquez and Goya are essentially portrait- ists, while Murillo, Zurbaran, Ribera and El Greco attain to their best when painting the human figure. To this subject the landscape is subordinate, as are all other subjects whether fanciful or real. In the portrayal of it there is room for all or nearly all the virtues, and most especially for the dignity and the 269 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING reticence which mark the Spaniard's aspect and his character. In considering the other modem Spaniards, we must not permit ourselves to be blinded or even to be dazzled by the fame of SoroUa and Zuloaga; these men are big, but their contemporaries are worthy of attention, being men of much dignity and strength. Of the two influences that of SoroUa is the least, and quite naturally so. SoroUa is less Spanish than cosmopolitan, while Zuloaga, the less accompUshed painter, is every whit of Spain, with an influence that is logical and inevitable. The ideal of these modems is in line with the ancient Spanish tradition; their way is a continuation of the way of Ribera, Zurbaran, Velasquez and Goya. This we may see very clearly in the work of that group of provincials which imme- diately surrounds Zuloaga. Here we have the nota- ble Iturrino, a frequent exhibitor in Paris, whose canvas is brilhant and clear yet charged with atmos- phere and racial feeling. In his painting of "Les Gitanes," which he showed three years ago at the Salon d' Autumne, there was the realism, the inten- sity, the purely Spanish air of Zuloaga with a hint of the clever eclecticism of SoroUa. It was some- thing essentiaUy racial, an excellent iUustration of the revival of the old Hispanic temper. Here also is Losada, who is even nearer to the master, his work being so big and so strong as to rank him a very close 270 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING second. Of this group are Guirad, Regoyos and Uranga, all of them ardently national, with "Spain" burnt in upon their hearts, as "Calais" on that of Queen Mary. We must remember, also, that mod- ern painting had its earliest champions in the sturdy and independent Catalans, in Barrau, Casas, Foiit- devila and Pichot. It is notable, too, that the big men of the time, the men who revive the old ideal, are men of the provinces and removed from the cen- tre of culture. This, however, needs no explanation. It is a matter of history that new blood comes from quiet places, from the countryside, from isolation and so-called lack of opporttmities. It is written of a certain Hebrew leader, by adoption a prince of the house of Pharaoh, that he conceived his plans when alone at "the back side of the desert." Rarely out of cities, rarely out of a cosmopolitan environment, do we get originality and the impetus of strong red blood. There is bom of isolation a certain independ- ence and intensity, and, if a man be not bom to it, he must get it at the back side of the desert ! It is only natural, therefore, that the lesser Spanish provinces should be centers of artistic activity, that Bilbao should claim Zuloaga and this little group of strong and high-hearted nationahsts, dreaming dreams of the elder Spain. It is they who have big opportuni- ties, their cities beisg distinctly more Spanish than Madrid, as the Bluegrass is more Kentuckian than 271 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Louisville, and the small Colorado towns are more of the West than is Denver. Bilbao and Barcelona are old bottles for old wine, and the wine has such a flavor as recalls the magnificence of the past. Of the type of Zuloaga is Anglada, of whom we are tempted to say that he is the painter of the night — weird, magical, half-terrible — as SoroUa of the bril- liant and reassuring dayUght. This, however, would be putting an imdue emphasis on a single expression of his nature. Anglada paints the sights of all the hours, with a sound draughtsmanship, a rich color, and a very keen feeling for the decorative. He has the same elementary strength as Zuloaga, the same effect of the sombre and half cruel, the word, as here employed, indicating the quality of the inexorable, the tmrelenting. He is especially the painter of move- ment, of the swift and secret look, the wave of the fan, the walking figure, the gay and graceful dance. He is, if possible, more intense than Zuloaga himself, or, as we may put it, more furious. He will say what he has to say and will drive home his idea at the ex- pense, sometimes, of strict veracity; that is, he will stretch out a limb or over-emphasize an attitude to make his purpose clear or to show his mood with abso- lute plainness. A recent criticism has accused him of "a meretricious artifice," but artifice, as will readily be seen, is the logical temptation to a painter of such a temperament. 278 DANIEL ZULOAGA AND HIS DAUGHTERS LUXEMBOURG MUSEUM IGNACIO ZULOAGA SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING Another and a very ardent leader, foremost in the revival of Catalan literature and art, is Santiago de E/Usinol, a poet, a painter, and a man of rare taste and rare feeling. He is especially the painter of Spanish gardens, of those wonderful pleasances of Cordova, Seville, Majorca, and other ancient cities. To look at his pictured gardens is to get away from trolley and from "sky-scraper," with all that the two words imply. These places, in very truth, belong to our castles in Spain, and the orange-trees of Majorca are, for the moment, our "golden apples of the sun," Of the peculiar beauty of such gardens — a beauty exquisitely hybrid, being half of nature and half of mortal artifice — Rusinol is absolute master. He gives us, too, the Hispanic quahty of his pleasances; these are not English gardens nor gardens of France or of Germany, but Spanish by every feature, breath- ing the romance of old-time Spain. Rusinol, in his fashion, is as much of the Spanish temper and tradi- tion as Anglada, Iturrino, or Zuloaga. We should see this old tradition very clearly if we had before us such modem paintings as were exhibited in May of 1913 at the Art Institute of Chicago. As it is, we must make shift with words — ^which, for all their puissance, will hardly be as clear as paint itself. We may discuss, then, a few of the notable men whose work was exhibited at this Institute, and who, with the painters we have already mentioned and with 275 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING their two giant leaders, will typify the trend of mod- em Spain. We have spoken, throughout this book, of move- ments, of tendencies, of basic facts and principles, and in our selection of examples we are following no special order. We may speak first, since the name comes first to mind, of Chicharro, the Castilian, whose particular subject is his country and his people. Chicharro is at times a grave realist, who presents his figures with much boldness and vigor, and who is not only manly but accomplished. Now and then he is somewhat too emphatic in his vigor — so much so, indeed, as to call from some critics the accusation of "harshness" — but this, if it be his real fault, is merely the fault of his virtues. Harshness, we have noted, is a frequent companion of virility, and Chicharro is among the most virile of modern Spaniards. It is not always, however, that he proves the ardent reahst. In his decorative work he betrays a rare ideahsm, pre- senting a far country, a land of vague dream and vague desire, which is, after aU, symbohc of a reaUty of the spirit. It marches with his blood, with the ancient CastiUan temper, that his decorative figures should be symbols of some strong and passionate im- port. Where other men paint mere idyllic scenes, or lands of antique vision with no very special sig- nificance, Chicharro is intense in his decoration and suggests an impassioned thought. To this, we are 276 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING very well aware, some critics will put a stem question- mark, denying to the mural all element of thought. Of these, however, we have spoken in our opening chapter, and we need not repeat what we have said. We may cite Chicharro's mediaeval triptych, "Les Trois Spouses," and his decorative panel of "Egyp- tian Inspiration," one being mythical while the other is philosophical. In matters more exquisite, in what we may call the nuances of his painting — ^the delicate turn of a figure, the elusive suggestion of a texture, the subtle approach to a smile — ^he evinces a mastery that is very remarkable. We have said that he is a Spaniard, and we say it once again; but he is also the modern painter, and by nothing is he more mod- ern than by this rare painting of suggestion, this ar- rest of the exquisite evasive. So far as his figures are concerned, he traces his ancestry to Goya, but we find in these decorations an eclecticism that is highly interesting, the one triptych, "Les Trois ifipouses," showing a trace of the Spanish Ribera and a trace of the mediaeval Florentine, these being united in a vision which is absolutely modern in eflFect. Another Spaniard who stands for the modern trend and also for the Spanish revival, and whose work has been seen in this country, is Valentin de Zubiaurre, who paints with his brother Ramon, the work of the two being almost indistinguishable. These men have occasionally an element of the mysterious; they are 277 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING realists, yet realists who divine a certain truth, the fact of the mystery of hfe, inherent even in its sim- plest and most readable forms. Their realism has also a decorative eif ect, and especially notable at times is their use of some arbitrary color, not belonging to the actual place, which is used to unite all other colors into one scheme. Their peasants, painted in a man- ner very Goya-like, are absolutely natural — in fact, they are life itself — and to the layman they may be merely life-like and nothing more, offering no least suggestion of a pattern; but to the painter, who sees with a different eye, their pattern is something quite evident. Among the Spanish pictures shown in 1913, at the Chicago Art Institute, was Valentin's "Pre- paring the Bride," in which the intent was clearly decorative, though emotion and appeal were very hu- man. The bride's face was dreamy and gravely in- nocent, that of the lover was bold and possessive, while that of the old peasant-mother was resigned and tolerant, as age is apt to be, no matter what its race. These brothers have something of the grand air of the older Spaniards, and some of their broad indica- tion of essentials. Their mingling of two intentions, the decorative and the human, belongs to the painting of modern Spain. We saw this in the same exhibit, in "The Baptism" of Manuel Benedito, which was immistak- ably decorative yet suggestive of a natural, domestic, 278 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING cheerful though sacred interest. We saw it once again in "Ninon and Lionello," the portrait of two sisters by Manuel Nieto, which recalled the old tra- dition very strongly by its mingling of splendor and reserve and by a broad brush-work which was yet not over-broad. No one else, we venture to say, gives as much of this double motive as does the modern Spaniard — except, indeed, Rossetti, whose "Blue Closet," "Bride," and "Bower Meadow," with a num- ber of other pictures, remind us of such two-fold con- ceptions. The merits of this may be questioned, but the subject is too big for brief discussion. Among the portraitists of this exhibit was Mes- quita, who showed a very charming httle girl, the painting of whom recalled both MuriUo and Velas- quez. Another was the versatile Fernando de Soto- mayer, who had sent a study of two Galician villagers which was thoroughly and very finely modern. Landscape-work, as we said at the beginning of this chapter, is a form of expression not frequent with the Spaniards. There are some, however, who have proved themselves good landscapists, and among the chief of these is Jaime Morera, whose subjects are the lonely Spanish mountains, and who has lived a great part of his hf e in the wildest and most severe of mountain-scenery. We talk of the isolated life of Segantini, high up in the Alpine forests, but Morera surpasses him in the sternness of his scenes. In his 279 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING "Faggot-gatherers" we perceive a certain loneliness, a certain awesome bleakness and severity, which is emphasized by the figures of the poor mountain- women who crouch at their meagre little fire. Again, in his "Peak of La Narjarra," he gives us a sheer isolation, a far-ofi", xmtrod place which fills us with a mingled awe and calm. He has an opportunity, of course, for bringing out the light upon the slopes, the dark of the passing clouds, the heavy, substantial shadow of the rocks, and the white of that marvelous garment, at once so ethereal and so solemn, which forever envelopes the peaks. This study of light and shade has marked him, we may say, as using some methods of Impressionism, but here again, we may note the independence of the Spaniard, who realizes that in his own painters the world has its greatest Impressionists, and who takes from our modern Im- pressionism only what he cares to take and use. A broad and fairly synthetic method is Morera's, with a treatment of shadows in distance which is some- thing very remarkable. Above all other qualities, however, we have marked a sort of awe; Morera has a feehng for these vast and lonely spaces which strikes us as a very important factor of his painting. He paints, we think, as Homer Martin painted — though the American had no such wild places- — as if he and God alone had visioned these solemn moun- tain-sides ! 280 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING Among the other landscapists is Eliseo Meifren, an Impressionist but not to any very marked degree. Meifren is truly a nature-lover, and we feel in his landscape the charm and the lure of the real Spanish country. Another is Aureliano de Beruete, who paints the Toledo country in a fashion at once broad and exquisite; and a third is Nicolas Rauricha of Barcelona, who is even more subjective than Morera, and who, by this quality, departs from the Spanish objectivity and big materialism. Among the names which we have not yet mentioned is that of Daniel Vierge, an accomplished painter and able in his practice of Impressionism, though a painter of Fortuny-like subjects. Vierge, however, is much more distinguished as an illustrator than as a painter. Another name is that of Jose Maria Sert, who re- turns to the old-time, magnificent theme and the old- time, magnificent manner. Sert has been likened to Tiepolo, but a clearer resemblance is the resemblance to Tintoretto, though the modem is less thunderous and dramatic. There is also a touch of Veronese, which is certainly more evident than the hkeness to Tiepolo. Another stiU is that of Vila y Prades, a yoimg follower of SoroUa, a striking colorist and es- pecially fortunate in his picturing of the Mediter- ranean water; a fourth that of Garnelo, whose por- trayal of a country bull-fight, seen in the Chicago exhibit, was done with a vigorous and even tremendous 281 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING realism; and a fifth is that of Roberto Domingo, who showed, at the same exhibit and with an equal realism, his typical picadors on their horses. StiU another is Lopez Silva, whose painting, "Sur Le Pla- teau," exhibited some two years ago at a Salon des Artistes Fran9ais, was distinctly after the manner of Degas, though the artist has not Degas' greatness of line, and showed a preference for the eflfects of light on white limbs and dancing-skirts, rather than for any perfection of drawing. To name but one or two others, there is Nestor de la Torre, of a genius at once vigorous and decorative; and there is Carlos Vasquez, whose "Presents de Noces," at the same salon, had a touch of Zuloaga but of Zuloaga softened, which was not imitation but clearly a matter of tem- perament. All of these are men of the new move- ment, which, we may say again, is a revival of the old Spanish genius. As to the movement which is generally known as "extreme" — that last phase of modernity, discussed in our opening chapter, which expresses itself in Cub- ism, Post-Impressionism, Futurism — the Spaniards have a share in it, though not to so great an extent as the French. In Pablo Picasso they possess an ardent leader, and no one who has seen his "Portrait of a Man" or his "Spanish Village," which we have repro- duced here, can make any mistake as to his Cubist doctrine. It is not buffoonery, it is not any crude f o d o K t— ( « 2i Q a z St o t— 4 o !^ SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING antipathy, which declares of these performances that they look like nothing terrestrial so much as a tmn- bling of children's blocks. It is surely a perverted vision that perceives, and asks others to perceive, in such a degenerate fashion! Picasso's following in Spain is not large, a fact for which Spain may be thankful. It would be paradoxical, indeed, in the midst of a group of splendid Spaniards, reviving the ancient spirit, to find such an influence predominant! The subject of these isms is discussed in our chapter on French painting, and there is nothing to be added to it here. It is enough to say that for Picasso and his following there is no such admiration in Spain as in Paris — and that Paris herself, as typified by Mont- martre and the Quartier Latin, has "been puzzled by the man's erratic structures. 285 CHAPTER II MODERN ITALIAN PAINTING The Italian Temper as Differing from the Spanish. — The Adop- tion of the New Order Not a Reversion to the Italian Tradi- tion in General. — Some Painters of the Middle Nineteenth Century: Boldini, De Nittis. — Line-Impressionism, or Divi- sionisme, and its Leaders: Segantini; Previati; Morbelli; Pelizza. — The Secession and its Leaders; Noci, Lionne, and Others. — Modem Work in General, Typified by Six Names : Mario de Maria, Ettore Tito, Segantini, Previati, Camillo Innocenti, and Plinio Nomellini. — Other Notable Paint- ers. TO come from Spanish painting to Italian may seem, to the casual, not so very long a step. Each people is a Latin people, each has a strong Northern element in its Latin, and each has a great artistic tradition, the basis of which is very like the basis of the other. Yet the distance, in truth, is something to be reckoned with. It involves, we may say, the difference between a grave and sombre peo- ple and one that is infinitely more joyous; the differ- ence between a race of great reserve and a race that gives freely of its speech; and the difference, more- over, which really does exist between the two tradi- 286 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING tions, despite the granted fact of a basis that is sim- ilar if not identical. In the history of Spanish painting, at least to the period of Goya, we perceive, in the range of subject and also in the gamut of emotion, a certain indescrib- able narrowness. The Spaniard, as we have said, is but rarely the landscapist and rarely the painter of idyllic scenes, while as a figure-painter he is devoted very largely to the portrait. His chief emotion, moreover, is the one that is proper to his genius — the genius of sombre realism, concerned almost wholly with that which is human and mortal in distinction from that which is ideal. What the Spaniard paints for us is man. Ribera does it with a cruel realism, Murillo with a gracious and tender; Zurbaran does it with the fervor of religion; El Greco with a sort of large, calm sweetness; Velasquez with a feeling whoUy worldly; and Goya, the most intense of all, with a spirit that is icily cold in its heat and fearfully hot in its cold, with a savagery that is highly accom- plished and a grotesquery that is highly deliberate. Even in the Crucifixions what we get from each painter is the man; not a God in the testimony of pain but a mortal thing in torture. In Italian painting the range is far greater — ^the range alike of thought and of expression — and we have, also, a very diflferent realism. Now realism it is, the ItaUan being a Latin race and therefore 287 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING largely objective, but it is by no means so sombre a realism or so terrible. The Italian does not tend towards the painful or the sorrowful; for grief, for anguish, even for the countenance of age, he shows no particular liking. His great older painters, we observe, refuse to their saints and martyrs the look of anguished love or mortal agony, the reason being their large classic inheritance with its tendency to restraint, its dishke of all imloveliness, of all that may spoil the norm of beauty. From the races more Gothic we get the expression of deep feeling; from the French, with the brilliant faces of Amiens and Chartres; from the Germans and Flemings, with their aged and sorrowful Marys ; and from the Span- iards even down to Bonnat, whose realism is so pain- fully real. The Itahan, as may easily be imagined, has proven none too ready to accept and use the principles of Impressionism. He is first of all the Latin, with the Gothic element second, and his environment and traditions are proudly, magnificently classic. Now the classic element is not cordial to Impressionism. Its first and signal qualities are composure, limit, restraint, while the first and signal qualities of Im- pressionism are glamor, suggestion, the indefinite, the free. That the French people have emphasized these qualities is due to a large Gothic element. The Italian, so plainly Latin, has not adopted Impres- S88 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING sionism but adapted it — to his own peculiar notions and ideals. In doing this — and here is a vital point — he has not revived a tradition as has his great neigh- bor the Spaniard, the reason being simple and clear. In the tradition of Velasquez and Goya, as we have already intimated, color is the leading element, as it is in the new and modern order; and the Spaniard, therefore, in accepting this new order, is merely re- turning to his own. By the Italian the process is reversed. With his tradition, except in Renascence Venice, the great and leading element is line; and it follows that the modem Italian- — Florentine, Lom- bard, Umbrian, Roman, aU save the gorgeous Vene- tian — in bowing to the triimiph of color departs from his ancient ideal. We must note this, however, as an evidence of his many-sided genius. That he adapts the new order to his needs, yet does no least violence to his past, is but one fact in many which betoken a variety of gift. The art of painting, moreover, is the art most suited to his temper, and it is, therefore, only natural that he should use various techniques. The first of the moderns, we may say, is that notable flanew, Boldini, whose work, like the work of For- tuny, was once over-rated, then disdained, and is only now assigned to its proper place. Boldini had in his own genius a thoroughly modern and impressionistic element. His picture of Whistler is not out-of -place and does not seem at all anachronistic, when repro- 289 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING duced, as we happen to have seen it, in a volume which is full of modern work. It would hardly be mis- placed, or not markedly so, in a bookful of Jo David- sons, Augustus Johns, Arthur Davies, and Eu- gene Zaks! It is not that he shares technique with any, it is not that his technique resembles that of any; it is merely that he strikes the modern note, that he has the modern feeling and sees with the modern eye. No one else, says M. Mauclair, has really painted Whistler, though others have tried to do so. Boldini had the poignant feehng for it, he had the chic, he had the mingled dehcacy and boldness that was neces- sary to set down, in the fine terms of paint, that vain yet exquisite egoist at once so childish and so mature. Boldini is especially the painter of women, and more especially of women of the world. His line is a quick, decisive slant — Latin, not Gallic — and his color is so brilliant, so bold and yet so dainty, so vivid and yet so airy, that it cannot be easily forgotten. In the earlier years of this painter Italy was following For- tuny; Boldini gave her something much better, some- thing far more modem, a psychological touch that was not unlike the touch of Goya. Of the same general order as Boldini is De Nittis, who is modern yet not over-modem. De Nittis is the painter of gay throngs, of the street, of the ball-room, of the fete, all of which he portrays with an excellent and moderate impressionism. With these two names, 290 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING in fact, we indicate the best ideal of Italy in the six- ties and the seventies, a period of remarkable barren- ness which is matched by the same time in Spain. The name of Cremona, however, is one that is not to be forgotten, for in this painter we have a pioneer of modern theories. The Line-Impressionism of Monet — or, as it is called in Italy, Divisionisme — ^has some ardent ad- herents among the greater artists. Its apostle and leader is Giovanni Segantini, who, it is said, was won to it by Grubicy, the author of a treatise upon it; but a close and ardent follower is Gaetano Previati, who, also, has written of its principles. Among others of the Divisionistes are Pehzza, Morbelli, Lionne, Balla, Fornara, Longoni and Cinotti. All of these men, however, may be included, either by actual membership or by virtue of their doctrine and prac- tice, in that very large and ever-increasing group which is entitled, Uke similar groups in various other countries, "The Secession." The Secession includes some men who are by no means strict Impressionists but eclectics, accepting Impressionism less as an ar- ticle of faith than as a Hght to work by. Among those who were included in the Secession exhibit of 1913 — its first and declaratory stand— were Arturo Noci, Onorato Carlandi, Pietro Fragiacomo, Barthol- omeo Bezzi, Umberto Principe, Felice Casorati, Felice Carena, Zanetti Zilla, CamiUo Innocenti and 291 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Vittorio Grassi, all of whom are named here as the names come to mind or as they move harmoniously and without regard to merit or to age. To return for a moment to the leadership of Divi- sionisme, let us look at the work of Segantini. This painter began in the old traditions, but as a convert to the doctrine of Monet he was most energetic, and he stands among Italians as its chief and best exponent. It is said of Segantini, who dwelt high up in Alpine fastnesses, that he was the first to show the mountain- tops as they appear when we reach them and stand upon them. Other men have painted them as they seem from below; he paints them as they seem to the dweller upon their heights. With an intense sym- pathy he portrays their strength, their loneliness; and he does this, moreover, much less by color than by line, line being suited to their severity. He has been hk- ened, this Italian, to that far greater Frenchman, Millet, and, allowing for the difference in genius, the comparison is not at all forced. The elementality of Millet, the primal simplicity and bigness, the effect of the monumental — all this he does not attain to, but approaches. It is not too fanciful, perhaps, to say that Millet is epic in quality. He is like Phidias, Uke Bach, like Homer, like the great bald mountains and the great slow rivers; while Segantini, on the other hand, is closer to the lyrical in quality. Like Millet, however, he suggests the essential or the type; 292 THE TOILET CAMILLO INNOCENTI IN THE MUSEUM OF PALERMO SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING for example, in such beautiful and simple things as his drawing of "Le Madri" or "The Mothers," which is more than reminiscent of Millet and as big in feel- ing as that master himself. His "Ploughing in the Engadine," the canvas in the New Pinakothek in Munich, is a thing which illustrates most admirably this likeness to the head of his order and is yet abso- lutely original and something which Millet has never done. The broad expanse of field, the inonotony of light, the white of distant snows, the high and lonely air, and the strength of those deep, wide, parallel furroughs — all this seems prima,l, elemental, as plain and as vital as Millet. He is a painter who is intel- ligible to the simple — ^to the peasant, to the laborer in the fields, to the boy, to the child. There is something plain about him, a reminder of the Primitives, which is not the pretentious primitivism of Gauguin and Matisse but a quality that is genuine and unsought. Yet, withal, he is never the thoughtless, and he gives us in some pictures a nature which is not all natural and which strikes us as dehberately "schem- atic." To put it into other words, the words of a famous critic, "we find, in this child of nature, con- ventions that are not in nature." The name of Previati is not nearly so familiar to Americans, yet his work has a certain quality which for the modern is distinctly more fascinating. Se- gantini and Previati may be compared to one another 296 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING as Wordsworth and Coleridge are compared. Wordsworth, we say, was the realist, who accepted with simplicity the sublime and awful mysteries; Coleridge was the mystic, who saw how mysterious were the apparent simphcities. It is somewhat the same with these Italians : Segantini is the realist, who shows us the mysterious as simple, but Previati is the mystic, who shows us how simple is the mysterious. His subjects are well suited to his temper; he returns to the older and sacred themes, to the events and scenes in the hfe of Christ, but upon these older themes he lavishes the secrets of a modern technique. He gives us, for instance, an "Annunciaition," in which both the angel and the Virgin are enveloped in a luminous haze that suggests, inevitably, a study of modem methods and the modem pleasure in the conquest of light. The darkness back of the Virgin, the soft blaze of glory between the two, the bank of leaves and flowers, half dark and half illimiined, and the bright and dazzling blur upon the figures — ^this is all completely modern though the subject is the special subject of old Florentines. Previati, how- ever, is not always the painter of such themes ; in an exhibition, held not long ago by the Catholic Club in New York, we had, as an example of his land- scape work, two Ligurian coast scenes which were at once realistic and highly decorative, showing all the sparkling glamor of the Italian sea-country. 296 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING We have named, among other Divisionists, Mor- belli and Pelizza, of whom the former is the more definitely reahstic while the latter is the more exqui- site and tender. Morbelli's realism has sometimes a deep human appeal, as in his pictures of the old men of an hospice, but Pehzza's appeal is at once more various and more poetic. His work reminds us, by turns, of Seurat, of Henri Martin, and of Maurice Denis. It is at times purely realistic, at times real- istic and decorative, and at times decorative only. He betrays, we think, the Italian morhidezza, for which our Enghsh has no equivalent and which is not so much morbidness as a dreamy intensity; his pathos is evident; and his tenderness is sometimes real ten- derness, and sometimes only what the French call "tendresse" a quality not elemental but intentional. The Secession, as we have already said, is a new birth in Italy, but is sponsored by some very big men, Carena, Bianco, and Nomellini being included in its jury. Among its best known painters is Arturo Noci, a Roman, a man who is portraitist, landscap- ist, and painter of the imaginary figure, using differ- ent media with an equal and evident success. He is as much the Divisioniste as it suits him to be, taking the road of his own particular choice and showing himself, by virtue of that choice, as the descendant of a noble race of painters, most of whom were superbly independent. Another of the Secessionists, and one 297 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING who is markedly the Divisioniste, is Enrico Lionne, whose technique is possibly too loose but whose color- sense is very rich and full. Another is Pietro Fragia- cono, a Venetian whose color is charming and about whose twilight-scenes there is something of the dream- spirit of that golden "Other World" concerning which we have spoken so often in this hook. With Fragiacomo, however, the country is real country; it is only the emotion that is mysterious — and this, for an Italian, is somewhat unusual, a departure from the racial temper, which is always and plainly a tem- per with the Latin force dominant. Still others of the group are the younger Ciardi, Emma and Beppo, the former of whom paints oftenest the Itahan villa with its charming and decorative effect, while the lat- ter is at home with great meadows and high mountain- scenes. Then, again, we have the poetic Bezzi; Nomellini, the painter of simlight; Carlandi, who is brilliant of technique and a free, sensitive and accom- plished colorist; and Felice Casorati, a young Vero- nese, whose studies of girls are very animated and in whose more decorative work we detect the Botti- cellian translated with a very strait modernity. We might go on, through a long and sparkling category, with the names of Discovolo, Ricci, Feretti, Terzi, Scattola, Gioli, and many others; but this would be unnecessary writing, the men whom we have named being fully illustrative of their kind. The 298 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING Secessionists, moreover, cannot be considered as rep- resentative. To illustrate the painting of modem Italy we must oflFer a list of several names, each name standing for a type. We make then, though with some hesitation and reluctance, the following list of six painters: Mario de Maria; Ettore Tito; Giuseppe Segantini and Gaetano Previati; Plinio NomeUini; and Camillo Innocenti. For this, of course, we must offer an explanation. In Mario de Maria we have a man who stands for independence, for absolute personal liberty, as to technique, style and interpretation. Ettore Tito, on the other hand, stands for the popular at its finest, for the general apprehension at its best. He is of brilliant technique, of splendid briOj of a joyous freshness, and happy in his choice of normal subjects. Segantini, of course, represents his Divisionisme, as does also Previati, the first in its realism and the sec- ond in its idealism or mysticism. NomeUini, whom we have mentioned as the painter of sunlight, stands also for the mural painters; while the Roman Inno- centi, of a various and magnificent endowment, may be accepted as typical of that very large class, the gifted moderates, men not so original as Maria, not so popular as Tito, not so close to extremism as Gae- tano Previati and his fellow Divisionistes. For some of these names, however, we might as well have sub- stituted others; Pehzza for Previati, Sartorio for 299 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Nomellini, and Arturo Noci for Innocenti. The painters whom we have chosen are merely typical and are not better than their fellows. Nevertheless, hav- ing named them, we venture to let the list stand, think- ing it not arbitrary, not the result of personal feeling or preference. To the names which we have already mentioned in these pages there are names which must certainly be added, and added not hghtly or as if of little con- sequence. Two of these are very great names in the history of the art of modern Italy, the first being that of Paola Sala, the second that of Mose Bianchi. Pie- tro Sala is the president of the Lombard Water-Color Society, with aquarelles which are delicate and grace- ful yet are also of a fine and beautiful vigor, evincing, at times, a certain splendid realism. Sala, moreover, is not exclusively the aquarelhst but is also the painter in oils, his "Prelude to the Storm" and his "Amber Fishers in the Baltic" being among the best achieve- ments of modem Italian painting. His work, in- deed, is various, he being a portraitist as well as a landscapist and the painter of beautiful scenes and bright episodes. He is at his best, however, when his subject includes some form of water, whether a broad expanse of sea or the spring and the sparkle of a fountain. He is hardly less the Luminarist than Previati, and he is grand past master of the rare effects of light, especially of light upon the water and 300 SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING of the united loveliness of water and cloud and sun. In Mose Bianchi we have a man of fine independence, who does not ally himself definitely with the order of the Luminarists but has learned some excellent lessons from it and has used all his learning towards the needs of his genius. Of a large and loose technique which may be termed "courageous," his effects have a cer- tain fulness, a certain bigness and splendor which is fine to look upon. StiU another name is that of Italico Brass, a Venetian, for whom the best subject is Venice. Though occasionally a little fantastic. Brass has a nervous touch and a color at once deli- cate and sparkling. There is also Carozzi, whose mountain-landscapes have a notable breadth and grandeur; and there is the elder Ciardi, who is con- sidered the typical Venetian. We note, too, the clever, half -courtly and half-fantastic Mancini, whose portraits have a certain sparkling hizarrerie; Sartorio, who has painted the frieze for the new House of Par- liament in Rome; and, again, Carlandi as a water- colorist, who paints with mingled delicacy and large- ness. Finally we have the Neapolitan Caprile, whose especial subject is Naples and its varying scenes; we have Migliaro, also a Neapolitan, whose light and shade effects are considered remarkably clever; and a Neapolitan landscapist, Casciaro, who is among the most original and independent of Italians. It is needless, however, to go through a long list 301 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING of names, the painters whom we have mentioned being enough to illustrate modem tendencies — that is, with the exception of the fantastic and most extreme. Among those whom we rank with Matisse in France and with Pablo Picasso in Spain is Umberto Boc- cione, the Futurist, whose "Laughter," reproduced often, is known on two continents but not for any beauty of expression. The aim of this canvas, which is something fairly typical, is to present to the spec- tator a certain scene as it appears at first glance to the person entering the room. It is all a blur of hazy forms, the one distinct element being a woman's face, laughing. This as we take it, is like the vision of one intoxicated, or of one about to swoon, or of one who addresses a crowd, and who, having his mind entirely on himself and his efforts, perceives his lis- tening audience as one great mist or confusion with a single face swimming up to him out of the blur. All this, however, means merely an abnormal experi- ence; it means drimkenness, illness, or unusual con- centration upon self, in none of which states is a man at his normal vision. The Italians, we may observe, have taken to these isms in no great numbers. In concluding this discussion we repeat our two vital statements. The first is the statement to the effect that the modern Spaniards — and especially Zu- loaga and Sorolla, with their followers — have revived the Hispanic tradition, the qualities of which we have PORTEAIT ARTURO NOCI SPANISH AND ITALIAN PAINTING more than once enumerated. The second is that the Italian, of a temper quite different from the Spanish, has accepted the modern ideas, but in so doing has revealed a new aspect of his gift. He has not re- vived his ancient genius in its entirety — for that genius, with the exception of its Venetian element, goes much more to line than to color, while the mod- em genius, we repeat, is actually given to "composing in color." These two, it appears, are our chief and significant points, or, certainly, the points to be em- phasized. In both countries the past twenty years have seen a great awakening, an awakening which promises most ardently for the future. S05 PART SIX MODERN PAINTING IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES MODERN PAINTING IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES IN HOLLAND T^UTCH painting, as all the world knows, is •*"-' eminently the art of Protestantism and is also the art of democracy. The Reformation, in its zeal against the symbol, did away with the faces of the saints, with the figures of Christ and the Mother, with the angels of annunciation and resurrection, with every pictured event in the earthly hfe of Christ and in the varied history of the Church. This was the end of all ecclesiastical art in the North, nor was there any idea of an art that might be religious with- out being included in the term "ecclesiastical." For- bidden to enter the churches, fair Art of the North betook herself to the household and made for herself a shrine among mundane things. The burgher and the noble, with the good vrouw of each; little son and daughter in quaint dress; the man-servant and the maid-servant within the gates — from these did she take her material, and well did she use her forced choice. It is not the object of these pages to defend and celebrate her exile from the Church, nor do we attack the Reformers for ejecting her with such de- termined sternness. It seems quite natural and log- 309 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING ical that these men, in their zeal for the spiritual life, should have thought it necessary to break all relations with the outward and visible shapes of beauty; and it is equally natural and logical that the adherents of the older church, their respect for the symbol so abid- ing, should look upon the break with horror and in- dignation. This matter has long since been threshed out and the intelhgence of two sides has been amply and justly satisfied. Then, too. Art has retiu-ned to the churches; she is once again the handmaid of re- ligion, a Mary with a box of precious ointment, who is welcome even in the Puritan churches, and will be so long as she keeps to her office and does not imduly exalt herself. It is necessary, then, only to make the statement that Art in the North is daughter to the Protestant spirit. She expresses also, and expresses superbly, the core of the democratic spirit, which is individual hberty. She is free and independent, an art of the individual, an art that portrays personality, an art that ranges through the people. From ladies at their music to servants in their most menial ca- pacity, nothing that God has made does she call com- mon or xmclean. Large, broad, independent, and almost incredibly serene, she goes on her way among men — an art of humanity, superbly composed and sane. In comparing the art of the present with that of the famous past we note the fact that landscape-work SIO IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES and the painting of interiors form two- parallel streams, as in the latter part of the great seven- teenth century. The landscapists are in the ma- jority, landscape being an especial form of modern expression; hut the modern Dutchman, men hke Israels, Neuhys, and the new de Hoog, are painting the in-door life, as did Vermeer, de Hoog the elder, van Ostade, Metsu, Terborch, and Jan Steen. Por- traiture, the painting of the imaginary figure, the painting of the idyl, of the set scene, of the set situa- tion—all this, it is true, is practised in modern Hol- land, but in the two channels just indicated flows the main stream of modem Dutch energy. We must admit here, however, that portraiture is an art which is well beloved of the modern Dutchman. Israels is a portrait-painter of rare sympathy and insight, get- ting at personahty, at the real and often complex natm*e of the sitter. The Maris brothers are por- traitists as well as painters of landscape; Jan Pieter Veth is distantly a follower of Holbein; Therese Schwartze, the painter of Queen Wilhehnina, ranges from a feeling purely Dutch to a species of modern German; and Tony van Alphen, another woman, is in some measure a romantic realist. Nevertheless, it is not in portraiture but in the painting of landscape that the modern Dutch genius rises to its height. The landscape of James and Matthew Maris, of Weissen- bruch, Israels, Bosboom, and Mauve — ^this, to Eu- 311 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING rope at large, represents the achievement of the Hol- lander, the other forms being of less importance because, apparently, less representative. It might be supposed, perhaps — arguing from a casual and popular notion of Dutch stability and clear-sightedness — that in Dutch landscape, and in Dutch painting generally; there would be no roman- tic qualities, nothing of the suggested or suggestive, and little or nothing of the interpretative. This, however, would be but an idle guessing, based, as we have said, on a casual and popular notion. The Dutchman, hke all other Northerners, the English- man not excepted, has a deep and very rich vein of romanticism. It is the Southerner — the Italian, the Frenchman, the Spaniard — ^who has most of the clas- sic blood. The Northern races, with their cold and even icy exterior, have hidden fires which far out- flame the Southerner's. The Dutch landscape, hke the landscape of every other coimtry, is at times mere realism, mere faithful representation; but at times it is eminently romantic, with a mystery about it that is far more mysterious than that of Pere Corot. We may take, for example, the work of Weissenbruch. He gives us the scene "as it is," but this is something far more inclusive than it appears to the eye of the unimaginative. He gets at the heart of the place, he informs our minds with the sentiment aroused within his own. A modern by his treatment of atmos- 3ia WINTER AFTERNOON CARLO FORNARA IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES phere and light, he is of this very moment in his effort to translate the spirit of his scene. Weissenbrueh's work, moreover, is landscape pure and simple; other men put animals and peasants in their canvases, but this artist paints the scene only — ^with a feehng of that great wind, or that calm and quiet air, which wraps the whole scene like a breath of the divine. It is so with Anton Mauve, though Mauve is a lesser man. Sweet, poetic, tender, his landscapes do not deserve the word "spiritual" but the smaller word "spirituelle." They are not mere literal reproduc- tions. They are lovely and emotional renderings of a few moods of nature — gentle moods and kindly, ex- pressed in simple lines and broad spaces, with mellow lights and with the homely figures of animals dear to man and appealing to his pity and his affection. Mauve is no hteralist ; he has been accused, indeed, of being too lyric in his utterance and of forcing the note of tenderness. For this we have no answer here, or, if any, the answer which we make for Lippo Lippi when his critics accuse him of this fault. "At any rate," we say, "he reaches his audience." The whole world loves Lippo Lippi, and a very large part of it loves Anton Mauve. A Dutch Corot, the Fra An- gelico of the sheep-cote, the meadow, the barn, he is indeed sweet and half -mystical — ^but who, pray, shall rail at him for his sweetness or his mystery? This same romantic quality we see in Matthew 315 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING Maris, whose work is not wholly with landscape and who paints the figure as often as the scene of out-door beauty. Maris lived part of his time in Dreamland, from whence he sent forth shapes as vague and as shadowy as Eugene Carri^re's. These forms are at once elusive and montunental. His "Ox-Cart," for instance, is not an ox-cart or some one ox-cart but the ox-cart; it is all the simple, laborious, primitive ve- hicles of the world, symboUzing a simple, laborious, primitive life. So his "Dreamer" is not this dreamer or that, not Joseph nor Joan of Arc, but a Rodinesque figure which stands for the universal dream. Then, again, we have this quality in the great mas- ter, Josef Israels. He paints, hke the other Dutch- men, the common things of life. He paints the coun- try roads, the poor old women and old men, peasant lads and girls, humble cottagers and quiet little seam- stresses ; but he gives us the pathos of such lives, and the short and simple annals of the poor are written in these unpretending canvases. This, of course, is merely the modern idea, which we know too well to celebrate. What we insist on is the element of the spiritual. This is no mere fidelity to outward fact; it is, in its way, a real interpretation with a genuine appeal. It is so, again, with Bosboom, whether in his painting of a landscape or in his painting of some great and dim interior of a church. This last is not always romantic in appearance, some churches being 316 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES Protestant and simple; but the painting itself is full of poetic spirit, of a sympathy which is pro- foundly romantic. In briefly discussing this quality, which is some- times spirituality and sometimes only high imagina- tion, we have named five men of the seven pillars of modern Dutch painting. When we speak of James Maris and of William Maris — ^the first of whom is among the most various and brilliant of modem Dutchmen, the latter one of the most gentle and se- rene — we have made up the list of the seven, upon whom, if she had no other painters, their country might well rest her fame. We have spoken, however, of a quaKty which appeals most strongly to the lay- men, and not of qualities more technical. We have maintained in this book, though the fact is self-evident and needs no statement, that the dis- tinction of modem painting is its conquest of light, of atmosphere — and this is, indeed, the achievement of these painters. So far as the landscapists are con- cerned, it is their first reason for being. Of their broad northern dxmes, of their meadows and brilliant tuhp-fields, of their sparkling inlets and the great solemn stretches of their sea, these elements of hght and air are the chief and most imperative. The Dutchman, by the very make-up of his landscape, must be the conqueror of the light and the air, for in the aspect of no other country do the two play such 317 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING important parts. It is not surprising, therefore, that these men should show a modern knowledge; the na- ture of their subject is something which at once de- mands it and breeds it. Among the men whom we have mentioned, then, this conquest is a foregone conclusion; to paint such scenes is to paint light and air, water and sky, and the thousand reflections involved in their commingling. James Maris, the oldest of the group, does it with the greatest brilhancy, Matthew Maris with the greatest glamour, Weissenbruch most spiritually, Anton Mauve with most tenderness and sweetness — but each one, in greater measure or less, is the master of atmos- pheric efi'ects, of the wonderful mingling of light and air. To consider these men and their achievement is to consider the larger part of modem Dutch painting. In William Roelofs, a pioneer of the nineteenth cen- tury, we have the master of a broad and noble land- scape, a sort of Dutch Rousseau, a man whose work is influenced by Barbizon. In Jongkind we have an- other independent, a man who painted for himself and who broke a path by the force of his own love for nature — a painter of flat land and bright water, who stands between the old school and the new, as does the French Boudin with his lovely and temperate sea- pictures. Albert Neuhys, whose work is admired in America, is a follower of Israels, with a like sense for 318 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES color though with a looseness that is not quite so satis- fying. Mesdag is especially the painter of the sea, of a vision essentially northern and of a certain fine and powerful northern poetry. From De Bock, whose early work recalls Corot, we get a vigorous as well as a charming landscape, with the birch-trees of Holland shining white among the green. In Johannes Bos- boom we have a lesser Israels, who suggests, hke that gifted Dutch Jew, the tie between the people and the soil; in Zilcken we have a landscapist who tends to the vivid, to the very picturesque and even to the dramatic; and in Bernard de Hoog a clear-sighted painter of interiors, who follows with respectful inde- pendence the wonderful tradition of his elders — though the distance is great, indeed, from the cool and masterly tightness of Pieter de Hoog to the loose and almost fluid manner of his follower. There is, however, another and a very diif erent in- fluence at work in modem Holland, this being no other than the influence of her own Eastern posses- sions. She is aff^ected in some measure by a sort of Oriental vision, of which the chief exponent is Jan Toorop, who was once a realist but is now strictly and brightly impressionistic. Toorop has a decorative intent which is probably quite natural but which chimes, most admirably, with the modem trend towards decoration. In Jan Thorn Prikker we have a pseudo-Primitive who is deeply afi'ected by the art 319 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING of the Javanese and their kind, as are also Djisselhof and Der Kinderen. Jan Toorop is the leader — "a Dutch Burne-Jones" some one has named him, and he, like the English Bume-Jones, is a vivid and fasci- nating illustrator. He is also a worker in ivory and precious metals, with a certain exotic touch that re- calls some quaint old stories of Holland and her East- ern possessions. Even more exotic is the younger man, Prikker, who wavers between de Chavannes and East Indian ornament. Der Kinderen and Djissel- hof are by temperament more illustrators than paint- ers, but both of these men, to quote from a learned German critic, "work with exoticism as if they had never known anything else." They work, moreover, with all the fidelity, the detail, the "peculiar homeli- ness" of the Little Dutch Masters. In Holland, as in all other coxmtries, "Extremism" has a group of followers — and Vincent Van Gogh, we remember, was a Dutchman. This movement, how- ever, has a definite center in Paris and has been dis- cussed at sufficient length in our chapter on modem French painting. It is enough, just here, to say that this exotic. Oriental tendency is not unconnected with Extremism — but he who runs may read the connec- tion and read it without any glossary! 320 IN BELGIUM IN the art of modem Belgium there is a mingling of the Gallic and Teutonic which, to say the least, is interesting to see. There is, first, a good deal of Seurat's spot-Impressionism, Van Rysselherghe being the Belgian leader of this Impressionism and among the most successful of all the pmntillistes. Among others of this persuasion are A. W. Finch, partly of English blood, Henri Van de Velde, Anna Boch, and George Lemmen. All of these men, however, have something of the old Flemish slowness and sureness, which makes for conservatism, and they do not out- spot Seurat. They belonged to the "Societe des XX," founded about 1884, and known since 1894 as "La Libre Aesthetique." Included in this Twenty are names now very famous — such as Felicien Hops the distinguished etcher, half diabolic in his subjects and effects; Dario de Regoyos, of Spanish blood and akin by tradition to Zuloaga; Jan Toorop, of whom we have already spoken; Henri de Brakeleer, painter of interiors; Paul Dubois, a young sculp- tor, now of so many conquests; and, not least, Con- stantin Meunier, that great Belgian sculptor who has 321 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING only recently laid down his chisel. Not all of these — as the list itself shows — ^were Belgian by blood or of Belgian extraction or residence, but the foreigners were the exceptions. Among these young men there was enthusiasm for all things new and promising, and some of them, now old and famous, can recall with what delight the ideas of Monet and Seurat were wel- comed. They were balanced, it is true, by the cool- ness and sureness of the north, but Paris had lessons to give and Belgium took them ardently. Of later years the Belgian of a certain extreme order has turned to ornament; but so, as we have just pointed out, has the Dutchman of Toorop's order and so has the Scandinavian of the order of WiUumsen. The leader here is Van de Velde, whose passion is for flat surfaces but of whom it has been said that "his motives have something in common with the elas- ticity of a motor-car and recall such things as levers, pistons, and sections of machinery," Van de Velde and his kind are distinctly the followers of William Morris, or, rather, are distantly akin to him, preach- ing the idea of the beauty of utility as well as its con- verse — ^but in Morris's plans there was no distaste for the picture, while in the plans of these particular moderns there is a barbaric insistence, or, at least, an Oriental insistence upon ornament as such. The modern period of Belgian art, however, is not only the immediate present; we have an artistic Bel- K O Q i> O >iJ W H I— I > wl^^B^^^^BiBtmMi^BB^K ' IIH BHH^^ffi|^pffiB iPfn ^^^HdIBI^mP „.i r . ' ■■■ ' 'y:ivM.JLi-cJHKdiJiJHHi ^^^^^^^^|P^' ?-y; . K/'^. #lj "'^•^ ^^H "'"'■, " -''a^l Ht^^^'^-v; ' ' 'W^P-V- ^^^^^^^^^^^Hp^ T|^BfK«^ w ' '%,^ ^^^^^^^^^HHDj^^'^'^ -t^l^B^h^BMiBmi ^^K' .^l^B I -^^B _/ IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES gium long before the coming of Expressionism and Primitivism, and long before the rise of Claude Monet and the Impressionists. In the late Alfred Stevens, a "painter of the mode" and one of the most exquisite of artists, we have a Belgian whom the world delights to honor and a man who, in his own sphere, is very nearly inimitable. The dainty, delicate, brilliant feminine is the subject of his dainty, delicate and even brilliant canvases — canvases that are perfectly fin- ished, with surfaces smooth and gem-like, to suit, as Birge Harrison points out, the smoothness of woman's satin and her velvet, the gleam of her ruby and her emerald. Stevens let Impressionism go by; he was content to be hke the Little Dutch Masters, to re- semble Vermeer and to bring up a far thought of Memlinc and his brilUantly perfect accessories. A name which we connect with his — ^that is, for brilliance and for discipline — is the name of ifimile Wauters, an able and accomphshed portrait-painter who upholds the Northern tradition of portraiture. Among the Belgian Impressionists we have paint- ers of deep poetic feeling and great ardor, men who are eager for hfe and its expression. Such a painter is fimile Claus, an intimate of Nature and deeply in- debted to Turner ; such are the two Wytsmans, land- scapists; Henri Evenepoel, an imaginative reaUst; Baertsoen, the painter of street-scenes; the mystical Fernand Knopff ; Wagemans, who is best at the por- THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING trayal of character; Morren, with a vibrance akin to Monet's ; Eeckhoudt, especially the master of out-door light ; GUsoul and Marcette, one a painter of the har- bors, the other of the great sea itself; Donnay, whose landscapes are vivid and even dramatic; Charles de Groux and Leon Frederic, both of whom are painters of the poor; and Henri de Brakeleer, master of inte- riors as well as of vibrating light. There is also Laer- mans, the realist, and Emil Vloors, who can paint the mode as charmingly as Stevens, though with a brush that is looser than the brush of that clear and sparkling master. 326 IN SCANDINAVIA IN modem Scandinavia, it would seem, there are two very clear and different currents. In the one are such men as Anders Zom, Carl Larsson, and Fritz Thaulow; in the other such men as Munthe, Willumsen, and Skovgaard. The first group, thor- oughly racial though learning much from Paris, is a group that aims at reahsm and goes straight to Na- ture, transcribing without affectation though often with a fine northern poetry. The second group is de- liberately primitive; it nms to archaisms and its manner is "a Northern Pre-Raphaelitism." Eduard Munch has combined the two ideals, though this painter as we see him, has no least notion of what he is doing but works like a child or a honey-bee. He has something to say which is half -civilized and half primitive, and he says it in the form which is suited to it, the only form which comes to his consciousness. Then — ^behold! the thing is done, but done without volition. The other men are conscious and dehberate in the combining of new shapes with old. In the work of the Danish Willumsen we have Egyptian, old Danish, and various other forms; in Skovgaard's THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING there is an early Italian touch ; in Munthe's a certain Orientalism; but none of this is real. It is, rather, a beautiful hodge-podge, or, to put it more gently, a modern mosaic made up of various bits which have no vital relation to each other and are literally "put" together. The first group is modern in the best and highest sense: by its treatment of light and air, by its democratic choice of subject, and by its imagina- tive realism. The second group is of men ultra- modern, their modernity being that of the moment and extreme. It is a mixture of some sort of primi- tive — Egyptian, Etruscan, or Florentine, but always decorative — with the modern consciousness of life and with a number of modern trickeries, supreme among which is the flat and shadowless painting which is consonant, presumably, with a choice of primitive forms. This, we need hardly say, has something of the pose about it, something of a deliberate and posi- tive artifice. Nevertheless, it means distinctly the new; it intimates new blood, new interest, new desire and new experiment ; and, as having this significance, we must give it all due credit. The term "Scandinavian," employed with relation to art and its character, is a term which is not to be divided. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, so far as artistic expression is concerned, may be ranked to- gether and discussed as a whole. The art of Scandi- navia, indeed, is typical of all modern art in the North 328 CONVALESCENCE EINAR NIELSEN IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES — in which region the influence of Paris is less, now-a- days, than the influence of an archaistic Teutonism. It is a fact of great significance that the tendency in Scandinavia is to the art of textiles, the art of ceram- ics, the art of wood-carving, the art of illustration — in short, to the arts which especially mean design and are not pictorial. In such arts this archaism ex- presses itself more fully and more naturally than in painting, and the revival of such is at once a result and a feeding of this revival of the primitive. It must not be thought, however, that pseudo- Primitivism, with all its fascination, is outdoing or out-ranking the saner forms of art. In Zorn, Thaulow, the Bobergs, Nielsen, Larsson, Liljefors, Fjaestad, Johansen, Count Sparre, Prince Eugen, Hesselbom, Ekstrom, Bergh and Lindstrom we have men of breadth and sanity, of spirit and restraint, of Uberty and obedience to law. The genius of these men, we must note, runs especially to the painting of landscape, though such painters as Zorn, Prince Eugen and Count Sparre are portraitists as welL The fondness for landscape, it would seem, has gotten into the blood of the modern Northerner — ^by the road, possibly, of much modem preaching of fresh air and a return to nature. The older men, in Holland at least, could boast of some giant landscapists — of Ruis- dael, Hobbema, Wouwermans, Wynants and Van de Velde — ^but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING have developed a craze for Nature and have made of the out-door world an actual fetich, a part of whose worship is insincere. This insincerity, however, is confined almost wholly to life and literature, and is not to be foimd in land- scape painting. The snow-banks and streams of Fritz Thaulow, Fjaestad's icicled fairy-land, and the sterner reahties of Prince Eugen are as real as the country itself, as sincere as the snow and frost are white. These men, it is needless to say, are all in the modern struggle with hght, theirs being the special problems which are offered by the light on perennial white surfaces, by the light on a milHon points of ice, by the light reflected from streams of dull, chill water so darkened by the whiteness on their banks. The modern attack upon the secrets of light — ^we repeat ourselves, but the truth bears repeating — is at once the cause and the result of so much landscape-paint- ing. The out-door world bred the struggle, and for the struggle the out-door world gives the chief suste- nance. The charm of Nature is perennial, inex- haustible ; she renews herself for each generation, and each, in turn, finds its own phrases for her beauty. Yet we note, again — for we cannot do otherwise — that even on these big spirits the decorative takes a strong hold. Note, for instance, the "Convales- cence," by Nielson, which is reproduced in these pages. This is at once something real and something IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES exceedingly decorative— but chosen, it is evident, much less for reality than for decoration. One sees here, by-the-way, the Northern touch of melancholy, the brooding and introspective quality that marks the Northern temperament. The stillness of these faces, suggesting a certain flatness of spirit, is in keeping with the quiet, flat, decorative scheme, and the whole thing appears as a remarkable composition — in which the physical and the mental are absolutely and curi- ously identical. We cannot think of anything else in painting which so combines the two — except, indeed, Carpaccio's "Venetian Courtesans," which is one of the miracles of its order. Of the painters mentioned in this list, Thaulow, Munthe and Wereskiold are Norsemen while Wil- lumsen and Johansen are Danes. The other names, however, are chiefly the names of Swedish painters, for the good reason that the Swede leads the North in a sane and healthy art. This statement will meet with contradiction from certain quarters, for Swedish art, to some minds, is purely "a peasant-art." To combat this idea we have not sufiicient space — ^but landscape-painting is never "peasant art," nor can it be justly called so by even the most finical of critics. It is true that Carl Larsson, who stands for the coun- try in general, has urged his compatriots to be their true selves — ^to be "clumsy rather than elegant," to dress in the furs and woolens that match their heavy THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING bodies, and to wear "so-called gaudy peasant colors" which shall show in vivid contrast with the cold white snow-banks and the forests of solemn pine. Yet this, as we take it, is not preaching peasant-art ; it is merely a preachment of propriety, an argument for fitness and good taste. What he urges on his people is what we find, largely, in the art of Scandinavia, or, rather, in that part of it which is opposed to pseudo-Primi- tivism and stands for imaginative realism. With an element that is ominously fantastic and even weird — akin to Extremism, akin to the work of the "Expres- sionists" — the art of Scandinavia has yet a healthy body. To put it more clearly, she has a large nimi- ber of sane and high-minded painters, for whom the portrayal of their own country and people is a matter of first importance. IN AUSTRIA— HUNGARY— BOHEMIA SO far as German Austria is concerned — ^which, of course, means chiefly Vienna — its art is close to Berlin and to Munich. The Viennese, however, is distinctly more personal, more baroque, more vivid than the Berlin man and therefore closer kin to the Miinchener. In the art of painting Vienna finds her metier, her rich and splendid temper being matched by a rich and splendid art. Here, as so markedly in the North, there are two evident currents or forces: the force which is made up of modern Impressionism, plus certain inalienable traditions, and the force which is a mixture of a decorative Primitivism, and other allied elements. In the first current a dominant figure is Rudolf von Alt, who began under the old regime but embraced new teachings and has led the modem attack upon light. Another is Mimkacsy, the Himgarian who brought into Germany the realism of Courbet. Mimkacsy was wholly German in feeling, and his realistic painting of Biblical scenes was once very popular with the German element. He is dismissed, now-a-days, with a smile and a little shrug; but he had a strong sense for romantic composition and a THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING color-sense which is not so very heavy when consid- ered in connection with his time. Another name of the mid-century is that of Hans Makart, a loud, fat, and extravagant colorist who is long since discredited but who helped, hke Piloty, to estabhsh the sense of color and romance in a world that had once been dominated by Winckehnann, Carstens, and line. A fourth of the group is Pettenkofen, the painter of a far and sunny East, while a fifth is Hans Canon, a follower of Rubens. We may leave these men with bare mention; they belong, with the exception of the versatile Alt, to a period immediately ante-dating the modern. The Secession — a branch of that rebellion against Academism which has organized itself all over Eu- rope — was led by this same Rudolf Alt, that splendid old man of young blood ; but for a type of Secession art and principles we cannot do better than to take the work of Bematzik, a painter recently dead, whose name means much to modern Austria. Bematzik is highly various, being a portraitist, a painter of land- scape and of the figure, and a mural decorator of no small distinction. On looking at his work we feel at once the largeness and the somewhat sombre beauty of his vision; we are aware of his art as exceedingly poetic; and, if it seem bizarre to the Westerner, he will spell Bernatzik's name and recognize the note of something alien, a something which makes for the 336 02 ^^ « 02 H 02 O 1-5 a S o P O W H IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES fantastic. Bernatzik's work has a certain two-fold quality that marks and even distinguishes the painting of so many modems. It is mystical and it is decora- tive — and so, too, as we have said throughout this book, is the larger part of our very modern painting. As far, however, as the decorative and the mystical may claim an actual school among the Austrians, the leader is not Bernatzik but Gustav Klimt. Klimt has somewhat the feeling of Moreau; his world is the exotic and the gorgeous, and he, like Moreau, gives a notion of jewelled breathlessness, a notion of brilUant silence. Klimt's order, we may say, is made up of Impressionism, Primitivism, and a quality that we define as an exaggerated reliance on color. Of this order he is the extreme, Basch, who ranks near him, being decorative but not so intense, while Jettmar, another big figure of the Secession, is decorative but much less extravagant. Jettmar has, moreover, an element of realism, though this realism is always poetic. Large, rich and deep-toned, Jettmar recalls to some extent the superb elder painters, though he has, of course, that pecuUar restlessness which belongs to modern work in all the arts and is something ex- actly opposed to the old-time serenity and quiet. In Jettmar there is a hint of Rubens and a vague re- minder of the Venetian Tintoretto, mingled with a something that we choose to call barbaric, though for want of a better and a more fastidious term. His 339 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING "Hercules and the Hesperidae," for example, has more than a touch of the Venetian, his light-and-dark effects recalling the stupendous scenes of Tintoretto's in the Scuola di San Rocco. For portraitiu-e the name of an Hungarian, Laszlo, has stood all the past quarter-century; yet Laszlo, we think, is decidedly less Austrian than cosmo- politan. He is a sort of Austrian Sargent, with much of Sargent's hrUliant accomplishment, and with something of Sargent's downrightness and his mun- dane spirit. We fancy that many Americans, if they knew as well the portraits by Lajos Mark of Buda- pesth, would put Mark a little beyond Laszlo — ^not for accomplishment, indeed, but for charm and for personal appeal. Laszlo does not move us; he states very brilliantly, but with no great suggestiveness and with nothing at all of the glamorous. Mark, on the other hand, stands for romance, our modem romance which shows itself even in portraiture. Laszlo is classic, he is complete; but in Mark we have an art that is far more human and imperfect and therefore far the more poignant. Among other portraitists are the aged but active Angeli, Leopold Horowitz, Victor Sharf, Arthur von Ferraris, Victor Shauffer, Josef Jungwirth, Jehudo Epstein, Joseph Koppay, and Nikolaus Schottenstein, all of whom are painters of dignity and composure as well as of power. In landscape painting these people excel, and they 340 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES give us, moreover, the feeling of their country — of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia. Very notable here are Hans Larwin, Anton Novak, Rudolf Zuittner, Hugo Baar of Moravia, Rudolf Bem of Bohemia, Vidovic of Dalmatia, Hans Ranzoni, Richard Harflinger and Maximilian Lenz. From most of these painters, as from their German kin, we get landscapes smacking strongly of the racial. There is little here of light- ness or of gayety, for this is Nature in her soberest appearance. Severe in her robe of winter white, not too rich even in the summer-time, and of an austere loveliness in the spring, she offers but few moods of airiness or of laughter, and few of a classic feeling. These men, like the rest of the painting-world, are endeavoring to express to us the idea or spirit of the landscape — and this, we may say, is frequently accom- plished. Very often, of late years, the landscape is decorative in feeling and selected for such a quality; there are snow-scenes here which are as decorative in their chill and solemn beauty as the roseate landscapes of East, the rich fantasies of Mostyn, the delicate, park-like places of Adrian Stokes, or the exquisite woodlands of Macaulay- Stevenson. In this art, how- ever, we note very little of the new and modern idyllic. Now and then — as in a recent "Song of Spring" by Maximilian Lenz, and in Wacik's Pre- Raphaehtish "Wonder-Bird" — we have some faint suggestions of it, but, on the whole, these Austrians THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING and Hungarians seem too weighty for it. There is something here — some strangely solemn element — that makes distinctly against the idyllic. Vienna is one of the brightest of bright capitals, but in the Austrian blood, as in that of the countries near by, there is surely some strain of heavy-heartedness, or of a seriousness with which the world of idyllic dream is not consonant. Of the Austrian's figure-painting and of his imag- inary scenes we have, as yet, said nothing — in part, perhaps, for the reason that his chief and especial ten- dencies are to landscape and portraiture. We may note Walter Hampel's interiors as things of both daintiness and vigor, and such figures as his "Pompa- dour," shown a few years ago at the spring exhibit of the Hagenbund in Vienna. Vaclav Maly, of Bo- hemia, we mark as a strong and admirable painter of street-scenes; and the late Lajos Bruck, an Him- garian of great repute, we recall as a landscapist of rare power, a painter of scenes with figures, and one who achieved the effect of atmosphere at a time when this effect was not at aU a matter of importance. Among the Vienna Secessionists we note Heinrich Gollab, whose "Gypsy Women," exhibited in 1913, was remarkably faithful and suggestive of the hfe and character of the nomads. We noted, then, such things as Krausz's "Intermezzo," which struck us as something half-German and half-English, a story- *%«=" ^*%v SWEDISH PEASANT GIRL IN WINTER COSTUME ANDERS L. ZORN IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES telling picture, which is not very common with the modern Viennese or even with the less sophisticated Hungarians. We may repeat, just here, that the genius of these allied races is especially for the paint- ing of landscape. IN RUSSIA THE art of modern Russia has been likened to its literature, but the likeness, it would seem, is much more in subject than in technique. The effect of Tolstoi, it is true, corresponds at times with that of Verestchagin and at times with that of Ilya Repin, but this is almost wholly a matter of feeling. The arts, in fact, are so unlike — one static, the other narra- tive — that parallels are dangerous and foohsh. Im- pressionism, as we said in our opening pages, is a form of expression which has been used in the nine- teenth and the twentieth century by nearly all the arts — by hterature, music, sculpture, painting, danc- ings — and in this, of course, there exists a bond of union between painting and literature. Otherwise, these resemblances are but far-fetched and largely imaginary. The case of art in Russia — ^that is, of modem art — is not very diff^erent from that of other coimtries. Somewhat slow to receive new impressions and new doctrines, she is now as quick of response as any other, and the modem spirit in its various forms is at work within her borders, especially in Saint 346 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES Petersburg, and even in the very Russian Moscow. Modern art, we may say, begins in Russia with Verestsehagin. A hater of war, he painted it and painted it truthfully. "War," he might have said with General Sherman, "is nothing else than hell." So, undoubtedly, he rendered it — ^with a vision of ravage and death before which the symbolism of Stuck's "War" is a mere childish bauble and fancy! While not a great painter, and really something of a poseur, he led the Russia of his immediate period with these big realistic canvases, the new ideas of Russia being absolutely suited to his savage yet sol- emn battle-scenes. His contemporary, Ilya Repin, who is much greater as an artist, gives us stark real- ism in his scenes of Russian life. A student in Paris, he is yet completely Russian and his pictures "read" like pages of national history. The fact that the Slav has not been very produc- tive is traceable to his political and social situation. Being socially miserable and rebellious, he has been hitherto unfitted for the production of great art — art being the result of a happy and prosperous con- dition and alien to all discomposure, whether that of the state or that of the individual. This does not mean, however, that art is dormant in Russia, nor that Russian painters are not abreast of the times. It is merely a statement in the comparative and one which we leave without further comment. So far as 347 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING organization is concerned, the Russian painters have had, for many years, their "Soyouz" or Union, and this society has marched with modern theory and with modem attainment. In the year 1911 the event of the Russian art- world was the break in this Soyouz. It is said to have been without just cause and was attributed to personal friction, but with that we have nothing to do and we note it here merely as the cause of the formation of another society, Mir Isskousstva, or "The World of Art." In the Soyouz remain most of the Moscow art- ists; to Mir Isskousstva belong most of the St. Petersburg men, the two Russian cities bearing somewhat the same relation to each other as do the two German cities, Munich and Berlin. Moscow is the more Russian and conservative, St. Petersburg distinctly the more European and more cosmopolitan. It is the object of this chapter to speak of main cur- rents, and we therefore say of this group only that it is the result of nineteenth century tendencies. It has been led by Constantin Somoff, who is now the chief seceder and who has for his allies such men as Lance- ray, Dobuzhinsky, Benois, and Kustodieff. The head of the Moscow men — though he has gone with the new group — is Seroff, the portraitist, and we may consider these five or six, with a few others of equal abihty, as leaders of modem Russia. With Somoff, of St. Petersburg, the chief themes 348 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES are modern, to illustrate the modern method of treat- ment. Some time ago he painted his famous "Lady in Blue," and he now follows it with his "Sleeping Lady," his "Fire-works," a study in lights, "The Kiss," and a night-piece, "Dame et Arlequin," all of which lend themselves generously to modern tech- nique. In the past, however, he has painted things of a much more serious order, and this recent choice of subject illustrates the fact that Russia, like the rest of the world, is attracted by the "stunt," the experiment with paint. In Seroff we have a man who is especially the painter of portraits and, whose work has both dignity and modernity. The gift of Benois is chiefly for the historic genre, while that of Roehrich is many-sided and especially decorative. Among others we note the portraitist Pasternak, who leads his order in his coimtry and is an artist of both substance and charm ; we note the realist Lanceray, who treats Russia as Menzel did Germany and paints its ordinary sights with great brilliancy; then there is Sapunoff, a lover of brilliant color and therefore a painter of flower- pieces and bright social idyls; Paul Ress, whose snow- scenes are charged with the northern cold and still- ness, and whose spirit is in accord with the spirit of the sea; and various other landscapists, though land- scape-work is no longer popular. Especially do we note Serge Ivanoff, a painter lately dead, who was S49 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING master of a plein-air realism, which he brought to the painting of modem Russian history and of life as he saw it among the Russian peasantry. Ivanoff re- turns quite courageously to the story-telling genre, and gives us hints of pathos, terror, and passion, but all this he does with real artistry, with a profound sense for the technical side of his art. Akin to him, but more of a Primitive in expression, was Riabush- kine, another young painter recently gone. Riabush- kine had the rehgious feeling and the racial feeling mingled, and there were times when he was almost decorative in his unconscious, stiff primitivism. As opposed to the reaUsm of Ivanoff and his kind stands the decorative order, which has been led by Michael Vroubel, a pronounced romantic with a very remarkable sense of decoration. Vroubel, however, was not narrow, as are so many men of a decorative turn, but showed a great variety of motive, taking suggestions alike from the Greek and the Goth, from Riissia and Italy and India. Vroubel and Ivanoff form an excellent contrast; the former, as we have said, is romantic and decorative, while Ivanoff is the imaginative realist and the painter of the Russian people — of the peasant, the Siberian emigrant, the gypsy and the traveller. Among names which we have not yet mentioned, and one which is both honorable and significant, is that of Victor Vasnetsoff, a painter of the older gen- 350 m CO H-t > ID ;> H D t» O t?3 W ►T3 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES eration who has never grown old but keeps his youth and vigor. Vasnetsoff takes many of his themes from Russian myth and history, but he is, perhaps, more fortunate as a portraitist than as the painter of scenes or of history. Other names are those of Maliutin, a portraitist of much sympathy; Ryloff, who is espe- cially the painter of the North Russian landscape, which he renders with great feeling and power; and Nikolai Fechin, whose vogue at the late Carnegie Institute exhibit was enormous, and who appears as influenced very deeply by French Impressionism, yet, at the heart, a painter profoundly Russian. These, however, might be changed to other names equally important, and it is useless to swell the list of painters in a study so very brief and general. With such names as these we have indicated the work of modern Russia. This, like the work of Europe in general, is divided between the ideals of Impressionism — in various forms — and the newer ideal that means, not transcription nor representation, but something purely decorative. Russia was a little slow, perhaps, to give up older ideals, but she is now in touch with the rest of modem Europe. 353 IN FINLAND THE art of Finland, like its literature, takes its subjects largely from the history of the people and the scenes of the country. Both literature and painting are of modern birth, for Finnish art is the re- sult of that comparative liberty which was announced to the Fins by Alexander I., and of the sense of peace and security which followed it. The nineteenth cen- tury saw a Finnish Renascence, when the ancient songs of the people were gathered up by Elias Lonnrot and fashioned into the Kalevala, the great Finnish epic; when the tales of Finnish prowess and heroism were made into "Ensign Stal's Verses" ; and when Mimia Canth, a peasant woman, became the pioneer of a peasant drama. In the field of painting there are several great names: Edelfelt, Jarnefelt, Gallen, and Victor Westerholm, Jarnefelt being the leader of portraiture, Gallen perhaps the greatest and most accomplished painter, Westerholm the best exponent of Impressionism, and Edelfelt a construc- tive force. From Axel Gallen we have a number of the Finnish legends — for instance, that excel- lent triptych for which he takes the heroine of the 354 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES Kalevala and her aged lover from whom she flees; or, again, the figure of the villain, Kullervo, a piece of imaginative realism, the treatment of which recalls Holman Hmit. Through most of his work we see the dreamy spirit of the ancient North, a spirit that is always romantic and can even he harsh and terrible. In the landscapist, Westerhohn, who is as great in his Finland as Gallen, we have a poet of the north- ern snows and one who gets at the meaning and the spiritual effect of his scene. Structurally rigid are some of his pictures, but so, indeed, is the scene itself. The lines of the naked trees, the lines of the stone or wooden cottages, the straight, stark lines of the canals — all these mean a rigidity, a gauntness, which is abso- lutely Northern both as to spirit and as to physical appearance. Then, too, Westerhohn gets the North- em stillness, the effect of the long winter day with its few hours of half-light; he gets the look of cold, so solemn, so intense, so perfect; and he gets the sub- stantial look of the little houses themselves, which seem to be built against Winter. Westerhohn is dis- tinctly the Impressionist, the head of plein-airism in his own country, and he knows the myriad lights and shadows on that land of snow and ice. He knows, also, the crystal air of the short Finnish summer-time, when "The Land of a Thousand Lakes" is in her brief joyance. This plein-airism, of course, means French influence, leading to a close study of natvu-e; but a 355 THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING German training, gotten at Diisseldorf, gave him a thoroughness and an exactness which have kept his plein-airism from going to extremes. It was Edelfelt, however, who led the modern Finn in a painting of sufficient excellence to be comparable with the painting of other countries. It was he who first appeared in the modern struggle with light, and it was he who showed, more than any other painter, that a French technique may exist side by side with a passionate feeling for country and with an emo- tional subject. Edelfelt, by the way, modernizes his religious subject in the fashion of the German Uhde; his Magdalen, for instance, is a KareUan peasant-girl, his Christ like some glorified Finnish shepherd. In Jarnefelt we have a man who is the painter not only of portraits but of landscapes, and one who is distinctly the colorist and is also more subjective than his fellows. As a Luminarist Jarnefelt finds his best subject in the now forbidden tree-burning, which was once a common sight in Finland and the very nature of which — all fire, smoke and dusky atmos- phere — was suited to the demands of Luminarism. More radical than he is Rissanen, who, in feeling, is the Finnish Courbet, a painter of intentional brutal- ity. He practically denies, like Courbet, the exist- ence of the ideal as a finer sort of truth, painting only the common and the commonplace, although with a glowing color and a very evident force. 356 IN THE LESSER COUNTRIES Of the art of Finland in general we may say that it is consciously an art of the country. In this it is like the art of Scandinavia, which has turned from Paris back to its own Teutonic self. From French painting Scandinavia has learned many lessons, but these lessons it is now using to bring forth a national art — even the craze for the decorative taking its forms from the history and the genius of the race. It is so with Finland; her painting tells her story, indi- cates her character, reveals her ideals. The romantic quality of the North, the mystery of its forests, the simplicity of its people, their customs, behefs and superstitions — something of all this is reflected in the work of Finnish painters. With Ihese few hnes on a new and vigorous art we may fitly close our study of modern painting. Be- ginning with the well-known art of France — so fin- ished, so nearly perfect in form, and so markedly sophisticated — ^it is right that we should close with the art of a country which is practically new in the modern world. The painting of France is an art which has run a great gamut; the painting of this little Northern country is an art which has just begun its course. Be- tween the two we have travelled a long way — ^not with- out labor, it is true, and not without great pains, but with the pleasure that is known to all travelers, for whom the end of the journey is at once a regret and a comfort. 357 INDEX INDEX Abbey, 34.9 Academy (Royal), 177 ^schylus, 164 Agamemnon, 31 Alexander (J.), 3, 163, 334, 243 Alexander I of Russia, 354 Allan (Maud), 88 Allen (James Lane), 303 Alma-Tadema, 164 Alt, 336 Aman, Jean, 61, 73 Amerigo, 261 Angelico (Fra), 22, S3, 83, 151, 315 Angelo, 13, 344 Anglada, 373, 276 Aphrodite, 61 Apollo, 17, 57 ^ Arcadia, 54, 57, 66 Arnold (M.), 54, Arnesby-Brown, 184 Auburtin (J. I.). 63 Baar, 341 Bach, 73 Baertsoen, 325 Bail, 8, 347 Balla, 391 Ballin, 7, 344 Balzac, 13 Barberini Faun, 58 Barbizon School, 10, 18, 31, 33, 133, 203, 304 Bareau, 13 Barrau, 371 Bartels (von), 134 Barye, 13 Bajsch, 339 Bastien-Lepage, 24 BatignoUes School, 28, 31 Baudelaire, 75 Bayern, 125, 131 Beardsley, 156, 181 Beaux, 349 Bechler, 124 Beethoven, 130 Behmer, 134 Bell, 183 Belle Dame Sans Merci, 76 Bellows, 233, 225 B^m, 341 Bernatzik, 336, 339 Benedito, 269, 278 Benois, 348, 354, 367 Bergh, 331 Bernheim Gallery, 65 Besnard, 3, 59, 104, 111, 343, 244 Bezzi, 291, 397 Bianchi, 301 Bianco, 297 Bilboa, 369, 371, 373 Blake, 177 Blakelock, 316 Blanchee, 73 Blashfield, 344 Blue Flower, 83 Blum, 344 Boberg, 331 Boccione, 303 Boch, 331 Boecklin, 69, 97, 98, 99, 103, 103, 111, 119, 177, 189 Boldini, 288, 290 Bonnat, 288 INDEX Bonnard, 65, 66, 131 Bosboom, 316, 319 Bosch, 253 BotticeUi, 151, 154, 155, 161, 177 Boudin, 318 Bouguereau, 28 Bracht, 123, 124 Brakeleer (de), 321 Bramley, 176 Brangwyn, 182 Brass, 300, 301 Breckinridge, 234, 250 Brinton(C.), 62 Browning, 54 Bruck, 346 Brunnhilda, 98 Brush, 228 Burne-Jones, 162, 158, 161, 167, 181, 320 Bussy (S.), 48 Byron, 124 Cabanel, 28 Caffin, 62 Calvinism, 166 Cameron, 166 Canon, 336 Canth, 364 Caprile, 301 Caracci, 13 Caravaggio, 14 Carena, 297 Carlandi, 301 Carlsen, 315, 216 Carbonera, 261 Caro-Delvaille, 75 Carozzi, 301 Carpaccio, 333 Carpeaux, 13 Carrifere, 316 Carstens, 81 Casada, 261, 270 Casanova, 262 Casas, 371 Casciaro, 301 Casorati, 298 Cassandra, 120 Cassatt, 249, 250 Castaly, 76 Cazin, 24 Cftsanne, 62, 66, 66 Chantrey Bequest, 177 Chabas, 53, 68 Chase, 327, 298 Chardin, 17 Chartran, 62 Checa, 261 Chicago Art Institute, 276, 381 Chicharro, 269, 276, 277 Church, 241 Ciardi (B.), 298 Ciardi (G.), 301 Cid, 269 Claude (Lorraine), 29, 147, 148 Claus, 326 Clausen, 166, 184 Cleopatra, 103 Clough, 54 Clouet, 14 Clytemnestra, 31 Coello, 258 Coffin, 216 Coleridge, 396 Colomb, 13 Columbine, 67 Conder, 188 Connard, 174 Corinth, 126 Constable, 29, 39, 147, 148, 183, 184 Constant, 28, 72, 165 Corot, 9, 21, 22, 47, 199, 203, 288, 289, 319 Courbet, 18, 22, 28, 92, 238, 336, 356 Cotraan, 146, 147 Cottet, 28 Cox, 146, 147, 166 Crane (B.), 216, 220, 221 Crane (W.), 216, 220, 221 Cranach, 32 362 INDEX Crawhall, 166 Cremona, 290 Crome, 146, 14T Cubists, 19, 66, 13« D Dabo, 206, 216 D'Annunzio, 41 Daphne, 57 Darwin, 102, 103 Daumier, 62 Daubigny, 21 Daucbez, 24 David, 17, 21 Davidson, 290 Davies, 24, 248, 249 Davis, 216 Dearth, 206, 249, 2S3 De Beruete, 281 De Bock, 319 De Chavannes, 49, S2, 58, 157, 244, 248, 249, 320 Degas, 17, 38, 222, 249, 282 De Groux, 326 De Hoog, 8, 247, 311, 319 Delacroix, 21, 62 Demeter, 98 Denis, 17, 58, 232, 244, 297 De Nittis, 290 Der Kinderen, 320 Dessar, 216 Dewing, 231, 234 De Sotomayor, 279 Dewey, 216 De Zubiaurre (V. and R.)> ^ Dian, 99 Diaz, 21, 259 Diez, 92 DiU, 124 Djsselhof, 320 Domingo, 262 Donnay, 326 Dor6, 117 Dougherty, 216 Dow (T. M.), 166 Dubois (P.), 321 Dufau, 61 Durer, 79, 81, 84 E East, 184, 341 Eastlake, 148 Eaton, 215 Ecole des Beaux Arts, 28 Ecole de Pharmacie, Paris, 60, Edelfelt, 354, 356 Eeckhondt, 326 El Greco, 269, 287 Ephesus, 98 Epstein, 340 Erler, 210 Etty, 148 Eugen (Prince), 328 Evenepoel, 325 175, F Fabre (Collection), 64 Falstaff, 103 Fantin-Latour, 34, 58, 171 Fechin, 353 Feurbach, 97, 100, 101 Feretti, 322 Fergusson, 189 Ferraris (von), 340 Finch, 321 Fisher, 200 Fjaestad, 331, 332 Flameng, 75 Fontdevila, 270 69 Forbes, 176 Fornara, 291 Fortuny, 258, 259, 260, 261, 21 Foster, 250 Fragiacomo, 291 Fragonard, 17, 34, 57 Frfedijric, 326, 331 Friesecke, 227, 232, 234 Fiihrich, 82 Furies, 131 Furse, 166 363 INDEX G Gainsborough, 198 Galiano, 269 Gallon, 354, 355 Garber, 216 Gauguin, 63, 65, 69, 70 Gebhardt (von), 114, 132 Geffcken, 133 G^rome, 24, 28, 165 Genth, 240, 241 Ghirlandajo, 155 Gillot, 24, 39 Gioli, 298 Giorgione, 44, 57, 108 Giotto, 83 Glackens, 107, 316, 222, 335, 250 Glasgow School, 166, 167, 168 Gleichen-Russwurm, 88 GoUab, 343 Gotch, 176 Goujon, 13 Goya, 29, 39, 63, 189, 268, 259, 36i 269, 370, 387, 388, 390 Grassi, 283 Greiner, 133 Grieifenhagen, 178, 189 Gretel, 84 Grubicy, 271 Guay, 61 Guinevere, 151 Guirad, 371 Guthrie, 166 Guys, 39 H Hacker, 187 Hagenbund, 343 Hagemeister, 132 Hals, 11, 18, 29, 31, 43, 139, 36( 268 Hamilton, 166 Hampel, 342 Hansel, 84 Happy Isle, 43 Hardy, 189 Harflinger, 341 Harpignies, 34 Harrison (B.), 206, 316 Hassam, 215, 216 Hawthorne (N.), H Hawthorne (C), 107, 337, 233, 234 Hearn (Collection), 3, 240 Heine, 104 Helicon, 75 Henri, 104, 107, 227, 233, 333, 234, 250, 297 Henry, 166 Herchert, 132 Herkomer, 187 Hind, 69 Hobbema, 331 Hoeber, 216 Holbein, 79, 81, 311 Homer, 3, 210 Hornel, 166 Horowitz, 340 H6tel de Ville, Paris, 49, 69, 243 Houdon, 13 Hiibner, 133 Hugo, 21 Huneker, 363, 264 Hunt, 51 Ingres, 17, 31, 38, 48 Inness, 200, 203, 304, 318 Innocenti, 337, 333 Iphigenia, 101 Isar, 136 Israels, 31, 51, 311, 316, 318, 319 Iturrino, 370, 275 Ivanoff, 349, 350 Jank, 133 Japanese (Influence), 28, 39, 64, 134, 168, 209, 232, 338 Jarnefelt, 354, 356 Jason, 100 Jettmar, 339 364 INDEX Jiminez, S61 Joan of Arc, 316 Johansen, 306 Jongkind, 368 John, 174, 175, 176, Johnson (L.), 167 Jongers, 234 Jungwirth, 340 Kalevala, 354, 355 Kalkreuth, 133 Kampf, 126 Kavdbach (F. A.), Kaulbach (W.), 83 Keith, 216 KeUer, 126 Kent, 216 Klimt, 48, 339 Klinger, 130 Knight (H. and L.), 189 Knoppf, 325 Koppay, 340 Krausz, 343 Kuehl, 133 Kullervo, 355 Kustodieff, 348 Laermans, 326 La Farge, 249 Lalla Rookh, 82 Lanceray, 348 Land of Heart's Desire, 54 Landseer, 148 Larsson, 327, 331, 333 Larwin, 341 L^szld, 340 La Touche, 61, 217 La Tour, 34 Lautrec, 64, 65 Lavery, 168, 187 Law, 166 Lawrence, 198 Lawson (C), 183 Lawson, 215 Leibl, 81, 93, 93, 94, 97, 98, 111, 126, 139, 133 Leighton, 163 Leistikow, 123 Lemmen, 331 Lenbach, 94, 97, 133 Leonardo, 10, 155 Le Sidaner, 184 Leslie, 148 Lenz, 341 L^vy-Dhurmer, 61 L'Hermitte, 24 Liebermann (Max), 81, 87, 93, 94, 111, 112, 113, 119; 120 Liebermann (Ernst), 131 Lindstrom, 331 Lippo Lippi, 315 Lionne, 391 Little Blue Flower, 99 Lonnrot, 354 Lorelei, 99 Ludwig I, 83 Ludwig II, 83 Luks, 250 M Madrazo, 263 Maly, 342 Macaulay-Stevenson, 166, 168 Maclise, 148 Mackart, 336 Mackenson, 124 Maliutin, 353 Mallarmd, 54 Manet, 9, 37, 28, 31, 33, 43, 62, 112, 129, 134, 189, 232, 325, 232, 234, 238, 249, 363 Mancini, 301 Mantegna, 58, 183, 248 Mann, 166 Mar6es (von), 97, 99, 107, 108 Maria (de), 299 Mdrk, 339 Mark Brandenburg, 123 Maris (J.), 317 Maris (M.), 316, 318 365 INDEX Maris (W.), 317, 318 Marlowe, 209 Marr, 133 Martel, 48 Martin (Henri), 244, 29T Martin (Homer), S3, 200, 209, 210, 37S, 280 Mason, 157, 163 Matisse, 70, 107, 248, 295, 302 Mauclair, 31, 290 Mauve, 311, 312, 315 Maze, 33 McEvoy, 174 McLean, 250 McTaggart, 166 Meier-Graefe, 103 Meifren, 281 Meissonier, 286 Mflisande, 70 Melville, 166 Memlinc, 189, 325 Mfeard, 58, 61 Menzel, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 97, 110, 118, 120, 349 Merlin, 151 Mesdag, 319 Mesquita, 279 Metcalf, 220 Metsu, 311 Meunier, 321 Meyer, 133 Migliaro, 301 Millais, 154 Miller, 227, 232, 234 Millet, 8, 17, 21, 22, 24, 110, 111 Mir Isskousstva, 348 Modersohn, 134 Monet, 4, 19, 29, 31, 34, 47, 71, 88, 146, 176, 206, 238, 263, 291, 292, 333, 326, 326 Monticelli, 29, 44, 47, 104, 189, 240 Montmartre, 285 Monvel (de), 75 Moore, 156, 164 Morbelli, 291, 297 Moreau, 47, 48, 49 Morera, 380, 281 Morren, 326 Morris, 155 Morton, 166 Mostyn, 189, 343 Mowbray, 244 Mozart, 70 MuUer (V.), 92 Munch, 327 Munkdcsy, 335 Munthe, 327, 328, 333 MuriUo, 279, 287 Murphy, 221, 215 Munzer, 130, 131 Muther, 102, 250, 259 N Nazarenes, 83, 83 New English Art Club, 158, 163, 172, 173, 176, 183 Newlyn School, 176, 183 Neuhys, 311, 318 Nielson, 331, 332 Nieto, 291 Noci, 291 Nomellini, 298, 299 Novak, 341 Ochtman, 315 Oppler, 133 Orchardson, 165 Orlik, 133 Orpen, 174 Overbeck, 82, 134 Pallas, 157 Pan, 102, 103, 109, 178 Pasternak, 349 Paxton, 234, 347 Parrish, 306 Parthenon, 89 Parnassus, 57 Parton, 316 366 INDEX Paterson, 166 Paul, 134 Peirce, 244 Pelizza, 291, 297, 299 Pellias, 70 Perugino, 151 Peter Pan, 57 Pettenkoffen, 336 Phidias, 98, 157, 293 Picasso, 283, 285 Pichot, 271 Pierrot, 57 Piloty, 94, 97, 198, 336 Pirie, 166 Pissarro, 34 Poe, 11, 189, 193 Poynter, 165 PradiUa, 261 Prades (VUa y), 281 Praxiteles, 33, 102 Previati, 287, 291, 295, 296 Prikker, 319, 320 Prinet, 24 Principe, 291 Pryde, 189 Psyche, 181 Putz, 130, 131 R Raebum, 168 RaffaeUi, 24, 71 Ramirez, 260 Ranger, 216, 220 Rangoni, 341 Raphael, 11, 153, 165 Raurichd, 281 Rebel, 132 Redfield, 216, 221 Redon, 64 Regoyos, 321 Rheingold, 99 Rembrandt, 11, 18, 39, 266, Renoir, 34, 37 R6pin, 346, 347 Ress, 349 Reynolds, 187, 193, 198 Reynolds-Stephen, 183, 183 Ribera, 269, 270, 277, 287, 321 Riabushkine, 182 Ricci, 398 Richier, 13 Rissanen, 356 Roche, 166 Rodin, 12, 13 Roelofs, 318 Roll, 24 Romney, 187, 193, 198 Rops, 321 Rossetti, 148, 153, 153, 154, 156, 158, 161, 177, 181, 189 Rotherstein, 174 Rousseau, 31, 134, 199, 218 Roussel, 61, 65, 66 Rubens, 336, 346 Rude, 13 Rusinol, 275 Ryloff, 350 Rysselberghe (Van), 182, 321 Sala, 300 Salomd, 70 Sappho, 164 Sapunoff, 349 Samberger, 133 Sargent, 338, 243 Sartorio, 299, 301 Sauter, 237 Scattola, 298 Scharf, 340 Schofleld, 216, 217 SchoUe, 134, 136, 130 Schattensteln, 340 Schuch, 113 Schuster-Woldan (G.), 133 Schuster-Woldan (R.), 133 Schwartze, 311 Schwind, 83, 84 Segantini, 279, 291, 292, 295, S6roff, 79 Sert, 281 Seurat, 32, 34 367 INDEX Shannon, 187 Shaw, 190 Shauffer, 340 Shelley, 54 Sickert, 174 Silva, 282 Simmons, 244 Simon, 24, 27 Sims, 177, 178 Skarbina, 120, 123 Skovgaard, 327 Slevogt, 129 Sloan, 250 Somoff, 346 Solomon, 178 Sorolla, 257, 260, 262, 265, 267, 270, 281, 302 Sophocles, 164 Soyouz, 345 Sparre, 328 Speed, 189 Stabb, 174 Steinlen, 71 Steer, 173 Stevens, 325, 326 Stokes, 184, 341 Strang, 178 Stott, 178 Stuck, 58, 117, 119, 129 Symons, 54, 216, 222 Syrinx, 102, 103 Swan, 189 T Tarbell, 247 Terape, 54 Terborch, 112, 311 Terzi, 298 Thaulow, 331, 332 Thayer, 228 Thoma, 99, 107, 109 Tiepolo, 162, 281 Tinker BeU, 57 Tito, 287 Tintoretto, 281, 339 Titian, 153 Toledo, 281 Tolstoi, 346 Toorop, 319, 321, 322 Torre (de), 282 Truebner, 112, 113, 129, 132 Tuke, 184 Turner, 29, 63, 104, 146, 147, 148, 182, 183, 184, 325 Troyon, 21, 22, 163 Tryon, 203, 206, 209, 210 Twachtman, 216 U trhde, 24, 113, 114, 119, 356 Umbricht, 76 Unger, 132 266, Uranga, 271 Valodas, 261 Van Alphen, 311 Van de Velde, 320, 322, 331 Van Gogh, 107, 320 Van Ostade, 311 Vasnetsoff, 350, 363 Vasquez, 282 Vedder, 244 Velasquez, 18, 29, 32, 33, 112, 238, 250, 259, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270, 287, 288 Vera, 261 Verestchagin, 346 Vermeer, 133, 247, 311, 326 Veronese, 281 Veth, 311 Vierge, 281 Villegas, 261 Vidovic, 341 Vivian, 151 Vloors, 326 Von Hoffman, 129, 130 Vroubel, 350 Vuillard, 65, 66 W Wacik, 341 Wagemans, 263 368 INDEX Wagner, 70 Walker (F.), 157, 158, 163 Walker (H.), 244 Walton, 171 Waterhouse, 178 Watteau, 17, 20, 57, 59, 60, 188 Watts, 10, 158, 161, 162 Weir, 227, 228, 334 Weissenbruch, 315 Wereskiold, 333 West, 184, Whistler, 9, 10, 18T, 188, 189, 236, 338, 339, 388 Whitman, 211 Williams, 316, 340, 241 Wniimisen, 323 Wouwerman, 331 Wordsworth, 379, 296 Wyant, 300, 205, 210 Wynants, 331 Wytsmans, 335 Y Young, 216 Z Zak, 348. Zamacois, ^63 Zilcken, 319 Zilla, 291 Zorn, 327, 331 Zuittner, 341 Zuloaga, 357, 358, 260, 266, 283, 303, 331 Zurbarto, 287 369