THE ART OF 
 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/artofgeorgefredeOOmunn 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
THE ART OF GEORGE 
 FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 EDITED BY 
 MARGARET CROSBY MUNN 
 
 AND 
 
 MARY R. CABOT 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 SIR JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 681 Fifth Avenue 
 
Copyright, 1916 
 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
^^NE thousand copies only of this 
 book have been printed from 
 type, and the type distributed. 
 
 This copy is number J I // 
 
By the kind permission of Messrs. 
 Harper and Brothers, some quota- 
 tions from "The Martian," by 
 George Du Maurier, have been in- 
 cluded in this volume. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robert- 
 son xv 
 
 Biographical Sketch 1 
 
 Notes on Art 89 
 
 Reproductions of G. F. Munn's Paintings . . 
 
 following 134 
 
 Catalogue of G. F. Munn's Known Works . 137 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PORTRAITS page 
 
 George Frederick Munn Frontispiece 
 
 George Frederick Munn at the age of nine . facing 18 
 
 George Frederick Munn as an Art Student . " 18 
 
 Margaret Crosby Munn " 55 
 
 George and Margaret Munn on the steps of 
 
 Francois Millet's House at Barbizon . "58 
 
 PICTURES following 134 
 
 Meadow Sweet " " 
 
 A Gray Day " " 
 
 On the Kennet " " 
 
 Cornish Trawlers at Rest " u 
 
 Moonrise " u 
 
 Arcadia " " 
 
 Daisy Fields, Evening " " 
 
 The Chateau de Crive Ceaux " " 
 
 An Old Master u " 
 
 The Old Church, Villerville " " 
 
 The Orchard Gate (Brittany) " " 
 
 The Deserted Chateau " u 
 
 Fort of La Hogue " u 
 
 The Breton Quarry Workers " " 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PICTURES following 134 
 
 The Avenue, Pont Aven, Brittany .... " " 
 
 A Washing Day, Brittany " " 
 
 Brittany " " 
 
 An Arab " " 
 
 Meadow and Trees " " 
 
 Old Trees, Brittany " " 
 
 Venice (Sketch) " " 
 
 The Old Fishpond, Woolhampton .... " " 
 
 Old Man's Head (Etching) " " 
 
 Harmony in Rose and Blue " u 
 
 The Japanese Screen (Harmony in Blue) " " 
 
 Still-Life Group " 
 
 Lily Pond, Normandy " " 
 
 Study for Portrait of Miss .... " " 
 
 Storm, Annisquam " u 
 
 Seven Little Trees " " 
 
 Trees and Sunset " u 
 
 Art Is Long and Time Is Fleeting .... u " 
 
 The Inlet, Annisquam " " 
 
 The Abandoned Farm " " 
 
 A Pool, Rhode Island " « 
 
 Normandy " * 
 
 A Road in Autumn " u 
 
 Evening, Normandy " u 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 s 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 On February 10, 1907, George Munn, 
 painter, passed over to the majority, and I, 
 his fellow-student and lifelong friend, wish 
 to set down, as best I may, a slight tribute to 
 his personality and genius. 
 
 His was a rare spirit — a steadfast one — 
 and always unfalteringly true to the highest 
 standards of his art. No petty trafficking, 
 or time-serving in his work, ever dimmed 
 his soul. He had the rare courage to paint 
 to please himself first, and the public and the 
 buyer — well, they did not count ! 
 
 In the year 1873 he passed those examina- 
 tions which qualified him for studentship in 
 sculpture at the Royal Academy, and I can 
 see now the straight-backed young Ameri- 
 
 XV 
 
xvi 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 can setting up his clay in the antique school 
 on his first day, a "new boy," and a stranger 
 amongst us. His face was pale, his hair was 
 dark and parted in the middle, a sort of out- 
 rage of the fashion of those days; big, sad 
 and thoughtful eyes, a slight mustache, and 
 wearing the clothes of a man of the large 
 world ; a strong contrast to us all, for Thack- 
 eray 's art student of the velvet jacket and 
 long hair lingered with us yet. Here was 
 an object for the insolent patronage of the 
 older students! But we were not to hold 
 that hectoring attitude long, for we soon 
 found that what the gracious American 
 stranger said on art "went," and we hung 
 on his words, uttered with a very slight but 
 most engaging stammer. 
 
 He had come to us a gold medalist from 
 the Kensington Art Schools, and soon took a 
 silver medal for modeling at the R. A. 
 Schools. Having passed into the Upper or 
 Life Schools sooner than most of us, he 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 abandoned sculpture and took up painting 
 with the greatest enthusiasm. 
 
 His fine sense of color was shown in his 
 very first study. From that day on he 
 gathered strength and won the golden opin- 
 ions of all his brother students. Some of 
 the great men were to come of us — Frank 
 Dicksee, Alfred Gilbert, Waterhouse, 
 Thornycroft, Waterton and Swan, all in 
 after years to add R. A. to their laurels. 
 Percy Macquoid, the archaeologist and 
 painter, was also one of us. What an au- 
 dacious and dictatorial crowd we were, lay- 
 ing down the law — and pretty good law it 
 was too — with all the world before us, and 
 each and all convinced we were to be of the 
 elect ! 
 
 Not satisfied with what the Academy 
 Schools could give him, Munn pursued his 
 studies at Julien's and Munkacsy's studios in 
 Paris and came back a ripe painter. Watts 
 chanced to see a copy of one of his works 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 that Munn had made and said to a friend, "I 
 must have that man work with me, 9 9 and so it 
 came about that Munn was in daily inter- 
 course with that giant for many months and, 
 amongst other things, he "laid in" all "The 
 Triumph of Death" in distemper for the 
 master to work on. 
 
 The young man's determination, enthu- 
 siasm, sincerity and reverence had won 
 for him the highest possible training, and 
 he became indeed armed and well pre- 
 pared for the pursuit of the art he so 
 dearly loved. His pictures, both land- 
 scapes and figures, were soon to be found in 
 the leading London galleries; the Royal 
 Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Brit- 
 ish Artists, the New and the Dudley gal- 
 leries. His landscapes, mostly painted in 
 Brittany and Normandy, were of the highest 
 order, and some indeed as fine as any that 
 have ever been painted. He could draw a 
 tree that would have satisfied even Ruskin, 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 xix 
 
 and his sense of color and tone was pure and 
 true and his style quite free from affectation. 
 There was an original and individual qual- 
 ity which pervaded the whole of his work, 
 combined with a great refinement and a 
 great strength. 
 
 The painters, I should say, who influenced 
 his work while a student, were Pelluse, Ma- 
 son, Frederick Walker, and preeminently 
 Watts. Had health permitted him to pur- 
 sue his art, his name as a painter would have 
 gone across the length and breadth of the 
 lands. 
 
 Reverence for what is best in men and 
 things is the lasting grace for the man who 
 would pursue art; without it he must come 
 to naught ; this precious grace George Munn 
 had to the fullest degree. The charm of his 
 personality, his rare and abundant sense of 
 humor, his just and upright mind, and all 
 the higher qualities that go to make up a 
 man made him beloved of all his fellow stu- 
 
XX 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 dents and all the men and women who had 
 the good chance to come in touch with him. 
 If a man was worth his salt Munn had that 
 rare art of making that man "get a fine con- 
 ceit o' himself," as it were, and so he was 
 a helper, an encourager, an inspirer, a giver 
 of those precious gifts that help the soul of 
 a man, and that all the dollars on earth can- 
 not buy. 
 
 Farewell, George Munn! To those who 
 knew you, you are not passed away, for your 
 high spirit of enthusiasm and truth remain 
 with us for guidance and help always. 
 
 Johnston Forbes-Bobertson. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 THE rare distinction of the genius and 
 personality of George Frederick Munn 
 lay in the extent to which the love of Beauty 
 took possession of his whole being. In him 
 the artist was not separated from the man. 
 To every one who recognized the source of 
 his power, he carried a message of pure 
 joy. There was a vital strength and fresh- 
 ness of life, touched by imagination and 
 humor, in his least expression of what is 
 commonplace to most men, and his atmos- 
 phere held a sweetness, nobility and strength 
 that were repeated in his face. The vision 
 of Beauty was ever with him, transforming 
 
 not only his achievement in his art, but ulti- 
 
 1 
 
2 GEORGE FREDERICK MTJNN 
 
 mately whatever for the moment seemed 
 failure, into the very wine of life. 
 
 His story, falling on modern days of strife 
 for material rewards, seems to miss its nat- 
 ural consummation unless it is open to every 
 one in need of his illuminations, as were the 
 riches of his heart and mind to those whom 
 he companioned most closely during his life 
 in this world. 
 
 No record of his life would be a true one 
 that did not include the illness resulting from 
 typhus fever which recurred from time to 
 time during the last twenty-five years of his 
 life; stopping his career as a painter and 
 changing, during the period of its recur- 
 rence, his point of view and standards, so 
 causing a misunderstanding of his true char- 
 acter and aims in the minds of all but those 
 who knew him best and saw him through all 
 the changes of his life and circumstances. 
 But it is not the purpose of this record to 
 dwell on the misunderstandings and compli- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 3 
 
 cations resulting from an illness, which to a 
 man of his power was a tragic misfortune; 
 but rather to attempt to show the man as 
 he was before his illness and also in later 
 years, of comparatively normal health, when 
 through a native strength of character he 
 won a triumph of spirit over conditions 
 which would have at the outset bereft most 
 men of either the hope or power to cope with 
 the world on any terms. 
 
 He was born August 21, 1851, in Rutgers 
 Place, Utica, New York, where his parents 
 had gone to make a home among old friends, 
 after a residence of ten years in Memphis, 
 Nashville, and other cities of Tennessee and 
 Virginia. His father, John Munn, was en- 
 gaged for many years in establishing banks 
 in Southern States, and the fortune made by 
 him during these years bears witness to his 
 energy and sagacity in practical affairs. 
 He was a New Bnglander by birth, and of 
 the English-Puritan stock that braved the 
 
4 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 hardships and peril of Indian warfare along 
 the Connecticut River in the earliest days. 
 
 More than one of the name of Munn 
 offered up their lives in the wilderness to 
 bring civilization to western Massachusetts. 
 The father of John Munn, Calvin Munn of 
 Greenfield, Massachusetts, entered the pa- 
 triot army at the age of sixteen and served 
 six years until the close of the Revolution. 
 He was at Saratoga at the surrender of 
 Burgoyne, in action at Yorktown, and one 
 of the boat's crew that captured a gunboat 
 on which one hundred and thirty British 
 were killed and eleven made prisoners. He 
 was Lieutenant under General Lafayette and 
 with General Sullivan when he evacuated 
 Long Island. At the battle of Jamestown 
 he was under the command of "Mad" An- 
 thony Wayne. During Shays 's Rebellion he 
 appeared again in the service of his country, 
 and was in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the 
 time of the attack on the United States Ar- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 5 
 
 senal. His fervid patriotism was ever 
 armed with courage and endurance. A 
 monument marks his grave in Greenfield, 
 Massachusetts, and is yearly dressed with 
 flowers by the citizens of his native town. 
 
 There is a reference in one of George 
 Munn's letters to "the trustworthiness of his 
 family in all branches, French and English 
 and Scotch." 
 
 His father, J ohn Munn, married a South- 
 erner, Mary Jane Buchanan Meek, whose 
 great personal beauty was enhanced by 
 buoyant health and spirits. The blending of 
 these two natures may hold some significance 
 as to George's inheritance, for his tempera- 
 ment seems to have been a compound of 
 tropical intensity of emotion, with the keen, 
 active mentality we associate with Northern 
 origins. John Munn was a man of broad 
 and cultivated tastes. Much of his early life 
 was passed in the home of Mrs. Sigourney, 
 whose influence doubtless developed in him 
 
6 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 the idealistic inclinations which were as 
 notable as those that seemed more practical. 
 A clear conviction that the welfare and hap- 
 piness of mankind depend on the recognition 
 of Beauty as the supreme test of human en- 
 deavor, led him to make the study of Art 
 an essential part of the education of his 
 children. He compelled their acquaintance 
 with the Art-treasures of the world, without 
 reference to their natural tendencies. The 
 love of perfection in this remarkable man 
 was rooted in the soil of large and hu- 
 mane instincts. Sometime before he left 
 the South he freed his slaves and later, when 
 he went North, took with him his faithful 
 house-servant. A portrait of him in bas- 
 relief, by the sculptor Calverley, shows a 
 massive head with noble features ; the whole 
 face expressing heart, sensitiveness and 
 strength. 
 
 Of his father, Munn wrote in later 
 life to a wise physician: "You have writ- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 7 
 
 ten me exactly such a letter as the finest 
 man I have ever known used to write me, 
 and that man could be no other than my 
 deeply beloved father and I cannot pay you 
 a more delicate or a more noble tribute." 
 Again writing of his recollections of his 
 father and mother, he said: "They are all 
 delightful, and even the corrections I no 
 doubt merited have become precious and 
 have remained with me like a rich man's 
 heirlooms ever since." 
 
 Utica was a town of solid and conserva- 
 tive people under the political leadership of 
 men like Senator Conkling, Senator Kernan 
 and Governor Seymour. Munn wondered at 
 "the strange love of politics" that prevailed 
 there. In Utica and later, in other neigh- 
 borhoods, the intimate associations of the 
 family were with men of virile life and ro- 
 bust humor. His sister, Mrs. Garret Pier, 
 says that "as a very little boy, George was 
 beautiful in the grand manner, having a 
 
8 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 noble head and a wide-eyed, almost inspired 
 expression in his large dark eyes, which I 
 believe were the true outlook for his high 
 spirit. " 
 
 At an early age Munn laid the foundation 
 for a deep and permanent friendship with 
 the family of the great naturalist Audubon. 
 Miss Eliza Audubon writes: "He came to 
 our home in Audubon Park, a young boy, in 
 1865 — into our household of children, older 
 and younger, and from that date was like a 
 son and brother. 
 
 "That he was a remarkable boy in many 
 respects, there is no need for me to say: 
 that he even then evinced the qualities 
 for which we, and later the world, loved 
 him so much, is not strange; but that 
 a lad of his age should possess certain at- 
 tributes of dignity, self-control, a peculiar 
 reticence and an unusually high sense of 
 honor, such as few persons even of ripe years 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 9 
 
 can boast of, is a thing to remember with 
 fond pride and pleasure. Not that he lacked 
 the joy of healthy youth: far from it: he 
 was usually ready for fun and frolic with 
 those who loved and understood him. But 
 he was very discriminating in his choice of 
 associates : his temperament was an exceed- 
 ingly sensitive one: and there were hours, 
 and even days when the eyes of affection 
 saw that his mood was not a light one : and 
 the love that was tender as a mother's and 
 a sister's never allowed these moods to be 
 trifled with: nor indeed would any of that 
 warm-hearted circle have wished to do so." 
 
 His early efforts to adjust himself to the 
 demands of a conventional training are best 
 narrated in his own words : 
 
 "I have been terribly weighed down by my 
 appalling lack of technical education. My 
 dear father would gladly have sent me to 
 a college or university, but my stammering 
 habit robbed me of that privilege. The sad- 
 
10 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 dest memories of my childhood, still vivid, 
 are those connected with my difficult speech. 
 When I reached the talkative age I found 
 that I possessed a set of weak nerves of 
 speech and that they prevented free utter- 
 ance of my wishes. Easy converse, even 
 with my playfellows, was almost an impos- 
 sibility. But as I grew and the desire to talk 
 developed with my strength, I found my 
 answers to what was said were rather wiser 
 than might have been expected of a little boy, 
 for the reason that I could not answer at 
 once, and so the chance was given me not 
 only to think twice before speaking, but 
 sometimes ten times twice. Then this afflic- 
 tion prevented me from reciting lessons in 
 class at school, and free intercourse with 
 even those who did not inspire me with awe 
 or fear ! I could not ask my way of a police- 
 man without hesitation or communicate my 
 wishes to a shopkeeper, and so I grew up a 
 rather lonely boy, and was not much of a 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 11 
 
 reader, a natural refuge, one would think." 
 
 But this enforced habit of silence bore 
 fruit in his increased capacity as a listener 
 when occasion offered him "the unrestricted 
 flow of talk from a host of men and women 
 who had won distinction in the professions 
 in England, France and Italy and America." 
 
 His education was to come, not from the 
 secondary mediums of schools and books, but 
 from direct contact with the vital Sources 
 of Life and Art. 
 
 In September 14, 1865, Mr. and Mrs. Munn 
 with three of their four children, Mary, 
 Sarah, and George, the youngest, sailed for 
 Europe. He was only thirteen years of age, 
 but alive to those first impressions that shape 
 the standard of a lifetime. Of this period 
 his sister, Mrs. Pier, says : 
 
 "There had been no indication of any spe- 
 cial trend towards the life of an artist, before 
 this time, but these two years seem to have 
 been an epoch in his career, a beginning, and 
 
12 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 the museums proved a forcing-bed for his 
 genius. He frequented the museums of 
 Naples and Rome, and made friends of the 
 Italian artists engaged in copying the classic 
 marbles. They were but humble men, but 
 their kindly converse and interest were per- 
 haps the first round of the ladder to this 
 young, striving soul. One of these simple 
 men was a young lava, or cameo-cutter of 
 Naples, named Stella, — another was an old 
 Roman copyist or marble-worker, Conti. 
 Under their directions he modeled bits of 
 clay into copies of the heads from the bas- 
 reliefs on Roman sarcophagi, etc., — very 
 stumbling little efforts, straws merely, blown 
 by the wind of his destiny, but intimations 
 of the irresistible force of that wind and the 
 tendency of his nature.' ' 
 
 Among his papers are many lists of ob- 
 jects of peculiar interest during this period; 
 objects of beauty in Nature and in the world 
 of Art that communicated to him "the thrill 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 13 
 
 divine." Mention is made by him of visits 
 to the studios of W. W. Story in Rome and 
 Hiram Powers in Florence ; of Strauss mu- 
 sic heard in Vienna, and music in Munich 
 under the leadership of Joseph Gungl; of 
 the galleries of Munich ; of Oberammergau, 
 and of bouquets thrown to the Emperor and 
 Bismarck and impressions of the Court and 
 aristocratic women. 
 
 In 1867 they went to Paris and were pres- 
 ent at the opening of the Exposition by Na- 
 poleon III, who was accompanied on this 
 occasion by the Empress Eugenie and the ill- 
 fated Prince Imperial. George was deeply 
 stirred at the sight of the Arts on exhibition 
 and enjoyed the street scenes: 
 
 From Paris in the same year they 
 journeyed to London and returned to 
 America. He was then sent to the Le- 
 doux School at Cornwall-on-Hudson, where 
 his record appears to have been made on 
 lava-cutting and on being expelled with 
 
14 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 three of the oldest boys for giving money 
 to help a little boy run away, who 
 had, they believed, been unjustly treated by 
 one of the teachers. His father was indig- 
 nant that Mr. Ledoux had no other resource 
 in the way of punishment except expulsion. 
 This was the end of George's technical 
 schooling. 
 
 The housekeeper of this school, Mrs. 
 Meagher, was a woman of much discernment 
 and balance of character. In 1908, a white 
 haired, majestic looking woman, she recalled 
 her vivid memory of George Munn during 
 the years he spent there. "George," she 
 said, "was a great student — very reserved, 
 and so superior to the other boys that he was 
 much alone, although he made a great deal of 
 fun for the boys when he was with them. 
 His room was next to mine and was un- 
 heated. Mine was heated and when I went 
 to Cornwall to shop for the school he always 
 asked if he might use my room until I came 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 15 
 
 home. He locked himself in and none of 
 the boys ever knew what he did while there. 
 But he used to show me when I returned, the 
 little heads and figures he had modeled. 
 He kept all his tools and clay in a wooden 
 box and wrapped them up with great care, 
 always in the same pieces of paper. It was 
 a great pity that Mr. Ledoux expelled him 
 
 for helping little S D to run away. 
 
 S was only eleven years old and was un- 
 happy and homesick. He thought he had 
 been unkindly treated and George believed 
 this too. He felt his expulsion very much, 
 and it was a wrong. He was the finest boy 
 in the school. At that time he was very slen- 
 der with large dark eyes and a remarkably 
 sweet voice in speaking." 
 
 To return to Miss Audubon's recollec- 
 tions: " After an absence of many months he 
 returned to us, as he did for several years, 
 as to a second home, and took up his studies 
 
16 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 in New York with one of the foremost sculp- 
 tors in America, Calverley. This was in the 
 fall of 1867, and he continued with Calver- 
 ley until he went again to Europe. At this 
 time he intended to make sculpture his life- 
 work, and showed decided talent, making 
 rapid progress in the art, and loving it 
 greatly. A model of a baby's head which he 
 executed while with Calverley is still cher- 
 ished as a precious gift by the owner, the 
 adopted sister to whom he gave it. Unfor- 
 tunately none of the scraps of verse which 
 he wrote from time to time for our games, 
 or for small festivities, have been preserved ; 
 though these lines often contained real poetic 
 thought and feeling." 
 
 As if in compensation for his difficult 
 speech he showed when only a boy this poetic 
 gift, which grew with his experience of life. 
 He never mastered any form in verse, but 
 the deep and true feeling and sense of beauty 
 of these irregularly rhythmical poems is akin 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 17 
 
 to that which reached perfection of style and 
 form in his painting. 
 
 The summer of 1870 was spent with his 
 family in Switzerland. The event of special 
 meaning to him during this year of travel 
 was the Declaration of War by France on 
 Prussia. He saw the wounded in cattle-cars 
 at stations on their way to Paris. He and 
 his father bought cigars and put them in the 
 mouths of the wounded, and lighted them for 
 those whose arms were helpless. There was 
 great excitement wherever they journeyed 
 and the frequent cry "a Berlin/' by the 
 French who expected to win the day. 
 
 In London at the Langham Hotel they met 
 many old friends among the refugees from 
 France. Here much time was occupied 
 with visits to antiquarian collections and 
 old shops, — his first acquaintance with such 
 places, much frequented afterwards. 
 
 In 1868, when seventeen, after nine 
 
18 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 months ' travel in Europe with his parents, 
 he was left by them in London to begin his 
 art studies at the South Kensington Mu- 
 seum. He already showed the self-reliance 
 which marked his whole life, in refusing to 
 accept from his father more than a monthly 
 stipend, so small, that not only then but for 
 the following ten years, he frequently went 
 hungry and inadequately clothed, to first 
 learn, and then pursue, his art. He said 
 in after years that, when tuition, studio rent, 
 materials and models were paid, there was 
 little left for food! But his burning ardor 
 for his work was such that his memory of 
 these years was one of the most precious of 
 his life. He once said that, during them, he 
 knew the "Heaven of Art." 
 
 On entering the Royal Academy School 
 in 1873, he was one of a group of men who 
 have won distinction as painters and sculp- 
 tors, nearly all of them adding R. A. to their 
 names. 
 
2 
 
 PS 
 +-> 
 
 C/2 
 
 a 
 d 
 
 P 
 
 a 
 
 u 
 
 Q 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 w 
 o 
 
 H3 
 
 o 
 
 c3 
 
 d 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 19 
 
 He loved London with a lover's enthu- 
 siasm and romance. Its age, its vastness 
 and complex life, — its darkness and fogs 
 were beloved and stimulated his imagina- 
 tion. During the summers he went some- 
 times alone, but often with one or more of 
 his artist friends, on walking tours through 
 the most beautiful counties of England. 
 
 These were happy days. Many pictures 
 were painted and his sketch-books are filled 
 with impressions of these journeys, and of 
 journeys in Prance and Italy. At night, at 
 the close of a long day of open-air painting 
 and tramping, they would walk, six abreast, 
 singing, through the sleepy English hamlets, 
 finally stopping for bread and cheese and 
 ale at some village tavern, where they talked 
 and sang with the ruddy-cheeked farmers 
 and teamsters who gathered there nightly. 
 Munn could reproduce the very echo of the 
 voices and intonation of these country-men, 
 even to the twist of their jaws and the sol- 
 
20 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 emn, strenuous earnestness of their eyes as 
 they sang. 
 
 One summer, he and Seely, a student 
 at the Royal Academy, hired a gypsy 
 van and had it freshly painted and fitted for 
 a summer 's painting tour. A horse was bor- 
 rowed from Seely 's father, Captain Seely, 
 and, after some days of journeying and 
 searching, a beautiful height was chosen, 
 looking down on the valley of the Wye, with 
 Tintern Abbey just beneath their eyes. The 
 land belonged to a baronet, who was the 
 personage of the neighborhood, and he not 
 only consented to their passing the summer 
 there, but he and the families of the adjoin- 
 ing estates became very friendly with the 
 two young painters, so that much happy com- 
 panionship varied their days of work. They 
 cooked their own meals, but the dish-washing 
 proved too much for their patience and a 
 small boy from a cottage near by was hired 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MXJNN 21 
 
 to take this part of their housekeeping duties 
 off their hands. 
 
 It was during this summer that Munn 
 painted the large study of wild flowers, 
 called "Meadow Sweet,' ' exhibited in the 
 Royal Academy in 18 — . Many notices 
 appeared in the leading London news- 
 papers and art journals of this remarkable 
 painting, several of them comparing it with 
 Fantin-Latour's flower pictures and giving 
 the palm to Munn's work. 
 
 One summer was passed in Cornwall, 
 where the wild beauty of land and sea in- 
 delibly impressed him. He painted there 
 his " Cornish Trawlers at Rest," which now 
 hangs in a private gallery in the North of 
 England and is the most treasured posses- 
 sion of its owners. The sales of his paint- 
 ings made travel possible. Summers were 
 passed in Normandy, and about 1876 he went 
 for nearly two years to Brittany, living in 
 
22 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 an inn at Pont Aven, close to the coast of 
 Finisterre. 
 
 Pont Aven is a typical Breton village. 
 The old houses surrounding the stone-paved 
 Place are built of silver gray stone, many of 
 them of the time of William the Conqueror. 
 The signs over the little shop-doors bear 
 names Welsh in spelling and pronunciation. 
 Pen Ven, Pen G-wynn, Plouynon, might be 
 Welshmen instead of Breton peasants. One 
 of these Pont Aven men, a sailor, said: "I 
 can always speak with the Welsh sailors. 
 We understand each other/ ' There is a 
 legend that, in prehistoric times, Wales and 
 Brittany joined each other and were one 
 land. Who can say? 
 
 A little river runs through the center of 
 the town, spanned by an old stone bridge. 
 A grassy path winds by the river, though 
 the Bois d' Amour, and a short walk through 
 the wood takes one to an ages-old stone 
 shrine, which Munn painted just as he saw 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 23 
 
 it, with a peasant woman kneeling before it. 
 The river flows on under the bridge, five 
 miles to the sea, widening rapidly and pass- 
 ing through a land of indescribable solitude 
 and stillness. One village on the left of the 
 river, and the old Chateau de Henan on the 
 right, alone break the loneliness. 
 
 The land of Finisterre is sown in that re- 
 gion with old stone chapels, so old that no 
 one knows their origin ; small and of simple 
 and noble architecture and bare and empty 
 vrithin, kept from falling to ruin by the rev- 
 erence for all that belongs to their church 
 is dear to the Breton's heart. 
 
 Once a year, a Pardon is celebrated 
 in each of these chapels, and there is 
 no more touching sight than that of the 
 processions of these simple people in their 
 beautiful costumes, the white caps and 
 brilliant satin aprons of the women giving 
 vivid color and life to the marching groups. 
 A sort of litany is chanted as they walk, set 
 
24 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 to a monotonous and strangely plaintive air, 
 which seems to express the longing, the pa- 
 tience, and the inexorable sorrows of pov- 
 erty, separation, and shipwreck which are 
 so interwoven with the lives of the Bretons 
 of the sea coast. 
 
 In 1900, after his marriage to Margaret 
 Crosby, on one August day of glowing sun- 
 shine, Munn and his wife watched one of 
 these processions at a Pardon at St. Nicho- 
 las, a fishing hamlet on the coast of Fin- 
 isterre. 
 
 The priest, a strong sunburned youth, 
 in white and gold vestments, stood on 
 the edge of the bluff where the white 
 sandy soil was strewn with green turf 
 and dotted with pointed cedars. Behind 
 him, in a long uneven line, were the 
 peasants, the women in their white caps, and 
 many of the men carrying banners of pale 
 blue and gold, which fluttered like splendid 
 butterflies against the deeper blue of the sky. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 25 
 
 The priest spoke to his bearers with solemn, 
 almost severe, earnestness in Breton; and 
 then turning to the sea, stretched out his 
 arms, pardoning and blessing the dwellers 
 in the sea, as he had pardoned and blessed 
 those on the land, while the plaintive chant 
 rose again. Surely a strangely beautiful 
 custom, and one to be found nowhere but in 
 Brittany. 
 
 During these years he exhibited at the 
 Royal Academy, Society of British Artists, 
 Grosvenor, Dudley and New Galleries in 
 London, the Salon in Paris, and the galleries 
 of Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and 
 other cities of Great Britain. A silver 
 medal was awarded him by the Royal Acad- 
 emy School for sculpture, and by the Gov- 
 ernment the " National" gold medal for 
 "success in Art" at the South Kensington 
 Museum. Sir Frederick Leighton was a vis- 
 itor to the Royal Academy in 1871 and gave 
 Munn the privilege of bringing designs to 
 
26 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 his house on Sunday mornings for sugges- 
 tion and criticism. 
 
 In 1870, he met in Cornwall, before the 
 days of the Cornish School, Percy Mac- 
 quoid, with whom a close friendship was 
 formed. When Sir Henry Peek, Bart. 
 M.P., wanted a copy of Hogarth's great life- 
 size, full length portrait of Capt. Coram 
 (the founder of the famous Foundling Hos- 
 pital in London) the commission was given 
 to Percy Macquoid, who " farmed the job" 
 to Munn, and the latter painted it during 
 weeks of constant work, with all the activi- 
 ties of the Hospital going on about him. 
 
 Sir John Millais was a visitor at the Royal 
 Academy in 1872, and also in the seventies, 
 Munn, Whistler, Madox-Brown, Ted Hughes 
 and Frank Lathrop were drawing and 
 painting from the same model, "the most 
 famous one" at that time at Victor Barth's 
 school. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 27 
 
 Russell Sturgis gave in Scribner's Mag- 
 azine in 1908 his estimate of Munn's work 
 as follows: 
 
 "The paintings of George Frederick 
 Munn are marked examples of that tendency 
 toward naturalism of the best sort which is 
 characteristic of American landscape paint- 
 ing. 
 
 " ' Normandy' shows a side of his work 
 which is indeed not touched upon in any of 
 the reproductions of his paintings which fol- 
 low. This picture, more than any other 
 composition of his known to the present 
 writer, is 'impressionistic' in its drawing, 
 by which phrase is meant that no attempt 
 has been made to render details or even to 
 express strongly such important facts as the 
 growth of the trees, the modulation of the 
 earth's surface, the articulation of the leaf- 
 age, the building up of clouds. Such a treat- 
 ment of landscape effect is precisely as le- 
 gitimate as a minutely rendered set of de- 
 
28 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 tails working together to build up a result — a 
 picture like one of the Liber Studiorum 
 prints, with great insistence upon the anat- 
 omy of tree forms. Just as legitimate, and 
 in one sense more nearly artistic, from the 
 fact that it is so much easier to invest such 
 a study as this with lovely light and warm 
 color than it is to combine those supreme ex- 
 cellences with the severe drawing of natural 
 form. 
 
 "But consider 'Normandy Sand Dunes' 
 in which the trees are drawn with almost a 
 Turneresque touch — with quite a Turner- 
 esque desire for accuracy in the anatomy of 
 ramification. This picture is, indeed, a 
 faithful study of a hillside crowned by the 
 trees in question; but that is precisely the 
 theme of these remarks. Munn knew how 
 to represent such a simple piece of natural 
 landscape, seizing its charm and recording 
 it for the permanent possession of those be- 
 fore whose eyes it would never appear again 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 29 
 
 in reality. As for its chief meaning, there 
 is really nothing more delightful than a 
 faultless piece of natural scenery, and all 
 that the landscape painter can do — all that 
 we dare to ask of Martin or of Inness, of 
 Constable or of Turner, is to reproduce that 
 when seen, or insensibly to modify something 
 not quite so perfect until it reaches the ideal 
 glory which the mind of the great artist 
 conceives as the practiced brush does its 
 work. 
 
 " 'Brittany' is a picture reminding us of 
 what Homer Martin used to paint, during 
 his last few years of life, from 1890 to 1897. 
 In it is seen the same reserve — the same con- 
 tent with a simple scene ; a slight hollow be- 
 tween slowly rising hills, and a suggested 
 water-course marking the bottom of the lit- 
 tle valley. The top of the hill on the left 
 is marked by a screen of trees, between the 
 trunks of which the light of the horizon is 
 seen to shine — so thin is the screen, so few 
 
30 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 are the trees which make it up. In this way 
 the hill is insisted on as a narrow ridge, a 
 part of a rolling country, beyond which ridge 
 another such valley will be found, if we walk 
 only a quarter of a mile in that direction. 
 On the right the same structure of the 
 ground is visible, but there the rain and the 
 rough weather have eaten away the rounded 
 hill into the semblance of a little cliff, and 
 the scraggy bushes emphasize and insist 
 upon that broken character of the ground. 
 Between these slight acclivities is the low- 
 lying valley with its stream, a bowlder or two 
 laid bare by the deeper run of the winter 
 torrent, and what seem to be dwarf willows 
 here and there set in the wet ground near 
 the brook. Long and low stretches this 
 green landscape, a perfect reach of pasture 
 ground as seen in our eastern country-side, 
 and above it is a sky full of summer clouds 
 of that uncertain August weather which 
 threatens and yet promises, offering alter- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 31 
 
 nation of showers and sunshine. The dis- 
 turbed birds which fill the sky with their 
 busy flight, sweeping by as if to escape a 
 threatened cataclysm, suggest a storm more 
 decidedly than the clouds alone can do. The 
 more I contemplate this picture, the more 
 pleasant it is to me. It brings up again that 
 obvious remark printed above — that there 
 is no landscape more lovely than a faithful 
 or slightly modified study of peaceful nat- 
 ural conditions. 
 
 " A piece of more thoughtful work, of more 
 deliberate expression of sentiment, appears 
 in which a study of a steep river-bank re- 
 minds one of Homer Martin's work during 
 the summer he spent in Normandy. This is 
 an admirable composition, whether it owes 
 its charm to nature, almost wholly, or has 
 been in part the work of the artist's modify- 
 ing mind and hand. The simple houses, 
 crowning the cliff in the most perfect fash- 
 ion, lend themselves at once to that place in 
 
32 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 nature and in the work of art; and beyond 
 them to the right are seen the spires which 
 suggest a larger stretch of the town in that 
 direction and the presence of a community of 
 men. Then the extreme foreground is filled 
 with the fisher's boat, a yawl-rigged cutter, 
 on the forward deck of which a small flame 
 and rising smoke are visible ; whether this is 
 to attract fish to the net or whether it is part 
 of the crew's cookery being uncertain. It 
 makes a streaming banner of light in the 
 foreground, and that is all that we ask. 
 Here, again, birds, numerous and in this 
 case large and near at hand, are sweeping 
 by, showing us how strongly the artist was 
 impressed by the free life of the flying crea- 
 tures. 
 
 " These admirable pictures are good to see, 
 even in their dress of black and white repro- 
 duction. If the canvases could be brought 
 together in one of our museum galleries, 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 33 
 
 even for a loan exhibition, that would be a 
 fortunate town and a fortunate museum 
 which should possess them for a day." 
 
 This tribute of Russell Sturgis' to Munn's 
 work was a spontaneous expression of en- 
 thusiasm from one who had never seen him 
 and knew him only by report. 
 
 One of his oldest friends, The Honorable 
 Stephen Coleridge, writes of him: 
 
 "It is now more than twenty-five years 
 ago that George Munn came upon us all 
 in London, bearing about him something so 
 fresh and strange as instantly to command 
 attention, and in a little while revealing 
 such qualities of heart and mind as to win 
 the affection of all who came to know him 
 well. 
 
 "Painting after all is a form of expression 
 or nothing at all, and a narrow mind and a 
 cold heart never yet had anything to confer 
 
34 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 upon mankind, but George Munn possessed 
 a wide vision and most tender sympathies, 
 and he cherished a sense of honor almost too 
 delicate for these material days, and his ex- 
 quisite sensibilities and stainless taste were 
 present in every line of his work. 
 
 The picture of his that I possess hung in 
 the place of honor at the end of the long room 
 at the Grosvenor Gallery in its last year of 
 existence and was called ' In Chancery/ It 
 is a large work and represents an old Manor 
 House standing desolate and empty, with 
 the garden before it full of tall grass and 
 wild flowers, and behind, a mass of dark 
 immemorial trees with the rocks wheeling 
 above them. The dignity and sorrow of 
 greatness passed away speaks eloquently 
 from the splendid canvas. The sense is 
 there of ancient family honor and nobility 
 of life gone away from the old home, which 
 stands forlorn yet still stately in its loneli- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 35 
 
 ness : of silence, and abiding peace. A man 
 who could look long at this picture without 
 being deeply moved must have a heart of 
 stone. 
 
 4 ' All great painting appeals to the heart 
 because it comes from it, and for this reason 
 I value this picture more than any that I 
 possess.' 1 
 
 Madame Frangois Millet, the wife of 
 Frangois Millet, and daughter-in-law of 
 Jean Francois Millet, formerly Miss Geral- 
 dine Eeed of New York, wrote of his paint- 
 ings in the New York Times, of April, 1911, 
 on the occasion of a commemorative exhibi- 
 tion of his work in New York, with an 
 enthusiasm founded on great knowledge 
 and the keen artistic sympathy of a fellow- 
 painter, the rare quality of whose own work 
 has won appreciative recognition in both 
 America and France: 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 "To the Editor of The Neiv York 
 Times: 
 
 " There is a satisfaction in seeing 
 justice done and order come out of 
 disorder which amounts to a keen 
 joy. It is with feelings of this sort 
 that one goes from one to another of 
 these admirable pictures by George 
 P. Munn — gathered together for 
 the first time four years after the 
 death of the painter and after hav- 
 ing been painted more than twenty 
 years. That these pictures were 
 painted twenty years ago is a very 
 important fact to consider in look- 
 ing at them. It is to be regretted 
 that others now in Europe are not 
 here to show the capacity for repro- 
 duction of George Munn. But all 
 add to a comprehension of the ar- 
 dent enthusiasm for nature and the 
 curiously pure taste of the young 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 37 
 
 artist: for in England at the time 
 they were painted Constable and his 
 French followers had not yet had 
 the influence they have gained since. 
 
 i i About twenty years ago there 
 were precious few who were free 
 from the morbid aestheticism or the 
 commonplace anecdotism of Eng- 
 lish art. That Munn admired Dau- 
 bigny is plain, but his admiration 
 served to stimulate his own individ- 
 uality, and his intense enthusiasm 
 before certain manifestations of na- 
 ture and their strong impressions 
 have been kept in hand by the scru- 
 pulous probity of anxiety to search 
 and find the most frank and per- 
 sonal rendering of the scene. That 
 Munn saw more and vibrated more 
 passionately than many, can be 
 seen, and proves that he had the 
 quality in common only with artists 
 
38 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 of race, not to spend their enthusi- 
 asm in the beginning, but to pre- 
 serve it and pass on to the spectator 
 the freshness of the emotion until 
 the last touch of the brush. Thus 
 in his work certain skies, certain 
 stretches of moorland, are so full of 
 air and light. 
 
 "This is the painting of a born 
 colorist. We are glad to be able to 
 see for the first time the extent of 
 the gifts and the breadth and flexi- 
 bility of his art. 
 
 " Though illness prevented him 
 from painting during the past 
 twenty years, this exhibition should 
 convince and proclaim the rank 
 that George Frederick Munn takes 
 and will hold in American art. 
 One work at least of this remark- 
 able artist should be placed in a per- 
 manent exhibition in New York in 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 39 
 
 order that an American painter of 
 such great accomplishment, strong 
 individuality, and pervading sense 
 of beauty may come to his own. It 
 must not be forgotten that these 
 paintings exhibited at the Cottier 
 Gallery have stood the test of time. ' ' 
 
 During one winter in Boston his studio 
 was next to that of Joseph Decamp, who ex- 
 pressed after Munn's death his admiration 
 for him and his work. He wrote of it : 
 
 i ■ The paintings of George Fred- 
 erick Munn represent a very 
 great artistic sophistication. Per- 
 haps their chief characteristic is 
 their tremendous artistic refine- 
 ment of perception. Always ad- 
 mirable and handsome in color, he 
 did not lean to that in preference 
 to everything else. Beauty of com- 
 position and draftsmanship, the 
 
40 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 whole selection of what he chose to 
 paint, his sense of the beautiful, his 
 drawing of nature, and of the in- 
 finite device that plants and trees 
 make in nature, his personal choice 
 of how all that went — was part of 
 his artistic sophistication. His 
 pictures were compositions of the 
 composer and the draftsman. Ob- 
 jects are as finely placed in them as 
 in the best of the Japanese prints. 
 That is their particular thing and 
 he had it. Artistic precision was a 
 part of his temperament and yet, 
 except in a few things — composition 
 and draftsmanship — he was not 
 precise. 
 
 "The strength and beauty of his 
 mental equipment was shown after 
 his nervous attacks when he came 
 out of them with his mind washed 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 41 
 
 clear like crystal. He was utterly- 
 reasonable, and with great dig- 
 nity had a modesty that made him 
 shrink, sometimes from his friends, 
 as one who would say 'I am not 
 worthy. ' 
 
 "The whole man, both in rela- 
 tion to his art and to life, was a 
 creature of such refinement and 
 delicate balance of artistic percep- 
 tions and sensibilities that he de- 
 manded of himself, of his effort and 
 of his work, more than was almost 
 ever humanly possible and the qual- 
 ity of the work he left behind him is 
 a thing to be thankful for and to 
 cherish.' • 
 
 About 1875, George Frederick Watts saw 
 a copy of one of his own paintings which 
 Munn had made. He said, "I must have 
 
42 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 that man to work with me," and sent for the 
 young man, who for seven or eight months 
 worked steadily with the great master. 
 
 "Watts was then living in Little Kensing- 
 ton House and the two painters dined 
 daily together at one o'clock. Their re- 
 lation therefore was one which could have 
 no parallel in any more formal acquaint- 
 ance. In speaking of this period, Munn 
 said that his reverence for Watts amounted 
 to awe. He had never seen anything 
 like Watts' absorption in his own work. 
 He literally began to paint as soon as 
 it was light and continued until darkness. 
 His art and he turned aside for nothing. 
 
 On one occasion, the King, Edward VII, 
 then Prince of Wales, wished him to come to 
 a garden party at Sandringham. Watts' 
 answer to the Prince was, "I can't, for I 
 have no high hat." "Come in your soft 
 hat," said the Prince. 
 
 When strongly possessed by his creative 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 43 
 
 power, Watts talked little, and at such time 
 Munn respected his silence, and the midday 
 meal was eaten together with hardly a word 
 spoken : but we can well imagine that the si- 
 lence was full of sympathy. 
 
 One day when Watts had sent him to 
 an unused studio to find some canvases, 
 the search was a long one and, in lift- 
 ing out some paintings that stood with 
 their faces to the wall, Munn came upon the 
 famous painting of Ellen Terry as Ophelia. 
 Its haunting beauty and pathos impressed 
 him profoundly and remained with him al- 
 ways. 
 
 With years, a great love of reading grew 
 in Munn, with a naturally fine discrimination 
 for literature as for all other Arts, and an 
 open book usually lay on some table or win- 
 dow-ledge near his easel. It was most often 
 a volume of poetry, or biography, although 
 his interest in books was universal as was 
 
44 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 his interest in life; but his best energies 
 were given to the great finished works and 
 their great makers. 
 
 Golden opportunities were offered him for 
 the development of these tastes. Carlyle 
 was still living, Huxley, Tyndall and Dar- 
 win he met constantly, going in and out of 
 Burlington House. George Eliot was re- 
 ceiving a coterie of distinguished friends on 
 Sunday afternoons at home and was always 
 to be seen at the Saturday "Pops." She 
 had, at this time, an enthusiastic following 
 of young men, and Munn was in close touch 
 with those who knew her intimately. 
 
 To quote from Munn's reminiscences: 
 "I have, at rare moments, been conscious 
 of that strange elixir stirring in the brain 
 from which eloquence is born, demanding 
 speech — and I have never forgotten a speech 
 made in the House of Commons, some time 
 I think in the seventies, by the member from 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 45 
 
 Newcastle, Joseph Cowen. He spoke with 
 a strong burr or north country accent, and 
 this time he spoke about the sadness and 
 terrors of war, making a wonderful image 
 in words about the consequences of battle — 
 Death. The image, if I rightly remember, 
 was of the Angel of Death hovering over the 
 land, her sable wings trembling and menac- 
 ing its people. I remember reading about 
 Garibaldi's visit to England in '58 (?) and 
 his stopping, while in the North, with Joseph 
 Cowen, — not then, I suppose, a Member of 
 Parliament. I heard quite often Disraeli 
 in his prime, in the sixties and seventies, 
 Bright, Gladstone, and very many great 
 speakers and debaters. 
 
 "I remember one evening, at Mr. Frank 
 HolTs studio in St. John's Wood, hearing 
 George DuMaurier sing to perfection, it 
 seemed to me. Mr. Holl had asked many 
 painters to spend the evening in his studio 
 to see his portraits destined for the annual 
 
46 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 exhibition at the Royal Academy, and it was 
 on that occasion that DuMaurier sang. And 
 this reminds me of that other wonderful 
 ' Punch' man whom Mr. Henry James has 
 written of so searchingly — Charles Keene — 
 a master indeed in his way and medium. I 
 was a member at that time of the Arts Club 
 — then in Hanover Square — and Keene 
 would come in very frequently in the after- 
 noon and smoke his cutty pipe — a very small 
 clay — and talk delightfully. No one painted 
 him as Sancho Panza, I fear — more's the 
 pity! Those were deeply interesting days, 
 nay, years, in my life and the memories of 
 them are curiously vivid." 
 
 Although Watts was separated from Ellen 
 Terry at the time of Munn's association with 
 him, the young man was constantly in her 
 companionship in the bloom of her young 
 womanhood, and at the height of her gifted 
 and bewitching personality. Sir Henry Ir- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 47 
 
 ving and Modjeska he also met frequently, 
 and formed a lasting friendship with Johns- 
 ton Forbes-Robertson. 
 
 On June 1, 1882, he married an English 
 widow, but the marriage proved unhappy. 
 They were separated permanently in 1885, 
 and later by a divorce. 
 
 At Villerville, en route to Venice, in 1883, 
 he contracted a fever which developed on 
 his arrival into malignant typhus. His life 
 was spared, but he never recovered his full 
 health or strength. Despite the repeated 
 warning of three Italian and four English 
 doctors Robert Browning came to inquire 
 for him every day, and later often came to 
 his studio in London. 
 
 Of Browning, Munn said : 
 
 "Robert Browning was undoubtedly the 
 greatest poet of our time — and no truer 
 singer ever lived to grace literature or teach 
 mankind. He was, naturally, and as a di- 
 rect consequence of his might as poet and 
 
48 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 teacher, in its fullest significance, a man — 
 brave, gentle, beautiful, alike in cast of 
 mind and character; surely a living lesson, 
 in his whole life and work, to all. The qual- 
 ities that most impressed me in him were his 
 sympathy and knowledge. 
 
 "My first meeting with Mr. Browning was 
 curious. I was asked to dine at Mrs. Arthur 
 Bronson's, in Venice, and it is to this delight- 
 ful woman he dedicates his last volume of 
 poems, 'Asolando,' — ' gratefully and affec- 
 tionately' — and we all know there is no 
 one who deserves the fame and honor that 
 it conveys, more. When dinner was an- 
 nounced, I did not catch the lady's name to 
 whom Mrs. Bronson assigned me. We sat 
 for a moment in silence — when I said to 
 her, 'I hear Mr. Browning is at table — 
 do you know him ? ' 
 
 " 'Yes,' she replied, 'we have been very 
 dear friends for many years.' 
 
 ' ' She pointed him out to me as she spoke, 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 49 
 
 on the right of our hostess, and I, for the 
 first time, knowingly, saw my literary Idol 
 — the author of 'Men and Women,' ' Andrea 
 del Sarto,' 4 The Blot on the 'Scutcheon.' 
 
 4 6 After a few moments, I said, 6 1 fear your 
 name escaped me: tell me yourself and I 
 promise not to forget it.' 
 
 "Her answer was 4 Miss Browning!' 
 
 "I remember they made me go home early, 
 for I was then developing the first stages 
 of malignant typhus and a few days after- 
 wards became delirious and remained so for 
 weeks. 
 
 "Mr. Browning came to see me afterward 
 in my London studio and I remember his 
 saying, apropos of the Browning Societies of 
 London, Boston, etc.: i Why, anybody can 
 understand what I mean — except some of 
 those early things — and I myself depend 
 a good deal on these Browning Societies for 
 much that is new to me in some of my early 
 work ! ' 
 
50 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 "This was said with a quaint look of fun 
 in his face and eyes!" 
 
 In Venice, and again two weeks after his 
 return to London, while weak from the ef- 
 fects of the fever, Munn separated perma- 
 nently from his first wife. He says, "I was 
 then penniless and ill. My people were too 
 far away to understand the true state of 
 things. Illness, combined with pride, kept 
 me from appealing to any one who might 
 help me. I, hungry and shabby, held my 
 own with the loyal help of two or three faith- 
 ful friends until my family, learning my 
 condition from a friend, sent for me. ' , 
 
 Weakened by actual want and fever he 
 returned to America where "the real break- 
 down came." "Only the love and care and, 
 best of all, divine tact of those nearest, 
 saved me, and I showed gleams of returning 
 power." This power proved to be the high- 
 est qualities of his nature ; his heroic endur- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 51 
 
 ance and patience, and the strength of un- 
 selfish, self -obliterating love with which he 
 blessed the lives most closely allied to his. 
 
 The motto adopted by him at Bellagio, 
 June 15, 1871, "Equal to either fortune,' ' 
 was an inadequate expression of the strength 
 of his spiritual consciousness, which was as 
 natural and happy as it was unrelated to 
 prevailing theological opinion. His tenet 
 was that he believed in a personal God, who 
 is a Father to His children, whose only help 
 is in their dependence on Him. What men 
 name sin seemed in his eyes so close to the 
 development that men call virtue, — and hu- 
 man ambitions and successes so far removed 
 from the greatness of God, that the mystical 
 uplift of his soul was calm, confident, yet as 
 simple and humble as the faith of a child. 
 He felt himself equal to either fortune. 
 
 He once formulated a creed for a society of 
 his friends to be named "The Illuminati"; 
 the object being "to gain and give light: 
 
52 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 i. e. : the light of heaven and of the world, the 
 Light of Knowledge, the Light of Hope and 
 Pleasure, of Charity to all Men; the Light 
 of Love and Obedience to God." The mem- 
 bers were to pledge themselves "to love one 
 another in holiness, to be charitable in word, 
 thought and deed, and to be good and kind 
 to the poor and sick, the old, the young, 
 the unfortunate and forsaken, and to all 
 animals." — The last a most characteristic 
 touch ! 
 
 In the brief period between his return to 
 London after the fever and his departure 
 for America, when illness, poverty and the 
 cruel misery of his broken career were new 
 to him, he records his enjoyment of a serv- 
 ice in Westminster Abbey (August 4, 1885) 
 when "the singing and procession were very 
 grand. ' ' It was his habit to note on the edge 
 of his sketch books texts that impressed him 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 53 
 
 and he quoted constantly from the Bible and 
 the great poets in these faintly outlined mar- 
 ginal notes. 
 
 After his return to America, under the 
 tender ministrations of a specially beloved 
 sister, Mrs. Pier, and her husband, his forces 
 at length rallied so that, in the summer of 
 1888, he was able to join the artist colony in 
 Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts. Prom there 
 he used to go to Annisquam, a few miles dis- 
 tant, where the sand dunes, sand beaches and 
 marshes, the sea and inlets and low-growing 
 trees, and bushes, all made a landscape that 
 had for him great charm and suggestive- 
 ness. But the first outbreak of serious 
 grippe in the winter of 1889-1890, attacked 
 him with a sort of relentless fury and, from 
 the Massachusetts General Hospital where 
 he was carried very ill, he went to Brook- 
 line, convalescent from grippe but weakened 
 from nerve exhaustion. 
 
54 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Years before, he made a memorandum of 
 a book by " Thomas Ashe, published by Bell 
 and Sons, London," and continued, "He 
 wrote flawless English, a model none better, 
 for all poets, especially women. Ashe — 
 what a suggestive name : — must have loved 
 some woman — but did she refuse him as Sir 
 F. Leighton and S winburne 's loves did? 
 When I find her will she pass me by too ? I 
 shall be ■ equal to either fortune' when the 
 great question is asked." 
 
 It now looked as if his power as an artist 
 was destroyed, the flame of his life flickered 
 as if going out, while "Love had passed him 
 by," and only a heart-hunger remained to 
 give poignancy to despair. 
 
 But at the moment of his deepest anguish 
 deliverance awaited him. 
 
 It so happened that Margaret Crosby was 
 staying in Brookline at the time of Munn's 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 55 
 
 coming, and their meeting was like a life- 
 giving elixir to both. 
 
 The veil cannot now be lifted from a 
 romance that was one of the events 
 which take the world out of the com- 
 monplace. There are sympathies that some- 
 times stir human beings to unerring in- 
 tuitions. By one of these supreme intui- 
 tions, Munn recognized at once that he had 
 found in her the woman who was for him the 
 realization of his best aspirations. Slower 
 to come to acknowledgment, but as sure in 
 prophetic insight, she at once divined his 
 greatness and set herself to the task of his 
 welfare and happiness. 
 
 But the condition of his health held no 
 promise, except to the two most deeply con- 
 cerned. By the judgment of friends and 
 doctors, a forced separation was effected 
 within a few months of their meeting, which 
 proved a source of tragic suffering to both, 
 and there were in all ten years of pain and 
 
56 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 separation before the floods abated, and the 
 sunshine of comparative health, freedom 
 and complete happiness blessed their heroic 
 endurance. 
 
 They were married May 17, 1900. A 
 friend of great discernment who had the op- 
 portunity of observing them closely writes 
 of them: " There are marriages on earth that 
 seem to be but recognitions of matings sol- 
 emnized on some heavenly height before 
 the world was. Such was the marriage of 
 George Munn and Margaret Crosby. They 
 had a genius for devotion, and through the 
 years of their wedded life these two never 
 ceased to inspire each other with comrade- 
 ship like the sweet, high converse of the 
 early years of marriage." 
 
 There was a masculine admirableness in 
 Munn which exhibited itself in everything he 
 did and everything he said, however much it 
 may now seem that his efforts were finally 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 57 
 
 crowned only with earthly defeat. His de- 
 votion to his wife and friends was luminous 
 with the strength and steadfastness of the 
 immortal side of his nature. He did not 
 like rhapsodies on his painting. There are 
 lovers of his works who remember the irony 
 with which in a few words he unmasked their 
 ignorance of true art, or science, of sound 
 criticism. Even to the wife who did homage 
 to his genius he sometimes said, "Poor, de- 
 luded little girl, what a good showman you 
 would make!" 
 
 JSTo flattery ever shook his judgment 
 of men, of manners, of right propor- 
 tions. This gave his comments weight. 
 "Across the Roses," said his bride opposite 
 him at the wedding breakfast as she touched 
 her glass to his. "Across the Ages, Mar- 
 garet," he answered. 
 
 With him every sentiment touched the 
 eternal life of man. It had no winding up, 
 no weakness. It was this vista in even his 
 
58 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 witticisms that gave them tang and robust- 
 ness. 
 
 Words had their total value when spoken 
 by him. His deep musical voice and the 
 slight hesitation which at intervals preceded 
 a word, causing it to come with an added 
 force, gave it meaning and emphasis; his 
 own vivid realization of its purport and 
 his grasp and insight into his subject, and a 
 background of his imagination that, in some 
 subtle fashion, made his hearer aware of all 
 its possibilities, often gave a tremendous, al- 
 most dynamic, power to a word. The lis- 
 tener felt to the full its danger, its blessing 
 or its humor. 
 
 His vocabulary was large and pictur- 
 esque; a mingling of the vigorous Anglo- 
 Saxon of the brilliant Englishmen with 
 whom he had associated for so many years, 
 touched by his personal gifts of poetic imag- 
 ination and humor. He had the vernacular 
 
GEORGE AND MARGARET MUNN ON THE STEPS OF 
 THE HOME OF FRANCOIS MILLET AT BARBIZON 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 59 
 
 of his profession, — the art-talk of the stu- 
 dios, and he seemed to catch from the air the 
 freshest slang in any country in which he 
 happened to be living. The result was a rich 
 and racy phraseology in which every word 
 fitted its meaning with a novel and impres- 
 sive effect. 
 
 This mastery of words was shown in 
 his letters, of which many hundreds ex- 
 ist and which are full of a spontaneous 
 eloquence and an artistic finish that is as 
 rare as it was unconscious; and also in his 
 many poems which are full of real, poetic 
 expression and an indescribable depth and 
 sincerity of emotion. Back of all he said 
 was the force of his spirit which lived each 
 moment of life truthfully without pretense 
 to himself or to others. It was this sin- 
 cerity that made society in its limited mean- 
 ing irksome to him. He used to say, "I 
 can't stand the talk." His sense of the ef- 
 fort, the " talking to order," often so fruit- 
 
60 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 less in any real communion or pleasure, 
 made him escape social life in its definite and 
 organized forms. But natural, spontaneous 
 companionship with his friends or with 
 mere acquaintances, where there was any 
 possible basis for meeting, was a delight to 
 him. The natural elements of life itself 
 were sufficient to make a Festival for him. 
 Like the Greek Poets in Keats' ode, he was 
 "Rich in the simple worship of a day." 
 
 Russell Sturgis, in his essay on the Art of 
 George Munn, speaks of this quality in his 
 works, — his content with a simple scene. 
 He was in touch with all classes through a 
 democratic sense that was not a theory nor 
 a conscious practice, but something innate. 
 He seemed always aware instantaneously of 
 the man or woman, as they really were, be- 
 neath the outside accidents of birth and oc- 
 cupation, and the dignity and pathos of their 
 humanity came before everything else with 
 him. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 61 
 
 As with Eobert Browning, the tone and 
 quality of Munn's voice was exactly the 
 same in speaking to an inferior and to 
 an equal ; yet while this won the love of his 
 fellow-men and women, no servant or person 
 below him in position ever ventured on a lib- 
 erty with him. Some one who had seen him 
 only once, wrote of him: "I had an impres- 
 sion of great gentleness and great strength, 
 as of one who had received his patent of no- 
 bility direct from Almighty God." 
 
 He had the hatred of destruction nat- 
 ural to the creative temperament. War, he 
 thought stupid, as well as cruel. He disliked 
 everything connected with it and seemed to 
 have a prophetic sense of the time to come 
 when the world would waken universally to 
 the same conviction and the method of legal- 
 ized killing of human beings by each other 
 to settle wrongs or differences would be set 
 aside for some more reasonable adjustment. 
 
62 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 When all New York went to Riverside 
 Drive to look at the warships anchored in a 
 sinister line in the river, he, chancing to pass 
 with a friend, who afterwards recollected his 
 words, did not turn his head to look at them. 
 "They are back numbers,' ' he said. 
 
 In looking at the illustrated papers, he 
 turned over the pages with pictures of troops 
 without a glance, saying : ' ' They are totally 
 uninteresting; the lines are all monotonous. 
 They mean nothing to me." When he met 
 soldiers in the street he said in Falstaff's 
 words : 4 ' Food for powder. ' ' 
 
 He had never, even as a boy, been willing 
 to either fish or hunt and was oriental in his 
 unwillingness to kill. His regard for life it- 
 self in all forms was united with a fearless- 
 ness that had its root in his sense of immor- 
 tality that lighted up Death itself and took 
 all its terror away for him and played over 
 existence like a quenchless light. 
 
 Yet all this was veiled to those who, from 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 63 
 
 some accident of circumstance or limitation 
 of mind or temperament, failed to recognize 
 him. To such he remained silent and aloof 
 and made no effort to reveal himself. But 
 he rendered those who did not understand 
 him the same service and kindness that he 
 did those who were akin to his spirit. 
 
 During the productive years of his life, 
 between 1873 and 1886, before the typhus 
 fever ended his active career as an artist, he 
 worked incessantly and with great intensity, 
 painting over a hundred pictures, the ma- 
 jority of which were very beautiful works, 
 fully up to the level of his best style. These 
 were both landscapes and figure paintings, 
 more usually the former; but, as he devel- 
 oped in later years, his desire and all his ar- 
 tistic impulse tended toward portraiture 
 and figure painting. 
 
 A famous American painter on seeing a 
 head of an Arab that he had painted, said : 
 
64 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 "He will be greater as a painter of human 
 beings than of landscapes." The day on 
 which he began a new picture was a gala day 
 for him, and at such times he was filled with 
 a strong enthusiasm that was communicated 
 to any one who happened to be near him. 
 
 Johnston Forbes-Robertson, in the trib- 
 ute to George Munn quoted before, speaks 
 of a " reverence for men and things being the 
 lasting grace for a man who would pursue 
 art" and says: ' i This precious grace George 
 Munn possessed in the highest degree. ' 9 He 
 saw life and soul in all things as Walt Whit- 
 man did. This was not from a conscious 
 exercise of his reason, but from some in- 
 voluntary inner knowledge or conviction. 
 
 He handled all inanimate objects with 
 great gentleness, and on seeing some one 
 near him throw a discarded box to the floor, 
 he exclaimed : "How could you throw down 
 that beautiful box! You hurt it." 
 
 Often when carrying a wrap over his arm 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 65 
 
 for his wife or a friend, he would answer if 
 they wished to relieve him of its burden — 
 "Why do you take it away*? It is so happy 
 here." 
 
 He was a cosmopolite in the breadth and 
 freedom from prejudice with which he re- 
 garded all phases of human existence in all 
 parts of the world. This quality and the 
 strength and fire of his humanity made him 
 identify himself with any community among 
 which he might happen to be living and he 
 drew the hearts of men and women to him 
 like a magnet. 
 
 It was difficult for him to see or imagine 
 evil. He seldom condemned any one, and 
 of a wrong-doer whose fault or sin had 
 not been carried to a heinous degree he was 
 apt to say, "He, or she, had been rather 
 silly." But real selfishness, cruelty, dis- 
 honesty or impurity aroused in him a burn- 
 ing indignation and anger that would have 
 been hard for the offender to face. 
 
66 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 That he was generous was a natural result 
 of a nature that instinctively sought the good 
 of his fellow men before his own. 
 
 One instance out of countless ones will suf- 
 fice as a typical example. A man, who, with- 
 out being an intimate, could claim sufficient 
 friendship to warrant an appeal, came to 
 him pleading need, and asking for quite a 
 large sum. Munn was at that time living 
 on a very small income hardly sufficient for 
 the bare needs of existence, but he had al- 
 ways a sort of prevision which made him 
 save from his income, no matter how small 
 it was, for, as he sometimes said: "It may 
 be needed. ' 9 Needed, it usually was, but for 
 some one else — not for himself! He was 
 convinced on this occasion that the appeal 
 was from a real necessity. He replied, "I 
 have not seen as much as the sum you wish 
 for a long time, but you shall have what I 
 have," and then gave all that he had man- 
 aged to save from his income. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 67 
 
 There was always in his giving the spirit 
 of Sir Philip Sidney — 1 6 Thy need is greater 
 than mine," with no concern for the conse- 
 quences to himself. He had the unique 
 power of standing aside and letting his own 
 external life wither that another life might 
 bloom — and doing it with joy. 
 
 In his generosity he always touched the 
 Universal brotherhood of man. This sense 
 of brotherhood included animals, with whom 
 as with Nature he seemed to have a secret 
 understanding. 
 
 There was a curious confusion in his dumb 
 companions between him and their own mas- 
 ters, and it is remembered in more than one 
 instance how the dog of a friend would stand 
 irresolutely when Munn parted from them 
 in the street and first follow Munn and then 
 his master. 
 
 In the woods Munn could call squirrels 
 and birds to him, and his joy in the fields 
 and forests was irresistible in its contagion. 
 
68 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 He seemed to be most completely himself 
 when leading a perfectly natural life in the 
 open. There was in him at such times — 
 in his whole being and in his care-free mirth 
 — a mood that seemed to belong to some pre- 
 historic race when men and nature stood 
 far closer to each other than they do now. 
 
 Hawthorne describes such a being in Don- 
 atello and some of his words bring George 
 Munn more vividly before those who saw 
 him at such times than any others could pos- 
 sibly do, if one can imagine a faun who was 
 also a spiritual being. 
 
 "Nature needed, and still needs, this 
 beautiful creature ; standing betwixt man 
 and animal, sympathizing with each, com- 
 prehending the speech of either race, and 
 interpreting the whole existence of one to 
 the other. What a pity that he has for- 
 ever vanished from the hard and dusty 
 paths of life ! 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 69 
 
 "Imagine, now, a real being similar to 
 this mythic Faun ; how happy, how genial, 
 how satisfactory would be his life, enjoy- 
 ing the warm, sensuous, earthy side of na- 
 ture ; reveling in the merriment of woods 
 and streams; living as our four-footed 
 kindred do, — as mankind did in its inno- 
 cent childhood; before sin, sorrow, or 
 morality itself had ever been thought of! 
 I suppose the Faun had no conscience, 
 no remorse, no burthen on the heart, no 
 troublesome recollections of any sort; no 
 dark future either. 
 
 "His usual modes of demonstration 
 were by the natural language of gesture, 
 the instinctive movement of his agile 
 frame, and the unconscious play of his 
 features, which, within a limited range of 
 thought and emotion, would speak volumes 
 in a moment. 
 
 "He gave Miriam the idea of a being 
 not precisely man, nor yet a child, but, in 
 
70 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 a high and beautiful sense, an animal — a 
 creature in a state of development less 
 than what mankind has attained, yet the 
 more perfect within itself for that very 
 deficiency. 
 
 "In Donatello there was a charm of in- 
 describable grotesqueness, hand in hand 
 with grace; sweet, bewitching, most pro- 
 vocative of laughter, and yet akin to pa- 
 thos, so deeply did it touch the heart. 
 
 ' 1 Donatello snapped his fingers above 
 his head, as fauns and satyrs taught us 
 first to do, and seemed to radiate jollity 
 out of his whole person. 
 
 " Beautiful, strong, brave, kindly, sin- 
 cere, of honest impulses and endowed with 
 simple tastes and the love of homely pleas- 
 ures, he was believed to possess gifts by 
 which he could associate himself with the 
 wild things of the forests, and with the 
 fowls of the air, and could feel a sympathy 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 71 
 
 even with the trees, among which it was 
 his joy to dwell." 
 
 Munn did not seem to feel the need of hu- 
 man companionship when living under nat- 
 ural conditions that satisfied his love of 
 beauty and freedom. He once lived alone 
 for two years on the coast of New England 
 in a cottage that for the greater part of the 
 year was the only inhabited house on the 
 point on which it stood. He went for his 
 meals to the little village a quarter of a mile 
 away. The cottage was taken care of by 
 people who came from the same distance. 
 When asked if he had not been lonely, he 
 replied, "I cannot say that I was." In one 
 of his letters to a friend, he says, "You al- 
 ways need human beings, but the sky and the 
 flowers and the trees are people enough for 
 me." 
 
 To prison in words the essence of humor 
 
72 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 is perhaps beyond the power of man. Even 
 wit when reported apart from the personal- 
 ity that conceived it, and the moment that 
 gave it life, loses half its power. With 
 George Munn, his mirth-producing humor 
 lay as much in the tone of his voice, in the 
 emphasis or inflection of a word or the lift 
 of an eyebrow as in the words themselves. 
 
 A charming fairy tale tells of a faithful 
 servant who, to keep his heart from break- 
 ing for the sorrows of his master, bound 
 it with bands of iron. When his master's 
 troubles were past and he saw him happy, 
 the bands broke one by one and his heart 
 was free. The humor of George Munn had 
 the power of loosening and breaking the 
 bonds of care and sorrow, so that the spirits 
 of those who fell under its spell were liter- 
 ally dissolved into helpless and carefree 
 laughter. 
 
 To gain an impression of what it was like 
 one must turn to Du Maurier's enchanted 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 73 
 
 pages, where so often he expresses the in- 
 expressible. In his descriptions of Barty 
 Josselin's humor, in The Martian, are 
 pages that might have been written about 
 Munn. 
 
 Let us with a reverential salutation to Du 
 Maurier, a salutation of the heart as well 
 as of the soul and the brain, take some of his 
 words about Barty Josselin and substitute 
 the name of George Munn. Let us change 
 and omit here and there a word or two to 
 make our quotations applicable for our pur- 
 pose, and let us find a portrait in words of 
 the humorous side as well as of some other 
 sides of Munn's temperament for those who 
 did not know him, as well as for those who 
 did. 
 
 In the first place, his beauty when a child was absolutely 
 noble as will be readily believed by all who have known him 
 since. And then as a boy, how funny he was without effort, 
 and with a fun that never failed! He was a born humorist 
 of the graceful kind — ever playing the fool, and somehow 
 always apropos; such very simple buffooneries as they were, 
 
74 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 too — that gave him (and us) such stupendous delight! 
 
 For instance during his school days. He is sitting at study 
 and M. Bonzig is usher. 
 
 "Fermez votre pupitre, Munn," (Barty) said M. Bonzig. 
 
 Munn shut his desk and beamed genially at the usher. 
 
 "What book have you got there, Munn — Caesar or Cornelius 
 Nepos?" 
 
 Munn held the book with its title-page open for M. Bonzig 
 to read. 
 
 "Are you dumb, Munn? Can't you speak?" 
 Munn tried to speak, but uttered no sound. 
 "Munn, come here — opposite me." 
 
 Munn came and stood opposite M. Bonzig and made a nice 
 little bow. 
 
 "What have you got in your mouth, Munn?" 
 Munn Shrugged his shoulders and looked pensive, but spoke 
 never a word. 
 
 "Open quick the mouth, Munn!" 
 
 And Monsieur Bonzig, leaning over the table, deftly put 
 his thumb and forefinger between the boy's lips, and drew 
 forth slowly a large white pocket-handkerchief, which seemed 
 never to end, and threw it on the floor with solemn dignity. 
 
 The whole school-room was convulsed with laughter. 
 
 "Munn — leave the room — you will be severely punished, as 
 you deserve — you are a vulgar buffoon — a jocrisse — a palto- 
 quet, a mountebank! Go, petit polisson — go!" 
 
 The polisson picked up his pocket-handkerchief and went — 
 quite quietly, with simple, manly grace. 
 
 As he grew older, it was quite impossible to know George 
 at all intimately and not do whatever he wanted you to do. 
 Whatever he wanted, he wanted intensely, and at once; and 
 he had such a droll and engaging way of expressing that hurry 
 and intensity and especially of expressing his gratitude and 
 delight when what he wanted was what he got — that you 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 75 
 
 could not for the life of you hold your own! Tout vient 
 a ceux qui ne sait pas attendee! Besides which, every now 
 and then, if things didn't go quite as he wished, he would 
 fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and intractable 
 for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes more 
 he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he 
 would forget all about it, and become once more the genial, 
 affectionate, and caressing creature he always was. 
 
 His idea of a pleasant evening was billiards or cards or 
 music or being funny in any way one could; and for this 
 he had quite a special gift; he had sudden droll inspirations 
 that made one absolutely hysterical — mere things of suggestive 
 look or sound or gesture, and making one laugh till one's sides 
 ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this. 
 
 Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of 
 the most high-minded, there is often a latent longing for this 
 kind of happy, idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for 
 those who can supply it without effort and who delight in 
 doing so. 
 
 Now and again George's face would take on a look so 
 ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that 
 it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel like 
 father and mother to him in one! It was the true revelation 
 of his innermost soul, which in many ways remained that of 
 a child even in his middle age and till he died. 
 
 He who lived on bread and cheese for weeks to save his 
 money for his painting expenses and who was the most ab- 
 stemious of men would, when a slender purse made a good 
 meal impossible, paint in words for himself and some equally 
 hungry companions the boiled leg of mutton, not overdone; 
 the mashed turnips; the mealy potato; the capersauce. He 
 would imitate the action of the carver and the sound of the 
 carving-knife making its first keen cut while the hot pink 
 
76 GEOEGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 grayy runs down the sides. Then he would wordily paint a 
 French roast chicken and its rich brown gravy and its water- 
 cresses; the pommes sautees; the crisp, curly salade aux 
 fines herbes! And his companions, still hungry, would laugh 
 till their eyes watered as well as their mouths. When it 
 came to the sweets, the apple-puddings and gooseberry pies 
 and Devonshire cream and brown sugar, there was no more 
 laughing, for then George's talent soared to real genius, — 
 and genius is a serious thing. And as to his celery and 
 Stilton cheese — But there! it's lunch-time, and I am begin- 
 ning to feel a little peckish myself. . . . 
 
 Without any technical knowledge, he had a great love of 
 music and grew more and more deeply sensitive to its influ- 
 ence. First of all, his priest friend would play the "Moon- 
 light Sonata," let us say; and George would lean back and 
 listen with his eyes shut, and almost believe that Beethoven 
 was talking to him like a father, and pointing out to him how 
 small was the difference, really, between the greatest earthly 
 joy and the greatest earthly sorrow; these were not like 
 black and white, but merely different shades of gray, as on 
 moonlit nights a long way off! and Time, what a reconciler 
 it was — like distance! and Death, what a perfect resolution 
 of all possible discords. 
 
 Then the good Mozart would say: 
 
 "Lieber George — I'm so stupid about earthly things that 
 I could never even say Boh to a goose, so I can't give you 
 any good advice; all my heart overflowed into my brain when 
 I was quite a little boy and made music for grown-up people 
 to hear; from the day of my birth to my fifth birthday I had 
 gone on remembering everything, but learning nothing new — 
 remembering all that music," that came out of heaven. "And 
 I went on remembering more and more till I was thirty-five; 
 and even then there was such a lot more of it where that 
 came from that it tired me to try and remember so much — 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 77 
 
 and I went back thither. And thither back shall you go, too, 
 George — when you are some thirty years older! And you 
 already know from me how pleasant life is up there — how 
 sunny and genial and gay: and how graceful and innocent 
 and amiable and well-bred the natives — and what beautiful 
 prayers we sing, and what lovely gavottes and minuets we 
 dance — and how tenderly we make love — and what funny 
 tricks we play! and how handsome and well-dressed and kind 
 we all are — and the likes of you, how welcome! Thirty years 
 is soon over, George, George!" 
 
 So this extraordinary susceptibility to musical sound went 
 on growing in George Munn since his troubles had overtaken 
 him, and with it an extraordinary sensitiveness to the troubles 
 of other people, their partings and bereavements and wants, 
 and aches and pains, even those of people he didn't know: and 
 especially to woes of children, and dogs and cats and horses, 
 and ag&d folk — and all the live things that have to be driven 
 to market and killed for our eating — or shot at for our fun! 
 
 He was funny in a good-natured manner, and made me 
 laugh more than any one else. Always in a good temper and 
 very caressing: putting his arm around one, and was often a 
 kind of jolly, boon companion with no disdain for a good 
 bottle of wine or a good bottle of beer. His artistic tastes 
 were very catholic; for, after the great old masters, he was 
 prostrate in admiration before Watts, Millais, Burne-Jones, 
 Fred Walker and Charles Keene. 
 
 I quote from the French Journalist's account of Barty 
 Josselin: "I remark that from time to time, just as the 
 moon veils itself behind a passing cloud, the radiance of his 
 physiognomy is eclipsed by the expression of a sadness, 
 immense, mysterious, infinite: this is followed by a look of 
 angelic candor and sweetness and gentle heroism, that moves 
 you strangely even to the heart, and makes appeal to all your 
 warmest and deepest sympathies — the look of a very mascu- 
 
78 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 line Joan of Arc! You don't know why, but you feel you 
 would make any sacrifice for a man who looks at you like 
 that, follow him to the death — lead a forlorn hope at his 
 bidding. 
 
 "He was happiest of all with the good denizens of Bohemia 
 who have known want and temptation and come unscathed 
 out of the fire, but with their affectations and insincerities and 
 conventionalities all burnt away. It is not a bad school in 
 which to graduate, if you can do so without loss of principle, 
 or sacrifice of the delicate bloom of honor and self-respect. 
 
 "With these he loved his oldest friends, those who knew 
 and understood him best, and after them the proletarians, 
 who had good, straightforward manners and no pretension 
 — the laborer, the skilled artisan, especially the toilers of the 
 sea." 
 
 Again we must thank Du Maurier as 
 we close these paraphrases from The Mar- 
 tian. 
 
 Munn was ambitious, not from a desire to 
 excel beyond others, but from his love of per- 
 fection that made him profoundly earnest 
 in doing well whatever he did. That he did 
 excel, his work as well as his medals and the 
 praise of his peers attest, and in lesser mat- 
 ters the word "won" frequently occurs in 
 his little diaries after a record of a ten- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 79 
 
 nis or billiard tournament, in both of which 
 games he delighted. 
 
 In reviewing one's experience with hu- 
 manity, it is not difficult to find a fair pro- 
 portion of human beings, both men and 
 women, who are living examples of a stern 
 moral code, in whom we find that that crown- 
 ing grace of morality, the love that fulfills 
 the law, has never seemed to complete their 
 virtue. To George Munn, love was both the 
 beginning and end, and through the depth 
 and sincerity of his affections, he "fulfilled 
 the law" with many supreme acts of un- 
 selfishness, entirely unconscious that he had 
 reached the height to which all great re- 
 ligions lead. He realized, as few do, that 
 the happiness of the heart was really what 
 counted in life. ' ' The great thing, ' ' he used 
 to say to his wife, in speaking of human 
 beings, "is to make them happy/' and this 
 he did in countless ways when he was well — 
 
80 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 often like Barty J osselin, by simply making 
 them laugh with such abandonment that the 
 care and sorrow and struggle of life were 
 blotted out for a happy moment. 
 
 He probably had as many disappoint- 
 ments in womanhood as an ideal, as most 
 men, but he firmly held to his belief that 
 women were born to command and that their 
 power to direct should be given the fullest 
 scope. He believed it was an important part 
 of the inspiration that is drawn from women 
 and his instinctive reverence for them was 
 such that his hand went involuntarily to 
 his hat on meeting the poorest of old beg- 
 gar women in the street. Of one of his 
 closest women friends, Mrs. Kennedy Tod, 
 he frankly said, "She would make a good 
 mayor of New York. " The question of suf- 
 frage for women did not become a burning 
 issue until after his death, but he believed 
 in the suffrage for them on the grounds of 
 justice and freedom. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 81 
 
 No estimate would be complete or true 
 that did not include the mystical side of his 
 nature which was inborn and which his 
 varied experiences of life greatly deepened 
 and developed. The unseen world seemed 
 always open to him and his point of view of 
 everything included the great circle of Eter- 
 nity of which this life is only a part. The 
 background of his mind, to the one or two 
 who knew him most intimately seemed half 
 Fairyland, half Heaven, and it was the in- 
 fluence of this region of pure Spirit that 
 touches his work with such beauty and gave 
 his words and acts a rare and haunting qual- 
 ity, strangely moving to the heart and in- 
 spiring to ever more lofty effort those who 
 had the grace to be open to his influence. 
 
 The great truths of the most universal re- 
 ligion, including its Christian development, 
 seemed his intuitively, without instruction. 
 The simple reverence and faith with which 
 he would say of a friend who was suffering 
 
82 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 hopelessly: "I hope God will take him soon. 
 It will be so happy for him Up There," — 
 carried conviction to others, and he seemed 
 to follow the souls of those he loved into the 
 other world. Through every change and 
 distraction of life, he prayed, and at such 
 times seemed to travel far away from this 
 world. 
 
 No one ever praised Life more. Many of 
 his letters are like hymns or songs of joy. 
 In his happy moments, like Emerson's Poet, 
 
 "His feet were shod with golden bells 
 And for him nature worked her mir- 
 acles/ ' 
 
 He said once that the " critical attitude 
 was the cheapest one in the world, and that 
 there was always Beauty even if it were hid- 
 den." 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 83 
 
 The last three years of his life, Munn and 
 his wife passed their winters in their studio 
 apartment in 57th Street in New York — 
 an ample and somewhat picturesque back- 
 ground, where, surrounded by pictures and 
 books and music, they passed happy days. 
 During J anuary of 1906 the beginning of an 
 attack of nervous excitability showed itself 
 in him, and they left New York, traveling 
 and remaining in the country until the fol- 
 lowing autumn, when he seemed so restored 
 to his normal health that they returned to 
 their home. 
 
 He continued to seem so well that the 
 hope of his wife in his restoration to 
 permanent health again returned. They 
 took up their usual life and several weeks 
 followed full of a serenity and joy that had 
 in it no hint of the coming shadow. One 
 of his oldest and closest friends, Johnston 
 Forbes-Robertson, was in town and they had 
 
84 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 many happy meetings, one of which was 
 in the Fifty-seventh Street Studio, where a 
 group of twenty or thirty friends were as- 
 sembled for informal talk and music. It is 
 pleasant to remember him so near the end of 
 his life in the companionship of one who is 
 associated with the strong and happy days 
 of his artistic work, and his wife was struck 
 by the serene and joyous expression of his 
 face on that afternoon. Several weeks of 
 seeming health followed, but with the 
 coming of the new year, January, 1907, 
 signs of nervous depression began to show 
 themselves and his strength failed rapidly. 
 Some one who saw him frequently during 
 this year spoke of him as "that broken- 
 winged eagle." With the exception of one 
 poignant expression of regret, he met these 
 depressing conditions with the uncomplain- 
 ing patience which is one of the highest 
 forms of heroism, and never flagged in a sin- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 85 
 
 gle external observance of his daily life, up 
 to the very end, which came instantaneously 
 from heart failure early in the morning of 
 February tenth. 
 
 The afternoon before his death, he had 
 walked in Central Park. The ground was 
 covered with snow, the day clear and sunny. 
 The cloud that had shadowed his spirit sud- 
 denly lifted, and when he returned to his 
 wife, who had been prevented by a cold from 
 going with him, he was filled with joy and 
 spoke of the glorious sunlight and the happy 
 people he had seen. "It was all so gay and 
 beautiful," he said. 
 
 Her hope in his recovery returned, only 
 to be taken away forever for this life the 
 following morning. 
 
 He had more than once said in his letters, 
 "I like sudden goings away. No time for 
 sad farewells and regrets," and at the end 
 his wish was fulfilled. 
 
86 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 He was really known to but few, but by 
 those few he was recognized as one of the 
 sons of Strength and Light of whom the 
 world is scarcely worthy and who leave 
 behind them works of Truth and lasting 
 Beauty to light the pilgrimage of those who 
 remain and those who are to come. 
 
 Of him Browning's words might have 
 been written: 
 
 One who never turned his back but 
 marched breast forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would 
 break, 
 
 Never dreamed, though right were 
 worsted, wrong would tri- 
 umph, 
 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to 
 fight better, 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
ART NOTES 
 
 On the margins of the sketch-books of 
 George Munn were jotted in faint pencilings 
 his impressions and convictions about art, 
 which were continually in the background of 
 his mind, and the pages which follow have 
 been selected from those in the sketch books. 
 
LONDON, 1876 
 
 IF the National Art of England be not a 
 burning question, — what in the name of 
 Greece and Italy is? Does not the true 
 greatness of these double blessed and mother 
 countries in art consist of what their sons 
 did as Sculptors, Painters and Poets, — and 
 do not their works point like Cathedral 
 spires to Heaven, and "rise in our hearts 
 and to our eyes in thinking of the days that 
 are no more'"? The great master, History, 
 teaches us what these kindred Arts did for 
 the world and such jewels as are set in the 
 great galleries of Europe are landmarks and 
 lamps to guide our future in all that makes 
 a people truly great. 
 
 "I am wrapt in a most humorous 
 sadness.' ' 
 
 89 
 
90 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Painting has become lighter food than 
 it once was, in the good old times when 
 Painters did glowing shrine-paintings — 
 helps to prayer and noble thought and deed. 
 We have changed all that and now a good 
 subject is one that tells some pretty story 
 for a pretty people. Even men who were 
 shining lights in the Germ movement now 
 paint dressed-up dolls doing nothing and 
 meaning less, — devoid of any higher aim 
 than to be sold to some rich perverter of 
 the public taste. 
 
 But the great Masters are not all dead — 
 we still have 
 
 Whistler 
 Henner 
 Dannat 
 Walker 
 
 Watts 
 
 Stevens 
 
 Ribot 
 
 Thompson 
 Rajou 
 Sargent 
 Fortuny 
 
 Corot 
 Millet 
 Mason 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 91 
 
 I think the ideal must mean to most of 
 us, Nature glorified. Something in fine, 
 ulterior to nature, better truly, but touched 
 by Art. A lesson in Beauty founded upon 
 the Real and reconstructed by the light of 
 Divine Laws. 
 
 Mr. Whistler, I cannot speak of without 
 emotion. He is saying things with his 
 subtle brush, which few seem to really read 
 — but Time will wreathe him with Laurel 
 from the tree which gave Velasquez a crown. 
 1873. 
 
 The flowers in Art — those of beauty and 
 perfume — immortal lilies — are very rare and 
 one must, like the Swiss climbers, work hard 
 indeed to reach them — the real Edelweiss 
 bloom. They only grow in pure, rarefied 
 air, but what fatigue and trouble or even 
 risk of life itself is too much to pluck them 
 for the world below? 
 
92 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Nothing can be more dangerous for the 
 fame of a professor of the Fine Arts than 
 to permit (if he can possibly prevent it) the 
 character of a mannerist to be attached to 
 him, or that he should be supposed capable 
 of success only in a particular and limited 
 style. The public are, in general, very 
 ready to adopt the opinion that he who has 
 pleased them in one peculiar mode of com- 
 position, is, by means of that very talent, 
 rendered incapable of venturing upon other 
 subjects. The effect of this disinclination 
 on the part of the public towards the artifi- 
 cers of their pleasures, when they attempt 
 to enlarge their means of amusing, may be 
 seen in the criticism too frequently passed 
 upon Actors or Artists who venture to 
 change the character of their efforts, that 
 in so doing they may enlarge the scale of 
 their Art. 
 
 Disappointment whets our appetite for the 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 93 
 
 better time when the hand will work with the 
 eyes and brain. The great Artist-painter 
 possesses a divine life and strength like steel 
 to triumph over every difficulty — and what 
 living, glorious lessons for all time have been 
 the life-long battles of some of them with 
 their unappreciative and be-fooled public. 
 A man of genius is like a musical instru- 
 ment, it must be guided and touched by lov- 
 ing hands or it will be mute. None shall 
 know of all the silent music longing to be 
 free. 
 
 No one dislikes the commonplace or trite 
 saying more than the true Artist, but in writ- 
 ing from experience one must go over well- 
 known paths and deep ruts to teach truisms. 
 Else why write? Now what the beginner 
 does not know and the Master seems to recog- 
 nize and work with a masterly knowledge of, 
 is, that painting is nature treated with a full 
 understanding that a reproduction is impos- 
 
94 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 sible, and he who compromises the best is the 
 greatest Artist-painter. Now in English, 
 the expression Artist-painter is an unknown 
 term. We say artist or painter, but in 
 France they link the two words, and to many 
 people it has a beautiful significance. It 
 means, I believe, the perfect marriage of 
 the artistic power with the skill of a sound 
 technical mastery over the material and the 
 way to paint. Now to illustrate this — 
 Alfred Stevens is a great Artist-painter. 
 Frederick Walker a great artist but with, 
 comparatively speaking, little painting 
 power; that is to say, his artistic feeling 
 and poetry were far in advance of the prac- 
 tical skill to paint, both in his nature and 
 training. 
 
 Velasquez was a perfect artist and painter. 
 So in our time is Whistler. Rossetti was 
 a bad painter but a very great artist and 
 poet. To be truly a great painter in its best 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 95 
 
 and completest sense one must possess the 
 two qualities. There are as many artists 
 in the profession in England in proportion 
 to the number as there are in any country, 
 France not excepted. But the French lead 
 the world to-day in national splendor of 
 painting in all its phases and they too have 
 been blessed in possessing real painter-poets. 
 The French Millet was a marvelous poet in 
 Art, but no great painter. Corot had the 
 two qualities which go to make up the genius. 
 But the Art student can make a list for him- 
 self if he understands clearly what is meant 
 by artist-painter and can distinguish the one 
 from the other. He must, of course, know 
 what good technical painting is, and what 
 endows a picture with poetic sentiment. 
 
 Art is a sealed and locked book with a 
 thousand golden keys — when one is found 
 that fits and will open, the world is the bet- 
 ter for the discovery. 
 
96 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Men often hug their vices when their 
 power to enjoy them is gone. Why do these 
 men (R. A.'s) cling to their pride of Place 
 so long before resigning in favor of — 
 possibly other men just as bad — but still 
 new names would be a boon to the critic at 
 least ! 
 
 At the moment, 1885, there is no Academi- 
 cian who is doing fine color. Millais has 
 lost all sense of it and the use of sable 
 brushes and the extent to which he seems 
 to use them would damn any free or really 
 noble color. 
 
 Watts is past his prime. 
 
 Orchardson is a good colorist in a certain 
 way, a good colorist of the Scotch school! 
 But color is of no school or period. Is it? 
 We want a better sense of gray in a woman's 
 cheek than a streak of Prussian or Antwerp 
 blue? These remarks apply to Mr. Pettie, 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 97 
 
 too — another 4 4 Scotch" colorist! Mr. Holl 
 is now a marvelous machine — turns out al- 
 most really noble work like a Photographer. 
 
 But money is the thing, and if a fund could 
 be started to keep good men in the Path of 
 Virtue, I for one will send a noble cheque. — 
 Holl is fine, fresh and always the same — no 
 better, no worse, for which we must be duly 
 grateful. Leighton is a great decorative ar- 
 tist (the highest walk in Art), — a graceful 
 draughtsman — successful in composition, — 
 the most perfect man for the great position 
 his sterling merits have won for him. May 
 Heaven bless him and permit him to lead us 
 for many a long year to come ! 
 
 Onlow has done some sound, fine work — 
 but — well, I can't explain it all! Only look 
 at the Philip IV at the National Gallery and 
 all I want to say will dawn on the reader. I 
 would rather not mention the rest of the 
 forty R. A. % They need more lashing than 
 
98 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 a weak (?) man like myself can afford to 
 give. They are supposed to be in their 
 prime ! 
 
 We need not aim too carefully at Beauty. 
 It is universal and exists in myriad forms. 
 Hit but one, and fame is your reward. The 
 young painter should from the first draw in 
 color. Let him associate as much as pos- 
 sible with the young men of his profession. 
 Let him get the fine flower of new ideas when 
 he needs them, from them, and then go to 
 the Old Masters for confirmation. 
 
 Do not try to climb the whole tree of Art 
 as Michael Angelo did. Grasp one branch 
 and never let it go till you are safely astride 
 of it and then cling to it till its bark has 
 grown over your hands and you are one with 
 its life and growth. 
 
 Remember that the true artist does not 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 99 
 
 need a casket of jewels to make beautiful 
 harmonies and contrasts of colors. Genius 
 and even talent, can do all with the cheapest 
 tube colors. Five in number — the primaries 
 — red, blue, yellow, white and black, or a 
 piece of charcoal, a bit of brown wrapping- 
 paper, and his thumb. Black paint as used 
 by Velasquez and Whistler is more beautiful 
 in the effect it produces than a rainbow, or 
 the jewel room in the Tower of London — as 
 Art it is finer in tone than the sunlit Alps. 
 Yet on the other hand, do not be afraid of 
 color. The artist must first be drunk with 
 color and line and gamble recklessly with 
 both, trusting to experience and Providence 
 for the result. The great masters of Tone 
 seem to have suffered and struggled before 
 its beauty was revealed to them. 
 
 Study your model, but do only what is 
 necessary for beauty and expression. Do 
 not make a dictionary of items. Never let 
 
100 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 your picture know how serious your inten- 
 tion is. If your work discovers your pro- 
 found interest it will, like a coy maid, throw 
 every obstacle in your way and nothing will 
 come of the wooing. Treat your motive 
 slightly and when you get the upper hand 
 press your suit with every energy in your 
 powder and then discovery is of no moment. 
 You win with ease. For a portrait, an un- 
 taught, intelligent person is often the best 
 critic of a likeness. 
 
 When working, lose your own identity, 
 but assume that of no one else, however 
 great, or however much you may admire 
 him or his artistic methods. God has made 
 nobles of some men in every art. An en- 
 thusiastic admiration and even worship of 
 their genius is healthy for the soul, but in 
 working listen to the still, small voice that 
 speaks to you and follow its bidding what- 
 ever it may dictate. Do not work too much 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 101 
 
 with your hands, but constantly with your 
 eyes. When you do work, do so with care- 
 ful boldness and you will have the freshness 
 and strength to win. All artists know how 
 subtly beautiful the ugly can be but do not 
 choose it often. The great French masters 
 have worn this idea threadbare and they are 
 not to be beaten in its execution. Kemem- 
 ber always that a good subject is often a 
 painter's ruin. Too much story is perdi- 
 tion. Leave that to the literary man and 
 let him tell it in words as it should be told. 
 
 Work and exercise in the morning and at- 
 tend to other duties and pleasures of life 
 after three o'clock in the afternoon. What 
 we call Beauty steals into our hearts and 
 wants to live there. But it must be turned 
 out, for the benefit of mankind. 
 
 Tell great truths with big brushes. Look 
 at Nature largely. Attend the marriage of 
 
102 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 gray tones and gray skies. Do not see a tree 
 or a sky singly, but grasp the subtle harmony 
 of the whole, like the union of two grand 
 notes of music. One and indivisible — each 
 beautiful in itself — and together poetry. 
 
 Take your Art seriously and pursue it 
 unswervingly for its own sake. Too many 
 friendly critics are more dangerous than 
 strong drink. Let good work and success 
 drive the smile from your lips, but take heed 
 lest the heart grow sad, the f earf ullest thing 
 in life. Let love sweeten work and pleas- 
 ure, and both become divine. 
 
 Nature is never Art — but a store-house 
 filled with inexhaustible material for all the 
 Arts — the wind sighing in the trees and 
 rushing through the tall grass, have sug- 
 gested sublime harmonies to the musician. 
 The fierce battles of bird and beast have 
 helped the conception and to add tragedy to 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 103 
 
 the actor's rendition of hate and anger ; even 
 the Art of love has learned much from the 
 tenderness of all nature for its kind and off- 
 spring. The Greeks modeled their Elgin 
 Marbles, and their faultless coins, from study 
 of their Athletes and the beauty of their 
 classic women ; so with each and every Art — 
 and always with an added beauty in propor- 
 tion to the artist's power and poetry. First 
 of all learn to observe Nature : or in simple 
 speech to use your eyes, even in the dark, — 
 for, shut or open, they still see as we see in 
 dreams, or as Helen Keller sees with her so- 
 called 6 i sightless eyes 9 9 ! Look at a face and 
 see if the hair be straight, the eyes small or 
 large in proportion to the face, the tip or 
 angle of the pose of the head — if a short 
 or long upper lip — if the expression be com- 
 monplace or poetic, if the mouth be firm or 
 a weak one and all these things and more 
 are to be observed in just one look of one 
 second or sixty. Then take as long as you 
 
104 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 choose to remember your observations. Un- 
 til you grasp the meaning of this observing, 
 remember drawing is useless and therefore 
 impossible. 
 
 All Artists — real Artists — are brothers, 
 and know the quality of any art at a glance : 
 — that is to say, the Elgin Marbles are su- 
 preme for exactly the same reasons that the 
 great musical compositions are supreme in 
 that art — and the same applies to the great 
 Velasquez pictures. The great Shakespeare 
 plays, the Greek Tragedies (possibly the 
 most profound dramatic productions ever 
 written in any language), the Greek tem- 
 ples, Milton's " Paradise Lost," the Bible, 
 Homer, Dante, etc. They are all alike — 
 brothers or cousins, in that they are made 
 by masters who worked in certain kindred 
 laws known by the chosen. 
 
 The Throne of Art is a magnificent struc- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 105 
 
 ture, — its columns, — Velasquez, Titian, Rem- 
 brandt, Tintoretto. 
 
 Emerson's ' 'Errand from the muse to the 
 poet concerning his Art" — its great teach- 
 ing, its glorious insight, its splendid elo- 
 quence are a burning, living cry to all with 
 even Talent to persist and do with might 
 what God has put into their souls. 
 
 Painting to me means color, else why paint 
 at all? But make the discovery early in 
 your artistic life whether or no the gods 
 have gifted you. If not, drop the brush, 
 rainbow-tipped as it was meant to be, — and 
 work in some other material : you may still 
 be an artist. 
 
 Velasquez 's noble blacks — Fortuny 's 
 beautiful whites — strange that they were 
 both from the country of bright and dazzling 
 colors. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 
 Chopin's Mazurka Op. 68, No. 1 
 
 IT'S all color music, and it delights a 
 painter. I think I could paint a Ma- 
 zurka, though it has been said by a critic 
 that this form of music is for the common 
 people, and the Polonaise for the swells ! 
 
 Mix your petitions to God with your best 
 work and never fear but that He will answer 
 your prayer. 
 
 Love all men and you enter God's aristoc- 
 racy. 
 
 Every true man derives true nobility from 
 God. He chooses them. 
 
 Do a noble action and He will pluck a quill 
 
 106 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 107 
 
 from an Angel's wing, dip it in the milk of 
 His divine kindness and run it through all 
 the little sins. 
 
 Fear of the devil and poverty are the 
 curses of most men's lives. Fight the first 
 to a finish, and face the other with your 
 best work. 
 
 Show me a real, natural criminal and his 
 history will have lacked Love. 
 
 The Ideal is not so far away, or above us. 
 Stretch up a bit, and it will meet you half 
 way. 
 
 The ugly is sometimes beautiful and like 
 music to the musician. 
 
 Even sketches are best shown in frames. 
 The moon would be a silly thing without its 
 sky. 
 
108 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 One need not aim too carefully at Beauty 
 and Fame — they are big things. 
 
 Wagner — He knew that there was a vast 
 audience awaiting him with a thirst for in- 
 tellectual music. He supplied the demand 
 and we are no longer bored by trivial tunes 
 and parodies of life on the opera stage. 
 
 Bernhardt without doubt possesses the 
 best talent for the stage of any woman, bar- 
 ring Desclees, of our time. Her resources 
 are endless and magnificent and — she knows 
 the power of advertisement! 
 
 1870. (This was before the day of Duse !) 
 
 Sarasate is simply musical genius per- 
 sonified. He too is a master in its great 
 sense, and God will certainly give him a 
 violin for the Heavenly Choir. 
 
 Though I know nothing of his Art, yet my 
 Art makes me see when he succeeds just as 
 surely as if I were a master in music. You 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 109 
 
 know what I have always said, viz. : that all 
 governing principles that make for beauty 
 and distinction are the same in all the 
 Arts. 
 
 To be really happy yourself you must 
 have a passion for the happiness of others. 
 
 Don't prop things up, build them up. 
 
 What we want after all in a Doctor is con- 
 fidence. It is not what he can do for us but 
 what we can do for ourselves, believing in 
 him. 
 
 Then this matter of taste. "Oh, I know 
 what I like." Yes, and it's lucky for Bir- 
 mingham and Manchester and the cut glass 
 manufacturers and the diamond merchants 
 that you do, and continue to think you do, 
 for, if it were not so, they would perforce 
 go to the wall and into bankruptcy in ten 
 minutes and would have to go into some hon- 
 est business, like insurance. 
 
 / 
 
110 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 People clever in one direction do not do 
 or say clever things on strange ground. 
 
 If, as some claim, the truly esthetic Poetic 
 Art-life may be had at any price in America, 
 why have our novelists not made it more of 
 a background for their work and heroes? 
 Why Europe so often? 
 
 Candles and lamps should be burned where 
 all good pictures are hung, and no furnace 
 heat. Gas is expensive and inartistic. 
 
 Kindness and courtesy are natural things 
 to the truly great, the duffer needs them to 
 ensure success. 
 
 It is quite compatible with genius to know 
 where the hammer is, and to tub every morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Lose your identity while at work and look 
 at the result with childlike eyes. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 111 
 
 If you want to do a good likeness of a man, 
 paint a stranger, not a man you know well. 
 
 Do not carve the capitals till the founda- 
 tions are laid. 
 
 They (the Academicians) seem divorced 
 from sense "and the reality of things.' ' 
 
 Why don't they apply the test of color 
 blindness to would-be painters, just as they 
 do to army men and engine drivers'? 
 
 The Iconoclast is not a reformer but is 
 apt to be an artistic ass. 
 
 The Iconoclast smashes only the semblance 
 of the real, his reach never gets at the ideal. 
 It is too far above him. 
 
 Re-forming is all very well but is a vulgar 
 idea, generally, for the new form is usually 
 worse than the old. 
 
 They err who teach that he who star-gazes, 
 
112 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 stumbles. Keep your eyes on the stars and 
 never lower them, but walk carefully and 
 an added sense will be given you to feel the 
 pitfalls and briars in your path. All the 
 diamonds are not in dung hills. 
 
 Should pathology in literature go hand 
 and hand with Art"? Ibsen, the master of 
 this form of teaching, failed, and he had real 
 power. Give me medical books undiluted 
 with story or garnished with "Art"! 
 
 Poetry must never buckle down to "com- 
 mon" sense. If it does, it must tip her 
 wings with golden light and sweeten the bit- 
 ter pill. 
 
 Why does the Supreme Being, or the un- 
 seen Force, whatever that may be, present 
 problems which cannot possibly, even with 
 the aid of science, lead the investigation to 
 a definite end? 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 113 
 
 We don't know what we believe till we 
 talk or write or give expression in some way, 
 to our inmost thoughts and convictions. 
 
 Why this urging one on for the securing 
 of Eternal Life ? This life is no less impor- 
 tant, for if decently and holily lived Eternal 
 Life follows. 
 
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND 
 DECORATION. A FRAGMENT 
 (1898) 
 
 U TN architecture alone man looks back 
 A upon the masterpieces of the past, not 
 as points of departure, but as ultimate at- 
 tainments. Content for his own part, if by 
 recombining the elements and reproducing 
 the forms of these monuments, he can win 
 from an esoteric circle of archaeologists their 
 praise of reproducing some reflex of their 
 impressiveness. " — Viollet le Due. 
 
 Many of us would, after acquiring the 
 knowledge and taste to travel abroad and 
 study the architectural glories there, become 
 architects ; but this very taste for, and love 
 of the beauties of this wonderful art, come 
 to us too late in life, and many men of ar- 
 tistic natures miss their vocation. Take any 
 
 114 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 115 
 
 town or city in America and examine the 
 most costly buildings, and we find them al- 
 most invariably the most pretentious in de- 
 tail and ornament, and without doubt the 
 ugliest. It would seem that our architects 
 had studied, nay, copied in many instances, 
 the worst European models, when, had they 
 been men of taste and educated in their art, 
 they might have been inspired to follow the 
 many examples of perfect art we find scat- 
 tered so lavishly in every country in Europe. 
 We seem possessed with the idea that the 
 most expensive house in town is the most 
 beautiful and worthy of admiration. The 
 reverse is almost invariably the case. It 
 takes a genius to spend a large sum worthily 
 and with the best results. In many of our 
 cities and country towns we find really beau- 
 tiful houses of small cost, well built (but too 
 often of wood) , well and fittingly designed, 
 and satisfactory to the dweller therein and 
 the passer-by. 
 
116 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Simplicity in all forms of art is, and must 
 be, forever "in style and so let not the pos- 
 sessor of anything good of its kind be per- 
 turbed in spirit over possessing a house or 
 picture not in the prevailing style at the mo- 
 ment. If it be fine, in either or in all cases, 
 it is in style eternally. 
 
 There is surely no more instructive, 
 educational fad abroad, than that of aes- 
 thetic house decoration. I say educational, 
 in its best and broadest sense, because it 
 touches the rich man who can afford a beau- 
 tiful interior to his house, it teaches his chil- 
 dren, his friends, casual visitors and serv- 
 ants; for is it not through the eye that 
 nearly all our best impressions are conveyed 
 to our brain? 
 
 We have, but very slowly to be sure, 
 begun a Renaissance of beautiful house 
 decoration, which has flowered sturdily 
 and seems, in the great majority of cases, 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 117 
 
 to be in the best hands, for have not such 
 men as La Farge, Francis Lathrop, and a 
 few others, all too few for this immense 
 country, devoted their taste and best years 
 to this endless and truly beautiful mode of 
 personal expression, making our dwellings 
 lovely to live in, harmonizing walls, ceilings, 
 floors, furniture; transforming and giving 
 the touch of distinction to the dwellers there- 
 in, and binding all the rooms together, either 
 with subtle contrasts of color and form, or 
 a complete harmony running through the 
 whole house. This gives the fortunate in- 
 habitants a curious satisfaction and sense 
 of fitness, and is carried to the kitchen and 
 third and fourth floors, where those who 
 serve their master and mistress are noise- 
 lessly taught to understand some of Nature's 
 harmonies repeated in all that goes to make 
 up what we understand by the house deco- 
 rator 's art. This may be magnificent or sim- 
 
118 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 pie, — and cheap also, if placed in the hands 
 of a man of taste so far as actual money 
 expended goes. 
 
 In either case what better way can we 
 instruct our children than by bringing 
 them up surrounded by distinction in this 
 form of Art? It is just as easy to live 
 with good form and color as with the ter- 
 rible wall-papers and ghastly furniture of a 
 quarter of a century ago. Nay, it should be 
 easier, and once the demand is created by the 
 best artist decorators, we shall be housed fit- 
 tingly, and sweetness and light in our sur- 
 roundings will prevail. 
 
 Nature teaches us the point I wish to 
 insist on, in endless lessons and in end- 
 less variety! Break open an apple and 
 see the lovely color and form of the hous- 
 ing of the seeds, open an oyster and 
 you have his marvelous dwelling revealed, 
 with his pearl exquisitely and fittingly 
 sheltered. Only think of the deep brown 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 119 
 
 seeds in a melon ; the bird in her nest, or, it 
 may be, the merman and his maid in their 
 opalescent, sea-washed grotto. They know 
 naught of bad taste and machine-made fur- 
 niture ! They walk on a carpet of sea weeds, 
 intricate and varied in form and dainty 
 color; is not all about their Sea-House 
 strangely beautiful and made appropriate 
 by the Master Decorator who teaches the 
 wise with a prodigality no man can estimate 
 or utilize? 
 
 Mural painting should be revived, easel 
 painting having cut it out, so to speak, in 
 public estimation. The average modern ar- 
 chitect shows a lamentable lack of educa- 
 tion. It is a curious fact that the ultimate 
 achievements of architecture and decoration 
 are all of the past. Apropos of this, and for 
 example, take the French cathedrals of the 
 13th century, notably, Notre Dame of Paris, 
 Chartres, Bourges, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, 
 etc., and five hundred other cathedrals and 
 
120 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 churches of that period all over Europe. 
 Can we show anything modern, or of our 
 time, comparable for one instant to the ar- 
 chitectural and decorative splendors of such 
 masterpieces? And again let us cite these 
 marvels of domestic architecture. Can we 
 show anything to compare with the Chateaux 
 of Coney, Josselin, Pierrefonds, Chaumont 
 and Chenonceau ? Much, if not all, of what 
 we now call the colonial style of architecture 
 was built not by architects but by skilled 
 English carpenters and, curiously enough, 
 the ornamentation was of purely classic 
 origin. These houses are beautiful, sober, 
 fitting and picturesque. 
 
 What we call our American style of ar- 
 chitecture, that is to say, those dwellings de- 
 signed by a very small number of our best 
 architects, are charming and creditable, but 
 of course the domestic architecture of 
 Prance is, in its variety and artistic splen- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 121 
 
 dor, unrivaled. The Musician's house at 
 Rheims, and Francis I's house on the Seine 
 in Paris are beautiful examples. 
 
THE DE CHAVANNES DEC- 
 ORATIONS 
 
 I 
 
 To the Editor of the Transcript: 
 
 In last Sunday's Herald a rather savage 
 attack upon Puvis de Chavannes and his 
 decorations in the Boston Public Library 
 appeared, and as, in the opinion at least of 
 many of the best painters of our time, these 
 paintings do decorate a noble building, I feel 
 that some protest should be made against 
 this critic's dull criticism, which, coupled 
 with the recent decision of the Art Commis- 
 sion that Mr. Macmonnies' Bacchante is un- 
 suited [did they say unfit?] to adorn and 
 eternally dance in the library's beautiful 
 court, has, I must own, considerably startled 
 
 me. Many of us who admire that statue and 
 
 122 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 123 
 
 these "bad" decorations in the Public Li- 
 brary are painters and sculptors, and truly 
 love all that contributes to sweetness and 
 light, to morals, and to the city beautiful, 
 and so we feel that this art commission and 
 the Herald art critic have blundered, and 
 are, to put it mildly quite unfit to lead or 
 guide public taste in art or morals in modern 
 Athens. 
 
 I am unable to defend the statue or its 
 generous, but, alas! mistaken donor, Mr. 
 McKim, for I can see no indecency in what 
 man copies from one of God's creations; 
 but I can and do take issue with much, if 
 not all, that this critic of the Chavannes 
 paintings says regarding so much beauty, 
 decorative beauty, mark you, as is contained 
 in these panels by this great French painter. 
 I grant that the drawing is faulty and the 
 masses and details are, sometimes, distinctly 
 not beautiful, not beautiful as Veronese, 
 Tintoret, Velasquez (quaint as are some of 
 
124 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 the Spanish skirt fashions) are beautiful, 
 but surely lovely in color and tone, delight- 
 fully unconventional, fitting as decorations, 
 suggestive of a beauty all too rare in modern 
 art and just literary enough to make them 
 go with the building and sing in harmony 
 with its purpose. 
 
 These decorations are not as wonderful 
 as those (by the same hand) in the Sorbonne 
 and Pantheon in Paris, but they are nobly 
 conceived, truly decorative, lovely in qual- 
 ity of tone and color, and fitting in every way 
 to adorn a city's best building. 
 
 Let some more worthy painter than the 
 writer of these lines keep this ball a-rolling ; 
 for the question, if such there be, as to the 
 real merit of these decorations, is something 
 of an art education in itself. In fine, art, 
 since the best Greek period, has never been 
 for the hoi polloi and no one expects these 
 decorations to be a "nine days' wonder." 
 
 But give them more time, and surely our 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 125 
 
 children, and their children, more surely, 
 will call us, or some of us, "men of taste," 
 and the reasons will grow with them, and 
 those reasons are written ' ' large" on the wall 
 a serious man climbs when he sets out on that 
 long but never tiresome road that leads to a 
 niche in the temple of knowledge and fame. 
 
 Why, then, are these panels good ? They 
 were made by a serious man ; an artist long 
 before he became " serious." They are the 
 result of time, his time and that of the ages 
 before him. No lightly accepted commis- 
 sion these, but Puvis de Chavannes made 
 them after years, let us say fifty years, of 
 work or experience, if you like, and surely 
 he has given us his best, or nearly so. 
 
 A painter's reasons for his faith are these : 
 First, they are appropriate and decorative. 
 Second, they are serious and noble and fit- 
 ting in conception. Third, it would be dif- 
 ficult to find a better man, better fitted by 
 the test of time to fill the space so delicately 
 
126 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 and in harmony with the severe building, 
 and the severe Puritan who will rest before 
 them and certainly criticise! 
 
 You, Mr. Editor, have grave duties, not 
 only to "art," but to the public, else I might 
 take up these panels one by one and show 
 cause why one anonymous critic should not 
 teach painters, at least, what is good or bad 
 in a profession they have served with all 
 their might, and counted not the cost. 
 
 II 
 
 To the Editor of the Herald: 
 
 In the Herald of Sunday, November 1, the 
 art critic of that journal wrote what to many 
 of us seemed a most inconsiderate notice of 
 the panel decorations by Puvis de Cha- 
 vannes, in the Boston Public Library. No 
 one replying, I, a painter by profession, 
 wrote a few words in defense of this masterly 
 French decorator, and my letter was printed 
 in the Evening Transcript of November 7th. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 127 
 
 In the Herald of the 15th, the critic of the 
 Herald takes notice (in the Fine Arts col- 
 umn) of my letter to the Transcript, in, what 
 many men think, a rather unfair way. 
 
 It is to be remembered, both by the Herald 
 art critic and myself, that we are discussing 
 the work which is the ultimate word of a 
 man whom the art world has proclaimed 
 great in mural decoration. This should not 
 restrain or limit the honesty or courage of 
 our opinions, but it should at least impose 
 on us the obligation to abstain from person- 
 alities and tricks of speech. If thirty 
 years of hard work as an art student — we 
 really never seem to progress further — be a 
 qualification to speak on this subject of the 
 Chavannes decorations, then I must be par- 
 doned if I set down very briefly my convic- 
 tions against those of this writer, published 
 in the Morning Herald of November 1st. 
 
 There is much to be said in qualifying crit- 
 icism of several of these decorations, but this 
 
128 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 critic has not, pray observe, gone into par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 Well, Mr. Editor, we painters by study 
 and profession see some nods by this Jove, 
 and I will indicate a few at random. First, 
 M. De Chavannes is guilty of some grave 
 faults, the result, possibly, of carelessness 
 or intentional naivete, and I will endeavor 
 to point them out, not, of course, in detail, 
 or too carefully, but merely for those who 
 can read, and run. To begin with (this, 
 remember, is the reverse of the medal, and 
 not its glorious side, which wholly escapes 
 this critic's notice!), some of the drawing is 
 faulty and certain of the silhouettes of the 
 various forms are certainly open to criti- 
 cism. I will, with rigid briefness, explain 
 this a little for the laymen and our " critic/' 
 and will take at random Raffaello Sanzio's 
 portrait of Jeanne d'Arragon in the Louvre. 
 In this picture we have a truly noble work 
 of art, like the Parthenon marbles in qual- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 129 
 
 ity, every form contained in it essentially 
 beautiful; not only beautiful when seen as 
 hung in the Louvre, but even a photograph 
 of it placed upside down on the easel, or side- 
 ways, shows marvels of form. The sleeves 
 and the slashings in the sleeves, the disposi- 
 tion of all the forms, the lights and shadows 
 and their shapes, even if the picture be 
 turned so that it rests on either of its four 
 sides, display a superb ensemble, and a won- 
 derful series of lovely forms, each perfect, 
 literally lovely shapes in themselves, regard- 
 less of the painting as a whole. Well, does 
 Puvis de Chavannes rival such faultless 
 work ? Alas ! no ; for this is the nineteenth 
 century, and we are not given to overmuch 
 thought in such matters, mere details to us, 
 but vital problems to the Greek and Italian 
 masters and giants. Now let us turn to the 
 merits of these beautiful panels, and to Pu- 
 vis de Chavannes' justly won laurels. Why 
 does our Boston " critic" not mention them? 
 
130 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 The beauties are many and sound; I mean 
 sound and living for all time. 
 
 There is no dark in them as biting as the 
 blacks in the marble of the staircase; thus 
 they are delicate, flat decorations, framed 
 by the gold and black marble. They are not 
 pictures in the ordinary meaning of the 
 word ; they are lovely arrangements of color, 
 inviting, not demanding, the attention of 
 those who mount the stairs presumably on 
 serious business or study. 
 
 Surely no chart or detailed elucidation is 
 needed to describe these beautiful panels, 
 and I hope it will not be deemed necessary 
 by those in authority to print and circulate 
 anything of the kind. These decorations, 
 and, pardon me if I insist a little on this 
 point, are not pictures, conventional pictures, 
 with a story and sometimes, alas! a strong 
 literary flavor (better, generally, than the 
 paintermanship that is used to elucidate 
 them), but flat, almost shadowless arrange- 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 131 
 
 ments of color masses, done with the big 
 decorator's mind perfectly clear as to their 
 fitness and place in one immense architec- 
 tural scheme. And so let us realize that of 
 the more important decorations in the li- 
 brary those by Puvis de Chavannes and John 
 Sargent alone are fitting and in the proper 
 spirit. But surely no more need be said on 
 a subject so well understood by serious men, 
 backed as they are, by all the great men of 
 the past who were painter-decorators. The 
 late Lord Leighton, P. R. A., once said to 
 me: " Never forget that the best decorative 
 art is the grandest and noblest art in all the 
 world, but it has its limitations in certain 
 ways, and when those are disregarded it 
 becomes foolish and vulgar, and at once is 
 beloved by the Philistine and the thought- 
 less.' ' 
 
 One point I wish to mention here, and 
 possibly some painter or architect may be 
 able to answer it and enlighten me, viz.: 
 
132 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Is the art of fresco painting so wholly lost 
 that perforce these panels by De Chavannes, 
 Sargent and others must needs be done on 
 canvas and glued to the walls, and not done, 
 as of old, in the plaster? We all know of 
 the melancholy condition of the Hunt mural 
 decorations in the Capitol at Albany, but has 
 no one, except the ordinary house decorator, 
 learned the secret of direct painting on the 
 plaster ? 
 
 If these men would not come to Boston 
 and paint on the walls, then, in my opinion, 
 it would have been better and more expedient 
 to have given native men the chance and 
 glory of trying, at least. 
 
 Thanking you, Mr. Editor, in advance for 
 your courtesy, and asking your pardon and 
 indulgence for the time I have taken, I am 
 your obliged servant, 
 
 George Frederick Munn. 
 
REPRODUCTIONS OF THE 
 PAINTINGS OF 
 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
MEADOWSWEET 
 
> 
 o 
 > 
 
 u 
 
ON THE KENNET 
 
CORNISH TRAWLERS AT REST 
 
AN OLD MASTER 
 
H 
 W 
 W 
 
 o 
 w 
 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 a 
 > 
 
 H 
 
 W 
 
 9 
 w 
 
 I— I 
 
 g 
 
o 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 W 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 d 
 
\ 
 
AN ARAB 
 
MEADOW AND TREES 
 
 OLD TREES, BRITTANY 
 
OLD MAN'S HEAD (ETCHING) 
 
HARMONY IN ROSE AND BLUE 
 
THE JAPANESE SCREEN (A HARMONY IN BLUE) 
 
JAPANESE STILL-LIFE GROUP 
 
LILY POND, NORMANDY 
 
STUDY FOR PORTRAIT OF MISS 
 
< 
 
TREES AND SUNSET 
 
 ART IS LONG AND TIME IS FLEETING. 
 
 (STUDY) 
 
52! 
 
 p 
 
 O 
 
 3 
 
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS 
 OP GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS 
 OF GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 With Date and Place of Exhibition 
 
 1874 Toast: A bit of Studio life. Study in 
 
 black and white. Sold to William 
 Fletcher, Esq., Brigham Hill, Carlisle. 
 
 1875 Evening. Oil sketch: (3% x 9 in.). Owned 
 
 by S. E. Waller, Esq. 
 Meadow Sweet. Oil study. 
 
 "Kich cymes of fragrant Meadow Sweet 
 Alas ! those creamy clusters lend 
 A charm where death and odors meet." 1 
 Dudley Gallery. Calder Campbell. 
 Sold to W. H. Mitchell, Esq., 4 Kings 
 Bench Walk, Temple, London. 
 
 i A flower-picture here, noticeable for the absence of manu- 
 facturing deftness, which goes so far to neutralize the 
 beauties of M. Fantin's work, is the large and most careful 
 study (B31) wild flowers, meadow-sweet the chief, to which 
 is attached a new name, G. F. Munn. This is evidently , a 
 labor of love, full of the most minute and loving study, such 
 as a man gives who finds both intense pleasure in his work 
 and the subject of it — such labor as only young men can give, 
 for only they are sustained by such keenness and freshness of 
 delight. — Artists of the Nineteenth Century in the London 
 "Saturday Review." 
 
 137 
 
138 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Roses: Dudley Gallery. 2 
 Wildflowers: Dudley Gallery. 2 
 
 1876 A Sunny Day. Pout-Aven. 
 Flowers. Sold to Lady Atkinson. 
 
 1877 A Brittany Model (Child). Exhibited by 
 
 Society of British Artists. 
 Wallflowers. Exhibited at Royal Acad- 
 emy, owned by Y. H. Lovegrove, Esq., 
 Esher, Surrey. 
 
 1878 A Gray Day, Brittany. Exhibited at Royal 
 
 Academy, owned by Y. Maddocks, 26 
 Booth Street, Bradford. 
 A Reconnaissance. Exhibited at Royal 
 Academy, owned by R. R. Winans, Balti- 
 more, Md. 
 
 Art Needlework. Exhibited at Brighton. 
 Lost and Awfully Frightened. 
 Moonlight. 
 
 Sunlight, Brittany. Exhibited at Royal 
 Academy. 
 
 1879 Breton Quarrymakers. Exhibited at Royal 
 
 Academy, owned by Y. Smith, 14 The 
 
 Buttons, South Kensington. 
 Cornish Trawlers at Rest. Exhibited at 
 
 Dudley Gallery. Sold to Messrs. Agnew 
 
 & Sons, Manchester, Eng. 
 Radishes. Exhibited at Royal Hibernian 
 
 Academy, Dublin. 
 2 Book typewritten. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 139 
 
 1880 A Berkshire Idyll. Exhibited at Society of 
 
 British Artists. 
 The Back Door. Leeds Spring Exhibition, 
 owned by Professor Marshall, M.A., 
 Leeds, exhibited at Dudley Gallery; 
 owned by Y. H. Tonlinson, Esq. 3 
 
 1881 Amusing His Lordship. 
 
 Art is Long and Time is Fleeting, etc. Ex- 
 hibited at Royal Academy. Sold to 
 Y. H. Tonlinson, Esq., Huddersfield. 
 
 An Old Master. 4 Walker Art Gallery. 
 Owned by Henry Duncan, 7 Belvidere 
 Road, Prince's Park, Liverpool. 
 
 3 Letter W. A. Duncan. 4 The subject of the picture is 
 well chosen. It depicts an artist of venerable aspect, such as 
 one would imagine Watts or Titian to have been in extreme 
 age. Wearing a skull cap from which streams out an 
 abundance of white hair, circling a head of much distinction, 
 the old master, clad in a long robe with a broad sable collar, 
 sits in the growing feebleness of age in an ample armchair of 
 solid make with great spiral legs and cross supports beneath. 
 The old man is giving the finishing touches to what he evi- 
 dently contemplates as likely to be the final product of his art, 
 an Andromeda chained to the rock. The picture, already 
 framed, stands upon a solid easel of plain oak, and within 
 reach of the artist stands a large vase filled with paint 
 brushes. A screen is fixed behind the artist to protect the old 
 man from draughts, and to the right of the spectator is 
 another armchair upholstered in green placed against the wall 
 of the studio and above the chair hangs a picture, while vari- 
 ous portfolios containing studies lie here and there about the 
 room. 
 
140 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Arcadia. Owned by W. D. Hall, Bright- 
 side, Little King's Hill, Great Missenden, 
 Bucks. 
 
 1882 Between Sunlight and Moonlight. Exhib- 
 ited at Grosvenor Gallery; sold to A. B. 
 Winterbotham, Norman Hill, Pursley, 
 Gloucestershire. 5 
 (19x13.) 
 
 Landscape. Exhibited at Royal Academy. 6 
 
 Moonrise. Owned by Sir Johnston Forbes- 
 Robertson. 
 
 Six Venetian Pictures. 
 
 One Joyous little Landscape. Owned in 
 London, England. 
 
 Pumpkins, South of France. Exhibited at 
 Royal Academy. 
 
 "The World is Changed 
 
 The Sun's away," etc. (R. Browning.) 
 Owned by C. H. Rickards, Esq., Old 
 Trafford, Manchester. 
 
 The First Snow. Exhibited at Royal Acad- 
 emy. 
 
 Low Tide, Normandy: The Walls of La 
 Hogue. Autumn sketch. Owned by Y. 
 H. Tonlinson, Esq. 
 
 The Little Gleaner. Owned by Y. H. Ton- 
 linson, Esq., Union Bank, Huddersfield. 
 
 5 Letter H. Hogue. 
 
 ■ It represents an Old Farm by a pool and there is an ave- 
 nue of trees to the right at right angles to the buildings. A 
 crescent moon is rising in the background above the farm, 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 141 
 
 1883 Passing Showers. Exhibited at Grosvenor 
 
 Gallery. 
 
 "The Wild March winds are Mowing," etc. 
 Exhibited at Royal Academy. 
 
 1884 The Story of the Church. Exhibited at the 
 
 Royal Academy. 
 
 1885 A Tale of Woe. 
 
 Cornish Trawlers. Sold to Mr. Holt, Sud- 
 ley, Mossley Hill, Liverpool. 
 
 In Chancery. Exhibited at Grosvenor Gal- 
 lery. Owned by Hon. Stephen Cole- 
 ridge, 7 Egerton Mansions, South Ken- 
 sington, S. W. 
 
 In the Hayfield. Exhibited at Grosvenor 
 Gallery; owned by Mr. W. D. Hall, 
 Brightside, Little King's Hill, Great Mis- 
 senden, Bucks. 
 
 Portrait of a Lady (M. C). Destroyed. 
 
 The Culprit. 
 
 The Enchanted City. Owned by Miss 
 Elizabeth Bartol, Chestnut Street, Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 1885 Walls of La Hogue. Exhibited at Dudley 
 
 Gallery. 
 
 1886 On the Kennett. 7 Exhibited at Royal 
 
 Academy. 
 
 reflecting the latter and trees in the pool which occupies the 
 whole of the foreground. 
 
 * The Saturday Review pronounced this to be the finest ex 
 
142 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 1892 Rhode Island Idyll (6 ft. x 4 ft.). Some 
 Pine Trees and Sandbanks. Sold about 
 1881-2 in Manchester. 
 ( " His best work. ' ' Cheston. ) 
 
 Country Scene. Trees and barn in back- 
 ground; River with punt: foreground, 
 strong shadows. Owned by Caroline 
 Bell, Cavendish Road, N. "W., London. 
 
 Breton Peasants pushing a Cart laden with 
 Blocks of Stone. Owned by Baroness 
 Gray, 14 The Boltons, South Kensington, 
 London. Bought later by Mary R. Cabot, 
 Brattleboro, Vt. 
 
 Bretagne. Exhibited at Salon, Paris. 
 
 L'Hovir San Rafael. Exhibited at Salon, 
 Paris. 
 
 Country Road in Autumn. Owned by Dr. 
 Henry C. Baldwin, 126 Commonwealth 
 Ave., Boston. 
 
 OWNED BY MARGARET C. MUNN 
 
 Brittany 
 
 Normandy — After Sunset 
 Normandy Haycocks — Sunset 
 Seven Little Trees. 
 Old Church, Normandy. 
 
 ample of a solid and serious style in the whole Exhibition at 
 The Royal Academy of that year. 
 
GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 143 
 
 Old Fish Pools, Woolhampton. 
 
 Storm, Annisquam. 
 
 The River, Annisquam. 
 
 River and Meadows, Annisquam. 
 
 Old Post Office, Woolhampton. 
 
 Old Breton Wood Shed. 
 
 Vase and Roses. 
 
 An Old Violin. Sketch. 
 
 An Eastern Seaport. 
 
 Venice. Very small painting — very fine. 
 
 Two very small and beautiful landscapes — Trees and 
 
 Meadows. 
 Meadow and Stream. 
 London Bridge — Sunset. 
 Several Unfinished Sketches. 
 
 OWNED BY J. KENNEDY TOD 
 Moonlight. Very beautiful. 
 
 OWNED BY ROSS WINANS OP BALTIMORE 
 Old Breton Stable Yard. 
 
 OWNED BY MRS. WINCHESTER DONALD 
 An American Beauty Rose. 
 
 OWNED BY MRS. GARRETT R. PIER, OF 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Head of Old Man. (Etching) 
 
144 GEORGE FREDERICK MUNN 
 
 Paintings 
 
 Copy of three men from a painting of Tintoretto. 
 
 Head and shoulders of each figure. 
 Normandy Landscape. 
 Corner of Munkacsy's studio. Still life. 
 Japanese Bowl and Flowers. 
 Small Japanese Bowl and Pansies. 
 Normandy Peasant Girl. 
 Normandy Peasant before a Shrine. 
 The Deserted Farm. 
 Girl by the Sea. 
 
 Copy of the figure of the Magdalen in Titian's "Noli 
 
 me Tangere." 
 Normandy Church (with child looking toward it). 
 
 OWNED BY MRS. J. M. COOK, OF NEW YORK 
 
 1. Breton Wash House. 
 
 2. The Fort of La Hogue. 
 
 3. Evening (Crescent moon and daisy fields.) 
 
 4. Fruits. Still life. 
 
 5. Twilight. 
 
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
 
 3 3125 01360 4323