CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ITHACA, N. Y. 14853 Fine Arcs Library ' Sibley Hall ..0 2605.864™""'""""'""'"^ "'IllmiittSi^,'"*'''''': '"e Scammon le 3 1924 016 790 556 „.. DATE DUE lm=^ 1 ftfll All* > 190T !t9¥=f3 ^asT 'mu 44W4t -anoQ ■■^^ -r-i^ fw IAMNk t\\^' ■* ^^,^_^^ TfTmimr •imuem^^ i jiniK'^. ' iSP^V CAYLORD miNTCOINU.K.A. a Cornell University y Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016790556 MURAL PAINTING IN AMERICA Copyright by John La Farge JohnLaFarge: "The Ascension." Decoration of the chancel of the Church of the Ascension, New York City- Example showing an almost equal balance of landscape and figures MURAL PAINTING IN AMERICA THE SCAMMON LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE ART INSTITUTE OP CHICAGO, MARCH, 19 1 2, AND SINCE GREATLY ENLARGED BY EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD WITH NUMEROUS REPRODUCTIONS OF REPRESENTATIVE WORKS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1913 COTYBIGHI, I9I3. BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published November, 1913 FOREWORD Mural Painting may safely be called the most exacting, as it certainly is the most complicated, form of painting in the whole range of art; its scope includes figure, landscape, and portrait; its practice demands the widest education, the most varied forms of knowledge, the most assured experience. Save by the initiated it is apt to be misapprehended, as a form of art at best demanding little but arrange- ment, fancy, lightness of hand, at worst as a com- mercial product calculable as to its worth by the hour and the square foot. It is the object of this book to try to make a fair statement of the real de- mands of Mural Painting, and to endeavor to sug- gest its real value. The book is based upon six lectures delivered in March, 191 2, at the Art Insti- tute of Chicago, under the auspices of the Scammon Foundation, but since then, a nearly equal amount of entirely new matter has been added. CONTENTS CHAPTEE PAGE I. The Importance of Decoration i 1. THE DECORATED BUILDING AS A TEACHER ... 3 II. THE MAIN FACTORS IN OUR DECORATIVE TRADITION . 8 III. THE FOCAL IMPORTANCE OF THE PUBLIC BUILDING . IJ IV. OUR SLOWNESS TO REALIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF DEC- ORATIVE AK,T 19 V. NATIONAL ART AS A NATIONAL ASSET 29 II. Harmony Between Building Commissioner and Architect , 41 i. the danger of a perfunctory attitude of mind . 43 ii. selection of the artist executants .... $9 III. COMPETITION versus DIRECT APPOINTMENT .... 61 IV. IMPORTANCE OF THE ARCHITECT 71 in.\ Importance of Experience in the Mural Painter . 77 I. EXPERIENCE PLUS TALENT ESSENTIAL 79 II. DIFFICULTIES WHICH MAKE EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL . 86 \ IVJ. Harmony Between Building Commissioner and \ J Mural Painter 95 I. the artist's constituency in the PAST ... 97 II. THE NOVELTY OF THE SITUATION IN RELATION TO MURAL PAINTING IN AMERICA 99 V- Mutuality Between Architect and Mural Painter 109 VI. Mutuality of Mural Painters 123 1. distribution OF the decorative work .... 125 II. THE RELATION OF MUTUAL EFFORT TO THE MAXIMUM OF EXPRESSION 133 vii viii CONTENTS CHAfTES PAGE HI. THE PROBLEM OF TWO PAINTERS WORKING IN ONE ROOM 135 IV. THE QUESTION OF A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY . . 143 V. A POSSIBLE SOLUTION OF A DIFFICULT PROBLEM . IJ4 VI. THE NEED OF SKILFUL ASSISTANTS 164 VII. Significance in Mural Painting 173 1. significance in the art of the PAST .... 175 II. inclusiveness of decorative art AS to signifi- cance 180 iii. americans have no excuse for eschewing signif- ICANCE ..... 186 VIII. Fundamental Education in Art 207 IX. The Importance of Culture 233 I. THE attitude OF THE PAST TOWARD CULTURE . . 235 II. ECLECTICISM INEVITABLE TO US 244 X. Have We as yet a Style.'' 249 XI. Evolution of Present Practice 259 1. the influence of puvis de chavannes . . . 261 II. our recent tendency toward ultra-light color- ation 268 XII. Influence of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Cen- turies ... 271 I. no style final 273 II. the lesson of decadent art 284 XIII. Modern Technic and Present Tendency .... 289 XIV. In Conclusion 305 INTRODUCTION TO ILLUSTRATIONS Lack of space makes it impossible to give in this book a more complete representation of the work of American mural painters. Young as the school is, an adequate presentation would require many score, indeed even some hundreds, of illustrations. William Morris Hunt, whose paintings fell from imperfectly .plastered walls, and John La Farge, whose wise work remains to us as a cause for lasting pride, were the pioneers, and were closely followed by Will H. Low, with his ceiling in the Waldorf. McKim's great enterprise of the Boston Public Li- brary, with the presentation of the work of Puvis de Chavannes, John S. Sargent, and Edwin A. Abbey, was nearly contemporaneous with the building of the World's Fair of Chicago, the first big general experiment in American decoration, when twenty mural painters at least tried their 'prentice hands. Only a few years later nearly the same group of men, but with many others added to their number, decorated the Library of Congress in Washington. American mural painting was now fairly launched both in the East and in the West. X INTRODUCTION TO ILLUSTRATIONS In the latter, where the Chicago Exhibition had given such an impulse, the movement became imme- diate and active in the decoration of the State Capi- tols of Minnesota and Iowa and later of Wisconsin and South Dakota. Somewhat later still began the decoration of the Federal Building in Cleveland and of many other important court-houses and post- offices (including the Carnegie Institute of Pitts- burgh) throughout the Middle West. In the East the decoration of the Library of Congress was soon followed by that of the Baltimore court-house, the Boston State House, the court-houses of Newark, Wilkes-Barre, Youngstown, Jersey City, the Uni- versity Club of New York, the College of the City of New York, and a whole succession of libraries, churches (notably the Church of the Paulist Fathers in New York), hotels, theatres, schools, and private dwellings. Very early among the important Eastern decorations must be accounted also the lunettes at Bowdoin College and the panels painted for Men- delssohn Hall, New York, by Robert Blum. Upon many of these buildings whole groups of artists were employed, and such experiments as the decoration of the State capitols of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the court-house of Baltimore, the Federal Building in Cleveland, have taught lessons to the painters and public alike, affording to the former a practice indispensable to success, and helping the latter to an appreciation of the gradual growth of INTRODUCTION TO ILLUSTRATIONS xi mural art in America. This practice was invaluable not only to the men who had planned the decora- tion but to their assistants, who aided them in carry- ing it out and who thus became in their own turn planners and directors of important decorative en- terprises. There has been space in this book for representa- tion of only a few of our mural painters and men have been left out who are quite as good as many of of those included, for the list is long. Judging from the latter, American artists, many of them at least, have a natural inclination toward decoration, for one at once associates a highly developed decorative sense with the names of such painters as Vedder, Cox, Parrish, Miss Oakley, Barry Faulkner, Jules Guerin, and indeed many others. In the selection of reproductions for this book an attempt has been made to choose subjects which il- lustrated the decorative practice of the mural painter as influenced by varying conditions, these conditions being in some cases indicated or explained in foot- notes. It should be remembered that these little reproductions, each covering only a few inches of paper, represent in many cases wall-paintings fifty feet long. It is easy to realize that such inadequacy of proportion can be only explanatory and may not pretend to realistic presentation. No complete list of American mural paintings ex- ists; the best thus far is that published by Miss Flor- xii INTRODUCTION TO ILLUSTRATIONS ence N. Levy in her Art Annuals. It is to be hoped that before long a complete catalogue may be made containing not only the names of the artists of the subjects of the mural panels and of their where- abouts but also a memorandum of their dimensions. The author desires to give an explanation of the fact that the examples of conventional shapes of panels, also of experimental and other working drawings, are made up wholly from his own works. The development of the subject required a large number of examples, and their number in turn necessitated such a diminution of size, that the author did not feel at liberty to ask other artists to consent to such a miniature reproduction of their work. ILLUSTRATIONS John La Faroe: "The Ascension." Decoration of the Chancel of the Church of the Ascension, New York City Frontispiece FACING PAGE Edwin H. Blashfield: Showing various shapes of panels common to the practice of a mural painter 6 Decoration for dome crown of Wisconsin State Capi- tol, in process, with unpainted spaces left for goring, and with duplicate figures reserved as alternatives in application of canvas 14 Placing the figures in a decoration ) > 22 Trying scale with a paper model ; In Lantern Crown, Library of Congress ) Trying scale of figures for Wisconsin dome ) Travelling scaffold used at the Library of Congress . 34 Edwin A. Abbey: "Science Revealing the Treasures of the Earth." Decorative lunette in the main rotunda of the State Capitol of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg . . 44 John W. Alexander: "The Crowning of Pittsburg." The main panel in the Apotheosis of Pittsburg, Carnegie In- stitute 48 Hugo Ballin: Centre ceiling panel in a room of the State Capitol, Madison, Wis 54 Robert Blum: Decoration in Mendelssohn Hall Glee Club, New York. Fragment 60 xiii xiv ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PACK George W. Breck: " Reflection." One of the ceiling pan- els in the library of the residence of the late Whitelaw Reid 68 Kenyon Cox: "The Light of Learning." Decoration in the Public Library, Winona, Minn 74 Arthur Crisp: "The Attributes of Dramatic Art." Decoration for wall by stairway, Belasco Theatre . 82 Elliott Daingerfield: "The Epiphany." Part of the decoration in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York City 88 T. W. Dewing: "The Days." Decoration in the home of Miss Cheney, South Manchester, Mass 98 Barry Faulkner: Fragment of decoration in the house of Mrs. E. H. Harriman 106 A. E. FoRiNGER and Vincent Aderente: "Yonkers, Past and Present. " Panel from the series in the new Court-House 112 Elmer E. Garnsey: One of a series of "Paintings of Sev- enteenth-Century Ports" in the Collector's room of the United States Custom-House, New York City . . 118 Jules Guerin: Interior of the Pennsylvania Railroad Sta- tion, with men working at the decorative maps ... 126 William Laurel Harris: Example of the laying out, in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York, of a decoration which is being executed in color, gold, and relief 132 Albert Herter: "Europe." One of the decorations in the tapestry room of the St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, Cal 14° William Morris Hunt: "The Flight of Night." Painted for the State Capitol, Albany, N. Y 146 ILLUSTRATIONS xv lACINO FAGB Francis C. Jones: Decoration in apartment of the artist 152 Charles R. Lamb: Dome in Memorial Chapel, Minne- apolis, Minn., executed in mosaic 158 Joseph Lauber: "The Pilgrimage of Life." Window in the First Congregational Church, Montclair, N. J. . 1,66 Will H. Low: "The Garden of Diane." Central panel decoration in reception hall of the residence of the late Anthony N. Brady, Albany, N. Y 170 Fred Dana Marsh: "Engineering." Mural painting for the library of the Engineering Societies, New York City 176 George W. Maynard: Ceiling, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C 182 Francis Davis Millet: "Paying for the Land, January 30, 1658." Decoration of rotunda, Hudson County Court-House, Jersey City 188 H. SiDDONS Mowbray: Decoration in the University Club Library, New York City 194 Violet Oakley: "Penn's Vision." From a series of panels in the Governor's room of the Pennsylvania State Capitol, Harrisburg 200 Maxfield Parrish: Decoration for the girls' dining-room of the Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia . . 204 Howard Pyle: "The Genius of Art." Panel in the drawing-room of the artist's own house 210 Robert Reid: "The Speech of James Otis." Decora- tion in the State House, Boston, Mass 216 John S. Sargent: "The Dogma of the Trinity." Deco- ration in the Public Library, Boston, Mass 222 xvi ILLUSTRATIONS tAOSa PAGI Herman T. Schladermundt: Decoration in the art museum in the residence of Mr. Thomas F. Ryan . . 228 Andrew T. Schwartz: "Justice" 236 Taber Sears: Frieze of the Apostles, Church of the Epiphany, Pittsburg, Pa 242 Edward Simmons: "The Civilization of the Northwest." Panel in the Minnesota Capitol, St. Paul, Minn. . . 252 W. T. Smedley: "The Awakening of a Commonwealth." Panel in the Luzerne County Court-House, Wilkes- Barre, Pa 256 Abbott H. Thayer: "Florence Protecting Her Arts." Decoration in the vestibule of the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College 262 Louis C. Tiffany: Tiffany Chapel, Crypt of Cathedral of St. John the Divine 266 C. Y. Turner: "Washington Watching the Assault on Fort Lee." Decoration for the Cleveland Court- House 274 Louis David Vaillant: "The Picnic." Decorative panel 280 Elihu Vedder: "Rome." Decoration in the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College 286 Henry Oliver Walker: "The Boy of Winander," Lu- nette in the Library of Congress 296 A. R. Willett: Panel in a court-room of the Mahoning County Court-House, Youngstown, Ohio ...... 308 I THE IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION I THE IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION I It is the theory of a certain group that art is for artists, that it can be truly felt and known only by them, and that outside a charmed circle of their own no opinion is worth listening to. There are others who beUeve that the mysterious force which created the beauty of the world, earth and sky, shore and sea, ox, under the hand of man, what we call art, did not do it for the benefit of any close corporation, even of artists. Yet from the people who look most eagerly for that beauty come the artists, therefore they may claim the right to be pioneers and leaders. On the other hand, the public is as essential to the creation of art as is handle to blade; it drives and enforces the purpose of the artist. There is need for the ad- visory companionship of the cultured non-profes- sional, the statesman, historian, ethnographer, to insist upon types, to emphasize points in the cele- bration of wise policy, to show us how and where to illuminate the history of our people. But at their 4 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION elbow must be the professional eye and hand to model those types, to compose that celebration, to mix the colors for that illumination, otherwise the noblest words may be set to sorry music. For the music's harmony is made up of the diverse yet con- cordant contribution of many minds, the sober sense of one, the dreams of another, aspiration and re- straint, but all co-ordinated in the end by him who can confer plastic shape. Architecture has been called an occupation for kings, but it is because kings, presidents, and govern- ments can summon together the trained workers, who approach by many paths, who bring brains and tools, eye, hand, and book-knowledge, that the gov- erning fiat may create a Parthenon, a cathedral, a Taj, or a national capitol. If we try to recognize man's earliest cravings for beauty, and if we hark backward to the voices which in the history of his development have been might- iest, to the Bible, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, the great dramas of the Greeks, and later of the English, we realize that they were, for the enormous majority of men, voices. They made their appeal directly through the ear to the mind. The people sat in circle about sage or prophet or poet, and listened to him. In the Orient, which has stood compara- tively still, and where few people read, you may see them doing it to-day. The admonition or sentiment or story was repeated by the listeners, repeated in IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 5 chorus; set to music it became the hymn or the popular song, and in such shape it made its strong- est uttered appeal to the mind and senses through the ear. But the eye of man admits an even more im- mediate appeal; with the rude and uncultivated the road to the mind from the eye seems still shorter than from the ear. Not even the Anacreontic song would stir quite as quickly as the carved and painted relief of nymph and faun, not even the hymn to the deity could strike as forcibly and immediately as the colossal goddess Athene shining in gold and ivory upon her pedestal. Not even the most fluent nar- rator could unfold his story so swiftly as could the frieze of the great altar of Pergamon. In the con- demnation of the graven image the Jewish law- giver relied mightily upon the spirituality of his people, but in the West, from Egypt to Ireland, the rule of the iconoclast has been short. The temple and the cathedral spoke to the eye, but they spoke as loudly as did Iliad or Bible, and they told the same story. No one knew this better than did the priest, whether he were pagan or Christian, wore fillet or chasuble, or scapular indeed, for as monk he took up brush and chisel himself. All over the an- tique and mediaeval world, throughout the Greek islands, the mountains of Asia Minor, the plains of Europe, the forests of the north, the priest set up the artist as schoolmaster, and his school became the public building. 6 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION "Pictures are the books of the ignorant," said St. Augustine, and to appeal to their unlettered citizens the old republics used them, knowing that few can grasp an idea, but that a visible, tangible image is easily understood. In Athens twenty-two hundred years ago, in Rome eighteen hundred years ago, the man who lacked the power or the will or the time to read went to the public buildings to learn history, which he found there painted and sculptured so plainly that he learned without effort. To-day, the same citizen in Paris walks around the courtyard of the Inva- lides, and easily gets the battles of the republic by heart. At the Pantheon he is taught who civilized his country and who fought for it; he sees Charle- magne as civilizer, St. Louis as lawgiver, Jeanne d'Arc as liberator. When he goes for whatever business may be to the mairie or headquarters of his particular ward, he finds that famous artists have celebrated and dignified the various public functions performed there by carving and painting the walls with subjects which refer to them. At the Sorbonne, which is the temple of science and law, he is immediately taught something about things very desirable indeed to know, yet which would never have occurred to him if he had not seen them painted. He can't help asking, for instance, what that means — that man in the fresco who is binding up a wounded soldier's leg, while others in armor are Edwin H. Blashfield: Showing various shapes of panels common to the practice of a mural painter I. (Wide pendentive) Hudson County Court-House. II. (Narrow penden- tive) Youngstown Court-House. III. (Depressed lunette) Cleveland Trust Company. IV. (Portion of collar) Dome of Library of Congress From a photograph, copyright by Curiis & Cit'neron /.!Cii:gp.rg£ 14 From a photograph, copyright by Curtis & Cameron Edwin H. Blashfield: Showing various shapes of panels common to the practice of a mural painter (continued) V. ^-unette) Minnesota Capitol. VI. (Square) Panel in Appellate Court, New York City. VII. f Dome crown) Wisconsin State Capitol. VIII. (Rectangle with rounded ends) Panel in house of Mr. Adolph Lewisohn IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 7 defending the wall, and a priest and acolyte stand by with crucifix and wafer to absolve the soldier if he has to die. Our onlooker is told that that is Ambroise Pare, in the sixteenth century, teaching men for the first time to tie up an artery. Then that modern Parisian workman realizes that once there was a time when a man badly hurt in a fight or an accident bled to death surely, and he thinks that things are better now, and in a vague way he re- members Ambroise Pare, not as a name perhaps, but as the bearded man in black trunk hose, working among armored soldiers of long ago. And so which- ever way he turns he sees on the walls the figures and the stories of those who have helped him in the past and have urged progress. The artist is teaching the lesson of intellectual de- velopment; teaching it with brush and chisel to the child who has not yet learned to read and the peas- ant who is too old to learn. Wise and ignorant alike can study the great picture-book and see how seven hundred years ago the monk Abelard taught French- men to think for themselves; how Louis, the king, learned to. obey that he might learn to command; how Richelieu gave a great college to the people; how Cuvier and Buffon revealed the animals to man; how Papin and Lavoisier made fire and steam obey them and poisons turn to healing drugs. So he is taught of the benefactors of France, and when he next sees it he understands the great in- 8 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION scription in letters of gold upon the pediment of the Pantheon: "A grateful country to its great men." It is a common thing to say: "How intelligent the French workman is; how he understands pictures!" But a great deal of this quickness comes from the fact that he has been learning from them all his life. And if this is good for the uneducated Frenchman, it is good, too, for the uneducated Irishman, German, Swede, Italian, who may stroll into some new city hall in our own country. This is the strongest ap- peal which can be made for public and municipal art, that it is a public and municipal educator. II In writing a series of chapters upon decorative art as applied to public buildings, the first difficulty which I experience is that of making subdivisions of my subject which shall be in any way independent of each other. Mr. Cox, in his illuminating lectures, has treated- the classic spirit in art, and has devoted chapters to subject, drawing, color, modelling, etc. His general subject, running through all his book, is, as I under- stand it, the classic spirit and its influence upon the art of to-day, positive or potential. My subject will be the same reversed, that is to say, the Modern Tendency in Art as Influenced by the Spirit of the IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 9 Past. Under it will naturally fall the same subdi- visions of composition, drawing, color, and subject, which last may also be called significance in decora- tive work. These latter qualities are to some ex- tent separable, but there are other subjects which I wish to discuss and find practically inseparable. Such, for instance, are Catholicity of Thought, that is to say, a fair-minded consideration of the relations of ourselves and our methods to the personalities and methods of other people; the necessity for har- mony between architect, sculptor, and painter; the necessity for experience as well as talent in the decorative artist. Between such subjects there is constant interplay; catholicity can hardly be bred save by experience, which in turn is absolutely essential to harmony; so that the discussions of each chapter will to a cer- tain extent echo or foreshadow those which go before or come after. The creation of a great building, with its scale, proportions, distribution, and decoration — all of which qualities have the most intimate association with art — is a prodigious achievement. Its authors may learn from the whole field of endeavor of the past, and the greater their knowledge of bygone ex- perience, the better their own experience is likely to be; the more needs they have seen served, the more needs they will be able to meet. And yet there are restless souls to-day who cry lo IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION constantly for what they call originality, not only in relation to new needs, which is reasonable, but in relation to all old art, which is parricidal; and who would have us disinherit ourselves. Catholicity is the last thing they wish to entertain. But study of our legacy from the past shows us at once what various needs have been met and what a lesson may be learned from it. Throughout the following chap- ters the results of such study upon our modern practice, the effect, in sum, of tradition, will appear. It is perhaps well to begin by touching for a moment upon four or five of the principal phases of art evo- lution which have gone to the shaping of that tra- dition. Our earliest masters in decoration, the Egyptians and Greeks, had a cloudless sky, and in their art they suited themselves to this condition with con- summate skill. The cathedral-builders of north- ern Europe more than a thousand years later had gray skies and dark rainy seasons, and they turned their churches into great stone cages and filled the huge openings with translucent color of glass. The churches of the Romanesque period in Italy and southern France, which geographically and climatically were half-way stations between Greece and the land of the northern Gothic, were intermediate also as to decoration, combining stained glass with a predominance of polychromatic paint- ing. IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION n Here and to-day we may learri from all this past with its widely spaced periods. Our country is one of bright skies, but there is a time in our rainy eastern winters when stained glass is none too bril- liant for us; while in southern California and Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, the decorator of the future will remember the exterior polychromy of Greece and Egypt with infinite advantage. Once you are confronted in situ with the physical conditions of such countries, you learn a whole lesson almost in a moment. One does not forget one's first Egyptian temple; mine was Denderah. As our procession of donkey riders filed along the dikes between the fields that led toward it from the Nile, we saw what seemed a little whitewashed stone hut in which workmen might lay away their tools. After a mile or two it grew into one of the mightiest temples of the world, but the blazing sun of Egypt had so swallowed up all modelling that from far off it looked like a lump of chalk, for its antique exterior coating of color had disappeared, rubbed away by the flying sand of two thousand years and the occasional, though very rare, rain-showers. In Egypt the noonday sky is a huge blotter — it drinks up all modelling; but at evening marvellous color streams back again with the lengthening shadows. The Egyptians understood these conditions per- fectly. They knew that sculpture in the round, placed out of doors, must be colossal in order to 12 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION present shadows big enough to be seen, for Ra, the sun-god, was pitiless to anything puny; and in decorating a wall for the open air they not only cut their figures in relief and painted them in strong colors, but often incised a deep line around the entire figure to stop out reflections and force the definition as far as they possibly could. To meet one of these reliefs indoors in a museum is to be surprised; to see it under the sun of Luxor or Kom Ombos is to understand in a moment the decorator's point of view. In the British Museum, even in the Acropolis Museum of Athens, when, if you look at the Panathe- naic frieze, you think, "What a pity to have daubed those wonderful young men and maidens with paint," you are seeing like a modern. But when you stand on the steps of the Parthenon and look upward to the place where the procession of riders and vase- carriers once marched along in marble, you begin to see more like an old Greek. Some remnants of re- lief-work are still up there, and the yellow blaze of reflected color from the pavement eats away every bit of their modelling. Now you know that the blue background was needed to enable you to make out the horses at all with their prancing legs. The old Greek, you may be sure, put on the strongest colors and even metal where he could, in bit and sword- hilt and spear-head; you understand now why he did it— and you have learned a lesson in decoration. IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 13 How the schemes of color may have been originally planned in Greece and Egypt, and how much sub- tiUty, or what we call tone, they had, is hard to say — perhaps it is impossible. I have examined much color and remain doubtful; pigment has subsisted vari- ously in various places. At Abydos yellow has most resisted time; at Dayr el Bahree red. At Philae in the ceilings and capitals there is a really exquisite succession of greens, blues, and whites, but in each case on further examination I have found traces of color now faded, which when fresh would have gone far toward what with our modern ideas we should consider a coarsening of the effect. The fact is that the Greek or Egyptian could afford to be violent with his exterior coloring, for right at his elbow was ' always the sun-god with his prodigious capacity for glazing and harmonizing everything in nature. When all is said, however, it is doubtful whether the decorators of Greece and Egypt were as subtly rich in their coloration as those later Greeks whom we name Byzantine, who came after Alexander the Great had opened the East, and who could thereby have in them more of what we call the Oriental feel- ing. The Roman Empire made great use of natural stones, adored marbles, and quarried them at the ends of the earth. Splendid as they were, they were not quite so solemnly gorgeous as the wonderful glass pastes which Byzantines compounded with their chemistry, rolled into sheets, cut up into little 14 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION cubes, and spread as a glorious surface for you and me to learn from still, upon the walls and vaultings of Constantinople, Ravenna and Palermoj Cefalu and Venice. The men of the Middle Ages, Giotto and the rest,^^ were more modest with their paint-box than By-r zantine or Roman, and went back to plain water- color upon plaster. These story tellers— for the story, so despised nowadays, was what they soug^l first and last — have left in this same unpretending water-color of the fourteenth century some of the simplest yet completest and noblest decorations that have ever been painted, fruitful in lessons for us to- day. As for the general lesson, indeed, we have now run the gamut. What came after the fourteenth; century was, with one important exception, a recastirigiof older methods by which we are still profiting. The Renaissance used the bronze and marble of Roman decoration, the mosaic of the Byzantines, and the water-color of the Middle Ages, adding the one im- portant factor of oil-painting. How much oil-paint- ing was independent, how much it was based on tempera, and just when it became pure oil-painting we do not know, perhaps never shall. The questiffi^ is very near to being the most interesting one befori^ the investigator of methods to-day. l^; Incidentally in the fifteenth century Italia|j' artists studied anatomy and perspective. These we IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 15 need not discuss, save to note that the painters fell so much in love with the new sciences as to force too much modelling into their frescoes, and thereby so confuse them that a process of elimination under the hands of Michelangelo, Raphael, or Titian, be- came necessary before decoration could be broad- ened sufficiently to fill its fullest scope of excellence. There we have it, then, to look back upon and study, the Greek and Egyptian understanding of conditions applicable to out-and-in-door polychromy, the metals and marbles of the Romans, the mosaic and glass of the Byzantines and the Middle Ages, the water- color and tempera of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the oil-painting of the sixteenth century, the revived classicism of a while ago, the roman- ticism of yesterday, and the impressionism of to-day. What have we done with it? What are we doing? 'What are we going to do? Ill To emphasize the importance of that which we call the decoration of public buildings will be the burden of what I have to say first in these chapters. Next will come the study of the conditions which are most favorable or unfavorable to our young students taking an active part in this decoration; for in the hands of the rising generation of artists lies the future of American art. i6 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION The decoration of public buildings is the most im- portant question in the consideration of that same art of the future, just as it always has been in the past of any and every national art from the time of the pyramid-builders down. Indeed, it passes far beyond the question of art to the questions of morals and patriotism and general culture. The temples, the cathedrals, the town halls have been the arch- schoolmasters of the ages. Eons and eons of years went to the preparation of these great teachers of mankind, for the first pupils were pupils of nature: and the aboriginal men who were the original art- ists had first to evolve their schoolmasters, then in turn to be developed by them. When man in his primeval childhood lost his tail but kept his curiosity and his imitativeness, he began to scratch or whittle with a flint upon a bone or a stone doubtful semblances of things he saw about him. He /commenced as an individualist; he scooped up the colored earths from the edges of the puddles, or the juice of crushed berries, and painted them upon his ozvn body, or smeared the colors onto the walls of his ozvn cave. After long, long steps — so long that they are in- conceivable to us, so long that all the time which has elapsed from the rigging of the first rude sail on a prehistoric dugout down to the latest turbine- motored sea-going monster is but short as compared with the evolution of one from another of human- IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 17 ity's primitive contrivings — the arts began to grow a little. Man learned to weave fibre into some sort of a stuff, to form clay into some sort of a vessel, and as he was afraid of a mysterious deity, who could hurt him with wind or rain or blast him with light- ning, he honored that same deity not only with the fruit of his spear and club, but with the work of his hands in weaving and modelling. And so the pre- historic man from an individualist became to a cer- tain extent a coUectivist, and the arts entered the service of the public. As they grew, and as metal-working was better understood, and glass was invented, and textiles were improved, in what we call the antique world, the world of the people who lived about the basin of the Mediterranean, life, in spite of its hardness and cruelty, grew very beautiful in some respects; and of all that life, covering thousands of years of time, thousands of square miles of space, almost the only message that has come down to us is the message of the graphic arts. The great sister art of poetry sounded as loud a note of celebration, but a very large part of what we know about the peoples of early antiquity comes from the work which they created with their hands to please their minds through their eyes. And the very flower of this creation went to the buildings which sheltered the priest and the king and represented law and majesty, sacred and profane. i8 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION, However beautiful the little statuettes, the figurines and vases of daily Greek life might be, the greatest works went to the temple, and it was of the colossal statue at Olympia that the contemporaneous his- torian wrote: "No Greek can be accounted truly fortunate who has not seen the Zeus of Phidias." As art penetrated the north, the same conditions gov- erned; the glass which with its colors helped to make the tables of Greeks and Egyptians gay, grew into solemnity in the basilica's mosaics, and into splendor in the windows of the cathedrals. The names of the public buildings are the century- marks of the ages. Just as King Edward raised a stone cross wherever the body of Eleanor was laid down on its progress to Westminster, so wherever the footprints of the spirit of civilization have rested most firmly some milestone of human progress has risen to be called Parthenon or Notre Dame, Giotto's Tower or Louvre, and to teach from within and without, by proportion and scale, by picture and statue, the history of the people who build it; to celebrate patriotism, inculcate morals, and to stand as the visible concrete symbol of high endeavor— the effort of man in his own handiwork to prove himself worthy of the Creator whose handiwork he is. IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 19 IV Why, then, if the very names of these monu- ments attest their importance, further support the attestation? It is because, while the average in- telligent American will admit what I have just said, he will forget all about it the moment he is con- fronted by his concrete problem in this field and by what he calls the necessities of the situation. And what are the necessities of a situation? To instance them let us take some famous town hall as the most representative of possible buildings — say the town hall of Brussels, and in it a room which may be the salle des manages. Now, in a perfectly plain, "plastered room, costing very little money, you could marry just as many people a day and shelter them just as well from rain, heat, and cold as in a room made charming with decorations, and in a building famous forever by its Gothic loveliness. But is there not something to be said for this latter quality? The man in the street may reply: "After all, it is no wonder that your town halls of Belgium, your merchants' exchange of Perugia, your people's palaces of Siena and Florence were famous for their art. They had nothing but their art to boast of. We to-day could not for a moment tolerate their inconvenience, their lack of telephones and heat and elevators; and in the interests of business 20 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION to-day we demand something better. We propose for ourselves infinitely greater convenience of every kind, and shall concentrate ourselves upon that." And why? If you are already masters of the situation as regards convenience, and if at the same time you realize that qualities for which you have relatively little aptitude, decorative qualities, have made those old public buildings famous through all time, why, I ask it again with emphasis, do you not give serious thought to your weak points as well as to your strong ones? Do you say that you neglect the artistic side of the question because the time for it is gone and past, and that we as a people are fitted only for the prac- tical? Such a statement may be emphatically denied. American art, on the contrary, is advancing rapidly. The landscape and portrait schools are fully abreast of anything immediately modern, and the school of decorative painting is following closely after the other two. It is seriousness of purpose that is lacking, not capacity for attacking the decorative problem. If once this seriousness can obtain, if once the public can be convinced of the prodigious importance of good decoration of the municipal. State, and national buildings, all the rest Avill follow as surely as noon follows morning, for there is plenty of capacity in America — it only needs to be developed. It can be developed only by experience, and by IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 21 experience along special lines. This fact we must grasp firmly, and accept absolutely; otherwise we shall stumble along, delaying our opportunity, and expending our effort, our money, and our most precious time unwisely. It is quite true that at the first blush this advo- cacy of the importance of good decoration applied to public buildings seems in itself unimportant, be- cause the public appears quite ready to grant every- thing — but it is only an appearance. The auditor replies to the speaker: "Of course, we recognize the importance of decoration of public buildings. Of course, we realize that the temples and palaces and cathedrals shine in the past like beacons, and will project their light beyond us into no one knows how remote a future. Of course, we feel that Phidias and Michelangelo and Titian are names to conjure with." This the objector representing the public will say readily, and easily, and perfunctorily, having become accustomed to say it through centuries. But having glibly stated this recognition and reali- zation of the greatness of the example of the past, he only too often cancels his words by the indiffer- ence of his attitude. Frequently the citizen, who is to be part owner of the new State capitol or court-house, having spoken trippingly of its importance as a factor for good, turns the whole matter over to a special committee, then thinks no more of it at all, save perhaps to boast 22 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION now and then in an open letter to the press of how fine the new court-house or State house is going to be, and how much bigger and better than the one over the river in an adjoining State. And all this in spite of the fact that he is a good citizen, honestly proud of the development of his State, that the committeeman is a capable commit- teeman, prudent and eager for the welfare of the commonwealth. It is all because, when the matter in hand relates to what we call art, they do not con- sider — they zvill not consider. Art, they think,' re- lates to feeling, and they, the citizens, the committee- men, many of them at least, most of them as yet, I fear, believe that every man has a diyine right to settle for himself any question which relates chiefly to feeling. They reiterate the worn phrase,- "I know what I like," and they sit content while the real beauty-lover mourns. Fortunately, the real beauty-lover is adding to himself many recruits from the ranks of the said citizens and committeemen. To every one of thfse we appeal, and with their aid we shall win, for beauty put into concrete form can work wonders-, and in the end convinces. When the artist is dead and can paint no longer he begins to earn great sums for the inheritors of his work. When the Greek temple has become the product of a vanished civilization and unreproducible, we go thousands of leagues to visit it. When we have recognized that the fresco is the a IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 23 outcome of an age and a spirit which have departed, and that we cannot order its counterpart into being, we saw it from the wall and transfer it with infinite care to canvas, and buy it at a great price for our museums. And so we recognize the past, and forget that the present is the past of to-morrow and is worth pro- viding for. To-day's recognition of the art of the past is phenomenal. So far as we know, such a con- dition of things has obtained only once before. It began when Mummius, fresh from the sack of Cor- inth, brought back to Rome chariot-loads of Greek statues and paintings, battered at first by rough handling, but finally paid for with enormous sums, as the philhellenism of the Maecenases under the Julians and Flavians and Antonines spread from Rome to the Rhine and Britain and covered Italy, Gaul, and Spain with their palace museums and villa museums, which they filled with objects big and little, either inherited or imitated from the art of Greeks or Egyptians, foreigners and predecessors. To-day the researches of the Morellis and Bodes and Berensons rival the antiquarian interests of a Hadrian, even though they may not call archaistic cities into being by imperial fiat; and the amazing collections of a group of American art-lovers recall what Fried- lander tells us of the heaping up of artistic riches by the senatorial famihes of ancient Rome, and leave far behind the treasures gathered by such famous 24 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION moderns as Fouquet and Jabach. Fortunes are ex- pended upon our collections, public and private. The soil of Eastern countries is literally sifted in sieves (I have seen it done) for the yield of tiny ob- jects which go into Western museums. The castles of Britain and the Continent prove expugnable as the family portraits pass outward to the dealer; and the princes of the past seem to have bred and fought in a measure for the benefit of the modern collector, while the imitation of old pictures and treasure of all sorts has become so subtle that the counterfeit can be detected by only the cleverest of museum di- rectors, and sometimes will no more down than will Banquo's ghost. Great diligence, great intelligence, and great gener- osity are being accorded to the collection and distri- bution of the art of the past. Great sums of money, great rivalry, and great good-will are given to the collection even of contemporaneous painting and sculpture. It seems as if in modern art only that which goes to the decoration of the public building has been (in certain cases at least) lightly con- sidered, and such art should be to everyone the most important in the entire modern field. Public and municipal art is a public and municipal educator. The decoration of temples and cathedrals and town halls has naturally taught patriotism, mor- als, aesthetics, in a far larger sense than has that of private palaces or houses, admirable as the latter has IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 25 often been. The passion for collection is, of course, the result of European precedent; but the American who, even making allowance for the fashion of a mo- ment, can enter so passionately into rivalry for the possession of masterpieces of the past, will inevitably advance in perceptiveness as general culture grows. Intrinsic weight will establish itself against the glam- our of celebrity (for it must be admitted that, like other amateurs, our collector sometimes buys a great name on a poor picture, instead of a better canvas with a less famous signature), and in time he who patronized the best art of the past so well^will al- most insensibly go on to acquiring the best art of his day. When he does, it is for the art students of the rising generation to see to it that some of the best contegiporaneous art is in America. It is true that in our American art, which is being developed, mural painting is a late comer, but it is a late comer because of all the branches of art it has become the most complicated in its organization. And although it is recent with us, it is a notable fact that it is older than history — is, indeed, the oldest of the arts. To try to place one branch of art above an- other would be to waste time in the attempt to sus- tain an untenable proposition. Decorative painting, portrait-painting, landscape-painting, are the peers of each other, and attain exchangeable headship in accord with the temperament and preference of those who practise and those who admire. Yet it is 26 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION undeniable that, of the three, decorative painting is the oldest and the most inclusive. Within the last twenty years there has arisen a wide-spread inter- est in it, and it has been celebrated generously, and praised for being what it really is — one of the high- est forms of artistic expression. Nevertheless, there are still many art-lovers, and even some artists, who think of decoration as of something compara- tively easy to do, the occupation of the man who is not quite big enough to depend wholly upon his own personality, but who backs himself by the resources of architecture, and hides his poverty or weakness of expression behind a screen of ornament. There was never a greater fallacy than that which attributes an even relatively weak personality to the successful decorator, as. I shall hope to demonstrate by future argument. Because decoration is applied to spoon- handles as well as to towers and domes, the superficial often catalogue it hastily as a minor art, forgetting that in being so inclusive it must also be enormously exacting. The public has not yet wholly outgrown certain antiquated notions. Fifty years ago the "fresco- painter, " who was invariably an Italian or a German, lived and worked in the vestibule between the "storm door" and the "front door." Sculpture at the same epoch — all this was in the days of what Mr. Henry James called mediaeval New York — dwelt in a tray upon the head of a vendor, also an Italian. The tray IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 27 contained plaster lambs and busts of Washington and statuettes of the "Little Samuel Woke" variety, and it did not go up the "stoop" to the Maecenas of the moment. It went down the steps to the area, and had to give the countersign to Bridget be- fore it met the eyes of her mistress. In one of John Leech's pictures, a flunky, with calves appropriate to his position, stands upon the steps barring the way, and says to the vendor, who holds out a plaster Apollo Belvedere: "Yes, I dessay it's all very fine, but it's not my idea of a figger." Just so, many lay- men, and as I have noted before, even some artists, still say: "Yes, decoration is all very fine," but make the mental reservation: "It's not my idea of art; it has neither frame nor shadow-box, and it does not %ure in a catalogue." In the main, however, decoration has met with a most generous recognition on the part of both artists and pubHc, and it deserves it; for, I repeat, it is the oldest, the most inclusive, and the most exacting of the arts. It began with the cave-dweller hacking bone into rude suggestion of men and animals, or scratching outlines upon the rock; it developed into beauty applied to utility, and it culminated as a supreme teacher, through the arts, of patriotism, morals, and history, in temples and cathedrals and town halls. The greatest artists who ever lived have been the acolytes of this ministrant decora- tion — Phidias, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, 28 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION Leonardo, Correggio, Veronese, Rubens, to name only a few of them, were decorator-painters and decorator-sculptors. It was in directing the sculptural ensemble of the Parthenon, in building up the great altar of Padua, in carrying the painting from the domes down the pendentives and walls of Parma, in composing the many consecutive or concentric ceiling panels of Venice, in covering and making glorious the bam- like nakedness of the plastering to the Sistine Chapel, that these protagonists of art attained to some of their highest flights. They showed that man mov- ing easily under the restraint of limitation, and bending the conventionalism of decoration to the expression of his purpose, can manifest as much of power as man moving freely. Design, one of the very highest and most exacting elements of art, must be ever present in decoration, and, above all, the history of decoration demonstrates that not even the most brilliant executant can lastingly succeed in it unless he possess that power of tension which is given only to the healthy in the arts, as elsewhere in nature. The greatest of artists, then, have been decorators, and a high development of the special branches of decorative painting and sculpture has been co- incidental with the periods during which the most famous schools of art have flourished. Holland fur- nishes the only exception, and even her exception is a Edwin H. Blashfield: In Lantern Crown, Library of Congress I-" :J ■r .-'S;;..?^ '^^ "^^^anBl «e§' P id ^ ^.S'^^fc^'.^i.. , ■ ^^at„ ^ wk \^' '4 > 1 y^M <* '*^ « f ^ i ^^^^^k '' ha mJI^^BKw m , i n i«« « ^^ -' * ; -^ ^#«?l m^^ Edwin H. Blashfield: Trying scale of figures for Wisconsin dome IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 29 qualified one. Her rejection of the doctrines and Forms of the mother church, the arch-patron, greatly curtailed the output of monumental painting in gen- eral; and the Dutchman was by nature a realist pur sang. One man, their greatest, Rembrandt, was filled with the decorative sense, a composer of love- liest and also grandest patterns of light and shade. But it was just when he created his almost magical picture, the so-called "Night Watch," that his fellow-citizens began to misunderstand his art, and to neglect him; and according to his biographer, M. Michel, the canvas which he frankly undertook as a decorative commission was not a success in the eyes of his contemporaries, and was not preserved in its entirety. Nevertheless, in many a composition of Hglit and shade, Rembrandt shows as much feel- ing for decorative beauty and even grandeur of pattern as any man who ever lived. V Such various men of various times have vibrated to the appeal of decorative art that we may surely look for a response among our own people. The American spirit is sympathetic toward many things. More than a score of years ago I went to Washing- ton with the first committee which made an attempt to obtain free importation of foreign art. We sat up nearly all night in the sleeping-car considering 30 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION ways and means; we agreed that we must not talk sentiment, we must talk economics, appeal to the practical American mind of our legislators, and show them that good art is financially desirable. But when we reached the Capitol we found that it was pre- cisely sentiment which appealed to senator and rep- , resentative alike. They patted us on the back, and said: "It is fine to find you young fellows [mind you this was more than a quarter of a century ago] asking not to be protected." Thus, you see, sen- timent does reach the American legislator. And for those who wish to hear the other side, we may prove easily enough that good national art is a good national asset. To begin with, art confers immortality. A noble artistic representation immortalizes the cause sym- bolized, the thought embodied, the individual por- trayed. "The bust outlasts the throne, the coin Tiberius," is not merely the fine phrase of a poet. For about the concrete representation crystallizes and remains the thought. Not all Thucydides impresses the mind of the average man as swiftly and forcibly as does his first vision of the Acropolis. Toward the monument which stands for cherished cause or in- spired idea or revered individual the mind turns in instinctive patriotism, and if in the monument you find commemoration plus beauty, the latter quality gilds the halo of pre-eminence, and even outlasts it, since men's memories may fade but their power for IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 31 visual receptivehess is constant. The votaries at the shrine of patriotism become the visitors to the temple of beauty, and that beauty holds with it still and always some memory of the good and great who are celebrated by its outward forms. If you think I am becoming too poetical, remember that these visiting pilgrims bring throughout the ages, in wallet or toga, bosom or breeches pocket, obolus and denarius and dollar, which go into the market to keep things stirring. Let us pass from the waxed tablets of the guardians of Athene's temple to the ledgers of the bookkeepers of a modern hotel, and take the little city of Perugia in Italy as an ex- ample. Forty years ago it was quiet indeed. To-day you have |)ig hotels and ultra-modern trolley-cars which pull straight up the hill in twelve minutes the travellers who used to lumber around long curves in an antiquated bus. Do you say that the old way was the more picturesque.'' Perhaps I agree with you, but we are talking now about the financial ad- vantages of good art. The clean hotels are at least an unmixed blessing; and who gave them, who made the town cleaner and more prosperous than it had been for four hundred years? The hotel-keepers whose money has come from the visitors to the famous frescoes in the Sala del Cambio, the Hall of the Exchange, and to the sculptures of the great fountain on the square. The prosperity of Perugia 32 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION has come straight off the palette of Perugino, and the marble dust from the chisel of Giovanni Pisano has turned to gold dust and coin. Has any Fouquet or Colbert, any minister of finance in France greatly excelled our lady, the Venus of Milo, as a bringer of revenue? Imagine the sums which have been paid for casts, engravings, photographs, printed books and pamphlets about her goddesship, and add to these the money given to steamer, railway, and hotel by those to whom her presence in Paris was one of the most powerful magnets which drew them thither. And as is Paris, so are other capitals; and as is Perugia, so are fifty other Italian towns; and as they are, so are Washington, Boston, and St. Paul beginning to be. Ask the doorkeepers of the Library of Congress, the Public Library of Boston, the State Capitol of St. Paul, how many visitors pour into their buildings on holidays, and even on week-days. It is perhaps a low plane, this of the consideration of the money value to hotel-keeper and shopman and railway of the visiting tourist; but its corollary is upon a higher plane, and is a better support to our contention which is for the stimulus and education returned to that same visitor as a thousandfold the equivalent of his money. If the chronicles of France, and Germany, and Italy inspire the citizens of those lands to patriotism, the eyes of the citizens— and, through their eyes, their hearts and minds — are even more quickly caught by the sculptured or painted IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 33 gures of the heroes of the chronicles. The French- lan who hears the word Austerlitz sees before his lental vision the little man in the gray overcoat nd three-cornered hat, the Napoleon of RafFet or /harlet. The descendants of the soldiers of the great "rederick see Alter Fritz in powder and pigtail in he pictures of Menzel. We Americans know Lin- oln in the sculpture of St. Gaudens or French, or Washington as Houdon and Stuart saw him; even he theatritally improbable Washington crossing the )elaware is not without his uses to those who meet lim in Leutze's picture. Minor men are immortalized if the muse of the culptor's art lay her hand upon their shoulder, jattamelata and CoUeone were after all only hired aptains, though among the best of the generals of he Italian Renaissance. They would have been for- ;otten fifty times over had they been emphasized by lothing beyond their personal worth, but to-day their lames are known to the cultured of every country, heir physical presentment to the artists of every and, because four hundred years ago they were lorsed and harnessed by great sculptors and set on ligh as unfading memories. As you walk the streets of Paris to-day among lurrying men and women, at every thousand feet >r so there crosses your path the shadow of a figure vhich is not hurrying but still, and which is above '^ou — pedestalled! You look up and add to the 34 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION picture which has passed before your eyes and through your mind, of sculptured or painted moni- tors, martyrs to principle, or defenders of the land — men who have fought with hands and head for their country; who have printed books and burned at the stake for the principles which those books enunci- ated;. who have struggled to save the commonwealth, and died under the guillotine for their service; who have taught the blind, or led the keenest-sighted; who have analyzed, painted, written, manufactured — ^who, in a word, have helped in the past and to- day, thanks to art, are still helping every thoughtful on-looker. Assuredly, then, the importance of art, which is the subject, in its widest sense, of this chapter, has al- ways been demonstrated by our reason, our emo- tions, even our instincts. As aboriginal savages we instinctively decorated our bodies. Childhood in the race resembles the childhood of the individual human animal, which loves bright-colored objects of any kind, and this primeval impulse to decorate our- selves is so mighty that it has proved one of the bases of commerce throughout the ages. Man him- self has been first subject of his own arts, and woman, probably as docile to receive, has been even more lastingly subjective. A delightful prototype is An- atole France's girl in "LTle des Pingouins," a book in which the aboriginal inhabitants of the island go about in artless nakedness. Captured running upon 5»J; Travelling scaffold used at the Library of Congress IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 35 lie beach, the girl is dressed by the progressive saint, '^ho has brought silks and satins to the Pingouins. it first she struggles like a snared wild beast, then s the gown begins to work its spell, and as the lint commences to lace her up, she looks over her boulder and, critically surveying her waist, says: You may pull it in a little tighter still." With the peoples of antiquity, particularly of rreek antiquity, it was something the same as with inatole France's girl. They were natural beauty- )vers and they wanted to make beauty a part of verything! Athens, even while she held the head- dip of the antique world, spent more money upon er art than upon her wars; and when it came to axing the people to pay for Athene's peplos — to a uestion of beauty and art, in short — the Athenian axpayer said, like the Penguin girl: "You may queeze me a little tighter still." They loved the rts so ardently, the ancients, that they made the matures of their beloved immortal. "The face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilion " ! still the prototype of imperishable loveliness, and his earliest sung of beauties was potential after lore than two thousand years to kindle poetic fire 1 an Elizabethan age, second only, if second at all, 1 brightness to that of Homeric times. 36 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION If instinct impelled man toward the arts, our reason and our emotions, hand in hand, lengthened and strengthened the chain of masterpieces. Some- times, as in the Parthenon, reason shone brightest; again, at Karnak or in the cathedrals emotion beck- oned us more compellingly into the mystery of the groves of stone and the jewelled Hght. But always in the past, whether exerting its force emotionally or rationally, art was a mighty power; and to-day, in spite of our diversion toward the path of her sister, science, we shall find, if we try to retrace it in thought and study, that the roadway which leads down to us from Attic Athens or Tuscan Florence may be fol- lowed step by step. It is less clearly marked here and there, but it is continuous; in the long chain not one link is broken. Art is a Jacob's ladder of angels. The masters, the Michelangelos and Rembrandts and Velasquezes, come down to us in a glory so great that they dazzle us a bit, then go up again into heaven, where they belong; but we may, any of us, crowd about the foot of the ladder and look through the crevices of the clouds till at least a little of the radiance comes out and warms us. And if we look with honest eyes, devoid of affectation or in- sincerity, we may see many things, and may fall in love, each of us in his own fashion. One of us may love the broad mastery of Greek modelling, another the delicacy of the Florentine primitives. Velasquez's flat gray planes or Titian's winy reds and IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 37 iwny browns are there for whoever chooses them; [id one may pass from the nervous^ vigorous, as- ired breadth of Frans Hals to the quiet, smooth, as- ired breadth of a Van Eyck interior. We may :and ringed around by miracles, all different, yet ich in its way a well-nigh perfect example of the rt of the past, and learn from it to practise the art F the present, which, as our art, to-morrow again ill become that of the past. All these things I have said before, and shall say gain and again, for the public consciousness, sen- tive to many things, is dull to others; and if I had ) raise a statue to the typical promoter, whether of latters spiritual or material, I would make him a od Thor, and gird him with his weapon to hammer, ammer, hammer, again and again in the same place. And he would be no serene god, no deified larmonious Blacksmith, but a striker of discords, irst, and longest, and hardest, he would smite in eating out from the amorphousness of our indiffer- nce a conviction' — the conviction of the impor- mce of public art — that it should be at least as ood as the very best, because placed the most con- picuously, and therefore of all art that most likely 3 impress and teach the people. Next, he would have to strike long and hard in mphasis of the importance of harmony, the mutual- :y of architect, sculptor, and painter in any decora- ive undertaking, to strike until he had welded the 38 IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION three into one ingot and fashioned from it a weapon ten times as tempered to its purpose as it ever could have been in the personality of any one of these artists divided from their trinity. Divided, the architect, sculptor, and painter, however sincere, would hinder each other in the production of a great building; united, they are all-powerful. The Thor's hammer has turned the ingot into a battering ram which can level everything that interferes with the desired result. The next thing to be placed on the anvil should be fashioned into a symbol of the importance of experience in the decorative artist, not the mural painter alone, for I am no longer separating him from architect and painter, but the decorative art- ist, architect, sculptor, or painter. Talent is common to all real artists, and to no artist is all-round talent and culture more needful than to the decorator; but upon one side, and that a very widely embracing and very exacting one, the dec- orator is perforce a specialist. Experience, reiterr ated and hard-bought experience, is absolutely nec- essary to him, and in no wise is the lengthening repetition of hammer strokes more typical than it is of this continuity of effort, this long succession, now of essay, now of blunder, now of half success, fusing at last into a harmonious result, triumphant and perfect. If our Thor has driven deeply into the public IMPORTANCE OF DECORATION 39 nlnd the conviction of these three things : that public irt shall be of the best, that there shall be harmony letween architect, sculptor, and painter, and that lot only talent but past experience shall be demanded rom all three, the rest is a matter of detail. II HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING COM- MISSIONER AND ARCHITECT II HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING COM- MISSIONER AND ARCHITECT We have seen that the intrinsic importance of dec- oration has been attested completely and lastingly in a line of world-famous buildings reaching from Egypt and Greece eastward across Asia and west- ward over Europe, and binding the age of the pyra- mid-builders to our own by an unbroken chain. If we consider its importance in our own times, and discuss the relation of decoration in general and decorative painting in particular to our modern needs and practices, we soon realize that, although the importance of good decoration is patent through- out history, the eyes of the average man to-day are not open to it — above all, are not open to the fact that it can exist only through harmony between those who create it, and that this harmony must be bought at the price of experience, good-will, and money. It is difficult to divide a consideration of decora- 43 44 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING tion into chapters, and especially in considering this same harmony, experience, and practice, for they are inextricably bound together. Experience and experiment, indeed, are like the children's game of laying hands one upon another, and making re- peated withdrawals of the under hand to place it again on top of the pile. Experiment breeds ex- perience, which must again draw upon experiment for further procedure in order to assure harmony in practice, and thus you have continuous inter- relation and interdependence. Consideration of harmony between the public, the architect, and the mural painter must, as far as may be in these chapters, cover the points which make it difficult, though possible, for the creators of the public building to be harmonious. The difficulties may be roughly divided into those relating to choice of creative and executive artists (through competi- tion or appointment) to the misconceptions arising between the building commissioner and the archi- tect, between the building commissioner and the mural painter, between the architect and the mural painter, between various mural painters working together. To-day when we build a State capitol or a great court-house the enterprise is chronicled as an event; a deal of paper is covered with print to tell us that such and such a thing costs so much more or less COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 45 than was expected; that So-and-so, the expert, has expressed this, that, and the other view regarding the excellence of the result to be obtained, and that in a general way this palace of the people is to combine first-rate practicality with artistic magnificence of the highest order. We are led to understand, in- deed we lead ourselves to understand, that our ap- preciation of the situation reaches the level of its intrinsic importance. We are vastly mistaken. It does not attain that level. It is all well, or much of it well as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Our architects are able, sincere, enthusiastic, and hard-working. They stand ready to serve us admirably; but we, the public, do not strengthen their hands as we should, becayse we do not appreciate the importance of what they create for us. It is of quite transcendent importance. The pubUc buildings are the houses of the people, and whether cathedral, temple, court- house, Capitol, or city hall, these houses in the past have been landmarks of progress which have lasted as long as printed and written records. They have been beacons in history which have outlasted the splendor of the dynasties that lighted them. Each one of these buildings has been the house of God and of the people as well, for each has been raised to enshrine the workings of the law, to sym- bolize aspiration, to evidence outward beauty, to stand for the attributes of deity. Such a building 46 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING is the very ark of the covenant, and its creation means such potentiality for instruction and edifica- tion that the man in the street has by no means fulfilled his duty in voting appropriations for its construction, and then turning his back upon it with little thought save a recommendation that there shall not be undue waste. For such a house there should be rather largess than economy; and it is pathetic that in a case where the very best of the best is needed, and may be made imperishable in stone and bronze and mosaic, to become a teacher for millennials, a concrete realization of beauty, the property of every man rich and poor — ^it is pathetic, it is deplorable indeed, that our first thought should be to recommend that it shall not cost too much. If the economy suggested meant expenditure otherwise and better applied, the saving would be worth while. But few objects are as worthy, and why not spend lavishly on the creation of a public building ? To begin with, it is yours and mine — we are expending upon our own; next, it is a place of pilgrimage for the visitor; its beauty will enhance our credit abroad as well as educate our children at home. As was said in the last chapter, beauty is a tre- mendous commercial asset; yet when the ground and the stone and the steel have been paid for with mil- lions, and the architect goes to the building commis- sioners for money, for his ornament, his sculpture, and COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 47 painting, and mosaic, and glass, how do they reply to him? He says: "To make this room as beautiful as I desire I must have twenty-five thousand dollars." They answer: "If you ask for such a sum as that, the legislature will not listen to you for a moment; we will propose ten thousand dollars; there has been waste in many directions; if you wish to get anything at all you must show them that you intend to prac- tise economy — and here is our opportunity to prac- tise it since art is a superfluity. " In other words, the architect declares: "We need a room which shall be an example of beauty of the first order." The legislators reply: "Spend half the money, and make something as good as you can." And so the enterprise is crippled, and two hundred years later, perhaps, the visitor looks indifferently at a char- acterless room which might have become famous and been instructive through all that lapse of time had not the legislature been convinced that art was the one superfluity which offered opportunity for the cutting down of budgets. "Before our cities are beautiful they must be clean" is used as a knock-down argument against him who asks money for embellishment. And what on earth has that to do with the question ? Of course, our cities should be clean. What is there in clean- ness that interferes with beauty, and why should the money which pays for cleaning be taken from that which pays for ornamenting? As well say: a 48 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING man should be honest before he is cultivated. Is culture any hindrance to honesty, and may a man not spend some money upon his intellectual cravings without picking his neighbor's pocket? Enough is given for tawdry so-called ornament to pay for much real beauty, and upon this kind of ornament the average voter is apt to insist. With- out it, he declares that the room looks bare and lacks the suggestion of comfort to which he is accustomed and entitled. But if you say to him, pay a man to think, to so formulate and distribute the ornament that it shall create beauty of a high order, the "prac- tical" man objects: "You wish me to pay an expert? I have no money left for that; it has all gone to the experts whom we had to have, the men who laid our pipes and attended to our needs," and there is the whole argument begun again ab ovo. We need an expert to regulate an arrangement which enables us, for instance, to accomplish some par- ticular business act in ten minutes instead of fifteen, but we do not need the beauty which has made the joy of centuries of past times. "Pay me fifty thou- sand dollars," says one man, "and I will contrive an improvement in the public service by which your advertisements shall reach twice as many people." "You shall have your fifty thousand at once as a public benefactor." "Give me fifty thousand dol- lars," says the architect, "and I will make your room beautiful." "Visionary!" replies the legislator; From afholasrapk. copyright iqoS. by Detroit PiMishing Co. John W. Alexander: "The Crowning of Pittsburg." The main panel in the Apotheosis of Pittsburg, Carnegie Institute COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 49 "can you not understand that this is the moment for sconomy?" And cannot the legislator understand that if we follow such reasoning, public art must be abolished, since there is and can be no end to the possibility of expenditure upon practical improve- ments? In the past the service of beauty was the service of God; have we progressed so far that the service of beauty is now the robbery of man ? One would think so. The tendency of the average modern individual is to assume the following attitude toward art: Art is a word applicable to things produced in the past, many of which exist still as purchasable commodities. If a man is rich enough he will do well to buy them. Their possession confers prestige. Indeed, some of them now command such enormous prices that to own one is almost as creditable as having a patent of nobility, and makes a man the successful rival of any of his fellows. He may, as it were, wear a sur- passing Rembrandt in his collection, just as a woman outvies her friends in her own pearls and laces. If he be truly public-spirited he will put some of this art of the past upon show, will in a way lay it on the shelf of a museum, label and give it to the common- wealth. Do not believe for a moment that I am speaking lightly of the collector; those collectors, who think and plan for our museums as well as for their private galleries, are our great and lasting benefactors, and I so HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING believe that they in turn get some of their truest happiness from their art treasures. And it is small wonder that they should; for my part I can hardly imagine a keener pleasure than that of going into one's own sanctum, and there before one's own pos- session, looking into the clear exquisite depths of a panel painted by a great Flemish primitive master or some other work perfect of its kind. If I could own it I would wear such a possession in my cap, and in my heart at once, and would go down on my knees before it in thanks to the goddess Fortune. Yes, the great collector is not only a benefactor but a happy man; and even the perfunctory collector who buys because it is the thing to do so, is perhaps by way (as the English put it) of becoming happy, for in time his pictures lure him onward to more and better appreciation. Said an American friend twenty years ago in Florence: "It doesn't do to look too much at these old Botticellis and Filippo Lippis, for if you do, don't you know, you get to like them." And so it is not of the real collector that I speak, but of the average man who has not yet looked "too much at the old Botticellis," but enjoys his art vi- cariously and buys upon somebody else's appraisal. When he is made building commissioner, how- ever, for the court or State house, being a good citizen and conscientious according to his lights, he remembers that art is a big word, and he takes car- COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 51 ain respectful precautions. These go as far as aving Mr. Blank, who is "artistic in his tastes," lade a member of the commission; sometimes they even further — so far, indeed, as to let a little con- ideration for beauty fall upon the proceedings i^herever it may not cost too much or interfere with he realities of life and "the necessities of the situ- tion." And here I must apologize to the building com- nissioner, and state his side of the case. I am speak- ng of him now in his beginnings. He is confronted ?ith something wholly new to him, and he under- stimates it; but he is an intelligent man, and as the nterprise grows he grows with it. The power of uch a situation for teaching is great, and I know of 10 more interesting process of education than that of he building commissioners of the Capitol in a certain ;reat Western State. They began with doubt and uspicion, but, led by tact and wisdom on the part of heir architect, and supported by their own intel- igence and sincerity, they ended in enthusiastic ealization of success deserved and achieved. I )elieve that their path is being followed by other ;ommissioners, and usually much in the measure of he importance and therefore of the steadying effect »f the enterprise. We have, then, as our situation for discussion, the leed in a special case for the creation of a fine public )uilding. For material which is to bring about an 52 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING adequate meeting of the need, we have on one side the architect, sculptor, and painter, who may become the direct makers of the monument; on the other side, the public, for which the work is to be done; and as representing the public we have the building com- missioners, who are to initiate the undertaking, choose the creative body, make provision for the enterprise, and finally approve it. The architect, sculptor, and painter are naturally eager and en- thusiastic; also they are specially trained, and their attention is focalized first of all upon endowing the building with beauty of an appropriate character, although the architect will also control a staff of men expert as to practical needs. The building commissioners, too, are eager and enthusiastic; they are not specially trained as regards art, but their general experience is great, and it will naturally incline them in the direction of the practical side. This is quite as it should be up to a certain point, but it is just beyond that point that the artist's trouble begins. The building commissioner knows much of the practical, little of the artistic, side. He should, therefore, study especially, and allow par- ticularly for, the questions regarding which he is relatively ignorant. But usually the exact reverse obtains. He has under him artist experts and prac- tical experts : on one side the men who control the scale, proportion, form, and color; on the other, those who plan the lighting, heating, plumbing, etc. COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 53 ^ith the latter the building commissioner works j^mpathetically and understandingly, but when he omes to the artists, he selects the best men he knows f, and then with the honestest purpose sets them drift. You say: "But is not this ideal — to be let lone with your thoughts?" The reply is: "It rould be, if the embodiment of thoughts in stone nd marble and color didn't have to be paid for. "he building commissioner is by no means ungener- us, and he means to be just; but when he comes to he question of details in appropriations for art he i puzzled." The elasticity of his estimates is a stock subject 3r joking between the artist and his client — by rtist, I mean architect, painter, or sculptor. But his elasticity is inevitable unless the artist begins y overcharging his client sufl&ciently to leave him- elf a margin for unsuccessful experiment, for the rtist's experiments are all made in process of the rark, whereas the manufacturer's are concluded efore the goods are ordered of him. You shrug your boulders. I could prove my point to you a hundred imes during the decoration of a great building, and hope to convince you in a measure in the course of hese chapters. The building commissioner thoroughly under- tands the man who puts in the wires or the hghting, lut the artist and he speak different languages. If le orders the tiling for a floor, the manufacturer. 54 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING after measuring the space, can tell him to a dollar what the material and the work will cost; but if it is a question of the coloring and general decoration of the walls and ceiling of the same room, and the best possible result is required, no human being can say just what it should cost, because this is a matter of feeling which may require repeated experiment. When McKim was decorating the University Club in New York, he did certain pieces of work over many times until the result satisfied him. McKini,* besides being a great artist, had the resources of a long-established house behind him, but the young artist whose purse is not deep must curtail his experi- ment or suffer loss; and the client, unless he be a man of quite exceptional breadth of vision, will sus- pect what he cannot understand, and will watch the budget jealously. Sometimes, truly, the converse obtains, and the architect for artistic reasons wishes to use a cheaper marble than that proposed by the commissioners. This has happened more than once, and not a little to the surprise of the parties of the first part. The members of our local committees and of our national committees are sincere — not a doubt of it — and the local patriotism which says, give us for our public building the local marble — our marble- as a sentiment is irreproachable; but if that marble once placed clashes with its surroundings and spoils the architect's music, not all the patriotism in Hugo Ballin: Centre ceiling panel in a room of the State Capitol, Madison, Wis. COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 55 county, State or nation will completely deaden the shock which its presence brings in a dissonance of color to the trained eye, because that shock proceeds from the cultivation of another kind of sense, and arises, not only from feeling, but from knowledge — knowledge which it is the expert pro- fessional's business to use as a sword to parry the assault of the enthusiastic, if mistaken, local patriot. Or, if the contrary obtains, as I believe it does more often, if the exotic appeal of the white marble of Carrara, or the glitter of Algerian onyx, with its prestige of greater cost, moves even a taxpayers* committee, then from no one can come more grace- fully than from the experts the suggestion, "Are not Abana and Pharpar waters of Damascus?" — the pa- triotic admonition to take for the public building the perhaps more harmonious marble which lies in the vein under the soil at that same public building's very foundations. I wish I could bring this constant need of expert advice home to the inteUigent, for in most cases it does not really reach them. They answer: "Yes, yes, you are right; united effort, wisely directed, is essential to harmony. You shall have a free hand." They say this and believe it. They are perfectly sincere, but the building rises, the reliefs and statues begin to take their place; mosaic and painted dec- oration begin to cover the walls. All at once some one, not an artist, has an idea — it may be a very S6 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING good idea, and assuredly sincere in its conception: "For utilitarian reasons we must enlarge such a room; for reasons of local patriotism we must change our columns or pilasters to a marble of quite another color (a color never contemplated by the designer) ; we desire to illustrate some point of local pride and the mural painter must introduce into his carefully composed arrangement this new thing." Straightway the building as an aesthetic concep- tion totters, as it were, upon its base, and, unless you have authoritative dicta from the men who know, the men of new ideas will so prevail with the public that the beauty of the result will be seriously im- paired, if not destroyed. And after this beauty has been impaired, the public says: "Why did they bungle? They had an advisory committee of artists, who ought to have known better." But an advisory committee can only advise. It has no other power, and the rejection of advice upon one point may throw all the other parts out of harmony. It is true that afterthoughts must come, and must be acted upon in some way in all great enterprises. But the business of the building com- mission is to minimize at the start the number and importance of possible afterthoughts, and later to deal with them wisely. In the first instance, lay directors and artist di- rectors may confer with infinite advantage; in the second, wise interference is hardly possible save to COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 57 the professional artist. The lay director can always make it clear to the artist director that there must be seating room, say, for two hundred and fifty more people; that is a simple proposition, plain to any intelligent man. But the artist cannot always make it clear to the lay director zvhy in enlarging the room he must do such and such a thing not to impair its beauty, cannot make the reason quite clear because it can be quite clear only to him who is trained in aesthetic relation and requirement. Utilitarian requirements can, barring accident, be foreseen and planned on paper at the inception of the work to the satisfaction of the lay directors; requirements in the processes of scaling, coloring, modelling, cannot be wholly foreseen, but to a cer- tain extent must be felt as they grow. Many a non- professional critic comes forward with a suggestion, excellent in itself, but utterly impossible of realiza- tion. Sometimes the thing suggested is better than the thing executed, but cannot be adopted. The theme may be even noble, yef ridiculous in possibil- ity of juxtaposition. When Paul Veronese painted one of those great banquets, which are among his masterpieces, and in which was a figure of Christ sitting at meat with many people, he put a dog under the table, as was his frequent habit. One of his building committee thought a dog not good enough for the subject, and requested the artist to put in St. Mary Magdalen in its place, washing 58 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING the Christ's feet. The painter replied that there were compositional reasons which made it incon- venient to do so. We have no mural painters to-day in America as authoritative as Paul Veronese, and usually our building committees treat us very con- siderately, but embarrassing suggestions have been sometimes made. In a way we have been generous even to lavish- ness, and at times we have spent money that might almost have built the Parthenon or Notre Dame of Paris. The evident reply is: "Yes, but this is not the age of Pericles, or of the mediaeval masons' guilds; where should we look for an Ictinus or Phidias, or an Erwin von Steinbach?" The re- joinder is as evident: Pericles simply did the best he could in his time. His time happened to be one of the great epochs of art, but that has nothing to do with the principle. He put his enterprise into the best-trained hands that he could find, and gave to the ablest brain the conduct of that enterprise. With the designers and builders he associated him- self, perhaps the most enlightened amateur of all time, but we may believe that he let discussion of important points come from the mouths of archi- tect, painter, and sculptor, before decision came from his own. For it is by no means the wish of the reasonable artist to-day to disfranchise the enlightened amateur. The enlightened amateur is invaluable; he helps to COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 59 clear up darkness in council; in a way his all-round cultivation may bring a wider sense of perfection than comes to the professional man. His love of all kinds of art may permeate discussion and consider many sides of a question, where the technician, forced to concentrate himself upon a point, may over- look other points of interest because they are with- out his focus. The non-professional may map out the course, he may even direct it in a general way, but at crucial times, at moments of emergency, safety will be more assured if the non-professional man keeps his hand off the wheel. II I have tried to note some of the difficulties which, even with the utmost good-will on both sides, may arise between the building commissioner and the artist in control of an enterprise, be he architect, mural painter, or sculptor. Let us pass on to the question of harmony between these three latter creators of the building, and begin by considering the importance of the artist-architect as director and controller. If the great decorated building is such a mighty agent, if all civilized peoples have needed it, and pro- duced it, we too need and must create it. We have created it, and we are acquiring it yearly in more and more of our cities. Do we ever reflect much 6o HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING concerning such a creation? It is worth while, for the process may be illuminating. How has it begun? Here in a new country, the sittings of the court of law have been held first under a tree. Then the school coeval with the church has been built — built perhaps before the court-house because the babies at a task of any kind need shelter more than the hardier "grown-ups." Next have come court and town meeting-house; then, as they wax numerous and prosperous, these children of older countries remem- ber what their ancestors built across seas, and ask for something more enduring than pine planks and shingles, until at last those who would still keep the public purse-strings drawn are outvoted, and an appropriation of money is made. Here are the funds for the new State capitol. Now who shall build it? A knows a good man, and proposes him; so does B; so does C. But the other citizens say no, and the local papers say no still more emphatic- ally. "We wish to offer the very widest opportu- nity for talent. There shall be no 'mute, inglorious Milton' here; if we have one, let him speak out in stone and mortar. Other States have built great Capitols, ours must be as fine as any. We will have a competition. " There is abundant fallacy in their contention that a competition necessarily offers the widest op- portunity for talent, but the theory is democratic, and, after much discussion by those who are as nearly Copyright by Robert Blunt Robert Blum: Decoration In Mendelssohn Hall Glee Club, New York. Fragment One of the pioneer mural paintings which helped importantly to further the movement COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 6i expert as practice can make them, no perfectly satis- factory^ equivalent for competition has yet been found. This question of competitions is so important, so full of thorns, so far from having been solved, that a good deal of space must be given to even partial consideration of it. Ill The selection of the men who are to create the building, the architect who is to design it, the sculp- tors and painters who are to be responsible for its decoration, is evidently a matter of grave importance to the public. The discussion of the method of selection is not Hkely to be entertaining to the reader, but the double facts — first, that what we call an open com- petition is the method usually preferred by the public and its representatives; secondly, that the artists nearly always dislike and disapprove of this method, make it desirable to state some of the conditions inseparable from an open competition, which render selection by the latter uncertain of result. In noting some of these difficulties, I emphasize especially those which confront the mural painter, because his specialty and needs are most famihar to me, but very nearly the same conditions apply to com- petition in architecture or sculpture. 62 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING The mainspring of the public desire for competi- tion is the public wish for the best service, and the public belief (I think mistaken) that young and un- discovered talent will find its direct opportunity in open competition. To put it more familiarly, the average layman says to himself, John Smith, of So-and-So; John Brown, of So-and-So, seem to us talented. How do we know that they are not more talented than any one in the field .'' On the other hand, how are they to show their talent save in an open competition? What oppor- tunity is there for them if the important commissions in mural painting are given always to older men? Establish an open competition; John Smith and John Brown will gravitate to their proper places, and, finding their opportunity, two geniuses may manifest themselves. It is possible to show that the event might prove, first, that John Smith and John Brown would not gravitate to their true places, and, secondly, by reason of certain conditions which govern competi- tion, that they might succeed in obtaining the com- mission, and fail in its execution. The two main hindrances to a successful deter- mination by open competition are, first, unfitness of nezv material — by new material I mean artists who have not had practical experience in mural painting; secondly, unfitness of juries. These two unfitnesses react upon each other. Let us begin, for convenience COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 63 sake, because it is sooner discussed, by considering the second of these two objections — unfitness of the jury- Very nearly the same qualities are requisite in a good juror as in a competent executant; therefore in an important case it is difficult to strengthen the jury without weakening the ranks of the competi- tors. We are still so young in mural painting in America that we have not a conveniently large num- ber of men to choose from for the double service. If our mural painting had been long established the ideal condition would exist of many artists already working on commissions who would be too busy to compete, but not too busy to act as jurors. This condition will exist here in the future, let us hope in the near future, but does not as yet. There would probably be some first-rate artists whose absolute disapproval of competition would prevent their be- coming competitors, but their very disapproval of the method would disincline them from being jurors, or at best would make them half-hearted. In any first-rate artist temperament urges strongly; he is bound to lean toward certain kinds of technic, and even toward a certain class of subjects. Bias of this kind can be neutralized only by the appoint- ment of a large jury, and, as stated above, such ap- pointment, in its withdrawing of many men from possible competition, has distinct disadvantages. In any competition some sort of subject has to be 64 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING given out, since even its widest scope must be ap- propriate to the place which will receive decoration. Now nearly every limitation of subject will be help- ful to the juror, and make it easier for him to de- cide between this and that competitor. On the other hand, exactly the contrary will obtain with the competitor, since every limit put upon subject will, in direct ratio, limit the said competitor's indi- viduality. Here is an almost insuperable obstacle to the best result. If a single subject is given even in a closed com- petition, say of five competitors, it is certain to be more sympathetic to some than to others of the five. This at once constitutes inequality of opportunity. Again, each juror will lean by nature to one kind of subject rather than to another, as well as to some special kind of treatment — another condition which militates against perfect fairness of estimate. If, on the contrary, the commission were given by direct appointment, the commissioners and the artist would agree beforehand upon a subject sympathetic to both. Any really intelligent client can immensely increase his chance of getting valuable service from an architect, sculptor, or painter, by discussing his problem with him beforehand, and determining through what he learns in that discussion whether the temperament of that particular architect, sculptor, or painter is sympathetic with his own, and thereby likely to interpret his (the client's) COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 65 ideals as he would like to have them interpreted. But if you have a competition it is the competitor's first duty not to discuss his problem with the client or with any other competitor. He may be ideally fitted to carry out the client's ideals, but he is not allowed to find out what they are; whereas, in the case of appointment, the client may study his artists as much as he likes beforehand, and by discussion of his problem with them get a good working knowledge of their temperaments, even if he cannot estimate their working capacities. Now, in a competition two men are often so nearly equal that the question of taste and personal wish on the part of the client really ought to outweigh the perhaps very trifling superiority of one artist over the other. But, in accordance with the rules of a competition, the jury is rigidly held to give the award to the one who is better than the other, be it ever so little better, except in the very rare case of the jury knowing the client's temperament and wishes in- timately enough to consult his real and ultimate ad- vantage, as seen from the broadest point of view. From this same broadest point of view commission by direct appointment is thus far more practical than commission through competition. Probably the greatest obstacle to healthy compet- ing is the a priori conviction of the artist competitor, that the chance is very small of his going before a jury which will thoroughly comprehend him through 66 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING his sketch — that is to say, comprehend his aim toward a final purpose — and his further conviction that unless his aim is comprehended the jury could not possibly forecast the result which he might obtain in his fin- ished work. Now, there is a great deal behind a competitive sketch. There are some things which cannot be divined by anybody except their author, and there are some things which deceive even a clever jury, which, indeed, at times fool the author himself. It is well known to artists of experience that a painter may triumph with his sketch, and fall flat with his finished work. We have all seen sketches which were captivating in appearance, but which depended for their attractivenes upon qualities which would practically disappear as the work was enlarged. Sometimes such promise is obviously tricky, but often it is quite honest in the author of the sketch, and so subtle as to deceive the jurors and make an equitable decision impossible. In sum, men who make beautiful sketches sometimes cannot paint a good mural panel; while others who can do a large and admirable work are clumsy and ineffectual in their sketches. Every one of these conditions offers an argument against competitions. Another argument is this: the carrying power of a sketch, considered simply as an impressive en- semble, is often, usually indeed, aided by incomplete- ness and by breadth of handling. On the other hand, COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 67 the carrying power of a sketch, as an expression of finahty in the artist's intentions, is exactly the op- posite. The artist's chance of showing to the jury just what he intends will be in proportion to the de- gree of elaboration and finish which he accords to his sketch. Therefore he will be obliged to choose between two kinds of effectiveness, either one of which conflicts with the other. Again, psychological operation makes it almost impossible to a man to plan as convincingly upon an uncertainty as he would in the case of a decoration which he had received outright as a commission, and was, therefore, sure eventually to correct and per- fect upon and from his first plan. In the former case, he has to complicate what he would like to do by wha^ he thinks the jury would like to have him do, and the complication, sure to disturb, is apt also to weaken. Again, it is open to question whether the moral effect of competitions is not unfortunate. Several men lose where one wins, and each loser is apt to feel with justice that he has not had a really free hand. That some of the strongest natures are stim- ulated by failure to greater endeavor is probable, but in view of their doubt as to the real equality of opportunity, most of the losers are disheartened; their morale is lowered. The public may answer that the artist is here subject to the common lot and that competition is a stimulus and is the soul 68 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING of business. To this the rejoinder is that art is a business only in a secondary sense; in the first sense it is art. Again, business competition is practically con- tinuous, unlimited by time, or at any rate limited only by result. A man who is making typewriters or automobiles may spend any amount of time on inventing improvements before he competes, and when he does compete, it is with a completed article, and he wins by a carefully planned and executedl result. The artist in a competition can offer only a sketch which is but experimental, and the jury's dictum stands between it and result. In a strictly limited competition open only to ex- perts, who are paid for their sketches, some of the conditions stated in the foregoing paragraphs may be met, and others improved, but a limited competitic^ * at once throws out of court the public's first and most convinced contention that competition opens the widest opportunity to undiscovered talent. Another objection to competition, limited or un- limited, is its enormous expense. In an architectural competition, the many thousands of dollars expended upon the competitive drawings in various archi- tectural offices are sometimes so out of proportion to any obtainable return that on the next occasion some of the most promising candidates decide to stay out altogether. In the specific case of a com- petition recently held, one of our most expen- George W. Breck: "Reflection." One of the ceiling panels in the library of the residence of the late Whitelaw Reid COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 69 enced architects calculated the money spent by the competing firms upon their drawings, and found that it amounted to more than the commission eventually paid to the winning competitor. In every case of an unpaid competition the public ob- tains something for nothing. In this case it received in cost of elFort far more than seems just. Trouble- some conditions of the kind I have mentioned do not come to the notice of the public, which, on the contrary, is easily caught by the specious semblance of equal opportunity. Of course, there are two sides; the undiscovered genius may appear, but it is unlikely, and it would seem in the light of experience hitherto gathered that the nearer the open competition is kept to the school- room and the further from the great public enter- prise the better. And this brings us to the strong- est argument of all. New and untried talent should not be intrusted with the conduct of a great enter- prise. For the latter, experience is required. Young Napoleons and Alexanders come but once in a thousand years; a young pilot would hardly be given a Mauretania to take into harbor on his first trip; the most brilliant young captain would scarcely command a division before he had taken any part in its mancEuvres as a subordinate. To assume con- trol of the decoration of a vast room is to embark upon a great enterprise; young and untried talent may find place in its conduct and may eventually 70 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING pass onward and upward to its direction, but to base the selection^of the director upon the most brilliant sketch of a beginner would be to take unjustifiable risks with the public support and the public money. And- by a beginner I mean any one who has not already taken an important subordinate part in the control of a decoration, and taken it successfully. It would be unfair to dismiss this side of the sub- ject without admitting that commission by direct appointment may open the door to one abuse worse than any which has crept into open competition. I refer to lobbying. Lobbying, of course, might result in putting for- ward the right man, but also it might, through fa- voritism, make an utterly unworthy appointment, and it cannot be too carefully guarded against. For the less worthy an artist, the less likely he is to reply, as did Paolo Veronese to the Venetian senator who advised him to enter a competition: "I believe that I am fitter to merit commissions than to solicit them." In the great age of Italian art competitions do not seem to have been especially successful, else Vasari would have noted more than the few which he describes; and an army of pilgrims may thank their stars to-day that Pope Julius's way of instituting a "competition" was to give one series of walls to Raphael, another to Michelangelo, instead of ask- ing them to submit competitive sketches to a jury composed, we will say, of himself and Giovanni de COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 71 Medici, with Bramante and Giuliano da San Gallo to help them out on technical points. On the whole, commission by appointment ap- pears to be safer than a result obtainable by open competition, and the answer to the public's main contention would seem to be this: John Smith, briUiantly talented and inexperienced, is debarred by his inexperience from appointment to a headship, but is fitted by his talent to be appointed to a minor place in which place his talent will earn for him ex- perience and assure his future. IV Let us suppose, then, that a competition is ordered, and 4architects' offices begin to buzz, and thousands of dollars' worth of time is put into drawings, most of which might be carried out in excellent buildings, yet most of which must perforce go unrewarded by the final great success. The jury meets and exhibits its strength and its weakness, the decision is made — enter the architect. Let us say at once that America, which is productive of ability, has been very successful in this particular product of a man who must be artist and engineer, imaginative and prac- tical. And think what a task lies before him. This great building is to be the temple of the Deity; that one is to stand for the law, and must not only shelter 72 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING him who pleads, but by its character suggest the majesty of justice which it enshrines. Or it is to be a Hbrary which stores up cubic measure of printed wisdom, and should manifest in its appearance its appropriateness to such guardianship; or a town hall, which shall suggest the aspirations and picture the achievements of a community. The muse rightly in- voked eternalizes the souvenirs of man, but those two words — "rightly invoked " — infer so much. That art is long, he who sits before only a little panel or statuette can realize; how much more he who sets his hand to the construction of a great and compli- cated building! Think of the whole that must be conceived as a whole; the parts that must be subordinated — their infinite and infinitely subtile interrelations, their sizes, proportions, shapes, colors, surfaces, the na- ture of their material, the character of their appear- ance, simple or complicated, austere or rich! What employment is here, what exaction! If we drop a pin into a delicate mechanism the disturbance may be felt by even ponderous wheels which that deli- cacy has served and governed at once. Anybody can understand this because anybody can see the disturbance that results. In a great building a small artistic mistake may also be far-reaching in its dis- turbance of general harmony, but this time it is not by any means every one who can realize it at first, because it is not so patent, and only such eyes COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 73 note It as are either prompted by feeling or informed by training. But the small mistake, if unnoted, can go on with its mischief until a big dissonance re- sults, and you have a regular "house that Jack built" of successive mischances, all started by one little disagreement when the "dog began to worry the cat," with bad forms upon good proportions or something of the sort. All this the architect must foresee, or rectify, or suffer for. Therefore he must be armed at every point; he must be a gladiator and fight the opinion of big and little where it is hurtful, and he must have a moral consciousness that can soar like an aeroplane above considerations of gain. He must, for example, reject In favor of cheaper material the costlier marble which would swell his commission, but might hurt his artistic effect. He must be modern and meet the modern problem, and in so doing turn his back resolutely upon some of the effects which he has most loved and most studied in buildings of the past, effects upon which he has been brought up to the comfort of his eyes and mind. He may not consider first of all the propor- tions which he would like to have. He may not spread out his plan, for he is building on ground more precious than gold, and he must squeeze his house, and press it together, and shoot it straight up into the air. Two feet of recess may cost thousands; two feet of projection may entail a lawsuit and 74 HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING condemnation. He may not treat his fafade with beautiful constructive ornament, but, instead, must make it into a kind of colander for the sifting of light into every cranny of a thousand office rooms, and in considering these same rooms he must unite something of the knowledge of a fireman, a purveyor of fresh air, and even of a sanitary inspector. For this great building is to be useful, expressive, and beautiful all at once. The people have paid their money for this. What responsibility then weighs upon the architect! How truly can he be called creator, how fortunate if one day he may be able to look upon his work and see that it is good! How manifold must be his precautions! How almost in- finite are the calls made upon his knowledge! How prodigious is the scope for his imagination! He must wear wings, yet grope in subcellars. He must have eyes for the glories of paradise painted under his dome, and at the same time to detect a leak in its lining. He must appreciate the excellence of the figures drawn upon his plaster and know that plaster's chemistry and endurance. Endurance of his own he must have, too, and the patience of Job with the walking delegate of the strikers. And at the very beginning of things, if he wishes decorative beauty in his building he must become a missionary and a preacher. He is designing a town hall or State capitol. Now, beauty is expensive; it costs money; and upon the committee which makes COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT 75 up the architect's building commission are sure to be men with veto power, who feel that their first duty in committee is to prevent unnecessary expenditure of the people's money, and who as honestly believe that beauty is unnecessary. To these men the archi- tect goes cautiously, respecting at once their power and their undoubted sincerity, which may cost his building its aesthetic life. The committeeman begins by believing that if the transaction of business is sheltered nothing more is needed. Gradually he admits the possibility of a few columns which not only "look nice" but hold up something. Soon, too, he realizes the attractive- ness of rich marble, though he scents "graft" in its employment and examines into the thing carefully. When the architect attempts to show him that in certain cases a cheap material can be handsomer than a costly one he looks askance at his teacher and suspects him of hedging in some way and for some purpose. But his education goes on. The average member of a building committee is a good man, selected for very real qualities, and, though he may not have much knowledge of art, he has plenty of knowledge of other things. By the time that the State capitol is finished the recalcitrant committeeman is often in love with the building from dome to pavement, and proud of the hand he has had in it; and the final relations between architects and their committees usually do the high- 76 COMMISSIONER AND ARCHITECT est honor to both sides, and lead by reason of their success to even more important enterprises. His- torians of art have celebrated the- many-sidedness of the Renaissance architects who could build domes and paint miniatures, play the lute and write son- nets, carve intagli and colossi; but even of them we may believe were hardly exacted more kinds of knowledge than are asked of the modern architect. "Are you a man or a meeracle ? " says the sergeant to Kipling's Mulvaney in "My Lord the Elephant." "Betwixt and betune," replied Mulvaney. And so to me the architect has sometimes seemed betwixt and between a man and a miracle in his capacity for all-round knowledge. Ill IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE IN THE MURAL PAINTER Ill IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE IN THE MURAL PAINTER We have discussed the importance of decoration as a factor in civilization and the importance of harmony between the building commissioner who orders and pays for the decoration and the archi- tect who designs and directs it. Under this second division we have placed the subdivisions which re- late to the importance of the architect as an artist, and the importance of the selection of the execu- tants. We have now to take up the various sub- divisions of the importance of the mural painter's harmony with the building commissioner, with the architect, and with his fellow mural painters. Before all this and as directly akin to the last words of the preceding chapter, we may consider the im- portance of experience in the mural painter, not for- getting that architecture and sculpture are closely related to painting, and that what is needed and re- quired in the practitioner of one of the three branches is indispensable in the followers of the other two. 79 8o IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE Experience, so absolutely necessary to the archi- tect in control, is almost equally essential to the mural painter. If charity covers a multitude of sins, art covers and emboldens a deal of ignorance — ^the would-be practice or appreciation of art, that is. In the estimation of the general, art is by no means caviare, but something which they may par- take of freely and assimilate by grace of nature; to many of them, in fact, art is universal license. If their friend is dangerously ill they will not send a violinist or a painter to him, even if that violinist or painter has occasionally listened to a lecture upon a medical subject; but if the question is one relating to art they will cheerfully set some smatterer in the field merely because he is a personal acquaintance whom they desire to advance. If you take them to task, they say: "Yes, but in a case of dangerous illness it is a question of the life of a man." We answer: "And where art is concerned it is some- times, as in the case of the Campanile of Venice, for instance, a question of a valuable life which lasted a thousand years, then ended for lack of an artist's supervision." Tell them to start on a railway journey with an inexperienced person at the locomotive's throttle, to enter a rocky channel with a green hand at the helm, they would search your eyes for dementia incipiens; but ask them to embark an inexperienced person upon a long and exacting artistic enterprise among IN THE MURAL PAINTER 8i rocks and shallows of all sorts of unapprehended difficulties, and they will say : "Why not ? " If they buy even a bulldog they will send an expert to select a prize-winner for them; but if it is a matter of art — ! He who approaches the sym- boHcal goddesses who stand for chemistry or physics draws near with respect. He admits that to succeed with them a man must know; but before the goddess of the arts the average man is a chartered libertine; "he may chuck her under the chin and sit on her knee." You tell me perhaps: "We are tired of hearing the professional find fault with the public." Let me say at once that I am one of those who believe first and last in the public. It is for it that art in the end exists. I believe in the lay critic, the lay writer; above all, the lay appreciator, the men and women who make up the world-audience. I believe in them first and last, but not all the time. There are times when they err in indulgence or in severity, and when it becomes necessary for the artists to demand that the rules be observed, if needful to stand together like soldiers in a hollow square and fight for this observance. A famous business man once said to me: "The trouble with American artists is exactly the same as with American business men. They don't work hard enough." The application of his proposition to the business man surprised me; in the case of the 82 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE artist it may be that he sometimes does not work hard enough, but it is certain that where the matter in hand is some great decorative undertaking the public often does not permit him to think hard and long enough — to prove his thought by sufficient ex- periment. As we have said, one of the first of the sine-qua- nons in the successful decoration of a great public building is that experience plus talent shall conduct the enterprise. And here again the client, which in this case is the public, accepts our admonition with an "of course, of course" — thfen shows lack of com- prehension by proceeding somewhat as follows: A great court-house in the capital of the State of Cloud- land is to be built. Some one suggests that A and B and C, experienced mural painters in — say, New York, or Philadelphia, or Chicago — be consulted, and that one of them be chosen to direct the work. Straightway somebody else cries: "No! We must have a Cloudland man to do Cloudland work. John Smith, born in Cloudland, is full of talent; he spent four years at the Atelier Tel-et-Tel in Paris, and has had a medal at the Salon." So John Smith, of Cloudland, is given the direction of the work. Now, nothing can be more praiseworthy, or more natural than the feeling which prompts such action on the part of the building commissioners for the court-house. They are sincere, earnest, patriotic, and they wish to give the local man an opportu- IN THE MURAL PAINTER 83 nity. Nevertheless there are many chances that they will be mistaken in their action. There is a deal of artistic talent all over the coun- try, a deal of it in Cloudland, presumably a deal of it in John Smith. But there is very little special experience in the country, and such experience is absolutely essential to the successful conduct of so exacting an undertaking as is the decoration of a public building; for decoration, which is a great branch of art, happens also to be a science — or at least to have one foot based upon it — and science is exact knowledge, the fruit of experience and only of experience. It is right that John Smith should be granted the privilege conferred by his nativity and backed by his talent. It is right that the young men, young in experience, that is — I do not care how few or how many years they may have lived — right, I say, that these young men, if they have shown ability and char- acter, should be recompensed for the same:, should be given an under-part in the work, and so win ex- perience and pass onward and upward to the con- trol of later work. But the headship of such an enterprise should be intrusted only to a man who has already proven his capacity as a leader and a controller. Feeling will not suffice; knowledge is required. The qualities which gave John Smith his medal in the Salon will probably be of great help in eventually making him 84 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE a decorator, but no Pallas Athene of talent can spring fully armed from the brain of any atelier whatever, be it in Olympus or Paris or New York, new-born, and yet ready to assume the direction of a great work which demands co-ordination of all softs based upon nothing short of past experience. Certainly, every one must agree with the propo- sition that the young men should have an oppor- tunity. It is in them that lies our only hope of future decoration in America. But this does not mean that the men who by hard study have learned to decorate shall step aside and give their place to those who wish to learn. Such a proposition could not be reasonably entertained in any business or profession or at any time of the earth's history. If a great tower were to be erected, and an architect success- fully laid the foundations to it, surely no building commission would say: "Now we will delay the fur- ther erection until other and younger architects have learned to lay foundations." If they did, the result would be a country full of foundations without any towers upon them. And that is in a sense what will happen if we lean too much to local patriotism; for in such a case what begins as nationalism easily becomes parochialism. If the work is to be given to John Smith only because he is of Cloudland, this will happen. In each State and county the local artist will be preferred; now, continued and repeated experience is needed to make IN THE MURAL PAINTER 85 a director of decoration. On the other hand, there cannot, save in a few great States, be enough impor- tant work to build up with reasonable rapidity and fortify such experience as would warrant leadership in decoration. Many years would have to elapse before the really experienced decorator could be developed; the land would be full of half-educated artists doing work beyond their capacity instead of painting under men who would gradually lead them to the top. In the story, the old lady always saved the ripe apples till they began to decay, and so finally ate them all rotten; we should reverse this system and eat all our apples unripe and sour. It should be axiomatic that only through repeated opportunity can a man become a mural painter, but he should not become one through the cession of opportunity by men older in experience, but rather through the natural and gradual development of more general opportunity. This opportunity can arise only through popularization, and popularization can be produced only by the intrinsic excellence of the work shown. It is quite true that a certain popularization comes from a spirit of rivalry between different localities, and a spirit of imitation, but this is a dangerous state of mind based upon artificiality. Unless the excellence of the work is sustained it will cease to interest; people will find out that, though they have kept abreast of their neighbor over the way, they do not really care for what they have ob- 86 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE tained, and then the spirit of imitation will manifest itself quite as naturally and rapidly in the abandon- ment of decoration as it did in undertaking it. II So much then for the statement that experience plus talent is absolutely necessary to him who is to be given the conduct of an important part in dec- oration. A few examples of the puzzles and troubles that confront a mural painter who is engaged upon an important work are sufficient to demonstrate the truth of this statement. To begin with, in a great building in course of erection, the mural painter or the sculptor has to do his thinking under certain physically and materi- ally difficult conditions. In Chicago, at the World's Fair, we mural painters wore sweaters, the wind blew the turpentine out of our cups and stiflFened our fingers; in Washington, under a summer sun beating upon the dome of the Library of Congress, we worked in gauze underclothing only, and drank a bucketful of Ice-water a day; in another great building, when the steam was turned on in September to dry the plastering, one of my assistants became very sick, but went bravely on with his painting. These are only physical discomforts, but they make it hard to do thoughtful work. Something, however, that is more than physical goes into trying to com- IN THE MURAL PAINTER 87 pel vast spaces to tell as one piece; into making thirty figures scale alike, and scale with the archi- tecture too; into considering the amount of air that is to come between the decoration and its spectator — sometimes ten feet of air, sometimes one hundred and fifty; into suiting various portions of your dec- oration to the different lighting of different parts of the same space; into allowing for the treatment of curved surfaces; into conforming your composition of masses and lines to the sort of ornament, rich or severe, that is to surround it; into neutralizing the effect of unfortunate reflections; into realizing that, deprived as we are, in mural work, of the resource of varnish, only repeated experience teaches what our overpaintings may dry into. Witji all of these difficulties to consider and many, very many more, which I have no space to note, is it hard to accept my afiirmation that not talent alone but talent backed by experience is absolutely essen- tial to him who would direct a great enterprise in mural painting? Take a man who is full of ability and set this problem before him; for a time he will be bewildered, and there are things which nobody can tell him; he must find them out for himself. One of the most brilliant of American painters, Alfred Collins, who was taken away from us only too early, and to our great loss, came into the Van- derbilt Gallery one day when I was painting there on a large decoration. He criticised a certain part 88 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE of my work. I said: "That has been puzzling me, too, and I have made repeated changes in that par- ticular place. Take my palette, and go up on the scaffold, and make the change yourself; suggest what you would like to see." He went up the ladder and painted a little while, then came down and viewed his work from the floor. "Why, it doesn't look at all the same from here as from the scaffold." "No," I replied, "that's what I've been iinding out over and over again for several years." He remounted the scaffold, returned twice to the floor, then put the palette back into my hands and said, laughing: "I give it up." A commission for a decoration in a public building had been allotted to Collins. A few weeks later he decided to decline it, and told me that he did not for the moment feel able to take the time necessary to acquire such exferience as would enable him to handle the work properly. That Collins would have made a brilliant decorator could he have taken time to grow gradually along the lines of mural work I feel sure; that under the circumstances he was wise in declining I am almost equally certain. The most delightful example which we have of simplicity dauntlessly confronting complexity is probably that of William Morris and his friends at Oxford volunteering an attack upon a stone-vaulted ceiling. They were full of subject-matter— which latter was to treat of knights and dragons and such IN THE MURAL PAINTER 89 and they were full of a high courage, too, and of an enthusiasm so compelling that when a coat of linked mail was made for them to paint from and was sent up from London, Morris put it on and insisted upon wearing it at luncheon. They had delightful swords and helmets, but their artistic weapons and ammuni- tion were not as substantial as their costume prop- erties. They painted with water-color brushes on the rough, unprepared stone surface, so that Preraphaelite compositions by Morris, Burne- Jones, and Rossetti, of gods and heroes, vanished from the walls almost as fast as they were painted upon them. No be- ginner would follow them quite as far to-day, though their naivete was so charming, their sincerity so evident, that one envies them. Certainly to-day's beginner has every right to make some mistakes without being laughed at. If he is told that he must at once prepare his color- sketch and must plan all his operations for a room which is to be completed in six months, he goes to the said room to inspect and consider it, and finds it very probably choked with scaffolding from floor to ceiling, and in almost black darkness. In the midst of the forest of uprights and horizontal planks, which nearly shut out all light, he has to decide whether the scale of his figures will be right, whether his tones are too light or too dark, his colors too weak or too strong. It will not be surprising if the beginner says to himself: "My calculation may not turn out right 90 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE the first time." If he does not say as much, and does not proceed with caution, he is likely to lose the game on" his very first cast of the die. Too much caution, on the other hand, will tie his hands; and many a tame-looking interior proceeds from the fact that the inexperienced decorator, new to his task, gropes timidly for himself instead of working with assurance under some one else, and upon the basis of that some one else's experience. Perhaps you say: "But a man must begin some- where. Did not the painters of the Renaissance fear- lessly attack any problem, and did not every little place have its local man able to celebrate the local fastes?" To this I can reply: "Such is the general impression, but it is a false one." Nowhere in the world has parochiaHsm in politics, and in art, too, been stronger than in Italy. Cam- panile has vied with campanile in the celebration of its local men; and the mediaeval hate of town for town has frequently only softened into a prejudice which now and again is loudly expressed to-day. Nevertheless, the most important local enterprises in the heyday times of decoration were not always, not even generally, confided to the local man, but were governed, or at any rate influenced, by the great artists of the moment. Duccio, the Lorenzetti, and Martini — all Siennese — decorated not only the city but the whole province, and pushed, some of them, as far as Naples in the south and probably Avignon in IN THE MURAL PAINTER 91 the north. Giotto and his direct colaborers covered the walls of Italy from Naples to Padua. Benozzo Gozzoli and Pinturicchio went up and down Tus- cany and Umbria; Mantegna's and Perugino's were (in very different ways) names to conjure with in many parts of the peninsula. Michelangelo's almost universal influence was even baneful, because too big and forceful for the comprehension of his average worshipper. Raphael, it is true, did hardly any dec- oration outside of Rome, but only because his short life could spare little working time to clients extra muros, even if they wore crowns or coronets. Venice drew to herself the cleverest artists from the moun- tains, lakes, and plains of the mainland — from Ve- rona, Cadore, Conegliano, the Bergamasque territory; made great artists, world-masters, of them, and sent them out again to decorate the walls of all north Italy with little reference to their nativity, but counting always upon their record of experience; while Tiepolo filled Lombardy, the Veneto, South Germany, and Spain with the fruits of his prodigious activity. It Is easy to note an exception or two, ex- amples to prove the pule, to cite Correggio in Parma (though even in his case it was lack of outside, rather than excess of local, appreciation that induced his insularity), or to say that the presence of theUrbinate Bramante at the papal court gave to the Urbinate Raphael his opportunity. In the main the minor decorative works of Italy were carried out by the 92 IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE local men. The big marking cycles of decoration for the public buildings were the work of the great masters who painted not only at home but far afield. It is infinitely unlikely that any man to whom decoration is a new undertaking, no matter how gifted he might be, could successfully confront the problems of scale, of lighting, of color, and of modelling, as influenced by the said lighting and by distance. That is why he should not be given the headship of any important decorative enterprise at first, but should win his chevrons under a superior officer before he earns his epaulets as commander. Perhaps you say: "But is it not better to select a big man to head a big enterprise? Will not his mis- takes be at least the mistakes of a big man instead of a little one? Is it not better to risk something upon him than to employ some minor personality?" Of course, it might be; but where is the necessity for such a choice? Such action we had to take twenty-five years ago, for at that time, save John La Farge, we had no master-decorator in the field; then if La Farge were busy elsewhere the best line of action to follow was to give the commission to the most eminent artist procurable, and trust to his working out the decorative problem by degrees, and by reason of his all-round capacity. But to-day those first men who were chosen, as well as a whole group of others, have proved their abiUty to lead; and there is not the slightest need of confiding to an IN THE MURAL PAINTER 93 inexperienced talent, however eminent, the conduct of any important enterprise. On the contrary, if America is truly to profit by the unparalleled opportunity which social, industrial, and geographical conditions may in a near future offer to the decorative artist, architect, sculptor, painter, we must demand the ultimate of the latter, the ultimate in talent and experience. He must know the art of bygone times thoroughly in order that he may utilize its happenings and processes in meeting the needs of the present. He must sympathize with the branches of art which are sisters to his own; and, in sum, he must be a veritable Janus looking backward for all that the past may teach him, yet not forgetting that he is an American among Americans, looking forward upon the threshold of no one knows how potential a future. IV HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING COMMISSIONER AND MURAL PAINTER IV HARMONY BETWEEN BUILDING COMMISSIONER AND MURAL PAINTER I There Is an art which is of the people, for the people, by the people. It is of the people, for it celebrates their annals; it is for them, for it is spread upon the walls of their buildings — the public build- ings; it is by the people, for it is created by the men who were born on our prairies or in our cities. It is non-partisan; it preaches to Democrat and Republican alike. It should be fostered by both, yet it is misunderstood by both. This art should be a queen and is a Cinderella. She holds the wand of her fairy godmother. Imagination, and can turn the commonplace into gold, gold which is instruc- tion and stimulus to greater action. Yet our govern- ing boards would only too often for false economy's sake turn back the golden chariot of imagination into a pumpkin again. This art is the art of mural painting and decorative sculpture — in a wider sense, the art of decoration. 97 98 BUILDING COMMISSIONER To-day in America we have an altogether unpar- alleled opportunity. We have vast wealth, we have vast territory. We have cities planned and cities building, and cities built yet growing. Under less favorable circumstances Greece and Italy, France and England raised monuments which have been a joy and an illustration for millennials. How care- ful, then, we should be of our opportunity, for unless we do have a care we may leave behind us buildings many of which at best are but half suc- cesses, some of which occasion Httle save regret. Why did they do so well in the past? Because the artist — I mean the architect, sculptor, painter — ^h^d the people as his constituency, and the people gave their labor and their money freely in exchange for beauty, which to them was a commodity, a commod- ity understood and valued. Together with beauty the people demanded utility and convenience, and obtained them, but they never forgot beauty, and in the creation of that great teacher of history, pa- triotism, morals, aesthetics, which is the decorated public building — town hall, or temple, or cathedral — they never condemned beauty to take even a second place. Why have we done so much less well.? Because our people never think of giving beauty the first place. Above it they set convenience, and some- times above that financial benefit to some person or persons indeterminate. AND MURAL PAINTER 99 You may reply that we do not always sacrifice beauty, and, secondly, that utility is more important than beauty. The answer to your first objection is that there have been a number of honorable excep- tions of State capitols and court-houses and libraries whose commissioners have seriously insisted upon beauty, but I am here characterizing and condemn- ing the greater number of cases. To your second objection one may reply that to sacrifice utility to beauty might be wrong, but that no such sacrifice is necessary. With brains, money, and patience, utility and beauty may always' become yoke-fellows in a great public building, since beauty is indeed the artistic expression of utility. II Why, then, do we not have them together, since brains our architects have, money our public appro- priates, and of patience there still exists a modicum? Let us look into the matter. In decoration the relation of artist to client will for some time be complicated by the newness of the situation. In American art mural painting is a new- comer. Even in Europe it is the child of a relatively recent renaissance, a renaissance forty years old at most. But in America it is more than a newcomer; it is a newcomer environed and confronted by wholly changed conditions. It is like a leader of a brand- loo BUILDING COMMISSIONER new political party bringing in with him a group of men who "knew not Joseph" and whose ideas of government and economy are revolutionary. The buyer and collector of easel pictures, donor to and founder of museums, is one of two things — either he is a cultured man and lover of art, or else he is, one who wishes to become cultured and to be a patron. In the first case he relies on his own culture, in the second on the culture of friends or experts who teach him how to buy and give. But in either case, and this is my point, he studies the intrinsic and mar- ket value of the pictures, and a considerable price asked and paid adds zest to his action and prestige to his collection. To put a great deal of money into his purchase intelligently is one of his objects. Now in the procedure which occurs in relation to mural painting exactly the contrary obtains. Mural painting in America is usually accorded only to public or semipublic buildings, capitols, town halls, court-houses, libraries, churches, schools, thea- tres, hotels. The erection of a public building is placed in the hands of a board of building commis- sioners. These men are presumably chosen for their business ability, their integrity, and their public spirit, and in most cases they prove their possession of these attributes. But also in most cases they differ absolutely in their point of view on this par- ticular matter from the private collector and donor to museums. The collector means to have the best AND MURAL PAINTER loi art, but he knows that for the best he must lavish money, though he is determined that inteUigence shall so guide his lavishness as to resolve it into a future asset and profit. Now I am not speaking of the connoisseur who accidentally becomes a build- ing commissioner, but of the average commissioner who is in quite another state of mind. He also wishes to have the best art, and demands it, but he desires even more strongly not to expend much of the people's money for it. Able and honest though he is in other respects and along other lines, he does not understand art. He cannot see far enough into the future to realize that good mural panels will inevitably become a financial asset, and his reasoning, though honest, will not go deep enough to prove to him that public money expended on third-class art is public money squandered. He does not, until after he has acquired real experience, know the difference between first, second, and third rate art, and he suspects those who could teach him, suspects them of being interested. Now we must not account this as blameworthy, for it is natural and at first inevitable. The building commissioner, no matter how able he may be, can learn, as the rest of us do, only by experience, and for a long time he is bound to be the victim of circumstances which he can but gradually learn to control. He is a good business man, his strongest instinct I02 BUILDING COMMISSIONER is to not make a bad investment, and his first idea of a good investment is of one which returns more than it demands. He thinks in terms of straight commerciahsm. For instance, he knows that to make a certain kind of shoe costs such a sum, to make a thousand of them would cost a thousand times as much minus such discount as wholesale manufacture renders possible. He learns that a pic- ture two feet square, by Mr. Blank, the artist, has just been sold for so much. He expects Blank to be able to tell him at once exactly what a lunette superficially twenty times as large shall cost. He cannot conceive why the artist is doubtful and hes- itates, and he suspects him of hedging. But the shoe is a problem which has been proved; it is well known just how much time and material go to its making. It is not so with the painted lunette — ^the work may proceed rapidly or slowly, may demand, as it develops, more or less elaboration than the author had expected when he contracted for it. What a field is here for disappointment and suspi- cion, and perfectly honest disagreement between the artist and the commissioner who is navigating un- tried waters! The commissioners thoroughly understand econ- omy when it means saving money by not expending it; when, for instance, it amounts to paying one thousand dollars to B instead of twenty-five hundred to A; but they cannot understand the economy AND MURAL PAINTER 103 which consists in not spending good money upon feeble thought or poor work. They cannot compre- hend the waste involved in paying B one thousand dollars for almost worthless creations, instead of giving twenty-five hundred to A for something good. The output is obvious to them, the value returned is unfamiliar, they cannot estimate it, and when the architect assures them that it is great, they think of him doubtfully, as of one necessarily interested and probably prejudiced. Again, save in rare cases, the commissioners can- not grasp the importance of the art required in the creation of a public building. Tradition has conse- crated it, history celebrated it, fashion has dictated pilgrimage to shrines of art as a duty, and, indeed, the * commissioner himself while on his particular pilgrimage to Europe may be temporarily dazzled while he is actually in presence of the building or picture or statue, but when he has turned his back upon them his memory is too imperfect to sustain enthusiasm. A, who is a famous and experienced architect, or sculptor, or painter, suggests to the building commissioners a creation which shall cost so much and shows his design. B, a much less interesting artist, offers another costing one-quarter as much. The commissioners say, in all sincerity, that as soon as preliminary business is cleared away they will give the commission to A as the better man. I04 BUILDING COMMISSIONER The clearing of preliminary business proceeds, the bills for lighting and plumbing are much larger than were expected, also some other bills. Economy must be practised; where shall this occur? In the decoration of the building, of course — ^lighting and plumbing are necessary, art as a superfluity may be mulcted. Now this is folly, folly most of all in a new coun- try which lacks the example of fine buildings. Good art is not a superfluity; it is a prime necessity; it comes immediately after indispensable convenience, and much convenience might to advantage be dis- pensed with in its favor. Lighting, heating, and plumbing should be of the best, but should not for one moment be provided at the expense of good art. Science advances so fast that in relatively few years the systems of lighting, heating, plumbing, will be improved out of existence in that particular build- ing, and will have to be paid for over again. On the other hand, the best art lasts practically forever. The pilgrims to the decorations of the Sistine Chapel fell into line four hundred years ago, and are still on the march; the marble deities of the Parthenon's pediments and frieze have received visitors for more than two thousand years. In short, the com- missioners who dock the appropriation for decora- tion in favor of the appropriation for plumbing and lighting sacrifice the possibly enduring for the in- evitably ephemeral. AND MURAL PAINTER 105 But you could not convince any building com- mission of that, unless it be composed of men who at once think for themselves, respect historical rec- ords, and listen fair-mindedly to artists and experts. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you could not win your case, for you would not be allowed to plead it. Immediate economy would be the order of the day at the meeting. B's design, which cost only one-quarter as much as A's, would gain enormously in its appeal, so much, indeed, as to look nearly as good as A's; and the commissioners, sincerely desirous of doing right, would be perplexed by many worrying conditions. We have said that forced to retrenchment they are hesitating between the first- rate artist A, whose work is expensive, and the second-rate man B, whose services may be had for niuch less; but if they choose to, the commissioners may descend far lower in the scale of price and almost as certainly of intrinsic value. At their elbow stand representatives of various firms of decorators and of department stores, say- ing, "We will do all this work for half B's price," and showing sketches dangerously attractive to the non-professional, because making up for a lack of real merit by a profuse display of detail and high finish. Recently a talented young mural painter told me that an order for a decoration had been prac- tically given him, and had been warmly approved by the architect, when, at the last moment, he lost it in io6 BUILDING COMMISSIONER this wise. A department store sent word to the client that if he would buy all his rugs from their firm they would include mural painting for the rooms. Again, the same young artist had entered into negotiations for the painting of seven subjects in a panelled room; a "decorative" firm offered to do twice as many panels for half the money. In each case the client yielded to the temptation of a lower price, and in each case as well his conclusions may seem doubtful to the unprejudiced onlooker. It is perhaps only natural that the local houses should also sometimes appeal to the building com- missioner's patriotism, saying: "We are local men; give us the work and not a dollar of your taxpayers' money shall leave our town, whereas A comes from New York, or Chicago, or Philadelphia, and what he receives will be literally taken away from us." Amid all these specious appeals and counter- statements the commissioners are so harried that compromise sometimes ensues; they reject the work of A, the first-rate artist, so that they may economize money for the plumbing; then they decline the offer of the department store, in the interest of high art, and feel that by thus compromising they are, on the whole, doing rather a handsome and artistic thing for the public in giving it the uninteresting second-rate work of B instead of fourth-rate commercial work offered perhaps by a frank jobber, or the first-rate work of A. They have made a deplorable mistake, Barry Faulkner: Fragment of decoration in the house of Mrs. E. H. Harriman Esample of the decorative effect of elaborate detail carried out in fifteenth-century style and with the heads treated as portraits AND MURAL PAINTER 107 because they are unenlightened, and their public will sufFer for it long after they, the commissioners, become enlightened, for it is only enlightenment which they lack. The building commissioners are sincere and patriotic men, chosen for their public spirit and their business capacity, and both commission and public away down at the bottom of their conscious- ness want the best art in return for their money. Only the best art is fit for the decoration of the public building, and if you put it straightly at them the people admit this at once, but the bottom of their artistic consciousness can be reached only by patient sounding, which must be incessant if it is to be ef- fectual against the mass of misconception which constantly accumulates upon the surface. MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT AND MURAL PAINTER MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT AND MURAL PAINTER Besides the possession of talent and experience there must be mutuality of effort between architect and mural painter. If we can have real co-opera- tion, beauty will come after it as surely as harvest after seed-time. But it must be real; it must not resume itself in a mere suggestion on the part of the "building committer that the architect shall consult the best talent, followed by his only say- ing in turn to the various painters: "Now, I count on you to respect each other's work and to obtain an harmonious ensemble." That is not enough. To begin with, the sculptor and painter must be- lieve in the architect as commander-in-chief, leader, designer, and creator of a whole, which they are to enhance as a whole by their art; and again they must see in him the planner of interrelated parts whose interrelations they must help, not hinder. I have heard painters say: "What does an archi- 112 MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT tect know about painting?" Now the architect, in spite of his general knowledge, is, like the painter, a specialist, and therefore is forced to neglect much that pertains to painting because he has not had time to learn it. But I am certain that if any com- petent mural painter will take pains to show things in the right way, he will be understood in the right way by the architect. The trouble is that each branch of a profession has a technical jargon ofits own, unfamiliar to the practitioners of the two sister branches; but all that applies speciall3^to either sculpture or painting can be reduced to terms which are understood by architect, painter, and sculptor alike, and which may constitute a kind of artistic Volapiik — a common language, like the mediaeval Latin of the church. We have thus far done fairly well in decorative painting in America, but we have made some mis- takes, and our worst errors have arisen from lack of proper co-operation, which has come, not from a want of honest enthusiasm or individual knowlec)^ but because a certain comprehension has been want- ing. It has been stated over and over again frona the beginning that architect, sculptor, and painter must work together in the sense of producing a mutual result, but it has not been realized that the three minds must, for a time at least, work simul- taneously and intercommunicatively — ^that the three men must agree to all give up some of their time at AND MURAL PAINTER 113 the same time to the problem. The architect is almost sure to be foreseeing and resourceful, but he cannot be in two places at once and there are con- tingencies which no man can foresee. He needs not only the support of his staff, but their constant watchful effort. And the co-operation should begin at the begin- ning. I would have the painter as well as the sculptor go with the architect to the quarry when the stone is selected, so that he, the architect, the director, in company with the sculptor and painter, his aids, shall see and know just what char- acter of color, what tone and depth the three shall have to calculate upon in their various results. For if it is the business of the expert to know the dur- ability of the marble, and that of the architect to determine its effect of line and mass, scale and pro- portion, it is the business of the painter to say what color effect it may produce and what it may call for in other marbles. And I would have this little federation go further afield: to the artist who puts on the gold, and the artist who carves the wood, and the artists who make the glass and weave the carpet. That they are on the general staff we have said, and that they are consulted; but to-day they too often remain in their tents till the battle is engaged and half over. I would have them ride not only into the pitched field, but also, and above all, in reconnoissance to spy out the land before the battle. 114 MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT Indeed, the carrying through of the ensemble and details of a great building should be done almost under martial law. Woe to him who is undisciplined. If a man cannot subordinate himself let him keep out of mural painting. All art is a convention and is under restraint — most of all is decorative art so; and if an artist is big enough he cannot give better proof of his power than in compeUing the relation of his work to be harmonious with its surroundings, while he yet remains himself. We have proceeded rightly up to a certain point in decoration, but not far enough. To-day the architect of the State capitol of Cloudland, let us call it, selects six mural painters to decorate his building, and allots to them his various wall spaces. The artists make their rough sketches, the archi- tect convenes them, they mutually compare their work, and sincerely declare that they will do every- thing that they can to work harmoniously. Almost at once starts the train of circumstances which interrupts their willingness and interferes with their harmony. A is very busy finishing a canvas for another State; he cannot commence his decoration for some months. B, on the contrary, must begin his at once, since he has engagements for the future which compel immediate action unless he would indefinitely postpone his Cloudland work. C has a room or wall space or corridor midway be- tween the decorations of A and B. If the vision AND MURAL PAINTER 115 can embrace these three decorations or even portions of the three at the same time, it is essential that C's work should harmonize with and unite that of the other two painters. A proceeds with his decoration; after a while B, who has also commenced his work and carried it well forward, goes to see A, and says in great sur- prise: "But A, the sketch you showed at the archi- tect's office was in a cool gray key; I have been treating my decoration in harmony with your sketch, and now you are working in a warm orange key upon your large canvas!" "Yes," replies A, "I sud- denly discovered that they were going to exchange the gray Circassian walnut of my wooden furnish- ings for a very red mahogany." "But how does it happen that you had no warning?" "Well, the archi- tect was called away to the west on business, and A B & Co., the decorative firm, who are in charge of the woodwork, changed their mind about the latter." Or, Mr. C has been told that his room will get little light because of the thick stained glass of rather dark warm tones. He therefore paints his decoration in flat planes of brilliant color exactly suited to such a twilight effect. When it is finished and he brings it to its place he finds twice as much light as he ex- pected and pale transparent glass in the cupola. His own colors, which would have been just right for the room as first planned, are now strident, his ii6 MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT effect spoiled. He protests and the glassmaker replies: "The building commission insisted that they must have more light. There was nothing to do but to humor their insistence." Or Mr. C D composes his decoration and has half finished it when some one remarks: "By the way, they will have to set a ventilator in the middle of your wall." These are only a few instances among very many difficulties which may unexpectedly present them- selves. Is it the fault of the architect? No, not more than it is the fault of any and all of us that we do not quite realize what an enormously difficult and complicated problem we have before us in a great building, nor enough consider that, while the architect must be argus-eyed, his staff too must re- member their responsibility not only to him and to their own work, but to every one of the many artists in stone, glass, bronze, pavement, mural painting, whose work in any way abuts upon theirs. It may be impossible to prevent some mischances, but at least an elaborate plan of campaign should do much toward forestalling some of the changes, and a united front of many artists opposing a decision of the building commissioners (besides taking some responsibility off the architect's shoulders) might go far toward preventing unwisdom. And such op- position would, in nine cases out of ten, not displease the building commissioners, since the latter are AND MURAL PAINTER 117 really seeking for the best solution of their problem, and are glad to avoid change as being costly. In some few cases this mutual federation of archi- tect, sculptor, and painter has been tried, and found to work so well that it has been continued after the completion of the building, continued in the form of a permanent advisory art committee, whose duty is to protect the building from any unwise additions or changes. That there is need of such advisory work we have had abundant evidence. I will note one instance: In a certain great building by one of our best-known architects, a room was decorated with painting and sculpture at much expense. The effect depended in the main upon several large wall panels of smooth simple stone. These panels, surrounded by rich sculpture, gave repose to the eye, and were the nat- ural complement and foil to the ceiling and upper walls, which were elaborately decorated with paint- ings, relief, and gold. The building commission, de- lighted with the room, showed it with pride and celebrated it in print. After a while they filled the panels with full- length portraits of gentlemen In black clothes and surrounded by heavy gilt frames. They thereby utterly ruined the effect which the architect had planned. The portraits, if properly panelled into the right kind of a wall in another room, might have produced an admirable result. As they are now they spoil the effect of the stone, and are in turn ii8 MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT themselves spoiled by the light stone about them, which makes such a background as their painters would never have selected. You say these gentlemen must be dull. Not so, they are among the most intelligent men in the community, and were honestly enthusiastic, to be- gin with, about their room. The result of their action has been the almost complete cancellation of the value received from their artists. If such a cancel- lation had taken place in any other part of their building, in their transaction of business, that is, and such depreciation had resulted they would have bestirred themselves at once, but it has not occurred to them that this matter could be of importance. They wanted portraits of their colleagues, and, having them, simply ordered them to be put into the finest room, and where they could see them well — then thought no more of it. Had an advisory committee of architect, sculptor, and painter said to them, "But, gentlemen, your portraits will kill the room, and the room will kill the portraits," I cannot help believing that they would have renounced" their project, and thus advisory stimulus would have helped to bring about mutual action between artist and client; in fact, would have helped to raise and maintain a standard of taste. In this effort toward mutuality, vital to the suc- cess of any great enterprise in decoration, the archi- tect is then essentially the head and commander-in- AND MURAL PAINTER 119 chief. He designs the building and assigns to each sculptor and painter his place in it. But if this is his unquestionable right it is also his privilege to expect and to receive authoritative assistance from both sculptor and painter, not only as their work progresses, but even before it begins. In a general way he, the architect, knows beforehand what man- ner of man is suited to some special work, but in a particular way that man, once selected, knows in turn how to fit his own temperament to that work and how he may best suggest amplification or elab- oration of it. The architect, burdened with the great weight of his responsibility, has a right to de- mand that the painters and sculptors shall minimize that weight by intimate and patient collaboration. Our educational institutions have no worthier task before them along the lines of art than the prep- aration of men who shall learn how to help toward this end and be willing to help at some sacrifice. For the untrained worker is a burden to the archi- tect; the man who knows and will use his knowl- edge reasonably and patiently is a blessing. On the other hand, to the advice of the trained sculptor and mural painter the architect, master and com- mander though he be, may, indeed must, at times, listen as to the sister arts speaking with authority. Architect, sculptor, and painter have each re- ceived a special training during which, if they are wise, they will have carefully considered the kin- I20 MUTUALITY BETWEEN ARCHITECT dred lines of the sister branches of their art; yet each remains essentially architect, or sculptor, or painter, and certain details, even certain principles, familiar to one of his two comrades will be unfamiliar, per- haps unnoticed by him, till his collaborator notes them and formulates them from the point of view of his own particular expertism. I have seen an other- wise clever painter so arrange his panel in reference to surrounding members of the wall that the archi- tect said, with reason: "But this is impossible." In such a case the painter must alter his work. On the other hand, now and then, even if rarely, an architect has put in a detail of color which any painter at his elbow would have forbidden. And when I say a detail I mean hundreds of feet of marble which cost thousands of dollars. In the beginning, and when the order was given, it would have cost ten words to make it right. After the mistake was made it would have taken prohibit- ory time and cost prohibitory money to rectify it. The greatest artists are capable of solecisms and errors along lines akin to, but not identical with, their own. A little consultation would obviate such mistakes, and we do not want the blunders even of a Michel- angelo when they can be avoided. And blunders he did make — they all made them— Bramante and Raphael and Leonardo made them just as we do, only theirs were blunders of men who lived in an age of great art, and at the same time they made AND MURAL PAINTER 121 masterpieces, setting lessons to an admiring world. When Michelangelo painted the "Last Judgment," he botched the joining and gravely injured the architectonic efFect of the chapel, but he is Michel- angelo, and we are glad to take him in exchange for Perugino. Correggio's angels are strangely out of character with the grand austere Romanesque shell of the cathedral at Parma, but Romanesque churches are many — Correggio's ecstatic outburst is unique. For that matter, disturbance, arising from the in- troduction of new and changed methods, has been inevitable where the theatre of performance has existed for five hundred years, and the sixteenth- century artist had to paint within a yard or two of the work of the tre cento. History repeats itself, and in the future, when there shall arise better- equipped artists than those of to-day, anachronistic additions may again be welcome. But in the pres- ent it is for us to do our work so faithfully and so thoughtfully as to make that future remote. VI MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS VI MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS I The relations of the mural painter with the build- ing commissioner and with the architect have been discussed in preceding chapters. We come now to the relations of mural painters with each other, and to the thorniest and most delicate question in the range • of decoration — the question of precedence. Thorny though it be, if it is grasped as one would grasp a nettle and by a hand which wears the gaunt- let of assured experience — difficult though it be, if it is approached with tact and adhered to with patience the problem can be solved. It is a prodigious problem, indeed; nothing less than to compel into accord various temperaments of men who control not only the design and coloring of pictured panels and mosaics, but of ornament, rich or severe, toning of gold, patina of bronze, depth or clearness of glass, design and color of pave- ments, selection of rugs, and very much besides. First must come the wise distribution of this work, I2S 126 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS then the harmonious conduct of it. If even the artists of the culminating epoch made mistakes, what procedure shall we follow to minimize our errors? Let us consider this question of distribution. In the largest sense all branches of art are equally great and important; all have certain vital princi- ples in common, as well as much detail of procedure. Decoration (mural painting or decorative sculpture) is, however, essentially different from the others in some respects; primarily in this, that it is based, rooted even, upon and in sacrifice. The end and aim of it is the beauty which can come only from harmony, and for the sake of that harmony the artists must constantly repress them- selves, hold themselves back, sacrifice themselves, In other branches of art and under other circum- stances, in an annual exhibition of pictures for in- stance, it is perfectly legitimate, though not always desirable, to force an effect in one's own work so far that beside it juxtaposed canvases might appear weak and secondary. In the decoration of a room where there is collaboration between two or more persons, things are different, the chief desideratum in decoration being the production of a harmonious whole. If one collaborator tries to make himself conspicuous by the display of a more forcible per- sonality than that of his fellow, he becomes danger- ous — virtuosity, a quality desirable per se, may swell into a disturbing note. Direct rivalry, then, being Jules Guerin: Interior of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, with men working at the decorative maps An example of topography- made decorative and used as part of a decorative ensemble MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 127 perilous, how shall we reduce its proportions with a view to obtaining a good general result? The consideration of this difficult question may be divided into two main questions, which in turn are subject to much subdivision. The first is the prob- lem of setting two or more painters at work in the same room. This is at once reduced to minimal proportions by the fact that few rooms are so exten- sive and contain so many places for important mural painting as to require more than one man to execute the latter. But there are parts of a great building so vast and complicated that one man could not decorate them within any reasonable time. A typical example is that in which the great central dome grows upon its pend^tives from piers and lower walls, and termi- nates in the dome-crown or lantern. Where such an example occurs, the prodigious gestation of a huge public building may compel the evolution of twins, triplets, or even a quartet of artists. In such a case twins they must be as far as possible; that is to say, men chosen because of their mutual resemblance in predisposition, aims, and methods. To discover such yoke-fellows is pretty nearly as hard as to find the proverbial white blackbird, yet they have been found now and again, and have worked together with relative success. In the past there have been many examples of such fortunate juxtaposition (for instance, the church of Santa Maria at Saronno where Luini, Lanini, and Ferrari fill 128 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS dome and pendentives and walls with their com- positions). But the art of bygone times was more of a kind than ours is. The schools which grew up by the Ilyssus and the Arno were far less confused by visions of outlying fields of endeavor than are we who are at once beneficiaries and victims of a pro- digious art-inheritance. Even the Italians, for all their homogeneity, have left us in their churches and palaces many examples of what to avoid. Time, that kindest of over-painters, who uses glazes and scumbling rather than solid colors, has done much to harmonize; but in spite of him some of their juxta- positions are shocking even to-day, and when the recklessly imtemperate crowding of pictures, prac- tised in the late sixteenth century, is added, the spectator is giddy and worse than surfeited in such churches, say, as Santa Caterina of Venice. We in America, young and inexperienced as we are, have committed no such glaring faults of taste as are foxmd in many Italian buildings; indeed, the painting of realistic landscapes upon piers (!) in the modern Hotel de Ville of Paris is an innovation which has fortunately not been emulated by any American. In fact, for our own comfort we might multiply instances to show that while the heights scaled by Italian decorators may be unattainable by modern men, the depths of false taste into which the later Italians descended have not been sounded by our comparatively unsophisticated painters. History then proves collaboration to be exacting. MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 129 What is the lesson of this ? It is that, since artists are human — and we all naturally and instinctively try to show our personality — and since collaboration cannot be dispensed with in public buildings, it must be carefully considered, and so carried out that there shall be the least possible loss of indi- viduality on the part of the collaborators, but that when all is said and done harmony must result. Now, the practice of collaboration is no easy matter; human nature at once takes a hand and makes it a very difficult one. Where there are even two collaborators there is some loss of power, since each has to bend his own temperament a little to- ward the united purpose; if there are three, the case is still more trying; if there are ten, all have to hold themselves down, to a certain extent, to the level of the least able man in the group. It is easy to see that so wholesale a sacrifice upon the altar of collaboration would victimize not only those offered up, but the public as well — it would re- sult in stultification. What are we going to do to avoid it? This — give just as much as possible of the work within the radius of vision to one man. Such a proceeding is in large part feasible in any great building. There are, as we have said before, always many separate rooms; these can be given each to one temperament; that is to say, to one artist. There are other places in the building which are I30 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS not really separate rooms, yet which are so subdi- vided into different parts by connecting corridors or vestibules that, if they were decorated by different painters, the passage from the result of one artistic temperament to that of another could be made without mental disturbance. In such portions of the building two or more men may work advanta- geously. Again, there are spaces so vast and hav- ing such complicated parts (I have cited a central rotunda) that it becomes impossible to give all the work to one man; he would not have time to do it properly in the period allowed by contract. In such a case the problem of distribution should be considered with reference not so much to the repu- tation and rank of the persons chosen as to their temperamental capacity for working together. We artists all know that there are men with whom we can work, and others, equally good, with whom we cannot. There are painters whose canvases would harmonize fairly well from the start; given good- will, the harmony could be made greater as the work advanced. On the other hand, there are those whose temperaments, as shown in their work, differ so much that we feel from the beginning the useless- ness, even the danger, of yoking them. There are men who carefully prepare their whole scheme beforehand; with them you know exactly what you are going to get. Such artists are rela- tively safe, but their inelasticity has to be reckoned MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 131 with. Again, we have those who also prepare an elaborate scheme, but, realizing that each problem may be a new one, make experiments and changes, and usually better their work as they proceed. Lastly, there are artists who are natural improvi- sators; their decoration is perforce an impromptu. Such men may prove most brilliant of all, but it is almost impossible for them to work with others, because, as they present no scheme beforehand, the others, and they themselves, are at a disadvantage as far as harmony goes. Where you have such a man you must give him a room to himself; then you may obtain a brilliant result. When, therefore, a part of a building which can- not be given to one artist is distributed among sev- eral, I believe that the collaborators should meet, present their schemes in common, choose one of their number to be dictator as to essentials, and obey him. For if several men without a leader or preliminary mutual practice attack the dragon of difficulty to- gether they will hamper each other; two of them will waste a stroke at the same time; they will even fall over each other. If, on the contrary, the dic- tator has three qualities — firmness, tact, and knowl- edge — ^the result will be satisfactory. If there is not some such leadership there are three chances to one that the decoration will not hang together and that the architect will be disheartened. Collective unwisdom has more than once unmade plans which 132 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS a little more mutual action would have brouglit to fruition. Wherever it is possible the painter should act directly under the architect. I, personally, should vastly prefer to do so, but if I must be part of a general scheme in which others share, and if the ar- chitect is not able to give constant and close super- vision, I should like to see a director chosen and should then follow him loyally or else drop out of the scheme. And if a man have originality he can show it even while conforming to direction. Even in one room where the vision is distinctly bounded by four walls, since painting is apt not to be the sole form of decoration employed, several tem- peraments are apt to come in contact although one be in control; and just in measure as that controller is able to control himself as well as others, just in measure as he is able to understand and consider the strong and weak points of his collaborators, will his result be fortunate. He is having abundant trouble with his own per- sonal equation, but it will be complicated by the working of other personal equations at his elbow — by those of the men who are designing bronze electrical fixtures, who are composing a tessellated pavement, who are setting the stained-glass windows. Some- times neither sculpture nor painting distinctly dom- inates in a great room, but the two have a parity of importance as decorative elements; in such a case sculptor and painter must proceed with infinite cau- William Laurel Harris: Example of the laying out, in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York, of a decoration which is being executed in color, gold, and relief MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 133 tion and mutual consideration so as neither to harm each other nor have to put their own temperaments into strait-jackets. It .is probable that building commissioners and public alike have not realized that the problem of the creation of a public building is to be approached with respect which should amount to reverence, for the successful accomplishment of such a creation sets the capstone on achievement. And this is why decoration as a disciplinary field is unsurpassed by any other in the whole range of painting. II All the different branches of art interlace at cer- tain points, and all are wide apart at certain others. Mural painting differs most from its sister branches in this respect — as has been already insisted — in decoration it is not so much individuality of expres- sion as mutual effort that is essential. There is a corollary to this statement, and a very important one, which sounds paradoxical but is true — it is only through this mutuality of effort pushed and per- fected that the highest individuality of expression in decoration is attained. The Parthenon, the church of St. Francis of Assisi, the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, the Stanze of Raphael, the Anticollegio of the Ducal Palace, the halls and churches painted by Tiepolo are so individual in their effect, their forcefulness, that we have only to close our eyes 134 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS to see them standing out as landmarks of historic, aesthetic sequence. But to the production of this individual effect have contributed a subordination and merging of the personalities, the individualities of the artists con- cerned, the architects, sculptors, painters, carvers, gilders, mosaic men, glass men, that can be under- stood fully only by him who is at once a student of history and a practitioner of decoration. Perhaps the completest example of subordination of individuality, of mutuality of effort, may be found in the mediaeval cathedral, where Guillaume and Etienne planned and built side by side, and Jean began the sculptured story which Jacques continued and Pierre finished, and Roger and Henri placed the trefoils and hexafoils of glass, and Franfois and Blaise braided stone flowers about the capital or set the portal ablooming. And all harmoniously, so harmoniously that they forgot themselves and were forgotten in their work. When all was done and a minster stood as the result, if we are asked who created it we have to answer: "Master So and So, John or James or Will- iam, of Chartres or Amiens or Bourges." Such a forgetfulness of names could not obtain to-day, not only because a printed record is in every ones hands, but also for many other reasons. And it is not essential or even desirable that names should be forgotten, but it is desirable, and it is essential, MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 135 that a near approach to the harmony and self- sacrifice of the cathedral-builders shall be made if we are to do first-rate decoration. And this sacrifice must be shared by all of us. I have already once quoted the man who said to me: "The trouble with American painters is exactly the same as with the business men; they don't work hard enough." Now our artists, our architects es- pecially, do work pretty hard, but perhaps even the architects do not always work hard enough at mutuality of effort with the sculptors and mural painters. This reflection, however, is a boomerang; it comes back and hits us mural painters even harder thafl it does the architects, for we mural painters certainly lack strenuousness in mutual effort; but it hits the architects first. They do not, except in rare cases, pay enough of their time and thought, which is the same thing as their money, to this problem of mutuality with those who work under them as decorative sculptors and painters. It is hard to solve — this problem — but until it is solved we architects, painters, and sculptors shall not be solvent ourselves; in questions of decoration we shall be always on the brink of bankruptcy. Ill In discussing the problem of mutuality, let us examine somewhat the procedure which has so far 136 MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS been followed by our practitioners. I have said at the beginning of this chapter that the determination of precedence is a troublesome one. To-day two artists are often set at work together in one room in a way which perhaps does more to retard the progress of true decoration than any other half-dozen hindrances. Why has this happened.? Partly by reason of historical and chronological conditions which could not be helped and can be only gradually adjusted, partly, I think, by the action of architects who have not sufficiently studied the situation. Let me try to illustrate in detail. It is proba- ble that any architect contemplating the decoration of his building dreads the changes which his de- sign may be forced to undergo when the sculptor and painter place their work. He, the architect, is commander-in-chief; he knows that well enough, and indicates the spots where each bit of sculpture or painting shall occur. Nevertheless he is some- times a little nervous, and, like a wise architect whom I have known, says to himself: "For God's sake don't let's have any features." He very nat- urally does not wish to have the design of his room, as it were, warped out of shape by a mural painter who should manage to focalize all attention upon some prodigious bit of virtuosity either m color or handHng. The architect's preoccupation as to this is thoroughly artistic. He is wholly right, and yet he is often the cause of his own anxiety. MUTUALITY OF MURAL PAINTERS 137 He is averse to features, yet frequently has designed his room in such a way that features are the only thing which the mural painter can put there. The architect has made a design for his room, often a very beautiful one — marble panels between pilas- ters or behind pillars cover the walls; and he says to the painter: "I have left a big space in such a place (lunette or rectangle, or what may be), which, it seems to me, would afford a capital chance for a mural painting." * The artist is delighted to have a panel in so beautiful a room; he paints it, and there it is, perforce, a feature ! It is the one piece of figure- painting in the room; nothing of its own kind leads up to it; nothing leads away from it; elsewhere is marble, bronze, gilding; in that one spot are figures of men and women; no wonder the eye travels thither and rests too long, and thus the design of the architect is warped, as I said, out of shape. What the mural painter who has a true grasp upon his task would like is this — he would like to see the architect's sketch for the room as soon as completed, and to say to him: "Yes, I should be glad indeed to do your big panel; and in the spandrels to some of your minor arches, and here and there and else- where are places where I should wish to do little bits of subsidiary mural painting of figures combined * It may be admitted that there are rooms where such focalizing of figure-work is permissible and effective, because the function peculiar to the place is also focalized by a prescribed arrangement of seats or benches, 1: ^^fM^^^Bgn^ INwSlK^'-^fit^ ^ MMBfTgy? it^^.'-'^j^^gy^ -^ ^^I^^^H 1 1^- iJk Copyright by the Curtis Publishing Company Maxfield Parrish: Decoration for the girls' dining-room of the Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia Example of decoration used as a cultivating and enlivening influence in a great commercial building MURAL PAINTING 205 demns preparation he condemns the whole. As well say you are at liberty to leap the street but not to stride the gutter. This idea that to have an idea, to have any subject, is to spoil the technic reminds me of the patient fishermen of Paris and of what an ac- quaintance of mine once said about them. To-day in Paris men stand by the side of the Seine fishing, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in loving devotion to their sport. Nobody ever saw them catch anything. Once an American remarked this fact to my acquaintance cited above. The lat- ter replied: "Catch anything! no, surely not — to catch anything would interfere with the fishing." High significance has been a quality inseparable in the past from any national art. In the future is its 'achievement to be eliminated as an interference? VIII FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART VIII FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART The importance of foundation is the name which I should like to give to this portion of my argu- ment. Such a name would suggest the caption to a first chapter rather than to one so far along in the series, and indeed it is a beginning over again in the sense that while the previous chapters have been ad- dressed to those especially interested in mural paint- ing, this one is for him who cares for every kind of art production whatever it may be. In all of the art schools in our many cities one finds vitality, vigor, curiosity. Sometimes these are applied with more force to the work in hand, some- times with less; but in the main it is about the same thing whether in New York, Chicago, or elsewhere. One sees promise of excellence, of success, every- where in the work, and again one sees certain other things which give one pause. When I entered a Paris studio more than forty years ago conditions were very different from what they are to-day; and yet as I look at their work it 209 2IO FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART appears to me that the young people now are hav- ing just about the same kind of trouble that I and my comrades had; which makes me think that people are pretty much aUke up and down the world, and even at long-separated periods of time, and causes me to wonder whether noting some of my own experiences and those of others, in both the immediate and remote past, might in any way be useful. "Ars una, species mille — art is one, its species are a thousand." So it is proclaimed by the voice of the ages. From the art student we should hear something different — that is, if I am to judge by myself and my comrades of the atelier in which I began to study in Paris. Could our voice as a school have become concentratedly articulate it would have said, "Species una, ars mea, ars sola — one species, my kind of art, the only art." Perhaps things are not like that now. Conditions have changed. I am speaking of forty years ago. It was certainly like that then, and in a way it was right that it should be. "My kind of art the only art," is a pretty good battle-cry for a beginner. If he have not con- fidence in his own legs, how is he going to stand upon them? He must have confidence in his own master and his own school, and that confidence, if strong enough to act as an anchor, would be more valuable to us of the last thirty years than ever be- FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 211 fore. For in the past half dozen lustrums has come a crowding together of so-called movements, and such a series of analyses supposed to be searching that the very thought of them is disconcerting. Just be- yond the horizon of our school life it all Ues waiting to burst upon us. What wonder that when it does many of us are overwhelmed, that the faint-hearted perish, and even the courageous feel jaded at once in the presence of this prodigious Art, while the aggressive say to themselves: "I must scream at the top of my voice, else who will accord me any per- sonality? What can I enunciate that is loud and clear enough to catch the ear of even ever so small a public?" This anarchistic condition, this series of earth- quakes in methods, has so shaken our artistic con- sciousness that the intelligent student may be for- given for wondering which way he shall go. When I went abroad conditions were at once much easier and much harder, and you may turn the proposition inside out and repeat it to-day. They were harder for us Americans then because there was nothing to study in America. "Go straight to Paris," said William Morris Hunt to me. "You will only have to unlearn what you learn here." There were prac- tically no art schools on this side of the water at the time. On the other hand the conditions were easier than now because once you reached Paris they were simpler— simplicity itself, indeed, in comparison with 212 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART what confronts the student who goes there to-day. To turn the proposition inside out, as I said, con- ditions in America to-day are much easier for the student, because his education has been prodig- iously facilitated by numberless schools and much besides. On the other hand, they are harder because the anarchistic conditions have shaken the founda- tions of art education. In Paris, in 1867, we trotted along wearing blind- ers, not turning our eyes from side to side, but fix- ing them on the master, in our first kindergarten of art training, and before our vision was strong enough to bear looking upon more than one thing at a time. Oddly enough, and utterly as the conditions varied, I believe that in our first months we suffered from exactly the same handicap that is affecting Amer- ican students now. The difference, however, was and is that our master found us out and sent us to the right-about, whereas here our Pegasus seems to have taken the bit in his teeth and is Hkely to give his rider some bad tumbles before he can become firmly seated. It happened in the month of May, 1867, forty- three years ago, that the ideal of a little group of art students in Paris was exactly the same as the ideal of nearly all the art students in America to- day — namely, vigor of handling. What we wanted was a vigorous-looking surface which should not appear "labored," only at that time we had not FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 213 found the word labored; we divided everything into smooth painting and strong painting. Since then we have invented fifty different surfaces and given them fifty names. Long ago, when I went to Paris, which was still the Paris of Du Maurier's Trilby, the capital of the decadent Second Empire, and very different from the city of to-day, the exhibitions were full of rather feeble work. The glorious group of Barbizon, Millet, Rousseau, and the rest were getting ready for im- mortality, but had not yet come into their own, and the official painters of imperialism were not stimulat- ing. At the Beaux Arts, Cabanel and Pils, Hebert, Gerome, and others were teaching. There were one or two ateliers independants, as they were called. Of^these the Atelier Bonnat was by far the most famous. Leon Bonnat, young, and bringing with him the traditions of Spanish vigor and the cultus of Ribera and Velasquez, had opened an atelier d'eleves, as they named it, a studio of pupils, to which and to whom he gave his services without payment. To it I went with many other Americans. Our master was the sensation of the moment; he had just missed the grand medal of honor with his pic- ture of "St. Vincent de Paul," now in the church of St. Nicholas in the Fields— fields which are in the heart of Paris— and was to capture it at the fol- lowing Salon with his canvas, "The Assumption of the Virgin." 214 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART The latter was a brilliant performance, and had retained its color finely when I saw it again five years or so ago in the church of St. Andrew of the charming old city of Bayonne. For Bonnat came from the Basque provinces at the foot of the Pyr- enees (and he has given a noble collection of old masters to the museum of his native city, having been an enthusiastic acquirer of them for many years). Bonnat did not practise the smooth paint- ing then in vogue; his was made up of vigorous brush strokes dans la pate. Great is paint was our one thought and cry; paint, paint — ^lots of it. Who so contemptible as he who put it on thinly; who so safely launched as he who carried a load of it! B., our massier, was a worthy leader; he was a mortar-and-trowel man, and we followed him, gaily contemptuous of any practice done outside of 31 Rue de Laval. One of the best of the many good qualities of the Paris art student in those days (I trust he has as many now) was his intense re- spect for his master. At that time Americans were but a tiny minority; the French students gave the tone and atmosphere of the studios. Netherlanders, Scandinavians, Russians, even Spaniards, were still in the future as influences upon art. M. Bonnat entered the atelier twice a week. Then the usual helpful accompaniment of our work, the imitation of cornets and organs, of lions, dogs, and pigs, died away; pipes were put out. M.'s singing — his voice FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 215 literally made the great window rattle in Its setting, and though I've often heard the expression used, I have known its realization only in his case — M.'s voice, I say, ceased; you could hear a pin drop. One morning, in this almost painful first moment of quiet succeeding noise. Monsieur Bonnat said: "Gen- tlemen, why do you use so much paint? You are only tripping yourselves up. / do not use a great quantity of paint for its own sake, but because my temperament is such that I can get my effect better in that way." The shells that dropped upon the frozen lake at the battle of Austerlitz, submerging whole regiments, were hardly more horribly quenching to enthusiasm than such a statement made to us so suddenly. For a long while afterwards the atelier was troub- led; in time the medicine worked with some of the men and the fit survived. B. went under; he never came to anything; not, please understand, because forcible painting was bad, but because he had not the stuff of a forcible painter in him, put all his strength into misdirected effort, and, I verily be- lieve, smothered his own feeble yet existent poten- tialities under a "gruel thick and slab" of pigment. Bonnat followed up this sudden illumination. He insisted upon our making hard, close studies as pre- paratory to doing, later, things as vigorous as his if we pleased, more vigorous than his if we could. He watched our artistic inclinations, and to correct 2i6 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART certain of my tendencies he sent me to the Imperial Library to make pencil copies of the hard Hne en- gravings after Raphael done by Marc Antonio Rai- mondi in the sixteenth century. No matter how much we wanted to paint, we must draw for a year first, for two years if we had the time, and if the shal- lowness of our purses did not prevent our remaining in even inexpensive Paris. "My Americans," said M. Bonnat to me long afterwards, "are some of the very best stuff that I have, but they do not stay long enough, and that often spoils all." We obeyed our master implicitly, or at any rate tried to; al- though our atelier was one of the most unruly in Paris, as we realized when it was moved from 31 Rue de Laval to 73 Boulevard de Clichy, and we found that we had been just upon the eve of expul- sion by the police of the quarter, so full was their complaint book of the remonstrances of our neigh- bors. The arts of peace were apparently not always our forte, but when it came to belief in the master, the patron, who could coin money in his own studio yet preferred to give two full forenoons a week to us, it was another matter. At all events, we had to draw and draw, model and model, just as carefully and closely as we might and for a very long time. And I believe that our obedience was enormously, valuable to us. Imagine a pupil to-day in Pans who thought it right to study hard cinque-cento line engravings at the library when instead he might be FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 217 freely developing in a city where all artistic chains are now broken, where knowledge must give way to feeling, where we may make a better man or woman out of a box of square blocks than by imitating their anatomy more closely. Now I believe, that the student to-day is just as willing to work hard as he was forty years ago. He has every whit as much enthusiasm, but I think that in the quality of obedience he is not quite so strong. I will not call it obedience to his master, but obedience to something which is way down at the bottom of his consciousness and which he is inclined to cover up. I fear that all this talk about ' freedom and feeling has bred an inevitable impa- tience of restraint, and that students are more in- clined to do their hard work in their own way and less in that of their master. But art is a convention now as it always has been and always will be; the links of the chain hold and its evolution must ac- compHsh itself by law; the artist of to-day cannot break it all ofF and make a new departure, for if it is easy to tear up a receipt it is difficult to make a new one. Hard work and obedience to law are both virtues, but the mere exercise of a virtue is not enough; it must be virtue qualified by intelligence. There are those who have said to-day in France: "The art of all the past has existed only to show us what ought not to be done." Between these: men who talk and 2i8 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART as yet have accomplished little, and the men who have accomplished miracles, is it so hard to choose? Let us hear the latter. It has often been told us that Michelangelo said, "Genius is eternal patience," and there is no doubt that Michelangelo was an ex- pert in the definition of genius if ever a man was. Thomas Carlyle, too, defined genius as a "tran- scending capacity for taking trouble." Students may remember then, when they wish to work vigorously and powerfully, and when they disdain what they call labored painting — may re- member, I say, that two of the most rugged and original personalities that ever existed, the one in literature, the other in art, have averred that pa- tience — careful, painstaking patience — is the crown- ing virtue which shall furnish the basis to the bril- liant and captivating vigor which is so desirable an achievement. And do not mistake my intention. I am with the student. I sympathize in his wish. The skilful manipulation of pigment is a capacity to be struggled for and to be proud of when obtained; it makes the surface of the canvas attract at once. But if the canvas is to be made vital-looking and lastingly solid as well as attractive, behind and un- der the lively manipulation of pigment there must be construction and knowledge, the fruit of hard work. Idolatry of mere dexterity is peculiarly dangerous in America because it assails us along the lines of the least resistance. Dexterousness comes naturally FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 219 to the American, and in its favor he is sometimes only too ready to suppress hard thinking, which is the one invaluable kind of hard work and discipline in any profession. Technical excellence is at its very best only a means to an end, and art stands for something much finer, greater, and deeper than even the very skilfuUest and most brilliant handling of one's tools. And it is easy to be specious in advocating strength. "I flog the canvas with swift brush strokes," is quoted as a saying of Van Gogh, but in saying it he merely coined a phrase which catches the ear. "I base my swift strokes upon a swift apprehension of the true sizes, shapes, and colors of things in nature," would be much more illuminating and convincing, if not so picturesque as to wording. It would also be much more difficult of accomplishment. Dashing handling is so good to look at, and con- veys such a sense of pleasure in the work of the executant, that I do not expect easily to convert students to the renunciation of vigorous brushing for a period long enough to suffice for even a few close studies. Nevertheless, let me assure them that the greatest artists, and among them those who have attained phenomenal facility, have almost invariably commenced by close, patient, and even hard studies of nature. Velasquez is a notable ex- ample of this. He began with the closest surface handling, then progressed to his final marvellous 220 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART maestria. Some great artists like Hals have gone straight on from the beginning, always loosening their manner; others have had occasional returns upon themselves. As for Rembrandt, he com- menced with a smooth and exquisite finish; then later, when he could toss. about his pigment as he willed, and juggle his surface into a jewelled glitter or pass through it into broad, air-filled depths, he would suddenly turn back to his first close manner. Look at his Syndics in the museum of Amsterdam — then at some little picture by him — an interior of Solomon's Temple, for instance, with its crowded figures — and see how well an artist who never had a superior realized that broad painting would not suit all moods or all needs. Note, too, how Rubens, from whose brush flowed rivers of oiliest pigment, learned to make studies exquisite in finish and close- ness of modelling. If you are tired of my wise saws about the past, if you want a modern instance ? here it is. For reliance upon handling, pure and simple, I know of no more remarkable example than that of M. Henri Martin. When you first see his immense mural paintings for Toulouse, you cannot think of anything but the handling; these tens of thousands of little spots of every kind of yellow, pink, green, and blue seem like sunlight resolved into its differ- ent chemical properties, and fill the eye and mind. His mowers and maidens are just congeries of these FUNDAMENTAL EDUCAtlON IN ART 221 same little spots. The gowns have no folds, the faces no eyes, noses, mouths, nothing but spots, spots, spots. By and by, after you have fallen back to the proper distance and recovered from the first pleasant shock of this charming surface, you realize that it is not only infused with a rare sense of color, but that these silhouettes are of just the right shape, the lights and shadows of the right value, and that behind it all is knowledge — knowledge earned slowly, by earnest, thoughtful work. Best of all, you may have the proof of this by merely going a few yards further and passing through a door; and it is for this reason that a visit to the Capitole, as it is called, of the old city of Toulouse in southern France, is of quite peculiar value to any painter, and especially to any mural worker. Here upon the gallery walls you have the gamut of Henri Martin, and behold you find him beginning with close drawing, in which all the details, although kept relatively flat, are made out and modelled, and we note with natural sur- prise that this painter of intensely rich and vibrant harmonies has begun in a cold, even a chalky key. Next, in his large canvas, "A chacun son chimere," a vibrant warmth is beginning to make itself gently felt like the sun through mist; we recall his decora- tions in the Hotel de Ville of Paris, as a link between the chimere and his final manner, and we come upon the latter in the sonorous color of the canvas in 222 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART which the Toulousans walk beside their river against an after-sunset sky. Or take one of our own com- rades, Gari Melchers. In his exhibition of a few years ago in New York there was a large canvas represent- ing Dutch girls in; church, hard and close in every detail; but if it had not been for what he learned in such earnest, early study as that picture shows he could never have painted the rich, vigorously brushed solid canvas which has so much vitality as it hangs upon the walls of the Metropolitam. Mu- seum of Art. As I have said before in writing of Frans Hals, Hals's brush strokes are not wonderful because they are broad, but because while broad they are of ex- actly the right size, shape, and tone, and are laid on in exactly the right place. No matter how hand- somely you stir up your surface, if you do not know your subsurface well somebody will see through the upper layer and find you out. If underneath yoil have a closely modelled study, you may strike out details, broaden planes, and your resultant breadth will look felt and finished. It will have nothing flimsy about it, but will have quality instead, and seem what it is — a solid piece of work. All this be- cause you have built it on a foundation. It is an honest piece of work, and you have achieved your desired vigor too, for in loving the latter you are not worshipping a false god. He is a beneficent and salutary god, but in sacrificing to him you will be FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 223 twice blest if you burn incense also to his twin deity, the Goddess of Patience. If one studies the history of painting — I do not mean only by reading about it in books, but by look- ing at it upon the walls of palaces and churches, over the altars of the Gothic period, in the pilastered corniced frames of the fifteenth century, or in the heavily sculptured coffers to ceilings of the late Renaissance — one finds that the school's evolution has been like the evolution of the individual. First the gown was buttoned tight for strenuous endeavor, then gradually loosened, and under the loosened, vigorously brushed surface of the canvas there has been at first a close preparation; for one cannot begin with Rembrandt in his last stage, or Hals in his, or Velasquez in his — one must begin as they did, with care and patience. As I walk through the art schools of America I am astonished at the vigor of the work, and I be- come filled with enthusiasm at the contact with so much young enthusiasm in others. I say to myself, "What vigor everywhere, what liveliness, what good fresh color, how the understanding of color and to- nality, especially of distinction of tone, are growing in the American school, and how much feeling for light there is," then I add, after the apprehension has come gradually, "and what similarity in all the class- work of pupils!" And I ask myself, "Is it entirely right that the work of so many young people who 224 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART presumably possess such different temperaments, should be so much alike, even admitting that this is but an early step in their development?" Why should it be so similar? It is not because they have the same master, for they have not. It is not be- cause they lack willingness to look hard, according to their own lights, at models who differ very much yet seem so much alike in the painted studies. Finally, I have thought I recognized what caused the similar- ity, and realized that all over America the pupils, while trying for light and color, were caring supremely about one thing above every other — namely, that their work should look vigorous and not labored, and believed that this vigor could be indicated only by a very loose handling of the paint. "Not la- bored " — fatal expression, grievously hurtful in its implication. What can be done in art or an)rwhere else without study — ^without studious thought ? And studious thought is labor. With this idea, that a surface which looks labored must be avoided, the stu- dents throughout America are nearly all treating it in nearly the same way. But it is in his treatment of this surface that the painter expresses his own tem- perament; and it is not probable that the tempera- ments of all students are as much alike as the surface uniformity that I speak of would imply. It is quite sure that later in life able students will find that they differ importantly, and that they will succeed along the lines not of their similarity but of their FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 225 difFerentiatlon. I do not mean that they should throw the reins on to the neck of their inclination and let it run away with them. They should look hard at nature; but the harder and more honestly they look the more impossible they will find it to see nature just as their fellow student does, for the very simple reason that they are they and he is he. It is easy to understand how it all happens, and it has happened to us all in our time. In art, as in so many things, there is always a momentary popu- lar tendency among practitioners, which sometimes is hardly more than an exaggerated fad, but oftener, as in the present case, is based on a very real desid- eratum — that of vigor. The students. A, B, C, D, are working hard at their studies from the same model. A becomes much interested in the painting of cer- tain muscles in the back; deUcate forms they are, and before he knows it he is smoothing them and pushing them to a relative finish. Suddenly he looks up and says to himself: "How much more vigorous B's muscles look in the back which he is painting! It will never do to leave mine so smooth. They are feeble beside his"; and at once a bigger brush and some loaded strokes make his study look like B's. C and D are also thinking first of all about strength, therefore the four studies look alike. Mr. Kenyon Cox said, in his admirable lectures, that the desire for vigorous strokes has so Increased the size of brushes that with many of those cur- 226 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART rently used it is no longer possible to execute any form in nature which is less than one inch wide. Now nature is full of forms, some of them as beauti- ful as any in the world, which are a good deal less than an Inch wide, and you must learn to execute them. You do not go to school for the achieve- ment of vigor alone in painting, but for the attain- ment of all-round knowledge which you will trans- late into vigor or delicacy, accordingly as one or the other best serves your purpose. Varying treatments will be useful at different times, for not only do artists' temperaments differ, but moods as well; one thing will be done better to-day, another to-morrow. Later in Hfe the artist will deliberately throw away for the moment some acquired knowledge, set it aside for the time and work along the best lines; that is to say, the most sympathetic. But all-round knowledge, ballast- knowledge, must be at hand to start with. After- ward some of it may be thrown overboard to lighten ship or balloon, to reach a higher wave crest, or mount into a rarer ether. The more you know processes, and the better you understand them, the more you will profit; but your highest profit will come from the clear apprehension that they are one and all means, not ends. For a process may become too costly for what it accom- plishes. You remember the prince in the fairy story. He had learned to use his sword so adroitly FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 227 and swiftly, that when a shower came he could flourish his blade so rapidly about his head as to parry every drop and remain quite dry. It was cer- tainly wonderful enough for fairy tale, but an um- brella would have entailed less labor, and such dex- terity of fence should have served a greater purpose. A famous artist in speaking of the changes that come with the sequence of years, used to say: "In eighteen hundred and so and so, all the pictures in the Paris Salon looked as if they were painted with ink; in eighteen hundred and something else, all the pictures in the Salon looked as if they were painted in chalk, but they were just the same pictures." He meant that those who are so impressible as to follow each fashion of the moment, be it for tonal- ity or vigor or feeling, merely swell that regular and unending processional which keeps alive the com- monplace for its little day, then melts into oblivion, leaving no mark. In all that I have to say to students there is noth- ing half so close to my heart as the desire to impress the absolute necessity for hard, careful, close drawing and modelling from nature, before they permit them- selves to loosen their surface and handle vigorously. What shall I say to impress the student with what I am sure are facts, and will have to be met later if he tries to avoid them at first ? The later he meets them the worse they will be; they are like mumps and measles — the young go through them easily. 228 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART but those who are grown older and more inelastic are roughly treated by them. When an invading army enters an enemy's coun- try it takes good care not to leave behind it, between itself, and its own frontier, any fortified cities held by the enemy, because such fortresses would become sources of danger in case of doubt or defeat. There- fore the invading army makes itself master of such places before proceeding farther. Now if you pro- duce brilliantly handled and broadly constructed work, without having first learned to construct very closely and correctly, you will be in precisely the condition of a careless invading force with dangerous enemies behind it. Or let us take another and more artistic simile. Venice, one of the greatest art centres of the past, is, as you know, built upon wooden piles driven into the mud of the lagoons at the head of the Adriatic. A thousand years ago its houses were rough and rude; gradually they grew into beauty, and as time went on, palaces took their place, and always newer and lovelier palaces, till the very flower of Gothic and Renaissance art bloomed above the mud of the morass. It was all supported upon piles driven with a cunning and skill which are interesting when one reads of them. It wasn't pleasant down there in the black mud; it was even less pleasant than it is in the schoolroom where the student groans over the difficulties of close drawing and modelling, but FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 229 the pile-driving had to be done, and done right, in order that the superstructure should be substantial and lasting. Festina lente (Make haste slowly), said the old Romans; they did make haste slowly, and established so firm a polity that they enlightened the world for two thousand years. Perhaps some students will say to me: "Why this reiterated sententiousness ? Why do you persist in telling us that water is wet and fire will burn ? We know all about spiders and patience, and squirrels and nuts and industry. Tell us something newer and more exciting." Let me say that in a time of almost universal sensationalism a little sententious- ness has a positive value^ A phenomenal condition has obtained in Paris, where absolute freedom in the arts is preached, and feeling is extolled, not only as the highest, but as the only desideratum. This new movement will die out in time, from inanition, emp- tiness, lack of nourishment from within or without. But meantime this preachment of license is doing harm. Young people think: "Why wear chains of endeavor if one may do better without them ? " Let me quote to you two statements, which I have heard made with most evident sincerity. First this one — some people who are interested in establishing a great art school, who have given their fortunes to it, and who have had experience of many years, said the other day: "The result of what we have learned by our experience is this: 'We must 230 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART not have anything to do with paying pupils. Any young people who pay for their education will not do hard, close drawing. They insist that as a re- turn for what they pay they must be allowed to divert themselves with pigment, and make at once dashing-looking studies in color. Therefore, if we are to make artists we want only non-paying pupils of a free school, then we can insist upon their study- ing seriously.' " Now let us listen to the other statement. It was made by the teachers and governing body of a great free art school. They said: "It is a pity that in order to be exempt from taxation we have to main- tain a free school; perhaps if our young people had to pay something they might realize the value of education and be willing to do some hard drawing and studying. As it is, they say to themselves: *We pay nothing. This is a free school. We wish to be free to study in our way, to be broad and easy, and up-to-date in our methods.'" Now I have simply quoted to you what I have heard said recently. What do you think of these opinions, of the temper of pupils ? If they are cor- rect, why then we are between the devil and the deep sea! I know that the young art students of America declare with a good conscience, and quite truly, that they are enthusiastically willing to work hard; but I say that they must be willing not only to labor FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART 231 over what they like to study, but also over what they do not like to study, else they'll never attain to anything but a one-sided development. And mind, that in saying all this I personally sympathize heartily with the desire for vigorous brushing in a picture. I beHeve in it. But vigorous brushing must be backed up by other and preparatory quali- ties. Though the student may succeed in getting bril- liant surfaces without a substructure of knowledge, he will find the earth shaking under his feet, weak spots will begin to show through, and he will lose his time in trying to repair what ought to have been right in the beginning. If, however, he begins with close work based on knowledge, he may make all sorts of mistakes as he goes on, may flounder about, yet in time he will get the effect he wants, because the work was built right in the beginning, and he has under foot a solid field for experiment- ing until he attains the right solution of his prob- lem. I, at least, have verified all this by bitter experience, by my blunders, by light-heartedly jump- ing over something and leaving it behind instead of filling it up, leaving it because I was in a hurry to reach my goal and get my effect. Broad painting, to be sure, as painting impresses more forcibly and immediately than close painting ever can. As a man learns more and more, he may, with great advantage to his canvases, suppress de- 232 FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION IN ART tail in favor of breadth. But close study he must have at first as the basis for knowledge^ because — and now listen to this, and remember it always — in his rendering of nature no one can intelligently leave out of an art work what he has not already learned to intelligently put into it. This statement is so sound that it cannot be controverted, and with it this chapter may close. IX THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE IX THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE I In the foregoing chapters pleas have been made for recognition of the importance of decoration, of the necessity for harmony among those who create that decoration, and of the value of experience. From such experience and collaboration will inevita- bly result good art, but it will not all be art of one kind, for there are many paths up Parnassus, and they all lead to the top. These last chapters will be given to a plea for toleration and culture, that Is to say for a withholding of censure in favor of examination. The latter will widen into culture which will ensure catholicity as to methods, and will help us to develop, each in our own way, while it will diminish the likeli- hood of his being at the mercy of almost purely de- structive criticism from those who should be sym- pathetic because they, too, are painters, but who are contemptuous because fundamentally ignorant of any method save their own. It is true that the actively contemptuous make up a relatively small body, but they are surrounded by a much larger body of those who are indifferent 23s 236 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE to anything save their own way of looking at art; from them the actively contemptuous make converts, while upon the public they exercise an influence in- variably unfortunate. The men of group A say of groups B and C, " Their work is not worth consid- ering"; groups B and C each repeat the same re- garding the other two groups. The public listens, then argues : " If either one of these groups is right the two others are not worth considering. Now as we cannot know which of the three is right, our policy is clear; it is to not consider any of them, but to collect the works of the past instead of theirs." Here is what happened in the late seventies. The Paris-Munich men came home and said: "The Hudson River School is weak, negligible." The Hudson River School said: "These parvenus are un-American; they are imperfect imitators of Pa- risians; they are negligible." The public said: "It appears, according to their own testimony, that they are all negligible" — and American artists were neg- lected for twenty years after! During the last decade a robust sentiment has been growing up in favor of American art. How shall it be strength- ened? What is thd remedy for that which occurred in 1880? Is it enthusiastic and indiscriminate lau- dation of each other's work within the fraternity? Assuredly not; the remedy is culture, study of each other's work and intelligent comprehension of each other's aims and methods. From comprehension Andrew T. Schwartz: "Justice" THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 237 will come first toleration, then intelligent admira- tion; and this admiration, wisely expressed, will help to establish what is worthy, since it is not sporadic notice of each other that really counts, but gradual infiltration of ideas. May I, in my talk about culture, go back for a moment to my first experience of evolution of the art idea in my early training, and return to No. 3 1 Rue de Laval, the Ateher Bonnat? In those days I began just as a normal and reasonable art student should. I worried myself sick over what the mas- ter said or didn't say, about my work; because I couldn't get my figure plumb or my proportions right, because my color dried in, or because it would not dry fast enough. My little two-foot study was the most important thing in the world. I know from my own experience exactly how all that is — how natural, and in a way how right. Blessed be concentration! Without it the beginner cannot get along at all; and for a while at least the more he thinks about his own efforts and the less about other people's the better. But when he does begin to think about other people's work his mind will grow faster, his horizon widen more rapidly, if he will try not to condemn any methods merely be- cause they are not his. If he does not sometimes look about him and realize that other aspirations than his exist, he is in danger — from too long and close concentration — of 238 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE contracting a mental squint. In the very beginning he is too busy to be uncharitable; too close to his own sheet of drawing-paper to see beyond it; his world is bounded by the school. But just a little later he is emancipated; and it was in the atelier, and from the more advanced men, who already had little studios of their own where they worked for one-half of the day, that I first learned what a paltry affair was anybody else's art than ours as exem- plified by that of our master. However, when I heard the master himself talk, a new point of view was afforded, and a new vista opened. If A and B and C, the camarades, exalted our patron Bonnat and scoffed at D, E, and F, Bonnat himself admired and studied the latter trio. This fact reached me only gradually, but at last I comihenced to recognize it as phenomenal. In the intervals of work my French fellow students became mitrailleuses of criticism. I gathered from them that so and so, famous men, were artists of the neuvieme categorie, the ninth class, not second or third, mind you. When I first arrived in Paris I had letters to Gerome and ambitions toward be- coming his pupil at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He accepted me as candidate, but said: "It will be three months before you can enter, you must not lose time — go to Bonnat, there is no better man in France." Now, if there were in the land two artists who dif- fered utterly in methods they were Gerome and THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 239 Bonnat. It was astonishing to me that the former should recommend the latter. But I went to him, and at the end of the three months did not wish to leave him. Indeed, when I looked at his powerful canvases and listened to the enthusiasm of his pupils I could even understand that Gerome realized his own feebleness as painter and Bonnat's superiority sufficiently to send the pupil to him; it seemed gen- erous but natural. A year or so later I went to M. Bonnat's studio for special advice of some kind. High on a ladder he was painting the sky in his "Assumption of the Virgin." With a big brush loaded with orange-pink color he was beating the bright, strong blue of the sky with regular drum- like strokes, "tacking," but it seemed almost like hi^mmering, and compelled my admiration by its vigor. I asked my questions, and in relation to one of them he said: "Better go to Gerome with that, il est bien bon gargon, and there is no better man in France to tell you." Here was a surprise; these were the selfsame words that Gerome had used in relation to Bonnat. To be sure, they referred to a different quality, but this vigorous handler of pigment was sending me to the smooth painter Gerome! It was the apparent inconsistency that astonished me. I began to real- ize that here at least was affirmation that artists could in wholly differing ways be peers; it was a new impression and an illuminating one. Later I 240 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE found Puvis de Chavannes painting a decoration inscribed "To my friend Bonnat" upon the walls of the patron's private hotel; Bonnat, in turn, doing Puvis's portrait, and either artist praising the other to the skies. Young as I was, my experience had already bred questioning in me as to how far their respective pupils would follow this mutual admira- tion of two painters who differed radically in nearly all their processes. I began to see in the example of these men, Gerome, Bonnat, Puvis, far older than I, far wiser and each of them archfamous, that an artist might unswervingly follow one road and yet not doubt that his friend upon another was just as earnest a pil- grim and just as directly headed for the goal. I commenced to realize that these roads would meet somewhere and began to conceive dimly of an at- tainable Ars Una. To have a solid perception of the unity of art is to own an invaluable property, and its possessor is in a sense grown up at once, an adult even though he still be struggling with the problems of school-life. But in its highest form this perception is the rarest of possessions; it be- longs in its utmost development only to the Titians and Velasquezes, the Rembrandts and Millets of this world, and is given to other men but in the descending scale of the proportion of their greatness. To be sure, almost any artist who has reached his third decade will admit that methods differing from THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 241 his own may be good, but many of them admit it only perfunctorily, and do not act as if they believed it. Even perfunctory admission is something, much indeed, for it is contempt of others that is dangerous. Contempt is a weed that grows fast and rank and high, and soon chokes everything else in the garden. I have said that with the beginner scepticism re- garding any other art-practice than his own is in some degree natural and not unhealthy; the child must have confidence in his own feet before he can walk freely, but there soon comes a time when it is seasonable to weed one's garden, and to admit that the feet of others may tread paths divergent from ours, yet leading all the same to artistic salvation. The danger is that later, if the young man has not begun early to cast intelligent eyes upon other meth- ods than his own, he will commence to harden and will narrow until, in middle age, it will be impossible for him to turn outward those many appreciative facets for that reflection of nature as seen through the eyes of others, which has been essential to the very greatest artists. For the very greatest artists have been the most generously and widely cultured. I do not mean the men who have won the most de- grees or medals, but who have recognized what is largest and most general in life and art and nature, the Dantes, the Michelangelos, the Miltons, the Leonardos, and the Millets. The artist of the Re- naissance stood the centre of an unassailable trio. 242 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE his arms linked fast in those of science and literature on either side. Raphael, at the time of his death, was not only a mural painter^and the mural painter must have one foot at least planted solidly upon science — he was also planning nothing less than a huge restoration of the city of ancient Rome. Architecture then as now was as much a science as an art, and the Renaissance architects thoroughly, understood painting and sculpture in relation to their own work. Michelangelo, as we know, was "the man with four souls," Leonardo was so all- embracing that we might account him a kind of spoiled child of Athene. Rembrandt, a bad business man, ruined himself as a collector. Rubens, more balanced, absolutely balanced indeed, profited by his own collections; was close to the learned, and distinguished himself as ambassador. Velasquez was majordomo of Philip IV., and master of such necessary pageants as royal marriages. And not only these giants but hundreds of other artists were prodigiously cultured. As you come down the cen- turies you still find that knowledge of, and respect for, the methods of others mark the most famous painters — Reynolds with his cultus of the Italians^ Lawrence with his collection of drawings. Millet with his understanding of Michelangelo and Poussin. It is true that the artists of the Renaissance based all culture upon either the study of the ancients or Taber Sears: Frieze of the Apostles, Church of the Epiphany, Pittsburg, Pa. THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 243 else of a few immediate forerunners, who had founded their own practice, in turn, on what they believed to have been that of the Romans. With Vasari, the Renaissance public called the gothic masters of the North barbarous, and their prejudice against the latter lasted for three centuries and blinded people down past the days of Goethe, who shut his eyes tight (though they were beauty-loving eyes if ever such existed) to the frescoes of Assisi because Minerva beckoned to him more compellingly from further up the hill. But both Vasari and Goethe believed in culture passionately, and their neglect of the Gothic was caused, at least on Vasari's part, far more by ignorance than by contempt. For that matter, it was the contempt of indifference rather th*a of active dislike, which in past ages fell upon superseded art. Lethe arose and covered with its waves the Italian primitives, the Giottos and Bot- ticellis and all the other early artists; and to our great advantage, since those waters of oblivion pre- served the tondi and panels and cassone fronts from restoration, and only a few masters, Titian, Cor- reggio, Raphael, and one or two more, were tall enough in reputation to remain emergent, and hence often to fare hardly at the hands of the over-painters. As for the gothic masters of mediaeval centuries, they almost lost track of their parentage in the turmoil of barbarian invasion. A little light flickered in the monasteries, and even in the darkest years there 244 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE never was a time when Aristotle was not a name to conjure with, or when there were not some men, tonsured or untonsured, who had heard of Horace and Cicero. But such names were only a faint echo from an otherwise forgotten past to nearly all who practised the graphic arts. The influence of Roman work passed onward to the Como masons, to Burgundian and Provencal monks; now and then a beam of light from By- zantium or Syria glanced down the steel line of the Crusaders as far as some church of Venice or Peri- gueux, but by the time of the cathedral-builders of the Ile-de- France, men worked in a changed world; they thought of the Romanesque only as a starting- point, of the Roman not at all; while five hundred years later the men of the bag-wig period, indifferent even to the early Renaissance, turned their backs squarely on the Middle Ages and their eyes once more toward the orders of Vitruvius. II We see, then, that the artists of the past were often innocently ignorant of their own parentage, and did not know whence they derived, even while trading successfully upon some paternal trait. But our age is eclectic beyond any other, and when we are igno- rant we are so by deliberate neglect. With us, pho- tography and facilitated transportation have brought THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 245 our far-away artist-cousins into our family of to- day. Any one of us may for a dime buy a reproduc- tion of a work of art better and more correct in its way than could be obtained for all his money by the richest art-loving nobleman in Europe travelling through Italy in the seventeenth or eighteenth cen- tury, with a whole retinue of servants, and in coaches that had been floated down rivers of France or Ger- many and carried piecemeal ov€r the Alps on mule- back, to go home again filled with copper-plate en- gravings and hard-outline reproductions of statuary which seem preposterous to our modern eyes. To- day an intelligent schoolboy can, in a way, know more of Phidias or Praxiteles than could Michel- angelo or Benvenuto Cellini. • Understand me clearly. I have repeated the words "in a way," for in another way a Michelangelo or a Donatello was a seer and a prophet who could look, we may not doubt it, backward up the ages, and vaticinate over a poor Roman copy, finding mighty stimulus in what had been but a borrowed thought, a reflection of a light, which, hidden from Michel- angelo behind horizons or under earth, shines for us to-day, dimmed perhaps by stains and breakage, yet in the original handiwork of a great Hellene. There- fore, there is no excuse for us if we feel contempt for other ways than ours; history, archaeology, pho- tography, travel teach us that many methods are peers and invaluable. If we even shrug our shoulders 246 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE gently over anything artistic that has completely developed, it is not quite well with us; then what shall we say of those post-impressionists who spit upon the past, declaring that the ancient masters existed only to show us what to avoid? To-day learned men explain to us both the Greek and the Gothic; if we see the glory of Titian's color, we know, too, the still greater glory of the glass of Chartres and Bourges. In looking on the sparkling splendor of Veronese's and Tiepolo's canvases, we can remember the solemn splendor of the mosaics of Ravenna and the Palatine Chapel. We may be personally all devotion to one school; we cannot for- get that another beside it has flourished in the sun- shine of sincere popular favor — popular, that is, in the largest and best sense. Do we bow to a cultus of the ugly which we call the strong and the true.? Truly Goya is magnificent, but how about the "Venus of Milo"? Is she feeble, is she artificial? Or if we cry out with Winckelmann for Greek deities, how about Rembrandt ? Is he not also divine ? We must not abuse Correggio for loving great starry eyes and filling cupolas with elfin or godlike presences, simply because we see in the distance Chardin coming along with his loaf of bread and his slice of cheese, and love him, too. Yes, it is quite true, as Ruskin says, that a German may be as solemnly and devoutly contemplative of a lemon-pip and a cheese-paring as an Itahan is of a Madonna in glory; but it is the THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE 247 contemplativeness of either which is his invaluable possession, and, as to varying mental attitudes, the more our light is broad-flung over great surfaces the more crannies, too, it will illuminate, and the better it will be for us, the more the illumination will beat back into our hearts and minds. While the gods and giants file along the frieze of the great altar of Pergamus, men and maidens, pages and cooks and scullions, too, pass us panelled upon wood or copper by the hands of the "Httle Dutchmen," and before these giants and pygmies alike we may say: "Stand, ye are perfect." Our ignorance of a certain phase of art does not cancel it; Madonna is as beau- tiful potentially in the darkness at night in the museum-gallery as by day; on the morrow morn- img we may admire her again, if we will. Think for a moment how the general enthusiasm has always come in waves, waxing and subsiding. Forty years ago Rubens was a giant in name, as he is now and always shall be; but people thought comparatively little about a certain contemporary and friend of Rubens, who had been Philip IV.'s majordomo, painted royal portraits, and was named Velasquez. By and by the French masters praised him to their pupils, and Mr. Stevenson began to write of him, and Sir Walter Armstrong and Mr. Claude Phillips and Mr. Ricketts followed suit; until, just as in the sixteenth century the Spanish court brought black into fashion of dress all over Europe, 248 THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE so in Munich and Paris the black and white pictures came to the fore, and upon the occasion of any argument, despite Whistler's query, every one dragged in Velasquez. Rubens was in the shade for the moment and the hispaniolated art-lover maintained that Velasquez was far greater than Titian; surely in unprofitable discusision, for who cares whether Mount Dhawalaghiri or Mount Kinchinjunga is a few score of feet the higher? If you step backward and view the Himalayas in their chain, or art in its succession, you cannot tell among the tallest which is overtopping. X HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? X HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? If travel and the improved reproduction of pic- tures have made us famihar with the famous exam- ples of the latter, have we, after so much admiration, observation, and sometimes imitation of the art of the past, anything to-day at all approaching a style? We can at least affirm that we have some strongly marked tendencies. Much writing has been devoted to the discussion of the question of an epochal style in art; that is to say, a dominating style of a period growing gradually out of a preceding style, lapsing gradually into a succeeding one, and so imposing itself that every artist worked along its lines as nat- urally as a man walking through an open country would keep to the hard, beaten, easy road. Excur- sions afield he might make, and the greater the artist the more likely he would be to overstep the common path, but he could never wholly get away from it. Boucher might be frivolous, Fragonard joyously in- decorous, Chardin grave, homely, and recueilli, Cochin mtensely serious with his little engraved profiles, Moreau almost classic in the beauty of compositions 251 252 HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? which yet are heaped up with falbalas and coquet- tish accessories with nonsensical appellations, but with one and all of these men you feel the century, eighteenth in name, the epoch of starch and powder, of wig and patch and hoop and high heels. And it is so with earlier centuries; we see the dryness (de- lightful to live with, for all that it is dry and hard) of the fifteenth-century Primitives, loosening and expanding in the work of the Roman school, gor- geously full-blown in that of the Venetians, as the sap of antiquity at the roots of art begins to run again. Then we note returning hardness, stiffer, darker costumes, black armors even, as the hand of Spain closes upon Italy, a hardness which, unluckily, does not bring back with it the precision of fifteenth- century dryness, until a little later we see seicento writ large in the very faces of saints and nymphs alike. We may well call such gradually changing interpretations of nature " styles," but when we come to our own time we should be hard put to attempt such denomination. Probaibly our successors, when far enough removed, will recognize our character- istics, but they will not be so marked and persistent as those of the past. Nor is this because we have sharpness of sudden contrast. Our ladies, who abruptly drop voluminous drapery and appear to be clothed in an enlarged lamp-wick, tight, cylindrical, even-sided, are, after all, not much more suddenly transformed than was HAVE WE As YET A STYLE? 253 a Recamier or a Beauharnais, svelte and low- crowned, just emergent from the enormous hoop of a Marie Antoinette, and from under the huge tower of hair and ribands and feathers which (we may quote an author of the time) made a woman's face appear to be just midway between her heels and the top of her coiffure. Even as early as the four- teenth century had come an equally sudden and prodigious change, when men — for this time it was with warriors, not women, that the fashion altered most — came down from their saddles to fight on foot, threw off the gown that reached the heels, put on the short, padded doublet, the juste-au-corps, the tight-to-the-body, the ancestor of the jersey, and when the knights at Nicopolis hacked off their Ipng-toed shoes with their own swords in order to stand firmly on their feet. No, we are not the only people who have made sudden changes, but the sudden changes of the past were not directly imitated as ours are. We run a gamut of costume skilfully varied by dressmakers fortified with study of an- tique examples, and I cannot believe that, with our enormous opportunity for eclecticism, we shall ever have such gradually evolved and distinctly charac- terized styles as the earlier centuries have known. As it is with dress so it is, to a certain extent at least, with the graphic arts. We have been shown so much that we inevitably recognize and remem- ber many kinds of excellence and admit them as 254 HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? such. Partisans some of us will be, but in the main a good deal of catholicity is sure to be bred. You may say, people have never agreed much. I reply, people have never had such a chance to agree before, and to accept so many kinds of things, for they have never before been so juxtaposed with the concrete message, not only with infinitely re- duplicated and admirable reproductions of art works, but with the originals. Facility and cheapness of transportation have brought the latter near; for in spite of reproductions, Mohammed must still go to the mountain, the great original. But, with five- day steamers and aeroplanes, perhaps, in the future, Mohammed may visit so many mountains in a short time that admiration and understanding of varied kinds of good things will become possible. Some one has said that, whether we agree or disagree with Darwin, we can no longer reflect upon certain sub- jects without doing so at least in terms of Darwin- ism. This application has been passed onward fe- licitously to the system of Morelli in art expertism. Whether Morelli was right or wrong in specific in- stances, we cannot to-day conceive of a situation in expertism which should wholly ignore him. When we are studying the authorship of old pictures, we are bound to think of certain things in terms of Mo- reUianism; his theories have opened so many ordered vistas that our eyes are bound to follow them instead of straying. HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? 255 And to-day we could not fix our mental eyes upon any focal point which should become pivotal to the evolution of a style. We could not forget what has been shown us in delightful but confusing quan- tity. In the past, single-mindedness sometimes came from dearth of knowledge. For instance, toward the end of the twelfth century, when the aspiration of the whole city flamed up into the desire and the will to build a minster, the knight or merchant or beggar, who pushed a barrow, the noble lady who tied her long swinging sleeves into bags for carrying heavy stones, the child who brought water to slake the lime for the workers, never thought for one mo- ment about Greek temple or Roman basilica, or Egyptian or Assyrian sculpture. They did not know gpything whatever about them; they only knew that there in Chartres or Paris or Rheims they were all very busy rebuilding a low-browed heavy church, which we, not they, would call Romanesque, into a lofty cage of masonry full of huge windows and running as far up into the air as stone construc- tion would permit. To-day when we build a cathedral we are plagued by our souvenirs and wonder whether we shall make it "Romanesque" or "Gothic" or "Renaissance." Whatever we do make and whatever we call it, we may be sure that it will in a way resemble some famous building of the past — and why should it not ? In the arts one thing is born of another as surely as 2S6 HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? man is born of woman. Said John La Farge to me several years ago: "If a pupil tells me that he has done something wholly original, I do not want to see It. To-day when we decorate a building with mural painting we must follow in somebody else's footsteps. They may have trodden the rock of the Acropolis or the sands of Asia Minor to enter the cella of a Greek temple, or they may have trudged the po- lygonal pavement of a fifteenth-century Florentine street, but wherever we go somebody's footprints will underlie ours. We may climb upon the scaffold after Giotto in Padua to study simplicity in decora- tion; or we may go a few hundred feet further down the streets of the same little city and clamber after Mantegna up his ladders to admire the dry, nervous draughtsmanship of one of the noblest of stylists; or in some convent's refectory, we may humbly try to gather up a few crumbs that fell from the abun- dance of Veronese's banquet; but wherever we pass we shall find that some one else's paint-box has been there before ours. And there Is nothing In all this to discourage one; nothing to avoid. It is natural, evolutionary, and fecundating. The artist who worries most about being individualistic is least Ukely to become so. A fellow-worker once said to me: "We should try to be spontaneous." Now, he who tries to be sponta- neous and to lift himself by the straps of his boots HAVE WE AS YET A STYLE? 257 is certain of only one thing — exhaustion. On the contrary, he who looks and learns and lingers need not fear, if he really be an artist (if he be not, why ! of that kind, "non ragioniam di lor"), that his fol- lowing footsteps will lead him away from himself. On the contrary, he will find himself; a self strength- ened by his contact with the healthy art of others ; he need not fear, because if he have a real personal- ity, no matter how much he looks at the work of the old Italian, he cannot possibly be anything but an American, since his temperament, if he have one, is part of himself, and therefore of his race. XI EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE XI EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE I By the time that the World's Fair of Chicago closed its gates, it was evident that America would attempt to take up the succession of the older nations in mural painting. We have in earlier chap- ters considered decoration as a form of artistic en- deavor, described some of its processes, and enu- merated some of the diificulties which confront both architect and mural painter. We shall now rather discuss decoration as applicable to American needs and shall try to consider some of the direct or indi- rect derivatives of our contemporaneous decorative practice. Our present practice in mural painting in America is composite in its origin. Our technic was acquired in the main in Paris ateliers, and it is applied to the creation of wall paintings which derive largely from study of the ItaUan work of the Renais- sance, and which in turn is in some cases modified by admiration for the art of Puvis de Chavannes. Our wall paintings are almost invariably done in oil upon canvas, since true fresco has hardly been 261 262 EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE attempted in America; nevertheless fresco with its clear light character of effect has influenced us not a little, particularly through the practice of Puvis, who felt its charm profoundly, though he himself worked in oils. The beginning of our opportunity was coincidental with the greatest celebrity of that artist, who, after years of indifference on the part of the public, suddenly came into his own with his decorations in the Pantheon relating to the life of St. Genevieve, his work for Amiens, and a little later his beautiful hemicycle of the Sorbonne. His example was a valuable lesson in what one might call thinking poetically in color upon large surfaces — ^above all in a noble simplicity. He did us some good and some harm; at times I api tempted to think much harm. He was a man to study, not to imitate. Many modern painters, French or American, have imitated or tried to imitate him without studying him very seriously. Instead of studying him they have looked hard, too hard at him. Real extension of sympathy in either pupil or public, sympathy which teaches them to lift their eyes, comes rather from turning them to right and left than from staring at one focal light until they are hypnotized by it. To hitch your wagon to a star is wise, for the distance gives perspective. In the study of Titian, Correggio, Rembrandt, Veronese, lie little peril and much reward. These great painters came so long before us that they lived in an atmos- EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE 263 phere of different conditions. Our conditions are so separated from theirs that they safeguard us from the possibility of feeble imitation. But if we try to hitch our wagon to the light which blazes close to our eyes, we may find that we have followed not a star but a meteor. This danger of lingering under a great contem- poraneous light, instead of praying and working for light of our own, is exemplified especially by the dev- otees of Puvis. I have seen forty men at least who made forty shipwrecks for themselves in imitating him; and if you consider minor lights you will find that each year the task of the member of an ex- hibition jury is made a burden to him by the young painters who imitate some brilliant contemporary fleverly, attaining to all his lesser qualities and falling just so far short of his greater ones, that their pictures cannot at first be distinguished from the master's second-rate work. When a great artist breaks the way, if you struggle along his path at a respectful distance, whether of time or space, you may note the proportions of his achievement and profit by them. If you follow closely in his every footstep, you will remain in his shadow forever. What proved at once most illumi- nating and misleading, in the example of Puvis de Chavannes, was the extraordinarily successful effect which he achieved in the Pantheon in Paris by constantly repeating or re-echoing in his work the 264 EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE cool light-colored masonry of which the whole build- ing was constructed. Other qualities in the artist's work were as im- portant, and perhaps even more fundamental to his contribution, but this quality was the most obvious. It sprang from a wise realization that, if you wish your decoration to cling to the walls of a building like a great drapery, like an epidermis even, you must marry it to the masonry by interfusion of tonality and color. He reapprehended a truth which had been partially forgotten or slighted, but which was patent to the old masters, namely, that true decoration is but a continuity of the surrounding masonry, not spots plastered upon it, whether made up of painted scenes or ornament. This success was so obvious that press and public celebrated it eagerly. It even caused a rival of Puvis to be subjected to rather unjust criticism. For M. Jean Paul Laurens painted upon a neighbor- ing wall another series of decorations, also referring to St. Genevieve; in them he used the strong and heavy colors special to his art. At once the public fell upon him, saying, "How inferior he is to Puvis!" and therein were unjust. To have said that as decorator Puvis had shown greater feeling and better judgment would have been quite correct, but in other important qualities of distribution of masses, arrangement of pattern, juxtaposition of what the French call les pleins et les vides, filled and empty spaces, Laurens EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE 265 was a great decorator in his way. (Soon after they were painted I made rough small copies of both their decorations and verified my impressions. These two cycles date from more than thirty years ago; M. Laurens afterwards apparently changed his atti- tude completely in relation to decorative tonal- ity and spacing. His large canvas, recently placed in the Capitole at Toulouse, is diffuse and scattered as to spots, and if compared with his work in the Pantheon is light in general tonality.) Now, if the French public, inclusive of the artists, somewhat misapprehended and exaggerated the office of light coloration in the work of Puvis, it is not surprising that we follow suit in America; all the more that many of our contemporaneous Amer- ican mural painters had worked in Parisian ateliers as young students. We all made the mistake of thinking that Puvis's method, admirably suited to certain kinds of building, was suited to every kind — that it and it only was decoration.' But there is no such thing as absolutism in art — everything is rela- tive; no matter how long continued, how static, a certain system of decoration may appear in history, we shall find if we watch it that it is in a condition of flux. The same laws are applicable to stagnation here as elsewhere. Puvis's decoration, delightfully suited to a certain sort of interior, would not have fitted another kind. As we stand before the light, even gay tonality of some of the churches of Lom- 266 EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE bardy — Santa Maria at Saronno is a peculiarly in- teresting instance — ^we feel in looking at the charm- ing panels of Luini, the delicate colors of Laniiii, the almost roUicking angels of Gaudenzio Ferrari, play^ ing away, a whole domeful of them, overhead, that Puvis's work might have figured worthily among them. Indeed — let us occasionally give the modem master his due — Puvis would have "bettered his in- structions." Though he might not in his heads have approached the loveliness, sometimes consummate though more often insipid, of Luini's madonnas and maidens, the Frenchman's sense of distribution of masses would never have tolerated the overloaded confusion upon the walls of Luini's show church of San Maurizio in Milan, to say nothing of the huge fresco at Lugano. Certainly Puvis's work recalls not only that of the fourteenth century, but the light, clear tonality of the Lombard group; and when I first had the honor of meeting him I ven- tured in my youthful enthusiasm to recall this sug- gestion, thinking it to be a compliment to any man. "Believe me, sir," he replied, "I have never even seen the works of those gentlemen" {ces messieurs). M. Puvis was the soul of courtesy, indeed of courtliness, but his answer had a slight savor of asperity. "Ma pur si muove" I thought to myself. ''The Luinis which were in my mind are in the newly arranged room of the Louvre, recently much noticed by the public, and through which you pass fre- Copyright ty Louis C. Tiffany Louis C. Tiffany: Tiffany Chapel, crypt of Cathedral of St. John the Divine EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE 267 quently." This I, however, did not say to him. The feeling and method of Puvis de Chavannes were absolutely suited to the great gray Pantheon, and he prepared his own surroundings in Amiens and at the Sorbonne. When he painted his decorations for Boston he was old, near the end of his life, dreaded a sea voyage, and did not come to America. Had he done so, I am convinced, that, confronted as he would have been by yellow Siena marble instead of his beloved gray surfaces, he would have modified the tone of some of his blues. Lovely as the work is, especially in the side panels, I can still pass up-stairs anticipatively, even from the presence of this great French decorator, to the always stimulating work of Mr. Sargent. Never- theless we should feel proud that through the initi- ative of McKim we possess an important series of canvases by the painter of the loveliest of modern decorations, the Hemicycle of the Sorbonne. Im- mediately after it, and indeed not after it in some respects, comes, in my opinion, the beautiful decora- tion by John La Farge in the Church of the Ascen- sion, in New York. It has not had as much influence upon us as the work of Puvis, because the manner of it is so quiet that in its perfectness it offers no handle for the imitator to grasp. Besides leaving to us his splendid glass, La Farge has done other work in dec- orative painting, but my own admiration reverts with most pleasure to his "Ascension." 268 EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE II To return to our American practice: we, all of us, decided that the fundamental property of decora- tive painting was to be its lightness of coloration, and we said many wise things about its "clinging to the wall" and "not making a hole." We forgot that a gray wall surrounded by gray columns and capitals and cornices, in the Pantheon, for instance, was wholly different from a wall set with the richly carved woodwork of sixteenth-century churches, the deeply cut caissons of Venetian ceilings, even the delicate sculpture or intarsia of fifteenth-century Tuscany and Umbria. Sometimes the old Italians worked in very cheap material, and put all their money into the painted surface. They gave to Giotto in Padua, to Botticelli and Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, just huge boxes of plastered stone with some holes knocked in them for windows. To Tiepolo in the Labbia Palace the same sort of in- terior was accorded. The artists turned these rough places into dreams of beauty. In other cases the Italians used gold and dark woods in profusion and lavished rich marbles. Here was an opportunity for quite another treatment; and when Perugino or Veronese or Tiepolo entered such an interior with his assistants and his working-drawings he adapted himself and his tonalities at once to this different and richer surrounding. EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE 269 We 'prentice hands here in America twenty- five years ago remembered Puvis's Pantheon, and thought that all decoration should be ultra-light in tone, forgetting, or rather not foreseeing, that the building commissioners in various States might like the native marbles for their capitols, and where rich- ness of color existed in any local vein might very naturally encourage its exploitation. I recall the pride with which, filled as I was with this obsession of pale coloration, I showed to visitors that upon a certain one of my decorative panels a spot of pure yellow ochre looked almost a blot of ink. My pride in that performance has wholly departed, and it is probable that some of my comrades have shared my experience and my disillusionment. A further , study of decoration has shown me that even upon a white surface it is not necessary to follow closely the example of Puvis. As one wanders through those exquisite rooms of the archives at the Hotel de Sou- bise, to quote an example accessible to all, in the heart of Paris, and then remembers many other hotels of the epoch of the dainty, of hair powder and red heels, one realizes that Natoire and Lemoyne and the rest of them were not one bit afraid of color — light, if you will, but clear, strong, and transparent, and never grayed into flat opacity. The fact remains that we learned much of Puvis, and may still profit greatly by his example, provided we keep in mind that his is only one of a number of 270 EVOLUTION OF PRESENT PRACTICE systems, suited to differing sets of conditionsj and realize that in art we have not one way but many ways leading to a successful result. I have given much space to the discussion of Puvis de Chavannes, because in the short story of our mural painting, as thus far developed, he has greatly counted. XII INFLUENCE OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES XII INFLUENCE OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES There are some lovers of mural painting, and very cultivated lovers too, whose culture has not elimi- nated prejudice, who aflSrm that the work of the Italian fifteenth century is the expression of the last really decorative style, or who maintain that Puvis's painting alone is mural; or who, in some alcove of the eighteenth century, say that there only may be found the truly exquisite exemplar of decora- tion. They are those, in short, who would adopt a style and proclaim all others illegitimate. But why to-day, since we have no characteristic style, stop short with any style whatever? What would have become of art if others had stopped; why break off with Puvis and the nineteenth century, or with Pinturicchio and Perugino in the fifteenth, why not with Giotto in Padua of the fourteenth; why not with the stucco reliefs in the Baths of Diocletian; why not have stopped once for all with the sculptors of Abydos ? Where would Perugino and Pinturicchio or Veronese or Puvis have been if men had not 273 274 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH loosened the conventional bonds of Egypt, and Byzantium had not followed Rome, and mediaeval masons come after Romanesque monks? He who declares that any one style is right and departure from it wrong, is blocking the chariot-wheels of art. There are people who would reply to this: "We do not wish to interfere with the roll of the chariot- wheels. Let them continue down the broad road of the general development of art; we only say that here (in the fifteenth century, for instance) the branch road of the truly decorative ends." In making their distinction, let these objectors note the fol- lowing: When Gozzoli, Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, Peru- gino, Pinturicchio, and the others practised a certain kind of painting in their decorations, they painted in exactly the same way in their easel pictures, their altar-pieces, and their portraits; and just as soon and just as fast as they learned to broaden their por- traits and easel pictures, they put precisely the same breadth into their decorative painting. They never had any doubt at all as to what they ought to do; they proposed to develop as rapidly as they might, and I do not think that we can logically bisect them, letting half their art progress and the other half re- main fixed upon the vaulting as the last legitimate decoration. The style of Perugino and Pinturicdiio is very beautiful, and may be used with great ad- vantage in America, but it is not final; no style is. Pinturicchio's vogue had come partly from the •^j ,0 AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 275 fascinating and sensational restoration made in con- nection with the Papal Jubilee, and at the Pope's own expense, of the decorations in the Borgia apart- ments of the Vatican. These latter in a consider- able measure focalized the decorative tendencies of the Italian fifteenth century, and exhibited them under a peculiarly brilliant light in the frescoes of Pinturicchio. In relation to this work, just as to that of Puvis, we may heartily sympathize with those who have admired and used it, may warmly approve it as one of the most excellent systems of decoration, and may still emphatically protest against those who say, "Now this I call real decoration" with the inference that broader and later methods are not truly decorative. Of course, it is true dec- oration, this work of Perugino and Pinturicchio, and very beautiful decoration; to lose it would deprive uis of some of the world's chief treasure. But why not admit its logical succession, why tarry among the grotesques of the Vatican, and refuse to pass on into the Stanze with their greater artistic breadth and freedom, their more advanced and de- veloped art; why remain with the entrancing rich- ness, the formalized ultramarine and gold of Pinturic- chio's vaulting to the Borgia apartments, and refuse to accept as equally true decoration those canvases of Veronese (or his school, who cares ?) in the Sala del Collegia of the Ducal Palace in Venice, which, when seen at the right hour in their deep ceiling caissons. 276 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH fairly smoulder and glow with color? In one case, that of Pinturicchio, the surface vibrates from the juxtaposition of little spots of gold and pigment, of tiny relieved bits, of embossed pattern of belt or drapery; even, and very essentially, at times, from beautiful, accidental disintegration, and flaking away of the paint. In the other case, that of Veronese, the canvas pulsates and palpitates under the brush work. The effect is very nearly as rich, and is, on the whole, the result of a more masterly influence. The wise decorator will study both styles and profit by each of the two without prejudice to the other. One very valuable property, especially to Amer- icans, of the style of Pinturicchio and the fifteenth- century artists nearest akin to him, is that it is a safe style to begin with in a young school of paint- ing — much safer than that of the sixteenth century, because much easier to handle well. In such rooms as those of the Cambio at Perugia, the Mantuan palaces, or many others in different cities, the archi- tect himself has worked over the composition of line and space so much that it is left to the painter and sculptor to only, as it were, continue and amplify his patterns, and by just so much the task of painter and sculptor becomes easier. The frame of mould- ings presented by the architect can stiffen and hold up and almost make easy a quite adequate decora- tion, where drawing and modelling, which are rela- tively inferior, pass muster easily within such a AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 277 splendid formal setting. In the Cambio, a great master; in the Sienese Libreria, a fertile, splendor- loving decorator immortalized the work, but in hundreds of rooms in Italy the same kind of formal- ized framing was filled out with grotesques and little figures and landscapes, powdered with gold or de- pendent wholly on pigment, and the painting was carried through by practically unknown men, yet with almost as much effect as was obtained in the rooms by Perugino and Pinturicchio. This effect comes from the fact that the fifteenth- century painter thought first and last of his room as a whole, as a piece of architectonic completeness. It is as a lesson in the latter direction that the fol- lowing of quattrocento art in America deserves high praise. Some of those who have followed it have achieved beautiful and exceptionally satisfactory re- sults, and deserve our gratitude for their steadying and truly artistic influence — their solid contribution. When the practice of art takes on a form new to the country in which it occurs, it is only natural to practitioners and public to refer at once to times and places in the past when and where the aforesaid form was in vogue. Thus when the Boston Public Library and the Chicago Exhibition called the at- tention of the public to mural painting, our Amer- ican eyes reverted at once to Italy. In Puvis de Chavannes we saw the influence of the fourteenth 278 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH century, in Pinturicchio's Borgia apartments the influence of the fifteenth; there remained also to be reckoned with, as a stimulus, the decorative paint- ing of the culminating period, as shown in the work of the sixteenth century. About the year fifteen hundred Renaissance art came of age, the adolescent period was past; the practice of decoration was centred and focussed in Rome, whence but a little later it shifted to Venice. After and even while Pinturicchio and Ghirlandajo painted, there were younger artists who were be- ginning to breathe deeper and ask for more and freer wall-space. It was still the time of the very protagonists of quattrocento decoration; Botticelli, Perugino, Roselli, stood upon the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel as alternating masters of the works. It was the heyday of their art, which had reached its zenith. It was the period of the Sala del Cambio in Perugia, of the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, the Libreria of Siena, when the pupil assistants (Michelangelo Buonarotti himself was among them as garzone of the bottega of Ghirlandajo) were gathering up all the most lovely decorative acces- sories of the Renaissance, the scrolls and vines and candelabra and romping panthers and nereids and cupids, and were disposing them about the figure compositions of their masters. It was the moment of the final, the richest, and in some respects the most admirable exemplification of a delightfully AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 279 decorative treatment of the walls. But already the protagonists began to realize that their road was widening. They had learned their lesson in per- spective and anatomy; in the application of dec- orative detail they had turned their kaleidoscope over and over again to the creation of unending com- binations of lovely pattern. They had diverged from the fourteenth-century road of Griotto, with its larger because simpler significance, and now they began instinctively to turn back to it again. Perugino, the arranger of scrolls and medallions, the creator of strange decorative detail of helmets like chandeliers, and shields like ornamental box- lids; BcftticeUi, the illustrator of Dante; Ghirlandajo, the goldsmith — all began to feel the need of more ^Ibow-room (Ghirlandajo indeed had longed for the town walls of Florence to cover with decoration). In painting the great rectangular compositions of the lower walls of the Sistina, these hierophants of fifteenth-century art carried as far as their develop- ment would' compass, exactly what their partisans to-day look askance at in the practice of Veronese and Tintoretto and Tiepolo. Probably the humanist, the scholar, is to a certain extent answerable for the earliest ventures. It is pos- sible enough that Botticelli at first pushed his bark somewhat timorously out upon the waters of a wider experience, but without doubt a feeUng for greater breadth, even in the superficial space accorded to 28o INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH pictorial composition, was in the air. Signofelli's trumpets, sounding the Last Judgment in the Cathe- dral of Orvieto, sounded also the initial flourish to the triumphal march of sixteenth-century art. When he painted "The Blessed" and "The Damned," he might tuck episodes, scenes from the Divina Cotip- media down into the spandrel's point, and work them into a decorative pattern with scrolls and scutcheons; but when he came to his main subjects he felt that he wanted for each one no broken wall with lu^ nettes and tondi, but a whole vast side of the Brizzi Chapel, just as Veronese, three-quarters of a century- later, would have claimed the entire end of a refec- tory for a Marriage of Cana in Galilee. Great men had been born, and were now working as apprentices, who were to be even unreasonably im- patient of ornament. For such impatience is dan- gerous, and only the Signorellis and Michelangelos of this world can be contemptuous of decorative accessory without peril to themselves. Michel- angelo cared so much for the human body that he rarely averted his eyes from it in favor of anything else in nature; but when all is said, his curiously in- volved head-dresses and his braided coiffures testify to his ability, when he chose to use ornament, even if he did think it unworthy of his time and skill, as long as he could make patterns of his mighty bodies, for that is what Michelangelo and Raphael, too, did with the personages of their action. They deliber- 1 ''■A i i 1 ■"■■ . , '""'■*' ^ Bjgj^^ w * AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 281 ately made them into great decorative patterns. Correggio also was inclined to shake off the bonds of ornament, and wear, as it were, only loose garlands. He trellised his cupids of San Paolo, and let his babies look out from oval bowers of leaves, free from any risk of catching their feet or hands in the tangle of curling tendrils to formalized scrolls. He spread feather-beds of clouds for the Apostles, who recline and sometimes sprawl upon the pendentives of San Giovanni Evangelista, and he filled the dome of the Cathedral of Parma with naked bodies. Possibly, no one cut loose so completely from tradition as he did, but then Correggio is always an exception in the history of art, the exception that proves the rule, the only instance of a prophet unhonored save in his own country, the only giant who during his lifetime was passed over by such a visiting connoisseur as Bembo, and was apparently known — and then largely by fortunate accident of friendship with Veronica Gam- bara — to only one of the arch patrons of the Renais- sance, the great marchioness, the Marchesana Isa- bella d'Este. With Correggio and the protagonists of the Ro- man School, came the colossi, whose mural painting we should lose if we admitted as decorative only fifteenth-century art. In fact, just at this period came the culmination of the change in painting which ushered in the mural panel, vast in size and in subject. In place, for instance, of Ghirlandajo's 282 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH wall in the Sala of the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence, to take a typical example, we have a Marriage of Cana by Paul Veronese; in place of Perugino's vault- ing to the Hall of the Exchange in Perugia, full of scrolls and geometrical patterns and figurines, we have a cupola of Parma by Correggio, filled with clouds and angels. As in any very radical change in systems, potential in either case for delight, there was great gain and great loss on either side — great loss of delicate, exquisite richness, and architectonic completeness, great gain of simplicity and breadth and nobility. And, as in every such instance, we must try to adjust ourselves, to balance both sides of the ledger, and get profit from the loss, since we must have loss in our profit. Much of the older lesson could persist in its influence, much of the delicate ornament could be preserved, and could still enrich and engarland the great new compositions. And these same great new compositions were to be- come the most renowned examples in the entire his- tory of painting. The continuance of the fifteenth- century system of decoration would have involved the renunciation, the loss, of these world-famous works, these teachers and sources of inspiration. The partisans of quattrocento art would break up the wall into relatively small divisions, and spot the great panel with gold and pattern. Such an ordering is lovely and decorative, but the splendid breadth and volume of the sixteenth-century sys- AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 283 tem is even more valuable, and it is only upon wide stretches of wall that the great outpouring be- comes possible. Had it not been for the vast mu- ral panel, Raphael, Correggio, Veronese, Tintoretto would not have found space to open their mighty- wings, and the world would never have known Michelangelo as painter. Had the quattrocento order- ing been retained, art would have been robbed of the Cana of the Louvre, the Crucifixion of Tin- toretto, the ceilings of Tiepolo, the great wall can- vases of Rubens and Vandyck, and so many others beside. Could we spare them? To be suspicious and uneasy regarding very large canvases is natural enough, because there are so many bad ones, and the reason for this badness is as patent — it is because to do good ones is very difficult. But this fact affords no reason for giving them up; rather, on the contrary, the very strongest reason in the world for admiring them and studying them above all other forms of decoration — studying them as the examples most perfectly suited to the wor- thiest celebration of the noblest themes of the past, the present, or, so far as we can yet know, of the fu- ture. In that future will be raised here in America Capitols and court-houses and libraries, vast build- ings of all descriptions in which will be signalized thefastes and some of the tristia, too, of the common- wealth. In the making of this celebration and com- memoration we shall need the lovely motives of the 284 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH fifteenth century, modernized into appropriateness, to bind together our subjects, but when these become events of national import, battles on sea and land, and apotheoses of inventions and discoveries, the victories in short of war and peace, we may not, we must not, crowd them into little panels, medallions, octagons, and lunettes; we must give them breath- ing space, the wide stretch of wall which Veronese and Raphael and Rubens loved. And just as Raphael and Veronese and Rubens and Tiepolo went on one after the other, adding each some new element — mind you, I do not say always improving, but always adding and changing — so in our case we shall modify and alter, loosening our sur- face here, tightening it there, finding new modes of handling, practising them, pushing them for a while to the very front as ultimate, then abandoning them for others, forging always new links in the chain of the arts. II It is easy to see why the traveller in Italy should sometimes conceive prejudice against mural paint- ing on a very large scale. The practice of using vast canvases was at first coincident with the great- est moment of art, but necessarily and by inexorable law that moment soon lapsed. Naturally the epoch of decadence lasted longer, and produced more; and AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 285 just as naturally the visitor to Italy sees more of its productions and is unpleasantly affected. After the use came the abuse of such decoration, and it is against the abuse that one instinctively and properly rebels. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the painted outpouring of figures became hysterical, the gods and nymphs, heroes and sages, who already covered the walls and ceilings of the great sala, swarmed out through the windows and spread and climbed upon the facade. We mourn the fading of Giorgione's fresco upon the Fondaco dei Tedeschi because he was Giorgione. We like to feel that he and his comrade Titian were not yet far enough within the threshold of the sixteenth century to depart from the great traditions of archi- tectonic treatment. But when we hear that Tin- toretto painted a whole cavalry fight "for the price of his colors and to show his hand " upon the facade of a Venetian palace, our remembrance of Jacopo's audacious disinvoltura of spirit in the face of any hard-and-fast ruling makes us shrug our shoulders. The practice of using huge canvases had been abused. When a big thing is weak it is more offensive than a little one. We instinctively look for an observation of proportion appropriate to the character of the work, and should probably not care to see even Botticelli's "Venus," for instance, as big as the Delphica; and this is why we are anxious and sus- picious regarding large canvases, for what happened 286 INFLUENCE OF FIFTEENTH in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy may happen here and now, though I shall not add a fortiori, for a young and growing school is safeguarded from some things by its very timidity. Furthermore our American school of painting, young as it is, is on the upward trend, and we must take some risks, trying at least to turn our blunders into stepping-stones. The small panel, to be sure, is apt to be safer than the large one; a song is easier to write acceptably than a symphony, but the fact would not excuse discontinuing symphonies, and as for safety in mural painting, if that is what you are after, the logical end is plain kalsomine. If the great wall painting be a complete success, and it sometimes was in the hands of Michelangelo, Veronese, Tintoretto, Rubens, it is apt to be as highly organized and vital as any painting that has been produced, and perhaps most inclusive of all. After Veronese and Tintoretto the crest of the wave broke, and their followers took easily, too easily, what they liked from the wreckage which lay spread around. Even for the modern painter, humble though he should be before memory of the past, there is a certain temptation of the devil which comes with especial force to the decora- tor who looks down from the high places of his scaffold upon great stretches of wall, and thinks that the world is his if he will only easily and quickly throw something fluent and attractive upon the said d ■a o M O P^ > w W AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 287 space. The theatre for his display is so brilliant in its possibilities — summary work seen at a distance may be so eflFective — and there is so much which he could borrow easily from his souvenirs, that it is very hard for the decorator to resist, to nerve him- self for hard work, and, above all, hard thinking. But that is what he must do unless he would prove a nuisance even, since slight work becomes irritating and finally grows offensive to the intelligent-minded, so that its existence works real injury to the future of mural painting and disposes us to reject it in toto in favor of simple pattern or colored marble. And this is the bane of decadent art, that " born too late in a world " of art methods m^de too easy, its practice leaves the onlooker indifferent at first, then irritates him, then disgusts him. XIII MODERN TECHNIC AND PRESENT TENDENCY XIII MODERN TECHNIC AND PRESENT TENDENCY Several of the foregoing chapters have been de- voted to the derivation of our practice in mural painting; of course, any practice involves prefer- ence, but when personal preference becomes so burning a question that we have to plead for even toleration, we are pretty sure to find that technical execution, the manner of using the tools, is what we have to discuss. The most narrow-minded of artists is naturally the student, because he is im- mediately and embarrassingly preoccupied, not with methods, but with a method. By means of this method he hopes to attain his ideal. Now whatever may be said about "Feeling" and "Freedom" and their logical sequence of annihilation of methods, we still have some schools and some students left, and we have tried to show that the school ideal of the present is vigor of presentation. Upon a canvas or a wall all that an artist has to depend upon, for personal expression, is a flat, painted surface; to make that surface vital and entertain- 292 MODERN TECHNIC ing through the manner of application of the pigment seems to be the first preoccupation of the painter of to-day. In any discussion of this preoccupation it is interesting to touch briefly upon its development, its advances and retrogressions in the past, since the best plea for toleration is made in a showing of di- verse excellences. The progression, throughout the centuries, toward freedom of handling in painting is not successively graduated. It Is not like the progression of a piece of music in which the theme has been planned from the beginning, and Is sketched, then stated, then de- veloped. Hints there are for development of brush practice, but they seem be the accidental results of temporary procedure. Such are the hints of broken color and vibration afforded in mosaic work, the foreshadowing of the pointilliste in the little gilded or bronzed or colored dots which filled the wall paintings of the Umbrians, the gilded rays from embossed bursts of glory, the glittering patterns impressed by the tool on haloes, or upon deliclously dainty raiment for angels, who were lucky enough to be robed by the splendor-loving Sienese. Dis- integration of surface and color change have often helped instead of hurting these mixtures of paint and gesso, till some of the tinselled, celestial dandies of Crivelli, for Instance, have become really splendid In their scintlllant surface. But this is partly accidental, and it is not brush-handling, for AND PRESENT TENDENCY 293 subtile and varied brush-handling could only begin to grow after a vehicle had been discovered elastic enough to permit dexterity to attain freedom. At first, the new oil medium only softened model- ling instead of emphasizing it. With the Van Eycks, with Antonello, with Giovanni Bellini in his Frari Madonna, the manner of the making is hidden in some of the most beautiful pictures ever painted; but soon men became quite willing that the brush strokes should be seen; and a little later to make them ob- vious, to make them count as strokes, was a de- sideratum. In the work of Titian, who was almost the earliest to loosen his surface, preoccupation with construction never came first, and he thought, not so much about how he placed, or which way he ^ dragged his brush spot, as about what color it was, and what should be the color of the spot beside it. He wanted his canvas to tell at a reasonable distance, and it is probable that change of eyesight, as his years piled themselves up, had not a little to do with the way in which he smudged the pigment with his thumb or with a rag, did anything indeed, in supreme indifference to all except result. Neither Titian nor any other Venetian could have come to heavy color-loading abruptly. The depar- ture was too radical, the traditional indispensability of transparency was too compelling. They were every one of them workers in tempera, and they could not forget it all at once. They began their 294 MODERN TECHNIC progression by putting more oil in their cups and widening the brush sweep. Correctness of sweep depended on the man; Veronese, who could draw and construct, accomplished it easily and often. Tintoretto achieved It with mastery, when he was willing to take the trouble, as in his "Miracle of St. Mark," and did it in some of the worst of his Scuola dl San Rocco canvases, as if he had been armed with a dirty broom, a bucket of oil, and a finished insouciance. Palma Vecchio came some- where near it in two or three pictures, but usually painted women who were like golden balloons of epidermis. Fluid breadth had, however, at last been accomplished in the best paintings of Veronese and Tintoretto, with pigment thinly but loosely and easily swept onto the canvas, and reinforced here and there, in the lights, with slightly loaded passages. Tintoretto left no one behind strong enough to take up the Italian succession, but the funeral in Venice was closely followed by the baptism in Siegen of a little Peter Paul, who was to open the pathway to modern technic. Rubens, Vandyck, and their group in their larger canvases developed still fur- ther the fluent ease of Veronese, and in some of their works, notably in some of their heads, began to paint solidly dans la pate, with brushes which left a handsome grain behind them. With Frans Hals came a breadth which in its unerring assuredness has not been surpassed, and Rembrandt was, perhaps. AND PRESENT TENDENCY 295 the first artist who frankly entertained himself with pigment, just as pigment, that is to say, as a pasty substance, which could be thickened or thinned, spread heavily or not, in planes or lumps, parsimoni- ously or abundantly, with a hand which caressed, kneaded — did just what it chose, in fact. Some- times keeping his mask in deep, contrasted shadow, he loaded a helmet with light till it seemed built out as if with gesso. Sometimes his surface was full of crumb, friable-looking, again it was dissolved until it fairly ran with golden liquid, then, presto ! — he re- turned to a porcelain-like smoothness, recalling his earliest work, and on the morrow leaped forward again to the breadth of his Syndics. Some writer on music has said that here or there in Bach may be found the suggestion for anything in music; and one might say that almost any surface handling may be found, in embryo or completed development, between the Zuyder Zee and the Maas, and in the years that made up the seventeenth century. Here was an overpowering inheritance for the lover of brush-handling, and it was varied and con- tinued elsewhere and later. In Spain Velasquez came, noble, sometimes impeccable, the monarch of all brush workers, so sincere, so simple, and so logical, that he beat the most brilliant on their own ground. With Hals, for instance, one notices the handling first of all; with Velasquez one only feels it in the perfection of the result, a result aided by the purity 296 MODERN TECHNIC which he maintains in his grays ; whereas Hals varies in his color, passing from marvellous force and clarity in some of his Haarlem corporation pictures to inky blackness in some of his later work. In Spain, too, Goya followed later, audacious, disconcerting, fasci- nating. In the French eighteenth century, surface ran a whole gamut; sometimes the languor and vapors of the boudoir entered into the artist's brush work, which again turned to hard commonplacehess in por- traits that, nevertheless, were highly characterized. Boucher, at times charming, was often cheap; but Watteau, Lancret, Pater, whether melancholy or friv- olous, kept a jewelled suggestion in their surface. Latour's little masques in the museum of St. Quen- tin astound us to-day by their vitality, both of execution and character, and Chardin brought to his brush-handling and color a quality at once so beauti- ful and so sterling that it must satisfy the most ex- acting. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Alps, a solitary figure, Tiepolo, performed with the brush point, whether in oil or fresco, feats of disinvoltura, which for downright skilfulness have, perhaps, been unequalled in the history of art. Then came the deluge, and except where the English school, inher- itor of Rubens through Vandyck, of Titian through Reynolds, stood safe and strong in its insularity, tradition was swept away by the French Revolu- tion. Surface turned in the hands of David into some- AND PRESENT TENDENCY 297 thing as hard as his own pitiless political creed, though there were occasional rare returns to the past, as in the wonderful portrait of a young man in the Salle des Quatre Cheminees of the Louvre by Prudhon. But even he, great artist though he was, in most of his oil-paintings shared with all the rest an absolutely uninteresting handling which had be- come common property. This benumbed condition of one of the technical qualities of painting lasted for a while. Then the wings of the Romanticists began to flutter uneasily, and presently the landscapists found their grove of the Muses in the forest of Fontainebleau, their Pierian spring in Barbizon. With a check of but fifty years at most, brush work had developed in one way or another, not always .steadily advancing, but changing, moving, keeping alive, from Titian to Millet. It is all a great, wonder- ful picture-book in which may be found the excuse if not the entire justification of those who now some- times preoccupy themselves too entirely with sur- face, and surely it is open also for the confusion of those Sir Charles Coldstreams of post-impressionism who declare that, as with the crater of Vesuvius, "there is nothing in it." That there is everything m it one may not aver, or rather we may not say that everything has already come out of it — the up- heavals of the mountain will continue as long as there is planetary heat, and always there will be something new, at least in combination. To just 298 MODERN TECHNIC what forms of combination the future will turn its kaleidoscope the artist can no more predict than can any other man. Assuredly the few last years have been whirling about the kaleidoscopic tube in what has seemed at times an almost frenzied pursuit of novelty. Nevertheless, a study of our American tendencies in the present, while it may discover and set down in the chart dangerous reefs, yields also abundant material for both pride and hope. Mr. Kenyon Cox, in his admirable book, has shown with his usual lucidity that the methods of the Venetian painters and Correggio in the treatment of color have not been surpassed since they laid down their brushes — perhaps never will be surpassed. In- deed, their canvases are so beautiful that we need not look for anything better, but, on the other hand, we shall not be unreasonable if we occasionally ask for something different. No one could wish for more golden color upon flesh, which is yet exactly like flesh and not like a yellow glaze over paint, than one sees upon the torso and limbs of Correggio's "Antiope" in the Louvre, or the marvellously rich yet delicate passages in Titian's "Flora" of the Ufiizi in Florence, or in his "Madonna with Saint Jerome" in the same gallery. What canvas surface could blaze more splendidly than Tintoretto's "Saint Agnes " in the Orto Church of Venice. If you go to it at the right hour of the day it seems fairly in- candescent. Again, as one stands under Veronese's AND PRESENT TENDENCY 299 "Triumph of Venice," the huge oval canvas in the Ducal Palace, one never ceases to marvel as to how its maker could have found so much glow and so much freshness, so much gold yet so much silver. Tiepolo in his way is as astonishing. Perhaps no other methods can produce such lasting glow and transparency as the thin painting with glazes and oc- casional loaded passages practised by the Venetians. But, on the other hand, while cordially agreeing for the most part with Mr. Cox, I am inclined to go even further than he does : not to stop with the Venetians, but to pass on and claim distinct qualities for opaque and loaded color also. Indeed, we can- not stop with the Venetians and their transparent methods in technic any more than we can stop at fifteenth-century decoration with Pinturicchio and the quattrocentisti. Mr. Cox admits this and re- cords the changes as readily as does any one, his claim being simply that change in art does not necessarily mean advance. Such a claim is incon- trovertible, if by advance we infer a higher plane along the whole horizon. But in chronicling de- velopment, opaque and loaded pigment, even if not as ideally suited to decoration as transparent color, must be reckoned with, because they have become the desiderata and therefore the working material of the artist of to-day. In a dome, to be sure, or any mural painting placed very far from the eye, loaded pigment can no longer be made out as 300 MODERN TECHNIC an attractive element of surface treatment, but when seen near at hand it is sometimes effective. As far as the masters of transparent color are con- cerned, I am on my knees to Veronese and Pinturic- chio; they have my worshipping admiration; in its way nothing can be better than either of them; but there are other ways; man's heart keeps on beating or he dies, and he must change as he goes. Perhaps the new ways will never again be as good as the old ones, but there is always room for hope. Tiepolo had already in the eighteenth century advanced in some respects beyond his inspiration, Veronese; and if the forms and spirit of art change from generation to generation the technic which expresses them is sure to undergo modification, some of it hampering, some of it even hurtful, but some of it surely helpful. There are perhaps aspects of nature which can be better expressed in opaque and loaded color than in the relatively slight washes and transparent glazes of the Venetians. Mr. Cox says very truly that much of our loaded pigment is mud; so it is, but the best of it is not. As I look at the work of some of our powerful painters and stand before their pounding seas battering great rocks, I cannot believe that the sense of weight and volume, the feeling communicated that this water is rubbing away the coasts and carv- ing the earth into new shapes, could be given by thin painting with glazes. When I look at the AND PRESENT TENDENCY 301 extremely distinguished cool blue sea in another artist's picture at the Metropolitan, I feel that his technic in turn is exactly suited to what he wishes to create. Before a canvas in a corner of the Van- derbilt Gallery of one of our academy exhibitions, a year or two ago, I said to myself: "Is it necessary to use so much pigment that it catches the light un- pleasantly?" Then I stood back at the proper distance, and replied to myself: "Yes, the artist is quite right; by his method he has given actual existence in paint to a huge mass of mountain. We feel in looking at it that it has been heaved up mightily by the underforces of the earth, and the vigorous loading of the color helps greatly, at least as it seems to me, in the impression." So it is with the intense, vital work of many of our artists, the vigor of the handling helps the land- scape to exist. Look at some of the powerfully painted pictures in the Metropolitan. Great masses of opaque color have been used, truly; but consider them carefully, and you will see how these splashes of pigment have been caressed afterwards, and by subtility and glazing have been worked into deli- cate harmonies; here in these canvases are Venetian methods of glaze and scumble and light loading laid directly on top of the heavy modern painting. Whether such methods will last chemically is quite another matter. Of course, the less pigment you use the more you diminish certain unpleasant 302 MODERN TECHNIC chances, but I have never heard anything conclusive on this subject, and hope and believe that the dan- gers have been greatly exaggerated. At every period, even the most eclectic — and the present is assuredly that — ^you may find, if you look for it, a prevailing tendency in technic. Ours stands out and does not have to be sought; it is the tendency to strive for vigor of presentation. In sculpture Rodin has been an exemplar; in painting we are proud of an American, Sargent, who as painter overtops in his sheer force even most of the painters of the past. With him, and with a hundred others, vigor of handling has so entered into our practice, and so fascinated our regard, that it will, I believe, remain a dominant quality in the art of to-day. It is an enormously difficult quality to cultivate to its highest point, because that highest point includes conciliation of vigor with depth and even with deli- cacy, since perforce nothing is complete without its complement. To even approach it closely is enor- mously difficult, for the added volume of pigment renders the technical task still harder than before, the riddle of the Sphinx is yet more troublesome to answer. Yet I cannot believe that in our time we could re- turn in our creative wish to the portraits, for in- stance, of Van Eyck or Holbein, or even of Mor, after the portraits to which we are now accustomed, with their volume of pigment and broad handling. AND PRESENT TENDENCY 303 We could not do them, you say, if we would. No, we could not, because we could not wish hard enough for that kind of excellence to love and labor it into existence. The expression of our aspiration sounds to other chords, our labor is accomplished more with our nerves. The Van Eycks and Holbeins, in their profound sincerity, their quiet and noble stateliness, their unsurpassability, may have been finer than anything we can do to-day, but to com- pare them with modern work is neither here nor there. The gentleman in shining armor and brocade may have been better to look at than the man who sits to us, but our business is with the latter; our way is our way, and in its immediacy it is in the main a sum total of derivations from what surrounds us. XIV IN CONCLUSION XIV IN CONCLUSION Dexterous, subtile, powerful, and beautiful han- dling of surface has been achieved by modern Ameri- can painters. Again as in the seventeenth century there are seen surfaces crumby or running, loaded everywhere or loaded only in places, spotted and striped or united and smooth. One would say that everything which drag or scumble or glaze could do is within the grasp of our artists; great variety and great distinction of color and of tone have been achieved: our painters have learned to speak their language; what are they going to say with it? Rembrandt said sublime things. Titian and Rubens spoke nobly, Giorgione passionately. But above all, Rembrandt said, Holland! Rubens, Flanders! Giorgione, Italy! Will our painters say, America? Assuredly yes, in time. Already our French accent has lessened to the proportions of a tonic to our enunciation — already our landscape-painters are na- tional, and of a certainty our portrait-painters and sculptors and our mural painters are becoming so. In entering any of our best exhibitions to-day the 307 3o8 IN CONCLUSION visitor is struck at once by the quality of tone of the whole as compared with what he would have foun4 there only a few years ago. Our sculptors, men and women alike, are making an extraordinary showing. As to mural painting, which has been the subject of this book, no field is wider, more embracing, more capable of offering a career to the younger genera- tion of artists, if they will enter upon it with an earnest spirit, and a willingness to study commen- surate with its exactions. I cannot too strongly ex- press my belief in the potentiality of the future if we will only think hard enough, and work hard enough, and believe hard enough. All plans can be bettered, all appropriations be more generously made, and more wisely expended, all work can be better done, if we will only study the matter in hand closely enough, study it unitedly, and look back intelligently at the past with the future in our minds. Prodigious lessons lie spread out behind us, and we have only to look over our shoulder to perceive them, without once needing to turn our footsteps backward. On the contrary, we may push forward, architects, sculptors, and painters all together, putting Ameri- can dexterity and adaptability at the service of the lesson learned. Men talked and acted two thousand years ago much as we are doing to-day, putting aside problems of art in favor of budget and plan of campaign: "the unnecessary" in favor of the "necessary," "the o ^ IN CONCLUSION 309 superfluous" in favor of the "vital"; and two thou- sand years later the unnecessary and superfluous is what remains vital and cogent, a concrete entity and a compelling influence. Now, when a man is a power in the land one of his rewards is the ability to acquire some surpassing "old master." When a royal visitor comes to us his first journey is to the treasures of the art museum. Do not let us mistake; some of the stones set up by architects to-day, some of the messages of the sculptor and painter, will be effective still when some of the ideas now current in every brain and influencing hourly action are super- seded and have faded from men's minds. Good art is tre'mendous in its endurance. How essential is it, then, that we pay tribute of earnest, single-hearted thoughtfulness in watching and nursing the creative impulse, lest in place of what should endure we pile up rubbish that is hard even to sweep away. And in the payment of such tribute we shall but conform to the wisdom of the ages, for after the pa- triot there was no one whom the older civilizations could so lastingly bless as the artist. The patriot gave the country its existence and preserved it, de- veloped its resources as farmer and merchant, and defended it as soldier. The artist set up the land- marks by which the city was known; he gave it the distinctive shape which was dear to each townsman; he made the familiar sky-line which told the return- ing traveller that he was nearing home; he gave their 3IO IN CONCLUSION character to the well-known streets, and set town hall, church, and court-house in their places. The money of the merchant, the labor of the farmer and artisan, were the solid base upon which all these arose; and this treasure which they gave remains to them still, and pedestals their memory as enduringly as their monuments. But the artist was the creator; he stamped the city materially as truly as ever coiner struck the impression of the die into the soft gold and left there the lily of the florin, or the winged lion of the sequin. And the home-sick wanderer, when far away, carried with him in his mind the creation of the artist. And it is so to-day. The traveller is thinking of home, of his native city, but what represents it to him in memory is Christopher Wren's great dome of Saint Paul's — a blue-gray bubble upon a horizon of sepia; or it is Soufflot's Pantheon, topping its wave- crest sky-line of houses; or the twin towers of Notre Dame, and the long vapor-canopied stretch of river curving westward to where the sunset shines through that giant loop of masonry, the Arch of the Star. What is the city of Cologne to any of us but the huge church which, as the Rhine steamer recedes with us, grows and grows and dwarfs its surround- ings till it seems bigger than the town? Strasburg is a spire pointing upward from the flat green plain of Alsace; Pisa is that one solemn group of buildings, the mausoleum of her dead liberty. And thus to IN CONCLUSION 311 each of us his native city means some familiar shape, and each, when distant from it, like Dante exiled from Florence, longs for "il mio bel San Giovanni." Every civilization of the past has turned to the fine arts to make a nobler setting for its daily life. Each has looked backward and learned of the fore- runners; and we must do even as they. We may do as France has done: go and sit at the feet of the masters and learn to achieve that wider art which embellishes not only our individual houses but our city. For France has sat at the feet of Italy. She has sent her architects, painters, sculptors to Rome. Of her great mural painters, Paul Baudry went straight to Michelangelo, Raphael, and Correggio; Puvis de Chavannes to Giotto, Luini, and the Lom- bards. Adding their native genius to the study of great examples, her architects have laid out Paris so cunningly, and created so many beautiful temples, courts of law, fountains, and squares, that the eye travels almost insensibly from vista end to vista end, and rests successively upon these different ar- chitectural creations as upon so many points of pa- triotic progress along the path of civilization, until, last of all, it reaches the town hall, where, upon its fafades, the dead worthies of France stand sculp- tured in scores — patriots, artists, writers, workers of all kinds; the choir invisible made visible In stone — at once a commemoration, a decoration, and an eter- nal stimulus. 312 IN CONCLUSION As It is in Paris, so, let us hope, it shall one day be in Ainerica when we shall have put our best art where it belongs, at the top, in the public building; for we shall have a national school when, and not until, art, like a new Petrarch, goes up to be crowned at the capitol.