NOTEWORTHY PAINTINGS IN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF THIS BOOK ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX COPIES ONLY WILL BE SOLD OR OFFERED FOR SALE. IT HAS BEEN PRINTED FROM TYPE AND THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED, NO PLATES HAVING BEEN MADE. THESE COPIES ARE NUMBERED AS FOLLOWS NOS. 2 TO I I ON IMPERIAL JAPAN NOS. 12 TO 126 ON PAPIER DE RIVES EACH COPY IS SIGNED BY THE PRINTER AND BY THE PUBLISHERS THIS COPY IS NO.HHIII NO. ON VELLUM NOTEWORTHY PAINTINGS I N AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS EDITED BY JOHN LA FARCE AND AUGUST F. JACCACI NEW YORK THE AUGUST F. JACCACI COMPANY M C M V I I COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE AUGUST F. JACCACI COMPANY ENTERED AT STATIONER’S HALL, LONDON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NOTE. THE WORDS “COPYRIGHT, I9O4, BY MERRILL & BAKER” WHEREVER OCCURRING IN THIS BOOK, DO NOT REFER TO ANY EXIST- ING COPYRIGHT. THE AUGUST F. JACCACI COMPANY THE INITIAL LETTERS AND HEAD PIECES IN THIS VOLUME ARE FROM DRAWINGS BY MR. KENYON COX, ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY MR. HENRY WOLF AND PRINTED DIRECT FROM THE WOOD BLOCKS. THE PHOTOGRAPHS AND PHOTOGRAVURES WERE MADE AND PRINTED UNDER THE DIRECTION AND SUPERVISION OF THE EDITORS. WITH ONE EXCEPTION ALL REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS IN THIS VOLUME ARE FROM PHOTOGRAPHS SPECIALLY TAKEN FOR THE PURPOSE. THE PHOTOGRAVURES WERE MADE AND PRINTED BY JOHN ANDREW & SONS UNDER THE PERSONAL CARE OF MR. GEORGE T. ANDREW. THE BOOK IS PRINTED FROM TYPE BY THE GILLISS PRESS UNDER THE PERSONAL DIRECTION OF MR. WALTER GILLISS. TWO BINDINGS HAVE BEEN DESIGNED: ONE IN GOLD ON LEATHER BY MR. JOHN LAFARGE; THE OTHER, AN ADAPTATION BY MR. KENYON COX OF THE DESIGN OF A BINDING IN THE PARIS BIBLIOTHEQ.UE NA- TIONALE DONE FOR DIANE DE POITIERS, WAS MODELLED IN LOW RELIEF BY MR. AUGUSTUS LUKEMAN AND IS TO BE IMPRESSED ON VELLUM FROM THE BRONZE CAST. THE EDITORS HAVE PLANNED THE STYLE AND MAKING OF THE BOOK AND HAVE GIVEN THEIR PERSONAL SUPERVISION TO ALL DETAILS OF ITS EXECUTION. CONTRIBUTORS SIR MARTIN CONWAY, MESSRS. KENYON COX, JOHN LAFARGE, and SAMUEL ISHAM are the authors of the essays descriptive of the collections in this volume. The editors in acknowledging their indebtedness to the following gentlemen, authors of the essays on individual paintings, have also to thank them for valuable advice and information regarding works of the masters and schools with which they are familiar. With this help the editors have hoped to realize an ideal of completeness and authority. ARSENE ALEXANDRE Art critic of Le Figaro: author of “His- toire de la Peinture”, “Jean Carries”, “ Daumier”, etc. Sir WALTER ARMSTRONG Director of the National Gallery of Ire- land, Dublin: author of “Gainsborough”, “Reynolds”, “Turner”, “Velasquez”, etc. A. LYS BALDRY Painter and critic: author of “Velasquez”, “The Wallace Collection”, etc. LEONCE BENEDITE Conservateur of the Luxembourg Mu- seum. CAMILLE BENOIT Conservateur-Adjoint of the Louvre. Dr. WILHELM BODE Director General of the Royal Museums, Berlin: author of “ The Complete Work of Rembrandt ”, etc. Dr. A. BREDIUS Director of the Royal Museum (Maurits- huis), The Hague: author of “Die Meis- terwerke im Rijks Museum, Amsterdam”, etc. HAROLD W. BROMHEAD London. ELIZABETH LUTHER CARY Author of “The Rossettis”, “William Morris”, “The Art of James McNeill Whistler”, etc. ARTHUR B. CHAMBERLAIN Director of the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Sir MARTIN CONWAY Formerly Slade Professor of Fine Arts, Cambridge: author of “The Dawn of Art”, “Early Flemish Artists”, etc. ROYAL CORTISSOZ Art critic of the New York Tribune. RALPH CURTIS Painter. LIONEL CUST Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London: author of “Van Dyck”, “Paint- ings and Drawings of Diirer”, etc. CAMPBELL DODGSON Assistant Keeper Print Dept., British Mu- seum: author of “Introduction to the Diirer Society Portfolios ”, etc. LANGTON DOUGLAS Editor of the new edition of “Crowe and Cavalcaselle ” : author of “ Fra Angelico”. ix CONTRIBUTORS WILLIAM HOWE DOWNES Art critic of the Boston Transcript. THEODORE DURET Author of ‘ ‘ Les Peintres Impressionistes”, “ Claude Monet”, etc. CHARLES NOEL FLAGG Painter. Dr. MAX J. FRIEDLANDER Director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin: author of “Die Meisterwerke der Niederlandischen Malerei”, etc. Dr. GUSTAVO FRIZZONI Author of “Arte Italiana del Rinasci- mento”, “La Galleria Morelli in Ber- gamo”, etc. ROGER E. FRY Curator of Paintings Metropolitan Mu- seum, New York: author of “Giovanni Bellini”, etc. GUSTAVE GEFFROY Author of “Auguste Rodin ”, “Corot”, “La Vie Artistique ”, etc. Dr. GUSTAV GLUCK Assistant Director Imperial Museum, Vienna: editor of “Die Graphischen Kiinste”, author of “Aus Rubens Zeit und Schule ”, etc. Dr. GEORG GRONAU Author of ‘ ‘ Leonardo da Vinci”, “Titian”, etc. JULES GUIFFREY Director of the Gobelins: author of “An- toine Van Dyck”, “Catalogue du Musee des Archives ”, etc. C. LEWIS HIND Late editor of the Academy: author of “Adventures Among Pictures”, etc. C. J. HOLMES Slade Professor of Fine Arts, Cambridge, editor of the Burlington Magazine: au- thor of “Constable and his Influence on Landscape Painting ”, etc. HERBERT P. HORNE Joint editor of the “ Dictionary of Flor- entine Painters”, etc. Prof. GEORGES HU LIN de LOO Author of “Catalogue Critique de l’Exposition des Primitifs ”, Bruges, “Met de Bles”, etc. HENRI HYMANS Director of the Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, editor of “Karel van Mander”: author of “Nicaise de Keyser”, etc. Dr. PAUL KR1STELLER Author of “Mantegna”, “Early Floren- tine Woodcuts ”, etc. GEORGES LAFENESTRE Membre de L’Institut, Conservateur des Musees Nationaux: author of “ La Vie et l’QEuvre de Titien”, “La Peinture Ital- ienne”, etc. D. S. MacCOLL Director of the Tate Gallery, formerly art critic of the Saturday Review: au- thor of “Art of the Nineteenth Century”, etc. AUGUSTE MARGUILLIER Secretaire de la Redaction, Gazette des Beaux-Arts: author of “Durer”, etc. H. C. MARILLIER Author of “ Dante Gabriel Rossetti”. Dr. W. MARTIN Assistant Director of the Royal Museum ( Mauritshuis ), The Hague : author of “Gerard Dou”, etc. ROGER MARX Inspecteur-Gen£ral des Musses Na- tionaux, editor of the Gazette des Beaux- Arts, etc. FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr. Art critic of the New York Evening Post, American editor of the Burlington Maga- zine. CAMILLE MAUCLAIR Author of “ French Impressionists”, etc. Cav. MARIO MENOTTI Author of “Van Dyck”, etc. ANDRE MICHEL Conservateur-Adjoint of the Louvre : au- thor of “Notes sur l’Art Moderne”, “L’Ecole franfaise de Ingres a Delacroix”, etc. CONTRIBUTORS EMILE MICHEL Membre de 1’lnstitut: author of “Rem- brandt", “Rubens”, “Les Breughel”, “ Les Van de Velde ”, etc. GABRIEL MOUREY Editor of “ Les Arts de la Vie”. Dr. CARL NEUMANN University of Kiel: author of “ Rem- brandt ”, etc. F. MASON PERKINS Author of “Giotto”, etc. Dr. CORRADO RICCI General Director of Antiquities and Fine Arts in Italy, Director of the UfFizi: author of “ Pinturicchio ”, “Correggio”, etc. Dr. JEAN PAUL RICHTER Author of “Leonardo”, etc. CHARLES RICKETTS Author of “The Prado Gallery and Its Masterpieces ”, etc. MAX ROOSES Director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp: author of “L'CEuvre de P. P. Rubens”, “Geschichte der Malerschule Antwerpens”, etc. Dr. ADOLF ROSENBERG Author of “Lenbach”, “Leonardo da Vinci”, “Geschichte der Modernen Kunst", etc. G. McNEIL RUSHFORTH Former Director of the British School at Rome: author of “The Three Bellini and the Earlier Venetians”, “Crivelli", etc. BERNHARD SICKERT Painter and critic. ROBERT de la SIZERANNE Of the Revue des Deux Mondes: au- thor of ‘ ‘ Ruskin and the Religion of Beauty ”, etc. MARION H. SPIELMANN Author of “John Ruskin", “Notes on the Wallace Collection”, “Charles Keene, etcher", etc. Dr. E. STEINMANN Author of “Botticelli”, etc. F. G. STEPHENS Former art critic of the Athenaeum : au- thor of “Sir Joshua Reynolds ”, “Titian", etc. Cav. I. B. SUPINO Professor Institute of Advanced Studies, Florence: author of “11 Beato Angelico”, “Les Deux Lippi”, etc. MAURICE TOURNEUX Author of “Eugene Delacroix devant ses contemporains", etc. MARIUS VACHON Author of “Puvis de Chavannes”, '/Jac- ques Callot ”, “ Eugene Delacroix a l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts", etc. ADOLFO VENTURI Vice President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts, di- rector of the National Gallery (Corsini), Rome: editor of L’Arte: author of “La Madonna ”, etc. JAN VETH Painter and critic: author of “Rem- brandt”, etc. WERNER WEISBACH Professor Berlin University: author of “Francesco Pesellino”, etc. Dr. GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON Editor of the new edition of “Bryan's Dictionary", of the “ Great Artists Series” : author of ‘ ‘ Perugino”, “Velasquez ”, “ Fra Angelico ”, “ Raphael ”, etc. MARCIA OAKES WOODBURY Painter and critic. OTHER AUTHORITIES From many of whom essays have been received for the succeeding volumes, have also given with regard to the paintings in this first volume valuable critical opinions and prac- xi CONTRIBUTORS tical help towards getting facts unobtainable otherwise. In this connection the editors wish to express their thanks to MALCOLM BELL Author of 1 ‘ Rembrandt “ Burne-Jones”, etc. AURELIANO de BERUETE Madrid: author of “Velasquez”, etc. HENRI BOUCHOT Conservateur du Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: author of “ La Lithographie ”, “ Les Livres a Vig- nettes ”, etc. MARY CASSATT Painter. SIDNEY COLVIN Keeper of Print Dept., British Museum: author of “Romney”, etc. GERALD S. DAVIES Author of “Franz Hals”, etc. BEN FOSTER Painter and critic. Dr. THEODOR von FRIMMEL Director of the Schonborn-Wiesentheid Gallery, editor of Blatter fur Gemalde- kunde, Vienna: author of “Die Modern- sten Bildenden Kiinste and die Kunst- Philosophie ”, etc. Dr. C. HOFSTEDE de GROOT The Hague; joint author of “The Com- plete Work of Rembrandt”, etc. Dr. LUDWIG J. D. KAEMMERER Director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Posen: author of “Memling”, “Hubert and John Van Eyck”, etc. PAUL LAFOND Director of the Museum of Pau: author of “Velasquez”, “Goya”, etc. Dr. GUSTAV LUDWIG Venice. E. W. MOES Assistant Director of Print Room, Rijks Museum, Amsterdam: author of “Franz Hals”, etc. E. MOREAU-NELATON Author of “L’Histoire de Corot et de ses CEuvres ”, etc. CLAUDE PHILLIPS Director of the Wallace Collection : au- thor of “The Early and the Late Works of Titian”, “ Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, etc. W. G. RAWLINSON Editor of Turner’s “ Liber Studiorum”. D. CROAL-THOMSON Author of “The Barbizon School of Painters ”. Dr. HUGO von TSCHUDI Director of the National Gallery, Berlin, editor of the Repertorium fur Kunst- wissenschaft, etc.: author of “Adolf von Menzel”, “Manet”, etc. Prof. JOHN C. VAN DYKE Author of “Art for Art’s Sake”, “The Composition of a Picture”, etc. Dr. W. VOGELSANG University of Amsterdam. WHITWORTH WALLIS Assistant Director of the City of Birming- ham Museum and Art Gallery: author of “Pre-Raphaelite Painters”, etc. A. J. WAUTERS Professor in the University of Brussels: author of “La Peinture Flamande”, etc. W. H. JAMES WEALE CHARLES LOESER Florence. Dr. V. von LOGA Author of “Notes on J. Van Eyck”, Author of “Goya”, etc. “Hans Memling”, “Gerard David”, etc. The editors have to thank the owners of the collections for their courtesy in giving information regarding their pictures, and for accepting the inconvenience of having the paintings removed from their walls to be photographed. xii \ INTRODUCTION HE time seems to have come definitely and almost with the rush one might expect in our form of civilization, for some record of the gathering together of works of art by our people. There comes a moment in every man- ner of civilization when the work of art is both a real and a conventional need as a manner of enriching the otherwise meagre external life, in the great commun- ities into which wealth has come rapidly, the tendency is to continue the accumulation of wealth through works of art the value of which is already established, and for that, to go outside of the country to other lands where previous accumulations exist. This, of course, is the old story of Roman culture which lived largely on the stored wealth in art of subject nations; of France when Italy could supply forms of art which were already famous, even to the neglect of France’s own art which had come to a moment of arrest in its development, it is also the story of the more Northern lands adjoining, where, also, the prestige of former art and the admiration of the classic past brought on a desire for connection with that past. In the Low Countries there were already forms of art so splendid as to check this movement, and later in Holland this check or arrest was intensified by the separ- ation of the country from others through war, and through forms of patriotic devel- XV INTRODUCTION opment that led at length to the establishment of a national art as important as any the world has seen. But the first feeling and wish is to have something at once, and a form of this natural development we can see in England when its growing wealth, its great commercial relations and the establishment of great fortunes con- nected with landed estates and political power, flooded the country with the ac- cumulations of Holland and Italy. The analogy there is more distinctly connected with the facts of our own case; and naturally, but with a strangely poetic justice, we seem likely to be heirs to the results of these bee-hives already prepared for our use. We are not all conscious of the amount and curious values of what is being gathered here, and many would be surprised at the variety of interests repre- sented in the personal ownerships of works of art collected in our Western World. Some exhibitions and some notices are making us aware of this mass of treasure. Of course we can see how the necessities of a more easy or more lux- urious and even a more splendid manner of living are filling our houses with works of art, as representing these imagined necessities. But we are less ac- quainted with the manner in which this bringing together of works of art has often a character which is separate from that of splendor or appearance, and is solely influenced by the choice of good taste or the special wishes of the owners. Therein the character of many of these gatherings have peculiar shapes varying through many forms and assuming very opposite directions. It might be im- portant and it certainly would be very interesting to note the forms of these col- lections or gatherings at the moment of their first taking shape. Later the pos- sible changes of manner of life, the displacements of fortune, or of inheritance are likely to alter these conditions and to make these collections lose their personal character, to destroy the record of first origins and to mass all together in a more commonplace appearance. In the records of European collections it is extremely interesting to see how they came together, and regrettable that we have not more easily at hand doc- uments telling us how these treasures passed into special hands. Wherever we can so follow any case it seems to be not only a history of the things themselves, but of the persons who had them, and by implication a story of the time. The following of a work of art through the seventeenth and eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adds a charm of life, an explanation of circumstances, to the biographies xvi INTRODUCTION or memorials of the persons who have owned them. We follow without any explanation except what is derived from the facts themselves, the vicissitudes of the families or individual owners. We see the work of art an object of admira- tion or of fashion as it passes through various hands ; or again as it remains steadily in place, testifying to solidity of social habits or permanency of political life, as against those possessions which move from one ownership to another ownership. We all remember the impression of the paintings in the house of the family of Six in Holland where the pictures appear to hang as they did at the great his- torical moment of the end of the seventeenth century. The quiet rooms, so like those of old New York, acquired through these undisturbed relics an importance equal to that of the great palaces of Italy itself. They testified to the character of the family, its steadiness, to the habits of the country for two centuries, and to the non-disturbance of the state by any great social revolutions or by such great political troubles as shook surrounding nations. The mere record of the look of those everyday rooms becomes an important piece of history. Later, perhaps, such a connection between a place and its treasures disappears, and then we struggle to know how at such a moment the mute witnesses of the lives of cul- tured people were placed about them. Here and there in the eighteenth century we know that such a picture hung on the walls of such a room where have lived people who made history. And by the words “making history” 1 do not mean only the noisy names, but the names of social characters whose rich or whose moderate dwellings were centers of life, or the writers, the poets, the scientific men whose lives have helped to mould the world. With the century just passed we have descriptions of collections. They are usually in the meaning of the modern wish to catalogue, and justifiable from that point of view. But it is extremely rare to find among the descriptions of the private collections a record to which attaches a personal flavour. Occasion- ally with the circumstances of certain owners something of that kind detaches itself from the accounts. As when the art critic and Directeur des Beaux- Arts, Mr. Charles Blanc, described the collection of Mr. Thiers; a very miscellaneous, but very personal bringing together of works of art, and of copies of others gathered from love of the unattainable originals. The sense of a very busy political chief, of an accumulator of written facts, and of a great worker came out in some way through the description of the placing of these works of art. One XVII INTRODUCTION knew what the busy politician and journalist, and later leader of his country, liked to have specially about him in the moments of work and intellectual struggle, what his eye rested upon ; and one might fancy that there was some reason for these special objects placed to meet the eye of their owner at moments of ex- cessive strain. The case might have been still more interesting in a more po- etic nature or a more singular one; 1 merely bring in this example as a case of the addition to historical reality brought on by the record of these few facts. We are passing from a stage of acceptance of general statements about people to realizing the living side of history, and to perceiving the derivation of one moment from another in actual people, whose personal life has of necessity its action on their outside action. This of course in the case of the minds that live in harmony with their externals; it might be interesting if it should happen that one could stumble across the opposite, the contradiction of life to the sur- roundings. This naturally we see on the great scale of the political drama, where in the great residences of the governing lives, the past continues on walls in con- tradiction to the meaning of the lives of the owners or occupiers. Italy and Spain are full of such wonderful contrasts, more so in the past than perhaps in our less contradictory day. But it is easy to recall the impression of the earlier century when the smaller tenants of Venice, for instance, moved within the poetry and splendour of an ancestral past with which they had no connection. All these many considerations are involved in the present enterprise, of mak- ing an attempt at a description and some serious catalogue of one of the forms of artistic treasures owned by individuals of our country. In this case, only the paintings have been attempted. The temptation, of course, would be great to make some record at the same time of other forms of art which are more specially susceptible of ordinary collection, such as the several remarkable collections we have of Oriental works, or again here and there some fragments of sculpture, or again examples of splendid furniture or furnishings, which in themselves are works of art, important, and testifying to the taste or opportunities of their owners. Perhaps here and there some reference may be introduced from mere pressure of fitness as to the surroundings of paintings or the companionship of other works of art. But already indeed the task is a serious and heavy one. Every few days of inquiry show how many are the possessions we have in the way of paintings. In many cases the owners of such works of art hesitate at xviii INTRODUCTION giving to the public an account of their possessions. The sense of privacy so easily disturbed, has been often felt by those who have courteously helped us to see and study what they own. In many cases, men with remarkable treasures have felt their pleasure of peace in ownership disturbed at the notion of their be- ing collectors; that is to say, owners of things gathered according to certain rules or sequences. Modesty and the unwillingness of many, who really love art for itself, would oppose the appearance of subjecting this free exercise of choice to the laws of sequence in collecting and this has been the case with some of the richest of what may be called “collectors,” if we do not insist upon a strict use of the word. Conversely some of the owners of these works of art have carefully kept within a line of choice; sometimes from mere liking, and often from the en- forced good sense which we realize has to be followed when we have the whole world from which to choose. The choice then does not always imply more than the yielding to the necessities of a given case. That is to say, to having to put aside a good deal so as to get a very little securely. Again, there are most interesting accumulations that have come from some way back, which have the charm of giving a date of coming together, the manner of a day now past, and thereby having an appearance of acceptance of things, however beautiful, as memories and continuations of one's predecessors. And indeed there is one case where the owner keeps together the paintings he has inherited in a due respect for the choice made before him, and for the expression of this choice and the character of his predecessor. In the preparation and in the carrying out of the catalogues of paintings in these several collections, a certain monotony is necessary and they must have the character of all rigid statements which are merely meant for accuracy. What- ever trouble and research they may oblige one to, their result may be of necessity somewhat meagre. A full account— such as the breaking up of a catalogue by long disquisitions upon certain works— would simply be too enormous an under- taking, one that could only be the result of very many years, during which changes would take place and the object of formulating the state of these collec- tions at the present moment would be missed. But in the present work a se- lection of descriptive essays or papers on the paintings has been separately con- sidered, so that a general view and a less dry treatment might also be supplied. In this way such a collection of essays supplemented by catalogues, would give xix INTRODUCTION perhaps more exactly the present state of things, and would bring about the main point, a general interest in the question of our present wealth in works of art. In such a question as the appreciation of the quality, the beauty of the work of art, there must inevitably be a great variety of opinion. Such a variety is justifiable because of the very different appeal of the work of art to those who care, and because notwithstanding these variations there remains a common element of appreciation which becomes quite visible when many opinions are brought together. The general consensus becomes quite evident. The person in charge of such a variety of appreciations, the editor, cannot of course be re- sponsible for the greater or less impression made upon the minds of others by certain works of art. He can only in a general way ascertain that little loose and careless work is done and that the writers have had a fair chance of explaining the pictures to the reader: perhaps interesting the reader by description, and be- ginning a wish to see the things described. Nor could one man’s enthusiasm and likings be sufficient for the very many examples of art to be described, nor again the learning of any one writer be sufficient for the covering of so many points. Hence, the authority of the opinions of various experts, largely in their own words, and also by their choices, will supplement and steady the more personal descriptions. JOHN LA FARCE THE COLLECTION OL MRS JOHN LOWELL GARDNER BY MR JOHN LA FARCE THE COLLECTION OF MRS JOHN LOWELL GARDNER BY MR JOHN LA FARGE ARELY do we remember the places where we have seen col- lections of paintings in such a way that the place and the works of art are all one. We remember great Italian palaces where the paintings ornament the splendor as if called upon to do their share. Occasionally in ancient houses long dwelt in, we feel that some of the works of art, important or commonplace, have grown into the use of their inhabitants. We remember the disposal of the paintings in the home of the Six family in Amsterdam, where the pictures seemed to be a part of the fur- niture, and kept in their places from some ancient association. We felt this all the more that the house reminded the American, certainly the New Yorker, of his own habits of building, derived in part from these very Dutch prototypes. The in- convenient adjustment of the light to the importance of the pictures in the central room behind the front parlor, where the beautiful Paul Potter hung on the placid wall, the dis- posal of pictures in the upper rooms, or on the narrow staircase to the garret, while all were masterpieces or associated with the great names of painting, relieved us from the tension, from the annoyance, the monotony, of Museum galleries. Here and there throughout Europe, we came across some such natural ways of association with the paintings or works of art, that placed us again in the historical sense of how they had come to be made, and of their having appealed to certain individual likings. The Europe of our grandfathers must THE COLLECTION OF MRS have had many more such resting-places. The recent invention of the Museum, the Gallery made for collections, or arrangements for the comparative study of works of art, gives an unreal appearance of competition and scholastic rivalry to these remains of individual effort. Whenever we came to some little museum or collection badly managed, housed by accident or temporarily, a sense of enjoyment, even of second-rate work, would steal upon us without our knowing why. Of course it was that things were merely housed, that theories of art were put aside, that orderly suggestion of schools and instruction from them had to be adjourned, and we rediscovered these things for ourselves. These reflections might come upon one when trying to disentangle the threads of a sen- sation of delighted relief in any visit to Fenway Court, the name given by Mrs. Gardner to her house, which is so arranged that at certain times the public may have the sight of certain special treasures. But even these are so much the decoration of a house, and some of them are so much a part of the house itself, that the name and idea of a collection is only correct because the house holds various collections and that their importance in some cases, or their multi- plicity, makes what we call a museum. So entirely true is this that to treat of the paint- ings, or of certain ones, which is the aim of the present book, is an unfair representation of the manner in which we see them, and makes them appear to be set apart and not in ordinary usage. There are here great examples of paintings, and there are others more or less accident- al, or chosen from some feeling of association or poetic completion. The historic frag- ment, the work bringing up a name, is a manner of filling in the idea of a house, a resi- dence where people have already lived long, whose inhabitants have had special likings and built around them a little history of the world. So this very new building looks as if it had been made long ago, because it is the record of many past likings, especially of those which its owner has indulged in a preferred climate and place. Italy, and especially the Venetian country, has made this building, has given it its shape and furnished the fragments out of which it is actually built. Its owner can see repeated, even in the actual stones, the memories of the enchantment of countries whose past is a rest to us who are of the most pressing present. The great court inside this perfectly plain building, which has the look of secrecy that we remember in many foreign treasure houses, is pierced with Venetian windows and balustrades, opening on many stories. Each one of these, and the arcaded galleries, has its own character, its own reminder of different pasts. The open court, down which the sun- light slips, also opens above to the change of the clouds, or to the moonlight that falls on the mosaic, trodden by Roman empresses. Here and there are fragments of antiquity among the flowering plants. At the end of the court a Venetian fountain plays against the mass of the steps leading to the upper story. The columns with Romanesque bases, that support the arcading, have each some story of the past to tell, and their sudden strangeness brings it up more than any modern imitation could possibly evoke. We are thus still in Italy, where the fragments of a Pagan past ever exhale a certain sense JOHN LOWELL GARDNER of fear when they leave their grave. Old, obscure meanings cling to the bits of figured marble that lie about. In the night, lit by the sky and accidental flame, the broken figures lose their actual places. So they did in Italy whence all this comes. Many centuries ago, in the night, Bacchus and the Satyrs and the Nymphs woke up, as legends tell us, left the marble that held them and did harm to those who thought ill of them in the day. The story of the antique Venus, freshly out of her grave of earth, who bent back her finger on the ring a foolish bride- groom had placed upon it, and then claimed him, is the well-known type of that strange feeling which belongs to the painting and the sculpture of the past, whose meaning is apart from ours and yet struggles to carry a message. So the walls of the rooms of Fenway Court carry the messages of a nearer and a better- understood past of Italy, which is near to us and which yet is closed to the modern meaning. “The Titian on the wall” and nothing more, gives the sense of belonging to that past with a splendor of relation that only the glory of the past can give. Buddhist teachers try to make us understand that the looks of the people who gazed upon the work of art have added to its power. For this the work of art must live by itself as a part of the temple or the house, must be removed from the gaze of the common or the analyzing eye. It must be seen accident- ally, in poor lights as well as good — as it were, never on purpose. It is only harsh necessity that has driven us to the Museum gallery, where the light falls equally on the just and the unjust, surely injuring the better and lifting the other to a false equality. I regret that the scheme of our study prevents my taking up the paintings in their places, under the influences of the rooms which have been built to fit their meaning more than their individual advantage. But such a scheme would carry us into too long a description ; and the purpose of our book is distinctly a statement of the existence of certain paintings, and such memoranda concerning them as may make a beginning for a history of the paintings we have here at this moment of time. We shall have to pass from a realm of life to the meanings of criticism. Occasionally, the beauty or the interest of some work may give to what is said a certain uplifting, but the result must necessarily be prose. In reality this collection, if I may so use the word, is but the necessary filling in of a manner of poem, woven into the shape of a house by a mind recalling likings and the memories of the past, and so much of a creation that the mistress’ own hand has mixed the very tones that colour the walls, chamfered the beams of ceilings, as well as planned the scheme and disposal of the entire building. In one of the lower rooms, on whose walls are scattered etchings and sketches and litho- graphs and paintings, signed by famous names, and names of much less consequence, is a little panel framed in black and gold that separates entirely, in meaning as in appearance, from all its neighbors. Whatever these may be, they are all based on things seen, or are transcripts of nature, Even the wonderful sketch by Sargent for the Astarte of the Public Library, which represents a dream, has a stronger basis of reality. The Sargent painting, which is decoration, seems logical and connected in comparison. All the more contradictory seems the beautiful Whistler called “ Symphony in Blue ” — a haze of fog and water, which hangs near the Sargent. Both these paintings, in their pursuit of tone 3 ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL 1828-1882 “LOVE’S GREETING” Panel, height 24K inches, width 32K inches. T WO lovers kiss each other, Love himself, personified, standing by. The man kneels clasping the hands of the lady, who bends down to receive his kiss. His hair is auburn, his long black overgar- ment descends to his feet, the sleeves are white and gold, and a short, straight sword, in a species of baldrick, hangs by his side. The lady’s loose fair hair, without ornament, falls around her face and neck ; the sleeves of her very full blue robe are green. Both figures are seen in profile. Love is clothed in a flowing white robe, the undersleeves are reddish violet in color, and on his dark red hair is a heavy golden crown. With his left hand he supports against his breast a large, black, T-shaped psaltery on which he is playing with his right hand. Of his long yellow wings with green peacock spots, one droops at his right side to the ground, and the other is extended protectingly behind the heads of the lovers. Across the picture, behind the figures and below a monochrome background, stretches a conventional wattled fence, over the top of which, to the right, appears a conventional rose tree, and on this side, lower, grows a sun-flower. The grass is spotted with daisies and other small flowers arranged in a formal pattern. Over the heads of the figures their names Amor, Amata, Amator, are in- scribed. Scrolls, across the picture at top and bottom, bear the lover’s invocation: “Madonna, Dio vi fece, Dio vi guardi, Madonna, Dio v'onori, Dio v’innalqi. Madonna, Dio vi dia levoglie vostre.” Painted for the decoration of a piece of furniture in William Morris’ Red House, Upton, Kent, 1861-62. Collection Mr. Dunlop, Bingley, Yorkshire. Collection William Graham, M. P., London. Collection Frederick Richard Leyland, London. Sale Graham, Christie’s, 1886, purchased by Mr. Leyland (£86.2). Sale Leyland, Christie’s, May, 1892 (185 guineas). 4 'a vtjjua BY MR JOHN LA FARGE and of space and air, connect with all the other works of different grades, and seem modern even though they join so beautifully with the past of painting. But the panel with the black and gold frame is so arbitrary in its treatment, that it seems older, as belonging to a more ancient manner of expression in art. And yet it is very modern ; it is a piece or example of what might be called a momentary fashion — the fashion we used to call pre-Raphaelite some half a century ago. This little painting is by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and however deficient, however faulty, and it is faulty almost all the way through, it is most essentially a flower of that singular movement. The influence of which Rossetti is the most perfect example, still persists in English art ; and yet this example, this specimen of that fashion, painted by the foremost of the Brotherhood, seems already faraway — as if some drift left on the shore by some receding ocean of ages. This is in part, per- haps, because of its being such a personal expression, such purely voluntary poetry, and be- cause, partly from intensity of feeling, partly from deficiency in the usual training of the paint- er, it has its own technique, its own methods. These are not based on the imitation of nature, but on the acquired habits, if one may so say, of admiring certain paintings and works of art belonging to a great and noble past, in which the knowledge which is now so cheap, had not been accumulated. There is here all the charm of a child’s admiration for what has been done that is beautiful, preceding the power of equalling it ; there is also the passion of the poet, a manner of enthusiasm, more self-conscious, more observant, than the simpler, healthier emotions felt by the many. A little more affectation and consciousness would degrade the feeling expressed. But the abandonment and recklessness of the ex- pression of the subject gives a real life to the archaeology, to the arbitrary poetry of the little painting. Two lovers in mediaeval dresses embrace, or rather kiss in forgetfulness of all outside. Their costumes, and their manner of being here as a result of breathing much Italian po- etry, do not take away from the sincerity of abandonment one recognizes in the artist’s mind. The slight uncertainties of the drawing add to the reality. The pressing of the two faces together has the hesitancy of the real fact. Lips find a difficulty in meeting ; their very noses interfere ; their eyes are too close to see each other. The loved one condescends gently, lifts her eyebrows, and drops her hand into the grasp of the lover absorbed in his newly gained happiness. As he kneels before his lady, the ideal of every virtue, he may well be repeating the words inscribed above and below the little image: “My Lady, God made thee, God keep thee; My Lady, God elevate thee, God exalt thee ! My Lady, God give thee thy wishes.” We may remember that Rossetti made a drawing of these two figures for the title-page of his translation of early Italian poets. There, in the wood-cut from his drawing, are only the two figures of the lover and the loved one, who in our painting are labelled Amator and Amata. In the painting there is an accompaniment of symbolic deco- ration; a figure representing Love, the name Amor being inscribed above it, stands next to the lovers in a pensive attitude, as if a little bashful and refraining from looking at this result. The figure of Love is draped in white, as if in ecclesiastical surplice, fitted to the neck with turned-down collar still more church-like. A crown with great leaves of gold, strangely 7 THE COLLECTION OF MRS improbable, covers her dark red hair — the beginning of a new admiration for a colour then long out of fashion. The reddish violet arms press against the body a curious black zither with gold ornaments around the openings. The right hand pinches a string in an absent way. The face looks out sadly in that new manner, which seemed to so many of us at the end of the last century, absurdly out of place; though traditionally and far back in record, the English were said to take their pleasure sadly. The pensive attitude, the withdrawal, is cer- tainly justified in the meaning: the figure of Love is executing a manner of rejoicing on the psaltery upon the happy consummation of this story of passion. Great wings, fantastically long and unmanageable, curve round the figure of Love, and reach behind the group of the lovers, thereby connecting the meaning too much, but in the colour or value arrangements uniting, by the yellow wings with green peacock spots, the lady's hair and the faces of the two lovers. However much the little painting is a lyric, an expression of individual feeling, however much the story is the main meaning, Rossetti's painter's nature has insisted on the pattern- ing and spotting of the values of colour and light and dark, so as to make the little work of art a handsome piece of coloured stuff to look at. And this, notwithstanding a certain heaviness of line and of use of pigment. Separately, the spots are not beautiful to look at. But though they are all heavy, they make a rich brocade, or rather an effect like that of some eastern lacquers, such as we see on Chinese or East Indian trays and boxes. The eye, roaming across the room and finding here and there bits of oriental lacquer, comes back to the little picture as to something akin in execution and in intention of surface. The black dress of the man, his white and gold sleeve, his auburn hair; the “Lady Green Sleeves" of the song, and her blue dress and blonde hair, and the “Love ” in white, rich violet, pink sleeves, and black psaltery, make a combination of dull values of the appearance 1 try to in- dicate. All the more, that the figures walk upon a carpet or a meadow of green with flow- ers evenly spaced as if embroidered, and behind them, against a background of no colour, are the indications of big sunflowers and an impossible rosebush, growing behind an arbi- trary wattled fence, which has some resemblance to the fence in Schongauer's Madonna of the same name. The combination of truthfulness to nature and arbitrary conventionality, makes one smile while in admiration of the unity of mind that produced this little poem of painting. It holds its own with a sketch of Corot above, a little Delacroix alongside, that has curious analogies of tone and manner of painting, and it has no fear of the neighbor- hood of Mr. Besnard's pastel, or of the formidable contrast of Mr. Sargent's wonderful sketch, or of Mr. Whistler's "Symphony in Blue." It has been a pleasure to pay this tribute to that doubtful genius, capable of so many blunders, so essentially a poet, so essentially a painter, whose technical education was defi- cient in certain ways, but fully capable in some of the most difficult matters of expression. One feels here the might of the ideal in contact with outside things. We leave these smaller, hospitable, more modern rooms, and pass into the arcaded cloisters. Greek and Roman and Byzantine and Gothic, and even far-away Arabic sculp- tures, stand under the arches or line the wall on our way to the stone stair. There already JOHN LOWELL GARDNER some Japanese screens will lead us to the upper gallery and the “Chinese Room,” so-called, where other screens of great names, embroidered hangings, and carvings and bronzes, give an excuse to the name. But already Italy is suggested by old furniture, and above Euro- pean porcelains hangs the very latest of Italian work, a painting by Mancini, “The Standard Bearer of the Harvest Festival.” The subject, however old, is also extremely modern: a peasant boy of the Roman Campagna, who holds upright a manner of votive offering for the shrine, a decorative standard composed of harvesting implements, a sickle, a bunch of corn, flowers and fruit. These multifarious objects, each of which is a difficulty in itself, are painted in a bravura manner, where the modelling is astonishingly indicated by the brush work, and the touch, and the thickness— or the thinness— of the paint. In the very modern way, a careful modelling of the boy’s face contrasts with the free handling of these loose objects. The extraordinary artistic capacity which remains in Italy under any form of art, the worst or the best, makes here a sudden introduction to the Italy of the past into which we enter with the Raphael room. On the red damask of the Raphael room, so-called, hangs the famous portrait of Thomas Phasdrus Inghirami. This is the original, painted for Inghirami himself, and the repetition is the famous one in the Pitti Palace in Florence. Inghirami sits in the picture, behind a table, in front of the spectator, and is seen just a little above the waist. The figure fills on either side a little more than the frame, and there is but small space above the red-capped head. The placing of the figure in the rectangle of the picture marks the new moment in the history of portrait painting. A few years back, before this date, such a placing would have been extremely singular. The earlier manner clears the sitter from the edges of the picture, and the sitter assumes less importance, unless in the cases when only the upper part of the body, the head and shoulders are represented. There is already here the estab- lishment of the question of style and grandeur in the representation, apart from that rather steady reality which Raphael, the idealist, insisted upon in his uncompromising portraits. Inghirami is dressed in the costume of Secretary to the Council of the Lateran. He wears a loose red robe with a folded girdle at the waist. A close-fitting red cap covers his hair, falling over his ear. The soft linen of his shirt is just visible at the neck. His face is slightly turned away with the movement of his right arm, and he looks upward as if hesita- ting before writing, either listening or deciding upon a phrase. This look upward, the move- ment of the head, throws the right eye, in which a disagreeable squint is visible, into a more pleasant relation ; the ugly feature is not only diminished, but becomes part of the meaning, as he lifts his eyes in thought. The hands rest on a quire of paper folded together ; the right hand holds a pen in the expectant manner of the scribe. He wears rings on the little finger and on the thumb. In front of the paper is an ink-stand. Propped against an orna- mental inlaid rest is half of an open book ; a line of inlaid wood runs across the edge of the table and the bottom of the picture, helping to connect all these horizontal lines of rest and book and hands and paper laid upon the table. The sitter was then only forty-six years old, but he is already swollen, as if by seden- tary life — (Cardinal Bembo says that some one wrote him that Phasdrus had grown gross, to 9 SANZIO, RAFFAELLO D’URBINO 1483-1520 “PORTRAIT OF TOMMASO (called Fedra) INGHI- RAMI” Transferred on canvas, height 36 inches, width 24^ inches. A GAINST a uniform dark background, Inghirami, seated behind a table and nearly filling the field of the picture, presents to the spectator a three-quarter view of his face, looking upwards to the left as though awaiting inspiration. This upward look is skillfully contrived to minimize the effect of the cast in his right eye, which, with his cor- pulency, was, we are told, his most noteworthy physical characteristic. He wears the costume of Secretary to the Council of the Lateran (1512- 1517), a loose robe confined at the waist with a white linen girdle. Un- derneath this is a soft, white linen shirt, the collar of which just appears at the neck; a close-fitting red cap or beretta, entirely conceals the hair, and is pulled down partly over the ears. The left arm is sup- ported by a large open book which is propped against an ornamental, inlaid book-rest, occupying the lower right-hand corner of the picture. The fingers of both hands rest lightly on a quire of folded paper, and the right hand, showing rings on the thumb and little finger, holds a pen, ready to write. Across the lower edge of the picture runs a band of inlay forming the decoration of the table top. Inghirami, who had received his nickname from his very successful personification, in some improvised theatricals, of the character of Phasdrus in Seneca's tragedy of Hippolytus, was forty-six years of age when he sat to Raphael for this portrait. The face is painted with extreme attention to drawing, modelling, color and tone, in a direct manner and with masterly sweep of the brush, the red of the costume furnishing the prevailing color for the whole picture. Painted for Tommaso Inghirami, and remained at the Inghirami Palace, at Volterra. Purchased from the Inghirami family for Mrs. Gardner. The well-known replica of this portrait is in the Pitti Palace. 10 BY MR JOHN LA FAROE which he answered, “So much the better; we may then style him both good and great, in the manner of heroes, ‘ -})uv re fxeyav re' ”) — and the fingers of the hand have the listlessness that might well belong to this physical condition ; they are, with the face, beautifully paint- ed, with a full flow of the material, in a serious attempt at representing the exact tone and colour of flesh, so that the realistic effect is one of the main points of the painting. The day had not yet come when the difference in light and shadow (and tone obtained thereby) would change the question of imitating the local colour of the flesh. But the suggestion of place and tone is still important. The red of the official dress persists all through the picture, even into the black background. The book that he is using for comment or reference, is spread before him, has a red binding, and rests upon a red stand with red legs, on the red- dish brown table with inlays. A few blacks connecting with the shadows, break this colour arrangement. As said before, the local colour of the flesh is carried out with extreme sim- plicity, and at a distance takes an illusive softness; near by, the execution, except on the large surfaces, of the dress, for instance, is a little hard and close, as if with the anxiety for careful study. Here and there we notice a slight indifference as to drawing, but in places where this looseness may help the illusion, or disappearance, or indistinctness. The infal- lible draftsmanship of Raphael is, of course, one of the conventions which we do well to ac- cept, because of its real meaning, which is not at all what pedantic upholders of his imitators would wish us to believe. Though there seems to be some repainting, in the simplicity and firmness of the paint- ing is felt the thickness and weight of each object. The softness of the body is felt under the simple sweep of brush that models the red dress. The thickness of the pages of the book, and the thickness and weight of the folded paper on which the Secretary writes, all this has a certain massiveness, as if the general structure had been thought of more than the less im- portant texture, but the result, the giving of the relative tone, suggests sufficiently the texture. These remarks are not the insisting upon small points, they are merely made to indicate the way and manner of this success, for the painting in any place would assume an import- ance it is entitled to. Such a portrait has the effect of a document like the records of Hol- bein, but with the splendor of poetic comprehension of a character understood as a whole, and not studied out in parts. The portrait painter in Raphael began to develop just before this moment, and he was no longer what he was when he painted years before in Florence, and delineated his facts one after the other. The very material of the painting has the look of having been run out of some vase and packed together by the brush. The result is an appearance of straightforward work, which is its cleverness. Every detail is uncompromis- ing, and the character of the subject as taught in the painting, agrees with what we know of the man, little as it is. We know little, but that little connects with and confirms the meaning of the portrait, if there could be any doubt. This secretary who writes is a type of the characters always attached to official life on a great scale. And he represents the “humanist,” the student of classic literature, the writer of beautiful Latin, necessary to the Court of the Church. Never 13 THE COLLECTION OF MRS after, not before, except for an important moment in the story of classical antiquity, has the importance of the rhetorician in actual practical life been so marked, so triumphant. The humanist in a certain way was, as is the press to-day, powerful by what he could say, and the importance of the people he could reach. And whatever jealousies, whatever rivalries might exist, the body of the humanists had to be counted with. Within the Church — be- cause they were necessary both to the use and the glory of their employers — they were only in part of it. At this distance of time, and with our views determined by the great changes of the Reformation outside of the Church, and of the Reformation within it, the external appearance of these literati is singularly pagan. But the imitation of the Antique in the bloom of the Renaissance, the adoration of all that might recall that past, the sudden value of printed speech, — the hope that through the use of the classic forms the glories of each ruler might go down to further ages, — concealed from even scrupulous minds the unfitness of pagan ex- pression to the meaning of the Church’s teaching. The last remains of this language linger in the official communications of the Papacy to this very day. Of such language Inghirami was a dispenser ; and his sermons were wont to charm their hearers in the Papal court. Not that he was merely a word dispenser; we have a slight record of the solid meaning he could impart, in the memorandum of his address to the Conclave at the time of the election of Julius 11 , September, 1 503. The Pontiff gave him the Prefecture of that Vatican Library, which his uncle Sixtus had founded. But before that he had been favored by the Popes. Of good family, an exile from his native Volterra, he passed to Florence, and thence to the service of the Popes, praised and recommended by Sadoleto and Bembo. Alexander the Sixth or- dained him in 1496, and sent him as an orator to Maximilian, whence he returned as Count Palatine and Poet Laureate. He helped Cardinal Riario, the nephew of Sixtus and the cousin of Julius, the extravagant and splendid, the clergyman who scandalized Rome with a retinue of three hundred horsemen, to realize the classical plays that the Cardinal wished to see. Therein he took the part of Phaedra, in the play of Hippolytus, by Seneca, so successfully as to have obtained and kept the name of Phaedra, which he accepts gravely and puts forth in the most serious record of his life. Thomas Phaedrus he is called by Burckhardt in the famous diary, where we expect scandal, but where quite proper Thomas Phaedrus preaches on great occasions “post Evangelium” — in that ringing and musical voice which Erasmus of Rotter- dam so greatly admired. This name of Thomas Phaedrus he seems to have placed himself in his other portrait, a fragment of a votive picture in the Sacristy of the Lateran. This was painted in 1516 and is dedicated to “Christo Salvatori” by “Thomas Phaedrus,” “periculo ereptus.” For the literary man had been run overby a wagon drawn by the wild buffaloes of the Campagna, while riding gently on his mule, perhaps reading his breviary ; in the pic- ture that gives the scene he holds the breviary in his hand. Thomas Phaedrus was a canon of the Lateran ; there he placed this votive image, a representation of his escape from death. But the results were more serious; and he died in that year of 1516, as is recorded in the book of the “ Misfortunes of Learned Men ” by Valeriano. The other portrait, the one we see here, comes from his own home of Volterra; perhaps it may have been painted by 14 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER the Sanzio as recognition of the composition of the many mottoes and inscriptions which adorn his frescoes; it would be but plausible that they came from such a learned and ele- gant source. An earlier archaeology, a more natural relation to the antique, however incorrect, than comes to us through the words of the humanists, such as Inghirami, we shall see in Botti- celli’s * ‘ Death of Lucretia, ” a fifteenth-century representation of Roman history. This panel, taken from a marriage chest (perhaps rather a panel in wall decoration), has also another name, “The Relations of Lucretia Swearing Vengeance Over Her Corpse.” We can see how well fitted for the decoration of the great ornamental box to contain the trousseau of the bride is the story of Lucretia, preferring death to remaining a dishonored wife. Per- haps even is it not too far-fetched to discern an intimation of the resenting affront to a bride, and of vengeance, historical and akin to the Italian feeling ? The story might be Florentine as well as Roman, and though we separate the mind of the middle ages from that of the Roman rule, we must not forget that the stream of feeling has run, disturbed but steady, from the earliest times of “low-lying” Italy to the present day. Our modern distinctions have obliged us to separate Paganism from Christianity, and to divide the feelings and ideas of men by different dates. Paganism is merely a name for a certain moment, and Christi- anity has gone on in that southern world, keeping many of the habits and forms of the earlier past, and making only an effort to clarify and uplift them. The little picture easily brings up this course of ideas. Indeed it is a clear exponent of the relation of Italy at that moment to its ancestral past. It has its date, most distinctly of what the Italians call the fourteenth, and we the fifteenth century. To the mind of its painter, this is what we would call a clas- sical representation. To our more cultivated and artificial training in archaeology, the paint- ing carries its correct date as if it belonged to the moment. The “classical ” buildings are all translations of Roman work, but subtly transfigured into proportions developed in the artistic minds of the day, and Botticelli perhaps, in many of his paintings or sketches taken from a pagan past, felt that he was representing that past in a thoroughly ancient manner. His “Venus Rising from the Sea,” his “Calumny of Apelles” (also perhaps, belonging to a “cassone” marriage chest), are, 1 believe, restorations of the antique. Not restorations in our modern accurate archaeological manner, but done with the security of the mind liv- ing among Roman remains, with many traditions and much old literature, and in a language so derived from the former tongues that it is a variation of the same, as these pictures are variations of the antique. Here, in the centre of the picture, really deciding it, in great part its pictorial subject, is a great triumphal arch, an imitation of Roman antiquity. Its white marble is coloured by dark bronze capitals and bases, and by great inlays of bronze bas-reliefs. The second story, the attic, has a mosaic ceiling. On either side of the Plaza are two buildings, also coloured. Right in the middle stands a column of red marble, capped again in black, making the white marble arch with its dark capitals and bases still more funereal. The building on the left, which occupies one third of the picture, has red marble in- side of white or gray for its architecture; that on the right, the same, but of a paler kind. »5 FILIPEPI, ALESSANDRO (called BOTTICELLI) 1447-Dio “DEATH OF LUCRETIA” Heavy panel, height 3234 inches, width 70 inches. I N the centre of the panel the dead body of Lucretia lies on a bier, the dagger with which she has committed her act of self-immolation still in her bosom. Above the body stands Brutus calling to his fellow- citizens for vengeance; his face expresses his feelings of horror and pity, his right hand brandishes a sword. Behind him rises a Corinthian col- umn which serves as the pedestal for a statue of the youthful David, Florence’s tutelary genius. Around Brutus his comrades throng in at- titudes expressive of grief and rage and of their eager response to his fiery words and his vows to exterminate the race of the Tarquins. The scene takes place in a public square surrounded by pseudo-classical porticos, with a very free representation of the Arch of Constantine in the background. The arch is decorated with reliefs, one representing Lucius Sccevola attempting to stab Porsenna at the door of his tent ; another, the same hero thrusting his hand into the flames. On the left of the picture at the entrance to a chamber, over which is portrayed in relief the incident of Judith and Holofernes, Sextus Tarquinius, dag- ger in hand, is seen preparing to offer violence to Lucretia ; while on the right, in a room surmounted by a representation in relief of Hora- tius Codes, the victim is seen as she falls dead in the arms of her hus- band. Collection of Lord Ashburnham, London. Purchased from Lord Ashburnham for Mrs. Gardner. Exhibition Early Italian Art, New Gallery, London, 1893-4. 16 BY MR JOHN LA FAROE There are bronze tablets of bas-reliefs inserted in the wall. The caps and bases are of bronze. Contrary to our present habits, this architecture is all coloured. We must re- member that it is only a rather forced view which has determined our direction of colour- less sculpture; even to the day of Michael Angelo the sculptures are coloured. If they are not painted they are treated in combination with architecture in coloured masses. The origin of the change is perhaps not very clear. It is connected with changes of taste, and with the archaeological attention paid to the ruins of the past, colourless from exposure. Also the problems of the sculptor and the painter become less and less necessarily coloured in Central Italian art. The destruction of the landscape feeling, the dropping of many prob- lems of painting, so as to carry out one view more thoroughly, are the marks of this pro- gression. At the time of Botticelli, and before him, the entire world was open to repre- sentation, and the painters’ inventions are complicated by every manner of representation. Hence, they remain coloured in the sense of noting the varieties of the details, which, of course, bring in innumerable fragments of colour study. But we are now here on the edge of the change, and parts of this astonishing attempt at representing all the facts of a scene, bring in charming solutions of the question of tone, and of placing objects in a light, and in an air which shall bind them together. On the left of our picture, within the door of the building, Tarquin with drawn dagger, is forcing Lucretia. On that side, the figures, fully coloured, are enveloped in half tone and shadow, with a few strong lights. The figures, therefore, detach in light and dark against the dark background. On the right, also in a recess, the figures are elegantly re- lieved against the light by a charming refinement of balance and feeling. There, Lucretia drops, in the faintness of death, into the arms of her friends. These two episodes then, make two great set scenes of architecture and tragic figure composition. As another re- finement, the building on the right comes right down to us and out of the picture, and the story is enclosed within an arcade. Lifted high, on the left, the building where the out- rage takes place is thrown back, and the steps that give access to it run down to the open place. The story is better told in that way, and the pictorial variety is used to explain the story. Between the buildings, and in front of the marble arch, is the representation of the ap- peal of Brutus for vengeance. Lucretia lies extended before us on her bier. Her head, with her hair thrown back, hangs over the edge. Her feet are bare, the dagger stands out from her bosom, and the idea of blood is carried out by the red lining of her green dress. Her white sleeves draw attention to the drooping hands and repeat the bare feet. She is placed at the foot of the great column in the centre, which suggests a statue suggestive of David and Goliath, the Florentine symbol, but which must perhaps be Perseus with the Gorgon’s head. At the foot of the column Brutus, with drawn sword, calls to his comrades for ven- geance. His deep red cloak flutters violently against the marble arch and the quiet land- scape seen through it. The violent gestures of the armored men surrounding the bier are theatrical in the sense of exaggeration, but the violence of the gestures is Italian. These gestures have not been co-ordinated by art. The rhythm of movement of the mass is broken >9 THE COLLECTION OF MRS up by the care of the individual studies. It is the Nemesis attending the difficulties of a realistic programme, insatiable of every point, and struggling with that higher view, that more poetic direction which tends all the time to a greater synthesis. Botticelli is a won- derful example of this struggle. This may be one of the reasons that has placed him within the sympathies and determined liking of the modern mind. We, too, are living in the world of realism and struggling to carry the whole of it along with our artistic wishes for unity and beauty of appearance. Perhaps in the painting this central mass of figures once had more clarity, more ap- pearance of a single movement such as, in the real realism of nature, exists amid the greatest confusion. Some of the colours, and there are many, may well have changed and all the shadows deepened. There are many colours: the armored Brutus in the centre is in a gold cuirass, with a blue skirt, red cloak and red stockings. On the extreme right there is a young man in red armor. The next, in a green jacket, has red drawers and blue mantle. Another older man, holding up his sword with his two hands, in a manner of withholding a blow, has blue armor and a pink skirt. The next has a red tunic and yellow hose. To the left, the next noticeable arrangement of colour is a young man with a red surplice over his gold armor, who holds his mouth and chin with the left hand in the well-known gesture of astonishment and attention. The line arrangement, which at times is gawky, is at places of extreme beauty of rhythm; as, for instance, in the arrangement of the group of three women behind the men, whose heads and shoulders are just seen above the bent backs of the angry crowd. In their colour also, the arrangement blends together. The one on the left, her face completely hid, her hands lifting her cloak against her face, is all in black. The next, gazing with piteous mien upon the dead, is in yellow, that cuts sharply against the gloom of the enveloped figure. Further on another presses her green drapery against her mouth with spread fingers, in a most beautiful arrangement of line, expressive of deep grief and retained emotion. The little fragment, alone, suggests a motive as fine as any on an antique gem. This mass then, of many colours, plays with some disturbance in an architectural landscape of remarkable beauty and reality. The tone of the distance in the sky is of exquisite delicacy, and its edges blend or separate above or below from the buildings, with a simplicity of early effort akin again to our modern attempts at rendering the open air. There are studies by “Father Corot,” made also in Italy, which are not far from these so very innocent studies of the modern problem. Far above, in the marble arch, the wealth of composition is continued through the bas- reliefs suggesting bronze. They are records of classical story, and perhaps worth studying in themselves, both as compositions telling the tale, and as a record of a moment’s manner of using the classical material lying about. A Nemesis of this care, typical of the difficulties of that moment in art, and of this group of men, comes in just at this place. A line of the bas-relief far away is taken up by the skirt of the statue which we might call a “David,” and the eye goes unfortunately to this trifle of bad taste in a work carried out with exceeding care. A later day would, even with a worthless artist, show enough skill to have escaped this trifling but annoying 20 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER failure, so small that as an optical effect it is curious that our eye should be carried to the place. An earlier, more mediaeval spirit, belongs to the small painting by Crivelli, of St. George and the Dragon. It is said to be a predella belonging to some altar-piece whose other frag- ments are scattered through Europe. It belongs to the period when Crivelli made much use of projections and bosses in modelled and gilded relief, and has his fascinating sugges- tion of fierceness and exaggeration. The St. George on horseback rides a gray horse that rears and faces the spectator in one of those foreshortenings which Crivelli undertook and carried out relentlessly. The Saint rises in his stirrups and turns to one side, striking with his two-handed sword at the dragon below him. The youthful face of St. George has the eager expression of enjoyment and skill in danger, that rightly belongs to him. His lips, set at the corners, show his teeth, as he half smiles at the loathly beast already speared and closing its eyes in agony. Right through the hanging jaw and into the long, snaky neck, the lance has pierced and broken. Its broken handle lies on the ground behind the horse's heels. The steed rears in obedience to the spur, against the rising dragon, and the blow will come down with the drop of the horse and the drop of the two arms. The whole composition leads up to the two hands grasping the handle of the sword, describing the weight of the blow to come. The loathly monster standing on its two legs, and stiffening its leath- ern wings, is made out with the unfailing persistence of Crivelli's art. The embossed and gilded ornaments of the trappings, the armor, the saddle and the sword, fit, in the usual manner of Crivelli, with the hardness of outline and the distinctness of every part. The town above the curious artificial rocks is distinct, and made out to every brick and stone. Its peaked masses are outlined harshly against the gilded sky and help to carry up the many upward lines that make the picture. The horse’s white tail flares up against a distant hill crowned with lofty Italian pines. At some angle in the arbitrary rocks kneels a little female figure, the lady rescued by the knight. Mr. Berenson has well called it a fairy story. The whole picture is gray; gray horse and grayish monster, gray city and neutral greens of grass and trees. On all these grays stand out the red trappings of the horse, the red bands on the barber’s pole of the lance, the red on the 'scutcheon, the red edge of the scabbard and St. George's sleeves, and the red jewel holding the gray feather which stands up from the little coronet around his hair. The gold embossing and the gilded sky pass soberly into all the mass of gray. Nothing could be more different from the solid mass of the portrait of lnghirami, whose deep red costume takes up the red of the brocaded wall on which it hangs, than the spring- like picture, the little Pieta in the same room. It is almost gay in the freshness of its colour- ing and the arrangement of its colours. It is, of course, the usual scene. The pale, dead Christ lies heavily on the knees of His Mother. He is more asleep than dead, and nothing on His body marks anything of the tragedy. The Mother's face, perhaps, has a steady ex- pression of grief, and the features of the other partakers of the scene have the look of com- miseration. St. John kneels gently and holds the body of the Christ, which otherwise would fall away from the Mother’s lap. His right hand presses against the upper part of 21 CRIVELLI, CARLO 1 43 ° (?)— 1495 (?) “SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON” Panel, height 36 inches, width i 8 tf inches. I N the centre of the composition and nearly filling the field, Saint George, as a young and beardless knight in full armor, mounted upon a rearing horse, raises his heavy sword with both hands to deal the dragon the final stroke. The monster, standing erect at the left on his two clawed feet and extending his leathern wings, closes his eyes as if anticipating his death, the head of the knight’s lance and part of the broken shaft having already transfixed his jaw and curved neck. Above him in the distance rises a precipitous rocky height, crowned by the walls and embattlements, the turrets and spires of a little hill town. Upon a ledge halfway up the curiously striated rocky cliffs, a young woman kneels in prayer. She may be a personification of the Church, or, more probably, the princess Cleodolinda, daughter of a mythical king of Cappadocia, whom, according to the legend, Saint George rescued from the dragon. To the right, a road leads away toward a distant group of Italian pines clipped into formal shape. The sky is of gold; the halo and armor of the Saint and his horse’s trappings, are modelled in gesso and gilded. The painting has the smoothness, the warm and rich brilliancy of an enamel. Part of a triptych painted for the altar of the church at Porto di Fermo (also called Porto S. Giorgio) on the Adriatic. Collection Frederick Richard Leyland, London. Collection Stuart M. Samuel, Liverpool. Sale Leyland, Christie’s, May, 1892, purchased by Mr. Samuel (£546). Purchased from Mr. Samuel for Mrs. Gardner. Exhibition, Royal Academy, Winter, 1882. Exhibition Venetian Art, New Gallery, London, 1894-5. 22 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE the arm of the dead Christ. His head also supports the otherwise falling head of the Saviour. The expressions are so gentle that the terrific contrast which would be there if treated from another point of view, does not come up to the mind. The gentleness of the story is the one feeling. One foot of the Saviour touches the ground ; the other is tenderly lifted by the hand of the Magdalene, kneeling almost prostrate on the right. She supports herself on her left hand, which is spread on the ground. Her hair falls to the ground in front and lies upon her back in a great mass. These, the principal actors of the scene, are placed upon an embankment that lifts them above the others, further back, who serve in the compo- sition as motives to arrest the flow of the lines. These stand rather stiffly on either side, their figures cut to the knee. The one next to John is Nicodemus ; he turns his head to look with pity upon the group of the Christ, the Mother and the disciples. His left hand seems to hold up his robe ; his right hand is poised in the air, with no particular apparent intention. On the right hand, behind the Magdalene, stands the other upright figure, Joseph of Ari- mathea, wearing a heavy gray turban, with a fold hanging down, accentuating still more the bending down of the head which is inclined toward the group of the Saviour, while the body is turned away. His hands are clasped with the same general intention, and pity and sympathy. Behind the figures various ultramarines make the sky and the distance, against which come out thin spring trees like those of Perugino. Two of them separate the stand- ing figure of Joseph from the group of the Mother and Son, and two others at each extreme side, right and left, frame the composition. Already in the early work of Raphael, of which this is an example, is seen the beginning of the master's placing. Light and unimportant as these accidents appear, they serve to con- fine the group and to insist upon our seeing more together the central figures. All the little painting is unpretentious. It is but a trifle, a panel in the predella at the base of the great altar at Perugia, painted in 1 505. In 1 505 the master was too important an artist, even as a youth of twenty-two or -three, not to be above the errors that we see in the little painting. It is, as it were, a sketch perfectly sufficient to fill the small space of semi-ornamental work, the panel of the predella. In those, however, many of the Italian artists have placed some of their most charming renderings of subjects. But that is merely the result of wealth of material or of power. The ornament could never be treated with the severity of the larger work in execution, unless as an exception — so that here we see Raphael in an unimportant, almost in a weak way. All the more does one recognize the difference of a poetic mind and the qualities of the great artist. The defects are apparent, but some of them are interest- ing as expressive of tendencies. The too large hand of the Madonna recalls Raphael's ten- dencies to a size of hand sufficient to count at a distance ; a habit or tendency which is also a manner of classical antiquity, wherein the opposite error never happens. So again, the Magdalene is on a double plane. Her knees are lower down on the ground than her hands, which are supposed to be on a lower level. And for that Raphael has changed the model- ling of the hand. The back figures are larger than the front, and the proportions of the limbs are unequal. It is doubtful what has become of the right hand of the Mother. At first, perhaps, it supported the Son. In such ways the entire little picture is full of errors, 25 THE COLLECTION OF MRS all the more delightfully sympathetic, because in our minds Raphael is a draftsman of great importance, and considered to be a model of classical correctness. The contradiction shows us how freely he has worked, and how he had, at this early moment, not yet acquired the habits which became his at the end of much experience. But the entire picture is charm- ingin its colour, in which, again, certain mismanagements imply that he had not acquired the complete notions of painting, of which, later, he will see sufficient examples. In the same way as with the forms, the defects of the colour arrangement are rather of the actual repre- sentation of the colour division, and though faulty separately, it is beautiful all put together. The heavy blue cloak of the Madonna in her deep red dress ; the St. John in yellow and red cloak ; the Magdalene in blue with red skirt or dropped mantle ; the Joseph in yellow dress and dark green cloak, and the pale ivories of the flesh, combine with the ultramarine background in a manner which altogether has the charm of sweetness ; the charm that be- longs to the impression of the young Raphael still attached to his early teachings; but really more himself in such a careless, personal expression. The great name attaches its prestige to the little panel. It seems fitting that the ro- mantic ex-queen of Sweden, Christina, should have fallen in love with it and carried it away from the nuns who held it in 1663. One hundred years before that date Vasari speaks of this little predella, which he says shows Christ lying dead in the lap of the Madonna. Of the whole work he says, that it was “without doubt very admirable, full of devout feeling and held in the utmost veneration by the nuns for whom it was painted. And very highly commended by all painters likewise.” We pass easily from Raphael’s Pieta as it stands on a little table by the window, to the Madonna and Child by Pinturicchio, which is just behind it, in a manner of modest physical relation, not so far from the intellectual relation also. It has been purposely, with special intent, placed just near the splendor of the greater man’s work, which, however, is intimately connected with that very important painter of a lower rank, whose influence or connection persisted throughout the illustrious, ‘ ‘ almost divine ” artist’s life. In the little tempera paint- ing, a few inches square, the touch, the movement of the brush, the method of the painting, the idea of placing, all belong to the school in which Raphael still was when he painted the little predella that stands in front of this one. At the time that it may have been painted, the teaching, or influence, came from Pinturicchio, or others of the place. The very choice of the shape of the hand of the Madonna, and the disposition of her long fingers, is carried through many other greater works. The subject is the usual one, of the Mother watching her Child. The little Christ, whose expression and shape of face are far in advance of the age implied by His smaller size and His make of body, sits upright in His Mother’s lap and reads out of a little book of a size so small as again to draw attention to this point, and to the fact that two or three fingers of His Mother’s hand are sufficient to support it. The Child is clad in violetish white and yellow tunic and little cloak. He reads attentively with the expression of a very much older boy. The Mother holds Him steadily upright with a cushion that rests in her lap. She presses her fingers against His arm, holding Him daintily with the ends of her fingers, and, as I said, also with the ends of her fingers she holds the 26 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER little book in place between the Child’s hands and His knees drawn up. Between the fingers and thumb of her right hand she holds some folds of the Child’s cloak. She watches Him, looking above Him slightly, with expression, but yet with a certain blankness which is the creation of the painter. Of course, she wears a dark blue cloak, embroidered with gold at places, and inscribed with the artificial Arabic, or Hebrew letters, affected by many painters of that period ; her blonde hair, almost white, escapes slightly from under a thin veil, just showing below the cloak that covers her head. Her dress is of a deep crimson, a band at the neck of dark blue, with the same artificial lettering. Behind her stands, or drops, the well-known feature in painting— a canopy. It is now all gilded, with a dark border that runs out of the picture. A parapet of violet red stone helps to divide the group from the distance on each equal side of the central canopy. The landscape distance and the sky, with thin trees and castle towers, is gawkily painted, but yet so as to be the making of the picture as a placing. There is the suggestion of out of doors in the rather dark blue and green tones of the sky and landscape ; the grays and whites, and the gradation of the line in sky are kept together in this blue tone, and throw the group of the Mother and Child, and the place in which they sit, with the gilded canopy behind them, into a manner of secret seclusion. The suggestion of interior light thus given, and of a gloomy exterior which still is under greater light, brings up the suggestion of the question of real painting, which is the presentation of light, and also the placing of objects by their general tone. The parapet also helps to divide the group from the distance, and to give it a real place. Through these successes the picture assumes an importance which does not properly be- long to its intrinsic merits as a spiritual expression, or even, perhaps, its much repainted execution. It indicates an influence under which the greater Raphael lived, and from which, later, he passed, in his impressionable manner, into something harsher, before he returned to the suggestion of tone and colour, brought again to his attention by other later masters or influences. It is impossible to describe the picture without expressing, in some way, a sense of its deficiencies, and yet the charm of its result is so great as to suggest a much greater mean- ing. The methods of tempera are distinct in this little panel, in the touch and in the brush- marks ; there are, perhaps, repaintings, which do not quite fit the original work, but the tone and connection of the colours make a pleasant example of the power of this weaker method of painting as compared with the necessary superiority of the more modern oil painting. One almost regrets, before the sweetness of the little painting, to have said any- thing that weighs its merits in a balance belonging to the judgment of the greater work. On the other side of the room, on the court side, below two interesting paintings of Baldassare Peruzzi, called portraits of the Princes of the Medici family, and representing imaginary heroes of antiquity in strange and decorative armor, hang two long panels by Pesellino. They have been long known, were attributed to another, but are now recognized as the work of this, one of the rarest of Italian painters, and are known as “The Triumphs of Petrarch,’’ though the text of Petrarch’s “Trionfi” is followed only for a moment in the paintings. 27 SANZIO, RAFFAELLO D’URBINO 1483-1520 “ PIETA” Panel, height 9# inches, width 11 % inches. T HE dead Christ lies across the knees of His mother, who is seated facing the spectator. St. John supports the upper part of the body of the Master, whose head rests against his face. Back of the Magdalene, who kisses the foot of Christ, stands Joseph of Arimathea; his hands are clasped, his turbaned head is turned toward the body. To the left of St. John, Nicodemus gazes sorrowfully at Christ. The delicate tracery of the branches and leafage of three young trees bal- ances the composition and gives depth to the background of sky and hills. One of five panels of the Predella of the altar-piece of Sant’ Antonio di Padua at Perugia. (Painted circa 1505.) Collection Queen Christina of Sweden. Collection Due d’Orteans, Regent de France. Collection Bonnemaison. Collection Count Carl Rechberg, Munich. Collection Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. Collection M. A. Whyte, Barron Hill. Collection M. H. Dawson. (Inherited from M. A. Whyte.) The Predella was sold to Queen Christina of Sweden in 1663 for 600 scudi. (The altar-piece was sold to Antonio Bigazzini in 1677.) Sale of remnant of the Orleans Collection, Bryan’s Rooms, London, 1800. (60 guineas.) Sale Sir Thomas Lawrence, May, 1830, to Seguier. (Z131.5.) Bought by P. & D. Colnaghi from M. H. Dawson. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Engraved ; in Crozat, No. 27, by Dr. Flos ; in Olof Granberg’s “ Gal- erie de la Reine Christine,” Plate XXIV. 28 BY MR JOHN LA FARCE The subject or motive is one found frequently both in painting and in sculpture during a certain period of Italian art, and is only indirectly connected with the name of Petrarch. We know how fond Italy became of such representations in public shows and ceremonies. We ourselves, fall naturally into similar manners of making a show of an ideal, in our pro- cessions, on Labor Day and such. Italian story is full of accounts of similar pageants. In- deed it is remarkable that we have relatively so few pictures of what must have been con- stantly in the memory of everyone. These panels were the painted decoration of marriage chests. Perhaps, indeed, they may have belonged to the household goods described in the Medici inventories, and may have been painted for the marriage chests of Piero de Medici and Lucretia Tornabuoni, somewhere about 1448. Their historical associations would thus fit them for the walls of this room, which are pages of history. The subject of “The Triumphs of Petrarch,” and of all the similar arrangements is ex- tremely simple, very edifying, and has the logic of the thought of the Middle Ages. In a physical, imaginary vision, Love, or rather Desire, rides in triumph with many followers, who are in a measure victims. Then Chastity, or Temperance, or the Right Guidance of Life triumphs over passionate Desire. But Death levels all our errors and our wisdom. After Death Fame survives and triumphs over Death. But time effaces all and nothing re- mains except what the other world can give. And the Triumph of Religion and its hope closes the logical sequence. The ideas are almost too great for the gentle representations of these amiable scenes, and the graceful talent of Pesellino is not sufficient to carry out in in- tensity the meanings of the subject. In some other representations of less known persons, something more important in the meaning has been occasionally reached. But here and there in these paintings the painter has risen to an indication of the meaning. The first panel begins with the Triumph of Love. Here, as Petrarch has told us, we see the victorious mas- ter of men driving his triumphal chariot in glory, as once the conquerors did in the Roman forum. Four horses drag it, “ white as snow,” and standing on the chariot of fire, which the painter renders innocently and weakly by flames of gold, stands the naked youth Love, with the bow in his hand, and at his hips the arrows against which neither shield nor helmet can avail. From his shoulders spread out two great wings of many colours, but otherwise he is absolutely naked, and the painter finds here the excuse and the advantage for an at- tempt at recalling classical nude figures that later shall become more accurate and more like the antique in form, but which shall never have again the charm of belief in the poetry and mystical meaning of pagan antiquity. And here we part from Petrarch’s vision. For he describes around the chariot innumerable mortals taken in battle and either killed or wounded by the piercing darts of Love. The poet tells us that knowing one of these shades less sor- rowful than the others, he was addressed by him and told that all this came through lov- ing. The painter has kept in the figures which accompany the chariot, a certain sadness of those whom fate has marked; but rightly enough they are unconscious of their being victims, and move gently and quietly in a cadence as of a dream. The landscape behind these figures is now dark and blackened, where blues and greens must once have been gay. The foliage and details of trees and plants are ingeniously and, 31 THE COLLECTION OF MRS indeed, beautifully rendered. In the entire colour of the groups, certain pinks and violet-reds help the balance of the groups, and long ago must have detached them still more from the landscape. The next group is separated by the narrowest possible distance from the proces- sion of the lovers, and the nearest ones are seen to notice, by uplifted hands, the triumph of the other idea which comes in next. Here, coming towards us, instead of passing in front of us, Chastity or Temperance rides on the well-known chariot drawn by two of the symbolical unicorns. Here the painter begins to leave the poet, who, indeed, is no longer the maker of images to be directly rend- ered. Lady Temperance, sitting on her car and holding a branch with a book in her lap, may or may not be the Lady Laura of the poem. The group of women encircling the car has the same gentle indifference of attitude that belongs to the first group of lovers, and they, perhaps, represent more closely, the emblematic figures of the poem. Here, as in the former group of lovers, there are no historic personages, such as fill the lines of Petrarch’s poem. But Love, as in his verses, is now bound at the feet of the Lady Chastity and bends a dejected head whose expression of humiliation is charmingly made out. As in the poem, some of the ladies accompanying the chariot now turn away. One of them carries the flag mentioned by Petrarch, “the victorious ensign, on a green field a white ermine.” They turn away; for they meet in the corner of the picture the beginning of the Triumph of Death, the two black buffaloes dragging a carriage whose shape recalls a tomb, upon which hangs a narrow black pall with the ornament of a white cross. Death stands in shortened, ragged drapery, with naked legs and arms and long wings, a rather aged woman with scythe on shoulder, and she steps forward as if about to leave her place. Behind her the sky has be- come wintry and the trees have lost their leaves. Below her are some of the dead; far from the words of the poet which tell us how the whole world is full of the dead, beyond what either prose or verse could tell. A raven has lit upon a rock and looks towards a naked body, which, with one or two others, represents the crowd which we know are the majority. Rightly enough, the painter gives but little of this part of the subject, and closes with this beautiful choice of composed lines, the end of his panel. Far off beyond the rocks, an el- derly woman with two attendants disappears. In the poem Death appears suddenly as an old woman draped in black, and this may be the reminiscence of the verses. At least it helps to turn the crowd away from the beginning of the passage of the car of Death and the track of the buffaloes. And rightly enough the artist has said as little as possible con- cerning the end of all earthly happiness in his painting, the decoration of a wedding gift. With the second panel comes the Triumph of Fame. Two white horses drag the chariot towards us wherein a few figures of more important character than those of former groups, represent the words of the poet, who saw “a noble crowd all together under the ensign of a great queen, whom each one loved and revered and feared ; and she, to see, appeared a thing divine ; and on her right hand had Cassar. ” In the picture she is seated within a frame almost as a picture, with a landscape of high mountains behind her and holding a globe in her hand. The frame in which she is represented, as a picture, is supported by brackets upon the body of the chariot. One of the horses coming towards us, stops to graze. Be- 32 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER fore them walk, out of the picture, two half-naked men representing the conquered. In the group are figures of soldiers and poets and judges, each one of which probably had once a name. Dante is there, and Virgil, and some oriental figure, who may indeed be Plato or Aristotle. They are holding a quiet converse together, and make the same mild gesture of approval which is repeated all through the figures of each separate triumph. Here the exe- cution of the painting, and the drawing, becomes more personal and of a larger intention ; a superiority which is felt still more in the further right-hand corner where gallop the elks that drag the chariot of Time — Time that effaces all and needs no attendance ; in fact, can have no witnesses of his putting an end to everything. Time here, is an old man, half reclining on a seat of remarkably ingenious invention. He has dark wings ; he holds a form of crutch in the right hand that hangs over his knee in a most elegant and beautifully drawn render- ing of position. Indeed, the whole figure has much dignity and is nearly the equivalent of some of the work of those greater men who influenced Pesellino. This noble influence is felt still more in the extreme right hand of the picture, which is separated by a perpendicu- lar from everything else. Two thick trees, perhaps symbolic, disguise part of this sudden transition. Up above, on a gold ground, reigns the Christ, lifting His hand in blessing. As might not have been expected, His face has a certain majesty and even sternness of ex- pression. The angels, who bend in adoration around Him, with very expressive gestures, again recall something of the fortunate influence of Fra Angelico. They are well worthy of his original teaching. Below the Christ and the court of angels, three bands indicate the spheres. Below them again, is the world of air and clouds in which float or stand two of the evangelical symbols, the Lion and the Eagle, each with his book. The other two are out of the picture far below the other side of the globe of the earth, of which we see a seg- ment, upon which are naive representations of buildings and trees, mountains and paths. But hereupon also are ships sailing on the sea, whose perilous edge hangs over into the sky in a childlike, but wonderfully poetic rendering. The long panels by Pesellino on the courtyard wall, represent a painter little seen out- side of Italy. On the west wall hangs a painting, strange out of its original Umbrian home, “The Annunciation," by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, which hung not long ago on the outer wall of the Portiuncola in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, at Assisi, the wall of the room where St. Francis died. The panel has warped under our climate, but the colour retains its clearness, and distinguishes the painting from all the others on the walls by a freshness that belongs to the very ideal of the subject. The very tone and colour arrangement of the picture have a charm quite by themselves, so that the impression of a gracious story is felt as soon as the eye rests on the surface of the painting. It is difficult to convey by words the fitness of this colouring to the choice of the subject. In a great hall, of which we only see a part— two arcadings and a corner of a vaulted corridor — the Virgin kneels to receive the words of the angelic messenger. We are very close to them ; they are just in front of the painting, and the frame, blue-gray with inside gold, painted by Fiorenzo himself, hides part of the draperies of both the figures. The angel kneels on one bent knee. He has hurried and his drapery falls in sudden but precise 33 BETTI, BERNARDO di BIAGIO (called IL PIN- TURICCHIO) 1454-DD “VIRGIN AND CHILD” Panel, height 12)4 inches, width 10 K inches. T HE Virgin with the Child in her lap faces the spectator. She is seated on a violet stone bench in front of a gilded baldaquino, her figure seen to the knees. The Child is clothed in a thin white and yellow tunic with violet reflections and a little cloak covers His shoul- ders ; He reads attentively in a book His mother holds before Him, lightly supporting it with her left hand while her right hand steadies Him on His cushion. Her head drooping towards the Child, her eyes look down with an infinitely gentle and rather apprehensive expression. The dark blue mantle which she wears forms a hood covering the white veil, from under which escapes a few tresses of her fair hair. Her dress is of deep crimson, girdled high. On the dark blue band at the neck and on the blue mantle are borders of strange letterings and on the left shoul- der the emblem of the star, all in gold. Her circular halo of gold appears against the gilded back of the canopy, and the Child’s halo is indicated by afloatingdiskofgolddots. On either side of the baldaquino is a land- scape background. On the right, a road winds toward a high arched bridge between masses of sun-touched shrubbery and past a single slender-trunked tree branching into feathery foliage ; on the left, a path climbs toward the imposing towers of a castle on the summit of a steep acclivity. Purchased for Mrs. Gardner from Sig. Costantini in Florence. BY MR JOHN LA FARCE arrest upon the marble floor. In one indifferent hand he holds the lily of the annunciation, and the other, with delightful stiffness, points with one finger to the upper places from which he has come. Or rather it is the motion of a finger repeating a lesson, a message which is partly an order ; and nothing in its simple way could be more real, without the addition of any unnecessary truthfulness. His very look, the steadiness of his eye, are proofs of the certainty of his message and almost of his habit as a messenger. The Madonna kneeling before him, may have been standing, and now have knelt for the message, so that her drapery falls into an arrested movement. She has hardly interrupted her book prayer. She listens just enough ; she listens with that special look which belongs to obedience, and only a little marking of the eyebrow may represent some manner of astonishment. Her face is the simple portrait of the reception of a message, as the face of the angel is that of the bearer of one. These two people are all by themselves in the big hall, and yet they are not solitary— they are only a little more out of the world. The hall looks cool in its many tones of white and gray. Black and gray and white are the colours of the pavement which stretches out into a far perspective, through a distant corridor and the beginning of a garden. Upon the white wall of the right corridor count the gray trims of the clear gray stone of Florence. Those doors are nicely closed. The privacy is increased instead of broken by their framings. Outside, beyond the central corridor, which technically and in pure decoration is the motive of the picture, a brick wall begins, indicating a court or a garden, and above it we see the sky. In the wall is set the pedimented portal through which we look into a far-away landscape of grass and trees and river and city and distant mountains— looking into all Italy, as was said by Professor Norton. Against, or rather within these harmonies of black and gray and white, are disposed the colours of the figures. Gray white, as if of velvet, in the angel’s dress, with blue velvet for his sleeves ; his mantle a rose-red with green lining ; his wings of that special gray of feathers, against the gray of the walls. And the Madonna is in a rose-coloured gown, deepening into crimson in the shades, according to the ancient Italian recipes for indication of modelling and shadow. Her mantle is of a deep greenish blue, certainly darkened by time, with dark green lining. Her veil is white and blends with what little is seen of her fair hair. Here and there a very little gold is used in ornamental embroidery, keeping up the old tradition, but rather more to help than to bring it back. Every part of the colouring is so connected, that, as I said before, it helps to make the picture. The grays and browns of the place, as well as the tints of the dresses and the tones of the flesh, are all in relation so delicate and so naive as to evade description. Hence, perhaps, the photograph, however successful, will always some- what misrepresent the impression of the painting. Throughout, this charm of colour blends with the realistic representation of every detail. In the same way the apparently average faces become beautiful through their accuracy and simplicity of rendering. They have the singular quality of seeming only transcripts of some certain people, and yet of being representations of what is almost an ideal. The entire picture has this same connection with what our mind always insists upon as opposite qualities. One feels the pleasure that the painter must have taken in his successful rendering of what 37 THE COLLECTION OF MRS he already knew well, and what had been done before him, and of the triumphant novelties he has introduced: among others the using of the open door or portico, as the key of his composition, and its being really open, and there being seen through the smallest opening of the picture the great landscape behind it. This great and novel mechanical triumph, carried out in patience and in calm, has in itself the charm of something that is not physical. It conveys to the mind the beauty of all open doors that look into far-away countries. We remember how the old Florentine painter, Paolo Uccello, said, waking up his wife at night to listen, “What a sweet thing is this perspective ! ” For to these men of the day the dis- coveries of scientific perspective were full of promises of what could be done in a future, that should leave behind it the flat surfaces of older masters. All the parts of the picture represent the new discoveries that belong to the period. They predict in their way what others will make of them; and among these others the pupils of Fiorenzo — Pinturicchio and Perugino — and through him even the Divine Raphael. And Lorenzo lived long enough to outlive all of these pupils, and even the very last, the pupil of his pupils. How far distant from these beginnings, and yet how well derived from them, must have seemed to him the work of the master of Urbino, such as in this very room hangs upon the opposite wall. And yet he must have felt that in its older way his work was perfect, that nothing could be added to it. The testimony of his pleasure in its rendering tells us that. And we can follow his mind through all these gentle triumphs. Everything in the picture is important, from the expression of the faces to the long distance of the marble floor. And we can imagine how pleased the painter was with the manner in which the pattern of that marble unites at the very front of his picture, enclosing within its first lozenge the blue drapery of the Madonna and the rose folds of the angel’s cloak, in a triumph of composition and a fair reward of his ingenuity. Wherever one may have seen a painting by the blessed Fra Angelico in a museum, the first sensation is that of the unfitness of the place. One has that, more or less, for all man- ners of paintings in the enforced collections that we call museums, but there are some whose intention and meaning of retirement from the world, of being meant for the privacy of church, or chapel, or cloister room, is so distinct as to force upon us their being out of place. Here the “ Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin,” by Fra Angelico, placed alone in the recess of a window, keeps its look of being a manner of reliquary. It was so once, and originally formed the principal decoration of one of the little shrines for relics, which it was custom- ary to place on the high altar of Santa Maria Novella in Florence upon days of great festivals. There were three more and they remained in Florence. We know about them, that they were painted through an order from a pious Dominican monk of that church, and that they were painted early in the painter’s lifetime. But however early this one, “The Death and Assumption of the Virgin,” may be in the pious master’s work, it has the look of complete mastery, except in the types where Fra Angelico usually hesitates a little, with an indecision suggestive of a respectful doubt as to his capacity of rendering. That is to say, in the images of the Christ and of the “Eternal Father," above. Otherwise each head is clearly defined in character and in drawing. In the lower division, where the gold panel of the 38 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER picture is divided to receive the two subjects, there against the gray wall, the characterizing of the actors of the story is carried very far. It is certainly less beautiful than the upper part, which is essentially an expression of the painter’s control of dreamland. But besides the fitness of arrangement, as representing the earth in relation to the heaven above, where the Madonna floats in the glory of her Assumption, the story is perfectly told. Some of the apostles have reverently put down the bier of the Virgin, on which she is stretched out at full length. Their hands still hold the poles. Two of them, with out- stretched hands, but with great quiet, make some gesture of warning for the setting down of the bier. At its head, Peter, in priest’s vestments, reads the Church’s prayers. Two of the saints, one young, one old, listen to him and make responses. The others look up, or con- trariwise, look down with gentle sadness, upon the face of the Virgin. None of them is aware that right among them stands the figure of Christ, holding in His arms the little child form, by which ancient art typifies the soul of the departed. The slight childishness of exe- cution is transferred into something beautiful through the sweetness of feeling, and the im- plied timidity of the artist’s rendering. This is the “ Dormition of the Virgin,” as it is techni- cally called in the description of the subject in ancient art. She has gone to sleep in death and waked at once, and therefore, the title is not that of death but dormition — going to sleep. Above in the gold sky, beyond the long wall which encloses that lower part of the picture, the Virgin rises in long robes of light blue and white, half standing, half floating on clouds, some of which blow across her and which are all of the same pale blue as her drapery. Below, on the earth which she has left, the Christ is also dressed in a similar blue. These are the only blues of exactly that tone, and they serve to connect both the idea and the figures of the Mother and the Son. The Madonna is now in immortal youth. The ecstasy of happiness lifts her hands, and to this rhythm moves around her a swirl of angels in a joy- ous dance, singing and playing on many instruments. They are dressed in blues and pinks and violets and reds and greens, in a gay chord of light colours. Many of them are so blonde that their hair is lighter than their very pink and white faces. Little red flames rise from their heads. Their gold wings are diapered with butterfly tones of many colours, for all this painting is like a piece of goldsmith’s work, painted on gold and gilded and embossed and engraved in the gilding. Nothing else could give the unreality in which they float. This unreality expressed in form notwithstanding, has been the secret of Fra Angelico beyond even the other few religious painters who have been able to give us the vision of an impos- sible dreamland. The flower look of the colours seems a part of the essence of these crea- tures of light and air. The suggestion of absolute purity and innocence is fixed on the smiling faces, with lines as firm as those of the graver that has cut the golden ornaments of their dresses and the outlines of their wings. Above the glory of gold, in which floats the Virgin and dance her attendant angels, is seen the figure of the Eternal Father sustained by cherubs in a haze of blue marked with gold. His hands are extended downwards in wel- come. Here of course, the artist’s representation has weakened in the arbitrary character of the idea. But no deficiencies can injure the beauty of the feeling, or even of the execu- tion, of this exquisite work, so completely representing the ideas associated with the shrine 39 FIORENZO DI LORENZO 1 45°(?) — 1 5 2 1 (?) “ANNUNCIATION” Panel, height 39 s/s inches, width 45 % inches; including frame painted by the artist, height 60 inches, width 61 '/t inches. T HE Virgin and the Archangel kneel facing each other. They are seen in profile in an inner paved court, the early Renaissance architecture of which is most carefully designed; the converging per- spective of the pavement contributing in a curious manner to the dig- nity of the figures. The Virgin, her rose-colored robe almost concealed by the ample folds of her deep greenish-blue mantle, her face framed in the thin folds of a delicate, almost transparent veil, kneels on the right of the picture. A border of delicate embroidery, in which are traces of gold, follows the edges of her mantle, which almost meets that of the angel in the centre of the pavement. She holds in her left hand a small book or breviary in which she reads attentively, as though unaware of the presence of the celestial bearer of glad tidings. The gray-winged angel, clad in gray-white tunic with dark blue velvet sleeves, partly covered by the folds of the rose-red outer garment, faces her with one knee bent in reverential greeting. The forefinger of the raised right hand points upward, while between the finger and thumb of the left hand is held upright the staff of lilies. Above the two figures, and descending directly toward the head of the Virgin, is the symbolic dove. The capitals of the columns supporting the arcade and vaulted roof behind the Virgin are of the composite order while the marble pave- ment of the foreground and of the long corridor which leads to the en- trance doorway in the background, is of squares set in a geometrical pattern. Through this open door, at the end of the corridor, and in the exact middle of the scene, is seen a peaceful landscape bathed in sunshine. Against the darker tones of the architectural background the more positive colors of the figures complete a strong and delicate harmony. From the outside wall of Portiuncola, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. 40 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE for which it was made. Its rarity, the improbability of its being where it is, make it as im- portant as the great Raphael or the glorious Titian which adorn the walls of the Italian rooms. On the wall, a little above the table, where rests the Fra Angelico, is a “Sacred Con- versation,” a pastoral scene by Mantegna. The strange severity that so rarely leaves him still persists in this picture of sweetness and light. The scene is by a riverside, near which occur in the distance various scenes of Christian legend, of many dates and of many coun- tries. In the foreground, filling almost the entire space, sit a group of women and two naked children, perhaps fresh from the bath, the Infant Christ and the infant John. It is like a family party or a number of friends well accustomed to each other’s company. Arbi- trary as the subject is, perhaps made in answer to some demand for special names, the fig- ures sit together in a unity as if of customary habit. Many times has a similar problem been given to painters, great and small, in periods when people wished to have their patrons in heaven represented together, and many and beautiful are the combinations and arrangements and excuses for getting the holy company into some plausible relation. Here in almost a conventional and frigid arrangement, the sense of life of the painter, his feeling for the entire scene, has combined the separate characters in what seems an unpremeditated arrangement. It is all the more convincing on that account, all the more looks as if it had happened, hav- ing been taken from an actual sight. The Madonna sits in the middle, facing us, and looks gently down in an abstracted way upon, or rather towards, the little Christ who stands between her knees, His bare feet pro- tected by her cloak, upon which He stands. His right foot rests upon hers, and forms the start of all the many folds which run through her drapery, and determine the arrangement of the draperies of the several figures to the right of the Virgin. For the picture with all its naturalness, is a learned composition, and a beautiful study of the arrangements of folds, ex- pressing the movement of the body and the character of the individual. The Madonna’s dull blue mantle, lined with black, that frames her head in dark and makes it at once most important, has large, soft folds, benign and gentle. St. Anne, her mother, alongside of her, drawing up her hand to close her cloak upon her bosom in a manner suggestive of feeling, but also of that protection necessary to age, wears a gray, ascetic cloak, covering also her head and falling in many folds of a certain severity, contrasting with the more gentle fall of the Madonna’s dress, or with the simple gown of Mary Magdalene alongside, whose frock is merely twice girdled and is all of one blue colour. The Magdalene’s drapery shows her form in a certain simplicity of meaning and attitude, which the face above carries out. She, and all but one of the women of the group, look with varieties of meaning and expression at the Divine Child. The Magdalene’s hand and arm rest in her lap, abstractedly, and she holds a little pyx of red and gold, which is her symbol. Near her, on the edge of the picture, sits some other saint, in much more worldly dress, in some dress more or less of the period, with hair in curls down her cheeks and in a net behind, whom we only see in part and whose face expresses a quiet interest in the Child and the Mother. But she also appears to listen, with pressed lips, to the saint in the absolute foreground, who reads, perhaps aloud, for her 43 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE for which it was made. Its rarity, the improbability of its being where it is, make it as im- portant as the great Raphael or the glorious Titian which adorn the walls of the Italian rooms. On the wall, a little above the table, where rests the Fra Angelico, is a “Sacred Con- versation,” a pastoral scene by Mantegna. The strange severity that so rarely leaves him still persists in this picture of sweetness and light. The scene is by a riverside, near which occur in the distance various scenes of Christian legend, of many dates and of many coun- tries. In the foreground, filling almost the entire space, sit a group of women and two naked children, perhaps fresh from the bath, the Infant Christ and the infant John. It is like a family party or a number of friends well accustomed to each other’s company. Arbi- trary as the subject is, perhaps made in answer to some demand for special names, the fig- ures sit together in a unity as if of customary habit. Many times has a similar problem been given to painters, great and small, in periods when people wished to have their patrons in heaven represented together, and many and beautiful are the combinations and arrangements and excuses for getting the holy company into some plausible relation. Here in almost a conventional and frigid arrangement, the sense of life of the painter, his feeling for the entire scene, has combined the separate characters in what seems an unpremeditated arrangement. It is all the more convincing on that account, all the more looks as if it had happened, hav- ing been taken from an actual sight. The Madonna sits in the middle, facing us, and looks gently down in an abstracted way upon, or rather towards, the little Christ who stands between her knees, His bare feet pro- tected by her cloak, upon which He stands. His right foot rests upon hers, and forms the start of all the many folds which run through her drapery, and determine the arrangement of the draperies of the several figures to the right of the Virgin. For the picture with all its naturalness, is a learned composition, and a beautiful study of the arrangements of folds, ex- pressing the movement of the body and the character of the individual. The Madonna’s dull blue mantle, lined with black, that frames her head in dark and makes it at once most important, has large, soft folds, benign and gentle. St. Anne, her mother, alongside of her, drawing up her hand to close her cloak upon her bosom in a manner suggestive of feeling, but also of that protection necessary to age, wears a gray, ascetic cloak, covering also her head and falling in many folds of a certain severity, contrasting with the more gentle fall of the Madonna’s dress, or with the simple gown of Mary Magdalene alongside, whose frock is merely twice girdled and is all of one blue colour. The Magdalene’s drapery shows her form in a certain simplicity of meaning and attitude, which the face above carries out. She, and all but one of the women of the group, look with varieties of meaning and expression at the Divine Child. The Magdalene’s hand and arm rest in her lap, abstractedly, and she holds a little pyx of red and gold, which is her symbol. Near her, on the edge of the picture, sits some other saint, in much more worldly dress, in some dress more or less of the period, with hair in curls down her cheeks and in a net behind, whom we only see in part and whose face expresses a quiet interest in the Child and the Mother. But she also appears to listen, with pressed lips, to the saint in the absolute foreground, who reads, perhaps aloud, for her 43 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE for which it was made. Its rarity, the improbability of its being where it is, make it as im- portant as the great Raphael or the glorious Titian which adorn the walls of the Italian rooms. On the wall, a little above the table, where rests the Fra Angelico, is a “Sacred Con- versation,” a pastoral scene by Mantegna. The strange severity that so rarely leaves him still persists in this picture of sweetness and light. The scene is by a riverside, near which occur in the distance various scenes of Christian legend, of many dates and of many coun- tries. In the foreground, filling almost the entire space, sit a group of women and two naked children, perhaps fresh from the bath, the Infant Christ and the infant John. It is like a family party or a number of friends well accustomed to each other’s company. Arbi- trary as the subject is, perhaps made in answer to some demand for special names, the fig- ures sit together in a unity as if of customary habit. Many times has a similar problem been given to painters, great and small, in periods when people wished to have their patrons in heaven represented together, and many and beautiful are the combinations and arrangements and excuses for getting the holy company into some plausible relation. Here in almost a conventional and frigid arrangement, the sense of life of the painter, his feeling for the entire scene, has combined the separate characters in what seems an unpremeditated arrangement. It is all the more convincing on that account, all the more looks as if it had happened, hav- ing been taken from an actual sight. The Madonna sits in the middle, facing us, and looks gently down in an abstracted way upon, or rather towards, the little Christ who stands between her knees. His bare feet pro- tected by her cloak, upon which He stands. His right foot rests upon hers, and forms the start of all the many folds which run through her drapery, and determine the arrangement of the draperies of the several figures to the right of the Virgin. For the picture with all its naturalness, is a learned composition, and a beautiful study of the arrangements of folds, ex- pressing the movement of the body and the character of the individual. The Madonna's dull blue mantle, lined with black, that frames her head in dark and makes it at once most important, has large, soft folds, benign and gentle. St. Anne, her mother, alongside of her, drawing up her hand to close her cloak upon her bosom in a manner suggestive of feeling, but also of that protection necessary to age, wears a gray, ascetic cloak, covering also her head and falling in many folds of a certain severity, contrasting with the more gentle fall of the Madonna's dress, or with the simple gown of Mary Magdalene alongside, whose frock is merely twice girdled and is all of one blue colour. The Magdalene’s drapery shows her form in a certain simplicity of meaning and attitude, which the face above carries out. She, and all but one of the women of the group, look with varieties of meaning and expression at the Divine Child. The Magdalene's hand and arm rest in her lap, abstractedly, and she holds a little pyx of red and gold, which is her symbol. Near her, on the edge of the picture, sits some other saint, in much more worldly dress, in some dress more or less of the period, with hair in curls down her cheeks and in a net behind, whom we only see in part and whose face expresses a quiet interest in the Child and the Mother. But she also appears to listen, with pressed lips, to the saint in the absolute foreground, who reads, perhaps aloud, for her 43 THE COLLECTION OF MRS mouth is open and a slight movement of the face seems to indicate something more than silent absorption in a book. It is a charming figure, the face very much turned away from us, the hair fastened with ribbons, the long neck and shoulders pale and bare, emerging from a dress of rather complicated fashion, a green overdress, an underdress of violet red and undersleeves of white. Her skirts spread out upon the rock on which she sits. In the careful folds, dear to Mantegna, her dress, like that of all the others, is finished most care- fully, with lights put in in gold, making at a distance for her, as with all the others, a peculiar bloom of indescribable variety. The refinement of the work is like that of a miniature. Under these surfaces of colour and modelling there are various underpaintings, from which, in places, the last surfaces have disappeared, so that only in a few of the figures does the red flush, which was above, remain. Perhaps some attempt at cleaning or retouching or repairing may have brought this about. This paleness and consequent monotony injures somewhat the general harmony and the appearance of reality. For all its appearance of conventionality to our modern eyes, this painting is a construction of reality. It is thought of in the manner of construction as Mr. Berenson has ingeniously shown in some of his criticisms of the master. The art of painting in its methods of that time, tended often to an enforcing of outline which was not so much in the real meaning of our artist. This is emphatic in the figure of the saint reading in the foreground, whose figure is modelled like a statue, and in the St. Anne from whom a statue could well be built. And so for the landscape which spreads behind the figures. This is made out in its modelling of flat spaces and rising ground, as if with an intention of leading the spectator into a wish to wander through a land that is full of stories. Not very far off, stepping away from a beach, marked by many curves, St. Christopher carrying the Infant Christ on his shoulders, crosses the ford indicated by piles rising from the water, and distant figures await him near the continuation of a peaceful road on the further bank. There gallops St. George in full armor on such a heavy horse as knights rode in action. With his long lance he is about to strike the Dragon crouching behind rocks upon a little green sward, where lie the skulls and bones of victims. These fragments of human life are made out with a care for detail unappeased. The Dragon himself is a mar- vel of constructed invention. His great leather wings, the marking of his spine, his curved beak, are all studies as if for a big scale of design. Further on, runs the road up the hill and round the enclosure of a peaceful orchard, fronting still higher ground, also studded with trees wherein is laid out the scheme of what might be a great garden in Italian ways. And further back, crowning the hill, a mass of buildings, palaces perhaps, make a city of arcad- ings and pyramids, with perhaps an aqueduct, and the classical front of a temple. The foot of a fortress and out-flanking towers close the scene, before it passes into higher rocks, crowned also by other castle buildings. Far beyond the hills, a sky interwoven with cloudy forms that melt at the top into the rendering of the more distinct outlines of the upper fields of air. On either side of the river rise high and strange rocks. On our side the rocks rise suddenly, closing in the garden feeling that belongs to the name of the Madonna (Hortvs Clavsvs), and to the idea of a Sacred Conversation. Trees, indistinct with wear of time, but 44 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER with defined trunks, stand by the great rock that towers to almost the top of the painting. Therein midway is a cavern of two openings. In one, Saint Jerome, long-bearded, kneels before a tall crucifix, and bares his bosom to strike it with the stone of repentance. In the other cavern, his friend, the lion, watches him attentively. Higher up again, on a platform, nearanother openingof cavern, St. Francis, on the very verge, stands in excited attitude before the winged crucifix of the legend, the vision from which he obtained the wounds of his Saviour. Some way nearer, a monk with his back turned, waits patiently and without see- ing the miraculous scene. One is reminded of the lovely sacred conversation attributed first to Basaiti, and later to Bellini, where outside of the closed garden occur far-away scenes of the saints of the desert, emphasizing the perpetuity of the Church, the living continu- ance of the relations of the saints in heaven with us of to-day, and the idea that all these accidents of time and place are but the events of a moment in the scale of eternity. For whom these many incidents were painted we do not know. As in similar cases, this placing of many saints is probably owing to the wish of the client. Never should we forget that the mass of the religious paintings are what the French call “objects of piety; ” especially were they so at such a period, and were ordered and carried out to fill a business need of the moment. As our eyes come down again to the nearer painting, we feel all the more perhaps, the presence of the two saints, the one seated, the other kneeling at the right of the picture. The one nearer the Madonna looks pensively at the Infant Christ, having interrupted her reading and waking up from her dream. In front of her moves the little infant Baptist as if he had just come from his bath; he offers some flowers to the other Child, resting his hands on the Virgin’s knee. He does this with a gentle action of supplication and an up- ward look of the eyes, that the Divine Child meets in the manner of a young lord accus- tomed to worship. In fact, the reminiscence of the antique which, in so many other paint- ings of Mantegna is a keynote, here perhaps, and only in this place, fittingly marks the cen- tral figure. Quite to the right a kneeling saint in a very modern costume, that of the period, of course, kneels and looks down, scarcely seeing the Infant Saviour, to whom she prays, however, with hands pressed one against the other. Those hands and arms close the ar- rangement on that side of the picture, and we feel that there is nothing more, even outside the frame. These last dainty figures, a little stiffened both by the intention of the master in expressing their gentle motion, and by the accuracy of the detail of the folds of their dresses, are clothed in dull violet, with a scarf of pink and redder shadows for the reading figure. The other further to the right, is in an exquisite gray, very neutral ; her sleeve is of velvet, with blue under-jacket and blue linings, and an upper sleeve of reddish gold bro- cade. The exquisite tone of the drapery has been obtained by a silver underpainting, upon which the many folds are painted, and then again the lights, as in all the figures, have been retouched with silver and gold. The mention of these bright metals does not mean that their use attracts the eye. They are merely used as pigments, as a manner of getting cer- tain delicacies of light and texture. On the contrary the effect is rather dull and neutral and the richness is sombre. Age, perhaps, has done much in that way, and some careless- 45 FRA GIOVANNI DA FIESOLE (II Beato Angelico) 1387-1455 “THE ASSUMPTION AND DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN” Panel, height 24^ inches, width 15^ inches. T HE picture is divided horizontally into two unequal portions. The lower, predella-like, represents the “Dormition”; above it is the “Assumption.” In the upper part of this larger and more im- portant composition, Christ surrounded by Cherubim, leans down with outstretched hands in welcome to His Mother, who is seen ascending through the heavens. Clad in long, flowing robes, her hands crossed in humble adoration, and with an expression of ineffable joy, she prepares to enter the embrace of her Son. Angels surround her; six of these float above her playing musical instruments, while five stand- ing on each side, and four others kneeling below, complete a scene full of chaste, airy grace and movement. Aureoles of golden rays surround the Virgin and Christ, and the heads of the angels are en- circled with golden halos. The angels’ wings, too, are of gold, and their garments enriched with golden ornamentation, while the sky is of solid gold, overlaid with horizontal, fleecy clouds. The color throughout is extremely fresh and brilliant. In the “Dormition ” four saints, their hands still grasping its poles, have just laid down the bier on which the Virgin lies with folded hands, her form completely shrouded by the long cloak, her face of supreme calmness. Four lighted candles in tall holders stand around the bier, while behind it are other saints and apostles, Saint Peter at the head reading the office for the departed. Christ stands in the centre and somewhat promi- nently to the front, holding in His arms the soul of the Virgin, sym- bolized by a little child. The background of the “Dormition” is a flat neutral tone, against which the strong colors of the costumes, the gold halos and the candle-holders stand out boldly. Collection of Lord Methuen. Purchased by P. & D. Colnaghi, who sold it to Mrs. Gardner. 46 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE ness or rubbing, or perhaps some cleaning. The picture has had an experience of travel; carried away a good many years ago from its place in Spain, perhaps hurriedly, it passed from royal hands as a gift to the noble owner who preceded Mrs. Gardner. The memory of another Christina, another exile out of touch with her country, is brought to us here. The Pieta of Raphael was carried off through purchase, as we know, by Christina of Sweden. All here is full of memories, but in those two special cases there might be something more than the mere love of a work of art; there might be something of the religious attachment which certain paintings, certain sculptures, give to their owners. Above, on the next floor, another room like this “Raphael Room” bears the name of another great painter of Italy. It is called so from the great Titian, “The Rape of Europa,” which hangs on the same wall as the portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez. For another Spanish King, another Philip, Phillip II, Titian painted what he so well called “a poesy of the fable of Europa carried by the Bull.” Another Philip, Philip V, let it pass as a gift into France. This is another record of the relations between Italy and Spain, when the Spanish Empire had laid its hold on the many smaller independencies. It marks also that relation of Spain to the art of painting through which the names of the great foreigners, Titian and Rubens, connect with those of the illustrious Spaniards who “carried on the banner,” when Italy and Flanders had begun their decline. — I am quoting the words which the Venetian painter-poet puts into the mouth of Velasquez when he makes him say: “For me it is Titian who carries the flag.” “Che porta la bandiera.” (Bandini, ‘Navegar pittoresco. ’) — The great flag of Titian waves triumphantly in the “poesy of Europa and the Bull.” It is later work, and the great swing of line and form and colour, suggested to the imagination of the painter, is rolled out through the figures of the woman, and the beast, and the red drapery floating above her, into the sky and the landscape. No longer, as in the earlier paintings, is the story placed within a landscape chosen for its beauty and its fitness, yet existing by itself and having its own beauty, its own accuracies. Here everything is connected; as it were, swept together. That delicate past of realistic inquiry in which the early Titian lived and painted along with the men of the end of the fifteenth century, is gone. The painter is now in the full flood of the later Renaissance. Its principles and its ambitions are here splendidly illus- trated. The decoration is interwoven with the representation of fact, so as to be insepar- able. When the mind reverts to that earlier poesy of “Bacchus and Ariadne,” the distance between the aims of the painter marks, in each case, the space passed over in the history of painting. The “Europa” belongs not only to the maturer development of the painter, but also to that result of the social and political and artistic unity which ends the more individual ex- pression of an earlier Italy. The more modern world is expressed in the generalization of the riper method. We, to-day, have not gone any further in that direction. On the con- trary, the mind of to-day looks back with sympathy, if not with understanding, to earlier and more realistic expressions which appeal to our own efforts at realization. All the more splendid, perhaps, is the existence of such a unity in this great painting; whatever careful preparation of underpaintings there has been, however much previous study, disappears in THE COLLECTION OF MRS the flow of modelling and of colour. The one feeling inside of the richness and glow of colour, is that of a rapid movement, really an escape and a carrying away. In a moment all these figures of Europa and the Swimming Bull, and the pursuing cupids, would have passed out of the picture, with the running clouds and the waves, out of our sight and that of the frightened women who spread out their arms in despair in the indefinite distance. But the rush is held within the beautiful lines of an adjusted composition. The figures can stay forever there, without the mind wishing to have the story carried out. Nature suggested, and art realized, are here inexplicably fused together. The heavy Venetian form of Europa, in a thin robe veiling the flaccid softness of her body, is stretched over the side and back of the gentle gray bull, whose motion in swimming breaks up the ripples and foam into lines of pursuit, as he plows his way through the water. Europa grasps one horn of the flower- crowned head of the kindly beast, with a motion imaginary but poetic, as if afraid of slip- ping away. In a similar manner she throws up her right arm and in her hand flutters the scarf of old rose passing into red, which marks the Titian likings. Its glow passes into her face, and the rosy sensation is felt through all the colours that come near it. Behind her spreads a blue and green landscape, and an enveloped sky, in which swim two cupids, with bow and arrow, pursuing her, with the same look of triumph that attends her being carried off. Their outstretched arms and legs repeat a pattern in the air that meets the opposing lines which belong to Europa and the Bull; the outstretched leg, the outstretched arm of Europa, and the neck and shoulders of the Bull. The implied learning and skill of the pattern are hidden, as so often with Titian and with Rubens, under glories or felicities of form and modelling and colour and reality, which prevent our minds appreciating the decorative ar- rangement that holds all this together. The little cupid clinging to a brown, herring-coloured dolphin, near us in the foreground, continues the line of flight of the greater group, and re- peats in a small way the motion of Europa and the Bull. He is like a little boat towed in the swell of the larger figures. His little wings have again the markings of Titian’s likings, as well as those of his flying companions in their dark browns and greens, outlined here and there with light. We have on record the admiration felt by Rubens for this painting, which he copied, ‘translating it into Dutch,’ as an enemy has said, and his splendid copy remains in the Gallery of Madrid. The painting has other associations, which in the case of such an ex- ample of the art of Venice, may well be recalled. It was, it is said, to have been one of the presents intended for Charles Stuart of England, the lover of paintings, had he carried out his intention of marrying the Infanta of Spain, after his romantic visit there with Bucking- ham. It has been owned by the Duke of Orleans, and its leaving France is the mark of that epoch which scattered more than paintings throughout the countries of Europe. The triple poetic associations make the wall historical. On the other side of the door, the light falls unevenly on the Velasquez, which is the usual portrait of Philip IV, erect, standing by a table, and holding in his hand the usual letter or note half folded, as we have seen him in other examples. Even in the poorer light the painting has the unity of impression which belongs to the master. Within the grays 50 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER and blacks and browns we see the well-known face, illustrious on account of Velasquez, but having its own character — that of a gentleman, of a person accustomed to endure work and official duty, and to show as little ennui as possible under a steady mask of attention. That mask, that heaviness, that want of expression of the face must have followed him every- where : less, however, in his escapes from official business, when on horseback, a gallant cavalier, he shows some enjoyment, or at least is less immovable. We have nothing of him that shows him as the gallant lover of many ladies, even to the sacrilegious extreme of the nunnery, or as the poet, or writer, and still less as the painter himself of pictures. But all these things he was, and he stands before us as the type of an idea, from which there are but one or two remnants in the world, that of the representation of a caste set apart for special and solemn duties, as well as obligatory amusements. The divinity that once did hedge a king is here in the person of that fair-faced, heavy-lipped, thin-legged gentleman. Separated from the Velasquez by the wonderful bronze bust of Bindo Altoviti, the work praised by Michael Angelo,* and made by the rarest of sculptors, Cellini, is an ambiguous portrait, hardly visible in the dubious light. At the present moment it remains somewhat of an enigma; it has been known as a portrait of Michael Angelo, and something of the greatest of all artists is suggested by the head. But there is a suspicion, that one might also say, to the contrary; it must be the portrait of that curious rival and enemy of Michael Angelo, figuring again here, as he did in life, as not quite the real thing. This would be Baccio Bandinelli, the great artist’s detractor and attempted rival, the son of the wealthy jeweller, who practiced art with a success, sometimes promising and sometimes ridicu- lous. 1 have at present no access to any other portrait of his but the profile outline given by Vasari, wherein also there is a curious something which might almost pass for a re- semblance of the man he thought to rival — Michael Angelo. If this be another, the same fatality has pursued him even into the mistaking of his portrait. The figure, scarce visible in the painting, holds in one hand a drawing which Professor Norton has pointed out as the group made by Bandinelli in rivalry of the great sculptor; — that of Hercules and Cacus; — again the subject and the cause of much animosity resulting in a celebrated failure. The picture seems here restored and repainted so that the apparent intention of the scroll held by the seated figure, to which he points, that is to say, a drawing in red chalk (Vasari speaks of this as a favorite method of Bandinelli’s), has turned to the look of a badly done painting. The turn of the hand pointing to it has that look which was derived from Michael Angelo by his admirers, and may belong to Sebastiano Del Piombo, or by another guess to Andrea del Sarto. Mr. Berenson inclines to recognize a work of the former. This wall is again a manner of history; the art and the stories entangled with it give it life. Then on the opposite wall by the window is another Titian, the portrait of Anne of Austria and her mother, whose face, delicately modelled, comes out like a blossom on the *“Dear Friend Benvenuto, — I have for many years known you for one of the ablest jewellers in the world, and I now find that you have equal abilities as a sculptor. You must know that Signor Bindo Altoviti showed me his bust in bronze, and told me it was done by you. I was highly pleased with the execution, but it gave me great uneasiness to see it placed in a disadvantageous light ; had it been but properly situated it would have appeared to have been the masterpiece it is.” These very words in every point would apply to the bust as it now is seen. 5 1 MANTEGNA, ANDREA 1431-1506 “MADONNA AND CHILD, ST. JOHN AND FEMALE SAINTS” (Santa Conversazione) Panel, height 23 % inches, width 18 inches. Signed in gold, on rock ledge in foreground: andrevs mntina B EHIND the shallow pool of water in its setting of shelving rocks, which occupies the immediate foreground, is seated the Virgin. She holds the undraped Child Christ between her knees, her right hand supporting His right arm, her left hand placed caress- ingly around His body. He turns His head to the right towards the little St. John, who, also nude, runs up to display with naive, childish interest, a flower which he holds in his hand. On the right of the Virgin sits St. Elizabeth, to the right of whom again is St. Mary of Magdala, holding her vase of precious ointment. Two other saints are seated to the right of the Magdalene, and two on the Virgin’s left ; all habited in the close-fitting tunics and flowing over-garments of fifteenth-century Mantua. To the left of the picture towers a rocky crag approached by a stone causeway, and divided horizontally into two portions. In the lower are seen St. Jerome and his faithful lion; in the upper, St. Francis, attended by a monk, receiving the stigmata. Through the mid-distance runs a river across which St. Christopher wades, carrying the Child Christ on his shoulder. On the far side of the river is seen St. George fighting the dragon. Beyond him again, a slope, planted with olive trees, rises towards the white buildings of a little town, set against a background of blue hills. Collection Duke of Mantua (until 1628). Collection of Charles I of England. Collection of Qyeen Christina of Spain. Collection of Prince del Drago (inherited from Queen Christina). Bought after the execution of King Charles I by Alonzo de Cardenas, Spanish Ambassador to the Commonwealth, and sent to Spain. Purchased from Prince del Drago, Rome, for Mrs. Gardner. 52 BY MR JOHN LA FARCE white ruff which spots the black stone of the entire picture. Then the Paris Bordone, Boni- fazio, Moroni, a Correggio once owned by Cardinal Fesch (the uncle of Napoleon, who in his later life made up for hard beginnings by these reasonable indulgences), and others, make a manner of suite and attendance to the name of Titian. On a table by the window is a panel by Titian's friend and early guide, one of the best known, one of the rarest of all paint- ers to be found in examples, Giorgione. Only the divine Leonardo may be called rarer. This one comes from the Casa Loschi in Vicenza, and for those who have not seen it in its out-of-the-way dwelling, or here, it resembles, that is to say, there is something like it, in the little fragment called Giorgione’s at Venice in the Church of San Rocco. But the two brought together would have little relation. This one must be of early work, and is so deemed by Mr. Berenson, who esteems it as one of the few authentic paintings by the master. It would belong then to the time of work or apprenticeship under the earlier masters, whose methods are far removed from the meaning we moderns now attach to the example and influence of Giorgione. Here the work is hard and precise and delicate. Christ, whose long locks, most elaborately represented, fall upon His shoulders, carries His cross, which we see only at the intersection. Against this mass of wood, elaborately grained and imi- tated, is detached the head of Jesus. The face is strangely calm with a curious expression of eye, intensified by the drawing of the eyebrow. The eyes look steadily at the observer. There is, apparently, a trace of tears. There is a certain expression of portrait that reminds one of Albert Durer. To a fantastic mind, he might have painted this in his days of Italian study; hence one is reminded that it has been surmised that this picture may be the one mentioned by the “Anonymous" writer, whose notes have been of late much referred to. This is the statement of a painting by John Bellini of a similar subject. And the passage from the one painter to the other is sufficiently ambiguous to have led to such surmises. In the wall between the Titian and the Velasquez a marble door, above which hangs a picture by Catena, the fellow-scholar of Giorgione, leads us into the near end of the Long Gallery, that runs the whole length of the building and ends in the little oratory, with Gothic window opening and an altar table below. Here is a space devoted to the Italian Madonna. Marbles and terra cottas by Andrea della Robbia, Mino da Fiesole, Antonio Rosselino, Benedetto da Majano, Luca della Robbia, hang upon the wall. In the corner kneels a Madonna, in adoration before her child, who kneels to her in repeated love and adoration. The group is coloured, and the colour increases the feeling of reality and the sense of motion in this extraordinary representation, the only one 1 know of which meets at once our belief in the actual occurrence. In another moment the mother will have bent over further and taken the baby in her arms. The wonderful thing has no name attached to it, and being the work of a sculptor, is outside of our scheme, but its exceptional choice of subject obliges me to note it. All these various representations reflect one upon the other the varieties of feeling which may attach to this conventional theme. On the wall, painted blue in southern fashion, hangs the famous Chigi Botticelli, a work representing the artist at a moment of his early development. The special lover of Botti- celli will be appealed to by the mystical meaning which is strengthened or insisted on 55 THE COLLECTION OF MRS through the gravity, perhaps even the sadness, of the manner of expression. It is a long step from this extremely grave vision to the enchanting sweetness of, let us say, the Ma- donna of the Magnificat, but the painting connects with those other representations by Botticelli in which the sadness of the Mother is the apparent meaning. Here she very slowly and deliberately takes hold of an ear of wheat, one of just so many, held up to her with a basketful of grapes, by a youth who may be an angel. This deliberation, this thoughtful action, is increased by the slight awkwardness of the rendering of the hands. This again, of course, is one of the marks of Botticelli, who is awkward and imperfect at times, but who is, notwithstanding, among the great draftsmen. The awk- wardness of this moment of his work is partly the result of the training which seems to have been influenced by Verrocchio perhaps, and some of the others, whose harshness is greater than that of Botticelli’s master, Fra Filippo Lippi. That hesitating hand is beautifully balanced by the hand of the angelic youth which supports the basket of fruit and grain. From that centre of meaning run the long lines of drapery following the arms, and leading up to the two faces, the pensive face of the angel and the still more significant face of the Madonna. Her lips are closed more than firmly, as if with determination, and her eye looks so steadily that it almost seems to choose the special ear of corn selected. These hard indications, which are those of line, are modified by the modellings of the face, carried perhaps too far, but which decide the expression. The drawing up of the corners of the mouth indicates the meaning, and is obtained by the faint work upon the hard lips. The reconciliation of the line indicating place, and of modelling which is the form, had not yet been reached by Botticelli, nor was it yet a problem solved by the men of his time. A few years must pass before Leonardo gives its place to model- ling ; makes it, in his own words, the main aim, and establishes the firm beginnings of modern work. Part of the charm of Botticelli, and of those whom we associate with him, is this hovering on the edge between the old and the new. He is, as it were, modern. We, ourselves, are also, in other ways, undecided. This word of indecision can be used again for other passages in the modelling of the painting. As for instance, where the expression of attention on the attendant’s face is largely increased by slight exaggerations of the place of the modelling, which simulate shadows and are in so far incorrect. But our attention is only drawn to this because we are following a development, and the methods and the mechanism are thus full of interest. The aim is reached through whatever means the painter has used. We feel the careful attendance of the youth as he offers the bowl with fruit, and the ordinary action is transposed into that meaning of sad importance which the picture gives to the trivial details. In the same way is the extreme attention of the Christ Child on His Mother’s lap, to His own action, as He lifts a hand to bless the corn and grapes, symbolical of His sacramental ordinance. All through there are the same means described above, of line and modelling. Conversely to this more primitive painting, certain great difficulties in painting are here met with simple success. The Madonna’s face is relieved against a sky as pale as itself, and yet the observ- ance of the delicate values is so fine as to suggest the space and air which our modern art 56 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER finds difficulty in controlling. Beautiful also is the architectural fragment behind the group, which makes a manner of enclosure, and also the dark shadow beneath it gives to this slight detail a curious solemnity. 1 do not like to leave the Long Gallery without a word at least, to describe the Tondo, or circular picture, of the Holy Family, given to Botticelli or to Filippo Lippi, and perhaps painted by such another companion of the studio, as Mr. Berenson has suggested. The Madonna kneels before the Child lying before her, and just being placed there by the hands of Joseph who bends over Him. The Madonna is very young, more interested than ab- sorbed. She has a blue-green cloak, and is very much veiled. Her dress is red touched with gold, as is her cloak. Joseph has the usual yellow cloak and red dress ; his head does not quite fit on the shoulders, partly perhaps because the colour has faded from his face. The colour has been injured by cleaning, but there is a general impression of evening light which pervades the entire space, the figures as well as background. And two figures, probably of shepherds, one of whom looks up to the sky, blue with warm clouds, add to the solemnity of the picture and to the impression of the afternoon or evening light. There is a beautiful use of reds that balance the grays and greens, and accentuate the feeling of peace, which is the meaning of the picture. We pass back again through the room of the great Titian into the other that makes an entrance, and which has within the framing of the ceiling the painting of Veronese called “The Coronation of Hebe.” From there out to the Long Gallery, where hangs by the door a characteristic Tintoretto, the portrait of a lady, all in black and coloured jewels, in front of the deep crimson of a curtain. It has the usual composition of the hands, the drop of the one, and the arrangement of the handkerchief. Then down the stairs again to the other side of the house, where, isolated from the Italy we have left, is the room reserved for the Dutch and Flemish and German pictures. Facing the Venetian doorway, lined inside with another frame of wood, is a painting of Rembrandt. We can see it either from the doorway, or near by, or far down the length of the hall. At each and all these distances the painting has an equal reality. It connects with the paint- ings of certain other Dutchmen; perhaps through something in its arrangement which at first seems different from Rembrandt’s; something more obvious perhaps. But it is an example of his perfect painting. It is well known under different names. Dr. Bode calls it “ Portrait of a Young Couple,” and it was painted in 1663, when he was also painting in other ways. But as 1 said, this is one of the paintings of great finish and care; a very little more and some hardness would be felt, so anxiously carried out is every detail of feature and of dress. The lady is seated to one side of the picture, and in what must be a hall, for there are the steps of a staircase to the right. She looks away, but is aware of the eye of the looker-on, while her husband faces us and looks directly at us with an extraordinary recognition of the spectator. His eyebrows lift just a little to emphasize this look of ques- tioning recognition. The mouth is ready to open. Something in his face and the dress- ing of his moustache and imperial gives him the look of a Northern Frenchman of a placid nature, but rapidly aroused. The black felt hat is pulled down upon his forehead. He is dressed entirely in black and wears a short, full cloak thrown away from the left shoulder. 57 VECELLIO, TIZIANO 1477-1576 “RAPE OF EUROPA” Canvas, height 70 inches, width 82 inches. Signed in lower left-hand corner, TlTIAN V 5 .P. H ER form showing through the folds of the thin drapery which par- tially covers her, Europa reclines, face upwards, on the back and massive flanks of the bull, whose likeness Jupiter has assumed. As the white animal ploughs his way through the summer sea, Europa grasps one of the horns of the garlanded head with her left hand; her raised right arm throws her face into shadow as she holds aloft a fold of the rosy drapery which flutters in the breeze. In the foreground, two at- tendant dolphins follow, one of which bears a winged Amorino, who gazes upwards at Europa. Above, to the left, hover two Amorini armed with bows, one holding also a sheaf of arrows. To the left, on the nearest point of the mountainous shore, is a group of Europa's rel- atives and attendants in attitudes of despair. The haze of heat shim- mering over the horizon blends into a sky of summer clouds and blue spaces. The sun shines over the deep emerald waters and illuminates the tones of Europa's flesh and the drapery waving above her head. Painted for King Philip 11 of Spain, 1562. Collection Marquis de Grammont (given him by Philip V, 1704). Collection Due d’Orldans, Regent de France, Palais-Royal, Paris. Collection Lord Berwick. Collection Earl of Damley, Cobham Hall. Sale Orleans Collection, London, 1799, purchased by Lord Berwick, 700 guineas. Purchased by Lord Darnley from Lord Berwick. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner through P. & D. Colnaghi, from the pres- ent Lord Darnley. Exhibition Orleans Collection, Bryan's Rooms, London (1798-99). Exhibition Royal Academy, Winter, 1876. Engraved by J. L. Delignon. 58 BY MR JOHN LA FAROE The left arm drops and the gray gloved hand holds another gauntlet. In the cuff of the gauntlet is tucked a paper. The other glove, which drops along his leg, carries the eye down and makes us notice the manner in which he stands with that side forward, and the eye is brought down to the rich black dress in which his wife is seated. So that in this most realistic of pictures, the well understood care of the Dutchman for arrangement and composition, can be traced in this little detail. To-day we have lost this side of art in gene- ral, and we are astonished when it comes up in a few remarkable cases. The lady is dressed in black checkered satin. She wears a wide ruff, elaborately and wonderfully fluted, and also wonderfully painted in the picture. The whites of this ruff and of the pleated collar of the husband, and the lace of the lady’s cuffs are a delight of tone. She wears one tan-coloured glove and holds another in the same hand, the hand of the arm that rests upon her chair ; and inclines her body just a little to one side, so that under all this stiffness of satins and lace and embroideries, and probable corsets, is felt the slight sway of the human form. The gloves are edged with red. There is red in the tulips, there is a red cushion on the chair opposite her, awaiting her husband or a guest, and there is last of all the reds in the picture, red in the wonderful embroidery of the white front of her waist. Here the painting is a little marvel of execution, where each colour of the tulip pattern is indicated in greens and yellows and blues and violets, and the separate texture of the stitch is felt. An equal care, caressing greater difficulties, has followed the painting of the face. The face has no longer the freshness of early youth, but it is still full and fair. A precocious fullness is beginning to veil the form. The eyes are a little tired ; the mouth passes from its commonplace stiffness to something expressive, to a gentle, absent-minded smile. In the same way the right hand, a little more than plump, presses in the same ab- sent-minded manner the arm of the chair. All throughout, there is a beautiful rendering of the fact that these comfortable and well-off people are conscious of their being looked at, and are really posing for their portraits. Three other Rembrandts are on the walls. One of them, the “ Christ and His Disciples in the Storm,” is well-known, has been engraved several times, and had a considerable reputation at the time of the eighteenth century when Rembrandt in his later work was not so well understood and appreciated. This is early work. It is dated 1 633. It belongs to the time when he was carrying out besides his general work, a number of small pictures, mostly of bibli- cal subjects. Some critics have doubted if this was painted entirely by his hand, but the design and the motive of lights and shades must certainly be his. The composition of the main mo- tive can be inscribed in a triangle. It is an unexpected example of pyramidal composition. The open boat is lifted by a mighty wave ; the storm, striking it, has torn the sail across, and half of the crew of disciples are engaged in the efforts to haul in the flapping sail. A ray of light falls out of the harsh sky on the spray and foam that cover the head of the ship. The spray and the fog are driven into the distance, like a cloud, by a strange wind. Meanwhile, in the stern of the boat, the Christ is just being awakened from sleep by some of His anxious disciples. The quiet of this end of the story, broken only by a few gestures of anxiety, disappears further on where the turmoil and noise and rage of the elements are felt, as the mast seems to reel 61 THE COLLECTION OF MRS and the sail is blown out and strikes the rigging, while the sailors make their desperate efforts to control it. From an opening of blue and gray in the sky the light falls heavily, streaking the fog with lines of strange light, through which are seen the mountainous clouds. The picture marks the beginning of the stories of Rembrandt and though compressed in general appearance, and ugly, as sometimes happens with him in certain parts, the dra- matic unity of the story is well worthy of the master of that side of painting. Another painting is the “ Landscape with a Column.” Here a gray-blue sky opens through clouds, somewhat as in the other paintings. At places this blue is reflected in the waters of the distance. Otherwise there is little or no colour remaining in the painting. It has the effect of a monochrome, and the manner and handling of a sketch. But it is full of a wealth of detail which is slowly visible, and mostly in the masses of shadow where the reflections disclose this gradual perception of the multitude of facts that have built up the story of the landscape. The first impression is little more than that of a storm, break- ing over a mass of trees and mountain scenes behind. These trees fill the half of the fore- ground, and they are turned and twisted by the storm; further back, by the wood, is a path leading up to rocky heights, and further yet, a mountain with great rock outlines. Below are many woods, and then the terraces and arcadings of some town, and a river flows through several arches into the foreground. On a rising promontory, which breaks the stream and where the waters fall over rocks, stands the high column which has named the pic- ture. The light falls through the murky clouds on the river behind the promontory and the column, and makes the luminous centre of the many gradations of half light and dark. Here and there are figures which perhaps may mean some story. It is a work of a little later date than the “Storm at Sea," and belongs to one of the variations of Rembrandt’s many methods. The last of the Rembrandts is known as his portrait, called ' ' Rembrandt in a Plumed Cap.” But this has not been always so recognized. This is still earlier work, by, perhaps, ten years from the last named, and represents a moment of anxious and careful representa- tion in Rembrandt’s career. He would be, perhaps, some twenty-two or twenty-three years old. The face is placed almost exactly in the centre of the picture so that the spec- tator’s eye goes directly to that centre of the face. Unfortunately, just there the work has been injured by some repainting of Rembrandt’s special characteristics; the connection be- tween the eye and the mouth is somewhat disturbed. The picture is all in grays: a little silver embroidery on the velvet coat, a greenish velvet edge on the gray cap, a yellow stone on its jewelled hand, a little colour in the face and all the rest varieties of grays. In a corner, perhaps too dark for it, is a work of that painter more recently discovered, Jan Van der Meer of Delft, himself probably a manner of pupil of Rembrandt, however dif- ferent and however himself this rare master may be. As in the Dutch pictures kept in their proper line, it is the picture of a room in which we are. Its floor is paved in black and white marble, in a handling of checkerboard which belongs to the painter’s habits or his opportunities of life. In the same way on the gray wall a landscape painting, beauti- fully rendered in its exact place, and in a black frame whose rectangular pattern meets 62 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER again the black perpendicular of the edge of the cover of an open spinet on which also a landscape is painted. Another rectangle on the wall represents a dull figure subject, also framed. In the corner of this frame against the wall where the sunlight drops in, a young lady in black and white, in white satin skirt and the yellow sleeves liked by Van der Meer, plays on the instrument. She plays carefully, with extreme attention, and her lips are open with the carrying on of the tune. The chair on which she sits has a square back, and so has the chair nearer us on which is seated a gentleman of whom we see nothing but the back and head, dressed in a neutral brown coat and wearing an embroidered baldric. His left hand holds a theorbo, whose handles return suddenly again at right angles. His sword resting partly on the floor makes another long line of triangle with the chair. Further to the right a lady in a green dress trimmed with ermine, sings, reading from a small paper and lifting her hand as if marking time. Right by us on the left, a big table partly covered with a Turkish carpet has a violin, and a big bass viol is visible in the shadow. Wherever it has been possible, the straight lines of these many objects have been accurately studied and put together as a pattern. That is one of the frequent marks of this singular, and ex- cellent and wonderful painter, whose technique is irreproachable, and in many cases ex- tremely curious. And the black and white all through the picture, on the wall, in the dresses, and in the pavement, is another of his likings. One spot of pale red marks the back of the chair. This tension and pursuit of certain arrangements, besides the first choice of designing and realizing the place, makes the beautiful Terborch alongside appear a little soft and accidental. But this is only by contrast. The Terborch is also a carefully constructed scene, with all its appearance of accident. Even the uplifted hand of the music-teacher in its story, for it is a Music Lesson, even the hand is so placed as to continue and yet arrest the angle and the line of the music book, placed on the table. All the more is felt the slow beat of the hand which contradicts all these lines. The lesson is given by a teacher standing, to a young woman whose face we see in profile. She turns away upon her seat, which is alongside of a plush-covered table on which lies a violoncello, and also stands a little rack for a music book. She is dressed in the usual white satin, astonishingly painted in the usual way by these few men, and she has besides a velvet sack trimmed with white fur. Her thumb touches the chords of the guitar-shaped instrument. The music does not disturb the little dog, so beautifully painted, on the plush-covered chair alongside. Of course, the expression is exactly the correct one; the face of the teacher, half watching, half listening, and looking down upon his fair pupil; the young woman all intent, reading, and listening, and counting, as the master beats the time. A piece of history, the portrait of Queen Mary Tudor, by Sir Anthony Moro, is placed on the wall between the two Dutch paintings which have no historic meaning. One is suddenly reminded of the existence of certain important people, and also of the painters who painted them. In the same room Rubens' portrait of an Arundel, Van Dyck’s portrait of a Spanish Countess, remind us again of official history which has been before us all along on the Italian side of the house. The Dutchmen have brought in another element 63 FRANCESCO D1 STEFANO (called PESELL1NO) 1422-1457 “THE TRIUMPH OF CHASTITY” Fragment of “The Triumph of Love, Chastity and Death." Cassone, height 16^ inches, length 61 K inches. A companion cassone of the same size, also in the collection of Mrs. Gardner, represents the “Triumphs of Fame, Time and Religion. ’ T HIS panel represents, from left to right, the “Triumphs of Love, Chastity and Death." The triumph of Love fills the greatest space, more than half. Love, a nude youth with long wings, stands on a four-wheeled car drawn by four white horses, his retinue is a distin- guished company of ladies and gentlemen in the rich costume of the middle of the quattrocento. The triumph of Chastity comes next. On a car of similar construction to that of the God of Love, but drawn by two unicorns, stands a platform covered with richly covered cloth, on the lowest step of which Amor, overcome by Chastity, sits with arms bound and eyes sorrowfully cast down; sitting on a chair above him Chastity holds in her right hand a book and in the left a branch; young maidens in rich costumes surround her car. The groups pro- ceed over flowery fields with here and there round-topped olive and laurel trees; in the background are hills and several small buildings. The triumph of Death occupies a small space to the right of the panel. Collection of Samuel Woodburn. Collection of Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley, Horsemonden Manor, Kent. Collection of Mrs. J. F. Austen. Sale of Davenport Bromley Collection, Christie's, June, 1863, bought by Messrs. Colnaghi, the first, £173.5.0, the second £157. 10.0. Purchased by Samuel Woodburn at Florence before the middle of the XIXth Century. Purchased by Mrs. Austen from P. & D. Colnaghi. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner through P. & D. Colnaghi. Exhibition Early Italian Art, London, 1 893 (attributed to Piero diCosimo). 64 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE which comes down to our day, the story of private life; the record of ordinary needs and amusements far removed from the heroic. This painting, of course, is a replica or duplicate of the slightly varying portraits of Qjjeen Mary, painted by Moro, the Court painter of Spain. This one was given by the Qjjeen herself to Sir Henry Jerningham, of Huntington, in Suf- folk, and Costessy, in Norfolk; the first among the Suffolk and Norfolk knights who de- clared openly for Queen Mary on the death of Edward VI. So that it is, besides every- thing else, a testimonial of service from the dread queen. The face in the portrait shows the conscientious perception and rendering of character that belonged to this most excellent painter, less known because less seen, and an exponent of court life solely. The portrait is well known; the expression of character so historical that one needs but to describe it with little comment. The red hair, so typical, the very high, round forehead, the steady eyes, the thin lips, framed in the well-known headdress and the embroidered ruff from which hangs a jewel of improbable value, the brown dress, embroidered gray sleeves, with bands of white and gold, the silver brocade of her gown, with the red velvet chair; each and every- thing is carefully considered. But though the execution is hard in places, the entire ap- pearance has that look of largeness which indicates the coming school of Flanders. Here we have an example of the great examplar, Rubens, in his portrait of Thomas, Earl of Arundel. The Earl is in armor and holds the truncheon of command. By his side, on a table, is the plumed helmet of the warrior; but we remember him as the collector and lover of art. In the chivalrous portrait the mind and manner of Rubens has found a type answering his own nature. In the head the blending of aristocratic importance and of sensitiveness, of manliness, and of a certain hesitation, make it a beautiful example of Ru- bens in harmony with the subject of his portrait. The dark armor, with lights and reflec- tions, the architectural background, half lit, upon which the face detaches, the big curtain, the few reds counting on the grays, altogether make a representation of a type that pictures our romantic sympathy with the time, which is not to be seen again after Van Dyck and Rubens, and for which the splendid nature of the painter must have felt a special sympathy. Later Van Dyck will be also romantic and beautiful, but here in this more careless render- ing, for Rubens is not a portrait-painter, there is something in that looseness larger than Van Dyck, though Van Dyck more perfectly represents the ideas we have of a portrait. And here exactly is the Van Dyck type of the portrait in its most distinct and typical character. The portrait of a lady, a widow, it is said, belongs to his later career, when he and his assistant painters have fixed for good the elegant form and manner that we know. Here are the long hands, still longer than usual, still more refined, and thoroughly in char- acter this time. The gray scarf and the black dress and veil are those of a widow. Some- thing tells us that the lady is of high rank. Her portrait came from the collection of the celebrated family of Ossuna; but the face does not seem to belong to Spain, but to France or perhaps England. Perhaps another Princess may be the lady, a youngwoman, whose portrait is attributed to Jan Scorel. Her gentle, rather homely and heavy face, is detached against a pale green background framed in dark wood. She wears a manner of widow’s cap, passing beneath 67 UNKNOWN ITALIAN MASTER “PORTRAIT OF BACCIO BANDINELLI” Heavy panel, height 59 inches (including a piece 2^ inches wide which at some later time has been added to the bottom), width 45 inches. HEN this picture came into Mrs. Gardner's collection it was generally accepted as a portrait of Michael Angelo, by Sebas- tiano del Piombo. Recent research, however, has demonstrated it to be a portrait of Michael's contemporary, Bandinelli, the Florentine sculptor. A certain specious resemblance between the two heads has been dwelt upon in the painting, but Bandinelli has been identified by details of his features and beard, by the insignia of the order of Knight- hood of Santiago de la Espada which hangs around his neck, and by the drawing in red chalk to which he directs the spectator's attention and which is recognized as one of the studies he made for his preten- tious colossal group of Hercules and Cacus. His figure, dressed entirely in black, is almost lost in the uniform gloom of the interior in which he sits, cross-legged on a square block of marble, pointing with his right hand at the drawing which he supports with his left, still holding a crayon between the fingers. In aspect he is a man of about sixty, with a long forked, gray beard ; the face is directed toward the left, the eyes, under heavy brows, looking attentively at the spectator. He is clad in a long, loosely fitting black blouse with a wide collar of the same material falling on his shoulder, and black hose; behind him are the bases and pedestals of two large columns. Collection Due d'Orldans. Collection George Vivian of Claverton (near Bath). Collection Lieut. -Col. Ralph Vivian. Collection De la Hunt. Purchased from P. & D. Colnaghi, for Mrs. Gardner. Exhibition of the Orleans Collection, Bryan's Rooms, London, 1 798-99- Exhibition Royal Academy, Winter, 1880. 70 BY MR JOHN LA FAROE were used. Of course we have to accept the fact that we do not know, and yet the por- trait as a mere human document, is one to be curious about. It is evidently the portrait of a man accustomed to authority; apart from the fact of the rich costume of fur and velvet in which he is clothed. Against the blue-gray background, his face is presented, turned away from us, looking directly before him, with quite an intent gaze, but with otherwise a quiet face. There is even in the modelling of the cheek the suggestion of a possible habit of smiling at times. This relieves what might be a certain sternness, as of men who lived in times of some anxiety and struggle. He may be one of the great business men of Nuremberg, just as well as the collector of whom this may be the portrait. But to me there is something a little more of South German. I would almost say that perhaps some Austrian might have been the subject. It has been connected with the portrait of the banker Imhof which is in Madrid, but there also we are met with those necessary doubts that entangle any question for which there is no first clue. Notwithstanding the rather monotonous colour which may also have increased with time, and the hardness of texture which belongs to some of Diirer’s paintings, the picture has the importance that belongs most specially to Diirer, and his look of extreme insistence on any point made. The details of the hat, of the velvet coat with its furs, are all carried out to the extreme, as well, of course, as the features, which seem a little overstated. But the profile of the cheek as drawn, is the work of a most masterly hand under guidance of a wonderful eye, and the placing of the picture in its frame, the look of extreme importance, and of great size, is scarcely possible to anyone but a great artist and has the mark of Diirer’s choice. In fact, in the room, the painting becomes more important when seen lower down on a level, as it was meant, and very close, so that the eye sees nothing but the inside of the frame — the picture being meant to be seen in that way, as representing a sitter very close to the painter. In that way the majestic outline is thoroughly felt. The little panel that bears the name of Schongauer brings up the associations that join all of these painters we have seen; the union of the arts of Germany and the Low Countries, all those that were supplied and connected in art, as well as commerce, through the River Rhine. It brings up also the charming memory of its original, the beautiful “Virgin of the Rose-bushes ” which he painted, and left in his city of Colmar some four hundred years ago. Whether Martin Schoen ever touched this little variation with his own hand may be uncer- tain. All through, many of its details are different, as its draperies and its many flowers and leaves, but the motive is the same, and the portraits of the Virgin and the Child are those, slightly attenuated, of the delightful original. That, if I remember, is painted on a gold ground according to the tradition of the painters of Cologne, while in the little panel, the sky is white and pink behind the gold rays across the sky and the leaves. Schongauer painted it probably towards 1470 or so, when he had already studied in the Low Countries, and its character is largely that of the masters whom he then must have studied. But the painting is so complete an expression, so singular in the contrast of its charm of sadness in the midst of the joy of flowers and fruit and birds and flying angels, that it has some of the impersonal existence of a few works of art which seem to live by themselves as if they were 73 THE COLLECTION OF MRS really the independent children of their makers. One can understand how Dtirer came to Colmar with the intention of studying under “ Beautiful Martin,” and his regret at finding him gone. But Dtirer himself never gave, in his more powerful and more important works, the equal of the strange charm of the Alsatian master’s work, wherein it is difficult to dis- tinguish whether what he represents is a mere copying, however faulty, from nature, or the absolute creation of an ideal. These memories of the wonderful original are brought up by the little panel. For a few moments before we leave the Flemish pictures, Italy is again recalled through the little panel by Giotto. Of course, if Giotto’s own hand went to it, we cannot tell, further than its resemblance to some of his work elsewhere. In 1306, six hundred years ago, Giotto painted this subject very much in the same way in the chapel called the Arena at Padua. His representation here, which is probably one of some series, is more or less the same. It is a composition of extreme sim- plicity, of a solemn dignity that alone is sufficient to make it religious, and is beautifully expressive of the great man’s great quality; the vivid perception of a subject as of a thing already seen. In that Giotto will always remain a master equal to the greatest, and the deficiencies of that early art can in no way detract from the mysterious life that fills figures, often incorrect, whose expressions are obtained by inaccuracies, but wherein the meaning is so obvious, the simplicity of intention so quieting, that its result is almost a relief to the artistic feeling. It is akin to the great early works of far away oriental art. Nothing more is said than what is needed for the expression, and yet we feel rather the wealth of the statement than its coming short. The story of the Presentation is told here in the simplest way : a supposed altar, a square mass, is placed below a little temple, four columns supporting a roof, making out a little building of white marble, inlaid with mosaic and representing to the mind the idea of an entire church. Over this altar hangs white embroidered linen. Bending over it, Simeon, in a pale crimson gown, girdled loosely, with the simplest possible folds, has taken the in- fant Christ into his arms. He takes him respectfully, as a precious gift, with hands all covered by his sleeves. The Child pushes away from him with foot braced against the kindly, bearded face, anxious to get back to the Mother, who, on the other side of the altar, stretches out both arms to encourage Him and perhaps to receive Him. She is of the usual make of Giotto’s women : massive and solemn, under the big blue cloak, which shows at places the traditional red gown. Her expression, which is obtained by the forcing of an eye that belongs to Giotto and those about him, is also reinforced by a much finer expression of the lips, and resembles nature, notwithstanding the evident mechanism ; and so for the St. Joseph alongside of her, who smiles kindly at the Child’s motion of timidity. Again, behind the Simeon, Anna, a scroll in her left hand, and wrapped in a long drapery, covering her from head to foot, lifts a prophetic hand, and seems ready to speak with a voice of prophecy. This beginning of the modern world has also the flavor of the antique, the unconscious gravity of the absence of all doubt. The little picture, only seventeen inches high, has the apparent size of a big painting. Its gold ground is hard and metallic, and probably under- 74 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER lies the entire painting. Upon its beautiful surface the values of the little temple, of the white altar doth, of the blue and red of the Madonna, the blue and yellow of Saint Joseph, and the crimson of Simeon, and the light yellow green of Anna, make a solemn and beautiful harmony. “The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is a most beautiful thing, for not only is the warmest expression of love to the Child to be perceived on the face of the old man Simeon, but the act of the Child, who, being afraid of him, stretches its arms timidly and turns to its mother, is depicted in a manner inexpressibly touching and exquisite.” Thus says Vasari of this subject, and it is more true of the little panel than it is of the fresco in the series of the Arena Chapel in Padua. There, the Virgin moves outside of the little shrine in which is the altar. Here, she and Simeon stand on either side, opposite to each other. The columns outside intersect the outstretched arms of the Virgin and help to intensify her not being able to quite reach the little Christ Child who plunges towards her and kicks against the breast of the kindly old Simeon, and pushes against his bearded mouth. All this in an arrangement of beautiful lines, but with a nature as complete and human as could be- long to any story not sacred, not made official through ceremonial art. In that way Vasari's description applies much better to this one form of Giotto's representation. There is also something charming in the comedy of the little panel, which the big fresco does not give, the amused smile of St. Joseph, which repeats that of Simeon, in the sympathy with the Child's ways, and also the half anxious look of the Virgin, whose maternal care for the in- convenience to the Child, His possible slipping out of the arms of the High Priest, is there- by noted for us. The little panel, therefore, is a fair rival of the great fresco, and rightly brings back to mind the importance of Giotto in the art of painting. As he connects both through feeling and through work, in actual filiation with the antique, so does he connect with the future that was to come after him ; and the greater artists of the Renaissance, certainly the great Michael Angelo, carry out with more modern power and knowledge, the promise of the man of the middle ages. He connects with the miniaturists just preceding him, whose style and intentions are larger than their execution. Even in their small way they echo the larger and powerful work of the early sculptors who are far in advance, as usual, of the painters, who work with more difficult problems of representation. In those sculptors we see the inten- tions and almost the realization of something that Michael Angelo will carry out in his way later. Though he begins the modern world there is in him an echo of the Gothic as well as of the hidden antique feeling. These two lines have been carried to him through the sculptors of the earlier time. They, themselves, directly connect with the Southern Italian tradition, which kept something of the antique, something of the Roman, and yet was influenced by the Northern feeling, the Mediaeval impulse that came from France. This Gothic sentiment is translated into still more ancient forms by them, but through them the connection be- comes complete, and Michael Angelo and the glories of later Italy hold dimly the reflection of the spirit that adorned the great cathedrals. The Giotto panel, therefore, serves to complete our cycle of art, and strangely enough to suggest the memory of Northern Europe as well as the special art of Italy. We can sum 75 BARBARELLI, GIORGIO (called GIORGIONE) I478-I5II “CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS” Panel, height 20 inches, width iyA inches. O NLY the head and shoulders of the suffering Christ are shown, the head seen in three-quarters view, relieved against the great wooden upright of the Cross, which is borne upon the right shoulder. The face is turned towards the left, the mild dark eyes look sideways and steadily at the spectator and the soft, golden brown hair, very carefully rendered, falls on each side of the face to the shoulders and the thin silky beard and moustache do not conceal the sensitive mouth. Around the head is the crown of thorns and on the left cheek is seen a tear-drop, finished like a pearl. The nose is straight, delicately formed, the mouth small. The arms of the Cross are painted with scrupulous attention to the realistic rendering of the grain of the wood, yet the Cross is intended ratheras a symbol, and rests but lightly on the shoulder of the bearer. The seamless garment is of white linen, falling away from the neck so as to expose a portion of the breast. Around the upper part of the loose sleeve is a band patterned with an Arabic inscription copied probably from garments brought to Venice by some Moorish merchant. The whole painting is characterized by an enamel-like delicacy and finish. Collection of the Countess Loschi dal Verme, Vicenza. Purchased for Mrs. Gardner, 1901. 76 BY MR JOHN LA FARGE up the entire story of European art in this, the last of the paintings that we consider at Fen- way Court. When I wrote this, Mrs. Gardner had not obtained the “Portrait of a Woman” by Degas, which at present is placed in the Long Gallery. This was painted in 1867, probably at the time when Degas may have been passing from the direct influence of Ingres and when perhaps Manet was well above the horizon. This is not to say that the recognition of Ingres has not always been within the ideals of Degas. It is merely to mark and explain the possible date of a progression for which we have the year. But even then there is a great deal in the picture which brings back the memory of the students of Ingres, even in the method of the painting. The tone, however, and part of the importance of the picture is the tone, marks new influences or new likings. The wall behind the woman is of that yellow, rather ugly, which we associate with our American word “kalsomining,” the dis- temper painting, so reminiscent of France. Against this dull, neutral yellow, the sallow face of this typical French type is detached in skillful and yet careful and attentive grada- tions. She is dressed in what must have been one of the fashions of the day, which whether ugly or the reverse, seems to belong intimately to the type of the face ; distinctly French, in a period when nothing foreign touched the taste of Paris — unless indeed, the Spanish, which always clung to the Empress, may have had something to do with laces and black and mantillas. But it is all sober, and what the French would call ‘6touff6’ — dead in sound. The hair, which is close to the forehead and crown of the head, widens out behind the ear according to the fashion. A “creation,” something like a bonnet, of lace and of little golden grapes, is placed upon the head, and fastened below the broad jaws by two big bows, perhaps of velvet. Some kind of lace with jet beads is on the shoulder and falls over the arms. She has black lace about her wrists and a soft white cuff showing one hand. She is, therefore, all in black, and sits inside of the Cashmere shawl (or is it a French shawl?), with green centre and red border, which is spread from right to left from the arms of the chair. The chair has the usual French striped covering, or * ‘ housse, ” and on the corner upon the back is a little piece of lace, apparently left there, and however remarkable in execu- tion, still indistinct, as are certain parts of the details. For one can recognize the little toilet table with the mirror and its frill of linen, and probably a pair of yellow gloves, upon the white cloth of the table. The hands of the lady are folded upon her lap. They are painted with ex- treme precision and yet so easily that at places the paint is hardly applied; the technique repre- sents to perfection the closeness of the folding and the looseness of the hold. They are hands that have dropped into place as if during the attention of the face above. It is the face above, that, after all, is the important part of the picture, though no artifice has been used to increase its importance. On the contrary the appearance of the picture would be that of an absolute transcript of the sitter’s position and lighting, just in the manner and place which belong to her. For the portrait is, if one may so say, an intimate one, and is a most astounding revelation of a character. The eyebrows are separated above the beginning of the nose by a very wide distance, and are arched very regularly over the eyes, which are 79 THE COLLECTION OF MRS set into large sockets. The definition between the portrait of each eye is as careful as it is unassuming in intention. All would be in the eyes were it not for the expression of the mouth, which is firm without the slightest pressure, and with a loose and large lower lip which still keeps its steady place. A small but very firm chin closes the broad oval of the face, and the very delicate outline of the cheek in the strongest light tells us the shape which the head would have in profile. Certainly there one feels the study of the master under Ingres. But the steady gaze of the controlling eyes above the quiet but resolute mouth is so astonishing as to mark the picture as something absolutely unique, something almost haunting in the perseverance of its impression. The person who might speak and who does not, whose lips and deeds are controlled by the mind, is told here in this astonishing way. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “LOVE’S GREETING” A PART from the intrinsic beauty of its design, the panel called “Love’s Greeting” (or, sometimes, “Romaunt de la Rose”), in Mrs. Gardner’s collection has some interest- ing associations attached to it. The central group, of a lady bending over and kissing her kneeling lover, appeared in 1861 as a design for the frontispiece of Rossetti’s translations from the earlier Italian poets, which were published in that year for the first time, together with the Vita Nuova some fifteen years after the poet, when a youth of about eighteen, had written them. It was Rossetti’s intention to use the design on an etched plate; but the plate, as happened invariably with reproductions of his work, failed to satisfy him, and so it was destroyed after one or two proofs had been taken from it. The design remained in the form of a pen-and-ink drawing, from which subsequently a woodcut was made, for the first number of the “English Illustrated Magazine,” which contained an illustrated article on Rossetti. The date of the actual panel is not so certain ; it may have been earlier than the design just mentioned, or of the same approximate time. At any rate, it formed one of a number of furniture panels, cupboard doors and so forth, which were painted for Mr. William Morris, at the time he was building and furnishing the Red House at Upton. Morris, together with Burne-Jones, on leaving Oxford in 1856, took rooms at No. 17 Red Lion Square, which they proceeded to furnish after their own taste. “Intensely mediaeval,” was Rossetti’s description of the furniture; “tables and chairs like incubi and succubi.” When, in i860, having married and given up the rooms at Red Lion Square, Morris settled in his new house at Upton, the second step was the furnishing of this, on a grander and more elaborate scale, involving many painted panels and wall decorations. Rossetti con- tributed as his share of the work the beautiful pair of panels “Dante meeting Beatrice in Florence and in Paradise,” afterward in the possession of Mr. Leathart of Gateshead; “Gwendolin in the Watch Tower” and “The Arming of the Knight” (on the backs of chairs), and indubitably, though there is no actual record of this fact, the panel of “Love’s 80 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER Greeting,” which was incorporated in a piece of furniture at this time. The third and final step was the starting of the firm of Morris & Co., in 1862, for the manufacture of decora- tive furniture and textiles. The growing exigencies of the new business caused Morris to abandon the Red House and to move up to London in 1865, when many of the panels were removed from their setting and sold as separate pictures. The “Love’s Greeting” was probably first acquired by a Yorkshire merchant, Mr. Dunlop, of Bingley, who also pur- chased the design of a pulpit panel by Rossetti — done for the Morris firm; but this is not certain. Rossetti had painted a water-color of the subject in 1864, which bore the definite title of “Romaunt de la Rose” inscribed on a rose in one corner, and it may have been this which Mr. Dunlop owned. In any case, Mr. Dunlop parted with it, and both versions, the panel and the water-color, found their way into the splendid collection of Mr. Graham. On Mr. Graham’s death, the panel was bought by Mr. Leyland and added to his not less memorable collection, and after the death of Mr. Leyland it passed into the possession of Mrs. Gardner. The panel is in beautiful condition save for an unfortunate crack down the middle. It shares with the Dante and Beatrice panels the merit of having been painted by Rossetti’s own hand, at a very good period of his work, whereas the later panels, done for the Morris firm, were merely copied from his designs. H. C. Marillier At the time that Rossetti was preparing the first edition of his translation from the early Italian poets, in 1861, he made a design for the frontispiece of the volume, of a girl kissing a young knight as he kneels before her, holding her hands in his. This design, for which more than one preparatory drawing exists, he etched on copper; but, not liking the result, he destroyed the plate, and only two impressions of it are known to exist. (Three preliminary studies of the subject were sold at Christie’s, May 12, 1883.) In the design, as Rossetti intended it for the frontispiece of his book, the two figures were relieved against a diaper background, and the title of the volume was inscribed above the figures, and the name of the publishers, and the date, 1861, below them. Liking the motive and compo- sition of the figures, Rossetti resolved to turn them to account, and worked them into a new design, from which he painted the picture in question. On the left of the two figures, he introduced a figure of Love, in the guise of a mediaeval angel, playing on a psaltery and shielding the two lovers with his wings. The psaltery was one of those odd inventions in the way of musical instruments in which Rossetti delighted to indulge, and though pleasing enough to look upon, would have greatly exercised the skill of a mediaeval musician. In the place of the diaper background in the original design, Rossetti introduced a wattled hedge with a rose tree and a sun-flower, and severally inscribed the three figures in Latin, and on the two scrolls above and below the picture, a legend in Italian. The same year that Rossetti made this design for his “Early Italian Poets,” the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., carried out a series of decorations for the Church of St. Martin at Scarborough, which had then been recently built from the designs of Mr. Seddon, the architect. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones and William Morris, all contributed towards this decorative scheme. Rossetti made several cartoons for stained 81 F1LIPEPI, ALESSANDRO (called BOTTICELLI) 1447-1510 “LA VIERGE AUX EPIS” (Madonna dei Chigi) HE Virgin, her somewhat worn face bearing an expression of contemplative melancholy, is seated in a stone loggiato. She wears a light, lawn-like veil which completely covers, without conceal- ing, her hair and ears. Over her red robe, plain save for the band of gold embroidery at the neck, its formal folds confined by a waist- band, is thrown a heavy cloak, turned over so as to show the darker lining at the wrists and neck, and with a shoulder cape bordered with a gold-embroidered pattern. With the left hand she holds in her lap the Divine Child, while with the right, inclining her head gra- ciously forward, she seems to half-apprehensively pluck an ear of wheat, one of a number which, together with some clusters of ripe grapes, are offered to her in a flat-brimmed, fluted dish, by an angel who occupies the left portion of the picture. Clothed in a garment gathered at the neck in many folds, his flowing curls confined around his brow by a leafy chaplet, he looks at the Christ, who, pillowing His head on His mother’s arm, lifts the fingers of His right hand as though about to bless the ear of wheat which she selects for Him. Around the heads of all three figures are halos formed of minute dots of gold. Through a rectangular opening in the loggiato is seen a peaceful, sunbathed landscape. On the shores of a winding stream rises a Gothic church with a tall spire, and on the opposite side a struc- ture with a round tower. Collection of the Chigi family, Rome. Sold by Prince Chigi in 1899 to a group of English picture dealers. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Exhibition Colnaghi Gallery, London, 1901. Panel, height 33K inches, width inches. 82 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS glass, and also painted two panels in oils, forming an “Annunciation” for the decoration of the pulpit. The painting in Mrs. Gardner’s collection although it bears no date, must have been executed at this time. Not only is the picture, as 1 remember it, thinly painted like the panels of the pulpit at St. Martin’s, the color being used rather as a stain than as a loaded pigment, but the whole scheme and arrangement of the color show the influence of that revival of English mediaeval decorative art as this group of the Pre-Raphaelites con- ceived it. To that phase of their art, no one contributed so much of its Gothic note and accent as Ford Madox Brown, and even Rossetti — who indelibly influenced every one that chanced to cross his path — fell for a moment under the influence of the man who, after Ros- setti himself, is unquestionably the greatest of all the English Pre-Raphaelites. It is Ford Madox Brown (I may recall by the way) whom Rossetti has portrayed in the figure of Adam, in one of the stained glass windows at Scarborough. In the frankly decorative treatment of this painting of “Love’s Greeting ” Rossetti was but insisting upon a passing phase of Eng- lish taste which stands in marked contrast to the taste of the eighteenth century. As in the time of Reynolds, the vogue had included the Carracci, Guido Reni and the Academicians, so now in the sixties, connoisseurs were bringing to England the ornate Madonnas of Botti- celli’s school and other such decorative pictures by the Italian primitives. That the finer qualities of such painting always exercised a fascination over Rossetti, is evident from the greater part of his earlier designs; and to disengage this influence from the influence of our cruder, but more expressive, Gothic art, may help us to recognize some of those old elements which, in new combinations, served to give an impression of profound originality to all that Rossetti produced. But let us turn for a moment from the treatment to the conception of this picture. No modern painter, I think, has realized more completely than Rossetti in his designs and paintings that dictum of the Romantic poets, which held that one of the chief aims of the artist was ‘ ‘ to make strange things seem familiar and familiar things seem strange. ” Surely nothing would appear more strange or more removed from the world in which we live than “the outward shows of things ” as they are represented in this painting of “ Love’s Greeting.” Ostensibly it is a scene or, if you will, a vision, of the mediaeval world; yet even the author of “II Ninfale Fiesolano” would find in it little to recognize which was of his time, or even akin to his own romantic imagination. But although it belongs to a world, which has never existed, except in the painter’s brain, nevertheless the sentiment by which it is informed and transfigured, is so familiar to us, so true to what is here and now, that not only does this fantastic world of Rossetti’s imagination appear probable, but even actual. Herbert P. Horne In the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti we touch the intimate phase of the Romantic movement which has colored so much of the art of the nineteenth century. I would con- fine the meaning of the words Romanticism and Romantic to express, not merely a more emotional outlook upon nature than we find in other schools, this would not be enough; nor does the word Romantic express a reaction only from that fine acquiescence in finer things which distinguishes classical art; something of both of these tendencies is, however, 85 THE COLLECTION OF MRS implied. Romanticism is, doubtless, in part both emotional and reactionary. The essen- tial difference between the Romantic school and other fashions of thought lies mainly in the value attached to art itself for its own sake, as a form of excitement; above all, to a wish to fascinate. Romantic art is therefore no longer a corroboration of life as it is, but a supervening element added to life, and a means of estimating it anew. Romanticism dives below the surface of things and is marked by the excitement of discovery. It expresses worship, and at times the opposite, namely, fatigue and disillusion. With Delacroix in France, we find the noblest assertion of these several elements, com- bined in a pictorial scheme which is at once ecstatic in its essence and epic in its range. With Rossetti the range has been narrowed and intensified; the horizons have closed in, and we are in the house of art itself where all is moulded by its spirit, devoted to its wor- ship, and dominated by an indwelling spirit of awe and fascination; we acquiesce in a transubstantiation of familiar things, they lose some of their daily character, whilst things remote grow nearer to us. All art that is not Romantic contents itself largely with facts. Romanticism attaches greater importance to the interpretation of emotions and events conjured up by facts. Romanticism appears as an exotic, arbitrary or singular frame of mind to the every-day man, wrapped as he is in the routine of daily events, and, being unshaken in the sense of his own importance — despite the small place he holds in his own time, he naturally dismisses all Romanticism as eccentric and even morbid. With this verdict we need not concern our- selves, or we should have to dismiss Michael Angelo, Leonardo and Giorgione, for the singu- larity of their aims, and their eccentric modes of thought. The charming and emotional rendering of nature by some French landscape painters has been termed Romantic. This is the case only in a slight degree: it is less so than the eighteenth-century art of Watteau, for instance; if Corot and Rousseau express a sensitive outlook upon nature, this was inaugurated in the eighteenth century, and their art is without the passion and regret, the fervor and at times the disillusion which is the characteristic of essentially Romantic painting and literature. Rossetti has established a more intimate and per- sonal ideal in art; he has also brought back the love of “pattern ” in design and personal choice in accessory things, which has spread outside of painting into crafts. As with Giorgione in Venice, his influence has stretched beyond his actual achievements, and in all that he touches we notice the remoulding faculty and the assertion of his own unique temperament. The charming panel, “ Love’s Greeting,” in the collection of Mrs. Gardner, reveals an almost playful phase of the golden period of Rossetti's work, in the fifties and early sixties. Done in all probability for some piece of furniture, it should be grouped in the life-work of Rossetti with the designs for the Seddon cabinet, and with the miraculous panels of Dante and Beatrice done for the Red House: it shows a quaint and charming version of a design for which Rossetti made some beautiful studies. He etched but never used it as a frontis- piece to his translation of the Italian Poets. In a slightly later form and on a gold back- ground, he painted it as a water-color entitled “Romaunt de la Rose.” This enchanting little work figured at the sale of Leyland, the great purchaser of Rossetti’s later and more 86 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER sumptuous works. The dark blue-green background, the golds and yellows of the wattle, sunflowers, wings, etc., the warm scarlets, whites and greens of the draperies, are expressed in an easy and simple technique full of ease and charm. C. Ricketts. “STANDARD BEARER OF THE HARVEST FESTIVAL” M RS. GARDNER’S example of Mancini may safely be ranked among the most impor- tant works of the artist. The picture symbolizes one of those picturesque pagan rites still surviving in many uninvaded corners of rustic Italy, and which have been but slightly modified to suit those superstitions of local and modern Christianity on which d’Annunzio has based his powerful drama “ La Figlia di Jorio.” It represents a Campagna peasant boy bearing the votive gifts which, at the conclusion of a successful harvest, it is still the custom to offer before a shrine of the Virgin, and in very much the way Greeks and Romans used to celebrate the same annual event by the presentation of similar offerings upon the altar of Ceres. The sun-burnt urchin’s animal spirits are awed by the holy baubles confided to his care. A mystic melancholy emanates from his pathetic eyes — mingled with pious pride. It is only after having felt this dominating note of human interest that one observes the brilliant but subsidiary interest of the accessories — a happy concentration which the painter too often neglected. Some thirty-five years ago Antonio Mancini, a lad in Naples, poor, ob- scure, friendless, with a minimum of education and with no artistic experience, and out of touch with all the world but nature, felt for himself unaided, and sang, spontaneously, his own natural note in art. Domenico Morelli heard it, and was the first, if not the only one, to applaud. Elated and helped on by the praise and generosity of the first artist in Italy, the boy made his pilgrimage to the Mecca of Modern Art — Paris, where sickness, disap- pointment and poverty unbalanced his mind, and where he really became the “povero mato ” he to-day laughingly calls himself. He was taken home, and the contents of his studio went to defray what he owed his color merchant in Montmartre. In that little shop, long after, Degas and Alfred Stevens discovered and immediately bought a number of Mancini’s canvases, the best of which, “ La Convalescente,” is now in the Mesdag collection at The Hague. These pictures, exquisite in color, sentiment and execution, induced the intelligently eclectic marine painter to give Mancini an order for all that he painted during two years, and Mesdag now owns, 1 believe, about forty of his works— very unequal, but all intensely individual and interesting. Amid modern painters, Mancini, though not an “intellectual,” speaks his own dialect volubly— a patois which, like Provencal, so contains the roots of all the tongues of art, that his work is enthusiastically comprehended by every educated polyglot. He has but a limited feeling for arrangement, flow of line, balance of form, equipoise of color, but he generally presents things with an ingenious wholesome bluntness much as they happen to present themselves, he adding but a minimum of stage setting. He often, however, falls into the common fault of modern Italians, that of over- charging the canvas with superfluous and distracting detail. While a head is drying, Man- 87 REMBRANDT VAN RYN 1608-1669 “PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG COUPLE” Canvas, height 52 inches, width 42 inches. HE two full-length figures, about one-third life-size, are placed in a hall from which two wooden steps lead upward to a door. The husband stands, while at the right of the picture his wife sits in a com- fortable arm chair. She wears a pleasant, shy smile, as if conscious that the eyes of the artist are upon her ; he looks directly out of the picture with assurance, almost challenging the spectator. Both are dressed in black, with wide, fluted ruffs, that of the lady much the more imposing ; the sombre hue of her dress of black chequered satin is also relieved by a light silk flower-embroidered stomacher, wonder- fully painted, by handsome lace cuffs and a gold chain around her waist. Each carries in the gloved left hand the glove of the right hand, the husband’s hand placed on his hip, disappearing under his cloak, whilst hers, plump and ringed, rests on the arm of her chair. The gray gloved hand of the man, the folded paper stuck in the top of the glove, and the empty one falling down his thigh, are of great importance in the arrangement of the composition and in giving a sense of action to his figure — this action being increased by the expression of his eyes and the upward twirl of his moustache. In the immediate foreground, to the right, is a chair with a crimson cushion, and on the greenish wall behind the man is a large map of the globe. Collection Henry Hope, Amsterdam, seventeenth century. Collection of the Hope Family. Sale of the Hope Collection by Lord Francis Pelham Clinton-Hope, of Deepdene, to Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (£121,550). Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Exhibition Manchester, 1857. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1881. Exhibition South Kensington Museum, 1890-1894. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS cini is frequently tempted to indulge in veritable orgies of still life in the background, exe- cuted with a brio which suggests mental intoxication. An apparent chaos of pigment is squeezed from the tubes, smeared with the fingers, scratched with the wrong end of the brush, troweled with the palette knife, until his canvas becomes a bas-relief of paint. Seen at a proper distance everything takes its proper place, the values being unerringly true. In contrast to the Gallo-cynicism of his gifted compatriot, Boldini, is the tender pathos of Mancini’s sympathy with the fever-stricken peasants of the Campagna. We see in the limpid eyes of his child models a wistful sadness not easily forgotten. In the many por- traits of his aged father, he shows that rare quality of simplicity and emotion which is the dominant note of Whistler’s portrait of his mother, but in his portrayals of other patrons Mancini is disconcertingly unequal. At all times, however, his technique remains as inter- esting to the painters as it is puzzling to the lay public. Ralph Curtis It is inevitable that Antonio Mancini’s career should be, as it has been, a long and arduous struggle against adversity. He is an original artist, supremely dexterous in the technicalities of his craft, but too iconoclastic for the general public, who require that a new thing should be presented to them persuasively. Most of his work is in portraiture, or in studies of single figures, and the public, looking at these strange canvases, call them brutal, unpleasant, and refuse to believe that any good purpose can be served by so heaping on paint with the palette knife. But Mancini has broken into an uncharted path, looking on the small section of the world that interests him in a way all his own, and which has little in common with ordinary pictorial vision. Brooding over what his eyes have revealed to him, he has evolved a startling technique to express what he sees. In technique lies Man- cini’s power. Imagination, idealism, subtlety, he lacks. He shows no sign of that pictorial vision, embracing from the beginning all the details of the picture as a whole, and retaining the unity of the impression to the end, which Velasquez exemplified so admirably in the “Surrender of Breda” and the “Tapestry Weavers.” Mancini is therefore a painter’s painter, appealing strongly to those who practice the craft and know the extraordinary dif- ficulties of manipulating paint so as to make it express what the eye sees. Brother artists have been the principal buyers of his works — Degas, Alfred Stevens, Sargent, who owns five of his pictures, and Mesdag, who has acquired enough to fill one of the large rooms in his gallery at The Hague. It is plain that Mancini is held in high esteem by those who are most competent to judge of his technical achievement — his fellow artists. The first picture I saw from his brush was a typical example of his startling method. The occasion was his d6but as an exhibitor in the Royal Academy exhibition two years ago. The portrait of a lady was so badly placed that it was not possible to give it adequate con- sideration, but even in the confusion of the reflected lights that played upon the surface of the heavy impasto, it was evident that here was work, original in design, superbly drawn, and shouting the personality of the artist. It did not give me pleasure, but it was compell- ing ; and there could be no doubt about the sombre dignity of the color. Something else in it claimed attention ; the bits of metal that Mancini had embedded in the paint, a rare 9i THE COLLECTION OF MRS stone here, a fragment of silver there. He is fond of this device. In the fine portrait of Mr. Charles Hunter, the artist has inserted gold sleeve links in Mr. Hunter’s cuffs. The trick is quite unnecessary. What Velasquez, Titian and Rembrandt did without, Mancini can do without, but he may argue that he is merely reviving an old custom, since some of the early Italians embedded jewels and pieces of metal in their pictures. (Crivelli went so far as to hang keys from the girdle of one of his holy men.) But Mrs. Gardner’s “Standard Bearer” instantly arouses the emotion of pleasure which art should certainly excite in the beholder. There are degrees and kinds of this pleasure, and to recall the diversity of it we need only to evoke the names of Leonardo, Velasquez, Giotto, Canaletto, Degas, and Harpignies. The pleasure of Mrs. Gardner’s pic- ture lies in its vitality, its joy, and its lively sense of the charm of youth and the opulence of nature. Here we have Mancini in a happy holiday mood, painting what pleased his eyes, frankly and simply, not struggling, as he often does, to attain his end by methods which bring the frown of disapproval to the orthodox and the academic. So absorbed is he in the potentialities of the pigment, so keen on snatching the vital gesture that comes and goes like the wind, that he apparently has not the patience to weave his impulsive designs into reasoned patterns, that is, into pictures. For sheer cleverness of technique, and a gay naturalness of pose, his portrait of “ A Spanish Opera Singer,” a man in dark clothes, wear- ing a straw hat, is unrivalled. The paint that gives to the straw an extraordinary illusion of actuality must weigh as much as the hat from which it was painted. This portrait is the last word in cleverness, the modern Paris-trained painter’s most vivid attribute, and it is just this excessive cleverness that places almost all modern work in the second class. Whistler’s portrait of his mother is not clever. What dexterity it possesses hides beneath sincerity, insight, and that simplicity of treatment that always accompanies greatness, as in Titian’s “Man with the Glove ” in the Louvre, and the “Woman with the Fan ” by Velas- quez, at Hertford House. These are related to time, not to the passing hour. But Mancini as a painter’s painter has won a first place in his class. C. Lewis Hind Our sensibility is constantly developing, and this refining of vision calls forth novel modes of expression to which art owes its renewal. Monticelli and the Impressionists, in our day, have enriched pictorial technique by precious processes. Only, while reality pro- vided the Impressionists with subjects for their pictures, Monticelli, poet-like, expressed the dream of his imagination. There has now arisen an Italian artist who places at the service of portrait-painting and the portrayal of manners, a technique closely related to that prac- tised by Monticelli in fixing upon canvas scenes which often took place, anywhere, out of the world. Antonio Mancini is one of those exceptional artists who at first appeared singular and eccentric but whom posterity, however, places among the number of those who have expanded the domain of art by the annexation of unknown regions. In Mancini’s works, the study of the human face betrays a rare gift of physiognomical analysis and psychologi- cal penetration. The principal attraction of his work, however, lies in the originality of the workmanship and the quality of the coloring. Mancini’s methods are exclusively his own. 92 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER The best historian of modem Italian art, Mr. Vittorio Pica, tells us that in order to obtain a glitter such as will arrest the eye, Mancini sometimes embeds in the paint crumbs of glass, fragments of tin, or bits of gilt paper. But without these articles, his pictures could be easily distinguished from among all others ; they are the work of one of the most extraordinary magicians of the palette that ever lived. Under the sky of Naples, all the gifts which made famous the greatest and most characteristic masters of the Venetian school, have intensified themselves to the point of excess. Like them, Mancini, with Southern sensuousness, de- lights in the splendor of rich tones ; but even more than they, he demands that color should rutilate under the light. He glories in brilliant, sparkling variegations. His paintings vie with jewel-work ; certain among them are comparable to a mass of precious stones glittering in the sunshine ; the curious materials used in others give them a likeness to the most sumptuous enamels bequeathed to us by the ages. It was expressly for Mrs. Gardner that Mancini executed, about the year 1897, the picture in which his gifts appear marvel- ously condensed — “The Standard Bearer of the Harvest Festival.” In it we see how the simplest accessories can become, under the brush of this artist, as precious as gems. The contrast by the sombre tones of the clothing sets off the brightness of the wheat, the flowers, the banner. Combined with all this, the quality of a luminous atmosphere raises the painting to the rank of a true master’s work, destined to remain, whatever may be the future evolutions of art, a subject of optical joy, delicious and powerful. Roger Marx “PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL INGHIRAMI” O NE cannot compare two versions of the same picture, such as the “ Portrait of Inghi- rami” in Mrs. Gardner’s collection and that in the Pitti without having seen them either side by side, or within a short space of time, one after the other. As the writer was never fortunate enough to see the Boston picture at all, he can base his remarks only on a comparison of the reproductions. But this is sufficient to enable him to state that, though almost identical at first sight, they differ too widely to be called replicas. In the first place, the Cardinal seems younger in Mrs. Gardner’s picture. Then — and this seems more im- portant — the head in the Pitti picture is turned more 'to the left. This difference, though very slight, is sufficient to change all the more important lines of the head. Note the dis- tance of the right eye from the line of the profile, which in the Boston picture is about double that in the Pitti picture. The same variations are noticeable in the case of the mouth and the chin. Now it is not likely that a copyist would voluntarily undertake any alteration which would make his work so much the more difficult; he would naturally pre- fer to copy with the greatest care, line by line. This instance, of no great importance at first sight, seems almost conclusively to prove that the artist who painted the one picture from the other, was no copyist in the ordinary sense of the word. Should we take it for granted, that Mrs. Gardner’s picture shows a somewhat younger man, we must conclude that it is the archetype, and that the Pitti picture was done from it, but by an artist who was able to undertake a task so difficult as the changing of the position of the head. 93 REMBRANDT VAN RYN 1608-1669 “CHRIST AND HIS DISCIPLES IN A STORM” Canvas, height 6yA inches, width 51^ inches. Signed on top of rudder : (Rrmbrantf '* T HIS well-known early work is an excellent example of the numer- ous small paintings, mostly of Biblical subjects, with which Rem- brandt varied the routine of his constant portrait work in Amsterdam, 1631-34. The broad-beamed, stout Dutch fishing boat is being lifted up by a huge sea which breaks over the bows, where five of the dis- ciples are trying to bring down the mainsail. The sails are split, the stays broken, the water rushes over the decks, and in the stern other disciples surround the Saviour, who has been roused from slumber by the appealing cry : “ Carest Thou not that we perish ?” His calm con- trasts with the frenzied gestures of His followers. The boat, which occupies a large part of the canvas, its bows rising far above the low horizon, is brought out vividly by the light which, breaking from an opening in the sky, falls on the boat, its occupants, and on the spray and crest of the angry waves. To the right, in the gloomy distance, is descried the phantom shape of another tempest-tossed vessel. Collection J. J. Hinloopen, Amsterdam, 1650-60. Collection of the King of Poland, at Hubertusburg, 1765. Collection of Gerrett Bramcamp, Amsterdam. Collection Hope, Amsterdam and Deepdene. Sale Bramcamp, 1771, purchased by Henry Thomas Hope (4, 360 florins). Sale of the Hope Collection, from Lord Francis Pelham Clinton-Hope, of Deepdene, to Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (£121,550). Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Exhibition British Institute, 1818 and 1835. Exhibition South Kensington Museum, 1868. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1881. Exhibition South Kensington Museum, 1890-1894. Engraved in outline in Reveil ; engraved by J . Fittler, etched by Exshaw. 94 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS 1 cannot speak of the artistic merits of the Boston picture, but I must state that Morelli seems not to have quite recognized the value of the Pitti picture. (“Galerie Borghese," Leipzig, 1890, p. 72.) After having studied this picture again and again I cannot convince myself that a Northern artist— a Fleming, as Morelli had said on another occasion— could have painted this picture, though Passavant, it is true, has compared its subtle technique with Holbein’s. Up to the end of the nineteenth century, Mrs, Gardner's picture, pre- served in the family palace of the Inghirami, remained almost unknown. Even in the local literature of the town 1 can find no mention of it; in one of the latest of the historical guide- books the Pitti picture alone is spoken of. (Amidei, “Delle Istorie Volteranne,” libri ii, Volterra, 1865, p. 391.) Its former history, therefore, is unknown, but that it passed im- mediately after its execution into the possession of the family seems highly probable. Crowe and Cavalcaselle say that the Pitti picture probably came into the possession of Pope Leo X and then into the Medicean collections. This is a pure supposition, and indeed a mistaken one. A search through the correspondence with art dealers of Cardinal Leopoldo dei Medici, in the inventory of whose collection (Florentine Archives, No. 58), made after his death in 1675, the Pitti picture first figured, might possibly throw more light on its anterior history. For the moment it is sufficient to know that it is not to be traced back to within any measurable time of its production. When, therefore, the superiority of the Pitti pic- ture, as proved by extrinsic, purely historical documents, can no longer be asserted, the intrinsic evidence I have given seems all the more important and leads to the inevitable conclusion that the portrait that remained in the family of the Cardinal is the picture painted by Raphael himself. Dr. Georg Gronau One question must inevitably occur to every student of painting on first seeing this portrait. Was Morelli right or wrong, when he pronounced this picture to be the original by Raphael, and the famous panel in the Pitti Palace to be the copy ? As 1 enjoyed the rare opportunity of studying both versions on the same day, one after the other, the con- clusion which I then came to, may possess a value which a mere expression of opinion might otherwise lack. When I examined Mrs. Gardner's portrait in Italy, the background which once had been of a dark green color, as in the Pitti version, and other portraits by Raphael, was repainted with what in effect was a black; a color which, had it been original, would certainly have pointed to the copyist. As anyone may see for himself on comparing the photographs of the two panels, the one is clearly a close copy of the other. The most obvious and striking difference between the two versions is in the painting of the red dress. The drawing of the folds in Mrs. Gardner’s panel has quite another character from those in the picture at Florence; just that difference (in its essential aspect at least), which exists between the hand that painted the “Ansidei Madonna" in the National Gallery at London, and the hand that produced such a work of the bottega of Raphael as, let us say, the "Madonna of King Francis” in the Louvre. The “Ansidei Madonna” still possesses that austerity and expressiveness of line and modelling which form the grand characteristic of the work of the great Italian masters of the fifteenth century. In this picture, Raphael 97 THE COLLECTION OF MRS shows himself to be what he always remained, in spite of that modernity of manner which he afterwards acquired — the child of the fifteenth century; whereas his scholars were en- tirely the product of the century in which they lived and worked. In the draperies of Mrs. Gardner’s version of the Inghirami portrait, as in the draperies of the “ Donna Velata,” and the portrait of “ Leo X ” in the Pitti Gallery, we still see, under- lying that modernity of manner which Vasari extols in Raphael, an austerity and impres- siveness of contour and modelling which he inherited from the fifteenth century. In the draperies of the Pitti version of the Inghirami portrait on the other hand, there is a “mor- bidezza ” and a loss of expressiveness, both in the contours and modelling, the result of a certain facility of touch and looseness of handling, which no longer stand in any real rela- tion to the earlier and austerer manner of the fifteenth century. When we come to com- pare the heads and hands of the two versions, this difference becomes still more apparent, at least to a practiced eye. In the Pitti version, the touch is everywhere more fluid, the modelling of the flesh a little fuller and more flaccid, the forms and contour less fine and simple. It is, perhaps, in the drawing and modelling of the mouth that the great superiority of Mrs. Gardner’s version is most obvious. Here, surely, there is a fineness of form which none of the scholars of Raphael attained, and which is not to be found in the Pitti portrait. Again, the faulty way in which the high light on the neck is touched in the Pitti version, the looser line of the linen collar, the more heavily loaded lights on the eyeballs, are all traits that point to the hand of the copyist rather than of the master. The difference be- tween the two pictures may be subtle enough ; but when once appreciated it is unmistakable and conclusive. I have no doubt that the Pitti version is an admirable contemporary copy, which may have been executed in the workshop of Raphael, probably for Leo X, but I cannot think of it as the original picture. Herbert P. Horne When an American collection comes in competition with the Pitti Palace, especially for a painting of Raphael’s, one is naturally predisposed to be a partisan of the Pitti picture. But with regard to the Inghirami portrait, the advantage appears to me to lie entirely with the example in America. The history of the latter establishes quite as firm a claim to au- thenticity as has the celebrated portrait in the Medici collection, since it was still in the pos- session of the Inghirami family when it was bought by Mrs. Gardner. But, every stroke and line of it is so much ampler and more distinguished, the color so much softer, and the style in no wise so smooth as in the example in the Palazzo Pitti, that the attribution of the latter to Raphael’s own hand is, to me, much less certain than that of the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. Dr. Wilhelm Bode “THE DEATH OF LUCRETIA” L IVY relates how a party of young princelings, among them Sextus Tarquinius, having supped with the wonted accompaniment of native wine, fell to vaunting the beauty and virtues of their respective wives. Each insisted on the preeminence of his consort ; wagers JOHN LOWELL GARDNER were laid, and finally those hot-heads rode forth, in spite of the late hour, to call upon the ladies in question and judge for themselves. Only one, Lucretia, wife of Tarquinius of Colatia, impressed them by her virtue, for whereas the other gentlewomen were discovered in the pur- suit of extravagant and not altogether innocent pleasures, she was found with her maidens spinning wool by lamp-light, her thoughts wholly given to the welfare of others. The prize allotted her proved a martyr’s crown, for the sight of virtuous innocence galling Sextus Tarquinius he determined to wreck her by force or guile, and rode with an attendant (cum comite) to Colatia some nights later, with this end in view, and when he left Colatia his das- tardly purpose had been accomplished. The broken Lucretia sent in hot haste for her hus- band and brother. They arrived accompanied each by a friend. She told her tale, and having urged, and received vows of vengeance, drew a dagger, and plunging it into her breast fell forward dying into her husband’s arms — thus was her stainless soul freed from its desecrated habitation. Her body was carried to the marketplace, where it became the centre of a horror- stricken multitude, who, incited by Brutus, swore before the gods by Lucretia’s pure and holy blood to exterminate the impious race of Tarquinius and never to tolerate him, or any other, as king in Rome. It is Livy’s story, and not Ovid’s, that Botticelli follows step by step, choosing the cru- cial moments with unerring tact. To the left he has pictured the midnight visit, the dim hall, the waiting Moor outside, the dagger-bearing Sextus and the surprised and frightened woman who meets violence with helpless distress; a characteristically feminine figure and very different from the Lucretia of Valerius Maximus’ imagination — the masculine soul im- prisoned by a whim of fate in a woman’s body. (Dux Romanae pudicitiae Lucretia cujus virilis animus maligno errore fortunae muliebre corpus sortitus est. Fact. et. Diet. lib. VI, I.) To the right of the picture Lucretia falls into the arms of those who have sworn to avenge her wrongs; among the four men whose names Livy enumerates is Junius Brutus. Between the representations of these two incidents is the great scene in which the royal crime bears fruit. In the centre of the picture on a bier lies Lucretia, stiff in death, a dagger in her breast; no longer the hapless, tender woman of the side scenes, but the awe-inspir- ing heroine of a tragedy the issues of which shall shake the world. Like storm clouds mus- tering from all sides, which meet, merge and break into black tempest, armed passionate figures with floating draperies and agitated hands, women among them too, gather about the corpse, and gaze and shudder. Above the body, hovering over it, like a brooding spirit of vengeance, is Brutus, his face transfigured with horror and pity, his drawn sword in his hand, and winged words on his lips. Behind him soars a Corinthian column crowned with the emblem of the civic liberties of the painter’s native city, the stripling David. What were the thoughts that filled Botticelli's heart when he painted this significant scene? Were they in Rome or — as this figure suggests — in Florence? Is this picture a protest, a cry for arms? Surely the most subjective of painters, the disciple of Savonarola, the illustrator of Dante, the lover of republican Florence who daily saw his mistress’s ancient liberties violated by Lorenzo’s degenerate followers, lifted the figure of the shepherd boy who killed the enemy of his people, into the position of the dominating genius of the scene below with intent. 99 REMBRANDT VAN RYN 1608-1669 “LANDSCAPE WITH OBELISK” Oak panel, height 27^ inches, width 28 inches. Signed at right-hand corner: /■ r & A LIGHT is breaking through the stormy clouds in the centre of the picture, near the horizon, and is reflected on the bluish surface of the river in the middle distance, and on the edges of the foliage and the obelisk, leaving the foreground almost entirely in shadow. A thick wood, many of the trees riven and twisted, occupies the entire right of the canvas; to the left a river winds through the landscape, past the towers and massive buildings of a small town. The river is spanned by two bridges, that in the middle distance formed by two lofty arches and the nearer one by a single span ; a road crosses the latter and leads away to the distant town. Below this bridge, to the extreme left of the foreground, is a water-mill, its undershot wheel driven by the cur- rent of the river, which just above the bridge falls over a low ledge of rock or an artificial weir. Over the bridge itself a peasant is urging his horse, which draws a heavily laden two-wheeled wagon. Beyond it rises the obelisk, surmounted by what has been suggested may be a statue. Near this a traveling carriage, drawn by two horses, ap- proaches. In the immediate foreground a man on horseback and a pedestrian converse together, while by the side of the former runs a dog. The sky is obscured in the upper portion by banks of heavy clouds. Collection Baron de Beurnonville, Paris. Collection A. Posonyi, Vienna. Collection Georg von Rath, Budapesth. Sales of the Beurnonville Collection, Paris, 1 88 1 , 1883, 1884. Purchased in the Beurnonville Sale, 1884, by A. Posonyi (4,650 francs). Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi, who had acquired it from Herr von Rath. Exhibition Rembrandt’s Works, Amsterdam, 1898. 100 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Botticelli comments his subject in the background. The scene is localised— if the idea of locality can be connected with an event of such universal import, conceived from a point of view at once so individual, and so abstract— as taking place in Rome, where he had spent many years, in the foreground are pseudo-classic Renaissance halls, with spacious porti- coes such as afterwards actually decorated the Capitol, and in the middle distance the Arch of Constantine, treated not in the reverent spirit of the archaeologist but remoulded in the crucible of a republican imagination into a monument of the shame and punishment of des- pots. it is decorated with reliefs representing Mucius Scaevola’s attempt to stab Porsenna at the door of his tent, and the moment in which the hero held his hand in the flames in order to show his enemies how little he feared the bodily pain which was all they had it in their power to inflict. Above these are representations of ordeals, of combats, and of the appurtenances of luxury— precious vessels, and slaves; and above the pilasters are pensive Renaissance figures, all born of the fancy of their Florentine creator, some, like their proto- types of the Roman Arch, with bound hands. Similar scenes decorate the porticoes on either side, among them is a representation of Judith with the head of Holofernes, a favorite subject with Botticelli. Like the thrum of distant drums, these scenes, telling of ancient wrongs which went not unavenged, call to action, and their accents harmonize with the spirit animating the ominous scene below. Lucretia is represented three times in this pic- ture in conformity with a convention inherited from classic through medireval art; a conven- tion which may bewilder the modern spectator whose pictorial imagination is so dominated by the “snap-shot" ideal that he has difficulty in realizing an event from any point of view but that of its actual material appearance at a given minute, but which was perfectly intel- ligible to the more poetic imagination of the Renaissance art lover, who demanded from a picture only that unity, not material but ideal, which he required from a poem. Closely connected with this continuous method of pictorial narrative, which is picto- graphic and not realistic, is the late classic and medieval use of landscape or architectonic background, not as an integral part of the scene but as a mere accessory of which the chief function is the localization of the event depicted. This point has been discussed already in my paper on Mrs. Gardner’s Giotto, in which it is shown how the use of architectonic accessories gradually gave way to backgrounds of realistic character, represented for their intrinsic qualities of line, color or mass. The architectonic accessories of the Death of Lucretia hold an intermediate place be- tween the emblems of the time of Giotto, and the realistic modern background; they by no means only serve to localize the scene pictured, or even to amplify and color the thought expressed, but are all-important factors in the solution of the purely artistic line and space problem Botticelli had set himself to solve. Before the discovery of the laws of linear per- spective, artists had been content that their pictures should have something of the character of colored reliefs; but at the end of the fifteenth century, space and depth of background were sought for and obtained by the aid of architectonic accessories by the distribution of the figures. As examples in point we may mention Leonardo's “Adoration of the Magi," in the Uffizi, and Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa, but rarely 103 THE COLLECTION OF MRS has the problem been solved more brilliantly than here; the lines of the splendid halls and arches carry the eye back to a point in the far distance from which they seem to have radi- ated, like rays from a sun; the depth given by these vanishing lines contrasts admirably with the shallow, frieze-like arrangement of the figures in the foreground. Nevertheless, notwithstanding its superficial naturalism and the tactful handling of the scientific line- scheme which is its artistic basis, this picture is not conceived realistically. It represents not a scene, but an idea; three incidents are imagined as one event, and are framed in an ideal background, which speaks of the splendors of ancient Rome, but also — and this is the dominant thought — of wrongs wiped out in blood of revolt, and of the final harmonizing of dissonance in hard-won republican liberty. The story of Lucretia is seldom met with in early Florentine art, and this not because of its inherent unsuitability, but because mediaeval and early Renaissance art was so exclu- sively the handmaid of religion that secular subjects were rarely treated. The spontaneity, sincerity and tenacity of Botticelli’s sensitive personality is shown by the liberty he allowed himself in the choice of his subject-matter and in his mode of handling it; he painted what appealed to him, drawing indifferently from Dante or Boccaccio, from the story of the Vir- gin, or of Venus. The efforts of painters like Uccello or Piero della Francesca, whose in- terests were chiefly scientific, made such a break with tradition possible; it would have been inconceivable in Giotto’s day. Nor could the subject have been treated worthily at an earlier date; it demanded powers of dramatic presentment, a swift and passionate line, and a sensitive and inflammable imagination — qualities possessed by Botticelli to a degree unap- proached by any of his contemporaries, Leonardo and Michael Angelo alone excepted. Paradoxical as it may appear, Botticelli’s affinities with the Florentine Titan, are neither few nor superficial; the despairing and passionate revolt which breathes in every line of his Death of Lucretia is sister to the brooding melancholy with which his fellow citizen regarded the fallen liberties of Florence, and gave expression to it in the figures of the Medici tombs. His affinities with Leonardo are purely artistic; here and there a trick of drawing, a com- mon sensibility to the swift movement of a horse, or of a slender girl (see the slightly sketched reliefs on the arch), and to the pathetic charm of yearning youth; but very far from Leonardo’s religious and political indifferentism was Botticelli’s passionate participation in the life of his native town. Its emotions sweep over and through him, and like an /Eolian harp he gives them musical expression. To this many-sided sensitiveness is due the charm of his representation of The Death of Lucretia, of the splendid architectural background and of the rhythmically grouped figures which gather like despairing spirits about the bier of the woman who preferred death to royal license. J. Paul Richter Of the two unquestionably genuine pictures by Botticelli which have found their way to America, one, the “Chigi Madonna,” belongs to the earliest, the other, “The Death of Lucretia,” to the latest period of the master’s career. Nothing of the history of the later picture appears to be known except that it was formerly in the collection of Lord Ashburn- ham, by whom it was shown at the Florentine exhibition held at the New Gallery in 1893-4. 104 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER Among the pictures which Morelli, the critic, bequeathed to the Academy at Bergamo, is another so-called cassone panel, similar in subject and treatment but somewhat smaller in size. The panel at Boston represents the story of Lucretia Romana, that at Bergamo represents the story of Virginia Romana. Morelli acquired his picture from the gallery of the Monte di Pieta at Rome, and exhibited it at the Esposizione Cristiana, held in the Baths of Diocletian in 1870, as a genuine work by Botticelli. In his “Studies in the Borghese Gallery,” Morelli has suggested that this panel may have been one of those which, accord- ing to Vasari, Botticelli painted for Giovanni Vespucci; basing his conjectures on the fact that this panel, like those which Vasari described, contains a great number of figures, “vivis- sime e belle.” Certainly this painting, like that in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, is much too large to have formed the panel of a cassone or chest, and was, no doubt, intended for the decoration of some larger piece of furniture; “per vani di lettucci, letti, ” to use Vasari’s phrase. In all probability they served for the upper panels of a “spalliera” or framed panel- ling, forming the back of a “lettuccio” or bench fixed against the wall. In the fifteenth century, at Florence, the “lettuccio,” with the “letto” or bed, formed the principal pieces of furniture in every bed chamber. Now, according to Vasari, Botticelli painted for the house of Giovanni Vespucci, in the Via de' Servi, “round one of the chambers, a number of pictures enclosed in ornaments of walnut, by way of framing and wall-panelling.” So far, then, Morelli’s conjecture was a probable one; but not long since I chanced upon a fur- ther confirmation of it. There is no need, 1 think, to demonstrate here, that the panels in question must have been painted towards the close of Botticelli’s career. I long since came to the conclusion, based entirely upon the internal evidence of the pictures, that they were painted a year or two before the picture in the National Gallery, of the “Adoration of the Shepherds,” which, as the fresh inscription of the upper part of it records, was painted “at the finish of the year 1500,” that is, according to our modern computation, in March, 1501, or shortly after. Now at this time the house in Via de’ Servi, for which Botticelli painted the panels described by Vasari, belonged, not to Giovanni Vespucci, but to his father, Messer Guidantonio, a famous statesman of his day, who was twice Gonfalonier of Flor- ence, and an inveterate opponent of Savonarola. At the end of the return of his property, which Messer Guidantonio Vespucci made to the officials of the taxes in 1495, is appended a note, stating that on the fifth of March, 1498, he purchased from the Arte del Cambio a house in the parish of San Michele Bisdomini or Visdomini. It was to this house, asjacopo Nardi relates (J. Nardi, ed. 1858, 1 , 154), that Messer Guidantonio returned with a fever upon him, after his proposals as Gonfalonier, for replenishing the exchequer of Florence had failed. “And the following night,” adds Nardi, the ribald youths of the town, with that grim Florentine sense of humor, “tied bunches of rope to the iron gates of the win- dows of the ground floor, and to the bell of the door of the house in which he lived in the Via de’ Servi, opposite to the church of San Michele Visdomini.” It is probable, then, that the paintings recorded by Vasari, were executed by Botticelli for the decoration of one of the rooms of this house, soon after its purchase by Messer Guidantonio in 1498. When Vasari wrote in 1550, the house had passed into the possession of Piero Salviati, and in the 105 REMBRANDT, HARMENSZ VAN RIJN 1606 (?)— 1 669 “PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF IN A PLUMED CAP” Panel (cradled), height 3 5 finches, width 29% inches. Signed with monogram T HE portrait represents Rembrandt as a prepossessing youth in his early twenties. The head is turned slightly to the left; the face, seen in full view, the eyes gazing directly at the spectator, is framed in the abundant dark hair. The lips, the upper part of which is faintly shaded by the down of the adolescent moustache, are slightly parted, conveying a suggestion as of a questioning expression. The nose is characteristic and strongly marked; the brow is almost concealed and the eyes thrown into luminous shadow by the projecting peak of the violet-tinted velvet cap, encircled around the crown by a jewelled chain with a large pearl in its centre. A tall, dark plume, drooping at the tip, rises from the left side of the cap. Around the neck is knotted a twisted scarf of gold embroidery, while across the shoulders of the greenish costume is thrown a gold chain of elaborate pattern, from which, at the breast, hangs a gold medallion. The light which comes from the left strongly illumines the right side of the face and the right shoulder, leaving the lower portion of the picture in heavy shadow. The background is monochrome, and the prevailing color of the pic- ture is gray in many shades, broken only by some higher accents on the face, the velvet and the jewels. Collection Duke of Buckingham, Stowe House. Sale Stowe House Collection, 1848 (£54,12.0). Sale Anonymous Collection, Christie’s, London, 1895, purchased by A. Tooth & Son (£1,155). Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Engraved by R. Cooper. 106 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS earlier part of the seventeenth century, this house and the adjoining one at the corner of the Via de' Pucci were entirely remodelled, if not rebuilt, in their present form by Giulio Parigi, at the instance of Lodovico Incontri. At that time, in all probability, the room which Botticelli had decorated was dismantled and its paintings were dispersed. Such evidence as we have, then, bears out the conjecture, that these panels were among those which Sandro executed for Messer Guidantonio Vespucci in 1498, or shortly after. Messer Guidantonio, I may add, was a near relative to Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to America. But let us now discuss the paintings themselves. In both panels Botticelli follows the method of the mediaeval cassone-painters, and depicts the stories of Lucretia and Virginia in a series of successive incidents, which are represented taking place against the same background. In Mrs. Gardner’s panel, the story of Lucretia which is set forth in three such incidents, was probably known to Botticelli in the version of the “Gesta Romanorum" or some later Florentine “Summa,” rather than in its original form in Livy. Mrs. Gardner’s panel is in a far finer state than the panel at Bergamo. Some of the figures, such as that of Lucretia on the left panel, or that of the Roman soldier with his hands raised on the right of the central group, are as admirable in execution as they are in conception. Other figures, especially some of the heads in the central group, are rather clumsy in drawing; and the figure of the negro which is partially seen on the extreme left of the panel is so un- Botticelliesque in motive that one must conclude that the master had some assistance in the execution of this painting. The various reliefs and figures which decorate this arch and the lateral buildings, possess all the beauty of invention and admirable freedom of handling which distinguish the reliefs on the architectural background of the famous “Calumny of Apelles” in the Uffizi. These reliefs, which are full of little figures, are executed in monochrome and the lights heightened with gold. We probably owe it to the difficulty of working in gold that these reliefs are entirely by Botticelli’s own hand. Herbert P. Horne In the last decade of the fifteenth century, a notable change had come over the spirit and character of Botticelli, owing, no doubt, to the events witnessed by him. First, the misfortunes of his Maecenases, the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, the flight of the arrogant Piero, of Cardinal Giovanni and of the gentle Giuliano, and the entry into Florence of Charles VIII. The painter saw the library of Saint Mark dispersed by the fury of the people, the palace in Via Larga pillaged ; he saw the beloved city, divided by factions and repeatedly invaded by strangers, fall from her former glory. Amid such upheavals, what wonder that he should no longer have found the calm and serenity of spirit necessary for his creative work as an artist! If existing documents show Vasari’s statement, that Sandro, having be- come a follower of Savonarola ‘was turned away from the work,’ to be exaggerated, the productions of his last period show none the less clearly that he had indeed lost his serene cheerfulness. We can imagine how the tumultuous events of this troublous period must have shocked this painter of the Medicean Court, friend of Lorenzo and Poliziano, and in- terpreter of their pagan phantasies. With the enthusiasm of his ardent nature, he embraced 109 THE COLLECTION OF MRS the cause of Savonarola, who, at the time, seemed to be the only man from whom help might come. Perhaps through him also Botticelli hoped to obtain forgiveness for his earlier productions, so thoroughly pagan in their sensuousness. As if wishing to forget the past he turned to the illustration of sacred scenes, which he treated with a dramatic power wholly new in his work, or to render such subjects as exhibited a moral, rather than the mere study and worship of form. “What shall 1 say of the houses of the citizens?” Savonarola had exclaimed. “There is no wedding of a merchant’s daughter but the maiden brings her outfit in a chest painted over with mythological labels; so that the Christian bride sets the deceits of Mars and the arts of Vulcan before the acts of the holy women famous in Scripture.” And Botticelli, as an alternative from sacred episodes, illustrates the triumph of virtue in the sacrifice of the Roman Virginia or in the death of Lucretia. The subject of the painting in Mrs. Gardner’s collection is the tragic death of the Roman heroine, represented at three different moments. The exaggeration in the move- ment of the figures, the flying garments, the peculiar drawing, established a close kinship between this painting and the one in the Morelli gallery at Bergamo, which illustrates the story of Virginia : and both clearly show their affinity in style to the more celebrated “Calumny” in the Florentine Gallery. Vasari relates that Sandro made in the house of Giovanni Vespucci, around one of the chambers, a large number of paintings enclosed in ornamented walnut settings; and Ulmann supposes that Mrs. Gardner’s picture and the two others with which it has so close an affinity were among those recorded by Vasari. However this may be, these pictures show how persistently in these latter days Botticelli carried his search after motion and life-likeness. Of this very characteristic late period of the artist’s life the painting in Mrs. Gardner’s collec- tion is certainly a most graceful and precious document. I. B. Supino “ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON” B EFORE the middle of the sixteenth century, in the Isle of Murano, near Venice, came into being the art of the Vivarinis, whose youthful exuberance strove for a magnifi- cence that may be justly termed Oriental. Carlo Crivelli, taking thence his start, soon adapted himself (as the Vivarinis had done) to the Paduan influence ; but he had not the strength wholly to cut himself loose from habits already formed and turn his art to new mani- festations in which beauty was the essential factor ; that is to say, a matter of composition and line, and not the abundance and richness of accessories and the sumptuousness of tissues. No one can deny the delightful impression of birth and good breeding Crivelli’s person- ages give. His saints, male and female, suggest that they have come from the most polished courts of the Renaissance. His “Saint George Slaying the Dragon” in Mrs. Gardner’s col- lection, calls to mind one of the youths of great families reared at the Court of Urbino, in the days of Federigo de Montefeltro, and trained to arms, sports and every courtesy, in- structed in the sciences and educated to an appreciation of the beautiful in the plastic arts and in literature. JOHN LOWELL GARDNER Such lively expressiveness as horse and rider show is not common in Crivelli’s art, nor, notwithstanding the great esteem in which we hold this master, do we believe he would have attained it without the example of Jacopo Bellini, the head of the Venetian school of painting in the fifteenth century. In the drawing-books by Jacopo, preserved in the Louvre and the British Museum, one may see studies of horses and horsemen very similar in atti- tude, form and feeling, studies made for the representation of Saint George, and of which Giovanni Bellini also availed himself in the predella of the painting of St. Francis of Pesaro. In the drawing of Jacopo, in the above mentioned painting of Giovanni, and likewise in the Crivelli in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, we behold Saint George when, the head of his spear having broken off in the monster’s jaws or body, he grasps his sword to strike. It is inter- esting to note the likeness in certain details of the armor, the equipments, etc. The paint- ing of Giovanni and that of Crivelli have also in common the position and shape of the Saint’s shield, the spiral ornament of the spear, and, if not the position of the dragon, his aspect, with the head resembling a lizard’s and the body a chameleon’s. But while in the painting by Giovanni the Dragon crawls along the earth, in Crivelli’s he rears himself high, with the fine movement of a sort of heraldic monster. Taken as a whole, this picture of Crivelli is of very rare beauty and elegance. It also is in a beautiful state of preservation. Dr. Corrado Ricci Chronologically I should place this work in the near neighborhood of 1475, although other critics have assigned it to a somewhat earlier date. Apart from the unique charm with which Crivelli has succeeded in endowing his representation of this most fascinating subject, one could not wish for a better example of his peculiar technical methods than that given us here. His wonderfully sure and clean-cut line, his enamel-like finish, his brilliant color, and last, but not least, his deep feeling for decorative effect — all are present in this panel in a superlative degree. The lavish use of embossed gold ornament, although never entirely abandoned by Crivelli, seems to have been in especial favor with the master during the particular period in which this picture, and certain others with which it stands in close relation, were produced. The type of the youthful warrior-saint is one often recurring in his works, not only in his male but also in his female characters. It meets, perhaps, with its closest counterpart in the St. Mary Magdalen of the Berlin Gallery, a work not very far removed in point of date from this St. George. It can be met again in a more developed form in many of his later pictures, as, for instance, in the young St. Sebastian of the so- called “Odoni” altarpiece, now in the National Gallery at London. The architecture of the high-lying hill-town reminds us of that in the background of Crivelli’s earliest recog- nized picture, the Madonna in the Gallery at Verona. The rocks of the hill itself are ren- dered in what is, even for Crivelli, a particularly conventional manner, quite in keeping, however, with the spirit of the picture. They invite comparison with the more naturalistic rocks in a far more naturalistic work of his, the “Vision of the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti,” in the National Gallery. A comparison of this panel of St. George with other Venetian pictures of the same subject, of earlier and of later date, can but serve to bring into greater VERMEER, OF DELFT, JAN or JOHANNES (JAN VAN DER MEER) 1632-1675 “THE CONCERT” Canvas, height 2334 inches, width 25^ inches. T HE scene represents the interior of a spacious apartment, with a pavement of large squares of black and white marble arranged in a cross-like pattern. Against the gray wall at the background is placed a harpsichord, the lid raised so as to show its inner surface, decorated with the painting of a landscape. Seated at the keyboard and seen in profile, her back to the light, is a young woman in a white satin petticoat with yellow sleeves, wearing a pearl necklace, and with white ribbons in her hair. Her lips are parted as she sings to her own accompaniment. Near her, in the centre of the composition, with his back to the spectator, sits a man with long, flowing hair, a wide bal- drick over his shoulders, from which hangs a sword. He is playing a lute, the thumb and fingers of the left hand just appearing above his left shoulder as they grasp the neck of the instrument. To the right stands a woman in a green dress and short, ermine-trimmed sack, hold- ing in her left hand a sheet of music, and as she sings beating time with her right hand. On the wall behind the harpsichord hang two framed pictures ; on the left a landscape, on the right a figure subject. Over the heavy pedestal table to the left of the foreground is thrown an oriental rug, upon which are a violin and some sheets of music. On the floor near the table lies a bass-viol. The light comes from a window to the spectator's left, which does not appear in the picture. The back of the chair gives a note of pale red, very valuable among all these blacks and whites. Collection Baroness Van Leyden. Collection Thore-Burger. Sale Van Leyden, Paris, 1804. Sale Thor6-B(irger, Paris, December 5, 1892 (20,000 francs). Pur- chased by Mrs. Gardner. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS relief Crivelli’s individuality of treatment. Among such pictures may be mentioned the famous Carpaccio in the Church of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni at Venice, the less known but hardly less interesting painting by the same master in San Giorgio Maggiore, the quaintly charming panel in the Martinengo Gallery at Brescia, the somewhat kindred subject of St. Crisogno painted by Giambono for the Church of San Trovaso at Venice, and lastly Crivelli’s own later rendering of the Cappadocian Knight in the predella of the “ Odoni" altarpiece at London. F. Mason Perkins This picture first became known to the public when exhibited in London, at the Vene- tian Exhibition of 1895, and the critics agreed in judging it to be a rare work of art ; Mr. B. Berenson placed it among the early works of the master, assigning it to about the year 1 470 ; Mr. McNeil Rushforth, to whom we are indebted for the only serious monograph on Crivelli in existence, also gave it a very early date. It is difficult with any certainty to give dates to the works of an artist who developed his style as Crivelli did, almost from the very beginning of his career, and, though developing it, changed neither his technique nor his types. A very similar type to this St. George, with the long, pointed nose and highly prominent chin, is again to be found in so late a picture as the ‘ ‘ Coronation of the Vir- gin," of the Brera Gallery (dated 1493) ; particularly close in type, too, seems to me the Magdalen at the Berlin Gallery (undated). Similar relief ornaments are to be found in the polyptych in the National Gallery (1476), and in the altar-piece in the Brera (1482). Taking these facts into consideration, 1 wrote that the picture now in Mrs. Gardner's Collection might have been painted about the year 1480 (“ Gazette des Beaux-Arts," February, 1895, p. 165). But, after all, this is not a question of great importance. The great fact is that the picture ranks very high as a work of art, not only when compared with Crivelli's own works but with others as well. No other Venetian artist has painted this subject with more vigor or with a greater sense of passionate movement. The high shape of the panel suggested to Crivelli the bold position of the horse, seen from underneath almost, and coming out from the picture ; and the movement of both horse and cavalier composes most magnificently within the lines of the frame. The dragon is worthy to be compared to one of those fan- tastic monsters which Oriental artists have delighted to fashion in bronze. The golden sky is the only fit background to this beautiful fairy tale. Dr. Georg Gronau This panel, which for quality and interest is unsurpassed among Crivelli's pictures, nevertheless belongs to the earliest stage of his development. It is not merely from the use of raised gilt ornaments in the armor and horse-trappings, or from the almost exaggerated hardness and precision of form — features which he modified in his later style, that we should infer an early date. Every line of the picture proclaims its Venetian or Paduan origin, and it is indifferent which term we use, for Paduan is only a species of old Venetian art. The fissured rock floor with its scattered pebbles, the curiously formed crags behind, are not only familiar from Mantegna and the Paduans (cf. especially in the “ St. Francis” of "5 THE COLLECTION OF MRS Gentile Bellini’s earliest work, the organ shutters for St. Mark’s), but may be paralleled in old Venetian work, for these forms belong to the Byzantine tradition which Venetian art in- herited. The trees, again, on the right, looking as if they had been cut into shapes like yew or box, are another Venetian peculiarity, perhaps learnt by Crivelli in the school of Vivarini. It occurs, for instance, in a school picture of the Annunciation at S. Giobbe, Venice. The raised gilt ornaments are eminently characteristic of Early Venetian art (Jacobello del Fiore and Giambono). Another phase of Venetian art — that infusion of new life into the old tradition which we associate with the name of Jacopo Bellini, is suggested by the horse. It is the horse which appears in so many of Jacopo’s drawings, but refined, strengthened, naturalized. Even some of the characteristic details of the trappings are reproduced (see “Rassegna d’Arte,” IV, 1904, 41). The town on the left with its towers and buildings crowded behind the battlements, recalls another regular feature in Jacopo’s drawings, and may well be derived from the same source. The union of all these elements shows us Crivelli fresh from the Venetian atmosphere and training in which he was brought up. He has infused extraordinary life and energy into the scene. The combat of St. George with the Dragon is usually represented from the side view. Obviously this was un- fitted for the narrow panel of an ancona, and the alternative was to represent St. George on foot, as Crivelli did in an example belonging to the late Lady Ashburton (Rushforth, “ Crivelli,” p. 93). In Mrs. Gardner’s picture he has adopted the front view of the horse, thus adding immensely to the interest of the composition. In dealing with early painting it is difficult to speak of pure originality, and doubtless Crivelli had some prototype before him. The same point of view was adopted, for instance, by a Giottesque painter in the Church of the Incoronata at Naples, where the reason for the employment of the design is the same as here, viz. : a narrow space. Perhaps we should look for the immediate source of inspiration to Jacopo Bellini. Among his drawings are several sketches of this subject ; and such animated treatment as we see in an example from the Louvre sketch-book (pho- tograph by Giraudon, 756), of which the British Museum volume has a variation (fol. 7. Reproduced in Molmenti’s “ Pittura Veneziana,” p. 27), may well have provided the sugges- tion which Crivelli has developed in so striking and individual a manner. Whatever the source of the composition he has treated it with conspicuous freshness and skill. The con- centrated energy of the Saint, grasping his heavy sword with both hands, for a crushing blow, the wounded Dragon raising itself for a last effort, the rearing steed averting its head as if to escape the monster’s poisonous breath — all this forms a scene of supreme interest. The form of Crivelli’s work does not often allow us to see him as a painter of action, and the St. George makes us regret all the more that it is almost unique among them. His later treatment of the subject, in the predella of an altar-piece in the National Gallery (No. 724), follows more conventional lines. Having from internal evidence assigned the picture to Crivelli’s early time, it is inter- esting to find that this is confirmed by the facts as to its provenance. Crivelli’s pictures fall into local groups, each belonging to a district in which he worked for a certain time before moving elsewhere. We can infer that between 1468 and 1473 he was active in the region of 116 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER which Fermo may be described as the centre ; and it is just with this Fermo group that, on internal grounds, the St. George is to be classed (Rushforth, “Crivelli," 46 cf. 16). And that it came from the Fermo district there can be little doubt, for it must belong to the altar- piece which once adorned the church at Porto di Fermo, on the Adriatic. It was still there when Ricci wrote about it in 1830; he describes it as a triptych of the Madonna enthroned between Saints Peter and Paul on one side, and a mounted figure of St. George on the other. Above was the usual Entombment (Ricci, “Memorie Storiche," etc., I, 209). St. George was chosen because he was the patron saint of the church. The place we may notice is sometimes known as Porto San Giorgio. The Madonna has not been identified and perhaps no longer exists, but the side panels (which are practically of the same dimensions, 35 x 18 inches) were acquired by the late Sir F. Leyland, at whose sale ( 1 892) the Peter and Paul came into the possession of Mr. Ludwig Mond, while the St. George passed through the collection of Mr. Stuart Samuel into that of Mrs. Gardner. From the difference of subject the two panels do not provide many points for comparison ; but besides the general uniformity of style, the identity of details, such as the nimbus and the sword-handle, leaves no doubt that both be- longed to the altar-piece of Porto San Giorgio. G. McNeil Rushforth No one who saw the Venetian Exhibition at the New Gallery in 1895 can forget the impression made by what was then Mr. Samuel's “ St. George and the Dragon.” Few even among Crivelli's adorable works have so piquant a charm or display so fairy-like a phan- tasy as this. There are other pictures of his early years which show intenser feeling, but no other exists in which the purity, the unfettered gaiety and freakishness of his fancy is more apparent. For though Crivelli has thought of everything he could to impress us with a sense of the tremendous, has drawn with real understanding the nervous clutch of the spare, deli- cate hands on the sword, the rapidly indrawn breath which contracts the lips and lays bare the teeth, has given us the mixture of rage and fear in the horse's tense nostril and swollen eye ; although all has been endeavored that might give dramatic reality to the scene, our own emotions before the picture are purely delightful, unmixed with any reminiscence of what is momentous or tragic in life. Mr. Berenson has alluded to the superb decorative quality of this work as akin to that of Japanese lacquer, and the kinship with Oriental art goes, I think, even further and lies also in this peculiar power of giving a vivid presentment of keenly observed facts of nature in a form which removes them completely from the atmos- phere of actual life. The decorative sense, the love of exquisite and perfect mature, which has always been strong in the East, has no doubt much to do with this, for it demands that the infinitely shifting contours and surfaces of nature shall be rendered by symbols of abso- lute precision ; as an instance, one may take here the treatment of rocks in laminae arranged according to an a priori scheme of decoratively harmonious curves. This Oriental feeling for minute realistic detail, combined in a whole which has none of the contexture of actual nature, may be fitly opposed to the classic ideal with its tendency to generalize the forms, and its insistence on naturalism in the larger relations of parts in the whole— and there are not a few indications that, if the art of Mediaeval Europe had developed "7 TERBORCH, (TERBURG), GERARD i 608- i 68 i “THE MUSIC LESSON” Canvas, height 2654 inches, width 2054 inches. Signed on footstool at left with monogram (% I N front of a table covered with a cloth of green tapestry, a young woman, her face seen in profile, is seated, playing on a double- necked theorbo or arch-lute. She wears a gown of white satin and a dull red velvet sack trimmed with white ermine, the sleeves reaching only to the elbows. Her fair hair is ringletted and tied with a bow of silk ribbon. She gazes intently at a book of music in front of her, sup- ported by a wooden rack. Behind her, and facing the spectator, stands her music master, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat, from under which his long hair falls about his shoulders. His dark costume is re- lieved only by the ends of the white neckerchief knotted about his neck. With his outstretched right hand he marks time as he watches attentively his pupil’s hands to see that she is striking the right note. On his right the door of the room, with its hanging brass lock handle, stands slightly ajar. Against the rear wall, to the right, is seen a high- post bedstead with a heavy plain stuff lambrequin. On the table lies a bass-viol, while on the cushioned chair in the foreground, to the left, a brown and white spaniel lies curled up asleep. Collection of Henry Hope, Amsterdam, seventeenth century. Collection Hope, Amsterdam and Deepdene. Sale of the Hope Collection, from Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton Hope, of Deepdene, to Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (£121,550). Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1881. Exhibition South Kensington Museum, 1891-1894. Engraved by Lewis. Several replicas are extant, one of which was etched by D. Mordent when in the collection of Prince Demidoff, at San Donato. 118 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS entirely spontaneously it might have formed itself along Oriental rather than Graco-Roman lines. In any case Crivelli shows himself in such a work as this as a delightful exception, a being who, by the accidents of circumstance and temperament, presents for us right to the end of the fifteenth century one element, the most purely native element, of mediaeval art. 1 say accidents of circumstance, because it was, perhaps, only in a Venetian that such a pure strain could occur, for Venice was the only important Italian centre that was never deeply touched by Giotto's essentially classic art. It was only there that that conception of the grand style, so inimical to this particularized naturalism did not gain ground. The whole of fifteenth-century art was in a sense a reaction against this grand style, but only in Venetia could an artist be so naively innocent of its existence as Crivelli. But there was one other invasion of the classical spirit from which Crivelli escaped only by the accident of his personal temperament. Crivelli was a contemporary of Mantegna, and both alike had studied in Squarcione’s 1 bottega ’ in Padua. To both alike Padua must have revealed the pre-eminence of Donatello’s art. But while to Mantegna's more awakened intellect this became a chief source of inspiration it had no message for Crivelli's narrow, childlike spirit. All that he learned from Padua was a perfect technique ; he remained to the end as he shows himself in Mrs. Gardner's picture, an old Venetian artist, a rare and isolated survival of that early Venetian school of which so little survives, but which, from Semitecolo's work, we may judge to have stood quite apart from the main current of Italian art, and having many points of contact with the art of Burgundy. Into that old and beautiful formula he fitted a nature he gathered from more restless and eager spirits. In this case, and the picture is of an unusual kind in Crivelli's work, he seems in the main to have borrowed from Jacopo Bellini. The idea of the rearing horse with its bold foreshortening, comes very close to some of Jacopo's drawings, while the treatment of the Dragon’s scales and the indication of its skin hanging loose like a lizard’s is to be found in Jacopo's drawing of a combat of five knights with two dragons in the Louvre. In composition, however, as well as in sentiment, the picture asserts the prevailing influence of a still earlier Venetian tradition in the forma- tion of Crivelli's style. Roger E. Fry “MADONNA AND CHILD "-PINTUR1CCH10 B ERNARDINO D1 BETTO, surnamed Pinturicchio, is not, like Perugino, his friend and fellow Umbrian, a painter of profound and subtle feeling, but more purely a deco- rator, seeking the beauty that comes from elegant, graceful figures, and from richness of detail. Holding, at first, to the manner of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, an artist preoccupied with splendid effects, he developed into an artist of finished execution and rich coloring, the fes- tive painter of courts and princes. With him psychological analysis stopped at the surface, and he never produced any of those pictures which retain celebrity for all time because of the intensity of life and of the depth of sentiment they express. In the matter of magnificence of color, ornaments, landscape, architecture, crowds, he absorbed the qualities developed in Umbrian painting through a whole century, fused them 121 THE COLLECTION OF MRS and carried them to a wonderful degree of splendor. By the types of his “ Madonna and Child” we may distinguish his divers epochs. In the earlier ones, before 1490, the face of the Virgin, of opaline tones, is beautiful but hardly fine; the eyes are big, far apart; the nose long, straight, with a round tip; the mouth narrow and moist like a rosebud; the folds of her draperies are still hard and stiff, betraying the scholastic influence; the Child is roundish-looking. Then later, about the time of his return to Umbria, Pinturicchio gets delicacy and refinement, as if from the refreshment of resting from the necessarily hurried and tumultuous execution of so many decorations for great halls and chapels. The painting in the collection of Mrs. Gardner belongs to the second charming type, together with the paintings of Citta di Castello, of San Severino delle Marche, of Cambridge, etc. The Madonna has the Child upon her knees and with her left hand upholds the book that He may read; her hands are such as the master usually paints; the Child, clothed, with a graceful, attentive little face, looks at the book; He repeats the type of the Child so much admired in the wonderful picture of San Severino delle Marche, and still more of the one, likewise reading, in the Borgia apartment of the Vatican. His attitude is nearly the same as in the Perugia painting of the same subject, in the fresco in the Eroli chapel at Spoleto, and particularly in the Cambridge picture, so very like the one in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. Also the landscape, with the tall, slight trees, faintly touched with light, offers the custom- ary characteristics of the master, so that we may rest perfectly assured that this painting is an undoubted work of Pinturicchio. Dr. Corrado Ricci The Madonna picture is one of the most charming and peculiarly characteristic of Ber- nardino Betti’s art. But, while in men possessed of such pronounced individuality as Botti- celli, or of such ingenious ability as Raphael, one can notice a gradual developing perfec- tion in their style in even their Madonna pictures, in Pinturicchio one finds a tenacious adherence to ideas of form and motives once used. It is for this reason that a chronologi- cal classification of these never dated paintings in accordance with the laws of stylistic de- velopment will always be a risky undertaking. In the Madonna of S. Maria fra Fossi — to-day in the picture gallery at Perugia — in the Tondo of the Appartamento Borgia, and in the “ Madonna with Donator” in the Cathedral of San Severino, Pinturicchio’s Madonna ideal received its most perfect expression. Most of his other and fairly numerous Madonna pictures reproduce these originals. Just as the type and expression of his Madonna is uni- form, even so Pinturicchio shows similar uniformity when it comes to research for motive. He knows but two of them. Sometimes we see the Christ Child with its little hands raised in benediction, standing on His mother’s knees ; at other times He sits on her lap reading. The picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection shows the latter motive, of which we also find a treatment in the Madonna at Valencia, and in the medallion of the Appartamento Borgia. So far as the form treatment is concerned, this little picture stands nearest to the painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, the date of whose origin Ricci places between the years 1497-1500. (“Pinturicchio, Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre et Son Temps.” Paris, 1903, pp. 246 and 247.) 122 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER The Madonna in Mrs. Gardner’s collection sits on a stone fence in an open landscape. A baldachino extends above her head, and its broad, light background leaves only narrow strips of landscape free to right and left. To the left towers a magnificent castle on a steep hill, to the right a huge arched bridge spans a river. In the painting at Cambridge, the little St. John, with devoutly uplifted hands, has joined the Mother and Child, who, in Mrs. Gardner’s picture, are alone. Mary wears, as is always the case with Pinturicchio, a blue veil decorated with ornamental golden arabesques, drawn up over her head, and under it a white cloth, beneath which a few blonde hairs appear. The remarkably small mouth, the straight nose, the arched eyebrows, and the drooping gaze in the slightly slanting eyes, are characteristic of all the Madonnas by this master. Just as typical of the master is the left hand with the slender thumb, the outstanding little finger and the bent index finger, a hand which one recognizes in nearly all of Pinturicchio’s Madonnas. Mary shows no par- ticular emotion ; calm and solemn — the ideal type of a pure Virgin, she gazes at the tiny little boy who sits in her lap on a pillow, and in spite of His tender years, diligently reads in the book which the mother holds before Him. As in almost every other instance, this Christ Child of Pinturicchio’s is dressed in a thin little shirt. As to technical execution, the Madonna is more carefully painted than the Child. If one did not know that the type of Pin- turicchio’s Madonnas remained the same, one might suppose that this was one of his early works. The landscape lacks, perhaps, some of the fragrant freshness and sunshine which in some instances brighten up the landscapes of Pinturicchio, who, alone among the Umbrian masters, knew how to read Nature. Dr. E. Steinmann If commonplace, it is not the less true, that the hand of a great artist is as apparent in a slight sketch or small picture as in his most important productions. The quality of Mrs. Gardner’s “ Madonna” leaves no doubt that it comes from Pinturicchio himself, and noth- ing could better illustrate the delicate sentiment, the refined sense of beauty, the exquisite yet perfectly natural charm, which distinguishes all his work. But it is clear that from this picture alone we could never apprehend the full range of his capacities. Pinturicchio painted easel pictures, intended for the domestic interior, as they came in the way of business, but primarily, a wall painter on grand scale, he was most completely in his element when unfold- ing in a setting of beautiful surroundings, scenes of historic or religious interest, with all the wealth of gorgeous detail and elaboration of composition. It is at Rome in the Borgia Rooms and the Sistine Chapel of Siena, or in the Church of Spello, that we learn to estimate Pin- turicchio at his true worth. The splendidly decorative character of these large compositions is their most striking feature, but, like the pageant pictures of Carpaccio (between whom and Pinturicchio there are many analogies), they are found on a closer view, to be full of particular beauties, sometimes in figures and faces of exquisite grace, sometimes in details of ornament of rich and delicate design, sometimes in lovely vistas of distant landscape. In a word, Pinturicchio’s large compositions, rich and impressive, are also full of charming and interesting morceaux, and it is this which, making him, in some ways, the greatest of the Umbrians, distinguishes his work from the, perhaps grander, but surely more monotonous 123 MORO, (MOOR or MOR), ANTONIO 1 5 12-1577 (?) “PORTRAIT OF QUEEN MARY” Canvas fixed to panel, height 44 inches, width 33 inches. Inscribed in upper left-hand corner, “Marye the Qyeene.” S EEN to a little below the knees, the Queen, represented at about the age of forty years, faces the spectator in rather more than three-quarter view. She sits erect in a straight-backed arm chair, upholstered in red velvet with deep silken and gold fringes, and having an embroidered panel of intricately interlaced gold pattern on the back. She is dressed in a tightly fitting overdress of brown velvet, with the long skirts thrown back in front so as to expose the petticoat of Italian silver brocade, which is also the material of the light under- sleeves. A jewelled wristband confines the gathers of the lace cuffs. The inside of the flaring collar is of white silk embroidered in colors. Around the lace collar is a necklace of pearls and precious stones, from which hangs a magnificent jewelled pendant. A jewelled chain is thrown around the waist, to which is attached by a black velvet rib- bon a golden pomander box of elaborate pierced work. In her right hand she holds a rose, in her left her jewel-embroidered gloves. Above the smoothly dressed hair is worn a dark bonnet with pointed front, across the top of which runs an ornamental band studded with pearls. The background is of an unbroken dark tone. Given by Queen Mary to Sir Henry Jerningham of Huntington, in Suf- folk, Costessy in Norfolk and Wingfield Castle in Suffolk ; Vice- Chamberlain, Captain of the Guards and Master of the Horse and of the Household. Collection of his descendants, the Barons Stafford. Purchased from Sir Fitzherbert Edward, Baron Stafford-Jerningham of Costessy Hall, Norfolk, in 1901, by Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell for Mrs. Gardner. 124 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS and mannered productions of Perugino. These particular beauties are the ones we can hope to find in a small panel, but there we may see, at least some of them, in all their charm and freshness. Pinturicchio’s great wall paintings show many examples of youthful grace and beauty, but the girlish simplicity and delicate charm of the Virgin Mother in Mrs. Gardner’s panel he never surpassed. His choosing to present the young, in preference to the maturer, type of the Madonna which found favor with the other painters, is characteristic. We may add that this Mother and Child finds its nearest analogy in a very similar group (with the addition of the infant St. John) in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. The charm of this elemental subject rests largely in the simplicity and naturalness of the expression, so differ- ent from that of many of the faces of Perugino, who, like other artists, fell, as it were, a victim to his own conception of human beauty, with the result that his type soon became self- conscious, monotonous and unnatural. Here, on the contrary, Mother and Child combine to form a group of perfectly unaffected and spontaneous grace. While with this small panel there is little opportunity for those adjuncts which fill his larger pictures, the landscape back- ground, from the necessities of the case, is therefore unobtrusive ; yet it has sufficient rich- ness and much of that interest with which Pinturicchio invested everything he touched. A detail worthy of particular notice is the fully draped Child, also characteristic of the painter, and a contrast to the nude Bambino of so many Italian pictures. This is a piece of archaism, for the clothed and sometimes richly robed Infant is a Byzantine tradition familiar to all who know the ancient paintings of the Madonna scattered about Italy. Here perhaps it may be taken, in connection with other points in Mrs. Gardner’s picture, to suggest a fairly early date. G. McNeil Rushforth PESELLINO’S “TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH” T HE two pictures in the collection of Mrs. Gardner, representing Petrarch’s “Trionfi,” originally formed the fronts of two Italian marriage coffers. It was the custom in Italy for a young woman to be presented at her marriage with chests, in which clothes and fine fabrics were to be put. These chests were generally richly ornamented with gilt stucco work and with paintings, and the greatest artists deemed it not beneath them to paint such cassoni pictures, many of which are specimens of the best Quattrocento art which has come to us. The most frequent and favorite subjects of these paintings were the romantic allegories of Petrarch’s poem “I Trionfi,” in which the poet sees Love trium- phant, Amor leading with a long suite of followers ; then Chastity triumphs over Love, Death over Chastity, Fame over Death, Time over Fame, and the Eternal Deity over Time. Pictorial art represented the poet’s allegories in cars. Richly caparisoned processions (also called “Trionfi”) took place, especially at Carnival, but also on other festive occasions, in which costly tableaux vivants of gorgeously attired personages, grouped on cars, were car- ried out with great magnificence, extreme attention to details, and the help of ingenious mechanical devices. Festive pageants were highly popular in Italy, and the Florentines were the first “ festaiuoli ” of the Peninsula. Pesellino has obviously represented, in these 127 THE COLLECTION OF MRS two pictures of the Triumphs of Petrarch, the actual manner of such festive processions. The costumes, as well as the whole artistic character of the paintings, point to the middle of the fifteenth century as the period of their production. They could not possibly have come from a painter who only began his artistic career towards the end of the Quattrocento. To those familiar with the art of Pesellino, the stylistic similarity to other authenticated works is immediately apparent. Francesco di Pesello, called Pesellino, was born in the year 1422, in Florence, and died there in 1457. He took his surname from his grandfather, Giuliano d’Arrigo, called Pesello, who was also a painter, and who brought up his grandson after the death of the latter’s father. D’Arrigo’s influence in the artistic development of his grandson appears to have been in the sphere of color, in which he was an innovator, and he must have contributed largely to develop the gift for color that Pesellino exhibits so conspicuously in the best of his work. In his taste for, and sense of beautiful color, hardly any other Florentine of the Qyattrocento is on his level. His only attested works are those mentioned by Vasari, the predellas to the masterpieces by Filippo Lippi in the Medici Chapel at Santa Croce, of which three are in the Florentine Academy and one in the Louvre. A comparison of these with the two pictures of Mrs. Gardner’s collection, shows that all are the work of the same hand. The close resemblance in style renders it also quite probable that they were of the same period, presumably the middle of the forties. Pesellino, especially praised by Vasari for his scenes containing small figures, was a favorite cassone painter in Florence. Indeed the works of Pesellino are the rarest of all the Italian masters, there being but a very few pic- tures, which, on the ground of similarity of style with the authenticated predellas, can be attributed to Pesellino, and these are all of a small size. Of the chest pictures he painted, only two pairs are known, in addition to those which Mrs. Gardner owns, of which the more important, with scenes from the story of David, was formerly in the Palazzo Torregi- ani in Florence, and is at present owned by Lady Wantage in England. Mrs. Gardner’s pictures are to be counted among the artist’s best works, and indeed they are among the finest and most artistically perfect cassoni pictures which have come down to us from the Quattrocento. Besides his grandfather, Pesello, Fra Angelico must have had a considerable influence on the young Pesellino. The two pictures ascribed to him in the Palazzo Doria in Rome, with scenes from the life of Pope Sylvester, which certainly belong to his early period, point to the influence of Angelico, in the expression of form as well as in color. Points of sympathy with the art of Angelico are also to be found in Mrs. Gardner’s pictures. We are especially reminded of Angelico’s figures, by the swing and rhythm and melodious ges- tures of the angels playing instruments of music, who surround God the Father in the “Trionfo della Trinita.” Examination of his work also leads us to the conclusion that, like most Florentine artists, he must have eagerly studied Masaccio, and working with Filippo Lippi on the altarpiece for the chapel of the Medici, he learnt much of Lippi’s manner. Pesellino’s style combines, therefore, the grace and swing of Fra Angelico, in the newer achievements of Florentine realism. But it is necessary to note that, while his was an 128 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER adaptable talent, easily impressed by the work of others, yet he retained a most distinct artistic personality. His chief gift lay in the expression of the tender and pleasing, and he was most successful in subjects of a romantic character, such as those which invariably adorned these cassoni, and which he executed with remarkable delicacy and a fine decora- tive sense. The quality of gracious charm dominates his work, but at times he reveals a sentiment, and even a depth of passionate feeling, as in the groups of lovers who accom- pany the “Trionfo dell Amore” or the women in the “Trionfo della Castita” of Mrs. Gardner’s pictures. A happy freedom characterizes those tender figures, which, clad in the modish costume of the time, appear as representatives of a refined culture. Drinking deep from the Romantic spring, Pesellino has enriched this romanticism with the subject- ive note of a marked and delightful personality. Dr. Werner Weisbach These two panels, the most important examples of pure Florentine art of the middle fifteenth century, which have as yet found their way to America, were lately in the collec- tion of Mrs. Austen of Capel Manor, Horsemonden, Kent, and were shown by her at the Exhibition of Early Italian Art, held at the New Gallery in 1893-4, under the name of “Piero di Cosimo,” Nos. 129 and 139. The panels appear to have borne this ascription from the time when they came into the hands of that famous dealer, Samuel Woodburn, who doubt- lessly purchased them, together with many other fine things of the kind, at Florence, dur- ing the first half of the last century. They appear to have been sold to the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley, during Woodburn’s life, for they were not included in the sale of the pictures which had formed his stock, and which, after his death, were dispersed by Messrs. Christie, in May, 1854. In the course of time, the two panels again came into the market with the rest of the Davenport Bromley Collection, which was dispersed at Christie’s on the 12th and 13th of June, 1863. They were sold in two lots, and are thus inscribed in the sale catalogue : “ Lot 72. A triumphal procession with many mythological figures celebrating the re- turn of Lorenzo di Medici to Florence, to which this refers. The masque was composed by Piero di Cosimo, and an account of it was given in Vasari’s ‘ Life of Piero di Cosimo.’ From the Woodburn Collection.” ‘ * Lot 73. The companion picture, with the portrait of Lorenzo di Medici in a car; on the left are the portraits of Andrea del Sarto, Piero and Andrea di Cosimo, then living and present at the masque ; portraits of Ariosto and Galileo are also introduced ; on the right is the Trionfo della Morte. See Vasari’s ‘ Life of P. di Cosimo.’ From the Woodburn Collection.” Both lots were bought by Messrs. Colnaghi, the first for £175.5.0, the second for £157. 10. o ; and both of the panels passed into the collection of the late Mr. J. F. Austen. The purely imaginary account of these pictures given in the sale catalogue, is of inter- est as showing how little, so fine and fastidious a collector of Early Italian pictures as the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley, really understood such things fifty years ago. The allu- sion to the “Trionfo della Morte ” on the right of the latter panel is almost the only passage which now enables us to associate the description with the paintings. 129 RUBENS, PETER PAUL 1577-1640 “THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF ARUNDEL” Canvas (relined), height 55 inches, width 46 inches. (Including strips 4K inches at the top, 2% inches at the bottom, yA and 3^ inches at the sides, which were undoubtedly added to make the picture fill a particular space.) Inscribed “ Thomas, Earl of Arundel.” A RUNDEL, life-size and seen nearly to the knees, stands proudly erect, his gauntleted right hand resting upon a Marshal’s baton, the left upon his hip. He is clad in ornate steel armor, underneath which appears a shirt of mail. A collar of soft white linen at the neck, a scarf across the body, and a gold chain with a medal at the breast, are the only details breaking the shining uniformity of the steel. The high-bred face of warm, intense color is seen in three-quarter view, turned to the right, and framed by the loose, wavy hair and the curly beard. The eyes look a little downward, but straight at the spectator. On a pedestal to the left of the picture is placed the Earl’s helmet with its visor closed ; behind this hangs a heavily fringed and richly em- broidered curtain. Through an arched embrasure to the right is seen the sky and a glimpse of open country. Collection of P. P. Rubens. Collection of the Earls of Warwick, Warwick Castle. Sale of the Rubens pictures after his death, Antwerp, May, 1641. (No. 97 of the Catalogue.) Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi, 1898. Exhibition British Institution, 1818. Exhibition Art Treasures, Manchester, 1857. Exhibition National Portrait, London, 1866. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1871. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1889. Engraved by E. Scriven, by G. Scriven, by James Basite, by H. Rob- inson and by Phillibrown. 130 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS But is it not possible to form some conjecture at least, as to the patron for whom these panels were originally painted? Vasari, in his account of Giuliano Pesello, and his grand- son, Francesco di Stefano, called Pesellino, failed to distinguish clearly between the two painters and their works. Following, as it would seem, the notices of the lost “Libra di Antonio Billi," Vasari states that “ Pesello (meaning apparently Giuliano) painted in the house of the Medici, a spalliera (that is, the panels of the back of a settle) of animals, a thing of great beauty, and the bodies of some 'cassoni' (or chests) with little stories of jousts on horseback.” Now neither of these works appears to have been seen by Vasari. The “spalliera” of animals, as we learn from other notices derived from the lost “Libra di Billi,” was in the house of Pier Francesco de' Medici, which was sacked by the mob after the murder of the Duke Alessandro there, by Lorenzino in 1 537 ; and the ‘ cassoni ’ appear to have been among the furniture and other works of art in the palace built by Cosimo de’ Medici, now the Palazzo Riccardi, which were sold by auction after the flight of Piero di Lorenzo de Medici in 1 494. A portion of these works of art, however, had been recovered after the return to Florence of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici in 15 12, and were well known to Vasari at the time he was writing ; and so he is careful, in speaking of the paintings exe- cuted by Pesello for the Medici, to distinguish between those which were only known to him from the notices of the earlier commentators, and those which he had himself seen. Flence he adds, after the foregoing notice of the cassoni, painted with the stories of jousts : ' ‘ And there are still to be seen in the said house "—meaning the present Palazzo Riccardi— ‘ ' at the present day, some canvases by his hand, of lions which are looking from behind a grate, and which appear most living ; and others he made without (the grate) ; and in like fashion one which is fighting with a serpent ; and he colored in another canvas a bullock and a fox, with other animals, very spirited and lifelike.” Now with the exception of the painting on canvas of a lion behind a grate, the whole of the canvases to which Vasari here alludes, originally formed part of the decoration of the room in the present Palazzo Riccardi, which Paolo Uccello and Pesellino jointly executed. (Vas- ari, however, again fails to clearly distinguish between the paintings executed by Uccello and those executed by Pesellino, and 1 have already discussed this question at length in an article which appeared in the “ Monthly Review ” for October, 1901 , and to that I must re- fer the reader.) But to come to my point. We know from contemporary documents that both the canvas of the lion behind the grate, and such decorations of the room in the present Palazzo Riccardi, as were not by Uccello, were the work of Pesellino and not of Giuliano Pesello as Vasari states ; and there are many reasons for concludingthat not only the spalliera of animals in the house of Pier Francesco de' Medici, but the painted cassoni likewise were the work of Pesellino. Now we possess a complete inventory of all the works of art and household goods which were in the present Palazzo Riccardi at the time of the death of Lorenzo the Magnifi- cent in 1492 ; and from this inventory it would appear that the palace contained a single pair of painted cassoni, such as Vasari describes. They stood “ in the bed chamber adjoin- ing the great parlor, called the chamber of Lorenzo.” They are described as a pair of “for- 135 THE COLLECTION OF MRS zieri” (or strong chests), gilt, of y/z braccia each, on which are painted the “Triumphs of Petrarch,” and were appraised at 25 gold florins. We also possess more than one early in- ventory of the contents of the house of Pier Francesco de’ Medici ; but none of them con- tain any entry which might refer to the cassoni painted with little stories of “jousts on horseback” recorded by Vasari. Now Vasari, as 1 have shown, had apparently never seen these cassoni, and in speaking of them was probably repeating a statement which he found in the “ Libro ” of Antonio Billi, who collected his notes many years after the dispersion of the works of art in the Palazzo Medici. We are, therefore, led to conclude, that Billi was in error in describing the subjects of the cassoni, painted by Pesellino, as jousts on horseback, and that, on the contrary, these paintings represented the “Triumphs of Petrarch.” If this conjecture be correct, there can be little doubt that the paintings in Mrs. Gardner’s collection once formed the panels of the cassoni in question ; and there are several indica- tions that go to support this conclusion. In the first place, the cassoni measured y/z brac- cia or about six feet eight inches in length ; whereas the panels measure five feet one inch in length, which would leave about 9 Vz inches at either end for the lateral pilastero which framed the panels, and for the projection of the lid and plinth of the chests. Again, if the two “forzieri” described in the inventory of 1492 were the cassoni painted by Pesellino, the probability is that they were the marriage chests executed for the nuptials of Piero de’ Medici, 11 Gottoso, with Lucretia Tornabuoni. Litta does not record the date of this mar- riage, but the event must have taken place not long before the birth of their eldest son, Lorenzo, who was born on the first of January, 1449. 1 ° that case, these panels in question must have been executed c. 1448 ; a supposition which well agrees with what we know of Pesellino’s life, and the development of his manner. Pesellino was born c. 1422, and died on the twenty-ninth of July, 1457. At the time of his death he was engaged upon an altarpiece for an oratory attached to the church of San Jacopo at Pistoia. He lived, however, to carry this altarpiece but a little way toward com- pletion, and the “Trinity,” which formed the central part of this work, and which is now in the National Gallery at London, is largely, in its execution at least, the work of another hand. There is but one other painting by him to which a date can be approximately assigned. The most important of his earlier works is undoubtedly the predella, which he executed as the assistant of Fra Filippo Lippi, for the altar-piece by that master, once in the church of Santa Croce, and now in the Academy at Florence. The panels of this predella are now dispersed ; two are in the Louvre, and three are still at Florence. According to Vasari, Fra Filippo re- ceived the commissions for this and another altar-piece formerly in the chapel of the present Palazzo Riccardi at Florence, from Cosimo de’ Medici, as the result of his admiration for the picture which Fra Filippo had painted for the high altar of San Ambrogio at Florence, and which is known to have been finished in 1441. Vasari’s story is credible, for the pre- della panels are clearly a little earlier in date than the two cassoni panels in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, so that all these indications appear to bear out one another. On the first of August, 1450, Pesellino went into partnership with Piero di Lorenzo Pratese, and Zanobi di Migliore, and this event marks the beginning of Pesellino’s later manner, of which the two i 34 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER cassoni panels in the collection of Lady Wantage are the most important examples. But to conclude : there is evidence that the two panels in Mrs. Gardner’s Collection were in their day admired and imitated as masterpieces of art. In the Bibliotheca Riccardiana, Florence, is a fifteenth-century manuscript of the “Triumphs of Petrarch,” adorned with a series of minia- tures, which are free versions by some follower of Pesellino, of the six subjects represented in these panels. Again, in the South Kensington Museum, is a gilt and painted cassone (one, no doubt, of a pair, and now much restored), the central part of which is a free version of one of the Gardner panels, by some cassone painter of the school of Paolo Uccello. The details throughout are different, but the conception and general arrangement of the three Tri- umphs of Love, Chastity and Death, are almost identical in both paintings. This cassone, which appears to have been executed a few years after Pesellino’s pictures, enables us to form a very clear idea of how the panels in the Gardner Collection were originally employed. The second panel in Mrs. Gardner’s collection represents the Triumphs of Fame, Time and Divinity — but Petrarch’s poems are too accessible, if not too well known, to occasion any necessity on my part to point out how far the paintings are a literal illustration of the verse. Herbert P. Horne “ THE ANNUNCIATION” F IORENZO DI LORENZO, the Umbrian disciple of Florentine masters so widely sepa- rated in temperament as Pollaiuolo and Benozzo Gozzoli, was the founder of the at- tractive and very personal little school of Perugia, to which his pupils Pinturicchio and Perugino gave more than a provincial celebrity, and to which heaven granted that its ideals at their ripest should be expressed by the greatest master of line and sentiment of the Italian Renais- sance, the divine Urbinate. Fiorenzo’s Umbrian sensibilities were refined and heightened, but not effaced by the Florentine influences to which he was subjected, and it is to these, and not to his acquired characteristics, that his reputation— both in his own day and in ours, must be attributed. These it is which were inherited by his more gifted pupils, some of whose most enchanting traits are presaged in their master’s work. The germ of the Picco- lomini frescoes, for instance, is to be found in Fiorenzo’s cyclic representation of scenes from the life of S. Bernardino at Perugia, in the artificial daintiness of the silken-haired, slender- limbed gentlemen, who peopled their architectonic foregrounds and in the relation of their ornate buildings to their landscape settings, to the vast stretches of light-bathed heavens, and serene valleys embroidered with a silver thread of moving waters. The formal line- motif of some of Perugino’s languorous Virgins also may be traced back to certain statuesque Madonnas of his so-dissimilar master. Fiorenzo’s figures conform to a fine, somewhat Doric, canon of human proportions ; they are massive, statuesque, with full draperies so arranged as to give dignity, “deport- ment,” and at the same time to express the forms of the body and its movements. His compositions are characterized by a fine sense of space, simple and noble distribution of masses, and the absence of dramatic power. These qualities and defects are illustrated in i35 VAN DYCK, ANTON 1599-1641 “LADY WITH A ROSE” Canvas, height 40 inches, width 3 1 % inches. T HE portrait is that of a woman of aristocratic mien, and of some- what mature years, standing at half-length, the face in three- quarter view, turned toward the left of the spectator, at whom she looks from the corners of her eyes. She wears a widow’s costume of the period, a loose, full-sleeved robe of black, relieved only by the touch of white in the linen undergarment, with its soft, falling collar exposed below the neck. Across the bosom from the left shoulder, and caught under the right arm, is a filmy gray scarf in loose folds. Her collar is confined by a narrow ribbon tied in a bow, which serves to support an enormous pear-shaped pearl which hangs upon her bosom. Her neck is encircled by a string of large, round pearls. The hair falls in masses of ringlets, concealing the ears, the oval-shaped lappet of the black widow’s cap extending over the centre of the brow. The slender hands with long, slim fingers and finely shaped nails, are crossed over each other at the waist, and caught between the fingers of the left hand is a rose. Breaking the conventional background, which extends only two-thirds across the picture, is a square opening to the right, through which is seen a landscape with a fine cloudy sky over a low horizon. Collection of the Ducal family of Ossuna, Madrid. Sale Duque d’Ossuna, Madrid, 1896, purchased by P. & D. Colnaghi. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi. 136 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Mrs. Gardner’s “Annunciation,” a picture of masterly technique, but of a sobriety of con- ception which verges on the prosaic. The Virgin, a figure isolated by its atmosphere of inner aloofness, bends her pale face, set in dainty draperies, over the book in her hand, apparently unmoved by the message of the heavenly ambassador, if indeed she is aware of his presence. The celestial visitant, if shorn of his wings, nimbus and lily, might be a mundane messenger, and at first sight his presence and insistent speech seems an intrusion on the maiden’s religious privacy. But this is not quite so. The spectator will presently feel the solemnity and congruity of the scene, and will realize that the somewhat insensitive apathy of the actors is partly due to the artist’s feeling that the tremendous issues at stake were incompatible with superficial signs of excitement. He rightly wished to divest his representation of the meretricious aid of gesture, but had not the power to vitalize his figures with inner emotion. Their immo- bility is a reflex of his temperament. His Pegasus was a sturdy steed of low flight and some- what overweighted by cumbrous trappings. How differently is the same scene conceived by contemporaries whose nerves thrilled to finer music; by the poetic Botticelli, for instance, or even, to take a master of a foregoing generation, by Lippo Lippi, with whose splendid frescoes at the neighboring Spoleto, finished when Fiorenzo was eighteen years of age, he must have been familiar. We have said that his figures were statuesque. Those of the Virgin and angel are so definite in outline, their poses so ponderous, their draperies so massive, their temperaments so unemotional, they are so aloof from their surroundings, that they almost give the im- pression of neatly and skillfully painted figures, carved in wood, such as adorned mediaeval altar-pieces. The heavy treatment of the angel’s hair suggests such an image. The dra- peries with voluminous rich folds, which fall heavily, breaking across each other in zig-zag lines, are characteristic of the master. Their trimmings, insertions, borders and embroideries, the delicate folds of the Virgin’s veil, the gleaming lights of the angel’s silken tunic, the care- fully executed feathers of the angel's wings and of the dove’s plumage, the details of the brick wall seen on either side of the central doorway, the detailed landscape with its fore- ground trees and wide alluvial valley — all bear witness to a quiet mind, to abundant leisure, and a skilful craftsman’s hand guided by an orderly and conscientious intelligence. But a reputation like Fiorenzo’s does not rest on mere conscientiousness, but on straight- forward excellence of workmanship, on the sincerity and dignity of his figures, and on that poetic sensibility to space effects, to stately halls, to translucent skies and wide landscapes which was his birthright as an Umbrian. His Virgin and angel are framed in a noble archi- tectonic setting. He has placed them in the midst of upspringing columns overhung by shadowy vaultings chequered with light and darkness. Sun-smitten walls and the long per- spective of an inlaid marbleway carry the eye to a distant open gateway, in which a light- drenched landscape is framed, like a pale jewel. Here the poet, who is too often hidden beneath the mask of the worthy provincial, stands confessed. Fiorenzo was born about 1442 and died in 1522 ; his eighty years of life saw the young promise of the Renaissance mature into its rich midsummer growth, and it is characteristic i39 THE COLLECTION OF MRS of his tenacious and immobile personality that he was unable to move with his times, but died, two years after Raphael, a dignified exponent of the Pre-Pinturicchiesque Renaissance in Umbria. His works are rarely met with out of Perugia, the museum, churches and neigh- borhood of which are enriched with the fruits of his industry. Few other galleries or build- ings in Italy or elsewhere can boast undoubted works from his hand. These are of so in- tensely personal a character that their paternity cannot be doubted even when unauthenti- cated by document or tradition. To this small class belongs Mrs. Gardner's 1 'Annunciation, " which no connoisseur of Italian art can hesitate to place in the category of undoubted works by the founder of the provincial school of Perugia, of which the masterpieces are the Piccolomini frescoes of Siena, the “Giving of Keys to S. Peter” of the Sistine, and the “Sposalizio” of Milan. Dr. Jean Paul Richter In the Quattrocento Umbrian art seems to have had no existence of its own outside of laboriously imitative Tuscan works, but Tuscan influence planted the seed of new life and infused fresh blood into it. The whole of Eastern Italy was for the time so dominated by the mysticism of Assisi that it is fruitless to look for the great Christian artists there before the last three decades of the fifteenth century. The varied, rich and luxuriant forms of the new Art found no welcome in the old ascetic monasteries that, from the hill-slopes, overlook the valleys of Umbria. We find no real Umbrian artist until the second half of the fourteenth century, when Fiorenzo di Lorenzo arose to form an artistic triumvirate with Pinturicchio and Perugino. These two went down along the banks of the Tiber, and traversing the Ro- man Campagna, reached Rome and fame. Fiorenzo remained in Perugia, becoming a de- cemvir of the city in 1472, and a master of his craft. Occasionally his drawing is hard and somewhat conventional, but his figures, especially his angels and children, are true to life and full of dignity . His work, like that of Perugino and Signorelli, shows the influence of the school of Verrocchio. His angels, with their folded arms and flowing draperies, foretell the angels of the “Coronation ” of Raphael, and are identical with those painted by Pinturicchio for the Church of S. Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, and the angels in Perugino's skies. The Tuscan influence, which dominated so many of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo’s works, is clearly discernible in the picture belonging to Mrs. Gardner. The Virgin, with a small open prayer-book in her hands, kneels before a portico. This is in accordance with the traditional story of Mary’s life in the Temple, which tells that she prayed from dawn till the third hour, then labored until the ninth hour, and again prayed, meditating on the Divine Laws and in- toning the Songs of David. The Virgin, absorbed in reading, seems not to have heard the winged messenger, who kneeling on one knee, brings her God's salutation : “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” . . . It seems as if Lorenzo had sought the inspiration for the composition of his background in the picture attributed to Piero della Francesca, now in the Museum of Perugia. In both, on the spectator's right, there is a portico ; and in the back are two arches opening into arched galleries, the one to the right with a door at the end showing a land- scape. From the far end of the marble pavement radiate bands of white like star-rays, in- creasing the marvelous perspective. The beautiful frame of Mrs. Gardner's picture is 140 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER decorated in a manner typical of the master. In three little medallions at the base of the frame he has painted in the centre a figure of Christ in a sarcophagus and on either side St. Peter and St. Paul. The picture was originally in the Church of Santa Maria degli This panel— one of the finest and most characteristic of Fiorenzo’s earlier works— clearly reflects the fresh Florentine influence of Verrocchio and his school at a time when its spell was strongest on the Umbrian master. Its precise period of execution cannot be far re- moved from that of the panel representing the Virgin and Child, and dated 1481, in the Berlin Gallery, with which work far more than with any other of the master it has the closest affinities. The sure, clear-cut draughtsmanship, the angular, decisive folds of the draperies, the modelling of the flesh, the color and technical treatment, the whole style in fact, is pre- cisely the same in both pictures. The heads of both Madonnas, although facing in opposite directions, are as nearly identical as it is possible for two heads to be without becoming direct copies of a single original. The likeness is, in this case, far more than a mere repetition of a type. We find the similarity carried even to the details of the Virgin's veil. There are reasons for doubting the exactitude of the date on the Berlin picture, but this does not alter the approximate position which these two paintings take in the chronological arrangement of Fiorenzo’s works. The stately Renaissance architecture in which the scene is set is that which we meet with in so many of Fiorenzo’s pictures — that with which we early become familiar in the series of delightful panels of the “ Story of San Bernardino” in the Gallery at Perugia. Throughout the picture there exists the same feeling of airiness and space so characteristic of Fiorenzo and his school, while through the distant open door we catch a glimpse of one of those enchanting landscapes which Fiorenzo handed down as models to his great followers Perugino and Pinturicchio. Prior to its purchase by Mrs. Gardner, in 1901 (?) this panel hung on the outer wall of the famous Portiuncula in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi. F. Mason Perkins HIS picture was acquired by Mrs. J. L. Gardner in the year 1899. It was formerly in Lord Methuen’s collection at Corsham, Wiltshire, England, having been brought to London by the Rev. John Sanford, who long resided in Florence. It is said to have been at one time in a chapel near Leghorn. (Waagen, “Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain.” London, John Murray, 1857, p. 397.) It is probable that some Florentine dealer who sold the picture to the Rev. John Sanford invented this story as there is no evidence to be alleged in its support. Originally this panel was one of a series of four representing the chief events in the life of the Virgin, which were the property of the Dominicans of S. Maria Novella, Florence, and were accustomed to stand on the high altar of that church dedicated to the Virgin, on her festivals. Of this series, three passed to the Convent of S. Marco in the year 1868. The S. Marco panels are all framed in their original tabernacles. Angeli of Assisi. Adolfo Venturi “ THE ASSUMPTION AND DORMITION OF THE VIRGIN” GOSSART, JEAN (JAN DE MABUSE) i47o-*537 “PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ” Panel, height 20K inches, width 17 inches. M ATRONLY in appearance, though still young, the subject of this portrait, of marked Teutonic type, is seen at half-length, with the head in three-quarter view, turned toward the spectator’s left ; her expression, with the full lips and dark eyes, is that of a good-natured, competent person. She wears an elaborate costume, a close-fitting coif confining the hair and ears, and over this a black velvet hood, the central point projecting slightly over the high brow. Around her neck is thrown a collar of dark, sable-like fur, which, however, allows almost the whole of the corsage to be seen. The dress is of velvet, bordered at the bosom and around the shoulders with narrow bands of ermine ; from beneath the full-plaited sleeves, at the wrists, fall very full, soft linen cuffs. The upper part of the sleeves is covered by heavy puffs of ermine, and beneath the velvet bodice is seen an undergarment of fine linen edged with a double line of dark hemming. From a velvet ribbon around the shoulders hangs a rich jewel finished with three large, pear-shaped, pendant pearls. Around the waist is a girdle of elaborate workmanship, ornamented with large jewels and pearls. Upon the first and third fingers of her right hand are rings, as also upon the forefinger of the left hand. In the right hand is held a folded paper, perhaps the conventional petition serving to denote the exalted rank of the sitter. Collection Bonomi-Cereda, Milan. Purchased from Sig. Bonomi for Mrs. Gardner. 142 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Of this picture in Mrs. Gardner's collection, the original decorative framework has disap- peared. The panel was probably divorced from its tabernacle at the time it was stolen from the convent of S. Maria Novella. (Marchese, “Memorie dei piu insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenicani. Bologna, 1878, Vol. I. p. 345). The series of four tabernacles was painted at the order of Fra Giovanni Masi, a Dominican friar, who died in the year 1430. (Biliotti “Chronica” M.S.Cap. XIX, p. 241, quoted by Marchese op. cit. Vol. I. p. 345. “Habe- mus et multas plurimorum sanctorum reliquias, quas quidem fra Joannes Masius florentinus multa; devotionis et taciturnitatis vir, in quatuor inclusit tabellas, quas fr. Joannes fesulanus pictor, cognomento Angelicus pulcherrimis beatissim® Mari® Virginis et Sanctorum Angel- orum ornavit figuris. Obiit fr. Joannes Masius anno 1430.) 1 will give briefly my reasons for holding that this picture is one of the series of reliquaries that was once at S. Maria No- vella. First of all, the panel of the series that was stolen from S. Maria Novella must have borne representations of the same subjects as are to be seen on Mrs. Gardner’s panel; for in any such series of scenes from the life of the Virgin these subjects would find a place. In the other panels of the series we find representations, first of the Divine Mother, secondly of the “Annunciation and the Epiphany," and lastly of the “Coronation of the Virgin.” Obviously the panel that is missing is the third of the series, and it is equally clear that this panel must have borne representations of the “ Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin.” Secondly, there is no other existing picture or portion of a picture that can be shown to have formed a part of this series. In Count Stroganoffs collection is a tabernacle which in its dimensions is near to those tabernacles of the series that are at San Marco. But, judg- ing from the attitudes of the angels round the frame, it is probable that, like other works in which angels are similarly represented, it contained a Madonna and Child ; and it is unlikely that there would be two representations of the same subject in one brief series of five or six scenes. (The sizes of the tabernacles and panels of the San Marco series are as follows: The “Madonna della Stella," size of panel 1 ft. 1 in. x 8 in., size of tabernacle 2 ft. 9 in. x i ft. 10 in.; the “Annunciation and Epiphany,” size of panel [ft. 1% in. x 10 in., size of tabernacle 2 ft. 4 yi in. x 1 ft. 454 in. ; the “Coronation of the Virgin,” size of panel 1 ft. 3 in. x io in., size of tabernacle 2 ft. 9 in. x 1 ft. 6 in. From this it will be seen that the sizes of the tabernacles and of the panels vary considerably. It is impossible to say what was the size of the tabernacle which originally framed Mrs. Gardner’s picture. It may have been a relatively smaller tabernacle than the others. That it was the most important of the four is but natural, seeing that in Tuscany the Feast of the Assumption is the most important and most splendid of the Virgin festivals.) Thirdly, stylistic and iconographical considerations lead us to the conclusion that Mrs. Gardner's picture was painted about the year 1429, that is to say, about the time when the other tabernacles of the series were executed. If we compare this panel with the first of the series, the “Madonna della Stella,” at San Marco, we shall find evidence which points to the conclusion that both works belong to the same period of the master’s career. We note several minute similarities, for exam- ple, in the representation of God the Father which fills the top of the arch in each panel. 145 THE COLLECTION OF MRS In the folds of the robe, in the gesture of the hands, in the facial features, these similarities are especially noticeable. Moreover, in the treatment of the drapery of the angels, Mrs. Gardner’s picture closely resembles the “Madonna della Stella.” And if we examine the lower portion of Mrs. Gardner’s panel, we at once discover reasons for concluding that it was executed between 1425 and 1430. Because of its Gothic features this work cannot have been painted after 1430. In the “Dormition of the Virgin” there is also to be found iconographical testimony that it belongs to no later date than this. Fra Angelico has left us four presentations of this subject. One forms a part of the predella of his “Annunciation ” at Cortona; the second is this of the reliquary panel at Boston; the third is one of the scenes of the predella of the “Annunciation” in the gallery of the Prado at Madrid, and the fourth is a little picture in the Uffizi, which was bequeathed to Cosimo II by the Marchese Botti in 1629. In the Cortona picture there is little purpose shown in the grouping, as well as little variety in the attitude of the figures. There is, too, but a slight attempt at characteriza- tion. Christ is not placed in the centre, but to the right of the picture, and is given no special prominence. The Virgin’s figure, though full of pathetic grace, is really ill-propor- tioned. In Mrs. Gardner’s panel, some purpose is introduced into the grouping. Two of the Apostles are represented as acting as priests attendant upon St. Peter, who is reading the office; one of them has the aspersorio in his hand. Jesus stands in the centre of the picture and somewhat prominently in front of a small group of his disciples. Four other disciples are placing in position the bier of the Virgin. Each personage is represented in some suitable attitude. The Virgin’s figure is in much better proportion than in the Cor- tona predella, and her form is more clearly indicated under her long blue robe. Two can- dles, which in the earlier picture are placed in the background, here take a prominent place in the design. In the Madrid predella picture there is a further improvement in characteri- zation and in grouping. The figure of Jesus is given yet more prominence and becomes the centre of the whole scene. His head stands out against a clear evening sky. The picture is better composed and better spaced. Finally in the Uffizi panel the Christ, with a mandorla around Him, is represented as towering above the Apostles. Four candles instead of two are placed about the Virgin’s bier. Three attendant angels, one bearing a candle and another a thurible, take their places amongst the group of mourning disciples. Thus an attempt is made to render the whole scene more imposing, and with this end, more space is given to the figures. Were the exe- cution of this little panel equal to the composition, it would rank amongst the best of Fra Angelico’s earlier pictures. But, unfortunately, the actual painting of it was entrusted to a pupil, and apart from its grouping and arrangement, there is little to commend it. In drawing and modelling, as well as in characterization, it is much inferior to any of the others. Now of these four presentations of the “Dormition of the Virgin,” it is probable that the first was painted in or before the year 1425. The third, on account of its pronouncedly Gothic features, and for other reasons, cannot have been painted much after the year 1430. Whilst the last was, I believe, executed during the early years of his residence in San Marco, that is to say, JOHN LOWELL GARDNER about the year 1439, a t a time when the friar made use of the services of many assistants. (The Madrid picture was originally at S. Domenico at Fiesole, where Fra Angelico resided from 1418 to 1435. It was sold to the Duke Mario Farneseon Feb. 26, 161 1, and was taken to Spain. Marchese, op. cit Vol. I, p. 298. Vasari, “ Le Vite,” Sansoni’s Edition, Vol. II, 510. Douglas, “Fra Angelico,” London, G. Bell & Sons, 2nd Edition, 1902, pp. 53, 54.) Iconographical reasons, then lead to the conclusion that the picture was painted about the year 1 429. Arguments drawn from considerations of style point to the same conclusion. It belongs to the closing years of the friar’s second Gothic period, that is, his early Fiesolan period, the period when he was gradually emancipating himself from the influence of the miniaturists. In the general form of the picture, as in the drapery, we find some pronounced Gothic features. But we also find a grace and freedom that is lacking in the master’s earlier works. He who has not seen Fra Angelico’s frescoes at the Vatican cannot rightly under- stand Fra Angelico s achievement. They prove even more forcibly than his works at San Marco, that the friar was no confectioner of pretty miniature-like panels. At last, out of his sweetness, there came forth strength. The frescoes of Nicholas V’s chapel teach us that the friar was, in his own way, one of the pioneers of the Renaissance, one who, like Ambro- gio Traversari, believed, and sought to make others believe, that the new teaching was not in reality inconsistent with the old. Fra Angelico lived for a time on the borderland be- tween the new world and the old. This panel of Mrs. Gardner’s collection is interesting be- cause it was, perhaps, the last work that he painted before he crossed the border, before he listened to the voices that were ringing in the streets of Florence praising the glories of antique art. In his next work, the fourth tabernacle of the series — a work, indeed, not executed by him, but painted under his supervision — we see the first Renaissance motif to be found in his paintings ; we see a plain, obtuse-angled tympanum resting upon an architrave com- posed of three bands. It is quite true that these classical forms had only been in disuse in Florence for about a century. Nevertheless, the substitution of these forms for the Gothic tabernacle of Fra Angelico’s earlier “ Coronation ” at the Louvre is an unmistakable mani- festation of the artist’s sympathy with the new movement in art. This picture of Mrs. Gardner’s collection is then, the last, and one of the loveliest of the works of the brief period during which Gothic motives predominated in Florentine art. It is too, one of the most beautiful manifestations, through the medium of painting, of the emotions that filled the breasts of the leaders of one of the most remarkable religious move- ments of the modern world, the great Dominican revival of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies — the movement that began with St. Catherine of Siena, was organized and developed by Giovanni Dominici, and was led to its deMcle by that noble but misguided man Girolamo Savonarola. Langton Douglas Vasari writes in his life of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole: “ In Santa Maria Novella — he painted with small scenes the Paschal candle and several reliquaries such as it is customary in great ceremonials to place upon the altar.” and Father Marchese, quoting Biliotti’s manuscript chronicle, makes the following reference: “We have many articles of various saints, which a >47 SCHONGAUER, MARTIN (?) !445(?)-i488 “MADONNA IN A ROSE GARDEN” Panel, height 17K inches, width 12 % inches. I N the centre of the panel, facing the spectator, the Virgin sits on a wooden bench against a background of rustic trellis-work inter- twined with a climbing rose bush. She is clad in an inner garment of blue with an outer robe and mantle of red with a dark lining, over which fall the unconfined tresses of her fair hair. She gazes down reflectively and holds against her left shoulder the unclothed Child, who, in turn, throws His arm confidingly around His mother’s neck. To the left, above the bench, rises a large peony in blossom, balanced on the right by a cluster of star-like meadow flowers. The foreground is carpeted with wild strawberries in blossom, from which on the left rises a slender spray of columbine, and on the right a tall Madonna lily backed by a clump of purple iris. Two angels, in long, fluttering sea-green robes, hold a Gothic crown over the head of the Virgin. Above are seen the First and Third Personages of the Trinity, the for- mer represented as an aged man raising the right hand in benediction, and underneath Him, the latter as a dove from which stream rays of light to the right and left and downward. The sky is of white and a curious pink color. The beautiful old frame was found in Germany by Mrs. Gardner and has no connection with the panel. Collection Prof. Josef Schlotthauer, Munich. Collection Prof. Sepp, Munich. Purchased by Prof. Schlotthauer in Milan. Purchased by Prof. Sepp from Prof. Schlotthauer between 1850-1860. Purchased by Mrs. Gardner from P. & D. Colnaghi, who had acquired it from Prof. Sepp in 1 899. Reproduced in “Kunst und Alterthum in Elsass-Lothringen,” and “Klassischer Bilderschatz.” THE CRITICAL ESSAYS certain Fra Giovanni Masi, a Florentine and man of great devotion, caused to be enclosed in four small shrines adorned by Fra Giovanni, the painter of Fiesole, known as Angelico, with most beautiful figures of the Holy Virgin Mary and saints and angels,” adding that at the time there remained only three of these, the fourth having been stolen, and the embel- lishments of the paschal candle lost. The three reliquaries were brought in 1868 into the convent of Saint Mark in Florence where they may still be admired. The first represents the Madonna known as the ‘ ‘ Madonna of the Star,” and exhibits the qualities of grace and feeling so specially characteristic of the artist. The six adoring angels in the peak slant of the frame, and the two at the bottom, seated and touching the keys of a spinet, not only reveal all Fra Giovanni’s skill, but may be considered, together with the angels of the Linaiuoli tabernacle, as the most beautiful ever painted by him. The second reliquary, divided into two parts, represents, in the upper, “The Annunciation, ’’and in the lower, the “Adoration of the Magi ” ; the brilliant enamel-like color gives it the character of an exquisite missal miniature. The third represents the * ‘ Coro- nation of the Virgin,” and was perhaps the artist’s first conception of the subject which he was to develop and perfect till it reached the highest degree of beauty in the picture in the Louvre, and of poetry in the other, truly breathing of heaven, in the Florentine gallery. In the Vatican Picture Gallery is a small picture representing the Virgin, seated, with the Child on her left arm and holding a rose in her lifted right hand ; kneeling at her feet are Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine. Cavalcaselle offers the surmise that this is the fourth of the reliquaries made at the order of Giovanni Masi ; but we recognize it, it seems to us with greater probability of correctness, in this small picture in which Fra Angelico, as if with the idea of completing the series carried along in the other three, has represented the ‘ 1 Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin. ” The type of the Virgin recalls that in the picture represent- ingthe “Adoration and the Annunciation”; the Christ, in the foreshortening and the character of the face, is a repetition of the one painted upon the reliquary of the “Madonna of the Star” ; several types of the apostles, with thick, wool-like hair and flowing beards, are seen again among the kneeling saints of the “Coronation”; and the very angels, dancing or playing upon instruments around the Virgin of the ‘ ‘Assumption, ” show a likeness, by the grace of their at- titudes and the sweetness of their countenances, to the angels in the peak slant of the frame of the * ‘ Madonna of the Star. ” Everything confirms the opinion not only that the painting in Mrs. Gardner’s collection was executed at the same time as the other three, but that it is closely allied to them by style as well as by subject. Helbig, who was the first to distinguish this precious work, wrote of it in the * ‘ Revue de f Art Chretien ” : “ This painting, with the freshness of its color and its excellent state of pres- ervation, gives the measure of the master. No other painter could call up and make enduring this charming vision. Our reproduction, which very imperfectly renders its charm and deli- cacy, gives the composition at least quite clearly, and dispenses us from describing it at length. Fra Angelico has divided it into three parts; in the lowest is the “Death of the Holy Virgin, ” surrounded by apostles; in the centre, the Virgin in glory, surrounded by one of those wreaths of angels in which the artist shows himself without peer, and in the upper part, Jesus 151 THE COLLECTION OF MRS Christ, surrounded by cherubim, awaiting His holy mother. These three stanzas of one poem are of a luminousness and an unction leaving nothing to crave further; and the freedom of the artist in this case, to dispose of his space as he pleased, allowed him to create a well- considered related whole in which there is not a half inch of surface other than interesting and, I might say, necessary.” We add that the lower part of the picture, in which the “ Dormition of the Virgin” is rep- resented, recalls by the general arrangement of the figures the same subject in the Gallery of the Uffizi; but in the latter four of the apostles are represented in the act of lifting the bier, while the others surround the figure of Christ, who holds in His arms the soul of His mother in the form of a child. This exquisite picture, exhibited in London in 1892, was described in the catalogue of the Exhibition as coming from a chapel near Leghorn, in Tuscany. If this be true, it is none the less beyond a doubt that it was originally one of the four reliquaries men- tioned by Vasari and described by Father Marchese. I. B. Supino Fra Giovanni was the last monastic painter of Italy; the painters who succeeded him, while wearing the monk's garb, were so free from conventual rules as to seem to us mun- dane. Moreover, Fra Giovanni asserts his individuality while conforming to holy tradition, to legends of miracles, to forms prescribed by iconography, to antiquated methods in the use of colors and symbolic signs. These, by the force of his own genius, he transformed and uplifted into a world of cloudless sky and pure air, and in that new world of his creation his art rises like a psalm. The ladder Jacob saw in his dream, and on which the angels of light and purity rose to heaven, was visioned and depicted by the artist. Later genera- tions have called him “II Beato Angelico,” the friar who “for love of Christ” — says the in- scription on his tombstone in S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome— “gave the fruits of his labor to his brethren, and who left a part of his work on earth and a part in heaven. ” While the revived naturalistic feeling of Italian art clothed itself in truth, Fra Giovanni gathered anew all the mystic ideas which were being neglected. The pious brother did not materialize his figures; he reduced to a minimum the elements of composition, substituting for the environment in which the sacred scenes took place a golden background, the un- adorned portals of a cloister, or cloister cells with small, barred windows. Mysticism idealizes humanity rather than represents it in worldly scenes, and thus the Madonna of the Beato An- gelico, far removed from that humble and lofty type of woman Dante had created, was in- vested by him with such humility that her simplicity seems child-like. That clear-eyed Madonna of his is ever clothed in unclassic robes, her pupils peeping forth from under slightly arched eyebrows, her slender body that of a young girl. Angels surround her as if she were a shrine. His saints, with luminously transparent faces and upward gaze, are wrapped in ecstacy; the exquisite soul of Angelico, yearning with divine love, shines forth through them as hovering lightly among the clouds, they form a rose garland to the Queen of Heaven. A chorus of silvery voices seems to rise around her, and all betokens a world of purity, of love and beauty. The delicacy of his gold and mosaic work, as well as his evenness of coloring, is attributed to his training in the Tuscan school of miniature painters. On the panels of 152 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER church and tabernacle he painted his delicate figures in pale colors, with an ivory tinge, sometimes slightly rosy. The manner in which he used conventional symbolic colors for his draperies, as well as the tenacity with which he clung to old forms, recalls medieval miniature artists. An example of this may be found in the “Coronation” in the Uffizi Gallery, in which some dark spots on the angels' wings prove, on careful examination, to be eyes. It would be impossible to find this little touch, which miniature painters have preserved to us, in larger works of art. Although inspired by miniaturists, Angelico in- vested his creations with the stamp of his own individuality. His angels, creatures of pure beauty and grace, have a feathery lightness; their flaxen heads, encircled by halos, stand out boldly from the glory of golden mosaic; their robes are adorned with radiating stars and symbols; their stoles are wafted by the morning breeze; their celestial forms rest on clouds as they softly play, and their golden wings with eye-like spots, akin to peacocks' feathers, point heavenward. Thus he represented the ‘ ' Death of the Virgin, ” and, in this picture of Mrs. Gardner's col- lection, her ‘ ‘Assumption. " It is remarkable that the great master should have united in one picture the conceptions of the Byzantine East and those of the West. The heretic gnostics of the third and fourth centuries first taught the poetical story of the Assumption of the Virgin, which was condemned afterward by Pope Gelasius, but restored to honor from the seventh to the ninth century. While the artists of the East represented the Virgin recum- bent on her death-bed and asleep as her soul passes into heaven, the Westerner depicted her, resuscitated and immortal, as she enters the supreme kingdom. In the fourteenth century, the renaissance of Italian art represented the Virgin exalted in heaven, clothed in light and sanctified. She is no longer the Madonna who, abandoning earthly joys, throws herself, child-like, in the arms of the Redeemer, but the tender Mother in her apotheosis, the sovereign whose brow God crowns. In mediaeval art, the Redeemer appeared amid the apostles surrounding His tomb, with the disembodied spirit of the Virgin in His arms; Italian art places the Redeemer on high, receiving the offering from the earth. Beato Angelico, who, in the picture in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, adheres to the ancient Byzantine form, has, in this one of Mrs. Gardner's collection, made a single con- cession to newer conventions, or rather he has connected the old with the new. In the lower part of the picture Mary is lying on the bier, in accordance with Byzantine tradi- tions; Peter is standing by the pillow, John, at the foot with a spreading palm; with them are other apostles, and in the centre is the Redeemer with the soul of the Virgin in the form of a baby girl; according to tradition the disembodied spirits were personified by little chil- dren. But above, amid a choir of angels and in a glory of golden light, the Virgin as a bride ready for her nuptials, white-robed, her hands crossed in a ravishment of prayer, ascends towards the Eternal, who, like a sun breaking through the clouds, extends His hands to the chosen among women. Thus, in this beautiful picture, the pious monk has represented his beloved Madonna according to the Eastern and Western conceptions — pas- sive in slumber as well as rising in eternal glory. Adolfo Venturi 153 GIOTTO DI BONDONE 1266-1366 “PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE” Panel, height 17% inches, width 17 inches, gold background T HE altar with its fair linen cloth, whose border is enriched with bands of drawn and openwork, occupies the centre of the picture. It is covered by a baldaquino supported on four slender columns with simple foliated capitals, the canopy pedimented on all four sides and decorated with mosaic, terminated in a peaked roof of gold tiles. The pavement is formed of black and white marble arranged in a pattern of diamonds within squares. The prophet Simeon, in a pale crimson gown, standing to the right of the altar, bends slightly forward over it, holding in his arms the Divine Child he has received from His mother’s arms. With a charming gesture the Child lays one hand on Simeon’s mouth, and reaches with the other towards the still outstretched hands of Mary. Behind the latter stands St. Joseph, bearing in his hands the dove which is to serve as a temple offering. To the right of Simeon stands the prophetess Anna, wearing a robe of light green, one hand upraised as though to acclaim the presentation, while in the other she bears a scroll, the inscription of which is designedly illegible. All the figures are clothed in long robes ; the Virgin wears a blue cloak, show- ing at places the traditional red gown, while St. Joseph is in blue and yellow. All are distinguished by circular halos. Collection Simes, Mond Park, near Horsham. Collection Henry Willett, Brighton. Sale Simes, purchased by Henry Willett. Acquired from Mr. Willett by Dr. J. P. Richter. Purchased from Dr. Richter for Mrs. Gardner. Exhibition Royal Academy, winter, 1892. Exhibition Early Italian Art, New Gallery, London, 1893-4. 154 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS This exquisite panel belongs to the earlier years of the Frate’s artistic career. I am in- clined to find it a somewhat earlier work than any of the three reliquary panels from Santa Maria Novella, now in San Marco. The treatment, more especially of the subject of the “Dormition of the Virgin," in the lower part of the panel, with its almost Giottesque simplic- ity and broadness of composition, form and drapery, would, taken alone, perhaps suggest an even earlier period than that in which the work was in all probability really executed. 1 do not think, however, that we can be far wrong in fixing the date of the picture between 1420 and 1425. The “Assumption of the Virgin” in the upper part of the panel, shows greater care and delicacy of technique than is to be found in the “Dormition”— a difference which was probably intentional on the part of the artist, who has evidently thought thereby to accentuate the contrast between the still, earth-bound scene on the one hand and the more purely spiritual vision on the other. The angels about the floating figure of the Virgin are certainly among the loveliest of Fra Angelico's creations, unsurpassed by any of their kind in lightness of movement and in the grace of their flowing draperies. The figure of Christ in the Heavens occurs again but with slight variations, although surrounded by a more elaborate glory of cherubim, in one of the San Marco reliquaries — that of the “ Madonna della Stella.” As a composition, the “ Dormition of the Virgin," may be profitably com- pared with the other renderings of the same subject by the Frate, i.e., in the predella of the Cortona ' ‘Assumption, " in the panel (probably executed by a pupil or assistant) in the Uffizi Gallery, and in one of the predelle of the “Annunciation” at Madrid. In its compactness and simplicity of arrangement the composition in Mrs. Gardner’s picture is perhaps more satis- factory than any of the others. F. Mason Perkins This wonderful reliquary picture, at one time in the possession of Lord Methuen, be- longs to the series completed before the end of 1430, and was associated with the three other panels which are at San Marco, and which form the principal decoration of four shrines. Very little retouching has taken place in the picture in Mrs. Gardner's collection, and it has the appearance of an exquisite miniature. In rhythmic, lyric beauty of composi- tion, it is the finest of the four. It is notable for three remarkable qualities. As a piece of design, it is of supreme excellence, perfectly composed, well balanced, and absolutely rhythmic in its lines, while as an expression of tender feeling the lower part of the picture is very noteworthy. There is but the beginning of the art of grouping many personages in close alliance with each other and of marking a bond of thought which connects them all together, but there is quite evidently this bond of thought, and it is that of a touching fare- well, an earnest expectation and a definite hope. The quality of combination is still further illustrated in the upper part of the picture. The angels surrounding the Madonna have an intimate connection with her and with each other, and what is more surprising is, that they move through the realms of light with soft and easy flowing movements, which were quite new to Italian art, and which Fra Angelico did not often attain to. It is a wonderful choir which surrounds the Madonna, and she herself, clad in long robes of white, transfigured with inexpressible joy, raises her hands as she enters into the embrace of the Father, hardly 157 THE COLLECTION OF MRS able to believe that the perfection of life is at hand. Above her are the six angels playing instruments, five more are on either side of her, and below kneel yet four more. The sense of floating upward on the wings of melodious music is a notable feature in this pic- ture, while the draperies and the musical instruments are painted with that marvellous per- fection which marks the works of Fra Angelico. Far more notable, however, than this per- fection is the loving care bestowed upon each face, and which betokens a knowledge of the anatomy of the face, of the art of blowing a trumpet, and of the manner of expressing the irradiation of a smile, for all of which one is hardly prepared at the very beginning of the adult life of Fra Angelico. The coloring, the third great quality of the picture, is exquisitely pure and tenderly harmonized. In all probability the picture was executed between 1425 and 1430, and it therefore stands well at the very beginning of the work of the artist. But in his latest years, when painting in the cathedral of Orvieto, he never surpassed in the angels which he grouped around Christ as the Judge, the exquisite charm of those appearing in this ‘ ‘Assumption. ” It is curious to notice that there was a reversion in his life to earlier types, and that many of the figures in the chapel of Nicholas V, at the Vatican, recall that anxious band of disciples which so early in his life he grouped around the grave of the Virgin. They are listening to the words of the Office, and waiting to bid a mournful farewell after the ceremony is over. All the tender expression which Angelico desired to convey, and which from his study of the human face, he was well able to express, can be seen in these faces, and when within the Vatican, we gaze at the frescoes in the little chapel, we find evidence of fuller knowl- edge, of deeper study, of more absolute truth, coupled with the same perception of the vitality of the soul, and the same fascinating beauty. Dr. G. C. Williamson “MADONNA AND CHILD, ST. JOHN AND FEMALE SAINTS” (SANTA CONVERSAZIONE) S O unconventional and unceremonial a portrayal as this scene with the Madonna and the Christ is extremely rare in Italian art. Ordinarily, the Virgin and Child in a company of saints are shown seated upon a throne, in state. It was the German and the Netherlandish masters — Gerard David, for example — who loved to picture the Madonna, in a circle of holy women, sitting on the ground and in the open air. In Mrs. Gardner’s picture, among the women portrayed, it is possible to recognize only, aside from the Madonna, St. Elizabeth seated on her right, and the next figure, who is characterized as St. Magdalen by the unbound hair and the box of ointment in her hands. In its every aspect this exceedingly fine and pleasing picture stands very close to Andrea Mantegna. It was Mantegna, so it appears, who first ventured to portray the Madonna and Child in full figure, seated upon a bank in the open, in the most engaging simplicity. The Madonna picture in the Uffizi is an example. Thoroughly Mantegnesque are, in Mrs. Gardner’s picture, the types of the Madonna and of the St. Elizabeth with their characteristic attitudes and the form of the hands, the treatment of the naked Christ Child, of the various 158 JOHN LOWELL GARDNER draperies, the rocky ground with the glistening little stones, the bushes and the trees — all are handled quite in his manner. Likewise the city upon the hill, with its antique or antique- resembling buildings, finds many analogies in Mantegna’s previous works. Nevertheless, and in spite of the signature, which is to be seen in the foreground, 1 do not regard this picture as a work of the Paduan master. In contrast to the three women of the middle group, the four others to the right and left of them, and also the little St. John, show quite other and un-Mantegnesque types and forms, and seem to be taken from quite another — perhaps not Italian — prototype. The modish costumes of these four women in no wise conform to the ideal garb in which Mantegna was wont to clothe his saints. So, too, in general, the faces are too narrow and the shape of the heads too oblong, the necks too stiff, and the vague and indecisive treatment of the draperies differs from his manner. The whole handling of the subject, although very careful and delicate, does not, to me, reveal Mantegna’s firm and plastic touch. But if not by him, the picture is without doubt of the closest kin to him and inspired by his immediate influence. In its style it corresponds to the characteristic forms which appear in Mantegna’s works of the period between the completion of the frescoes in the Cas- tello di Corte at Mantua and the “Triumphal Procession of Cassar that is to say, between 1475 and 1490. As to the personality of the painter, it is impossible to recognize it among the various pupils of the master known to us. Many noteworthy traits of style, however, suggest that this fine picture comes most probably from an artist of the school of Verona. A quite similar arrangement of single little scenes and forms upon the successive stages of a high cliff is to be noted, for example, in Francesco Morone’s picture of the “Madonna and the Eremites, Anthony and Paul,” in the Berlin Gallery. Figures closely resembling these, too, are to be found in the little painting by Michele da Verona in London. But the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection shows an especially close affinity, particularly in the ex- pression of the faces, to the early works of Giovanni Francesco Caroto, whose paintings — so Vasari relates — Mantegna is said to have sold as his own. Dr. Paul Kristeller This work appeals in the highest degree to the interest of the lover and connoisseur of Italian art in its most classic manifestations. At the first glance one is struck by the singu- larity of a subject frequently met with among Venetian painters of the sixteenth century, and which bears the traditional title of “Santa Conversazione.” The picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection is certainly one of the finest “Holy Conversations” in existence. In a landscape with very marked features, seated on a level space of rocky ground, is an assemblage of pious women, defined as saints by their aureoles, who surround, with looks of sorrow and worship, the small figure of the Saviour of the World, represented in infancy, and receiving the homage of His little companion, St. John. Of the six saints accompanying the Madonna, two only may be identified ; the aged saint contemplating the two children is undoubtedly Elizabeth, and near her is youthful Mary Magdalen, with the abundant hair hanging about her shoulders and the box of ointment. In the distance is seen a city with great monuments. The painting is signed in Latin with Roman characters. Was this inscription set there by i59 DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD 1834- “ PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN” Canvas, height 23 K inches, width 17 yi inches (sight measurement). Signed in upper left-hand corner : “Degas, 1867" A YOUNG French woman, of the later years of the Second Empire, seen at three-quarter length, is seated with clasped hands in an arm chair, in her toilet room. The period is clearly depicted, not only in her costume and in the interior in which she is placed, but in the sitter. The eyes, set in large sockets and arched by regular and widely separated eyebrows, gaze steadfastly at the spectator. The mouth is small and firm, but not compressed ; the sallow face is relieved with great skill against the yellow wall of the background. Her hair, ar- ranged close to the forehead, widens out behind the ears and is crowned by a small bonnet of lace and golden grapes, which is held in place by bands of velvet ending in bows beneath the chin. About her shoulders, and falling over the arms, is a lace scarf dotted with jet beads ; black lace is also seen about her wrists, and one hand shows a white cuff. Across the arms of the chair is spread a red and green cashmere shawl, upon which the woman sits, while the back of the chair itself has a striped covering. A piece of lace hangs on the corner of the chair-back, and on the little toilet table, with its mirror and frilled white linen cover, is seen a pair of yellow gloves. Collection Manzi, Paris. Purchased from M. Manzi by Glaenzer & Co. Purchased 1904 by Mrs. Gardner from Glaenzer & Co. Exhibition Salon, Paris, 1869. 160 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS thoroughness and care, merely quotes a note from Cavalcaselle’s ‘ ‘ History of Painting in North Italy ” describing a lost picture with the title. The fact that the signature, “Andreas Mantina,” occurs on a ledge of rock in the fore- ground is not sufficient to attribute this work to the master were it not that I am able to show that the traditional attribution goes back a very long way, and that this picture figured in no less a collection than that of Charles I. In the original manuscript catalogue of Charles’ collection drawn up by Vanderdoort, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, occur two entries which bear on the question. This catalogue was copied by G. Vertue and published after his death in 1757. From this version, I quote the following en- tries : “No. 27. A Mantua piece done by Andrea Montanio (sic). Item : a little piece of Andrea Montanio, being the dying of our Lady, the Apostles standing about with white wax lighted candles in their hands, and in the landskip, where the town of Mantua is painted, is the water lake, where a bridge is over the said water towards the town ; in a little black strong wooden frame, painted upon the wrong light. 1 ft. 9 inches by 1 ft. 4K inches.” This has long been recognised as the small picture of this subject now in the Prado at Madrid. The picture agrees in all details and the light falls from the right-hand side, “the wrong light.” Under No. 33. Vanderdoort enters the following: “A Mantua piece, done by Andrea Mantania (sic) Item. Another as aforesaid fellow piece of Andrea Mantanio (i. e. fellow piece to No. 27) also in the like stony frame, joined in another wooden frame, where our Lady, Christ and St. John and six other saints sitting by; in the landskip, a St. Christopher carrying Christ over the water ; and also another, St. George on horseback, running with a spear to kill the Dragon ; and also on high upon a rock, a St. Francis and St. Jerome, and St. Dominica, painting upon the right light. 1 ft. 9 inches by 1 ft. 5 inches.” Fortunately, Vanderdoort in spite of his somewhat involved phraseology was careful in making his inventory, and there is little doubt of the identity of the picture in Charles’ collection with that now belonging to Mrs. Gardner. The description tallies in almost every point, including the lighting which is here from the left (“upon the right light”). There is, however, one detail in which it does not agree, namely, Vanderdoort finds a “St. Dominica,” whom I confess I cannot discover. It occurs to me as likely, however, that he mistook St. Francis’ companion, who is invariably represented in Italian art as witnessing the miracle of the stigmata, for yet another saint, and hit upon the natural idea that St. Fran- cis’ great contemporary was intended. Before discussing the picture itself it may be inter- esting to follow its history one step further. In an “ Inventorie of the Personall Estate of ye late King which was sold by Act of Parliament,” the manuscript of which is in the Vic- toria and Albert Museum, there occur under the heading, “ Pictures at St. James’s Palace,” the following entries : — “Death of Marie, water colors, Mantegnia £ 1 5 Jasper,” and immedi- ately following this “Marie and divers Sts by Manteyner £ 15 Jasper.” The possibilities of misspelling Mantegna’s name would seem to be almost exhausted here, but that in a second 164 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS contemporary inventory we find a similar account where the appraiser has achieved the amazing foim of “A. Demantanger.” There is, for the English reader, a profound pathos in these bald entries with the note “£15 ” and “Jasper,” at the end to indicate the name of the unknown purchaser and the insignificant prices at which, in the turmoil of political revolution, the great collection of Charles I was disposed of. Charles I, “ le prince le plus amateur de la peinture qui soit au monde,” as Rubens called him, was the one great royal patron of art that England had, and the collection he made in twenty years in the face of keen rivalry has perhaps never been equalled. With his death and its dispersal, the high- sounding hopes of the English Renaissance vanished, and with the short entry quoted above the little Mantua piece disappeared from view until it emerged again in an American collec- tion which in turn will become historical. What then is the value of this identification with the picture in Charles' collection ? The Mantua pictures were bought by Charles’ agent Daniel Nys from Duke Vicenzo of Mantua. He declares in a letter dated 1628 that “the people of Mantua made so much noise about it that if Duke Vicenzo could have had them back again, he would readily have paid double and his people would have been willing to supply the money. There can be little doubt, therefore, that the pictures were at Mantua in the Ducal apartments. As we shall see later this picture must, in all probability, have been painted at Mantua, and have remained there till Daniel Nys got it out of Italy. The traditional ascription, therefore, has about as good a history and as unbroken a continuity as it is possible to obtain. But this, as every student of early art is aware, is no absolute proof. Of the companion piece to Mrs. Gardner’s picture, the “Death of the Virgin ” at Madrid, the consensus of critical opinion has been in favor of its genuineness, but it would not follow of necessity that its pendant was also due to the master’s hand. It makes, however, the strongest sort of presumption in its favor. It makes it fairly certain that the court of Mantua, for which it was probably painted, had received it as a work of Mantegna, that it had, in fact, come from his studio as such. This indeed corroborates the idea which we get from the picture itself, namely, that so strange and original a composition, one so entirely outside the usual formulas of pictorial arrangement, could only be due to a great and independent creator like Mantegna. The sentiment of the picture, the freedom with which a sacred subject becomes the motive for a purely romantic fantasy, and the peculiar relations of the figures to the landscape, are characteristics which at the early date to which we must ascribe this work were rare in Italian art. Such a treatment had been found by Pisanello earlier, it recurs in Jacopo Bellini’s drawings, and it is evident, though in a less striking degree, in many of Mantegna’s early works. The one with which we may best compare it is the small “Madonna ” in the Uffizi. In this too, the landscape is carried out with such completeness, with so passionate an in- terest, that it impresses one almost more definitely than the figures of the Virgin and Child. The two pictures have indeed so much in common that it is evident that they belong to nearly the same period of the artist’s career. The Virgin, it is true, is quite a different type. In Mrs. Gardner’s picture she is a simpler, humbler, less marked character than the sorrow- ful and grandiose mother of the Uffizi picture. But the right hands are almost identical in 165 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS pose and drawing, while the action of the left hand is closely similar. But, though the faces of the two Madonnas differ so much, the exact type of the Uffizi ‘ ‘Madonna" occurs in the Magdalen to the left of St. Elizabeth in Mrs. Gardner’s picture ; the likeness both of face and hair is so strong that one might suppose the same model to have been used for both. Again in the landscape, the similarities are very marked. In both, we have the same strange towering mass of rock, in both a causeway leads up to a cave midway in the height. Both have the same peculiarity of a sharply fractured volcanic mass imposed on a basis of more regular stratification. In both, the rocky mass is conceived in too fantastic, too purely romantic, a vein to allow us to suppose them to be literal transcripts from nature, but one can scarcely doubt that the same actual place gave Mantegna thehint for both compositions. Dr. Kristeller has in fact discovered a place between Vicenza and Verona, where such a curious combination ofbasaltic rock, lying upon a regular stratified water formation, occurs. There can, however, be little doubt that the picture under consideration was done be- fore, though not much before, the “ Madonna ” in the Uffizi. The reminiscences of Manteg- na's earlier Paduan style, as well as traces of his father-in-law’s influence, are more clearly evident. For, although he already employs here the jagged volcanic rocks which recur constantly in his later works, the treatment is for the most part still rigid and schematic. His stratification still has that regularity and perfection that gives it almost the appearance of masonry. The natural causeway that leads up to St. Jerome’s cave reminds one of the hillside in the “ Execution of St. James ” at Padua. Again, the river with the beach beside it represented by concentric curves, is exactly such as is painted in the “ Agony in the Garden ” of the National Gallery, which was executed in 1459, just before he left Padua, to take service at the Mantuan Court. Yet another point which indicates a comparatively early date is the profile of the Saint to the left with her back toward the spectator. Man- tegna would have avoided its protruding eyelid in his later years. It is however, a very faithful record of the actual appearance, a record of the kind that Mantegna did not shrink from in the earlier period when his interest in the precise forms of nature was at its height. In point of fact, we get in one of the Paduan frescoes, the “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” just such another pose of the head with a precisely similar statement of the literal fact, and here too the eyelid, though drawn with the utmost skill, looks prominent. We can define then, by internal evidence, the period of Mantegna’s career to which this picture belongs, namely, to the early years of his life at Mantua. It comes between the Florentine triptych which was his first work at Mantua and the ‘ ‘Madonna” of the Uffizi which, as Dr. Kristeller has clearly shown, belongs to a few years later. Now this is pre- cisely the date to which critics have already attributed the companion piece, “The Death of the Virgin," at Madrid. I have, I hope, shown that the composition and design of this picture belong so entirely to this period of Mantegna’s work that there can be no doubt that it is, so far as these go, entirely due to his creative power. Whether the execution is also entirely his 1 am not in so good a position to determine, but so far as the means at hand will enable me to decide, there is no form which is not characteristic of Mantegna, nor can 1 find that the quality falls below that of the master himself. In any case we have l66 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS here one of the most original and one of the most purely delightful of Mantegna’s inven- tions. The lyrical mood, which almost immediately after this disappears from Mantegna’s work, is here singularly strong. There is nothing to disturb the sober gaiety of this sacred pleasure party which has gathered by the side of a clear stream, to admire the beauties of the wild but by no means forbidding scenery. One may almost see reflected here the happiness of Mantegna s early years at the Mantuan Court, when even his umbrageous spirit unbent in the genial atmosphere of its humanistic and polite society — of the time when Felice Feliciano, Samuele de Tradate and Mantegna went on excursions to the Lake of Garda to admire the romantic scenery, investigate antiquities, and in their youthful ex- travagance crowned one another with laurel and ivy, and pretended to be ancient Romans. The lyrical feeling which distinguishes this picture gives place soon after, to a more sober, more heroic manner; but it flickered up again at the end of his life when Isabella d Este came to Mantua and demanded in her pictures an elegance and lightness of touch to which Mantegna must have found it hard to conform. Isabella d’Este had indeed the strongest predilections which she endeavored to force upon the artist she employed, and when in 1501, she began her long negotiations with Giovanni Bellini she endeavored to get from him a mythological poesy similar to Mantegna’s. Bellini, however, pleaded his inca- pacity to treat pagan themes, and Isabella reluctantly agreed to a picture of the Nativity. But she insisted repeatedly on the introduction of a number of saints among which, at all costs, St. Jerome, the romantic saint, was to appear, while the whole was to have “dis- tant prospects and other fantasies. ” It occurs to me that in all this correspondence Isabella may have had in her mind, as a type of what might be made of a religious subject — since, owing to Bellini’s obstinacy, religious it must be — precisely this delightful fantasy of the Madonna and six saints in a rock glen. Certainly no other of Mantegna’s works can have been so exactly to the taste of this elegant connoisseur. Roger E. Fry HE history of this justly celebrated picture is most interesting. When Titian, in 1562, then eighty-five years old, sent it to King Philip II of Spain, his most enthusiastic ad- mirer and patron, he had just finished it; but the choice of subject and the preparatory studies belong to a much earlier period. It may be surmised that this composition, as well as others of the same mythological and plastic style, called by him and his contemporaries “Poesies” (poetical inventions, as distinguished from religious or familiar subjects and por- traits), haunted the artist’s dreams from his earliest youth. The first painter of “poesies” ap- pears to have been his school-fellow Giorgione, whose unfinished pictures, after his untimely death (1511), Titian completed. Both drew their inspiration from the Latin and Greek poets with whom they were made acquainted by the scholars Pietro Bembo, Andrea Navagero, Fra Giocondo and others, at the meetings of artists and men of letters held in the house of the celebrated printer, Aldo Manuzio. This particular pagan idyll, at all events, was in the mind of the painter as early as 1554, and formed part of a whole series of scenes celebrating “THE RAPE OF EUROPA” THE CRITICAL ESSAYS love, which he promised to the pious and profligate son of Charles V, who, as Prince of Spain, had just wedded Mary Tudor, Queen of England. Titian had already sent to Spain the “ Danae,” and it is in the letter accompanying the “Venus with Adonis,” which he had forwarded to London, that the following curious passage is to be found : ' ' As the ‘ Danae ’ 1 sent your Majesty was seen from the front, for the sake of variety in this new poesie I have shown her from the opposite side, that the closet which they are to adorn should be more pleasing to the eye. 1 shall soon send your Majesty the poesie of 1 Perseus and Andromeda,' who will be seen in still another posture, as will likewise ‘ Medea and Jason,' and I hope, besides these, with God’s assistance, to send your Majesty a most religious work (opera devotissima), upon which 1 have been working these ten years.” In 1559 the painting of “ Europa” seems to have been well on the way toward comple- tion, but in [ 560 the master, after his habit of reflective slowness, of taking up and leaving his work to take it up again, was still keeping it in his studio. In [562, at last, the picture, shipped from Genoa, safely reached Madrid and was placed in the Palace. In the succeed- ing century Rubens copied it. Not long after, it was packed with other paintings of nudes which were to be presented to Prince Charles Stuart, betrothed to a Princess of Spain ; but after the marriage had been broken off the picture was returned to its place, until it passed into the hands of the Due de Grammont, to whom Philip V had given it, and from thence into the possession of the Due d’Orleans, Regent of France. During the whole of the eighteenth century it formed one of the principal attractions of the Palais-Royal collection, in which might be seen twenty-nine other superb paintings by Titian, three of which — “Diana and Acteon,” “Diana and Calisto,” and "Perseus and Andromeda” — had, like “Europa,” been inspired by Ovid's “Metamorphoses." Weknowthat this collection, taken to England in the early days of the Revolution by Philippe Egalite, was exhibited during six months, from December, 1 798, to June, 1 799, in London, in Bryan's Rooms. The ‘ ' Europa ” was acquired at the price of seven hundred pounds sterling by Lord Berwick, who disposed of it a few years later to Lord Darnley for his gallery at Cobham Hall; it remained in the family of the latter until sold by the present Lord to Mrs. Gardner. Was the “ Europa ” inspired solely by the “ Metamorphoses” of Ovid, whose narrative seems indeed to have left some trace upon the painter’s imagination ? The detail of the flowers, for instance, with which the confiding daughter of Agenor, playing in the meadow with the gentle and splendid bull, has garlanded his neck. But other traits, the most picturesque ones, seem to have been taken from the delicious idyll of Moschus, the poet of Alexandria : “She spoke thus, and laughing, seated herself upon his back. And her companions were about to follow, when the bull, rising abruptly, departed as if in winged flight and swiftly reached the sea. Turning back, Europa called to her beloved companions, stretching her arms toward them, but they could not follow. . . . Then, having plunged into the sea, he moved away like a dolphin. . . . The maiden, seated upon the back of the bull Zeus, clasped with one hand one of his long horns, with the other she held to- gether the folds of her purple robe, and the surge of the white sea wet the hem of it. Her wide peplus, like the sail of a ship, floating upon her shoulders, uplifted her— while 168 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS she was being carried so far from her native land that she could no longer see the shore, nor the high mountains, but only the heavens above and the boundless sea beneath her.” However it may be, the Venetian made marvelous use of the ancient myth. The “Europa” is certainly one of the compositions in which Titian’s genius shines forth in all its power and perfection, in the arrangement of the figures, in their beauty and sense of movement, in the harmony of deep, splendid color, and in the absolute realization of a poetic theme. No less admirable is the variety and play of brilliant tones, delicate or intense, which, ringing, re-echoing, chiming together from one end of the canvas to the other, like musical notes artfully orchestrated, form something like a triumphal symphony of youth and love. The perfectly simple but extraordinarily effective distribution of light and shade, the accuracy of the perspective of line and of sky, the gold-tinged whiteness of Europa’s plaited tunic above the silvery whiteness of the bull’s coat, the old rose of the mantle floating against the azure of the sky or dragging in the sea, give us, in spite of some slight dulling of these harmonies by the action of time, a sensation of undefinable delight. With his customary feeling for grace, and in order not to cumber his scene around his principal figure, Titian has substituted Amorini for the retinue of Nereids “seated upon the backs of whales,” and of Tritons “blowing the nuptial hymn upon their long sea- conches, ” who, according to Moschus, escorted the nuptial group to that further shore which was to take its name from the Phoenician maid. Of these three Amorini one, stretching upon a dolphin, seems to follow Europa to make sure she will not fall into the water, and perhaps to urge the bull to haste; the other two, floating in the sky, evidently mean to in- spire the maiden with the same desires that have inflamed Jupiter’s heart. These three Amo- rini offered the ingenious and learned artist opportunities for displaying all his skill; they are apparently so spontaneous, so real and joyful, but in reality they are most admirably placed and carefully composed — not only do they show the infantine form in new and expressive attitudes, but their part in the general balance and movement of the picture is requisite to complete a scientific composition. A masterpiece such as this would be sufficient for the glory of a national European gallery; it becomes a jewel of inestimable worth in the new world, where masterpieces of the sixteenth century are necessarily rarer than those of modern art. 1 cannot do better, in concluding this paper, than to unite in the judgment pronounced long ago by two clear-sighted and conscientious judges, Crowe and Cavalcaselle : “No other painting by the master can vie, it may almost be said, with the ‘Europa,’ not only in respect to the vigor of the coloring, but also in regard to the powerful chiaros- curo, the airy perspective, the touch full of spirit and animation which gives life and move- ment to the scene. While there may be found in this canvas, the same breadth that dis- tinguishes the ‘ Antiope ’ and the * Callisto ’ it does not show the exaggeration in brilliancy of Paolo Veronese’s coloring. The large masses of color, to increase their effect, no doubt, are broken here and there by half-tones and reflections — red, azure, black, but all this is blended in such just concord that the resulting whole is true as well as powerful and com- pletely harmonious.” George Lafenestre 169 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS In his long artistic career, Titian twice painted a series of mythological paintings. In his early days he executed the beautiful Bacchanalian pictures for Alfonso d’Este, now in Madrid and London. About thirty years later, a number of pictures representing scenes from classical fables were ordered by King Philip II of Spain. The “Rape of Europa” was among these. There are several replicas or copies of it in existence. First of all must be mentioned the one Rubens executed during his sojourn in Madrid, in 1628-29, and which he took back to Antwerp where he adorned his house with copies after Titian, all by his own hand. After his death, this copy by the Flemish painter was bought by Philip IV and is now in the Prado Museum (No. 1614). A fine replica “possibly of Spanish origin” as Crowe and Cavalcaselle believe — likely by del Maso — is in the Wallace Collection. Another copy, described as very good, belongs to Mrs. Donovan, Rokeby (H. Cook, “Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ” October, 1 896, p. 340). The late director of the Prado Gallery speaks of an original by Titian in the collection of Don Josd de Madrazo. (No. 272 of Catalogue “de la Galeria de Cuadros de Sr. D. Jos6 de Madrazo.”) Little need be said of so famous a picture as “ Europa.” Belonging to Titian’s late period, it shows all his artistic powers at their climax. The sun, issuing from the clouds and shining over the greenish-blue sea, gives a wonderful luminosity to the body of Europa. The pose of the nymph, which, judged from a purely classical standpoint, is in no way beautiful, has all that fortuitous character, as of the thing seen, which is the dominant note of Titian’s later pictures. In many respects the “ Europa” is, in its general effect, like the “ Danae ” in Madrid. The exquisite quality in the rendering of the sea and sky, the beauti- ful undulating line of the coast which the bull is leaving far behind, all show that wonderful mastery of technique and that perfection in the rendering of nature, which are to be found in overwhelming grandeur only in the later works of Titian. Dr. Georg Gronau In the “Rape of Europa,” Mrs. Gardner possesses one of the greatest masterpieces of Titian’s later years. It would be useless to deny that in the series of mythological pieces which he executed for Philip II of Spain, when over eighty years of age, he recaptured alto- gether the poetical intensity, the freshness and purity of feeling of his earlier “poesies,” painted when the influence of Giorgione was still strong upon him. These works of his old age, executed for a court which was at once devout and licentious, are in sentiment more self-conscious and more prosaic. In the interval of time which divides the “ Bacchus and Ariadne” from the “Rape of Europa,” the Catholic reaction changed the face of Europe, and left its marks even upon so robust a nature as Titian’s. But there is this enor- mous compensation, that in the interval Titian had become an incomparably greater painter. At the age of eighty he had lost nothing of his skill of hand, and his brain was stored with the ripe experience of a long life of unparalleled activity. In this picture, oil painting has all its peculiar virtues, its power of realization, of sug- gesting to the imagination mass, solidity, resistance, and suggesting besides more perfectly than any other medium, the veritable surface quality of substances, the filminess of lines, the sheen of silk, and the elastic firmness of flesh. It has here, in a surpassing degree, 170 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS these qualities, which are usually attained only at the cost of more essentially aesthetic con- siderations. They are often achieved by a labored, imitative dexterity, and in the process the freshness, the immediacy of the touch by which the artist should reveal his inmost na- ture, are lost. Here, on the contrary, there is so astonishing an economy of means, the paint, for all the solidity of relief, is so thinly applied, the brush slurs the surface of the canvas so lightly, that each touch delivers its own complex message, revealing the painter’s character and the particular mood which inspired him, almost as certainly as the touches tell in a Chinese water-color or a Rembrandt pen-drawing. The picture is less poetical in conception than Titian’s earlier “poesies,” the sensuality which always belonged to his art is here less purified by an impassioned fancy. He takes pagan mythology less seriously than in his youth. There is something of a half humorous irony in this rendering. He still enjoys the pure lyrical beauty of the story, presenting that side of it indeed, more sumptuously than any other artist had done, but he surely indulged a quick sense of humor in contrasting thus the magnificent forms, the heroic energy of Europa with the timid, mild-eyed bull who carries her off. Jupiter is here the nervous husband, who, even in the rapture of his new amour, does not altogether forget the possi- bility of an explanation with Juno. Even if this be thought too fanciful, the possibility of its occurring to anyone shows how much less completely old Titian abandoned himself to the poetical idea, and how much more he used it for his own end. But, if the fervor of ro- mance is less, how infinitely greater is the imaginative grasp of reality. We should look in vain in Titian’s earlier works for such modelling as is seen in the bent knee and thigh of Europa. We think instinctively here of Rembrandt, so far is it in advance of the schematic rendering of Titian’s earlier works, so far is it, in this direction, ahead of all that other Italian artists could show. Nor is it less complete in those qualities of rhythmical and harmonious design in which the Italians were supreme. The pose of the ‘ ‘ Europa” is the invention of a great designer ; it is one in which the most difficult and complex movements, the most varied changes of direction, are reduced to a lucid simplicity of line. The whole conception is indeed a capi- tal example of a type which runs through Titian’s work. It is a particular solution of the problem of decorating a rectangular space which is first hinted at in Giorgione’s recumbent Venus. ” It enters into a more complex scheme in the Madrid ‘ ‘ Bacchanal, ” and it comes out most clearly in this “ Rape of Europa,” and in Titian’s last work, the “ Pieta ” at Venice. It depends upon obtaining balance without making any use of symmetrical correspondence in the two halves of the picture. The chief weight of the composition is concentrated in one of the lower corners of the rectangle. This is bounded by a strongly marked diagonal line, reinforced in this case by many subsidiary variants of the main theme. This arrange- ment, which by itself would overweight the right-hand side, is, however, balanced by a much smaller mass, here represented by the two flying amorini, a mass which acquires sufficient weight to reduce the balance partly by its position high up on the left, partly by the attention which is directed to it by the sudden turn of Europa’s head. Here the effect of this nice counterpoise is very striking. Titian has crowded all the most important matter 171 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS of his story into the right-hand lower corner, has compressed it surprisingly, so that a less bold and original designer would have felt the necessity of adding a strip to the right, in order to leave more play to his figures. But in spite of this concentration, the balance is secured by the small forms of the amorini above. As a result Titian has perfectly filled his picture space, and left free a large field for the misty, unaccented forms of sea and distant promontory. The command of boundless space, the sense of being borne in triumphant security away from the familiar shore and the clamorous attendants, across the untried plains of a summer sea, which this disposition affords, is, indeed, the essential charm of a consum- mate invention. Roger E. Fry When Titian died at the age of ninety-nine, entreating Philip II to compensate him “for the many pictures sent on divers occasions to your Majesty,” did the old man, proud of his age, proud of the title “Cavaliere ” that Charles V had bestowed upon him, have any prevision of the tremendous influence his achievement would have on succeeding centuries? He shares with Velasquez the distinction of having directed and inspired, more than any of the great masters of painting, the art effort of our times. Indeed, it may be said that nearly all the painters of the present day, whose work is significant, fly either the banner of the Italian or the banner of the Spaniard ; the one standing for all that is glorious and opulent in color and design, the other for all that is reticent and subtle in art. Titian represents the pomp and glamour of Venice, Velasquez the quiet footfalls of sober Spanish figures in the half-lights of the old palace of Madrid. The influence of Titian began to work early and has been per- sistent. It was owing to his pictures at Madrid and the Escorial, including the “Rape of Europa,” and the works by Tintoretto seen by Velasquez during his sojourn in Italy, that the Spaniard realized in full the possibilities of the craft of painting. As Claude challenges Turner from the walls of the National Gallery in London, so Titian challenges Velasquez from the dim halls of the Prado Museum at Madrid. Compari- sons are absurd. We are grateful for the privilege of seeing such works as remain from the brushes of these great masters. Ocular proof we have of the high esteem in which Velas- quez held Titian, for, in looking closely at “The Tapestry Weavers ” one will notice that the regal piece of tapestry in the background of the picture, which the visitors are examin- ing, is a representation of Titian’s “Rape of Europa,” now in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. Rubens also paid Titian the high compliment of copying it, or “translating it into Flemish,” as Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle term the operation. This copy is No. 1614 among the Rubens works at the Prado. The kindly hand of time has transmuted it into a harmony of dull, rich yellows, blues and reds ; a blue sky beyond the storm clouds, blue-green in the water through which the bull plunges, a strong note of red touched with orange in Europa’s flying scarf ; yellows ranging from lemon to dark orange in the drapery about her limbs, in the flesh of her limbs, and in the body of the bull. It is a rich and sumptuous picture, al- though the shadow cast by Europa’s raised arm, and the reflections of the forms of her dis- tressed companions in the water, have become browner than they could have been when seen by Titian’s eyes. This was one of the copies made by Rubens during his nine months’ 172 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS stay at Madrid, during which period he copied almost everything of Titian’s in the king’s possession, including “ Philip the lid big as ye life, James the secretarie of the sayd Kynge, and the kynge’s dwarf.” Also, the “Adam and Eve,” to which he impudently made ad- ditions. The influence of Titian has been as strong on his humbler followers as it was on Velasquez. The wall in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, where hangs his portrait of the “Man with the Glove,” has long been a place of pilgrimage; students place their handker- chiefs against the linen of his “Entombment” to convince themselves by the rich yellow of the contrast that to copy a Titian the adventurer must imbue himself with the glow that objects assumed, never wholly white, never black, to Titian’s color sense. Hardly a gal- lery is opened in London but there are pictures inspired by the great Venetian, the harmony of his revolving color, the broad sweep of his design, like the flight of an eagle; but the secret of Titian’s persuasive color evades his followers. Perhaps that secret is not entirely hidden behind the flaming gates of his personality; perhaps a solution of the riddle may be found in his technical method of first painting in a picture with the yolk of an egg mixed with powdered pigment, then adding glazes of color. True it is that no artist has the power to so flood the eye with that opulence of color that you see in nature at Venice, in the country around Titian’s home in Cadore and the Dolomite region of the Tyrol, all places where Titian had roamed, where he had studied and stored up the sun color as well as the sunshine. Yet Titian did not set his figures and his scenes in the full light of the sun. That was to be a later development. The illumination of Titian's canvases is oftener a reflected light. One may see groups of figures standing in Venetian doorways to-day, their faces and costumes lighted by the reflections from walls and porticos — veritable Titians. Although Titian is one of the bulwarks of the Prado Museum, he was never in Spain. It is Venice that is evoked at the mention of his name, and that wild road between Venice and Pieve di Cadore, which he traveled over once a year to recover his health in the pastures about his home. On that road he made sketches for those blue vistas and jagged rocks that appear in the backgrounds of so many of his pictures. When the Cam- panile fell it broke the thread of one of the associations between Titian and Venice. For it was to its top that Titian would ascend to refresh himself with a sight of Mount Antalegeo towering above the hills of Cadore. C. Lewis Hind “ PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IV AS A YOUNG MAN” I N the National Gallery of London, three portraits by Velasquez indicate the sweep of his genius— the “ Admiral Pulido Pareja,” the modish, full-length of Philip IV as a young man, and the amazing half length of Philip, old and flabby, painted at the height of the artist’s power, when the problems of technique had ceased to trouble him, and when, analysis having solidified into synthesis, he painted the man before him without hesitation and without effort. Rome has a masterpiece, “ Pope Innocent X ”; and the Berlin Gallery contains “Alessandro del Borro,” known as “the fat man.” That unforgettable figure, which i73 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS certain modern critics have tried to attribute to another painter (name not given), and the “ Pope Innocent X,” have done more to convince wandering tourists of the greatness of Ve- lasquez than any of his other works outside of Spain. But one cannot discuss Velasquez with- out having visited Madrid. To see him in the Prado for the first time, after having studied photographs of his pictures for years, and read the best that has been written about him, is an adventure — an immense adventure as Mr. James would say. This adventure opened before me on the morning I entered and wandered through the long first gallery, excited by the Goyas, interested and amused by the El Grecos, unmoved by the Murillos, caught and held by Titian’s superb equestrian “Charles V.” And all the time I was conscious of a door mid-way down the long gallery; above that door my eye had caught the word “Velasquez ” in black letters on a gilt background. There, in a chamber as large as the courtyard of a royal palace, hanging chronologically in proud array, were most of the mas- terpieces that Velasquez painted — thirty-seven in all. “ The Maids of Honor” is in a small room by itself; other pictures by him are scattered through the Prado; but in that cham- ber you may read the open book of his art life, page after magnificent page. There are those who deny color to Velasquez, as if as expansive a gamut does not invite the colorist in grey and silver, as the colorist in scarlet and purple. Not a colorist! “The Surrender of Breda ” flashed out before my eyes and proclaimed his kinship to Titian, the king of col- orists, with its lovely blues and greens flecked by yellow lights, stretching over sky and water, and illuminating all the low-lying, war-ravaged country. Not a colorist, in the face of the tender blues of the chess-board flag that one of the Spanish officers holds aloft; in face of that passage of sunlight between the bending figures of the two commanders, across which the Spanish courtier-soldiers swing their bright uniforms! But it was only by slow degrees that Velasquez became a colorist. He was a slow learner. In early life he saw his figures as a sculptor sees them. Later he was to look with profit on Titian, Rubens and Tintoretto; but the early portraits of his surly Hapsburgs stand out darkly in silhouette against their faintly-lighted backgrounds, the contour so clear and defined that it seems almost possible to pass the arm behind a back or link it within an arm. In his first full-length portraits of Philip IV, one of which, a characteristic example, is in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, there is no color at all save in the red of the underhanging lip, the dark maroon of the table-cloth, the hue of the youthful monarch’s face, the hint of auburn in the hair, and the gleam of the suspended jewel. All the rest is black, deep, rich black, luminous in the shadows which knit the picture together with that supreme art which was to find its highest expression in the binding into pictorial unity of the shadows about the feet of the figures in ‘ ‘ The Surrender of Breda. ” Mrs. Gardner’s portrait is certainly among the first four or five representations of Philip that the young Velasquez painted. He was not yet twenty-four ; it was his second year in Madrid. Fortune was at his feet, for Philip had already appointed him Court painter and resolved that in future this young genius from Seville, and none else, should reproduce his royal features. The walls of the Prado contain two portraits of Philip of this period— the silhouette, sombre, early period of Velasquez, before he had taken that first Italian journey i74 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS which was to develop his color sense and swing him forward in majestic strides. One of these portraits in the Prado is the half-length of Philip in armor, No. 1071; the other is the full-length of Philip, No. 1070, holding a paper in his right hand, the left resting on a table upon which his hat is placed. Mrs. Gardner’s portrait is almost identical with this. The difference is slight, but it proves that her portrait is a replica and not a copy. In the Prado picture less of the frame side of the hat is shown, and there is a gleam of light on the red table-cloth behind the brim, as well as in front of it. The high light behind the brim of the hat does not appear in Mrs. Gardner’s picture. This contemporary picture by Velasquez of the Prado portrait was probably painted for presentation to some foreign potentate, a custom of Philip’s, which explains the repetition of certain portraits in private and public collections, altered just enough in unessential details to show that they were not mere copies. I hazard the opinion, but there is no documentary evidence in support, that it was one of Philip’s royal gifts to Prince Charles of England, who was in Madrid with Bucking- ham at the time Velasquez was painting his early portraits of Philip. It is certain that Ve- lasquez and the Prince of Wales met in Madrid in 1623, and that Velasquez began a por- trait of him which was lost or burnt (although an enterprising bookseller of London ex- hibited, in the summer of 1847, a portrait of Charles 1 which purported to be the missing picture by Velasquez); it is also certain that Philip and the nobles of Spain presented Charles with many pictures, which, although packed up, were left behind in the hurry of his depar- ture. Titian’s * ‘ Europa ” and ‘ ‘ Danae ” (still in the Prado) were among the gifts of Philip to Charles. (The “Europa” was part of her dowry. As we know, the marriage never took place.) It is more than likely that Philip, wishing to please his royal guest, would present him with a replica of a portrait of himself by his new protege. Before Charles left Madrid he probably saw the equestrian portrait of Philip in armor, mounted on an Andalusian pony, which was burnt in the fire at the Alcazar in 1734. In the three early portraits under notice it may be surmised that Velasquez was trying his paces, preparing himself for the great equestrian group. This was the crowning effort of the first period of his art life, before he had met Rubens. These early portraits mutter the genius of Velasquez. All three have that piercing quality that makes the personality of Philip so real to us. They are the living man as he looked to the young gaze of Velasquez. Not yet had his unerring eyes seen and felt that exquisite silvery-gray tone in the dress, face and hair of the little, naughty central figure in “The Maids of Honor”; not yet had Velasquez dreamed of that scheme of color, pale rose-pink to scarlet, that makes the full-length figure of the same little Infanta who was to become the Qyeen of Louis XIV sing out from the walls of the Prado. Sombre was the adult dress of Spain, grave and melancholy was Philip IV, and thus Velasquez, the Truth-seeker, painted him. Velasquez stands forever as the greatest exponent in art of taste, breeding, reticence and truth. Of all the masters in the Prado, and it is a gallery crowded with masterpieces, Velasquez stimulates, astonishes, holds and haunts above any other. He had amazing skill in painting, an eye that never deceived him, and he always told the truth. That could stand as an epitaph of Velasquez, and if anything further were 175 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS needed, I would suggest these three passages : the first from Montaigne: — “I teach nothing; I relate”; the second from Flaubert: — “Draw life to the life, and the moral will drawitself”; the third from Sir Joshua Reynolds:— “What we are all attempting to do with great labor, Velasquez does at once.” C. Lewis Hind For the connoisseur of Velasquez the earlier works of the master must always possess a singular attraction. They have qualities which, if inferior to those of his golden age in point of splendor and power, are, on the other hand, full of charm and suggestion. In the works of his prime his authority is so complete, he is so emphatically the Jupiter of painting, that a kind of hopelessness enervates the analyst in his presence. “Others abide our question, thou art free.” Who shall dissect the magic in “The Maids of Honor” and “The Spinners,” or explain the construction of that wonderful fabric called “The Sur- render of Breda ” ? Only those who have essayed the task know with what finality the most reserved of all painters bars the way to solution of the heart of his mystery. To confront those webs of color in the Prado is to confront a problem, the complexity of which is only equalled by the effect of supreme simplicity lying on its surface. Like Mozart, this sympho- nist of values baffles while he enchants you, for his is in truth the very perfection of art. But he is approachable in his earlier period, and though even then unmistakably the man of genius, with resources that defy interrogation, he is not yet the absolute demi-god, and pur- suit of his secret is far less discouraging. For one thing, he reveals at the very beginning closer relations with that body of truth which exists for the painter in the paths of every-day life; he has not yet adopted the gait of the Court, which, as will presently appear, strongly affected the fibre of his art. He paints subjects like the “Aguador” at Apsley House, and paints them with the vigor of a man to whom the forthright recording of a vivid impression is the main thing. Being what he was, a man of genius to whom refinement in his work was a law of nature, these peasant studies of his contain passages of extraordinary delicacy, limpidities of tone foreshadowing the great achievements of his later period. His realism is controlled by exquisite taste. If it is true that he received some impetus from Ribera, it is also true that he well sifted whatever he drew from the example of that painter. His color is altogether finer in quality, his drawing is far more subtle, and there is a smooth- ness in his handling to which Ribera never attained. The fact is that the young Velasquez seems much more sensitive to nature than to any painted precedent; the impression left by his first works is that of a creative genius devising a new language of his own on the basis of what he actually sees before him. The veil between nature and art is with him, at this period, peculiarly thin and transparent. You would say that he was just patiently imitating if it were not for the fluency disclosed in his every touch, and the sense of beauty that he already betrays. There is certainly no hint of artifice in his peasant pictures; there is nothing of sophistication in them beyond that which is necessarily part and parcel of the exercise of any professional activity. He allows us to perceive, then, at the outset of his career, that, like other painters of the same age and experience, he faces the world without prejudice, seeking to tell the truth about ordinary things in direct fashion. His 1 76 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS method is itself simple, the subtle aspects of it suggesting a manual habit behind which the mental impulse is alert but not yet profound. Then he comes to court, and, in my opinion, submits to an influence in the social at- mosphere there, which not only changes his point of view, but develops his technique in a specific manner. It is the fashion, born of our reverence of inspired gifts, not simply to speak of a painter like Velasquez as conferring immortality upon the man he commemo- rates on canvas, even though that man may be one of the potentates of the earth, sure of remembrance on other grounds, but to conceive of the artist as imposing himself upon his sitter. The broad principle is sound, yet it should not blind us to the possibility of a pain- ter’s being moulded to a certain extent, where his mode of expression is concerned, by his familiar surroundings. The portrait of Philip IV as a young man, in Mrs. Gardner’s collec- tion, a beautiful version of the well-known full-length in the Prado, represents at once a phase of the art of Velasquez and a significant moment in the history of Spain. The court was at that time rigorously attentive to the sumptuary laws, imposed in a measure no doubt, with reference to the trade in laces and stuffs for economic reasons, but expressive also of the royal views on fashionable extravagance. Young as he was, a keen sportsman, and in fact, a man of many very human traits, Philip was in matters of dress a model of the restraint so sternly recommended to the Spanish people. The garb he wore when he posed for this portrait must have been in itself an invitation to the painter to wield his brushes with discre- tion. Add to this the majesty of his deportment, and remember that Velasquez was noth- ing if not an humble servant of the Crown. Is it only an accident that the full-length of Philip’s brother, Don Carlos, painted in the same period and along kindred lines, is a less distinguished piece of execution ? It seems to me that the portrait of Philip is a monument to Velasquez’s tense absorption in a new sensation, and that the painting of it was to him a momentous experience, determining, in some way of which he was perhaps himself un- conscious, the evolution of his style. Look simply to the nominal simplicity of the com- position, to the subdued tonality, accented by the sharp notes of the golilia, the wristbands, the document in Philip’s hand and the jewel at his girdle, and just as before the peasant studies, you recall Ribera, so now you recall Moro. I prefer to think, however, that Velas- quez had, on. this occasion, little or no thought of another painter’s pattern, but did his work under the stress of a great emotion. He was on the threshold of his friendship with Philip ; he saw before him a man born to rule, who knew well the grandeur that so often lies potential in immobility, and was clearly conscious in youth, as he was all his life long, of the importance of kingly demeanor. Velasquez saw this awe-inspiring personage, gazed at him with a deep sense of his inviola- bility, remembered at the back of his mind all that was making at court for measure and reticence, and, feeling to the full that in his sitter he had the type and fine flower of the social movement of his time, adjusted his brush accordingly. Spain as well as the sign manual of a great artist, is exposed to our vision in the style as well as the substance of this canvas. The transparent blacks in it and the pearly grays, the suave modelling of the face and hands, and the detachment of the stately figure from its neutral background with 177 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS such delicate precision, these things, which all spell technique, spell also a condition of the soul. They clearly enforce, I think, the point that Velasquez, entering upon the career of a court painter, rejects something of the freedom of his earlier days, and accepting the moral discipline of his environment, likewise purifies his technique, refines it still more, gives it an elegance in curious contrast to the robust qualities of, say, the “ Aguador.” He was destined to give himself freer play as his powers developed and broadened, and espe- cially to grow in variety as he felt the ground firmer under his feet, achieving in time the richness and balance of those chromatic mysteries before which, as 1 have said, the task of the critic is made trebly hard. But in this portrait of Philip he half opens the door of his studio. Through it we catch glimpses, slight but suggestive, of the first sources of his strength. That is why, for America, which can never even begin to rival the Prado and other European museums in illustration of all the facets of the great Spaniard’s genius, this canvas seems to me an especially precious possession. Royal Cortissoz RT criticism and the science of iconography exclude the theory of this painting being a portrait of Michael Angelo. Of its author I can only say that he must have been a Tuscan brought up under the influence of Buonarroti and Bronzino; with regard to the sub- ject portrayed, it may be asserted without hesitation to be Baccio Bandinelli, the Floren- tine sculptor, who died in 1560 at the age of seventy-two, the envious rival of Michael Angelo and at the same time his imitator. This assurance is owing to other portraits of him, from among which we must, how- ever, exclude that of a sculptor preserved in the Louvre, successively ascribed to Sebas- tiano del Piombo, Andrea del Sarto, Bronzino, but in the last catalogue bearing the simple indication : “ Portrait of a sculptor.” Bandinelli’s best known portraits are the one engraved by Enea Vico, which Bartsch believes to be the work, instead, of Nicolo della Casa; the one painted by Vasari in a subject picture at the Palazzo Vecchio; finally the one in the Uffizi Gallery, held to be painted by himself. Of still another, carved by his own son, in which he figures as Nicodemus in a marble “ Pieta,” all trace has been lost. Of all these the most interesting seems to me to be the first one. Beside seeing it in the engraving we may study it at the Uffizi, in the drawing believed to be the original prepared by Baccio himself for the engraver. There Bandinelli is portrayed from the knees upward, clad in the “ lucca ” and wearing upon his head the broad flat cap we are accustomed to see in the por- traits of Leonardo; he has a long nose, a very long beard, and he wears upon his breast the order of Santiago. There were those in Florence who laughed at the decoration of Santiago being cast away upon a maker of “figures that fright you into flight,” as the mot of the day ran; but the sculptor proudly continued to wear the handsome trinket suspended at his neck, and he is wearing it in this portrait. The drawing shown in the picture is, no doubt, one of the many made by him before spoiling good marble to produce his colossal group of “ Hercules and Cacus,” which aroused the angry criticism of Benvenuto Cellini, “PORTRAIT OF BACCIO BANDINELLI” THE CRITICAL ESSAYS and drew forth lamentations from Vasari because the beautiful block of marble had not been kept for Michael Angelo's use. Dr. Corrado Ricci The name of the painter and the subject of this portrait have undoubtedly been wrongly given. It is true that the portrait bears a certain distant likeness to Michael Angelo, but when did the great misanthrope wear the order of Santiago around his neck ? Anyone, who even in a superficial way, has made the acquaintance of the Florentine painter of the Cinquecento, will immediately recognize the likeness; it is that of Baccio Bandinelli, of whom we possess a series of portraits of the widest variety. The Gallery of the Uffizi at Florence contains a relief portrait in marble, the other museums similar portraits in clay. Likewise the sketch which the figure displays, and the block of marble, with the mask, at once reveal the deadly enemy of Michael Angelo. It therefore cannot have been Sebasti- ano, the intimate friend of Michael Angelo, who painted this characteristically posed por- trait; this all the recognized handiwork of this fine painter makes clear. We must regard it as the work of some Florentine painter like Rosso. Dr. Wilhelm Bode When this picture came to America as the portrait of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, by Sebastiano del Piombo, it was Mrs. Gardner, I am told, who first pointed out that the person represented was not the great Florentine but his contemporary and would-be rival, Baccio Bandinelli. But the question whether or no the painting was really a portrait of Michael Angelo, had already been raised and even its ascription to Sebastiano del Piombo disputed. Mrs. Gardner founded her contention upon the badge which the sub- ject of this portrait wears around his neck, and the drawing of “Hercules with Cacus” at his feet, to which he attracts the attention of the spectator. The badge is that of the Spanish order of Santiago of Compostella, of which Bandinelli was made a knight by the Em- peror Charles V, in 1529. Vasari relates that Baccio, having cast a relief of the “ Deposi- tion ” in bronze, “ gave it to Charles V at Genoa, who held it in very great esteem; whence it came about that his Majesty gave to Baccio a benefice ‘ in commendam ’ of Saint James, and made him a knight of the order.” At that time it was almost an unheard of thing for a sculptor, a mere craftsman, and a very indifferent one at that, to be raised to the honor of knighthood. The Florentines, however, with their sound critical sense, were justly in- dignant that so unusual an honor should have been bestowed upon a mere schemer and adventurer: and Milanesi, among his notes to Vasari, has printed a squib of the time entitled “A Sonnet written on Baccio, the stone-carver, son of Michael Angelo, goldsmith and brazier, who has been unworthily made a knight of the order of Saint James of Spain.” The badge of the order appears to have been varied with the course of time. In the seven- teenth century, according to John Guillim’s “ Display of Heraldry,” the “ensign which the knights of Santiago wore, was a red cross in the form of a sword, with an escallop shell on it, in imitation of the badge of the pilgrims that go to Jerusalem to the Sepulchre of Saint James the Apostle.” In the picture the badge which Bandinelli wears around his neck consists of an escallop shell bearing a cross of the same form. In more recent times 179 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the badge took the form of an oval scutcheon, bearing the cross alone. This cross, the arms of which terminated in tleurs-de-lys, was borne by Bandinelli between three fleurs-de-lys and a “ palla ” or on his shield, according to the blazon given by Milanesi among his annotations to Vasari. (Ed.Sansoni. Vol. VI, p. 196.) Of the statue to which the design in the picture has reference, Vasari gives a long and detailed account, relating that the block of marble.from which it was cut had originally been quarried by order of Pope Leo X, with the intention that Michael Angelo should carve from it a colossal group of ' ‘ Hercules slaying Cacus, ” to place beside the David on the right of the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence. Vasari goes on to tell how the death of Pope Leo, in 1521, prevented this design being carried out, and how the intrigues of Baccio were so far successful that Pope Clement VII finally gave him the commission to execute the statue. Bandinelli at first prepared a model of Hercules in the act of hurling Cacus to the ground, but afterward, finding that the size and the form of the block would not admit the execution of this design, he made another of Cacus lying vanquished at the feet of Hercules, which, after various vicissitudes he finally executed. Vasari records that Bandinelli brought the statue to completion in 1534; and this date is still to be seen carved upon the base. According to a contemporary diarist, the transporta- tion of the figure from the Opera of the Cathedral, where it had been executed, to the site beside the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, which it still occupies, was begun on May first of the year. The famous altercation which took place between Benvenuto Cellini and Bandi- nelli in the presence of Duke Cosimo de' Medici, and of which Cellini has left so vivacious an account in his autobiography, turned upon the merits, or rather demerits, of this statue. In the portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardner, the painter has, for the purpose of his design, reproduced the motive rather than the actual composition of Bandinelli's statue. But to come to the portrait itself ; no very profound study is necessary in order to see that it cannot be a portrait of Michael Angelo. The authenticated portraits of the great Florentine are fully borne out in every detail by the minute description of his head, which Condivi has left in his “Life"; and the two woodcuts of Michael Angelo and Bandinelli, which Vasari gives in the second edition of the “Lives," published at Florence in 1568, en- able us clearly to distinguish between the characteristics of the two men. Michael Angelo's head was far more rugged and forcible than that of Bandinelli ; his forehead was more ro- tund and powerful ; his eyes more deeply set ; his cheek bones more prominent. Again, Michael Angelo's beard was short and forked, whereas Bandinelli’s was long and curled. At first sight the peculiar form of the nose in Mrs. Gardner's picture recalls the portraits of Michael Angelo ; but his nose had been broken in his youth by a blow by Pietro Torrigiani, whereas Bandinelli’s nose was of an unusual, flattened form, with sharply receding nostrils, as other portraits of him, of which 1 shall presently speak, clearly show. On the other hand the painter of Mrs. Gardner’s picture obviously endeavored to portray Bandinelli as the rival of Michael Angelo, not only, indeed, by the allusion to the statue of “ Hercules and Cacus, ” but in appearance. In my opinion, the picture is the work of some Florentine artist, who stands in closer relation as a painter to Vasari and Salviati on one hand, and as a de- signer to Bandinelli himself on the other. The attitude of the sitting figure with the crossed 180 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS legs is peculiarly characteristic of Baccio ; it occurs twice in a single design of his, the print of his “ bottega ” engraved by Enea Vico, which I shall presently discuss. Again, the draw- ing of the hands, and the figures of “ Hercules and Cacus” in Mrs. Gardner’s picture, are entirely in the manner of Baccio. The painting itself, both in its technique and chiaroscuro, recalls the earlier work of Vasari and Salviati, though it is certainly by neither of them. In view of these considerations there can be little doubt, I think, that the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection is that of Bandinelli. Since I began to study the question, I have found a piece of evidence, which not only goes to confirm the conclusion, but which seems to furnish a clue to the painter of the picture. On looking through drawings ascribed to Bandinelli, in the Malcolm collection at the British Museum, 1 came upon a large head drawn in black chalk, with a washed background, which 1 at once recognized as another portrait of the person in Mrs. Gardner’s picture. The head in the drawing is seen in profile to the left ; the hair is cropped short, as in the painting, and the beard is long and curled. But what is strikingly alike in both portraits, is the very unusual form and expression of the nose. The drawing, though ascribed to Bandinelli himself, and recalling his manner, is clearly, 1 think, not by him. At first the name of Francesco Salviati suggested itself to me ; but on studying the drawing further, I saw that it was evidently the work of a sculptor, as the broad relief of the head, and the formal design of the hair plainly show. One is apt to think of Bandinelli as a draughtsman who worked exclusively with the pen, whereas Vasari expressly states he em- ployed both pen and chalk, and on comparing this head with other drawings in chalk which bear his name, there is little doubt, I think, that it is correctly ascribed to him. 1 conjecture that its author may have been Francesco di Girolamo da Prato, an able Florentine craftsman of very varied attainments, who is mentioned by both Vasari and Cellini as the assistant of Baccio Bandinelli. This Francesco was born in the first years of the sixteenth century, and died on the 13th of October, 1562. He appears to have begun life as a goldsmith and damascene worker. When afterwards he became the assistant of Bandinelli, he appears to have turned his attention to sculpture, and to have practiced with success as a medalist and caster of small bronzes. Vasari states that he executed medals of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, and Pope Clement VII, though only the latter now appears to be known. Now the drawing in question has all the appearance of being a study for a portrait medal, or relief, and though, as I think, it is certainly not by Bandinelli himself (the line is too fluid for Baccio), it is just the portrait which we might expect an able disciple of his to have done. Besides, Vasari especially records that Francesco “drew much and well” ; and adds that he possessed drawings by him, in his famous book. But are not both the drawing and the painting by the same hand ? Francesco, we know, latterly became a painter. Vasari relates that “the art of the goldsmith growing distasteful to Francesco, and finding that he was unable to de- vote himself to sculpture, and being a good draughtsman, he gave himself to painting ; and inasmuch as he was a person of small business, and did not mind that it should be generally known that he was attending to painting, he executed many things by himself. So that, as I said before, Salviati having come to Florence, and executed in the rooms which Francesco occupied in the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore (as superintendent of the wood- 181 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS work) the picture for Messer Alamanno, he, on that occasion, seeing Salviati’s method of execution, gave himself to painting with far greater study than he had hitherto done, and completed a very fine picture, of the ‘Conversion of St. Paul.’” This painting bore the date 1 544. Vasari also describes two other history pieces which Francesco executed. Now the wood-cut of Bandinelli, which is given in the second edition of Vasari’s “ Lives,” published in 1568, and which was probably engraved from a sketch by Vasari him- self, agrees with the drawing in the Malcolm collection, so far as the main features and pro- portions of the head are concerned, with the exception of the peculiar form of the nose, which is the most striking feature of the drawing. In the wood-cut, the contour of the nose is of a more ordinary and regular form ; and in this the cut agrees with the portrait of Bandinelli in Enea Vico’s print of Baccio’s “ bottega.” On comparing these various por- traits it is difficult to resist the impression that the peculiar form of the nose in the drawing had resulted from a deliberate intention on the part of the artist to impart a Michael Angel- esque character and impressiveness to the able but somewhat commonplace features of Bandinelli. Now this manneristic exaggeration, as I understand it, recurs in the painting with an identity of form and character so remarkable, that one can only conclude that the picture is by the same hand as the drawing. The supposition that this portrait is a work by Francesco da Prato, would account for its close relation to Bandinelli, in so far as the design of the figure and the forms of the head and hands are concerned ; and to Salviati as regards the technical method of the painting, and the more naturalistic treatment of the hair and beard, in comparison to the formal treatment of them in the drawing. But the drawing, as I have said, is clearly a study for a relief or medal ; a circumstance which sufficiently ac- counts for this difference of treatment. This print by Enea Vico of Baccio’s “bottega” is described by Bartsch, Vol. XV, p. 305, No. 49. The portrait figure of Bandinelli is on the extreme right of the print, and is distinguished by the cross of Santiago of Compostella, which the figure bears on the breast. Above the chimney-piece on the left are sculptured the arms of Bandinelli in which the same cross again figures. The print bears the inscrip- tion “ Baccius Bandinellus invenit. Enea Vuigo Parmegiano Sculpsit.” It now remains for me to speak of some other portraits, or reputed portraits of Bandinelli. In the famous collection of portraits of the painters in the Uffizi, at Flor- ence, is a half length of a man with a beard, wearing a black cap, and holding a paper in his right hand. This is said to be a portrait of Bandinelli painted by himself, and 1 have had no opportunity since 1 began this notice, of ascertaining what are the pre- tensions of the picture to be considered an authentic portrait. It is certainly not by Bandi- nelli himself ; and it does not agree with the four portraits of him which I have already cited. If, however, it should turn out to be a genuine portrait, it would fully bear out my theory of the manneristic exaggerations of the Malcolm drawing and Mrs. Gardner’s paint- ing. I may add that the portrait of a young sculptor, which is engraved in the “ Galerie du Musee Napoleon,” Paris, 1804, etc., Vol. IV, PI. 257, as a portrait of Bandinelli, is a famous picture by Agnolo Bronzino, now in the Louvre. This is the so-called portrait of Baccio to which C. P. Landon alludes as a work by Sebastiano del Piomboin his “Vie et oeuvre com- 182 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS plMe de Baccio Bandinelli,” which is included in his “Lives of Celebrated Painters,” pub- lished at Paris in 1812. It is needless to add, that this painting by Bronzino has nothing whatever to do with Baccio. Herbert P. Horne “CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS” T HIS is indubitably one of the most notable works of Italian painting of the golden age. That it is the work of Giorgione, prince of colorists, must be admitted without hesita- tion. Without making an argument of the tradition which ascribes it to him — inasmuch as one cannot ascertain how far back the tradition existed— one is compelled to say that the critical and aesthetic examination of it by the method of exclusion confirms this verdict. The stamp of Venetian art being obviously upon it, the excellence of the work permits us to think only of one of the greatest of masters, and, more precisely, one who left his track of light upon the first part of the sixteenth century. If, on one hand, the purity of the style and the seriousness of the conception might turn our thoughts upon Giovanni Bellini, founder of the school, on the other hand the coloring must easily suggest to one studying it closely that we should look beyond him— that is to say, to an art developed upon the basis of Bel- lini’s art. Now, among the numerous scholars and imitators of the latter, which one was capable of such intensity of expression, such warmth of tone, unless it be the magical painter of Castelfranco ? And, of a truth, although we have here a subject limited to a half figure, without accessories of landscape, or aught beside, save the Cross— the dark flesh-tones, the spell of the Redeemer’s glance, are sufficient to proclaim as their author the supreme artist crowned with a glory quite his own; a glory he owes to the rare enchantment of his crea- tions. That from the first the painting should have been appreciated by art lovers is suffi- ciently demonstrated by the fact that within a short period several replicas were made of it, or 1 should rather say copies, since there can be no doubt that the original is this painting, preserved in the superb Palladian palace of the Counts Loschi dal Verme at Vicenza, until it passed into the possession of Mrs. Gardner. The copies known to the writer are very inferior to the original. These are, first and foremost, the one in the Ro- vigo Gallery, which passes — ‘incredibile dictu!’ — for the work of Leonardo da Vinci; and the one — reduced to a more restricted space and markedly deficient in the interpretation of form and management of color — belonging until a few years ago to a painter in Venice, from whose hands it passed into the collection of Count Lanskoronski at Vienna; and finally, a repetition of the same subject, reversed, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, where it is very sen- sibly classified by Cotignola as a work of the school of the Romagnuoli. Another copy still, but upon which the writer cannot offer an opinion, not having seen it, is the one in the pos- session of Count Pourtales at Berlin. This latter, as Herbert Cook informs us in his volume upon Giorgione, must be regarded as the work of the so-called Pseudo Basaiti. (It was re- produced in the illustrated catalogue of the Exhibition of the works of the Renaissance, held at Berlin in 1898.) Dr. Gustave Frizzoni 183 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS The picture by Giovanni Bellini described in the “Anonimo" as being in the house of M. Taddeo Contarini in Venice, [525, is not known at the present day. But there are six pictures known, all of his school, and showing exactly the same composition, and this com- position corresponds perfectly with the description given in the “Anonimo." By far the finest of these is the version which for many years belonged to the family of the Counts Loschi at Vicenza, but now forms a part of Mrs. Gardner’s collection. An earlier provenance seems to be unknown. The other versions of this picture are: (1) Rovigo, Town Gallery, No. 25, ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci — Crowe and Cavalcaselle give it to Basaiti. (2) The Hague, Count Pourtales (formerly at Berlin); this picture belonged to a well-known pupil of Giovanni Bellini, who worked much in his master's workshop during the first decade of the sixteenth century, and whose finest work is a polyptych in the Berlin Gallery, ascribed to Basaiti. It was exhibited in Berlin, 1883 and 1898 (see “ Werk fiber die Renaissance Aus- stellung,” Berlin, 1898, page 55). (3) Vienna, Count Lanskoronski ; discovered by the Venetian painter Marius de Maria, who sold it to its present owner. (Reproduced in Ven- turi’s article in the “Archivio Storico del’ Arte.") (4) London, Sir William Farrer ; exhib- ited at the Venetian Exhibition, London, 1895, as “School of Giorgione," (catalogue No. 76.) (5) Stuttgart Gallery, No. 219; formerly ascribed to Paris Bordone and unknown to the writer of this note. Crowe and Cavalcaselle speak of another replica, which at the time belonged to an art dealer at Padua. It is not known what became of this picture, or whether it is identical with one of the pictures just mentioned. (It may also be stated, in passing, that there is another version of “Christ Bearing the Cross” which, by its style, also points to Bellini’s school. It is by Marco Palmezzano, and is to be found in an extraordinary num- ber of replicas. Here Christ is seen in profile with both hands shown, holding the heavy Cross.) Between the more important pictures mentioned above and the one in Mrs. Gardner's collection there is a very remarkable difference of quality and style. The others, especially those at Rovigo, The Hague and Vienna, are reproductions of what we may suppose to have been Bellini’s original; the Boston picture also reproduces its composition, but gives quite a personal note to the theme. One has especially to compare the eyes. In the other versions of Christ the half-shut eyes look at us with a depressed expression, but in the picture that Giorgione painted He has the radiant eye of a man who in all the bitterness of life is far above human sorrow, and His figure, which seems taller, suggests that He does not feel the weight on His shoulders. One may further note that because the face is a little less turned to the left, the line of the right cheek bone is finer, nobler, as is also the shape of the nose. The drawing of the mouth as well is of greater beauty. This picture, taken by itself, and without considering other replicas, must be ascribed to a master who was no longer a Qyattrocen- tist. It has all the sense of dignity and beauty which, together with the lack of imitation of a given model, are so highly significant of the golden age of the Renaissance. As for the composition and execution, it is very close to the style in art which just preceded it. So we might think of the artist as one who belonged to the pioneers of a new generation, but had had his education with one of the elder masters. I84 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Among the artists who would fill these requirements, Giorgione stands out first. Very characteristic of him is the high forehead, ending almost in a triangle; the shape of the eyes and the folds of draperies, especially of the under part of the sleeve. To be convinced of this statement, one should compare with the care due to the importance of the subject, the drawing of this head with that of the young man who offers a plate to little Moses — in one of the two panels in the Uffizi — almost taken from the same model; also compare it with the young woman in the famous Giovanelli picture where the forms are remarkably like, though adapted to the other sex, and with the “ Portrait of a Youth " in Berlin, for details; one may also look at other known pictures, for instance, the "St. George” in the Castel- franco altar-piece, or the “ Knight of Malta” in the Uffizi. I wish to draw attention espe- cially to the form of the eyes and the eyelids and to the delicate shape of the mouth, to be found in almost all of Giorgione’s known pictures. I do not speak of the likeness in senti- ment, this being an element which depends somewhat upon personal impression. When Giorgione, later in his short life, painted the figure of Christ, he characterized it in a manner different from that in this earlier picture. 1 allude to his later work in the Church of San Rocco at Venice, which is attributed at times to Giorgione and again to Titian, through Vasari's fault, who, in the first edition of his book, attributed the picture to the first named and, in the second, to his friend and pupil. Christ appears here accompanied by three fig- ures of Jews who are maltreating Him; He is shown this time as a suffering man, a figure to awaken the compassion of pious worshipers. This expression marks the difference be- tween the two figures, but not the difference in the painting nor in the treatment of form. Comparing these artistic elements carefully one may convince himself easily that both pic- tures were painted by the same artist. It is unlikely that Giorgione painted the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection at the very beginning of his career. It has none of the awkwardness, for example, of the figures in the early paintings in the Uffizi; the drawing of it shows an experienced hand. The imi- tation of a work by his master Giovanni Bellini does not prove that he was still in Bellini’s workshop; but may easily be explained by a commission from persons who wished to get a replica of a then famous composition. Judging from its style, the picture may have been painted about 1 504. It shows that perfection which is common to most pictures of the Quattrocento. The flesh painting is like enamel, the hair is finished with a very pointed brush, the tear is like a pearl. The whole work technically reminds one of Antonello da Messina, whose enamel-like finish was for many painters a model. The preservation of the picture is very satisfactory. At a later period, some one has enlarged it on the right side; originally only a small portion of the Cross and just the beginning of the back were visible. The other replicas show the original state of composition. On the occasion probably when this portion was added, the bluish coloring on the darker part of the drapery was refreshed, and also some slight retouches in other parts, especially the hair, are to be noticed. But altogether it is well-preserved, and must be placed among the number of the few genuine pictures by that finest of all Venetian artists, Giorgione. Da. Georg Gronau 185 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS For centuries, and indeed until recently, the works of Raphael have been extolled as the highest achievement of the ripe Renaissance. Modern critics, however, have chal- lenged their right to such pre-eminence, giving the palm rather to Giorgione, whose de- light in sensuous beauty and pre-occupation with things of exclusively artistic interest, with line and color, appeals directly to the picture lover of to-day; whereas the art of Raphael, so often stigmatized as literary, speaks a foreign language, the appreciation of which demands erudition. It is strange, however, that passionately as the supremacy of the young Vene- tian is asserted, and categorical as is the ascription of his peculiar charm to the magic of his personality and to the glamour of an unsurpassed gift of pictorial expression, there is no point on which art history speaks in a more uncertain tone, than on that of the authenticity of the pictures ascribed to him ; some critics counting his genuine works on the fingers of one hand, others reckoning them by tens and twenties, and, it cannot be denied, losing in quality what they gain in quantity. Only one authenticated monumental picture by Giorgione exists, the “Madonna be- tween SS. Francis and Liberale, ” which still adorns the High Altar of the little Cathedral of Castelfranco, his native place, for which it was painted. Its Quattrocento character proves it to belong to an early phase of the painter's career. Morelli ascribes it to the year 1 504 or 1505. Another composition of undoubted authenticity though different in character, is the small easel picture— described as “A Storm, a Soldier and a Gipsy," — which was in the house of Gabriele Vendramin in 1530 and which is still in Venice, in the Palazzo Giovanelli. These two indisputably genuine pictures are distinguished by such marked characteristics that they may serve as points about which other related pictures may be grouped. Only four pictures can be placed with certainty beside the Castelfranco Madonna (we speak from the chronological point of view), i.e., the two little panels of the Uffizi, one representing the “Judgment of Solomon," the other a scene from the legendary history of Moses, naive and charming works by a gifted boy; the “Venus" of Dresden, the fruit of the poet-artist's mature but still untarnished youth; and Mrs. Gardner’s “ Christ Bearing the Cross " to which Morelli first drew attention when it was in the Loschi collection at Vicenza. Certain peculiarities of type and treatment are common to the “ Head of Christ" and to heads which occur in other early pictures, such as the oval of the face, and the position of the eyes, which are somewhat too near each other; early in character also is the peculiar enamel-like quality of the surface, and the contrast of the luminous flesh tints with the brilliant white of the draperies; early, too, is the character of the composition, which is reminiscent of the school in which Giorgione was trained, that of Giovanni Bellini. Only a man of genius could give expression to an ideal of so composite a character, could give pictorial form to such contradictory conceptions as the union of the human and divine, the serene and the suffering. This is amply proved by the ' Christs ’ of the disciples of Bellini, those of Catena, for instance, or of Cima; how inadequate they are, how insig- nificant; it would almost seem as if the artists were paralyzed by the consciousness of hav- 186 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS ing attempted a task beyond their powers, for they are actually beneath the normal level of school work. Five representations of the crowned Christ by Giovanni Bellini reveal the great Vene- tian's inward vision of his suffering Redeemer, his consciousness of something stronger than death together with something almost northern in his unflinching delineation of it. Giorgione embodies another conception; pain and sorrow are unfamiliar to his beautiful Christ, who ponders sin and suffering with pitying, almost incredulous eyes; the pure young face, the sensitive lips, the thoughtful eye, speak of pleasure refined by melancholy, rather than of endurance and pain. The clear, cold heroic note which dominated Bellini's conception, is absent from Giorgione's melting music. Compare the flowing lines and soft sensitive features of the young Venetian's “Christ ” with the sharp-cut profile, the dilated nostrils, and the ascetic, bony structure of the “Christ" of the Brera; or the sensuous mouth of the “ Christ " in Mrs. Gardner's collection with the strong sad curves of the parted lips of Bellini's Redeemer, lips between which the dying breath has passed, “ It is finished." The contrast iseloquent. Giorgione's “ Christ " is not the suffering Saviour, but the comely lover of the ' ‘ Song of Songs, " the fairest among the children of men ; a crystalline tear which glistens on His cheek, telling of childlike trouble and helplessness, adds a refining note of pathos to an otherwise sensuously conceived type of youthful virility. This pleasing con- ception of the Divine Man is characteristic both of Giorgione's greatness and his limitations. Beauty, serenity, grace, these were the gods at whose shrine he worshipped. He had no affinities with tragedy, though he loved her younger sister, pathos. He has realized his conception, naively, but with great distinction; this head of Christ, with broad low fore- head framed in warm gold-touched hair, with steady thoughtful gaze, firmly cut but unde- veloped mouth and nose, its proud carriage of the head, its indescribable quietness and aloofness, breathes a haunting charm. Something of the quality of Attic Greece, its suav- ity, its air of warm-blooded refinement, lingers about Giorgione. It is unknown whether this cross-bearing “Christ" was designed for a church or a chapel, or whether, like so many of Giorgione’s easel pictures, its destination was the palace of a Venetian patrician; be this as it may, it was not inaccessible, for copies were made early in the fifteenth century. One of these is now preserved in the gallery of Rovigo, where it passes as a work of Bellini, a quite arbitrary attribution, the retention of which can only be ascribed to indolence. It differs widely from the original, not only in quality, but in actual drawing; the copyist, a man of small ability, has done away with the gleaming tendrils of the hair, and broken its lightly hanging masses into heavy coils, has lost the pensive curve of the eyebrows, and flattened the curve of the skull, has lowered and thickened its upper eyelids, giving the eye a heavy and sly expression, which is accentuated by the unsymmet- rical structure of the head and the crookedness of the eyes and mouth which are not paral- lel with each other. His lack of imagination is evidenced by the manner in which he has treated the crown of thorns, the teeth of which, an inch long, are plunged up to the roots in the brow of Christ, as if there were no skull under the skin, but a head stuffed with bran. We have spoken at this length of this picture not because of its merits, but because the as- 187 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS tounding opinion has been put forth that it is the original, and Mrs. Gardner's “Christ" a copy! A second copy, of even less merit, was in a private collection in Venice (in that of the painter Berti), but now in the Viennese collection of an Austrian prince, being no longer accessible. The present writer, however, examined this second copy care- fully at a time when, having been fortunate enough to discover and obtain possession of a then unknown portrait head by Giorgione, which has since passed into the Berlin Gallery, he was unremitting in his efforts to see and study all such pictures as were attributed to the incomparable Venetian. Dr. Jean Paul Richter “LA V1ERGE AUX EP1S” (MADONNA DEI CHIGI) T HIS picture, one of the most original of the Florentine master’s compositions, is painted throughout in light tones. That it belongs to his first artistic period is clearly proven by the head of the garlanded youth, indisputably a Verrocchio type. Besides being a perfect ex- ample of Botticelli, the “ Madonna dei Chigi ” is, moreover, a most precious document, since it gives the means of tracing the various influences by which the painter was swayed at the beginning of his career. A pupil of Fra Filippo, it was from him that he derived his prefer- ence for a certain type of feminine beauty and a love for material splendor, but he also worked with Pollaiuolo upon an allegorical picture for the Guild of the Merchants in Florence (1470) ; and he potently felt the influence of Verrocchio, if he did not actually work in his shop in company with Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi. All of these influences may be clearly discerned in this beautiful picture. I. B. Supino Never in the past, not even in his own day, did Sandro Botticelli, the poet-painter of allegories, the exquisite interpreter of graceful, delicate and subtle femininity, enjoy the fame that has attached to him in the last third of the nineteenth century. This picture is one of the most charming of his early works. It also is, in our day, Botticelli's most cele- brated “Madonna," not only because of its real merit, but because of the clamor raised when in 1899, Prince Chigi of Rome sold it in contempt of the Pacca law, to Edmond Despretz. Immediately upon learning of this sale, the Italian Government sued the Prince, who was sentenced to pay a fine amounting to the price he had received for the picture. But the Court of Appeal soon afterwards reversed this decision and found the Prince guilty of an in- fraction of the Pacca law, punishable by a mere fine of two thousand francs. Whereupon both parties appealed to the Supreme Court, which, after a long deliberation, remanded the case to the Court of Appeal at Perugia, where after much thunder and lightning, the storm finally subsided, the Prince retaining the money he had received, and the picture from Despretz’s hands finally passing to America. One may see in this beautiful picture, the broadening of Botticelli’s manner, as he gradually casts off the influence of Verrocchio, still perceptible in the “ Madonna of the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital," now in the Uffizi Gallery; in the “Madonna of the Rose Garden," likewise in the Uffizi; in the “Madonna" of the Naples Museum, etc. This THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “ Chigi Madonna,” which marks one of the best moments of the master, must be regarded as a rare and most precious treasure. Dr. Corrado Ricci When the “Madonna” of Botticelli left the Chigi Palace, of which it had been the orna- ment for centuries, many consoled themselves by saying that all lamentation for the loss suffered by Italy was unwarranted, since the country was still rich in works by the master. However, those who had had the good fortune to know the beautiful conception of Sandro, had reason to think differently, for few among his works are as unquestionably authentic, and still fewer are as perfectly preserved. Of the few authentic productions of his in the private galleries of Europe, none could have been better chosen to represent the most elegant of Tuscan pre-Raphaelites beyond the Atlantic. According to general opinion, the “ Madonna dei Chigi” should be regarded as one of the artist’s youthful works. (Modern criticism has followed the old opinion which classified Mrs. Gardner’s picture among the earlier works of the master ; Mr. Streeter classifies it in the same way, assigning it, in his admirable work, to the year 1474.) While giving due consideration to the reasons which led the Florentine master’s biographers to such a con- clusion, we hold that it should be assigned instead to the artist’s maturity, and this, as will be shown, rather by reason of a chronological point, than by any characteristics of its tech- nique. In studying not alone this ‘ ‘Madonna, ” but the whole artistic production of the Flor- entine Renaissance, one is struck by the profound realism of the personages. In contemplat- ing those sorrowful Madonna faces, we feel the distance which separates us from the simple results of academic study ; the personages depicted live and suffer with the intensity of ac- tual beings, and we cannot doubt our being in the presence of a moment of life actually lived, which the hand of the artist has seized for us. In the streets of Florence, * Madonnas ’ and ‘St.Johns’ were pointed out, as are to-day the singers in the Passion Play at Oberam- mergau, and from the pulpit of St. Mark’s, Savonarola inveighed against this as a profanation and a scandal. It was admitted that in the inspiration of certain of Botticelli’s female figures, a notable part must be credited to a Florentine gentlewoman of the time, the fair Simonetta, representing the highest rank of ideal beauty. She was a member of the patrician Genoese family of the Cattanea, and was wedded to Marco Vespucci, nephew of the great Amerigo. Every epoch as well as every country has its own ideal of beauty, and one, remote in time and place, may hold in contempt that which has been regarded with admiration by others ; but we do not believe many persons reading the stanzas of Poliziano, could stand satisfied before the portrait in the Pitti Gallery, bearing the name of “Fair Simonetta.” We may accept the sensual, Tuscan type, made familiar by Filippo Lippi and by Verrocchio ; we may feel the fascination of that mysterious Lombard type idealized by Leonardo, which leaves us puzzled as to whether it be through the lips or the eyes that the soul smiles forth ; but to accept as a marvel of beauty and grace the sup- posed “Simonetta” in the Palazzo Pitti is impossible. One must look elsewhere for the effigy of the beautiful niece of Amerigo Vespucci ; Dr. Richter identifies her in the “Venus with Mars asleep ” in the National Gallery of London ; this hypothesis seems probable from THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the fact that the figure of Venus has every mark of being a portrait, and shows in the fea- tures those traces of suffering and sadness which appear in others of Botticelli's female heads ; furthermore this accords with history, since we know that Simonetta died of consumption at the age of twenty-three, universally mourned by the Florentines. Again, it is not diffi- cult to recognize in the figure of the sleeping Mars, the features of Giuliano de’ Medici, so far, at least, as the excessive foreshortening allows, the same Giuliano who must have served as model for the “St. Sebastian ” in the Museum of Berlin, painted for Lorenzo the Magnificent. Another argument to strengthen the hypothesis that the Venus represents the beautiful Genoese, is to be found in the marked likeness between the Venus and the portrait executed by Botticelli at the order of the Medici, hanging to-day in the Civic Museum at Frankfort. (In Vasari we read : “In the wardrobe of Duke Cosimo, there are of Sandro’s hand two most beautiful female heads, seen in profile, one of which is said to be the beautiful inamorata of Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzo.” The second portrait might be identified in the picture by Botticelli in the Berlin Gallery.) It shows the profile of a youthful woman, richly apparelled, with pearls in abundance adorning her gown and complicated head-dress. From a gold chain around her neck hangs a cameo engraved with the figures of Apollo and Mar- syas, a proof that the painting was executed for the Medici. In addition to these there ex- ists a third portrait, more surely than any other the portrait of Simonetta, since upon the canvas itself stands written by the author: “Simonetta Cattanea Vespucci”; we refer to the interesting portrait in the Cond6 Museum at Chantilly, attributed, it seems to us with little reason, to Pollaiuolo. In this the beautiful Genoese must have been portrayed a long time before her death, since she appears much younger than in the other paintings. She is seen in profile, and in the guise of an allegorical personage, adorned with a serpent whose metallic tones contrast with the warm pallor of the flesh-tints. In the other two portraits she wears a rich gown of the period, the same in both, and in both the two braids of hair dividing at the nape of the neck, come together again upon the breast. These three por- traits resemble each other so much in feature that they must be taken as point of departure in identifying the fair Simonetta among Botticelli’s other representations of women. A very curious portrait belonging to Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, of Paris, is considered by the owner to be a portrait of Simonetta. To proceed with a comparison between Mrs. Gardner’s “ Madonna” and the three above mentioned portraits: If the differences in dress are set aside, and such differences as might be accounted for by the interval between the dates of execution, as well as by the progress of the disease sapping Simonetta’s life, we can readily see that it was drawn from the same model. While the hypothesis may appear daring, we hold that it was no other than Simo- netta with the aspect of suffering during her last days, who inspired the Florentine master. The “Venus” in London lends herself particularly to the comparison, not being seen in profile, as are the portraits at Chantilly and Frankfort, but offering a three-quarters view. Mrs. Gardner’s “Madonna” presents the same view and shows the same forehead, the same delicate eye-brows, the clearly-cut almond-shaped eyes, turned with an expression of infinite sadness upon the symbolical homage of the angel in the composition. From very exhaus- 190 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS tion the sensitive faculties of Simonetta have ceased to vibrate, and there is left only that mortal weariness, forerunner of the approaching end, which serves in the religious repre- sentation to suggest the anguish of the foreboding Mother. As in the “ Venus ” of the Na- tional Gallery, the nose is straight, delicately curved at the tip, with the nostrils slightly dilated. The colorless cheeks, which show no rounded curves, become in Mrs. Gardner's Madonna even more thin and hollow, of a pallor unearthly, while the pointed, slightly prom- inent chin carries out perfectly the character which we believe the artist was representing in the four portraits of Simonetta. What weariness, what resignation, in this Virgin I At the Conde Museum of Chantilly, near the portrait of “ Simonetta ” which, in our opinion, was painted by Piero di Cosimo and not Pollaiuolo, maybe seen a “Madonna” re- sembling that of Mrs. Gardner's collection. In a picture of the same dimensions appears the same "Madonna," in the same posture, holding upon her knees an identical Child; the identical angel, however, instead of the dish containing the symbols of the Eucharistic sacrifice, proffers a basket of roses, those beautiful May roses of which the Florentine spring is so lavish. This composition went for a long time under the name of Filippino Lippi, until Morelli, by pointing out the “Chigi Madonna,” called attention also to the Chantilly version, which, if it does not present any characteristics of an original work, shows the great impression made on the artist by Botticelli. It was while considering this version and the neighboring portrait of ‘ ' Simonetta ” that the thought first struck me that the two were copied from the same model, made at an interval of several years, a supposition only strengthened by the comparison with the London “Venus” and the Frankfort portrait. She is recognizable as well in the celebrated “ Primavera,” particularly in one of the three dancing Graces who stands nearest Giuliano de' Medici, in the character of Mercury. In Mrs. Gardner's ‘ ' Madonna ” the Child is directly derived from Domenico Ghirlandaio, not only as regards the type but the attitude; indeed, it may be said that Botticelli’s Child, but for slight modifications, is no more than a repetition of the Child in the famous ' ‘ Ado- ration of the Magi ” in the Church of the Innocenti at Florence. The splendid composition by Ghirlandaio which enjoyed at Florence at the time an enormous reputation, must have engaged in no small degree the attention of the Florentine artists of his day, both on ac- count of the great success the work had had with the people (Vasari speaks of this), as well as the importance of the place for which the picture had been painted. Nor can one sup- pose it to have been Ghirlandaio instead, who drew inspiration from his contemporary, Bot- ticelli; for whereas that type is exceptional in Sandro's work, it is Domenico’s customary personification of childhood, and appears at the side of almost all his ‘Madonnas.’ Now, as the great altar-piece of Bigordi bears in the entablature the date 1487, and as the Child of Mrs. Gardner’s ‘ • Madonna ” is indubitably an imitation of it, we can affirm with certainty that Mrs. Gardner’s ‘ 1 Madonna ” is not, as has always been held, a work of Botticelli’s youth, but was painted after 1487, and must therefore be ascribed to his maturity. While the right hand of the Madonna is suggestive of Verrocchio, the left, wholly out of proportion, recalls Fra Angelico. The angel’s face, with its expression of tender sadness, was certainly the in- spirer of the “ St. John in Childhood ” in the Louvre, a painting which Streeter denies to be 191 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the work of Sandro, but describes as merely of his school. In Mrs. Gardner’s “ Madonna,” the eye, passing beyond the personages, falls upon the fertile hills of the Florentine country, at the foot of which flows a gently winding stream, like the Arno just outside of Florence, in the direction of Signa. As for the workmanship, the painting sets forth various of the artist’s best qualities, solid modelling, spontaneity in handling, and the harmony that reigns among the three figures and the sentiment animating them has its counterpart in the delicate har- mony of the light, quiet, transparent colors. To Giovanni Morelli is to be given, as we have indicated, the credit of having called attention to this very noteworthy work, to which neither the Chigi family owning it, nor the connoisseurs who so far had seen it, had attached any great importance. Pronounced “extremely beautiful” by Morelli, it became deserv- edly celebrated. In 1899 this single authentic painting by Botticelli in Rome went to enrich the artistic treasures of the new world. Mario Menotti It is one of the curiosities of criticism, that Morelli, who found this picture hanging neg- lected in one of the lower halls of the Chigi palace, at Rome, and unhesitatingly recognized it as a fine and genuine work by Botticelli, should have denied the authenticity of the “For- titude” in the Gallery of the Uffizi (No. 1299), a painting which all the earliest and most credible writers upon Florentine art, Antonio Billi, the Anonimo Gaddiano, Francesco Albertini and Vasari, are unanimous in ascribing to the master. Morelli’s attribution of the Chigi picture, although now universally accepted, is still unattested by documentary evidence; whereas his criticism of the “Fortitude” has recently been finally disposed of by the dis- covery, in the State Archives at Florence of a record of the payment made to Botticelli for the picture. From the documents in question it appears that Sandro executed the “ For- tezza ” as the assistant of Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo. By three successive deliberations of 18th August, 27th September and 18th December, 1469, the Magistrates of the Mercanzia at Florence, commissioned Piero Pollaiuolo, in association with his brother Antonio, to paint seven panels of the Cardinal and Theological virtues, for the decoration of their courthouse. From a further deliberation of 18th June, 1470, determining the price to be paid for these panels, it would appear that the execution of two of them was entrusted to Botticelli, work- ing as the assistant of Piero. For some reason, this intention did not take effect; and finally on 1 8th August, 1470, the balance of “20 fiorini larghi d’oro” was paid “Sandro Mariani Botticello,” for the panel of “ Fortitude.” Had Morelli denied the authenticity of both pictures, he would at least have been con- sistent; for the “Chigi Madonna” is so nearly related in style to the figure of “Fortitude” that it is only by studying these and other pictures of Botticelli’s earliest period, in their rela- tion to one another, that we are able to explain those peculiar forms and traits of manner which proved a pitfall to Morelli. Now, however, the documents in question conclusively prove, what some of us have long contended, that the influence which transformed the dis- ciple of Fra Filippo Lippi into the painter of the “Fortitude” was not the influence of An- drea Verrocchio, as Dr. Bode and others have asserted, but the influence of Antonio Polla- iuolo. In the ‘ ‘ Chigi Madonna ” this influence still completely overshadows that of Botticelli’s 192 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS first master, Fra Filippo. In the head and draperies of the Virgin, and more especially in the head of the angel, Sandro has set himself to imitate not only Antonio’s peculiar types and methods, but also his naturalistic form and relief. Yet, he conceives his picture with a deli- cacy of design and sentiment which was wholly foreign to the virile draughtsmanship of An- tonio Pollaiuolo. Everywhere in the painting Sandro, young as he is, and susceptible to new influences, shows himself the “father of the man.” If his line does not possess, as yet, that inimitable movement and expressiveness which is presently to become the distinctive trait of his mature work, his peculiar sentiment, color and even forms are already here, at least in the germ. If we compare the Child in the Chigi panel with the Child in the “Ado- ration of the Magi,” once in the Church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and nowin the Uffizi (No. 1286), we shall find unmistakable resemblances of form and manner. The two pictures exhibit even such faults of drawing as the disproportion of the Virgin’s hands. In point of date, the “Chigi Madonna” must have been executed subsequently to the “Fortitude,” which, as we know, was already finished in August, 1470, and before the panel of “St. Sebastian” in the Museum at Berlin (No. 1128). When the Anonimo Gaddiano saw the latter painting in its original place, in the Church of Santa Maria Mag- giore at Florence, it bore a date, apparently that of its dedication in January, 1473-4. Apro- pos of this picture, I may add that when the “Chigi Madonna” was exhibited in Lon- don, in 1901, a well-known connoisseur objected that at least the landscape with the Gothic spire could not be the work of Botticelli, on account of its Flemish character. But the Flemish character of Botticelli’s landscapes, at this early period of his career, is still more apparent in the Berlin panel of “St. Sebastian.” There we see an assemblage of Gothic buildings which certainly could not have been suggested by anything which existed at Florence in the fifteenth century. It is likely enough that Botticelli had in mind the landscape of some northern master, for Flemish paintings had already long been prized and collected at Florence. Of a similar character is the landscape in the background of the portrait in the Uffizi (No. 1 154), of a young man holding a medal of Cosimo de’ Medici, the work above all others which, in point of style, stands in the closest relation with the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. Of the “Chigi Madonna” at least three old copies, or rather versions (for they were probably executed not from the picture itself, but from the cartoon), have come down to us. The finest and earliest of these is the panel (No. 20) in the Mus£e Cond6 at Chantilly. This version must have been executed by some immediate follower of Botticelli within a few years of the completion of the original. The copyist, however, spoils the beautiful motive of San- dro’s design by representing the angel offering the Child a basket filled with roses, instead of wheat and grapes. Another version on canvas, dating from the first years of the sixteenth century, was lately in the Panciatichi collection at Florence. In this picture the copyist, who no longer employs the technique of Botticelli, has introduced a pot of carnations on the parapet above the Virgin’s head, and other decorative details, which destroy the sim- plicity of Sandro’s design. A third version, a fragment, is in the collection of the Comtesse de Turenne at Scandicci, near Florence. Herbert P. Horne •93 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS This picture was first recognized by Morelli and has since been pronounced by Beren- son, Muntz, Steinmann and Venturi to be an undoubted work of the earliest period of Botti- celli. There is no need at this time to debate whether this famous work belongs to the artist or his school. The exceedingly searching examination which it received when it was exhib- ited in November, 1901, in London, by permission of its owner, assured the critics that it was undoubtedly the work of the master. Careful comparison between it and the school version hanging at Chantilly, which was undoubtedly executed by some immediate follower of the master not long after the original had been painted, has but emphasized the decision. (That school version, which, in all probability, was executed from the master's cartoon rather than copied from the finished picture, shows considerable variation of color and detail from the original composition, although the principal forms and mass of the latter are closely adhered to.) That the painter of the Chigi Madonna had not yet attained to the absolute certainty of technique which marked his later years is betrayed by a detail— the lack of proportion of the left hand of the Madonna. But in the direction of structural draughtsmanship he never went further. The figures are well balanced, firmly knit together, perfectly related to each other, and their modelling is solid and definite. Mrs. Gardner's picture marks the strong influence of Pollaiuolo's force and strenuous character which had just entered into Botticelli's life to redeem the over-sweetness of Filippo Lippi, in its mystic teaching it is one of the master's most wonderful works. The Madonna's contemplative and somewhat mournful look, fastened upon the symbols of the Eucharist borne by the leaf-crowned angel, who has come down through the ages and is weary with the long expectation, seems to betoken a full realization of the approaching tragedy. She plucks one of the ears of wheat that she may give it to her Child, thereby ac- cepting what lies before her. The action, so long expected, fills the angel with ineffable contentment, and his weary look begins to give place to one of perfect peace. There is hardly any picture by Botticelli which so vividly presents his power of realizing in a moment of supreme contemplation the passage of thought through the minds of the figures in the picture, and the result that the fruition of that thought will bring forth. It has been said that in depth of tenderness, perfect comprehension and deep, significant chord of color this picture does not quite rise to the “Virgin and Child” in the Louvre. If that be true, and I certainly do not feel that it is, it must be said that when the two are compared the inner vitality, the intensity of concentration (the true meaning which the great poet- painter imparted to all his youthful works), are more certainly to be found in the Chigi picture. The composition, moreover, shows that the latest work of Botticelli, done under the strong influence of Savonarola, was but a reversion to his early pure Christian sentiments. These, during the middle period of his life, had been overshadowed by the pagan sympa- thies of the milieu in which he had been thrown. A comparison of the earliest with the latest works of the master gives us a truer picture of himself than we can gather from the works in which he was so strongly influenced by the learning about him, and by the ■94 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS exquisite melody of his own perfect line. In the Chigi picture we have his budding strength, his perfect vitality of perception, and his marvelous quality of subordinating color to theme. Dr. George C. Williamson “ PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG COUPLE” I T was towards the middle of 1631, that Rembrandt, barely twenty-five years of age, left his native town of Leyden for Amsterdam, drawn by the prospect of orders to the large and rich city, which was then the centre of Dutch commerce. He had already been there several times, probably taking up his abode during these visits with a dealer in pictures and objects of art, from whom he made purchases for his collections. This intercourse con- tinued long, for Hendrik van Uilenborch, this picture dealer, was the cousin of Saskia, who became Rembrandt’s wife. No sooner had the young artist settled in Amsterdam, than he found admirers and patrons in plenty. Among the rich merchants the taste for art had rapidly developed, and among his rivals Rembrandt found portrait painters whose reputa- tions were well established, with whom to measure his strength. Up to that time, having had only his parents, his friends or himself as models, he had been free to do as he wished in posing, costuming, and lighting his portraits. With no constraint put upon him he had felt that he could follow his own fancy, since, after all, his good-natured models furnished him subjects for study, rather than for portraits. It was different with the clients of vari- ous conditions who at Amsterdam came to him that he might faithfully paint their likeness, in an even light, in costumes suited to their station, personal tastes and prevailing fashion. To succeed he had to bow to all these exigencies, just as his rivals had to do. With that ardent wish to learn which never left him, Rembrandt adapted himself to the new conditions and the obligations they involved. He applied himself, with absolute sincerity, to secure faithful likenesses of his sitters, and bring out in each physiognomy the characteristic traits it was deemed suitable to insist upon. His success was such that he became a fashionable portrait painter. The great success of the “Lesson in Anatomy,” which he painted in 1632 for Doctor Tulp, one of his earliest patrons, placed him in the foremost rank. In that year he painted perhaps ten portraits, and from 1633 to 1634, he had orders for over forty, among them Mrs. Gardner’s “Young Couple.” Following the example of several of his predecessors, notably Thomas de Keyser, Rembrandt here puts on a single canvas portraits of a man and wife, about a third of life size. The husband is standing, his wife sitting beside him, in a simple interior, a sort of entrance hall, the sole ornament of which is a geographical map hanging on the wall, upon which is inscribed the artist’s name and the date, 1633. The two personages, seen in full light, are dressed with simplicity. The husband’s face is frank, with a direct glance, even a suggestion of astonishment in his look. The woman’s complexion is fresh, her mien restful, her candid eyes are at once mild and penetrating. It is a typical Dutch couple, placid, well-fed, somewhat heavy in figure, somewhat stiff too, and not quite at ease in their ceremonial best clothes. In opposition to de Keyser, who was given to lengthening i95 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS his figures and exaggerating their slenderness, Rembrandt was inclined to shorten them, and the husband, as he is here represented, short and thick-set, has not, it must be owned, a very aristocratic aspect. But elegance seldom entered into Rembrandt’s consideration. At this period, least of any. Moreover, he could not so quickly apprehend the shades of fashion, for he had but just left the modest household where thus far he had lived. A year later he was able, in a way all his own, to give his personages an air of great distinction, as in the charming portrait of the young wife of Marten Dacy in the Baron Gustave de Roths- child’s collection, or that of the amiable youth in the collection of Comte Pourtal6s, but in the beginning he felt more at ease with people of humbler rank, which fact could not be more conclusively shown than by the “Ship Builder and his Wife,” whose loyal and touch- ing faces look forth side by side from the masterpiece of the same date (1633) in Bucking- ham Palace. Without claim to aristocratic elegance, the couple in Mrs. Gardner’s collection pre- sents at least that appearance of moral equilibrium and fundamental honesty, that whole- some and comforting aspect of domestic peace and order, which pertain to well-assorted unions. The master’s workmanship, in harmony with the character of his models, is care- ful, conscientious, poised, of absolute veracity and correctness. It has all the qualities which constituted the strength of the Dutch race and the supreme merits of Dutch art. So sincere an adherence to nature, with so scrupulous a respect for it, could not but prove profitable to the artist. As happens in the case of great masters only, Rembrandt, before his genius shone forth in its fulness, showed greater talent than any of his contemporaries. At the time he painted this portrait of a young couple, he had already surpassed them, and stood indisputably first. Had he cherished less high aspirations, he might have limited himself to the enjoyment of the position he had conquered and to making the most of its advantages. But the period was a brief one with him. He could not long suffer the restraints weighing upon a fashionable portrait-painter. What care had he for all those in- different faces, these chance models, to whose exactions he must submit ? He was not the man to stop short in the road he had in mind. He must follow it on to the end. And so, at his own risk, with the improvidence of a child and the pride of a great artist, he shook off the yoke put upon him by a position considered enviable, and hastened to re- cover his full independence, to choose his tasks, and place at the service of his ideals the resources he had gained by close study and wider knowledge. Having resumed master- ship of himself, the whole man appears in that sentence reported by one of his biographers: “lam not striving for honor but for my liberty 1 ” Emile Michel In his portraits Rembrandt seeks above all to give expression to the spiritual. He is the painter of the soul, and accordingly the body is to him an incident; he envelops it in shadows, while upon the heads he lets the full light fall. Thus it happens that among the several hundred portraits which we have from his hand, there are very few which show the full figure. All of these belong to the years immediately following his removal to Am- sterdam, where he more or less painted la mode,” and particularly followed the fash- 196 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS ionable painters, like Thomas de Keyser. One of the most interesting pictures of this sort has found its way from the celebrated Hope collection into that of Mrs. Gardner; the “Young Married Couple in a Room.'' Here the influence of de Keyser is especially not- able. Not only in the full length but also in the half-life size of the figures, and in the ar- rangement of the interior, is Rembrandt quite in accord with the most celebrated portrait- painter of Amsterdam at that time. The loving care in the handling of costumes, and the details of the room by which Thomas de Keyser was wont to characterize his models, that is to say, with and through their surroundings, these Rembrandt disdains; he envelops both figures in a mysterious chiaroscuro, and allows only the heads to stand out in the full light. The result is a speaking and lifelike presentation, full of the most delicate and spiritual feeling. How the artist represented a married pair when he was able to arrange everything according to his own taste, is shown in the large picture of “The Master Ship Builder and His Wife" in Buckingham Palace, which likewise belongs to the year 1633, and in the two pictures of “Rembrandt and His Wife,” one in the same Buckingham Palace collection, the other in the Dresden Gallery. Dr. Wilhelm Bode “CHRIST AND HIS DISCIPLES IN THE STORM” T HE pictures Rembrandt painted during his youth were highly praised by his contem- poraries; indeed many connoisseurs preferred them to his late works, because of their being carried out in a very minute, exact manner. It is natural that those who prize detail above every thing should find the bold, turbulent, sometimes sketchy, manner of the ma- turer Rembrandt rather unpalatable. They cannot examine the technique of his later pic- tures with a magnifying glass and catalogue all evidences of conscientious labor, all details of painstaking accuracy. Even Houbraken, the historian of Dutch painters, takes this stand- point and cites this picture in Mrs. Gardner's collection, which he had known in the collec- tion of Burgomaster Hinloopen of Amsterdam, as a proof of the patient finish of young Rembrandt (“ De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders” I, C, 1718, p. 260). When the old historian praises the extraordinary naturalness of the expression, no less than the sobriety of technique of the early works, he is sound; for certainly the naturalness and keenness of expression of the faces, as well as the simplicity of the gestures, are striking characteristics of the works of young Rembrandt. This picture shows Rembrandt's manner of treating Biblical subjects, never following the traditions that had been handed down by long generations of painters, and which restricted the artists of his day to a formal and tra- ditional composition for each particular subject. The examples of his predecessors are never used by Rembrandt as a guide. On the contrary he follows the text of the Bible, literally, in the story of Christ and His Disciples in the storm, as told in the Gospel of St. Mark, Chap, iv, 35-41. It is stated that other ships had gone to sea with them, and in Rembrandt's picture we can descry in the dim distance another storm-tossed boat; the violent wind had swept the waves into the boat, so that it was almost full of water; Jesus had rested on cushions in the stern and gone asleep, but the disciples, terrified, awakened 197 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Him; every one of these points is exactly adhered to by Rembrandt. It is consistent with the literal interpretation of the Gospel text that, unlike the Italians, who idealize their reli- gious subjects, Rembrandt should set them forth as historically real. The main point for him was to make his story credible, and to seize and carry with him the mood of the be- holder. It is not the Saviour who, conscious of being the Son of God, is elevated above all danger, that he represents, but a personage of living reality, surrounded by earthly trouble and danger, so that great faith is contrasted with small faith, His calm with their terror and despair. In the portrayal of real danger to the threatened ship, Rembrandt has used the utmost means of realism. On the left, a wave has lifted the bow high in the air; it beats against the ship and hurls water into it. The wind howls and thrashes the great sail, which is torn ; five men are engaged in hauling it down, and it seems as if one could almost hear the can- vas flap. These men, absorbed in bodily exertion, are lifelike in their momentary action. To further express the fury of the elements, a victim is not lacking in the person of a sea- sick disciple in a dejected attitude, holding his head over the gunwale. It is an instance of how the young painter seized upon every point to make a scene alive and real. In contrast to all this physical exertion and anguish is the absolute calm of Jesus. Three disciples clutch at Him, begging Him to help them, but His thoughts are higher and far off. Each one of the fourteen figures can be separately observed and a fullness of meaning and expression found, for the artist has made a study of each and lovingly carried it through. The later Rembrandt would have knit the figures more closely together, with fewer accents, and while giving prominence to the main subject would allow accessory figures and objects to remain in shadow. Here, on the contrary, Rembrandt is nearer to the art before and around him. He finishes everything equally; but he already far surpasses other painters of his time in powers of observation and of startling realization. Finally, special note should be made of the admirable arrangement of the composition within the lines of the frame. No one can fail to realize how well placed is every mass and bit of detail, and how particularly valuable to the composition is the diagonal line of the mast. Prof. Carl Neuman This picture, which came from the Hope of Deepdeene collection to that of Mrs. Gardner, bears the date 1633, as well as the signature of Rembrandt. It is a particularly interesting work on account of the manner, at once realistic and poetic, in which the young painter— he was then twenty-seven — has treated the swollen, storm-driven billows. In the work of the early marine painters, such as Willaerts, Jan Porcellis, Simon de Vlieger, which he prized very highly and was beginning to add to his collection, it would be vain to look for the breadth of conception and the pathetic significance he has put into this scene. While his predecessors and even his contemporaries represented the angry sea by a monotonous succession of little waves like scales overlapping each other, Rembrandt gave it enormous dramatic value. Here once more is shown strikingly the superiority of masters of genius over specialists, the former drawing their lofty inspiration from the reality, while the latter, hedged within narrow boundaries, are satisfied to copy it with timid scrupulousness. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS In this composition Rembrandt adhered faithfully, as he always did, to the text of the Gospels. The moment chosen by him is that when "a great storm of wind having arisen, the waves beat into the boat which bore the sleeping Jesus and His disciples, so that it was full of water, and the latter, coming to the Master, awoke Him, saying, ■ Master, we perish!' " The fury of the waves, swollen by the gale, the sinister light from the sky, the violence of the hurricane, the huge billow hurling itself upon the unlucky bark, the terror of the disci- ples, who, crowding around Jesus, rouse Him from sleep and beseech Him to help them, all display a boldness of invention very novel in Dutch painting. We must note, too, with- out dwelling upon it, but as a characteristic touch, the seasick passenger who, in the midst of the disciples' terror is unburdening himself, his head propped against the gunwale, a de- tail of which the counterpart may be found in more than one of the master's works, Rem- brandt, like Shakespeare, having upon occasions introduced into his noblest conceptions, similar realistic details. But turning from what we moderns may consider an error in taste, how many expressive traits are to be found in this picture, and all perfectly appropriate to the subject. The panic of the disciples clinging to the mast and the rigging, the serenity of the Christ gazing upon them in wonder, the helpless distress of the helmsman whom the ship no longer obeys, and in the distance, fleeing under the murky storm clouds and vaguely illumined by a livid, phosphorescent gleam, the indistinct, mysterious, phantom shape of another disabled craft. The date of 1633 holds suggestions that we must no more than touch upon. At that moment the young artist, who had been living in Amsterdam hardly two years, had already become the fashionable portrait painter. In spite of his productiveness, which in that year was especially extraordinary, he could not accomplish all the work ordered of him. In ad- dition to the numerous portraits of noted personages and those of himself, as well as his etchings, he had begun to paint for Prince Frederick Henry the various incidents of the Passion, and was carrying on at the same time, in such works as the “ Philosophers in Meditation ” in the Louvre, for instance, his studies in chiaroscuro, which were shortly to show forth his genius in all its originality. And yet, crowded as was that period of his life, he found frequent opportunities of seeing his dear Saskia, who had become his promised bride and whom he was to marry the following year. It may have been that Rembrandt, having gone to see her during one of her visits to a sister at Francken, witnessed one of the terrific tempests so common to those shores. While he was under the impression of the grandeur and beauty of this spectacle, his reading of the Bible, which was his favorite book, may have given him the idea for this picture of “Saint Peter's Ship,” to which Nature her- self is seen adding such a moving commentary. Emile Michel “The Little Ship of Peter,” as this picture was called in Rembrandt's own time, was one of the artist's most celebrated pictures then and is still valued highly at the present day. That which the people of his time so greatly admired, namely, the vivid portrayal of the might of the elements and the despair of the voyagers, may seem to our modern taste rather overdone. A few years later, Rembrandt himself would have employed the same 199 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS motif with deeper feeling ; he would have realized his figures more powerfully, setting them in the centre of the composition, and, through an expression of heavenly peace, he would have given alike to the spectator and to the sailors confidence in the quieting of the storm. In the present picture it is rather the fearful power of the raging sea that is felt ; the apostles in the ship are but simple sailors, and even the figure of Christ fails of a high spiritual con- ception. But, in its art, in the representation of the wildly tossed sea, in the despair of the men, the picture is still a masterpiece. And it is also an especially noteworthy example of the storm and stress period of the young artist. Dr. Wilhelm Bode “THE LANDSCAPE WITH THE OBELISK” H OW our taste has changed, how our understanding of the works of Rembrandt has grown in a few decades ! In the year 1882, the “Landscape with the Obelisk ” was offered at the first sale of the great Beurnonville collection in Paris for 25,000 francs, and found no takers. M. Beurnonville had formed his collection with exquisite taste, but conscienceless dealers contrived to make of that first sale a failure. A year later the same contemptible tactics were repeated, and finally, when in 1884, the collection had to be sold at any cost, the “ Landscape with the Obelisk” fell to a Vienna dealer in engravings, bring- ing about eight hundred dollars ! The picture bears the artist’s name with the date 1638, and although this inscription is apparently not from the master’s hand, it must have been copied from the signature, originally existent, but probably removed by restoration. It was in this same period that the majority of Rembrandt’s landscapes were painted: the “ Landscape with the Good Samaritan,” in Cracow, dated 1638; the “River Scene” from the Reis collection, now in the Museum at Amsterdam ; the “ Tempest ” in the Brunswick gallery ; the “ Canal ” in the Oldenburg gallery; the “ Landscape with the Castle,” in the Wallace collection in London; the “Scene in the Plain with the Town,” belonging to Earl Northbrook; and likewise the two others which I have reproduced in the supplement of my “Works of Rembrandt,” “The Landscape with the Swans,” belonging to M. Schiff in Paris, and the “ Landscape with the Town ” in the collection of the Duke of Alba at Madrid. All of them were painted in the years from 1637 to 1640, and with every variation of sub- ject they all have the same distinguished character. Rembrandt painted, as it were, the poetic moods of the landscape. He puts us in communion with the very life of nature, just as when we stand before his portraits they seem alive. He shows us nature in mo- ments of deep disturbance, when storms sweep over the earth and clouds threaten, but through them, like a ray of hope, streams a gleam of sunshine. Dr. Wilhelm Bode Figures and landscape painting present in their essence problems so dissimilar that it is not common to find them practiced by the same artist. The necessity for precision and the appeal to concrete expressions of thought, which arises in representing figure compositions, stand in sharp contrast to the character and expression of a landscape. In contradistinction to figure subjects, landscape paintings should arouse in the spectator feelings which do not 200 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS attain to definite individualization. In looking at them one should feel that trees, mountains and clouds unite into an arrangement of lines and tones, and that in such an arrangement there is something agreeable and soothing, a pleasant dream, as it were, but nothing that compels us to think of representations of nature precisely carried out. When Rembrandt began his career as a figure and portrait painter, the intensity of ex- pression in the faces of individual human beings was his chief preoccupation. Gradually, however, this interest yielded to, or was enlarged by, the endeavor to perfect his own painter- like expression, in which all details were blended in the whole and subservient to the gen- eral effect he wished to convey. One might compare the result to the work of a musician who relies for his chief effect, not on the invention of a clearly formulated theme, but on the accompanying orchestration with its inexhaustible modulation of tones. Hence it follows that, at the close of the thirties in the seventeenth century, when landscape subjects entered into Rembrandt’s life, the study of tone harmonies and tone contrasts was his chief interest. He became a landscape painter in order to study problems of color harmony, unhampered by the necessity of giving expression to individual figures. These studies fill the middle period of his production, when he so strongly inclines towards beautiful tone that he even sacrifices the particularities of color to the domination of tone, in an endeavor similar to that in his etchings. As in etching, where he secures his effects by means of black and white, and of the gradations between the two, so in his painted landscapes his scale of color is ex- tremely limited, and it has been remarked that their manner resembles closely that of another Dutch landscape painter, Herkules Seghers. The green of the trees becomes nearly brown, the color of the whole canvas ranging between brown and a light yellow, occasionally height- ened to a white; here and there sparkle touches of red, and blue is sparingly used in the sky; but it is the warm tone that reigns throughout. The decorative value and beauty of this 'parti pris' made an indescribable impression at the time, and has been imitated since in an endless series of pictures. Nowadays we have become accustomed to see nature painted in a more highly colored key. In the landscape in Mrs. Gardner's collection the main point the artist had in mind was to produce the impression of fading-away distance that one sees in nature. For this pur- pose a dark mass of trees is placed towards the right of the foreground ; the mill and the bridge over the river to the left are in deep shadow. The middle distance is brightly lighted. On the banks of the river stands the obelisk which has given its name to the picture, behind which stretches a town, both serving to throw the horizon farther back and make it appear still more atmospheric. It may be remarked that between Rembrandt’s painted landscapes and those he etched there is a radical difference in the choice of motives. The etchings mostly, though not always, give glimpses of the flat, Dutch country. The pictures, on the contrary, are arrangements of mountains and ruins, of woods, sky and water; they are beautifully com- posed, but of a most fanciful character. Mrs. Gardner's example is one of the best of this kind, of which other famous representatives are to be found in the public galleries of Cassel and Brunswick. Dr. Carl Neumann 201 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS It was not until late in life that Rembrandt turned to landscape painting; when he did, as is the case with most great artists, he gave it originality and the stamp of his genius. In his early paintings, where picturesque nature is usually absent, the sacred or profane episodes he treated are placed within-doors. Absorbed in study of the human figure, he devoted himself wholly to that, and if there were need to introduce a plant or two into his composi- tions, as in the “St. Jerome at Prayer” or the “Baptism of the Eunuch,” he copied them for the purpose, and complacently spread their broad foliage in the foreground, well in sight. When, after leaving Leyden, he settled in Amsterdam, quickly becoming the fashionable portrait painter of the town, so many orders were showered upon him that he had little leisure left. Yet we know that even then nature allured him, and though unable to go in the country to study, he had at least among the pictures he bought and loved to have around him the works of landscape painters — among whom Roelandt Savery, Herkules Seghers, Simon de Vlieger, Pieter Molyn and van Goyen held the foremost place. The few artists he visited were also landscape painters, such as Roeland Roghman and van de Cappelle, who became his friends, or Berchem and Asselijn, whose portraits he painted or engraved. Although, as we see, he had studied nature but little, he gradually came to trying his hand at landscape painting, mingling in his first efforts the studies he had made with remi- niscences of paintings which had impressed him. Signed by his initial and dated 1638, the picture in the collection of Mrs. Gardner is one of these interesting essays. The small obe- lisk, very dimly defined, from which it takes its name, stood at the time two miles outside of Amsterdam; Rembrandt made a sketch of it later, and toward 1650 an etching (Bartsch, No. 227). But in the picture the region surrounding the obelisk is absolutely fantastic. Toward the right a palm tree, whose heavy foliage hangs in tufts, and in the foreground a horseman and groom, attired in strange costume, might lead one to suppose that the artist had thought of representing the Orient as he imagined it. As he had never been out of his own country, it was from the works of imitators of Italian art, who knew as little of the Orient as he, that he tried to picture it. To make up for lack of precision, he crowds into his compositions a number of incidental features — villages, towers, ruined bridges, a tumbling mill, a foaming cascade, strange trees, all brought together as if by chance in a most improbable arrangement. These various elements are found again in another picture by the master, likewise dated 1633— the “Landscape with the Good Samaritan,” in the Czartorisky Museum (Crakow). The execution and the effect are identical ; the foreground is painted vigorously, with deep brown tones which set off the hazy bright- ness of the distance and the sky. By this pursuit of chiaroscuro effects, this art of draw- ing the eye to the horizon, whose vast prospects stretch away indefinitely, we recognize the great magician of light. This same character belongs to other works of similar style, such as “Landscape with Swans,” and others of an earlier period— the “Ruin,” in the Cassel Museum, for instance, in which, with a degree more of coherence and unity, the same fantastic conception of a landscape is seen. The time was coming however, when the artist would no longer be satisfied with such approximations to the truth of nature. A small “Winter Scene” dated 1646, in the Cas- 202 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS sel Museum, gives us an unexpected specimen of a rapid sketch from nature, reproducing with absolute truth a perfectly simple subject; a frozen canal upon which a few skaters are disporting themselves. More and more, from this period onward, Rembrandt devotes himself to study directly from nature. In his etchings and drawings, a precious collection of which is owned by the Duke of Devonshire, he shows us the Dutch country under its most familiar aspects. He finds sufficient for his purpose — a bit of hedge, a bridge, a spring, a wood-yard, a barn, a mill, or a few huts huddled among the sand-hills, a group of three trees struggling against the wind, beneath a dramatic sky. The free and full-grown artist apprehended all the charm, the poetry of the common, familiar landscape, and the admir- able “Windmill” in the Marquis of Lansdowne’s collection shows the final and highest ex- pression of Rembrandt’s talent as a landscape painter. In the same degree that in his first efforts he was complex, he became courageously simple, and by his exquisite truthfulness and the nobility of his interpretation attained the most commanding eloquence. At the end of the year 1657, when ruin had overtaken him, and his beloved collections sold for next to nothing and scattered, one might think that finding himself deserted and misunderstood, he would have sought in a closer communion with nature the supreme con- solation which she reserves for her faithful. But quite the contrary, at that moment all landscapes, painted, drawn or etched, completely disappear from his work. Accordingly this landscape is doubly interesting, since, aside from its own proper value as a work of art, it marks a period and a particular mood, in Rembrandt’s life and in his artistic develop- ment. Emile Michel “PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT IN HIS YOUTH” A S is shown by the date and monogram, Rembrandt was hardly twenty-three and was still living at Leyden when he painted this portrait, the first impression of which is likely to perplex those unfamiliar with his early work. It is to the learned Director of the Berlin Museum, Dr. Wilhelm Bode, and his remarkable researches, published in 1883 (“ Studies for a History of Dutch Painting,” Vol. I, Brunswick) that we owe the first light thrown upon the artistic beginnings of Rembrandt. Up to that time the works of Rem- brandt’s youth had remained almost unrecognized; the marked difference between them and the productions of his maturity going far to explain this ignorance. It was the mas- ter’s admirers especially who, disturbed in their preconceptions, refused to admit Dr. Bode’s discoveries. They were, however, forced to yield to evidence for, without speaking of the monogram used at that time by Rembrandt and found upon his etchings and paintings un- til 1633, a close study of those early paintings, finally readjudged to him, enables one to follow the perfectly logical development of his talent. Timid at the start, minutely accu- rate and reverent in his copying of nature, his execution gradually acquires breadth and freedom. The chiaroscuro effects which in his first attempts are rather violent, get more and more refined till, in time, becoming a means of expression at once subtle and power- ful, they serve the genius of the master to original and marvellous purpose. 203 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS As illustrating the artistic development of Rembrandt’s talent, the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection is particularly interesting, from its having been preceded by only a few other paintings, such as “Saint Paul in Prison” in the Stuttgart Museum, “The Money Changer” in the Berlin Museum, “Samson,” owned by the Emperor of Germany, and the “Presentation in the Temple” in the collection of Mr. Weber, at Hamburg. At this period, inspired mainly by the Scriptures, Rembrandt, eager to improve and without suffi- cient means to hire models, frequently used the members of his own family, his father, his mother, his sister and his brothers. It is readily comprehensible that he should have found it easier still to work with himself as subject for studies. Indeed, he never wearied all through his life of reproducing his own image, in all manner of costumes and in every sort of light, interested in seeing what alterations of the features took place with the different sentiments he assumed, and what modifications of aspect could be produced by differences of lighting. In this relation, the portrait in question is among the most interesting. One is struck by the ingenuousness of the youthful countenance, the artlessness of the glance; and the somewhat indefinite line helps to show forth most engagingly the candor and straightforwardness of the model. The portraits which followed, the one at Gotha painted the same year, and the one in the Museum at The Hague, dated 1631, have already lost this character. The moustache indicated in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait by a faint down, in those has grown out, and the glance, (as well as the workmanship,) has taken on decisive- ness and assurance. The general aspect has so changed that the earlier type is scarcely to be found in it. And yet the likeness in this portrait may not be disputed, for an extremely rare etching — there are in existence only two copies of it, one in the Amsterdam Cabinet the other in the British Museum, “Bust of Rembrandt” (Bartsch, No. 338) — presents ex- actly the same features, the thick nose, broad at the base, the eyes near together, the crisp, curling, unmanageable hair. The general garb also has been made familiar to us, and we shall see it reappearing in many a work of the young artist’s — the velvet cap adorned by a large feather which he will more than once thereafter clap on his father’s head or his own, —the multi-colored scarf, the earrings, the heavy gold chain and the locket hanging from it; in short, the whole outfit, bought from his modest savings which formed the nucleus of those passionately cherished collections, enlarged with such prodigality, and which later were to bring about his failure and ruin. Emile Michel This portrait of Rembrandt, which once adorned the collection of the Duke of Buck- ingham at Stowe, is the earliest of those in which the artist sought to give a true likeness of himself. The various little portraits of himself which came earlier and in which he usu- ally gives but the head, are handled simply as studies of a man laughing, peering around curiously, twisted in a grimace of pain, et cetera; studies such as he might need for any of his compositions. In Mrs. Gardner’s picture, he portrays himself the size of life, beauti- fully posed and in sumptuous costume, the cap decked out with a big high plume, and a large medal hanging from a gleaming gold chain across his breast. He wishes to set him- self out to the best possible advantage; the features are graceful and the expression is sym- 204 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS pathetic. The portrait was perhaps done for one of the distinguished patrons whom this youth of three-and-twenty had already acquired, while he was still living with his people in Leyden, in the house by the mill. The friendship of Constantijn Huygens, the well-known statesman and literary man, whose recognition of the young painter does him so much credit, dates from these early years. Dr. Wilhelm Bode “THE CONCERT” V ERMEER may be regarded as one of the half dozen most distinguished artists of the Dutch school of the seventeenth century, and at his best he may be ranked with the very greatest painters of any country. Genuine pictures by Vermeer are not common and the one in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, though unsigned, is unquestionably genuine, and moreover, it is in excellent condition. It was a virtue of the Dutch painters of the period, that, unlike the Italians, they realized and set forth the beauty of ordinary domestic life. Jan van Eyck had first revealed the possibilities of such subjects by his famous picture now in the National Gallery, representing John Arnolfini and his wife in their chamber, in which, however, the pair stand manifestly posed to be portrayed while the great Dutch painters of two hundred years later, not yielding to van Eyck in perfection of technique and finish, avoided this forced posing. Vermeer’s personages do not appear to have been posed, there is no sign that they knew they were being painted, but arranged they are, for such perfect groups, so perfectly lighted, do not occur accidentally. A moment’s consider- ation shows that it is the lighting that gives the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection its magical effect. Vermeer is master of the handling of light and shade; seldom indulging in the gloom that pervades Rembrandt’s canvases, he floods his pictures with light, and air, enveloping all the figures and filling all the spaces. Where, we wonder, are now the pictures that hung on the walls of this room shown in Mrs. Gardner’s Vermeer ? The one to the left might have been a Ruysdael. Where is the massive Dutch folding table which used to stand in Vermeer’s studio, and the Oriental rug used for a table cover, after the fashion of the day, which is found again and again in the master’s works ? In almost all Vermeer’s interiors the light enters through a window to the left, the window generally standing open, and it was the painter’s love of light that made him prefer white walls, as did Fabritius also. There was much in common between those two gifted painters, but Vermeer alone was granted long enough life to show to the full what he was capable of. 1 believe that one of the women here is the same model that appears in a picture in the Munich Gallery, where she is trying on a necklace before her glass. Like Terborch, Vermeer must have been fond of music for he frequently painted people playing musical instruments, or with instruments at hand, and, as the same in- struments recur several times, they were probably his own property. It is quite clear also that Vermeer painted rooms of his own house, and that some of his models were the members of his household. From his paintings we may safely conclude that he did not belong to that series of clever artists, from Mabuse down to Jan Steen and later, who lived 205 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS a wild life of alternate dissipation and hard work, but that he was a quiet person who loved his home and took his pleasure quietly, who worked industriously, without fuss, delighting in sunshine, in the pleasant company of decent people and who, no doubt, was held in repute by his fellow townsmen. Sir Martin Conway Johannes Vermeer (called Vermeer of Delft, because two other artists of the same name lived in Holland at that time, one in Utrecht, a man of inferior talent, the other in Haarlem, an excellent landscape painter) is to-day considered one of the most celebrated artists of the seventeenth century. His very rare works — there are known only about thirty- five of his pictures — fetch prices as high as those of Rembrandt. And yet about fifty years ago his name was almost forgotten, his pictures hardly looked at. It was W. Burger (Thor6) who, during his travels through Holland, began to admire the wonderful productions of this superior artist and called attention to him, until at present much is known about his life and career. Vermeer is eminently a painter of interiors, but the few instances of his painting open- air scenes, such as the magnificent “View of Delft” in the Mauritzhuis at The Hague, “The Houses” in the Six collection, and even his very early work, “Diana and her Companions” in the Mauritzhuis, show that he was as great a master in these subjects as in his usual Dutch interiors. Like Rembrandt, but in a way of his own, he was a painter of light. Light falling through a window in the room of a Dutch house, on a figure or on a wall, gives him an op- portunity for that wonderful play of light and shade which excites our admiration. He usu- ally painted the light falling directly on a blank wall, before which are figures of women at their toilette, or reading letters, or playing on instruments, which are always distinguished by marvellous draughtsmanship. We must not seek deep expression in their faces, for, unlike Rembrandt, Vermeer does not penetrate the soul of his models. He is purely an artist of color and light. And what marvellous color is to be found in all his pictures! Who ever obtained so deep and transparent a blue, or such a fascinating combination of colors, like those in a Persian rug; his pale yellow next to his peculiar blue, or the carmine and violet of his earlier compositions ? Throughout his pictures perfect harmony reigns. Nor is there ever too much. Of his thirty-five pictures Holland still possesses eight, amongst which is the incomparable “View of Delft,” one of the most luminous paintings of the world, of a brilliancy of color that kills nearly every picture in its neighborhood ; also the beautiful “Milkmaid” in the Six collection at Amsterdam. Dresden has the “Courtesan,” one of his largest works, of great brilliancy of color, in which yellow and vermilion predominate. It may be noted that in his early work Vermeer does not use the curious ‘pointing technique of some of his later pictures. Belonging to the early period is a large picture, “Christ with Mary and Martha,” now in the collection of Mr. Coats, near Glasgow. This wonderful work also excels in its subtle lighting and its fine harmony of color. Another early work, which has suffered much from time, is “Diana and her Companions” in the Mauritzhuis. This Museum has also recently acquired another picture showing the head of a young woman with slightly open mouth and very expressive eyes, a work of marvellous charm, in which 206 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Vermeer used tender blues and brownish yellows for the dress and the kerchief about the head. The Louvre possesses the famous “Dentellibre”; the Berlin Gallery two pictures, of which that from the Hope collection is a splendid example. Other examples are to be found in the galleries of Brunswick, Dresden, London, New York, in the Frick collection at Pittsburg, and in the Arenburg collection at Brussels. A wonderful work also is the portrait of the artist with his back towards the spectator, painting, with a female model standing between himself and the window at the left, which is in the Czernin collection at Vienna. A brilliant picture in the Josephs collection, London, shows a soldier sitting at a table with a laughing girl, both partly in shadow, and behind them, a wall flooded with sunlight en- tering through a window at the left. Johannes Vermeer, born at Delft in 1632, died there the 13th of December, 1675, leaving eight children and no money. Only two of his pictures were found in his studio, one of a woman writing a letter, and the other of a girl playing the guitar, and these his widow was obliged to hand over to a baker for a bill of 6 1 7 guilders, ‘for bread furnished to Vermeer,' but she stipulated that she should have them back again by paying fifty guilders a year for thirteen years. It is likely that Vermeer painted slowly, since we know so few pictures by him. When the French traveller, de Monconys, visited the painter in 1663, he saw a picture with only one figure, for which a baker (again a baker!) had paid 600 livres (florins ?). This would lead us to believe that during his lifetime he was rather well paid for his work. In our day one picture by him, that from the Hope collection, was bought for the Berlin Gallery for about £ 10,000. Mrs. Gardner’s picture belonged, in 1804, to the Baronne van Leyden, and was sold at that date in Paris under the name “Concert 4 trois Personnages." The man, with bandolier and sword, sitting next to the woman playing the harpsichord, seems to be an officer. As in his other works there is the same wonderful effect of light coming through a side win- dow, and the same exquisite harmony of color. Dr. A. Bredius Among the genuine pictures of this great Dutch painter of light which have found their way into American collections, “The Concert” in Mrs. Gardner’s collection is no doubt the most important. And yet no one picture, however great its merits, is sufficient to fully set forth the artist’s very great talent. A fact of unusual interest in relation to it is that it was among the number of Vermeer’s paintings in the possession of their discoverer, W. Burger, which, twenty years after his death, were sold at auction in Paris (1892). Burger (whose real name was ThSophile Thorb) is surely entitled to a first place among the art con- noisseurs of the nineteenth century. A passionate social reformer and radical republican, who served as Cabinet Minister of the French Republic in 1848, Burger had a most original and intense personality. His features were homely, he had a cold and distant manner, but when standing before a painting that interested him, he would grow enthusiastic and speak and write fervently as well as critically. That he devoted one of his books to Vermeer of Delft, and referred to this artist repeatedly, is not surprising when we take into consideration Burger’s art ideals. He knew intimately the painters whom we admire to-day as the founders and masters of the modern French school. Being himself an artist, he had worked with, 207 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS and appreciated and admired, Delacroix, Rousseau, Corot and Millet, long before he had become their most ardent champion in the press. When, later, he took up the study of older art, the Dutch masters attracted him especially, and above all the painters of light between whom and his Barbizon friends he could see a direct and close relation. When, as a result of the Coup d’Etat of Louis Bonaparte, he was exiled from France, and saw in Holland for the first time paintings of the Delft master, whose name he had not even heard in Paris, he felt that he had found the ideal of what modern French art was striv- ing to accomplish. The “View of Delft” in the Gallery at The Hague, the “Dairy Maid” in the Six Gallery, and the “Letter Reader” in the Van den Hoop Gallery, filled him with the greatest enthusiasm. He set out searching everywhere for examples of Vermeer, sometimes finding them catalogued under a different name, sometimes stum- bling upon them in auction sales of obscure collections. In this manner he managed to identify a number of Vermeer’s paintings, and to trace them, with the aid of old cata- logues, back to the artist. His famous monograph, “L’CEuvre de Jan Vermeer,” is the result of that enthusiasm and of his unceasing labor of many years. He went too far in his zeal, crediting his favorite artist with paintings of van der Meer of Haarlem, a landscape painter of the same school as Jacob Ruysdael, and also with the views of Dutch streets by Jan Vrel. These have since been eliminated from the list of the works of the great Delft painter; on the other hand, more than a dozen paintings, some of them excellent, of which Burger knew nothing, have since been discovered. Thus the number of indisputably genu- ine works by this artist, which have been preserved to us, reaches about fifty. But no single one of these, however astonishing, not even the wonderful “View of Delft” in The Hague, gives an adequate idea of the range of his very great talent. Dr. Wilhelm Bode The first-known mention of this picture occurs in 1 804, at the sale of the pictures of the Baronne van Leyden in Paris. The catalogue, by Paillet and De la Roche, gives a detailed description of it, even to the gesture of the woman who stands beating time with her hand as she sings, concluding with these words: “Les ouvrages de van der Meer, qui approche Metsu, sont tellement rares, particuli^rement en sujets composes, que les amateurs doivent se contenter aujourd’hui de quelques portraits d’artistes de la main de cet auteur, dont les productions ont toujours et6 regardees comme classiques.” It is No. 23 in the list made by Burger, who, in 1866, had not been able to find it, and marked it as one to rediscover and verify. Later on it came into his possession. Upon his death in 1892 it was sold in Paris with two other fine examples of Vermeer. “La Jeune Musicienne,” now in the National Gallery (29,000 francs), and “ La Femme au Clavecin ” (23,000), an almost identical subject, and two others attributed to him by the owner, but not sanctioned by the critics. “Le Concert” was sold for 20,000 francs. Fifty years ago this artist, one of the most brilliant the Dutch School had produced, was practically unknown. His works were very rare, and, when met with, were usually attrib- uted to other painters. On some his signature was erased to give place to the more popular ones of Pieter de Hooch, Metsu or Maas. It was not until the French critic Burger, greatly 208 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS impressed with the “View of Delft” in The Hague Gallery, began his search for other works and for authentic details of his life and career, that connoisseurs were made aware that a genius as fine as Pieter de Hooch had become completely forgotten, though fully appreci- ated in his own day by his fellow-countrymen, as the prices his pictures fetched at sales, proved. The articles published by Burger threw a flood of light upon Vermeer and his posi- tion in the Dutch School, with the result that his works have been eagerly sought for since by collectors. Burger succeeded in making a list of nearly sixty pictures which he attributed to the painter of Delft, but the enthusiastic zeal of the discoverer carried him too far at times, and a number of his ascriptions cannot now be sustained. Little enough is known about the life of the painter. Born in Delft in 1632, there is no proof that he ever lived away from his native town. His first master was possibly Leonard Bramer, and he also came un- der the influence of Karel Fabritius, one of Rembrandt’s pupils, for a short period. Fabritius joined the Painters’ Guild at Delft as a stranger in 1652, and was killed in 1654, at the age of thirty, in the explosion of a powder magazine. What little Vermeer’s art owes to Rem- brandt he must have received at second-hand through Fabritius. The stronger influence was, no doubt, that of Pieter de Hooch, who lived in Delft for a number of years. Burger had a theory that, immediately after the death of Fabritius, Vermeer studied for a short time under Rembrandt in Amsterdam, but he could give no proofs beyond that which he drew from the former’s paintings. Vermeer was admitted a master of St. Luke’s Guild in 1653, and married in the same year one Catherine Bolenes, of Delft. He was a chief of his Guild in 1662-1663, and again in 1670-1671, and died in 1675, leaving eight children, all under age, all of which points to a continuous residence in the one town. There are, no doubt, traces of Rembrandt’s influence to be seen in some of his earlier works, such as the fine one at Dresden, with life-size figures, of the year 1656, one of his few dated pictures. The passion for painting light was a characteristic of the Dutch School before Rembrandt showed its utmost capabilities; and Vermeer’s cold color scheme of pale blues and grays, bronze greens, citron yellows and camelia reds, which, accord- ing to Burger, he adopted from the greater painter, has small likeness to Rembrandt’s schemes of warm reds, yellows and bituminous browns. Vermeer’s painting, indeed, has far more in common with that of Pieter de Hooch, except that the latter’s favorite color was red, while Vermeer’s predilection was for blue. In their choice of subject, in the simplicity of their design, the tonality of their color, and in the magic of their light, they were almost identical. Vermeer’s favorite subjects were interiors, usually the room of some burgher in comfortable circumstances, but in no way sumptuously decorated, the walls of white or pearl-gray, with a skirting of blue and white tiles, and with some map or picture in a plain black frame to break its surface. The room is lighted from the left by a leaded casement, through which the light pours. Within the room a single figure, occupied in some ordinary daily occupation, such as the “Reading Girl” at Amsterdam, the “Young Lady at the Spinet” in the National Gallery, or the superb “Milkmaid” in the Six collec- tion, or perhaps two figures, as in “The Painter in his Studio,” belonging to Count Czernin in Vienna, or the “Maid handing her Mistress a Letter” in the Rijks Museum. Pictures by 209 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS him with three or more figures, such as Mrs. Gardner’s, are extremely rare. Vermeer was a colorist of the first rank. He was fond of powerful tones, and loved to contrast rich yel- lows with beautiful blues, harmonizing them with rare skill through the wonderful deli- cacy of his gradations of light and shade distributed through all parts of his canvas. His handling was peculiar to himself. He secured his effect, more particularly in the higher lights, by a series of small oval patches of paint, which he afterwards glazed together, the final result giving that effect of the vibration of light which no one before him had ren- dered. It is, no doubt, the subtlety of his lighting, more than the brilliancy of his execu- tion, that adds to the realism of his small interiors and life-like figures, that touch of real imagination and poetic feeling by which his work is distinguished from that of his contem- poraries. To render the true qualities of light was, no doubt, his chief occupation. A won- derfully soft light, an exquisite chiaroscuro pervade his pictures, while his shadows have richness, depth and purity. As Burger expresses it: “Rembrandt is golden in his flesh tones and chestnut in his shadows, while Vermeer is silvery in his lights, and in his shadows pearly, and these opalescent qualities give real value to the tones and bring into perfect harmony the rich colors he loves to place in contrast, which from a less skilled hand would produce mere ugly clashing. ” The artist’s mastery in the rendering of light is shown to the full in “The Con- cert,” truly a beautiful example of his work. Sunshine plays upon the satin dress of the girl seated at the harpsichord, and vibrates upon the pale gray wall, against which her profile, with parted lips as she sings to her own accompaniment, stands out with real- istic vividness. The rendering and arrangement of the three figures is most happy. There is no posing here. Intent upon the music, they are oblivious to all else, and both in ex- pression and action are true and just. The hands of the standing woman who beats time are models of life-like rendering. The technique throughout is firm, bold, yet extremely delicate. Vermeer’s favorite little dabs of paint in the high lights are to be seen in the ear- rings and necklaces of the women, in the fingers of the cavalier playing the lute, in the folds of the satin dress of the woman seated, and in the guitar and music sheets upon the table, the last a brilliant passage of still-life painting. He never sought for new or strange objects upon which to display his skill; the ordinary possessions of his household sufficed, and these he painted over and over again in his pictures. The rich Turkey carpet, flung care- lessly over the table, is one of his favorite accessories, while the landscape on the lid of the harpsichord is the same as in the picture in the National Gallery. In all respects “The Concert” is a beautiful example of the master. Arthur B. Chamberlain “ THE MUSIC LESSON” T HIS beautiful picture has three characteristics, which especially attract the observer, to wit : its simple, smooth, perfect execution, its exquisite quality of tone, and the faith- ful presentation of the personages. Faithfulness to nature is one of the principal features, and perhaps the most important characteristic of Dutch art of the seventeenth century. 210 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Although a certain set among Dutch painters of the period leaned toward a more philo- sophical manner of representation, and made use of allegorical and mythological figures, while another set paid tribute to the Italian landscape idea with its representation of South- ern scenery, yet the great reputation of the Dutch school as a whole is almost entirely owing to the merits of its realistic painters. Prominent among these is Gerard Terborch. While he must be reckoned among its genre painters, neither the peasant scenes of Brouwer, Ostade, Jan Steen, nor the society personages of Codde or Dirk Hals, are found among his subjects. Although he received his first schooling under the influence of Frans Hals, he never chose to represent stirring or boisterous scenes. His realism, in strong contrast to that of the Haarlem genre painters, is pleasant, refined, domestic. The military subjects he painted in his earlier days were peaceful ones, and as soon as his talent had become fully developed his motives were generally taken from the home life of the upper middle class, the bourgeois aristocracy. We will not here enter into consideration of Terborch as a portrait painter; that would carry us too far from our subject, but keep to the genre pictures of his mature, later years, when after 1650, upon returning from abroad he resided in Zwolle and Deventer. In these he reminds one of Gabriel Metsu's later manner, and also somewhat of Gerard Dou’s. Terborch’s motive is usually a domestic incident ; it may occur in camp among military officers, receiving or preparing to despatch a message, or it may be a scene of home life, like his numerous “music lessons,” his ladies drinking (sipping rather), reading or what not. At the very first glance his fidelity to nature attracts our attention, and compels our respect. The lady in Mrs. Gardner’s little panel is by no means a beauty. Why is there no particular beauty about her ? Why not idealize the model and make pretty features ? Thus many have inquired, on seeing for the first time Dutch paintings of that school. The answer is simply that the Dutch realists, far from being eclectic, found pictorial interest in reality alone, and painted actual facts. This was particularly the case with Terborch. A plain room with bare walls and uncarpeted floor had for him sufficient attraction as the scene of action for two personages absorbed in their music lesson. Whether these person- ages were beautiful or homely was no concern of his. They only represented to him a sub- ject, the truthful representation of which was his one aim and delight. Moral tendencies were as foreign to him as those of a humoristic nature. Even though Terborch’s figures tell a story, adherence to nature was ever the chief aim and main purpose of his work. In addition to this truthfulness to life, our attention is immediately attracted to the wonderful tone of the picture as a whole. In this respect Terborch is one of the great masters of all time. He never sought striking effects of light ; he allowed no sunshine to fall directly on the floor, or upon his figures, as did Rembrandt, or the Delft school of Ver- meer and de Hooch. Not a single brilliantly illuminated detail breaks the quiet harmony of this picture of Mrs. Gardner’s ; on the contrary, a uniform, warm and cheerful tone per- vades it throughout. The extremely subdued light is just the light which prevailed in the orderly, comfortable apartments of a Dutch family. All the colors, from the brownish-red velvet of the jacket to the delicate greenish gray of the walls, are consistent with the feeling 21 1 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS of quiet Dutch home life. In the representation of textures Terborch is not surpassed by either Vermeer of Delft or Metsu. The satin of the petticoat, the velvet of the warm dress- ing jacket bordered with white fur, the silky hair of the little King Charles spaniel asleep on the chair, are all rendered in a masterly way, and yet without giving the impression of their being things that were, or need be, particularly considered. That which in the later works of Metsu, for instance, is a fault, namely, the bringing out of each texture so promi- nently that the ensemble thereby suffers ; that which Ostade again, in his later period, en- tirely neglects, we find developed to the highest degree of perfection in the pictures of this period of Terborch’s activity. Another excellence of this “ Music Lesson ” is the masterly realization of the character of the two personages. In such portraiture, if 1 might so say, Terborch is one of the fore- most Dutch realists. In that same field which Frans Hals opened for the whole school of Haarlem painters, Terborch, but in his own way, possesses the ability to put down on his canvas a fleeting moment in the daily life of a human being. But he does not, like Hals, paint the boisterous laughter and the gay smile. Equally foreign to him are the wild drink- ing bouts, the scenes of rollicking humor, which Jan Steen delighted in painting. Subjects like the youngster cleaning his dog, in Munich, or the mother who is freeing her child from vermin in the Steengracht collection of The Hague appealed to Terborch but rarely, and probably only because of their physiognomic interest. Generally his pictures are representa- tions of a moment of arrested action and expression; for instance, the “ Reading Lesson ” in the Louvre, showing a mother with her child, the latter attentively reading while the woman sits by with composed mien, half listening, half thinking. Another example is the young girl in the Louvre, whose thoughtful gaze is fixed upon the gold coin which a soldier holds out to her. The officer reading a letter in the Dresden Gallery, “The Letter,” at Buckingham Palace in London, are other examples. His music pictures have an added in- terest because in them he aims at rendering a more animated expression. The most charac- teristic of the several music scenes he painted is perhaps the one in the Cassel Gallery, in which the lady is seen sitting alone before her music sheet, marking the time with her foot, while earnestly striving to play the notes of a difficult passage. Her expression is beauti- fully rendered and the pose and drawing of the hands is unsurpassable. Three music pic- tures, one in the Hermitage, one in the Cassel Gallery (different from the one mentioned above) and this in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, form one group, similar in composition, all showing a plain room with a door, a bed in the background and a table in the foreground at which a lady is sitting. The man, the instructor, is also the same in all three pictures while in the St. Petersburg example there is a second man, looking on and listening. But close com- parison of the three pictures shows how widely the details differ and proves also that what interested Terborch most was to come as near as possible to rendering the actual scene he had before his eyes. In each the music teacher emphasizes his instruction either by singing the tune to the lady, or marking the time. The pose of the two figures, their demeanor, the gesture chosen, the placing and movement of the hands, all is most wonderfully character- istic, expressive and true. In Mrs. Gardner’s picture it evidently is a somewhat difficult tune 212 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS that the lady is learning to play. While she looks earnestly at the notes, she is thinking of the position of her fingers on the strings. The teacher behind her is holding back the time- marking motion of his hand, waiting for her to strike the right note. He appears at the same time to be humming the tune to her and he looks at her fingers, to see that she gets them in proper position. Every detail is skillfully rendered, but the composition remains as simple, natural and fortuitous as an actual scene. Yet it is vigorously considered and ‘ voulu. ’ This well preserved picture undoubtedly belongs to the later period of the pain- ter’s activity, after 1650. It has, to the left, on the footstool, an inscription, which is not authentic. A careful copy of this picture with but slight variations, was formerly in the Demidoff collection. Dr. W. Martin The extraordinary number of good painters, flourishing at one and the same time in Holland in the seventeenth century, had this almost inevitable result — that each was im- pelled to adopt some special line of work and devote himself exclusively to it. When painters were few, each would take all art as his province. As the number of painters in- creased, the field of art production was divided and subdivided, and each man had to culti- vate his own little plot. Only such a genius as Rembrandt could pass beyond the bounds which circumscribed the activities of lesser men. The mention of such names as Jan Steen, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Van der Velde, Metsu, Terborch, calls up in each case the vision of a particular kind of work, even of a particular class of subject, identified with the artist in question. Some painted scenes of low life, some chose domestic interiors, some devoted themselves to landscapes of a definite type. The class of subject most frequently chosen by Terborch, and the art with which he treated it, are well represented by the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. Terborch was an essentially respectable person. Other clever artists of his day and country might drink and gamble as they pleased; he enjoyed no such indulgences. He desired to be, and became, a man of good position in the honest town of Deventer, where he spent the latter period of his life and was in due course elected to the Town Council, filling the office of Burgomaster. All we know of his life confirms the impression produced by his pictures, that he was a gentlemanly, and perhaps precise, person — respectability in- carnate. In his traveling days he mixed with courtiers and statesmen. He painted a meet- ing of the plenipotentiaries ratifying the Treaty of Munster. In Spain Philip IV received him kindly and conferred on him the honor of knighthood. He might have attained wealth and fame as a court painter, but his ambition does not seem to have led him in that direc- tion. It is clear that he liked best the society of well-to-do Dutch provincial burghers of his own class, for those were the people he painted by preference, and he found all the sub- jects his brush required within the houses of the gentry of Deventer. Taverns on the one hand and courts on the other had no permanent attractions for him. He was content with a very small range of subjects and though he did not often repeat himself, many of his pictures very closely resemble one another. He was fond of music and of painting musi- cians. There is a picture in the National Gallery very like this one, and the lady in the 213 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS London picture, re-appears at Cassel with little change. A copy of Mrs. Gardner's picture was etched by D. Mordaunt, while in the Demidoff collection. Mrs. Gardner’s picture, which has been relined, remains in fine condition, though the table-cloth is slightly retouched and the signature may be modern over the old one. Sir Martin Conway “PORTRAIT OF QUEEN MARY" V ERY few portraits exist that so perfectly match the generally received idea of a definite, historical personage, as does this of “Marye, the Queen.” There are portraits of all kinds, and each sort may be good in its kind. Some are records; others are judgments. There are snap-shot portraits like Hals’, that catch the subject in mid-flight of a gesture, and portraits like Holbein’s, that seem to be the record of all the years that the subject has lived. Some portraits catch the expression of a man ; some depict his settled character. In some the mind is shown in action, in others it is in repose. Some old works translate the personality into a precise monumental formula, and others go to the opposite extreme of indefiniteness and suggestiveness. Some seem instinct with the mind of the man por- trayed, and others express the mind of the artist rather than of the sitter. Some are like reflections beheld in a looking glass — cold, impersonal, impartial. Some convince the spectator that it is a living, breathing, human being he beholds, not mere paint on canvas. Some create a personage more alive, more vivacious, more real, than ever was the man himself whom they depict. Some bring a man within a formula, some are the invention of a new formula to fit the man. Some are dramatic, some pathetic, some brutal, some simple, some intimate and almost like the revelation of a confidence. In some the man is subordinated to his costume and surroundings (an official is often subordinate to the dig- nity and prestige of his office); in others the man transcends all his surroundings and re- duces costume and other accessories to the minor rank they hold. A picture containing the likeness of a human being need not be a portrait ; it only becomes one when the per- sonality of the sitter dominates the picture. Such is this painting of Mary the Qyeen. It shows us fine jewels, fine stuffs and what-not, but the personality of the woman so im- mediately and completely dominates the spectator that he necessarily thinks first of her and only later of the details. These details, moreover, are not painted for their own sake, but for the Queen's. Her prim, precise old-maidishness comes out in the way she sits, in the way she wears her clothes, and in the kind of clothes she wears. The expression of her countenance is bitter. Historians may make out of the records that have come down what judgment of the woman they please, but so long as this painting exists her character is unalterably recorded. Anyone can tell at a glance what kind of a woman she was. There is no possibility of invention here. This is one of the portraits that is a final judgment, from which there is no possibility of appeal. Portraits of this unhappy lady, ascribed to Antonio Moro, are not uncommon. The most famous is at Madrid. There are others at the Society of Antiquaries in London, at Trinity College, Cambridge, and elsewhere. These pictures, however, are not mere repro- 214 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS ductions of a single original. The Prado version, Moro’s masterpiece, is perhaps the most poignantly pathetic. It shows the Qyeen as a woman, solitary of heart, dignified, resolute and reserved. Mrs. Gardner’s picture is of the same type, less bitter, perhaps, but substan- tially the same, and without doubt by Moro himself. In all these pictures the rendering of the jewelry is worthy of note, and what admirable jewelry it is !— in design worthy of Holbein. Inasmuch as the great artist is known to have designed many jewels for the Court of Henry VIII, Qyeen Mary must have worn some of them. The pendant in this picture seems to me particularly Holbeinesque. It is interesting to compare the Moro group of portraits of Queen Mary, with a portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery, painted ten years earlier by Joannes Corvus. On it is inscribed “ Ladi Mari, doughter to the most vertuous prince, Kinge Henri the eight. The age of xxviii yeres.” She is already as pre- cise as can be, but the bitterness that was to come is not foreshadowed. Sitting full front, with arms and hands symmetrically disposed, she wears her clothes as neatly, has her hair as accurately dressed, and is adorned with similar jewelry — indeed, part of the hair decora- tion and the pendant appear in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait also. The portrait of 1544 is a second-rate work of art, but in portraiture the second-rate still possesses historical value. Mrs. Gardner’s picture possesses that, and is a work of art of the first rank, as the superb reproduction here published sufficiently manifests. Sir Martin Conway Antonio Moro, a pupil of Jan van Scorel, was born at Utrecht and died at Antwerp. Trained in the Dutch traditions, he developed his style in Antwerp (1547), in Italy (Rome, 1550), and in Spain; he also worked in Lisbon (1 542 (?), 1552), Utrecht and Brussels, and at most of the Courts of Europe where he was held in high repute as a portrait painter. It is evi- dent that he painted Mary, Queen of England, in 1554, the year of her marriage to Philip of Spain. His best known portrait of Mary is in the Prado Museum, where thirteen paintings represent him better than in any other Gallery. This Madrid portrait is believed to have come from the collection of Charles V at St. Juste, and to have been painted for that Em- peror. The picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, acquired from Lord Stafford, and, according to tradition, given by Queen Mary to her Master-of-Horse, corresponds entirely with the one in Madrid, and is of exactly the same size. The only thing wanting in the Madrid ex- ample is the inscription “ Marye, the Queene,” which evidently has been affixed at a later date. A comparison of the two pictures reveals very few, if any, discrepancies. The one picture is copied from the other with marvelous care and striking accuracy. Even the splendid jewelry and the wonderful embroidery on the chair are alike, piece by piece and line by line. The reproduction shows no trace of being hampered, mechanical, or copy- like in the real sense of the word. Therefore we have undoubtedly before us, in this pic- ture of Mrs. Gardner’s collection, which is a true counterpart of the Prado portrait, the work of Moro’s own hand. Dr. Max J. Friedlander Antonio Moro, sought after by the princes and great nobles of various countries, was forced to move about the world according to their pleasure. It is worth while following 215 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS him in his wanderings, because the dates upon certain of his portraits tell us the country in which they were painted, while from the personages represented we are able to fix the period of the artist’s life in which they posed for him. Antonio Moro, or Moor, or Mor, as he variously signed his name, was born in Utrecht (at a date unknown to us, but which may confidently be placed in 1512 or near it). We know that in his native city he received instruction from Jan Scorel. In 1547 we find him in Antwerp, where he became a master of the Guild of St. Luke, but it seems likely that he had left Utrecht a few years earlier for the southern provinces of the Netherlands. In fact, van Mander, our old art-historian, who speaks of having taken great pains to gather as much information as possible about Moro, states that he entered the service of the Emperor Charles V, through the offices of Cardinal Granvelle, and was sent by that monarch to Portugal to paint the King’s daughter, who had been betrothed to Philip II. In 1543, Philip II, at the age of sixteen, married the Princess Mary of Portugal. On the 25th of December, 1542, at Alvala, Charles V had made the announcement of his son’s marriage. It was two years earlier that the Emperor had visited the Netherlands and met Granvelle, then recently ap- pointed Bishop of Antwerp. If, therefore, van Mander’s narrative deserves credit, it was toward the year 1 540 that Moro entered the Emperor’s service. His stay in Portugal must have been fairly long, for, according to our historian, he painted the King also, as well as Catherine of Austria, a younger sister of the Emperor, and various noble lords, all of whom rewarded him with rich gifts and paid him considerable sums for his work. In 1544 he was back in his native town, Utrecht, and there painted the portraits of the Canons van Horn and Tacts. We have seen that in 1547 he was established at Antwerp. He did not remain long, however, for in April, 1550, and in November, 1551, he is known to have been in Italy. In 1552 he was in Spain, painting the portrait of King Philip II; in the same year he was sent by Mary of Hungary to Portugal, to paint the portrait of her sister the Queen. After this he was commissioned by Charles V to go to England and paint the portrait of Qyeen Mary, whose hand Charles had asked for his son Philip, widowed of his first wife. The marriage was concluded in July, 1554, the Qyeen being thirty-eight years of age ; it was toward this epoch, therefore, that the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection was painted. In 1553 Moro had returned to Utrecht; during that same year, in the Netherlands, he painted the portraits of Philip II and Alexander Farnese. When, in 1559, peace was concluded between France and Spain, van Mander tells us that Moro returned with the King to Spain. He remained there for some time, but having permitted himself the familiarity of touching with his maul- stick the shoulder of the King, who had given him a friendly slap on the shoulder, he feared the consequences of this momentary forgetfulness of Court etiquette, and returned to the Netherlands. In 1 564, he was at Utrecht. Then the Duke of Alba, governor of the Netherlands from 1567 to 1373, summoned him to Brussels to paint him and his numerous mistresses. In 1372, Moro was once more established in Antwerp, where he died. Van Mander complains of the great artist’s children, who showed no concern for their father’s renown, and would not take the trouble to answer his pressing and polite requests 216 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS for information so that he was unable to ascertain the date of his death. Van Mander must have obtained the information he sought, elsewhere, for in the appendix to his book he tells us that Moro died in Antwerp at the age of fifty-six, one year before the ‘French Fury.’ The episode thus distinguished took place in 1581; the date of the painter’s death would accordingly be 1580, and that of his birth 1524. We are more accurately informed than van Mander. He indeed tells us himself that Moro was working upon a painting of the ‘ ‘ Cir- cumcision ” for the Cathedral of Antwerp when death overtook him and in the accounts of the Chapel of Our Lady of that church, belonging to the years 1576-1578, one may read that the heirs of Anthony Moro received 45 livres or 1 50 florins, in payment for an unfinished picture. It must therefore have been in the course of those three years that the painter died, aged about sixty-five. The dates inscribed by him upon his paintings range from 1544 to 1576. The earliest occurs upon the portraits of two churchmen, Cornelius van Horn and Anthony van Ameronghen, in the Berlin Museum; the latest upon a picture in the Brussels Museum, the portrait of Hubert Goltzius, the archeologist, a friend of Moro during the last years of his life at Antwerp. There are a few portraits besides, bearing dates. That of Cardinal de Granvelle in the Imperial Museum of Vienna is marked 1549, and must therefore have been painted in the Netherlands. The “portrait of an unknown man’’ in the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg, is dated 1550; the portrait of Simon Renard at Besan^on, of Henry Sidney and his wife, at Petworth, 1533; a young man at the Academy of Vienna, 1554; his own portrait at the Uffizi and that of Jan Scorel, belong to the year 1558; the portrait of a gold- smith in the Museum at the Hague, and the portrait of an unknown, to the year 1 564. The portrait of a woman in the last mentioned museum bears the date 1575. In his portrait at the Uffizi he has represented himself seated before his easel, brushes and palette in hand. Upon the easel is a canvas with a Greek inscription, signed with what seems to be the first letters of the name Lampsonius, author of the “lllustrium quos Bel- gium habuit pictorum effigies.” The painting is signed: “Ant. Morus Philippi hisp. regis pictor sua ipsa depictus manu 1558.” Another portrait of the painter by himself, with the same inscription, and date, 1 560, belongs to the English Society of Antiquaries. A third is to be found in Lord Spencer’s Gallery. The predilection of Philip 11 for our painter, of which van Mander speaks, is amply shown by the numerous commissions Moro received from him. In English collections we find three portraits of the King of Spain, one of his first wife and one of his second, dated 1 569. In a manuscript catalogue of the portraits forming part of the collection of Philip II we find fifteen numbers by the hand of Moro: his own portrait, that of Emperor Maximilian and the Empress, the Qyeen of France wife of Francis I, and the Qyeen of Hungary, two sisters of Charles V, three princes of the house of Portugal, and other princes and nobles of various countries. We have stated that Moro painted the portrait of Qyeen Mary in 1554. Van Mander speaks of it thus: “ He was sent by the Emperor (Charles V) to England to Qyeen Mary, second wife of Philip II, whose portrait he painted, for which he received a gold chain, one hundred pounds sterling, and beyond this an annual pension of a hundred pounds sterling. 217 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS He copied the features of this Queen, who was a handsome woman, several times upon small panels, portraits of the head only, which he offered to the great lords of the land, the Knights of the Order (of the Golden Fleece), to Granvelle, as well as to the Emperor, who gave him 200 florins. It is related that he brought one of these portraits to Cardinal Gran- velle, who sent him to the Emperor that he might offer it in person. The Emperor said, ‘I have no longer any household, I have given up everything to my son.’ The painter, ill-pleased, returned to the Cardinal, who said to him, ‘Leave this to me.’ He went to the Emperor, praised the work very highly, and the beauty of the Princess, asking what he had bestowed upon the painter. The Emperor answered that he had bestowed noth- ing, and inquired what it would be proper to offer. The Cardinal replied, ‘ 1,000 florins, or 300 ducats.’ The Emperor thereupon gave him the latter sum to remit to Moro. This is supposed to have happened a year and a half after Moro’s return from Spain.” By this is meant his first return from Spain— that is to say, toward 1554. According to van Mander, therefore, Moro painted the portrait of the Queen of England several times. We are acquainted with three exemplars: The first, from life, taken from the apartment of Charles V, at St. Juste, and belonging to the Madrid Museum; the second, now owned by Mrs. Gardner; the third, in the possession of the Duke of Bedford. The portrait owned by the Imperial Museum of Vienna, cannot be regarded as a replica of the preceding one. It measures only sixteen centimeters in diameter, and its ascription to Moro is doubtful. In Mrs. Gardner’s picture Qyeen Mary’s attitude is quiet but most dignified. Her fea- tures have not the beauty vaunted by van Mander, but in the rigid posture, the piercing glance, the thin lips, the expression of cold resolution, one may recognize the woman who was enamored of the least lovable and most fanatical of kings. As merciless in her religious zeal as her husband, she, attempting by fire and blood to re-establish the Catholic religion, sent to the scaffold those of her subjects who had embraced the Reformation. It is “ Bloody Mary” that Moro, without prejudice but remaining faithful to nature, pictures for us. Here is the woman who, knowing nothing but creed, became the sad and haughty spouse of the joyless and loveless Spaniard. And it is interesting to think, in front of this portrait, that the disagreeable couple were to see little of each other, at long intervals only, and that the neglected Queen is said to have wasted away with love for her frigid lord. The picture is a masterpiece, and the painter shows himself to be one of the greatest masters of portraiture of the Flemish school in his truthful rendering of expression and in the splendor of his coloring. He had begun by following the precise, stiff and cold manner of Scorel; but in his development, and under the influence of the Italian masters, his poses became easier, his workmanship more delicate, his color warmer and more trans- parent. He acquired so marked a likeness to Holbein that his works were often confused with those of the painter of Bale. In the matter of drawing, the affinity between the two great portrait painters is striking; with regard to color, Holbein is more vigorous, clearer; Moro soberer, duller in tone. But all through life he preserved the precision of his earliest manner, his exquisite rendering of detail. A certain rigidity, which he never outgrew, seems to have determined in him a preference for painting haughty and harsh characters, such as 218 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Mary of England, and to have made him successful with them. His “ Philip II,” sad and lean, his “ Duke of Alba,” encased, body and soul, in iron armor, with iron in his glance as well, seem to have been especially appropriate subjects for his art. And yet the beautiful “del Rio ” portraits of the Duchatel room in the Louvre, depicting such a serenity of soul and perfection of bodily health, prove that he could render with equal truth the placid mind and well-balanced nature. Among his masterpieces, furthermore, are two portraits hardly less than burlesque; “the dwarf of the Count di Benevento” at Madrid, and “the dwarf of Charles V,” at the Louvre, mirth-provoking faces, whose gleeful, ill-shaped features and brilliant costumes are reproduced as conscientiously and complacently as if they belonged to eminent personages. Unfortunately, the large number of Moro’s religious paintings have not been preserved; it may be presumed, however, that, as with his contemporaries of the Flemish school, his productions in that line were inferior to his portraits. In studying the artistic production from the time of Quentin Metsys to that of Rubens, that is to say, the two or three generations who felt the influence of Italy, we observe the same fact. As historical painters, the Flemish in great measure lose their originality, their national character. They adopt the Italian manner and their ideal and their ambition is to equal or to resemble the Southern masters. Striving to behold the heroic world of great art through the eyes of others, they become impersonal, declamatory. But when before a living model, they forget academical rules, conventions, and exotic pomp, and become them- selves once more, descendants of van Eyck, Memlinc, and Metsys, masters who, while conscientiously striving for the highest art, preserved, none the less, strict honesty in the rendering of the individuality before them; hence it follows that certain of these masters who left historical works of no great value, produced admirable portraits. We need only remember Joost van Cleef, Willem Key, Frans Floris, Peter Pourbus. Moro was of their family and superior to them as a portrait painter. He remained a Flemish painter after the older fashion ; always a profound observer and a faithful interpreter of nature, who handled his brush with marvelous dexterity; careful of detail, he constructed with minutiae of drawing and delicate touches of color, a texture firm as enamel and rendered with the fidelity of a mirror the outward aspect of the model as well as his intimate being. Max Rooses “PORTRAIT OF ARUNDEL” T HERE are various portraits of this Maecenas of arts and letters, great collector of an- tique marbles and works of art of every description, and most of them were painted by Van Dyck. A comparison of the Earl of Arundel's portrait by Van Dyck, with the masterpiece by Rubens in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, suggests interesting observations upon varied characteristics of the style of the two masters — the one so fine, elegant and cool-toned, the other broad and warmly colored. Mrs. Gardner’s portrait may best be likened, in general arrangement, to the one by Van Dyck in Arundel Castle owned by the Duke of Norfolk. In each, the Earl wears shining armor and holds a marshal’s 219 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS baton, the white of the linen shows at the throat, and the uncovered head presents a three- quarters view. But whereas Van Dyck painted the hands bare, Rubens preferred the stout steel gauntlet, full of gleaming and reflected light; whereas Van Dyck painted the hair and beard smooth and well-ordered, Rubens preferred tossed, careless locks. Van Dyck, seek- ing vivid, light tones, illuminates the corselet by a long, diagonal bar of light, and at the hero’s neck he displays a goodly breadth of linen; Rubens, instead, plays over the surface of the corselet with reflected lights, places across it a colored scarf, and allows the linen to show but scantily, in warm-toned, transparent folds. The Earl of Arundel’s age in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait is about the same as in the portrait owned by the Duke of Norfolk, which is held to have been painted about the year 1636. Dr. Corrado Ricci Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, one of the important personages of his day, is known to us through his love for and patronage of art. Born July 7, 1586, at Finchingfield, in the county of Essex, he was but ten years of age when his father, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, died a prisoner in the Tower of London. His property was confiscated and it was only in 1606, by his marriage with Althea, daughter and heiress of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, that Thomas Howard found himself in possession of such means as might en- able him to satisfy his tastes. From 1609 until 1611, he visited the Netherlands, France and Italy, studying works of art. Shortly after, accompanied by his wife, he made a second Journey into Italy, where he remained until 1615. From that time forth he became a passion- ate collector. He had agents in different parts of Europe; Daniel Nys, who bought statues and paintings for him in Venice, William Petty, his chaplain, who travelled in ancient Greece seeking for antique sculpture. The English ambassadors and political agents, Sir Dudley Carleton at The Hague, Sir Isaac Wake atTurin, Sir Balthasar Gerbier at Brussels, Sir Thomas Rose at Constantinople, Sir Francis Cottington and Lord Aston at Madrid, kept him in- formed of such opportunities as offered, to acquire works of ancient or modern art. He ardently sought for and purchased statues, ancient marbles with inscriptions, paintings, books, coins, medals and thus formed the celebrated Arundelian Collection, scattered por- tions of which enrich to-day the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford and the British Museum. Arundel had won the favor of James I and in 1616 he was made member of the Privy Council; in 1621, Earl-Marshal of England. On several occasions he was charged with important missions upon the Continent, and entrusted with military command in Scotland. Under Charles I he in turn enjoyed the King’s highest favor and fell into disfavor. An agitated existence was his. In 1642 he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, and never re- turning again to England, died in Padua on October 4, 1646. His haughty disposition made him unpopular at Court, but his love of arts and letters caused him to be revered by artists, men of science and scholars. It was through his influence with James I that Van Dyck was called to England. It was he who brought the engraver, Wenceslas Hollar, of Prague, to London, and who was the patron of the architect Inigo Jones. He surrounded himself with learned men; John Evelyn calls him “the father of vertu in England, the great Maecenas of all polite arts, and the boundless amasser of antiquities. ” 220 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Rubens came into relationship with the Earl of Arundel in 1620, through the friendly offices, no doubt, of Sir Dudley Carleton. The latter, who had been ambassador of James I to The Hague since 1616, made over to Rubens in 1618 his collection of ancient marbles, in exchange for nine of the Flemish master’s paintings and a sum of money. The English statesman probably recommended the Antwerp painter, whom he held in great esteem, to his friend and patron Arundel, when the latter was on the Continent seeking for the best artist to paint his wife’s portrait. Carleton’s recommendation proved effectual. In July, 1620, Arundel sent an agent to Rubens, receiving an account of his mission in a letter, dated at Antwerp, July 17th. The portrait which Rubens painted is to-day to be found in the Munich Picture Gallery (height 261, width 265 centimeters). The most important work of the kind Rubens ever executed, it originally contained only the Countess of Arundel with her dwarf-fool and her dog; the figure of the Earl being added later, for it is nearly certain that when in 1621 Arundel made a journey to the Continent, visiting Amsterdam and Ant- werp, he improved the opportunity of having his own portrait painted in the background of the picture, of which the Countess occupies the centre. The high esteem in which Rubens held the Earl of Arundel is seen by the flattering expressions he used in accepting the order for the Countess’s portrait. It is natural, therefore, that when in 1629, the artist went to England upon a diplomatic mission on behalf of his sovereign, Philip IV of Spain, he should have wished to visit Arundel Castle and its collections. On the 8th of August of that year he writes an account of the visit to his usual correspondent, Pierre Dupuy, Librarian to the King of France. (See Bibliography.) Thus Rubens met the Earl of Arundel, who was at the time in England, and it was more than likely, upon this occasion, that he painted the por- trait now in Mrs. Gardner’s collection. This portrait, preserved until very lately in Warwick Castle, is indisputably one of the finest of the master. The whole canvas evidences a con- summate technique and marvelous sureness of hand. The armor catches the light in broad streaks and throws it back with dazzling brightness. The head shines forth intensely warm in color. In just such a manner Rubens painted all his portraits about 1630 and after. It is his last and best manner. The portrait of the Earl of Arundel comes between the two portraits of the Marquis of Spinola, painted in 1625, one of which belongs to the Brunswick Museum, and the other to the Nestitz Gallery at Prague, and the splendid portrait of the Cardinal-Prince, painted toward 1635, now the property of Mr. Pierpont Morgan. It is somewhat less exuberant in tone than the Spinolas and has in common with Mr. Morgan's picture that the model is represented in full armor with his helmet beside him. The por- trait of the Earl of Arundel, by the intensity of the lights upon the armor, most resembles that of the Cardinal-Prince, but it surpasses it in beauty of expression and nobility of bear- ing. Rubens painted the Earl’s portrait more than once after that. Beside the portrait in the Munich Gallery, of which we have spoken, mention is made of one in the inventory of paintings left by the Earl at his decease: ‘ The picture of the Earl of Arundel upon cloth.’ This may be the portrait owned by Mrs. Gardner or, possibly, the portrait now in the Gallery of the Earl of Carlisle at the Castle Howard. Rubens again reproduced the noble Lord’s head in a splendid drawing owned by Count Duchastel-Dandelot of Brussels. Krafft, 221 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS who engraved this drawing, wrote upon the plate: “Comes Arundelius a P. P. Rubens memoriter designatum non coram, ” though we do not know upon what grounds the engraver based the statement that Rubens made the drawing from memory and not from the living model. In these various portraits Rubens represents the Earl at different ages. In the one at Munich, he might be thirty-four or thirty-five ; in that owned by Mrs. Gardner, about forty- four ; in the drawing belonging to Count Duchastel he is at least fifty. Arundel’s portrait was painted by more than one Antwerp artist. Van Dyck, who was under deep obligations to Arundel, painted his portrait several times. In one of these, now the property of the Duke of Norfolk, the effect attempted is the same as in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait, but the painting is less broad, the posture less easy, the expression less dignified. There is another portrait by Van Dyck, of Arundel with his wife Althea Talbot, in the possession of the Duke of Norfolk; a third belongs to the Earl of Sutherland. There are still other portraits by Van Dyck, of his powerful patron. Max Rooses A personage of historical importance, general, court marshal and ambassador, Arundel owes his permanent fame to his patronage of art. His connections with celebrated artists make it quite natural that, in painting as in engraving, his effigy should be most familiar to us. While there can be no doubt that he was a man of much learning, his portrait at Stafford House, one of the several painted by Van Dyck, tells us clearly both in attitude and expression, of Arundel’s pride and consciousness of his high standing. It was through Arundel that the young Flemish master came into connection with the Court, and at least six portraits by Van Dyck of the Earl and his family are still preserved in England alone. We know that in the course of 1620, one of Arundel’s agents was in Antwerp, making arrangements for a large picture of the Earl’s wife, to be painted by Rubens. This work is now in the Munich Gallery. It presents Arundel, his consort Althea, a dwarf and court fool called Robin, and a large dog. Although very stately with its columns and waving drapery emblazoned with the Howard coat of arms, the canvas looks somewhat hollow and artificial. The artist’s task was not an easy one, for we gather from his letters that he had to start the work and push it to completion in a hurry, with hardly any previous ac- quaintance with his models. As the picture was probably finished before Arundel arrived in Antwerp, his portrait was most probably added later, which would account for the Earl's subordinate place in the ensemble. As we see him depicted in the magnificent work now in the collection of Mrs. Gardner, he is evidently older than in the Munich portrait. Rubens having spent several months in London in 1629, it seems quite a natural thing to suppose that this portrait was thought out in London for we know that the painter made at least one study for it there at that time. There is in the collection of a gentleman in Brussels, Count R. Duchastel-Dandelot, a valuable drawing we were fortunate to discover some years ago, showing Arundel as he appears in the engraving of Birch’s “Lives.” It is certain this drawing was made in 1629 in London where the artist was on a diplomatic mission to King Charles I, and thus had every opportunity of getting sittings from the King’s court marshal. Seeing, however, that Arundel 222 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS is here represented in armor, and with the baton, and remembering that he was only appointed a general in 1638, we must conclude that Rubens after making at least one sketch in England, painted the portrait at Antwerp. All of which is borne out by the style of the picture. Among Rubens’ masterpieces there are a number of portraits not inferior even to those of Titian in what may be termed the interpretation of individuality. Thus, for instance, Rubens’ portrait of the Queen Mother of France, Marie de Medicis in her mourning weeds, is a work which brilliantly holds its own in that Madrid Museum, rich in so many of Velas- quez’s and Van Dyck's best works. When at Warwick Castle, Mrs. Gardner’s portrait was always considered one of the most masterly examples of Rubens, and nowhere else, perhaps, does he more fully recall Titian. The decorative conception of this particular portrait, so different from the Flemish conception of a portrait, shows that the Italian master had an enormous influence on Rubens. Many of the Northern portrait painters who did not visit Italy, took up also the fashion of displaying such accessories as would give an idea of the status in life of their sitters, and, no doubt, this was the wish of the sitters. So if Claren- don could say of Arundel: “He had nothing martial about him but his presence and looks,” we cannot expect a painter, and Rubens above all painters, not to have seized the chance to please his sitter and himself and make a striking picture by giving to Arundel, besides nobility and intelligence, a martial air, and the pictorially effective paraphernalia of the warrior. Henri Hymans “ LADY WITH A ROSE” T HIS portrait evidently belongs to the latest period of Van Dyck’s career; that which may be termed his English period. It shows all that studied carelessness under which the artist disguised his impatience with the demands of his aristocratic sitters; a carelessness his magic brush transformed into exquisite grace and elegance, but which, in the hands of his pupils and imitators, was to degenerate into mere mannerism. The exaggerated slen- derness of the hands, the gray gauze scarf that falls so negligently over the shoulder and bosom, and other such details as Van Dyck alone could save from being trivial and affected, are all characteristic of this last manner of the master. Who, however, is the aristocratic widow depicted here ? At first sight the portrait would seem to be that of some important lady at the Court of Charles 1 . But the face is not English, in spite of its aristocratic and disdainful composure, a mien characteristic of many ladies of the North. Moreover, the portrait comes from the collection of the Duque d’Ossuna in Spain, in whose family no doubt it had been since the days when it was painted. Let us, therefore, follow the great ‘pittore cavallieresco ’ in his wanderings. It was in April, 1632, that Antony Van Dyck went from Antwerp and took up his residence in London in the service of the King he was to immortalize on canvas. Charles I, and his bright-eyed French queen Henrietta Maria, kept him well occupied for the first year or two of his time in their employ. The King’s barge came so often to Van Dyck’s house at Blackfriars that a special 223 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS landing stage was built to enable the royal visitors to have access to the painter's studio in ease and comfort. But Van Dyck, in spite of the honors heaped on him by the King, in spite of the indiscriminate patronage of the noble and wealthy, never seems to have contem- plated settling permanently in England, and in March, 1 634, he returned to his native town of Antwerp. His fame was then so well established that his old master, the mighty Rubens, was not ashamed to look upon him as an equal, and perhaps even a rival. It so happened that this visit of Van Dyck's to his native city synchronized with an important event in the social history of the Netherlands. On December 1 st, 1633, Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II of Spain, widow of the Archduke Albert of Austria and Regent of the Netherlands, closed her long and useful life in an atmosphere of piety and regret. Her rugged, careworn features, with the shrewd expression of the eyes, are familiar to all students of Van Dyck’s portraits. Philip IV of Spain appointed his own brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, usually known as the Cardinal-Infant, to the vacant post of Regent. Pending the arrival of Ferdi- nand, the Government of the Netherlands was carried on by the brilliant Prince Thomas de Savoie-Carignan, the ancestor of the present royal house of Italy, a special patron of Van Dyck, as is shown by the splendid equestrian portrait of Prince Thomas in the Turin Gallery. At Brussels all was gaiety and rejoicing, the advent of the new and youthful Regent being hailed on every side with eager expectation. Besides the many stately Spaniards at the Court of Brussels, there were many members of the French royal family, who had fol- lowed the widowed Queen of France, Marie de Medicis, in her exile. Charles, Due de Lor- raine, was the centre of this group, with his wife, Nicole, both of them with the blood of Valois in their veins. There, too, were the dignified sisters, Henriette, widow of Louis de Guise of Phalsbourg, and Marguerite, wife of the ignoble Gaston, Due d'Orleans, Marie de Medicis' younger son. One of the brightest ornaments at the court was Beatrice de Cusance de Beauvoir, the winsome widow of Eugdne Perrenot de Granvelle, Prince de Cantecroix, whose beauty was soon to entrance the Due de Lorraine. Van Dyck was at the height of his reputation and the zenith of his powers, and at Brussels he was as great a man as at the Court of England, and perhaps better and more regularly paid. There is hardly a great name at the Court of Brussels, with its curious medley of Spanish, French and Flemish grandees, whose memory has not been preserved to posterity by his brush. Never did the painter work so ‘con amore.' By the side of the great portraits of this year, those of Beatrice de Cusance, of Henriette de Phalsbourg, of Marguerite d’Orleans, and others, many of his portraits of English ladies seem vacuous and insipid. But it was not only in the portraits of these great ladies that Van Dyck rose to so high a pitch of excellence. It was one of the striking features of his genius that he could with such ease and absence of effort, with no dependence on accessories to supplement the individual character, give all the differences of race and breeding. Nowhere is this better shown than in the portraits of Spanish gran- dees he painted in the Netherlands at that time. Velasquez has accustomed the eye to the sombre dignity of the Spaniard. Great and unapproachable as he was in his own line, it may be doubted if he could have shown such versatility as Van Dyck, who, coming to Brussels fresh from the English Court, differentiated with such ease, and, as it were, simultaneously 224 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the medley of races at the Spanish Court. Among the brilliant princes, such as Thomas de Savoie, the Arenbergs, Croys and other representatives of the Flemish nobility, the dignified Flemish bourgeois, Northern statesmen, priests or artists, the Spaniards stalk with a solem- nity worthy of Velasquez himself. Conspicuous among the Spanish nobility at Brussels was Francisco d’Aytona, Marques de Moncada, Conde d’Ossuna and Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish forces in the Neth- erlands, one of the four successive Commanders-in-Chief there who sat to Van Dyck for their portraits. Moncada was one of the chief Grandees of Spain, Seneschal of Aragon, and one of those generals who, like Spinola, stemmed the tide which was undermining the power of Spain and of the Roman Church in the Netherlands. Moncada sat to Van Dyck more than once, his equestrian portrait d’apparat, which is familiar to all visitors to the Louvre being the best known; the more intimate being the full-length in the Grand Ducal Gallery at Cassel. There are half-length portraits of Moncada in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna and in the Prado at Madrid, and another is, or was, in the collection of the Duque d’Ossuna in Spain. Let us now return to the portrait of the lady in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, which came from the Duque d’Ossuna’s collection, dispersed by sale at Madrid in 1896. Moncada, among other titles of nobility, bore that of Conde d’Ossuna. His portrait in the possession of the Ossuna family was, no doubt, inherited. The lady represented in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait is a widow, and from the circumstance of the sale evidently a member of the Ossuna family. Now, the Commander-in-Chief, Marques de Moncada, died in 1635, the year in which Van Dyck returned from the Netherlands to resume his position at the English Court. It has been shown that the relations between Van Dyck and Moncada were somewhat close, and it would be likely that Moncada’s widow would have called upon Van Dyck to paint her. Is it not permissible, therefore, to see in the portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardner not merely a lady of the Ossuna family, but the widow of the great general, Francisco d’Aytona, Mar- ques de Moncada ? Lionel Cust Judging from all its essential features, this picture is undoubtedly the handiwork of Van Dyck himself, and that was not generally the case with the portraits which came from his studio during the last ten years of his life, when he was Court Painter to Charles 1 . It is, however, a particularly fine and very characteristic example of the manner of the Flemish master during his later period. Highly distinguished in appearance, and yet thoroughly individual, it is of special value as well as of rare attractiveness. Dr. Wilhelm Bode Van Dyck occupied a very large and glorious place in the art of his day, but his elegance and the refinement of his style, reduced to formulas, so dominated the conception of por- traiture long after him that the affected performances of his imitators and followers have tended to blur, for us moderns, the just estimate of the master’s genius. A few words upon his achievements are not, therefore, unnecessary. Van Dyck, the Flemish painter, shone also as an Italian painter, and in England rose to the importance of the head of a school. 225 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS That wide influence of his is easy to understand, for, while he is the author of splendid re- ligious and mythological works, necessity as well as his own inclination drove him to turn his talent to the art most in demand, portraiture, and as he was the most successful and fashionable portrait painter of his day, he naturally became the model to follow. While still very young, before his journey into Italy — that is to say, in 1620 — he was in England paint- ing for James I and Thomas Arundel, and his work was already distinguished for its elegance, freedom, breadth and brilliancy. In the royal galleries of England are preserved speci- mens of this period, remarkable in conception, ample and impressive in execution; and some of those portraits, now in Dresden and Brussels, were long ascribed to Rubens. In Italy Van Dyck worked in Venice, Mantua, Genoa, Rome, Naples, Palermo, reaping honors wherever he went. At Genoa he played a particularly brilliant part. What to others could have been a little more than a dream, with him became reality. With the combined stimulus given him by the splendor of light and color, the pomp of costumes and the distinction of types, this young native of Flanders, not yet thirty years old, be- came the leading portrait painter of Italy. Brought up by his master, Rubens, in the worship of Titian, Van Dyck found in Genoa such types amid such splendid surround- ings as had inspired the incomparable Venetian, but it was by instinct, much more than because of Rubens’ teaching, that he turned to Titian. The palaces of Genoa ‘la Su- perba’ no longer retain their art treasures, but the world has been a gainer for her loss, particularly England, where many of Van Dyck’s Genoese masterpieces are owned. A com- parison of such of these portraits, for instance, as “The Housekeeper” or the “Knight in Black Armor ” in the Edinburgh Museum, with those painted by him later in England, brings out marked differences. If they do not always eclipse the latter, they are assuredly not eclipsed by them, and their warmth of coloring, their vigor of composition, their sumptuous setting of marble pillars, balustrades and floating draperies, give them an imposing and grandiose air. Returning home in 1628, unspoiled and unhampered by his brilliant experience, he readily became Flemish once more, and the portraits of this period show a marked contrast by their simplicity, sincerity and the frankness of their coloring to his Italian productions. These Northerners, grave men and modest women, did not demand of their interpreter the dash and brilliancy he had displayed in the representations of illustrious Genoese. Their portraits reflect perfectly the spirit of the time and place. Wealthy and richly clad, these thoughtful, substantial people avoid display. The attraction of the women is that of gentle- ness, of purely natural beauty, of freshness of complexion; it never depends upon nor is enhanced by rich gowns and ornaments. Among the gems of the Wallace Gallery the por- traits of Philippe le Roy and his young wife are admirable examples of this period of Van Dyck’s career. In 1632 Van Dyck went to England. History records the important part played by foreign painters who became English by adoption. Walpole has said of them that it was scarcely possible to tell that they were not English by birth. The portraits Van Dyck painted in England reflect the British type as faithfully as those of the most famous English portrait painters, and Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, etc., seem to have 226 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS felt an ambition to perpetuate his style. A stay in Brussels in 1634 came in Van Dyck’s career as a period of calm between the years filled with enormous labor and the intenser pleasures of English life. He went back to England the next year, and died there in 1 64 1 . It is not impossible to differentiate, in the works of Van Dyck, what pertains to his own personality and what to that of his sitter. In his interpretation of feminine beauty, particu- larly, the tendency to bring his models to one favorite type is evident; hence a vague resemblance exists among them, accentuated still further by costume, hair-dressing and cer- tain physical peculiarities, the persistence of which leads one to suppose that they were the results of fashion. The arch of the eyebrows is a peculiarity of many portraits of his English period, and so are the hands of a very special type; we know, however, that for these Van Dyck made use of hired models. The date of Van Dyck’s works is clearly revealed by the manner of workmanship and also by the style of the costumes. Although French fashions prevailed at the English Court, through the influence of the Qyeen, feminine costume re- tained certain distinctive peculiarities, like for example, the ampleness of the sleeves. The workmanship of the most remarkable specimens of the English period is less bold, but much more refined than that of the Italian or Flemish period. It is because of its beautiful work- manship that we believe Mrs. Gardner’s portrait should be assigned to that period — that is to say, among the works of the painter’s last years. In its refinement of presentation it is a worthy companion of the admirable portrait of the Countess of Oxford (in which also the lady holds a white rose), dated 1638. With regard to the lady's identity we can only hazard a conjecture. From the likeness one might be led to think of Anne Herbert, Countess of Carnarvon. Van Dyck painted this lady several times in the full bloom of her youthful beauty. There are several engraved portraits of her, one by Lombart in the so-called series of the “Countesses.” The costume, however, appears to be that of a widow, and Anne Herbert only became the widow of Robert Dormer, first Earl of Carnarvon, in 1643, after Van Dyck’s death. But, after all, the important thing is that the portrait is a veritable mas- terpiece. Henry Hymans “ PORTRAIT OF A LADY” P ROFESSOR JUST 1 , the learned critic, was the first to speak with indisputable author- ity in favor of both the artistic and the historical value of this painting. Although, as a rule, after the lapse of some centuries a portrait, considered merely as a likeness, is of remote interest to the public at large, yet in a case such as this, much importance attaches to the identity of the sitter. For to know who she is, is to come closer to attributing the picture to a particular master. In the fourteenth, as well as in our own century, fashion ruled the dress of the upper classes; a fact which becomes important in considering the costume in this portrait. Although coming from a collection in Milan it is quite un-ltalian from every point of view. The manner of the painting is, without a doubt, Flemish. The prepossessing model is, in type, as well as in proportion, thoroughly Germanic, and her dress is that worn by ladies of rank in Central Europe. Indeed the splendid fur, the ermine 227 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS sleeves, the display of magnificent jewelry, show her to be a lady of very high stand- ing. Apart from this, a special interest which Professor Justi with his usual acuteness has pointed out, attaches to this work. The young woman is not only not a “Mrs. Nobody of Nowhere,” but she reminds us to a remarkable degree of some women known to us by certain portraits of the great masters, particularly of Holbein’s masterly full-length portrait of Christina of Milan, the property of the Earl of Norfolk, and for a long time exhibited at the National Gallery. The young niece of the Emperor, Charles V, bears a striking resemblance to the lady in the portrait owned by Mrs. Gardner. Struck by this, as well as by the fact that the Gardner picture was found at Milan, Pro- fessor Justi came to the conclusion that in it we might have a likeness of Christina’s mother, Charles the Fifth’s sister, the unfortunate Queen of Denmark. Born at Brussels in 1501, Isabella was scarcely fourteen when she became the wife of Christian II of Denmark, later known to history as the “Nero of the North.” Although through her genial disposition she won her subjects’ hearts, it was not in her power to prevent her husband from incur- ring the violent opposition of the nobility and clergy. After a reign of scarcely ten years the King lost his crown. The Qyeen, having declined to act as Regent for her son, say- ing she “preferred to live in exile rather than reign without him,” retired to Flanders with her husband and children. She was then scarcely twenty-two. Some time was spent in England by Christian and Isabella as the guests of Henry the Eighth. Later, however, the royal couple lived in the Queen’s native land, at Brussels, at Mechlin, at Lier, and lastly in the vicinity of Ghent, at Swynaerde, where Isabella died on the 19th of January, 1526. Her son had died in 1523, and both mother and child were buried at Ghent in the Church of St. Peter’s Abbey. Their grave was adorned with a magnificent marble tomb, designed by Mabuse and chiselled by Jan de Heere, father of Lucas de Heere, the painter. The tomb is now destroyed. In 1883, at the desire of the King of Denmark, the remains of Isabella and her son found their resting-place in the royal vault at Copenhagen. Beyond this resemblance we have no proof of the lady’s identity. Other likenesses of Isabella, painted either before or at the time of her marriage, recall the features of Mrs. Gardner’s picture. In 1903, at an Exhibition of Portraits held at The Hague, there was shown a portrait of her, the property of a Polish nobleman, Count Tarnowski, the identification of which was complete. In this the still young and girlish model has the same eyes, the same shape of nose and mouth, as in our picture, the only difference being that the one is of a woman, the other of a girl— but, unfortunately for our theory, Isabella never reached such an age as that of the original of Mrs. Gardner’s portrait ! Clouet was supposed to be the author of Mrs. Gardner’s portrait, at the time of its discovery by Professor Justi in the Cereda collection, for these delicate paintings on green backgrounds usually go by his name. Less known, comparatively, than this comprehensively entitled group of the Court Painters of the great Francis, these early Flemish and Dutch portrait painters surprise us by their high standard of excellence, when once we come across a positively determined specimen of their work. As an instance, though of a somewhat later date, it is true, we might suggest the capital portrait of the 228 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “ Gentleman With the Hawk” in the Brunswick Gallery. Who knows anything of Franz Floris as a portrait painter ? Yet this admirable work bears his signature in full. At the time at which Queen Isabella’s likeness must have been taken, two painters are best known to history among these artists who ranked first in the Spanish Netherlands, Bernard Van Orley and Jean Gossart. Both were in the service of Margareta of Austria, then governing the Netherlands in the name of the Emperor, her nephew. Others there were, of course. In fact, Margareta’s court at Mechlin was the abode of a number of men renowned in all branches of the arts. Of painters, it is known that Jacopo de Barbari worked there, and also that she received Albrecht Diirer, whose portrait of Orley still hangs in the Dresden Gallery. Orley and Gossart worked constantly for Margareta from 1523 to 1526. Sacred subjects as well as portraits of members of the imperial family came from their brushes. It is on record that Orley painted both the young princes Charles and Ferdinand, and their four sisters, as well as Christian of Denmark at the time of his marriage or soon after. These works are certainly not lost, but most probably pass under the names of other per- sonages and painters in the galleries where they now hang. It is natural that Orley should have painted both Christian and his consort during their stay in Brabant, precisely as their children were represented by Mabuse in the delightful picture now at Hampton Court Palace, and identified in i860 by Sir George Scharf. Some question may arise as to the ascription of our portrait to Orley rather than Ma- buse. My reason for it rests solely on the character of the work, particularly the treatment of the hands and the arrangement of the drapery of the sleeves. Both are in perfect keeping with the master’s usual style. Less known as a portraitist than as a painter of religious subjects, Orley, however, must have been a highly esteemed master of the first capacity, judging from the manifold orders he received for portraits. These works are to be found in the royal collections of Denmark as well as of Spain and England. At the time when it was taken for granted that Mabuse had worked in England, most of the portraits belonging to the period in the British collections, were regarded as his. There can be no doubt, how- ever, that many of the personages connected with the Imperial House, who visited the Brussels Court, were painted by Orley. Holbein certainly took the likeness of Christina of Milan at Brussels, but Orley also painted the young widow. We may look upon it as quite a natural thing that he should have painted the mother as well as the daughter, though of course, at different times. Henri Hymans This very attractive and interesting portrait, while in the Bonomi-Cereda Collection at Milan, was mentioned in Burckhardt’s “Cicerone ” (1885) as a work by the “Master of the Death of Mary.” In the edition of 1893 this attribution was changed, and the picture as- cribed to Mabuse. It had also been given to Holbein, and to Scorel, and under the name of the latter master it entered the collection of Mrs. Gardner. The attention of the art world was especially called to it by an article by Dr. Carl Justi in the “ Zeitschrift fur Bildende Kunst,” 1895, under the title “ Ein Bildnis der Isabella von CEsterreich, von Mabuse.” In this essay Dr. Justi, who had seen the picture in 1885 at the Casa Cereda, gives biographical 229 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS details concerning the supposed original of the portrait, and tries to establish her identity as Isabella of Austria, daughter of Philippe le Beau, sister of the Emperor Charles V, and wife of Christian II of Denmark. This identification is based on no inscription or emblem in the picture, nor is it supported by any document or tradition. By another critic the lady por- trayed was supposed to be Margareta of Austria, an assertion which is contradicted by authentic portraits of the Regent of the Netherlands. Five existing trustworthy portraits of Isabella, taken at different ages between infancy and the year preceding her death prove the absolute impossibility of recognizing her in the lady of Mrs. Gardner's collection. (One engraved by Jacob Bink, in 1525, one in a Brussels tapestry made in 1518 and now in the Musee des Arts DScoratifs at Brussels, one a water-color portrait in a volume in the section of manuscripts in the Royal Library at Brussels, one a small panel portrait by Mabuse in the collection of Count Zadislas Tarnow- ski, a Polish nobleman, and exhibited at the Portrait Exhibition at The Hague in 1903, and one in a series of four portraits ascribed to Lucas Cornelisz in the gallery at Hampton Court.) But, if we possessed none of them, there are sufficient grounds in the portrait itself to compel us to deny the alleged identity. The portrait in Mrs. Gardner's collection is that of a lady of thirty at least, an age which Isabella never reached, she dying at the age of twenty-four years and six months, after a long disease which for about two years undermined her health. These sufferings account for the emaciated, hollow cheeks which the Bink engraving shows ; the stout young matron in Mrs. Gardner’s collection certainly does not look like one suffering from languor. She seems to enjoy the most flourishing health and her moral expression suits the Queen of Denmark no better than her physical aspect. She appears, not only buoyant with animal life, but full of bright spirits. This sounds like cruel irony when applied to poor, gentle Isabella, married at fourteen to a brutal husband, who, from the beginning, inflicted on her the worst humiliations. Unhappy as a wife, she was equally unfortunate as a queen, and in 1523 a revolt caused by the cruelties of Christian, obliged the royal family to fly from Denmark, where Isabella was never to return, and to seek refuge with her own family in the Netherlands. If we had a portrait of her in these last years of her life, by as good an artist as the one who painted Mrs. Gardner's picture, it would tell us a touching story of physical suffering and of moral resignation, and gentle, womanly courage. The lady portrayed in Mrs. Gardner's collection is certainly not Isabella. 1 have no other identification to offer as a substitute for the one rejected, but a de- tail of costume may be found of some importance for further research. The headdress which the lady wears is one which I never have met with in the purely Netherlandish portrait, but which was common in France between 1515 and 1530. The above-men- tioned portraits of Isabella of Austria show us, it is true, a black headdress, hanging down at the back, but there it is bordered with golden embroidery, leaving visible a broad brim of white muslin; it is placed back on the head so as to show the hair uncov- ered on the top of the head. In the Netherlands this type of headdress was worn not only in the circles of the court, but also by unmarried young ladies of the gentry and bourgeoisie. 230 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Married ladies of the same classes, on the contrary, covered their hair completely, as in this portrait, but their headdress was of white linen, not black velvet. Of white linen also was that of ladies of quality, but of a peculiar shape, as exemplified by the portrait of Margareta of Austria, by several figures in an altar-piece at Oporto, etc. In France we find ladies, married or not, wearing a shape of headdress very similar to that just described as worn by Isabella and by the Netherlandish young ladies, but mostly without ornament or embroidery. Beside this type we also meet a number of portraits representing ladies of elderly, or at least mature age, who wear the headdress of Mrs. Gard- ner’s portrait. For instance, the collection of pencil portraits formerly at Castle Howard and published by Lord Ronald Gower, contains nine specimens of this fashion. Generally the cut of the body of the gown is different from that in Mrs. Gardner's portrait, but we find it similar in one instance— No. 157, “Portrait of Franpoise d'Alenpon," who twice became a widow and was married for the third time to Charles de Bourbon, Due de Vendome. As in those cases, 1 believe this shape of headdress was only worn by widows. In any case, I consider the fashion to be decidedly French. The resemblance to French portraits did not escape Dr. Justi, but he objects that the type of the lady does not look French, but rather Flemish. However, the French nation is not of such unmixed race that it would in every case be easy to distinguish a French from a Flemish woman; and, moreover, it must be observed that the wearing of a French fashion does not necessarily imply French extrac- tion. The lady may have become French by marriage only, or simply lived in France. We now come to the second question: Who was the artist who painted the portrait? As was said above, it was attributed by Italian connoisseurs to Jan van Scorel. But a simple comparison with original works by the Dutch master, such as the series of portraits at Utrecht, the portrait of Agatha van Schoonhoven (signed and dated 1529) in the Doria Gallery at Rome, the beautiful family group of Cassel, or the charming young boy (dated 1531) at Rotterdam, will at once show the profound difference in painting as well as in drawing between such standard works of Scorel and Mrs. Gardner's portrait. Perhaps the error took its origin from a comparison with a portrait of a lady in the Museum of Berlin, which was hitherto catalogued as a portrait of Agatha van Schoonhoven, painted by Scorel. But the authorities of the Museum have since, with good reason, recognized that it neither repre- sents Agatha nor is by Scorel. This portrait, which shows a real analogy of treatment with the lady in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, also shows the style of another master, one who exerted an influence on Scorel, the great painter Jean Gossartde Mabuse. Dr. Justi was struck by the characteristics of the master, and I believe this was the principal reason why he was induced to believe the lady was Isabella of Austria. Indeed, the whole arrangement and presentation of the figure and dress, the position of the arms and hands, and the folds of the sleeves, as well as the general character of the drawing, speak of Mabuse. Some hesi- tation might, however, arise from the sharp way in which the contour of the figure comes out on the clear background. Mabuse generally aims at strong and round relief, putting no stress on the 'silhouette' of his portrait figures. Here the contrast of the light and shade in the flesh painting is uncommonly pronounced, and at some places we find material lines 231 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS instead of simple limits in solid bodies. Such is the case, for instance, with the commissure of the lips; a line, not a shadow. Also, the hair is treated somewhat thinly, and different from his usual way of rendering each hair separately, with lights and shadows. Whatever be the case, Dr. Justi was certainly right in recognizing in this portrait the style of Mabuse. 1 am inclined to ascribe it to his own hand. A material detail points to the school of Antwerp, where Mabuse studied; it is the painted, false frame which sur- rounds the background, and before which the figure stands. This disposition was not infrequent at Antwerp in the early sixteenth century. I do not know whether it was intro- duced into fashion by Mabuse himself or by Qyentin Metsys, who used it in a “Lucretia Romana,” now in a private collection at Antwerp, but certainly Mabuse was particularly fond of it, as is shown by his portrait group of the three children of King Christian at Hampton Court, by the beautiful “San Donatian” atTournay, by the “Blessed Virgin and Child,” of which there are so many repetitions and copies at Munster, Brussels, Ypres, etc. Of course, in Mrs. Gardner’s portrait the upper part of the false frame must originally have been as broad as the sides. Georges H. De Loo Portraits of women by Jean Gossart de Mabuse are difficult, not to say impos- sible, to find. This one is unquestionably his work and certainly one of his finest existing examples. There is only lacking a rich, architectural background, such as we see in his “ Portrait of a Man ” in the National Gallery of London (No. 946, Catalogue of 1901) for us to find in the Gardner portrait all the ear-marks of the master’s manner. But the noble, sumptuous effect of the whole, the amplitude of the style and the lordly taste of the dress, make it a masterpiece worthy to be placed beside those of his contemporary rivals in por- traiture, notably of Holbein. As for Scorel, his two beautiful portraits of Agatha de Schoon- hoven, in the Doria Gallery at Rome and in the Berlin Museum, have in common with the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection only those qualities which belonged in common to the masters of that period; the taste in arrangement ; the style and modelling being entirely different. Now who is the person represented ? Unmistakably a lady of station, sufficiently high to stimulate curiosity and urge inquiry. But neither the princely jewel with three pear- shaped pearls hanging from her neck, the no less princely girdle adorned with pearls and gems, the three rings, nor the folded missive in her right hand, furnish the least suggestion as to her identity. Might she be the wife of the Governor of the Netherlands, whom Dtirer, in the account of his travels, calls Madame Margareta? No, if we compare this portrait with the one in the Antwerp Museum (No. 184), (which if it be a faithful likeness of the famous Princess, is certainly not the work of Mabuse). Might it be the Marquise de la Vere? The thought suggests itself naturally. We are told by Karel van Mander that Mabuse was in her husband’s service during several years. The historian of Flemish paint- ers adds that when the master painted a Virgin and Child for the Marquis, the wife of the latter sat for the Mother, and their child for the Infant Jesus. It is more than likely, we may say it is certain, that the master did not remain so long in the service of the noble 232 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS couple without painting their portraits as portraits, and that, doubtless, more than once. Furthermore, the historian’s statement has all the weight of a tradition that it would be important to verify. Meanwhile, without offering positive judgment, one may admit the possibility, at least, of this beautiful and aristocratic portrait in Mrs. Gardner's collection being the faithful image of the Marquise de la Vere, at the time when the first bloom of her youth had passed away. Camille Benoit Born about 1470, received into the Antwerp Guild in 1503, and dying at Antwerp in [541, Jean Gossart, who derives his cognomen Mabuse (Malbodius), from Maubeuge, his place of birth, enjoyed a high reputation in Holland, at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury, as the pioneer champion of a new art. Like other early Dutch painters he went to study in Italy, returning with the ambition to design and compose like Raphael, and to paint like Jan van Eyck. We know that he did not reach his goal. The end he strove for was unattainable, and for that reason his compositions with nude figures, in imitation of those of the Italian renaissance, are of less interest to us now than his superb portraits. This superiority was perhaps felt in his day, for, in his capacity as portrait painter, Gossart was kept busy by the princely patrons of Holland, especially by the Regent Margareta. This beautiful ' ' Portrait of a Lady " in Mrs. Gardner's collection, represents a princess, as the rich jewelry and ermine indicate, but while it may not be possible to determine who the princess, living in Holland about 1520, may have been, it is quite certain that Jean Gossart executed the picture. At any rate, it has nothing whatever to do with Jan van Scorel, to whom it has been attributed. The arrangement with the painted border behind the half figure, on the edge of the picture, is a specialty of Gossart, who has treated several other portraits and a number of Madonna pictures in the same manner. The conception is sober and realistic; the contour lines are full, and throughout the composition, round, boldly curving lines are insisted upon ; the painting, evidencing great care, is marked by a silvery, delicate enamel-like surface. These are characteristics which are to be recognized in all portraits by Gossart's hand. Mabuse's finest portraits in public galleries, and those with which comparisons may most fitly be made with Mrs. Gardner's beautiful example are: “Chancellor Carondelet” of 1518, a monk dated 1526 in the Louvre and a “Married Couple" acquired a few years ago by the London National Gallery and considered his best portrait. A fairly good replica of Mrs. Gardner’s portrait is owned by Earl Brownlow, and was exhibited 1899-1900 in the New Gallery, London (No. 97), when it was mistakenly entitled “Mary Tudor.” Dr. Max J. Friedlander ALBRECHT DURER'S “PORTRAIT OF A MAN” F ROM the voluminous and extensive literature concerning Albrecht Durer, one would suppose that all the authentic works of this great master were well known. Yet America possesses an undeniably genuine portrait from his hand which is almost unknown. At the Thirty-third Winter Exhibition of the London Academy (1902), J. T. Dobie, Esq., 233 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS exhibited (under No. 21 1) the portrait of a man, which soon afterward passed into the pos- session of Mrs. Gardner. The catalogue of the Academy Exhibition described this portrait in the following manner: “Martin Luther — Albert Durer ; bust to left showing left hand, three-quarter profile; fur robe; black hat; grey background; inscribed with monogram and date 1521 ; panel 19^4 x 13 inches.” The picture, so sensationally presented, remained quite unnoticed, although Dr. Bredius mentioned it as a genuine work of Diirer’s in his review of the Exhibition (“Nederlandsche Spectator,” 1902, No. 2), as did also the writer of this note in the “Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft” (XXV, 146, 147). But it cer- tainly is not Luther that is here portrayed. The man, who is of middle age, with a proud figure of large mould, does not at all resemble the Reformer. The signature and the date are certainly genuine. Durer spent the first half of the year 1521 in the Netherlands, which fact is established very accurately with the help of his traveler’s diary (Conway’s “ Diirer’s Visit to the Netherlands,” the “Fortnightly Review,” No. 62, 1896-97 page 358). That this portrait was painted in the Netherlands is made almost certain through the fact that it was painted on oak. The Netherlanders used this wood generally, while in South Germany they usually chose panels of soft wood. Diirer’s portrait of Bernard van Orley, likewise of the year 1521, is also painted on oak. An old copy of the portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collec- tion is to be found at Hampton Court. Probably the original picture was brought at an early date to England, and at one time was in the possession of royalty. While on his travels through the Netherlands Durer undertook many portraits, mostly drawings, of which we possess to-day an important part. In his diary he mentions scores of personages with whom he had appointments. He naturally did very little painting owing to the haste and discomfort of traveling. Of the portraits painted in the year 1521, the two best known are the van Orley, and the portrait of a man now in the Prado, which is generally regarded as a portrait of the banker Imhof, and which was probably painted in Nuremburg after the return of the master. The portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection may be compared with the Imhof, since they are very closely related in character and arrange- ment. Mrs. Gardner’s picture is probably a portrait of Tax-Collector Lorenz Steret, who was intimately associated with Durer at Antwerp, and who made him many presents. Durer wrote in his note-book on May 12, 1521 : “I have painted Collector Lorenz Steret in oil-painting ; was worth 25 fl. This I have presented to him. In return he gave me 20 fl., and Susanna [Durer’s servant] 1 fl. for a tip.” In the years Durer lived in Nuremburg, fol- lowing his stay in the Netherlands, he devoted himself enthusiastically to portrait painting. The portraits we have of him nearly all bear later dates, the most famous of all: “Der Holzschuher,” in the Berlin Gallery, being painted in 1526. Dr. Max J. Friedlander It is fitting that in a collection which aims at bringing together characteristic produc- tions of every school of art, Durer should find a prominent place. He is not only one of the greatest masters of his country, but in him are combined, to a marked degree, the soul of his race and the spirit of his time. He was, and will remain for posterity, the most perfect incarnation of German genius. This “Portrait of a Man” belongs to the best period of 234 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Diirer’s activity. It was executed in 1521, that is to say, during the artist’s journey in the Netherlands or upon his return to Nuremburg. He was then in the fulness of his powers. Before coming in touch with the art of the Netherlands he had seen the masterpieces of Italy and both had added to his resources, and the inspiration he derived therefrom had refined and broadened his manner. He had come to prize simplicity, breadth of execu- tion and nobility of composition, — in a word, style — and to summarize more and more and to achieve greater results with simpler means. His constant and searching study of the exterior world, as well as his unwearying effort to reach greater perfection in the rendering of life and nature, culminates in his portraits of this time. In this portrait we are far from the master’s first manner, of which his own portrait in the Museum of the Prado, and the portrait of Oswald Krell, in the Munich Pinakothek, are the most striking examples. At that early period, under the influence, perhaps, of the somewhat affected works of Jacopo de ’ Barbari, he strove for original and unusual rather than simple and true presentations. It pleased him to portray his models quaintly attired, in curious poses and with the same expressive side-long glance, whilst, shown through the opening of a window, finely wrought out landscapes added a mysterious attraction. Later he disdained these methods. The curiosity as to the new and unknown which one feels underlying his words when, in connection with Jacopo de’ Barbari’s investigations relating to the human body, he confessed that he had “less desire to see unknown kingdoms than to make acquaintance with these theories,” seems to have definitely given place in his mind to the tranquil assurance of the master who has come at last into his inheritance of knowledge and truth. It is from nature now, and without recourse to any exterior source, that he draws. His models speak to us of themselves alone, and with what supreme authority! The portrait of the banker Imhof, in the Museum of the Prado, the engraved portraits of his friend Wilibald Pirkheimer and of the Imperial attorney Ulrich Warnbuhler, the portraits of the two Nuremburg councillors, Jacob Muffel and Hieronymus Holzschuher, in the Berlin Museum, among the pictures of this last period, give ample proof of the incomparable mastery of Diirer’s art. The portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection ranks with these. It is closely related to that of Imhof, with which, at least, it has one point in common — its date. The personage here represented might well be a younger brother of the patrician of the Madrid portrait. The same conception, the same pose of the head, slightly turned toward the left, and the same sort of costume; the expression only differs : in Imhof it is careworn and tense, here it is placid and almost smiling. For that reason we cannot believe that this (as was claimed in the “Catalogue of the Exhibition of Old Masters,” London, 1902) is the portrait of Martin Luther, the restless monk, whose fiery preaching spread through Germany and all Christendom. When Diirer returned from the Netherlands after the Diet of Worms, Luther was under the ban of the Empire and in hiding at Wartburg Castle, where we believe that Diirer never went. This portrait is more probably that of some rich burgher, of cultivated mind, perhaps a friend of the artist's as were Imhof, Pirkheimer and all those whom Diirer during this last period of his life liked to gather around him, and who are 235 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS known to us through his brush or burin. This man of about forty, with an open, affable, serious countenance, is a man acquainted with life, who reflects and who knows, and whose calm features denote moral health. 1 should like to think of this patrician philosopher as a frequenter of the artist’s house, where he found himself in the company of the best minds of Nuremburg, and where the evening hours were spent discussing questions of science, literature and art. It was during one of these meetings, perhaps, that Diirer took note of the attentive attitude of this mild and grave physiognomy. This painting deserves to take its place, if not among the most magnificent, at least among the most attractive produc- tions of Durer’s brush. Auguste Marguillier “MADONNA IN THE ROSE GARDEN” L ITTLE is known of the life of Martin Schongauer, the greatest engraver, and one of the greatest German painters, of the fifteenth century. His ancestors had been counted among the patrician families of Augsburg for at least two hundred years. Caspar Schon- gauer, goldsmith, emigrated, not later than 1440, to Colmar, Alsace, where he became a citizen, and a member of the council in 1445. He was still living in 1481. He had five sons, Caspar, George, Ludwig, Martin and Paul (whom 1 name in alphabetical order). Ludwig was an unimportant painter and engraver, while Caspar, Paul and George were gold- smiths. The four brothers received Diirer on his travels in 1492, after the death of Martin. The latter appears, on the authority of a recently discovered document, to have matriculated at the University of Leipsic in 1465. In 1469 he was already a householder at Colmar. The drawings by him in the British Museum belong to that year, one being dated in the artist’s own hand, the other in that of Diirer, who wrote on it : “Das hat hubsch Martin gemacht Im 1469 ior.” ‘Hiibsch Martin’ is one of the many varieties of a nick- name of Schongauer’ s, of which the most familiar form is ‘Martin Schon.’ It has nothing to do with his surname, which was derived from Schongauer, on the Lecht, and we do not know whether the beauty of his person or the excellence of his art gave rise to the epithet. It seems clear that Martin Schongauer, in addition to learning something of the hereditary craft of the goldsmith as the foundation of his skill as an engraver, received his special training as a painter in the Netherlands. The obvious influence of Rogier van der Weyden on the great “Madonna” at Colmar, confirms the statement of Lambert Lombard that Rogier was his master. We have no exact information about any of his pictures, and the remaining biographical facts are scanty. Schongauer bought a new house in 1477. In 1488 he founded an anniversary mass for his parents and himself at St. Martin’s Church. In 1489 we hear of him as a citizen of Breisach, on the Rhine, and there he died in 1491, probably on February 2nd, but certainly before June 9th. The flourishing Colmar School which he founded fell rapidly into decay. Schongauer seems to have painted his own portrait in 1483. A copy of it by Burgkmair, painted many years later, is at Munich ; there is another old copy with the date 1453, at Siena. Not a single picture is certified by a signature or by documentary evidence as Schongauer’s work, though in addition to the 236 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Colmar “Madonna” described below, two small Holy Families at Munich and Vienna, and an “Adoration of the Shepherds” in the Berlin Gallery have a fair claim to be his. The large “Madonna in the Rose Garden” is painted in oils on a panel which has the date 1473 painted on the back by a contemporary hand. It now hangs in the sacristy of the Minster or Church of St. Martin, the principal church of Colmar. Since the French Revolution the picture has been the property of the Municipal Museum, and it is not cer- tain, though highly probable, that it was in St. Martin’s before 1792. In its present mutilated form it measures 6 ft. 6 in. by 3 ft. 8 in. It was injured in a process of cleaning and restora- tion to which it was submitted soon after 1830. The Virgin, somewhat over the size of life, wearing an inner garment of dark bluish-green, with a robe and mantle of two different shades of red, sits on a bench in an arbor of roses. Goldfinches and chaffinches flutter and perch among the branches. To the left is a large, single peony in flower. A strawberry plant springs from the grass below. The Virgin gazes down toward the left. Her features, austere and melancholy, are of a strong Flemish cast. The Child, with a face old beyond His age, throws His arms around His Mother’s neck. Two angels, in long, fluttering robes, hold a splendid Gothic crown over the Virgin’s head. Gold rays descend behind the crown from a source now invisible. The whole background is of gold. Christ has a nimbus of rays darting in the form of a cross from His head. On the round nimbus of the Virgin is the Latin hexameter (abbreviated and now in part illegible): “Me carpes genito tu quoque 0 sanctissima Virgo.” The words (“Thou shalt pluck me, too, most Holy Virgin, for Thy Son ”) contain an allusion to the flowers by which the Madonna is surrounded. The execu- tion is delicate, highly finished in every detail, and the preservation of the picture good on the whole. It bears no signature, but the attribution to Schongauer has never been seriously questioned. It is by far the most important work of his which has survived, and one of the chief masterpieces of the German school. The picture was originally much larger. The old replica formerly in the possession of Dr. Sepp of Munich, but now the property of Mrs. Gardner of Boston, though painted on a far smaller scale, shows the original composition in its entirety. Above the crown we see the first and third persons of the Blessed Trinity, the former represented as an aged man, raising the right hand in benediction. Long rays of light shoot out to the left and right from the Dove, the source also of the downward pointing rays which still remain in the original picture. The bower of roses extends further to left and right, and the peony plant at the back of the bench is much larger and bears three flowers. The foreground is full of wild strawberries and other wild flowers, while a slender plant of columbine rises on the left and a tall Madonna lily on the right, with a clump of iris behind it, nearer to the bench. The whole of the Virgin’s mantle and robe are seen, the ends of the drapery being spread out over the grass and flowers. The abundance of these must have added greatly to the charm of the original picture in its pristine beauty, and would counteract the severity of the impression which it now makes on the spectator. Neither Mary nor the Child has a nimbus, and the birds, which give a pleasing variety to the background of the Colmar pic- ture, are omitted. The Virgin’s mantle and outer robe are red, the inner robe blue. The 237 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS little picture has the value and interest of a rare document, by which the original extent and appearance of the picture at Colmar, now mutilated, may be conjecturally restored. This painting has been reproduced at least twice before, on a small scale and indis- tinctly, in collotype, in “Kunst und Alterthum in Elsass-Lothringen ” by Dr. F. X. Kraus, and much better in the “Klassischer Bilderschatz ” edited by Reber and Bayers- dorf, 111 No. 332, where it is attributed without question to Schongauer. Kraus also believed the picture to be a repetition of the Colmar “Madonna” by Schongauer him- self; he quotes, however, the opinion of Scheibler, who regarded it as a copy. Campbell Dodgson Martin Schongauer, the most renowned painter of Southern Germany in the latter half of the fifteenth century, unlike his contemporaries in Cologne and Holland, was not only a painter, but also an engraver on copper. Through his engravings he spread his message far beyond the confines of his native country, and sowed the seed which in Diirer was to bring forth the richest fruits. The engravings have been preserved, whilst most of the paintings were destroyed by the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century. The former, executed with much care and with admirable skill, and attributed to him mainly on account of the initials “ M. S.,” form the basis for the study of his art. So that any criticism of the few paintings of the Schongauer school in existence must be founded on these engravings. Owing to the differences in the signatures it has been possible to arrange the engravings chronologically, thus tracing the development of Schongauer’s technique and style. (Schongauer signs the “M” [Martin] in his earlier works with parallel vertical strokes, but later in a slanting direction.) There is now, however, not a single picture showing the genuine signature of Schongauer. But by general consent, “The Madonna in the Rose Garden,” which is said to have been executed in 1473, is recognized as his greatest and most important painting. The little picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, which, until a few years ago, belonged to Prof. Sepp, of Munich, is probably a contemporary copy of this Colmar “Madonna.” Great importance, from an art-historical point of view, should be attached to the fact that Schongauer’s beautiful composition is here revealed in its entirety, while the painting at Colmar is unfortunately cut down on all sides, especially at the top where the half figure of the Almighty is altogether lacking. It has often been remarked that the “Madonna in the Rose Garden,” like several engravings in similar style, dating from Schongauer’s younger days, bears close relationship to early Netherlandish art. The type of the Madonna reminds one of the works of Rogier van der Weyden. A painting by this Brussels master, formerly in the possession of the Carmelite sisters at Brussels, shows two angels crowning the Madonna with a diadem of stars. This painting, which has disappeared, may possibly have inspired the master from Colmar. Schongauer evidently took great pains in executing the luxuriant foliage behind his Madonna. This garden motive was not unfamiliar to the lower German or the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century, and the Cologne masters delighted to represent the home of the Mother of God as a rose garden. In similar surroundings, although less luxuriantly depicted than by Schongauer, a master of Bruges, who also seems 238 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS to have gathered ideas from Rogier, paints a Madonna — in the year 1473 — for the middle part of a triptych, now in the museum at Sigmaringen. With the exception of a few small pictures, almost miniature-like in their style, in the museums at Berlin, Vienna and Munich, modern critics have identified scarcely a single painting as the actual work of Schongauer. Dr. MaxJ. Friedlander In marked contrast with the school of Cologne, idealistic and mystical, absorbed in a celestial dream which blossomed forth in gentle, angelic figures, but by reason of this very idealism falling often into the faults of insipidity and conventionality, the school of the Upper Rhine, in the fifteenth century, allowed itself to be affected by the wave of naturalism flow- ing in from Flanders ; and became more diligent in the study and rendering of Nature. Martin Schongauer is the most famous and best representative of that school, and because of the purity of his sentiment and richness of his poetic imagination, he was in his day the most admired among the German painters and engravers. There remain, it is true, very few paintings which can with positive certainty be attributed to him, and his fame rests prin- cipally upon his engravings; one must not forget, however, as Hans Janitschek aptly pointed out in his fine “History of German Painting,” that the wars of the Reformation and the Revolution of 1789 raged with peculiar violence in Alsace, and destroyed a great number of works of art. Like Differ later, Martin Schongauer began by studying his father’s art, and subse- quently took painting lessons in the studio of his fellow-countryman, Gaspard Isenmann, who had just executed (1462) for the great altar of the Church of Saint Martin at Colmar, several paintings, realistic in sentiment, almost harshly so, and impregnated through and through with the Flemish technique. He finally completed his education, as artists most commonly did, by a journey, with the purpose of study in foreign lands. Flanders, with the prestige of its wealth and the reputation of its schools of painting, was the natural destination, and it is presumed that the young artist went there and remained for some length of time. Did he, as has been generally reported, meet Rogier van der Weyden? It is doubtful, for the master of Memling died in 1464; the influence, however, of his grave and tender art is clearly discernable in the charming 1 ‘Madonna in the Rose Bower” of Colmar, painted probably in 1473. There has been much discussion as to the authenticity of this work, but it is to-day no longer contested by the majority of art historians. Muntz and Bayersdorfer, among others, make this painting the basis for the discussion of other paint- ings by Schongauer. At first glance one is tempted to take it for the work of a Flemish artist; everything in it betrays the immediate influence of Flanders, the structure of the Vir- gin’s face, closely related to the faces by Rogier van der Weyden, the careful and minute rendering of detail ; but, upon a narrower inspection, the character of the drawing reminds one likewise of the school of Cologne, of which we are further reminded by the gold back- ground, dear to the old German painters. And if one has in mind the master’s origin and education, one cannot but find it natural that this youthful work should bear traces of both influences. It is neither the most original nor the most perfect of the works attributed to 239 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Schongauer, but it surpasses them all in respect to one quality which takes the place of many others; charm, sovereign charm, a charm made up of tenderness, freshness and purity. It is a composition full of idyllic grace. The Virgin, with her head slightly bowed and pen- sive, holding the Child Jesus upon her arm, her long hair flowing upon her mantle, is seated upon a bench among the flowers, in front of a trellis wreathed with roses, among which birds are fluttering and singing, while two little angels, in long floating robes, hold above her head a magnificent crown of jewel work. The ideal beauty of the Madonna’s features, a beauty which Schongauer more than any other German painter of the fifteenth century sought to evoke — the gentle and vaguely sorrowful expression of her face, the richness and the poetic quality of the composition, the felicitous commingling of living reality and super- natural ideal, make this painting one of those rare works before which the spectator stands in silent admiration, and the charm of which, once felt, can never be forgotten. The free replica owned by Mrs. Gardner, which comes from Dr. Sepp’s fine collection of early German paintings, has in one respect an advantage over the original at Colmar, and offers a point of special interest relating to the history of that work — it is completer, and leads one to suppose that the larger picture may have been originally more important than it is now. The picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, larger in both dimensions, not only shows the whole of the Virgin’s mantle and robe, which in the panel at Colmar are cut, but it shows, besides, all around the Virgin a profusion of plants and flowers of the most finished execution: peonies, strawberry vines, gladioli, a tall full-blown lily, adding to the rose- hedge (from which, in this version, the birds have flown), the joy of their varied colors and, one might add, the illusion being so complete — of their fragrance. Dominating the whole composition, God the Father, seen in the sky in the midst of a glory, above the Dove of the Holy Ghost, blesses the Virgin and her Son, who in this copy have no aureoles. Such are the outward differences between the two works ; for the remainder, the likeness is absolute. It is possible, judging from the quality of the workmanship, that we may have here a con- siderably later copy of the Colmar picture. Bayersdorfer, however, believed it to be an authentic replica, although, he said, it had been much restored. F. X. Kraus is of the same opinion, and holds that the work belongs to Schongauer’s last, which is to say, his best period. Auguste Marguillier “PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE” T HIS is one of the few among the many existing panels ascribed to Giotto that can justify their attribution to his brush. Although it is impossible to fix the exact date of its execu- tion, this panel bears certain evidences of being a work of the earlier period of Giotto’s activity, painted at a time when he had not yet attained to that full development of form, that security of draughtsmanship and broadness of effect to be found in his Paduan and later works. Of the genuine existing panel-pictures of the master, the two paintings at Munich (Nos. 981 and 983), representing the “Crucifixion” and the “Last Supper,” are those with which it has the closest affinities. Still, despite certain similarities to these works, I should place it 240 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS at a date considerably in advance of either. Giotto has twice treated this same subject of the “Presentation" in fresco— in the Lower Church at Assisi and in the Arena Chapel at Padua. These two frescoes are separated by a considerable period of time and an even greater difference in style. The first was painted hardly later than 1300, probably before that time; the second hardly before 1306 or J307. A comparison will show that the panel has points in common with both. In the matter of composition it is almost identical with the fresco at Padua, even to the charmingly naturalistic motive of the Child turning from Simeon towards its Mother, a motive which for ease and truth of action is most happily carried out in Mrs. Gardner s picture. Nevertheless, although in its concise simplicity of ai rangement the little panel would appear to have more in common with the fresco at Padua than with the earlier and, for Giotto, somewhat overcrowded composition at Assisi, a more detailed examination shows a considerable difference in style. The relative gracility of the figures, as compared with the broader and heavier forms in the Paduan fresco, clearly points to a priority of execution. In this respect, as well as in the style of draperies, it displays a closer relation to the painting at Assisi. I would, therefore, for these and other reasons, place it somewhere in the period elapsing between the execution of the two fresco-paint- ings, and certainly before what is known as his Paduan period. F. Mason Perkins Small panel pictures by Giotto are of such extreme rarity that this must be considered one of the greatest glories of Mrs. Gardner's Collection. That it is Giotto’s design, is made evident by comparing it with his treatment of the same theme in the Arena Chapel at Padua. Not only are the main lines of the composition similar in both, but the rather peculiar action of Anna’s right hand is exactly reproduced, while the Virgin’s hands are also in precisely similar pose and relative position. The differences between the two are, however, interest- ing, and of such a kind as to make it probable that Mrs. Gardner’s is the early version, a view already put forward by Mr. Mason Perkins. There is no doubt that the Paduan version is a grander and better articulated composition. Simeon, instead of leaning across the altar, whereby his figure is cut by the pillar of the baldaquino, has moved round in front to meet the Virgin, who also stands free of the altar; this arrangement avoids a certain cramped feeling that we have in Mrs. Gardner’s version. No doubt Giotto saw that the earlier design, though admirable on a small scale, could not be enlarged without these altera- tions. It was necessary to make the arrangement more grandiose and monumental, and with that there has come a change of mood which throws a light on Giotto’s extraordinary creative power, for by the slight changes he has introduced he has modified the whole con- ception so that the two pictures, though so closely allied, in fact are quite distinct in feel- ing. In the Paduan version, to suit the scale and the pictorial context, the scene has become one of solemn historical import, in which the idea of Christ’s dedication predomi- nates. Even the Christ Child himself seems conscious of the gravity of the ritual ; the movements of Simeon and the Virgin are large and majestic, while Anna is remote and awful as a Sybil. On the smaller scale of Mrs. Gardner’s picture, a more pleasing narrative vein was permissible, the feeling is more intimate and more tender. Simeon leaning upon 241 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the altar in a less restrained pose, seems almost to smile as the Child stretches out one hand to His Mother with an expression of purely human joy, while the other hand, with the indeterminate movements of babyhood, has strayed on to Simeon’s mouth. This latter movement shows just that keenness of observation and that rightness of feeling that we find in Giotto alone among the artists of his time, one might say of all time. There is here, therefore, no question of a free adaptation from the Paduan fresco by a pupil; it is a fresh and distinct creation inspired throughout by a different mood. It has, too, that vitality, that power of convincing us of the reality of the scene, which is peculiar to the master himself; nor do we know of another artist who could have conceived a figure of such exquisite and austere beauty as that of Anna. Giotto himself has created such another in the “Temperentia ” of the Arena Chapel. The difference in the architecture of the baldaquino in the two versions of the theme is interesting, and reinforces the theory of the comparatively early date of Mrs. Gardner’s picture. In the Paduan version the columns are thicker, and they support arches instead of an architrave, while the pediments are suppressed. That is to say, the tendency is throughout more towards the character of Gothic design. The baldaquino in Mrs. Gardner’s panel is just such a curious modification of classic forms as we find in the early frescoes of the Upper Church at Assisi. Indeed, we find just such a proportion of slender pillars to a long, low architrave, just such a pediment and an almost identical perforated roundel in the representation of the Roman temple of Minerva at Assisi, which occurs in the fresco repre- senting a young man spreading his robe on the ground before St. Francis. The brilliant yet sober harmony of the color, the firm and solid touch without any suggestion of harshness in the tonality of this picture, show what one may gather also from his “Cru- cifixion ” at Padua, that Giotto was as consummate a master of the tempera technique as he was of fresco. Roger E. Fry Like the Centaur of the legend who taught Achilles, Cimabue trained Giotto, in whose color we find the bloom of spring, and whose figures are incarnate with life. With him beauty breaks through the veil of medievalism, poetry finds its expression in art. It is sud- denly, and as if it were by magic, that the rigid conventions of art are vivified. In his works the Byzantine armor falls to the ground, and the figures standing out in bold relief from against the golden mosaic of the background live, move and are swayed by human passions. An infinitely gentler, more human spirit shows itself apparent in his Virgins, in his joyous angels and in his Christ dying on the cross, as well as in the young monk of Assisi extending his holy hand towards his brethren as if to caress all created things. The soul, shining through the body, irradiates all his work, and if the outward form is still primitively simple, the soul is all the better revealed. If the instrument has not yet attained perfection, its chords vibrate with every human emotion. Dante and Giotto mark the death throes of medievalism and the glorious birth of the new Art. But unlike Dante, Giotto the ex-woolcomber, had no great forerunners on whom to model his work. The way had not been opened for him as it had been for the poet. 242 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Before his time there had been a few timid attempts, a few barely initiated changes, to pro- duce less hardened rigidity of outline, less conventional lineaments, softer and clearer flesh tints, pupils less fixed. It was Giotto, expressing himself with absolute simplicity and sincere humility, who freed Italian painting from its old yoke, and shook off its immobile, dogmatic uniformity. Dante had the wisdom which fathomed the past; he was the philosopher who united Science and Religion, Mythology and History, Politics and Art. Giotto found spiritual poesy in the Christian legends and in the Gospel. He went no further for his inspiration than the sacred traditions of his own tongue, the oft-repeated prayers of past generations, the affect- ing psalmodies of the Church. If they met, as tradition asserts, the poet-painter must have rejoiced in the painter-poet. To represent the truth and the ideals of life by art was common to both, and the poet who had drunk deep of the cup of life must have felt the link of brotherhood for the seeming recluse hidden behind monastery and chapel walls. During the whole of the thirteenth century the representative arts were inspired by Giotto and Dante. And later, when the representative arts found more perfect expression, the two minds still controlled the spirit of the age, purifying, rekindling and elevating it. The “Presentation in the Temple,” nowin Mrs. Gardner’s collection, is a simplified version, somewhat earlier, of the similar composition in the Oratory of the Scrovegni in Padua. In both compositions the figures are gathered around a ciborium, which is symbolic of the Temple where originally the ceremony took place. The ciborium in the Paduan pic- ture is formed of four spiral columns, surmounted by rounded arches, above which is a cornice supporting a pyramid with a square base. The ciborium in Mrs. Gardner’s picture is rectangular in plan, and has four slender columns joined by an ornamented architrave. Triangular tympana, ornamented with rose openings of Gothic tracery, rise on all four sides above the architraves, and the roof of pyramidal form ascends between them. This form of ciborium, with its decorated architraves and rose tracery, more nearly approaches Giotto’s style at the time when he painted in the Upper Church of Assisi St. Francis walk- ing over the mantle of the Assisian, than to his later Paduan period. Moreover, the drawing of the figures bears greater resemblance to those of Giotto at Assisi than to those at Padua; it is grander and more simple. The picture may be considered as a study for the fresco at Padua. The Child is similarly held in Simeon’s arms, and points with His right hand towards the Mother, who lovingly holds out her arms to Him. Simeon, in appearance like Jove, with a long beard and long hair falling in classical lines on his shoulders, gazes at the Child intently, satisfied to look at the Son of God ere his eyes close in death. His own greatness is evident from the power of his gaze and the vigor of his attitude. Mary, as in the Paduan painting, holds out her arms anxiously to take back the Child. Anna the Seer, enveloped in her mantle, displays the prophetic scroll. In the Paduan picture she is more inspired, more exalted with the spirit of prophecy, but Joseph, who carries the doves, is less convincing. The absence in Mrs. Gardiner’s picture of the angel seen above Anna’s head in the other work, goes to prove that the completer Paduan picture belongs to a later period in the chronolgy of Giotto’s works. This is also evident from the presence of 243 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Salome, who is filled with wonder at Simeon’s utterances concerning the Child, that He would be the light of all nations and the glory of Israel. If additional proof be needed, the more highly decorated altar, the more ample folds of the drapery and the larger proportions of the heads show that the Paduan fresco belongs to a later period than the picture in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, making the latter of the greatest value in the study of the master’s development. Adolfo Venturi The number of genuine panel pictures by Giotto, the founder of the purely national school of Italian art, is surprisingly small ; there are only two, Mrs. Gardner’s little picture, and the great altar-piece which was once the central ornament of the old basilica of St. Peter in Rome, but which now, dismembered, disfigured and time-stained, has been rele- gated to a badly lighted baroque sacristy. None of the other panel pictures attributed to the great Florentine master are authenticated either by stylistic or documentary evidence. The examples ascribed to him in the National Gallery, in the Louvre, in the Florentine, Bolognese and other great European collections, have no right to such an honor ; and, if judged by the standard set by undoubted originals, sink to the level of school pieces, that is to say to a class of pictures of which almost every collection can boast examples, and of which the number and quality are in inverse proportions. The fame of Giotto, paramount in his own time, sung by Dante and proclaimed by Vasari, rests to-day on tradition, and on the merits of his great frescoes in Padua, Assisi and Florence. Those at Assisi are the best preserved, and are, therefore, the fittest touch-stones by which the authenticity of other attributions may be tested. The works of Giotto are distinguished from those of his pupils and imitators by the statuesque dignity and repose of the figures, by the harmonious equilibrium of the com- positions, and by a method of presentment in which simplicity and veracity unite to pro- duce a poignant impression of reality; but, above all, by the dramatic handling of the sub- ject matter, by depth of insight into the springs of human action, by eloquence of gestures, by nobility of facial types, and by the tenderness and force with which human emotion is rendered. Details are painted delicately, ‘con amore;’ especial care is bestowed on the arrangement of draperies which are exceedingly simple, and commonly fall in long parallel folds arranged with intentional reference to the structure of the figure and to the expres- sion of movement. Giotto’s mode of conceiving the human body is peculiar and personal ; the trunks of his figures are massive, and in his earlier works tend to be thick-set, the arms short, the hands sensitive and disproportionately small ; the backs of the heads, if judged by the canons of Greek art, are too small with reference to the faces, a racial pecu- liarity which still distinguishes the people of Central Italy. It is also important to note that, although the linear perspective of his time was arbitrary (its foundation on a scientific basis being the work of a later century), Giotto’s buildings do not strike the modern eye as grotesque or impossible; nor do they torment one with the impression too often produced by the work of his imitators of architectural accessories, which are chiefly remarkable by their bad drawing. 244 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS These stylistic peculiarities, which characterize all his undoubted works, occur in the little easel picture representing the “Presentation;” and concurring with its high level of quality, testify to its authenticity. The prophet Simeon holds the Child over the altar, behind him stands the prophetess Anna, characterized as a seer by the nimbus which encircles her head and by the written scroll in her hand. Clearly the event represented is the recognition of the Child as the long-prophesied Saviour by two devout Jews, “who looked for the redemption.” The genealogy of this picture is long, the chain which, stretching across a thousand years binds it to its classic prototype, is unbroken. But, though Giotto has retained the ancient pictorial formula, he has informed it with a new spirit. The inspiration of the early Christian composition was mystic and hieratic, but Giotto, the friend of Saint Francis of Assisi, conceived the scene realistically, as something of tender and awful import which actually occurred. The altar which occupies the center of Mrs. Gardner’s picture is significant. In the early Christian prototype of this composi- tion in which, according to the received classical convention the direct realistic representa- tion of architectural backgrounds was not permitted, it represented the Altar of Sacrifice, and served to localize the scene as taking place in the atrium of the Temple. But the stone table here covered by a fair linen cloth and over-shadowed by a Gothic baldaquino, was certainly not meant by Giotto for the Old Testament sacrificial altar at which animals were slaughtered. It is an unmistakable reproduction of the altar familiar to fourteenth century Christians which was the central accessory of their religious ritual, and of which many examples still survive in early Italian churches. (In Venice, in S. Marco, in Rome, in Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, in San Lorenzo, in San Paolo, in the Lateran, in Ravenna, in San Apol- linare in Classe, to mention a few only of the many examples scattered over the Penin- sula.) Neither is it emblematic of the Temple of Jerusalem. Giotto simply translated an inherited accessory, which the lapse of ages had rendered unintelligible, into the language of his own day. It was to him, as its classic prototype had been to its creator, the symbol of a holy place, which holy place figures in his post-medieval consciousness as a Gothic or Romanesque Church. Simeon holds the Child over the altar, a motive also inherited from a classical representation, one picturing the Circumcision, in which the thought of the blood of the Redeemer as doing away with the whole sacrifical system, as abolishing the spilling of the blood of animals, was present. The subject matter of Giotto’s panel is not the ritual- istic act, but the recognition of the Redeemer by two divinely inspired and expectant deni- zens of the Temple. The prophetess Anna raises her right hand in acclamation, in her left is a scroll on which words are inscribed but which the artist has not thought necessary to render intelligible, probably because the significance of the time-honored formula was too well known to require verbal elucidation. But in the representation of the same subject at Padua the words are clearly inscribed: “CL M. [quoniam] in isto erit redemptio seculi.” In Giotto’s little picture in Boston, the inherited hieratic formula is retained, but it is illumined by the humanistic spirit of the thirteenth century, and the incident is conceived in a spirit of tender and reverent naturalism. The baby laying one hand in childish insou- ciance on Simeon’s mouth as a ‘point d’appui’ and stretching the other in longing and 245 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS confidence towards its Mother, occupies a central position between its hieratic prototype and later “Circumcisions,” in which, in accordance with the realistic tendencies of the early Renaissance, the actual operation is the central point of interest. (We speak of such pictures as the Signorelli, or the so-called Giovanni Bellini of the National Gallery.) It is difficult to give it a precise date, for, as is well known, none of Giotto’s works are signed or dated ; nor, with two exceptions, are literary or historical data at hand from which conclusions may be drawn. The pictures themselves, however, to those who have learned their language are their own genealogical table, for the processes of Giotto’s artis- tic evolution are clear, the phases through which it passed, evident. The comparative analysis of the pictures yields approximate dates. Such a course of study is invaluable, moreover, as a disciplinary training, for it gives birth to a sense of intimate qualities of charm and style, unerring outer witnesses to the inner man. We know of no less than three pic- tures out of the few surviving specimens of the art of the greatest master of the fourteenth century, the subject matter of which is the recognition of Christ as the Messiah by Simeon and Anna; that is, the two frescoes of Padua and Assisi and the panel picture at Bos- ton. These three compositions differ so widely in style that it is evident that each was executed at a period separated from the other by a considerable lapse of time. They thus give a wide basis for the comparative study of the evolution of Giotto’s art. They share certain formal peculiarities. The center of each of the three pictures is the altar with Simeon and Anna on the right and the Virgin and Joseph on the left. The conception and pose of these figures varies but slightly; the Virgin, least of all; she is pictured throughout as erect, veiled, and with both hands outstretched to receive the Child, behind her is Joseph, a subordinate being, carrying doves. Simeon gives the Child, whom he holds in his arms, to the Virgin. Anna is conceived as a God-inspired seer. These features are com- mon to the three renderings; the nucleus of the composition is, therefore, invariable; the last picture differs formally from the first, only in that it is enriched by accessories, both human and architectonic, and in that it is on a higher poetic and artistic level. The artist’s power of expression is intenser, his technical skill greater, his sense of beauty, of propor- tion, of rhythm, finer, and his understanding of the human soul profounder. These points are most convincingly proved by analysis of detail. In the representa- tion at Padua the subject is reduced to its barest elements. The figures, though psychologi- cally noble, are squat, thick-set and plebeian in structure ; the draperies fall in heavy and inexpressive masses ; Simeon’s hair is wig-like, its deep parallel undulations seem carved in wood; Anna’s exaggerated gestures are peasant-like. In Mrs. Gardner’s easel picture the figures are taller, their structure finer, their gestures at once more expressive and more dis- ciplined. The Virgin’s face is deeply felt, the drawing and movement of the Child are admirable, Simeon’s face and the drawing and texture of the silken meshes of his hair are of admirable delicacy. In the third picture the original simple theme is so enriched and refined that at first sight it is hardly recognizable. Twelve persons are solemnly grouped about the high altar as if assisting at a high festival ; the figures are still slighter, the dra- peries richer, their folds more broken and expressive, the gestures more individual, the 246 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS heads of very tender expression and execution. But on examination it will he found that the central group is little changed. Comparison of the architectonic accessories of these three scenes reveals the same growth of the artist's sense of beauty. The baldaquino of the Paduan fresco is a relic of clumsy medieval classicism ; its spiral columns are of clumsy proportions with unpleasantly small capitals; its spandrels are heavy, and its pyramidal cover singularly tasteless. In the little easel picture this awkward structure has given place to an airy Gothic canopy, with aspiring columns, flower-like capitals, which support a gabled Gothic superstructure with broken lines, rich chromatic inlayings, a structure which harmonizes agreeably with the taller figures and more vital gestures of the persons pictured. Ten years may well separate the execution of these two important accessories, one of which is more primitive in conception than the other. It is difficult to believe that so deep-seated and significant a change of taste could have been accomplished in a shorter time. The third in the series is the altar and architectural background of the fresco of the Lower Church of S. Francis in Assisi. The baldaquino is absent here, but the role played by its upspring- ing lines is filled by the slim columns of the Gothic buiding in which the scene takes place. The progressive evolution of these compositions is toward realism. In the Paduan picture there is no trace of any desire to represent an interior ; the altar conveys the neces- sary information, it localizes the scene to a spectator ‘ au courant ' with a certain classic convention, and this done, it has served its purpose. In the fresco of Assisi the artist aimed, not at expressing an idea, but at picturing a scene, at reproducing a complex visual impression ; it is to the eye-sight and not to the intelligence that he consciously appeals. In the Paduan picture, Giotto is the gifted barbarian heir of classic tradition, in the Franciscan fresco he is the progenitor of naturalistic European art. Mrs. Gardner's panel occupies a central position between these two modes of representation. Small four- teenth century easel-pictures of the type of this panel were usually parts of altar-pieces, of which Giotto is known to have executed not a few; together with two or three others of similar size, it probably formed the predella of some such monumental piece of eccle- siastical furniture; but nothing of its early history is known. Neither are there any indi- cations pointing to its connection with any particular town. Dr. Jean Paul Richter “PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN” P ETRARCH left by will to his friend, Francesco da Carrara, a small Madonna by Giotto, with the remark that few were able to appreciate its beauty. He meant, I think, not that people generally are blind to the beauty of art, but that this picture offered especial difficulties. Very likely he would not have used the same language of a lovely panel by Simone Memmi. And, in fact, there is an art too austere to charm, whose grave appeal escapes the average untrained person. Thus it is easier to care greatly for Memmi than for Giotto, for Angelico than for Piero della Francesca, for Reynolds than for Hogarth, for Duran than for Degas. Before the noble portrait here reproduced from the original in Mrs. Gardner's collection, even a veteran may feel with the joyful recognition of a masterpiece a 247 v THE CRITICAL ESSAYS moment of repulsion. This woman is disquieting. For what is she adorned in all the folds of stiff silks and glittering jet ? How strangely an almost sullen discontent contrasts with the milieu— a Third Empire dressing-room with the suggestion of the most ugly and expensive luxury. An inferior painter would have forced this note and called the canvas “World Weary.” An artist of the exquisite sort, an Alfred Stevens, would have surrounded her with a penumbra of beautiful color until in the splendor of the cage one lost the bird. Either treatment the man in the street would measurably understand and like. But here, to his confusion, this woman sits, emphatically herself, a little formidable, and distinctly to be reckoned with. So he reckons with her quite simply by calling her ugly. This per- plexity, wherein does it consist? Is not the real grievance against a chef-d’oeuvre of this character that the painter has only made one see, whereas, most of us wish to be told as well what to feel? Generally the painters leave us in no doubt, they laugh at their own joke and weep at their own tragedy with melodramatic ingenuousness. But this woman of Degas’, she is terribly unexplained. Far from knowing how to feel about her, we may hardly divine how he felt as he traced these admirable contours. Having addressed our eye in a language whose exquisite precision may be grasped only after long attention, he assumes that we have minds and hearts with which we may render judgment or accord sympathy. In this the artist does most of us too much honor, for the task of judgment remains an uncomfortable one. Where is to be found one clue? A tear, a hint of a smile, would have helped marvelously. Yet before Degas is dismissed as a heartless person, a technician merely, the picture itself should be consulted. One does not lay such lines upon canvas without emotion. Follow the oval of the face. It searches the firm contours of bone and muscle with the authority of bronze, and tells of the softness of the skin. Mark also the drawing of the eyelids; it is as merciless as an engraver’s line, yet as mobile as life itself. Such delicious passages as the mouth, modeled with the utmost simplicity, and the ear with its lovely curve re-inforced by the hair and opposed by the firm arches of the eye- brows, and hands clasped in a languid tension like that of the face itself, are apparent to all who can see. In this respect of the metier, then, there can be no difference of opinion, it is painting of the most masterly sort. Ingres might, perhaps, have drawn the head, he could never have set the whole figure so justly in the diffused light of a Parisian interior, nor could he have handled, even tolerably, the wide contrast between the black of the gown, the red brocade and the yellow hangings. Once the sheer mastery of the thing is estab- lished, the question of our likings or dislikings becomes at once less important and more insistent. The portrait becomes a challenge to our taste and intelligence, and, as it were, their test. I find, myself, something wholly admirable in the detachment which such a picture evinces in its creator. Respecting his sitter, he deliberately puts aside all that may obscure his vision. I take it that for long periods Degas waived all curiosity and conscious sym- pathy for this human soul, and set himself simply to realizing the latent beauties of the body. Here must have intervened an extraordinary labor of selection. A hundred forms must have been discerned and rejected before he discovered the specific beauty of the defiant 248 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS mouth and the noble lines of the lids that veil inward seeing eyes. Some happy intuition may have led him to the pose which makes the head rhythmical, but the slightest change would have destroyed an apparent pre-established harmony of minute composition. Simi- larly, I believe, the appealing lassitude of the figure, caparisoned for some kind of battle, but already wearied, was first felt quite simply in terms of the weight and thrust of an alert body in a chair. In fine, while giving to a negligent eye, merely the data of a portrait with almost photographic fidelity, Degas has, out of his own stock of beautiful forms, enhanced every detail his hand has executed. The result is the woman herself, thrust upon us, how- ever, with an especial poignancy, with that peculiar and clarifying emphasis which is the very essence of artistic creation. That is, Degas has not, with the painter of charm (against whom I hold no brief), given us a woman vaguely individualized and distinguished merely by the sentiment she has aroused in the artist; he has rather, with the painters of power, given us an extraordinary synthesis, as if his brush really had the faculty of creating nerves and muscles under the peculiar nervous charm that went to make this woman — her very effect upon the eye with all its disquieting implications to the mind. A creative work of this scope always is a little terrifying, and it takes trained minds to live with this sort of terribilit£. Few people precisely like Piero’s “Bella Isotta,” and only a very thoughtless ticket-holder to Mrs. Gardner's Venetian Palace, will find Degas’s lady ‘just lovely.’ Its beauty is eminently aristocratic; you see the kinsfolk of this woman on Pisanello’s medals. Her beauty, moreover, rests upon a profound faith in truthful interpre- tation. Like the Parnassian poets, Degas, and all who have seen the world in his fashion, believes that what is characteristic of any object can hardly fail to be beautiful. A certain elation of the mind in discovering the sign manual of any object will infallibly express itself in beautiful line and color as in beautiful words and rhythms. If the Parnassians relatively broke down under the weight of their theory, it was because they should have been paint- ers or sculptors, not poets; the appeal of the word to the eye being inevitably defective. And when Degas finds his category, I believe he will be valued, not with the so-called Impressionists, but in a school by himself, which, while as old as Egyptian portraiture, may fairly be called Parnassian, because it is scornful of all formulas, even the most engaging, and finds its joys in the rendering of the characteristic through that severe delineation which Ingres declared to be the ‘probite de l’art.’ But our defiant woman, overburdened with some unadmitted care, in her Parisian dressing-room — what of her? There is no answer. Behold her as she sits and reckon with her as your mind and heart dictate. If you are unequal to the task, blame yourself or blame the woman; Degas has been neither her eulo- gist nor judge, but her painter. F. J. Mather, Jr. The date inscribed upon this canvas has a special significance. It is 1867, the year in which Ingres died. Degas was then but thirty-three, which is to say that he was still very far from being the man before whom the painters of an emancipated generation were to doff their hats. But it is obvious that this portrait was executed at a time when French art was once more in the melting pot, and that the author of it was destined to exercise a com- 249 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS manding influence upon the direction taken by that art on its emergence into the changed conditions of a new epoch. In it he looked both ways, loyally toward the past — the past of Ingres — and fearlessly into the future, which he was to make his own. Yet I do not believe that he was conscious of as rigid a line of demarcation between the two as we are disposed to infer existed. It is natural for those who come upon the scene of an historic conflict, long after the sounds of warfare have died away, to assume that the issue at stake must have been so sharply drawn as to render all parley between the opposing forces im- possible. Degas justifies this view of the chapter in the annals of art with which he was identified, in so far as he, with true revolutionary spirit, looked at the material of picture making in the sixties with eyes very different from those of the Academicians he sought to overthrow. He could not see it as Ingres saw it. He tried for a time painting the classical subjects which the latter loved, and he soon found that they did not suit his frame of mind. But in the midst of the fracas, in the midst of all that din which attended the break-up of the classical tradition and the establishment of the individual as distinguished from the school as the only legitimate giver of criteria, he remembered that, after all, Ingres was a great artist. One of the few things known about Degas, who has always had a way of keeping himself to himself, is that he remembers it still. To what purpose? The answer lies in every one of his works, but in few of them is it to be found so interestingly stated as in this portrait in Mrs. Gardner’s collection, a landmark signalizing a transitional point in French painting. It relates in the first place to the whole question of what portraiture shall be, an affair in which the artist himself, his method and his style, shall fill the foreground, or one in which the sitter shall be primarily considered. Ingres, for all his Olympian detachment when he was composing a picture, was solicitous for the evocation of a person- ality whenever he set about the making of a portrait. His preoccupation with the traits of his sitters comes out spontaneously in his superb drawing; it is clearly visible, though raised to a colder and more formal plane, in paintings like the “ Bertin " of the Louvre, the “Madame Rividre” of the same museum, the “Madame de Senonnes" of Nantes, and the ' ' Granet, Architecte ” at Aix. It is this fidelity to the character of his subjects which Degas also seems to have made one of his guiding principles. It might be argued that he has been truthful in portraiture as he has been truthful in the delineation of ballet girls and race horses, or even, as in at least one memorable instance, of a pedicure at work in the bed- room of a child; in other words, that his subject means nothing to him save a purely visual experience. But it is one of the safe-guards of the dignity of portraiture that the artist who works within his field in this cynical spirit cannot help betraying himself; he may give us brilliant technique, but the veriest layman sees that something, and that an essential, is lack- ing. Now the example of Degas in Mrs. Gardner's collection is, first and foremost, a por- trait, a painting brimming over with the charm of a humanized work of art. I do not know who the lady was, but that does not diminish in the slightest measure the force of the appeal which she makes to the beholder, so quietly, with such an air of being sure of herself and her ‘monde.’ Degas answers to her mood. He does not visibly play the seer, searching the human heart to its depths, unlocking mysteries and altogether 250 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS taking the opportunity to make a great show of psychological insight; he places no accent on what he has discerned in his sitter’s nature, but leaves it to speak for itself. If he had another “ Mona Lisa” to paint would he exhibit Leonardo’s mysticism in painting her? If by some unheard-of concatenation of events another Farnese Pope were to arise and sit before him would he use the almost tragic power with which Titian made his triple portrait at Naples, as moving a record of Italian history as a page out of old Italian literature? 1 doubt it. If there is anything problematic about his subject he disdains to force a clue upon us. Rather does he seem willing, like Matthew Arnold, to ‘ step aside and let humanity decide.’ The delightful thing about this portrait of his, to my mind, is its absolute candor and simplicity, its representation of a figure such as any of us might have known, precisely as any of us might have seen her in her own home, with no histrionic gesture to spoil her aspect of placid reticence, with no teasing accessories to transform her accustomed milieu into a ‘ scheme ’ arranged to reflect, not her temperament, but the artist’s. If this seems a trifling achievement, reflect for a moment on the effort of the average modern painter, and that of many a man above the average, to give his sitters distinction by inventing effective attitudes for them, and by manipulating their surroundings into picturesque relations. It will be seen at once that the sincerity of Degas in this matter is as rare as it is beautiful. He aligns himself through his exercise of it, not simply with Ingres, but with Rembrandt, Hol- bein, Hals and Velasquez, to say nothing of a hundred Italians, who showed that simple truth is, indeed, at the foundation of all great art. But while this portrait is unquestionably entitled to be mentioned in the same breath with the works of the Old Masters, it remains a modern production in its very grain. The rectitude of Ingres — a famous attribute with the great classicist — embraced, as we have seen, the feeling for a sitter’s individuality, the subordination of effect to respect for truth, which the Degas portrait so eloquently pro- claims, but it consisted even more specifically in impeccable draughtsmanship, and there the link between the two men is of high importance. It is important for the illustration it gives of one master drawing inspiration from another without the smallest sacrifice of his own principles — the true secret of continuity in art. What makes this portrait so vivid a lesson to the student of styles is the sobriety with which it marks the transition from the old school to the new. No violent change is suggested. Ingres has been painting in one way, the new-comer paints in another, portraiture is being metamorphosed beneath our eyes, yet the “Madame de Senonnes” and Mrs. Gardner’s picture could be hung side by side, and they would not jar. Only it would be impossible to avoid noticing in the pres- ence of the two that the men who made them conceived of form and interpreted it in radi- cally different ways. Ingres saw it in a kind of dry light, clean cut in contour as a piece of sculpture, and he expressed himself, thereupon, even when working in color, in the terms of the pencil. Degas has seen form in nature’s own light, he has seen it modified, almost transmogrified, by what we call, for want of a better word, atmosphere, and while the line of Ingres survives in him, it is a line enriched with nervous force, and made wonderfully flexible. But Degas expresses himself, even when working in black and white, in the terms of the brush. That is the great step that he stands for, that is the ideal that made him the 251 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS foe of the Academy while retaining his cult for the greatest of the Academicians. Other men, contemporaries of his, were working for the same end. Manet was even earlier in the field, and there are portraits of his, as there are portraits by Fantin-Latour, which, like the one now under consideration, record the opening of a new era, the substitution of free- dom for formula. But the genius of Manet was of rougher grain than that of Degas, Fan- tin-Latour, on the other hand, though generously gifted, was an artist of less weight, and Degas remains unique in that he was as useful as they were in liberating art from its Acade- mic shackles, and at the same time carried on into the new movement what was best in the old, its purity and strength of line. It is a little difficult to say which note is the more impressive in his portrait, the linear precision shown in the treatment of the face and hands, or the searching tenderness with which every nuance in the work is painted, so that the structure of the head and physiognomy is all of a piece, and the portrait has magnificent substance as well as outline, color and texture as well as form. Would it not be fairer to say that the greatness of the painting lies in its blending of the two principles? At all events it is of the homogeneity of the work that one thinks most, its air as of having been created from within, of having a kind of organic vitality. It is as real, as breathing a piece of portraiture as modern art has produced. It is as fine and as sure in draughtsmanship as a work of Ingres. It is painted as only a born painter, a man of the line of Velasquez and Hals, could have painted it. Virtues like these, meeting in such absolute unity, make a painting nothing less than a masterpiece. Royal Cortissoz While Degas, by his character, as well as by his achievements, occupies a commanding position in the history of nineteenth century French art, his work, bold and sober, evincing a thorough knowledge which connects directly with the great masters and their traditions, has been understood and appreciated by but few. If this solitary, scrupulous artist has long been reputed queer and intractable, that, I believe, comes from the fact that he never made concessions. Many of his sayings which seemed cruel were simply expressions of basic truths which he proclaimed aloud, but which others only dared whisper. Thus in Moliere’s play, Alceste, by his outspoken frankness, gives rise to many complications from which Philinte, by submitting to everyone and accepting even that of which he does not approve, escapes. Degas, with his integrity, the genuineness of his feelings and his ardent passion for truth, is a modern incarnation of Moli£re’s hero, the Misanthrope. To thoroughly understand and appreciate this admirable “Portrait of a Woman,” it is necessary to recall the artist’s origin. Born in New Orleans, of French parentage, Degas, coming to Europe very young, went at once to Italy to study the works of the masters. From the beginning he was a firm believer in drawing, (more than once he tried sculpture,) and Raphael, Michael Angelo, Signorelli, and Piero della Francesca in his superb decorations of Arezzo with their sculpturesque and definite line, influenced him most. About his twen- tieth year he came to Paris, frequenting the Louvre, where he made many copies from the Old Masters. A Parisian collector, M. H. Ronet, has, among others, a copy of Poussin’s “ L’Entevement des Sabines,” which is not a student’s sketch, but a superb replica of the 252 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS original. This choice of Poussin is an eloquent indication of his tendencies. It was in Paris that one day the young student, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Ingres, rang at the door of the master s studio. The old academician received him on the threshold, asking him briefly who he was and what he desired, and at the visitor’s request for advice, coun- selled him thus: “Study the masters constantly, sketch from nature, also from memory, and you will become an artist.” The counsel of Ingres was superfluous, but the young man had seen the master he admired, and that to him was a great satisfaction. The little fact has interest since Degas was to become the one among modern artists, who is, in spite of appearances, the direct successor of the great draughtsman and painter of “L’Apotheose d’Hom^re.” What gives Degas his strength and at the same time his originality is that in paintings of modern life he carries out the old traditions. It is because he is profoundly educated in the school of the great masters that he has grasped the infinite resources which the specta- cles of actual life present to the modern artist, from the point of view of movement, color and expression. His favorite subjects are scenes from theatrical life, from the ballet and the race course, and portraits. The portraits are of small size, simple of presentation, firm and compact in execution. Often they are but a head, almost filling the entire canvas, but occa- sionally we find the model surrounded by familiar objects. He painted Duranty, the art critic, surrounded by the books, whose multi-colored backs adorned the walls of his study. Notwithstanding its soberness of detail, the background of this “Portrait of a Woman” gives us a definite impression of a Parisian boudoir of the Second Empire. Apart from the mastery with which it is painted, this celebrated picture has a certain historical value as being one of the five pictures which Degas has exhibited at the Salon. The model was a young actress, whose name is without importance as it was never well known and is now entirely forgotten. The painter undertook the portrait to please her, but above all to paint a picture which would satisfy himself; but his model was so dissatisfied with the result that she left the canvas with him. While Degas does not disclose the slightest inclination to flatter his subjects in pre- senting them in the commonplace way and with that insipid, stereotyped, so-called ‘ele- gance,’ which makes portraits agreeable to the majority of people, it is difficult to imagine a more serious and careful work, and one which so definitely expresses a particular feminine personality. Why was it refused? It is quite possible to imagine that, although the great ladies of the Renaissance possessed a finer appreciation of artistic beauty than the majority of modern women, Mona Lisa was not satisfied with her portrait by Leonardo. We are speaking of the Gioconda, not without reason, since the subject of Degas’ picture, with her practical turn of mind, correct manners and evident care of her reputation is also, in her way, to us, a sphinx. From the headdress with its golden grapes, to the shawl which the artist, with an intelligent and capricious negligence, has left unfinished, she is propriety itself. Although we see at once that she is quite incapable of any deep feeling or enthu- siasm, she remains curiously interesting and enigmatical to us. Little given by nature to dreaming, she, nevertheless, moves us to speculation. What are her thoughts behind that almost placid and irreproachably conventional air and manner of hers? Should you wish to 253 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS know what that expression means, it would be useless to ask Degas, who would answer you as he did one of our friends, with one of his cutting and ironical smiles: “ 1 do not paint thought, 1 do not know what it is to paint thought. I only occupy myself with drawing, with outlines, and planes.” No more could one speak to him of the emotion he must have felt in realizing on canvas that precise personality; he would resent the word ‘emotion;’ but it would be worth while to see the mocking look that would accompany his answer. There surely is in this superb painting something which conquers and holds us, and that something is due, 1 believe, to the extraordinary pertinacity, the fierce absorption in his task, which in Degas amounts to a powerful, and, if one might so say, a dispassionate emotion. This fine precision which characterizes his work is essentially analytical and yet it is not cold. Unquestionably Degas’ absorption in firmness and accuracy is as intoxicating to him as lyric color and movement were to Hugene Delacroix, who, as many of his friends have told us, was absolutely carried away by his emotions when at work. Because a portrait so completely and perfectly carried out, shows in its masterly simplicity the most acute and intelligent spirit of observation, the fact that the model deprived herself of a masterpiece becomes all the more puzzling. Arsene Alexandre THE COLLECTION OF MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE BY MR KENYON COX THE COLLECTION OF MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE BY MR KENYON COX ARM1NGTON, in Connecticut, is a little, straggling New Eng- land town with tree-lined streets and an old, white painted wooden church with a singularly graceful spire — a town set among low hills in a pleasant country which is beautiful under its winter covering of snow, and must be otherwise, though perhaps not more beautiful in its summer garment of green. In this quiet village — for it is little more — stands a large, ram- bling, old-fashioned looking house with wide verandas and big, comfortable, low-ceiled rooms which contain a somewhat sur- prising treasure. There is no museum-like crowding of beautiful things, yet beautiful things are every- where; a few good pieces of old china here and there, Japanese prints, a Diirer engraving or two, etchings by Meryon and Haden and Whistler, and some thirty paintings of the most modern schools, choice works, selected with a fine discrimination and hanging well apart with a luxury of space that emphasizes their individual beauty. Even the bedrooms have each a picture or two chosen with an evident personal predilection and placed where they are that they may be enjoyed, not that they may be shown, though the stranger is cour- teously given every facility to inspect them. Whistler, Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Mary Cassatt, these are Mr. Pope’s favorite artists, and while there are many low-toned and sober canvases on his walls, and few examples of the extremer forms of Impressionism, yet the 257 THE COLLECTION OF general effect is of coolness and freshness and light, the paintings harmonizing admirably with the airy brightness of such a country house. Not all of Mr. Pope’s pictures, however, are of the same sort, and two in particular belong, by style, if not by date, to earlier schools— two little panels by Puvis de Chavannes and Honore Daumier, the one purely classic, the other as purely romantic. Puvis de Cha- vannes never did anything more successful in some respects than the “Peace” which, with its companion “War,” decorates the walls of the Musee de Picardie at Amiens, these two being the first of the long series of monumental compositions to which he devoted his life. Mr. Pope’s picture is a replica on a small scale of a part of this composition. It was proba- bly painted within a year or two of the completion of the original, and it, in its turn, seems to me to be in some ways finer than the larger work from which it is derived. Were its intrinsic qualities less notable than they are, it would still possess a great interest as mark- ing an early stage in the evolution of a commanding talent; but it is far more than an inter- esting picture — it is a work of great merit and great charm, consummate in its own manner, which is different from, not essentially inferior to, the later manner of the master. Its special virtues are such as largely disappeared from Puvis’s work to be replaced by others more fitted to his conception of mural art but not in themselves more valuable. It repre- sents him at the beginning of that series of eliminations which formed his definitive style and which only ceased with his life. When he painted his “War” and “Peace” Puvis de Chavannes was thirty-six or thirty-seven years of age, and had been working independently for ten years or more. His formal training had been of the slightest and his titular masters, Henri Scheffer and Cou- ture, had had little visible influence upon him. He had twice visited Italy and had educated himself by the study of the great masters, and by the effort to realize his own ideals. There seems to be very little known about the nature of those works which had been regu- larly rejected from the Salon from 1850 to 1859. They are described as ‘easel-pictures of many different types.’ Some blank panels in his brother’s country house ‘tempted him’ and he painted his first decorative works for them. An enlargement of one of them, called “Return from Hunting,” gained admittance to the Salon of 1859, and was followed two years later by the “War” and “Peace.” These pictures are quite unlike the later Puvis of the “Sainte G6nevi£ve” or the Sorbonne Hemicycle. They are somewhat crowded and even a little confused in composition, rather powerful in light and shade, strongly modelled, and drawn with an academic correctness surprising in an artist who had had so little sys- tematic schooling. They already show great decorative feeling but as mural paintings they are certainly less admirably effective than the later works of the master. On the other hand, they contain bits of painting that are finer, as such, than anything he did afterward, and individual figures of a grace only equalled by him in the works of the next few years. Their highest merits are merits of detail rather than of ensemble and therefore a fragment of them, such as this replica of Mr. Pope’s, loses little by its detachment from the whole of which it formed a part. The bit of the back and foot of a kneeling figure to the left would indeed be incomprehensible in an independent work, but otherwise this group, the 258 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE finest of the picture, fits well in its frame and is altogether pleasing in its division of space and harmony of line. It would be difficult to find in the later work of the painter a group which should so well lend itself to isolation. He was not yet the master of large and spacious composition which he was to become, and it is doubtful if this part of a decora- tion is not more thoroughly satisfactory in arrangement than the greater page from which it is detached. Certainly the beauty of the principal figure is the more striking from the lack of competition with the others which, in the larger work, have a nearly equal prominence, and this beauty is of a very high order. The extreme simplification of form, to which Puvis de Chavannes was led by his decorative bias and his preference of the total effect to the perfection of the parts, reached at times, in his old age, to negligence, so that he has frequently been accused, even by admirers, of an inability to draw. In such figures as this and some others painted in the next few years we have the proof that he was, in his younger days, not only a precise and competent academic draughtsman, but that much rarer thing, a master of rhythmic and significant line. One or two figures in the “Rest,” one or two in the “Ave Picardia Nutrix,” are perhaps even finer than this, and these few figures in his earlier work show a solidity of construction, a suppleness of flowing contour, a classic beauty of form and above all, a sense of style which make them comparable to the work of Ingres — almost to the work of Raphael. This blonde and robust creature who stands with her back turned towards us, her weight supported on one firmly muscled leg, while she reaches to the right for the basket of fruit offered her by one brawny lover, and turns her head to the left to look at another who empties his basket at her feet, is a splendid vision of primitive womanhood, and the lines of shoulder, back and hip, which are brought out by her somewhat complicated action are endlessly interesting and delightful to the eye. If this little picture is essentially classic in its reliance upon the modulation of studied line it is no less so in its technical method. It has less contrast of light and shade, I think, than the large decoration from which it is derived and less attempt at full modelling, in this resembling the “Work” and “Rest” which were, likely enough, the principal occupation of the artist at the time this panel was painted. There are almost no positive colors, but it is of a most agreeable tone and color, a tone of pale gold and ivory which makes one feel that the artist was a colorist as well as a draughtsman; in actual handling it might be an Ingres or an early Gerome. It is hard and smooth and very thin, the prepared surface of the panel barely covered with the lightest skin of pigment and each figure is all of a piece, as if a couple of tones had been mixed on the palette, one for the light and one for the shadow, and the figure painted in these without modification or variation, except in value. It is all translucent from the very thinness of the paint, but the shadow tones are gray and opaque in nature, not warm and transparent as with the old Flemish painters; yet in the evenness of surface there is much of that enamel-like charm which in their pictures tempts the touch. In the painting of the fruit and the flowering shrub which forms the background there is a certain soft liquidity which differs from anything else in the picture or in any other work of Puvis’s which I know. 259 PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, PIERRE CECILE 1824-1898 PEACE” Panel, height 15 inches, width 12 inches. Signed at left bottom: “ Puvis de Chavannes” HE important figure of this classical composition is a superb nude woman with her back turned toward the spectator. She is firmly poised on her right leg and with an easy, effortless gesture, is about to take the basket heaped with purple grapes, which a young man seated at her feet to the right, is lifting from his head. He also is nude, except for the white linen falling from the back of his head. Her head is turned to the left, towards another nude young man with dark flowing hair who kneeling down, looks upward at her while emptying various fruits out of a pouch. Above him and leaning against the trunk of a rose-bay tree in bloom is a figure whose head in profile to the left alone shows. To the right a partly draped woman coming towards the group is cut off by the panel and at the left is seen but a foot and a little of the back of another nude figure kneeling. This picture is an episode from the big canvas “Peace” (1861), which together with “War” (1861), “Work” (1863), “Rest” (1863), “Ave Picardia Nutrix” (1865), “Ludus pro Patria” (1880) and two small grisailles, “Vigilance” and “Fancy,” decorates the walls of the Mus6e de Picardie at Amiens. The paint is applied thinly, smoothly. The color gives a subdued but rich impression of pale gold and ivory. Bought of M. Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1 898. 260 BY MR KENYON COX The superficial contrast between such work and that of Puvis’s later years is very great. The change was neither all gain nor all loss, and when he had become the greatest of modern mural painters he could no longer produce small pictures which, as independent creations, should have quite the same penetrating charm. The other and still smaller panel of which I have spoken, though earlier in date, is of a later school, for while Puvis de Chavannes, in his early work, impresses one as a belated classicist, Honore Daumier is a pure romanticist of 1830. Every one knows Daumier as the bitter caricaturist whose lithographs, with their cruel power of drawing, are among the most valuable and necessary documents for the history of France in the first half of the nine- teenth century. It is only recently that we have begun to understand that he was also a painter of force and originality who produced, for his own amusement, a number of small pictures which are all marked by his strange fancy and terrible irony, and which have, besides, technical merits of a very considerable order. He lived almost to the age of seventy-one, but when he died, in 1 898, he had been blind for more than twenty years, and his artistic career lies entirely between the early thirties and the early fifties, and was ended before that of Puvis de Chavannes had fairly begun. Daumier has been thought, by some critics, to have exercised a direct influence upon Jean Francois Millet and, different as is the temper of the two artists, there is certainly a real analogy between their ways of seeing. Like Millet, Daumier seems never to have worked directly from nature, but to have made constant observations which he afterwards resumed in a highly generalized and abstract form. Richard Muther goes so far as to say of Millet that ‘precisely what constitutes his style,’ the great line, the simplification, the intelligent abstention from anecdotic trifles, ‘are things which he learned from Daumier.’ This is surely an inadequate account of the origin of Millet’s grand manner, but it throws a light upon the quality of Daumier’s art — an art which has even been compared to that of Michel- angelo, for it is recorded that when Daubigny first saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he exclaimed: ‘That looks as if it had been done by Daumier!’ One need not go this length to feel that there is an intense and almost terrible expressiveness in Daumier’s line and a sinister grandeur in his synthesis of form and movement. In a world where Millet saw nobility and beauty or, at the worst, a stolid resignation to labor and the hard lot of the tiller of the soil, Daumier saw stupidity and cunning, meanness and greed, and all the cor- ruption of a bourgeois society dominated by the love of money; he is a caricaturist, but life is, for him, no laughing matter — he is rather in grim earnest, or if he laughs it is to avoid weeping. But he attains his very different ends by much the same means which Millet uses, for indeed, true caricature proceeds like the greatest art, by abstraction and elimination, that the chosen characteristics may be emphasized and disentangled from the non-essen- tial; and the caricaturist and the idealist have much more in common than has either with the realist. The one creates the ugly or the grotesque as the other achieves severe or serene beauty by ignoring everything which is not to his purpose. There are resemblances, also, between the methods of painting and the treatment of color by Millet and Daumier — resemblances that strike one on the first view of such a pic- 263 THE COLLECTION OF ture as that by Daumier in Mr. Pope’s collection. Both artists used a restricted and simple palette, and both, on occasion, achieve great power of color with their simple means. They did this, largely through the study of values, and, as M. Camille Mauclair has said, ‘This feel- ing for values is so strong in Daumier, that it succeeds in making him a colorist who pro- duces an impression with three or four tones.’ All the characteristics of Daumier’s art are clearly to be discerned in the small example of it which Mr. Pope possesses. It represents a number of lawyers, in their black gowns and caps, conversing together in a Salle des Pas-Perdus of some Court House. They are seen only to a little below the shoulders, and there is no action and no story— merely a number of heads which are extraordinary in type and expression, fat men, vacuously pompous, lean men, sharp and unscrupulous; a little portrait gallery of human baseness. This is what interested Daumier the satirist, the caricaturist, for there is no reason to shirk the word— the painter was otherwise occupied. The black of the robes, the brownish pink of the flesh, a little gray in the base of a column to the left, these few notes are so delicately adjusted in their relations of value and so rich in quality that, without colors, there is fine color and perfect tone. The painting, on its smooth under-surface, is unctuous and slippery —what painters call ‘fat’— much like that of Millet in those early nudes which are, per- haps, better ‘painted’ than anything he did afterwards, but without the extreme warmth of Millet’s ground. It is the old paradox of beauty out of ugliness, for while the men are extravagantly ugly the picture is beautiful, a work of real distinction and charm. At the very moment when Puvis de Chavannes was painting that fragment from the “Peace,” which seems like the prolongation of an older time, Manet and Whistler were pro- ducing those works which were received with scorn and laughter, but which were to revolutionize modern painting. From Manet dates the beginning of what we know as the Impressionist movement; from Whistler that still more recent movement which, at the present time, seems likely to supersede Impressionism. Different as are the paths they were to follow the two painters had much in common and their pictures, hanging in the Salon des Refuses of 1863, must have seemed to belong to the same school. Manet’s talent was perhaps the more robust as Whistler’s was the more delicate. Both showed the same freshness of vision, the same independence of formal composition and academic drawing, the same horror of unnecessary roundness and exaggerated modelling. Both, in their works of this period, tended to flatness and to the reduction of painting to a pattern of sim- ple masses, in two or three tones, bounded by interesting contours. Whistler did little else all his life but make these tones more exquisite and these contours more refined. Manet was led into a new realm of experiment, and set his palette to compete with sunlight and the open air. Whistler became ever more frankly artistic in his aims, Manet more natural- istic and even scientific. Is it because of a more perfect balance between idealism and real- ism in their earlier work that much of it is so attractive to us to-day, or is it that the youth- ful efforts of a great painter have had in all times a charm of freshness and enthusiasm that is less evident in the more accomplished productions of his maturity? Certainly the lover of art often finds himself enjoying some picture which a master has painted before he was 264 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE quite himself more intensely than anything except those rare works, the finest of all, in which the studies of a lifetime have culminated in one last magnificent display of passion and power. Or, again, in the case of a modern master, it may be that we are already in the position of posterity as to his earlier work, while we are not yet far enough removed from his later to do it impartial justice. For one or the other of these reasons— perhaps for all of them— two of Mr. Pope's four Whistlers, both painted in 1862, seem to me, as they have seemed to many others, to be among the most delightful things their author produced. They are “The Blue Wave" and “The Building of the Westminster Bridge." Of the two “The Blue Wave” has most in common with the later works we know. It must have been one of the first of those marines of which Whistler afterwards produced so many. Over deep brown rocks a wave has broken and lies in a seething sheet of foam below, while the next, its inner surface as intensely blue as a peacock’s neck, just trembles on the verge of falling. Farther back a third wave lifts its long back and cuts sharp against the rolling sky of slate and gray-green and dun, hiding all the sea beyond. There is a direct impression of nature in all this, a dramatic grandeur in the sky, a sense of life and energy and freedom, of sea-breezes and salt air. But because it is Whistler's, it is, after all, essen- tially what he would have called, a little later, a ‘symphony’ or an ‘arrangement’— a pattern of lines and spaces and colors delightful to look at for its own sake. He is less occupied with trying to paint the sea than with seeing how the elements of beauty which the sea lends him may be moulded into a work of art. He has not yet become the master of finesse and of nuances, and his chord of color is fuller and richer than he will often strike again, his contrasts of light and dark are stronger. He will learn to be more subtle and more illusive and to attain his ends with less expenditure of means; now he strikes his notes of blue and brown in their full force and gets the utmost out of their opposition, resolving it into splendid harmony. How powerful the harmony is may be guessed from his feeling that a note of strong red was needed to complete it; and he has added his sig- nature— not yet the historical butterfly, but the plain name and date— in nearly pure ver- milion. In technical method also, in the handling of his materials, Whistler has yet to develop his own especial manner. His touch is already free enough, with a flowing liquid- ity, but there is more body of pigment than he used later and a fine rich consistency in the lights — that quality ‘as of cheese or cream’ which the older English painters delighted in and employed in rendering flesh or draperies. So far as its painting is concerned the picture might be the work of almost any able and free technician, while the rocks, modelled in pure brown, would not seem out of place in a foreground of Rembrandt’s. A mingling of audacity and conservatism; of a new point of view, already plainly to be discerned, with traditions as old as the art of painting; of a frank observation of nature with the dominant intention of producing art — this is the total impression. The combina- tion is singularly fascinating, and the picture itself is of the highest beauty, its sober mag- nificence of hue reminding one of old glass or Persian tiles, or the wings of butterflies. “The Building of Westminster Bridge” is less obviously lovely, and less characteristic as an exposition of Whistlerian esthetics, but it is perhaps even more profoundly impressive. 265 DAUMIER, HONORE 1808-1879 “AVOCATS” Panel, height W inches, width 1 1 inches. Signed at left bottom: “H. D." I N the Salle des Pas-Perdus of some French Court-House a half dozen French lawyers clad in their professional full-sleeved black robes with the cambric band falling downward at the neck, are seen only down to the waist. The group is full of movement. The heads are covered with the stiff, round, silk toque, and striking is the differentiation of character in the clean-shaven faces. Turning toward the left and with his head thrown back, the pompous, pursy central figure of the group faces the spectator with, in his left hand, a bundle of legal looking documents. Contrasting strongly with his self-satisfied importance, is the man addressing him, whose harsh face, seen in full profile, is thrown into deep shadow. On the right is an entirely different type of lawyer with deep cavernous eyes; wide, thin-lipped mouth and parchment-like skin drawn tightly over the bones. Three other faces, less prominent in the composition, are just as individual. The light falls from the left. The tone of the pic- ture is low. The few notes of color, blacks, grays and flesh color, make a pattern of rare pictorial quality. Purchased by Mr. Pope in 1896 from van Wisselingh, of London, who acquired it from a Paris dealer. 266 BY MR KENYON COX It is warm and little varied in color, a touch of sky, one arch of the bridge, and the green- ish blue of the inside of a couple of rowboats being the only cool notes. All the rest is yellow or brown or brownish gray. What attracted Whistler to the subject, in the first place, was evidently the intricate arrangement of lines produced by the forest of scaffold- ing, the motive being such as he had delighted to render in the early etchings of the “Thames Series” rather than of the kind he most frequently painted. The primary artistic significance of the work is linear, yet there are no definite lines in it, everything being painted directly with an easy sketching touch, the forms shaped in the wet paint with no appearance of preliminary drawing. The bridge seen from a little above its own level, hidden behind a maze of timbers and swarming with workmen, crosses the picture in per- spective from the right foreground to left distance. Beyond, one feels the presence of a great city, though one actually sees but little of it, and, far below, the muddy current of the river swirls between piles and barges and massive masonry. The painting of the distance reminds one greatly of Corot, and the whole canvas has a wonderful precision of values which is comparable only to that which Corot achieved and convinces absolutely of the reality, the bulk, and the distance of each object represented, while the accuracy of drawing attained by seeming formlessness is astonishing. Apart from what seems to us, to-day, a certain old-fashioned air in the brownish convention of the color it would be difficult to imagine a more vigorous and successful piece of direct representation of a complicated and difficult subject, clearly seen, thoroughly understood and instantaneously rendered. Such are, as nearly as I can describe them, the material merits — merits, in themselves, of the highest order — of a picture that can hardly have been long a-painting — which looks, indeed, as if it had been completed in a few hours of rapid and almost incredibly skilful labor. But it has something also which is rarer and more wonderful than its material merits, great as those are. Something which accounts for the singular hold it takes upon one and the persistency with which it is remembered. For this unpretentious little study from nature is, in reality, a great imaginative work — as much so as the most famous masterpieces of the world. It is full of a strange poetry — a poetry like that of “McAndrews’ Hymn” — which speaks of the wonder and mystery of our big modern world and of man’s stupendous inventions and the conquest of nature. These things the painter must have felt, though perhaps he was hardly conscious of them while he was gaily busied with the exhilarating technical difficulties of his task, with question of form and color and value — and, with the felicity of genius, he has expressed them almost in spite of himself and in contradiction to his theories of the proper function of art. It is a fortunate instance of the divergence of theory and practice — of the difference that sometimes exists between what a man does and what he thinks he is doing or should do. With such works as these two began, more than forty years ago, a career which has only just ended in long deferred but universally acknowledged glory. Perhaps Whistler’s serious recognition as a great artist was delayed by the very notoriety which his remarkable personality and his caustic wit early secured for him. Stung by the incomprehension and the ridicule of the critics he turned their weapon against themselves and covered them with 269 THE COLLECTION OF a ridicule vastly more effective than their own. The scornful flippancy of his letters and pamphlets delighted and amused the world, but a public unused to drawing fine distinc- tions could not separate the author of the ‘Gentle Art of Making Enemies’ from the painter of exquisite talent, and his most serious achievements and most delicate fancies were classed with his biting retorts on his critics as ‘only Mr. Whistler’s little jokes.’ Looking back, now, at the pictures which first aroused such violent opposition, their con- servatism is more apparent than their novelty— their connection with the past more evi- dent than their prophecy of the future. One feels that Whistler was the legitimate suc- cessor of the Romantic school, destined to carry on, in a certain direction, their task of re-creating the art of painting. In his long working life he defined with more and more precision his own artistic personality, clarified and accentuated his conception of the essen- tials of art, until he became one of the most powerful influences on the painters of to-day, not only his avowed followers, but men of strong individuality who yet as one of them has put it, having once seen his work could ‘never see nature in quite the same way again.’ But if Whistler has done things more Whistlerian than these early works — things in which the qualities peculiar to himself are more clearly distinguishable because less mingled with others — it by no means follows that he has done anything finer — the Whistlerian qualities are there in almost as great a measure as in the work of his prime, while the other qualities, which he was afterwards to eliminate as non-essential to his self-expression, have also their own value. At any rate, the pictures which he painted in the sixties have the great interest of all beginnings and the perennial charm of youth. If Whistler proceeded by evolution, it may almost be said that Manet proceeded by revolution. The difference between Whistler’s earlier work and his later is a difference of degree; that between such a picture as Manet’s “Girl with a Guitar,” in Mr. Pope’s collec- tion, and those which came from the same hand ten or fifteen years later is a difference of kind. One may fancy one sees, in the pictures which Manet painted in the sixties, the lin- gering influence of his master, Couture. One may certainly see the influence of Hals and of Velasquez and Goya. Yet this art, so reflective of the past and so conservative, as it now seems to us, was, in its own day, considered violently revolutionary and hardly sufficiently to be reprehended by the guardians of tradition or hardly sufficiently to be admired by the young generation to whom it opened new vistas of artistic achievements. There were the best of reasons for such feelings for, indeed, these works of Manet’s mark in two ways the final success of the movement for the liberation of art begun thirty years before. The Romanticists had forced the inclusion of the medieval world and the Orient among the available subjects of painting; Millet and Courbet had added the peasant, the artisan and the bourgeois; Manet found interesting subjects in the fashionable and artistic world and added the ‘monde’ and the ‘demi-monde’ to the list of things with which painting may profitably occupy itself. After him no subject could be called trivial or vulgar in which the artist found his account of line or color or light, a beauty to render or a problem to resolve. Delacroix had rediscovered color; Courbet had preached naturalism and the frank accept- ance of actual forms; it was largely reserved for Manet to get rid of the studio light, to 270 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE free the palette from brown shadows, to risk flatness in the reaction against excessive modelling, and to reintroduce the cool and fresh tones of Velasquez and Hals into modern painting, thus, in both the subject matter and the technical manner of art, he cleared the field of the last of the old restrictions upon free experiment and personal expression. What he should paint and how he should paint it was henceforth a thing that each artist might determine for himself. The more eager and able of the younger painters hailed their new freedom with enthusiasm and began that investigation of the methods of representing light which has created what we know as the Impressionist school. They accepted Manet as their deliverer and leader, and, gathering around him, carried him along with them into their new field, where, of himself, he might not have ventured. For it is at least a possible belief that Manet was most entirely himself before he became altogether an Impressionist, and that the best of him, as an artist if not as an influence, is to be found in some of those admirable canvasses, like the “Woman with the Parrot” and the “Boy with the Sword ” which belong to his first manner. Of about the same time as these, or even earlier, must be his “Girl with a Guitar.” It is an excellent example of his style and by itself would give a clear idea of the characteristics of his art at a great moment of his career. In the first place, Manet has no story to tell, no subject in the old sense of the word, and no care for formal or classical composition. He has several times painted a number of small figures on one canvas as in the “Toreadors” in this collection; — a picture which came near being purchased for the National Gallery — he once attempted a large his- torical picture in “The Death of Maximilian,” and he even tried his hand, once or twice, at lofty religious themes. But his most unequivocal successes were in pictures with little more external motive than this one — single figures, standing or seated, doing nothing in particular. Whether or not they are formal portraits, such pictures are confined by choice to the portrait painter’s problem: given, a single figure on a canvas of no great size, to get out of it all the interest which the study of character and the perfection of art can supply. As to composition, no good art can exist without it; but composition with Manet relies solely on the pleasant division of space and the balancing of two or three large masses in an agreeable manner. In other respects as well as in this limitation of subject matter there is, as 1 have already said, a resemblance between the earlier art of Manet and the art of Whistler at all periods. As much as Whistler, Manet detests the painting that ‘stands out’ and like him he uses little light and shade and rather avoids any obvious modelling. He does not paint in Whistler’s diffused light nor has he yet begun to work in the open air, but he likes to place himself between his sitter and the window, as nearly as possible in the line of light, where the shadows, if strong, are yet extremely narrow and reduced to the least possible area. He relies upon these narrow shadows, which he makes nearly black, to give him the drawing and construction of his forms, and eliminates halftones almost alto- gether, keeping his lights as broad as possible and retaining the great local value of his masses with religious care. His palette is cool and silvery, with little positive color and no conventional browns, and he has abandoned all the traditional methods of thick and thin paintings, preparations and glazes, and works entirely in solid and opaque color, with no 271 WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL 1834-1903 “BLUE AND SILVER: THE BLUE WAVE- BIARRITZ” also called “LE DANGER-ARGENT ET BLEU FONCE” Canvas, height 25^ inches, width 35K inches. Signed at left bottom: “IVbistler 1862" I N the immediate foreground stretches a ledge of brown stratified rock. Parallel with it runs another and higher ledge through which the resistless sea has battered its way. The long Biscayan rollers come at them, one having spent its force has subsided, and the swirl of its water is a tumult of yeasty foam. In the center of the composition and just beyond the opening in the rocks the wave which gives its title to the work, rears itself in a liquid wall, whose crest touched with white foam, is already beginning to curl inward. Beyond it, other white- crested breakers are coming on. The wide expanse of sky covering over half of the picture, is veiled with luminous clouds which in the upper part melt into a blue as tender, yet as vivid as the deep blue of the waves below. The arabesque of clouds accompanying and har- monizing with the masses of the waves, impart a fine sense of restless movement to the whole scene. Collection Gerald Potter, London. Collection J.Staats Forbes. Purchased by Mr. Pope of Boussod, Valadon & Co., London. Exhibition Whistler, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892. Exhibition Salon du Champ-de-Mars, 1894. Exhibition Society of American Artists, 1898. Exhibitions Whistler Memorial, Boston, 1904, London, 1905, Paris, 1905. 272 BY MR KENYON COX particular method, painting and repainting until he gets the result he wants, but attaining often a material beauty comparable to that of the painting of Velasquez. In the present picture, for instance, there is much loading yet little relief. To get the precise expression and sentiment of the head has been the greatest difficulty, and it has been painted over and over again until its texture is like that which Troyon gives to the sun-lit hide of cattle, yet it is essentially flat, the lights broad and even, the half-tones lack- ing, the shadows cutting with insistent sharpness. The hand has apparently been done more easily and is very delicately modelled and of a fine cool color, while the rest of the canvas has almost painted itself. The dress is a bluish white, fine in its own quality, which contrasts well with the handsome black of the sash and the almost black background, but the desire to keep it unmistakably white has restricted its modelling to a minimum. There is a bit of greenish blue in the hair ribbon, a purplish tone in the ribbon of the guitar, the hair is reddish brown and there are the yellow of the guitar and the green of the slightly indicated parrot, but these colors are confined to small spaces and are not very powerful in themselves. The total effect of the picture is of a pattern of white on black; everything else has been sacrificed to this pattern — to the broad silhouette of the light figure against the dark ground, its contour everywhere defined and clearly visible. In the very frankness of its purely artistic aims and methods, the picture makes a power- ful esthetic appeal. It has not the exquisite refinements of one of Whistler’s harmonies— its oppositions are stronger and its line is less studied — but it is fresh and vigorous and big. What few negligences of detail one may perceive in it are of small importance, for one is in the presence of a man who ‘sees things largely and sees them whole.’ What he would say he has said simply, definitely, soberly, with dignity and with force, and there is a nobility in the plainness and directness of his speech. And the human content of the work is no less attractive than the artistic. Manet was one of those artists who care less for beauty than for character— who think more of expression than of feature. It is evident enough that the character and expression of his sitter on this occasion interested him profoundly and he has rendered it with an intense and intimate sympathy. She is not a beautiful woman— only a moderately good-looking one— but there is gentleness, seriousness, intelli- gence and refinement in her face. As she sits, quietly playing to herself, in her simple, old-fashioned gown and wearing her hair in the great chignon that to our eyes has become almost grotesque, she radiates that personal feminine charm which is so much better and more permanent than mere beauty. The woman and the art are alike in this. Neither is faultlessly nor consummately beautiful, but both are alive for us, eternally young and endur- ingly charming. If Edouard Manet was the initial force of Impressionism, Claude Monet is, more than any other, the formulator of its aims and the inventor of its technique. His large and robust nature, his frank naturalism, his love of light and air and movement, have made him, as the late Theodore Robinson has pointed out, much such an influence on the painters of to-day as Constable was on those of 1 830 — an influence toward freshness and spontaneity and truth, and against the continuance in old methods and the acceptance of old points of 275 THE COLLECTION OF view. He has supplied them not only with an inspiration, but with a model. He is too great and various an artist to confine himself to any one manner and his pictures show as surprising differences of method and handling as of subject; but the weapons which Impres- sionism employs in its combat with light — the blue or violet shadow, the dissociation of color, the broken and hatching touch — all were forged in his smithy. Mr. Pope is as ardent an admirer of this virile art as of the dainty fastidiousness of Whistler, and the first picture he ever purchased is that “View of the Bay and Maritime Alps at Antibes which is one of Monet’s most astonishing realizations of clear and brilliant sunshine. He has now five other pictures by the same painter, well chosen examples, variously successful and characteristic. Two of them belong to the famous “Haystack” series in which Monet endeavored to exhaust the possibilities of different effects of lighting upon a simple object; a third is a brilliant “Poppy Field” and a fourth a powerful study of dark rocks and deep blue, breeze-stirred sea dancing under a sunny sky. The art of Monet is so essentially an art of color and his effects are so largely dependent upon the juxtaposition of apparently formless touches of pigment, which, at the proper distance, resolve themselves into a true image of nature, that his works are exceptionally difficult to render in black and white reproduction. Fortunately for the purposes of this book Mr. Pope’s sixth Monet — the largest and one of the best of them all — is another of those early pictures in which his collection is so rich. It is a picture which does indeed lose greatly by deprivation of its color, as what good picture does not? But it is not so dependent on its color for its very existence and intelligibility as are others of the master’s works, and a reproduction of it may give some notion of its value. For its own sake, also, it is worthy of study, and possesses that pecular interest which we have been noticing as inherent in those works which mark the formative stage of a great talent before it has quite found its definitive expression. It is a “ Marine ” and represents early morning on the English Channel. The mist is rising from the flat, milky green water. The sky is hung with horizontal gray clouds, its pale yellow glowing through the rifts between them; below, the fog bank is shot with amber and one line of gold bars the farther sea. To the left a distant sloop looms vaguely, and nearer two luggers are putting out one behind the other, their black hulls breaking the smooth water into spots of light and dark and their dark brown sails cutting sharply against the light beyond. The dusky red stripe on the gunwale of the nearer boat completes a harmony of color as effective as sober. Nothing could well be more unlike the later work of Monet than the handling of this picture. It is painted with entire simplicity and direct- ness, its large tones laid simply and flatly in place without research of any kind, depending altogether on their justness of hue and value for their effect. In method, as to some extent in feeling, it is more like the work of our own Winslow Homer than that of any other artist 1 can think of. But if Monet the technical experimentor is not yet, Monet the observer is already at his best. Nothing could be more truly seen or give one a fresher feeling of direct contact with nature. It must have been so and not otherwise that the thing looked. The sea was of this color and the sky like this — and things are not fixed but changing; the 276 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE light will have broadened in a few moments and the fog have lifted, the sloop will be fully revealed and the fishing boats will have sailed away into the distance. Their movement as they glide into the picture reminds one irresistibly of the naive question of the child in the old French song: “ Papa, les p’tits bateaux qui vont sur l’eau, Ont-ils des jambes?” There is a somewhat strange abruptness in the change from the tone of the sky at either end to the lighter and more glowing space between the sails, but the resultant con- centration of effect is fine, and one feels that one may trust the eyes which everything else proves so trustworthy, and that this odd effect, too, was seen. Altogether it is a fine and true picture which shows already the measure of the man if not his variety. He will do other things but nothing better, and in the ardor of investigation and demonstration he may even lose what he now has — a touch of feeling which transmutes its healthy truth- telling into something like poetry. There is perhaps more to be learned from his later works, but not necessarily more in them to enjoy. Born in the same year with Whistler and a year later than Manet, Degas is still with us— one of the last survivors of the little group which has so powerfully affected modern painting. He has always maintained a sort of connection with the Impressionist painters, and has exhibited with them when he has deigned to exhibit at all, which has been seldom, for he seems to have led a rather solitary and somewhat mysterious life; producing his entirely independent and personal art to please himself— and without regard to the praise or blame of the public or of other artists — as indifferent to fame as to money or medals or any other of the rewards that painters covet. Though no one has painted his ‘ impressions ’ more exclusively than has Degas, he is scarcely an Impressionist in the sense in which the word has come to be used. The researches into the means of representing light which have been carried on by Monet and his friends have had little interest for Degas, and though he has a rare and special talent as a colorist he is, primarily, a draughtsman. Among his earlier works were certain small por- traits which are said — I have not seen them — to be marvels of close and searching draughts- manship, reminding one at once of Holbein and of the Italian Primitives. He is still almost a worshipper of Ingres whom he considers the greatest of modern artists, and of all the qualities of art it is the significance of line that most interests him; though he detests academic draughtsmanship, perhaps because he detests it, as he does everything that savors of routine or of the commonplace— he is, in his own way, one of the greatest draughtsmen of this or any age. His horror of routine and of the banal is Degas’s most pronounced char- acteristic and he seems to carry it almost to the extent of a hatred of beauty though, of course, it is only conventional beauty that he hates. He is, above all, a searcher for new sensations, inexhaustible in the pursuit of the unnoted gesture, the unrecorded form, the unpainted effect. A beauty, to please him, must be plucked from the very heart of what has passed for ugliness because no previous artist has seen the beauty that was in it. What has 277 WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL [834-1903 “THE LAST OF OLD WESTMINSTER BRIDGE” also called “LA DEMOLITION DES ECHAFAUDAGES DU PONT DE WESTMINSTER” and “THE BUILDING OF WESTMINSTER BRIDGE" Canvas, height 24 % inches, width 31 inches. Signed at bottom left: “Whistler 1862.” F ROM the left of the foreground to the right in the distance stretches the wooden scaffolding through which are caught at in- tervals glimpses of the white piers of the stone bridge being built. The tidal river, seen from high, swirls heavily toward the left. Show- ing the force of its current are breakwaters of piles whose reflections are broken by the swiftly moving waters. Flat-bottomed barges laden with building materials are moored here and there. In the middle of the immediate foreground two boats tied to a stake are dancing on the moving water and to the right of the foreground is partly seen the deck of a huge float heaped with sand and blocks of stone. Everywhere, clustering upon the scaffoldings, starting to remove them and ma- neuvering the boats below, swarm active white-shirted workmen. Along the horizon stretch the warehouses and public buildings of Lam- beth, with a stately dome looming up in the distance. Over all, hangs a narrow band of sky, gray, hazy and soft. Collection of Dr. Cavafy, a Greek Physician of London. Purchased from Dr. Cavafy by Mr. Kennedy (Wunderlich & Co.) through Whistler himself. Purchased by Mr. Pope from Mr. Kennedy through Cottier & Co. Exhibited at Royal Academy Exhibition, London, 1863. Exhibition Society of American Artists, 1898. Exhibitions Whistler Memorial, Boston, 1904, London, 1905, Paris, 1905. 278 BY MR KENYON COX once been well done is done, and that is the best of reasons for not doing it again — the beauty that Titian and Michelangelo and Raphael saw they have rendered for us with un- approachable perfection, and if one is to avoid useless repetitions it behooves one to find beauties which they have neglected. The charm of formal composition has been exhausted but is there not a charm of informal composition in which discoveries may yet be made? We know the glories of crimson and blue, but may we not find strange harmonies and un- dreamed-of combinations? There is nothing more to tell of the free human figure as the Greeks saw it and the Italians imagined it, but how of the human figure as clothes and an indoor life have made it? The world is old and stale, but a curious picker and chooser may yet find something new under the sun — or at least under the electric light. So it is that Degas has given us a whole series of observations of things which no one before him had recorded. He has haunted the race track but he has not painted the race with its horses ‘ventre a terre’ full spread in the conventional gallop; he has seen accidental arrangements and odd placings and he has been delighted with the spotting here and there of the brilliant shirts of the jockeys which look like wonderful and impossible flowers. He has studied the ballet and the Foyer de la Danse and has found there exquisite sympho- nies in arsenic green and raspberry pink, attitudes and foreshortenings of a piquant novelty, awkwardnesses which have the value of grace. He has peeped into the toilet chamber and the bathroom and seen the modern woman in her unaccustomed nudity, moving timidly and with constraint, blanched from the lack of light, thin and angular or soft and flabby, bearing the marks of the corset and the garter, but still charming with a beauty all her own, like that of crumpled rose-leaves. His observation may seem at times ironical and cruel, but in reality it is not so. He is not in search of ugliness — he is in search of beauty and he records the ugliness unsparingly, as Rembrandt did, because the peculiar beauty he has dis- cerned is a part of it and inseparable from it. And he is never, in the common acceptation of the term, a realist. His mark is a highly intelligent selection. His work is summarized, a kind of stenography — a few lines, a few tones, what is absolutely essential to the expression of the thing in hand, no more. He eliminates the unnecessary as rigidly as the severest classicist; if they are other things which he eliminates it is because it is another beauty which he is creating. And always he is the artist, thinking of the work itself, not of the facts which are its material or the observation which is its method. Mr. Pope has a number of Degas’s pictures of which three especially impressed me. A little panel of jockeys and horses, painted in oil, of extraordinary brilliancy and charm of color; a pastel of a similar subject, larger in size and of a duskier harmony, a special favor- ite with its owner; and a most characteristic and admirable canvas representing a scene from the ballet. In the choice of subject, the arrangement of colors, the quality of form, in matter and in manner, such a work as this could have been produced by no other artist that ever lived. The right foreground is occupied by a huddled group of ballet-girls, seen at three-quarters length, and behind them the stage rises in steep perspective to where on the left another group stands waiting in the wings. The rumpled and impudent little faces, human and likeable, of the nearer group, their thin arms, sharp shoulder blades, and meager 281 THE COLLECTION OF bosoms, are vividly rendered with a prompt and supple line, a few planes, a drawing that expresses everything but insists on nothing, as different as possible from the explicit drawing of the schools. The bright sharp pink of their tulle skirts is a note that no old master would have dared, but the whole picture is based upon it, the flesh is made greenish by contrast with it, and the cold tones of the scenery, under the flooding artificial light, com- plete a harmony as consummate as it is extraordinary. In sentiment as in subject, the pic- ture is thoroughly modern, nineteenth century in the extreme, entirely unlike anything that a Rembrandt could have dreamed of; but it is one of those seeming miracles of repre- sentation without comprehensible means, of drawing without definition, of beauty extracted from the ungainly or the repulsive, of which Rembrandt alone among the older masters was capable. Of Renoir, who has been for figure painting much what Monet has been for landscape, the most important of the pure Impressionists, Mr. Pope possesses a single example, the “Girl with the Cat,” but this one example seems to me to be of exceptional beauty. 1 can remember very clearly the effect upon me of the first exhibition of Renoir’s work which I ever saw, some twenty-odd years ago, when I was a student in the schools. The pictures were of boatmen and grisettes, picnics on the river, balls in suburban resorts and the like. I think, even then, the subjects did not disturb me — I was willing to admit that any subject was allowable in which the painter found something to interest him — but the work itself shocked all my school-boy prejudices. It seemed to me odd in arrangement, weak in form, violent and crude in color, inexcusably negligent in handling. I have seen a good many things since those days and have learned something, I trust. The same pictures would probably look different to me, to-day, and I should find in them something of the admir- able qualities which I now see so plainly in this picture of Mr. Pope’s. 1 should probably find that there was a method I had not grasped in the unconventional composition, a sense of movement and of character in the unacademic drawing, great beauty in the fresh color which dazzled unaccustomed eyes, fantasy and verve in the loose touch. Still, 1 have seen paintings by Renoir from time to time, and I have seen many photographs and reproduc- tions of his paintings, and I cannot believe that he has often reached so high a level as in the “Girl with the Cat.” He is admittedly an uneven painter, never a faultless one. In this instance his faults are so slight and his merits of such a remarkable order that this picture must rank anywhere among the finest. For the faults, they are quickly disposed of. One may not greatly like the face of the girl, with its short nose and broad jaw, and one must admit that her wrists are somewhat too thick; one may feel that the note of blue is here and there more pronounced than one often sees it in nature and that the table and tablecloth are not quite realized in place or substance— that is absolutely all, and how little it is. If the blue seems not altogether accounted for as representation, it plays its part perfectly in a harmony of color which is as fresh as a flower, brilliant, yet with a chastened loveliness delicately gilded by the few years that have passed over it. There can be no reservation about the drawing of the girl’s chest and shoulders, a drawing entirely without edges as without definite planes or accents, yet 282 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE palpable in its solidity, absolute in its construction, modelled with extraordinary refinement. And the nacreous coolness of the flesh tints is almost beyond praise or hope of imitation. Better flesh painting than this it is impossible to imagine. The canvas has evidently been prepared with a warm undertone, and does not strike one as especially high in key. Over the warm ground the colder tones have been struck with a touch that is everywhere loose and free, fanciful and swift, light as a feather, an exhilaration in itself. In the growing plant these rapid touches produce a result that in the reproduction is enigmatic and hardly comprehensible, but in the painting the color makes all right and the plant itself, leaves and flowers and all, in its deep-glazed green pot, is before you. But best of all is the cat, surely the finest cat ever painted — in drawing, char- acter, movement, color, texture, a sheer masterpiece. Look at the long, sinuous line of his back, look at his cheeks and ears, his chest and elbows, the thinness behind the shoulder blades and the swelling sides below. From his white nose to the tip of his curving tail he is an epitome of feline grace and vitality. Look at the depth of his fur, the richness of its black and yellow mottlings, the softness of its white. Velasquez could paint a dog like this, and perhaps Van Dyck — nobody to my knowledge has so painted a cat. It is a strangely personal art, that of Renoir, yet one compounded of many simples. There is naivete in it and sophistication, nineteenth century science and eighteenth century gaiety and elegance, a desire for the beautiful and a toleration for the ugly. Above all and always there is a kind of pagan joyousness, a love for the things that are and the absence of any desire that they should be otherwise. For him shame or terror or sorrow do not exist. He might say, with the Stevenson of the Child’s Garden of Verses: “The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.” The things are all good— perhaps the best of them all, is painting. He loves it for its own sake, and with all his heart, and in such a picture as this “Girl with the Cat” his love has brought its exceeding great reward. Two women have played a considerable role in the Impressionist movement, Madame Berthe Morisot and Miss Mary Cassatt. With the French woman’s delicious feminization of the later manner of Manet we have not here to concern ourselves, but the more personal and masculine art of the American is represented in Mr. Pope’s collection by a number of examples. Mr. George Moore maintains that woman has done nothing else in art than play graceful feminine variations on themes invented by men — that all she has produced of any value are adaptions for the boudoir of some man's way of seeing and rendering nature. However true the generalization it would seem that an exception must be made in favor of Miss Cassatt. Her way of seeing and rendering is as individual as is that of any of the male members of the school to which she belongs; she has distinctly a style of her own and a style by no means adapted to the boudoir. Prettiness, elegance, grace, are not its domi- nant characteristics. Indeed it is only at her best that she escapes a certain awkwardness and harshness which form a tantalizing accompaniment to the real beauty and strength of 283 MANET, EDOUARD 1832-1883 “WOMAN WITH THE GUITAR” (“LA GU1TARISTE”) Canvas, height 25^ inches, width 32 inches. T O the right of the picture and seen to below the knees, a young woman in a bluish white dress relieved by a sash of black rib- bon around the waist, is sitting on a bamboo chair. Her body is in profile turned toward the left, one shoulder only showing. Her face also is in full profile; the abundant hair arranged in the chignon fash- ion of the sixties being confined by a narrow pale blue ribbon. In her lap she holds a guitar, whose amber yellow body forms a dominant note in the color scheme of the picture, and whose purplish ribbon also, in its drawing and color, has its importance in the ensemble. Her left hand, raised to the neck, holds a position on the strings. To the left, a parrot on its perch, serves as a subsidiary note of rich color to enliven the dark monochrome background. The half life-size figure is lighted almost squarely from the front, and modelled in large light masses with strong, narrow shadows. Collection of M. Ernest May, who bought it from the artist in May, ■ 877 - Sale May, Paris, June, 1890, bought by M. Durand-Ruel. (3,000 fcs.) Exhibition Manet, Pont de l'Alma, Paris, 1867. Exhibition Manet (Memorial), Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, January, 1884. Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889. Engraved by Lauzet. 284 BY MR KENYON COX her work. Her femininity shows in her choice of subject and her sympathy with childhood and motherhood, but it is a large, full-blooded sentiment that she expresses, not a dainty one, and she expresses it in a direct and vigorous manner, caring more for incisiveness of expression than for charm— more for character than for beauty. When she fails it is from insufficient thought for the more feminine graces of art— from a willingness that her work shall be ugly, if only it be expressive. When she succeeds it is by dint of sheer straight seeing and honest rendering of the beauty inherent in her subject. Let it not be supposed, however, that Miss Cassatt is one of those women who mistake brutality for strength and affect an exceeding robustiousness that they may not be accused of weakness. If there is nothing anaemic about her art neither is there any coarseness, and affectation of any kind is far from her. She is a simple and direct painter, occupied solely with the effort to produce some record of those things in the world which have seemed to her most interesting and beautiful in line and color. Of light and shade she makes little use and her Impressionism shows itself mainly in this abolition of light and shade and, to some extent, even of values, and in the relatively high key of light and color. On the other hand she has nothing of the impressionist dislike for fixed contours and love for drawing solely by mass. Her outlines are marked, definite, sometimes insistent, and her work at times bears a resemblance to Japanese color printing— a few firm lines and a few spaces of shadeless color, the artistic value lying in the beauty and expressiveness of the lines and in the har- monious relation of the colored spaces. She has a strong and very personal feeling for color, delighting in certain fresh and uncommon combinations, and her composition, sometimes very successful, has a kind of quaintness and an air of the accidental and unforeseen. Her handling is marked neither by great suavity nor willful roughness and is without any special research or ostentation; it is the handling of a painter who thinks more of large matters of forms and hue than of the preciousness of the material employed. The best of the pictures by Miss Cassatt in the Pope collection, to which a black and white reproduction hardly does complete justice, seems to me, to be far and away the best and most entirely successful picture of hers that 1 have ever seen— a picture in which all her merits are splendidly present while her occasional faults are entirely absent from it. The subject is her usual subject, a woman and children. The woman is seated to the right, her body turned away from the spectator, her head in full profile filling the extreme upper right hand corner; a naked child, perhaps eighteen months or two years old, is seated on her left arm, his beautifully drawn right arm stretched out over her shoulder and the hand resting, palm towards us, on the back of her chair. His back is the center of the picture and he turns his head to the left and stretches out his left hand to receive a little box which is offered him by a flaxen-haired girl, a year or two older than himself, who completes the full and compact, but perfectly clear composition. The three heads form a diagonal line and a composer of the old school might have felt the desire for more variety of spacing or for some object placed higher on the left to complete the balance, but the arrangement is pleasant in its informality and one would not have it otherwise. The diagonal is accom- panied and emphasized by the graciously flowing line which leads from the boy’s right 287 THE COLLECTION OF hand across his shoulders and down his other arm and that of the little girl to her elbow. Thence the eye is carried back through the children’s heads to that of the mother and the whole group is thus intimately bound together while the mother’s head is given an impor- tance in the composition which its position on the canvas would not alone have conferred upon it. The lines of the chair also, especially the middle support of the back which ter- minates just below the child’s hand, have an important influence in tying the whole picture together in a perfectly natural manner. The woman is dressed in some gauzy white stuff and the chair also is white, both whites of a bluish quality which becomes a decided pale blue in the background. The little girl is dressed in a bright orange yellow, and these notes of yellow and pale blue make up, with the flesh tones and the hair, a color scheme somewhat strange but most agreeable. The handling is simple and unaffected throughout, the drawing thoroughly sound, without an ugliness and with scarcely a negligence, though the girl’s left hand and the boy’s feet are some- what sacrificed — intentionally so, one imagines on account of their position in the picture. The chubby-faced little girl, with her pale hair and dark eyes, has a delightfully childish smile, but the most charming things in the picture are the head of the mother and the whole head and figure of the boy. The mother with her round forehead, large nose and small eye, is scarcely beautiful and her wholesome, placid face has little expression, but her ample per- sonality reminds one somehow of the delightfully buxom saint who holds the Christ Child in Titian’s “Madonna of the Rabbit,” while as a piece of blonde flesh painting and delicate shadowless modelling the head is altogether admirable. As for the boy there is no word for him but adorable. His red-gold, curling hair, the fold in his little neck brought out by the turn of his head, the modelling of his back and hips, the lines of arm and side and the child- like action of the dimpled left hand— above all the soft yet firm and elastic texture of his flesh and the exquisite flesh color, all these things make this figure as beautiful a rendering of babyhood as any in the whole range of art. An artist of an entirely different school is represented in Mr. Pope’s collection by a capital example, the “Dordrecht Harbor” of Jacob Maris— one of the finest paintings of one of the foremost of modern Dutch masters. It is a well-composed picture of a most picturesque scene in that country of unapproached picturesqueness, Holland, and it has more fullness of color than is common in modern Dutch painting. The Dutch painters of to-day have altered in many ways the old Dutch conception of the technical methods of painting; they have abandoned the close textures and elaborate finish of their predecessors and have substituted a rougher and freer handling, and from warmth of color they have gone almost to the extreme of grayness; but they have never lost the Dutch sense of tone. For Maris, as for the others, perfection of tone is the principal artistic reliance, and this quality gives his work a certain kinship with that of Whistler, different as the two tempera- ments are in all other respects. Another element of the older Dutch painting is its intense nationality and localism — its interest in the immediate surroundings of the artist; in his own country with all its peculiarities of architecture and costume; its special atmosphere, its very sky— and in this also the newest Dutch painting is very like the oldest, and here it is an- 2 88 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE tipodal to the art of Whistler whose cosmopolitanism and lack of local attachment led him to the denial of any possible nationality in art. ‘You might as well speak of British mathe- matics as of British art,’ he maintained. Some of us seem to find a particular turn of mind, a way of seeing and feeling, that is distinctly national even in the best works of the Eng- lish school, but it would appear impossible for any one to miss recognizing such a turn in almost any Dutch picture. It is not merely that the moist atmosphere, the rolling sky, the quality of light and color, are so rendered in this “Dordrecht Harbor” that we know at once in what country the scene is laid. Still less is it that the make of the buildings, the construction of the boats, are unmistakably Dutch. A foreigner would surely try to render these things, if he painted in Holland, and it is possible that he might succeed in ren- dering them nearly as well. If he were a very great painter indeed he might conceivably render them better. But would he give us the same sense of affection for them, of intimate and life-long acquaintance? One feels that Maris has always lived in the country he is painting, that his rendering of it is inevitable, that he could not imagine it otherwise. A stranger might observe it coolly and tell us accurately that so Holland is, though he would be likely to overlook something, to make some mistake, to import some reminiscence of other lands and other airs. The slightest negligence would be fatal, the most momentary reliance on habit or memory would leave its trace. With the native Dutchman the thing is otherwise, and in his negligent moments, when he is least attentively observing the actual, he is most surely true to the spirit. His mind, his eye, his very habit of hand, are national and he cannot avoid that local feeling which the foreigner must painfully seek. He has no need to go abroad in search of artistic material with which his own land abundantly provides him, but should he do so he would in turn become the foreigner and would inevitably carry his Holland with him to interfere, in the briefest moment of distraction, with the clear vision of the land he has come so far to see. At home he is so sure of his local feeling that he can disregard mere facts as much as it may suit him to do so, and he gives us all the more certainly a true picture of Holland that it is not the exact representation of any one place in that country. It is in this marked ring of nationality— this perfection of local feeling— that lies, even more than in its fine tone, its rich color, its beautiful composition, its picturesqueness of subject or its great technical ability, the abiding interest of such a picture as Maris's “Dord- recht Harbor.” But if we cannot admit that Whistler was right in denying the existence of nationality in art it was natural that he should deny it, for he had no such feeling himself. His art is in the abstraction from the multiplicity of nature of few and simple elements and in their exquisite recombination, and wherever he finds these elements he takes them, combining them into a result which depends little for its effect on anything peculiar to the place. He is equally at home in London or in Venice, and what he produces in either place is not London or Venice but Whistler. Perhaps he is never more himself than when there is no national or local accent to seize, and some of his most characteristic and beautiful works deal with the open sea, as does one of Mr. Pope's pictures which it is more convenient to 289 MONET, CLAUDE 1840- “BOATS LEAVING THE HARBOR” Canvas, height 38 inches, width 5 1 inches. Signed in lower left corner “ Claude Monet ” O N the milky green, shallow waters of the Channel, two broad- beamed, heavy, two-masted Normandy fishing smacks are riding away leisurely in the silence of early morning. Their clumsy hulls, mainsails and jibs stand out darkly against the sea and sky, and the re- flections they cast on the dancing wavelets give a sense of living motion to the calm waters. The horizon line is placed a little above the middle of the picture. The gray, cloudy sky shows, through horizontal, narrow rifts, glittering patches illumined by the rising sun. In the distance a band of warm light falls on the water and just above it the coast is faintly descried. Over both sides of the picture, the rosy, damp early morn- ing mist hovers, and through it to the left another sailing craft shows dimly. Collection M. Faure, Paris, who secured it from the artist. Purchased by Durand-Ruel, from M. Faure. Purchased by Mr. Pope from Durand-Ruel. 290 BY MR KENYON COX consider here than in connection with such earlier works as “The Blue Wave" and the “Westminster Bridge,"— the “Symphony in Violet and Blue," The very title marks the change that has come to Whistler's work— perhaps it would be truer to say the development. In the earlier pictures there was already the Whistlerian occupation with tone and arrangement — in the later picture there is tone and arrangement with nearly as little as possible of anything else. And what Whistler consciously strives for in the work of his maturity is the arrangement of two or three notes of color and two or three lines. He differentiates these color notes with infinite subtlety and applies all his wonderful sensitiveness to insuring their intrinsic quality. He divides his space into a few large masses, balancing the sizes and shapes of these masses with utmost nicety, and he gives to their bounding edges the last refinement of graceful and vigorous line; having done this he is content. The few notes of color, the few spaces, the few beautiful lines which he has selected make up a work of art which exists independently of the source from which its elements are drawn, as a piece of music exists independently of any natural sounds which may have suggested its notes; and having composed like a musician, Whistler gives his composition a musical title and calls it a 'symphony,' a ‘harmony’ or an ‘arrange- ment.’ Most musicians are executants as well as composers, and it would be a strange musician who did not care for fine execution and a firm and supple touch upon the instru- ment. The painter is necessarily his own executant and composes and executes by the same act, and there is nothing in which Whistler is more musicianlike than in his admirable execution. His sense of technical propriety is unrivalled, and whatever his medium, he uses it with unfailing sureness in the adaption of means to ends and of ends to means also, for he will not attempt in one medium what could be better, or even as well, expressed in another. In oil painting the fluidity of his matter, the lightness and sureness of his touch, the extent and evenness with which he lays broad masses of pigment, give his work a technical charm which, for the initiate, is unexcelled if not unequalled in the whole range of art. Even music, however, is seldom quite divorced from some connection with nature, by which it is inspired though it does not imitate it, and if this picture is a “ Symphony in Vio- let and Blue,” it might well be called, like a famous musical composition, “The Ocean Symphony.” Whistler may have cared little for the registration of facts of wave form or cloud form, or for any explicit statement of color or reflection on water— he was content with the pure beauty of the two or three lines and masses and tones which he extracted from the scene before him; but these elements are different from those he could have found elsewhere, and carry with them the sentiment of their origin. The line which separates sea and sky is a beautiful line in itself, but it is also a line of majesty and force, a line that could only express the heaving back of a mighty billow— the tones of gray and blue-green are intrinsically lovely and harmonious, but they are hues of sky and water. The art is an art of utmost abstraction, but in its extreme simplicity it is powerfully expressive. It is, as it were, the essence of ocean-grandeur that the artist has given, and the emotions which the sight of the ocean cause in us are all the more surely evoked that there are so few matters 293 DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD 1834- “DANSEUSES” Canvas, height 2 y/* inches, width 29 inches. Signed at bottom, to the left: “ Degas” I N the right of the foreground, standing against a painted wing of the Opera House stage, in attitudes of momentary relaxation, five ballet dancers are seen at three quarter length. Two of them glancing sidewise to the left, and almost wholly in shadow, occupy the center of the canvas. The nearer of the two presents her youthful face in profil perdu, her back turned directly toward the spectator, her right arm raised, as with a gesture redeemed from awkwardness by its exact natu- ralism, she satisfies herself as to the arrangement of her hair. Her com- panion who faces her with arms akimbo, also turns her head presenting the face in profile. On the right a more mature ballerine facing the spec- tator bends downwards with arms behind her as she arranges the bil- lowy folds of her skirt, her face is in shadow, the bust strongly lit; back of her are partially seen the faces of two more women. The vacant stage rises in steep perspective to the left where other girls stand waiting. The artificial light here and there, brings out the splashes of paint of the scenery. The acid strawberry pink of the principal figure’s skirts is the dominant note of color. Collection Erwin Davis, who acquired it of M. Durand-Ruel, Paris. Sale Erwin Davis, New York, 1889, $3200. Purchased by Cottier & Co. Purchased by Mr. Pope from Cottier & Co. 296 5 n THE CRITICAL ESSAYS nor more than the truth of mind and character. It is a piece of realism of the higher order, and its distinction is its mingling of unflinching veracity with perfect sympathy and kind- ness. There is no glozing or sweetening, or pretty suppression of fact; we are spared no natural plainness of feature, no mark of the ravages of time; everything is rigorously set down— one might almost say mercilessly— were it not that there are love and respect and tenderness as well as rigor in the truth-telling. Behind the plain, strong, frail old face we are made to see the force of intellect, the elevation and sweetness of character, the gentle firmness of control, that made the woman what she was; and we feel that those who knew her and loved her in the flesh, must find her here as they knew and loved her, and must ever be grateful to the artist for his entire, unostentatious, self-suppressing truthfulness. This is true portraiture— yes, it is great portraiture— a thing which has always been rare enough in the world. A few of the greatest men have given it to us with brilliancy or beauty of mere painting beside. It cannot be given without sound and honest painting, and such a picture as Brandegee’s “Miss Porter” shows to what nobility sheer honesty of purpose and soundness of method may attain when coupled with the true portrait painter's acuteness of observation, the true portrait painter's depth and fullness of sympathy. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS COMPOSITION FROM “PEACE” B EFORE becoming the famous decorator who endowed with noble beauty the monu- mental buildings of two continents, Puvis de Chavannes tried his strength in vast compositions, which were only later put to decorative use. Among these are the four can- vases of “Peace,” “War,” “Work” and “Rest” adorning to-day the walls of the Musbe de Picardie at Amiens. The picture belonging to Mr. Pope gives one of the principal epi- sodes of “Peace." The figures which at the right and left are cut by the frame show that it is, properly speaking, a fragment of an early version of that admirable composition. This fragment with perfect fitness may be separated from the rest and placed in a private collec- tion, for its execution is that of a painting with ordinary aims, rather than a decoration — that is to say, nothing is sacrificed to the necessity of adapting it to a special place. In it are discoverable the influence of the masters whose lessons Puvis de Chavannes had learned, or whose traditions he followed, Poussin and Primaticcio among the older painters, Chasseriau and Flandrin among the modern; but none the less his own personality stands revealed. That personality combines in harmonious union the dominant virtues of French genius. Puvis de Chavannes satisfies imagination and reason; with infinite taste, with majesty and playfulness, simplicity and elegance, nobility and grace, he unites the love of ideal conceptions and the taste for humble truth. in this composition, a young man holds upon his head, without painful effort, a heavy basket loaded with fruit, with perfect ease a young woman offers to take it in her turn. One might call it a scene from pastoral life in Arcadia so far removed is all violence of idea, 299 THE COLLECTION OF emotion, gesture. Puvis found lines and colors perfectly corresponding to his ideal con- ception; the lines are lofty and calm, the tones show power and subtlety. Although the work belongs to a time when the artist was almost unknown, in it he has already realized what was to remain the ambition of his whole career. ‘S’inspirer de la nature en la trans- posant et en lui restant parallde.’ Roger Marx During the second half of the nineteenth century French painting has concerned itself mainly with the recasting of its technique. Devoted to little else than landscape painting, its aim has been analytical. We are fully able to realize this in a statement of Manet, whose influence has been more general than even that of Corot. Manet said: ‘One must paint a woman’s face as if it were a landscape, ’ that is, without stylistic recollections, or even asso- ciations. The narrowness of this arbitrary statement, or expression of personal habit, was doubtless in the mind of Degas when, contrasting Mantegna with the moderns, he pointed out that ‘the world is contained in the frame of one of Mantegna’s pictures, while the moderns are only able to realize a little corner of it, a mere moment, a phase.’ If Degas had remem- bered the work of a friend of his early manhood, namely Puvis de Chavannes, he would have found one modern artist who has included a sense of the whole world within his definite and original pictorial scheme of things; a painter capable of rendering the aspect of skies, horizons, and the evidence of man’s influence upon nature herself; an artist capable of understanding the suave grace of woman, the power and beauty of man, the quaint and exquisite charm of childhood. Later in life he took up pastel as a medium for producing works of restricted area, and during his last years, after his marriage in fact, he seems to have been seized with the wish to produce work which would carry his art into homes and cen- ters other than those towns to which he had given artistic importance by his decorations, and several small pictures, replicas at times, sometimes variants or new combinations of early motives, left his easel. These small pictures, which are practically all that can belong to a private collector, are of varying quality when compared with works of his maturity; small in number, they are not only rare in fact, but also rare in art. The beautiful sketch in the Pope collection is a fragment of a smaller version of the superb mural painting, “La Paix” at Amiens, and is probably anterior to it. It reveals a warmer scheme of color than that which the painter chose later in life, the flesh is more like ivory in its color and texture and the green lower in key. The importance of this work, both artistically and historically, is very great. Charles Ricketts Among the early works of Puvis de Chavannes, this painting belongs between the “Return from the Chase” (1857), in the Marseilles Museum, and “Autumn” (1864) in the Lyons Museum. It was precisely during these years that he had become conscious of his power. Up to then he had been groping his way. He had hardly done more than pass through the studio of Couture at the period immediately following the great success of the “Romans of the Decadence,” but Couture’s teaching with its rules, formulas and pictorial code, had bewildered and repelled, rather than helped him. Subsequently, receiving sug- 300 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE gestions but hardly guidance from Henri Scheffer, he started out for himself, entering the field of production when the confusion of schools, aims and ideals, was at its worst. The classical school was clinging to a tradition into which the disciples of Ingres had not been able to infuse new blood, and whose incurable consumption was attested by their works. On the other hand, the last upholders of the romantic school were vainly trying to rekindle the lyrical blaze upon the hearth which had apparently become cold forever. Between these two, the realistic school springing to the assault was casting a triumphant challenge to the gods and goddesses of the classical Pantheon as well as to the medieval heroes of the romantic roll call. One might be inclined to say, in looking at one of his pictures of that period— “A Conflagration in the Village”— that Puvis did not wholly escape the influ- ence of Courbet. If so this influence was transient. Upon a nature such as his it could only have been harmful. An accidental circumstance, and the unconscious but deep influence of one of his con- temporaries, Theodore Chasseriau, older than he by five years, determined the direction of his genius and impelled him toward his fated career. The opportunity was offered him by his brother, who had built a country house near Lons-le-Saulnier, in Franche-Comt£, to decorate the walls of his dining-room. From the hour of beginning this work, Puvis de Chavannes read more clearly his mind and heart. He said, referring to this moment of his life, ‘1 felt for the first time enough water about me to swim in.’ The decoration of this dining-room of his brother’s was his first mural composition. From that time onward he had before him the task to which his nature and the quality of his thought and imagina- tion, as well as his very elevated, and at the same time limited, gifts as a painter seemed to have predestined him. The master who truly helped him in that decisive moment was neither Ingres nor Delacroix, but Theodore Chasseriau, whom an early death had removed in 1865, but who had opened a wholly new road to monumental paintings by his frescoes in the Cour-des-Comptes of Paris. Chasseriau, a youth of delicate, rich imagination, of an ardent and thoughtful temperament, had cherished in equal measure two apparently con- tradictory admirations — Ingres and Delacroix. He had wished in his conception of beauty —in which all the melancholy tendencies of the modern soul mingled— to reconcile the opposing principles of the two painters whom he loved equally, and he intended, as he once wrote ‘to use in monumental painting, simple subjects drawn from the history of man and from his life.’ “Peace, Protectress of Art and Agriculture” in the Cour-des- Comptes, was the concrete and highly significant reality of that conception. One may say that Puvis de Chavannes took his start from that point. He added out of his own, and made use of what he learned from the great landscape painter Corot and from Millet, but when his brother gave him his first opportunity, the effective impulse had been awakened in him, the illuminating word had been spoken to him, by the work of Chasseriau. It is this influence that makes itself chiefly felt in the Amiens decoration of which Mr. Pope’s panel is a fragment, as well as in the “Autumn.” One may truly say that these are worthy preludes to the crowning achievements of the master’s career, the decorations of the Paris Pantheon and Sorbonne, and of the Boston Public Library. Andre Michel 301 THE COLLECTION OF emotion, gesture. Puvis found lines and colors perfectly corresponding to his ideal con- ception; the lines are lofty and calm, the tones show power and subtlety. Although the work belongs to a time when the artist was almost unknown, in it he has already realized what was to remain the ambition of his whole career. ‘S’inspirer de la nature en la trans- posant et en lui restant paralRle.’ Roger Marx During the second half of the nineteenth century French painting has concerned itself mainly with the recasting of its technique. Devoted to little else than landscape painting, its aim has been analytical. We are fully able to realize this in a statement of Manet, whose influence has been more general than even that of Corot. Manet said: ‘One must paint a woman’s face as if it were a landscape, ’ that is, without stylistic recollections, or even asso- ciations. The narrowness of this arbitrary statement, or expression of personal habit, was doubtless in the mind of Degas when, contrasting Mantegna with the moderns, he pointed out that ‘the world is contained in the frame of one of Mantegna’s pictures, while the moderns are only able to realize a little corner of it, a mere moment, a phase.' If Degas had remem- bered the work of a friend of his early manhood, namely Puvis de Chavannes, he would have found one modern artist who has included a sense of the whole world within his definite and original pictorial scheme of things; a painter capable of rendering the aspect of skies, horizons, and the evidence of man’s influence upon nature herself; an artist capable of understanding the suave grace of woman, the power and beauty of man, the quaint and exquisite charm of childhood. Later in life he took up pastel as a medium for producing works of restricted area, and during his last years, after his marriage in fact, he seems to have been seized with the wish to produce work which would carry his art into homes and cen- ters other than those towns to which he had given artistic importance by his decorations, and several small pictures, replicas at times, sometimes variants or new combinations of early motives, left his easel. These small pictures, which are practically all that can belong to a private collector, are of varying quality when compared with works of his maturity; small in number, they are not only rare in fact, but also rare in art. The beautiful sketch in the Pope collection is a fragment of a smaller version of the superb mural painting, “La Paix” at Amiens, and is probably anterior to it. It reveals a warmer scheme of color than that which the painter chose later in life, the flesh is more like ivory in its color and texture and the green lower in key. The importance of this work, both artistically and historically, is very great. Charles Ricketts Among the early works of Puvis de Chavannes, this painting belongs between the “Return from the Chase" (1857), in the Marseilles Museum, and “Autumn” (1864) in the Lyons Museum. It was precisely during these years that he had become conscious of his power. Up to then he had been groping his way. He had hardly done more than pass through the studio of Couture at the period immediately following the great success of the “Romans of the Decadence," but Couture’s teaching with its rules, formulas and pictorial code, had bewildered and repelled, rather than helped him. Subsequently, receiving sug- 300 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE gestions but hardly guidance from Henri Scheffer, he started out for himself, entering the field of production when the confusion of schools, aims and ideals, was at its worst. The classical school was clinging to a tradition into which the disciples of Ingres had not been able to infuse new blood, and whose incurable consumption was attested by their works. On the other hand, the last upholders of the romantic school were vainly trying to rekindle the lyrical blaze upon the hearth which had apparently become cold forever. Between these two, the realistic school springing to the assault was casting a triumphant challenge to the gods and goddesses of the classical Pantheon as well as to the medieval heroes of the romantic roll call. One might be inclined to say, in looking at one of his pictures of that period — “A Conflagration in the Village” — that Puvis did not wholly escape the influ- ence of Courbet. If so this influence was transient. Upon a nature such as his it could only have been harmful. An accidental circumstance, and the unconscious but deep influence of one of his con- temporaries, Thbodore Chasseriau, older than he by five years, determined the direction of his genius and impelled him toward his fated career. The opportunity was offered him by his brother, who had built a country house near Lons-le-Saulnier, in Franche-Comtb, to decorate the walls of his dining-room. From the hour of beginning this work, Puvis de Chavannes read more clearly his mind and heart. He said, referring to this moment of his life, ‘I felt for the first time enough water about me to swim in.' The decoration of this dining-room of his brother's was his first mural composition. From that time onward he had before him the task to which his nature and the quality of his thought and imagina- tion, as well as his very elevated, and at the same time limited, gifts as a painter seemed to have predestined him. The master who truly helped him in that decisive moment was neither Ingres nor Delacroix, but Theodore Chasseriau, whom an early death had removed in 1865, but who had opened a wholly new road to monumental paintings by his frescoes in the Cour-des-Comptes of Paris. Chasseriau, a youth of delicate, rich imagination, of an ardent and thoughtful temperament, had cherished in equal measure two apparently con- tradictory admirations— Ingres and Delacroix. He had wished in his conception of beauty — in which ail the melancholy tendencies of the modern soul mingled— to reconcile the opposing principles of the two painters whom he loved equally, and he intended, as he once wrote 'to use in monumental painting, simple subjects drawn from the history of man and from his life.’ “Peace, Protectress of Art and Agriculture” in the Cour-des- Comptes, was the concrete and highly significant reality of that conception. One may say that Puvis de Chavannes took his start from that point. He added out of his own, and made use of what he learned from the great landscape painter Corot and from Millet, but when his brother gave him his first opportunity, the effective impulse had been awakened in him, the illuminating word had been spoken to him, by the work of Chasseriau. It is this influence that makes itself chiefly felt in the Amiens decoration of which Mr. Pope's panel is a fragment, as well as in the “Autumn." One may truly say that these are worthy preludes to the crowning achievements of the master's career, the decorations of the Paris Pantheon and Sorbonne, and of the Boston Public Library. Andre Michel ;oi RENOIR, AUGUSTE 1841- “GIRL WITH THE CAT” Canvas, height 38% inches, width 32 X inches. Signed at bottom to the right: “Renoir” O the left a young woman seen to a little below the waist, sits with her arms negligently resting on a table which occupies the rest of the immediate foreground. Her typically Parisian face is seen in full profile looking to the right, the loosely looped hair falling carelessly down her neck. Half dressed with chemisette and corset, her arms bare and the softly rounded shoulders and youthful bosom partly exposed, she watches a cat with beautiful tortoise-shell brown and yellow fur, standing on the table to the right, its back turned toward the spectator. It stretches upward to its full length, resting its forepaws on the edge of a large ‘cache-pot’ of blue pottery and investigating the plant whose leaves fill the upper part of the canvas above him. As background to the girl is a piano with lid closed, its top littered with sheets of music, among which stands a jar of flowers. A half-burned candle in a brass sconce, ornaments its front whose dark surface is full of reflections as is the table and the cache- pot. The light falls from the front and a little to the left. The execu- tion is delightfully free, the color brilliant and delicate. Collection Potter Palmer, Chicago, bought from Boussod, Valadon & Co. Purchased by Mr. Pope, of Boussod, Valadon & Co. 302 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS In the eyes of future generations, one of the glories of nineteenth century pictorial art will doubtless be the variety of its creative activity. From the time of the French Revolu- tion down to our day, under different names; classic and romantic, neo-Greek, realist, nat- uralist, symbolist, academic and impressionist, scores of earnest and laborious artists have given expression in generous rivalry or fruitful hostility, to two eternal aspirations which combine, or oppose each other, in the souls and imaginations of men — the desire for truth and the desire for beauty. In the very epoch, for instance, in which the rude and energetic peasant Courbet, applauded by an already powerful group of landscapists and painters of contemporary manners, was calling with obstinate brutality for ‘reality, the whole reality,’ even the most trivial and blunt, to be expressed by the brush — in opposition to him and the realists a group composed of men of more cultivated and open minds, was defending the no less indefensible and inviolable rights for the rendering, in expressive forms and harmonious colors, of poetry and sentiment. Following Prudhon, 1758-1823, Gros, 1771-1835, Ingres, 1780-1867, Delacroix, 1798- 1863, and Gericault, 1791-1824, two generations, less vigorous and more restful, but still distinguished and very laborious, succeeded in spreading and restoring the great traditions of monumental, historical and poetical painting. The first, that of Paul Chenavard, 1808- 1895, Gleyre, 1807-1876, H. Flandrin, 1809-1864, Couture, 1815-1879, Chasseriau, 1819-1856, produced its work between 1 840 and 1 860 and served as an example to a second generation whose convictions gained acceptance between 1860-1880. This later generation, composed of well-read men most of whom on their return from a pilgrimage to Italy, lived in happy intimacy in the neighborhood of the Place Pigalle, comprised Gustave Ricard, Hebert, Bau- dry, G. Moreau, Delaunay, Fromentin and Puvis de Chavannes. It is the last whose achieve- ments were the most popular in the closing years of the nineteenth century, partly owing to the number, the importance and the individuality of his decorative monumental com- positions, and partly also to his long career. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, born at Lyons, was by family, character and heart a down- right Burgundian. The vigor of his physical and moral health, the rectitude and clearness of his intelligence, the firmness and boldness of his convictions, the constancy of his gener- ous nature and its growth amid the difficulties of a trying career, made him one of the best representatives of that strong race to which France owes, beside men of action, so many great writers and artists. Nevertheless, whether it was that the remembrances of childhood had left ineffaceable impressions or whether he had kept during his travels and through his family circle close connections with his native city, there may also be noticed in him, with the Burgundian spirit, marks of the Lyons influence, in the sympathy of his philosophical conceptions and in the nobility of his poetical aspirations. If he picked up some useful in- struction in Paris in the studios of Henri Scheffer and Couture, where he remained only a little while, and that unwillingly, his real educators by example or advice, Delacroix, Chas- seriau and Flandrin, were all but the first true Lyonnais. All his life his work was reminis- cent of the simple technique and expressive style of Delacroix and Chenavard, as well as of the grandiose compositions of Axtel and Flandrin. Furthermore, like his friends Delaunay 305 THE COLLECTION OF and G. Moreau, and with them during two pilgrimages to Italy, he received from the mural paintings of Pompeii and the frescoes of the Trecentisti and Quattrocentisti at Assisi, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto, Rome and Padua, the solemn stimulus which exalted his lofty ambition to become a decorative poet and monumental historian. He worked in solitude, slowly, patiently. An unnoticed appearance in the Salon of 1850, and several checks at fol- lowing expositions, taught him, without disheartening him, that he was still lacking in skill and technique. When he reappeared, at the Champs-Elys£es in 1859, with his “Return from the Hunt” (Marseilles Museum) his co-disciples and colleagues, if not the public, recog- nized an agreeable and promising personality. The cartoons of “Peace” and “War” (Salon 1861) confirmed their predictions, placing Puvis in the eyes of artists and enlightened lovers of art, in a rank far above that of the skilful anecdotists who encumbered the Salons with their little canvasses and their little conceptions. A fragment of that first composition, a study for the central and principal group of “Peace,” represents Puvis in the Pope col- lection. It is most interesting since it informs us of the imaginative and technical power of the artist at the hour of triumph which fixed his thought and assured his future. Of the two paintings “Peace” and “War,” one was bought in 1861 by the Government, and the other given by the artist to the Musee de Picardie at Amiens. A little later the painter com- pleted, by canvases of more important dimensions, the splendid decoration of that mu- seum, where one may follow the development of his poetic vision and of his technique during the maturity of his life. “Work” and “Rest” were executed in 1863, “Ave Picardia Nutrix” in 1865, “Ludus pro Patria” in 1881. Whatever may be the superiority of these canvases, because of a greater and more supple unity, of rhythm of line and quieter harmony, of a more decisive personal observation and interpretation in the render- ing of expressive attitudes, physiognomies and movements, the first two in their less skil- ful blending of classical reminiscences and new observation, preserve that indisputable, lively and powerful quality which marks in true artists the juvenile outbursts of their genius. The composition of “ Peace ” is well known. The principal group, whose most impor- tant and most elaborate figures are reproduced in our picture, is assembled in the center of the foreground, around the slender trunk of a magnificent laurel tree in bloom. On the left a young woman kneels milking a goat, while a young man leans forward talking with her; behind, a warrior with nothing of the warrior but his helmet, holds a bowl to a peasant who fills it with wine. The figures in the background are summarily executed. One feels that the attention, the love of the painter, were centered upon the trio, the two nude men, one kneeling and spreading fruit on the ground, the other seated on a bank and holding up his hand to receive the fruit which a young woman brings him. Entirely nude, her back to the observer, is this superb and delightful creature in whose figure the painter, inspired by the beautiful rhythm of undulating lines and flesh tints, aimed to produce a finished work of art, pictorial and picturesque. Nothing proves better than this excellent panel by what solid and serious studies of the antique, of the masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, and at the same time, of nature, the future creator of the decorations of the Pan- 306 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE thgon and Hotel-de-Ville at Paris, of the H&tel-de-Ville at Poitiers, the Museum at Marseilles and the Boston Library, prepared himself for those illustrious undertakings which made him, at the end of the nineteenth century, the worthy successor of Giotto, Raphael and Poussin. Georges Lafenestre This work in Mr. Pope's collection is of exceptional interest. While a fragmentary repetition of a mural decoration, it has the character, the interest and charm of an easel- picture. This quality it owes to the manner of its execution. At that time Puvis was in the habit of painting the figures of his compositions directly upon the canvas, from the living model. In the youthful ingenuousness and enthusiasm of the artist to whom beauty had just been revealed, he believed that this was a means of preventing the freshness, the bloom of color of the flesh, from being lost in successive transcripts from the sketch and the color study to the definite picture. The simple fact is that he had not reached that high mastery of decorative art which later permitted him to turn from preoccupation with detail and the effect of detail, to the sole thought of that general effect, which can be harmonious and great only by the complete sacrifice of the vanities and delights of the virtuoso. The three figures in the picture, the standing woman with her back to us, the young man on the bank of the stream and the man turning out upon the grass the fruits he has just gathered, are admirable and would confer distinction upon any museum. Puvis was very fond of this little picture, as well as of the replicas he painted of the most characteristic figures in “Rest," under the title “At the Fountain." They reminded him pleasantly of the time in his artistic life when he had finally forced the doors of the Salon, so long closed to him, as it had been to Rousseau, Corot, Troyon, Dupre, Millet and others, and of how after ten years of isolation and work, shut off from the coteries, the influences of fashion and the trivialities of worldly life, he had commanded the respect of his fellow-painters and of the public. This aloofness from the world and his single-minded devotion to his ideals, is in large part the secret of his original and vigorous personality and of his inexhaustible fer- tility. There is no doubt that the name of Puvis de Chavannes will live chiefly through the stately vision of his great decorative paintings which ennoble our life and move our hearts in conjuring up before our imagination the sorrows, hopes, dreams and illusions of hu- manity. But to reach a complete understanding of the broad and many sided person- ality of the master, one must not fail to give their due importance to the easel-pictures, such as Mr. Pope's example, “At the Fountain," and the “Poor Fisherman ” formerly in the Luxembourg and now in the Louvre, the “Magdalen,” “The Dream," “The Prodigal Son," “Orpheus,” “The Family of Fishers," and "Tamaris." The master wittily called them ‘entr'actes’ and he precisely defined their character and intention in saying that these ' individual, episodic, instead of general, compositions were conceived in the sense of expression— the expression of form in the line of pure sentiment.' Completing his per- sonality these smaller examples prove what depths of delicacy and of caressing tenderness there were in this mighty artist. In them he gave himself the intimate joy of pouring forth 307 CASSATT, MARY “AWAKENING OF THE BABY” (“LE LEVER DE BEBE”) Canvas, height 36K inches, width 32 $/& inches Signed at bottom to the right: “ Mary Cassatt” O the right, in a solid arm chair of simple lines, a young woman sits with her body away from the spectator, her pleasant face seen in full profile to the left. She is dressed in a gauzy morning gown; her head, with brown hair negligently arranged, almost fills the extreme upper right hand corner of the picture. A naked, gold haired baby boy, some two years old, is seated in her left arm, his right arm stretching out over her shoulder, the hand resting palm out on the back of the chair. His back turned toward the spectator is the center of the composition. His face shows in profil perdu to the left and with his left hand he reaches to clasp a little box, held out to him by a little girl, who, facing the spectator, her dark eyes contrast- ing with her pale yellow hair and her face agleam with interest, looks up to the baby. Her loose frock of orange yellow is edged with lace. The background of pale blue repeats and strengthens the suggestion of the same color in the white of the woman’s dress and in the green- ish blue of the chair in which she sits. Purchased by Mr. Pope of M. Durand-Ruel, Paris. 308 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the overflow of his heart, in intervals between the great works which never completely set forth, to his own thinking, his poetic dreams and artistic ideals. Marius Vachon “AVOCATS” H ONORE DAUMIER, bom in Marseilles in 1808, was a meridional. His father was something of a poet, and a liberal in thought. The parents who came to Paris dur- ing his childhood had little money to spend on their son's education and start in life. From the first, his bent for drawing was pronounced and he early found his way to the antique sculptures in the Louvre, but two attempts were made to start him on a business life. As he still declared that he ‘wanted to draw,' advice was sought from Alexandre Lenoir, the remarkable man who brought together from the wreck of churches after the Revolution, an historical museum of French Art, and influenced in this way the romantic movement. Lenoir was convinced of the boy's vocation, and gave him some lessons. These, and a little time spent in the Art School of one Boudin, were all his academic training. His idea of drawing could not accommodate itself to the piecemeal copying of noses and eyes, and the rest of the regular discipline. He determined to find some employment that would give him an opening into art as well as to enable him to earn his bread, and turned to lithog- raphy. This method of multiplying drawings, invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had an enormous vogue in the thirties. It was to be displaced later by wood en- graving, and that, in turn, by photographic process, both of them methods that allow of printing along with ordinary type. Lithography, compared with the means previously available for illustration, engraving and etching, has the advantages of rapidity, cheapness, and the possibility of enormous multiplication without deterioration, as well as that of directness of reproduction without the intervention of a second hand— for a lithograph is practically a drawing transferred from stone to paper. This method, however, which easily turns in weak hands to nerveless and fuzzy scrabbling, or can be forced into a poor imita- tion of other processes, had been proved capable of high and characteristic use by Goya and after him by Delacroix. Of these draughtsmen, Daumier was the natural heir by his search for vehement expression of character in emphasized contours, emphasized modelling and strongly marked silhouette of dark against light. To all this the lithographic crayon, timid- est of tools for the timid, boldest for the bold handler, naturally lent itself. Beside its numberless uses as cheap maid-of-all-work in illustration, lithography was particularly associated with the close, day-to-day, political fight. Daumier's debut coincides with the beginning of the bourgeois monarchy, 1830. In that year his first signed work appeared in ‘La Silhouette,’ but he was quickly drawn into Philipon's band of draughts- man-fighters in 'La Caricature,' 1832-1835, ‘Le Charivari,' 1832 onwards, and he played his part in making Louis Philippe and his ministers ridiculous. He served his time in prison for a caricature, and through all the political and social changes of France, down to the early years of the Third Republic, he continued his satirical commentary, ever increasing in vigor, breadth and ease. He lived to draw the skeletons of Sedan appearing as witnesses at the 3 " THE COLLECTION OF trial of Marshal Bazaine, and survived till 1879; but in his last years his eyesight had failed. His labors brought him small pecuniary reward, nothing like the honor due to their quality. He received, however, at the end, a small pittance from the State, and the staunch and deli- cate friendship of men like Corot did something to cheer his poverty. The drawing of Daumier is peculiarly ‘caricature drawing.’ It is not, that is to say, drawing closely following the details of a model; it attempts to give a mental impression with the utmost of fantastic force. His biographer, M. Arsine Alexandre, goes so far as to say that Daumier in no circumstances whatever drew from life. ‘Jamais, au grand jamais, il ne dessina d’apr£s nature.’ This must be an exaggeration. One of his more elaborate lithographs, a subject from his prison experiences, is pretty evidently a study from life, but it is interesting to trace the effects of the method on the work. Details, like the markings of the clothes, assert themselves awkwardly, and the grouping of the figures has none of the customary freedom and force. “ La Rue Transnonain,” another of those more elaborate pieces, also shows signs of study from the nude model, but it is a much finer composition. It is enough to say that whatever part actual drawing from life may have played in his studies, Daumier’s habitual method was to fix, like Hogarth, the parts of the body in his mind, and to work from his general impression or invention of a scene by the aid of such memory. In preliminary drawings which exist, we can follow the stages of his search. Sometimes the paper is covered with vague pencilings out of which, as the idea becomes clear, the form emerges, and in the lithographs that have been hastily finished, much of his tentative line work persists. There is therefore in his work, as in that of Delacroix and other passionate artists who are ‘put out’ by the presence of the model, a mixture of dramatic intensity in general conception and vitality in design, with weakness where the mental vi- sion has failed. Daumier was not counted among the painters of his lifetime, though his paintings were known and admired by some of his fellow-artists; indeed it is possible that J. F. Millet, whose conception of drawing and sentiment of form are so strikingly like his, may have been directly influenced. Painting was the work of Daumier’s scanty leisure, when he could get away from his daily task and produce for the pleasure of production. Most of his pictures remained in his studio at his death. They were brought together in an exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and the posthumous fame of their author has steadily grown till it culminated at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, when a number of them were again shown. He had entertained some ambitious projects, among them a figure of the Republic, and a “Christ shown to the People” of which an impressive sketch exists. The greater number are of small dimensions; one group of them is occupied with the fantastic romance and gross humor of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; a second group with the actor-orators of the law courts, or, like the example given here, with the bustle of the law- yers going and coming; a third with the figures of dealers and collectors, bending over prints. Others yet are scenes of riverside Paris, a “ Malade Imaginaire,” a third-class railway carriage, or those tender sentimental pieces that, as it has been noticed above, link Daumier to Jean Francois Millet. 312 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE These paintings, in their delicate varieties of brown, are almost monochromatic, but the feeling in them, for the impact and shaping of light and its dramatic concentration, for the mastery of darks and degrees of shadow, for the nuance of color that can set all the chiaros- curo alive, combine to carry a remarkably full and rare suggestion of reality. The space and air of the scene is rendered as delicately as the figures are massively sculptured and sharply characterized. Light, like the types of his fellow-men, had become native in Daumier’s brain. D. S. MacColl The great Corot had two particularly treasured pictures in his bedroom, a portrait of his mother and a painting by Daumier representing a group of barristers, quite similar to the one belonging to Mr. Pope. “Sufficit mihi unus Plato cuncto populo.” The approbation of a master such as Corot might well console the great Daumier for the small esteem his con- temporaries had of him as a painter. And indeed, the friendship and admiration of Corot were of great comfort to Daumier in his laborious, modest life, with its frequent material difficulties. A caricaturist, an ‘amuseur,’ that is all the public could see in Daumier; and at that time a caricaturist was far from earning the large sums which humorists do to-day. Critics said his drawings in the papers were true to nature and that he caught a likeness. Much laughter greeted brief dialogues accompanying the caricatures, but these were not his work for writing was repugnant to him and he used to say that ‘drawings ought to speak for them- selves and that if they were not understood they must be bad. ’ As a change from his work in black and white, he busied himself with painting, spending his leisure time at it, and his works, unknown to connoisseurs, accumulated in his studio. However, there did exist a small number of the faithful, richer in goodwill than in money, who understood and defended him. Thanks to these, Daumier was able to sell an occasional painting and a few colored drawings without accompanying text. Corot not only bought the “ Barristers,” when Daumier had become old and blind, but gave him the little country house at Valmandois, where he died. The painters, Jules Dupr6, Daubigny, Auguste Boulard, and the sculptor Geoffrey Dechaume, were also his friends. They were not many, but of fine quality. A few other admirers bought some of his sketches and little pictures for their own pleasure, at modest prices. The historian Michelet had the courage to say during Daumier’s lifetime, and to the artist’s face, ‘ You are one of our great men.’ Such were his compensations for the apathy of the general public. Daumier more than once represented men of law and always in this sculpturesque and powerful ironical manner. He had no liking for them, because he was a philosopher and an observer who looked for facts rather than words, and stood indignant before the juggling he saw practised by the lawyers upon the just and unjust. While he had come into con- tact with the justice of his country, it was not a personal grudge which prompted him to produce such pictures. It was the spirit of observation applied to a picturesque world, whose costume, expressions, pantomime, still remained extremely suggestive to the painter, and it was Daumier the painter who recorded his impressions, and never the man sentenced in 1832 upon a political charge, who wished to be avenged. These barristers still remain 313 MARIS, JACOB 1838-1899 “DORDRECHT-SUN EFFECT” Canvas, height 30K inches, width 34 inches. Signed in lower right hand corner: “J. Maris” VIEW of a Dutch town seen from the harbor under a luminous summer sky which fills two-thirds of the canvas with the im- pressive onward sweep of clouds, heavy at the zenith, and here and there parting to give glimpses of the blue beyond. The eye is carried to the center of the composition — the two arches of a stone bridge with sunlit buildings in the distance dominated by the nearer massive tower of the old Groote Kerk of Dordrecht whose substructure is hid- den behind a mass of trees. To the right and left, tilted roofs and a confusion of dark buildings stand out boldly against the sky and have their counterpart in the dark masses and reflections of big sail boats moored on each side of the bridge, two to the left and one to the right. From the lower left corner the lines of planks floating in the water help further to carry the eye toward the center of the picture. Purchased by Mr. Pope from the artist’s representative, M. Preyer, Amsterdam, 1903. Exhibition World’s Fair, Chicago, 1893. 314 THE COLLECTION OF been credited, as Herr Muther points out, with playing among draughtsmen the part played by the great novelist among authors. It is impossible to look deeply into his work without recalling the ‘Comedie Humaine.' He is allied to the creator of that colossal work of art, not simply, as Gavarni is, by a preoccupation with the foibles of human nature ex- hibited in a given period of French social development, but by a turn of temperament pro- foundly significant. Gavarni had, above all, gaiety; not even the grim note struck in his “Thomas Vireloque” for example, serving to place him anywhere, save among those observers who take life as they find it, and satirize, if satirize they must, in the unimpas- sioned mood. A heavier burden rests upon the shoulders of Daumier. He is sardonic and somber. For him, as for Balzac, the sullen waters of tragedy flow beneath the surface of what the humors of our common lot incline us to call comedy, and if his pictures, like those of the novelist, are full of the lights and shadows of the life of his period, they are most eloquent, again like Balzac's, in their shadows. The little picture in Mr. Pope's collection sharply suggests this point of contrast between the two. It makes me think of nothing so much as of that closing scene in ' L'ln- terdiction,’ in which the good judge Popinot, caught in the toils of the Marquise d'Espard's powerful friends, is retired from the case in which his rectitude has threatened to work her harm, and the complaisant M. Camusot is put in his place. “When he saw M. Camusot," runs the paragraph, “a judge recently called to Paris from a Provincial Court of the same class, as he went forward bowing to the judge and the president, Popinot could not sup- press an ironical smile. This pale, fair young man, full of covert ambition, looked ready to hang and unhang at the pleasure of any earthly king, the innocent and the guilty alike.” Where, save among just such types as Daumier has presented in his “Avocats,” could a Camusot have been found? This is simply one way of saying that Daumier had, like Balzac, a peculiar gift for piercing the shams of his time. He had no illusions about the law courts. He knew that Justice was there, but he also knew how Justice was constantly suffer- ing the insidious attacks of corruption and incompetence, charlatanry and stupidity in the very ante-chamber of her sanctuary, and so, in pictures like these he painted evil, or merely earthly, faces and developed them in an atmosphere that very nearly provokes a shudder. He was a caricaturist. He could be exquisitely funny when he chose. Some of the actuali- ties with which he enriched the pages of the ‘ Charivari ' are, indeed, among the drollest things in the world. Nevertheless he is, of all the pictorial humorists of France, the one per- haps most darkly militant. He has none of the unction which Monnier showed in his “Joseph Prudhomme.” He is certainly must amusing, but most terribly in earnest. The quality of his mind comes out in his technique as a painter. A great artist with the crayon, his slightest drawings are notable for power and for style, but his works in the weightier medium possess necessarily a richer character. The draughtsmanship of the famous cartoons takes on, in these pictures, a finer because a more subtle quality. It is then the draughtsmanship of the brush, of pigment so placed upon the canvas that it gives the irregularities of a head, the minute variations of a surface in a physiognomy, a warm reality and an artistic significance more appealing, if not more masterly, than the merits, superb as 3-8 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE they are, achieved by the artist with a pure line. He models his figures with a kind of ebul- lient force, and with what you would call a brutal directness if it were not that you find in his pictures innumerable passages of the most searching craftsmanship. He reminds me of El Greco in the austerity of his methods, in the simple massive way that he has of putting human beings before you in a certain bold solidity, creatures of flesh and blood with nothing that is stern or even uncouth about them softened by a hairbreadth. I have spoken of his shadows. They are heavy, tangible, and affect one with a sense of physical phenomena. Daumier has extraordinary skill in the rendering of atmosphere. But the gloom in which he saw so many of his subjects was a matter of feeling as well as of vision. In “Avocats" he gives us not only the tone of a scene affected by specific conditions of the atmosphere, but the tone of an episode expressive of the seamy side of modern life. Royal Cortissoz By an injustice, which to-day seems almost inexplicable, the pictorial productions of Daumier, other than his lithographs, were lost sight of until his death. It was hardly sus- pected that the great satirist was a great painter as well, although the marvelous vigor of his pencil and the masterly quality of his white and black work, should have suggested that such might be the case. The same thing happened with regard to the unusually beautiful figures painted by Corot. Like Corot, Daumier was modest, and as he painted for love of painting, he was willing to owe his reputation to his lithographs, without making a dis- play of his paintings. After his death there were found in his studio a number of them, which, when shown, produced a considerable sensation. One of these we have under our eyes. What power is revealed in that group of barris- ters, viewed in the half light of some room in a Court House! The feeling for caricature char- acterizing his lithographs may be found here also, in the delineation of these crafty or puffy faces. But it is ennobled, lifted into the region of great style by the masterly chiaroscuro, by the significant distribution of the lights, by the fine amplitude of the masses. The faces look almost like sculptures, with their thickness of paint in which Daumier chiseled, as it were, the essential features. The broad, clearly-defined planes, the light and deep shadows playing upon them as upon bronze, make of this small picture a bas-relief, but there also is about everything Daumier painted a quality of atmosphere akin to Rembrandt's. His work is that of a finished artist, achieving greatness by concentration of expression, by beauty of dense and rich color, by a dim golden light and an astonishing scale of blacks which re- minds one of Bassano and Bronzino. It is classic art, and the caricaturist's mode of seeing gives it unprecedented breadth. One must revert to Rembrandt, his beggars and ragamuffins, the cripples and lepers of his backgrounds, to find examples of that same uplifting into style of ugly figures. Baudelaire, an excellent art-critic, was not mistaken when he pointed out such noble affinities between Rembrandt and the satirist, the text of whose caricatures the public relished without appreciating the talent displayed in the drawings themselves. The slightest sketch painted by Daumier is impressive for its pictorial power, for the contrast between ironical ugliness and tragic atmosphere, no less than for observation and psycho- logical insight. No one has shown more skill in accentuating a type, creating life by a few 319 WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL 1834-1903 “SYMPHONY IN VIOLET AND BLUE” (“BLEU ET VIOLET-PARMI LES ROULANTS”) Canvas, height 19K inches, width 28 inches. Signed down at the left with the butterfly. A N impression of the ocean in which the dominant feature is a long wave swelling its angry crest above the horizon toward the left of the picture. The limitless waste and the power of heaving waters are emphasized and made singularly impressive by a sailing vessel in deep shadow rising far out over a foamy crest in the middle of the composition. Farther away, on each side of it, is a boat with its canvas touched by the sunlight. The cloudy sky occupying almost two-thirds of the picture is as full of movement, as wind swept as the sea. The technique is extremely broad, the paint fluid, applied in masses, thinly, as in water color washes, except that each foamy crest is put down rather thick and with a single touch of the brush. The tone is low, the subdued color scheme of great subtlety. Purchased by Mr. Pope from the artist in Paris, 1898. Exhibition Salon du Champ de Mars, 1894. Exhibition Society of American Artists, 1898. Exhibitions, Whistler Memorial, Boston, February, 1904, London, 1905, Paris, 1905. 320 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS touches upon the surface of a canvas, and it may be predicted that his reputation, already well established, will be for critics of the future, quite different and far greater, owing to the posthumous revelation of his paintings. Camille Mauclair “THE BLUE WAVE” T HE BLUE WAVE” was exhibited in Paris, at the Champ-de-Mars Salon of 1894. At the same exposition Whistler exhibited several ‘Nocturnes,’ and the full-length * ‘ Portrait of Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fesenzac. ” ‘ ‘ The Blue Wave ” elicited the warm enthusiasm of Claude Monet, who valued above all its vivid coloring and the impression of motion it conveyed. Whistler did not date his pictures upon the canvas, as has been the custom of other painters, ancient and modern — Rembrandt, for instance, and Claude Monet. He had a sort of horror of dates and left no catalogue or notebook in which his works were recorded in their chronological order, so that it is almost impossible to know the exact date of many of his works, but “The Blue Wave” is fortunately dated. It is obvious that Courbet’s manner is discernable in it, and we know that the relations of the two artists date from the exhibition of the refuses at Bonvin’s studio in 1859 where Whistler’s “At the Piano ” was particularly noticed and much praised by Courbet. Subsequently, Courbet and Whistler spent two summers at Trouville, in 1865 and 1866, living and working together and Whistler then painted several seascapes, with the sea in the background; he even intro- duced the figure of Courbet in one of them (now belonging to Mrs. Gardner). It was at this time that Courbet produced most of those pieces which he called his ‘sea views.’ Cour- bet, returning alone to Trouville in 1870, painted the great picture “The Wave” exhibited in the Salon of 1870 and now in the Louvre. This title “The Wave” is also that of Mr. Pope’s painting, save for the adjective added by Whistler. The manner of representing the wave breaking upon the shore is also the same. We have then in the two ‘ Waves ’ by Whistler and Courbet, painted in different places, one at Trouville and the other at Biarritz — the work of men who, as painters, looked at the sea from the same point of view. It is very interesting to compare the two pictures, to see what different interpretation can be given to the same subject by two powerful and original artists. [It is interesting to note that Whistler’s “Blue Wave” was painted years before any of the “Waves” of Courbet, and that Courbet’s title for his picture known as “The Wave,” now in the Louvre and re- ferred to by M. Duret, was “La Mer Orageuse,” — Editor’s note.] Whistler repeatedly returned to representations of the sea as it unfurls upon the shore. “The Blue Wave” is typical of that class of subjects. Its coloring is brilliant, its sky very luminous. It certainly is a most characteristic example of Whistler’s manner and of his development at the time. Theodore Duret The influence of Courbet upon the mind and the first works of Whistler is undeniable. It seems quite possible that Whistler’s indulgence in his wit, so pitiless for the Philistines, should have come, in some part, from his intimacy with Courbet, who was, somewhat 323 THE COLLECTION OF childishly, a ferocious anti-bourgeois. Whistler, aristocratic, refined and infinitely more intelligent, nevertheless felt strongly the influence of the robust, realistic French painter. They worked together, and the ‘ 1 Blue Wave ” is conclusive proof of the existence of a con- ception of art common to both. In front of this “ Blue Wave” painted at Biarritz, there comes irresistibly over one’s mind the remembrance of the celebrated “Vague” of Cour- bet’s, painted in Normandy, and whose green porphyry seems to us to-day a trifle heavy. The sky is analogous in both. Both pictures show the same desire to define the aspect of a compact, liquid wall, and to formulate its moving line, to give the sensation of the weight of a huge mass of water, and to seize upon that moment when the volute of the wave, held in suspense, will soon break down into seething foam. There is also the same desire to find in the drawing of the heavy clouds, a replica to the arabesque of the tumu- lous wave, thus creating unity of movement and perfect cohesion between sea and sky, and helping the suggestion of the forceful resistless impact of rollers coming on, one after the other, toward the spectator. In a few marines Whistler has tried to help render the powerful lift, the consistency and volume of huge waves, giving them a uniformly somber coloration. In Mr. Pope’s picture, the water has the consistency of lava, and the deep blue is well chosen to help render the impression of solidity. Before this souvenir of Biarritz, one must not think of those mysterious works of Whistler’s, those poetical transpositions of life, which are the most personal and greatest expressions of his genius. In these, Whistler, passing Courbet, has totally forgotten him. Pursuing his research for the special suggestion, the dreamy synthesis of an aspect of nature, his art has came so near to music that he has used musical terms in naming his pictures. Here we are only in the presence of the Whistler influenced by Courbet, a Whistler of the first manner. But this takes nothing of the violent beauty of this picture, of which the values are so fine, of which the movement and tumult are so intense, and the big rollers, seen from the low shore, surge on so impressively. This “ Blue Wave ” is an important work in the evolution of the American master, for it marks the moment when he was beginning to appreciate color; that is, to appreciate what was to become the real subject of his paintings. It is already no more the waves which are of importance here, but the blue in its infinite varieties. Whistler is ready to go a step further and to call his future land- scape ‘Symphonies in Blue and White,’ ‘Arrangements in Black and Gold,’ ‘Nocturnes in Brown and Gray;’ that is, to suppress the anecdote and to keep but the soul of the land- scape, its coloration, its chromatic symphony, and thus pass from realism to the research of a truth more mysteriously essential. Camille Mauclair Whistler threw scorn on the limitations implied in the terms: marine, animal, portrait or landscape painter. As he was fond of pointing out, a man who can paint a Dutch clock can also paint a Dutch sea. In this he is a typical Impressionist, to whom the meaning of the scene depicted is not so much secondary as insignificant. A picture was to him prima- rily a certain arrangement of lines and colors, and though, no doubt, the artist must, Antaeus-like, be ever in touch with Mother Earth — otherwise his arrangements will become 324 MR ALFRED ATMORE POPE tedious, formal, uninspired — yet nature is to be used merely as a hint, a corroboration or a correction of some preconceived idea, drawn perhaps from the memory of other pictures, or from the memory of some fleeting vision of the actual thing seen. And certainly this picture is an illustration, a spontaneous, unaffected illustration of this fundamental creed, or more truly perhaps, instinct. No critical mind would catalogue it as merely a marine. It is, no doubt, a vision of a rough sea beating against rocks, but essentially it is an arrange- ment of certain colors in certain forms. It has, moreover, a peculiar interest as being one of the few important pictures in which rocks are a conspicuous feature in the foreground. The “Coast of Brittany,” sometimes known as “Seule,” has a rocky foreground, but the sea is a distant strip on the horizon. And in Whistler’s versions of the sea, whether calm as in “Valparaiso,” or stormy and threatening as in “The Great Sea,” there is nothing in the foreground to break the grand sweep of the brush. But here the dark brown rocks, over which the breakers foam and surge, add a note of terror and delight which was never again repeated. Unique, too, is the intensity of the color inspired by this southern sea, intense yet not crude, dazzling but not inharmonious. One cannot imagine Whistler, like Turner, braving the elements, lashed to a mast while taking notes of effects for his “Snow Storm: Steamer off a harbor’s mouth making signals, in shallow water, and going by the lead. ” Does not such a title alone point to a man who knows the ropes? It is a nautical, technical title. Whistler did not know the ropes, he knew only one thing, what brushes and paint were and how to use them, and that he knew consummately well. No one work could be better cited than this as an example of Whistler’s supreme faculty of bringing out of each medium that he handled the quintessential qualities of that particular medium. There are other painters who were supreme in one medium and never touched another, and there are others still who would not limit their ambitions to the medium which espe- cially suited, but again and again tried others, most unhappily. We need only quote Con- stable’s water-colors, which, however interesting and useful as notes, cannot be cited as good examples of the treatment of this medium. Turner again, that overwhelming genius, has left examples of everything, badly and well done. Oil pictures that are models of the best style, and again others that are, in the attempt to get the dainty lightness of water- color, huge failures; water-colors that just are on the brink of such failure, and are merely pulled out by exhausting every artifice known to or invented by him. And there are other artists who, by boldly ignoring the standards till then universally recognized, did not even permit any discussion of the question as to what oil or water color, or gouache, essentially is, considered as a medium for expressing an idea beautifully. I mean especially the Pre- Raphaelites, Millais in his early work, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and later, Burne-Jones. Millais’ “Ophelia,” wonderful as it is, might as well have been painted in water-color; there is no joy in the stuff, merely as stuff. Now Whistler’s mastery of the needle was from the begin- ning fully conceded, but his mastery of the other mediums is even now contested. Yet surely his oils, his water-colors, his gouaches, his chalk drawings, lithographs, pastels, are quite as supreme in their unerring sense of propriety. See how, in this picture, the delighted brush always expressed two things: first, its delight in being a brush, that being its func- 325 BRANDEGEE, ROBERT 1848— “PORTRAIT OF MISS SARAH PORTER” Canvas, height 30 inches, width 26 inches. T HE aged lady is seated in an attitude of repose facing the spec- tator, her body seen at three-quarter length being slightly turned to the left and leaning back a little. Her head placed high in the canvas is a little inclined toward the left shoulder; the thoughtful, sensitive, kindly face is lighted from the left, the luminous eyes looking straight out from under their dropping eyelids. The white hair parted in the middle and lying smoothly around the high brow, is brought down over the top of the ears and fastened at the back with a plain comb barely showing above the head. The hands, partially seen, and with the fingers of the one resting within those of the other, lie loosely in her lap. The gown of black silk, confined at the waist with broad girdle of similar material has the full sleeves, puffed at the shoulders, of the period. At the neck and wrist a glimpse of white collar and cuffs shows. The technique is simple, direct; the brown background harmonizes beautifully with the quiet blacks of the dress and the golden tones of the head. Painted about 1 896. Exhibited Society of American Artists, 1900. 326 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS tion; and second, the delight of the handler in expressing by its means a beautiful thing seen. Thus, eye and hand are in the most intimate communion, they are brothers — nay, they are one, and unity is achieved. Bernhard Sickert Although painted at an early period, Whistler’s “Blue Wave ” is to be counted among his unmistakable masterpieces. It is an important picture in the history of all art, because it is the great product of one of those moments when art, rather than the artist, was at work. Now and again art, which has existed from the beginning, springs full-grown into life. It is then that the artist paints better than he knows. These flashes of inspiration throwing light into the unexplored recesses of his being, reveal to the full the latent possi- bilities of his genius. It is doubtful if the artist can ever reach for himself these moments of high attainment, which, coming unsought, shine as the particular gems in the chain of his achievements. The “Blue Wave” is one of those rare works in Whistler’s splendid pro- duction. The art of Whistler is the art of extreme selection. His powerful personality steadily asserted itself with but little change or growth. Uncertainty, failure, experiment, seem to have been alike unnecessary to him. He had from the first a peculiar rightness of vision and sureness of choice. There is scarcely another painter of our time who does not, in one work or another, bear the hallmark of the nineteenth century; but Whistler stands apart, showing but little trace of any outside influence. This particular picture of the “Blue Wave,” wherein must always be found a suggestion of Courbet, bears only a superficial stamp of Courbet's influence. The internal evidence points as conclusively to Whistler and his methods and sources, as that of any other picture he ever painted. While it is impossi- ble that a person of such sensitive nature could help being influenced by all that he comes in contact with, it must always be with Whistler an influence of indefinable suggestion, and scarcely one which could reproduce itself in any imitation. It is but the acceptance of some subtile quality, quite possibly invisible to the perception of another, but to him of great significance, which, by quickly combining with some similar stored away material, gives birth to a wholly new identity of thought. Such indeed is all influence upon strong indi- vidualities. Let us lay no stress upon imitative processes with such as Whistler! Indeed it might justly be said, that more than by any other was he influenced by himself. We follow him rearing his structure upon its own self-discovered foundations with a steady disregard for outside material. He arranged what he chose to paint to suit his own demands; in his studio work he often spent infinite time and pains, carefully adjusting every detail of his subject, until it was, to his delicate sense, perfect. In much the same way Whistler arranged nature, or persuaded her to so arrange herself, by seeking her only when she had veiled her- self with her own peculiar softness of atmosphere or semi-darkness, and had eliminated all but her enchantments. In these rare moments he found her ‘right’ and he applauded. Thus were painted the ‘Nocturnes’ and many of his ‘Symphonies’ and ‘Arrange- ments.’ But, while this method represents the peculiar personality of the man, there are still those recorded moments when this particular finesse forsook him, swept away by some 329 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS sudden, new positiveness of nature itself, when she, ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ appeared before him in some dazzling splendor of actual existence, from which he forgot to select; when everything before him was beautiful, and the eliminating process gave way to a prodigality of expression. Nature no longer coquettes with him, but she subdues his soul with the wealth of her significance and rules him. He paints now, not because he chooses, but be- cause he must. Then, like a gold thread running through a web, appear these spontaneous pictures, examples of this surrender of which the “Blue Wave” is one. Spontaneous it is, standing eminently alone in a critical examination of Whistler’s art; yet at the same time bearing the stamp of the greatest of Whistler’s qualities. Those canons of art for which he always steadfastly and exultingly stood, are all manifest here. The beauty of the color is wholly Whistler’s. It is a spot of gorgeous blue, made to seem more brilliant than pigment because of his instinctive knowledge, even at this early period, of color-beauty, and his keen sense of its fittest use for the expression of the idea which he was intent upon. The beauty of nature— the fullest beauty of all her color and form and light and movement, which was neither but yet must contain all— this Whistler sought for, this he saw and this he painted, here as always. No such color possibility exists in the world as that of water, the jewel- like radiance of moving water, transparent with filtered light, intensified by the shadow of its depth, vibrating in the web of the sky reflections woven over it. A note within this won- drous range Whistler struck, and balanced its living quality with the solid darkness of the rock and the unsubstantial whiteness of the foam. He was not painting a breaking wave, but the beauty of a breaking wave. The beautiful to the artist is a potent wine. Quickened by this influence Whistler painted the “Blue Wave.” He painted the impression while the impression was hot upon him. He painted in the presence of nature. The double creator is seen at work. Nature over- whelmed him with an abundance of revelation surpassing his imagination. Nature, herself, has laid her finger upon him and guided his hand — the glow of her inspiration is over the picture in the presence of Nature. Marcia Oakes Woodbury “THE LAST OF OLD WESTMINSTER BRIDGE” T HIS picture, although one of the early oils exhibited by Whistler at the Royal Academy, was not the first. “At the Piano” was exhibited in i860, “La M£re G6rard” in 1861, and “Thames in Ice,” as it is now called, exhibited in 1862 under the title of “The Twenty- fifth of December, i860, on the Thames.” In the same year “Alone with the Tide” was also exhibited. In 1864 came “Die Lange Leizen,”now owned by Mr. John G. Johnson, of Philadelphia, and a pothouse scene, and in the following year four pictures, “The Golden Screen,” the property of Mr. Freer, “Old Battersea Bridge,” “The Scarf” and the wonder- ful picture “The Little White Girl” or “Symphony in White No. 2.” All these pictures have certain marked characteristics which would fix the period, even if there were no records of it. The touch is bold and what the artists call ‘fat,’ there is no deliberate suppression, or but very little, subordinate parts keeping their place from the obvious fact that they were 33o THE CRITICAL ESSAYS subordinate in nature, which has been closely followed throughout. There is none of the cunning Whistler developed later; of drawing attention to a particular passage which pleased him most, and which was not necessarily the obvious center of interest, by suppressing or simplifying the other portions. Another characteristic of this period is that each portion of a picture appears to be painted ‘ du premier coup. ’ There is none of that search for exquisiteness which made the “Miss Alexander" such a long agony during the progress of the work, and such a miracle of refinement at the close. There is nothing of the miraculous or baffling in the “ West- minster Bridge." Anybody could have done it, anybody with the hand and eye of Whistler; that is to say, nobody except possibly Manet. But it is largely hand and eye, the brain is young, eager; it is as yet not fantastically exquisite as in later years. But for mastery of the materials ready to everybody's hand, and the vision patent to everybody's eye, this work would be difficult to parallel. The spacing of the beams and timbers— with what sureness and vigor is this indicated? The slight turn of the bridge, the swirl of the water, the little groups of men busy as bees, the little boats rocking in the foreground, the distant wharves and warehouses, could not be better done, since they were to be done by this method and no other. And while the realism is so definite that a hasty glance suggests a photograph of the scene itself, a moment's study would show that every touch is a translation into brushwork. That man's white coat is exactly like a white coat, and exactly a single dab of the brush. Many works by other hands, which have appeared since this picture was exe- cuted, have aroused considerable astonishment and discussion, and yet had no other quali- ties than these, and had them in a less degree. The ‘Saturday Review' for May 20, 1863, says: "Whistler's effective rough sketch of Westminster Bridge (352) only painted to be looked at from a distance, has been good- naturedly put where effectiveness is lost, and roughness alone visible.” The hanging was as severely criticized by T. G. Stephens in the ‘ Athenreum ' as by Palgrave in the ' Satur- day Review.' Palgrave, after attacking Mr. Frith who was on the Jury, and whose “ Railway Station”he dismissed with a few contemptuous words, went on: “ We may now return from these strangely conceived productions (i.e. by David Roberts) to another, which, while it represents a part of London with sufficient fidelity to be useful, possesses all the art qualities in which Mr. Roberts' pictures are so lamentably deficient. Below the ‘line,’ and where the crinolines scour its surface, hangs Mr. Whistler’s artistic and able picture; ‘The Last of old Westminster Bridge ’(352), a view taken from the west end of the new structure, looking over the stump, so to say, of the old one, along the forest of piles to the opposite shore. A comparison of the artistic qualities of this boldly executed work, with what we have seen in those by Mr. Roberts will show, if it be needful to do so, where the last fail altogether in art and are little else than misrepresentations of fine themes. One glance at Mr. Whistler’s reading of the softened, warm grey of a London sky, so feelingly rendered here, and so beautiful in truth as it is, will satisfy the student that the artist has found some- thing Mr. Roberts’ black and white and blue give no idea of. The streaming motion of the river as it goes past the piles, its many and subtly-hued surface, the atmosphere among the 33 ' THE CRITICAL ESSAYS piles; their solidity so deftly given without toil, and the aerial beauty of the removed shore, are such that, if the hanging committee had given a moment's thought to them, they would have put this picture where it ought to be, in an honorable position." it says much for this critic’s discrimination and spirit that he should have unfavorably compared the work of David Roberts with that of Whistler, for at the time Roberts was a famous and highly popular painter, while Whistler was young and comparatively insignifi- cant. Thus the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. Of all the works which elbowed each other at this exhibition of 1863, the only one which has held its own and worthily, beside the “Westminster Bridge” is Millais’ masterpiece "The Eve of St. Agnes," which, curiously enough, seems to be a precursor of some of Whistler’s later productions in a quality of breadth and grandeur which is unique in Millais’ work. Bernhard Sickert “Westminster Bridge" which has the style and tone of a first-rate painting of the French school of the middle of the nineteenth century, is a remarkably fine and interesting early example of Whistler’s work, and, like so many early examples, it manifests a side of the painter’s talent which his later work either does not exhibit at all or shows in a much less pronounced degree. Not only is it a subject picture in a far more positive sense than most of the paintings that followed it, a composition of rich, human interest and illustrative purport, but, while summarily brushed in, it possesses a wealth of intricate and thoroughly constructed detail. Like the Thames etchings, this painting has fine drawing, firm con- struction, ample atmosphere, picturesque charm of design, sufficient completeness of state- ment, and a fascinating personal style. The golden brown tone makes it look a little old-fashioned, but this tone is exceedingly choice and delectable. So much of what is best in his art was inspired by the Thames, Whistler might well be called the poet-laureate of that historic stream as Daubigny was of the Oise, and Meryon of the Seine. Wherever, among the squalid surroundings of the London river-banks, on the docks, on the bridges, in a boat, at any view-point commanding the shipping, the huddle of grimy old warehouses along the shore, the distant silhouette of buildings, the smoky skies, the network of masts, yards and cordage, the fleets of clumsy barges, the play of reflected lights and shadows along the surface of the water, the myriad of commonplace objects which combine to make a commercial chaos of a great tidal river winding its way through a great town — wherever, in this apparently unpromising region Whistler chose to paint or to etch, the result was certain to be fascinating. The keen delight felt by the artist in his work is directly com- municated to the sensitive observer, who, in a measure, shares with him the joy of spon- taneous creative labor, the supreme satisfaction of power aptly applied to a worthy purpose. So in early examples of Whistler's painting like this “Westminster Bridge" we see him freely exercising a personal capacity which has not yet assumed its ultimate phase of expression, but in which, without parti pris, he uses, with ease, felicity and mastery, some of the goodly traditions of the French school of the vital 1830-1860 period, giving, with unsurpassed smoothness, lucidity and force of statement, an impression of a high order of pictorial character. What it lacks of the unique and highly individualized quality which is 332 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS to more and more separate his later work from the work of other men, is well compensated for by the rare beauty of its tone, the choiceness and delicacy of its values, the numerous inter- esting passages of detail which, for the most part, we surmise, in after years he would have sacrificed to the general effect of masses, atmosphere and tone-scheme. Moreover, some- thing definite is going on in this picture, and we cannot see how such proceedings fit in consistently with the theory of art for art’s sake. Nor do we feel obliged to reconcile the spirit of this busy scene with the airy abstractions of the ‘ Ten o’clock.' For Whistler was constantly rising superior to his own theories. Of him it may be said with special aptness that he builded better than he knew. It is already clear that the world is bound to take him at a higher valuation than his own, by reading into his pictures meanings and sentiments which had no acknowledged place in his philosophy of art. It will be greatly to the advan- tage of his fame when he is judged, as he no doubt will be, by his paintings, pastels, etch- ings and lithographs. How much or how little the painter of ‘ ‘ Westminster Bridge ’’ had in mind with respect to the human association of such a subject, which we naturally discern in the background of it, so to say— the engineering and architecture, the purposes of the bridge, the local and historic and romantic elements— it were idle to inquire too closely. We may assume, from what we know of Whistler, and of painters in general, that little, if any, thought of all this entered into the undertaking. It is a wholesome state of mind, on the part of the artist, to hold fast, first and last, to his craftsmanship. The painter fulfils his appointed function and obeys his destiny by painting well. To have a philosophy of life or of art may be of small advantage to him. Let him be loyal to himself and to nature, and the result takes care of itself, with all its implications, sentimental, historical, ideal. The actual, the visible, will always give him arduous problems and to spare, will engross all his faculties to the utmost. The most original, inspiring, intimate qualities of his work are not in it by his conscious volition. Of this fact “Westminster Bridge” affords as good an illustration in its way as Whistler’s portrait of his mother in the Luxembourg Museum. William Howe Downes A bridge in course of construction over a river, that is to say, a mass of scaffoldings, beams, girders, rafters— entangling, crossing, mingling in an immense and powerful trellis-work; a river encumbered with piling, with boats laden with planks and timber and in the foreground a barge on which are scattered varied building materials; on the iron floor, sustained by stone piers, but still half concealed in the forest of timbers now being demol- ished, a swarm of human ants, lifting burdens, drawing carts, raising hoists, and in the back- ground the dull and trite horizon of a populous suburb of a great city beneath a cloudy, sullen sky. Such is the spectacle that Whistler’s picture presents to us. From the docu- mentary standpoint it may interest Londoners as the portrayal of a site which is very much changed since the development of all that shore of the Thames and the construction of the massive pavilions of St. Thomas Hospital, placed, as if in battle array, on ground almost de- serted forty years ago, But this, assuredly, is not the point of view which touches us. Neither is it the one Whistler had in mind, although he is still far from the period of his m THE CRITICAL ESSAYS purely harmonic notations; he had not as yet become the masterly, subtle, acute sympho- nist who took from reality only the soul of beings and the phantom of things, the para- doxical musician, the disconcerting painter, who created color and light out of darkness and music out of silence. Reality has not become for him a simple pretext; he is in the first period of his evolution, in which he perceives forms under their concrete and determinate aspect. And yet this painting surprised the public. Admitted at the Royal Academy, the committee judged it severely enough to hang it in a very unfavorable position. The aston- ishment of contemporaries at a picture which seems to ourselves so little subversive may be explained thus: In England especially, one was accustomed to find an appeal in a pic- ture, either through the choice of scene, the ingeniousness or piquancy of arrangement, or the animation of figures. People wanted to be amused, instructed or moved by the feeling, the action, or the picturesqueness (a term which was understood in a wholly romantic fashion). In short, they wanted a subject even in landscapes, and it was difficult for them to understand that there was an esthetic interest, an appeal to the imagination or a simple delectation of the eyes before a mass of stone-work heaped up between a muddy stream and a grizzly sky. They scarcely saw anything in this canvas, but a sort of low and trivial realism. For in England, realistic inclinations had taken, quite naturally, a wholly imagina- tive cast and direction. While in France, G6ricault, Millet, Courbet, to cite only the princi- pal realistic masters, lingered in the direct study of the spectacles and acts of contempora- neous life, the artists across the Channel, the Pre-Raphaelites reacting against the tendencies of their milieu, applied their minute studies of nature and life to subjects drawn from the poets or story-tellers of yore. Whistler himself had just returned from France. He retained, as he always continued to retain, a strong attachment for that country, and, at the time of which we write, he was enrolled in the little group of French independents who were about to prepare the new evolution of painting. He was the comrade of Fantin-Latour, Legros, Bracquemond, who were called realists, because they followed Manet who, for the instant, incarnated all alone realism, while giving their homage to the great romantic leader, whom they also thought a great realist because he had stirred their imagination by his passionate fight against aca- demic tendencies. We find, in effect, Whistler, bouquet in hand, as one of the most fervent and devoted of the faithful in the first rank of the little band of realists before the portrait of Delacroix, in that “ Hommage k Delacroix ” by Fantin-Latour, dated 1864, two years after the day when this picture of “Old Westminster Bridge” was painted. Now, in France, we had learned to discern in the apparent vulgarities of surrounding realities, characteristic elements which Daubigny and Millet first emphasized, and to which the realistic and popular impulse of the democratic movement of 1848 opened the eyes of the artists. We had, with penetrating intelligence, in the most customary and common- place spectacles of nature, and especially of nature modified by man, we had found, as Hob- bema had previously found, a value at the same time expressive and pictorial, an unexpected beauty in elements formerly not exactly disdained, but ignored. In this particular order of ideas, and quite near to the sphere in which Whistler worked, there dawned a singular 334 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS genius of extreme simplicity and great power, Mdryon. This great master has drawn the bridges, monuments, old hovels, scaffoldings and small public buildings aligned along the quays of Paris, on the banks of the Seine. When Whistler went to live by the Thames, in that suburb of Chelsea of which he became so fond, the remembrance of the unfortunate artist whose work had so strongly impressed his comrades was fresh upon him. It was furthermore the time when one examined with a new interest and a more sympathetic and just comprehension the pictures of the Japanese masters, which before then had been con- sidered exclusively as objects of curiosity. Their naturalistic and picturesque spirit had turned to equally expressive and decorative account all this world of spectacles unobserved by Occidental art. We know how sensitive to their influence Whistler became and always re- mained. Did he not also obey the bent of his nature in seeking to break away from the com- mon range of subjects and to show the beauty and grandeur hidden in what was deemed the commonplace vulgarities of such a scene as the “Demolition of Old Westminster Bridge”? If that be true, the time soon arrived when that which was taken up as an exaggerated example was to become one of the greatest manifestations of eternal truth, and the subjects of docks, works, scaffoldings, which Whistler exploited in his first manner were adopted with delight, not only by those children of realism, the Impressionists, but by numerous painters of all schools. This picture in addition to its intrinsic merits, marks therefore, a date in the evolution of the work of the master as well as in the history of the development of contemporary art. Leonce Benedite This is one of Whistler’s most important paintings. One can judge how greatly the artist prized it by the fact that it was the only one representing him at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1863. About the time it was produced, he lived in England and in France, and the sojourn in both countries seems to have led him to appreciate more thor- oughly the beauty of each. The charm of a view constantly before the eye becomes dulled, if not entirely lost, whereas short absences make one discover at each return, new beauties. Thus Whistler, after a stay in Paris always took increased delight in the diversity of aspects the Thames presents in its course through London and the surrounding country. He tried to fix the character of these views first in etchings and finally in paintings, one of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863 and belongs now to Mr. Pope. This picture shows a love for exactness which, however, soon grew cold, but in spite of its realism, the scene had been rendered in an original, a Whistlerian manner. It is only in Japanese prints that one could at the time find so bright and stimulating a rendering of a subject. Like the artists of Nippon, Whistler seems to have taken a point of view sufficiently high to domi- nate the scene in order to make the onlooker realize spontaneously the unexpected beauty of this everyday scene. Again, like them, he did not fear the abrupt interruption of the scene, or the cutting by the border of a figure, or a boat. The planes are wonderfully estab- lished and the distance is splendid. The scene is animated by the figures of many workmen, some of whom are occupied on the bridge while others are in boats on the river, and in the gray atmosphere the white shirts of these men make delightful light spots. 1 do not think 335 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS that Whistler ever signed a painting more richly composed, and more picturesquely varied than this one. At that moment the passion for tone for the sake of tone, did not absorb all the energies of the painter and under his brush every mood of nature was not as yet uniquely recorded in a ‘Symphony.’ Whistler was evidently attracted by the construction of that bridge spanning the tide river, by the entanglement of timbers and scaffolding, he was interested in the picturesqueness of the setting, in the labor of the workmen, and he detailed the horizon and outlined on the sky the precise silhouette of the buildings. The balance is perfectly held between the science of the draughtsman and the gifts of the colorist which assert themselves triumphantly. Under the diaphanous envelope the tones, exact in their values, are veiled. In opposition to the principle that Whistler was to proclaim later, the free, broad touch shows he had no fear that the canvas should reveal all the marks of the brush. Everything betokens a master’s hand, and yet the picture bears the date of 1862. Historically this work gives most useful data for the period of Whistler’s beginnings. If we consider it in itself, it takes its place by its composition as well as by the authority of its technique, among the most beautiful and personal of modern landscapes. Roger Marx “THE WOMAN WITH THE GUITAR” M ANET painted the “Woman with the Guitar” in his studio of the Rue Guyot, behind the Parc Monceau, in 1866 or 1867, from the same model and at the same time as the “Young Woman,” exhibited at the Salon of 1866 together with his “Portrait of Emile Zola.” The “Young Woman” now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, has become better known under the name of “The Woman with the Parrot.” Manet introduced in the background of the “Woman with the Guitar” the parrot which sits upon a perch in the other picture. This bird called forth a burst of indignation from the critics, for in France ‘ grand ’ which we should call ‘ academic ’ art, turned its attention chiefly to the produc- tion of historical pictures, in which Greek and Roman heroes figured together with mythological gods and goddesses. All these personages were represented in studied arrangements, and conventional poses. Even the accessories were objects of antique shape, and no parrot had ever figured in classical works, therefore no parrot should ever figure in art. Manet, rebelling against this academic and so-called classical tradition, delighted in choosing subjects and accessories of an absolutely unacademic character. In his “ Olympia,” exhibited at the Salon of 1865, figured a black cat with his back up. In our days, when ideas of art have broadened, no one feels the slightest astonishment at these innovations of Manet’s, which on their first appearance excited such lively wrath. In the cat of “Olympia ” we see only a black note placed there for the sake of contrast to bring out the value of the whites, and in the parrot of the “Young Woman” and the “Woman with the Guitar” only the means of enlivening a picture and relieving the background by the introduction of vivid tones. Such accessories gave Manet the means of obtaining variety of tone and contrast of color. The guitar, the chair, the parrot, in the picture, have their full value as things of different colors, complementing the color of the face. The guitar player herself, with her 336 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS light colored dress, is painted altogether in the full light, without the help of artificial shadows. We are here in the presence of one of those wholly individual works which bor- rowing nothing from the methods of schools, reveal the freedom and creative power of the original artist. It is this manner of painting, regardless of conventional rules, which, after rousing such mighty opposition, gradually brought about a complete change in the modern French school. It is largely owing to Manet’s example that the painters forsook traditional subjects and turned their attention to the rendering of contemporary life. And it was his example that led to painting light tones in juxtaposition and discarding the use of conventional shadows. Manet’s point of view, that of a pure painter, is at the basis, if it is not the start- ing point, of the modern evolution of painting. Theodore Duret Here is a painting whose passport, if one may so say, is in perfect order, and whose whole history is known to us. That it was painted in the year 1866 (and not in 1867 as has been generally stated) is proved by the mention of the “Woman with the Guitar” in a study by Emile Zola, published in the ‘Revue du XIX Si6cle’ January 1, 1867. The pic- ture, catalogued as No. 26, was shown at the private exhibition organized by Manet in May, 1867, at the Pont-de-l’Alma, as a protest against the exclusion of his works from the Universal Exhibition. About 1877, a connoisseur of assured taste, Mr. Ernest May, bought it directly from his studio. After Manet's death the importance of the work appeared such as to make its presence desirable at the Posthumous Exposition of the master’s work, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, January, 1884 (No. 40 in the catalogue), and later at the first Cen- tennial Exhibition of French Art at the Universal Exhibition in 1889 (N01491 in the cata- logue), where it was designated vaguely as “The Woman in White.” On June 4, 1890, Mr. Ernest May’s collection of pictures was sold; the painting catalogued under No. 39 and re- produced in heliotype, was sold to M. Durand-Ruel, and from his hands passed into the col- lection where it now hangs. A woman in a white gown is seen seated upon a chair; she holds a guitar upon her lap and appears about to play; aside from a parrot on its perch nothing breaks the uniform dark-gray of the background. It is against this dark ground that the light-clad musician stands forth; the subtlety of the colorist is shown by the concord of the amber yellow of the instrument with the black note of the girdle and the blue note of the ribbon making a three-fold fillet about the chestnut hair. Considered in its place among Manet’s works, the “Woman with the Guitar” is a characteristic specimen of the master’s first manner. It was only much later, and greatly upon the suggestion of Claude Monet, that Manet began to study the relations established by the light between a figure and its surroundings; at the moment of painting the “Woman with the Guitar” he still remembered the old masters whom he had freely chosen as his guides. Did he not, at the Louvre, copy Tintoretto’s self- portrait? And we know the warmth of his admiration for Zurbaran, El Greco and Goya, at the time of his travels in Spain in 1865. In the “Woman with the Guitar” he delights in the play of vibrant tones, standing 337 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS forth in light masses and without transition, against opaque darkness. The model’s position on the canvas indicates that the picture was originally longer at the bottom, and that Manet intentionally, and with good effect, shortened it, a thing which he frequently did. The material quality is that belonging to free, full-bodied, rich painting, which, with time, can become only more enamel-like and gain brilliancy and beauty. Roger Marx The simple and frank workmanship of this picture of Manet’s first manner reveals the genuinely classic foundation of his talent. From 1855 to 1870, he was a realist influenced by Velasquez, Goya and Courbet. His haunting desire was to render oppositions of light and shade and to avoid the diffused tones and washed out attenuations by which Aca- demical art sought to obtain a false distinction, and easily achieve elegance. Manet had the courage to limit the range of his pictures to violent contrasts of white and black, with few scant notes of a special gray of his own, and he suppressed most of the modelling, seeking only to find the precise tone of a face and to inscribe, one might almost say to write upon it, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, with a few strokes such as the artists of Japan, with a single sweep of the ink-filled brush, have the art of making so expressive. It was only after 1870, under the influence of Claude Monet, that he began his research for atmosphere, and became one of the most admirable representatives of Impressionism. The ‘black’ manner of Manet, to which the “Woman with the Guitar” belongs, is marked by its breadth of touch, the truth and power of its values and the sobriety of its lines. This simplicity comes near startling us, accustomed as our eyes have been these last twenty years to subtle elaborations. It must not be forgotten that Manet found in the vigor- ous realism of Goya a source of rejuvenation because he wanted, above all, to protest against the pettiness, the inexactitude, the excess of small details of his epoch. He detested the intrusion into his art of sentimentalities and literary elements, and when his personages make a gesture, that is the whole of their and his concern. Manet’s interest was wholly a pictorial one, it was in form, tone, color and not in anything else. See this young woman playing the guitar. She is not idealized, she is simply playing and in so doing giving the artist a splendid chance for the rendering of some fine values. This picture is one of several interpretations of a favorite theme of Manet’s. His first work in the Salon was a “ Guitarero,” hailed joyously by Th£ophile Gautier and Baudelaire. One may say that the presence of a guitar, in one and another of his pictures, is a sort of trademark of his Spanish period, like the parrot in certain works of Courbet. The interest of Mr. Pope’s picture lies in its simplicity of arrangement and its masterly selection of lines. Note how the cord of the instrument joins the singer’s belt-ribbon in a waving line which gives lightness to the white of the dress, and falls in with the design of the puffed sleeve. Examine the hand, the setting of the eye, Manet is all there, in his mag- nificent frankness of a realist saturated with the classics. And it is this frankness, and bold solidity which gives to everything he paints such an enduring, albeit somewhat rude, charm. In the midst of the subtleties and artifices of contemporary painting, we feel in him the au- thority and restfulness of an old master. Camille Mauclair 338 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS The “Woman with the Guitar" must have been painted, at the latest in 1866, in the studio of the Rue Guyot, made famous by the picture of Fantin-Latour, now in the Luxem- bourg Museum. The figure is half life-size, and was painted from Victorine Meurand, the model who sat for the “Lunch upon the Grass,” “Olympia," the “Street Singer” and whom Manet employed repeatedly for ten years, up to 1875 or thereabouts. Theodore Duret relates her history in connection with a portrait of her belonging to Mr. Burrell, of Glasgow. Manet, it appears, met her by chance one day when strolling near the Palais de Justice; struck by the brilliancy of her complexion, the warm tone of her blonde hair, the unusual character of her face, he engaged herto pose for him. We are told she is still living, earning a precarious existence by teaching and painting. This canvas, whose history is com- plete, belongs to Manet's first manner, that of his realistic period before he had felt the witchery of the problems of open-air painting. It was the hour which brought into close union— in company with writers likewise fighting the good fight, Baudelaire, Champfleury, Duranty, Zola, Zacharie Astruc— the young followers of Courbet who were bound together by a common revolt against traditional routine, by school-comradeship and by admiration for the same masters. Fantin-Latour and Manet, in more than one picture, have shown them grouped together, as in the “ Hommage i Delacroix,” in “The Toast,” in the “Atelier aux Batignolles”— Legros, Whistler, Bracquemond, to cite only the more celebrated, were the ones whom the critics and Zola himself, who was of the brotherhood, called ‘ realists. ’ The first ambition of these ardent, combative youths, was to rebel against the old scholastic subjects which were not drawn from anything that ever existed, and to look for inspiration in the realities of contemporary life, discarding even the picturesque side of urban and of rural life to depict scenes of their own actual environment. Our picture takes us back to 1 866. The year before, a most significant picture by Fantin-Latour, “The Toast,” unfortunately de- stroyed the day after its exhibition, had made clear the deep purpose of that small, warlike phalanx; a group of painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, were seen rallied around Truth, who stood unveiled holding her mirror, while they enthusiastically saluted her by lifting their glasses. A preliminary sketch, presented by the widow of the artist to the Luxembourg Museum, brings out forcibly the character of that realistic evolution. In it, in place of alle- gorical T ruth, appears a more determinate figure, the framed portrait of him who was and will remain the great realist, Velasquez, before which all are paying homage. At that date Velas- quez was the master who most influenced the members of that group, and notably Manet. The latter had but recently returned from his first journey to Spain, and one can imagine what profound and memorable impressions he brought back, and to what extent his later work must have been affected by that experience. At that period, Manet's art is distinguished among contemporary productions by a three- fold concern, clearly displayed in our picture. The first care, common to all members of the small realistic group, is for the subject. In this picture it is the model just as she was, and without such action or expression, the significance of which would stand by itself apart from the purely external, pictorial significance of a living human being. His second concern is revealed in what Ingres, who might well be considered the first realist of the century, 339 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS used to call ‘modelling in the light.’ In order to understand this particular point one must remember that at that moment the French school was degraded by a technique, a loose and facile workmanship with an excessive use of bitumen, which Romanticism under the excuse of spontaneity had aided in making acceptable. Courbet himself was not free from these practices which caused a certain critic to name him the ‘ Guercino of Franche Comte.’ If Manet at that time was following Courbet, he became foremost in the reaction against him. He took up again the traditions of Ingres, of Holbein and the Primitives, in seeking to present the roundness of bodies so as to indicate projections and give weight to solids, without the artifice of opposition of light and shade graded into half-tones. The “Olympia” of 1865 offers a typical example of this, and remains a classic. We need only look at Mr. Pope’s picture to see the silhouettes of the model stand forth without abruptness, in an unbroken outline against the gray background. Aside from a few faint narrow shadows, the modelling, delicately and exactly rendered, is all in the light. The third aim relates to color. 1 have named Velasquez; I should not forget the Japan- ese prints which were keenly admired by that brotherhood. Manet took from them his love for flat tones and positive colors, and from the Spanish the play of pure against neutral tones. In his paintings, in which grays dominate and compose delicate chords, there vibrates always some highly-colored note which seems to have been placed there to wake up the whole picture. Here, into the quiet scale of white and amber, against the warm dark tone of the background, the blue ribbon and the green and red parrot enliven the canvas, giving it piquancy, making it ‘sing’ as painters express it. The “Woman with the Guitar” born in the most difficult hour of Manet’s militant life, is one of the works he executed with the greatest affection. This painting which at one time formed part of the collection of M. Du- rand-Ruel, was engraved by Lauzet for the book upon that collection published by G. Le- comte under the title of “ L’Art Impressioniste.” Leonce Benedite “ BOATS LEAVING THE HARBOR” F ROM the cliffs of the Normandy coast Claude Monet painted numerous marines, or ‘vues de la mer’ as he called them. In 1864, at the age of twenty-four, he went for the first time to Havre in search of this class of subjects, to which he was to return repeat- edly. It was then that he became acquainted with Boudin, his elder by fifteen years, and a native of Honfleur, a little town across the estuary of the Seine from Havre. Boudin, who had worked in the open air for years, was able to give the young painter frequent sugges- tions as well as the stimulus of his example. It was in 1865 that for the first time Monet exhibited in the Paris Salon, sending two of the marines he had painted at Havre. Executed in a very broad manner they were, in a high key of color, the light tones contrasting with each other without the conventional use of shadows. This was the manner first introduced by Manet, and in borrowing it, Claude Monet, then starting on his career, gave it at once the stamp of his own decided individu- ality. While Manet remained in Paris, painting figures chiefly, and seldom working in the 340 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS open air, Monet settled in the village of Argenteuil on the Seine, where he painted land- scapes, most commonly the banks and waters of the river, altogether in the open air. The marine in Mr. Pope’s collection was painted in 1868. As it is of large dimensions it cannot have been executed out of doors, actually in front of the sea, but must have been painted in the studio from the studies made from nature. The workmanship is broad and simple, and is characteristic of Claude Monet’s early manner while he was still perceptibly under the influence of Courbet and Manet, the masters who were his immediate prede- cessors. Theodore Duret The ancient saying — that ‘ nature does nothing by leaps and bounds ’ — is as true of mind as of matter. Fashions of thinking and of seeing cannot change abruptly from one minute to the next. In the history of art, so-called revolutions, causes of so much polemical warfare and alarm, are usually merely normal evolutions, slowly prepared for and actuating at the appointed hour. They surprise us only because we do not sufficiently apprehend the causes which led to them. The Impressionist school, the origin of which has been so dis- puted, is but a rational sequence of the school of 1830; far from violating the tradition, its leaders have followed and, at the same time, enlarged it. This is not a light and casual state- ment, but the result of observations, the accuracy of which can easily be verified. Do not the earliest landscapes by Pissarro and Sisley continue Corot in the most obvious, incon- testable manner? Claude Monet in his earliest works is closely allied to Courbet. If one were to compare the admirable “Portrait of Louise Colet ” in the Havemeyer collection with the first picture of figures in a garden by Claude Monet, still to be seen in the artist’s studio at Giverny, one would be surprised at the likeness between the two works. In each one is evident the wish to paint people of our day, life-size, out-of-doors and in broad daylight. In the landscape setting, similarities of method can also be discerned. Either from conviction, from the desire for popularity, or perhaps rather in acknowledgement of the appreciation he met with from the new generation, Courbet followed the work of the young artists, went to see it in their studios, was not niggardly with his suggestions, and this easily explains the ascendency of his pictures as examples to follow. Claude Monet felt this influence and some trace of it is plainly visible in the “Marine” of the Pope collection. The approximate date of its execution is known to us, as well as the circumstances under which it was painted. It was about 1866 or 1867; Claude Monet, who had made his first appearance at the Salon of 1865 with two marines, “The Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur” and “The Promontory of the H6ve at Low Tide,” was living at Ville d’Avray, and had as his guest the sculptor and critic, Zacharie Astruc, who was conducting in the reviews a vigorous campaign in the interests of the young independent school. While talking of Havre, his native city, Monet painted in the presence of Astruc, several seaviews, making use of the palette knife in imitation of Courbet. ‘It was,’ he writes, ‘like a conversation painted in obedience to memories of my youth spent in Havre, as they rose before me.’ The “Marine” of the Pope collection is one of that series of paintings, and the fore- 341 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS going details, furnished by the artist himself, give the picture’s true measure while they elucidate a point in history. None can to-day deny the close bonds which unite to his illus- trious predecessor the painter destined to become the incontestable chief of the plein air school. But such a fate could fall only upon an artist whose exceptional gifts rendered him worthy of it. These gifts are amply demonstrated in this work, whose documentary in- terest is at least equalled by its rare pictorial attractiveness. The vigorous power of the technique and the beauty of the tone, proclaim at once a great craftsman and a master colorist. [The artist’s identification of Mr. Pope’s picture as being one of this series is defi- cient in one particular, that it is painted with the brush and shows no traces of palette knife work.— Editor’s Note.] Roger Marx Is this beautiful “Marine" bathed by the salubrious breezes of the estuary of the Seine? One might easily think so, remembering that it was at Havre that Claude Monet lived in his youth and that a little later, at the beginning of his career, he associated with the admirable artist Eugene Boudin, his counseller and friend, who painted around Havre the largest number of his pictures. Before adopting decisively the impressionist technique, of which he is the greatest ex- ponent, Claude Monet felt the influence of Manet, Corot and Boudin. His first works show precision of drawing, subdued harmonies of grays and blacks and constant research after simplification. In Mr. Pope’s picture, it is surprising to note that detail is excluded to such an extent. Beside the strong values of the two fishing smacks, nothing is indicated other than general tonalities; the eddies in the waves are suggested by a few touches, very accu- rate in shape; the plain of water, from the middle distance out, is reduced to a flat color; a luminous band at the horizon, a few streaks in the sky, and that is all, and yet it is sufficient to compose a powerful harmony. This picture strongly recalls the studies made by Manet at Boulogne and Bordeaux, and furthermore those dashing water-colors of Jongkind, which foreshadowed the rapid notation of the Impressionists with such living and picturesque grace. At the time this marine was painted Monet was not yet thinking of the problems which led him to a wholly new manner of painting. He was a landscape painter of the somber kind, faithful to the misty skies of his native Normandy, and more akin to Courbet than has yet been pointed out. It is worthy of note that all the Impressionists began by harmonies in gray and black, very similar in Degas, Manet, Jongkind, Whistler, Pisarro; Renoir alone forming an exception. There is an immense distance between this marine and the artist’s recent views of the Thames, in which one may say that air is the subject, and that the landscape exists only be- hind the expression of transparent atmosphere. This first period of Monet’s is none the less interesting; if he had stopped there his work would have remained as solid as that of Cour- bet and airier and lighter. Truth and vigor are here admirably displayed, as well as the faculty for selecting essential details and eliminating the rest, which is to say, the clear perception of the style and character of a landscape. Monet retained this virtue even in his later infat- uation with the vibration of light and color, and it is that which makes his work so strong. 342 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS He is above all a masterly draughtsman who understands the architecture, that is, the draw- ing, of a stretch of land, of a wave, and who presents and maintains it as a solid basic foun- dation underneath the most brilliant variations of color. Camille Mauclair “ DANSEUSES” T HE Greek artists followed the games of the Hippodrome or the Stadium and chose their models from the gymnasium and the palaestra. Like them Degas has sought for spectacles where the human body lends itself to an infinite variety of attitudes, and like them he has especially sought to represent it in the intervals between successive phases of effort and exercise. The race course, the circus, the theater, have in turn attracted him, their color, movement, play of light and line having strong interest and fascination for him. In the course of time the pleasure of the eye was offset by the intellectual disillusionment due to a realization of that mental poverty of the actors which underlies the outward show. The painter, who in Degas is more sensitive than any living artist to the flow of a line, the quality of a tone, the shimmer of a tissue, lives in company with a satirist who, never asleep, cannot help contrasting the sumptuousness of appearance with the grievous constraint of the human element of the show. This glimpse behind the scenes of the Paris Opdra bears out my statement, and 1 hold it to be in that respect, one of the most significant of Degas's works. Behind the wings, on each side of the stage, upon which some invisible persons are no doubt performing, some girls, ballet dancers, are awaiting their turn to appear; con- cealed from the eyes of the spectators, they fall into easy attitudes, glad of the freedom they have momentarily gained. One has her hands on her hips, another appears to be testing the solidity of the arrangement of her hair, a third is spreading out the gauze to give her skirt the desired fullness. The poses certainly are significant, but it is rather through the expression of the faces, in which are betrayed curiosity, coquetry, envy or disdain, that the painter has succeeded in investing his figures with a psychological interest. His ballet dancers are creatures of luxury and joy and, at the same time, human beings accessible to all the emotions which lay siege to the feminine soul. As we behold the innermost ego thus revealed by their external aspect, we feel that never before did a painter achieve so complete an exposition of mentality, so literal a transcription of the hidden characteristics and fugitive moods of the soul. Here is an exceptional and wonderful accord between power of psychological insight and subtlety of expression. Painters of manners and humor are more generally draughtsmen than colorists, and this predisposition of their instinct is justified by the fact that line, even better than color, lends itself to marked differentiations of character. Contrary to this rule, Degas's skill as colorist is almost equal to his skill as draughtsman, and it is interesting to find that he worships with equal fervor at the shrines of Ingres and Delacroix. Nor is he the descendant of these two masters alone; he is allied to Corot by his sense of harmony and atmosphere; to Daumier by his choice of subjects and his rendering of physiognomy. If we go farther back into the past, we may discover Degas's affinity to Clouet, also with Poussin whose “Rape of the Sabines ” he once copied 34? THE CRITICAL ESSAYS with extraordinarily comprehensive fidelity. But it would be neglecting one branch of the ancestry of his genius to limit his knowledge to the artists of his own country. He has taken advantage of all teachings, feeling that it was not merely his right, but that it was his duty to study the work of past centuries and foreign civilizations. Rich, therefore, in the inheri- tance of his predecessors and well founded in his self-given education, he has succeeded, if not in expanding the horizon of art, at least in urging art to further progress. In truth, Degas has neither forgotten the great English colorists, nor Vermeer, from whom he seems to have learned the secret of diffused light and indoor atmosphere, nor the primitive Flor- entines, with whom he held long converse during his visit to Italy with Gustave Moreau — not unfrequently his drawing recalls that of Ghirlandaio. His curiosity, furthermore, led him to venture beyond Europe; he indulged his taste for Japanese prints, such as Rousseau and Millet, Manet and Monet were already collecting. Before Degas, the arrangement of every composition was regulated by immutable formulas; his intervention has broken the yoke of prejudices centuries old, and set chain-bound inspiration free. With Degas the perspective and point of view vary according to the neces- sities of each subject; his unconventional, almost eccentric manner of so placing a figure or an object on the edge of, and half in, the canvas — as happens in this picture — testifies to the boldness of his picturesque inventiveness and his determination to direct, distribute or con- centrate attention as he desires. What matter that the master painters of Japan proceeded after the same fashion? The application of the principle betrays Degas into no effect of for- eignness; for one thing, the atmosphere, absent always from the prints of the Far East, creates essential differences between the two arts. The draughtsman, the colorist, who regenerated the art of picture-composition, impresses us also as a most subtle and observ- ing interpreter of the play of light, in the diversity of its modulations. He has not limited his aspirations to daylight effects (like the Impressionists with whom he is mistakenly classed, for his art is the result of patient, reasoning deduction rather than the record of a first impression), he has rendered every description of light, outdoor sunlight as well as the soft indoor light, the reddish glare of gas as well as the vivid illumination of electricity. Degas’s triumphant rendering of atmosphere constitutes the uniting bond between the parts of a composition, and gives the aggregate its value as a whole, that unity of interest, action, aspect, which has ever distinguished the masterpiece. Roger Marx Degas’s pictures of ballet girls or race courses leave the impression of an art character- ized by wit, technical assurance, and just that touch of irony which is to be expected of a French modern painter of such subjects. It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to understand that a picture of ballet girls dancing, resting or rehearsing, can be at once very witty and extremely serious. With the lightness of touch which is characteristic of his nation, and which is best described by the saying — ‘ glissez, messieurs, n’appuyez pas, ’ there is an essential element in the work of Degas, which brings it in close touch with the great works of all periods. His method is the result of profound and prolonged study, combined with ex- quisite taste; but its manifestation — how can this be adequately described? 344 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS If one were to dwell too much on that side of it which appears the most obvious — its grip of the real aspect of nature, its realism — one might lose sight of the other side, which shows an equal power in the assimilation of previous art. If one were to say that his art were eclectic one would be in danger of invoking the wearisome specter of conflicting influences which perpetually haunts modern exhibitions — the ghost of Giorgione and the ghost of Hokusai, who have come from different quarters of the globe to engage in a futile struggle on the neutral and indifferent territory of France or England. Do we not recall countless instances of these well-meant efforts in our decadent age of art which is at once so feeble and so brutal? And yet the eclecticism of Degas’s art, more than the realism, is pro- foundly characteristic. Only in his case it is assimilated with such cunning that it is only to be found after some research and familiarity with his predecessors. In the work of his bril- liant fellow-student and rival, Whistler, such influence, although by no means paramount, is more easily detected. Velasquez, Rembrandt and Utamaro, are the names that come to our lips when contemplating “Girls on a Balcony” or the “Portrait of my Mother.” But what names occur to us when looking at this picture of ballet girls? At first sight it appears reck- less and wanton in its challenge to all previous art. The placing of the two chief figures, the cutting of the picture just below their skirts, and the bits of faces and hands that peep between, seem to show no more sense of selection than a photographic camera. And yet the art is based securely on foundations of scholarly training. Degas loved the impeccable draughtsman Ingres, whose influence is to be traced throughout in the decision and the nervous finality of his line. But, whereas Ingres elected to continue not only the style and method of his predecessors, but also, to some extent their subjects and ideals, Degas, while yet young and enthusiastic, determined to strike out for himself. So he went into the world around him with the naive, wide-open eyes of a young knight-errant, and conquered it by sheer passion and courage. He was fascinated by the charm and beauty of women, yet he never allowed himself to degrade his vision by attempts to elevate it. Consequently there are flashes of beauty that have the zest of a new discovery. The girl in the center turning her back, how odd, how true, and how beautiful is the gesture of her left hand to arrange the extravagant chignon such as was worn in the seventies. It makes an angle in the shoulder which is not uncouth because it is so perfectly placed to relieve the lines which would otherwise flow too smoothly. And throughout the picture there is the same won- derful cunning, that art to conceal art which all artists strive for and so few achieve. The bare space of the floor, the distant figures slight and half-hidden by the scenery, the girl on the right looking down, the listless jaded girl behind her, are all calculations fitted together like those in a Japanese kakemono, and of course after an infinite number of studies from nature. The technical mastery is equally perfect. Added to the problem of painting flesh, which is in itself sufficient for many painters, is the problem of painting certain effects of light which until then had hardly been attempted. Look at the girl bending down on the right. The drawing of the head, shoulders and neck and bosom is a miracle of achievement, and yet it is subordinated as in nature, to the effect of light, or rather of many lights which play on her. The term ‘ Impressionist’ is a vague one, and has become tedious and stale 345 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS from over-repetition. It has no logical connection with ‘ pointillism ’ and ‘vibrism which are equally associated with it and were a later development. We may perhaps couple the names of Manet and Degas with Impressionism, if by Impressionism we mean unbiased vision and the absence of an old and conventional ‘parti pris, ’ but any attempt to limit the meaning further must exclude perforce these two very great painters as it would exclude Giotto or Rembrandt or Jean Francois Millet. Bernhard Sickert On looking at this picture one is at once struck by the fact that the foliage is not nat- ural, but painted on flat canvas, that it is not lighted by the sun, but artificially, as are the figures. These ballet girls in their extraordinarily natural poses produce an instantaneous effect of reality, so thoroughly has the artist seized their attitudes and facial expression at a moment when they were absolutely unconscious of being under observation. This seizing of the human being in the act, so to speak, is the essential feature of Degas's art. He once said it was his aim to represent woman when she has not the slightest consciousness of being looked at by anyone and that he wanted his pictures to give the impression as if the model had been seen through the keyhole. By this preoccupation Degas allies himself to the Impressionists and for years he exhibited with those artists who like himself, sought the direct representation of nature, without conventional arrangement. From this many critics concluded that they were incapable of co-ordinating their impressions. On the contrary, these men brought to the choice of a subject the necessary deliberation. Knowing that nature offers inexhaustible combinations of lines, forms, colors, succeeding one another constantly, they select the aspect which to them appeals particularly. While we must not shrink from the affirmation that all aspects of nature are equally valuable, because nature, which is the sum and the continuity of the phenomena of life, is always beautiful, we have only to look at the subjects taken from life by Degas to see that resembling no other work, they belong to a particular individual, who seeing and feeling in a way of his own, prefers and chooses certain aspects of the pageant of life which appeal to him with especial force. For this reason his art, the art of the painters of the Impressionist group, is sensibly different from the current art of their epoch, which is perverted by formulas, conventions and the pretended necessities of academic compositions. I am speaking here particularly of French art, as affected by the reign of the Institute and the methods of official education, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole de Rome. Composition, lauded and acclaimed, triumphs, but it is at the expense of life. The formulas of the Academiciens produce a petrified, mummified art, while the independent painters of France have produced an art thrilling with life. This independent art is allied to the tradition of the true masters and counts as its followers all who see nature at first hand and have no desire to reduce her teachings to formulas. Recently, Raffaelli attempting a definition of Degas said that being by the turn of his mind a caricaturist he must infallibly work somewhat in the spirit of caricature, but because of the strain of Italian blood which came to him through his mother and of many years spent in Italy, he evolved a manner and method of painting derived from the works of the early Italians, Perugino, Gentile Bellini, and, above all, Carpaccio. He therefore painted such 346 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS modern subjects as his temperament as a caricaturist inclined him to: races, dancers, etc., with the method of the religious Primitives, and he painted them religiously in spite of their atmosphere of caricature. Raffaelli was mistaken in that the Italian painters he named are not exclusively religious and Degas has therefore not borrowed from them a religious character. This indeed he does not possess. It is true that one sees in Degas the effect of contact with Italian art and that he has painted scenes of modern life, not with the doubt- ful religious sentiment of Umbria and Venice, but with the tremendous dignity and serious- ness characteristic of the Italian Primitives. While being a philosopher who betrays in everything he does his ironical vision, his works none the less remain grave, religious if one wishes, because of the intensity and seriousness of his devotion to nature. Examine from this point of view these girls of the ballet clothed in thin gauze and bathed in the artificial light of the wings, observe their accurately seized movements, their firmly and delicately modelled flesh, their faces. They are very ordinary types, but the truth of the vision shown in rendering the animal grace of the bodies, the strength and balance of forms and colors, forces one to the admission that with Degas an entirely new form of beauty has made its appearance in art. Gustave Geffroy There is one criticism to which Degas has always been particularly sensitive, it is that of people who having evidently not the same conception of beauty that he has, prefer the pretty to the true and reproach him with painting only ugly women. For many, from the mere fact that a woman is on the stage she must ‘ a priori ’ be pretty. They judge her according to a convention rather than to what their eyes would show them if they really wanted to look. But Degas, the impartial observer, is the last person in the world to be satisfied with conventional visions. He is as far removed from commonplace flattery as from malevolent caricature, and those who have spoken of the ferocity of his observation have been as much mistaken as those who have judged him incapable of depicting feminine beauty. Often to his friends, he has protested against the accusation of having been cruel, and shown himself sorrowfully surprised that people have seen only ugly wofnen when he painted all kinds, pretty and otherwise. It is certain that theatrical women are not all ugly. It is certain, too, that the make-up, the costume, the animated movements, the milieu, the factitious brilliancy of the light, and many other circumstances, unite in creating an illusion in the casual observer. Degas is no casual observer. That is clear from a study of Mr. Pope’s picture, but there we see at once that among these women, each one with a definite tem- perament and caught in a momentary action, some have beauty. The picture represents a scene in the wings during a ballet, when the dancers are waiting and getting ready for their appearance on the stage. They are thinking of the effect they are going to produce, of the effect their comrades produce, and even if you will, they are thinking of nothing at all. The two personages of the center are evidently ready to give themselves up to the pleasure of * breaking sugar,’ as the Paris theatrical slang has it, upon the backs of companions who are not seen, but whose presence upon the stage may be guessed at. Another dancer, with black hair and regular features, is of a rather seductive type, although not flattered, she has a 347 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS curious smile, half satisfied, half professional, and is evidently thinking of nothing for the moment but to make her skirts puff out. Behind her are two other dancers, whose heads are only partially seen, and these two women’s faces are expressive and handsome. One may well say that theirs is a sort of feverish and unhealthy beauty, but it is the beauty of the modern theatrical woman, quite different from the Greek and also from the conventional beauty of academic traditions. These principal figures form a natural but harmonious arrangement and they stand against the variegated decorative background, where are to be seen other distant dancers, more or less cut off by the wings. One has the sense of the incessant agitation, the ‘ per- petuum mobile ’ of this nervous, noisy world, impressionable and vain. How many beauties of detail might be incidentally pointed out in this little picture, which sums up all the qualities of the work of Degas! For instance, how well rendered is the heaviness in the bearing of these supple and nimble women, the strong pose of the body upon legs wearied with continual exercise. The dancer in repose has that decision in her bearing which may be noticed in the sailor who walks the deck of his ship. She becomes agile and vibrating only at the very moment of the dance. Then with what skill the painter has rendered the aerial, puffed-out tulle which contrasts so well with the firmness of the muscles, with the solid modelling of the faces, arms, and chests, and finally with the flat scenery. We say nothing of the seduction of color, of those sparkling lights, lucky hits in the general har- mony, and placed with exquisite taste. Specially worth noting in Degas’s dance pictures is the sculpturesque character of the modelling. The early work of the artist marked him as a disciple and successor of Ingres. Admiring the masters who painted flatly, he aimed at an extreme hardness of outline and a modelling in full light, almost without shadows, after the manner of Clouet and the Primitives. It is likely that the stage, which attracted him as being one of the most original and expressive manifestations of modern life, led him, little by little, to modify his first way of viewing nature. His early paintings of such subjects, ex- hibited some thirty years ago, show a very marked change. In them the lights, strongly accentuating the reliefs, reveal a definitive turning away from the flat treatment of an Ingres toward the massive and relief treatment of a Rembrandt or a Daumier. But Degas does not owe the fine solidity of his animated figures to their contrast with flat backgrounds, or to the strong effects of artificial light; these figures were studied in a less factitious atmos- phere than the stage and neither under artificial nor in full daylight. His passion for con- struction, for solid drawing and sculptural modelling, led him to model in the round; thus, he took the tools of the sculptor and fashioned many nude figurines, attempted portraits and executed among others, an admirable statuette in wax of a dancer, about one quarter life- size. Since he has allowed them to crumble away we may conclude that he made and viewed them simply as studies for his paintings. The evolution of the master continued and the numerous pastels and drawings which he undertook later inclined his restless mind toward peculiar problems of color. This last phase is distinguished by drawing not less vigorous than formerly, but more summary, with color, usually a violet gamut with lights of luminous green, laid on in touches of singular 348 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS boldness. Mr. Pope’s picture belongs to the intermediate period, between the delicate early ones and the pictures of the latest and boldest manner. Some years ago Degas was so absorbed in this later, broader, more summary and forcible execution, that he frequently sought among collectors and dealers to find his earlier works in order to repaint them. It happened that sometimes those who had yielded to this desire regretted it, and openly said so. An intimate friend of his, a Parisian collector who owns some of his finest works, had frequently been solicited by the artist to let him ‘ ameliorate ’ a superb ‘ ‘ Rehearsal of the Dance ” which is one of his masterpieces. But the profound friendship of the collector stopped there. ‘Ask me what you will,’ he said, ‘but that is the only thing I cannot possibly do for you.’ And not being sure either of Degas or of himself, he had the picture padlocked to the walls of his gallery. Arsene Alexandre “GIRL WITH THE CAT” I WAS listening to Degas before a picture by Renoir, which we both admired for the originality, graceful liveliness and the fascinating qualities peculiar to the artist. His con- clusion was: ‘It looks as if it had been painted by a cat!’ Beside humor there was much truth in the remark. Degas’s gestures as he delivered it increased its effect, and before me rose vividly a vision of the painter-cat. Can you not see him seize his palette, dip his claws in the paint, nervously scratch or gently caress the canvas; at difficult points growing ner- vous and pretending to leave his work; then springing at it once more, and as though it were a skein of wool, getting deliciously tangled in its complexity; finally, having ex- hausted the possibilities of the game, falling upon his feet and gazing gravely at his audience? I could feel it all in the painting we were examining. And an additional interest was the contrast between the two artists, for a greater one can hardly be imagined. In the same degree that Degas is classical, systematic, deductive, Renoir is fantastical, unexpected, in- ductive, having no settled ideas about anything or anyone. The works of Degas appeal to the intellect, those of Renoir, the product of no logical system, appeal to the nerves. It is certain that Renoir is not only different from such men as Degas, but that he is different from the whole contemporary school. He is a phenomenon apart, a rare original personality. One must accept him as he is and like him unreservedly, or not like him at all. To half like him it is not quite possible. I know those, I count myself among them, who take as much delight in his faults, or what are so termed by others, as in his merits. When an artist has such a marked personality, what are called his faults form an integral part of his being, and if one likes him at all one likes him altogether. This “Girl with the Cat ” is a fine example of Renoir’s manner, or rather one of his manners. At first glance this picture seems composed outside of any rules, or so little composed that one accustomed to school conventions might see only awkwardness in it. But in reality the little scene is truthfully and charmingly rendered, the execution subtle and easy. Here, as in most of his works, Renoir shows his affinity with the French masters of the eighteenth century, among others, Fragonard. Mr. Pope’s picture, with others of the same style, is closely related to the “Lessons upon the 349 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Harpsichord ” in the Louvre. It evidences the same spontaneity, the same delight in paint- ing, the same yielding to fancy. With their appearance of spontaneity, Renoir’s composi- tions are really the fruits of great and persistent labor. There is, perhaps, no living painter who is more painstaking and searching than he. Never working in anything like a com- placent mood, should he at any time become self-satisfied, 1 am sure he would find his con- dition a prodigious bore. He has had several and quite different manners, but in all of them he was himself and it is impossible not to recognize a painting of his at first glance. His earliest works show the legitimate admiration which the independent artists of his genera- tion felt for Corot and Courbet. Later came Impressionism, which under the influence of Japanese prints and the scientific theories of light and color, peremptorily cleared the palettes of modern painters. But it was only when this revolution was complete that the real evolution of Renoir began. After busying himself with the study of the thousand-fold action and reaction of light upon objects bathed in, and saturated with, light and air, there came a time in which, while losing nothing of his complexity, he sought more particularly to produce a robust, full-bodied texture, making use of extremely rich pigments. One of the most curious specimens of this period is the picture of a girl asleep with a cat in her lap, in the collection of M. Durand-Ruel. While of the manner preceding it, light and iri- descent, a good example, “ Le Moulin de la Galette,” is in the Luxembourg. But Renoir did not long stop there. Experiencing scruples, he suddenly fell to pursuing the precise draw- ing and smooth, thin surface of the Renaissance artists. It was then that such an enamel- like painting as the “Women Bathing,” in the collection of M. Jacques Blanche, was produced. At length, once more giving full rein to his natural inclination, Renoir relin- quished all systems, in so far as he had ever been the docile slave of any — and returned to his light and supple brush-work. But through all these changes he had the same manner of seeing form and of expressing it, of making color fairly blossom, of getting the greatest possible entertainment out of his work while remaining inwardly most anxious about it. Renoir has never painted a harsh or unpleasant subject. His predilections have been for pictures of flowers, portraits of women, of children, the business of feminine toilet and idleness. The nude has always attracted him, with its pearly flesh-tints, delicate as that of living flowers. 1 heard him say that if woman did not exist, he could never have been a painter. His painting, conspicuous for its richness, wears beautifully, becoming richer and finer with time. Renoir’s extemporaneous and unconstrained technique is based upon con- summate knowledge. Born at Limoges and beginning his career as a painter upon porcelain, he early mastered the secrets of that craft, afterwards he studied exhaustively the technique of Corot, that of Watteau and of many old masters, and one of his greatest predilections has been for the art of the men who decorated the villas of Pompeii. For a long time Renoir fought against the application to him of that artificial term ‘Impressionist,’ under which have been grouped such different talents as those of Manet, Degas, Monet, Pissaro. The greater part of his pictures were painted in the studio, and are not impressions from nature in the literal sense. An Impressionist is one who allows nature entirely to guide him, not one who interprets nature in so personal a manner. Arsene Alexandre 55o THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Never more obviously than in this picture did Renoir come close to the French masters of the eighteenth century, and to those English painters who were, perhaps unconsciously, their disciples. Indeed, the “Girl with the Cat” belongs to the epoch in which the artist’s palette was richest in variegated and iridescent color, for it was painted in 1882, shortly after the celebrated “Canotiers.” The showy surroundings, the cat’s silky striped coat, the half-dressed woman with arms and neck bare, all combine to offer fine and subtle harmonies and contrasts. The arrangement of the scene, its easy, voluptuous grace, mark Renoir as inheriting and carrying forward a tradition wholly French. Renoir, a deserter from the studio of Gleyre, like Claude Monet, was first obliged to rid himself wholly of the effects of a classi- cal education and little by little we could see him excluding bitumen from his palette. While Monet went on devoting himself more and more exclusively to landscape, Renoir applied to the painting of figures the same scientific principles. It is with the technique he thus evolved that he has painted a few landscapes, some flower pieces and especially scenes of modern life grouping together a considerable number of figures, each one of which has the individuality and reality of a portrait. The swarming street, the river-side with its holiday boatmen, the theater and its display, the Moulin de la Galette with its drinkers seated at little tables, these are the familiar themes of this recorder of Parisian pleasure. The supreme characteristic of Renoir’s art is his understanding of woman and her general bearing, his close observation of her gestures and attitudes, usually in moments of intimacy, abandon- ment, playfulness or idleness, his loving study of her graceful outlines. Nothing is more absolutely modern than the type for which Renoir has shown his predominating predilec- tion; it may be described as the summary of countless Parisian types. The face is round rather than oval, the forehead is half hidden by the curly hair, the eyebrows are accentuated, the eyes long and almond-shaped, the pupils dilated and brilliant, the cheeks full, the nose with quivering nostrils is short and uptilted, the lips firmly outlined and generally parted in a smile or ready for a chat. As painter of the nude, we find Renoir exhibiting his preference for the lustiness of youth, the delicate and somewhat awkward outlines of the figure no longer that of a child but not yet that of a woman. Were it not for the tints of rose and amber which give the skin the iridescence of mother-of-pearl, one might find a resemblance between the nudes of Renoir and certain nudes of Ingres. Other subjects have appealed to the painter and incited him to make use of his rare gifts as a colorist, but in all his work the painter of modern woman and of flowers, shows himself, as in the example in Mr. Pope’s collection, the por- trayer of dreamy grace and tranquil charm. Roger Marx This picture, with its vivacious harmony of color and charming decorative feeling, be- longs to the second manner of Renoir, when he was definitely enlisted under the banner of impressionistic technique. His first canvases recall Boucher by the smooth appearance of flesh, painted however with a palette-knife, by the preponderance of certain blues and the sharpness of outlines. While the artist has entirely modified his technique in adopting the principle of the division of colors, he nevertheless remains the one, among living French 35i THE CRITICAL ESSAYS masters, who best recalls the eighteenth century. He has its spirit, its delicate feminism, its caressing color and bold touch, and above all, its fine sensuousness and capricious composi- tion. No painter is more profoundly French; his work— landscapes, flowers, nude figures with soft and rosy flesh, girls with big summer hats, plump children — is a great poem of happiness and fancy, filled with song and laughter. The indolent woman of Mr. Pope's pic- ture presents the special type in which the artist delights; bright eyes, sensual lips, short nose, small head, with childish expression, rich healthy flesh with the firmness of ripe fruit. It is thus that Renoir sees woman. He lends her no complex psychology, no neuroticism, none of the modern subtleness. To him she is hardly a thinking being, but rather a living flower. He does not intend that his paintings should disclose souls, but that they should bring out the most brilliant and tender harmonies of color. His art is the magnificent and unaffected blooming of externals, from which may be asked only the pleasure that results from happy combinations of lines and the orchestration of rich tonalities. This vision of life gives to all that Renoir has done a character seldom found save in the decorative work of Boucher, Fragonard, and other eighteenth century artists to whom he is logically related. His dazzling ingenuousness, suppressing thought and opening a window upon the sunny gardens of fancy, permits these human flowers to be unclad without arousing sensuality in the beholder, they are natural creatures, graceful animals. It may be said of Renoir that he is one of the rare artists who have expressed joy pure and simple. Infinitely fewer great works have been inspired by it than by sorrow or passion. His production of forty years, now, after a long and surprising injustice, appreciated everywhere, is a lyric poem of summer. Mr. Pope's example with its fabrics of changing color, the silky, mottled cat stretched out in easy suppleness, embodies the languorous vision, the taste and grace of the painter. With its soft, flexible, varied and expressive touches — the flesh, the fur, the hair, the plants and stuffs — this picture shows our magician of sensuous color at his best. Camille Mauclair Sitting before a table, a young girl with hands idly joined, follows with amused interest the movements of a cat playing with the leaves of a plant, azalea or hortensia, growing in a pot in front of her. She is in morning ddshabilld, her hair hastily knotted. Without effort one traces the sympathy between the two creatures, feline and indolent; and everything in the young girl, the general type of features, the little short nose, the little red full mouth, and the caressing, half shut eyes, accentuates her resemblance to the sinuous little feline. The reddish mahogany of a piano makes a warm note in the background of this intimate little scene, animated, personal and full of atmosphere. The canvas has no indication of date. One may however, conclude that it was executed about 1880, when a very similar subject was painted; a woman asleep in an arm chair with a cat on her knees, the private property of M. Durand-Ruel, which was shown in his gallery in an exhibition exclusively composed of Renoir's works in 1 892, and which reappeared in 1 899 in a collective exhibition of works by Manet, Pissaro, Renoir and Sisley. It is apparently the same model, although in a front view, the same careless d&shabilld, and the character of the technique is the same. 352 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS It cannot quite be said that Renoir has had successive periods for he has too little of the spirit of system for that. But being very impressionable and at the same time never satisfied, he has changed his method and procedure often. There are times for instance when he has been eager to transfer the mobility of life in light, the fugitive aspect of things, to express in a woman's body the melting quality of flesh, the skin comparable to the petals of a flower and in which everything is welded and bound together by delicate pas- sages, by insensible transitions, where dark and light mingle and melt together. At other times, he has been struck by the sharpness of contours, the melodious purity of lines, the rich brilliancy of flesh like living Parian marble. And as this naturalist and independent painter has a great respect for the masters, he has turned, here and there, to Watteau, Fragonard and Lawrence, he has sought counsel from the Primitives, from the great Italian or French decorative painters of the Renaissance and, also and often, from Ingres. But it has always been in order to return better equipped to the precious flowing colors of his palette, to the pleasurable and tender emotions aroused in him by the contemplation of flowers and of those creatures which make the ornament and beauty of life: children and women. And as we see here the young girl, not the full-bloom flower but the bud which is just opening, it is her artless grace, her charm still a little crude, that he has translated with appealing sensuousness. “The Girl with the Cat” in the gentle warmth of its half light, in its profound and singular harmony, in its quivering and scintillating brilliancy, be- longs to the most personal period of the artist’s career, that is to say the period when his work was most in conformity with his fundamental temperament. He has rarely rendered better the supple and firm modelling of a full and round young form, he has never expressed more lovingly the innate elegance and natural distinction of that beauty, a bit savage and of a candidly animal character no doubt, which springs from the rich plebeian soil of the Parisian faubourgs. LSonce Benedite The extreme heat of the summer of 1900, the year of the Exposition Universelle, is still remembered in Paris. On one of those scorching afternoons 1 was crossing the Alma Bridge. The sun beat down fiercely, the window shades of the closed carriage were down and 1 was leaning far back on the cushions when 1 suddenly became aware of a passing figure and looked out. The sunlight was so bright that through the flimsy blue shade I saw per- fectly all the details of the scene outside— the flowing, sluggish waters of the Seine between the Exposition buildings and the rows of chestnut trees of the Cours-la-Reine, the bridges, the Trocadero, and the distance melting in the burning haze, last of all and nearer, on the sidewalk, the passers-by oppressed by the heat, sponging their heads with their handker- chiefs. Only I had never seen such things in that way before, the people even had a curious look. It was things and beings, trees, water, stones and flesh studded in purple reflections, enveloped in an atmosphere of reddish blue. What 1 saw was a Renoir. A picture by Renoir is to me, therefore, nature seen through blue gauze, in the glowing sunlight. I was de- lighted with this discovery, because for long I had unsuccessfully sought the starting point of Renoir's peculiar vision. Assuredly, this is not a secret process which one could steal in 353 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS order to achieve the same result. Other artists see nature through blue gauze and yet find it impossible to realize on their canvases those marvels of harmony, of grace and of modelling the pictures of Renoir so often are. Renoir is right in having chosen this particular way of viewing nature and his vision or prepossession is legitimate, like all true artists’ preposses- sions, which are assumed upon the express condition that the result shall be balanced and harmonious throughout, and congruous in all its parts. For rendering nature with blue or violet rather than with Van Dyke brown or yellow ochre, a painter should no more be reproached th an a musician for writing in G or in D rather than in C. We should only ask him when once he has chosen his key, to keep to it throughout his composition and not to make discords. Does Renoir make any discords? 1 am afraid he does, sometimes. His “Girl at the Piano ” of the Luxembourg Museum passes in certain quarters for a masterpiece and the literati of our day have sung its praises almost as loudly as the literati of former times ex- tolled the “Harvesters” of Leopold Robert. But an ephemeral literature cannot alter the reality of things nor influence the judgment which later generations will pass when Im- pressionism shall have become an ancient style. Beautiful phrases cannot give harmony to a picture which does not possess it. But frequently the pictures of Renoir are admirable. His “Dancing Girl,” for instance, is a marvel, his “ Loge,” that most valuable and astonishing record of the multiple effects of artificial light playing on modern people in evening dress, is equally interesting. Mr. Pope’s picture is also a capital example of Renoir’s talent. The modelling is both firm and flexible, the drawing correct, and the harmony of the undulating lines — undulations of arms, of the bosom, the face — is as beautiful as the rich harmony of the color. The scene is at once animated and graceful. The young girl curiously watches the motion of her little domestic tiger. The little domestic tiger looks curiously at something we do not see, and we, the spectators, watch these, to us, mysterious beings. From the purely technical point of view, it is a splendid example of Impressionism whose three characteristics may be defined thus: Nature consists of color rather than lines. Shadows themselves are bright colors. Bright colors are expressed by divisions of tones. Robert de la Sizeranne “AWAKENING OF THE BABY” A MERICA enjoys the good fortune of being able to claim as her own the greatest woman painter of our day, Miss Mary Cassatt. There is no record of any feminine talent ever having cast a brighter luster upon a school of painting, and I can think of no woman save Madame Vig6e Lebrun, who may be compared to Miss Cassatt. Rather than by any kinship in their manner of seeing, feeling or expressing, the parallel is justified by the similarity of their sources of inspiration, a relationship usually secondary, but in this case not without great importance. Too many women have made the mistake of ignoring, in the practice of their art, the special obligations laid upon them by organic laws. Except in the case of abnormal natures, certain tasks demand masculine energies. If this be granted, it 354 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS must be equally true that women have a chance of success whenever they can make use of the particular gifts and faculties which are their portion. Like Madame Vigee Lebrun, Miss Cassatt did not go for inspiration outside of the domain which she was predestined by nature to explore with the greatest success. Like her illustrious predecessor, she has appointed herself the painter of women, of childhood, of home subjects. In what school did she get her training? Most critics represent her as the only pupil taught by Degas. Certainly, Miss Cassatt profited by the example and the suggestions she received from an exceptional master in whom the critical faculty is as highly developed as the gift for pictorial expression, and whose art, perfectly balanced and rounded, gives equal importance to beauty of form, of light and of color. But the relationship between Degas and Miss Cassatt has been less that of teacher and pupil than of a continuous and fruitful interchange of thoughts upon the art of the past, and the methods of interpretation of the modern ideal. Though allied to the Impressionist group, Degas and Miss Cassatt distinguish themselves from their companions by the uncommon importance they give to draughts- manship. Thoroughly artistic and wide-cultured, they complement instinctive inspiration with the knowledge resulting from a profound study of the Old Masters. Fortified by the educated taste she has acquired, Miss Cassatt has been able to attain style. While she seeks the subject of her art immediately around her and the scenes she prefers are of the intimate, familiar sort; the arrangement, the distribution of masses and balance of lines give her work the stamp which characterizes the creations we are wont to term nowadays classical. Let us hasten to add that while holding to the rules which guided the masters, she transforms their tradition by revivifying it. Such of her work, for example, as is inspired by childhood, calls to mind certain bas-reliefs of the Italian Renaissance, and 'in both of them we find the tenderness of maternal love manifesting itself with equal nobility and naturalness. But the creations of the past are differentiated from those of our day by an ethical sentiment which needs not the excuse of religion to justify the representations of maternity, and by a tech- nique which enjoys the benefits of the progress already made in this direction, and sums up its resources in a new and harmonious whole. It is that widening of consciousness and that increased subtlety of observation which confer on modern art, and on Miss Cassatt’s art in particular, a value all its own. In Mr. Pope’s painting we see, in all the fullness of their accomplishment, the artist’s distinctive qualities — skill in composition and in the distribution of light, a clear, a profound expression of character due to accuracy of drawing, and a richness of color which blends in one delicious harmony the iridescence of flesh and the gloss of hair, the varying tints of fruit and flowers, of ribbons and laces, of muslin and cretonnes. This work, popularized by its colored reproduction, is of recent date, having been painted in 1901. Roger Marx Miss Cassatt was inspired by the example and perhaps also by the teaching of Degas. While her color is that of the Impressionists, the most striking and most important element of her art is her drawing. It is not undervaluing it to say that it derives much from Degas, for that does not in any sense imply the adoption of ready-made forms, or the repetition of 355 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS conventional lines. It simply means that manner of expressive drawing which follows life as closely as possible and strives to render with precision the gestures and character of each individual. Miss Cassatt, therefore, draws in a personal and expressive manner, and unites with this drawing the color, free from conventional shadows, of the Impressionists. Her special subjects are children and the women who love and take care of them. She has ren- dered child-life in a simple, straightforward and finely felt manner. Only a woman can feel the charm she gives to infancy. In the choice of subjects and the sentiment with which she invests them, her art reveals itself at once as a woman’s. But it is because this essentially feminine character of her work is expressed with firm execution and clear, vigorous color, that an entirely novel result is achieved. For where the work of women artists does show charm, elegance, feeling, we have been accustomed to see these qualities expressed in a feminine manner, while Miss Cassatt has at her service a fully expressive, direct and vigorous style. It is this union of qualities feminine with a masterful technique, unknown heretofore among women, which makes her art so remarkable and so rare. The “Awakening of the Baby ” in the collection of Mr. Pope is an example to the point. Its arrangement is most felicitous, the three figures being grouped with much art and yet with perfect naturalness. It was painted in 1901, at Mesnil-Beaufresne in the Oise, where Miss Cassatt spends the greater part of the year. She is a persistent worker, and the freedom of movement of her figures, the flexibility of execution she exhibits in her work, are obtained only by clear-sighted re- search and continued effort, which, while not superficially apparent, are none the less evident to the trained eye. In this she follows the example of her friend and master, Degas, whose works, even those that seem the slightest and simplest, are the result of most arduous and sustained application. Theodore Duret Impressionism counts in its ranks some women of great talent; Eva Gonzales, a pupil of Manet who married the distinguished engraver, Henri Guerard, and died prematurely giving promise of a brilliant future, and above all Bertha Morisot, the wife of Manet’s brother, whose character and beauty equalled her intelligence and who left, among admi- rable works, some water-colors as fine as Bonington’s. Miss Cassatt takes place with Bertha Morisot among the great Impressionists. She is the favorite disciple of Degas, who never consented to take pupils, and to merely mention the sympathy between such a master and such a disciple is sufficient. Miss Cassatt has done an enormous amount of work, in oils and pastels, and her etchings in colors exhibited in Paris years ago, show in an absolutely original way her mas- tery of one of the highest branches of graphic art. Feminine in her tenderness and grace, she nevertheless shows herself singularly virile by the energy of her drawing, the brilliancy of her coloring, her precise rendering of values and her intensely truthful expression of life as it is. She is notable as a painter of children, and without a rival in this most difficult genre. She never allows her work to be weakened by too exclusive a seeking for exquisite harmonies. Her manner is assured. Her children are real children, drawn with that incisive truthfulness which bespeaks the example of Degas, and they are tender, plump, laughing 356 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS beings like those so deliciously painted by Renoir. She has a faculty of psychological in- sight and it is really a child’s thought which one reads in the bright eyes of her little models. Whether she paints them on the beach or on green lawns and checkered with sunlight, or whether she shows their artless nudity in the subdued light of a nursery among gaily flowered cretonnes, among linens and porcelains, her children are always characteristic little ones, alive and happy. Look for a contrast at the children painted by Eugene Carriere. It seems as though beneath the brows of these precocious and thoughtful little creatures, one might already read the consciousness of life’s burdens. The children painted by Miss Cas- satt have their exact age and nothing is more delicious than the gay poem of their perfectly natural attitudes. See, in this picture, what force and ease of composition, what fine and supple modelling, what a suggestion of the home intimacy, what pictorial gifts this eminent artist reveals! She knows howto be feminine without being finical. One necessarily thinks of her as in the very first rank of modern artists and so the public in general would think, if Miss Cassatt cared to exhibit at the Salons. She is content to do her work and show it at rare intervals in private exhibitions. But since the time when in the first exposition of the Impressionists she valiantly took her place between Renoir and Degas, then sneered at by a public which ad- mires them to-day, the £lite of art lovers have had for her beautiful work an admiration which has been constantly increasing. Camille Mauclair “ DORDRECHT— SUN EFFECT” D ORDRECHT, the oldest city in Holland, lies in the middle of the fertile delta of the Maas, steeped in an atmosphere richer and riper than any other. This same Dord- recht, so often pictured by van Goyen and Cuyp, the two leading Dutch painters of watery landscape of the seventeenth century, was a source of delight to Jacob Maris. Whenever Maris — I am speaking of his best period, that in which this picture in the Pope collection was painted — after being long at work in his studio at The Hague, felt the need of refreshing his artistic fancy, he would take the train to Rotterdam, thence travel by steamboat to Dordrecht, remaining on deck the while. One who loves the beauty of Dutch landscape can hardly imagine a more delightful journey, and when, after revelling in the sight of the cool stream, the diversified banks and the wealth of ships with their stimulating outlines of hulls, masts and sails, he comes out of the Noord and sees arising the girdle of steeples and houses that decks Dordrecht in dignity and splendor, it is as though he saw spread before him a vision, an apotheosis of Holland’s rarest beauty; that wide river view, with the town outlined above the ship-laden stream under the swelling sky — which we see in the pictures of old Dutch masters and which more recently has fascinated Jongkind, but which Jacob Maris never painted. In his views of towns he did not seek the open so much as the close, not the widespread so much as the massy; and this he found not by the riverside but in the inner harbors of Dordrecht where the lines of the trees, the rows of houses and quays gather more closely around the gray tower. And yet this “Dordrecht” in the Pope collection does 357 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS not give a representation of the harbor as it exists in reality. It is true that we recog- nize in the general conception the Neiuwe Haven at Dordrecht, more or less as we see it when standing on the bridge near the Vlak, but the proportions are changed. The old tower itself is in reality taller than it appears here. For that matter, Maris, who himself was some- what short of stature, used to make everything uncommonly broad and sturdy of base. The fine stone bridge beyond it does not exist at this spot, nor are the gables of the houses quite so fantastically beautiful. The whole scheme of the picture contains not only many elements of the Dordrecht Wolwevershaven or Weaver’s Harbor, but also memories of Rot- terdam and Amsterdam worked into the composition, and the spectator would be deceived who sought to discover an accurate point of view. The accent of form and local color in the swelling harmony of tones hovering over- head, which characterizes van Goyen and Cuyp, was carried by Maris into a still higher orchestral pitch. While for the two older masters a concrete reproduction of what they saw before them remained a basis of their art, for Maris everything, at least in the pictures of his more mature period, was devoted to a glorification of that which greeted his eyes. And Mr. Pope’s picture of Dordrecht in its bold composition, its sonorous harmony of deep and heavy notes, is no more and no less than a eulogy, chanted in organ tones, of all that Hol- land which he loved so well. ‘I have never painted cows; only effects of light,’ Jacob’s younger brother Willem remarked. In the same way we might say of Jacob that he never gave us landscapes, but only manifestations of the love of beauty. Does not his work seem to be one flowing, glorious eulogy of the mighty fecundity, the gorgeous fullness of the earth as he saw it, swelling heavily under the proud vault of Holland’s cloudy skies? And when he succeeds in gripping us, as it were, with his representations of common things— of a canal, a bit of a town, a stone wind-mill, a stretch of beach, a bridge, a harbor, a corner of a village, a towing path— things which we Dutchmen contemplate every day and all around us — with the white, swelling firmament above; when he succeeds in touching us, in moving us with these things, is it not because he wafts down upon us in these representa- tions, an ennobling and inspiring breath from out of the confines of universal life? Jacob Maris knew how to give the impression of something extraordinary by merely representing things in their ordinary proportions, and one would almost say, in their ordi- nary way of being. He was able to paint the luxury of air and space by merely causing a chromatic chord to strike loudly, to swell up with its many changes and to dissolve into its variegated notes. He attached so much importance to the full and living arrangement of the whole that he often built up a painting before he had become aware of the actual sub- ject that was to justify this pictorial structure. Whether a certain robust note of blue was eventually to take the form of a milk-pail, a huntsman’s jacket or a horsecloth was a matter more easily resolved than the question as to how the briny gray was to develop into a fine luster of dull silver, or by means of what modulations the heavier russet-brown was to har- monize with and help the prevailing tone of coral. The painting, therefore, was to him far from being a well-ordered arrangement of speaking details, but rather the rhythmical motive that undulated gently through the total structure. And so his vision was an embrace, his 358 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS painting a true creation, and the subject which he adopted was to him only an outlet for a stream of beautiful fancies. But, lest his dream should be frustrated, it was necessary that he should be fully steeped in the material of Dutch landscape, that he should possess such familiarity with details as to enable him to give this certain accent or supply that particular link— that he need never look around for the justification of this burst of color or that accent of light. Ought this harbor to have a boat just here, or perhaps a mooring post? Should a mast rise up in yonder fading perspective, or would a steeple be better? Shall a row of houses or a screen of trees be painted here to support the pictorial edifice? These are questions which only the burden of his song could enable him to solve; for his familiarity with all these matters lay wholly in the great store-house of his knowledge of fields and streams and cities. And in this he re- sembled the poet who need never seek a thought or an image for the stringing of his rhymes, the coloring of his rhythms, the swaying of his accents, because his inner life offers an inexhaustible source of beauty that makes itself manifest in his song. To Maris a work of art was a wise and lofty result of many delights of the eyes, built of detached pieces and attaining a majestic synthesis. By enveloping the soulless, the commonplace and the casual in one great splendor, the splendor of life, Maris was able to use the particular for the glori- fication of the universal. Not of himself, nor without a struggle, did he attain these heights of feeling and exe- cution. Endowed by nature with a precocious talent, he began applying himself to the study of art before he had reached his thirteenth year. By the time he was fourteen or fifteen, while studying under Stroebel, the painter of interiors, young Maris began to make pencil drawings of buildings in The Hague. These drawings were executed with minute detail and yet with a certain freedom, with a perfect sense of proportion and even with some feeling for color. Satisfying to archeologists as well as to artists, these drawings are important for the proper understanding of a picture such as that under consideration, for they enable us to see that its freedom is based upon profound knowledge. For the rest, his education was mainly that of a figure painter. His talent and inclination for landscape was only gradually revealed and it was not until he was twenty-three that he set out for the Gelderland with the fixed resolve to paint landscape studies. When a few years later he had settled in Paris, he exhibited almost exclusively figure paintings at the Salon, but in 1868 he produced a noteworthy picture containing definite recollections of the Gelderland landscape. It represented a shepherd lad lying down on a high bank with his chin resting on his hands, looking into the river below. Was there, in the evident pleasure with which the boy gazed at the watery landscape, something of the longing which the exiled painter must have felt for the beauty of his low lying country? Be this as it may, he took the little picture to Goupil’s to be sent to the Salon, together with a small figure piece; but the dealer considered the landscape a little odd, and Maris therefore sent it on his own respon- sibility giving it the title “Bords du Rhin: Holland.” It was hung very high, but not so high as to prevent an English visitor, armed with opera glass, from discovering and purchasing it. A fine landscape of a couple of years later, “View of Marlotte,” displays no very striking 359 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Dutch characteristics, but shows the influence of his brother Matthys, who had followed him to Paris. On the other hand a no less fine painting, called “The Ferry-Boat,” is much more Dutch, in the sense that it immediately reminds the spectator of the style of van Goyen and Solomon Ruysdael. The old Dutch tradition, which, in a somewhat degraded form, he had received from his masters at The Hague, now began to take new life in Jacob; and it is worthy of note in how much more Dutch a fashion those old painters were followed in a work of this kind than in the landscapes of the great Frenchmen, whose works, for that matter, were as yet all but unknown to our artist. He never had the smallest personal inter- course with any of the painters of the Barbizon school; and it was not until the end of his stay in Paris that Maris saw a Corot, which made a strong impression upon him and which he extolled loudly on his return to The Hague. The love of harmonious, subdued tones, which is so characteristic of his work, prevailed ever more and more in Jacob Maris, and before long the nickname of the “gray school" had been invented in Holland to describe him and his friends. When after living in Paris through the Siege and the Commune he returned in 1871 to settle for good in The Hague, his native city, his evolution from the student to the master is striking. It is then that the Maris we know, suddenly developed. It was as though the ex- perienced man, having sharpened his implements on many a piece of work, on returning home discovered his own Holland for himself once more. From that moment the erstwhile figure painter began to enrich his native art with the series of landscapes executed between 1880 and 1890, to which “ Dordrecht Harbor" belongs, and which are the best of all the new-born Dutch art has given us. Jan Veth A painter's first visit to Holland is at once delightful and exasperating in those remi- niscences which are ever appearing and eluding him, of the great Dutch masters, both of former times and the present. In the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam he will see old Rabbis tottering about, who might have stepped out of Rembrandt's canvases; all along the polders are the heavy Dutch cows, reminiscently chewing the cud of Cuyp; in court-yards are the buxom, plain-featured women still peeling potatoes for Mynheer Pieter de Hoogh's dinner, and if we cannot find Jan Steen’s and Brauwer's cronies boozing and bellowing in the very smart restaurants of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, we have only to go further a-field to find their descendants. But we do not expect to find the very life of the old Dutch masters, for not only has this altered in the course of centuries, but the point of view of the old masters is different from ours; were they alive to paint the Holland of to-day, it would not be in the realistic or impressionistic manner. But one does expect to find Israels, and Bosboom, and Jongkind, and more than all, Jacob Maris. Accordingly, after landing in Rotterdam, I looked around for him and found him every- where; in the heavy, gaily colored boats, with the short curved yard and big brown sails, in the round-topped piles, in the old windmills, in the green copper domes, in churches like the Oude Schans, but chiefly and supereminently in looking above all these, at the peculiar sky, which may be said to be a discovery of Jacob Maris— heavy, low clouds, passing majes- 360 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS tically but with awful swiftness over all, and perpetually giving peeps of the deep, blue- toned sky beyond. Here at last 1 was in a perfectly familiar country. So I set out in Rot- terdam and Amsterdam to make corroboration of my memories of Maris, and to find the exact spot where he had painted some of the pictures 1 had seen. Although I seemed very near the place often, somehow 1 never seemed to hit it exactly. Again at Dordrecht 1 tried, and seemed to be always round the corner as it were, never reaching the exact spot. I was much puzzled by this, for Maris’s death was too recent to account for any considerable changes, until at the house of one of his daughters at Dordrecht I came on a magnificent picture, evidently painted on the spot, of a town of which the most conspicuous edifices were the Lutheran Church of Amsterdam and the Groote Kerk of Dordrecht ! I had been taken in, and had behaved as wisely as one who should try to find the exact point of view of Turner’s “ Bay of Baise ’’ or Corot’s “ Lac de Garde”! But Maris’s special gift is my excuse. He had wonderful faculty for painting impression- istically something that had no existence. When a painter sketches some place on the spot he must not stop to analyze the absolute constituents of the aspect. His preoccupa- tion with the analysis of the aspect itself must be so intense that it is at his peril that he stops to inquire what are the actual physical elements that constitute it. When he brings this sketch home, unless he has had the curiosity to approach the place and see it from all points near and far, he is no better qualified than the merest passer-by, indeed less so in most cases, to describe what the things actually were. ‘ This little bit of blue here, was it a man’s coat or the rudder of a barge; this streak of gray-white, was it a flag or a woman’s dress or a swan’s breast?’ ‘Don’t ask me!’ the painter will impatiently say, ‘1 know it was there, and I know I liked it, and that’s all.’ But when a painter takes all these notes and impressions and wishes to weld them together in a whole, he always is forced to rely upon his knowledge of the actual construction of objects; if of boats, he must know something of the build and behavior of boats; if of buildings, he must know something of architec- ture; that is to say, he is forced to disintegrate the vision and rearrange it as particular ex- amples of a prototype. He may try to hide this process of reconstruction, but it can only be by further steps in the same direction. He may say: ‘I know from study the behavior of boats, which leads to such and such a plan, but beyond this 1 also know from study the behavior of atmosphere which will cause such and such modifications of the plan, empha- sizing some points and modifying or obliterating others. ’ He may accumulate such obser- vations, each supplementing the other, but the process is always visibly underlying the whole. We see this process in the old masters, and conspicuously as late as Turner. Jacob Maris could paint something that never existed as a whole, and yet in every touch he appears to be faithfully copying something which does exist but which he has not stopped to verify. It is as if he had an exact mental image of the object and copied it impressionistically. It is evident that this mental image was not perfectly fixed and clear from the beginning. It began with a very broad project. Let us take the picture of Mr. Pope’s as an example. Pos- sibly the only clearly defined project from the start was that the Groote Kerk of Dordrecht 361 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS was to be placed where it finally is; then, having covered the canvas with broad masses, only distinguishing the sky, the town and the water, the paint itself seemed to tell him how to proceed step by step. Here the sky would cut lower into the mass, there a spire or a mast would project higher; here a blue rudder would relieve the brown mass of hulls; there a red roof would sing a subdued but full note, and all with perfect ease and freedom. One can distinguish in all old pictures the few portions where the so-called ‘pentimenti' have occurred. Maris'swork may be said to consist of nothing but ‘pentimenti’; all of it may be considered provisional until the last touch. And so we find this picture is a realization of an unknown town with the Groote Kerk of Dordrecht as the leading motive, but shortened considerably, with a bridge inserted from some other town, and with gables and red roofs which are a characteristic of all Dutch towns, Dordrecht among them, but which are not to be seen from any point of view exactly as they are painted here. This idealization of mate- rial is not new nor in itself astonishing; what is astonishing is that the result gives such a conviction of reality that professional painters may be deceived without being ashamed of their naivete. Bernhard Sickert “SYMPHONY IN VIOLET AND BLUE” F ROM the beginning of the eighteenth century, writers have dwelt upon the grandeur of the spectacles nature is ever lavishing upon us. It was Turner and Corot who led the painters in depicting her bewitchery and enchantments. Among the artists who followed them, some have tried to formulate a synthetic evocation of the reality, by confining them- selves less to literalness of detail than to the impression of a scene and the emotion it awakens in us. It is not simply the impression of a scene but the resulting emotion from it that Cazin, Pointelin and Whistler have tried to convey. They chose to render the simplest of motives, seen at those illusive hours when in the subdued or fading light the diverse ele- ments of landscape blend. And of them all, Whistler has carried farthest this search for a notation of subtle harmonies by means of as few tones as possible. One can appreciate the exquisite charm of his ‘Symphonies’ only by first realizing that they express a special phase of art, one which approaches very near to music and literature — an expression of art in which the power of suggestion to the mind depends upon the justness and quality of the accords. Whistler’s ‘Symphonies,’ by the sensuousness of exquisite tones miraculously brought to- gether, are the equivalent of musical themes, and their large synthetic character (details being eliminated), opens the door to a world of meditation and dreams. In bringing together in musical accord the two colors, which form the dominating notes of this “Symphony in Violet and Blue,” Whistler was attempting to realize a certain harmony of ocean and sky. Nothing could be simpler than the motive of the composition: above is the sky, across which scurry light clouds; below is the great sea, full of movement, and with angry, white- crested rollers, where ride three vessels bent by the wind which fills their sails. But the spectator is not held to the subject itself. The extraordinary subtlety and charm of color lead him to follow the painter further until he is lifted, as it were, to an understanding of 362 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the bonds that unite sea and water as they unite all the elements of nature, and make as simple a scene as this testify to the splendor of creation and serve as an admirable ex- ample of the supreme, overpowering harmony of nature’s spectacles. Roger Marx Whistler, who from his earliest youth had been on the sea, was well prepared by expe- rience to know its beauty and appreciate its artistic value. When but eight years old he journeyed from New York to St. Petersburg. He returned to America seven years later, in 1849, and again went to Europe in 1855, having crossed the Atlantic three times when such voyages were neither as frequently made nor as easily as they have since become. He found sea voyages most beneficial to his health, and in 1870, when stricken by heart failure and a lingering illness, he made a long journey from England to Valparaiso, Chili, by way of cure. Later, when forced by the extreme dampness of the climate to leave England for southern shores, he chose to go by sea, crossing the Bay of Biscay, visiting Tangiers, Algiers and finally landing at Ajaccio, where he spent the winter under sunny skies and by the blue Mediterranean. Knowing the sea, and finding health and a stimulating change from being on or near it, Whistler, as an artist, could not fail to take pleasure in painting it. His corre- spondence with Fantin-Latour informs us that when he spent the summer of 1862 at Gue- thary, near St. Jean de Luz, he was then painting the sea as seen from the shore. Only the “Blue Wave” and one or two of the sketches he made then now exist. The sudden varia- tions of temperature, the storms and continual rains of that summer, evidently prevented him from completing much work he had begun. From the period 1865-66, when he spent both summers at Trouville with Courbet, his first important and characteristic marines date. From that time on, he returned repeatedly to the sea and in his paintings, water-colors and etchings we find it under many changing aspects. The marine “Blue et Violet, Parmi les Roulants” was shown in the Salon du Champs- de-Mars in 1894, with the portrait of Count Robert de Montesquiou and two other marines, one of which was the “ Blue Wave.” The secondary title explains the subject of the picture, boats flying along the crests of big, foam-capped, rolling waves. This marine must have been painted only a short time before its exhibition at the Salon, as its tone, its suggestive- ness of movement, its subtlety and simplicity, clearly show it to be one of the master’s latest pictures. The striking effect of running white foam, obtained by a few strong and daring strokes of the brush is typical of his later and consummate mastery of technique. The shape of the butterfly serving as signature also proves the work to be one of his latest and it, consequently, must be regarded as an example of the most expressive and personal development of his style. Theodore Duret Strong with the strength of a great simplicity, fresh as the dawn of creation, this fleet- ing and noble vision of one of the most beautiful and inspiring aspects of nature testifies to Whistler’s capacity to see, feel and express, with purity of style, pithy brevity and complete spontaneity, that supreme type of order, power and infinity, the Ocean. In order thus to set forth, in his own way, with so much distinction and force, an impression, a memory of a 363 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS moment, the artist must have been keenly susceptible to the most delicate as well as the most profound phases of beauty. From a kaleidoscopic maze of swiftly changing forms and colors, his unerring instinct chose the one visual climax, the separate, distinct and typical momentary appearance which embodied and suggested all the rest of the splendor, the wonder and the awe of the stupendous theme. And that climax, that memory of a moment, inevitable, peculiar to itself, is the unique child of his temperament. Other great painters of the sea, J. M. W. Turner, Jules Dupre, Winslow Homer, have given us other aspects of its grandeur, force or charm; but it remained for Whistler to fascinate and enthrall us by the sheer perfection of its color. The magic of it is, that showing but one wave, he so surely leads the mind to infer all the broad unseen miles of sea beyond. Past master in the art of implication, his appeal is ever to the imagination. By means which seem phenomenally slight, he awakens a host of associations connected with the sea, brings to mind poignant recollections of long past impressions, re-creates bonds of special sensibility to natural beauty, and vitalizes our consciousness of the majestic and virile poetry of the sea. But simple as the process seems, flat as the color masses look at first blush, there is a variety, a life, a mobility and a subtlety in the tones, which belong to Whistler alone. And the reaction of those tones upon the spirit, the fitting of color to mood, the correspondence between emotion and object— what a mystery is this! It is impossible to describe the feeling evoked by color; doubtless there are those who are incapable of the experience; if so, they miss one of the rarest and finest sensations to which the art of painting gives birth. The blues and violets in this ocean symphony, ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,’ are to be compared to nothing else in all art, so strong and deep, so pure and tender, so splendid are their qualities. And as nothing in art or life survives except it be based on truth, we may say confidently of this marine piece that it will hold good forever as an epic presentment of that “ Glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form Glasses itself in tempests ” Still, while the critic, who studies, observes and interprets the work of art and its gene- sis, is within his rights in tracing poetical effects to their causes, in assuming that the tree which produces good fruit must itself be good, he should guard against the assumption that the ultimate significance, the highest import is present to the consciousness of the artist at the moment of creation. We have too much evidence to the contrary. Many of the eulogies pronounced upon great paintings would be a source of surprise to their makers. Yet be- cause one reads into a work of fine art meanings which were not in the mind of the artist, or at least not consciously, it does not follow that they are not there. It is in the unconscious self-revelation of the artist’s mind and soul that his works attain their highest plane of sen- timent and imagination, and it is precisely in proportion to his capacity for discovering these intimate personal revelations that the critic gives proof of his right to exist. Neither artist nor critic can justify his choice of profession unless he be a discoverer; it is for the one to reveal new and lovely phases of the old order, power and beauty, which have always existed; and it is for the other to show that wherever and whenever this is successfully done it is 364 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS nothing less than a fresh demonstration of this godlike, creative power in the man who does it. A very old story this. But we must remember that it is a short time since Whistler was regarded as an eccentric, a ‘poseur,’ whose renown was largely due to his epigrams; and we are just emerging from the cloud of misunderstanding which enveloped his person- ality. We are, in other words, just beginning to judge him in accordance with the only evidence which is of any value, that is to say, his works; and we have hardly got over our surprise at finding that this singular being whose sport it was to angle for gudgeons, was a man of such deep, tender, and ardent sensibility. Sensibility — that is the keynote of Whistler’s temperament, and it was so keen, so deli- cate, that there must have been times when the effect of beauty upon his soul transcended the bounds of ecstasy. He saw so much more, felt so much more, than other men, it is easy to see how he was forced to wear a mask of indifference and cynicism when he came in contact with the world. But this trait from which he suffered, and not he alone, was the very essential principle of his art, without which we should never have had such master- pieces as the “Symphony in Violet and Blue.” The style of this work is not only intensely original, it is also essentially modern; and it thus forms a curious and interesting contrast with the marine paintings of the older schools, as exemplified, for instance, by Van de Velde. To the modern imagination, the method and manner of Whistler makes a much more stir- ring appeal, and this is chiefly because his way of working is so much more suggestive and so much less descriptive. He is brief, audacious, and says more in a phrase than the older painters were able to say in a whole chapter. Only the greatest artists are capable of this summary completeness; it is only by the exercise of a supreme tact that they know how to let well alone; ‘le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.’ William Howe Downes If we were to select from the works of Whistler those which represent his strongest personality, they would be his pictures of the sea. Simple as they appear, they are in reality the result of a complexity of invention and selection defying imitation, since to behold in the sea what Whistler beheld is to look through Whistler’s eyes. And for this reason they seem to constitute a group somewhat isolated from his other work. They are compositions of nine parts Whistler and one part sea, but that one part is the very essence of the sea itself— the grandeur of space wherein all local aspect is lost. Superb among them in the ex- pression of this largeness of vision, no less than in color, is the “ Symphony in Violet and Blue.” It is a long surge of deep sea, with a line of foam running over the crest, which, half hiding a tall sail, blots out the horizon and outlines itself against a windy sky. There is no feeling in it of frame limit. Enormous distance seems to lie between the sea and the sky, and the picture gives the same sensation that nature herself gives; that of having thrown the whole of space within our particular angle of vision. It is an epitome of sea and sky, painted with a great sweep of the brush and with a precision and directness that show the master in complete understanding with himself. Yet “The Symphony in Violet and Blue” is as little the record of subjective seeing, so called, as it is of any fleeting impression. The sense of vastness is a product of Whistler’s imaginative sight— that very rare faculty of 365 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS discovering or, indeed, of creating the beautiful, by instinctively replacing, out of the store of his memory, the accidental qualities of the scene before him with such sublimer ones as may belong to it. His steady purpose, from his earliest work onward, was the expression of the beautiful, for its own sake alone, as separate from exact representation of nature, or of any of her sentimental or scientific facts. Hence it is that his pictures stand, with little traceable step from one to another, like a series of moods, changing in and out, from an alert receptiveness to the most dreamy abstraction, but with this single object clearly apparent throughout. Whistler himself rejects all idea of time; he would have no earlier and no later in his or in any other art. Only one connecting thread in the sequence of time or develop- ment is to be found in the steady trace of simplification — the discarding of all unnecessary detail, be it ever so lovely in itself, for the better expression of this fundamental idea. It has been too much the habit of critics to lay stress upon his technical excellencies, as if giving him this foundation alone to stand on as the great exponent of art for art’s sake; with a tacit assumption that all other qualities are forever outside the legitimate realms of art. Art for art’s sake is manifestly an ambiguous statement, meaning something or nothing according to the mind that considers it. Whistler was eminently the painter, but above all he was eminently the artist; and by this is meant one who has an idea to express, which lies neither in any casual, outside suggestion, nor yet in masterly technique. Despite all misrepresentation, the painter’s art, in his conception of it, is as much the embodiment of this definite idea as art in any other form, subject to the same laws and composed to the same end. It was in his insistence on this fact, clear enough to him, that Whistler called his pictures ‘Symphonies.’ He himself drew the analogy between compositions of sound and those of color, and gave the reason for his satisfaction in these titles whereby the motive that he put upon his canvas was best and adequately described. Using the painter’s only language, that of nature’s forms, he composed his work of art in the same manner as a musician composes in the language of tone. It is beyond the power of invention or imagination to reach the ineffable beauty of color and form that is revealed in the gradations and the lighted textures and contours of actual substances. Of this, truly, Whistler has constantly made us aware. And from this opulence of nature he has produced the matchless color of his “Symphony in Violet and Blue ” — the color, in this case of the sea, in the full splendor of such qualities as only the moving sea with the light of the sky over it can give. Surely he was no seeker after reasons, nor was he an explorer in the realms of scientific discovery. He painted with a deliberate earnestness that which could be discovered by the steady eye alone, and fitly expressed in his own language of a fixed color on a flat surface, while at the same time every part of his canvas had its meaning and its intention with a true reference to some living reality of nature. In the highest sense he was an Impressionist. Unlike all of that, however, which bears the name whether in the more or the less exact meaning of the word, his impression- ism took no note of the accident of the moving instant, but concerned itself with the enduring quality, alive everywhere and defined in the one moment by its recurrence in many others superficially unlike. 366 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Thus seeing, Whistler composed, on the theme of the sea, his “Symphony in Violet and Blue ” made up of the truth of water as water, sky as sky, and color and form as living color and form— each tone struck in its richest inherent value for the enhancement of the whole. And hence it exists, not in the painters’ sense as an illusion of the sea, but as a new creation of this idea of the beautiful — a composite of perception and imagination — and painted, for the sake of art. Marcia O. Woodbury “MISS PORTER” B RANDEGEE was a little more than twenty years old when, in 1869, he came to Hart- ford to try his fortune as an artist. His equipment then consisted largely of an artistic temperament. He had, for a short time, studied in New York, where he became imbued with the importance of the Pre-Raphaelite movement much in vogue at the time. Brandegee, extremely fond of nature, was at first much attracted by a school which advocated the pre- sentment of things as they really were, rather than as they appeared to be, but after awhile his temperament rebelled against the rather narrow limitations of this school. In 1872 he went to Paris and with a small number of American students entered the studio of Jacques- son de la Chevreuse, a man of singular gifts, of fascinating personality, a very severe teacher and a true friend to his pupils. De la Chevreuse, who had studied under Ingres, was in the strongest sense of the word a classicist, yet he would often tell his pupils that they should forget the school as soon as they ceased to belong to it. To learn to draw was in his judgment an absolute requisite to the education of an artist, and he laid special stress upon the study of descriptive geometry and anatomy. He also made every effort to develop their individual manner of expression. De la Chevreuse insisted that no one should try to teach more than a dozen pupils at the same time, because their different temperaments required special attention, and it was indispensable that the teacher should remember and con- stantly follow the bent of each pupil. It is true that no two of the men in his studio drew or painted alike, but they all learned to draw, and later, as painters, they all developed indi- viduality as is proved by the works of Dwight W. Tryon and Brandegee. With that severe schooling Mr. Brandegee has developed an art entirely his own. Ex- cept from the fact that no matter what his subject may be he takes evident pains to draw before painting, his technique, void of theory or of any kind of preconceived method, is con- stantly changing according to circumstances. 1 think it safe to assert that he could paint with the palette of any of his brother artists, whatever kind of painters they may be, just as well, and possibly with less inconvenience than with his own, and that the whole of his art sense lies in seeing and not in methodical ways of doing. It seems to me that in the search of, and respect for, drawing, which Ingres said so pithily was * la probity de l’art,’ in absolute honesty of intention, in fundamental, direct simplicity lies the strength of Brandegee’s technical expression. Such a splendid work as his “Portrait of Miss Porter” could never have been painted without a true, thorough, fundamental knowledge of the art of drawing, which in this in- 367 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS stance was received in an obscure school, under one, of the perhaps many, unkown artists of France. Charles Noel Flagg In his portrait of this venerable New England gentlewoman Mr. Brandegee has shown himself not merely a scrupulous and accomplished painter touched by the wand of Ingres in his use of poignant line, but an American with the power to divine national character- istics. The beautiful face before him, with its rugged construction and ample dignity of fea- ture, had much more than the beauty of age, and more also than the beauty of intellect, though its aspect was that of the old and the wise. It had the spiritual beauty that comes only of the disciplined soul and the inner vision fixed unalterably upon unworldly images. It was the happiest of chances to find an art so fitted to the expression of this quality. Nothing could be more eloquent of passionate sincerity than the perfectly simple, perfectly expressive manner of the painting, without bravura or any artifice of mediocrity, but with the research that tells of long practice in right ways of working. A rare combination of temperament and drill was needed to realize the significant facts of that still resilient figure, bent by the accumulation of years, but yielding under gentle protest and keeping all its suggestions of self-control and a reticent bearing. There is pleasure enough in noting how unobtrusively the arm rests within the loose sleeve, how the plain silk dress defines without emphasizing the slightly shrunken shoulders and high waist, how all the little lights and shades have their respectful comment to make upon the external type of the sitter. There is much more pleasure to be had, however, in noting the interpretation of the spiritual type, the type of old New England in its purest essence, with its elevated, mystical, dream- ing side balanced by its sense of strict decorum, of practical efficiency, and of moral values applied to conduct. About Miss Porter’s memory lingers the aroma of a completely vanished tradition of our national life, completely vanished yet insensibly modifying our standards and ideals. Born eleven years later than Emerson, she belonged to his generation and to his environment. The ideas that haunted him filled the atmosphere in which she worked and thought. Whether consciously in sympathy with his utterances or not, she was the product of the same forces by which New England gained a kind of culture of mind and manners unique in history. The plain living and high thinking of those days was a brave, aristocratic theory of life. It had the advantage of providing very clear forms of behavior which in essentials approxi- mated those of the highest civilizations. If it hedged about its followers with restrictions of conscience and taste it gave them a compensating charm allied to that which Flaubert finds in works of art wrought in material of the utmost resistance. In Miss Porter’s face, as her compatriot has evoked it, we see delicate hints of all the cloistered, remote, refined associations of a period and a society not perhaps of a finer texture than the present offers, since the present must be of surpassing fineness to keep even an appreciation of the old things under the obliterating and submerging conflict of our mani- fold interests, but at least of a texture more integral and firm. We see the mild austerity of a fixed moral standard in which taste played an important if not always a recognized part. 368 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS We see the typical New England humor, largely due to a sense of proportion and congruity, which made for the discernment of the lightest shade of pretentiousness and for its prompt notation in the dry idiom of the people. We see the keen love of things of the mind as op- posed to physical luxuries, together with the love of daintiness in material surroundings. With these general characteristics Mr. Brandegee has revealed also the power to organize and execute, and the gracious kindly temper that played charmingly over the efficient exer- cise of authority. Nor has he failed to show a still subtler quality, one nourished by the quiet and reasonable courage which taught New England’s earlier generations to meet the siege of time as unpretendingly and self-respectingly as they did battle for their principles. The type to which Miss Porter belonged preserved to the end the fine elasticity of their temper- amental fiber. The relaxations of will and intelligence with which advance of years is asso- ciated were infrequently a part of their human fate. The spring of their moral energy was tempered to a lasting usefulness and old age came to them not as a disintegrating but as a spiritualizing experience. Mr. Brandegee has managed to convey the sentiment of reverence for the spiritual attributes of our nature by which our forerunners, whether ‘Transcenden- talists’ or Calvinists, were inspired. Any of them might have said of old age with Emerson: “When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare — muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise. 1 have heard that whoever loves is in no condi- tion old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immor- tality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill — at the end of life just ready to be born — affirms the inspira- tions of affection and of the moral sentiment.” It is this belief in the persistence of the spirit and the importance of its intimations of immortality that glows behind the dim veil of the flesh in this beautiful portrait. It is not, perhaps, unjustifiable once more to consider that for such an interpretation the art itself must have a certain moral quality. It must be sincere, not merely with that rather obvious sincerity of intention which frequently shines like an applied polish from the works of mediocre craftsmen, but with a sincerity of execution that presupposes the utmost humility of pupilage, the utmost dedication to the means by which the precious idea is to be rendered. It is not the men with great ideas and with penetrating vision who are care- less of their metier. More than one thoughtful artist has indicated the true frame of mind. “It will be to us,” says John La Farge,“the proof of a sober certain holding of the higher prin- ciples of art, that we care for the small matters that allow us to express greater ones.” And Blake, in his Manuscript Book, writes: “I have heard many People say Give me the Ideas it is no matter what words you put them into and others say give me the Design it is no matter for the Execution. These People know enough of artifice but Nothing of Art. Ideas cannot be Given but in their minutely Appropriate Words nor can a Design be made with- out its minutely Appropriate Execution.” This deference to the necessities of the art of ex- 369 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS pression Mr. Brandegee possesses. The finer the thing to be said the more anxious he is to say it in precisely the right way with every modulation and accent that will contribute to the truth of its effect and with every omission that makes for truth. He is not content with a line that tells but part of the story or with one that tells so much as to confine the imagination to a field too restricted. We have only to study the curiously blended breadth and precision of modelling in the portrait of Miss Porter, especially about the brow and in the hands, to discover with what ardor of research the painter must have sought the sig- nificant in his subject, with what quiet disregard of the cleverness that so allures the secondary mind he must have determined upon the method of transferring his conception to canvas, and with what unremitting, intellectual energy he must have pursued his task. In the lines “ Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought,” the poet spoke more truly than perhaps he knew. The vain and shallow thought in art is quite often betrayed by absence of mind, by the wandering of the attention to matters apart from the means of expression, as by the glib brushwork that proclaims its flippancy. In art dullness and smartness are alike in their lack of real sincerity. Thus it is that we gain from work like this of Mr. Brandegee’s a sensation of moral and intellectual stimulus conveyed by the evident concentration of his mind upon the important to the exclusion of the negligible. Elizabeth Luther Carey THE COLLECTION OL THE HONORABLE JOHN HAY BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY THE COLLECTION OF THE HONORABLE JOHN HAY BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY N old and experienced lover of art, the joy of whose long life had been to wander over the civilized world in quest of the sight of beautiful things, held that a collection of art was, as such, as interesting to him as individual pictures. Collections, he justly said, never coming together by chance, must necessarily mani- fest the nature of the person or agency that formed them. Ele- ments of chance enter into the composition of public galleries, the chances of amalgamation, of legacies and gifts or of trans- fer to them of objects that have fallen into the public domain. In Europe, the great private galleries usually represent the accumulation of several generations of proprietors guided by successive movements of con- temporary taste, and collections such as are the rule in America are rare, for in America each collection is a concrete manifestation of the progress of one individual taste. But everywhere among the people possessing the necessary financial qualifications to collect, the number endorsed with an individual taste of a definite character is, in proportion, small. Individual collectors, again, are of many kinds. There are men who desire to possess precious things for the sake of their rarity and value, and there is the man whose collection is the main interest of his life, for which he makes money as others make it for power and glory, and who lives to collect, as a painter to paint, an architect to build. But there is, moreover, a kind of collection which is so common that we hardly realize 373 THE COLLECTION OF THE its existence as a type. It is the gathering together, for the sake of their personal interest to the gatherer throughout the years of his life, of a number of objects which he has accquired and is willing to retain around him as the setting of his everyday existence. There is not a householder who does not make such a collection of furniture, carpets, pictures, photo- graphs, domestic ornaments of various kinds, and there is not a college student with a room of his own that is not constrained to engage in this category of collecting. Such an accumula- tion of objects is the most tell-tale thing in the world; more even than his clothes it manifests the man, and with each year that passes, reveals the stages of his human and humane develop- ment. The discordancies between what he inherited, what has been given to him and what he chose, require no explanation; the piety with which he preserves things, ugly it may be, but of memorable personal association, or the recklessness with which he sacrifices asso- ciation to picturesque effect; the dominance of the outer or of the inner, of friendship or of personal liking; the tendency to live in the past or in the present, all these factors declare themselves, and sometimes are manifest with a pathetic emphasis that cannot be mistaken. And when a man has lived a rich human life, when he has been the friend of others of his own quality but of all varieties, and has passed through considerable experiences and acted a notable part in the affairs of his time, the accumulation of material things by which he ultimately surrounds himself becomes interesting in a high degree. It is for this reason that the general public rightly desires to visit the homes of the illustrious dead, always eagerly desiring to see them in their natural condition, filled with the furniture and possessions accu- mulated by the men themselves, as if one could come nearer to them in their houses than even in their work. What revelation of personality seems to be so intimate or so sacred? The ultimate revelation of a friend takes the form of reception into his household, the sacra- mental relation of host and guest — admitting us into the world of his own choice and crea- tion he for the time allows us to share it with him; it is as if after this there were no more walls to penetrate save the impenetrable final wall that hedges personality from all pos- sible violation. The works of art belonging to the late Mr. John Hay form a collection of the kind we have thus attempted to define. Being the accumulation of years, they express the friend- ships and the successive tastes and opportunities of a lifetime rich in many-sided activities and experiences. It is always the personal note that is dominant, and that note is one of human sympathy. Selected friendships declare themselves on all sides, and attract the visitor's first attention, or rather attract his attention next after the home itself, which is not anyone's house, taken on, ready made, but an abode definitely fashioned for its inhabitant. Its architect was Richardson, it was one of his last works, and only a few days before he died he came and sat in the hall to behold this latest creation of his art. He loved things struc- turally massive and strong, large stones, solid wood; and it is clear that he built with the long future before him, and that what he built will lend itself kindly to the slow decorating hand of time. In a country where the new is so often called upon to make way for the yet newer, there is something pathetic in this kind of appeal to futurity to respect work once well done. The spacious, strongly wainscoted hall at once declares the general character of the interior. 374 HONORABLE JOHN HAY There is room enough for its ample staircase and gallery, indeed, there is room enough everywhere for the life of a family that does not wish to be surrounded by a crowd. Here a large fireplace of beautiful stone immedately attracts the attention. It is the first of many, all plain in form and intentionally thus restrained the better to display the gloriously colored and finely polished stones of which they are fashioned. They are to this house what jewels are to a finely decorated medieval binding, or polished monoliths to a Fifth Dynasty Egyptian temple. Nothing can be imagined more in harmony with the free waving and darting of burning logs than the natural patterns of these sectioned rocks, which seem to flow this way and that with a similar liberty, as though themselves fire-begotten. In the hall pictures already attract our attention — among them an English landscape from the banks of the Avon by Alfred Stevens, a richly colored Opie high aloft, and Jim Bludso at the wheel holding “ her nozzle agin the bank, Till the last galoot’s ashore.” The painter of this picture was, Mr. Hay told me, a western amateur of considerable natural gifts. Beside it hangs a profile portrait of Henry James as a young man painted by John La Farge, showing a face of extreme refinement, reticence, and sensibility, more sug- gestive of the reflective observer who was to write ‘A Portrait of a Lady’ than of the subtle creator of ‘The Wings of a Dove.’ But here we stand at the open door admitting to the two connecting rooms that contain most of Mr. Hay’s pictures, which numerous though they are, form only a minor part of the decoration and take such places as can be found for them among the books, over the fireplaces and upon the walls. The books are, perhaps, the dominant feature, and the tables with the things on them, and the chairs — in fact the used objects that belong to the life of the inmates. It is because the pictures also belong to that life that they are there, and for the same reason photographs are not lacking and do not spoil the general harmony of effect, for the harmony does not arise from a dominating scheme of color or other leading esthetic consideration, but from the felt presence of a personality expressing itself in the choice of things. Here is another portrait of Mr. Henry James in bearded middle age, a bas-relief pendant to one of Mr. Howells. There is a full-length of the incomparable Clarence King, by Zorn, a fine figure of a man but less revealing to one who did not know him than the photograph likeness occupying a place of honor on the mantelpiece. A Mambrino’s helmet, brought from Spain by King, is stored away on one of the many shelves that contain I know not how many such-like reminiscences of treasured personal relations. All about the room, indeed, are things of interest — a sketch by W. M. Thackeray of Mr. Braham, pieces of Venetian or Cyprian glass, Greek terra cottas and many others. Though the next room contains at least one masterpiece of early Renaissance art, the conspicuous and principal decoration of its walls is a series of water-color drawings mainly of the English school. To begin with, there are examples of the work of the two George Barrets. Most of the known works of the father, who was one of the earliest members of the Royal Academy, depict English scenery studied with much accuracy of detail. Mr. Hay’s 375 SALVI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (called IL SASSOFERRATO) 1605- 1665 “MADONNA AND CHILD” Canvas (relined), height 30 inches, width 25 inches. T HE Madonna, seen at half length and under life-size, sits almost in the center of the picture, her figure slightly turned toward the right, her head, from which a resplendent halo radiates, inclined to her left. The Child whose partially draped figure is seen to a little below the knees, is seated on her lap, sunk in slumber. He leans against His mother, supported by her hands, one of which is' placed under His left arm, the other being on His right knee. His right hand touches hers; His left arm lies across His breast, the hand lightly clasping the other arm. His face is almost in profile, like that of Mary, who, pressing her cheek against His head bends over and looks at Him with an expression of loving thoughtfulness. Her hair is brought down smoothly over her ear, not quite concealing it. A veil framing the back of her head falls on her shoulders. A cloak lies over her left shoulder and arm and covers her knees. The group is lighted from the spectator’s left. Bordering the halo are fleecy clouds, out of which in the upper corners of the pic- ture two winged cherubs’ heads look down. Collection Alexander Barker. Sale Barker estate, Christie’s, 1874, bought by the executors, (400 guineas). Sale Barker estate, Christie’s, 1879, purchased for Mr. Hay,(i 10 guineas). 37 6 BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY example is a view of Windsor, seen from the high ground a few miles away to the south, so that the decorative outline and imposing mass of the Castle is seen rising out of the richly wooded and cultivated Thames valley plain. Time has no doubt sobered, without injuring, the coloring, so that the picture retains its original charm and interest, outcome of the so- briety and patient elaboration characteristic of the day when it was painted. The drawing here preserved of Barret junior, one of the first members of the Royal Water-Color Society, is a pleasant view of mountain, forest and river, painted in a competent and unpretending way. A view of a cottage among trees is a characteristic example of the work of Thomas Girtin, and as the north of England was his favorite sketching ground, there, no doubt, this drawing was made. It was the artist’s fate to die young, so that all he accomplished only indicates what might have been expected from his evident capacity, yet as it was, he advanced further than Turner had done at the same age. Upon the study of Canaletto, Rubens and Wilson, he founded a style of such originality and promise that Turner said: ‘If Thomas Girtin had lived, I should have starved. ’ But Girtin did not live and his drawings, relatively rare, are correspondingly valued by those who feel the charm of the early English water-color school. An artist, who enjoyed considerable vogue in his own day, and whose work after a period of neglect is again receiving recognition, is John Dowman. He painted a certain number of subject pictures, but it is his portraits in pencil and water-color that have kept his memory green. While there is nothing recondite about his art, yet it is far more artful than any superficial observer might imagine. ‘ Simplex munditiis ’ might have been his motto. Half the prominent ladies and notable personages of his day sat to him, and he not only made their likenesses but often annotated them with a few words of comment either about him- self or his sitter, whose name he generally added. The little portrait, a thoroughly charac- teristic example, belonging to Mr. Hay, represents the charming lady who was Madame Roland and afterward became Lady Monington and Marchioness of Wellesley. No collec- tion of English water-colors is complete without one of Prout’s drawings, and there are two in Mr. Hay’s collection. Samuel Prout, like so many of his contemporaries, wandered a great deal, and wherever he wandered he sketched, but whether he was in Venice, in Northern France, or in England, he saw everything in the same way, drew it according to the same convention, so that his drawings are not so much views of this or that scene, as successive images out of the artist’s own mind. While not seeing things very nobly, there is always something attractive about his work, and every view he painted leads into a romantic place such as Scott’s characters might have inhabited. Town-scenes were his favorite subjects, but only if the buildings were accentuated by the sculpturing hand of time, the cold, damp winters which have eaten into stones and rounded off the angles of wood. He especially loved the half-timbered houses, and no one better understood the crazy humors of those quaint structures. With Prout, since Ruskin wrote, the name of Hunt is naturally asso- ciated; not that they were contemporaries or related as master and pupil, but because Ruskin found in the work of Hunt the traditions of the old water-color school consistently preserved. A drawing of a boy by him is in Mr. Hay’s collection, and with it may also be mentioned the drawing of a figure, boldly colored, by William James Muller of Bristol. 379 THE COLLECTION OF THE The most notable of all the English water-colors are two exceptionally fine works by Turner, one characteristic of his later middle period, the other of the last period of his activity. In the foreground of the former (known as a picture of Lucerne), lies a walled town, four-square, with towers upon the walls, evidently a city of Roman descent. It occu- pies the floor of a valley, and behind it the great mountains pile themselves aloft into the multifold of the clouds. Clouds and peaks, indeed, are parts of a single vision through which light plays mysteriously, and the atmosphere spreads abroad distinguished by brightness, shadow, and mist. The town, I think, can be no other than Aosta, which Turner painted more than once; the mountains behind are the foothills of the Alps, near the mouth of the valley, up which goes the way to the great St. Bernard Pass. Just there, where the hot airs of Italy drifting up the deep Aosta Valley rise into the lap of the uplifted mass of the Alpine chain, such cloudy intricacies are the common and glorious vision of almost every day— a vision that Turner was especially qualified to enjoy with understanding. But it is the second Turner that is the more precious, a drawing to be numbered among the very best that ever came from his magic-weaving hand. It was suggested by sight of the Rhine- watching Drachenfels, beheld toward evening when the western light was mellow. No one ever saw the Rhine so blue, or the crags so brick-dust ruddy, save with the eye of the imagination, but many of us would gladly — not give our eyes — but give away that ignorant and dull quality of our eyesight that prevents us from beholding the actual world thus ex- ceedingly glorified. The wonder is not merely that Turner could see, but that he could thus so magically suggest. A twisting squiggle in the foreground, which taken alone appears to have no possible significance, does actually suggest the shaded river bank with plants growing at the edge, and we cannot help receiving that suggestion from it. By what com- pulsion he thus imposes his will upon us is the unaccountable mystery of his art. And it is the same all over his drawing— the river, the rocks, the boat upon the water, the people on the bank, the castle ruin aloft — we are under no possible misapprehension as to what and where they are, yet each is suggested by such a tangle of lines and blots that a fragment taken alone could not possibly be identified as depicting anything in particular. But the whole is perfectly lucid, showing, indeed, not the bald facts about the component parts of the view, but only such facts as formed part of the lovely effect of forms, light and color, which Turner desired to render. That effect might well be called a “Symphony in Blue and Brick Dust” with as much appositeness as “The Drachenfels.” For in truth it is not the particular mountain and river, but the color effect, there once by the artist beheld, that is the subject of his drawing. Seldom has a pictorial subject been more sufficiently realized with paint on paper. It is a great temptation to consider some splendid drawings in black and white by Millet, Bastien Lepage, and others, or the set of beautiful water-colors and some designs for glass windows by John LaFarge, but enough has been said to indicate the character and quality of the collection as a whole, so that we may now devote ourselves to the pictures by Old Masters. Three representations of the Virgin and Child claim first consideration, not only because of their intrinsic merit and value, but as excellent examples of three several 380 HONORABLE JOHN HAY stages of pictorial spiritual evolution. They are a tondo by Botticelli, a half-length by Mabuse, and another half-length by Sassoferrato; they may be regarded as representing in a general way the religious art ideals of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively. In the Botticelli we behold the work of a man brought up and living in an atmosphere where the old religious ideal was still an overmastering tradition. Nowadays it is difficult for the imagination to recreate a state of things so at variance with that under which we live. Throughout the middle ages and down to the beginning of the fifteenth century, artists had painted a definite series of religious subjects in a conventional manner, and the convention almost had the sanction of inspiration. The sacred images had been a kind of hieratic emblems of divine beings. But the preaching of Francis of Assisi breathed a new spirit into men. The divine now tended to become human, and the Byzantine Mother of God was to be transformed into the historic Mary, Mother of Jesus. That transformation was slow to come about in the conservative realm of pictorial art. We can follow the stages of the change. When Botticelli had grown up to be a painter the course of the destined evolution was already plain. He and his contemporaries realized that in painting the Virgin it was a human mother, and in painting the Child it was a common infant that they had to depict. No doubt they set living models before them and endeavored with all their might to imitate what they saw. But the old ideal still held them so strongly in its grasp that yet two more generations must pass in Italy before that could actually be done; the Virgin of this tondo is not a Florentine woman of the day as we should have beheld her, but as beheld by an artist dreaming of the medieval heaven. She was not a lady of fifteenth century Florence, but an inhabitant of a visionary Paradise, fair by imitation and sweet by the exclu- sion of half the qualities that go to make a woman. Whether Botticelli ever realized the constraint that was upon him— a constraint that even Raphael never succeeded in overcoming, though he carried emancipation a long way further than his masters — who shall say? But the fact of the constraint is indisputable, and it has to be remembered by all who would enter into the spirit of early Renaissance painters and fully enjoy its outcome in their works. The picture by Mabuse carries us into a wholly different atmosphere, and brings us in contact with the ideal of another world. Not only, when compared with the Botticelli, does it manifest the everlasting fundamental contrast between north and south (between what we may call the Arctic and Mediterranean races) but it displays the gulf dividing the new Renaissance world from that which precedes it. The Mabuse at first appears to be a portrait, and in fact it is a portrait. Presently we may discover by search that the rosary held by the baby, and one or two minor indications, were introduced to say that the picture stands for a ‘ ‘ Virgin and Child. ” There is, however, nothing else to prove it. The old spirit has absolutely vanished. These two human beings are plain, human actualities. Mabuse saw them looking just so. They existed in their own time and place. Actually sitting in the artist’s studio, they are denizens of no fanciful fairyland, but of the Netherlands at a given date. The impulse given by Francis has gone much further than ever Francis foresaw. The divine has not merely become human, but the human has ex- pelled the divine. It is not now the beauty of the dream that is sought, but the actual beauty 381 FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF THE XVth CENTURY “MADONNA IN ADORATION” Transferred on canvas, height 38 inches, width 22 inches. O N the right, a regular stone wall rises to about two-thirds of the height of the circular-top picture. Above it a few tree trunks support a peaked thatched roof, partly under which, and almost in the center of the composition, the Madonna, turning toward the left, kneels in adoration before her Child. Her head encircled with a halo is slightly bent, her face presents a three-quarter view, her uplifted hands are joined in prayer. Her light hair, looped over the ears, falls upon her shoulders in loose locks, discernable through a short veil with fringed and embroidered border which is drawn back far enough to bare her forehead. Her ample cloak makes heavy folds over her arms. The infant Christ lies on the ground partly on a fold of His mother’s tunic, partly on a cushion over which are spread the swaddling clothes that have been unwrapped from His lower limbs. His face is turned in three- quarters view toward the spectator; His hands press against His lower lip while He playfully lifts one leg, pressing the left foot against His mother. His halo is ornamented with a quatrefoil. The foreground is dotted with little plants. The ground in the middle distance, to the left of the Madonna, is rugged and traversed by a path leading to the ‘closed gate’ of Ezekiel’s imagery, which with a fence of trellis-work marks the limits of the ‘enclosed garden’ of the Canticles; gate and garden being symbols of Mary’s virginity. Beyond is a river with high banks scattered with clumps of trees; in the extreme distance moun- tains slope to the water’s edge. The sky is serene and from the Holy Dove poised aloft gold rays stream downward. Embroidered borders, halos, flowers, fence and gate in distance are touched up with gold. Collection Baron Zezza, Florence. Purchased by Mr. Hay, in Florence, 1890, through Prof. Larkin G. Meade. 382 BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY in the thing beheld. It was the men of the north who first, since the days of the Greeks, learned to look for beauty thus. The van Eycks led the way. The Italians followed after. Sooner or later artists of all countries were swept along by the same irresistible tendency and the last traces of the old spirit vanished. This naturalism, however, like the Reformation, by its very tendency to excess, led to local reactions. True, in the north, under Rembrandt and the Dutch, it was unfalteringly pursued to a very glorious accomplishment. But there were people of another sort who had cravings which naturalism, however perfectly handled, failed to satisfy. They hungered after the old dreamland or something like it. Dissatisfied with this world in any possible devel- opment they could foresee, they demanded vision of existence of another and more sym- pathetic type. Beauty beheld did not satisfy them. They wanted a kind of sweetness that eye had never seen nor ear ever heard. What enough people want they will get. Artists arose who were in harmony with them in this desire. Like their contemporary naturalists, those artists saw the world about them clearly enough, and their instructions had been in learning to paint it as they saw it. Nature, in fact, possessed them. Nevertheless, though thus equipped, they consciously and intentionally set themselves to paint, not the thing seen but the thing fancied — or rather to so pose and treat the thing seen, as thereby to suggest to the spectator the fancy that he loved. Madonnas and Saints in the hands of these men — Rubens, Van Dyck, the Carraccis and the rest— became beautiful and distinguished people, beautifully acting a part, and acting it by aid of a convention as well understood as any stage tradition that ever existed. That convention was based upon the pre-Reformation traditions, no doubt, but is distinguished from them by every quality that separates uncon- scious from conscious activity. This picture of Sassoferrato’s is an example of work of such kind. It belongs to a school best characterized as the Jesuit school (as Giotto to the Fran- ciscan, Fra Angelico to the Dominican), and it possesses the charms of a most refined arti- ficiality chastened by the very perfection of good taste. The result is a thing of beauty, perfect in its way, which in its turn, after further revolutions of the wheel of time, becomes by us inimitable. It would be as easy to recreate the Court of Louis XIV to-day as to repro- duce the attitude of mind that made this picture possible. Its eclectic grace, artificial and rococo charm, its posturing cherubs, every factor of it belongs to a by-gone ideal. The great interest of old works of art, is that they cannot be made now, nor really copied, nor replaced, and they are infinitely precious for that very reason. They open to us another world when we are tired of to-day. Our own ideals can be expressed in a thousand forms every day, but by-gone ideals cannot, they come to us only in actual survivals from the past over which the only power we possess is to conserve or to destroy. After these general considerations we may fittingly consider the three pictures individ- ually. The Botticelli tondo was no doubt designed by Botticelli himself, and sold out of his bottega. How far assistants helped in the work is a matter of small importance. He made himself responsible for it, and the praise or blame is his. There is another version of the same group, filling an oblong panel, in the Boston Museum and a comparison between the two shows that the design was made for an oblong rather than for a round panel. Round 385 THE COLLECTION OF THE pictures, however, were favorites with the Florentines of the day, so this was no doubt ordered and duly supplied after an existing design. Mr. Hay’s version, bearing many an hon- orable scar, incorporates the same wistful pathos that gives their charm to the well known masterpieces of the artist in the Florentine galleries. And then it is painted in his rich and harmonious chord of color, with the same fair accessories of books and flowers, the same graceful flow of outlines, the same cameo-like delicacy of low relief, the same seeming sim- plicity of gesture, the same tenderness of sentiment. Here is the very soul of that Florence out of which Savonarola sprung — an actual fragment of it corporeally present with us to- day, not itself requiring interpretation, but capable of acting as interpreter of the by-gone world to whomsoever cares. The Mabuse picture is of great interest for the position it holds in the succession of the master’s works. Jean Gossart of Maubeuge, in Hainault, began painting in the style of the fifteenth century Flemish artists, the style centrally represented by the work of Roger van der Weyden. At Antwerp he fell under the influence of Quentin Metsys and then (1508-9) he spent the best part of a year in Italy where he seems to have been most influenced by the painters of the Milanese school. He was not singular among his compatriots in this ex- perience, Flemish Milanese pictures by unidentified artists being common in European gal- leries. German artists, Holbein conspicuous among them, were similarly affected. Mr. Hay’s picture is an example of the work of Mabuse done under Milanese influence. The low tone, delicate and elaborate modelling, smoky shadows, fine outlines, careful drawing and smooth impasto are Milanese features. We need not conclude that the picture was painted in Italy. What Mabuse learned there he never forgot. He became extravagant in design at a later period of his life, and forgot the reticence of his middle days, but here there is no intima- tion of that abandonment. The models seem to be northern people. Something about the picture reminds us of Holbein’s portrait of his wife and children. Can it be that Holbein saw this work when he was in the Low Countries and experienced the influence of Metsys and Mabuse? The Child, except for its peculiar head, is an essentially nothern baby, most closely paralleled by the infant in Diirer’s quaint little picture in the Uffizi. Italian Christ-Children are always more splendid and less pathetically infantine about the limbs. The Louvre diptych of the “Virgin and Child with John Carondelet” comes closest to Mr. Hay’s among the works of Mabuse known to us. Both are done in the same style, but Mr. Hay’s picture is more human. Unfortunately some parts of it have been entirely repainted. The splendidly carved and elaborately designed frame of the Sassoferrato Madonna is approximately of the same date as the picture. Indeed it seems probable that the picture may have been painted to fit the frame, if it was not cut to fit it. Sassoferrato painted this subject more than once, and it was often copied in his day. The replicas and copies carry the composition a little lower down. In our opinion there is no doubt that Mr. Hay’s ver- sion was painted by Sassoferrato himself. Superior people, during the last half century, have been taught to speak slightly of the artist and other eclectic Italian painters of the seven- teenth century. There is no such parrot as our superior person, speaking from the teeth outward instead of from the heart and understanding. But it is evident that the best works 386 HONORABLE JOHN HAY of any and every by-gone day must have, each in its kind, some intrinsic value. Each gen- eration has its merits and good points, and what it likes must be, in a measure, likeworthy, whether we share the taste for it or not; hence there is never any occasion to prove that what a generation of men has admired has merit. The only question for us is whether we can or cannot honestly see and enjoy the qualities in such works which were seen and en- joyed by the people for whom they were made. It is ourselves that such pictures test, not we them. It happens, however, that while superior persons have in late decades ignored the works of Sassoferrato, simple people, who did not know anything about the oughts on such matters, have quite straightforwardly loved them; and a day is now at hand when a wider catholicity of admiration will bring the eclectics again within the pale of what it is correct to admire. It must be admitted quite frankly that no one, except those who follow blindly the pontiffs of taste, would ever have hesitated to call this picture beautiful. Of course it is arti- ficial, what work of an artifex is not? But it is artificial with the help of a long and precious tradition. Be assured that to paint thus is no easy matter. It is tight-rope walking with a vengeance and in a work of this kind the tiniest error is fatal. The picture proclaims its learning at the first glimpse, and challenges conviction of error. Sentimental too it is, with an assertive sentimentality — and why not? Ungoverned sentimentalism is a social vice, but who does not forgive and even love it in many a person of his acquaintance? To analyse the technical factors of the picture is needless. Anyone can see that the composition leaves nothing to chance, but is as carefully arranged as that of a Doric temple. Every fold of the drapery is intentionally laid; the pose and position of the cherubs’ heads, the drawing and modelling of the clouds, the distribution of light and shade, and still more, the arrange- ment of the visible flesh in undulating flow down the middle of the canvas— all these facts are obvious. Two more pictures still await our detailed consideration. The first of them, a Floren- tine Madonna and Child, is now confidently ascribed to Sellaio by some students. Its close approximation to the style of Fra Filippo Lippi is obvious to us. The subject is the Virgin kneeling in adoration before her new-born babe. The action of the Child, pointing to its mouth, is intended to suggest the Word of God made flesh. What may have been the rea- son for the popularity of this subject in the last third of the fifteenth century in Central Italy, we are unable to say, though it may admit of easy explanation. Hardly a gallery in Europe is without one or more examples of pictures of this kind, all similar in composition and all doubtless going back to some one original which it would be interesting to identify. In the work before us the traditional arrangement is followed. The picture was intended to hang on the wall of a room, not over the altar of a church, hence the intimacy, one might almost say the domesticity of the treatment. It is not a congregation that is here addressed, but an individual. But the charm of the picture is quite as much in the manner of the painting as in the manner of the conception. Indeed in its own day the manner or art of the painting must have been its chief charm. The spirit expressed in the figures was the spirit of the day, and had nothing novel or unusual about it for contemporary eyes. We are charmed by what is to us the dreamy, other-world character of the personages and the land- 387 FLEMISH SCHOOL OF THE XVth CENTURY “CHRIST ON THE CROSS, WITH MARY AND JOHN” Panel, height \ \V* inches, width 8 inches. T HE figure of the Saviour seen in front view, occupies the center of the composition and nearly the whole length of the cross which extends from the top to near the bottom of the canvas and has its cross- bar set so high that only a little of the tablet above it is visible. The Saviour’s head is inclined to His right, His lips are parted and the blood trickles down from the spear wound in His side. On the right of the cross, facing the spectator, stands Mary and on the left John; Mary with half bowed head, wipes away her tears, John, full of anguish, gazes upward. The background is a landscape with a high horizon-line. A city of medieval architecture stretches across it in the distance, the lower parts of its edifices being hidden by rows of shrubs, while in front of them, tall round-topped trees are disposed at intervals. Behind the figures of the Saviour and John extends a meadow rising abruptly from the level plane where the cross stands — dark green above, and of a light green dotted with little plants below the bank of low shrubs which traverses it. At the foot of the cross lies a skull. Horizontal, dark clouds, their edges touched with light, fill the upper part of the sky. Purchased by Mr. Hay in Paris, 1882, at a Hotel Drouot sale. BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY scape; the costumes, the colors, all commonplace when they were painted, are not com- monplace to us. But in the fifteenth century the art of this painting was the most advanced art then known; nothing more original of its kind having been made. The modelling, the flesh painting, the scheme of line and color, all was modern and so it was calculated to charm the owner with the shock of novelty and advanced skill. Moreover, though the painter definitely intended and strove to embody a religious idea, he strove with equal or even greater energy, to make a decorative work; one to adorn as much as to instruct. The decorative intention reigns throughout so harmoniously that every detail seems inevitably right. The gate and the fence in the middle distance, and the plants in the foreground are actually gilt, yet the casual spectator would hardly notice it, they seem perfectly correct and proper thus treated. Imagine how out of place gilded plants would look in the foreground of a modern landscape. Here they pass unnoticed. The fact suffices to define the character of the work. How easy it would have been to become profligate in the use of such free- dom! How easy to have overloaded the panel with gold or jewels, or mosaic of multiplex glitter! The restraint of the artist is his great merit. He allows his hand to play with rec- ondite elaboration in the veil of the Virgin, and the covering of the Child, and he blends the dim effulgence of the halo and the hair with what there is near by. But there is no riot of fancy allowed. All is kept simple and almost austere, the richer parts being sufficiently united by tiny fillets of decoration such as the embroidered hem of a garment or the gilt paling of the field. The last picture remaining for consideration is a small panel, a Crucifixion, by an artist of the fifteenth century Flemish school. Not so long ago, before this school had attracted the study which has been lavished upon it in recent years, all such works as this were ascribed to Jan van Eyck. Nowadays we know of a number of followers of the van Eycks, compe- tent artists who painted in the same country and in varieties of the same style. A great number of excellent pictures by this group also have been discovered and rescued from neg- lect, so that now our position is this: We can write down a whole list of fifteenth century painters, and a certain number of pictures by some of them; we know of a quantity of ad- mirable pictures, some by identifiable individual painters, the rest (including several of highest artistic rank) of which we can only assert that they must have been painted by some of the artists of whom we know the names but not the works, or by artists of whom we do not know even the names. Mr. Hay’s picture is by an artist of the school and not by one of those whose names has yet been identified with any particular group of pictures. Internal evidence enables us to assign it to about the year 1480 or later, and to some painter of the Bruges school over which Memlinc’s influence was then dominant. The subject is not his- torical but purely devotional, this having been a domestic altar-piece for some private indi- vidual to kneel before when reading his Hours. Pictures of the scene at Calvary, intended to recreate historical facts, were common enough at that time, but this is not of that kind, it is merely a painted substitute for a sculptured Crucifix. The type of the Virgin recalls Memlinc, or even more strongly a nameless follower of Van der Weyden, who painted several small pictures now at Vienna and elsewhere. St.John resembles figures in Gerard 39i THE CRITICAL ESSAYS David’s pictures, or even some by Isenbrandt. The landscape background is of the Bruges type. Traditions entered very potently into such pictures as this. The artist felt no stimulus to attempt any novelty of treatment. Likely enough the person who ordered the picture of him bargained that it should resemble some known existing work, and he undoubtedly stipulated that it should be done well and in workmanlike fashion and that the quality should come up to some definite standard. The guild would see to it that the standard was attained and that the quality of the material employed was of recognized excellence. Work of this kind has the durable qualities alike in design and execution that the guild system existed to maintain. It was a system inimical to rapid development and to the free play of individualities, hence when that free play became essential to contemporary expression the system broke down. But so long as this kind of art was demanded by the people, the guild system was excellently adapted to bring it about. Mr. Hay’s picture, then, may be regarded as a far from important but yet a most characteristic example of guild-governed art. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHILD" G IAN BATTISTA SALVI, surnamed Sassoferrato, from the place of his birth, a delightful mountain region rich in streams and woods in the heart of the Marches, enjoys fame, but it is essentially a popular fame, and art criticism has so far neglected him that the nar- rative of his life and the study of his work have never been seriously undertaken. Yet he is far more celebrated than many artists with whom history has been busy for centuries, and when, in 1901, a painting of his was stolen from Santa Sabina upon the Aventine in Rome, the Roman press was much agitated over the matter, and the Roman people greatly re- joiced when the picture was recovered. The reason of it all lies, it seems to me, in the charming and spontaneously graceful character of Sassoferrato’s work. I could compare it to Italian music, which will, I believe, continue to delight the masses by its limpid tuneful- ness and melodic flow, in spite of the criticisms of the symphonists. Sassoferrato, living through nearly the whole of the seventeenth century (1605-1685) embodied in his work the most agreeable characteristics of the art of that century. He took a little from everyone, holding to pleasing elegance and physical beauty rather than search- ing after depth of feeling or strength of expression. Thus, historians of art make him out a follower or a student at home, in Rome and in Naples, of his own father Tarquino, of Raphael, Barroci, Albani, of Guido, Domenichino and even, 1 do not quite see why, of the sensational Neapolitans of his time. Certainly he copied from all, and his copies from the above-quoted masters and from Luini may be met with over half Europe, often passing as originals. Of his original compositions, the “Madonna between the Seraphim, bending over the sleeping Child ” is perhaps the best and surely the most appealing. It was among the most admired, witness the many replicas of it he painted and the many that were painted in his bottega. Among others, one is to be found in the Royal Gallery in Milan, one in the 392 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Corsini Gallery in Rome, another in the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa, another is owned by the Caremuli family in Milan, two are in the Wallace Museum in London, others in France, Ger- many, Russia, and now America has a very good one. Thus does Sassoferrato sing his typi- cal Italian melody in every country! Dr. Corrado Ricci Sassoferrato belongs to that wide group of gifted artists whose fame is almost forgotten. Modern taste has turned its interest to the art of an earlier period. Whether this, in prin- ciple, is right or wrong, need not be discussed here; but one may ask why, in a period embracing almost two centuries, there should not be found serious artistic qualities worthy of study and sympathy? A better fate, it would seem, was deserved by an artist of whom Jakob Burckhardt has written: ‘Not without cause does one feel himself again and again attracted by Sassoferrato, whose mild, beautiful, carefully painted pictures of the Virgin have, without an exception, the heart of a mother, wherefore one forgets the lack of higher life and pictorial sense.’ His pictures at one time were among the most popular of all, as is proved by the extraordinary number of replicas in existence. Especially the “Virgin in Prayer” and the “Virgin with the sleeping Child in her arms,” have been reproduced again and again. Of this second picture replicas are to be found in many galleries, in Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, Paris, Dresden and elsewhere. The picture in the Hay collection differs from others in some details. In all the pictures 1 could compare it with, the left foot of the Child is visible; in the Madrid picture, a reversed copy, both His feet are shown. Again, in a great number of the replicas the background is a plain neutral tone, but the ex- ample in the Louvre, like the Hay picture, shows clouds and the heads of two angels which however differ in some details, the one to the left being shown in strong profile. What seems unpleasing to us, in the work of Sassoferrato, is his coloring. His tonal scheme is pale and his colors dull, lacking brilliancy. But putting color aside and noting the sense of form and composition, one realizes that here is an artist who, in times of brutal naturalism and anarchy in artistic aims, tried to keep in his work something of the feeling for classical line and form of the great period that had passed. The large altar-piece of Santa Sabina at Rome, a purely classical composition, is still highly impressive, and the “Adora- tion of the Child” in the Naples Gallery, reminds one, and not in the sense of mere imita- tion, of the finer works of the sixteenth century. From the photograph I should judge Mr. Hay’s picture to be an original. Dr. Georg Gronau In the seventeenth century, Salvi shared with the Florentine Carlo Dolci the glory of being regarded as the best painter of Madonnas for chapels and oratories. Their reputation was maintained during the eighteenth century. It is only since the rehabilitation of those religious painters antedating the triumphant sixteenth century masters, and since the con- demnation ‘en bloc’ of the whole school of the Carracci and their followers by the Pre- Raphaelites and Realists, that these two lovable and pleasing artists have suffered the anathema both of more vigorous members of the craft and less indulgent amateurs. The spontaneous sympathy of unsophisticated visitors to the churches and museums of Italy, 393 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS has always protested against this ostracism, and still yields to these secondary but sincere and tender artists an homage whose persistence would be strange if their work did not really possess unquestionable merit. Why should we show more indifference to them than the enlightened amateurs of preceding centuries? Mariette, that connoisseur of unerring taste, exclaimed in his ‘Abecedario’: ‘By what fatality does this excellent painter remain ignored, none now speaking of him, or if they do, expressing themselves incorrectly? Doubtless he was not a painter of genius, since one sees only small pictures by him, and those almost always representing the Virgin with the infant Jesus; but they are all in extremely graceful positions, which, being painted with extreme care, are made to please, and for this reason are as much sought after as they are esteemed.’ Lanzi, some years later, compared him to his rival, Carlo Dolci: ‘Carlo Dolci is in the Florentine school what Sassoferrato is in the Roman. Both without being men of great originality have been much appreciated for their Madonnas and other pictures of small size which at this date have risen to a high figure through the demands of rich noblemen desirous of having in their chapels some images of rare workmanship, although these painters have different modes of expression.’ Indeed Carlo Dolci, naturalistic like his master, Matteo Roselli, is less preoccupied with beauty and grace in the types of women and children, and poetic harmony of color, than with the ex- pression of the faces, vigorous or sentimental, and the effect of relief obtained by an opposition of light and shade in the manner of the Bolognese and the realists. Thus, Sasso- ferrato, as Lanzi again observes, ‘is much superior in the beauty of his Madonnas, whose humility he is particularly happy in expressing. The simplicity of the dress and its arrange- ment corresponds to the character of the head, without any loss of dignity. His brushwork is full and broad; his chiaroscuro effects are good; his color while a little dry is agree- able. In general he loved to paint heads with the bust showing a little, a great num- ber of which can be seen in museums. His canvases rarely attain the dimensions of a life-size portrait. Of this size, or very nearly, was one of the Madonnas with the Holy Infant in Rome at the Casali Palace. Is this the delightful picture which now forms part of the Hay collection? According to tradition it came from the Casali Palace, not from the Corsini Palace as stated by Buchanan. The artist painted several replicas of this picture which passed as his masterpiece, and had many others painted in his bottega. But the ex- ample in the Hay collection possesses all the qualities of an original work, those qualities which the contemporaries of Sassoferrato admired; the charm of a delicate chiaroscuro, extreme care in the facture which is so delicate that one might think, says Lanzi, that it ‘was done by a breath,’ and especially the great tenderness of faces and attitudes, natural and full of refinement. This simple and charming theme of the infant Jesus sleeping in the Virgin’s arms, had often been treated by the sculptors and painters of Italy. Dating from the time of the fif- teenth century a hundred exquisite examples are to be found, all delightfully varied, just as such scenes of daily life between mother and child are varied. In his fine work on the Ma- donna, Adolfo Venturi reproduces a statue in the Louvre, by the unknown master of the Cappella Pellegrini, with the Child seated on the left knee of the Virgin, leaning His head 394 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS in a movement similar to that of Sassoferrato, and the Mother also bending down toward Him with an almost identical gesture of the hands. We need not suppose that the painter had a knowledge of the statue, or tried to imitate it, but it is clear that, living two centuries or more apart, both — the precursor, contemporary of Jacopo della Quercia, and the contem- porary of the facile decorators and academic eclectics — have looked at life with the same sin- cerity, and that both being simple and gentle artists, experienced the same sort of emotion which they expressed with equal fidelity. In the time of Sassoferrato there was some merit in departing from the trite formulas of current usage and in returning to nature to find therein fresh suggestion. We know that the painter, at first pupil of his father, Tarquino, in their little town, finished his studies in Naples and Rome. In Naples he seems to have studied under Domenichino, the most sincere among the Bolognese, and who sought to ex- press the gracious side of nature. In Rome, Sassoferrato endeavored, by the study of Guido Reni, Barocci and especially Raphael, to find the secret of a fresh, limpid execution suitable to express the charm of women and children. While he endeavored to see nature as they did, he was sufficiently individual to avoid copying them. The young woman with hair negligently bound, who tenderly embraces her slumbering child, is certainly not taken from any previous work; it is rather a living model transferred to canvas, a mother whom he has seen in his little world of humble artists and artisans, the bambino with round cheeks and plump limbs may be of the same race as the babies of Giovanni Bellini and of Raphael, but is not of the same family. The two cherubs, little heavenly brothers, are of the same sort. Sassoferrato had all the virtuosity needed to render such amiable and familiar senti- ments, such gracious and tender visions, and beside virtuosity, something still more valuable, a candor rare in his time. These are the qualities by which he sometimes ap- proaches the best quattrocentisti, and calls to mind the poetic and spontaneous work of the Renaissance. Georges Lafenestre “MADONNA IN ADORATION” I F one reflects upon the remarkable number of artists working in Florence during the sec- ond half of the fifteenth century; if one remembers how pupils congregated around the most celebrated of these, and how vast was the influence of the great painters upon the lesser and the least, it will seem natural that so frequently before a painting which does not conspicuously present the individual characteristics of a master well-known, but rather a blending of the tendencies of various masters, one should be in doubt as to the rightful ascription. We used to know only the famed painters, who are very few in proportion to those of whom little is known and to the entirely unknown or forgotten ones, and the ten- dency to ascribe to the head of the school and a well-known artist the works of unknown disciples was as natural as it was universal, and to it we owe a large number of ascriptions. Modern criticism, more thorough in its research, has reversed many erroneous judgments, or rather suppositions which were put forth in good faith by the critics and students of times still fairly recent. 395 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS These observations should be borne in mind with regard to the painting before us, the work, undoubtedly, of a Florentine painter of the latter half of the fifteenth century, in which the kinship with two masters, Fra Filippo and Botticelli, is plain. Fra Filippo, forerun- ner of Botticelli, delighted in the sweetest and most human of scenes, those between mother and child. No one before the noted Carmelite friar had so intimately felt and rendered the subject of the Virgin adoring the Babe born of her. His ideal treatment of it may be said to have established that subject as a beautiful Florentine tradition which was to be carried on in sculpture as well as in painting, till Andrea della Robbia uniting the two in his glazed terra- cottas made extraordinarily popular the motive of the Immaculate Woman worshipping her Divine Son lying among lilies and roses upon the grassy sward. In the painting by Fra Filippo, in the Gallerie Antica e Moderna of Florence, we find the Babe in the same attitude, but in Mr. Hay’s picture it is with a more wholly childish gesture that he is putting his hand to his mouth, while the act of apparently kicking out his little feet and lifting his left foot till it touches his mother’s vesture, is charmingly ob- served and rendered. Our Lady kneeling with clasped hands and bowing her head in adora- tion, presents in the line of her delicate and gentle face, the characteristics of a manner between that of Botticelli and that of Filippino. It partakes of the first in the arrangement of the hair, of the second in the long oval of the face and the structure of the extremities. But 1 do not believe that either of those masters can be responsible for the background, which is rather primitive in execution. [Repaints have unfortunately altered its character. Editor’s Note.] On the whole the painting preserves that gentle, ingenuous grace and sen- timent to be observed even in paintings of the period which are not the handiwork of these most celebrated Florentine artists, Fra Filippo and Botticelli. I. B. Supino Although I am not able to agree with either of the attributions which have usually been given to this picture, I am not surprised at their having been made. The face and feature of the Madonna, her attitude, and the draperies about her head, undoubtedly recall the work of Botticelli, even to the extent of bringing clearly before us the face of the “Madonna of the Magnificat” and the features of the “Madonna” of the Louvre. The curious, awkward fig- ure of the Child on the ground has certain also of Botticelli’s characteristics, although it is more closely allied to the work of Lippi, while the landscape is to a certain extent reminis- cent of the latter artist. To neither of them, however, do 1 think it belongs, as it has far closer connection with the work of another Florentine painter, Lorenzo di Credi. But the difficulty of an attribution lies in this, that certain parts of the Child, the draperies, and the distant hilly landscape are not, in so far as we can see, by the artist who painted this work, but by one who, in restoring the canvas has removed from it that quality of enamel- like perfection which as a rule characterizes every painting by Lorenzo di Credi and which we see here in other parts of the picture where the absolutely untouched work is marked by a wondrous finish; the wall behind the Madonna, for example, and the face of the recum- bent Child. On the whole, 1 am inclined to say that the picture is not the work of a pupil but an 396 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS actual painting by Lorenzo himself and that a great part of it is in its original condition. It is possible that underneath that part of it which is not the work of the Florentine master there may be his original brush-work shining in all its glorious enamel-like quality. The color has that brilliant quality which is his leading characteristic and it also has that deep resonant note distinctive of his work. The minutely detailed herbage, the carefully studied drapery, the landscape with its winding river, almost identical with a painting by this mas- ter in the National Gallery, are all eminently characteristic of the work of Lorenzo. The flower spangled ground, the exquisite border of the garment worn by the Madonna; the details of the trees in the distance and the perfect drawing of the Mother’s hands, all bespeak the pencil of Lorenzo himself and no other, but although the body of the Child is plump and over-modelled, as was his habit, there is a lack of that marvellous minuteness of finish and of those higher qualities of beauty which can, as a rule, be found in so satisfactory a combination in the work of the fellow-student of Leonardo da Vinci. The sculpturesque treatment of the Child, however, tells us that a pupil of Verrocchio must have been con- cerned in this picture, and no other but the name of his favorite pupil rises to one's memory in connection with it. Dr. George C. Williamson “CHRIST ON THE CROSS WITH MARY AND JOHN” H ERE is a specimen of impersonal art, satisfying to the taste of its period, and inter- esting, on that score, especially as an unaffected witness of the general predilections in the matter of religious imagery, of a certain region of the Netherlands. We could very nearly indicate the boundaries of that region, although this style of production was current at the time as far as the banks of the Rhine, neighboring Cologne and even Colmar. This picture came forth, without doubt, from one of the workshops patterned upon those which had at their head, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, such men as Robert Campin, Jacques Daret, Rogier de la Pasture and Colin de Coter— the schools of Tournai and Brus- sels, or those of Hainault and Southern Brabant. The arrangement of the figures, the type of the Christ especially, plainly show the preponderating influence of that master of pathetic and dramatic painting, Rogier de la Pasture, better known under his Flemish cognomen of Roger van der Weyden. The landscape in the background reminds us of the art of Bruges, in its group of edifices supposed to represent Jerusalem, as well as in the over-simple treat- ment of trees and shrubs, the execution of which seems to betray a professional miniaturist. The intention is as little complex as the workmanship is simple and void of subtlety. When such a subject, set forth by three personages only — Christ on the Cross, attended on either hand by the Virgin and Saint John— is treated by the great primitive masters. Van der Weyden (Escorial) or Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Louvre), it attains a very high pitch of human as well as of religious emotion. But the picture in the Flay collection is, none the less, a fine specimen of the art production of the time. It also is a by no means common ex- ample of a species of portable oratory, as it was without doubt the leaf of a diptych, whose counterpart most likely was a portrait of a personage at prayer. Camille Benoit 397 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Of the many painters active in the Dutch cities of the fifteenth century, the pictures of no more than ten are now associated with definite names. We hope that the men whose names we know may have been the principal masters and real factors in the art progress of their time, but we are not surprised when not only good paintings, but remarkable ones, suddenly appear which cannot be connected with the personality of any of the masters known to us, and which do not fit into any of the shelves we have labelled with their names. To these nameless paintings belongs the work in Mr. Hay’s collection. Concerning it we must be satisfied if we are able to determine as nearly as possible the time and place of its origin. The composition, which shows no strongly inventive power, is relief-like, simple and dignified; the tall figures, with their straight contour lines, having a statuesque effect. The types, though not very strongly marked, resemble somewhat those of Hans Memlinc, after whose conception the landscape also is fashioned, with its globular little trees, its gentle motive corresponding rather to an elegaic and ecclesiastic theme than to a dramatic one. The painting, judged by its style, originated toward the end of the fifteenth century, with one of the masters living in Bruges. The composition appears frequently in book pic- tures and wood-cuts, in the miniatures of missals, but comparatively seldom in altar pieces. Two other examples of the early Dutch school which have points in common with Mr. Hay’s picture are to be found, one at the Berlin Museum, suggesting Jan van Eyck’s style, and the other in the collection of M. Ad. Thiem, at San Remo, ascribed to Dietrich Bouts. From the same hand, evidently, as the painting in Mr. Hay’s collection, is a “Bewail- ing of Christ,” which in 1902 was sold at auction in Brussels under Memlinc’s name. In addition to its similarity of technique, its sacred figures are adorned with halos of the same shape as in Mr. Hay’s painting, which is significant, since halos are extremely rare in old Flemish art. Max Friedlander In conception as well as in style many works of the Flemish Primitives show an indis- putable similarity, and, generally speaking, it is no easy task to discover their respective authors. As yet the undertaking is comparatively a new thing. Overlooked, underrated even by some of the greatest lovers of art, the Flemish Primitives were thrown together in bulk, so to say, and their works classed under the names of two or three particularly noted masters. Van Eyck was a great favorite with picture collectors; later on, Roger van der Weyden and Hans Memlinc grew into fashion. In fact, it has been the work of some gen- erations to learn to discriminate between these early pictures. Of late, photography has played a remarkable part in the solution of this difficult problem and paved the way for dis- coveries of the greatest importance. A comparison of the faces and figures, which are so variously differentiated and bear to a greater degree the personal stamp of each individual artist, although certainly not alone sufficient, is of great help in determining the authorship of these early pictures; such comparisons photography alone permits and makes easy. Concerning this “Crucifixion” of the Hay collection, the only thing we may take for granted is, that, in origin, it belongs to the Flemish school; and, in date, to the second half of the fifteenth century. The principal value of the work is in the depth of its feeling. 398 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Looked upon from this point of view, the heads are really very fine. The Virgin’s subdued grief, the face of St.John the beloved disciple, as well as the Saviour’s agony, testify to the painter’s depth of emotion. The work is interesting. It is realistic in every sense, showing most careful study of nature and an advanced knowledge of the human form, influenced, it is true, by what may be called the ‘Gothic’ taste. But, beyond the conventionality in dis- tribution and attitude, it does not strike one as positively ‘Primitive.’ It bears an archaic stamp, precisely as do a number of others belonging to the same period. And the compo- sition is that used by many well-known painters, among whom may be named Roger van der Weyden in his examples at the Antwerp, Brussels and Madrid galleries, Memlinc at Buda-Pesth, Dirk Bouts in a painting belonging to M. Thiem at San Remo, and Martin Schongauer in several prints. The view of Jerusalem alone would almost be sufficient to determine the origin of the work. The towers, the gate of the town, scarcely differ from those found in most of the Netherlandish works of the time, in which the fact that Jerusalem is supposed to be de- picted did not prevent the painter from using the vegetation of his own country, as, most probably, he used the view of his own town. Van der Weyden’s influence, more than that of any other, is perceptible in this work. It is, therefore, of a somewhat later period than his time, and by some, as yet, unknown master. Henri Hymans This picture is very clearly the work of a follower of Hans Memlinc, as may be seen by comparing, for instance, the head of the Virgin with that in the “Presentation in the Temple,” the left panel of the Floreins triptych in St. John’s Hospital at Bruges. Com- parison should also be made of the figure of Christ with that in the “Crucifixion” of the great altar-piece at Ltibeck, although in Mr. Hay’s picture the face is slightly different and nearer in type to that in Mr. Richard von Kaufmann’s triptych at Berlin. The landscape background shows the same very close following of the master. It is evident that there is in this work a deliberate and almost complete suppression of the painter’s personality. Its author has aimed at following, as faithfully as was in his power, the very great master his model. It is difficult for me to determine the date of its execution. As far as I can judge, it looks as if it had been painted by a contemporary of the last years of the master, so that it may date from the end of the fifteenth century. A later sixteenth-century hand would probably have betrayed itself, even in a direct reproduction. There seems to have been at Bruges a whole group of artists who followed in the footsteps of Hans Memlinc, and we know those of their pictures that have come down to us by their imitation of and relation to the works of the master. The influence of Memlinc on the Bruges school predomi- nated until early in the sixteenth century, when it was eclipsed by that of Gerard David. The subject of Mr. Hay’s picture is a well-known traditional composition, which prob- ably was originally borrowed from the huge Crucifixion between the Virgin and St. John, which, in medieval churches, crowned the rood-screen separating the choir from the nave. It is the most condensed form known of a ‘Calvary.’ It was only afterward that St. Mary 399 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Magdalen kneeling at the foot of the Cross was added. Angels receiving in chalices the blood from the Saviour’s wounds was also a later addition. Georges Hulin de Loo ALESSANDRO FIL1PEP1 (called BOTTICELLD (?) “ MADONNA, CHILD, AND ST. JOHN” [This tondo, formerly in possession of Signor Nistri, at Prato, was purchased by Mr. Hay in Florence, in 1890, through Prof. Larkin G. Meade. After coming into Mr. Hay’s pos- session it was transferred on canvas. The Editors regret that being set into the woodwork of a mantel-piece, it was not possible to have it taken down to be photographed.] I N his “Life of Sandro Botticelli,” Vasari says: ‘in the various houses of the city he, with his own hand, painted tondi. ’ It seems likely that the old biographer confused the works of the master’s own hand and those in which his pupils collaborated, and some of which were entirely painted by them. These round paintings were much in demand, and Botti- celli, not being able personally to fill all the commissions entrusted to him, followed the cus- tom of the time in having them executed by his assistants. His share in these productions was always the composition and sometimes the drawing and finishing touches. Of his dis- ciples we only know, upon the statement of trustworthy documents, the names of Do- menico di Papi (Toschi), Giovanni di Benedetto Giansanini, Raffaello di Lorenzo di Frosino Tosi, Biagio di Antonio Zucci and Jacopo di Francesco di Domenico Filippi. No precise account of the work they, and other disciples unknown to us, have done, has been preserved, but there are in existence a series of paintings which, by their evident interpretation of the melancholy Botticellian poetry and of certain characteristic traits of the master, reveal the hands of men working under him, and through whom his vivid, delicate drawing and his subtle treatment of the draperies become perforce less graceful and more formal. These men in copying the compositions, the forms and types he created could be but echoes of his extraordinary poetic suggestion. To my judgment the characteristics of the work from Botticelli’s assistants mark the tondo belonging to Mr. Hay (from which the painting of the same subject in the Museum of Boston seems to have been derived). Cavalcaselle, who saw it while in the possession of Sig. Giuseppe Nistri, at Prato, noted the fact that the paint- ing, aside from a few retouches on the hands of St. John, was in a good state of preservation and he thought it a fine example of Botticelli. The composition is undoubtedly the master’s, but the scheme of coloring and the technique also are suggestive of his follower, Filippino Lippi. This tondo of Mr. Hay’s has singular points of resemblance to the “Madonna of the Roses,” discovered in 1900 and now in the Pitti; the profile of the Madonna, the fore- shortening of the face, the half-closed eye, the arrangement of the hair, the drawing of the broad-leaved flowers, are the same. Yet the picture does not seem to me to be the handi- work of Filippino. I should rather attribute it to an artist who knew him, but who derived directly from Botticelli his taste for decorative arrangement and treatment, his poetic senti- ment and seductive charm. I. B. Supino THE COLLECTION OF MR HERBERT L. TERRELL BY MR SAMUEL ISHAM a collection composed of work by men as dissimilar as Rem- brandt and Regnault, Monticelli and Lenbach, it might seem vain to seek for any guiding principle of selection by which the canvases were brought together, but when Mr. Terrell’s pictures are seen in place, the reasons for the choice of each particular one are clear and commend themselves at once as admirably sound. The pictures are hung, not in a gallery, but in the living rooms of a city house, and the problem was simply to get the best and most beautiful work available that would fit above a particular mantel piece or in a particular panel of wall. If there was a selective principle beyond that, it seems to have been the negative one of avoiding the illustrative, story-telling type of painting in favor of more purely artistic qualities, color, tone, beauty of surface. The canvases fuse with the tapestries, the bronzes, the porcelains, into a rich, har- monious unity, and while they dominate, both by their more articulate appeal and by their loftier inspiration, yet they admit the identity of certain underlying principles in all art whether labeled “Fine” or “Industrial” Art. This is in accord with the general broadening of taste in these latter years, which, though showing a tendency to run somewhat to luxury and splendor, is yet sound and a real advance in culture. The work of the figure and genre painters whose popularity culminated about a quarter of a century ago, has been found lack- 403 THE COLLECTION OF ing in durable quality in spite of their ingenuity and great technical skill. Interest in the cleverly arranged groups, and in the minutiae of the costumes, dies out in time, and, as mere decoration, they are apt to assert themselves unpleasantly on the walls of a room. This is to consider them rather unfairly from the standpoint of mere bric-a-brac, but it is a test to which great art does not fail to respond. Mr. Terrell’s pictures ornament his rooms no less than Venetian leather or Japanese lacquer would, which does not prevent their showing the highest qualities of inspiration and execution when considered by themselves. The artists represented form an interesting list; the three Englishmen were at least con- temporaries and acquainted with each other, the others are curiously dissimilar, and this not so much from their different environments as from their personalities. There is of course a difference of schools, but still more of men. Each in his own school stands out sharply from the artists working around him, with a special style developed by himself, fitted to express his own idiosyncrasies and never successfully copied by another, all which is equally true of Reynolds and Gainsborough in spite of certain superficial resemblances. At the head of these men stands Rembrandt, as he stands almost at the head of all painters, for the mirroring in art of his own character and his own feeling toward life, un- moved by external influences. Mr. Terrell’s example is a portrait of the artist taken in the prime of life, looking straight out at the spectator. The experts place the date between 1640 and 1645, that is to say, when the artist was somewhere from thirty-three to thirty- eight years old. It is hardly possible from the manner in which it is painted and the appar- ent age of the artist to limit more accurately the time at which it was done but there are sentimental reasons, not without practical weight, for considering that it was executed not later than 1642. That year marks the culmination of his prosperity. From that time his for- tunes declined. The manner in which he had executed his group of the “Night Watch,” (his most important work up to that time,) displeased his patrons, and his manner of receiv- ing their expostulations had offended them still more; his popularity was diminishing and his carelessness about money matters was laying the foundation for infinite future trouble. These were but vaguely gathering clouds, but there was one blow, personal and immediate. It was in June of that year that his wife, Saskia, died. All that we know about him tends to show how great was the shock. At her grave he might have cried with far better grace than the hero of the ‘Vie de Boh&me’ ‘C’est ma jeunesse qu’on enterrel’ He was never quite the same afterwards. The change can be seen in his painting, in his choice of subjects, and in the impalpable things that give the sentiment of a picture. It seems unlikely that he would have painted this portrait of himself in the first year or so after his loss, for it fairly exudes prosperity from every pore. Knowing the old age of neglect, unpopularity and financial trouble that came later it is pleasant to know that there was a time when Rem- brandt looked as he does here, plump and florid, bright-eyed and self-confident, arrayed in velvets and furs and with double gold chain around his neck. He often loaded himself with sumptuous adornments when he sat as his own model, but the jewels and feathers and rich costumes have usually an effect of fantasy, of accessories put on for pictorial effect rather than his customary wear. He could hardly have worn habitually a turban or a cap with 404 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL ostrich plumes but he might well have received his friends in the rich and simple costume of this picture and he wears it as if it were his natural garb at this culminating period of his life. How great a change the next few years effected can be seen in the well-known etching of “Rembrandt Sketching” which was done in 1648 and which shows him dressed with quaker-like plainness, wearing a broad brimmed felt hat, his moustache shaved off and his face round, serious and hopelessly middle-aged. There has been a change, and a change that is more than a difference in arrangement of costume and accessories; a change that we recognize as having taken place in the man himself, for, like the etching, Mr. Terrell’s paint- ing gives the impression of being a likeness. This is not true of many of the portraits that Rembrandt painted of himself. When the artist placed himself in front of the mirror there were often problems of brush work, of rendering textures, of composition, of lighting, which interested him more than giving his features with absolute accuracy. Even in this portrait, as in the others, there seems to be a certain reticence. He does not lay bare his own soul as he does that of some of his sitters, but he has tried for perfect drawing of his features undisturbed by any of the expressions which it sometimes amused him to study from his own face. Hardly any of the early heads of Rembrandt give a stronger conviction of being like him, and the extra firmness and care shows also in the workmanship. It is beautifully painted, the face in an impasto not heavy nor showing the brush work, but perfectly fused together into a smooth enamel-like surface. Dr. Bode in his notice complains of the condi- tion of the painting and that in spots the color shows a tendency to peel up from the panel, but the surface seems absolutely intact without retouch or over-cleaning, retaining abso- lutely that impalpable quality of freshness that is apt to vanish under the most careful attempt at restoration. All of the delicate finishing glazes seem undisturbed and render marvellously the luminosity of the flesh which has not yet lost the freshness of youth. It is an admirable example of Rembrandt’s technique at the time, without the freedom and the ruggedness of his later work, but with his earlier, smoother handling brought to its com- pletest development. It is impossible to express more in paint without a more varied sur- face. He had already made experiments in this direction, notably in the “Night Watch,” and it would seem as if he had taken the panel to test completely the capabilities of the old method before abandoning it definitely for a different handling and a less even texture. After saying that this picture is a first-class example of the great master, it is hardly necessary to add that no other picture in the collection quite comes up to it, either in in- spiration or execution, and yet the “Portrait of Lady Frances Finch” fairly equals it in interest. The eulogy of Rembrandt does not need to be made and Reynolds is not on the same plane, but Rembrandt was an indefatigable laborer and of the enormous mass of work left behind him it may almost be said that all is good, which is far from being the case with Reynolds. He also produced enormously but much of the work of a quality that did not show his best power and while many of his canvases have been brought to America it can be truthfully said that a really fine example is rarer here than a good Rembrandt. The por- trait of the Lady Frances is, however, beyond any doubt, a fine Reynolds. The extracts from the invaluable pages of Burke’s ‘Peerage’ give most of the essential biographical facts 405 REMBRANDT, HARMENSZ VAN RIJN 1606 (?)- 1669 “PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF” known as ‘REMBRANDT WITH SHORT HAIR IN A BROAD FLAT CAP” BUST portrait, life-size, full-face. The head vigorous, well poised, is strongly lighted from the left. The eyes look toward the spec- tator. Under the broad nose the upper lip is shaded, but hardly con- cealed, by the moustache which curls up slightly at the ends; under the lower lip is a sparse tuft. A flat cap of black velvet conceals the hair, save on each side above and behind the ears; its broad brim, framing the face, casts a marked shadow across the upper part of the forehead. The costume, except for a bit of white linen shirt gathered at the neck, consists of a black coat, whose sable trimming forms a low collar. Around the shoulders is thrown a double chain of yellow, topaz- like jewels, cut cabochon fashion and set in gold. The dark background is slightly relieved by the faint light, which, playing about the head, brings into relief the black mass of the cap. Collection first Due de Leuchtenberg, Munich. Collection Prince Leuchtenberg, St. Petersburg. Purchased from the Leuchtenberg family by Knoedler & Co. Purchased by Mr. Terrell from Knoedler & Co. Exhibition Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 1900. Etched in outline by J. N. Muxel, in the ‘Leuchtenberg Gallery.’ Panel, height 27 & inches, width 21^ inches. Painted circa 1645. 406 - BY MR SAMUEL ISHAM about the lady. The daughter of a noble earl, when the picture was finished in March in 1 782 she was a few weeks past her twenty-first birthday, and in September of the same year she was married to a gentleman, who on his father’s death became also an earl and equally noble. His father, by the way, the second Earl of Dartmouth, as a statesman was much in- volved in the outbreak and maintenance of the Revolutionary War. He was Lord Privy Seal during the contest, which happens to be precisely the time when the picture was painted, and though he at first approved moderation and concession yet the unreasonable- ness of the colonists and their inability to see things as he did, led him finally to recom- mend the sternest measures and the most effective waging of the war until the fall of Lord North’s administration in 1782 put him out of power. It would have much surprised the fine old Tory nobleman to have been told that his daughter-in-law’s portrait was eventually to adorn a drawing room in one of the ‘ rebel ’ cities. This wealth of noble connection was not a thing to leave the rather worldly-minded Reynolds unmoved, and probably united with the beauty of the lady in inciting him to do his best. The sittings were in October of 1781, and in March of 1782, which shows a method of procedure common with Sir Joshua and which he had derived from his study of the Vene- tians, more especially Titian. He painted in his figure solidly and complete in drawing but with little color, sometimes using only black and white, then when this foundation was per- fectly dry and hard he finished by elaborate glazing and retouching. This way of painting demands a certain amount of time and it may be to the long gap of five months between the sittings, that the perfect condition of the canvas, quite exceptional among Reynolds’s works, is due. Something too must be credited to the extra care displayed. The head is naturally more thoroughly done than the rest, but no part is slighted and there is no trace in the hands, the background or the costume of that haste and carelessness too common with the artist. The costume is particularly interesting and may have been imposed on him by the lady herself, for it is most becoming, evidently in the height of the fashion of the day and not in accord with Sir Joshua’s own theories on the matter. He certainly painted many ladies in their customary dress but it was not what he preferred. From the tradition of Sir Peter Lely and the practice of certain of the Continental painters of his day, combined with the general custom of bringing classical antiquity in as a standard for all matters of taste, he had gained the idea that minute contemporaneous details, fashions that a year or two might change, were incompatible with the dignity of an art that sought to be permanent. He begged West to put the soldiers and Indians of his “Death of Wolfe” in togas and armor (that a historic scene might not fail of proper epic tone), and for his own portraits of women he devised a very simple and beautiful type of dress, half-classical, half-modern but stripped of the too insistent temporary fancies of the mantua-makers. He succeeded in reconciling with it, heads crowned with wonderfully built up structures of powdered hair, and bare feet in blue-ribboned sandals, but either he or the Lady Frances had sense enough to see she was better to look upon in her own proper person than as any “Vestal” or ‘ ‘ Nymph ” offering flowers on the Altar of Hymen. The powdered hair, the nodding ostrich tips, the yellow-ribboned dress and black silk cape were just what was needed to frame in 409 THE COLLECTION OF a face whose charm consists in not being in the least classical; a delightful face, not too regular, with something quaint and mutine in the expression. Since the artist could not bend the lady to his taste, he was forced to accommodate himself to hers and he has fitted her into a background which unites with her costume in a very original and lovely harmony of color. The canvas glows like a bit of old mottled tortoise-shell. The warm brown of the background and the black of the cape (which does not show black but a dark gray with violet tones) throws in relief the face and the whites and grays of the hair and dress, while the bow of yellow gives a culminating touch of pure color. The whole is combined into a perfect harmony without a jarring note, and forms a picture which after answering every exigency of criticism has, beyond its technical excellence, so delightful and appealing a charm that one leaves it with regret. The Gainsborough “Portrait of Miss Isabel Howland” has not the same importance. It is a much smaller canvas, only a head, but in quality it is not inferior to the Reynolds. In fact there are some who would prefer the prim old gentlewoman, well advanced in years, to the charming countess with all her youth and beauty. Miss Howland has the air of being good company, of being a person not only discreet and sensible but kindly and with a de- corous wit. She was not of the high nobility, but she came of a good county family and represented what was best in the best class in the England of her day, the intelligent county gentry. Her sister married Sir George Beaumont and as the aunt of Sir George Howland Beaumont she was brought into touch with art and artists, for her nephew was one of the first of well born, well-to-do Englishmen to dabble in paint as an amateur and he sought the society of artists and men of letters. He entertained them both in London and at his country place, and was quick to detect talent and generous in his encouragements. He was a ‘patron,’ but of a different type from the Olympian personages of an earlier day who re- ceived dedications and homage with an infinite condescension. He had a real love for lit- erature and the arts and treated their practitioners as his friends. Gainsborough was a frequent guest at his house, which speaks much for the baronet’s tact and discretion, for the painter was an impulsive man who mingled but little in the higher society, finding its restraints irksome. He apparently never painted Sir George though Reynolds made several portraits of him, one of which with its companion head of “Lady Beaumont,” is now in Mr. Frick’s collection in New York. It shows him a much less intellectual looking person than his aunt, well bred but also well fed, with indications on his rosy face of that tendency to plumpness whose attacks on the symmetry of his figure were the baronet’s chief trouble in life, and which, having heard that swimming was a remedy, he combated by remaining in the water so constantly that his friends declared he had become an amphibious animal. There is no trace of such materialism in the portrait of Miss Howland, who shows almost etherial by contrast. It is the very apotheosis of refined old-maidenhood, prim and slim with a peculiar blossom-like delicacy in the face. This is the painter’s insight, his point of view which runs through all his portraits, so that though they manifestly give the sitters’ character yet they no less give his own. There is in this an apparent paradox, for while no other man ever rendered the charm of purity which shows in the faces of good women with 410 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL so personal an appeal as Gainsborough, yet his own language was apt to be of the loosest sort, freely sprinkled with oaths, and his letters are for the most part unprintable. It is fair to argue that he expressed himself more truthfully in painting than in words, for he seems to have been a warm-hearted man whose impulses were generous and noble. His reckless- ness of speech must have come largely from his impatience of restraint in anything. His freedom from the bonds of convention shows itself clearly in his methods of painting. What- ever Reynolds may be in some of his other work no one would call the portrait of “Lady Frances Finch” academic, and yet it is infinitely more academic than the “Miss Howland.” The approved practices and maxims of the great masters are there, adapted, assimilated, but showing clearly their origin. Gainsborough painted as no one else ever painted before or since, devoid of school-training, fumbling his way to the effect that satisfied him without regard to other standards than his own. The modelling has a looseness, an apparent lack of firm drawing which nevertheless gives the form perfectly and in addition a nobility of feature, a softness of flesh that seems like life itself. The color also has a delicacy of its own with pearly gray tints, defining the modelling about the eyes and the sensitive mouth with a refinement which none of his English contemporaries equalled, though there is a good deal of it in Gilbert Stuart when he is at his best. With this delicacy there is also a courage in the use of strong crude color when it pleases him. The pattern on the sacque with its vermilions and apple-greens is given with its brightness unmitigated and unmodified. Rey- nolds’s taste, formed in the mellowed tones of old masterpieces, would have instinctively avoided it. It was contrary to his models and there is probably not to be found in all his works such a bit of sharp, almost acid, color. But Gainsborough’s feeling was a guide for what was beautiful no less sure than the learning of the President of the Royal Academy, and the brilliant spot gives vivacity and that touch of originality which is characteristic of Gainsborough. These canvases, where the two masters of the British school show themselves at their best, are trying neighbors for the Hoppner and make it appear by comparison somewhat prosaic. Certainly “Miss Pollock” was a fine girl, with rosy cheeks and clustering curls and liquid eyes and red lips and all the other accessories of fine girls. She sits on the grassy bank in the sunlit landscape, young and healthy and good to look at, but she had not the distinction of Reynolds’s young countess, still less the refined charm of Gainsborough’s old maiden lady. John Hoppner was an excellent painter with much of Reynolds and some- thing of Lawrence, as in the present example. He was a sound draughtsman, a good colorist, industrious and intelligent; he painted excellent pictures, some of which have sold for very high prices in recent years, but he seems never to attain to style except as an echo of the greater men around him. A picture like the “Miss Pollock ” testifies to the uplifting inspira- tion of the school founded by Reynolds, in its great decorative quality, and its grace and freshness, and as yet there are few traces of the decadence that was to follow. It is per- ceptible, of course, for Hoppner was of the generation succeeding Reynolds when super- ficial glitter was beginning to be sought at the expense of solider qualities, but the “Miss Pollock ” is serious and thorough. If it seems to lack the lyric note that so nice a girl in the 411 REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA 1 723-1 792 “LADY FRANCES FINCH” Canvas, height 57 inches, width 45 inches. (On the back is the inscription, evidently added after her marriage, * ‘ Frances, Countess of Dartmouth, sister of the fourth Earl of Aylesford. ”) T HE young woman is represented at three-quarter length, in almost full view, her head, turned very slightly to the right, looking toward the spectator. She is sitting in the crotch of a large tree-trunk, in a park-like landscape, her hands with fingers interlaced being clasped in front of her. Her costume is the fashionable morning dress of the period. The powdered hair, dressed high and with short side-ringlets hanging down, is surmounted by a plume of ostrich tips. Thrown across the shoulders is a mantilla of black silk, brought together in front so as to hide the greater part of the bodice, but allowing the white muslin neckerchief, crossing the bosom and leaving the neck bare, to be seen. Below the lace border of the mantilla, the frilled cuffs of the grayish- white dress are visible. The black of the cape is relieved by the knot of yellow at the breast. The warm browns of the background complete a low-toned, warm and delicate color harmony. The light falls from the right. Painted in 1781-2. Collection third Earl of Aylesford, her father. Collection Earls of Aylesford. Purchased by Agnew & Sons, from the eighth, the present, Earl of Aylesford. Purchased by Mr. Terrell, 1901, from Cottier &Co. Exhibition Grosvenor Gallery, 1889. 412 BY MR SAMUEL ISHAM flower of her youth has a right to expect, and to insist too much on the material charms and too little on the spirit within, the fault may, with justice, be laid somewhat to the artist but more to the too exalted standard of criticism forced upon us. In a collection of recent portraits the picture would seem a paragon of refinement. The three remaining pictures in Mr. Terrell’s collection are the works of modern men, men who may fairly be called contemporaries, for though Regnault died thirty-five years ago he was the youngest of the three. Monticelli, the eldest, and Lenbach, who to the end continued to paint with undiminished vigor, have also passed over to the majority. They all represent very modern, though very different tendencies in art, and discussion of their work, which is still a part of the changing life around us, is far less easy and definitive than criticism of productions that are withdrawn a century or more in time. Not that the status of the old men has become immovably fixed; even for the greatest there is an ebb or flow of critical appreciation, and Raphael himself, to take a shining example, is admired for other qualities and with a different enthusiasm to-day than fifty years ago; but in such cases the fluctuation is due to the slow change in the intellectual and esthetic standards of the age, sated with the old emotions and moving us to new ones. The qualities of the painter which formerly gave pleasure remain the same, they have simply ceased to move the newer genera- tion in the same way. Yet men whose works have been admired for many years must have in them some vital principle beyond the mere fluctuations of fashion to have made for so long a successful appeal to different generations. With contemporaries sterling qualities are less assured. The highest honor, the loudest praise may be given from admiration for super- ficial qualities which correspond to the taste of the hour, from astonishment at novelty or technical cleverness, from liking for the personal character of the artist or even from the baser reasons of personal interest and intrigue. These obscuring influences usually disap- pear in about a generation and Regnault has been dead just a generation. When he fell, shot in almost the last ‘sortie’ from Paris in 1871, all France, struggling in the agony of Tannee terrible,’ could yet feel one more pang for the brilliant genius struck down in the flower of his youth just as success, honor and love seemed within his grasp. No eulogy was too great for him, his funeral was a public function and his monument stands in the court of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts a shrine for pilgrimage. His name is still honored for all that it represented of character and patriotism, but very naturally his work does not occupy the very large place in the public’s mind that it did. Even before his death there were not lack- ing critics to declare their disappointment at the failure of his later works to fulfil his early promise. Afterwards there was no attack on his memory but there was less discussion of his works, and when they came up for criticism it was generally recognized that they had been over-estimated and there was even a tendency to treat them as of not much impor- tance. Latterly there has been a reaction which while it does not put Regnault back in his old place as a prodigy yet recognizes the genuineness of his inspiration. The “Execution without Trial ” was felt to be outclassed in the Louvre and has been removed, but the “ Por- trait of General Prim ” still remains and affirms its right to be in the great gallery devoted to nineteenth century French art. The Prim is undoubtedly his crowning achievement. The 415 THE COLLECTION OF works of the next year, preceding his death, showed that he had been temporarily directed into questionable paths. Regnault was a Parisian, of a family of means, with many connections in the artistic and intellectual world. His father, a chemist of reputation, was director of the Sevres por- celain manufactory, and he made his son receive a liberal education before permitting him to take up the study of art. Such surroundings, such a training, leave an indelible impression on the taste. The boy was precocious and wonderfully gifted — his early drawings are amazing; he made the most rapid progress, but after all what he tried to do was largely what every other young art student in Paris was trying to do, only he absorbed the school training more readily and more rapidly than they. When, after gaining the Prix de Rome, he reached Italy and was ambitious to display the skill that he knew he possessed, it was to the old academic ideals that he turned only vivified by his ardent temperament and youth. Even David himself might have pardoned the turmoil and lack of classic repose of the “Au- tomedon ” out of consideration for the painter’s youth, his Homeric inspiration and his fine rhetorical desire to show ‘what is most terrible in a horse, to give to the coursers something of the wildness and ferocity of their master.’ The whole thing is a piece of youthful exuber- ance as the facts in regard to its creation show. Each student at the Villa Medici has a cer- tain obligatory task for each year of his stay, a sort of demonstration that he is employing his privileges in a satisfactory manner. In his first year a painter must execute a full-sized figure from the nude and it was to fulfil this obligation that the “Automedon” was painted. All that is required is a conscientious life study and if this shows hard work and a proper advance in technical skill the authorities are fully satisfied. Probably there was never such another canvas as Regnault’s sent on to Paris among the * envois de Rome, ’ both as to its dimensions and as to its generous superfluity above the academic requirements. This orig- inal is now in the Boston Museum and suffers a little from the circumstances under which it was created. The figure of Automedon is too good as a school study to fit perfectly into an imaginative and romantic composition, there is in it too much literalness, too much of the vulgarity of the posing model. Mr. Terrell’s picture escapes somewhat from this re- proach, the figure being more freely executed, with brushwork more in unity with the rest of the picture. Whether this was the original study for the ‘envoi’ or whether it was painted later from it is not clear. The groups are absolutely alike in the two, there are tri- fling differences in the positions of the horses’ feet, etc., which show that in any case the artist worked with a certain freedom. The composition of the smaller canvas is certainly the better. The figures instead of being cramped closely within the frame have space about them to expand in; they go well within the oval form, and the sky heightens the general effect. It is a remarkable achievement for a beginner of twenty-four but for that matter, it would be still more remarkable at any other age. It is distinctly a young man’s picture and has in it the inspiration and enthusiasm of youth. The lover of the horse, of tumult, of struggle, is all there. There is a real emotional thrill in the picture, but the painting in its strong, bold, brush work and heavy impasto agrees rather with the aspirations than the achievements of the average young man. In the horses there is a decided resemblance to 416 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL the handling of Courbet, then in the height of his fame, which was calculated to shock the professors of the institute; and we know that the picture was received by them with many criticisms and objections not entirely silenced by the ‘argumentum ad hominem’ thrown at them by one of their colleagues: 'Which of you gentlemen could do as much?' The painting fairly reflects Regnault as he was at the time, ardent, ambitious, full of life, delighting in sport and exercise and particularly in horsemanship. His love of riding and his recklessness had serious results, of which the “ Automedon ” is, in a way, the record. The big dark bay rearing against the sky was studied from a horse in Rome, said to have been an Arab but more probably a barb from Algeria or Tunis, and certainly in either case a much smaller beast than the epic animal struggling against the groom. Beside painting, Regnault insisted on mounting him, though he had a bad reputation and had brought a number of riders to grief. All went well the first few times but finally the artist was thrown on his head outside the Porta del Popolo and sustained injuries that became complicated with fever and required a long convalescence. During this time he left Rome, and the “Automedon" was his last painting executed before his trip to Spain. While he was at work on it he had met Fortuny and been carried away with enthusiasm and admiration. On his arrival in Italy he had praised the old masters in his letters, which were many and eloquent. He had been 'crushed, ground to earth,' by the majesty of the Sistine Chapel and had felt the power of the other great men down even to Pietro da Cortona, but in Fortuny he found an art that was new, alive, and that had for him the fascination that it had at the time for thousands of other young artists. The things that they were struggling with and found desperately stupid— drawing, life studies, still life, the prose of art in short — were suddenly displayed as sparkling with epigram most amusing and amazing. This glorification of clever handling and brilliant detail had an unfortunate effect on Regnault. His great portrait of “General Prim” shows little of it but something of the immediate influence of Velasquez at Madrid, where it was painted, and much of the knowledge of horses gained from his studies for the “Automedon.” Most of all, however, it shows the enthusiasm of a young man over a revolution which he believed was to right wrongs and bring happiness to a nation. As with the “Automedon,” it is this blast of real emotion which gives the picture its vitality. In his later works it is lacking and replaced by an imitation of Fortuny's brilliancy and studio orientalism. In the 'envoi' of his second year, a composition of “Judith and Holophernes," there is an attempt to combine them with the academic teachings, and the result is lamentable, showing that it was done with- out pleasure, as a piece of taskwork. His two successes in the style, the “Execution without Trial” and the ‘ ‘ Salome, ” in spite of their temporary vogue are not much better in con- ception. The first is theatrical and the second is but a model decked out in odds and ends of studio bric-a-brac, admirably painted, it is true, but meaningless except as a bit of bril- liant color to arrest a crowd of spectators at the Salon. Then came death, suddenly, unex- pectedly, and, the cynics say, fortunately for the reputation of the painter, whom they considered as entered upon the downward path. They are probably unjust. Regnault was too talented, too intelligent and too ambitious to persist long on a false road. He had 4>7 GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS 1727-1788 “PORTRAIT OF MISS ISABEL HOWLAND” Canvas, height 30 inches, width 25^ inches. A GAINST a plain background the subject, whose face is turned almost full toward the spectator, is seen in a painted oval which conceals the figure below the waist; the body is turned, showing the left arm, the right being concealed. Though no longer young, the lady still retains smooth cheeks and a delicate complexion free from wrinkles; her face has an amiable expression, the dark eyes almost twinkle while a twist of the mouth imparts an air of piquancy to the plain features. She wears a high-waisted Watteau gown of figured silk embroidered with roses and ornamented with large bows at the elbows and on the corsage into which are tucked sprays of leaves and flowers. The square cut in the corsage is filled in with lace which leaves a V-shaped opening showing a little of the neck. A velvet band set with clusters of pearls encircles the lady’s throat and large clusters of pearls hang from her ears. The gray powdered hair is rolled high over a cushion and on top of it is perched a little hat of straw and light satin ribbon. Part of a bow shows at the back of the neck. The light falls from the left. Collection of the Beaumont family. Purchased by Knoedler & Co. Purchased by Mr. Terrell, 1903, from Knoedler & Co. Exhibited Royal Academy, winter, 1877. Exhibition Gainsborough’s works, Grosvenor Gallery, 1885. 418 BY MR SAMUEL ISHAM qualities that might have made him a decorator equal to Baudry, or a portrait painter such as France has not had in the past thirty years. Whatever might have been, the fact remains that of his actual works it is the “Prim” and the “Automedon” which show the most originality and seem likeliest to endure. In spite of himself Regnault is a product of the Academic traditions in France, and of the school training. All his desire to innovate, to be original, was forced to take the lines marked out by Ingres and the Institute. The death of Franz von Lenbach occurred but yesterday. He was sixty-seven, but with his stalwart frame and strong constitution he was still in full vigor and, producing with his customary copiousness, he showed small outward sign of the disease that his friends knew was undermining his health. In him, Germany loses one of the few artists of personal and original talent who were accepted abroad at something like the same valuation as at home, for originality in the higher ranks of painters is rare in Germany. There is a thorough train- ing that shuts out glaring incompetence, the standard of admission to the annual exhibi- tions is high, the artists must know their trade as workmen, but the mass of capable, merchantable, uninspired work only throws into relief the utter lack of delicacy of feeling or personal inspiration. Whether it be genre or landscape or the grand style, what fetters them all is that same commonplaceness lamented by Goethe. Even the rebels, the seceders from the official standards, rush by the force of their revolt and the lack of real inspiration into excesses and absurdities that are temporarily interesting but which soon weary. The living art sentiment of the nation seems to avoid the higher forms of painting and to de- velop most freely in illustration and amusing but unpretentious decorative work. Of the three or four men who stand out from this mass of mediocrity, Lenbach was one. His position was firmly established. He had everything that the world official, and unofficial, could give; strings of medals and orders, ample wealth, a house that was one of the show places of Munich, filled with all the spoils of the past such as artists covet. In the exhibi- tions a room was set apart for his work alone, which was displayed in spacious isolation with all the aid of careful lighting and draped hangings. And this distinction was merited. His artistic life was long and honorable, filled with untiring labor. He had begun by study- ing thoroughly the Old Masters, and the series of the copies that he made in his youth fill the rooms of the Schack Gallery at Munich, copies admirable in their truth and versatility and lacking, like copies generally, only that vitalizing spark that makes the original live. He tried also, with success, most of the branches of figure painting, but at the end of his life he confined himself almost entirely to portraits and it is as a portrait painter that he will survive. He holds in Germany a place like that of Watts in England. In each nation, posterity will form its conception of how the great men who shaped the intellectual and political life of the last half of the nineteenth century looked, from the rendering of their features by these artists who were their contemporaries and friends. Both were far from impeccable craftsmen and were capable in different ways of some lamentable things. Lenbach, for in- stance, had a weakness for ideal female heads where feminine fascination is insisted upon to the destruction of all truth of line and form, and the vulgarization of the sought-for 421 THE COLLECTION OF charm. Even his portraits of women are apt to be unsatisfactory. Like his English colleague he was a painter of men and like him he put a large infusion of his own personality into the heads of his sitters. It is no literal and colorless rendering. The lines that express character are exaggerated almost to caricature. But Lenbach achieved character, and if he also ex- aggerated it, posterity will prefer, beyond the literal facts, a touch of that emotion with which the great men inspired those who saw them face to face. They are now almost all gone, the generation that Lenbach painted, and it is said that he found himself a little lonely toward the end and looked forward not unwillingly to following them. He had known intimately the very greatest and especially the mighty trio who created modern Germany, the old Emperor, Moltke (to whom his wife was related) and the greatest of them all, Bis- marck. To this last, in spite of being a Bavarian and naturally averse to the Prussian hegem- ony, he gave his firmest allegiance and admiration, and the uprightness of his character gained him the friendship and the confidence of the grim Chancellor. To him he was al- ways accessible and secret affairs of state were discussed before him while he painted, with a confidence in his discretion that was never misplaced. The artist knew by heart the fea- tures of the man ‘of blood and iron,’ he had watched him in public and in private, he was familiar with all his varying moods and he painted him again and again, no picture a replica of a preceding one but each showing a different view of a complex character. There are dozens of these portraits. Mr. Terrell’s is more than usually interesting as showing the man with no insignia of his rank and no official expression in his face. The whole interest is thrown on the head, a head of a mighty fighter but beginning to show traces of age and weariness. It was painted in 1889 during the disputes and disagreements with the young Emperor, impatient to escape from his tutelage, and it needs no great imagination to see in it a premonition of the fall and dismissal from office of the following year. The features are given without any of this forcing of the character common in the portraits of sitters with whom he was less familiar. In those heads he seems to have felt that he would lose the personality unless he insisted on the individual traits, but Bismarck was to him as no other man, he knew every detail of the big, heavy-jawed head, and each was equally characteristic. The execution of the portrait has not the same interest as the subject but it is, for Len- bach, more than usually satisfactory. His workmanship is extremely variable. His early years spent in Italy making copies for the Graf von Schack gave him an intimate knowledge of the methods of many different masters and his desire to escape from monotony, to add a fresh interest to his work, led him to employ them all in turn. He painted Van Dycks and he painted Titians and had a special fondness for something like the later manner of Rem- brandt, with dark glazed backgrounds and the faces worked up in a thick impasto. Through all run his own personal mannerisms, which, from the standpoint of pure painting, are not particularly attractive. The surface of the paint is seldom beautiful, there is a redundancy of brown in shadows and half-tints alike, and disquieting light patches forced up beyond their true value for effect. There seems often to be an attempt to produce the effect of an Old Master without either the knowledge or the labor. There is nothing of this in Mr. Ter- rell’s “Bismarck,” though the influence of the Old Masters is still sufficiently apparent. The 422 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL way in which the head is put on the canvas and the suppression of all detail in the dress is exactly in the manner of some of Rembrandt’s latest portraits, but the painting itself adopts the methods of Rubens. The background, shadows and features, all in different shades of a transparent brown, are swept with a brush filled with thin, freely flowing vehicle almost as a water color might be done, a few equally thin washes of opaque flesh tint, and then the high lights are put in with solid touches of almost pure white. The drawing has not the fine, fluent, rhetorical curves of Rubens, but rather cutting incisive strokes which show a tendency to spring back to a straight line, which are surely placed and render the whole modelling of the face with an economy of actual work and an intensity of perception of essentials that is masterly. It is, above all, noble in the spirit that animates it — a portrait not for a day but for centuries. Romanticism is represented by Monticelli. Born in Marseilles he was of that ‘Midi’ where the blood is supposed to flow more warmly and the feelings to express themselves more exuberantly than in the North, and moreover he was of an earlier generation. He was the younger contemporary of the real Romantic school, the school of Delacroix and of Victor Hugo, of which the great French landscapists were a branch. When the Revolution of 1848 came he was twenty-four years old, and that revolt of all that remained of the vague aspi- rations and passions of the Revolution against the smug, prosaic respectability of Louis Philippe, was exactly calculated to stir up his deepest sympathies. It was, in fact, an artists’ revolt, and if Regnault had been more than five years old at the time, he would undoubt- edly have been struggling against the parental authority, and aspiring to take part in it. But even if he had been a man at the time, and even if he had come to Paris from a distant province, living from hand to mouth in a strange city, without position or friends, he would yet have been a very different man from Monticelli. He was, after all, a man of the North, moved by his mind rather than his senses, and his enthusiasms, his plans, his ambitions, came through the intellect. He could never have delivered himself over utterly to his pas- sions like Monticelli, and as he was strictly brought up, well educated, with his degree of ‘bachelier-6s-lettres,’ elegant, cultured, ambitious, and received in the best society with the regard due to genius, he forms the greatest possible contrast to the Bohemian artist, living entirely by his emotions, careless of the future, a slave to his senses, without morals and without shame. This is truest of Monticelli at the end of his life when dissipation had pro- duced its effect, but from the very first the temperament was there. He represents, carried out to its logical result, the contempt of the bourgeois principles and traditional rules which was a watchword of the Romantic school. The older men expressed it oftener and more forcibly than he, and wrote and argued about it, but the mere fact of writing and arguing showed an intellectual and restraining side. Monticelli was all feeling, impatience of re- straints and thirst for pleasures. Artistically he was influenced mainly by the landscapists, the so-called men of the thirties. He even worked some with Ziem, but Diaz furnished the most direct and formative influence. There was much that was akin in their natures, the same joy in life as a pageant, the same delight in beauty, in color, in textures, but Diaz had fervently admired Rousseau and had formed himself on that austere model so that some- 423 HOPPNER, JOHN 1758-1810 “MISS POLLOCK” Canvas, height 30 inches, width 40 inches. T HE young woman, seen at three-quarter length is sitting upon a grassy bank. Her animated, rosy face framed in dark hair cluster- ing in curls, presents a three-quarter view, the eyes looking to the right. In an easy attitude, the figure, bending slightly forward, inclines a little toward the left. The plain, high-waisted gown of white muslin, is crossed over the bosom and relieved by a ribbon serving as a waist- band; three strings of small beads are worn as a necklace. The short sleeves, ending in bands well above the elbow, leave the arms bare but for a narrow bracelet on the left wrist. The left hand rests care- lessly on a large sketchbook opened in her lap, on one of whose leaves, which the young woman is turning with her right hand, is the sketch of a landscape. The background shows a sunlit open glade, sloping gently to the left, and a hill in the distance. The foliage of trees rising from the bank fills the whole upper part of the picture. In the left corner of the foreground is a cluster of wildflowers. (Miss Pollock afterwards became Mrs. Skottowe of Amersham, Buck- inghamshire.) Purchased from the family by Thomas Agnew & Sons. Purchased from Agnew & Sons, 1902, by Cottier & Co. Purchased by Mr. Terrell, 1902, from Cottier & Co. Exhibiton Agnew's Eighth Annual Collection, 1902. Engraved in mezzotint by Joseph B. Pratt, 1903. 424 BY MR SAMUEL ISHAM thing of the firm constructive quality of his master shows itself even in his slighter sketches and keeps them coherent. He had, however, too little of this logical quality in his nature to exercise a similar influence on his own admirer. He could show him an effective technique of wonderful richness and variety of surface, and could develop and strengthen in him the native feeling for color, as Ziem may also have done, but he could not drive into him the feeling for the structural framework of a picture and it is doubtful if Monticelli was capable of receiving it from any one. He represents to an extent hardly equalled elsewhere in paint- ing, pure feeling expressed through color, through massing of light and shade, through beauty of pigment and varnish, but there is hardly more reproduction of actual fact in his paintings than in music, and emotions which they produce are largely the emotions of music or poetry. The interchange of the terminology of the different arts, which has been pushed to such an extravagant excess, is justified in his works. They are harmonies, or songs, or symphonies, or are so when the artist is at his best. There are passages like bits of brilliant instrumentation, and refinements of tone and melody. This purely emotional quality with its lack of clearly defined ideas, forces the artist into the extremest development of the beauty of his material. In that he vies with the finest achievements of the industrial arts, the glazes of old porcelain, the patina of bronze or more closely yet with the richness of old lacquer; there are passages of thick impasto melting into transparent varnish, bits of brilliant color glowing against warm brown depths, vague forms and mys- terious shapes and then a detail done with the sharpest, finest touch. In these things Mon- ticelli is wonderful when he is at his best, but unfortunately his best is rare. Work which is not based on technical training nor on long habit, but must be wrought out by constant appeals to the feelings, is exhausting to the artist, and Monticelli had not the ambition nor the physical energy to respond to such a strain. His unregulated life destroyed his health as well as his character; only the immediate necessity of procuring food and drink forced him to work, and in Paris before the war and later in Marseilles after his return there, he used to hang about the cafes trying to dispose of sketches for a twenty-franc piece or so, in order to get what money he needed. These sketches, with the paint daubed on, or squeezed on directly from the tubes, are occasionally beautiful as bits of color but as fre- quently crude and worthless. He had admirers who knew the merit of his work, and the dealers also kept in touch with him but he would rarely apply himself seriously for them. His steadiest patron and truest friend was Mr. D. Cottier and it is probably to his influence that we owe the completeness of the “Don Quixote.” I do not know another of his can- vases of like dimensions that approaches it in quality, so coherent, so admirably composed as a whole and so brilliantly executed in its details. The colors have a jewel-like brilliancy, not the flash of diamonds or emeralds, but the luster and glow of opals and pearls, in fact, the picture recalls specifically and exactly a huge brown opal, one of the spoils of the Holy Empire which is now guarded in the Imperial collection in Vienna, a thing as big as a hen’s egg, with a flame of rainbow colors in its tawny depths. That it illustrates the text of * Don Qyixote ’ or even that the mounted figure, dimly seen, would be recognized as the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, unless the title were known, it would be too much to maintain. 427 THE COLLECTION OF The scene suggests rather Boccacio as far as there is any literary suggestion, but the pic- ture is only remotely literary or anecdotic. Temperamental would describe its quality better, for it reflects the kind of man that Monticelli was, his love of beauty and pleasure, his dreamy nature which filled his head with visions of fairyland amid his actual surroundings of squalor; and also his exquisite feeling for color and form. There are times when he sur- passes his master Diaz both in originality and in subtlety. In the heads of his figures espe- cially, when Diaz gives little but the glow of rosy flesh and golden hair, there is a minute completeness of workmanship combined with an aristocratic refinement in the little faces, that he may have gained from his romantic and hopeless passion for the Empress Eugenie, whom he met once in Diaz’ studio and with whom, like so many other youths in the six- ties, he imagined himself desperately in love. With their swan-like necks, their grace, their queer mingling of Classical or Rennaissance costumes with Indian shawls and crinoline, they are fitting inhabitants for that little world outside of reality which Monticelli formed for them. At least such is the world and its inhabitants when the artist is successful in his endeavor, but it cannot be too often repeated that success is not habitual and that there are only too many authentic canvases and panels by Monticelli to be found that show none of the rare merits of this “Don Quixote,” a picture which closes worthily Mr. Terrell’s series of masterpieces. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “REMBRANDT WITH SHORT HAIR IN A BROAD FLAT CAP” F EW artists have painted their own portraits more frequently than did Rembrandt. He has left us portraits of himself, from his earliest youth until the last year of his life; smiling when he was young, laughing when wealthy and happy he lived with his dear Sas- kia, and finally in the dark days of his career, with keen eyes, and earnest and unbroken in spirit even under the worst circumstances. When his cherished art treasures had been sold, when poverty had entered his new and modest home, that he was still every inch a king is proved by the portrait belonging to Lord Ilchester as well as by the one owned by Lord Iveagh. The same extraordinary, searching eyes are to be seen in this magnificent portrait in Mr. Terrell’s collection, which once belonged to Prince Leuchtenberg in St. Petersburg, where I saw it some years ago. Dr. Bode, in his monumental book on Rembrandt, sup- poses it to have been painted about 1645, when Rembrandt was thirty-nine years of age. The portrait is very similar to the one in Buckingham Palace, while the Grand Duke of Saxony has another, dated 1643, in which Rembrandt, wearing the same golden chain, does not look much younger. It was some years after the death of his beloved wife Saskia (1642), that Mr. Terrell’s portrait was painted, and evidently with the desire of representing himself most advantageously. For then a new love had risen in his heart, he had found the woman who was to be his comfort and helpmate until her death in 1663 or thereabouts. Hendrickje Stoffels was the name of this simple, good-hearted soul, whose glory it is to have been often 428 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL painted by the great master. Rembrandt was a passionate man; passionate in life but pas- sionate, above all, in his art, and his tribute to her, the beautiful portrait in the Louvre ‘ Salon Carre,’ is beloved by all who know it. In every respect one of the very few truly great masters of the world, Rembrandt is perhaps greatest in his portraits, in his middle and later periods especially he painted not only the exterior of his models, but their inmost character, their soul. There is such a com- pelling presentment of life in them that, forgetting colors and canvas, one is forced to be- come interested, to the exclusion of all else, in the human being portrayed. It is afterward only that one comes to realize the power and to appreciate the art with which the master has worked this miracle; that magical light he throws over a portion of the face leaving the rest in that beautiful chiaroscuro, which, never black nor opaque, keeps its transparency even in the darkest parts; the wonderful coloring, the consummate handling which, the nearer we come to the end of his career, becomes more and more extraordinarily simple and masterly, and more and more able to express just what the great master meant and all that he meant to express. Dr. A. Bredius This portrait of Rembrandt is one of the many, drawn, painted or engraved, which he has left us of himself and in which we can follow, from his youth until death, the develop- ment and transformation of his talent. It was formerly owned by Prince Leuchtenberg, whose collection of pictures was exhibited for some time at the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. Though neither signed nor dated, the type, as well as the workmanship, makes it clear, in comparing the picture with other portraits bearing dates, that it was painted in the neighborhood of 1642-1644. Here Rembrandt is no longer the boy, nor even the young man who, utilizing the arms, stuffs and curiosities purchased with his modest means, tricked himself out in strange guise, took theatrical attitudes in front of his looking glass and in different lights tried in turn to invest his features with expressions of anger, amazement, fear, joy or despair. He has grown older; the time for such masquerading is past. At this period the artist would find no more gratification in the curious costumes which delighted him before, than he would in simulations of artificial moods or sentiments. His garb, with- out being the ordinary one, is simple in the extreme; a black velvet cap, a black surcoat edged with a narrow fur collar which allows a bit of white shirt to be seen, and, for orna- ment, a double gold chain displayed upon his broad breast. Like the costume, the attitude and the expression are unaffected. The wild and rebellious hair of the earlier portraits has been shorn, and the face, seen almost in full view, with the somewhat thick nose and the mouth shadowed by a delicate, silky moustache, stands out frankly in the full light. Rem- brandt has begun to take on flesh, for the double chin is already clearly defined. But our attention is above all attracted by the eyes, penetrating, questioning, rather sad; true paint- er's eyes, used to searching, seizing and retaining in order to put down the significant traits of reality. This intensity of observation, this concentration of the artist's vision, has carved upon his forehead, between his eyebrows, a furrow which will deepen more and more with the years. It is a calm, thoughtful face, full of strength and authority. 429 REGNAULT, ALEXANDRE GEORGE HENRI 1843-1871 “AUTOMEDON AND THE HORSES OF ACHILLES” Canvas, oval, height 62 K inches, width 47 >4 inches. Signed at bottom a little to the right: “H Regnault" D OMINATING the oval canvas the two chargers, which Automedon, comrade and charioteer of Achilles, is leading to the Greek hero who is about to take part in his last fight, are seen furiously struggling. The figure of Automedon, nude but for some floating red drapery, is the pivot of the composition. His muscular left leg is thrust forward in an effort to anchor himself to the earth, from which he risks being uplifted by the rearing black horse on the right, whose forefeet paw the air. Automedon’s light flesh-tones contrast with the red drapery, with the rearing horse behind him and the tawny sorrel with flowing, light-colored mane on the left, which, though less strikingly militant, conveys also a suggestion of untamed ferocity, vainly endeavoring to toss his head restrained by the taut bridle. Below the cliff, on the edge of which the struggle takes place, are seen the dark grayish blue waters of the Scamander and in the far distance, illumined by a sullen gleam of sun, the low line of an arid, rocky coast. The sky, against which the group is silhouetted, is heavy with storm clouds. Collection Cercle des Phoc6ens, Marseilles. Collection Wm. L. Elkins, Philadelphia, 1900. Bought from the Cercle des Phoceens by Boussod, Valadon & Co. Sale Boussod, Valadon & Co., New York, Feb. 1902 ($7,500). Purchased by Mr. Terrell from Cottier & Co. Exhibition Henri Regnault, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1872. 430 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Upon this fine painting, in which maturity of talent goes hand in hand with maturity of years, knowing what he wants, wasting no force in hesitating experiments or vain dis- play, Rembrandt has set his stamp with sovereign assurance and decision. This doubly precious portrait is not only the revelation of the artist’s soul but a superb example of that middle period of his development, between the timidity and extreme carefulness of his early technique and the thoroughly unconstrained, bold and passionate manner of his old age. Caring more for his art than for any success it might bring, the great master, never believ- ing he had reached the goal, went on, searching to the last, throughout all his troubles, and ever preserving that earnestness and sincerity which constitutes the value of his works and the compelling attraction of his genius. Emile Michel There is in existence an extraordinary number of portraits of Rembrandt by himself. If one includes the sketches and etchings, there must be a hundred of them, all quite differ- ent one from the other, according to the time when they were made and also according to the special purpose the artist had in view in executing them. It was not from foolish vanity that the master so often pictured himself, but because he was the most readily available and the cheapest model for his own studies. In his youth therefore he portrayed himself fre- quently, sometimes by way of studying an interesting effect of light, at other times in order to express a given emotion. For that reason, these early portraits are nearly all small heads in which Rembrandt had paid little attention either to securing a likeness or an advan- tageous appearance. They often seem, on the contrary, painter’s studies rather than por- traits, because the artist sought to record and emphasize in them some purely pictorial effect. After his engagement to marry Saskia van Uylenborch, a great change in this respect may be observed, for he portrayed himself with the idea of pleasing his fiancee. And later again, after she became his wife, he painted himself life-size, often with Saskia, or as the counterpart to pictures of her giving himself a showy, even fantastic appearance. These carefully executed portraits are like pages out of his own happy life, and many of them, especially those belonging between the years 1633 and 1636, were painted at the request of friends and collectors who wished to possess the likeness of Holland’s foremost artist. After the demise of Saskia in 1642, the representations of his own person change again, becoming considerably plainer and less posed; with no fanciful adornments of costume, they are in- finitely more serious and intimate of conception. An exceptionally characteristic picture ot this period is the portrait which Mr. Terrell has acquired. The expression is serious, natural, and the artist, with magic chiaroscuro and exquisite coloring has made ordinary features attractive and sympathetic. The straightforward, manly look goes to our hearts and wins our sympathy for Rembrandt the man, just as the metier fills us with admiration for Rem- brandt the artist. Judging from the technique and from the apparent age of the subject, we may place the date of the portrait at about 1645. During this and the following years his self-portraits are comparatively infrequent. But the more he retires from the world and the greater his financial straits become, the more frequently those portraits appear. With the decrease in 433 THE COLLECTION OF orders, the artist resorts anew to the ever available and least expensive model of his younger days; again he puts on rich, and sometimes odd, costumes. In color, these later portraits are by far the best; in execution they are always most picturesque, and in conception gen- erally sober and profound. They surely are among the best works that Rembrandt has left us. Thus the greatest artist of all times in the representation of mental traits, in giving us the most attractive pictures of his own person, at different ages and in diverse moods, has permitted us to look into the depths of his own soul. Dr. Wilhelm Bode Rembrandt’s numerous self-portraits, drawn, etched and painted, offering an oppor- tunity to become acquainted with the outer appearance as well as the inner nature of the man, with all the changes brought about by the years, may truly be called an autobiography. If one imagines, however, that the reason Rembrandt depicted himself so frequently was from vanity, and that the same reason caused him to flatter and beautify the presentments of himself, one would entirely misjudge his artistic nature. An unusual combination of mental traits is found in him: the strength of a lively imagination, a power of poetical crea- tion, closely allied to the desire for strict observation of nature and a searching and sober appreciation of realities. There are artists whose imagination is so strong that nature ham- pers them and they depart from it when undertaking tasks such as portraits, which require close observation and literal reproduction. Rembrandt, on the contrary, was both a poet and a portrait painter. The great number of his self-portraits is explained by his desire for study and observation, and he made use of himself as a model frequently because this model cost nothing and was always at his disposal. It is clear that the great changes in his conception of the world, and his manner of looking at it, which mark his career, should be as plainly evident in these portraits as in his other works. One may follow the changes of technical treatment more easily in them because their subject is familiar. The portraits of his youth are often experiments in the rendering of effects of light, or studies of certain definite expressions. There are but a few which give what one might call a photographi- cally true presentment of the vivacious, aggressive, eager and happy young artist. In con- trast with these is the depth and intensity of expression, pathetic, almost tragic, which is the dominant note of the later portraits, showing him a lonely man, bruised by life, on the de- fensive, and thoughtful to the point of misanthropy. As character studies, or rather as revelations of the soul, these late works are unique in the annals of art. Between these two periods lies a middle one, which extends from the end of the thirties to the end of the for- ties, and to which Mr. Terrell's picture belongs. In it the strong realism of the earlier period is not abandoned, but it is moderated by poetic treatment. In place of precise rendering there is a noble generalization. Everything appears softer, more harmonious, and hand in hand with a relaxation of the sharp definition of characteristic features, goes also a modifi- cation of the psychological conception. Mr. Terrell’s picture is all the more interesting because, while perhaps not particularly true to life, it is so supremely beautiful as a picture. Rembrandt had a somewhat broader face than is shown here. As a rule, in his portraits of himself, in order to help their unex- 434 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL pectedness, their sense of arrested motion, the head is turned so that the axis of the head and that of the body are not the same. All this is different in Mr. Terrell’s picture. Face and body have the same axis; the nose is not broad, but straighter, and while the strong forehead often makes the lower part of his face look compressed and small, here the face from the chin up appears longer, the beretta and its shadow concealing a great part of the forehead. The hair is also kept short, because if abundant it would tend to emphasize the broadness of the face. In examining the most celebrated self-portrait of this period, that dated 1640, in the National Gallery, one notices that in it the head sinks down in the neck as compared with the portrait before us. It cannot be doubted for a moment that all these characteristics, which distinguish Mr. Terrell’s picture from other portraits of Rembrandt, are there for the artistic purpose of enhancing the best points of the features and giving the face besides an expression of proud, free manliness, an air of distinction also. Dr. Carl Neumann “LADY FRANCES FINCH” T HIS picture was known as “The Countess of Dartmouth,” yet the lady was not married to Lord Lewisham until the year after it was painted, and her husband did not suc- ceed his father as Earl of Dartmouth, until nearly twenty years later still. Lady Frances sat to Reynolds in 1781. Her portrait was paid for in March, 1782, by her brother, the fourth Earl of Aylesford, and her marriage took place in September of the same year. To Lord Dart- mouth she bore twelve children, five sons and seven daughters, several of whom survived until a few years ago. Large and enviable families of children have been common with the Legges. The last Lord Dartmouth was one of a family of sixteen, all but two of whom reached old age. Lady Frances has a maternal face. No one who is familiar with the fea- tures of old Queen Charlotte can look at this portrait without being struck with the like- ness; and Queen Charlotte’s family totalled eighteen. In 1871, the year in which Lady Frances sat, Sir Joshua was very active, and that in spite of an absence of nearly two months on the Continent. His sitters numbered about forty. Among the most important (from an artistic point of view) were Lady Salisbury, Lady Althorp, Lady Catherine Pelham, Mrs. Abington, Lady Maria Waldegrave and Lord Temple. But of all the resulting pictures not one was better than this ‘ ‘ Lady Frances Finch. ” The conception is happy, while as for execu- tion, Reynolds seldom combined success for the moment and durability of charm with more felicity. The color, especially the black, is superb, and the brushing rich, fat and mas- terly. This picture was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1889, by the Earl of Aylesford, who was then its owner. Sir Walter Armstrong Lady Frances Finch, second daughter of Heneage, third Earl of Aylesford, of Packing- ton Hall, Warwickshire, was born December 9, 1761. Her mother was Charlotte, daugh- ter of Charles, sixth Duke of Somerset. Her eldest sister, Charlotte, who married Henry, twelfth Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, was painted by Gainsborough when she was a child. 435 LENBACH, FRANZ von 1836-1904 “PORTRAIT OF PRINCE BISMARCK” On papendeckel, height 32 inches, width 24 inches. Signed at bottom to the right: Lenbach Friedricksruh 1889. B ISMARCK in his seventy-fourth year is represented at half length, life-size, standing erect, his face in three-quarter view turned to the right, his arms hanging down so that the hands do not appear in the picture. Through gold-rimmed spectacles, the gray eyes gaze as though absorbed in some distant object. The light from the right falls on the face, the shadow on the right cheek throwing the cheek bone into prominence. The lower lip firmly set is barely seen under the heavy gray moustache. He wears a tightly buttoned brown overcoat of military cut, the upturned collar coming high around the neck allowing a mere glimpse of white neckerchief. The peaked cap, with its lappels but- toned in front, is set down on the forehead almost to the white bushy eyebrows, and is brought low behind, concealing the hair except a few gray locks about the ears. The conventional background, wall perhaps, shows a dark patch at the right of the head against which the pale face stands forth, while on the opposite side the dark outline of the head and shoulders is relieved against lighter ground. Purchased by Mr. Terrell from Schaus & Co., who acquired it of the artist. 436 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS The portrait, one of his most simple and charming renderings of a small girl, dating from his Bath period, was exhibited at the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1900, by its owner, the Earl of Aylesford. Sir Joshua began Lady Frances’s portrait in October, 1781, and finished it the following March. It was paid for in the latter month, as noted by the artist: ‘Lord Ailsford for Lady Frances Finch s picture £105.’ Her brother Heneage’s young wife, Louisa, the Hon. Miss Thynne, daughter of Lord Weymouth, afterwards first Marquess of Bath, sat to Rey- nolds in February, 1782, and the portrait was exhibited in the Royal Academy of that year, when Walpole praised it for its ‘great simplicity.’ The portrait of Lady Frances does not appear to have been included in that exhibition. Reynolds painted other members of the Aylesford family, among them Heneage, the fourth Earl, more than once, as well as several of the Dartmouth s. The second Earl of Dartmouth, father of Lady Frances’s husband, sat to him in Van Dyck dress in 1761, when he was still Viscount Lewisham. Lady Frances married George, Lord Lewisham, afterwards third Earl of Dartmouth, on September 24, 1782. There are several references to this event in Mrs. Delany’s correspondence. On Sep- tember 21, she writes to Miss Port, of Ilam: ‘Ld. and Lady Dartmouth are very well, con- sidering the loss they have sustained, which they bear with Christian fortitude.’ (Their fourth son had died at Weymouth on September 6.) ‘ Ld. Lewisham is soon to be mar- ried to Lady Frances Finch, Ld. Ailsford’s sister; a very agreeable match to all partys. Young Lady Ailsford is in town expecting the hour of confinement; she looks, and is, very well.’ Again, eight days later, she writes to Mrs. Port: ‘I suppose you will write to Lady Willy [Willoughby de Broke] yr. congrat’s to her, etc., on the marriage of Lord Lewisham to Lady Frances Finch, an event 1 hope will cheer our amiable Lord and Lady Dartmouth, who bear their great loss with true Xian resignation. What a blessed state of mind is that of perfect resignation to the Divine will ! ’ Her husband, George Legge, was M.P. for Plymouth, as Lord Lewisham, in 1778, and afterwards for Stafford. In 1782, the year of his marriage, he was Lord of the Bed Chamber to the Prince of Wales, and in 1783 was appointed Lord Warden of the Stanneries. In 1801 he was President of the Board of Control, and in the following year Lord Steward of the Household. In 1804 he filled the post of Lord Chamberlain. He was a capable politician and official. Among other things he interested himself in the Volunteer movement, and was Colonel of the Loyal Birmingham Regiment of Volunteers. Lady Frances survived him twenty years, dying November 21, 1838. This portrait when exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery Winter Exhibition of 1889 (No. 46), by the Earl of Aylesford, together with that of her sister-in-law, Lady Aylesford (No. 91) and other family portraits, was wrongly catalogued as the wife of the second Earl of Dartmouth, and daughter of Sir Charles Nicholl. It is an exquisite example of Sir Joshua’s powers in their maturity. The position chosen is a happy and natural one, and the treat- ment is entirely unconventional. The face is not remarkable for beauty of the regular, clas- sical type, but it is bright, piquant and full of expression, most admirably caught by the master. Without much positive color, the general effect is rich in the extreme. The black 439 THE COLLECTION OF scarf, dark in tone as it is, is in complete harmony with the gray-white of the dress and the powdered hair, and with the richer tints of the flesh painting, in which the grays have been introduced with very subtle effect. There is, indeed, great charm both in the color and the composition, and the whole canvas has an air of elegance which is in no way forced. The effect of the interlacing of the long, elegant fingers is exceedingly graceful. The picture is in remarkably good condition, and displays none of the fading which to- day gives many of Reynolds’s portraits, particularly the earlier ones, the appearance of ghosts, in which the beautiful carnations of the flesh tints have completely vanished. Happily many of the canvases of this period — 1 782 — have stood the test of time well, for Sir Joshua seems to have finally relinquished his most dangerous methods of color experiments, methods which, in his own day, caused more than one prospective sitter to hesitate before entering his studio. His art was at its maturity, and imbued with a dignity, grace and sweetness, which to some extent he owed to the Italians he studied with such constancy and admira- tion, as well as with a power of expression and of color previously unknown in English art. Certainly the older he grew the more his hand gained in power and his color in richness and splendor. Among the portraits which he completed in this same year, were those of Mrs. Baldwin as “The Fair Greek, ” Mrs. Robinson as “Perdita," “Lavinia, Viscountess Althorp,” "William Beckford," “Lord Chancellor Thurlow,” “Beau Brummel as a Boy,” and a number of others which still retain almost all their original freshness and melting beauty of color, such as is to be found in this portrait of “Lady Frances Finch," a picture which would add distinction to any collection of pictures, however rich it might be in the works of other masters. Arthur B. Chamberlain Among the fair ladies who sat to the President of the Royal Academy in 1781, was Lady Frances Finch, second daughter of Heneage Finch, third Earl of Aylesford, and Lady Charlotte Seymour, his wife, daughter of Charles, sixth Duke of Somerset. In March, 1782, Sir Joshua Reynolds entered in his ledger: 'Paid March 1782, Lord Ailsford for Lady Frances Finch's picture £105.' Lord Aylesford who paid for this portrait was the lady’s brother Heneage, fourth Earl of Aylesford. It is possible that this young lady with her haughty look and aristocratic lineage, a ‘Lady Clara Vere de Vere’ of the period, had already made a conquest of her cousin, the young Lord Lewisham, eldest son of William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth by Frances Catherine, daughter of Sir Charles Gounter Nicholl. The young couple were united in September, 1 782, and when Lady Frances quitted her home at Packington Hall, her portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds remained as a substitute for herself. Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted her mother-in-law, Frances Catherine, Coun- tess of Dartmouth, and it is important to avoid any confusion between the two ladies. Lord Lewisham did not succeed his father until 1801, so that for more than twenty years of their married life he and his wife were known as Lord and Lady Lewisham. Horace Wal- pole, writing from Berkeley Square to the Countess of Ossory on June 13, 1782, says: ‘I find nothing new in town but a marriage or two, as many deaths, a house-breaking and a murder— if they are novelties. Lord Lewisham marries his cousin Lady Frances Finch, Lord 440 MR HERBERT L. TERRELL Aylesford's sister. Lady Grandison is dead at Spa,’ and so on through a list of events of which Walpole says: ‘methinks I am writing a letter like the casualties at the end of a reign in “Baker's Chronicles.” ’ The Lewisham marriage, it is to be hoped, had no claim to be marked as a casualty. The Legge family have always, and do still, play a conspicuous part in court circles, and Lady Lewisham was an ornament to society in her day. But with this Sir Joshua Reynolds had nothing to do. Lady Frances Finch passed through his studio as one of a long train of aristocratic beauties. Her portrait remained at Packington until quite recently, when family troubles brought about the dispersal of the works of art, and “Lady Frances Finch,” or rather her portrait, migrated to the novel world of New York. The year 1781 was important in the career of Sir Joshua Reynolds, for in that year he painted the famous triple portrait, "The Ladies Waldegrave," and also that bewitching portrait of the actress, “Mrs. Abington, as Circe,” with the panther and white cat, which showed how sensitive the staid old bachelor could be to feminine charms when exercised by a sprightly and audacious hoyden. The portrait of “Lady Frances Finch” is worthy to be ranked with these two masterpieces, and is fortunate in having been not only one of Sir Joshua's most pleasing renderings of aristocratic elegance, but also one of the most successful in the way of actual technical execution. It is well that in the new world Sir Joshua Reynolds should be represented by so trustworthy an example of his skill. Reynolds is one of the landmarks in the history of art. In the history of England he occupies a position analogous to that of his great contemporary, Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the history of literature. In Reynolds and Johnson the eighteenth century in England seems to be summed up and embodied, each of them enthroned, as it were, on his own particular Olympus. There was little or no poetry about either of them, no divine afflatus, no mystical inspiration. They taught nothing new, but they exemplified in their admirable lives that strong, safe sense of true humanity which has enshrined them forever in the hearts of the British race. Reynolds was no phenomenon in the history of British art. He was the direct outcome of a progressive school of portrait painting, which was derived from Van Dyck. His precursors, his grandparents in portrait painting, Riley, Richardson and Hudson, had all been skilful practictioners in their art, thoroughly capable, honest workers, but lacking in style and devoid of everything approaching to original genius. It was on the groundwork of their teaching that Reynolds built his own style, and it is possible to trace his progress from the meritorious but uninspired work of his apprenticeship to Hudson, up to the monu- mental triumphs of his later career. In his early years Reynolds obeyed the then inexorable law of painters, and traveled to Rome to study the great masters there, having the yearn- ing so common to the young aspirant in those days, to let loose his expanding talent on vast canvases or wall spaces in endless academical compositions of so-called sacred history or mythology. For this purpose he spent his time in the study of the famous paintings on the Continent, especially those of the Bolognese school. The true instinct of the portrait painter showed itself in his tendency to hark back continually to Van Dyck. Perhaps Rey- nolds might have been an even greater artist than he was, had he never gone to Italy, but stayed at home, like his great rival Gainsborough, and let his genius work out its own part 44i MONTICELLI, ADOLPHE JOSEPH THOMAS 1824-1886 “DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA” Canvas, height 45 inches, width 56^ inches. Signed at bottom to the left: A. Monticelli and under it what is probably a date that cannot be made out. GAINST a quivering, opalescent sunset sky, and a little to the right of the center of the composition, rises darkly a ruined tower balanced on the left by the rounded mass of a tree or clump of trees. In the gloom, midway between the two, is dimly seen Don Quixote with Sancho approaching groups of feminine figures in vari- colored dresses, disposed on each side of a pathway, which meanders down the middle of the picture toward the right of the foreground. Some are directly below the ruined tower, and among those under the tree to the left, one in a white robe edged with crimson, stands out prominently. On the right half of the picture a dark hill carrying the sky line obliquely to the top of the picture, is partly curtained behind an indefinite mass of foliage which serves as background for twisted slender trees, at whose feet are seen other personages, also in fantastic, bright-hued garments. In the immediate foreground and to the left is a pool of water, emphasizing the brilliance of the sky and the varie- gated colors, as of precious stones, of the costumes of the personages distributed in the rich, warm, dusky landscape. Collection Daniel Cottier, who had secured it from the artist. Purchased by Mr. Terrell from Cottier & Co. 442 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS in life, refreshed by memories of the past but never yielding to any slavish submission to traditional authority. It was just the imperturbable equanimity of Sir Joshua Reynolds which enabled him to do so much for British art. It was only his commanding personality and impartial aloofness from the quarrels and jealousies by which his brother-artists were torn and ravaged, which enabled the Royal Academy of Art to come into real existence under the rule of the first and greatest of presidents. Reynolds was not only a great painter, he was a type of the great Englishman, and it is as such, I believe, that he draws the reverence of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. Lionel Cust Not the least valuable result of the critical study of art is the light which it throws upon the conditions under which the human mind develops most perfectly. A general survey of the great art achievements of the past shows that they are invariably the resultant of two distinct forces; one, the accumulation of culture and technical experience, commonly known as tradition, the other, the personal character of the artist, stimulated, whether consciously or not, by something alive and vivid in the atmosphere of his own time. Each force is es- sential, for without some element of tradition personality becomes incompetent, and with- out personality, tradition becomes pedantic. The terms ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ are used by careless writers as if they represented entirely inconsistent qualities. In reality they are but opposite poles of the same needle, and the best and most consistent efforts of the human mind have depended on keeping at an equal distance between them. That impartiality, however, has the effect of all impartiality; it makes no brave show in the public eye. It can be appropriated at once only by the few who understand that such judicial righteousness presumes a more complete knowledge and a more perfect courage than is possessed by those who are willing to give a hastier and one-sided performance. It is over pronounced classicism, or pronounced romanticism, that the great battle of the art world rages, and the names of the protagonists are proclaimed so loudly that for a time the winners of even greater victories are overlooked, simply because their victories are won far away from the din of conflict. Some recognition of this fact is necessary if we are to understand rightly the charm of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The tendency of some of the best modern criticism has been to lay stress upon failings of Reynolds as a man, which it dares not impute to him as an artist, to accuse him of coolness and deliberation, as if a true artist must needs be rash and hot-tempered. Criticism should be founded more on the study of pictures than on the study of the men who paint them. While in their relations with the outer world artists are often irritable and capricious, it is only when the failing appears in their art that it reduces it to mediocrity, from the lack of that control and balance which are essential to the con- struction of any great work. To his contemporaries Reynolds was a miracle of ease, fertility and grace, but as our distance from him increases his greatness does not diminish. In him we have one of those rare beings whose arrival seems to sum up all previous tradition, and to stamp it with an entirely new and personal character. Reynolds’s tradition was not that of one country or period, but included the ripe achievements of all the great schools of painting that had 445 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS flourished before him in Europe. Though Michael Angelo, the name that sounds most deeply in the ‘Discourses,’ was to be for him an inaccessible divinity, Reynolds was heir to much of the senatorial dignity of Titian, to much of that translucent fervor of Rubens, and to some of the mysterious depth of Rembrandt. Upon this triple foundation of mature artistic experience, Reynolds set out to build a monument to the healthy culture, energy and grace of the English upper classes in the eighteenth century. To knit material together into an edifice so splendid withal in its details, and yet so homogeneous in its character that it remains the typical illustration of its period, was no light task, and if Reynolds openly set himself to it in a spirit of calm deliberation 1 cannot see why we should find fault with his outward demeanor, especially since his art is glowing and experimental enough to sat- isfy the most ardent believer in the fire of genius. Take, for instance, this exquisite picture of the “Lady Frances Finch.” From a technical point of view it presents none of those striking effects of design or lighting, by which Reynolds freed the task of portrait painting from the monotonous routine of arrange- ment, to which, before his time, all lesser men were restricted. Its prevailing character is one of perfect moderation and balance. The face, the neck, the hands, have each their due degree of emphasis and delicate suggestive modelling, while the whole figure is set in the pictorial atmosphere with just the right sense of definition, which gives us the contempo- rary note of the costume merely as a hint that this graceful being is a real grande dame of the eighteenth century. There is none of the commonplace insistence on the devices of her dressmaker (or the still more ridiculous imitation of Greek drapery) which makes almost every woman’s portrait by other hands look like a more or less glorified fashion plate. This quality of balance, allied to splendid sympathy with the human intelligence of his day, is the essence and genius of Reynolds. C. J. Holmes “PORTRAIT OF MISS ISABEL HOWLAND” T HE lady represented here is no longer young, and is possessed of no particular attrac- tion in the way of features or figure. Moreover, there is no indication that she was a beauty in her youth, rather the reverse. The face does not indicate a character of brilliancy or genius. Yet there is something entirely engrossing and fascinating about this plain lady, a lady to the tips of her fingers, although without that exquisiteness of aristocratic breeding which lends so dignified an air to certain eighteenth century portraits. The lady, in fact, belonged to a county family in Essex. Michael Howland, of Stonehall, New Dunmor, in Essex, had two daughters, one of whom, Rachel, was married in 1751 to Sir George Beaumont, sixth Baronet of Cole Orton, and the other, Isabella, remained un- married. Lady Beaumont was mother of the Sir George Howland Beaumont, seventh Baro- net, to whom English art owes so much. A genuine enthusiast for painting in an age when to be an amateur of art was a foible of smart and fashionable dilettanti, Sir George Beau- mont was greatly instrumental in bringing about the foundation of the National Gallery, wherefore not only England but the whole Anglo-Saxon race may be said to be greatly in 446 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS his debt. One can imagine that Sir George Beaumont must have been attached to the aunt whose features are here depicted. In countries where marriages are usually swayed by at- traction and inclination rather than by necessity or convenience, the maiden aunt is an established social factor. The girl with the pretty face attracts the lover and is quickly wed, the girl with the homely features looks forward to a spinster’s life, though she may be the stronger and better character of the two. She becomes indispensable to her married rela- tions, and if she be well endowed she is treated with great consideration (especially toward the end of her life). Such an aunt we believe Miss Howland to have been, though there is no reason to suppose that her nephew had any ulterior motives with regard to her sitting to Gainsborough. It must have been at Bath that Miss Howland sat for her portrait to Gainsborough. Her sister, Lady Beaumont, had been left a widow in 1 762, and the style of painting indicates that it dates from about the year 1768. Miss Howland, as a wealthy spinster who might have been the original of one of the characters in Smollett’s ‘Humphrey Clinker’ was probably a personage in the Pump Room, and the lady painted by Gainsborough was one to whom we can imagine ‘ Beau’ Nash offering his arm. But in truth, the lady in the por- trait plays but second fiddle to the painter. Not long ago the famous French artist, Bonnat, when on a visit to Windsor Castle, remarked to the present writer that in his opinion the English school had only possessed two real painters: Gainsborough and Sir Thomas Law- rence. The conversation was upon portrait painting or he would probably have added the name of J. M. W. Turner, or perhaps John Constable. This seemingly paradoxical statement was based upon the fact that Gainsborough and Lawrence were both original in their genius, painters born and bred, who owed more to themselves than to any precursor in their art, and who developed a style of painting wholly individual. On investigating the grounds on which this statement was based, it will be found that Hogarth was the direct product of the school of art, which, beginning with a direct imitation of the Dutch school, combined with it the Academic teaching of the late Italian as filtered through France, thus producing in England a Hogarth where in France it produced a Chardin, and in Italy a Pietro Longhi. Sir Joshua Reynolds, too, was the outcome of a great life of tradition, descending from Van Dyck and the Bolognese school. Romney was a mystic, whose flashes of genius were, so to speak, accidental, and at all events personal to himself, and might easily have been di- verted into other channels, save for the dictates of fashion and the rivalry of Reynolds. Hoppner at his best was perhaps little more than an imitator, and Raeburn a practitioner of consummate skill. Gainsborough and Lawrence remain the creators of a new art in por- trait painting. Of the two there can be no doubt that Gainsborough was incomparably the greater artist. Born in Suffolk, in the same county that later on produced John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough had no artistic forebears. His father was a clothier and Dissenter, his uncle a curate of the Church of England, who kept the Grammar School at Sudbury, where Gainsborough learned his letters. There, at an early age, his desire to draw and paint proved overmastering. Before he was fifteen he had left Sudbury for London, and after some assist- ance from a silversmith, such as Hogarth owed to Ellis Gamble, he went to Hubert Greve- 447 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS lot, the draughtsman engineer, for instruction, and through him obtained admission to the Drawing Academy in St. Martin's Lane. He then left Grevelot for the studio of Francis Hayman. It is possible to lay too little stress on the influence exercised on Gainsborough by Grevelot or Hayman. That he owed something to Hayman is evident from the fact that Hayman’s own work has sometimes been passed off as that of his famous pupil. To Greve- lot, Gainsborough most certainly owed that French touch, that invisible something which inspired in French art that sense of artistic expression, vitality and refinement, which is often wanting in the more restrained and heavier art of the Englishman. To this French influ- ence Gainsborough undoubtedly owes that light flutter and restlessness, that diaphanous texture which is seen in his best work. Gainsborough, however, acknowledged but one master, Anthony Van Dyck. Where Reynolds bowed the knee, Gainsborough worshipped without servility; Reynolds copied Van Dyck’s paintings, and the copies are the work of Reynolds; Gainsborough copied Van Dyck and his copies are sometimes indistinguishable from the originals. He wrested from Van Dyck his secret of painting silks and satins, and the silvery shimmer which pervades a portrait by Van Dyck in its original condition. From Van Dyck he learned not only the secret of pose that lent distinction to an otherwise uncomely figure, but the actual execu- tion as well, the touch, the coloring, the means by which the details are all gathered to- gether to produce a particular effect. It must not be forgotten that Gainsborough was as much a landscape painter as a portrait painter; hence the problem of the diffusion of light in the open air was one of which he made a special study, and in such paintings as the “Morning Walk,’’ “The Mall," the “Duke and Duchess of Cumberland in a Garden,” he boldly placed his figures in the open air where a less skilful or audacious painter would have been content with a conventional studio background. Apart from the grace and deli- cacy of his draperies, and the beautiful, soft finish of his flesh tints, Gainsborough introduced a novelty in the use he often made, as in Miss Howland's portrait, of black pencil strokes in the hair, the gray powder then insisted upon by fashion offering a particular scope for this treatment. It is easy to pick flaws in his work, for he is not always correct in his draw- ing, and his poses are sometimes awkward, but in the quickness and directness of his brush he ranks with Frans Hals and Velasquez. Can more be said to establish his place among the great artists of the world? Constable said of Gainsborough's landscapes, that ‘the stillness of noon, the depth of twilight, the dews and pearls of the morning, are to be found on the canvases of this most benevolent and kind-hearted man. On looking at them we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.' Portraits can hardly be expected to arouse the same emo- tions as landscapes, but looking on such a portrait by Gainsborough as that of Miss How- land, one is tempted to sum up one's feelings of admiration in profound gratitude to the painter for having lived. Lionel Cust In one sense Gainsborough remained objective to the end of his life. He was more in- fluenced by the nature of his sitters, I believe, than any other painter of his rank. An inter- 448 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS esting personality never failed to strike a fine work of art out of him. When a beautiful, or vivacious, 01 even a venerable woman appeared in his studio, his imagination took fire, blazed up, and gave the world something brilliant indeed. So, too, was it with those men whose faces bore the stamp of the high responsibilities or active wit: a Pitt, a Garrick, or a Sheridan. Even Royalty had its stimulus for him. He is the only painter since Van Dyck who has entirely succeeded in making fine works of art from kings and queens, and little royal highnesses. The private audience chamber at Windsor Castle is filled with his de- lightful heads of the many children of George III and Queen Charlotte. Everyone knows what he made of Queen Charlotte herself, and even of the dull brothers of George IV when they sat for him, after their boyish charm ceased. The commonplace client too often had to pay for art which was commonplace too, but he who brought the flint to this painter’s steel, saw the sparks fly and the tinder of imagination glow. Miss Isabel Howland was neither a beauty nor a wit, nor was she any longer in her first youth; so she lives for us on the canvas of the English master. And yet she had charm, and so the picture has it too. The ‘petit air pinc6 which is supposed to be so English, gives her face a Victorian rather than a Georgian look; but character and loyalty are there, and we can see that Gainsborough felt that he was in the presence of a real, if not an entirely sympathetic, individuality. This pic- ture was painted during Gainsborough’s Bath period (1760-1774), probably about 1768. The commission may have come to him through a feeling of clan-ship, for Miss Howland was the daughter and co-heiress of an Essex squire. Her sister married Sir George Beaumont, then sixth Baronet of Cole Orton, Leicestershire, and became the mother of that other Sir George who was once so well known as an amateur painter, and as a generous benefactor of the infant National Gallery. Miss Howland’s portrait remained at Cole Orton until it came into the hands of its present owner. The Beaumonts of Cole Orton into whose family that of Howland merged through the marriage of one co-heiress with Sir George Beaumont, and the death, unwed, of the other, are the descendants of a very ancient and distinguished family which was domiciled at Beaumont, on the Dordogne, at least as early as the twelfth century. The male line was interrupted by an heiress, who married the son of John, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and nephew of St. Louis of France. The son of this marriage, Henri, Vicomte de Beaumont, came to England on the invitation of Eleanor, Queen of Edward I, and founded one of those amphibious families, partly English and partly Scottish, which enjoyed privileges under both crowns before those crowns were united on the head of James VI and I. Among the other dignities which they held was that of hereditary Con- stable of Scotland. Sir Walter Armstrong Perhaps from its fulfilment of a natural human want, the craft of portraiture has been practiced with success more consistently than any other branch of the arts. Yet because good portraits are comparatively numerous it is a mistake to think that the art is a simple one. The mere getting of a likeness, of course, was made easy as soon as the trick of draw- ing features became common knowledge. The setting of each figure on a canvas with an appropriate environment was a more troublesome problem. One or two safe arrangements 449 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS became generally known at an early period. But more elaborate compositions remained a matter of experiment until the time of Van Dyck, by whom the accumulated experience of the older masters was borrowed and systematized. In one respect, however, the art of Van Dyck was an innovation. In Italy, in the Netherlands, in France, in Germany, and in Spain, a man expected to be painted just as he was. Ghirlandaio, Clouet and Differ, different as they were in every other respect, agreed in one thing; they did not flatter their sitters. This was the case in England, too, during the Tudor period, which, so far as the fine arts were concerned, was in reality still barbaric. In the reign of Charles I, however, the English added a new terror to portrait painting by insisting that a portrait should not only be a well-executed likeness, but also a flattering one. It is almost impossible to recall an Englishman by Van Dyck who is not a blue-blooded cavalier to his finger tips, and the tradition was continued by Lely and Kneller to the be- ginning of the eighteenth century. The protest of Hogarth, whose bluff gentlemen and homely ladies have evidently received at the most the compliment of good temper from their painter, was a solitary one; and the general tendency of English portraiture continued uninterrupted till it found its apotheosis in the oily curls and pink cheeks and eternal sim- per, of Lawrence. Reynolds and Gainsborough, though they could not escape the national habit of thought, modified it each in his own way. The sitters of Reynolds all catch some- thing of the painter’s earnest culture; the sitters of Gainsborough in a like manner reflect a little of that master’s own lively, romantic mind. It is to this cause, perhaps, even more than to their intrinsic pictorial methods, that the portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough owe their perennial charm. Consider, for instance, this painting of Miss Isabel Howland. She was a person of no particular note, indeed her only connection with art or with history seems to be the fact that she was the aunt of Sir George Beaumont. She was no beauty, and at the time she was painted had long since passed the age which unmarried ladies usually think appropriate for pictorial immortality. Gainsborough, too, has chosen to paint her quite simply, against a dark background, with a degree of definiteness that might well be thought trying in the case of one whose features, when in repose, might fairly be termed hard. Yet the result is a miracle of attractiveness. By delicate drawing and delicate color, the painter has suggested the pale tones of the silk and the lace, relieving them sharply with the black velvet strings at the throat, and more subtly they contrast with the bunch of flowers and leaves on the dress. This exquisite use of simple materials does not, however, distract attention from the central point of interest. The strongly marked features of the animated face are modelled with a tenderness that makes them also tender, and the very texture of the skin is hinted at rather than expressed, by touches so impalpable that they recall those airy films of shadow, felt rather than definitely seen, of which Leonardo, among the Old Masters, alone had the complete secret. On these delicate surfaces the shadow from the nose strikes sharply, emphasizing the lady’s character, and above, the eyes flash out with a wonderful decision and alertness, completing the impression of an English gentlewoman of some re- finement, humor and kindness, but pre-eminently lively and sensible. Such a personality 450 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS would have become plain and hard at the hands of van Eyck or Holbein, ugly at those of Durer; Titian would have passed her by; Velasquez would have made the smile a simper. Only Reynolds or Gainsborough would have succeeded in summing up the charm as well as the real nature of such a personality. The contemporary fashion which attaches an enormous pecuniary value to so many portraits of the eighteenth century, however absurd in the case of its minor masters, is jus- tified in the case of Gainsborough and Reynolds. No doubt their age contained many inter- esting personalties; no doubt the costume of her period gave a painter many opportunities denied to their successors, yet a portrait, such as that of Miss Howland, indicates that they owe their positions to no such accidents of fortune. They rank with the great masters be- cause they possessed the gift of seeing character as a whole, and not one aspect only, and of recognizing the temperate beauty of such complete conception. Their sitters, being English, needed flattery, and Gainsborough and Reynolds flattered them; but in the noblest of ways, handing them down to posterity not only as individuals, but as citizens of the great city of the world. The technique of these two masters, if it lacks the entire confidence and sureness that is bequeathed to the immediate heirs of a fine tradition, is at least suffi- ciently brilliant, original and adequate to give them a place among the great portrait paint- ers, while the serene humanity of their outlook will suggest to many minds that their ultimate position will be even higher than it is now. C. J. Holmes Of this thoroughly characteristic and admirable work by one of the best and most orig- inal English masters in painting, 1 wrote in the ‘Athenasum’ (of which I was then the art representative, and while the picture was at the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, 1877, of which it was one of the gems), that in 1 naturalness, no portrait here excels the beauti- fully executed Miss Isabel Howland (41), a half-length of an “old maidish ” lady, in the height of the severest fashion of her day, bearing her head rather stiffly aloft, but showing a most genial and kindly face, with a natural smile set sidling on her thin lips which seems sup- pressed by consideration of propriety. Her shoulders are well thrown back; she wears a sacque of sprigged silk or muslin; a broad black velvet band, set with pearls, encircles her neck. It is a picture of exquisite refinement, in keeping, tone and color, of unsurpassable tenderness in the carnations and of the purest grays.’ Gainsborough excelled in painting old maids; witness his wonderful “Miss Tyler of Bath" (Southey’s good aunt, who got small thanks for bringing him up), and the picture before us. In the latter it is interesting to notice that the sprigs of flowering myrtle which serve Miss Howland for a breast-knot, taken with the splendor of her attire at large, probably indicate that the lady went to the painter's studio in Schomburg House, Pall Mall (a still existing, historic mansion, one half of which he occupied), in the dress worn while she attended a wedding; the resplendent hat and elaborate coiffure, her pearl ornaments and animated expression, are in keeping with an occasion of this kind. Her broad velvet necklace repeats a fashion introduced by Queen Charlotte, the reigning lady of Gainsborough’s period, while the back-thrown shoul- ders of his sitter are reminiscent of those tortures of the back boards to which all school- 45 * THE CRITICAL ESSAYS girls were then subjected, with a view of enhancing the charms of their ‘ deportment,' and illustrating the somewhat rigid graces of the period. Gainsborough’s defective early train- ingas a draughtsman may be responsible for the narrowness of Miss Howland’s shoulders, a defect almost universal in his portraits of ladies — witness the otherwise incomparable picture of Miss Graham, which is the glory of the Edinburgh National Gallery — but not to this characteristic shortcoming is due the peculiar ‘ sidling ’ form of those lips which the sympathetic observer of the portrait will study with care and attribute to the keenness of the painter’s observation of the life which was revealed to him while the lady sat. The smile, quaint and veracious as it is, extends to and pervades her eyes, and is dashed therein with amused surprise, as if the artist has compelled his sitter’s attention with one of those un- conventional vagaries and humorous sallies of which his biographers have recorded not a few, while he thus caught the flying changes of her mind, and immortalized her changeful mood. By way of concluding my comments on the picture as such, let its present owner be congratulated upon its brilliance and nearly perfect condition. Painted, no doubt, in Gains- borough’s later days, say about 1775, it is perhaps not less than a hundred and thirty years old, yet it shows scarcely any deterioration; a keen eye may indeed detect a comparatively trivial fading in its originally highest tints, but that is all. The work shows, too, Gainsbor- ough’s very peculiar ‘pencilling, ’and the best of those wonderfully firm and deft touches of his brush, to which are due so much of that ineffable charm we recognize in the output of his prime, e.g. the “Miss Graham,” and above all, in those portraits of King George’s daughters, about the hanging of which, at the Academy Exhibition in 1784, the painter fell out unjusti- fiably with his fellow Academicians, and showed his impatient temper only too strongly. As I can find no record of Miss Howland’s sitting to her painter, and the years of a lady of ‘a certain age’ are hard to number, while it is certain that 1877 is the date of the picture’s first appearance, we must, perforce, class it with what appear to be contemporaneous ex- amples of his art. If in nothing else, Miss Howland’s portrait compares fortunately with almost all of the Sir Joshua’s of the epoch here conjectured for it; its fine preservation is in its favor. Technically speaking, I have no doubt this is to be attributed to our artist’s way of painting a primo, i.e., finishing his works right off and at once, so that his pigments dried homogeneously, so to say, and without striving with each other which should set before its under-paint. Gainsborough’s vehicle was obviously copal varnish, which changes hardly at all with time’s lapse. Would it were possible to write thus of most of Reynolds’s output. In this matter of time’s effect upon his works, and the extreme brightness and purity of that one now in question, the latter not only compares happily with some of the P. R. A.’s masterpieces, but, strangely enough, with Gainsborough’s own landscapes, many of which have darkened and become opaque and rusty in disastrous degrees. The famous “Gipsy Encampment,” and the popular “Cottage Door” are witnesses of this. Whatever may be the causes of the deterioration which is so marked, it is certain Gainsborough him- self took (strange to say of one whose art was so truthful and intensely animated and sym- pathetic), much greater delight in depicting nature as he thought he saw it, in landscape, 452 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS than in treating the human face and form divine with such almost incomparable power and zest as in Miss Isabella Howland’s likeness. Whenever he could contrive to do so he escaped from that studio of his in the Circus, at Bath, where countless belles and beaux crowded to sit to him, and paid what were then thought large sums for the privilege. He did so in order to produce the charming, but somewhat sentimental pastorals, whose too frequent deterioration 1 have lamented. His contemporaries were, it is manifest, of quite another opinion than their painter's. This is plain by means of an anecdote replete with humor which the artist related to one of his intimates, about one of his interviews with George 111, who often sat to him, or perhaps, it concerned one of the very many, and good, portraits of that monarch's Queen. The King said to his painter: ‘Doubtless portraiture is a tantalizing art; no pleasing your sitters, hey! All wanting to be Venuses and Adonises, heyl Well, Mr. Gainsborough, since you have taken to portraiture 1 suppose everybody wants your landscapes, hey! Is it not so?' ‘Entirely so, your Majesty,' was the reply. It is certain, however, that by painting portraits Gainsborough made a good deal of money, and he shocked his wife by squandering it so openly, as the anecdote goes on to say, that ‘a certain great personage whom he depicted in a lace cap, lappets and hoop, that is, “old Queen Charlotte" herself, vouchsafed to ask Fischer, the hautboy player, if Mrs. Gainsbor- ough approved of her husband's extravagance. “Nod at all, may it blease you, Madam," replied the censorious Fischer, “mine moder-in-law is twin sister of the old lady in Thread- needle Street (i. e. the Bank of England). She shall not be gondent if mine fader-in-law pour into her lap the amoundt of the whole National tebt!" ' There is another curious illus- tration of how Society's exalted ranks, closely related to his personal interests and charac- ter, regarded our painter and his works. Mrs. Delany, Queen Charlotte’s much admired model of propriety, wrote to Mrs. Dewes, her sister, from her own quarters in Galloway Building, Bath, October 23, 1760, a time when our subject was flourishing in all the glories of his art at the ancient city: ‘This morning went with Lady Westmoreland [who had sat to Gainsborough for her own portrait] to see Mr. Gainsborough's pictures (the man that painted Mr. Wise and Mr. Lucy), and they may well be called what Mr. Webb says un- justly of Rubens — they are “splendid impositions.” There 1 saw Miss Ford's picture— a whole length with her guitar, a most extraordinary figure, handsome and bold; but 1 should be sorry to have anyone 1 loved set forth in such a manner. ' It puts us right, chronologi- cally, if we remember that this was written two days before the death of George II. This whole length, life-size portrait of Miss Ann Ford, a lady well known for her beauty of a somewhat pronounced sort, and for her musical skill and attainments (born in 1 737, died in 1824), was No. 101 at the Academy in [894. She appears seated, with her legs crossed, lean- ing her head upon her left hand; her right arm is around a mandolin, behind her stands a viola-di-gamba. She became, in 1764, the third wife of Captain Philip Thicknesse, Gainsbor- ough's zealous and obtrusive patron and biographer. She was great with singing, the viola- di-gamba, lute and musical glasses, and notorious enough to be the subject of a satirical print of which there is a copy in the British Museum (Sat. Print. No. 3806), entitled the “Earl of Jersey and Miss Ford.” She is part of the subject of a long anecdote concerning 453 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS her viola-di-gamba, Gainsborough and Thicknesse which is given in Fulcher’s ‘Life of T. Gainsborough,’ 1856, p. 91. Miss Ford is mentioned in a letter by Horace Walpole to G. Montagu, February 7, 1761; ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine,’ 1761, p. 35; Nichol’s ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ 1815, ix, 256; Gillray’s satire ‘Lieu. Govenr. Gall-Stone,’ 1790, and the ‘Athe- nzeum’s’ review of the Academy Winter Exhibition, 1894, in respect to the picture Mrs. Delaney saw in our painter’s studio at Bath. As to the lady who sat to Gainsborough for the picture here in question, her sister, Rachel, married Sir George Beaumont, Bart., who was succeeded by his son, another George, the distinguished dilettante, amateur painter, collector of works of art, and per- sonal friend of all painters of his time, often mentioned in the art biographies of that period, from that of Reynolds to Haydon’s and Wilkie’s, a donor to the National Gallery and the Royal Academy. To the latter institution he gave the celebrated tondo in marble of “The Virgin and Child, ” a capital work of Michael Angelo. By the marriage in 1695, of Wriothes- ley Russell, second Duke of Bedford, with Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of John How- land, of Streatham, Surrey, his grace acquired large estates and, in consequence of that union, was created Baron Howland of Streatham, (ob. 1 7 1 1). Howland Street, Fitzroy Square, London, once a great resort of artists, and now lapsed into something like squalor, pre- serves the memory of this union, signalizes part of the great wealth of the house of Russell, and bears the name of the lady whom Gainsborough painted with so much charm. How- land appears as the second name of the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth holders of the baronetcy of Beaumont, which is held by representatives of one of the most ancient Anglo-Norman families; Sir George Howland William Beaumont, tenth Baronet, now inherits the title. The picture here represented remained in the possession of the Beau- mont family until it was sold to Knoedler and Company of New York, who, in 1903, sold it to Mr. Terrell. F. G. Stephens HIS charming portrait of a young girl shows John Hoppner at his best. It is full of grace and charm, and if, on examination, the qualities seem to be artificial and studied, rather than purely natural, the whole painting may be considered to be a success as a work of art. It is difficult at first to explain why, with all his talents and his power to please, Hoppner, when compared with his great contemporaries and precursors among English portrait painters, takes but a second place to Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney, and even, perhaps, to Lawrence and Raeburn. There is often a note of insincerity in Hoppner’s portraits, which jars upon the mind, even when the eye is quite entranced by their beauties. When a number of paintings by Reynolds, Gainsborough or Raeburn are brought together and examined, the great qualities of their art will be found present throughout and even though the pictures may vary in excellence, their sum-total goes to increase the respect and admiration for the painter’s genius. Take, however, the works of Romney, Hoppner or Lawrence, and bring them together for a similar purpose, and it will be found that the “ PORTRAIT OF MISS POLLOCK” 454 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS weaker efforts of these painters do not contribute to the foundations of their greatness, but have a distinct tendency to lower the reputation in which they have previously been held. The reason is that compared to the three first named the other three are, as men, lacking in moral backbone. In Romney’s case this was due to a want of mental equilibrium, whereby even in some of the fairest visions conceived by his imagination, the brain seemed unable to guide the hand to that technical completion necessary to make them entirely successful works of art. Lawrence was ruined by fashion and success, his life of art impaired by under- taking more duties than he could perform, and which he had not the moral courage to decline. Hence the sense of hurry, of affectation, and even the fatuousness which is so often the companion of his technical facility. With Hoppner, the man was at fault. He was insincere, like the age in which he lived. There was a mystery about his birth which he loved to cherish, like Harry Richmond in George Meredith’s novel. His parents belonged to the inferior German satellites who were quartered in or about St. James Palace, where young Hoppner began life as a chorister in the Chapel Royal. For some reason it was put about that the boy was not really his father’s son, but owned a more illustrious personage for his parent. There seems to have been no foundation for this suggestion, but Hoppner traded on his supposed illegitimacy all his life, and in this, one has the man’s character. Hoppner was undoubtedly a clever artist, and it is not surprising that his early efforts were encouraged by the young King, George III, or that he attracted the notice and obtained the friendship of the Prince of Wales in his youth. When the Prince on attaining his majority was given Carlton House as a residence, Hopp- ner settled in Charles Street, St. James Square, close by, and continued to retain the inti- mate friendship of the Prince and the other inmates of Carlton House. It was in this unwholesome atmosphere that his art was developed, and his position in the world of art established. Hoppner’s ambition was to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some of his paintings are plagiarisms of his great predecessor’s works. Backed by the support of Carlton House, Hoppner had the field, apparently, open before him after Reynolds’s death, but an unexpected rival arose in the person of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who, though several years younger than Hoppner, challenged the latter’s su- premacy and established himself as a serious and often successful rival. From this time Hoppner’s art was devoted to rivalry with Lawrence, and the honors of the strife may be said to be equally divided, certainly not to Hoppner’s disadvantage; Hoppner’s position in art is defined by the rivalry with Reynolds at one period of his career, and the rivalry with Lawrence at another. It was not on his own ground that he sought to vanquish his rivals, but on theirs and with their weapons. It is not surprising, therefore, that originality of con- ception is not one of the qualities to be found in Hoppner’s work. The man’s life is reflected in his pictures. Handsome in face and in figure, witty and polished in conversation, in friendly, even fraternal, relations with a Prince, so skilful an artist could not help painting pleasing portraits. His talents are so remarkable that he might have attained to distinction as a portrait painter had he moved in a humbler circle and been less jealous of other paint- ers. Such a portrait as that of “Miss Pollock” cannot fail to charm. If Hoppner never out- 455 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS stripped his rivals he can claim the credit of having kept pace with them, and in the ranks of great portrait painters he must always be allowed a place. Lionel Cust The Minor Masters of Painting may be divided into two classes. Of these one is found in all schools and all ages, the other is hardly more than a century old, and would almost seem to be peculiar to England. The first class includes those painters who have absorbed all that training and tradition can teach them; who have perhaps taste and feeling for what is fine, but lack the vital spark of creative imagination which separates genius from talent. The other includes those men who, by accident or caprice, have failed or refused to absorb the technical power needed to express their thoughts; they can create, but cannot render their creations in complete pictorial form. The men of the former class stand or fall by the company they have kept, and the reputation that company may have at any given time. The men of the second class find their way into favor slowly. The dunce and the pedant, in the joy of discovering technical deficiencies, will overlook the spirit beneath, and it will be long before a sufficient body of admirers is found to give their work its due. When that time does come, however, its value is a stable quantity because it is based upon a solid foundation of stimulating thought. In considering the painters at work a century ago, Wil- liam Blake would stand for a type of the second class; John Hoppner would be an equally good example of the former. Hoppner is a puzzling and pathetic figure; puzzling because in his efforts to find the narrow way of genius he follows many roads; pathetic, because none of those roads leads him quite to his goal. At one time he takes Reynolds for his model, at another he is almost indistinguishable from his rival, Lawrence, while in his excellent landscapes there is more than a suggestion of Gainsborough. His most characteristic manner is a compromise be- tween all three, with perhaps some personal note of cold color, but all the same a compro- mise. It is impossible not to feel that had he been the heir to a poor tradition instead of a very noble one, he might not have risen above mediocrity. As it is, his pictures have almost always that richness and completeness of general effect which is the common property of the great English masters of the eighteenth century. Yet this alone would hardly account for the place which contemporary fashion has accorded him by the side of Reynolds and Gainsborough, any more than would the obvious talent as a landscape painter, which his drawings show him to have possessed. The secret of Hoppner’s power of retaining our affections lies elsewhere, in his own simple, earnest nature, in his openness of mind, and in the sympathy he shows with goodness and naturalness in others. The comparative unpopularity of masculine portraits in the salesroom is a matter of everyday comment. In the case of Reynolds and Gainsborough, and often in that of Rom- ney, it is singularly unjust, but in the case of Hoppner, sometimes warranted. I have not seen a male portrait by him that did not bear some trace of effort, that was not either forced or timid or superficial. His portraits of women have, on the other hand, a consistent charm, a frank and virginal air, that not one of the other great English masters quite attains. Rom- ney perhaps comes nearest to Hoppner in this respect. But even his most charming sitters 456 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS seem just a trifle hard and conscious by comparison. The portrait of Miss Pollock thus be- longs to the class of pictures in which Hoppner is seen at his best. The finest example of that class probably is the superb picture of “The Sisters,” in the collection of Sir Charles Tennant, where Hoppner for once aims at Sir Joshua’s grandeur of design and attains to it. This masterpiece stands alone in Hoppner’s achievement; a few brilliant ‘tours-de-force,’ Mr. Stern’s “Mrs. Jordan” for example, and one or two portraits of children at Windsor, being its only possible rivals from a technical point of view. Immediately after these comes a limited number of those graceful portraits of women of which Mr. Terrell’s “Miss Pol- lock,” and Mr. Lever’s “Duchess of Rutland” are exquisite examples. Their charm, as I have said, is perhaps due to their freshness and sincerity. But freshness and sincerity are so rarely rendered in art, as to make their rendering a feat of no common order. Yet even when Hoppner’s sitter fails to excite his sympathy with the qualities of which he was wholly master, as in the “Lady Louisa Manners,” which fetched more than fourteen thousand guineas in London, in 1902, he is no mean painter, and it is only because he was the imme- diate successor of Reynolds and Gainsborough, that his art seems to us incomplete in com- parison with their serene perfections. C. J. Holmes Hoppner has been reproached for being a mere echo of Sir Joshua, and that at a time when critics and connoisseurs were racking their brains and straining their eyes to distin- guish between Giorgione and Titian, or Velasquez and Juan Baptista del Mazo Martinez! To Continental critics the resemblance between the two Englishmen may seem as complete as that between two sheep does to everyone but a shepherd. To the native critic the like- ness is superficial, and each has his own idiosyncracy. It is quite true that if Reynolds had never lived, Hoppner would not have painted exactly as he did. But that is only to say that he was the child of his age, as all but a few unteachables of genius have been. He saw beauty vividly, he thought pictorially, and he contrived so to realize his visions in paint, that paint seemed created for his purpose. In a fine Hoppner there is nothing mean, noth- ing thin or strained. He is sometimes too exuberent, his warmth occasionally verges on heat, and his drawing seldom reaches draughtsmanship. But he could paint, and he knew what to paint. His conceptions are always simple from the picturesque point of view, though their simplicity is often won by much care and elaboration. This you may see in the group of the Frankland girls, now so famous through the print by Ward, and that of the Douglas children which has lately passed into the collection of Lord Rothschild. Hoppner painted several of these groups, but the two I have named are probably the best. Like the painting here reproduced, and, in fact, nearly all his later works, their landscape back- grounds are exquisite, more than rivalling Sir Joshua’s, and being excelled only by the best of Gainsborough’s, which are the finest of all. The genealogy of these picturesque additions to the painted figure is interesting. Titian was their first employer in the form in which we see them here. Van Dyck appears to have been profoundly struck by the Venetian master’s treatment of the background in the great picture of the killing of St. Peter Martyr, in the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. 457 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS High trees, spreading out above like hedgerow elms, stood against a brilliant cloud-flecked sky in the upper part of the canvas, and furnished what would otherwise have been an empty space. The Flemish master imitated this arrangement closely in many of his extra tall pictures, such as the two great portraits of Charles I, in the National Gallery and at the Louvre. From him the expedient, or rather the happy device, descended to Gainsborough, who be- gan to make use of it early in his Bath career, probably about 1765. From Gainsborough it passed to Reynolds, and from Reynolds to Hoppner, with whom it practically died out. Others have used it since, but they have either thought fit to give it actuality, and so lost its decorative and essentially subordinate character, or they have been inferior painters. Hoppner was the last to be at once vigorous, tactful, and yet essentially conventional in its employment. He was an indefatigable sketcher of landscape. A large number of his chalk studies are in the British Museum, and they occur pretty frequently elsewhere. They seem to show that as a sketcher he built himself on Gainsborough. Some of them might readily be mistaken by a careless eye for drawings, and good drawings, by that master. When he took up brush and palette, however, it was to Reynolds that his imagination turned, if it turned to anyone at all. The “Portrait of Miss Pollock” in Mr. Terrell’s collection is a fine example of his latest period. For a Hoppner, it has lost remarkably little in reproduction, and the charm of the young and animated head against the trees is entirely preserved. This young lady after- ward became Mrs. Skottowe, of Amersham, Buckinghamshire. The picture was exhibited in the Bond Street Galleries in 1902; a mezzotint plate from it, by Mr. J. B. Pratt, was pub- lished the following year. Sir Walter Armstrong Until recently, when his real artistic value has become better known and more highly appreciated, it has been the fashion to regard John Hoppner as merely the best of the imi- tators and followers of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was, no doubt, curiously unequal in his performances, and at times careless and even slovenly, in his handling, but these are faults which are also to be found in the work of more than one of his great contemporaries, at the time when demands for portraits made upon them by the fashionable world were greater than they could supply with due respect to their art; which has been the case with popular painters at all periods in the history of portraiture. Hoppner’s work at its best, however, proves, and proves brilliantly, that he could be much more than the mere slavish disciple of Reynolds. It is quite true that he had the greatest admiration for Sir Joshua’s painting, and was very largely influenced by it; modelling his style, more especially in his younger days, upon that of the great master. In many of his portraits he made a somewhat free use of the composition and the general arrangement of the sitters in Reynolds’s canvases, but it was only natural that he and his contemporaries should fall under the spell of one, or of all, of three great painters who were at the zenith of their fame when Hoppner studied. In some of his pictures, indeed, the influence of Romney is much more apparent than that of Reynolds. As his art rose to maturity, however, he showed that he possessed original powers of execution and of insight into character sufficient to place him upon a very high 458 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS level of distinction. In his finest works, such, for instance, as “The Daughters of Sir Thomas Frankland, belonging to Sir Charles Tennant, he challenges comparison with Sir Joshua on all grounds but that of color, though in the latter quality this picture is remarkably fine, it is pale and silvery in its tones, with little of the lusciousness of Reynolds's paint, but it has a beauty of its own which is of the greatest charm. The “Portrait of Miss Pollock” is an admirable example of Hoppner’s manner toward the end of his career, when he divided the approbation of the Town with Sir Thomas Law- rence, his only real rival. He was successful in rendering the beauty of young girls, as can be seen in this picture, painting them with an unaffected simplicity which is often lacking in similar subjects from the brush of Lawrence. The expression of Miss Pollock's pretty, vivacious face, shadowed by her dark curls, he has caught and set upon canvas with much animation and sympathy, and with a greater expression of naturalness and far less self-con- sciousness than, for example, is seen in such a portrait as Sir Thomas's “Miss Croker, " in the possession of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, fascinating as the picture is in many ways. The white dress, open at the neck, with short sleeves allowing full liberty in the drawing of the lady's beautiful arms, is very simply and broadly rendered, and only relieved by the touch of color in the waist ribbon. White was Romney’s favorite color for his sitters, and Hoppner seems to have felt the artistic possibilities of it in much the same way. The painting of the arms and hands is admirable, recalling similar features in his lovely portrait of the “Duchess of Rutland," belonging to Mr. W. H. Lever, which was painted in 1799. The two pictures have many qualities in common, as well as with the portrait of “Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland," at Trentham, of the same date, which is even finer than the “Duchess of Rutland,” for in it Hoppner seems to have attempted to rival Reynolds even in the crowning glory of color. Possibly Miss Pollock sat to him a few years later than these two ladies. Hoppner was a sincere lover of natural scenery, and many of his backgrounds prove that, had he chosen, he might have been a painter of landscapes second only to Gainsborough. Whenever he got the opportunity he spent his time in sketching from nature and making charcoal and other studies out of doors. These he worked up into backgrounds for his portraits, some of which are exceptionally good, being beautiful in color, and truer in drawing and effect, than in those of the greater number of eighteenth century portraitists. His landscape settings indeed, are often less perfunctory and conventional than those of Gainsborough. In the picture under consideration, the background admirably serves its purpose, and adds to the charm of a portrait painted with great animation and a keen appreciation of beauty, and which in all ways must be considered an excellent example of Hoppner’s talent. Arthur Chamberlain “AUTOMEDON AND THE HORSES OF ACHILLES” T HIS painting, which for a long time belonged to the Cercle des Phoccens of Marseilles, is a reduced but faithful replica of the picture painted by Henri Regnault in fulfilment of his obligation as Laureate of the Prix de Rome, to send home during the first year, a 459 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS painting containing a ‘nude figure.’ But a nature as independent as his could with diffi- culty bend to the exigencies of a predetermined scheme; Regnault evaded their conditions by placing the required nude figure between two horses, and giving to the horses and not to the man, the predominant place in his composition. As early as the fifth of January, 1868, he announced to his father the subject of his picture: ‘Automedon, a young Greek, is leading the divine horses of Achilles from the banks of the Scamander; one of these is rearing, the other throws his head to one side in the effort to rid himself of the hand which holds him. 1 mean,’ adds Regnault, ‘that they shall be extraordinarily animated, and filled with something of Achilles’s own ferocity.’ In another letter, dated March 6, he describes himself as ready to attack ‘his fiery and high-mettled subject.’ On the 13th of the follow- ing June, the “Automedon” was exhibited according to custom, at the Villa Medici, and here is Regnault’s own commentary upon his picture: ‘It is a free translation of a classical subject. I have tried to give my horses, not the special characteristics of Thessalian horses, but all that is most noble and terrifying, whatever might mark them as the historic horses who foresaw the death of their master Achilles. The sky is heavy with storm-clouds; a leaden sea is beginning to stir in its depths, although the surface still looks asleep. A mournful sunbeam touches with a pale gleam the arid, rocky coast on the horizon. The horses, knowing that their master is about to take them into battle, that the fight will be their last and cost them their lives, struggle to resist the youth who leads them from pas- ture. One of them, a dark bay, rears aloft like a great phantom against the sky, the other is a tawny sorrel. In the picture I meant to give a forewarning of some sinister event. ’ Whether the effect of the picture is as dramatic as Regnault desired, I hardly know, but there can be no doubt about the brilliant quality of its execution. How eloquently does the crispness of touch render the dramatic incident! The picture is a revelation of the power and audacity of this generous youth of twenty-five, with his exalted passion for color and action. In this impressive composition everything is in motion and there is action in everything; in nature, in the horses, and in the man; the horses show the twisted lines of living arabesques; the body of the horseman in full light stands out clearly against the floating red drapery of his garment, all his muscles strained with the intensity of his effort. Some idea of the sensation caused by the appearance of his work may be found in the critique of Bonnin, published the day after the opening of the Exhibition in Paris of the works sent from the Villa Medici. ‘The horses’ manes float in the wind, their nostrils foam, their hoofs beat the ground, and all this makes a most unaccustomed tumult in the galleries of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. ’ The Academicians did not receive so much audacity without protest. Later, when the “Automedon” appeared in a public exposition, Paul de Saint- Victor expressed himself as follows: ‘An ordinary student would have translated the Homeric theme into the conventional sign-language; Henri Regnault made of it a strong violent study, a mixture of truth and style. This fine beginning reminds one of the first work of Eugene Delacroix. In a different degree, we have here the same imagination, the same living color, the same mixture of ardor and assurance in the handling of the brush.’ It is interesting to note that in the same year in which he painted “Automedon,” Regnault 460 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS was unable to resist his desire to ride one of the two horses represented in the picture; at first all went well as could have been wished, but the fourth time the animal came in collision with a sand-cart, pitching his rider over and beyond it. It was with a serious wound on the head, and an abundant loss of blood, that Regnault paid for his rashness in attempting to subdue one of Achilles’s horses. Roger Marx It was in 1868 that Henri Regnault, as Prix de Rome, executed and sent to the Acade- mic des Beaux-Arts the huge canvas which is now at the Boston Museum, representing “Automedon bringing home from the banks of the Scamander the horses of Achilles.” Regnault made an oval copy of this huge, square picture, a very finished replica, and supe- rior, in our opinion, to the original, and it is that replica which Mr. Terrell owns. They are identical in composition, but the execution of the replica is much closer and finer, making it one of the very best examples of the artist. Regnault’s state of mind when he painted these pictures easily explains their character. The young artist, upon arriving at Rome as a pensionnaire of the Villa Medici, was fas- cinated above all by Michael Angelo. In his letters to various friends he speaks of him with a mixture of admiration and amusement. He is so ‘crushed’ by him, to use his own ex- pression, that he writes: ‘To see the Sistine Chapel or to fall from a fifth story window would hurt about equally.’ After a short period of prostration, resulting from this fever of youthful enthusiasm, he wished in his turn to produce something mighty, something vehement, to give the measure of his power. Hence the “Horses of Achilles.” It was Regnault’s ambition to attain distinction in whatever he undertook; he aimed at being as brilliant an athlete as he was a painter. He was a bold and daring horseman. In this he was perhaps spurred on by the example of GSricault; he must ride dashingly, and produce splendid works in the grand style. When he painted the “Horses of Achilles” he proposed, as he himself wrote, to show ‘what there is terrible in the horse.’ He did indeed give the horses such tumultuous action and imposing size that the man appears somewhat belittled. Automedon, tall, thin, sinewy, has no more than just the strength needed to hold the two impetuous beasts, who give a flattering idea of the unseen Achilles; and yet the servant, who can hold in check such a formidable pair, while he is not the important personage in the picture, deserves some regard. The two paintings, the “Portrait of Marshal Prim,” and “An Execution under the Caliphs of Tangiers,” were to meet with even greater success than the “Horses of Achilles,” and to occasion more heated discussion; the “Automedon,” however, was honored by a sufficiently lively controversy at the Academie des Beaux-Arts, when it arrived for the ac- customed Exposition. The Academicians, who are timid persons and more easily fright- ened than Achilles, Automedon or Henri Regnault, raised lively objections. The most moderate (who were the most perfidious too), tried to show that the picture did not fill the requirements of the Prix de Rome regulations, and for certain minds a picture which does not conform to regulations is necessarily an object of blame. Others disapproved of the tendency of the work and criticized the drawing. Fortunately one among them, Pils, 461 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS stopped his colleagues by saying: ‘Which of you, Messieurs, is sure he could do as much?’ They looked at each other and were silent. However, the argument, effective as it was, amounted to nothing more than saying: ‘Which of you, gentlemen, is still as young as Henri Regnault?’ For, in the last analysis, this much discussed painting had value and the power to conquer attention, principally because it had the virtues as well as the faults of youth — fire, intrepidity, a fine self-confidence. And those are the great merits of the works left by Regnault. As one looks at them now, no longer under the spell of emotion over the dramatic end of the artist cut down in his youth, nor experiencing the captivating seduc- tion of a canvas in all the brilliancy of its fresh color, one considers them more calmly, and stands perplexed before the question of what place to assign that sympathetic figure and this strenuous art. It is certain that Regnault was animated above all by the ambition to make a sensation in the world; which, in truth, if a legitimate ambition, is a less pure one than the ambition to produce perfect and accomplished works. This is why our artist loved striking effects and such subjects as would forcibly attract the crowd — the foaming horse of Marshal Prim, for example, or the enormous shock of hair of Salome, or the pool of thick blood dripping down the steps of the Palace of the Caliph of Tangiers — things which achieved a marked, but none the less a theatrical, success, and which inevitably would lead to other still more violent and sensational things in order to retain public attention. Since then we have seen at the yearly Salons, too many ‘new’ departures, analogous to Regnault’s manifestations of a bold and powerful temperament, which called forth the cries of ‘Miracle!’ and won official recognition and the applause of the crowd. Then, a few years later, one was astonished to find the same names under little genre pictures of a wholly secondary order. Would Henri Regnault have brought us the sorrow of witnessing such a failure of brilliant promises? I do not think so; Regnault’s love of good drawing would have saved him. The few draw- ings and pencil portraits he left are sure proof that he would have gone further and further as a draughtsman, and become less and less satisfied with brilliant approximations to truth and dazzling, impetuous color. At any rate, the best of his pictures, in spite of certain de- fects which are evident to us to-day, will preserve their poetic and dramatic attractiveness. They certainly are not examples in style or tendencies to be followed by young men be- ginning their artistic career. But they remain documents of real value in art history, and touching mementoes of the young artist, the ‘garde mobile’ who was killed in the Franco- Prussian War doing his duty as a French patriot. Arsene Alexandre “ PORTRAIT OF BISMARCK” B Y the recent death of Professor Franz von Lenbach, the German school has lost a leader and an artist of definite capacity. He was born, the son of a mason, at Schroben- hausen in Bavaria, in 1836, and showed in early life an inclination toward art which op- posed by his parents proved too strong to be resisted. Eventually he became a pupil of Piloty, and with him went in 1858 to Italy, where he closely studied the masters. It is as a 462 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS copyist of the masterpieces of old art that he first acquired reputation (for Count Schack, one of his earliest patrons, he painted a long series of reproductions of famous canvases in the galleries of Italy, Spain and other countries). To this early experience was unquestion- ably due much of the quality of his later work. His force of character saved him from sink- ing into imitation of the Old Masters. Understanding that their traditions should be applied in working out the problems of modern art, he built up a personal style, for with his sincere liking and respect for tradition, he was an emphatic realist who looked at life with his own eyes, and recorded what he saw with a directness that left no room for doubt as to his meaning. It was to this vehement realistic frankness he owed his success as a portrait painter. He lived and worked in this branch through a period of strong national activity, when the destinies of the German Empire were being shaped by statesmen with ideals and with very definitive views as to the way in which these ideals should be brought within the scope of practical politics. It fell to his lot to paint most of these national leaders. He car- ried out his task with deep appreciation of his responsibility and it was with grim earnest- ness that he portrayed the men who typified the dogged resolution of the leaders of a great people. He made no attempt to soften their ruggedness under an inappropriate pictorial suavity. In none of his works, perhaps, are his insight as well as his power of expression so plainly evidenced as in his various portraits of Bismarck. He painted the great states- man with brutal directness, and an absence of sentiment that showed an absolute disincli- nation to compromise with fact. Yet by this very directness he summed up the points vitally essential in a pictorial statement. He has given us on each canvas much more than the features of the sitter before him; he has grasped the individuality and given what may be called the human and dramatic qualities of the personality of his subject. In Mr. Terrell’s portrait he shows us a comparatively unfamiliar aspect of Bismarck. But in this aged, worn face of the country squire, reflective rather than aggressive, there is, it seems to me, a clear suggestion of forcefulness. This is no superficial likeness but a con- vincing character study, possible only to a painter of great gifts. A. L. Baldry For twenty years Franz von Lenbach studied the inner characteristics of Prince Bis- marck, when the man, whose life was one long battle, appeared to have reached the height of fame and fortune. No other artist was allowed so profound an insight into the great Chancellor’s soul, and it was fortunate that Lenbach, thus favored above all others, had the intellectual and artistic power to reproduce so comprehensively the thoughts and feelings which actuated the man whom the world has named ‘The Iron Chancellor,’ but who really possessed an extremely sensitive nervous nature. There are over one hundred portraits of Bismarck which rightly bear Franz Lenbach’s signature, and no one of them resembles an- other. Whenever Lenbach began to paint a portrait of his famous friend, some rapidly per- ceived fresh characteristic of this ever restless, inexhaustible intellect flashed across his mind, hence each portrait bears its own distinct character. To obtain as perfect an idea as possible of this extraordinary personality, which, among all the great men of the nineteenth century was perhaps one of the most inscrutable, all portraits of Bismarck should be studied 463 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS together. Even then we should hardly have a complete realization of the many-sided and mighty spirit. When, at Christmas, 1878, Lenbach went to Friedrichsruh for the first time, to paint a portrait of Bismarck, he was not unprepared for his task. He had often studied and observed his model at Kissingen and Gastein, and, thanks to his excellent memory, the Chancellor’s features had left an impression upon his mind. But he wished to have a thoroughly reli- able basis to work on, and knowing Bismarck’s objection to sitting for his portrait, he feared that he might not again have another such opportunity. He chose the excellent method employed in the past by Lorenzo Lotto in painting the portrait of an Italian (in the Court Museum in Vienna), by Van Dyck in painting the head of Charles I (at Windsor), and by Philippe de Champagne in his portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu (in the Louvre). He painted on a single canvas a full face of Bismarck, the profile from the right side and that from the left. Having thus made himself fully acquainted with the structure and all details of the formation of the head and face, he was at least reassured as to the outward likeness of the portrait. This external resemblance, which is far above the mechanical one obtained by the photographic camera, was thus attained in this first portrait of Bismarck, which was an order from the Berlin National Gallery. But the psychological painter’s task was still to begin. If the commission he had received from the National Gallery served as his intro- duction to Friedrichsruh, it was solely owing to his personal qualities that the doors of the castle remained ever open to him. The sincerity and openness of his manner, his honest, naively expressed enthusiasm, soon gained the statesman’s confidence and affection, and the unknown painter, who at first may have been considered as a species of intruder, be- came an ever-welcome friend, one who remained faithful till Bismarck’s death. Lenbach was now free to study the man to whom Terence’s epigram might well apply, that nothing human was foreign to him, and who, capable of loving and hating whole-heartedly, con- cealed neither his love nor his hate. From that time forth every portrait of Bismarck that Lenbach painted became a psychological study. Each of them bears an individual charac- ter and depicts an emotion which gaining sudden prominence during an animated conver- sation quickened the slack physiognomy of every-day life. The first principle of Lenbach’s art was not to paint men as they generally appear in real life, but with the expression they have when all their mental powers and their whole individuality are reflected in their coun- tenance. This is why all his portraits, without having deviated from nature, bear an expres- sion which goes beyond nature. If the portrait painter’s art thus raises an average individual above the common level of people, it was bound to do so in a far higher degree in the case of a man of Bismarck’s intellectual powers. Lenbach painted most of his Bismarck portraits during the period between the Chan- cellor’s dismissal from the service of the State, and the time of his death, a period covering the years from 1890 to 1898. From his first painting of Bismarck after his dismissal in the spring of 1890, he became the historian describing the tragic ending of a hero’s life. The eloquence of a flashing eye was always the chief characteristic of Bismarck’s countenance, and Lenbach needed no other means of characterization. The hands, which were used as THE CRITICAL ESSAYS an invaluable aid to characterization by Diirer, Holbein and other great portrait painters, are, in Lenbach’s treatment, sketchy and careless, sometimes unpardonably so, while the drawing of the body too often shows the same defects. The painter was satisfied if the pene- trating, fascinating eyes were done justice to. In this he succeeded as no other painter had, hence he felt discouraged when he stood at Bismarck’s deathbed and saw the face from which the light had gone. He could never bring himself to paint Bismarck without the eyes which had reflected his hero’s wonderful inner life. Adolf Rosenberg It is said that when staying in an old castle in Brandenburg, Prince Bismarck once saw ghosts. I am inclined to believe that what he came across unexpectedly was a reflection of his own self in a mirror. Was he not a ghost of past ages? one of those Alsatian Land- graves who, after centuries, had leaped, full-armed, from the tomb on which his stone image had lain rigid with helmet, sword and gauntlet near at hand; the ghost of an epoch when people believed in the divine origin of monarchy, in the virtue of ‘iron and blood,’ in might considered as right. Landgrave, with indomitable faith in the ancient gods and with that force which no reasoning touches and which, carrying everything before it, crushes and triumphs over everything. It is a mighty figure which stands before us here, but it is not a figure of our time. Infinitely greater than Metternich, Bismarck will nevertheless appear a Metternich to coming generations, a giant trying to turn back the world, and succeeding in one corner of the globe for some years, centuries perhaps, but whose work is inevitably destined to perish submerged by the infinite forces of the new life. To portray this ideal model Lenbach found the ghost of schools of art which had dis- appeared. In the same way as ‘Junker’ Bismarck, the great hunter, deep drinker, passionate duellist and genial reactionary, borrowed nothing from the life of our own times, so Len- bach never came in touch with the art of our day. He belonged, as did his model, entirely to the past. And this, on my part, is neither censure nor praise, but a statement of fact. We moderns like to see the loftiest tree-tops feel the same impulse and bend in the same direction as the twigs and the blades of grass, but there are immovable trunks in the forest which are proof against all that stirs the other trees. Neither Bismarck nor Lenbach ever bent. That is not the only respect in which the statesman resembled the painter. The main characteristic of Bismarck, that which distinguished him from the majority of public men of our day was the faculty of seeing with profound accuracy into human souls and piercing at one glance the hypocrisies, the phrases, the humanitarian jargon, even to the very depths. One of his most significant sayings is this: ‘I bring you, gentlemen, consid- erations inspired not by the green cloth but by the green fields.’ That is to say he held of little account ideas born of discussion and trusted only his direct observation and knowl- edge of life. And seldom had so penetrating and certain a gaze been fixed upon men. Lenbach’s chief characteristic was never to become absorbed in or distracted by the super- ficial aspect of his model but to go straight to essentials. He did not embarrass himself with eloquent phrases of rendering, but gave with exactness the few indispensable facts which indicated the anatomy of the model and the characteristic lines of the phsyiognomy 465 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS —the ‘leading lines’ of Ruskin. Lenbach used colors sparingly in painting women, just as Bismarck paid compliments, rarely and rather heavily. But in stating with powerful and clear incisiveness the main characteristics of a manly face, the German painter was incom- parable. Look at this portrait of Bismarck grown old; this Bismarck in cap and spectacles. It was painted at the time when the statesman was reflecting upon all he had seen in his wonderful life, and when he felt the vanity of things more and more. The vanity of life he had judged as far back as 1856, when he wrote: ‘There is nothing on earth but hypocrisy and jugglery. Whether this mask of flesh be torn from us by a fever or by a bullet, it must fall sooner or later and then there will be a resemblance between a Prussian and an Aus- trian which will make it very difficult to distinguish one from the other.’ It was fortunate for the world that Lenbach should have seen and studied that ‘mask of flesh’ of the great statesman. He studied it often and painted it many times. But rarely had he more pro- foundly felt that which distinguished Bismarck not only from an Austrian but from all the men of his time, than in this portrait. Robert de la Sizeranne “DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA” G REAT adventurer, huntsman through autumn forests, painter of fairyland, ballet- master of princesses, organizer of fetes where nature becomes theatrical and the least silhouette takes lordly attitudes, Monticelli will remain in the history of nineteenth century painting as the type of the impassioned romanticist. In his splendid Bohemian misery, where though frequently poorer than a mendicant he felt ever opulent in his dreams, he had the pride of leading along the paths of his own fancy those descendants of the illustrious lords and ladies who had posed of old before the great Veronese. Strange destiny was his! Of Italian origin, his blood burned with that heat which ripens early the fragrant grapes on the terraces of Sorrento, but some chance had brought his family to the city of Marseilles where much of his life was spent. Yet Monticelli was essen- tially a wanderer, a seeker after ‘the something else,’ and only ill-fortune hindered him from roaming indefinitely in quest of the romantic landscapes that inspired him, or of those gala events whose sumptuous personages would forever become alive to him when he closed his eyes. What a wonderful explorer he was, when, abundantly equipped with Silver White, with Van Dyck Browns, and all sorts of Lakes, he turned his back on the bustle of the great commercial city, and passing out of the Real entered the glades of Chimera-land ! There awaiting him were groups of cavaliers in golden doublets, mounted on prancing horses, and exchanging courtesies and low salutes with their beplumed musketeer hats. They could not but welcome him from afar, as a guest bringing his rare gaiety and verve to companies of high-born ladies, who, with flowers and fans, struck pretty attitudes by marble balus- trades mirrored in quiet waters. He would take place among them as a historian who must be flattered in order that he should flatter in return, and along with them he would go through the woods on extravagant promenades, moving in royal fashion amidst the 4 66 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS rutilant splendor of leafage enkindled by sunset light. Visions of the Renaissance seen through the enchanted light of perpetual fairyland, dominated the imagination of the starv- ing painter, who in his misery accepted for models only princesses and gentlemen. The influence of Diaz placed at the service of Monticelli’s conceptions a fertile and superlatively colorful technique, and so the grand demeanor of the aristocratic personages who people his canvases finds its complement in superb decorative backgrounds, in landscapes with harmonious, though seemingly irregular, lines, in solitary towers where linger the last rays of daylight, in giant trees whose tops make noble silhouettes against the sky, in roads lead- ing down to running water, in barges and garlanded chariots. His figure of Love seated upon a rich car drawn by nude Bacchantes, the imaginary festivals, the strange processions which he arranges at the edge of forests gilded by autumn, the Don Qyixote whom he thrusts into a landscape of ruins, rocks and exuberant vegetation, the scenes of love held in coppices beneath arching branches, the sumptuous beauty of the flashing shafts of light with which he pierces the forest, all seem real enough, and yet Monticelli alone knew the mysterious country where the women were so engaging, the forests were so beautiful, the ruins so impressive and the sunsets so tragic. When the companions of his poverty saw him after a week's absence — reenter one of his favorite cafes, no one dreamed that he had been far away, beyond the boundaries set by geographies, a wanderer in the land of eternal splendor. Had he recounted the wondrous stages of his journey, his hearers, with one of those rapid judgments which crush words on inspired lips would have relegated him among the tellers of puerile legends, as they relegate those who dare give visible form to their inmost visions. And yet, Monticelli, departing on his short expedition empty-handed, brought back in original and astonishingly beautiful works, tangible proofs of what he had seen. Unfortunately, as he brought his treasures to commercial Marseilles, chiefly concerned with coal, sugar, bales of wool and all such cargoes, he received no recognition, and on each return from the garden of the Hesperides, the unfortunate poet of the brush was glad to sell his treasures for a mere pittance. Thus he lived and died. His impassioned work sur- vives him — pictures saturated with light and color, and reflecting the extraordinary nature of a man who had one of the richest and rarest of imaginations. Gabriel Mourey Toward the end of the Second Empire, fortune had become kinder to Monticelli, his paintings having begun to be known and appreciated in Scotland and America, largely through the efforts of a dealer who was a true connoisseur. It is even said that the French Emperor bought one of them. But, when he was forty-six years old, the disastrous Franco- Prussian War of 1870 forced him to return to his native Marseilles, and there he ‘went un- der,’ becoming more and more known as an eccentric old man, who sold his crazy work for a bottle of brandy. Much of his later work is a chaos of color, of palette scrapings with no recognizable form, a confusion out of which, if one look long enough, seems to emerge what may be fantastic figures of men and women sprawling about. One can imagine the critical attitude of a French public, educated above all to admire correct work, and to re- quire evidence, not alone of logical arrangement, but of labor in the carrying out of it. 467 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS American collectors were among the first to recognize the full and lasting value of his talent, and this picture in Mr. Terrell's collection was taken to New York as far back as 1876, ten years prior to Monticelli's death. It belongs to the artist's best period, and thrilling with passion it answers the criticism the French public applied to Monticelli's poor work: ‘What is there in it?’ with the word which is a perpetual puzzle to the bourgeois mind: ‘Quality.’ If an oil painting presents a surface as beautiful as that of Japanese lacquer or carved ivory, or cloisonne or embroidery, and if this quality is combined with superb color, then we do not demand the line of Ingres or Utamaro, but we are satisfied with what the artist has to give us. Our only criterion is the result. Has the artist created a beautiful thing? If he has, what matters it whether he took an hour or a year to do so, whether he started with palette scrapings, applied the paint an inch thick, or only stained the canvas I As a matter of fact, the ‘quality’ of a good example of Monticelli could only have been arrived at by an infinite amount of work, carried on between long periods of rest. The paint has been rubbed, and coaxed, and caressed, until it gives a result like no other painting in the world, a coruscat- ing blaze of jewelry, a riot of color which makes all other pictures seem pale and sober. Although we are reminded of many of Monticelli’s predecessors and contemporaries — of Rubens, Titian, Watteau, Turner, Corot, Diaz — yet we feel that there never was a more original artist. He may never have seen a late Turner, like “Queen Mab’s Grotto" but other Turner’s had passed through the alembic of his eye and produced a new result which seems as spontaneous and inevitable as the growth of a flower. Monticelli seldom appears to have had a definite subject, but when he did, the picture, fitting it as loosely as possible, was rather in the nature of a symphonic poem. I remember the picture he called “Souve- nir de Walter Scott, ’’ which summed up in an exquisite and absurd way, all of Walter Scott’s works as imagined by an Italian; vague ladies attended by vague Scotchmen in tartans of no clan or period, and in armor of no nationality, with mountains in the background which might be the Himalayas or McGillicuddy's Reeks. In Mr. Terrell’s picture we feel at once that we are in a world of romance; but it might be that of Boccaccio or Walter Scott or Chaucer. Yet after gazing at the groups of these ladies and gentlemen, so ethereally sen- suous, it does add a thrill to recognize in the distance the spear of the solemnly rigid Errant Knight, and to recognize his companion, waddling Sancho, naive and shrewd. In this case Cervantes's romance found an illustrator whose fantasy corresponded to the daring non- sense of the original, and whose color supplied what had been lacking in all other illustra- tors of Don Quixote, such as Daumier, Gustave Dorb and Vierge. Bernhard Sickert An art student may be taught drawing, composition, perspective, and he may acquire, to the limit of his capabilities, the power of seeing objects as they are, but color is an innate gift. Color, like the voice, expresses and explains the individual. It is the confession of personality. An artist can give reasons for his drawing, his composition, his perspective; but ask him how he produced those rose-flushed chromatic tints in his sky, and he is mute. While he can tell into which pigments his brush dipped, he knows that the laying of the color upon the canvas is instinctive, that while the eye must have stored the memory of 468 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS that passing sunset his obedient hand really followed but the mysterious promptings of his instinct. At times, nature, breaking away from her custom of casting gifts to mankind after the fashion of a sower sowing his seed with tolerable evenness over the whole field, empties all she has of one seed upon one particular spot. Thus did she lavish the gift of opulent color on Monticelli. It seized him, dominated him, and by its very strength so disturbed and dis- tracted him that one may say he died under the pressure of the gift. Born at Marseilles, he lived in color, for color, and died crazy of color, believing that he had once dwelt in Venice with Titian. Indeed he cherished the belief that he was a reincarnation of Titian, and dressed like a Doge of Venice. Before the window of his room flapped a great, red silk curtain, which cast over his few belongings his favorite purple hue. His life falls naturally into two periods; that before the war of 1870, when he lived much in Paris, and that after the war, when, practically renouncing the world, indifferent to fame and success, he retired to Marseilles, painting less and less coherently as time passed and striving the while to still the riot of his nerves with drink. In the last years, when ill-health had dulled the glory of his palette and the impulse of his drawing, Marseilles people would see the white-bearded, ma- jestic figure stalk through the streets at dusk to sell to a picture dealer two small panels, his day’s work. This renunciation of the world was his own choice. His friends in Paris strove in vain to make him return, but he refused. His dreams were his company, his ex- citements. The play of sunlight upon tree and flower and sea were always tremendous excitements; music was like a battle-cry to him, and rushing home from a concert of Hun- garian gipsy music he would light the candles, and paint feverishly until nature refused to be goaded into further efforts. His art may be divided into three periods: (1) the early years of his life in Paris, when he knew Troyon, Daubigny and Delacroix, and coming under the influence of Diaz, forsook his early minute, Watteau-like style and abandoned the bituminous tone that the spirit of the age decreed; (2) his great middle period, when his finest pictures were produced; (3) the latter days at Marseilles, when, his mind becoming clouded, his power of drawing and his color were but an echo, a lingering, faint afterglow, of his brilliant middle period. The “Don Quixote" in Mr. Terrell’s collection is a typical example of Monticelli's best period. The title is immaterial. The literary motive was anathema to him. In this work he con- ceived a vision which belonged to a Golden Age that had become sophisticated. It was his favorite vision of gaily dressed women and cavaliers in a romantic landscape. The coloring is rich and rare, a shower of prismatic largess, radiant and sparkling with whimsical charac- teristic touches. The figures who merge into the landscape are part of it, and not detached from it, after the manner of Claude. They belong to it like casual poppies in a field of wheat, or the grass growing between the cobblestones of a Dutch dead city street. The composition is sane and distinguished. Contentedly the eye roves from the dark tree-clump to the left, rests on the silhouette of the grave tower, and passes on to the fantastic huddle of trees in the foreground. It is impossible to analyze Monticelli’s method of laying on the pigment. Every artist THE CRITICAL ESSAYS has noticed what subtle and beautiful hues the scrapings of the palette assume when boldly smeared over a sheet of brown paper affixed to the studio wall. Monticelli, it would seem, had the power to control those brilliant, tertiary color smears into a coherent, decorative scheme. The observer feels his excitement, the ecstasy that trembled in him, so intense sometimes that in his desire to express the Wagnerian rushes of color that overwhelmed his consciousness, he had not the patience to draw his figures correctly. Passages from Boccaccio and Keats, hasheesh dreams of the East, the tales of romantic travelers, pageants of chivalry, the splendor of Venice, France at the height of the Empire, float into the brain before Mr. Terrell’s picture. He was an original artist who strove to express by poor, finite means, the splendor of the things seen and imagined that thrilled and tortured his super- subtle sensibilities. His contemporaries thought bizarre his method of using color. But time was on his side. His influence on the artists of to-day, particularly on the Glasgow School, has been considerable. Monticelli is among the few who have solved the problem of how to make a picture a decorative incident of a wall. It is only in our time that the veil which covered his laborious existence and miserable end has been lifted. We know that Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli was born at Mar- seilles October 14, 1824, and died there June 29, 1886, and that, although an illustrious lin- eage has been attributed to him and he was supposed to be the last scion of the Dukes of Spoleto, his father, of Venetian origin, followed the modest but lucrative profession of oil- gauger. His early years were spent in Ganagobi, a village of the Basses-Alpes, where living the rude life of a peasant he gained great muscular strength . Returning to Marseilles about 1834, he manifested a passion for painting which was opposed by his family, and especially by his mother, who likened the profession of an artist to that of a mountebank. After some years spent as a clerk in a drug store, he was permitted to enter the School of Fine-Arts at Marseilles, and showed himself very studious under the direction of Rey, Aubert and Emile Loubon, taking a first prize in 1846. He was then a young man of striking physical beauty and developed a beautiful tenor voice which in after years changed to baritone. He began painting portraits, and perhaps would have continued to do so if, on his first journey to Paris and the study of the great colorists in the Louvre and Luxembourg: Rembrandt, Titian, Veronese, Watteau, Delacroix, Diaz, he had not beheld a new world. From that time began that ardent, incessant pursuit of color and light into which he threw himself so violently as to injure his brain. Returning South, he did not long remain in Marseilles, but wandered through the neighboring region. We have a witness of these wanderings hitherto unknown. Among the wood engravings which ‘L'lllustration’ gave in 1857, of the inauguration of the Southern Railway, may be found (April 18, page 345), a view of the Pont de l’Orb, at Beziers, ‘after a sketch by Monticelli.’ The engraver who interpreted the sketch, changed it to suit the taste of the editor, and nothing remains which would mark it as a personal work. It is also known that at the time Monticelli had already painted a great number of pictures, a small number of which figured, after 1850, in the annual Exhibitions organized by the Societe des Amis-des-Arts of Marseilles. Even these remained unknown to the only public which in France confers reputation upon an artist, that is the public of Paris. His name was men- 470 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS tioned by Leon Legrange, a critic of southern origin, who reviewed the Lyons Salon of i860 in the ‘Gazette des Beaux-Arts,’ and compared Monticelli with Diaz then at the height of his vogue. This resemblance was so striking that unscrupulous dealers sold Monticelli’s pic- tures as the work of Diaz, and the deception was easy because Monticelli, throwing hap- hazard on his canvas medleys of figures, flowers, bits of landscapes, without ever a thought of subject, could not give them a distinguishing title; they were such absolute fantasies that, as one of his Provencal colleagues, Marius Chamentin, remarked, the time of day was no more obvious in his pictures than the subject he wished to represent. It could not be said of him, as Paul Monty said of Delacroix, that his color was the clothing of his thought. He had no thought of anything but to create beauty of color with paint, somehow and anyhow. After a short stay in a private sanitarium, for an attack of religious hallucination, he went, about 1863, to Paris, when his father having died he had to depend entirely upon his own exertions for a living. If his resources were meager, his needs were of the simplest and he lived literally from hand to mouth. Although a lover of good cheer he had but poor food, yet he always felt rich enough to be generous. For instance, having promised to sell a little picture to a cousin for fifteen francs, and having afterwards received a dealer’s offer for two hundred, he immediately carried the painting to his cousin, who had much trouble in forcing him to accept forty instead of fifteen francs. Again, seeing a friend, a merchant, worried by creditors, he seriously put into the former’s hand a two-franc piece fully per- suaded that he was pulling him out of trouble. Those who knew Monticelli then agree in representing him as a simple, unpractical, visionary man of a most loyal and generous nature and his memory has remained dear to them. During his second stay in Paris he refused to face the Jury of the Salon, but a great critic, Th. Thore (W. Burger), who recog- nized the merit of his work and wished to help him produce at leisure and only his best, offered him a regular income. It was in vain, Monticelli could not be disciplined; he brought Thore one day twelve canvases and never appeared again . He was living miser- ably in Romainville, outside Paris, when the war of 1870 broke out, and following the advice of a relative he journeyed, on foot through lack of funds, back to his native Provence. He painted portraits during the latter part of that ‘annee terrible’ at Saton (Bouches-du-Rhone). His old mother at Marseilles hoped to keep him near her for a time, but he kept wandering away, painting with indefatigable fury an extraordinary number of canvases, and selling them as formerly, at absurdly small prices. Some art-lovers of Marseilles gathered a number then, but the greater part, finding their way to Paris, were sold under the name of Diaz, especially after the death of the latter in 1876. In 1880, for the first and last time in his life, Monticelli sent to the Paris Salon a picture entitled “A Conspiracy” which was admitted without diffi- culty. Its author, increasingly deranged in mind, had himself inscribed in the catalogue as ‘born in Venice, pupil of the Academy of Venice, and living there.’ I have searched in vain among newspapers and reviews for a word about this work. The death of his mother in 1885 completed his ruin by plunging him into a still more hopeless physical and mental condition, and not long afterwards he succumbed to the tortures of a stroke of paralysis against which he struggled for a fortnight. He was buried near his parents. His death 47i THE CRITICAL ESSAYS passed almost unnoticed, and was barely mentioned by a few papers of Marseilles and Paris. Yet he was not unknown in England and America where his friend Mr. Cottier had for many years sought for his best works and paid good prices for them. Some of his biogra- phers assert that one of his pictures, purchased for five thousand francs by Napoleon 111 , was destroyed in the burning of the Tuileries during the Commune. This story seems incredible to those who have read in the 'Souvenirs d’un Directeur des Beaux-Arts,’ by the Marquis de Chennevteres, what the taste of that sovereign was in matters of art. Monticelli’s works, upon which only connoisseurs of exceptional taste set a value when he was living, were to become splendidly appreciated. Thus in 1891, at the posthumous sale of Philippe Burty, one of the strongest and most militant of the protagonists of present- day art, the "Venetian Women at the Sea Side” brought 8050 francs, and in 1900, in the dispersion of a part of the Collection Mireux of Marseilles, the price of Monticelli's pictures rose very high. In that same year the Centennial Exhibition of French Art in the Grand Palais of the Champs-ElysSes had seven of his pictures, loaned by Messrs. Andrd, Samat, Emile Blgmont and Charles Haviland. In France only two museums, those of Marseilles and Lille, possess canvases by him, the latter having two— a “Scene from the Decameron” and a landscape bought at the instance of Thort, who was a close friend of Edouard Rey- nart, Director of the Museum at that time. Proof that the existence of Monticelli was always problematic and mysterious, is that the catalogue of the Lille Museum (fifth edition, 1875) mentions him as having died in 1872, when he still had fourteen years of life before him. How did Monticelli produce his marvelous effects? His comrades of Marseilles and Paris are unanimous in saying that all means were good to him, and that he employed indifferently the brush, sponge or palette knife, the finger, and even at a pinch pressed the color from the tube on to the canvas. Some of his tricks, already known to Decamps and other technicians, have had curious results in certain of his pictures. Time, by the disintegration of the glazes, has disengaged the vigorous impasto underneath, and fig- ures which no one could have suspected of being there have been revealed. Whether he concealed them intentionally, or whether he had incompletely covered them in altering his original composition, is a puzzling question. '1 paint for thirty years hence,' he would say, and one does not know whether he meant to express the opinion he held of his merit, or whether he had in mind the surprise he was preparing for posterity. Cultivated admirers of Monticelli have endeavored to render in words the impression his essentially subtle art conveys to sensitive minds but no one has succeeded, and equally powerless have been engravers to translate his work in their medium. Engravings are to Monticelli's paint- ings with their vibrating color what the stopper of a cheap, pressed glass decanter is to a finely-cut diamond. Maurice Tourneux THE COLLECTION OF MR ALBE RT A. SPRAGUE BY MR KENYON COX THE COLLECTION OF MR ALBERT A. SPRAGUE BY MR KENYON COX 0 N the great, roaring, bustling, energetic, smoky Chicago, it is IT peculiarly delightful to find such an oasis of artistic refresh- v X ment as one lights upon under the roof of Mr. Albert A. Sprague. In a moderate-sized room, well lighted from large windows, but in no way resembling a gallery — rather the principal room of a pleasant and homelike city house, hang a dozen or so of pictures; a couple of small but interesting Corots (one of which bears on the back the artist’s autograph presentation to his physician); a Dutch landscape by Eugene Jettel, which was thought of sufficient importance to be borrowed by the Aus- trian Commissioner to the Chicago World’s Fair, for exhibition in the Austrian section, where it was awarded a medal; an excellent Hoppner; and others. Among these Van Dyck’s “Virgin, the Infant Christ and Saint Catherine” glows like a great jewel. One feels it growing steadily upon the vision until, after a while, it becomes impossible to look at any- thing else. This is one of two pictures of this subject, similar in composition, but with many differ- ences in detail. The other is in the collection of the Duke of Westminster, at Grosvenor House, and has been exhibited many times, especially at the great Van Dyck Exhibition at Antwerp, in 1899, has been engraved more than once, and is illustrated in Lionel Cust’s book on Van Dyck, and in that of Max Rooses. This Grosvenor picture had been held to 475 THE COLLECTION OF be the one presented in 1631 to Charles I by his resident ambassador at the Court of the Infanta Isabella at Brussels, a picture which Van Dyck denied to be authentic though Rubens and other artists declared that they knew it to be his. Rubens mentioned another picture of the subject ‘sent into Holland’ and said that the picture sent to the king ‘in many parts surpassed the one sent into Holland,’ which might lead to the supposition that the latter was the earlier production. Which of these two is the picture in the Chicago collection ? Mr. Sprague’s picture is mentioned by Rooses, but only as ‘From the collection Cambiaso at Genoa,’ whence it was bought by Count Cornelissen, of Brussels, in 1840. It is a smaller picture with a different background and a better balanced composition than that belonging to the Duke of Westminster; and it has been pronounced by good judges to be the finer work of the two, an opinion to which I strongly incline. It is certainly an admirable work, and of technical beauty every way worthy of the master. On a panel of about three feet by two and a half, the Virgin, a dark and slender type of extreme elegance, is painted at half-length, looking down upon the naked Christ-Child on her knees; to the right, leaning in adoration, is the lovely blonde head of a female saint, who presses the palm of martyrdom to her bosom between her crossed hands. As she bears no other identifying symbol, the absence of the wheel might lead some to doubt if she were really a ‘Saint Catherine,’ if it were not for the fact that the picture has always borne the same title (or the more specific one of “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine,” which it does not at all justify, since the ring, which is the inevitable and traditional symbol of this subject, is absent). Behind the Madonna is the base of a square pilaster, and a wall through an opening in which we catch a glimpse of deep blue sky contrasting sharply with the pale gold, pearl-wreathed locks of the adoring saint. It is Van Dyck in his Italianizing mood, as far from Rubens in technique and feeling as he ever came to be; and if not yet influenced by English sentiment, showing clearly the kind of sentiment that made him popular in England. But the picture bears the ineffaceable impress of the giant of Antwerp; the Cath- erine especially, who is more Venetian in the London picture, is here with her swimming eyes, her flushed and pouting face, and the plump whiteness of her throat, an unmistakable daughter of that sumptuous Flemish beauty whom Rubens painted as Magdalen or Susan- nah, years before he found her in the young flesh of H 61 £ne Fourment and made her his second wife. She has a pretty childishness which is new — as if she had already suffered a sea-change. In her adopted country she will be the mother of Sir Joshua’s babies. The Madonna, with her olive skin, large eyes, delicate nose, and cupid’s bow mouth, has much less of Rubens in her pensive air and mannered grace; and the Child has least of all. Well painted as is this figure, it is, perhaps, the least entirely satisfactory part of the picture, for it has neither the deep spirituality of the best Italian representations of the infant Saviour, nor the frank and hearty childishness of Rubens’s figures of children. There may be some little restoring in this part of the panel. With that exception, if it really be one, the picture is in admirable condition. The composition, with its somewhat florid line and its crumpled draperies, is Flemish, but the coloring, splendid in its rich bouquet of red and blue and gray, is Venetian. Rubens’s 476 MR ALBERT A. SPRAGUE vermilion has given place to Titian’s crimson, and the tone of the whole panel is fuller and deeper than Rubens’s usually is. Very much like Rubens is the palm branch with its swing- ing, decorative line; and the one sharp leaf, cutting against the rounded flesh of Catherine’s neck is a capital example of telling, but carefully attenuated, contrast. Van Dyck had two entirely different methods of painting. The most of his earlier work was painted in the true Flemish manner, with a sketch in transparent browns rubbed over a white ground, the brown tone being largely left alone in the shadows, and the local color and high lights slipped into it, the whole being kept thin and fluid. Rubens always retained this manner, and his later work shows it in a more extreme form than his earlier. Some of his latest and best pictures seem breathed upon the canvas, with hardly any substance at all. In this style Van Dyck produced the work of his youth before his Italian journey, and many of his Italian portraits are also painted in this manner, but he must have learned his other method in Italy and he used it frequently in his later work, as he did in Mr. Sprague’s picture. This second method, founded upon that of Correggio, is almost the reverse of the first. In it the picture is first entirely painted in solid, opaque monochrome, rather cold in tone, like a black and white drawing, and over this the color is spread in transparent glazes. Where the glazes have stood well this method secures great brilliancy and richness. The cold under-ground gives solidity, force of light and shade, and imparts great luminosity to the warmer over-paintings, while the surface color can be given a purity and fullness of hue impossible to maintain in tints mingled with white as they are applied. There is, however, a danger that the under-painting may work through the glazes, either blackening the whole picture, as has occurred in many Tintoretto compositions, or bleaching it to a ghastly cold- ness, as happened sometimes to Van Dyck himself. The use of fugitive colors in the glazes has produced this effect in many of the portraits of Reynolds, which show us blue and corpse-like faces looking out from their warm background. In the present instance, the glazes seem to be admirably preserved, and the result is such an organ-throated harmony of deep, yet brilliant hues, as only few of the greatest colorists have equalled or surpassed. Certainly this is the work of a prince of painting, if not on the throne, as Fromentin said of him, yet near it. If it has not quite the superb vitality of his master, Rubens, or the dignity and the gravity of the great Italians, if it seems even a little mannered in its ele- gance and over-sweet in its sentiment, it is yet the work of a great master, and is alone sufficient to give distinction to any museum or private collection in which it may be found. Near the Van Dyck, and hanging as a sort of companion to it, the two pictures being of much the same size, is Hoppner’s “Master Mercier.” While it is a charming picture in itself, it can no more help being over-shadowed by its formidable neighbor than could any other work of a later date than Van Dyck’s. And so, on coming to it from the other, one needs time to readjust one’s vision and one’s point of view, to do it justice. The greatest of its merits is one which it shares with almost all eighteenth century work, a happy choice of incident and attitude which give it a pictorial interest apart from the interest as a like- ness which it possessed for the family of the sitter. The boy, in one of those short-waisted, long-skirted gowns, with which the adaptations of the late Miss Kate Greenaway have made 477 VAN DYCK, ANTON 1599-1641 “THE VIRGIN, INFANT CHRIST AND ST. CATHERINE,” also called “THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHE- RINE” Panel, height 37 inches, width 3 1 inches. T HE Virgin, under life-size and seen to a little below the knees, is seated somewhat to the left of the center of the composition. Covered by a veil which leaves the high forehead exposed, her head is slightly inclined forward and to her right. Her face is in three-quarter view and her eyes look down at the Infant Christ lying nude and at full length on a white drapery in her lap. Over an ample robe, a cloak covering her shoulders and left arm is disposed over her knees. Her right hand slightly raises the Child’s head, her left resting on His left knee. He gazes up at His mother, raising His left hand toward her and pressing His left foot against her arm. At the Virgin’s left, St. Catherine leans forward in adoration of the Child ; her face is seen almost in profile and foreshortened; her hands are clasped upon her breast and in the right one she holds a palm ; her golden hair through which run strings of pearls, falls in loose tresses over her right shoul- der. She wears a dark-colored robe, and at her neck is seen the edge of a white garment. A wall, with to the left the base of a pilaster, fills part of the background, which to the right, through an opening be- hind St. Catherine, shows a landscape with heavy clouds. The light falls from the right. Collection Cambiaso, Palazzo Cambiaso, Genoa. Collection Count de Cornelissen, Brussels. Purchased by Count de Cornelissen in 1840 from the Cambiaso collec- tion. Purchased by Mr. Sprague from Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris, who had acquired it from Count de Cornelissen. 478 BY MR KENYON COX us familiar, stands in profile, well to the right of the canvas, as though entering the picture rather than posing in the middle of it, and bestriding his father's cane as a hobby-horse, looks out over his shoulder with serious eyes at the spectator. The simplicity and the nat- uralness of this motive are sufficient to banish the stiffness of the arranged portrait, and, with the landscape background, to make a picture of the scanty material. Either the can- vas has been over-cleaned or it was always a little thin and pale, but its tone and color, if not rich or resonant, are distinctly agreeable, and the landscape shows a good decorative sense in the disposition of its masses. There is a certain naivetd in the attempt to indicate wind in the lines of the blowing sash, and indeed the drawing is nowhere more than ade- quate to convey the desired impression, but the artist has succeeded in making us feel the charm of his little model, and this, in itself, is a sufficient achievement. The head with its golden curls, the plump little arms, the round and solid body under the frock, the little pointed shoe, these together with the healthy poise of the figure and the childish gravity of expression, are sure to please all lovers of children. Hoppner was one of the last of that brilliant school of portrait painters who were the glory of England in the eighteenth century, and he was not one of the greatest of them. The learning and versatility of Sir Joshua, or the easy witchery of Gainsborough, were be- yond his powers, perhaps as much as the courtly splendor of Van Dyck or the grand solemnity of Titian, but he possessed that pictorial sense which rarely failed the painters of his time, and that sympathy with childhood which has always marked his nation. These qualities, together with a share of indefinable eighteenth century charm, are enough to in- sure a permanence of popularity to such a picture as the "Master Mercier” as they have insured it to the works of his greater contemporaries. For, after all, it is art that the public likes in the work of the artist, even though the public itself does not always know it, and though the artist is sometimes long in finding it out. There are many painters to-day whose knowledge of nature and whose technical resources are far greater than any Hoppner ever possessed. Are there many whose pictorial gift and whose sympathy are sufficient to the production of a portrait which shall give as much pleasure a hundred years hence as we receive from this century-old canvas? There the little fellow stands for us, after all these years, as childlike, as natural, as awkwardly graceful as ever, presented without ostentation, very simply, and with the winning charm of all young things about him. THE CRITICAL ESSAYS “THE VIRGIN, INFANT CHRIST AND ST. CATHERINE” T WO distinct influences mark the talent of Anton Van Dyck. The teaching and the example of such a master as Rubens could not fail to leave a profound impression on the mind of a beginner, filled with deference for the strong personality of a great man to whom he was devoted. But the painter of Charles I certainly owed to no one that char- acter of elegance and supreme distinction, which gave him a leading and special place in a 481 THE COLLECTION OF school whose naturalistic tendencies are opposed to the idealism of southern artists. At birth every great artist, every eminent poet, possesses the germ of high qualities, which study, instruction, example will develop in future but are quite incapable of creating. There is something characteristically feminine in the talent of Van Dyck, which is found not only in the best portraits of his English period, but also in the religious subjects painted during his sojourn in Flanders. I am inclined to believe with the poet, Sully Prudhomme, that his rare elegance and delicacy in the representation of women and children are largely due to the maternal influence. “Non cette grace tendre a ce goht fier unie, Pour t’inspirer, l’exemple et le conseil sont vains, C'est ta m£re, apr£s Dieu, qui t’a fait ton g£nie.” At any rate, the compositions in which appear the Virgin with the Infant Jesus, are those which accord wholly with the temperament of Van Dyck. He excels in the render- ing of the grace of womanhood and motherhood, of the brilliant ‘ morbidezza’ of children’s complexion, and he is at his best in scenes where these two elements are united. And when, in accordance with the custom of the time, he is able to associate with the Virgin and the Divine Infant in her arms some accessory figures of saints, men or women, these scenes of several figures, leaving nothing to be desired in composition and execution, are bewitching to a rare degree. Rubens’s illustrious pupil was content to leave to the head of the school such dramatic subjects as required dash and violent action. If he sometimes attempted, and with success, the tragic episodes of the Passion, it is because he was compelled to satisfy the demands of convents, confraternities and members of the Catholic aristocracy. But his tastes, and the tendency of his genius led him to prefer such subjects as the “Pieta,” where the principal role belongs to the Mother, or the Holy Family, or such subjects as were then much in vogue, like the marriage of the Infant Jesus and St. Rosalie, that of the Blessed Herman and the Virgin, or the union between the Divine Infant and St. Catherine. Two replicas of the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” are known. One described in Smith’s Catalogue about 1827, belonging to the collection of W. Agar Ellis, was seen by Dr. Waagen in 1854 in the gallery of the Duke of Westminster at Grosvenor House, where it still remains. It has been supposed that this painting might be the one which gave rise to an interesting incident, which I have related in detail, with corroborative documents, in my book on Van Dyck. I will here give its substance: Balthazar Gerbier, representative of Great Britain at the Court of the Spanish Netherlands, desiring to please his King, Charles I, sought some masterpieces of art to send him. He chose a painting of one of the most famous pupils of Rubens, rep- resenting the marriage of St. Catherine to the Infant Jesus. Van Dyck claimed that the pic- ture acquired by the ambassador was not by his hand. Such a declaration by the author himself caused a veritable scandal. Gerbier surrounded himself with the most decisive proofs. The great Rubens affirmed that the painting was indeed the work of his pupil, a work de- nied by its author and yet declared perfectly authentic by his friends. The researches of M. 482 MR ALBERT A. SPRAGUE Edouard Fetis and M. Gachard concerning Balthazar Gerbier, communicated to the Belgian Academy, present the painter-diplomat Gerbier in a quite unfavorable light, and it might well have been that in his quarrel with Van Dyck, a quarrel which almost prevented the departure of the artist for England, the wrong was on his side. In any case the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” does not figure in the catalogue of the collection of King Charles I, (George Vertue) published in 1757. The Duke of Westminster’s picture does not appear, therefore, ever to have made part of the royal collection. It is none the less considered one of the most beautiful works of its author. That was the opinion of all competent judges who saw it at the Exposition at Antwerp in 1899. The replica of this subject, formerly pre- served in a Genoa collection, and which passed through the gallery of the Count of Car- nelissen before reaching the home of Mr. Sprague, of Chicago, is second in nothing to the painting in Grosvenor House. The origin and date of Van Dyck’s religious pictures have never been satisfactorily established, except of a few in churches concerning which we possess positive documents, hence the precise date of this canvas of Mr. Sprague’s must remain for us rather uncertain. Between those painted in Italy and those after his return to Flanders, the difference is but slight. As he took seven years to travel from Genoa to Naples and from Rome to Venice, many of his best pictures are to be ascribed to the period of his youth. The fact that Mr. Sprague’s example came from a Genoese collection may point to the Italian period. One recognizes in characteristic details the influence of the Bolognese school then dominant, while the Virgin’s head, covered with a veil falling on the shoulders, recalls Madonnas of Sassoferrato and Carracci. Quite different, however, is the St. Catherine, with her Flemish coloring and beautiful golden hair bringing to mind the type of model preferred by Rubens. The Child is quite the creation of Van Dyck, and belongs to that type always the same and always charming, of angel or cupid with which he loved to adorn his compositions. Sometimes it is the Bambino, plump and dimpled, stretched on the knees of the Divine Mother, some- times an angel, reproduced a number of times, enlivening with his graceful gambols the repose of the Holy Family in Egypt. Anton Van Dyck is par excellence the painter of child- hood. The portraits of the children of Charles I at different ages, especially the earliest in date, the admirable painting in the Museum at Turin, will always count among the master- pieces of the world. The fine canvas in Mr. Sprague’s possession sums up Van Dyck’s talent; with the Madonna showing the Italian influence of his youthful years, the head of Catherine reminiscent of Rubens and the radiant Divine Infant, it embodies his essential and most personal characteristics. Jules Guiffrey The pictorial religious art of the two or three centuries that preceded the Renaissance derived its inspiration from St. Francis of Assisi. The Virgin and Child, the saints and angels, the men and women of sacred history and legend, appear in pictures and sculptures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries mainly such as St. Francis had taught his followers to conceive them. It was likewise the work of painters to render these creations of the Franciscan imagination visible to the eyes of all that could see. The whole of western 483 HOPPNER, JOHN 1758-1810 “MASTER MERCIER” Canvas, height 40 inches, width 28 inches. I N the center of the picture, but a trifle to the right, the blue-eyed, plump little boy, apparently some four years old, is represented full-length and life-size. His body, facing the left, is in profile, but his face is turned in three-quarter view to the spectator at whom he is looking. His golden hair cut short across the forehead falls in curling locks below his ears. A wide sash with fluttering ends encircles the waist of his plain and short-waisted white dress, which reaching to the ankles exposes a white, pointed shoe. Leaning slightly forward, his right hand clutching the walking stick he is riding while the fingers of his left hand lift a loop attached to the head of the im- aginary steed, he stands on a lawn against a landscape background decoratively treated. The heavy foliage of a large tree spreading across the upper part of the canvas, gives relief to his head and body. To the right a sheet of water stretches across the base of distant hills. The cloudy sky is low in tone and the color of the whole picture pale. Purchased by Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris, from a family in the south of England. Purchased by Mr. Sprague from Mr. Sedelmeyer, 1900. 484 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS Europe practically held the same ideal in common, and dreamed of the same fairyland heaven peopled by the same kind of saintly host. The Renaissance changed all this. It shut the door of that fairyland into which , thenceforward, entry was not possible to men of the modern progressive type. Modern painters might name their pictures with the old names, but they did not truly depict the same subjects. This picture of Mr. Sprague’s, for example, is no such “Betrothal of St. Catherine ” as Fra Angelico or Botticelli, Meister Stephen or even Memlinc, would have painted, or as Saint Bonaventura or St. Bernardino of Siena, would have described. Here we are in no fairyland of gentle spirits but on the solid earth peopled with loving mothers, crowing babies and admiring aunts. In so far as the actuality of the nineteenth century art is avoided, it is avoided not by the inmingling of some religious element but by the conscious posturing of the figures— a theatrical element which, however, when concerned with religion we must not confuse with cant. This Child is just a fine human infant. St. Catherine is no saintess, her hair proves it; but she acts the saintess, as you perceive from her pose. No, this is in no sense a religious picture, yet it differs from the actual, the purely human, not surpassing fine humanity but emphasizing an aspect of it, the aspect namely of distinction. Though these people are neither divine, nor superhuman, they are assuredly distinguished. So to see mankind was Van Dyck’s peculiar gift. English courtiers of his day were few generations removed from mere rustic swashbucklers, yet we know how he made them appear, and by so doing, to some extent taught them how to look. It takes hundreds of years at least, to teach manners to a race and the teachers at no time can be many. Among those who took a hand in this long educational task— for Anglo-Saxondom, as yet, little more than begun— Van Dyck must be remembered as one of the first and perhaps even the most efficient of its teachers. If in such a picture as this, the Flemish master does little to stimulate the religious emotions, he at least satisfies and delights the eye with sight of elegant and distinguished beings beautifully beheld. Sir Martin Conway Many are the works of Van Dyck in which the influence of Titian is clearly felt, but rare are those betraying the influence of the school of Parma; and among those the chief place surely belongs to this “Virgin, the Infant Christ and Saint Catherine,” which unmis- takably recalls the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine,” treated by Correggio in the paint- ing now preserved in the Louvre. It was, however, Parmigiano rather than Allegri, whom the Flemish artist had in mind when this composition was painted, or to be more exact, it was through Mazzola’s interpretation that Allegri’s art attracted Van Dyck, as is shown by many characteristic details. This opinion is fully confirmed by a sketch made by Van Dyck’s own hand in the album now owned by the Duke of Devonshire, which represents the “Virgin and Child with St. Catherine in Adoration,” and is marked at the side ‘Parmesan.’ In this sketch we see the first idea of the composition in Mr. Sprague’s collection. As may be noted in the most casual study of the painting, the composition as well as the coloring are eminently Italian, with the exception of the head of Saint Catherine, which is a glorification of the Flem- ish type. The coloring recalls Venice rather than Parma, although the master’s native Flan- 487 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS ders is not completely forgotten. To Van Dyck’s Genoese period we are tempted to ascribe this picture full of beauty and grace, the more so since it formed a part of an important picture gallery in Genoa rich in works by the same master, the gallery of the stately Cam- biaso Palace, (standing in Via Nuova, facing the no less stately Doria d’Angri Palace,) from which it was bought in the year 1840 by Count de Cornelissen of Brussels. Two examples of the “Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine” are known, and an infi- nite number of copies and reductions, one of which, of no great merit, is in the Pitti Palace. There are also numerous engravings of it, executed by Bolswert, Bloteling, van Schuppen, Ragot, Guzzi (from Bartelli’s drawing) and finally Armand Mathey. A replica of the Cam- biaso picture, painted, I believe, about 1631, formed part of the W. Agar Ellis Collection (No. 3 in the Smith Catalogue) and after various changes of fortune, came into the possession of the Duke of Westminster. It is now preserved in Grosvenor House, London, from which it was temporarily removed to figure in the Antwerp Van Dyck Exhibition of 1899. The Cambiaso painting, on the other hand, passed directly from Brussels to America. As in most of the pictures of the Madonna belonging to Van Dyck’s Italian period, we may note behind the seated Virgin a broad Venetian pillar, and in the sky seen through an ample window, gray silvery clouds. In the Duke of Westminster’s replica the classic pillar is replaced by the thick foliage of a tree, a feature in not a few of the artist’s works belong- ing to his second manner, among which may be cited the portrait in the Louvre represent- ing the Duke of Richmond in his orchard, which shows in the treatment of the foliage a marked likeness to the painting in Grosvenor House. This, however, is not the only differ- ence between the two versions; the draperies vary distinctly from each other, nor are the dimensions the same, but considerably larger in the London copy, which shows at the left a dusky corner, fairly displeasing in its effect and out of harmony with the opposite side, which is copiously lighted. Beside this more felicitous distribution, the painting belonging to Mr. Sprague, every part of which is penetrated with light, presents a more cheerful har- mony of color and gives as a whole an effect of more felicitous and greater spontaneity. Although we hold both paintings to be unquestionably authentic, Mr. Sprague’s example seems to us much the finer of the two. There is at present in Buckingham Palace another, and truly named, “Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine,” likewise held to be the handiwork of Van Dyck and which is men- tioned by Smith in his Catalogue (No. 234); but it differs materially in the dimensions in the types and also in the composition from the Sprague and the Westminster examples. Judging from the Braun photograph, it can in no way rival the composition we have been examining. Mario Menotti This painting is one of Van Dyck’s finest representations of the Virgin, a composition of masterly simplicity and nobleness. The Virgin, whose face shows the high-bred, elon- gated features peculiar to many of the Virgins of Van Dyck’s later time, looks down upon the Child lying in her lap, who turns His eyes upon His mother with a somewhat startled gesture. A mature, handsome woman, looking with adoration upon the Child, stands to the THE CRITICAL ESSAYS right; her hands are clasped over her bosom, and in her left hand she holds a palm branch. The fact that the eyes both of the Virgin and of the Saint are bent upon the Child lends to the picture an intensity of solemn repose, which is artistically relieved by the Child’s lively gesture. The Saint might at first glance be taken for an angel, but she has no wings, and although we miss Saint Catherine’s attribute, the broken wheel, the fervent expression of her face leads us to identify her with that Saint. The omission of this attribute may be due to the desire for that simplicity which Van Dyck was evidently striving for in this picture. Discarding the traditional moment generally chosen in representing her in connection with the Christ-Child, namely the moment of the Mystic Marriage, (as in his fine painting now in Buckingham Palace,) he evidently intended to represent St. Catherine's mute, humble, heartfelt adoration of the Divine Child and the result demonstrates that he was able to ex- press the innermost nature of the Saint without having recourse to such externals as the broken wheel or the delivery of the ring. In the background is a plain stone wall and a pilaster with on the right an extensive landscape under an evening sky. A somewhat larger replica, in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, shows in the background an apple tree and a rose bush, while the figures are identical with Mr. Sprague's example, although the entire composition is massed some- what on the right of the canvas. This picture of the Duke of Westminster’s is undoubtedly genuine; it was engraved by Scheltius a Bolswert and the engraving bears a dedication by Van Dyck to the Augustinian friar Gasper van der Meiren. Shall we then say that Mr. Sprague's example is a later replica made by the master himself, in which he substituted a simpler and quieter background for the first somewhat restless one and thereby made the composition more harmonious? Or that these evidently intentional improvements are the work of a pupil or a copyist? The answer to this question is complicated by the curious story we find in contemporary documents. In December, 1631, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, the painter and English Ambassador at the Court of the Regent Archduchess Isabella in Brussels, sent to Lord Weston, Treasurer to the King of England, a picture by Van Dyck representing the Virgin and St. Catherine. Gerbier had acquired it from the painter Salo- mon Noveliers, of Brussels, and recommended it to the Lord Treasurer as a New Year’s gift for the King who was a patron of art or for the Qyeen, saying that it was one of Van Dyck’s finest works, which would surely please the King. Soon after its arrival in London, Gerbier heard that Van Dyck had declared in a letter to the painter Georg Geldorp who was then in London, that the picture sent by Gerbier was not an original but a copy. Gerbier there- upon wrote an acrid letter to Lord Weston in denial of Van Dyck’s statement, saying that the picture he sent was considered to be an original by all painters, including Rubens; that Van Dyck himself thanked him for sending it to England, though he now denied that it was an original; that the Infanta Isabella had hung it as a decoration in the chapel used by Marie de Medicis on her visit to Brussels, and would have purchased it had she not been de- terred by the high price. Gerbier enclosed in his letter an affidavit by the painter Noveliers, signed before a notary, testifying to the genuineness of the painting. Noveliers declares in this affidavit that he does not know whether Van Dyck has painted any other replicas of THE CRITICAL ESSAYS the same size; but that Rubens knows of the existence of one, and only one, other copy which has been sent to Holland, and that he, Rubens, has declared in the presence of Jean de Montfort, First Chamberlain to the Regent, that the picture sent to London is in many respects superior to the one sent to Holland. Noveliers adds that Van Dyck could not pro- duce anything better than the picture sent to London and he should be challenged to try to do so. What shall we think of this contradictory account? While we may doubt the veracity of the versatile Sir Balthazar Gerbier, painter, phi- losopher, diplomatist, whom we know to have been a dangerous and even treacherous intriguer, or the veracity of Salomon Noveliers, officially the Court Painter to the Infanta, who had charge of the pictures in her castles at Brussels and Tervueren but whose official functions did not prevent him from acting as an expert and also as a dealer in works of art, we may not doubt the veracity of a man like Rubens whose whole life lies so clear and unblemished before us that it is impossible to believe him capable of an intrigue against his former pupil Van Dyck. In attempting to answer this difficult question, in which Rubens and Van Dyck con- tradict each other, we must ascertain in the first place, which of the extant paintings was the one that Gerbier sent to London. The one that first comes to mind is the one men- tioned above “Marriage of St. Catherine,” now in Buckingham Palace. But this picture was only acquired by the King of England in the last century (according to Lionel Cust it was purchased by Chevalier de Burtin at Brussels for 2,500 guineas). We therefore have no grounds for identifying it with the picture sent by Gerbier. Nor can it be the picture in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, although this example can be traced way back and only through English collections, but as this undoubtedly authentic picture was engraved by Scheltius a Bolswert during Van Dyck’s lifetime, the latter could not have authenticated it by his dedication if he had denied its genuineness a few years previously. (Moreover we have nothing to show that Bolswert ever was in England). May we not then assume that the beautiful picture in the Sprague collection was the one which Gerbier sent to England? I am strongly inclined to think so. While it was formerly in the Italian collection of Signor Cambiaso in Genoa it cannot, judging from the style, have been painted in Italy; the con- ception as a whole, as well as many details in the drawing, point to the time following Van Dyck’s Italian journey, when he was in his native country. And as its manner resembles most closely that of the fine picture in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna representing St. Joseph kneeling before the Virgin, which was painted in 1630 , 1 am inclined to assign it to the same date and to assume that the Duke of Westminster’s example was produced not very long before. This assumption also tallies with the documentary account of the con- troversy, which took place in the beginning of 1631. I believe that the earlier work, be- longing to the Duke of Westminster, was the one which was sent to Holland. Rubens was correct in saying that the painting, which there is little doubt in my mind now belongs to Mr. Sprague, was in many respects superior to the other; but Van Dyck also was in a way justified in saying that it was a copy. Considering the difference from the Westminster ex- ample and judging from the fine reproduction here given, we must come to the conclusion 490 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS that Van Dyck himself painted this replica, which is an improvement upon his earlier work, with an artistic freedom beyond the reach of any copyist. Gustav Gluck “MASTER MERGER” I T was a favorite maxim of Reynolds that the attitudes of children are all graceful, and that the reign of distorted, unnatural postures commences with the introduction of the dancing master. Perhaps the greatest and certainly the most delightful of all paint- ers of children, the snuffy old bachelor with the big goggles and ear-trumpet, had a clearer perception of the grace of childhood and a deeper sympathy with child-nature than many a father of a large family. When the young people came to his studio he did not much care what they did. They romped, laughed, sulked or cried as the disposition of each prompted and he never thwarted them or tried to make them behave. Above all, taking the child- ren as they take themselves, with perfect seriousness, he never poked fun at what was revealed to him, no matter what it was, and while often enough secretly amused he re- mained outwardly solemn. He wanted none of the prim antics and mincing manners instilled by teachers of deportment, but his kindly old eyes were ever on a keen watch to catch the natural child off its guard, to see the germ, scarcely formed or moulded, of the man or woman expressing itself in attitudes of unstudied grace, with the spontaneity and freshness of unconscious simplicity. And for each subject he composed a fresh formula and invented a new arrangement, exquisitely adjusted to convey what he had seen and in just the way he had seen it. It is impossible to speak of Hoppner’s work as a child painter without reference to the man to whom he owed so much and whose teaching and practice so completely revolu- tionized the old methods. Hoppner shared to a large extent Reynolds’s gift of the sympa- thetic comprehension of children. Developing in a perfectly independent and legitimate way the spirit and methods that Sir Joshua revealed, Hoppner applied them in all his great- est and best work. The portrait of “Master Mercier” in the Sprague collection is an excel- lent example of his originality. While but for Reynolds it could not have come into existence at all, but for Hoppner it would not have been what it is. Sometimes uncertain, and often unequal, Hoppner, in spite of all — yes, and in spite of certain youthful mistakes of obvious and inexcusable plagiarism — was, when at his best, a perfectly original artist. En- dowed with genuine creative power of his own, that he should have stooped to borrow another man’s inventions is not only inexplicable in itself but exasperating in its fatuous- ness. But his fame is securely supported by creations incontestably great and indubitably his own. “Master Mercier” is presented with that free handling and fresh unlabored execu- tion that were especially Hoppner’s. He found a charming and novel arrangement for the bright, fair-haired boy in the white dress with the big sash, who on a fine landscape back- ground, ‘rides a cock-horse’ upon a riding crop, presumably on his way to the famous nursery destination ‘Banbury Cross.’ He bears himself with a gravity recalling the epigram that ‘games are the serious business of childhood.' One wonders how the idea was caught, 491 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS and whether it was suggested by some unconscious self-amusement on the child's part while waiting in the painter's studio. In any case it was a happy thought, and perhaps the clue to the future tastes of the man the boy was to become. A country gentleman in em- bryo seems to be suggested, an hereditary lover of sport and of a free country life, whose sweetest music would be the sound of the huntsman’s horn. Harold Bromhead The reputation of John Hoppner up to the last few years suffered an unreasonable eclipse. Leader of the portrait painters for the first years of his career, and then sharer with Sir Thomas Lawrence of the favors of society for the rest of his life, he afterwards was bracketted in the general estimation with John Opie and was thought to rank lower than Romney. No greater mistake could be made. Hoppner was a master, a ' little master ’ it is true, but at his best, a great ‘little master,' and his finest work combines qualities which render his position secure, not in his own country only, but abroad. The danger is now in the reversion of feeling, an exaggerated regard by the less critical, which, in 1901, induced admirers of the painter to ‘run up’ in the sale room one of his pictures (“Lady Louisa Manners") until it reached a price never before attained at a London auction, of $60,250. It is likely enough that artistic appreciation had little to do with the matter, and that love of a pretty face and a fancy for human grace and charm, aided by the unreasoning spirit of collectors' rivalry, brought about a sensation unaccountable on purely esthetic grounds. Yet the sale room is the mirror of the market, and it is the sale room which proves to the general public that in the last seventy years Guido Reni and Frans Hals have properly found their true levels, downwards and upwards, and that, improperly, Romney occupies a posi- tion in the collector's esteem which is not endorsed in the studio or in the critic’s study. If Hoppner were to be considered purely on his merits he would probably take his place as a painter par excellence of ladies and children, sound as were his portraits of men. Refinement he always had, charm he could always feel and reproduce; beauty appealed to him strongly, and as transcribed by him was not merely skin-deep, as with Lawrence, for it was not only the prettiness of beauty, but the character of beauty that he sought to place upon his canvas. His canvases give us less elegance than Lawrence's, but more sincerity, and while the charm is not lost, the sense of distinction remains. For Hoppner was not less a cultivated, accomplished gentleman than Lawrence. He was born and brought up in the court of King George 111 , and when he transferred his allegiance to the Whigs he transferred his allegiance also to the rival Court, more influential in matters of art and society, of the Prince of Wales. His conversation was certainly not less brilliant than Lawrence's, his knowledge not less informed, his wit and humor not less polished and sparkling. To one sally of his wit indeed, he owed his first serious defeat in his life’s duel with his friendly rival. Speaking of Lawrence's female portraits he had said in a fit of vexation: ‘His ladies show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as profes- sional chastity.' The mot, says Cunningham, on whose sketch of Hoppner all the subse- quent memoirs of the artist are founded, flew at once round the two Courts and spread in the world of art and fashion, with the result that while the more demure beauties of the 492 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS King’s Court were not indisposed to be represented by Lawrence as possessing a little more than their natural vivacity and a little less than their natural virtue, the far livelier ladies of the self-indulgent Court at Carlton House were reminded that they were being invested by the Prince’s Painter by Appointment, with a purity of look and manner in accordance neither with their fancy nor the fact. So they sought out Lawrence; they too, began to transfer their loyalty and to desert the ‘Whig painter’ for the flattering artist, who, strange to say, professed no politics in a day when the taking of sides seemed imperative to the repute of every man of spirit. The fact remains that Hoppner’s ladies are all pure, sweet, wholesome English ladies, who can think and feel deeply, and worthy consorts of the solid, thoughtful gentlemen whom Hoppner has also made to live for us. Lawrence’s men are too often not so much gentlemen as fine gentlemen; his ladies are not content to please, they seek to please, the smile is often a simper of affectation and the sparkle in their pretty eyes seems to glint as a consequence of bella-donna. There is no need to depreciate Lawrence in order to raise Hoppner. It is obvious that Lawrence was the better draughtsman; he could dazzle and flatter better than any man who ever painted in England; and his courtliness, natural enough to him it must in fairness be admitted, has an attraction no one would deny. But com- pared with the portraits of Hoppner their brilliancy often becomes glitter, and their color showiness, and although they may carry it off at a first acquaintance, they do not stand, generally speaking, against Hoppner’s more solid, sober and sincere pictures of English womanhood at its finest. For here there is simplicity as well as breeding, and naturalness as well as loveliness and charm. If this is true in the portraits of ladies, still more so is it in the case of children. Lawrence painted mainly a series of pretty little prigs, and dainty but precocious little coquettes. ‘ ‘ Master Lambton ” is a beautiful boy, but a young ‘ poseur ’ after the heart of Mr. Barlow of ‘Sandford and Merton.’ For the natural dignity, playful- ness and fascination of the happy, unsophisticated child, Hoppner’s pictures of little ones, boys and girls, from the time of infancy up to the age when knowledge of the world and its ways robs them of the sweet unconsciousness of youth — an age continued later in Eng- land than in many other countries— Hoppner may fairly be compared with those master- creators, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough. His town children are as handsome, well-bred and childlike as those of the former. His country children (there are not many of them, however) are fit to play with those of Gainsborough, and yet neither learn nor teach aught which might filch away their charm. Romney could on occasion, give us child- like children, as in the little boy in the world-famous “Lady Cowardine and Son;” but even he, more often than not, would veneer classic graces on the little forms in their highly be- coming play or their well-trained, rhythmical dance. Beside these, Hoppner’s youngsters in their frolic, or even when sitting in the studio, are as free and fresh as they should be; they exhale, as it were, the freshness of new fields, or show the restraint of the schoolroom, but never distress us with the conventional atmosphere of the reception-room and the airs of the dancing-room. “Master Mercier” is an unaffected rendering of an innocent child, unconscious of its innocence; stopped in its play of ‘riding a cock-horse’ on his father’s 493 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS walking stick he looks round in frank protest without even the faintest suggestion of a conciliatory smile. In like fashion “Master Smith,” better known as “The Nabob,” sits for his portrait, his rebellion not yet quite sunk into resignation. Little “Miss Cholmondeley,” that fascinating child, familiar to all who care about such things through Charles Turner’s beautiful mezzotint, walks forward to the spectator in friendly confidence. “Master Rus- sell,” which might have been painted as a companion to “Master Mercier,” and doubtless executed about the same time, say about 1786, is a typical English boy. With these might be grouped little “Matilda Fielding” (known as “The Hurdy Gurdy Player”), the lovely group of the Douglas children (which James Ward mezzotinted under the title of “Juve- nile Retirement”); the daughters of Sir Thomas Frankland, more charming still (which in William Ward’s masterpiece of engraving is entitled “The Sisters”); Hoppner’s own group of three boys better known by the title, on James Ward’s plate, “Children Bathing” (now in the collection of Mr. P. A. B. Widener); the Godsall children (“The Setting Sun”); the Earl of Sefton’s children; the Duke of Dorset’s children; these, with the group round “The Show,” and the little ones in “Lady Ann Lambton and Children” (“Domestic Happiness”); “Love Me Love my Dog;” “Mrs. Sheridan carrying her Child Pick-a-Back” — these and a score of other canvases bear witness to all that has been written, a tribute to the loveliness of childhood and a triumph for the painter who loves its beauty and is blessed with the gift to reproduce it. While it would be idle to place “Master Mercier” in the highest category, it is painted with great skill; its arrangement being admirable in invention, and its lighting capital, better than in many of Hoppner’s other portraits and groups. Among the artist’s defects was the dissipation of his lights; he would sometimes get sparkle all over his pictures, as in “The Sisters,” at the sacrifice of that unity and dignity which alone can come from a well-con- sidered concentration. In this case he has not failed, and the picture impresses us with the excellence of composition as well as with the freedom of the handling. Another striking merit is the happy landscape he has introduced. This is one of Hoppner’s most consistent virtues. In most of the canvases I have named, and indeed in most of his portraits of ladies as well, he delights in putting his sitters out-of-doors, and behind them, both in the distance and in the middle distance, painting a landscape, which, from the consistency of his attain- ment, cannot be said to be surpassed by that of any other English painter. His love of landscape is equalled by his taste in the rendering of it and his sense of fitness. It used to be said of him by the partisans of Lawrence, that he got his figures from Reynolds and his landscapes from Gainsborough. There is certainly something of both to be seen in his work, but mainly because he belonged to the British school of the day and was a student of the painters he so much admired. But he never was an ‘imitator,’ and his dependence on Reynolds, which is fairly frequent, is that of an independent, if searching, observer. Cer- tainly, he never borrowed ideas and annexed ‘bits’ as many a man has done since. He merely tried to see with Reynolds’s eyes, and occasionally, without affectation, would adopt the fashion of the day. As to his Gainsborough landscapes, the ground of the criticism is far less solid. In his rendering of it his trees and foliage sometimes partake of the treat- 494 THE CRITICAL ESSAYS ment and summariness of his great forerunner; but they are usually more carefully and thoroughly worked out without the conventions which Gainsborough permitted to himself. The background in the “Master Mercier” is a fair, but not by any means preeminent ex- ample of what Hoppner could do in this way; it has less of his occasional signs of rapidity, but less also of his vigor of handling. “Master Mercier” is in one respect a puzzling pic- ture, for it has defied all attempts at identification. No complete list of Hoppner’s portraits has ever been drawn up so far as 1 know, and I have reason to believe that my own is more exhaustive than any in other hands. Yet I am baffled in my efforts to trace this work. The child, it is understood, is a kinsman of the painter; but beyond that it is hazardous to go. There was a Philip Mercier, a painter, born in Berlin of French parents, who went to Eng- land and worked there, and died in 1 760 (before the foundation of the Royal Academy). He left behind him a son who became Captain of the Welsh Fusileers, and died in 1793. This child may have been Captain Mercier’s son, although his fair hair and complexion hardly suggest French extraction. And yet, it may be remarked, there is in the Wallace collection a portrait of a “Boy with an Orange” by Greuze, which, in color, fairness, naturalness, with an absence of that ‘espteglerie’ which is so dear to the French and usually so fatal to an innocent bearing, has not a little in common with “Master Mercier” in stamp and char- acter. If Hoppner was overshadowed by the greatness of Reynolds, he has less of the sim- plicity, or rather simplification, we see in Raeburn in the “Boy with a Rabbit” for example. But we must recognize among other merits the invariable taste and good arrangement in his draperies and accessories. He was often curiously like Lawrence (who was the younger man) in the way in which he dealt with heads, and particularly the hair; but in the matter of hair, and heads too, he painted with far greater solidity, just as in his state portraits he put greater richness in his draperies. No doubt this mood, this characteristic, rather, pre- vented him from achieving the lightness and brilliancy of Lawrence’s canvases; but lightness and brilliancy can be dearly bought. Hoppner too, has been charged with a lack of senti- ment in the expression of many of his portraits, and the charge must be allowed; but against this must be arrayed his appreciation of mass, his elegance and simplicity in his aspect of form and the fine sentiment revealed in the picture as a whole. He approached his work with dignity, confidence and amiability; there was no laborious effort, no indeci- sion, no teasing, just as there was no summary, aimless show of dexterity such as is leading astray so many painters at the present day. Hoppner was an earnest artist, highly endowed with all the gifts that should be united in a great portrait painter; and though his limitations prevented his stepping into the first rank, his abilities permitted him to approach it near enough to secure the respect of every connoisseur and student of art, and to keep his name alive for generations to come. M. H. Spielmann KEY TO THE ABBREVIATIONS Cross references are in Italics. Double quotation marks are used for the title of a picture. Single quotation marks are used for the title of a book, etc. Collections mentioned are to be found under ‘COLLECTIONS', {Coll) Museums and Galleries " “ " “ ‘MUSEUMS’, {Mus.) A picture reproduced in photogravure or treated of at length in the text is to be found under the name of the artist, its TITLE being printed in SMALL CAPI- TALS and attention being called in similar manner to its CATALOGUE PAGE (and therefore to its photogravure reproduction) and to its ESSAYS. When mention is made of a picture from one of the five American Collections treated in this volume, the name of the particular collection to which it be- longs is indicated in the following manner: {Mrs. G. c.) meaning that the picture belongs to the collection of Mrs. Gardner References to such pictures rarely include the subject: ‘Essay on Gossart {Mrs. G. c)' means an essay on the picture by Gossart belonging to the collection of Mrs. Gardner. But in the case of two or more pictures by the same artist belonging to one collection and in that of pictures of whom the authorship is unknown or doubtful, the subject is given, as in the case of one of the Whistlers in the col- lection of Mr. Pope: ‘Essay on Whistler "Westminster Bridge” {P. c)' or of a picture in the collection of Mr. Hay which has been attributed to different artists: ‘Essay on Florentine Master XV Century "Madonna in Adoration" {H.c).’ Exhibitions Sales 'EXHIBITIONS’, {Exh.) ‘SALES’, {Sales) Mr. Sprague Mr. Terrell Mr. Hay Mr. Pope THE CLASSIFIED INDEX PACE ABECEDARIO, see Mariette. ABINGTON, Mrs., see Reynolds. ACADEMICIANS, French, see Pope coll. and Regnault (T. c.) Italian, their vogue in England 85 ACADEMY of Venice, see Monticelli. ACHILLES 242 AGNEW & SONS, see Exb. Agnew. sold Reynolds ( T.c .) 412 Hoppner “ Miss Pollock " (T.c.) 424 AJACCIO, see Whistler. ALBANI, see Sassojerrato. ALBERTINI, Francesco, see Botticelli. ALDUS Manutius, his friends, Gior- gione and Titian 167 ALENQON, Franfois d', see Gossart (Mrs. G. c.). ALEXANDRE, Arsfcne, essays on Degas “Portrait" (Mrs. G.c.) 252-254 Daumier "Avocats" (P.c.) 313-317 Degas " Danseuses” (P. 347-349 Renoir “Girl with theCat”(P.c.) 349, 350 Regnault "Automedon” (T. c.) 461,462 ALGIERS, see Whistler. ALPS, see Aosta. ALSACE, 74, 239, 465 see French Rev. ALTOV ITI, Bindo, Cellini bust of him (Mrs. G.c.) 5. AMERSHAM, see Hoppner " Miss Pol- lock" (T. c.). AMIDEI, ‘ Delle Istorie Volteranne,’ see Raphael. AMSTERDAM, see Coll.: Hinloopen; Hope; — Mas.; — Maris; all Rembrandt Arundel there 221 ANGELICO, FRA 247,487 see Coll.: Methuen; Stroganofj; — Mus.: Florences. M .; Prado; Uffifi; Vatican; — Colnagbi; Farnese; Fiesole; Flemish Sch. XV C. M .; Florence; Leghorn; Miniaturists; Pesellino. Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin (Mrs. G. c.) 38, 39, 43 Catalogue Page 46 Essays by I. B. Supino; A. Ven- turi; E. Perkins; G. C. Williamson; influence on Pesellino 33 Waagen; Biliotti; Vasari; Crowe & Cav.; Father Marchese; Helbig, on him, .... '4', 145, 147. '5'. 152 and Fra Giovanni Masi 145, 151 S. Marco tabernacles and panels <45. >47. <5* "Madonna della Stella,” "Annuncia- tion and Dormition" (Cortona and Prado), " Dormition" (Uffizi)," Epiph- any, ” " Linaiuoli " tabernacle and “As- sumption” (Mrs. G.c.) . 145, 146, 151, 157 painting in Orvieto Cathedral 158 buried at S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome 152 Dante’s conception of the Madonna and Angelico’s 152 and the ‘ Dominican ’ Sch 305 ANNA in Giotto "Presentation” (Mrs. G.c.) 74. 154 ANNUNZIO, d', ‘La Figlia di Jorio’ .... 87 ANONIMO (Morelliano), see Giorgione on Giov. Bellini "Christ bearing Cross” 55. <84 PAGE ANONIMO (Gaddiano), see Botticelli. ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, see Gior- ANTWERP, a Van der Weyden whose composition is that of the “Crucifix- ion” (H.c.) 399 AOSTA Valley, probable scene of Tur- ner water-color (H. c.) erroneously called " Lucerne” 380 ARCADIA 299 ARCHITECTURAL backgrounds, and the classic convention 245 AREZZO, Piero della Francesca decora- tions 2 52 ARGENTEUIL on Seine, see Monet. ARIOSTO 129 ARISTOTLE in Pesellino (Mrs. G. c.) . 33 ARMSTRONG, Sir Walter, essays on Reynolds (T.c.) 435 Gainsborough (T. c.) 448, 449 Hoppner (T.c.) 457, 458 ARNO, in background of "Chigi Madon- na" (Mrs. G. c.) 192 ARR1GO, Giulianod’, (Pesello), see Pes- ARUNDEL, Howard, Earl of, see Ru- bens; V an Dyck. and Lord Aston, Sir D. Carleton, Fr. Cottington, John Evelyn, B. Gerbier, James I, Queen H. Maria, Daniel Nys, Wm. Petty, Th. Rose, Althea Talbot, I. Wake, Tower of L., 220 ASSELIJN, portrayed by Rembrandt. .. 202 ASSISI frescoes, see Giotto; P. de Cbavan- nes; St. Francis of. S. Maria degli Angeli and Fior. di Lo- renzo (Mrs.G.c.) 33,40,141 ASTON, Lord, see Arundel. ASTRUC, Zacharie, see Manet; Monet. AUBERT, see Monticelli. AUGSBURG, Schongauer’s family there- from 236 AXTEL, see P. de Cbavannes. AYLESFORD, family of Earls of, see Rey- nolds "Lady Francis Finch" (T. c.). AYTONA, Francisco d’. Marques de Moncada, Conde d’Ossuna, see Coll. Ossuna; — Mus. Louvre; — Van Dyck. BALZAC, see Daumier. BALDRY, A. L., essay on Lenbach (T.c.) 463 BAKER’S 'Chronicles’ mentioned by Walpole 441 BANDINELLI, Baccio, 70, 71, 178-183, 251 See Mus.: Florence P. V.; Uffizi;— Bronzino; Charles V; Clement VII; Condivi; Guillim; Italian Mas. Unkn.; London; Michelangelo; Milanesi; Nico- demus; Norton; Prato; Ricci; Rosso; Salviali; Santiago; Vasari; Vico. "Hercules and Cacus”.-5i, 70, 178-181 Bartsch quoted 178, 182 and Cellini and Duke Cosimo dei M. . . 180 BAN DIN 1, Venetian painter-poet 49 BANK of England 453 BARBARELLI, Giorgio, see Giorgione. BARBARI, Jacopo, see Diirer. BARBIZON painters, the, see Vermeer. BARLOW, Mr., in ’Sanford and Merton’ and Lawrence "Master Lambton”. . . 493 BARRETT, George, Jr., water-color (Tf c.) 379 BARRETT, George, Sr., " View of Wind- sor” water-color (H. c.) 375, 379 BARTELLI, his drawing of Van Dyck "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” engraved by Guzzi 488 BARTSCH, see Bandinelli; Rembrandt. BASAITI, (also Pseudo), see Giorgione. BASITE, James, engraved Rubens "Ar- undel” (Mrs. G. c.) 130 BASSES-ALPES, see Ganagohi. BATH, see Gainsborough. Marquess of, see Reynolds. BAUDELAIRE, Charles, see Daumier; Manet. BAUDRY, see P. de Cbavannes. BAYERSDORFER, see Scbongauer. BAZAINE, Marshal, see Daumier. BEAUMONT family, see Coll. Frick;— Exb. Royal A.; — St. Louis; Gainsbor- ough "Isabel Howland" (T.c.) on the Dordogne, France 449 BEAUX-ARTS, Acad^mie des 417, 421 see Regnault. Ecoledes, see Exb. Ec. des B.-A. Monument to Regnault 415 Regnault, Prix and Envois de Rome 416. 459-46 i Ecole des, Marseilles, see Monti- celli. BEDFORD, Duke of, see Russell. BELLINI, Gentile 395 see Christ; Crivelli; Degas. Giovanni, see Mus.: Nat. Gal.; Gfjigi; Venice A.; — Anonimo; Berti; Cima; Este; Mantegna. J acopo, see Crivelli; Molmenti. school of, see all Giorgione, especially 183, 184, 186 BEMBO, Cardinal, see Raphael. influence on Giorgione and Titian 167 BENEDITE, Ldonce, essays on Whist- ler "Westminster Bridge” (P.c.) 333-335 Manet "Woman with the Guitar” ( p - «•) 339. 34° Renoir "Girl with Cat” (P. c.). 352, 353 BENOIT, Camille, essays on Gossart “Portrait" (Mrs.G. c.) 232,233 "Crucifixion” (H.c.) 397.398 BERCHEM, see Rembrandt. BERENSON, Bernhard, see Botticelli; Crivelli; Giorgione; Seb. del Piombo. BERKSHIRE, Henry, Earl of Suffolk and brother-in-law of Lady Frances Finch 435-439 BESNARD, Albert, pastel (Mrs. G. c.). 8 BEZIERS, the Pont de l’Orb at, sketched by Monticelli 470 B I AG 10, di, see Pinluricchio. BIARRITZ, see Whistler. BIBLE, St. Mark’s, and Rembrandt “Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G.c.).... 197, 199 BIBLIOTHECA Riccardiana, MS. of Petrarch 'Triumphs’ 135 BILIOTTI, see Angelico. BILLI, Antonio, see Botticelli; Pesellino. B INK, Jacob, his engraving of " Isabella of Austria” and Gossart (Mrs. G. c.) 230 BIRCH’S ‘Lives,’ engraving of head Rubens “Arundel” (Mrs. G. c.) 222 BISCAY, Bay of , see Whistler. BISMARCK, see Brandenburg; Fried- ricksrub; Gastein; Kissingen; Lenbach (T. c.); Meltemicb; Si^eranne. 499 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX BLAKE, William 369 a type of the unskilled creative Minor Master 456 BLUDSO, Jim (‘Pike County Ballads'), subject of picture ( H . c.) 375 BLOTELING, engraved Van Dyck "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine”. . 488 BOCCACCIO, Botticelli draws subjects from 104 suggested by Monticelli "Don Qui- xote” (Tc.) 428 BODE, Dr. Wilhelm, see Rembrandt. essays on : Raphael “ Inghirami" (Mrs. G.c.) 98 “Bandinelli" {Mrs. G.c) 179 Rembrandt "Young Couple" {Mrs. Gc) 196, 197 Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G.c) ,99,200 Rembrandt “Landscape with Obe- lisk" {Mrs. G.c) 200 Rembrandt "Self-portrait 1629” {Mrs. G.c) 204, 205 Vermeer "Concert” {Mrs. G. c.). 207, 208 Van Dyck {Mrs. G.c.) 225 Rembrandt “Self-portrait 1645" ( Tc ) 433-434 oninfluenceof Verrocchio on Botticelli 192.193 BOLDINI, his Gallo-cynicism 91 BOLOGNESE School, 397 see Reynolds; Ran Dyck. BOLSWERT, Scheltius k, engraved the Duke of Westminster Van Dyck, so- called "Mystic Marriage of St. Cather- ine" 488,489,490 BONNAT, on Gainsborough and Law- rence as the only two real painters of the Engl, sch 447 BONNIN, on Regnault (T.c.) 460 BOND ST. GAL., see Exh. Agnew. BONI FAZIO, example {Mrs. G. £.)... . 55 BONINGTON water-colours, see Mary Cassatt. BONVIN, see Exb. B. BORDEAUX, see Manet. BORGIA Apartments, see Mus. Vatican. BORDONE, Paris, see Mus. Stuttgart; example {Mrs. G.c.) 55 BOS BOOM 360 BOSTON, see Mus. B. Public Library, P. de Chavannes deco- rations 301,307 BOTTI, Marchese, see Mus. Uffiji ; — Cosimo II. and an Angelico "Dormition" 146 BOTTICELLI, Sandro 487 see Coll.: A sbbumham; Cbigi; Nislri; Rothschild; Turenne; — Mus.: Bergamo; Berlin; Boston; Condi; Florence; A. Gr M.; Frankjort; Louvre; Napl.; Nat. GaU.; Pitti; Uffifi; — Exb.: Christiana; Colnagbi; New Gall; — Sale Monte di P.;— Capitol; Colnagbi; Despret 7; Florence; Italian Gov.; Meade; Medici; Perugia; Summa; Tarqutnius. "Death of Lucretia” {Mrs.G. c) 15, 19,20 Catalogue Page 16 Essays by J. P. Richter; H. P. Horne; l.B.Supino 98-1 ro Livy, Ovid and "Lucretia" 99 B. Gozzoli frescoes of Campo Santo, Pisa and "Lucretia" 103 Narrative method in “Lucretia” and "Virginia" 103, 109 “Chigi Madonna" {Mrs. G. c.) . . 55, 57 Catalogue Page 82 Essays by I. B. Supino, C. Ricci; M. Menotti; H. P. Home, G. C. Williamson 188-195 Dom. Ghirlandaio "Adoration of the Magi" and "Chigi Madonna" 191 tondo "the Holy Family” {Mrs. G.c.) 56 "Virginia" “Calumny of Appelles” subjects from Boccaccio 1 5. 9®. 99. 103-105, 109, 110 B. Berenson quoted 57> 94 Vasari quoted. ..105, 109, no, 192, 400 Giov. Morelli; Venturi; Eug. Muntz; quoted 105, 191, 192, 194 and Giulio Parigi; Lud. Incontri; Charles VIII; Jacopo Nardi;‘Gesta Romanorum ' 105, 109 Ulmann quoted no J. P. Richter; Streeter quoted 189, 191 Albertini; Ant. Billi; the Anon. Gad- dianoonhim 192 his vogue in England 85 landscape and architectonic acces- sories 103, 104 name in Florentine archives 192 and Corot; Realism 19, 20, 381 and Filippo Lippi; Verrocchio. . . .56, 188, 191-194 and Leonardo da Vinci; Dante; Mich- elangelo 104 and the Vespucci family; Simonetta 105, 109, no, 189-191 and Fior. di Lorenzo 139 and the Pollaiuoli 188, 190, 192, 194 and Duke Cosimo dei Medici 190 and Angelico; Piero di Cosimo; Ghir- landaio 191 and Dutch sch 193 “Madonna, Child and St. John" (H. c.) 381.385.386 Essay by I. B. Supino quoting Ca- valcaselle 400 "Madonna in Adoration" {H.c.); “Madonna of the Magnificat” 396 Jac. di F. Filippi, G. di Giansanini, Dom. di Papi (Toschi), Raff, di Lor. di F. Tosi, Biago di A. Zucci, his dis- ciples 400 BOUCHER, see Renoir. BOUDIN, see Monel. BOULARD, Auguste, see Daumier. BOULOGNE sur Mer, see Manet. BOURBON, de, see Gossart. BOUSSOD, VALADON Sr CO., see Sale. B., V. Sr Co.;— sold: Whistler "Blue Wave" {P. c.) 272 Renoir "Girl with the Cat" {P.c.).. 302 Regnault "Automedon” {T. c.) . . . . 430 BOUTS, Dietrich or Dirk, and "Cruci- fixion” {H . c.) see Coll. Tbiem. B RA B ANT, School of Southern 397 BRACQUEMOND, a realist 334, 339 BRAHAM, Mr., Thackeray sketch of him {H.c.) 375 BRAMER, Leonard, see Vermeer. BRANDEGEE, Robert G., see Blake; Ingres; " Portrait of a Lady” {P.c.) 294 "Portrait of Miss Porter" {in a Farmington Coll. desc. in P. c.) 294, 295, 299 Catalogue Page 326 Essays by C. N. Flagg; E. L. Cary 367-370 studied with D. Tryon under J acques- son de la Chevreuse 295, 367 Emerson; John La Farge quoted. .368, 369 BRANDENBURG, Bismarck in 465 BRANTOME, on Isabella of Austria. .68, 69 BREDIUS, Dr. A., see Diirer essays on Vermeer {Mrs. G. c.) . 206-207 Rembrandt "Self-portrait 1645" (T- c.) 428-429 BRIESACH on Rhine, Schongauer there 236 BRISTOL, see Muller. !Vm. J. BROKE, Lady Willoughby de 439 BROMHEAD, Harold, essay on Hopp- ner "Master Merrier” {S. c.) . . .491-492 500 BROUWER 21 1 BROWN, Ford Madox, see Rossetti. BRONZINO, see Daumier and Bandinelli 178, 182, 183 BRUGES, see Memlinc. school, see Flemish Scb. XV C. Master and Gerard David 399 B RUSSELS, see Coll.: Arenberg; Comelis- sen; Duchastel-D.; — Mus. Brussels; — Gerbier; Isabella; N metiers. Moro, Gerbier there 215, 220 and Van Dyck 224, 226 Van der Weyden "Madonna” and Schongauer {Mrs. G.c.) 238 Royal Library, a water-color "Isa- bella of Austria" 230 BRUTUS, in Botticelli "Lucretia" {Mrs. G.c.) 16, 99 BUCHANAN, see Sassojerralo. BUCKINGHAM, Earl of, visit to Spain with Charles Stuart, and Titian {Mrs. G.c.) 50, 175 BUDA-PESTH, see Flemish Scb. XV C. Master. {H. c.) BURCKHARDT, see Gossart; Raphael; Sassojerrato. BORGER, W. (Thord), see Sale Burger; — Millet; Monticelli; Regnault; Rousseau; Vermeer; Vrel. and Corot, Delacroix, Millet and Rous- seau 208 BURGKMAIR, see Schongauer. BURGUNDY and P. de Chavannes .... 305 art of, and early Venetian art 1 18 Ducal house of 68, 69 BURKE'S ‘Peerage’ 405 BURNE-JONES, Sir Edward, William Morris, the decoration of St. Martin’s Church, and Rossetti {Mrs. G. c.). .80, 81 his disregard of mediums 325 BYZANTINE influence, see Giotto. on Venetian art 116 CADORE, see Titian. CALVINISTS 369 CAMPANILE, Venice, see Titian CAMPIN, Robert 367 CAMPO SANTO, Pisa, see B. G0770U CANALETTO 92 see Thomas Girtin ‘CANTICLES’ 382 CAPITOL, Rome, in Botticelli "Lucre- tia’’ {Mrs. G. c.) 103 CAPPELLE, Van der, see Rembrandt. CARDENAS, Alonzo, buys Mantegna (Mrs.G. c.) 52 "CARDINAL-PRINCE" see Coll. J. P. Morgan. CARLETON, Sir Dudley, see Arundel; Rubens. CARLETON HOUSE 455.495 CARNARVON, 1st Earl of. Van Dyck portrait of his wife, and Van Dyck {Mrs. G.c) 227 CARONDELET, see Mus. Louvre. CAROTO, and Mantegna, Vasari on them. 1 59 CARPACCIO, see Crivelli; Degas; Pin- iuriccbio; Venice. CARRACCI, the, 85, 385, 393 see Van Dyck. CARRARA, de, Petrarch bequeaths him a Giotto "Madonna” 247 ‘ CARICATURE, LA, ’ see Daumier. CARRIERE, Eugfene, see Mary Cassatt; Renoir. CARY, Elizabeth Luther, essay on Brandegee "Miss Porter” 368-370 CASA, Nicolo della, see Mus. Louvre CASSATT, MARY 257 see Degas; Durand-Ruel; Oise. "Awakening of the Baby" {P. c.) 283,287, 288 Catalogue Page 308 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX Essays by R. Marx; T. Duret; C. Mauclair 354—357 and Japanese prints 287 and Titian “Madonna of the Rabbit” 288 and Madame Vig£e-Lebrun 354, 355 and Impressionism 355—357 and Bonington’s water colors; Eva Gonzales, Berthe Morizot 356 and Carrifere’s children; Renoir; etch- ing 357 CASSONE paintings, see Botticelli; Pesellino. Savonarola quoted on no CASTELFRANCO, see Giorgione; St. Francis of A. CATENA 55, 186 “CATHERINE of Austria,” see Moro. CATTANEA, see Simonetta. CAVAL.CASELLE, on Botticellesque tondo (H. c.) 400 CAZIN 362 CELLINI, Benvenuto, see Bandinelli; M ichelangelo. bust of Altoviti (Mrs. G. c.) 51 CENTRAL ITALY, racial traits and Giotto (Mrs. G. c.) 244 CHAMBERLAIN, Arthur B., essays on Vermeer (Mrs.G. c.) 208-210 Reynolds (T. c.) 435,439,440 Hoppner’s (T.c.) 45^,459 CHAMENTIN, Marius, see Moniicclli. CHAMPAGNE, Phillippe de, see Len- CHAMPFLEURY, see Manet. CHARDIN 447 "CHARIVARI, LE" see Daumier. CHARLES I, of England, see CM.;— Mantegna; Rubens; Titian ; Fan Dyck. alleged Velasquez portrait of him 175 and Arundel 220 Nys his agent and Mantegna (Mrs. G.c.) 1 65 flattering portraits demanded by the English of his day 450 and Gerbier 476, 481, 482 CHARLES V, and Titian 168, 172, 174 and his sister Isabella 68, 228 and Bandinelli 179 and Moro (Mrs. G.c ) 215-219 CHARLES VIII, of France, see Botticelli. CHARLOTTE, Queen 435, 449, 451, 453 CHASSERIAU, see P. de Chavannes. and Delacroix; Ingres 299, 301, 305 his painting in the Cour-des-Comptes, 301 CHAUCER 468 CHELSEA, see Whistler. CHENAVARD, see P. de Chavannes. CHENNEVlERES, Marquis de, and the taste of Napoleon III 472 CHEVREUSE, Jacquesson de la, see Brandegee; Ingres; W. Tryon. CHICAGO, see Coll. Sprague; — Exh. Chicago. CHIGI family and Botticelli "Madonna dei Chigi ” (Mrs. G. c). ... 82, 188, 189, 192 CHILD pictures, see especially Gains- borough; Hoppner; Lawrence; Rey- CHINESE water-color technique, see Titian. CHRIST, inadequately conceived by Bellini disciples 186 CHRISTIAN II of Denmark, see Gos- portrait by Orley 229 CHRISTINA, of Milan, niece of Charles V, see Gossarl. of Sweden, see Coll. C. of S .; — Mantegna. Cl MA, disciple of Gio. Bellini 186 CIMABUE trained Giotto 242 CITTA di Castello, Pinturicchio "Ma- donna” and Pintur. (Mrs.G. c.) ... . 122 CLARENDON on Arundel 223 PACE CLAUDE Lorrain, see Moniicclli and Turner 172 ‘CLASSIC,’ opposed to but not antag- onistic to ' romantic’ 445 CLEEF, Joost van, see Moro. CLEMENT VII and Bandinelli. ... 180, 181 CLEODOLINDA, see Giorgione (Mrs. G. c.) CLEVELAND, Ohio, see Kavanaugh, J . CLOU ET, see Degas; Gossarl. did not flatter his sitters 450 CO DDE, see Terborcb. COLLECTIONS, different, an index to personality 373 COLLECTIONS AGAR ELLIS, see Ellis c. ALBA, Duke of : Rembrandt “Landscape with the Town” and R. Landscape (Mrs.G. c.) 2 ALTAMIRA, Count: Velasquez "Philip IV” (Mrs. G.c.) 50, 51, 173-1 ANDRE: a Monticelli 4 ANONYMOUS, Farmington: Brande- gee “Miss Porter” 294, 295, 2c 3 2 6, 367-3 ANTWERP, private: G. Metsys " Lucre- tia Romana” and Gossart (Mrs. G. c.) 2 APSLEY House: Velasquez "Aguador” 1 ARENBURG: a Vermeer 2 ARUNDELIAN (see also Ashmolean).. . 2 ASHBURNHAM, Lord: Botticelli "Lu- cretia” (Mrs. G.c.) 16, i ASHBURTON, Lady: Crivelli "St. George” (Mrs.G. c.) 1 ASHMOLEAN : and Rubens 164, 2 AUSTEN, Mrs. J. F.: Pesellino "Tri- umphs” (Mrs. G.c.) 64, 1 AYLESFORD, Earls of: Reynolds (T. c.) . B AN K ES : Velasquez "Philip IV" (Mrs. G.c.) 5°. 5'. 173- 1 BARKER, Alex.: Sassoferrato (H. c.) . . 3 BEAUMONT family: Gainsborough " Isabel Howland” (T. c.) 4 BEDFORD, Duke of: Moro (Mrs. G. c.). 1 BERT I : copy Giorgione (Mrs. G.c.)... 1 BERWICK, Lord: Titian “Europa" (Mrs.G. c.) 58, i BEURNONVILLE, de: Rembrandt “ Landscape with Obelisk” (Mrs. G.c.) 100, 2 BIANCO Pal.: Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child” and S. (H. c.) 3 BIGAZZINI, Ant.: Raphael "Madonna di San Antonio” (J. P. Morgan c.) BLANCHE, J.: Renoir "Women Bath- ,n g • BLEMONT, Em.: Monticelli example. . 4; BONNEMAISON: Raphael "Pieta" (Mrs. G.c.) : BONOMI, see Cereda c. BRAMCAMP: Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs. G. c.) < BROMLEY, Dav.: Pesellino "Triumphs” (Mrs. G.c.) 64,1: BROWN LOW, Earl: replica of Gossart " Portrait” (Mrs. G.c.) 2; BUCKINGHAM, Duke of: see Stowe H.c. BUCKINGHAM Pal.: Van Dyck "Mys- tic Marriage of St. Catherine” and Van Dyck (S. c.); Rembrandt "Ship- builder and Wife”, “Self and Wife” and R. “ Young Couple" (Mrs. G.c.).. 196, i< Rembrandt "Self-portrait” and R. (T.c.) 4: Terborch " Letter” and T. (Mrs. G. c.) 2 BURGER: Vermeer (Mrs.G. c.). ... 1 12, 21 BURRELL: Manet “VictorineMeurand” and M. (P. c.) 3; CAMBIASO: Van Dyck "Virgin, In- fant Christ and St. Catherine" (5. c.) 476, 478, 483, 488, 490 CAREMULI: Sassoferrato "Madonna” and S. (H. c.) 393 CARLISLE, Earl of : Rubens "Arundel” and R. (Mrs. G. c.) 221 CASALI Pal: Sassoferrato “Madonna" perhaps the one in (H.c.) 394 CAVAFY, Dr.: Whistler "Westminster Bridge" (P.c.) 270 CERCLE des Phoc£ens: Regnault “Au- tomedon "(T.c.) 430, 459 CEREDA, Bonomi, : Gossart "Portrait” (Mrs.G. c.) 142,227, 228 CHARLES I: Mantegna "Death of Mary," Prado and M. (Mrs. G.c.) 52 CHIGI : Botticelli “Madonna dei Chigi ” (Mrs. G.c.) 82 CHRISTINA, Queen of Spain: Man- tegna "Sacred Conversation” (Mrs. G. «•) 52 Queen of Sweden: Raphael "Pieta” (Mrs. G.c.) 28 COATS: Vermeer "Christ with Mary and Martha" 206 COLE-ORTON : Gainsborough (T. c.) . . 449 CORNELISSEN, Count: Van Dyck (S.c.) 476, 478, 483, 488 COTTIER, Daniel: Monticelli (T. c.) . . 442 CZERNIN: Vermeer "Painter in his Studio” 207, 209 DARNLEY, Earl of: Titian "Europa" (Mrs. G. c.) 58 DAVIS, Erwin: Degas "Danseuses” (P-c.) 296 DAWSON, M. H.: Raphael "Pieta" (Mrs. G.c.) 28 DEMIDOFF, Prince: Terborch “Music Lesson ” and T. (Mrs. G.c.)... 1 18, 212, 214 DEVONSHIRE, Duke of: Rembrandt etchings 203 Van Dyck sketch of "Virgin and Child with St. Catherine in Adoration" and Van Dyck. (S.c.) 487 DOB IE, J. T.: Diirer (Mrs. G. c.) 233 DONOVAN, Mrs.: Copy of Titian "Eu- ropa” (Mrs. G.c.) 170 DRAGO, Prince del,: Mantegna "Sa- cred Conversation” (Mrs. G.c.) 52 DUCHASTEL-DAN DELOT: Rubens "Arundel ” drawing and Rubens (Mrs. G c.) 221-223 DUNLOP: Rossetti (Mrs. G.c.) 4, 81 DURAND-RUEL: Renoir "Girl asleep with Cat in her Lap " and Renoir (P. c.) 352 ELKINS, Wm. L.: Regnault "Autome- don"(7\ c.) 430 ELLIS, Agar,: Van Dyck “Virgin, Child and St. Catherine” (Duke of West- minster c.) 482, 488 ESCORIAL: Van der Weyden "Cruci- fixion” and "Crucifixion” (H. c.) 397 FAURE, Paris: Monet “ Boats leaving the Harbor” (P. c.) : 290 FARRAR, Sir Wm.: copy of Giorgione (Mrs. G.c.) 184 FESCH, Cardinal : Correggio (Mrs. G. c.) 55 FORBES, J. Staats: Whistler "Blue Wave" (Ac.) 272 FREER, Chas. L.: Whistler examples. . 330 FRICK, H. C.: Vermeer example 207 Gainsborough “Sir George Beaumont" and " Lady Beaumont ” 410 GARDNER, Mrs. John Lowell, Boston. 1-254 Courbet figures in a Whistler picture . . 323 GIOVANELLI Pal.: Giorgione “Ad- rastus and Hypsipyle” (A storm, sol- dier and Gipsy) 185,186 501 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX GRAHAM, W.: Rossetti (Mrs. G. c.).... 4 GRAMMONT (Gramont), Due de: Ti- tian “ Europa” (Mrs. G. £.)... 49, 58, 168 GROSVENOR House: see Duke oj West- minster c. HAVEMEYER, H. O. . Courbet “ Louise Colet” 341 HAVILAND, Chas.: Monticelli example. 472 HAY, The Honorable John 371-400 HINLOOPEN: Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G. c.) 94, 197 HOPE: Rembrandt "Young Couple" (Mrs.G.c.) 88 Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs. G. c.) 94, 198 Terburg “Music Lesson” (Mrs. G. c.). 1 18 Vermeer picture (Berlin Mus.) 207 HOWLAND Castle: see Carlisle c. HUNT, de la,: " Bandinelli" (Mrs. G. c.) 70 ILCHESTER, Lord: Rembrandt "Self- portrait” and R. (T. c.) 428 1NGHIRAMI: Raphael "Inghirami” (Mrs. G. c.) 10, 97 1VEAGH, Lord: Rembrandt "Self-por- trait” and R. (T. c.) 428 JERNINGHAM, Sir H.: Moro "Queen Mary” (Mrs. G. c.) 124 JOHNSON, John G.: Whistler "Die Lange Leizen" 330 JOSEPHS: Vermeer and V. (Mrs. G. c.) 207 KAUFMANN, Richard von: triptych byMemlincand "Crucifixion” (H. c.) 398 LANSDOWNE, Marquis of: Rem- brandt "Windmill” and R. "Land- scape” (Mrs.G.c) 203 LANSKORONSKI, Count: copy of Giorgione (Mrs. G. c.) 183, 194 LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas: Raphael "Pieta" (Mrs. G. c.) 28 LEATHARD: Rossetti "Dante meet- ing Beatrice in Florence and Para- LECONFIELD, Lord: see Petwortb H. c. LEGANES, Marquis de: Velasquez "Philip IV” (Mrs.G. c.) . . 50,51, 173-178 LEUCHTENBERG: Rembrandt "Self- portrait, 1645” (T.c.) 406 LEVER: Hoppner “Duchess of Rut- land” 457.459 LEYDEN, Baroness van : Vermeer "Con- cert” (Mrs. G.c.) i!2, 207, 208 LEYL.AND, Fred. R.: Rossetti "Love's Greeting” (Mrs. G.c.) 4, 81, 87 Crivelli, (Mrs. G.c.) 22,117 Crivelli “ Peter and Paul” 117 LOSCHI, Casa: Giorgione "Christ" (Mrs.G.c.) 76, 183, 184, 186 MADRAZO, Jos6 de: Titian (?) " Eu- ropa " 170 MANTUA, Duke of: Mantegna "Sacred Conversation ” (M rs. G. c.) 52 MANZ1 : Degas (Mrs. G. c.) 160 MARIA, Marius de: copy Giorgione "Christ bearing Cross” (Mrs. G. £.)... 184 MAY, Ernest: Manet "Woman with Guitar" (P.c.) 284, 337 MESDAG: Mancini "La Convalescente” and others 87, 91 METHUEN, Lord: Angelico "Assump- tion of the Virgin” (Mrs. G. c.) . . . 46, 157 MOND, Ludwig: Crivelli "Peter and Paul” 117 MORGAN, J. P.: Raphael "Madonna di S. Antonio di Padua” 28 Rubens "Cardinal -Prince" and R. (Mrs.G.c.) 221 Lawrence" Miss Croker” 459 N1STRI : Botticelli (?) tondo (H. c.) ... 400 NORFOLK, Duke of: Holbein "Chris- tina” and Gossart (Mrs. G.c.).. . . 228, 229 Van Dyck "Arundel” and Rubens "Arundel” (Mrs.G.c.) 219,220,222 NORTHBROOK, Earl: Rembrandt “Landscape” and R. “Landscape" (Mrs.G.c.) 200 ORLEANS: Raphael " Pieta” (Mrs. G.c) 28 Titian "Europa” (Mrs. G. e.)," Diana and Acteon,” "Diana and Calisto” and others 58, 168 “ Bandinelli " (Mrs.G. c.) 70 OSBORN, Wm. Church: Manet "Gui- tarero” 338 OSSUNA, Duke of: Van Dyck (Mrs. G.c.) 67, 136, 223,225 Van Dyck"Francescod’Aytona". . . . 225 PALAIS-ROYAL: see Orleans c. PALMER, Potter: Renoir "Girl with Cat "(P.c.) 302 PANCIAT1CHI: free version of "Chigi Madonna” 193 PETWORTH House: Moro " Hy. Sidney and Wife" 217 POLAND, King of: Rembrandt " Lit- tle Ship of Peter” (Mrs. G. c.) 94 POPE, Alfred Atmore, Farmington. 255-370 POSONYI, A.: Rembrandt "Landscape with Obelisk" (Mrs. G. c.) 100 POTTER, Gerald: Whistler “Blue Wave" (P.c.) 272 POURTALES, de: now in The Hague, copy Giorgione "Christ with Cross” (Mrs.G.c.) 183 Rembrandt “Portrait of Youth" and R. "Young Couple” (Mrs. G. c.) 196 PREYER, Amsterdam: Jacob Maris (P- c.) 3 <4 RATH, von: Rembrandt “Landscape with Obelisk” (Mrs. G. c.) too RECHBERG, Count Carl: Raphael "Pieta” (Mrs. G. c.) 28 REIS: Rembrandt "River Scene” now in Amsterdam Mus. and R. Landscape (Mrs.G. c.) 200 RICHTER, Dr. J. P.: Giotto " Presenta- tion” (Mrs. G. c.) .54 RONET: Degas copy of Poussin "En- lfevement des Sabines" 252 ROTHSCHILD, Baron Alph.: “Fair Simonetta” 190 ROTHSCHILD, Baron G.: Rembrandt "Martin Dacy" and R. "Young Couple" (Mrs. G. c.) 196 ROTHSCHILD, Lord: Hoppner "The Douglas Children ” 457 ROYAL ACADEMY: Michelangelo marble tondo "Virgin and Child”. . . . 454 RU B ENS, P. P. : " Arundel " (M rs. G. c.) 130 SAM AT: Monticelli exam pie 472 SAMUEL, Stuart M.: Crivelli “St. George” (Mrs. G.c.) 22, 1 17 SANFORD, Rev. John: Angelico "As- sumption" (Mrs. G. c.) 141 SAXONY, Grand Duke of: Rembrandt “Self-portrait” and R. (T. c.) 428 SCHIFF: Rembrandt "Landscape with Swans” and R. "Landscape” (Mrs. G.c.) 200,202 SCHLOTTHAUER, Prof. J.: Schon- gauer "Madonna” (Mrs. G. c.) 148 SEPP, Prof.: Schongauer (Mrs. G. c.) 148, 237, 238, 240 S1MES: Giotto (Mrs. G. c.) 154 SIX: Vermeer "The Houses” and “ Dairy Maid”; Paul Potter example 206,208 SPENCER, Lord: Moro "Self-portrait”. 217 SPRAGUE, A. A., Chicago 473 _ 495 STAFFORD, Barons: Moro "Queen Mary” (Mrs. G.c) 124, 215 STEENGRACHT : Terborch example ... 212 STERN: Hoppner “Mrs. Jordan” 457 STOWE House: Rembrandt “Self-por- trait, 1629” (Mrs. G.c.) 106, 204 STROGANOFF, Count: Angelico Tab- ernacle and A. (Mrs. G.c.) 145 SUTHERLAND. Duke of: Van Dyck "Arundel” 222 TARNOWSK1, Count: " Isabellaof Aus- tria” and Gossart (Mrs. G. c.). 69, 228, 230 TENNANT, Sir Chas.: Hoppner "Sis- ters” 457-459 TERRELL, Herbert L.,New York.. 401-472 THORE, see Biirger c. THIEMAd.: Dirk Bouts (?) picture and "Crucifixion " (H. c.) 398, 399 TORREGIAN1: Pesellino cassone "Da- vid” and P. (Mrs. G. c.) 128 TURENNE, Comtesse de: Version of Botticelli "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 193 VENDRAM1N : Giorgione " Adrastus and Hypsipyle” 186 VIVIAN, “Bandinelli” (Mrs.G. c.). . 70 WANTAGE, Lady: Pesellino cassone "David” 128, 135 WARWICK, Earls of: Rubens "Arun- del” (Mrs. G. c.) 130,221,223 WEBER: Rembrandt "Presentation in Temple” and R. “Self-portrait, 1629” (Mrs.G.c.) 204 WESTMINSTER, Duke of: Van Dyck so-called "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” replica with variants of Van Dyck (S. c.) 475, 476, 482-488 WHYTE, M. A. : Raphael “ Pieta” (Mrs. G. c.) 28 WIDENER, P. A. B.: Hoppner "Chil- dren Bathing” (mezzotinted by James Ward) 494 WILHELM II, of Germany: Rembrandt “Samson” and R. "Self-portrait, 1629” (Mrs.G.c.) 204 WILLETT, Henry: Giotto (Mrs. G. c.) 154 WINDSOR CASTLE: Hoppner children portraits 457 Van Dyck "Charles 1” and Lenbach.. .464 WOODBURN: Pesellino "Triumphs” (Mrs.G.c) 64, 129 ZEZZA, Baron: Florent. Sch. XV. C. Master, "Madonnain Adoration” (H. c) 382 COLMAR and Schong: school of COLNAGHI, P. & D. sold Raphael “Pieta” (Mrs. G.c.). Fra Angelico (Mrs. G.c.) Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (Mrs. G. c.). Titian (Mrs. G.c.) Velasquez (Mrs. G.c.) "Bandinelli” (Mrs. G.c.) Botticelli "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 82, 193, Rembrandt "Young Couple" (Mrs. Durer and G. Isen- •73. 74. 236, 237, 2 G.c.) "Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs. Landscape (Mrs. G. c. "Self-portrait, 1629” ) (Mrs. Terburg (Mrs. G. c.) Pesellino (Mrs. G.c.) Rubens (Mrs. G.c.) Van Dyck (Mrs. G.c.) Schongauer (Mrs. G. c.)... 502 INDEX THE CLASSIFIED COLOGNE 397 school, use of gold backgrounds. . .73, 239 and Schongauer {Mrs. G. c.) 238 COLOR, as expression of personality. . . 468 COLORED Sculpture and Architecture. 19 COMEDIE Humaine, La, Balzac 318 COMMUNE of 1870, Jacob Maris... 360 burning of the T uileries 472 CONDI VI, on Michelangelo’s head and " Bandinelli” {Mrs. G. c.) 180 CORNELISZ, Lucas, see Mus. Hampton CONSTABLE, John 275, 325, 447 CONWAY, Sir Martin, see Diircr. general essay on Hay coll 373 - 392 essays on Vermeer {Mrs. G. c.) . . .205, 206 Terborch {Mrs. G.c.) 213,214 Moro {Mrs. G.c.) 2 1 4, 2 1 5 Van Dyck (S. c.) 483, 487 COOK, Herbert, see Giorgione; Titian. COOPER, R., engraved Rembrandt "Self-portrait 1629" {Mrs. G. c.) . . . . 106 COROT, see Botticelli; Burger; Daumier; Degas; Maris; Monet; Monticelli; Pi- sarro; P. de Cbavanncs; Renoir; IVbisller. sketch {Mrs. G.c.) 8 "Le Lac de Garde" 361 CORREGGIO, see Coll. Fesch; — Pan Dyck. example {Mrs. G.c.) 55 CORTISSOZ, Royal, essays on Velas- quez "Philip IV” {Mrs. G. c.). .176-178 Degas {Mrs. G.c) 249-252 Daumier "Avocats" {P. c.) 317-319 CORTONA, see Angelico. Pietro da, see Regnault. CORVUS, Joannes, see Mus. Hal. Port. G. COS I MO, Piero and Andrea di, see Bot- ticelli; Pesellino {Mrs. G. c). COSTANTINI, sold Pinturicchio "Ma- donna” {Mrs. G.c.) 34 COTER, Colin de 397 COTIGNOLA, see Giorgione {Mrs. G. c.) COTTIER & CO., sold Degas "Dan- seuses "(P.c.) 296 Reynolds {T.c.) 412 Hoppner " Miss Pollock" {T. c.) 424 Regnault "Automedon" {T. c.) 430 Monticelli “ Don Quixote" {T. c.) . . . . 432 Whistler "Westminst. Bridge”(P. c.) 278 COTTIER, Daniel, see Monticelli. COTTINGTON, Sir Francis, see Arundel. COURBET, see Coll: Mrs. Gardner; Have- meyer; — Manet; Monet; Regnault; Re- noir; Trouville; IV his tier. and Realism 270, 305, 334, 339, 340 portrayed in a Whistler {Mrs. G. c.) . . 323 "Louise Colet" (Havemeyer c.) 341 COUR-DES-COMPTES. see Chasseriau. COUTURE, see Manet; P. de Chavannes. "Romans of the Decadence" 300 COX, Kenyon; general essays on Pope coll 257-299 Sprague coll 475-48 1 CREDI, Lorenzo di, see Florentine Sch. XV C. Master {H. c.) and Verrocchio 188 CRIVELLI, Carlo. see Coll.: Ashburton; Leyland; Mond; — M us.: Berlin; Brera; B ritish; Louvre; Martinengo; Nat. Gall.; — Exb: New Gall.; R. A. IVinter; — Sales: Leyland; — Naples; Oriental Art; Porto di F. “St. George and the Dragon” {Mrs. G.c.) 21 Catalogue Page 22 Essays by C. Ricci; Mason Perkins; G. Gronau; McNeil Rushforth; Roger Fry 1 10-12 1 "St. Mary Magdalen,” “ Vision of the Bl. Gab. Ferretti,” "Madonna" Ver- ona, "Coronation of the Virgin”. ..111,115 84 PAGE Jacopo Bellini St. George drawings; Gent. Bellini organ shutters S. Marco; Vivarini sch. "Annunciation" S. Giob- be; Carpaccio in Ch. of S. G. di S. and in S. G. M., Venice; Crivelli pi della of “Odoni” altarpiece, London and other Crivelli’s; Giambono Crisogno,” Venice, tit, 115, 116, B. Berenson quoted 21, Molmenti in'Rassegna d’Arte'on him and Jac. Bellini Ricci ‘MemorieStoriche’ quoted real keys on girdle of a holy man . used raised gilt ornaments Paduan infl.; Vivariniinfl ito.it and Giambono, Jacobello del Fiore Mantegna 11 studies under Squarcione CROZAT, engraving of Raphael " Pieta by Dr. Flos {Mrs. G. c.) CROWE & CAVALCASELLE, see An gelico; Mantegna; Raphael; Titian and Giorgione, {Mrs. G. c.).. . . on Botticellesque Tondo {H. c). “CRUCIFIXION" («.£.): see Flemish Scb. XV C. Master. CRUTTWELL, Maud, see Mantegna. CUNNINGHAM, see Hoppner. CURTIS, Ralph, essay on Mancini "Standard Bearer” {Mrs. G. c.) . .87-91 CUSANCEde Beauvoir, Beatrice de. . . . 224 CUST, Lionel, essays on Van Dyck " La- dy with Rose” {Mrs. G.c.) 223-225 Reynolds {T.c.) 440,441,445 Gainsborough {T.c.) 446-448 Hoppner {T.c.) 454-45$ CUYP, Albert, see Maris. DANTE, see Angelico; Botticelli; Giotto; Rossetti. in Pesellino (Afw. G.c.) 33 DARET, Jacques 397 DARTMOUTH, family, see Reynolds. DAUBIGNY 332.334 See Daumier, Monticelli. DAUMIER, Honor!, see Exb. Daumier; — Marseilles; Sistine Cb.; IVisselingb. "Avocats” {P.c.) 258, 263, 264 Catalogue Page 266 Essays by D. S. MacColl; A. Alex- andre; R. Cortissoz; C. Mauclair 31 1 -323 "Christ Shown to the People;" "Don Quixote and Sancho Panza;” "Le Malade Imaginaire;” Marshal Bazaine; Sedan 312, 468 "La Rue Transnonain;” "The Re- 3"-3'3. 3'* Muther on his and Millet’s style 263 Baudelaire on him and Rembrandt 31c and Daubigny; Millet 263,312,313 and Michelangelo 263, 315 and Lithography; infl. of Antique sculpture 311 and Alex. Lenoir; Louis-Philippe; Philipon 311 and Corot 312, 313, 317, 31c and Boulard; Dechaume; J. Dupr!; Michelet 313 and Gambetta; Molifere; Balzac; Gavarni 317, 31? and El Greco 31c his blacks recall Bassano and Bron- zino 3 if and Degas 343, 34? dies in Valmondois 313,31; DAVID, patron saint of Florence. .15, 21,9c Scenes from his life by Pesellino iaf Statue by Michelangelo 18c Gerard 158, 392, 39c his and Memlinc’s influence 39c Louis, see Regnault. DEGAS, see Coll.: Davis; Manji; Ronet; —Mus.: Aix; Louvre,— Exb. Salon 1869; — Cottier; Durand-Ruel; English scb.; Glaen^er; Japanese infl.; Moliere; New Orleans; Parnassian; IVbisller. "Portrait of a Woman” {Mrs. G.c.) 79, 80, 92 Catalogue Page 160 Essays by F. J. Mather, J r. ; R. Cor- tissoz; A. Alexandre 247-254 “Danseuses” {P. c.) 281,282 Catalogue Page 296 Essays by R. Marx, B. Sickert, G. Geffroy, A. Alexandre 343 _ 349 copy Poussin "Enlfevement des Sa- bines” 252,253 " Duranty ’’ and the old traditions .... 253 “Rehearsal of the Dance” 349 Raffaelli quoted on him 346, 347 and Ingres. .79, 80, 250-253, 277,343, 345, 348 and Manet 79, 259 and Mancini 87,91 and Delacroix 254, 343 and Carolus Duran 247 and Alfred Stevens 248 and Franz Hals, Holbein, Velasquez, sincerity of their art; Pisanello; Titian “ Paul III”; "Alexander VI ” 251, 252 and Fantin Latour; Raphael; Signor- elli 252 and Piero della Francesca.. 247,249,252 and Impressionism. . . . 249, 277, 355-357 and Rembrandt 251, 281, 282, 348 and Michelangelo 252, 281 and Ital. Primitives. 277, 340, 344,346-348 contrasts Mantegna with the moderns 300 and J ongkind ; G. Moreau ; Vermeer 342, 344 and Corot; Clouet; Daumier; Poussin • •••• 343. 348 and G. Belhm;Carpaccio;Ghirlandajo; Perugino 344, 346, 347 and Renoir 349 and Mary Cassatt 355—357 DECHAUME, Geoffroy, see Daumier. DELACROIX, Eugfene 270, 305, 312 see Burger; Degas; Monticelli; P. de Chavannes ; Regnault; Rossetti. small example {Mrs. G.c.) 8 and Chasseriau 301, 305 and lithography 311 Paul Monty on his color 471 DELANY, Mrs., writes Miss Dewes of Gainsborough’s studio 439, 453, 454 DELAUNAY, Elie, see P. de Chavannes. DELFT and Vermeer 206, 21 1 S. Luke’s Guild of, Fabritius and Ver- meer members of it 209 DELIGNON, J. I.., engraved Titian " Europa” {Mrs. G. c.) 28 DESPRETZ, agent, buys Botticelli "Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G. c.) 188 DEWES, Miss, see Delany, Mrs. DEVENTER, Terborch at 211,213 DIAZ, see Monticelli; Rousseau. DIJON 68 DODGSON, Campbell, essay on Schon- gauer {Mrs. G.c.) 236-238 DOGE of Venice 469 DOLCI, Carlo 393 see Sassojerrato. Matteo Dolci his master 394 DOLOMITES, the. see Titian. DOM F.N ICH I NO, see Sassojerrato. ‘DOMINICAN’ school of art, and Angel- in 385 DOM1NICI, Giovanni 147 DONATELLO 121 DORE, Gustave, illustrates Don Quixote 468 DORI A d’ Angria Palace, Genoa 488 DOU, Gerard, see Terborch. DOUGLAS, Langton, essay on Angelico {Mrs. G.c.) 141, 145-147 503 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX PACE DOWDESWELL & DOWDESWELL, buy Moro (Mrs.G. c.) 124 DOWMAN, John, "Madame Roland” (W.c.).. ■ 379 DOWNES, William Howe, essays Whistler "Westminster Bridge" ( p - f ) 332. 333 Whistler "Symphony in Violet and Blue” (P. c.) 3 6 3 ~ 3 6 5 DRACHF.NFELS, see Turner. DRESDEN, see Sassojerrato. DUPRE, Jules, see Daumier. DURAND-RUEL, see Coll.; Exb. D.-R. sold P. de Chavannes ( P.c .) 260 Manet (P.c.) 284, 337, 340 Degas (P.c.) 296 Mary Cassatt (P.c.) 308 Renoir (P. c.) 342, 350, 352 Monet (P.c.) 290 DURAN, Carolus, see Degas. “DURANTY,” see Degas; Manet. DURER, see Coll. Dobie;—Mus.: Ber- lin; Dresden; Hampton Court; Mun- ich; Prado; Uffip; — Exb. R. A. IP inter 1902; — Colmar; Gossart; Lu- ther; Nuremberg; Reporiorium K. Portrait of a Man (Mrs. G. c.) . .69, 73 Essays by Dr. Friedlander, Aug. Marguillier 233-236 “Banker Imhof” 73,234,235 "Pirkheimer Wilibald," "Ulrich Wambtthler" 235 Susanna his servant; in Antwerp . .69,234 and Giorgione 232, 239 visits Mechlin .229, 232 Jac. Barbari and Italian inf] 229,235 and his friend Steret 234 Sir M. Conway and Dr. Brediuson him 234 and Schongauer 236 engravings (P.c.) 257 did not flatter his sitters 450, 45 1 hands as means of characterization . . . 465 DU RET, Theodore, see Coll. Duret. essays on Whistler "The Blue Wave” (**•«•) 323 Manet (P . c.) 336. 337 Monet (P.c.) 340. 341 Mary Cassatt (P.c.) 355. 356 Whistler "Symphony in Violet and Blue" (P. c.) 363 DUTCH SCHOOL, see Diirer; Flemish S.; Gossart; Isenmann; Maris; Moro; Rembrandt; Rubens; Scbongaucr; Ter- borcb; Pan Dyck; Vermeer; IPhistler. the largeness of the Flemish manner. . 67 realism its dominant note 2 1 1 its national and local character 289 ECLECTICS, see Italian eel. EDWARD VI 67 ELEANOR, Queen, see Gossart. and the Beaumonts 499 EMERSON, see Brandegec. ‘ENGLISH Illustrated Magazine,’ en- graving of Rossetti (Mrs. G.c.) 80 ENGLISH School, see Bcmnat; Van Dyck. influence on Degas; on Renoir. . 344, 351 of eighteenth century, see Gainsbor- ough; Hoppner; Lawrence; Raeburn; Reynolds; Romney; Opie. of water-colour painters (H. c.). .375, 380 see Barrett; Dowman; Girtin; Hunt; Muller; Prout; Turner. ERASMUS, and Inghirami 14 F.ROL 1 Chapel, see Spoleto. ESCORIAL, Titian and Velasquez 172 ESTE, Alfonso d’, see Titian. Isabella, and Mantegna, Bellini, Gio. . 167 ETCHINGS, see Cassatt; Haden; Me- ry on; Rembrandt; IPhistler. EUGENIE, The Empress, see Degas; Monticelli. EVELYN, John, see Arundel. EXHIBITIONS ACADEMY OF F. A. St. Petersburg, 1886: Rembrandt "Self-portrait, 1629" (Mrs. G.c.) 106 1900: Rembrandt “Self-portrait, 1645 ” (T. c.) 406 AGNEWS Eighth Annual Collection, 1902: Hoppner (T. c.) 424,458 ANTWERP, see Exb. : Van Dyck. BIRMINGHAM, 1900: Gainsborough " Lady Charlotte Finch” 435,439 BRITISH INST., 1818: Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs. G. c.). 94 Rubens “Arundel” (Mrs. G.c.).... 130 1853: Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G.c.) 94 BON VI N, see Salon des Refuses. BEAUX-ARTS, Ecole des, see Exb. Daumier; M anel Mem.; Regnault M em. BERLIN, 1898, Works of the Renais- sance: Copy of Giorgione "Christ bearing Cross" (Mrs. G.c.) 183 BRYANT, see Exb. Orleans. CHICAGO, World's Fair, 1893: Jacob Maris " Dordrecht" (P. c.) 314 Eugene Jettel "Landscape” ( 5 . c.). 475 COLNAGHI, 1901: Botticelli “Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 82,193,194 CRISTIANA, Rome, 1870: Botticelli "Virginia Romana” 105 DAUMIER, £. des Beaux-Arts, 1889.. .312 DURAND-RUEL, see Exb. des 1m- pressionistes, 1899; Renoir, 1892. GROSVENOR GAL. 1885: Gainsbor- ough " Isabel Howland" (T. c). . . . 418 1889: Reynolds (T.c.) 412 Reynolds "Lady Louisa Heneage Finch," “Lady Aylesford" 439 HAGUE, THE, 1903: "Isabella of Aus- tria” (Count Tarnowski coll.) and Gos- sart (Mrs. G. c.) 228,230 DES IMPRESSIONISTES, Manet, Pis- saro, Renoir and Sisley, Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1899. Renoir " Girl asleep with a cat in her lap” (Durand-Ruel c.) 352 MANCHESTER Art Treasures, 1857: Rembrandt "Young Couple"(/Wri. G.c.) 88 Rubens "Arundel” (Mrs. G. c.) 130 MANET, see Exb. des Impressionisles. Pont de I'Alma, 1867: “Woman with Guitar" (P. c.) 284, 337 Memorial, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1884: " Woman with Guitar” (P. c.). . .284, 337 NAT. PORTRAIT London, 1866: Rubens "Arundel" (Mrs. G. c.) 130 NEW GAL. 1893, Early Italian Art: Botticelli "Lucretia” (Mrs. G. c.)i6, 104 Giotto "Presentation” (Mrs.G. c.) 154 Pesellino " Triumphs" ( Mrs. G. c.) 64 1894, Venetian Art: Crivelli “St. George" (Mrs.G. c.) 22, 1 17 Sir W. Farrar copy of Giorgione "Christ bearing Cross " (Mrs. G. c.) 184 1899, Earl Brownlow replica Gossart Portrait (Mrs.G. c.) 233 ORLEANS COLLECTION, London, 1798-9: Titian "Europa” (Mrs. G. c.) 58 " Bandinelli" (Mrs. G. c.) 70 REGNAULT, H., Memorial, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1872 :"Automedon "(T.c.) 430 REMBRANDT, Amsterdam, 1898, " Landscape with Obelisk” (Mrs. G. c.) 100 RENOIR, see Exb. des Impressionisles; Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1892; "Girl asleep with a Cat in her lap” (Durand- Ruel c.) 352 R. A. 1784: Gainsborough “Portraits of King George’s daughters” 452 i860: Whistler "At the Piano” 330 1861: Whistler "La Mfere Girard". . . 330 1862: Whistler "Thames in Ice,” "Alone with the Tide” 330 1863: Whistler "Westminster Bridge” (P; «•) 33»-335 Millais "The Eve of St. Agnes” 332 1864: Whistler, " Die Lange Leizen” (Johnson c.) 330 1865: Whistler "The Golden Screen,” . “Old Battersea Bridge," "The Scarf," and "The Little White Girl — Symphony in White No. 2” 330 R. A. WINTER 1871: Rubens "Arun- del” (Mrs. G. c.) 130 1876: Titian "Europa” (Mrs. G. c .). . 58 1877: Gainsborough “Miss Isabel Howland" (T. c.) 418,451 1880: "Portrait of Bandinelli” (Mrs. G.c.) 70 1881: Rembrandt "Young Couple" (Mrs.G. c.) 88 1882: Crivelli "St. George" (Mrs. G.c.) 22 1889: Rubens "Arundel” (Mrs. G. c.) 130 1892: Giotto "Presentation" (Mrs. G.c.) 154 1894: Gainsborough "Miss Ann Ford” 453 . 454 1902: Diirer "Portrait of a Man" (Mrs. G.c.) 233,235 SALON DU CHAMP-DE-MARS, 1894: "The Blue Wave” (P. c.) .. 274,323 “Symphony in Violet and Blue" C p • c.)' 320, 363 "Portrait of Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fesenzac” (Canfield c.) • • • • •• 323 - 363 SALON DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES, 1850: an unnoticed contribution of P. de Chavannes 306 1859: P. de Chavannes "Return f rom the Hunt " 258, 306 1861 : Manet, "Guitarero" (W. Church Osborn coll.) 338 P. de Chavannes "War" and “Peace” 258,300 1865: Manet "Olympia" (Louvre Mui 0 33 6 . 339.340 Monet: "Promontory of the Hive at Low Tide" and "Mouth of the Seine at Honflour" 340, 341 1866: Manet "Young Woman" known as the "Woman with the Parrot” (Metropolitan Mus.) "Emile Zola". 336 1868: J. Maris "Bords du Rhin: Holland” 359 1869: Degas "Portrait de Madame G " (Mrs. G.c.) 160, 253 1870: Courbet "The Wave" (Louvre) and Whistler “Blue Wave’’(P. c.)-323 1880: Monticelli "A Conspiracy”.. 471 SALON DE LYON, i860: a Monticelli, 471 SALON DES REFUSES: Bonvin Stu- dio, 1863: Fantin-Latour; Monet; Whistler "At the Piano" 264 SOCIETE DES AMIS-DES-ARTS, Marseilles; after 1850, paintings by Monticelli 470 SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARTISTS, 1898: Whistler "The Blue Wave” (P. c.); “Westminster Bridge" (P. c .); "Symphony in Violet andBlue” (, Pc ) 272, 278, 320 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX 1900: Brandegee "Portrait of Miss Sarah Porter” ( see Pope c.) 326 SO. KENSINGTON, 1890-1894: Rem- brandt “Young Couple" {Mrs. G.t ) 88 " Little Ship of Peter” {Mrs. G. c.) . 94 Terborch "Music Lesson" {Mrs. G.c .) 118 1868: Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” {Mrs. G.c.) 94 UNIVERSELLE, Paris, 1867: excludes Manet's works 337 1889: "Centennial French Art” Ma- net "Woman in White” now known as "Woman with Guitar” (.P-c-) 284,337 1900: "Centennial French Art” Mon- ticelli 's works there 472 Daumier's works there 312 VAN DYCK, Antwerp, 1899: Duke of Westminster Van Dyck "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” 475-478 WHISTLER, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892: " Blue Wave” {P. c.) 272 Memorial Boston 1904: "Blue Wave” {P-c.) 272 "Westminster Bridge” {P. c.) 278 "Symphony in Violet and Blue” (P-c-) 320 Memorial London, 1905: "Blue Wave,” "Westminster Bridge" {P. c.) . .272, 278 (The "Symphony in Violet and Blue” was not exhibited there.) Memorial Paris, 1905: " Blue Wave,” " Westminster Bridge” {P. c.) . . 272, 278 (The“Symphony inViolet and Blue” was not exhibited there.) EXSHAW, etched Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” {Mrs.G. c.) 94 EYCK, Van, Brothers, see Mus. Berlin; — Gainsborough; V ermeer. led in realistic movement; their fol- lowers 385, 39 1 favorite name with picture collectors. 398 EZEKIEL, mentioned 382 FABRITIUS, Karel, see Delft; Vermeer. FANTIN-LATOUR, see Mus. Luxem- bourg; — Exh. Bonviti; — Degas; Manet; IVbistler. FARMINGTON,Conn.,s« Coll. Anony- mous F.; Pope. FARNESE, see Paul III. Moro "Alexander Farnese” 216 Duke Mario and Angelico "Annuncia- tion ” now in Prado Mus 147 FELICIANO, Felice, see Mantegna. FERDINAND, Archduke and Cardinal, "The Cardinal-Prince,” see Coll. J. P. Morgan; — Rubens; Van Dyck. Portrait by Orley 229 FET1S, Edouard, and Gachard, re- searches concerning Gerbier 483 FIESOLE, Giovanni da, see Angelico. Mino da, example {Mrs. G. c.). 55 FIGURE and Landscape Painting com- pared 201 FILIPEPI, Alessandro, see Botticelli. FI LIPPI, Jacopo di Francesco di Do- menico, disciple of Botticelli 400 “FINCH, Lady Frances," see Aylesjord; North; Ossory; Packington; Port; Rey- nolds; Seymour; Somerset; IValpole. F1NCH1NGFIELD, Essex, Arundel birthplace 220 FIORE, Jacobello del, see Crivelli. FIORENZO DI LORENZO, see Mus.: Berlin; Perugia; — Assisi; Colnagbi; Frame; Si. Francis of A.; Siena Lib.; Spoleto; Venice. "The Annunciation” {Mrs. G. c.) • 33- 37. 38 Catalogue Page 40 Essays by J. P. Richter, A. Venturi, Mason Perkins 135-141 "Scenes from Life of S. Bernardino” ; 135. Mi and Perugino, Raphael, Pinturicchio 38, 121. 135. '40 and Ben. Gozzoli 135 and Filippo Lippi frescoes in Spoleto 139 and P. della Francesca 140 Verrocchio inf] 141 FISHER, the hautboy player, see Gains- borough. F1TTLER, J„ engraved Rembrandt " Little Ship of Peter” {Mrs. G.c.).. . 94 FITZROY, Miss Ann, see Gainsborough. FLAGG, Charles Noel, essay on Brande- gee"Miss Porter" {addedtoP. c.) 357, 368 FLANDRIN, H ..see P. de Cbavannes 299, 305 FLAUBERT, G., see Velasque j. FLEMISH SCHOOL, see Botticelli; Dutch Scb.; P. de Cbavannes. historical paintings 219 portraits 228 FLEMISH SCH. XV C. MASTER(W.c), see Coll.: Escorial; Kaujmann; Tbiem; — Mus.: Berlin; Brussels; Prado ; — Sales: Brussels; Hdtel Drouol. "Christ on the Cross with Mary and John” (Crucifixion) {H. c.) 391,392 Catalogue Page 388 Essays by C. Benoit; Dr. Friedlan- der; H. Hymans; G.Hulin de Loo 397-400 and Schongauer’s engravings 387 Memlinc " Bewailing of Christ,” "Cru- cifixion,” "Lubeck," "Presentation in Temple," Bruges; pict. in Buda- Pesth; Dirk Bouts pict. (Thiem c.) 398, 399 and small pict. in Vienna by follower of Van der Weyden 391 and Angelico "Crucifixion” in Louvre. 397 and Van der Weyden "Crucifixion" in Antwerp 399 and Van der Weyden 386, 391, 397~399 and Bruges sch 391, 398 Halos rare in old Flemish pictures .... 398 FLORENTINE SCH. XV C. MASTER {H.c.)see Coll. Ze^a; — Mus.; Florence G. A. Sr M. Louvre; Nat. Gallery. "Madonna in Adoration”(W.c.) 395-397 Catalogue Page 382 Essays by I. B. Supino, G. C. Wil- liamson 395~397 and Prof. L. G. Meade 382 and Sellaio; Filippo Lippi 387, 396 and Lorenzo di Credi 396, 397 FLORENCE and Botticelli "Lucretia” {Mrs. G.c.) 99 S. Croce, Medici Chapel : Filippo Lippi paintings once there had predellas by Pesellino 128, 134 S. Ambrogio: Filippo Lippi altar piece and Pesellino (Mrs.G. c.) 134 S. Marco convent, Angelico resides there 146, 1 57 S. Maria del Fiore, opera of, Salviati and Francesco di Girolamo da Prato paint there 181, 182 S. Maria Novella and Angelico {Mrs. G. c.) 38, '4'. '45. '57 Pollaiuolo "Adoration of Magi” now in Ufifizi, originally there 193 Ch.of the Innocenti: Ghirlandaio "Ad- oration of the Magi" and "Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G. c.) 191 FLORENTINE, Archives, see Botticelli. Raphael "Inghirami" {Mrs. G. c.) 97 school, see Botticelli; Go^oli; Michelangelo; Pesellino; Pesello; L. da Vinci. influence on Umbria 140 505 PAGE FL0R1S, Frans, see Mus. Brunswick ; — Moro. FLOS, Dr., engraving in Crozat of Ra- phael “Pieta” (Mrs. G.c) 28 FORD, Miss Ann, see Mus. British ; — Gainsborough. FORTUNY, see Regnault. FOURMENT, H£lfene, and Rubens 476 FRAGONARD, Honord, see Mus. Lou- FRAMES, painted in backgrounds by Antwerp sch., Metsys, Gossart.. .232, 233 of Fior. di Lorenzo {Mrs. G.c.) 33 FRANCESCA, Piero della, see Are^o; Degas; Fior. di Lorenzo. FRANCH E-COMTE, and Courbet 340 FRANCIS I, his Queen painted by Moro 217,228 ‘FRANCISCAN’ school of art, and Giotto 385 FRANCKEN, and Rembrandt “Little Ship of Peter" {Mrs.G. c.) 199 FRANCO-PRUSSIAN War, Henri Reg- nault killed in it 462 Monticelli leaves Paris then . .467, 469, 471 FREDERICK HENRY, Prince, Rembrandt. FRIEDRICKSRUH, seat of Prince Bismarck 434, 464 FRENCH infl., through Gravelot on Gainsborough 447, 448 School, see IVbistler. Fury, The, Antwerp 217 Masters of the Eighteenth Century, see Renoir. Revolution 3 1 1 many worksof art in Alsace destroy- ed 237, 239 FRIEDLANDER, Max J., essays on Moro {Mrs . G.c.) 215 Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 233 DOrer (Mrs. G.c.) 233, 234 Schongauer {Mrs. G.c.) 238, 239 "Crucifixion ” (H. c.) 398 FRITH, Palgrave on his "Railway Station” 331 FR1ZZONI, Dr. Gustavo, essays on Man- tegna {Mrs. G. c.) 1 59. 1 63 Giorgione {Mrs. G.c.) 183 FR0MENT1N, see P. de Cbavannes; Van Dyck. FRY, Roger E., essays on Crivelli {Mrs. G.c.) "7-'2i Mantegna {Mrs. G.c.) 163-167 Titian {Mrs. G. c.) 170- 172 Giotto (Mrs. G.c.) 241 ,242 GACHARD and Edouard Fdtis, research- es concerning Gerbier 483 GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas, see Co/ 1 .: Bonnal; Cole- 0 .; Frick; — Mus. Edin- burgh Nat.; — Exh. Birmingham ; — Delany; Knoedler; Smollel. “Portrait of Isabel Howland” (T.c.) 410,411 Catalogue Page 418 Essays by L. Cust, Sir W. Arm- strong, C. J. Holmes, F. G. Stephens 446-454 "Countess of Suffolk and Berkshire,” "Lady Charlotte Finch” 435, 439 " Morning Walk,” " The Mall, " “ Duke and Duchess of Cumberland in a Gar- den" 448 “David Garrick," "Pitt,” "Sheridan" 449 "Miss Tyler of Bath" 451 "Gipsy Encampment,” "Cottage Door” 452 "Miss Graham," "King George's Daughters,” “Lady Westmoreland," Mr. Wise, Mr. Lucy 453 and Gilbert Stuart 411 and Van Dyck 441,447 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX and Hals; Holbein; Van Eyck; Velas- quez; Constable; Francis Hayman; 448,45' and Leonardo da Vinci 450 and Reynolds 45 1 , 45 2 and George III 452, 453 and Miss Ann Fitzroy; Miss Ann Ford and Thicknesse; Fischer's anecdote . . 453-454 and Hoppner. . . .454, 456, 458, 481, 491, 493-495 at Bath 439,447,449 Bonnat quoted on him 447 French influence through Gravelot 447, 448 Fulcher quoted 454 and landscape 457-459, 494, 495 child pictures by him and by Hoppner, Lawrence, Reynolds 483 'GALER1E DU MUSEE NAPOLEON,' portr. of Bandinelli (?) 182 GALILEO, in Pesellino (Mrs. G. c.) 129 “GALL-STONE, Lieu. Govnr.,” set Ford, Miss Ann. GAM B ETTA, see Daumier. GAMBLE, Ellis, and Hogarth 447 GANAGOBI (Basses-Alpes), Monticel- li’s early days spent there 470 GARDA, Lake of, see Mantegna. GARRICK, David, see Gainsborough. GASTEIN, Lenbach sees Bismarck at. . 464 GASTON, Due d’Orteans 224 GAUTIER, Thfophile, see Manet. GAVARNI, see Daumier. GAZETTE des Beaux-Arts, Monticelli and Diaz compared 471 GEFFROY, Gustave, essay on Degas ( P ■ c.) 346,347 G E LAS I US (Pope), see Giotto. GELDORP, Georg, letter to him from Van Dyck to, concerning a "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” 489 ‘GENTLEMEN’S Magazine,’ The, see Gainsborough, Miss Ann Ford. GENOA, Van Dyck there 226, 483, 488 GEORGE III 449,492 See Gainsborough; Hoppner. - IV.. See Prince of Wales. GERBIER, Balthazar, see Arundel; Charles I; Fitis; Gacbard; Monljord; Noveliers; Rubens; IVeston. presented Charles I with a Van Dyck "Virgin, the Infant Christ and St. Catherine" ( The S. c. example ?) 476, 482, 483, 489, 490 GERICAULT, see Regnaull 305, 334 GERMAN school, statesman, see Len- bach. GERMANY, the present state of art in. 421 G£ROME, see P. de Cbavannes. ‘GESTA ROMANORUM', see Botticelli. GHIRLANDAIO, Dorn., see Botticelli; Degas; Florence T. !.; Vasari. did not flatter his sitters 450 G I AM BONO, see Crivelli; Venice. G1ANSANINI, Giovanni di Benedetto, see Botticelli. GIOCONDO, see Giorgione ; Titian. GIORGIONE 86, 345,457 See Coll.: Berti; Farrar; Giovanelli; Lanskoronski ; Loschi; Maria de M.\ Pourtales; V endramin; — Mus.: Berlin; Brera; Dresden; Rovigo; Stuttgart; Uj- figi; — Exh.: Berlin 1898; New Gall. 1894; — Aldus; Betnbo; Dttrer; Nava- gero; Raphael; V enice S. R.;da Vinci. "Christ Bearing Cross" (Mrs. G.c.) 55 Catalogue Page 76 Essays by G. Frizzoni; G. Gronau; J. P. Richter 183-188 B. Berenson quoted 55 The Anonimo (Morelliano) quoted . .55, 184 Venturi reproduces Lanskoronski "Christ Bearing Cross;" five versions of “ Christ Bearing Cross;” Crowe and Cavalcaselle 184 Vasari on "Christ Bearing Cross" which he attributes to Giorgione and to Titian 185 and Basaiti 45, 183, 184 and Giov. Bellini 55, 113, 183-187 and Titian 55, '85 "Recumbent Venus;” "Madonna be- tween SS. Francis and Liberale,” Castelfranco 171, 185, 186 and Ant. da Messina 185 Herbert Cook; Cotignola quoted 183 Giov. Morelli quoted 186 GIOTTO 92, 104,346 See Coll.: Richter; Sinus; Willett ; — Mus.: Bologna; Munich; — Exh.: New Gall.; R. A. Winter; — Sale Simes ; — Carrara; Michelangelo; Naples; Orien- tal Art; P. de Cbavannes. "Presentation in the Temple” (Mrs. G.c.) 74, 75 Catalogue Page 154 Essays by Mason Perkins; Roger Fry; A. Venturi; J. P. Richter. .240-247 and gold underpainting 74 and the medieval miniaturists 75 Vasari on him 75, 244 landscape architecture as localizing ac- cessories 103 overcomes the Byzantine influence . . . 242 and Pope Gelasius doctrine of the As- sumption 153 and Roman Temple of Minerva, As- sisi... 242 andCimabue; Dante 242-244 and altars in S. Marco, Venice; S. Mar- ia, in Ara Coeli, S. Lorenzo, S. Paolo, Lateran; Rome; S. Appolinare in C., Ravenna 245 “ Presentation,” "Temperantia, ” Arena Chapel ... .74, 75, 241, 244, 246, 247 Paduan period, "Crucifixion" and tempera technique 241-243 " Presentation, " " Life of St. Francis," Assisi 241-247 "Crucifixion," Padua and Giotto (Mrs.G.c.) 242 examples in Louvre, Nat. Gall., Flor- : and Bolognese galleries not by • 244 frescoes Padua, Assisi and Florence; "Altar piece” St. Peters, Rome 244 and Signorini ( called Giov. Bellini) " Circumcision" (Nat. Gall.) 246 "Madonna” bequeathed by Petrarch. 247 and the ‘Franciscan’ School 385 GIRTIN, Thomas, water-colour (H.c.) 379 Turner quoted as to his ability 379 studies Canaletto, Rubens, Wilson .... 379 GIVERNEY, see Monet. GLAENZER & CO., sold Degas (Mrs. G.c.) 160 GLASGOW School, see Monticelli. GLEYRE. See Renoir 305 GLUCK, G„ essay on Van Dyck (S.c.) Essays by H. Hymans; G. H. de Loo; C. Benoit, Dr. FriedIander.227-233 "Madonna and Child" (H. c.). 381-386 designs tomb of Isabella of Denmark. 228 “Wife of Ch. de Bourbon”; "Marquise de la Vere"; "Chancellor Carondelet”; Oporto altar piece 231-233 and a Castle Howard pencil portrait of Fr. d’Alenfon (Ronald Gower) 231 examples at Tournay, Munster, Brus- sels, Y pres, etc 232 andScorel 67-69, 229, 231,233 and Christina, Jane, Joanna, John of Portugal, Christian of Denmark, Louis of Hungary, Isabella, Eleanora 68, 69, 228-232 Prof. Carl Justi quoted 68, 69, 227, 229, 231, 232 and Clouet; B. van Orley; Burckhardt quoted 228, 229 K. van Mander on him 232 and Holbein 232, 239 and Diirer little picture in Uffizi 386 his painted frames and Quentin Metsys "Lucretia Rom.” 232 influenced by Q. Metsys and by the Milanese sch 386 GOWER, Lord Ronald, see Gossart. GOYA, see Manet. and lithography 311 GOYEN, van, and Jacob Maris, and Rembrandt 357, 358, 360 GOZZOLI, Benozzo, see Botticelli; Fior. di Lorenzo. GRAN BERG, Olof, engraved Raphael “ Pieta” (Mrs.G.c.) 28 GRANDISON, Lady. 441 GRANVELLE, Cardinal de, see Mus. Vienna; — Moro. GRAVELOT, Hubert, see Gainsborough. GRECO, El 174 see Daumier; Manet. GREENAWAY, Kate 495 GRONAU, Dr. Georg, essays on Ra- phael " Inghirami” (Mrs. G. c.). . . .93,97 Crivelli (Mrs.G.c.) 115 Titian " Europa” (Mrs. G.c.) 170 Giorgione (Mrs. G.c.) 184, 185 Sassoferrato "Madonna" (H. c.) . . 393 GROOTE Schonburgh der Nederl. K., Houbraken, see Rembrandt "Little Ship 0/ Peter ” (Mrs. G. c.). G ROS 305 GUERARD, Henri, and Eva Gonzalfes . . 356 GUETHARY, see Whistler. GU1FFREY, Jules, essay on Van Dyck (S. c.) 481-483 GUILD, its influence on art 392 of merchants, Florence, see Bot- ticelli, Pollaiuolo. GUILLIM, John, 'Displays of Heraldry’ and " Bandinelli" (Mrs. G. c.) 179 GUZZI engraved Van Dyck "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine" from Bar- telli’s drawing 488 GOETHE 421 GOLDEN FLEECE, see Moro. GONZALES, Eva, see Cassatt; Gulrard. and Impressionism 356 GOSSART, see Coll.: Brownlow; Cereda; Norfolk; Tarnowski; — Mus.: Berlin; Brussels; Cassel; Copenhagen; Doria; HamptonC.; Louvre; Nat. Gal.; — Exh.: The Hague; New Gal.; — Antwerp; Bink; Headdress; Maubetige; Reber; Scharf. "Portrait of a Woman" (Mrs. G.c.) 68 Catalogue Page 142 506 HADEN, Seymour, etchings (P. c.) HAGUE, THE, see J. Maris... .357,359, H A 1 N AU LT, School oj HALOS, see Flemish Scb. XV C. Mas- ter (H. c.) HALS, Dirk See Degas; Gainsborough; Manet. his portrait "snapshots” HANDS, large, in Raphael, a classical tendency Van Dyck uses hired models for as means of characterization by DOrer, Holbein etc., neglected by Lenbach HAPSBURG family HARLEM Sch., of Genre painters.. 2 11, 257 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX HARPIGNIES 92 HAVRE, see Monel. HAY DON 454 HAYMAN, Francis, see Gainsborough. HEADDRESS of French Ladies (1515, 1530) and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) . . . .230, 231 HEBERT, see P. de Cbavannes 305 HEERE, Jan de, and tomb of Isabella of Austria, also Lucas de 228 HELBIG, see Angelico. HENRIETTA Maria of England, see Arundel; Van Dyck. HENRY VIII of Eng 215,228 HERMAN, the Blessed 482 HIND, C. Lewis, essays on Mancini {Mrs. G.c.) 91.92 Titian "Europa" {Mrs. G. c.).. 172, 173 Velasquez {Mrs. G.c.) '73-176 HOBBEMA 213,334 HOGARTH 450 see Gamble; Reynolds. usually drew from memory 312 HOKUSAI 345 HOLBEIN, see Coll. Norfolk;— Degas; Gainsborough; Gossart ; Hands; Manet; Moro; Raphael. for "Portrait of Sir William Butts” and “ Lady Butts” {Mrs. G. c.) see Vol. I of Bibliography. early portraits by Degas compared to his 277 influenced by the Milanese school and perhaps by Gossart 386 HOLLAR, Wenceslas, Arundel his pat- ron 220 HOLMES, C. J., essays on Reynolds (T.c.) 445- 446 Gainsborough {T. c.) 449-45 1 Hoppner (T.c.).. 456, 457 HOLY Roman Empire, a great opal among its spoils and a Monticelli pic- ture 427 HOMER, Winslow, see Monet; Whistler. HONFLEUR, see Monet. HOOCH, Pieter de 360 see Terborch; Vermeer. HOPPNER, John, see Coll.: Lever; Rothschild; Stem; Tennant; Widener; — Mus. British; — Exh. Agnew's , — Pratt; Sedelmeyer; Turner; Wales, P. of; W ard, J. and W. "Miss Pollock” {T. c.) 4".4'5 Catalogue Page 424 Essays by Lionel Cust, C.J. Holmes, Sir W. Armstrong, A.B. Chamberlain 454-459 "Master Mercier" (S. c.).. 475,477,481 Catalogue Page 284 Essays by Harold Bromhead, M. H. Spielman 491-495 “ Daughters of SirThomas Frankland” (The Sisters), "Miss Jordan," "Lady Louisa Manners,” “Douglas Child- ren” (Juvenile Retirement), "Eliza- beth, Countess of Sutherland” 457. 459. 470. 492, 494 "The Hurdy Gurdy Player” (Matilda Fielding); "Children Bathing;” “Miss Cholmondeley;” “Lady Anne Lamb- ton and Children,” ("Domestic Happi- ness”); "Children of the Duke of Dor- set ;” "The Godsall Children,”(The Set- ting Sun); "Love me Love my Dog;” “Mrs. Sheridan carrying her child Pick- a-back;” "Children of the Earl of Sefton;” "Master Russell;” "Master Smith,” (The Nabob); "TheShow".. 494 and Romney 447, 456, 459, 492 and Gainsborough; Lawrence; Rae- burn; Reynolds; Child pictures 454.459.48 i, 49'.495 and George III 454,459 as an imitator 447, 494 Cunningham quoted 492 landscape in portrait backgrounds 494, 495 HORNE, Herbert P., essays on Rossetti {Mrs. G.c.) 81,85 Raphael " Inghirami” {Mrs. G. c.) 97, 98 Botticelli " Lucretia” {Mrs. G. c.) 104, 105, 109 Pesellino {Mrs. G.c.) 129, 133— 135 “Bandinelli” {G.c.) 179-183 Botticelli “Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G.c.) 192, '93 in ‘Monthly Review’ on Pesellino and Uccello 133 HOTEL-DE-VILLE, Paris and Poit- iers, see P. de Chavannes. HOUBRAKEN, see Rembrandt. HOWELLS, W. D., his portrait {H. c.) 375 HOWLAND, Miss Isabel, Michael, Ra- chel, Baron, John, Street 446, 454 see Gainsborough; Smollel. HUDSON, John, see Reynolds. HU LIN, De Loo, George, see Loo. HUMANISTS and Rhetoricians, their influence 13, 14 HUMANIZING influence of St. Francis of Assisi, see also Realism 381 HUNT, Alfred William, Ruskin on him 379 Water color {H. c.) 379 Holman 325 HYMANS, Henri, essays on Rubens {Mrs. G.c.) 222, 223 Van Dyck {Mrs. G.c.) 225-227 Gossart {Mrs. G.c.) 227-229 "Crucifixion’’(W. c.) 398,399 ‘ILLUSTRATION,’ L’, see Monticelli. IMPRESSIONISM, see Cassatt, Degas; Jongkind; Manet; Monet; Pisarro; Realism; Renoir; Romantic scb.; Whistler. referred to throughout Pope coll. 257-370 and Eva GonzaRs, Henri Gu^rard, Berthe Morisot 283, 356 INCONTRI, Ludovico 109 INGHIRAMI , see Coll.: Ingh.; Gardner; — Erasmus; Julius P.; Maximilian; Raphael. INGRES 301, 305, 339, 421, 468 See Mus.: Aix.; Louvre; Nantes ; — Degas; Manet; P. de Cbavannes Renoir. on drawing 249 "L’Apothdose d’Homfere” 253 his rectitude 251 and Chasseriau 301 and Jacquesson de la Chevreuse, Brandegee 367, 368 ISABELLA of Austria and Denmark, see BranlSme; Brussels; Gossart; Heere. ISABELLA, Regent of the Netherlands, see Van Dyck. ISENBRANDT 392 ISENMANN, Gaspard, see Scbongauer. ISHAM, Samuel, General essay onTerrell coll 403-428 ISRAELS 360 ITALIAN ART, see Lenbacb. Electics, of seventeenth cen- tury, recent opinion of them .... 386, 387 and the pre-Raphaelites and Realists . 393 Government, and “Chigi Madon- na” {Mrs.G. c.) 188 Inf]., see Academiciens; Dtirer; Reynolds. Primitives, see Degas; Renoir. beginning of their vogue in England . . 85 School, see Van Dyck. ITALIAN MASTER UN KNOWN, (Seb. del Piombo?) see Coll.: Hunt; Orleans; Vivian; — Mus.: British; Louvre ; — Exh.: Orleans; R. A. Winter; — Sale Bryant; — Bandinelli; Colnaghi; Piombo, Seb. del; Sarto, A. del. “Portrait of Bandinelli” {Mrs. G. c.) 5' Catalogue Page 70 Essays by C. Ricci; Dr. W. Bode; H. P. Horne 178-183 B. Berenson quoted 51 Condivi on Michelangelo's head and his "Bandinelli " portrait 180 JACOPO della Quercia, see Quercia. JAMES I of England (VI of Scotland). 449 See Arundel; Van Dyck. JAMES, Henry, two portraits of him {H. c ) 375 JANE, of Austria, see Gossart. JAN1TSCHEK, Hans, on destruction of works of art in Alsace 239 JAPANESE infl.on Whistler 335 on Manet 338, 340, 344 on Degas, Millet, Monet, Rousseau . . . 344 Prints, see Mary Cassatt. and the Impressionists 350 JASPER, see Sale Charles I; Mantegna. JERUSALEM 245 ‘JESUIT’ School of art and Sassoferrato 385 JETTEL, Eugfene, see Exh. Chicago, 1893. landscape {S. c.) 475 JEWELRY, see Holbein; Moro. JOANNA of Castille, see Gossart. JOHN, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, an- cestor of the Beaumont family 449 of Portugal, see Gossart. JOHNSON, Dr. Samuel, see Reynolds. JONES, Inigo, and Arundel 220 JONGKIND, see Degas and Impressionism 342 and Holland of To-day 360 JOSEPH, in Giotto {Mrs. G.c.).. 243, 246 JUDITH and Holofernes in Botticelli "Lucretia” {Mrs.G. c.) 16, 103 JULIUS II, Pope, and Inghirami 14 KAVANAUGH, John, from Cleveland, studied in Munich. " Portrait of a lady” {P. c.) 294 KENNEDY, Mr., see Wunderlich & Co. KEY, Willem, see Moro. KEYSER, Thomas de, see Rembrandt. KING, Clarence, his portrait by Zorn (W. c.) 375 KIPLING, Rudyard, McAndrews’ Hymn, see Whistler. KISSINGEN, Lenbach and Bismarck 464 ‘KLASSISCHER BILDERSCHATZ’ re- production of Schongauer {Mrs. G. c.) 148, 238 KNELLER, Sir Godfrey, see Van Dyck. his portraits flatter 450 KNOEDLER & CO. sold Rembrandt {T.c.) 406 Gainsborough {T. c.) 418, 454 KRAFFT, engraved a Rubens drawing of Arundel, nowin Coll. Duchastel — D. 222 KRAUS, Dr. F. X., see Schongauer. KRISTELLER, Dr. Paul, see Mantegna. essay on Mantegna {Mrs. G. c.). 158, 159 ‘KUNST und ALTERTHUM in Elsass- Lothringen,’ reproduction of Schon- gauer {Mrs.G. c.) 148, 238 LA FARGE, John, see Brandegee. Introduction to volume xv-xx general essay on Mrs. Gardner’s coll. . 1-80 Water colours {H. c.) 380 LAFENESTRE, Georges, essays on Titian {Mrs.G. c.) 167-169 P. de Chavannes (P. c.) 3°5~3°7 Sassoferrato {H. c.) 393—395 LAGRANGE. Ldon, see Monticelli. LAMPSONIUS, see Moro. LANDON.C. P., and a so-called "Bandi- nelli” portrait 182,183 LANDSCAPE and Architectonic acces- sories, see Botticelli. 507 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX the painting of, and figure compared . . 201 the use of it in portraits, see Gains- borough; Hoppner. LANZ1, quoted on Carlo Dolci and Sas- soferrato 394 LAUZET, engraved Manet (P. c.) 284, 340 LAWRENCE, Thomas, see Coll. J. P. Morgan; — Barlow; Bonnat; Hoppner; Renoir; Van Dyck. "Miss Croker” 459 “Master Lambton;” his child pictures and those of Hoppner 493 L.ECOMTE, G., ‘L'Art Impressioniste’ . . 340 LEGGE, surname of the Earls of Dart- mouth 435 LEGHORN, Angelico {Mrs. G. c.) came from a chapel near 141, 152 LEGROS, a realist 334-339 LEIPS1C, University of. Schongauer matriculated at 236 LELY, Sir Peter, see Reynolds; Van Dyck. his portraits flatter 450 LENBACH, Franz von, see Coll. Wind- sorC.; — Mus.: Berlin; Louvre; Nat.G.; — Bismarck; Hands; Scbaus & Co. "Portrait of Bismarck” ( T.c .) ..421-423 Catalogue Page 436 Essays by A. L. Baldry, A. Rosen- berg, R. de la Sizeranne 462-466 "Von Moltke,” "Wilhelm 1” 422 and Watts; Rembrandt; Reynolds; Rubens; Titian; Van Dyck. .421, 422, 464 and Piloty 462 and Italian art 462,463 and Lorenzo Lotto; P. de Champagne 464 leader of the German Sch 462, 463 LENOIR, Alexandre, see Daumier; Ro- mantic mov. LEO X, see Mus. Pitti; — Raphael. and Michelangelo and Bandinelli 180 LEPAGE, Bastien, drawing ( H . c .) .... 380 LEWIS, engraved Terborch {Mrs. C. c.) 118 LEYDEN, see Rembrandt. LIER in Flanders 68, 228 LIPPI, Filippino, see Mus. Condi. and tondo " Holy Family " {M rs. G. c.) 56 Filippo, see Mus.: Florence A. andM.; Louvre; Pitti; — Botticelli; Florence S. C.; Spoleto. and "Madonna” {H. c.) 387, 396 some of his pictures have predellas by Pesellino 128, 134 his sensual type of T uscan beauty .... 189 commission from Duke Cosimo dei M. 134 LISBON, Moro there 215 LITHOGRAPHY, see Daumier; Whist- ler. practiced by Delacroix 3 1 1 LIVY, story of Lucretia, see Botticelli. LOMBARD, Lambert, see Schongauer; van der Weyden. LOMBARD type, idealized by da Vinci: 189 LOMBARD engraves Van Dyck "Coun- tess of Carnarvon" 227 LONDON, see Lambeth; Westminster. . . 332 LONG HI, Pietro 447 LONS-LE-SAULNIER, Franche-Comtd, see P. de Cbavannes. LOO, Georges H. de, essays on Gossart {Mrs. G.c.) 229-232 “Crucifixion" {H.c.) 399, 400 LORENZO Pratese, Piero di, see Pesellino LORRAINE, Chas. Due de, see Van Dyck. LOSCHI dal Verme, see Coll. Loschi. LOTTO, Lorenzo, see Mus. Vienna ; — Lenbach. LOUBON, Emile, see Monlicelli. LOUIS of Hungary, see Gossart. XIV of France, his future queen painted by Velasquez 175, 385 LOUIS Philippe, and Daumier 311, 423 LUBECK, see Memlinc. LUTHER, and Diirer {Mrs. G.c.) 69, 234, 235 LYONS, see Mus. Puvis de Chavannes, Chasseriau and Flandrin born there 305 ‘McGILLICUDDY’S REEKS' 468 MAAS, see Vermeer. MABUSE, see Gossart. MAC COLL, D. S., essay on Daumier ( p - c-) 3"-3'3 MADONNA, see Mus.; — Angelico; Bot- ticelli; Crivelli; Fiorenjo di L.; Gior- gione; Gossart; Lippi; Mantegna; Pin- luricchio; Raphael; Rubens; Scbon- gauer; Van Dyck. " M A DONNA I N A DOR AT I ON ” (H.c.), see Florentine Sch. XV C. Master. "MADONNA, CHILD AND ST. JOHN" tondo (H. c.), see Botticelli. MAGDALEN, see St. Mary Magdalen. MAJANO, Benedetto da, {Mrs. G. c.) . . 55 MANC1N1, Antonio, see Coll. Mesdag ; — Mus. Wallace; — Exh. R. A.; — Boldini; Curtis; Degas; Sargent; Stevens; Vene- tian Sch. "Standard Bearer of the Harvest Festival" {Mrs. G. c.) 9 Essay by Ralph Curtis; C. L. Hind, R. Marx 87-93 "Mr. Charles Hunter,” "A Spanish Opera Singer" 92 Dom. Morelli, his master and friend . . 87 Whistler's art and his 91, 92 Vittorio Pica on him 93 MANDER, Karel van, see Gossart; Moro; Vere. MANET, Edouard, see Coll.: Burrell; May; Osborn; — Exh.: Bonvin; Manet; Univ.; — Sale May ; — Durand-Ruel; Japanese injl.; Laurel. "Woman with the Guitar" {P.c.) 270, 271. 275 Catalogue Page 284 Essays by T. Duret, R. Marx, C. Mauclair, L. B6n6dite 336-340 "Toreadors" {P. c.); " Death of Maxi- milian" 271 "Victorine Meurand" (Glasgow); "Lunch upon the Grass"; "Street Singer”; "Atelier aux Batignolles". . 339 and Impressionism.. 264, 271, 275, 338 and Couture; Goya; El Greco; Franz Hals 270, 271, 337, 338 and Velasquez 270, 271, 275, 338-340 and Degas 277 and Mme. Morisot 283, 356 and Troyon 307 and Bracquemond; Legros 334 and Zola 336, 337, 339 and Zurbaran 337 and Monet 337-338, 340, 342 and Astruc; Baudelaire; Champfleury; Courbet; Duranty 338, 339, 341 and Spanish influences 338, 340 and Ingres: Fantin Latour 339, 340 and Holbein 340 copies Tintoretto "self-portrait". .. . 337 Th. Gautier on "Guitarero" (Coll. Osborn) 338 Lecomte' L’Art Impressioniste’ quoted 340 in Bordeaux Boulogne 342 MANTEGNA, Andrea, see Coll.: Charles I.; Christina; Drago; Mantua ; — Mus.: Berlin; Louvre; Nat. Gall.; Prado; Uffi^i; Venice Ac.; Verona; — Sale Charles /.; — Degas; Morone; Michele da V.; Vanderdoort; Verona; Vertue. “Sacred Conversation” {Mrs. G.c.) 43, 49 Catalogue Page 52 508 Essays by P. Kristeller; G. Frizzoni; Roger Fry 158-167 frescoes Castello di Corte, "Triumphal Procession of Caesar” 159 "Execution of St. James” 166 Vasari on him and Caroto 159 Ch. Yriarte quoted 163 and silver underpainting 45 and Giov. Bellini 45, 163, 165, 167 and Queen Christina of Sw.; Charles I; Cardenas 49, 52, 164, 165 and Crivelli 115, 1 18 and Pisanello 165 and Jasper and Daniel Nys 165, 184 and Isabella d’Este; Feliciano; Sam- ueledeTradate; Lake de Garda 167 studies under Squarcione 1 18 MANTUA, and Duke of, see Van Dyck; Mantegna. MANUZIO, Aldo, see Aldus. MARCHESE, Father, see Angelico. MARGARET, Regent, see Mus. Ant- werp; — Gossart; Moro. MARGU1LLIER, Auguste, essays on Diirer {Mrs. G.c.) 234-236 Schongauer {Mrs. G.c.) 239, 240 MARIETTE, 'Abecedario’ quoted as to Sassoferrato 394 MARILLIER, H. C„ Essay on Rossetti “Love’s Greeting” {Mrs. G. c.). .80, 81 MARIS, Jacob, sec Exh. Chicago, 1903; — Commune; Preyer. "Dordrecht — Sun Effect" Catalogue Page 314 Essays by Jan Veth; B. Sickert , 357-362 "Bords du Rhin: Holland," "View of Marlotte” 359 "The Ferry Boat” 360 and Whistler; and the Old Dutch School 288, 289 and A. Cuyp; S. Ruysdael . . .357, 358, 360 and Corot 360 his pentimenti 357, 362 in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the 357 359 Mattys 360 Wilhelm 358 MARSEILLES, see Coll.: C. des P.; Mir- eux; — Mus. of M.\ — Sale Mireux ; — Monlicelli. Daumier, born there 311 MARTIN, Dr. W„ essay on Terborch {Mrs. G.c.) 210-213 MARX, Roger, essays on Mancini {Mrs. G -c ) 92, 93 P. de Chavannes {P. c.) 299, 300 Whistler "Westminster Bridge” (P.c.) 335. 336 Manet {P. c.) 337, 338 Monet {P. c.) 341, 342 Degas " Danseuses” {P. c.) . . . .343, 344 Renoir {P.c.) 351 Mary Cassatt {P. c.) 354, 355 Whistler “Symphony in Violet and Blue" {P.c.) 362, 363 Regnault {T.c.) 459-461 MARY, of Burgundy 69 of Hungary, see Moro. of Portugal, see Moro. "Tudor," see Coll. Brownlow ; — Mus.: Nat. Portrait G.; Prado; — Moro. MASACCIO, see Pesellino. MASI, Fra Giovanni, see Angelico. MASO, del, (Mazo), see Mus. Wallace; MASTER, see Italian M. unknown Mrs. {G. c.); Florentine Sch. XV C. M.{H. c.); Flemish XV C. M.{H. c.). of the Cappella Pellegrini, see Mus. Louvre; — Sassoferrato. THE CLASSIFIED INDEX MATHER, F.J. Jr., essay on Degas (Mrs. G.c.) 247-249 MATHEY, Armand, etched Van Dyck (S.c.) 488 MAUBEUGE, Mabuse born there 233 MAUCLAI R, Camille, essays on Daumier (•?■«•) 3 '9. 323 Whistler "Blue Wave” (P. c.) . . 323, 324 Manet (P. c.) 338 Monet (P. c.) 342, 343 Renoir (P. c.) 351, 352 Mary Cassatt (P. c.) 356, 357 MAXIMILIAN, see Moro. and Inghirami 14 MAZZOLA, see Parmigiano. MEADE, Prof. Larkin G., purchases "Madonna in Adoration” ( H . c.) 382, 400 MECHLIN, see Gossart. MEDICI; Alessandro, Francesco; Gio- vanni, Giuliano, Lorenzo, Piero, Poli- SeeMus. Uffqi; — Angelico; Apollo and M Bandinelli; Bolti; Botticelli; Lippi, Filippo; Mars; Peru^i; Prato, F. di G.; Tomabuoni. and Botticelli "FairSimonetta”; " Fe- male Portrait,” Berlin Mus.; "Mars with Venus Asleep”; “Primavera”; "Lucretia” ( Mrs . G. c .); “Chigi Ma- donna” (M rs.G. c.)..3i, 99, 109,189,190 and Pesellino 129, 133, 134 Leopold owned the Pitti Raphael "Inghirami" 97, 98 Villa, Rome, see Regnaull. MEIREN, Gasper van der, Augustinian friar, friend of Van Dyck 489 MEMLINC mentioned 487 See Sale Brussels; — Bruges Scb.; Flem- ish Sch. XV C. Master. “ Bewailing of Christ," “Crucifixion," Lubeck; "Presentation in Temple”; "Floreins triptych," Bruges; "Trip- tych," (coll. Kaufmann) 398, 399 M EMM I, Simone 247 MENOTTI, Mario, essays on Botticelli "Chigi Madonna" (Mrs. G. c.). . 189-192 Van Dyck (S.c.) 487,488 MEREDITH, George, “Harry Rich- mond” mentioned 455 MERYON, see Paris; Seine; IVhistler. etchings (P. c.) 257 MESSINA, Antonello da, see Giorgione. METSU, see Terborch; Vermeer. METSYS, Quentin 219 See Gossart. METTERNICH, and Bismarck 465 MICHEL, Andrd, essay on P. de Cha- vannes (P.c.) 300,301 Emile, essays on Rembrandt “Young Couple” (M rs. G. c.). 195, 196 Rembrandt "Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs. G. c.) 198, 199 Rembrandt "Landscape” (Mrs. G.c.) 202, 203 Rembrandt "Self Portrait 1629” (Mrs. G. c.) 203, 204 Rembrandt "Self Portrait 1645” (T. c.) 429.433 MICHELANGELO 86, 104, 179-183 See Coll. R. A.; — Botticelli; Daumier; Degas; Regnault. on Cellini bust of Altoviti (Mrs. G.c.). 51 and “Bandinelli” (Mrs. G. c.) 51, 70, 178, 179 carrying out the promise of Giotto . . 75 connects the Gothic and the Renais- and Pietro Torrigiani 180 MICHELE da Verona, example in Lon- don and Mantegna (M rs. G. c.) 159 MICHELET, see Daumier. MIGLIORE, Zanobi di, see Pesellino. PAGE MILANESE SCHOOL, its influence on Flemish and German artists, including Holbein and Gossart 386 MILANESE on Bandinelli.. 179, 180 MILLAIS “Ophelia”, “Eve of St. Ag- nes” and Whistler 325, 332 MILLET, J. F 264, 270, 307, 344, 346 See Daumier; Japanese infl.; Muther; P. de Cbavannes. BUrger his friend 208 drawings (H. c.) 380 MINERVA, Roman temple of, Assisi, MINIATURISTS, medieval, see Giotto. influence on Angelico and Crivelli .152, 153 MOLI ERE, see Daumier. his ‘Misanthrope’ and Degas 252 MOLMENTI, see Crivelli. MOLTKE, von, see Lenbacb. MOLYN, Pieter, see Rembrandt. MONCONYS, de, visited Vermeer .... 207 MONET, Claude, see Coll. Faure;— Durand-Ruel; Japanese infl.; Manet; Robinson, Tb. Boats Leaving the Harbor (P. c.) 276,277 Catalogue Page 290 Essays by Th. Duret; Roger Marx; C.Mauclair 340-343 “View of the Bay and Maritime Alps at Antibes” and two "Haystacks” (P- O; 275-277 and Winslow Homer 276 and Astruc, Boudin, Corot, Courbet 339. 342 in Argenteuil, Giverny, Havre, Ville- d'Avray, Honfleur 340-342 MONINGTON, Lady, see Roland, Ma- dame. MONN1ER, Henri, ‘Joseph Prud- homme’ 318 MONTAGU, Walpole letter to lady ... 454 MONTAIGNE, quotation applied to Velasquez 176 MONTEFELTRO, Federigo de, of Ur- bino, see Pesellino. MONTFORT, Jean de, and the Gerbier- Van Dyck controversy(5. c.) 490 MONTICELLI, Ad. J. Thomas 92 see Coll.: AndrS; Bllmont; Cercle des P.; Cottier; Haviland; Samat; — Mus.: Lille; Marseilles ; — -Sale Buriy ; — Franco- P. IV ar; Regnault; Tuileries. “Don Quixote and Sancho Pan- za" (T. c.) 423, 427, 428 Catalogue Page 442 Essays by G. Mourey, B. Sickert, M.Tourneux 466-472 “Souvenir de Walter Scott” 468 Drawing in ‘L’ Illustration,’ 1857 470 "A Conspiracy” 471 “Venetian Women at the Sea Side;” “Scene from the Decameron" 472 an opal and one of his pictures 427 appreciated in Scotland, America, England 467-472 in Marseilles 416, 427, 470, 472, 479 at Ganogobi; studies under Loubon; Rey; Ecole des B. A. Marseilles; Duke of Spoleto; infl. on Glasgow school. . . 470 and Daniel Cottier 422, 442, 472 and Ziem 423, 427 and Delacroix 423, 469, 470 and Diaz 423, 427, 428, 467, 471 and Empress Eugdnie 428 and Turner’s "Queen Mab’s Grotto”.. 468 and Watteau; Corot 468, 470 and Troyon; Claude Lorrain; Daubi- gny; Veronese;Titian; Rembrandt .469, 470 and BUrger; Reynart; Lagrange; Acad, of Venice; Chamentin; Napoleon III 47'. 472 MONTY, Paul, see Delacroix. 509 PAGE MOORE, George 283 MORDENT (read Mordaunt), D., etched Terborch "Music Lesson” (coll. Demi- doff) 1 18, 214 MOREAU, Gustave, see Degas; P. de Cbavannes. MORELLI, Domenico, see Mancini. Giovanni, see Botticelli; Giorgione; Raphael. MORISOT, Berthe, see Cassatt; Manet. and Impressionism 283, 356 MORO, An tonio.srn Coll. : B ed/ord; Hague; J erningbam; Pelworth; Spencer; Staf- ford; — Mus.; Berlin; Besanfon; Brus- sels; Cambridge; London, S. of A.; Louvre; Nat. Portr. Gal.; Prado; St. Petersburg; Vienna; Ufftii; — Charles V.; Dowdeswell; Francis /.; St. Juste. " Mary Tudor” (Mrs. G. c .) . ..63, 67, 68 Catalogue Page 124 Essays by Sir M. Conway, Dr. Friedlander; Max Rooses 214-219 “Mary of Hungary” 88,216,217 "Mary of Portugal”; "Catherine of Austria”; "Canon Van Horn”; “Canon Tact”; “Queen of Portugal”; "Philip II”; "Alexander Farnese”; "Duke of Alba"; "Emperor Maximilian” and "The Empress"; "Queen of France,” etc 216, 217 "Self-portrait” and Lampsonius; var- ious portraits; Fr. Floris; Joost von Cleef; P. Pourbus; Wm. Key 217-219 and Velasquez 177 and jewelry designed by Holbein . .2 1 5, 2 18 and Philip II 215-217,219 and Cardinal deGranvelle 216-218 and Scorel 215-218 in Flanders and the Netherlands; Por- tugal; Italy 215,216 K. van Mander on him and Queen Mary 216, 218 joined Antwerp Guild of St. Luke 216 sells portrait of Queen Mary to Knights of the Golden Fleece 218 MORONE, Francesco, see Mus. Berlin. MORONI, Giovanni, example (Mrs. G. c-) 55 MORRIS, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., and Rossetti 81 William, Rossetti (Mrs. G.c.) pain ted for him 4, 80, 8 1 The Red House 80, 86 MOSCHUS, of Alexandria, see Titian. MOUNT ANTALEGEO, see Titian. MOUREY, Gabriel, essay on Monticelli (T- c.) 466,467 MOZART, see Velasquc{. MULLER, Wm. James, of Bristol, draw- ing (H.c.) 379 MUNSTER, see Gossart, painted frames. MUNTZ, Eugfene, see Botticelli; Scbon- MURANO, and the Vivarinis no MURGER, Henri, ‘Vie de Bohfeme’ quoted 407 MURILLO 174 MUSEUMS AIX: Ingres "Granet, Architecte” and Degas (M rs. G. c.) 250 AMIENS, Musee de Picardie: Puvis de Chavannes "Peace and War” 1861, "Work and Rest” 1863, “Ave Picar- dia Nutrix” 1865, "Ludus Pro Pat- ria” 1861, "Vigilance” and “Fancy” 258, 260, 294, 298, 307 AMSTERDAM: Rijks: Rembrandt " RiverScene” and "Landscape” (Mrs G.c.) 200 Rembrandt etching “bust of self” and "self-portrait 1629” (Mrs. G. c.) . . 204 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX Ver Meer “Maid handing a letter to her Mistress” 209 Van Der Hoop: Vermeer “Letter Reader” 208,209 ANTWERP: "Regent Margaret” and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 232 BERGAMO: Botticelli “Virginia Ro- mana” and “Lucretia” {Mrs. G. c.) 105, 109, 110 BERLIN: Botticelli "St. Sebastian” and “Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G. c.) .190,193 Crivelli “Mary Magdalen” and Crivel- li {Mrs.G.c.) in, 11 j DOrer "Hiero. Holzschuher,” “Jacob Muffel” and Diirer {Mrs. G. c.) — 234, 235 Jan Van Eyck; also Early Dutch pic- ture, and “Crucifixion ” {H. c.) 398 Fior. di Lorenzo "Virgin and Child” and Fiorenzo {Mrs. G. c.) 141 Giorgione “Portrait of a Youth" and Giorgione {Mrs. G.c.) 185 Moro "Canon Tact”, "Canon Van Horn”, "Van Ameronghen” 216, 217 Morone, Fr. "Madonna, Anthony and Paul" and Mantegna {Mrs. G. c.) 159 Rembrandt "Money Changer” and "Self-portrait 1629” {Mrs.G.c.) 204 Schongauer "Adoration of the Shep- herds” 237 Scorel (?) "Agatha van Schoonhoven ” (?) and Gossart {Mrs. G.c.) 231, 232 Velasquez "Alessandro del Borro” 173 Vermeer from Hope coll, and other ex- amples 207 BERLIN NAT. GAL.: Lenbach “ Bis- marck” and Lenbach {T.c.) 464 BESANQON: Moro "Simon Renard”. . . 217 BOSTON : Botticelli (?) oblong replica of tondo in {H. c.) 385, 400 Regnault "Automedon” and Regnault {T.c.) 46. BOLOGNA: Giotto 244 BRESCIA, Martinengo Gall.: Venetian Sch. "St. George” and Crivelli {Mrs. G.c.) 115 BRERA: Copy of Giorgione "Christ Bearing Cross” {Mrs. G.c.) 183 Crivelli "Coronation of Virgin,” "Altar piece "and Crivelli {M rs.G. c.) 115 BRITISH: Jacopo Bellini sketch "St. George” and Crivelli {Mrs. G.c.) 116 Malcolm coll, drawings ascribed to Bandinelli and "Bandinelli” {Mrs. G.c.) 181, 182 Rembrandt etched self-portrait and R. "self-portrait, 1629” {Mrs.G. c.). . 204 has part of Arundelian coll 220 satirical print "Earl of Jersey and Miss Ford” 453 Hoppner chalk sketch 458 BRUNSWICK: Rembrandt "Tempest” and R. "Landscape” {Mrs.G.c.) . .200, 201 Vermeer 207 Rubens “Spinola” and “Arundel” {Mrs.G.c.) 221 Fr. Floris "Gentleman with Hawk”. . 229 BRUSSELS: Moro “H. Goltzius” 217 Gossart (?) "Madonna” and Gossart {Mrs.G.c.) 232 Van der Weyden picture and "Cruci- fixion" {H. c.) 399 M. des Arts Dgcoratifs: Tapestry with portrait of Isabella of Austria and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 230 CAMBRIDGE, Trinity College: Moro “Queen Mary” and Moro {Mrs. G. c.). 214 Fitzwilliam: Pinturicchio "Madonna” and Pinturicchio {Mrs. G. c.) 122, 123, 127 CASSEL: Rembrandt "The Ruin,” "Winter Scene" and R. "Landscape with Obelisk" {Mrs. G. c.) 201, 202 Terborch "Music Lesson” and Ter- borch {Mrs. G. c.) 212,214 Scorel "Family group" and Gossart {Mrs.G.c.) 231 Van Dyck "Moncada” 225 COLMAR: Schongauer "Madonna of the Rose Garden" and Schongauer {Mrs.G. c.) 236-240 CONDE, Chantilly: Pollaiuolo (?) "Madonna,” "Simonetta” and "Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G.c.) 190, 1 9 1 , 194 COPENHAGEN: Orley Portraits and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 229 CORS1NI, see Rome. CRACOW, Czartorisky: Rembrandt "Landscape" and R. "Landscape” {Mrs.G.c.) 200, 202 DORIA, Rome: two Pesellino "Scenes from Life of Pope Silvester” and Pes- ellino {Mrs. G. c.) 128 Scorel "Agatha von S.” and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 231, 232 DRESDEN: Diirer “ B. von Orley "229, 234 Giorgione "Venus” and Giorgione {Mrs. G. c.) 171, 186 "Rembrandt and Wife” and Rem- brandt "Young Couple” {Mrs.G. c .) . . 177 Terborch "Officer reading letter” 212 Van Dyck early portraits 226 Vermeer “Courtesan" 206, 207, 209 EDINBURGH Nat. Gal.: Gainsborough “Miss Graham” 452 Van Dyck " Knight in Armor” 226 FLORENCE, ANT. AND MOD.: Bot- ticelli "Primavera” and "Chigi Ma- donna” {Mrs. G. c.) 191 Pesellino Predella of Lippi altar piece and Pesellino {Mrs. G.c.) 128, 134 Filippo Lippi "Madonna” and "Ma- donna in Adoration ” {H. c.) 396 PAL. VECCHIO: Bandinelli figures in one of Vasari’s frescoes 178 Bandinelli " Hercules slaying Cacus”. 180 S. MARCO: Angelico "Madonna of the Star,” "Annunciation,” "Adoration of the Magi” and Angelico {Mrs. G.c.) . '46. 15'. '57 FRANK FORT, Civic M.: Botticelli "Por- trait” and "Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G.c.) 190, 191 GOTHA, Ducal: Rembrandt "Self-por- trait” and R. "Self-portrait, 1629” {Mrs.G.c.) 204 HAGUE: Rembrandt "Lesson in An- atomy" 195 Rembrandt "self-portrait, 1631" and R. “self-portrait, 1629” {Mrs. G. c.) . . 204 Vermeer " Diana and her companions ” “View of Delft” 206,208 Moro "A Goldsmith," "Unknown Man," “Woman” 217 HAMPTON COURT: Gossart "Children of Christian II” and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 229, 232 Lucas Cornelisz " Isabella of Austria” and Gossart {Mrs. G. c.) 230 old copy Diirer " Portrait” {Mrs. G. c.) 234 LILLE: Monticelli "Scene from the Decameron,” " Landscape” 472 LONDON, Soc. of Antiquaries: Moro "Mary Tudor” and Moro {Mrs. G.c.) . 214 Moro "Self-portrait 1560” 217 LOUVRE: Angelico "Coronation of the Virgin” and Angelico {Mrs. G. c.) ; '45. 147. '5' "Crucifixion” and "Crucifixion” ( w -«-) 397 PACE Botticelli "Madonna” and "Madon- na in Adoration” {H. c.) 396 "Madonna of Magnificat” and “Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G. c.)... 56, 194 "St. John in Childhood,” "Ma- donna” and "Chigi Madonna” {Mrs. G.c.) 191. 192. '94 Jac. Bellini sketch book and Crivelli {Mrs. G. c.) 1 16, 121 Bronzino portrait and Bandinelli. 182, 183 Correggio "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” and Van Dyck (S. c.) 487 Fragonard “ Lesson upon the Harpsi- chord" and Renoir 349, 350 Gossart "Monk” and Gossart {Mrs. G.c.) 232 diptych "Virgin and Child with John Carondelet” and G. {Mrs. G. c.) .. 233 and G. {H. c.) 386 Giotto examples, not by him 244 Ingres “ Bertin,” "Madame Rivifere” and Degas 250 Mantegna "Crucifixion” and Man- tegna {M rs. G. c.) 163 Master of the Cappella Pellegrina "Madonna” and Sassoferrato (H. c.) . 394 Moro "Dwarf" "Del Rio portraits”.. 219 Nicolo della Casa: " Portrait of sculp- tor" (Bandinelli?) 174 Pesellino Predella of Lippo Lippi altar piece and Pesellino {Mrs. G.c.).. 128, 134 Philippe de Champagne "Cardinal de Richelieu " and Lenbach 464 Poussin "Enlfevement des Sabines” copied by Degas 252 PuvisdeChavannes“Poor Fisherman” 307 Raphael "Madonna of King Francis” 97 Regnault “ Execution without Trial,” "Marshall Prim” 415 Rembrandt "Portrait of his second wife” 429 “ Philosopher in Meditation” and “ Little Ship of Peter” {Mrs. G. c.). . 199 Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child” and Sassoferrato {H. c.) 393 Titian “Man with the Glove,” "En- tombment” 92, 173 Terborch "Girl and Soldier,” " Reading Lesson" 212 Van Dyck "d’Aytona,” "Duke of Richmond” 225,488 Vermeer "La Dentellifere” 207 L. da Vinci “Mona Lisa” and Degas {Mrs.G. c.) 251,253 LUXEMBOURG: Fantin-Latour"Hom- mage & Delacroix,” "The Toast” 334, 339 Whistler "Portrait of my Mother” . .91, 92 LYONS: P. de Chavannes "Autumn” . . .300 MARSEILLES: Monticelli 472 P. de Chavannes "Return from the Chase" and Chavannes {P. c.) 300, 306, 307 MARTINENGO, see Brescia. METROPOLITAN: Manet “Boy with the Sword,” "Woman with the Par- rot” and Manet {P. c.) 271, 336 MUNICH: Burgkmaier copy of Schon- gauer "Self-portrait” 236 Diirer "Oswald Krell” and DUrer {Mrs.G.c) 235 Giotto "Crucifixion,” “Last Supper" and Giotto {Mrs. G.c.) 240 Rubens "Arundel and Wife" and Ru- bens {Mrs. G.c.) 221, 222 Schongauer (?) "Holy Family" 237 Terborch "Boy with Dog” 212 Vermeer "Woman with Necklace” and Vermeer {Mrs. G. c.) 205 MUNICH, Graf von Schack M.: Lenbach copies of Old Masters 421,463 NANTES: Ingres "Madame de Se- nonnes”and Degas 250,251 5 IO THE CLASSIFIED INDEX PAGE NAPLES: Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child” and Sassoferrato (H. c.) 393 Botticelli "Madonna” and "Chigi Ma- donna” {Mrs. G. c.) 188 NAT. GAL., London : and Sir George Howland Beaumont 446, 449, 454 Botticelli "Venus with Mars asleep” and "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G. c.) 189—19 1 "Adoration of the Shepherds" and "Lucretia” (Mrs. G.c.) 105 Claude Lorrain and Turner examples. 172 Lorenzo di Credi and "Madonna in Adoration" (H. c .) 397 Mantegna "Agony in the Garden” and Mantegna (Mrs. G.c.) 163, 166 Crivelli "Odoni altar piece,” “Vision of the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti” and Crivelli (Mrs. G. c.) hi, 115, 116 Van Eyck "John Arnolfini and wife” and Vermeer (Mrs. G. c.) 205 Giotto (so-called) examples, not his . . . 244 Gossart "Portrait of Man," "Married Couple” and Gossart (Mrs. G.c.).. 232, 233 Holbein "Christina of Milan” (Nor- folk c.) exhibited there 228 Pesellino "Trinity” his best work 134 Raphael "Ansidei Madonna” and " in- ghirami” (Mrs. G.c.) 97, 98 Rembrandt "self-portrait, 1640” and Rembrandt (T. c.) 433 Signorelli (so-called Giov. Bellini) "Circumcision" and Giotto (Mrs. G.c.) 246 Terborch "Music Lesson” 213 Velasquez "Admiral Pulido Pareja;” two " Philip IV” 173 Vermeer " Lady at the Spinet " . . . . 207-2 1 o NAT. PORTRAIT GAL., London: Cor- vus “Queen Mary” and Moro (Mrs.G.c.) 2 1 5 OLDENBURG: Rembrandt "Canal” and R. "Landscape” (Mrs. G.c.).... 200 PERUGIA: Fior. di Lorenzo “Story of San Bernardino” and F. di L. (Mrs. G.c.)...... 135, 140, 141 Pinturicchio “Madonna of S. Maria fraFossi” 122 Piero della Francesca "Madonna” and Fior. di Lorenzo (Mrs. G.c.) 140 PITTI: Raphael "Inghirami,” “Don- na Velata,” "Leo X” and “Inghira- mi" (Mrs. G. c.) 93'97.98 Botticelli "Fair Simonetta” (?) and “Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 187 Filippo Lippi "Madonna of the Roses” and Botticelli (?) tondo (H. c.) 400 copy Van Dyck "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” and Van Dyck (S. c.) . . 488 PRADO: Angelico "Annunciation” and Angelico (Mrs. G.c) 146, 1 57 Diirer "Self-portrait,” "Banker Im- hoff" and Diirer (Mrs. G. c.) . .73, 234, 235 Mantegna "Death of Virgin" and Mantegna (Mrs. G.c.) 164, 166 Moro "Dwarf” 2 “Mary Tudor” and Moro (Mrs. G. c.) 214,215,2 Rubens "Marie de Medicis” and Vel- asquez and Van Dyck 2 Titian "Charles V,” "Bacchanal" 1 Rubens copy of " Danae" 50, 168, 1; • '72. '73. i Van der Weyden and “Crucifixion” (H. c.) Van Dyck examples 223, 2 Velasquez examples '74, 2 PRAGUE: Nestitz G.: Rubens "Spinola” and Rubens (Mrs. G.c.) 2 ROME, CORSINI PAL: Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child” and Sassofer- rato (W. c.). •393.394 ROTTERDAM: Score! "Young Boy” and Gossart (Mrs. G.c.) 231 ROVIGO: copy Giorgione "Christ Bear- ing Cross” (Mrs. G. c.) 184, 187, 188 ST. PETERSBURG: Moro “Portrait of an unknown man” 217 Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child” and Sassoferrato (H. c.) 393 Terborch" Music Lesson” 212 SIENA: Schongauer (?) "self-portrait”. 236 SIGMARINGEN: Bruges sch. "Madon- na” and Schongauer (Mrs. G. c.). .238, 239 S. KENSINGTON: School of Paolo Uc- cello cassone and Pesellino (Mrs.G.c.) 135 manuscript inventory of Charles I es- tate and Mantegna (Mrs. G. c.) 164 STUTTGART : Paris Bordone (?) copy of Giorgione "Christ bearing Cross” (Mrs.G.c.) 184 Rembrandt "St. Paul in Prison" and R. "self-portrait, 1629” (Mrs. G. c.) . . 204 TURIN Wan Dyck “Thomas de Savoie- Carignan” 224 "Children of Charles I ” 483 UFFIZI: Angelico “Dormition of Vir- gin” (formerly owned by DukeCosimo dei M.), “Coronation” and Angelico (Mrs. G.c.) 146, 153 Bandinelli "Self-portrait” 178, 179 Bellini, Giov. “Allegory" and Man- tegna (Mrs. G. c.) 45, 165 Botticelli two "Madonnas,” “For- tezza” and "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 188, 192, 193 "Calumny of Apelles” and " Lucre- tia” (Mrs.G. c.) 15, 109, no Diirer example and Gossart (H. c.) . . . .386 Giorgione " Knight of Malta,” "Judg- ment of Solomon,” "Moses” and Gior- gione (Mrs. G.c.) 185, 186, 193 Mantegna Triptych and Mantegna (Mrs.G. c.) 158, 163, 165, 166 Moro "Self-portrait,” "Jean Scorel”.. 217 Pollaiulo "Adoration of the Magi" and “Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G. c.) 193 Tuscan sch. "Portrait of Young Man” (No. 1 1 54) and Chigi Madonna (Mrs. G. c.) 193 VATICAN: Angelico "Madonna with S. Dominic and St. Catherine” and Angelico (Mrs. G. c.) 151 Chapel of Nicholas V frescoes 147, 1 58 Sistina Chapel and Borgia Rooms, Pinturicchio works 122,123 Sistina Chapel, Perugino "Giving of keys to St. Peter” 140 VENICE ACAD. d. B. A.: Giov. Belli- ni "Madonna St. Catherine and St. Magdalen "and Mantegna (Mrs. G.c.). 163 VERONA: Crivelli "Madonna” and Mantegna (Mrs. G.c.) 1 1 1 VIENNA: Moro (?) "Cardinal Gran- velle,"" Young Man" 217 copy of Moro "Queen Mary ” 218 Lorenzo Lotto "Portrait” and Len- bach 464 Schongauer (?)" Holy Family” 237 Van Dyck "Marques de Moncada”. . . 225 “St. Joseph kneeling before the Virgin” and Van Dyck (S. c.) 490 WALLACE: Greuze “Boy with an or- ange” 495 del Maso (?) copy of Titian " Europa” (Mrs. G.c.) 170 Rembrandt "Landscape with castle” and R. " Landscape” (Mrs. G. c.) 200 two Sassoferrato "Madonna and Child ” and Sassoferrato (H. c.) 393 Van Dyck " Philippe le Roy and Wife” 226 Velasquez “Woman with Fan” and Mancini (Mrs.G.c.) 92 MUTHER, Richard, see Daumier. on Millet’s style 263 on Gavarni 318 MUXEL, J. M. etching of Rembrandt "self-portrait, 1645” (T. c.) 406 NAPLES, see Sassoferrato; Van Dyck Ch. of the Incoronata: Giottesque “St. George” and Crivelli (Mrs. G.c.) 1 16 NAPOLEON III, see Monticelli. NARDI, Jacopo, see Botticelli. NATIONALITY in art, see IVbistler. NAVAGERO, Andrea, and Giorgione and Titian 167 NEUMAN, Prof. Carl, essays on Rem- brandt "Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. Gc.) 197. '98 Rembrandt “Landscape” (Mrs. G.c.) 200.201 Rembrandt "self-portrait, 1645” ( T - c -) 434-435 NEW ORLEANS, Degas born there .... 252 NICHOL, his ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ and Miss Ann Ford 454 NICHOLL family, see Reynolds. N1CODEMUS, Bandinelli portrait as Nicodemus in a lost “Pieta” by his son '78 NORMANDY, see Havre; Honfleur; Trouville. NORTH , Lord, his and Dartmouth father of Lady Frances Finch, see Reynolds. NORTON, Prof. Charles Eliot and ” Bandinelli” (Mrs.G. c.) 33, 51 NOVELIERS, Salomon, and the Ger- bier-Van Dyck controversy, 489,490 see Van Dyck (S. c.) NUREMBURG, and Diirer 73,235 NYS, Daniel, see Arundel. OA K panels, use of, in the Netherlands . . 234 OISE, the river, and Daubigny 332 Miss Cassatt summers at Beaufresne in the department of 356 OPAL, an, see Monticelli. OPIE.John 492 painting (H. c.) 375 OPORTO, see Gossart. ORIENTAL ART and Giotto 79 and Crivelli 117 and the classic ideal 117 and Medieval art 118 "ORLEANS, Marguerite d',” widow of Gaston, see Van Dyck. ORLEY, Bernard van, see Mus. Dres- den; — Gossart. and Margaret of Austria, princes Charles, Ferdinand and their sisters, Christian of Denmark 229 ORVIETO, see Angelico; P. de Cha- vannes. OSSORY, Countess of, Walpole's letter to her about Lady Frances Finch . .440, 441 OSTADE, see Terborch. OVID, see Botticelli; Titian. OXFORD, and Burne-Jones, Morris, Rossetti 80 PACCA Law, see Botticelli; “Chigi Madonna.” PACKINGTON Hall, Warwickshire. seat of Earls of Aylesford 435, 440, 441 PADUA, see Crivelli; Giorgione; Giotto; Mantegna. Arundel dies there 220 frescoes in, see P. de Chavannes. PADUAN, and old Venetian art 115 PALERMO, Van Dyck there 226 PA LG RAVE, see Frith; Whistler. 5 “ THE CLASSIF 1 E D INDEX PALMEZZANO, Marco, see Giorgione versions oj "Christ Bearing Cross." PANTHEON, Paris, see P. deCbavannes PAPI, Domenico di, Toschi, see Bot- PARIGI, Giulio, see Botticelli. PARIS, Mdryon etchings {P.c.) 335 Opera House 296, 343 PARMA, School of, influence on Van Dyck 487 PARMIGIANO, (Mazzola), and Van Dyck {S. c.) 487 PARNASSIAN poets, and Degas 249 PASSAVANT, see Raphael. PASTURE, Rogier de la, see Pan der Weyden. PENT1MENTI, see Jacob Maris. PERKINS, F. Mason, essays on Crivelli {Mrs.G.c.) in, 115 Fior. di Lorenzo {Mrs.G.c.) 141 Fra Angelico {Mrs. G. c.) 157 Giotto {Mrs.G.c.) 240, 24 1 PERRENOT de Granvelle, Eugfene, Prince de Cantecroix 224 PERUGIA, see Mus. Perugia; — Fior. di Lorenzo; Pinturiccbio; Raphael. Court of, decision in “Chigi Ma- donna” lawsuit 188 PERUGINO 25,38, 127, 135, 140 see Mus. Vatican; — Degas; Fior. di Lorenzo; Pinturiccbio. PERUZZ1, Baldassare, portraits of Medici Princes(?) {Mrs. G. c.) 27 PESARO, see Bellini, Giov. PESELL1NO, ‘Francesco di Pesello,' see Coll.: Austen; Bromley; Torregiani; Wantage; Woodburn;—Mus.: Doria; Florence A. and M .; Louvre; Nat. Gal. S. Kensington; — Exb. New Gal. 1893; — Sale Bromley; — Biblio. R.; Dante; Florence, S. C.; Medici. Two Cassone "Triumphs” of Pe- trarch {Mrs. G. c.) 27, 3 1 , 32 Catalogue Page 64 Essays by Dr. Werner Weisbach; H. P. Horne 127-129, 133-135 "Scenes from story of David” 129 "Scenes from the Life of Pope Syl- vester” show influence of Angelico.. 128 and Paolo Uccello 104, 133, 135 and Fed. de Montefeltro no worked with Filippo Lippi 128, 134 and Piero di Cosimo 129 Vasari on him and Giuliano d’Arrigo Pesello; Billi quoted 128, 133, 134 Masaccio infl 128 Lorenzo Pratese and Zanobi di Mig- liore, his partners 134 his last work for Ch. of San Jacopo, Pistoia 134 PETRARCH, see Carrara; Giotto; Pes- PETTY, Wm„ see Arundel. "PHALSBOURG, Henriette de,” wid- ow of Louis de Guise, see Van Dyck. PH I LIP the Bold 69 II, see Moro; Titian. and "Europa” {Mrs. G. c.) and Ti- tian and Rubens .. 49, 58, 167, 170, 172, 173 his daughter Isabella Reg. of the Netherl 68,224 IV, see Coll. Grammont; — Mus.: Nat. Gal.; Prado; — Terborch;V elasque {. and Rubens' copy of Titian "Europa” 170 and Archduke Ferdinand, Reg. of the Netherlands 224 PH I LI PON, see Daumier. PHILIPPE EGALITE, sells Titian "Europa" {Mrs. G. c.) 168 PHILLIBROWN, engraved Rubens "Arundel” (Afrr. G. c.) 130 PHOTOGRAPHY, its value to critics of art 398 PICA, Vittorio, see Mancini. PI LOT Y, see Lenbach. PILS, see Regnault. P1NTURICCHIO, see Mus.: Cam- bridge; Perugia; Vatican; — Citta di C.; Costantini; Siena; Lib.; Spello; Spo- leto. "Virgin and Child” {Mrs. G. c.) .26, 27 Catalogue Page 34 Essays by Dr. C. Ricci; Dr. E. Steinmann, McNeil Rushforth.121-127 "Madonna,” Valencia; "Madonna,” S. Maria fra Fossi, Perugia 122 angels in S. Maria in Ara Coeli, Rome; Piccolomini frescoes, Siena, and Fior. di Lorenzo 135. >4° and Perugino, Raphael, Fior. di Lo- renzo, Carpaccio 38, 121, 123, 140 C. Ricci book on him, cited 122 PIOMBO, Seb. del, see Unknown Italian Master. {Mrs. G. c.) and Bandinelli {Mrs. G.c.) 51, 7°' 178. 179. '82 PISA frescoes, see P. de Cbavannes. PISANELLO, see Degas; Mantegna. PISARRO, see Exb.: Durand-Ruel 1889. and Corot 34 ■ and Impressionism 350 PISTOIA, Ch. of S. Jacopo, see Pesellino. PITT, William 449 PLACE PIGALLE, Paris, Puvis de Chavannes and his friends there 305 PLATO, in Pesellino {Mrs. G.c.) 33 PLYMOUTH, Geo. Legge, see Dartmouth POINTELIN 362 POINTILLISM, see Vermeer 346 POITIERS, H6tel-de-Ville, see P. de Cbavannes. POLLAIUOLO, Antonio, and Piero, see Mus. Condi; — Botticelli. POMPEII frescoes, see P. de Cbavannes; Renoir. POPE, Alfred Atmore, Farmington, see Coll. Pope. PORCELLIS, Jan, see Rembrandt. PORSENNA, in Botticelli "Lucretia” {Mrs.G.c.) 16, 103 PORT, Mrs. and Miss, of Ilam, and Lady Frances Finch 439 PORTA del POPOLO, Rome 417 PORTI UNCOLA, see Assisi. PORTO DI FERMO (or di S. Giorgio), and Crivelli "St.George” {Mrs.G. c.) 22, 1 17 PORTRAITS as records, judgments, etc. 214 PORTRAITURE, its history 449 PORTUGAL, see Moro. POTTER, Paul, see Coll.: Six. POURBUS, Peter, see Moro. POUSSIN, see Degas; P. de Cbavannes. "L'Enlfevementdes Sabines” 343 PRATESE, Piero di Lorenzo, see Pes- ellino. PRATO, see Coll.: Nistri. Francesco di Girolamo da, and " Bandinelli ” {Mrs. G.c.) 181, 182 his medal of Alessandro dei Medici ... 181 PRATT, Joseph B. mezzotinted Hopp- ner " Miss Pollock " {T.c.) 424, 458 PRE-RAPHAELITES 7,85, 188 325. 334. 367 see Brown, F. M.; Burne-Jones; Morris; Rossetti. PREYER, M. Amsterdam, sold Maris “ Dordrecht" {P.c.) 314 PRIMATICCIO, see P. de Cbavannes. PRIMITIVES, see Italian primit. PROUT, Samuel, two water colours {H c.) 379 PRUDHOMME, Joseph 318 PRUDHON 305 PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, see Mus.: Amiens; Lyons; — Exb. Salon des C. E. Burgundy; Durand-Ruel; Lyons. Detail from " Peace" {P. c.) . .258-263 Catalogue Page 260 Essays by Roger Marx; C. Ricketts; Andr£ Michel, G. Lafenestre, M. Vachon 299-31 1 "SainteGenevifeve” Panthdon — 258, 301 Sorbonne H6micycle 258, 301 “Conflagration in the Village” and Courbet’s influence 301 "At the Fountain” (detail from "Rest”); "Poor Fisherman”; "Mag- dalen”; "The Dream;” “The Prod- igal Son;” "Orpheus;” "The Family of Fishers”; “Tamaris" 307 work in the Boston Public Lib., Hfltel- de-Ville, Paris and Poitiers 301, 307 early work 263, 264 first decoration at Lons-Ie-Saulnier . . 301 influenced by the frescoes in Assisi, Orvieto, Padua, Pisa, Rome, Pom- peii, Siena 3°6 and Henri Scheffer 258,301,305 and the Flemish sch. ; G£r6me 259 and Ingres; Millet 259, 301 and Chasseriau; Delacroix; Delaunay; Flandrin; Poussin; Primaticcio. . .299, 301, 3°5> 3°7 and Corot 300,301,307 and Couture 300, 305, 328 and Axtel; Ricard; Baudry; Chen- avard; Fromentin; Hubert; G. Mor- eau 3 0 5.3°6 and Giotto; Raphael 307 QUERCIA, Jacopo della 395 QUIXOTE, Don. see Dore; Monticelli. other illustrators of 468 RAEBURN, see Hoppner 447 " Boy with a Rabbit” 495 RAFFAELLI, on Degas 346, 347 RAGOT engraved Van Dyck’s "Mystic Marriageof St. Catherine” 488 RAPHAEL, see Coll.: Bigatfini; Bonne- maison; Christina Q.; Dawson; Ingbi- rami ; Lawrence; Morgan; Orleans; Panciatichi; Recbberg; Whyte;— Mus.: Nat. Gal.; Pilti; Ufp;i; — Sales: Bry- ants; Lawrence; Orleans; — Cro;al; Degas; Flos; Granberg; Hands; Medici; P. de Cbavannes. “Inghirami” {Mrs. G.c.) 9, 15 Catalogue Page 10 Essays by G. Gronau; H. P. Horne; Dr. W. Bode 93-98 " Pi eta ” {Mrs.G.c.) 2 1 , 26 Cata log uePage 28 "Madonna di San Antonio di Padua” and Perugia 25,28 “Donna Velata” and “Inghirami” {Mrs.G.c.) 98 Burckhardt quoted 14 Vasari on “Pieta" {Mrs. G. c.); on his modernity 26, 98 Amidei in ‘Delle Istorie Volteranne’ ignorant of the "Inghirami" {Mrs. G.c.) 97 Giov. Morelli quoted 97 and Cardinal Bembo 9, 13, 14 and Holbein (Passavant quoted)... .13, 97 and Pinturicchio; Fior. di Lorenzo; Perugino 38 and Leo X 97, 98 and Giorgione 186 Perugian influence 135 never overcame the traditional re- straints 381 infl. on Sassoferrato 392, 395 ‘RASSEGNA d’Arte’, see Crivelli. RAVENNA, see Giotto. REALISM, see Botticelli. and Impressionism 335 REALISTIC Movement, see Eyck, Van. 512 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX REALISTS, Bracquemond; Courbet; Delacroix; Fantin-Latour; Gericault; Goya; Legros; Manet; Millet; the Pre-Raphaelites; Velasquez; Whistler 334.338-340 REBER and Bayersdorf, reproduce Schongauer (Mrs. G. c.) in “Klass- ischer Bilderschatz” 238 RED HOUSE, the, see Morris, iVm. REFORMATION, wars of the, art works in Alsace destroyed then 239 REGNAULT, Henri, see Coll. Cercle des P.; Elkins; — Mus.: Boston; Louvre; Luxembourg ; — Exb. : Rcgnault ; — Beaux-Aris; Boussod V. S' Co.; Franco- P. War. "Automedon and the Horses of Achilles" (T.c.) 430 Catalogue Page 430 Essays by Roger Marx, A. Alexan- dre 459-462 "Portrait of Marshal Prim"; "Execu- tion under the Caliphs of Tangiers”; "Salome"; "Judith and Holo- phernes" 415,417,421,461,462 and Louis David 416 and Fortuny; Pietro da Cortona; Courbet; Velasquez 417 and Pils; Michelangelo; Sistine Chapel 417,461,462 and Monticelli 423 and Delacroix; Gericault 460, 461 Paul de Saint-Victor, Bonnin on the "Automedon” 460 in Spain 417 at the Villa Medici 460, 461 REMBRANDT, Van Rijn 326, 346, 360 see Coll.: Alba; Beumonville; Brain- camp; Buckingham Pal.; Devonshire; Hinloopen; Hope; llcbesler; Iveagb; King oj Poland; Lattsdowne; Leucbten- berg; Northbrook; Posonyi; Pourtales; Rath; Rothschild; Reis; Saxony, G.D. of; Scbiff; Stowe House; W allace; IV eher; Wilhelm II; — Mus.: Amsterdam; Ber- lin; British; Brunswick; Cassel; Cracow; Dresden; Gotha; Oldensburg; Stuttgart ; — Exh.: British Inst.; Manchester; Rem- brandt; R. A. Winter; S. Kensington ; — Sales: Beumonville; Bramcamp; Hope; Stowe House; — Colnagbi; Cooper; De- gas; Daumier; Exsbaw; Fittler; Franc- ken; Knoedler; Monticelli; Muxel; Re- veil; Tooth & S.; Wertheimer; Whistler. “Young Couple" (Mrs. G. c.) ... .57, 61 Catalogue Page 88 Essays by Em. Michel, Dr. W. Bode 195-196 "Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G.c.) 61,62 Catalogue Page 94 Essays by C. Neumann, Em. Michel Dr. W. Bode 197-200 gospel of St. Mark quoted 197, 199 Houbraken in ‘Groote Sch.,'etc., on "Little Ship of Peter" 97 "Self-Portrait, 1629” (Mrs. G.c.) 62 Catalogue Page 106 Essays by E. Michel, Dr. Bode. . 203-205 "Landscape with Obelisk" (Mrs. G.c.) 62 Catalogue Page 100 Essays by Dr. W. Bode, C. Neu- mann, Em. Michel 200-203 "Self-Portrait, 1645” (T.c.) .403,405 Catalogue Page 406 Essays by Dr. Bredius, Em. Michel, Dr. W. Bode, C. Neumann.. . .428-435 “Passion scenes” and Prince Freder- ick Henry 199 "St. Jerome at Prayer” 202 "The Night Watch" 404,405 his etching "Rembrandt Sketching" .. 405 "Self-Portrait,” Buckingham Pal.; " Hendrickje Stoffels” Louvre 428, 429 "Self-Portrait," Nat. Gall 435 Dr. Bode quoted 200, 203, 405, 428 Bartsch on his etchings 202, 204 and Titian "Europa" (Mrs.G. c.) ... . 171 and Doctor Tulp; Hendrick van Uilenborch 195 and Leyden 195, 202, 203, 205 and Saskia 195, 199, 404, 428, 433 and Porcellis, Willaerts 198 and Pieter Molyn, Van Goyen, de Cap- pelle, Berchem, Roghman, Savery, Seghers, Vlieger, Asselyn 202 and Vermeer and Burger 205, 206, 209, 210 andTerborch 21 1 and Reynolds 446 and Hendrickje Stoffels 428, 429 his and Shakespeare's use of realistic details 199 copied by Lenbach 422 RENAISSANCE artists, Italian and French, see Renoir. REN1, Guido 492 RENOIR, see Coll.: Blanche; Potter Pal- mer; — Exh. des Impressionistes; Re- noir; — Boussod V.; Degas; Eng. Scb. "Girl with the Cat" (P. 282, 283 Catalogue Page 302 Essays by A. Alexandre, Roger Marx, C. Mauclair, L. B6n6dite, R. de la Sizeranne 349*354 " Dancing Girl," " La Loge," "Women Bathing," “Moulin de la Galette,” " Les Canotiers” 350, 35 1 and Fragonard; Watteau; other eight- eenth century French Masters; Law- rence 349.350.353 and Corot; Courbet; the Pompeii fres- coes 350 and Gleyre; Ingres; Italian primitives; Renaissance artists 35°. 35 1 . 353 and Boucher 35 1,352 and Carrifere 357 'REPERTORIUM FOR KUNST' on Diirer’s " Portrait” (Mrs. G.c.) 234 REVEI L, has outline engraving of Rem- brandt " Little Ship of Peter "(Mrs. G.c.) 94 REVOLUTION OF 1848, French, and Monticelli 423 REVOLUTIONARY WAR (American) and Reynolds (T.c.) 409 ‘REVUE de l’Art Chretien,’ see Helbig in Angelico. REY, see Monticelli. REYNART, Edouard, see Monticelli. REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua 85,404,450,451 • 476,477 See Coll. Aylesjord; — Exb. Grosvenor G. ; — Agnew Sr S.; Bolognese Scb.; Hoppner; Lenbach; Nicboll; Van Dyck; Velasque f. "Lady Frances Finch” (T.c.) 405 409-4".454-459 Catalogue Page 412 Essays by Sir W. Armstrong; A. B. Chamberlain; L. Cust; C. J. Hol- mes 435.446 "Marquess of Bath,” and sundry por- traits by him 435,439,441 "Lady Althorp,” "Lady Pelham,” "Lady Salisbury”; "The Ladies Wal- degrave"; " Lord Temple;” "Countess of Dartmouth;" "Mrs. Robinson" (Perdita); "Mrs. Baldwin” (The Fair Greek); "Wm. Beckford"; "Beau Brummel”; "Chancellor Thurlow"; "Mrs. Abington" (Circe) 435, 440, 441 "Miss Louise Thynne" 439 H. Walpole on him 39, 454 Bolognese Sch.; Italian infl 440, 441 Richardson and Riley his precursors; Hudson; Dr. Johnson; Royal A 441 ‘Discourses on Ari ' 446 and Lely; B. West "Death of Wolfe", Titian 409.446 and Rubens 423 and Van Dyck 441.447 and Rembrandt . 446.491 and Gainsborough . . .451.452 and Hogarth 451.452 RHINE, painters of the Upper,. . .73, 236,239 380 RIBERA 177 See Velasque j. RICARD, Gustave, see P. de Chavannes. RICCARDI Palace, and Uccello, Pes- ellino, Filippo Lippi 133, 134 RICCI, Dr. Corrado, see Pinluricchio . essays on : Crivelli (Mrs.G. c.) 1 10, 1 1 1 Pinturicchio (Mrs. G. c.) 121, 122 “ Bandinel I i " (Mrs. G.c.) 178, 179 Botticelli, “Chigi Madonna" (Mrs. G.c.) 188, 189 Rubens (Mrs. G.c.) 219, 220 Sassoferrato (H. c.) 392, 393 RICCI, ‘Memorie Storiche’ (1830), see Crivelli. RICHARDSON, architect of John Hay’s House 374. 375 Jonathan, see Reynolds. ‘RICHMOND, Harry,’ George Meredith 455 RICHTER, J. Paul, see Coll. Richter. essays on : Botticelli “ Lucretia”(Afrs. G.c.) 98,99. '03. 104 F.di Lorenzo (Mrs. G.c.)... 1 35, 139, 140 Giorgione (Mrs. G.c.) 186, 188 Giotto (Mrs. G.c.) 244—247 RICKETTS, Charles, essays on Rossetti (Mrs. G.c.) 85-87 P. de Chavannes “ Peace” (P. c.) ... 300 RILEY, John, see Reynolds. ROBBIA, Andrea and Luca della, ex- amples (Mrs. G. c.) 55 his Madonnas 396 ROBERT, Leopold "The Harvesters" 354 ROBERTS, David, see Whistler. ROBINSON, H., engraved Rubens (Mrs. G.c.) ,30 , Theodore, on Monet's influence . 276 ROGHMAN, Roeland, see Rembrandt. ROLAND, Madame, afterward Lady Monington, and Marchioness of Wel- lesley, her portrait by Dowman (H. c.) 379 ROMANTIC movement, definition of the 85,86 and Alexandre Lenoir 311 school, see Whistler. opposed to but not antagonistic to ‘classic’ 445 and Impressionism 273, 341 ROMANTICISM, see Monticelli. •ROMAUNT DE LA ROSE’, see Ros- ROME, see Coll. Chigi ; — Mus. Doria; Rome, C. P. ; Vatican; — Angelico; Moro; Pinturicchio; Santa Sabina; Van Dyck. frescoes in, see P. de Chavannes. Prix, Envois de, see Beaux Arts, E. des. ROMNEY, see Hoppner. “ Lady Cowardine and son” 493 ROOSES, Max, see Van Dyck. essays on Moro (Mrs. G.c.) 2 1 5-2 1 9 Rubens (Mrs. G.c.) 220-222 ROSE, Sir Thomas, see Arundel. ROSELLI, Matto, see Carlo Dolci. ROSENBERG, Adolf, essay on Len- bach (T.c.) 463,465 ROSSELINO, Antonio (Mrs. G.c.) 55 ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel 325 See Coll.: Dunlop; Graham; Lealhard; Leyland; — Sales: Christie’s; Graham; Leyland; — Engl. II. Mag.; Oxford. "Love’s Greeting” (Mrs. G. c.).. 7,8 513 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX Catalogue Page 4 Essays by H. C. Marillier, H. P. Horne, C. Ricketts 80, 87 "Gwendolin in the Watch Tower”: "Dante Meeting Beatrice in Flor- ence and in Paradise”; "The Arming of the Knight” 80 designs stained glass and panel "An- nunciation” for St. Martin's Church, Scarsborough 81,85 ‘Romaunt de la Rose’; 'Vita Nuova'; 'Translations from Early Italian Poets' 80,86 and William Morris 4, 80, 8 1 , 86 and Burne-Jones; Ford Madox Brown 80, 81,85 and Dante 80, 86 and Delacroix 86 ROSSO, and " Bandinelli” {Mrs. G. c.) .. 179 ROTTERDAM, see Jacob Maris. ROUSSEAU, Thdodore 307 not a Romanticist 86 Burger his friend 208 J apanese influence on him 344 Diaz's admiration for 423 ROYAL ACADEMY, see Coll.—Exb. George Barret, Sr., a very early mem- ber of the 375 Reynolds its first president, and chief founder 441 Sir George Howland Beaumont, its benefactor 454 WATER COLOR SOC., George Barret, J r., one of its first members 379 RUBENS, see Coll.: Carlisle; Ducbasicl- D.; Morgan; Norfolk; Rubens; Suther- land; IVarwick; — Mus.: Brunswick; M unich; Prado; Prague; — Exh.: British /.; Manchester; Nat. Port.; — Sale Rubens; — Birch; Colnagbi; Girtin; Krafft; Philip II; PbiUibrown; Rey- nolds; Scriven; Webb. “ Earl of Arundel” (Mrs. G. c.) .63, 67 Catalogue Page 130 Essays by: Dr. C. Ricci; Max Rooses; H. Hymans 219-223 "Cardinal Prince Ferdinand” (J. P. Morgan c.) 221 "Arundel, his wife Althea Talbot,” and dwarf 221,222 his opinion of Charles I 165 in Antwerp 221 and Sir Dudley Carleton 220, 221 and H£lbne Fourment 476 and Marie de Medicis 233, 234 and Philip IV 170 and Spain 49, 50 and Titian 50, 168, 170, 172, 173,223 and Van Dyck and the Gerbier-Van Dyck controversy about Van Dyck ($• c.) 219, 220, 224, 476, 477, 481,483,489,490 and Velasquez 1 74, 175 his Madonnas and Saints, beautiful and distinguished people 385 RUSH FORTH, G. McNeil, essays on: Crivelli ( Mrs.G.c .) 11 5-1 17 Pinturicchio (Mrs. G.c.) 123,127 RUSK IN, John 466 on Alf. Wm. Hunt 379 RUSSELL, Wriothesley, 2nd Duke of Bedford 454 RUYSDAEL, Jacob 208,213 See Vermeer. Solomon, see Maris. SAINTS, see the different Italian masters; Rubens; V an Dyck. ST. BERNARD Pass 380 ST. BERNARDINO of Siena 487 ST. BONA VENTURA 487 ST. CATHERINE, of Siena, see Mus.: Vatican; Venice Ac. and the Dominican revival 147 ST. JOHN, models for, pointed out on the streets of Florence 189 ST. JOHN’S Hospital, Bruges, see Floreins triptych. ST. JOSEPH, in Botticellesque Tondo (Mrs.G.c.) 57 in Giotto (Mrs.G.c.) 74, 154 ST. JUSTE, and Moro "Queen Mary” nowin Prado 215,218 ST. LOUIS, King of France, related to the Beaumont family 449 ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI ..33, 141,242,243 See Mantegna "Sacred Conversation” (Mrs.G.c) ;Bellini; Castelfranco; Giotto. the room in which he died and the Fior. di Lorenzo (Mrs. G.c.) 33 influence on Umbrian art 140 his influence on art 381,483 ST. MARTIN’S CH. Colmar, see Colmar. Isenmann painted altar-pieces for it ... 239 ST. MARY MAGDALEN, see Mus. Berlin. in Mantegna (Mrs. G. c.) and in Giov. Bellini "Madonna” in Acad. d. B. A., Venice 163 and “Crucifixion” subject by Flemish Primitives 399, 400 and Rubens 476 STS. PETER AND PAUL, in Crivelli Altar-piece once at Porto di Fermo ... 117 in medallions in frame of Fior. di Lor- enzo (Mrs. G. c.) 141 "S. PETER, GIVING OF KEYS TO,” by Fior. di Lorenzo in Sistine Chapel and F. di Lorenzo (Mrs.G.c.) 140 ST. PETERSBURG, see Whistler. ST. ROSALIE 482 ST. SEBASTIAN, in Crivelli "Odoni" Altar-piece 111 in Mantegna fresco at Padua 160 painted by Botticelli for Lorenzo de Medici 190, 193 SAINT-VICTOR, Paul de, see Regnault. SAN REMO, see Coll. Tbiem. SAN SEVER 1 NO delle Marche, Cath- edral of, Pinturicchio "Madonna” and Pinturicchio (Mrs. G.c.) 122 SANTA SABINA upon the Aventine, Ch. of, Rome, its Sassoferrato stolen and recovered 392 SADOLETO recommends Inghirami to preferment 14 SALES ALTAMIRA, London, 1827: Velasquez "Philip IV" (Mrs. G. c.) 178 BARKER, Christie’s 1874 and 1879: Sassoferrato “Madonna and Child" (H.c.) 376 BEURNONV 1 LLE, de, Paris, 1881, 1883, 1884: Rembrandt "Landscape with Obelisk" (Mrs. G.c.) 100 BOUSSOD, VALADON & CO., New York, 1902: Regnault “Automedon" (J.c.) 430 BRAMCAMP, Amsterdam, Rembrandt " Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G.c.) 94 BROMLEY, Davenport, 1862: Pesel- lino "Triumphs" (Mrs. G.c.) 64, 129 BRUSSELS 1902: “Bewailing of Christ” sold as a Memlinc and "Crucifixion" ( H.c .) 398 BRYANT : Raphael " Pieta" (Mrs. G. c.) 28 Titian " Europa" (Mrs. G.c.) 58, 168 BURGER, Paris, 1892: Vermeer "Con- cert” (Mrs. G. £.), "Young Lady at the Spinet” (Nat. Gal.) 112, 207, 208 BURTY, Philippe, Paris, 1891: Monti- celli "Venetian Women at the Sea Side” 472 CH RISTI E’S, see Sales: Barker; Bromley; Graham; Leyland. 1883: Rossetti sketches and "Love’s Greeting" (Mrs. G. c.) 81 1895: Rembrandt "Self-portrait, 1629," (Mrs.G.c.) 106 1901: Hoppner "Lady Louisa Man- ners” 492 CHARLES I, of England: Mantegna "Sacred Conversation" (Mrs. G. c.) . . 52, 164, 184 DAVIS, Erwin, New York, 1889: Degas " Danseuses " (P.c.) 296 GRAHAM, Christie’s, 1886: Rossetti " Love’s Greeting " (M rs.G.c.) 4 HOPE collection, 1898: Rembrandt " Little Ship of Peter" (Mrs. G. c.) ... 94 Terborch “Music Lesson" (Mrs. G. c.) 1 18 HOTEL DROUOT, 1882: Flemish "Cru- cifixion" (H.c.) 388 LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas, 1830: Ra- phael" Pieta" (Mrs.G.c.) 28 LEYDEN, Baroness van, 1804: Ver- meer “Concert” (Mrs. G.c.) 112 LEYLAND, Christie’s, 1892: Rossetti “ Love’s Greeting” (Mrs. G.c.) 4 Crivelli "St. George” (Mrs. G.c.) 22 MAY, Ernest, Paris, 1890: Manet "Wo- man with Guitar” (P. c.) 284, 337 M 1 REUX, Marseilles, 1900: several Mon- ticellis 472 MONTE di PIETA, Rome: Morelli buys Botticelli "Virginia Romana" 105 ORLEANS, 1799: Titian "Europa” (Mrs.G.c.) 58 (Remnant) Bryant’s, 1800: Raphael " Pieta " (Mrs. G. c.) 28 OSSUNA, Madrid, 1896: Van Dyck "Lady with Rose" (Mrs. G. c.) 136 RUBENS (posthumous), 1641 : Rubens "Arundel” (Mrs. G.c.) 130 S 1 MES: Giotto "Presentation” (Mrs. G.c.) r 54 STOWE HOUSE COLL., 1848: Rem- brandt "Self-portrait, 1629" (Mrs. G.c.) 106 THORE, see Sale Bilrger. SALVI, Gian Battista, see Sassoferrato. Tarquinio, artist, father of Sas- soferrato 392, 395 SALVIATI, Francesco, and " Bandinelli" (Mrs.G.c.).... 180, 181, 182 SANSON I, his edition of Vasari’s ‘Lives’ 180 SANTIAGO de la Espada, Order of, and "Bandinelli" 70, 178-180, 182 SARGENT, John S., sketch for ‘Astarte’ (Mrs. G.c) 3,8 and Mancini 91 SARTO, Andrea del, see Pesellino. and " Bandinelli ” (Mrs.G.c.) 51,1 78 SASK 1 A, see Rembrandt. SASSOFERRATO, see Coll.: Barker; Bianco; Casali; Caremuli; — Mus.: Corsini; Louvre; Naples; Wallace ; — Sale Barker; — S. Sabina. "Madonna and Child" (H.c.) 381, • 385-387 Catalogue Page 376 Essays by Dr. C. Ricci, G. Gronau, G. Lafenestre 392-395 "Madonna,” Dresden 393 and Albani; Barrocci; Domenichino; Guido Reni; Bern. Luini; Raphael .392, 395 514 the cl studies in Naples 393-395 Burckhardt quoted 393 Lanzi on him; Carlo Dolci; Buchanan on a Sassoferrato in Corsini and Casali Pal.; statue of Master of the Cap. Pellegrini, Louvre; Mariette quoted . . 394 and Van Dyck 483 SATON, Bouches-du-Rh6ne, Monticelli there 471 SAVERY, Roelandt, see Rembrandt. SAVOIE-CARIGNAN, Prince Thomas de, and Van Dyck 224 SAVONAROLA 386 See Cassoni; S. Join. and the Dominican revival 147 and Botticelli 99, 109, 1 10, 194 Guidantonio Vespucci his opponent .. 105 SAVOY, house of 224 SCAEVOLA Mucius (Lucius), in Botti- celli " Lucretia” {Mrs. G.c.) 16, 103 SCAMANDER river, see Regnault " Au- tomedon” (T. c.). SCARBOROUGH, see Rossetti; Seddon. SCHARF, Sir George, on Gossart in Hampton Court 229 SCHAUS & CO. sold Lenbach " Bis- marck” (T.c.) 436 SCHEFFER, Henri, see P. deChavannes. SCHEIBLER, see Scbongauer. SCHELTIUS b Bolswert, see Bolswert. SCHOMBURG HOUSE, Pall Mall, Gainsborough studio there 451 SCHONGAUER, Martin, see Coll.: Scblotlbauer; Sepp; — Mus.: Berlin; Colmar; Munich; Siena; Sigmaringen; Vienna; — Colnaghi; Klassiscber B.; Kunsl und All. " Madonna ” {Mrs. G.c.) 7-73-74 Catalogue Page 148 Essays by C. Dodgson; Dr. Friedlan- der; A. Marguillier 236-240 Bayersdorfer, Krauss, Eug. Muntz, Scheibler, quoted 238-240 and Van der Weyden . . . .224, 236, 238, 239 and Van der Weyden "Madonna,” Brussels 239 and Burgkmair, Diirer 236 and Flemish Sch 237, 239 and Gaspard Isenmann 239 his engravings and "Crucifixion” (H. c.) 399 SCHOONHOVEN, Agatha van, see Mus. Berlin; Doria. SCHROBENHAUSEN 462 SCHUPPEN, van, engraved Van Dyck's "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine" .. 488 SCOREL, Jan van, see Mus.: Berlin; Doria; Cassel; Rotterdam; — Gossart; SCOTT, Sir Walter 379 SCRIVEN, E. and G., engraved Rubens "Arundel” {Mrs. G. c.) 130 SCROVEGN1, Oratory of the, see Padua Ar. Chap. SCU LPTORS, in advance of painters ... 75 SEBASTIAN, Don, King of Portugal ... 68 SEDAN, see Daumier 312 SEDDON, archit. St. Martin's Church, Scarsborough, see Rossetti. SEDELMEYER, Charles, sold Van Dyck "Virgin Infant Christ and St. Catherine" 478 Hoppner" Master Mercier” {S.c.).. 484 SEINE, the, and Meryon 332-335 SEGHERS, Herkules, see Rembrandt. SEGUIER, bought at Sale Lawrence, Raphael, “Pieta” (A/rr. G.c.) 28 SELLAIO, and "Madonna in Ador- ation" (H. c.) 387 SEVILLE, and Velasquez 174 SEVRES Manufacture de, and the father of H. Regnault 416 SEYMOUR, Charles, father of Charlotte, mother of Lady Frances Finch. . . .435, 440 A S S 1 F I E SHAKESPEARE, see Rembrandt. SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley, see Gainsborough. SHREWSBURY, Gilb. Talb., Earl of, father-in-law of Arundel 220 SICKERT, Bernhard, essays on Whistler " Blue Wave” (P. c.) 324, 325, 329 Whistler “Westminster Bridge” ( Pc ) 330-332 Degas “ Danseuses” {P. c.) 344-346 Maris "Dordrecht — Sun Effect” (.Pc.) 360-362 Monticelli {T.c.) 467,468 SIENA, frescoes, see P. de Chavannes. Library, Pinturicchio Piccolomini frescoes and Fior. di Lorenzo {Mrs. G -c.) 135* HO 'SILHOUETTE, LA’ see Daumier. S1GNA (near Florence) 192 SIGNORELLI, see Mus. Nat. Gal. — Degas; Giotto; Verrocchio. SIMEON, in Giotto "Presentation" (Mrs. G.c.) 54,74 “SI MON ETTA, FAIR, Vespucci" see Coll.: Rothschild A.; Salviati; — Mus. Pitli; — Botticelli; Catlanea; Medici. SISLEY, see Exb.: Durand-Ruel, 1899. S1ST1NE CHAPEL, see Regnault. the ceiling reminds Daubigny of Dau- mier’s work 263 SIZERANNE, Robert de la, essays on Renoir “Girl and Cat " (P. c.) . . .353-354 Lenbach " Bismarck” {T. c.) 465-466 SKOTTOWE, Mrs., and Hoppner "Miss Pollock" {T.c.) 424, 458 SMOLLETT, "Humphrey Clinker" and Miss Howland 447 SOCIETY OF AMER. ARTISTS, see Exb. SOMERSET, Duke of, and " Lady Fran- ces Finch” (T. c.) 435 SORBONNE HEMICYCLE, see P. de Chavannes. SORRENTO 466 SOUTHEY’S aunt. Miss Tyler of Bath, see Gainsborough. 'SOUVENIRS d’un directeur des beaux-arts,’ by de Chenneviferes 472 SPAIN, see Regnault. of Velasquez 177, 178 SPANISH influence, see Manet. SPELLO Cathedral, Pinturicchio fres- „ coes 123 SPIELMANN, M. H., essay on Hoppner " Master Mercier” {S.c.) 492-495 SPINOLA, marquis of, see Mus.: Bruns- wick; Prague N. G. in the Netherlands 225 SPOLETO, Duke of, see Monticelli. Eroli chapel, Pinturicchio "Ma- donna" and example (Mrs. G.c.) 122 Filippo Lippi’s frescoes and Fior. di Lorenzo (Mrs. G.c.) 139 SPRAGUE, Albert A., Chicago, see coll. SQU A RCION E ,see M antegna and Crivelli. STAFFORD HOUSE, “Arundel” by Van Dyck 222 STEEN, Jan 212, 213,360 see Terborch; Vermeer. STE1NMANN, Dr. E., essay on Pintu- ricchio (Mrs. G.c ) 1 22, 1 23 STEPHENS, Meister 487 , F. G., see Whistler. essay on Gainsborough (T.c.).. .451-454 STERET, Lorenz, see Diirer. STEVENS, Alfred, see Degas. appreciated Mancini 87, 91 Alfred, (English), water-colour land- scape (H. c.) 375 STEVENSON, R. L„ 'Child’s Garden of Verses’ quoted 283 STOFFELS, Hendrickje, Mus. Louvre; Rembrandt. D INDEX PAGE STREETER, see Botticelli. STROEBEL, see Maris. STUART, Gilbert, see Gainsborough. SUFFOLK, Gainsborough born there . . . 447 and Berkshire, Henry, 12th Earl of, Gainsborough's portrait of his wife. Lady Frances Finch’s sister 435-439 SULLY PRUDHOMME, see Van Dyck. ‘SUMMA’, a Florentine, and Botticelli " Lucretia" (Mrs. G.c.) 109 SUMPTUARY laws, their indirect effect on Velasquez 177 SUP1NO, I. B., essays on Botticelli "Lucretia" (Mrs. G.c) 109, 1 10 "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 188 Angelico (Mrs. G.c.) 147,151,152 XVC. Florentine Sch. M. ‘‘Madonna in Adoration” ( H.c .) 395-396 tondo Botticelli (?) (H. c.) 400 SUSANNA, DUrer’s servant, see Diirer. SUSANNAH, as painted by Rubens 476 "SYLVESTER, Pope,” see Pesellino. "TACTS, The Canon,” see Moro. TALBOT, Althea, see Arundel, Rubens, Van Dyck. TANGIERS, see Whistler. TAPESTRY, at Brussels a portrait of Isabella of Austria in 230 TARQUINIUS, Sextus, and Botticelli "Lucretia” 16, 98, 99 of Colatia, husband of Lucretia . 99 TERBORCH, Gerard, see Coll.: Buck- ingham; Demidoff; Hope; Sleengracht; — Mus.: Cassel; Dresden; Munich; St. Petersburg; — Exh.: R. A. Winter; S. Kensington; — Sale Hope; — Colnaghi; Lewis; Mordent; Wertheimer; Zwolle. “ Music Lesson "(Mrs. G.c.) 63 Catalogue Page 118 Essays by Dr. W. Martin; Sir M. Conway 210-214 "Ratifying the Treaty of Munster” ... 213 and Pieter de Hooch, Codde, Metsu, Jan Steen, Van Ostade, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Ger. Dou 21 1-213 and Philip IV 213 THACKERAY, William Makepeace, his sketch of Mr. Braham (H. c.) 375 THAMES, see Whistler 379 THICKNESSE, Captain, see Ford, Miss; Gainsborough. THIEM, M. Ad., San Remo, see Coll. THORE, Th&phile, see Biirger. TINTORETTO, see Velasque 7 . " Portrait of a Lady " (Mrs. G.c.) 57 self-portrait in Louvre, see Manet. results of his technique 471 TITIAN, see Coll.: Berwick; Darnley; Donovan; Gramonl; Madraqo; Orleans; — Mus.: Louvre; Prado; Wallace ; — Exb.: Orleans; R. A. Winter; — Sales: Bryants; Orleans; — Aldus; Bembo; Cassatt; Colnaghi; Degas; Delignon; Escorial; Lenbach; Manu;io; Monti- celli; Navagero; Rembrandt; Reynolds; Van Dyck. " Rape of Europa" (Mrs. G. c.) 3, 49, 50 Catalogue Page 58 Essays by G. Lafenestre, G. Gronau, Roger Fry, Lewis Hind 167-173 " Bacchus and Ariadne” 49, 170 "Anne of Austria and her Mother” (Mrs. G.c.) 51.52 “Philip II,” "Adam and Eve," "Man with Glove,” "Entombment" .92, 172, 173 "Venus and Adonis," “Perseus and Andromeda," "Medea and Jason,” " Diana and Calisto,” " Diana and Ac- taeon” 168, 169 the Bacchanalian series and Alfonso d’Este 170 “Pieta,” Venice" Bacchanal” 171 5 1 5 ED INDEX THE CLASSIFI PACE triple portrait of Paul III 251 Charles I and the“Europa”. . .50, 168, 175 del Maso and replica of "Europa" (Wallace Mus.) 170 Ovid and Moschus followed in “ Eu- ropa" 168, 169 introduces Titian “ Europa" in "The Weavers" 172 Crowe and Cavalcaselle quoted 169, 170, 172 Herbert Cook quoted 170 Giocondo influence 167 his technique and the Chinese water- col 171 and Philip II and IV . .49, 58, 167, 170, 173 and Giorgione 55,88, 185 and Rubens 50, 168, 170, 172, 173,223 and Velasquez infl. on art 172, 174 and Cadore, Mount Antalegeo, Dolo- mites, Tyrol, Campanile of V 173 introduced the use of landscape back- grounds in portraits 457 "St. Peter, Martyr” 457 TOND 1 (Mrs. G. c), see Botticelli and Filippo Lippi. TOOTH & SON, sold Rembrandt "self- portrait, 1629" (Mrs. G.c.) 106 TORNABUONI, Lucretia, wife of Piero dei Medici 31, 134 TORRIGIANI, Pietro, see Michelangelo. TOSCH 1 , see Papi, Domenico Di. TOSI, Raffaello di Lorenzo di Frosino, see Botticelli. TOURNAI school 397 Gossart "S. Donatian” and G. (Mrs. G.c) ...... ....232 TYROL, Dolomite region of, see Titian. TOURNEUX, Maurice, essay on Monti- celli "Don Quixote” (T.c.) 468-472 TOWER OF LONDON, see Arundel. TRADATE, Samuele de, see Mantegna. TRAVERSARI, Ambrogio 147 TROUVILLE, Whistler and Courbet there 323, 324, 363 TROYON 275 See Manet; Monlicelli. TRYON, Dwight W., studied with Bran- degee under Jacquesson de la Chev- reuse 366 TUI LERI ES, Palais des, a Monticelli said to have been burned there 472 TURNER, Charles, see Hoppner. ■, Joseph M. W 172, 447 see IVbistler. " Steamer off a harbor’s mouth, etc.”. . 325 “BayofBaue” 361 quoted as to Girtin’s ability 379 water-colours "Lucerne" (probably "Aosta") and “The Drachenfels" («■«•) .••.380 "Queen Mab's Grotto,” and Monticelli 468 UCCELLO, Paolo, see Mus. South Kens.; — Pesellino. and perspective 38 UILENBORCH, Hendrik, also Saskia van, see Rembrandt; Saskia. ULMANN, see Botticelli. UMBRIA 347 and Umbrian art, see Ftor.di Lo- renzo; Perugino; Pinluricchio; St. Fran- cis of A. UNDERPAINTING, see Giotto; Man- tegna (Mrs. G. c). URBINO no UTAMARO 468 See IVbistler. UTRECHT, see Vermeer. Moro born there and worked there .21 5, 2 16 VACHON, Marius, essay on P. de Chav- annes "Peace” (P. c.) 307, 31 1 VALMANDOIS, see Daumier. VALENCIA, see Pinluricchio. VALER 1 ANO, on Inghirami’s death. ... 14 VALERIUS MAXIMUS version of the Lucretia story 99 VALOIS, house of 224 VALPARAISO, see IVbistler. VANDERDOORT, catalogue of Charles I’s coll., on Mantegna (Mrs. G. c.) 164 VAN DERWEYDEN, Roger, seeColl.Es- corial; — Mus.: Brussels; Prado; — Flem- ish Scb. XV C. Master; Schongauer. VAN DER VELDE 213 See IVbistler. VAN DYCK, Anton 283 See Coll.: Buckingham; Cambiaso; Cor- nelissen; Devonshire; Agar Ellis; Ossu- na; Sutherland; IVestminster; — Mus.: Cassel; Dresden; Edinburgh; Louvre; Prado; Turin; Vienna; IV allace ; — Exh. Antwerp ; — Sale Ossuna ; — Charles I; Gainsborough; Hands; Len- bacb; Lombard; Sedelmeyer. " Lady with Rose” (Mrs. G . «.)... 63 67-69 Catalogue Page 136 Essays by L. Cust; Dr. Bode; H. Hymans 223-227 “Virgin, Infant Christ and St. Catherine,” erroneously called “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” (S.c.) 475~477 Catalogue Page 478 Essays by J. Guiffrey, Sir M. Con- way, M. Menotti, G. Gltick . . .481-491 "Arundel," "Arundel with his wife and dwarf" 219, 220, 222 and Archduke Ferdinand, Regent Isabella, "Marguerite d’OrlSans,” “Henriette de Phalsbourg," "Charles de Lorraine,” " Beatrice de Cusance" 224 "The Housekeeper," “Knight in Black Armor,” "Philippe le Roy and his Wife," and various portraits . . . 224-226 “d’Aytona, Condede Ossuna” 225 "Countess of Oxford," "Lady Car- narvon” 227 "The Children of Charles I” 483 Regent Isabella, the "Mystic Mar- riage of St. Catherine,” and Gerbier controversy 476, 489 his rendering of different national types,; influence on English portr.; an Italian painter 224-226 and the "Pieta” subject 482 his use of landscape backgrounds in portraits 457,458 Max Rooses, Waagen quoted on example (S. c) 475, 476, 482 Lionel Cust quoted 475, 490 Fromentin quoted 477 Sully Prudhomme quoted 482 and Rubens; Velasquez 219, 220, 224 and Marie de Medicis 223, 224 and Charles I; James I; in Antwerp; Brussels; England; Genoa; Mantua; Naples; Palermo; Rome; Venice.. ..223-226 483, 488 and Lely, Lawrence, Kneller, Rey- nolds, Gainsborough 226 and Bolognese Sch.; the Carracci; Correggio; Italian Sch.; the Parma Sch.; Parmigiano; Sassoferrato; Titian 476-478-48 1 -483, 487, 488 and the engravers Bloteling, Bolswert, Guzzi (Bartelli), Mathey 488-490 (and in Bibliography the engravers Ragot, van Schuppen, Snyders) "VAN HORN, the Canon,” see Moro. VAN MANDER, see Mander. VAN SCHUPPEN, see Schuppen. VASARI, see Mus. Florence P. V.;— An- gelico; Botticelli; Caroto; Cosirtw P. di; Giotto; Mantegna; Pesellino; Raphael. 516 asapainter 180, 181 on Bandinelli and Michelangelo. . . .51, 179 180, 181, 182 on Ghirlandaio “Adoration of Magi” 191 on Tondi by Botticelli 400 VELASQUEZ, see Coll.: Altamira; Apsley; Bankes; Leganes; IV allace ; — Mus.: Berlin; Nat. Gal.; Prado; — Sale Altamira; — Colnagbi; Degas; Escorial; Gainsborough; Manet; Regnault; Spain; Sumptuary L.; Van Dyck; IVbistler. "Philip IV of Spain” (Mrs. G. c.) 50, 51 Essays by Lewis Hind, R. Cortis- soz 173-178 “Surrender of Breda,” "The Tapes- try Weavers” 91, 172 “Woman with the Fan” 92 "Maids of Honor,” "El Aguador,” " Don Carlos," "The Spinners” . . ..174-176 his permanent infl. on art 172 his art and Mozart’s 176 Flaubert, Montaigne quoted 176 and Tintoretto; Titian 172, 174 and Reynolds; Ribeira 176 and Louis XIV 175 and Moro 177 his masterly painting of dogs 283 in Fantin Latour’s “The Toast” 339 VENDOME, Due de, Charles de Bourbon 23 1 VENETIAN SCHOOL, see Burgundy; Byzantine influence; Carpaccio; Cri- velli; Titian; Venice. andMancini 93 its Byzantine heritage 1 1 6 not deeply influenced by Giotto 1 1 8 VENICE 173,220,347 See Acad, of; — Giotto; Van Dyck. San Rocco: Giorgione (?) "Christ” and Giorgione (Mrs. G.c.) 55, 185 St. Mark’s, Gent. Bellini organ shut- ters and Mantegna (Mrs. G. c.) 116 San Giobbe: Vivarini school "Annun- ciation” and Crivelli (Mrs. G.c) .. . 1 16 San Giorgio Maggiore: Carpaccio and Crivelli (Mrs. G.c) 1 1 5 San Giorgio degli Schiavoni: Carpaccio and Crivelli (Mrs. G.c) 115 San Trovaso: Giambono "San Cri- sogno" and Crivelli (Mrs. G.c). . . . 1 1 5 Church of S. S. Giovanni e Paolo: Titian "St. Peter, Martyr” 457 Van Dyck there 483, 387 VENTURI, Adolfo, essays on: Fior. di Lorenzo (Mrs. G.c) 140, 141 Angelico (Mrs. G.c) 1 52, 1 53 Giotto (Mrs. G.c) 242-244 about Count Lanskoronski "Christ bearing Cross" 184 his book ‘The Madonna’ cited 394 VERE, Marquise de la, see Gossart. VERMEER OF DELFT, see Coll.: Aren- burg; Bilrger; Coats; Cfernin; Frick; Hope; Leyden; Six; — Mus.: Amster- dam; Berlin; Brunswick; Dresden; The Hague; Louvre; Munich; Nat. Gal.; Van der Hoop; — Sales: Burger; Leyden; — Degas ;M onconys ; Rembrandt. "The Concert” (Mrs. G.c) 62, 63 Catalogue Page 1 12 Essays by Sir M. Conway, Dr. Bre- dius. Dr. Bode, A. B. Chamberlain 205-210 “La Femme au Clavefin" and other examples 206-209 his pictures formerly ascribed to P. de Hooch, Metsu, Maas, Vrel 208, 209 his use of pointillism 206, 2 1 o joins the St. Luke’s Guild of Delft .... 209 Leonard Bramer his master 209 and W. Burger; the Barbizon men 112 206-208 and Fabritius; Ruysdael; Jan Van Eyck 205, 209 and Terborch 211,212 THE CLASSIFIED INDEX VERMEER.of Harlem 206,208 , of Utrecht 206 VERONA, neighborhood of, and rock formation in background of Man- tegna (Mrs. G. c.) 166 VERONESE, Paola 466 See Monticelli. Ceiling, "Coronation of Hebe” (Mrs. VERROCCHIO, see Botticelli; Fior. di Lorenzo. influences Perugian artists, on Sig- norelli 140 Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi his pupils 188, 397 his type of beauty 189 VERTUE, George 483 Catalogue of Charles I's coll, and Man- tegna (Mrs.G.c.) 164 VESPUCCI, see Coll.: Rothschild A.; Sal- viati; — Mus.:Conde; Florence A. M .; — Botticelli; Medici; Simonctta. VETH, Jan, essay on Jacob Maris " Dor- drecht: Sun Effect " (P. c.) 357-360 VIBRISM 346 VICENZA, see Coll. Loschi. neighborhood of, and rock formation in Mantegna (Mrs.G.c.) 166 VICO Enea, engraves a portrait of Ban- dinelli 178, 181, 182 VIERGE, Daniel, illustrates Don Quix- ote 468 VIGEE-LEBRUN, Madame, see Mary Cassatt. VILLA LI VI A, pavement from (Mrs. G.c.) 2 VILLE D’AVRAY, see Monel. VINCI, Leonardo da 55, 56, 86 92, 103, 178,450 See Botticelli; Gainsborough; Ferroc- copy of Giorgione "Christ bearing Cross” wrongly ascribed to him 183 idealizes the Lombard type of beauty . 189 and Lorenzo di Credi 397 VIRGIL, in Pesellino " Triumphs "(Mrs. Gc.) 33 ‘VITA NUOVA,’ see Rossetti. VIVARINI, see Crivelli; Murano; Fen- VLIEGER, Sii VOLTERRA, Amidei. VREL, Jan, see Fermeer. 1 de, see Rembrandt. Raphael " Inghirami" WAAGEN, see Angelico; Fan Dyck. WAKE, Sir Isaac, see Arundel. PAGE WALES, Prince of, see Charles I. afterwards George IV, and Hoppner ... 492 WALPOLE, Horace, see Ossory; Rey- nolds. on foreign-born English portrait painters 226 mentions Miss Ford (painted by Gains- borough) 454 WARD, James, engraved Hoppner "Ju- venile Retirement” 457.493 , William, engraved Hoppner "The Sisters" 494 "WARNBUHLER, Ulrich," see Diirer. WARTBURG, Luther there 69, 235 WATTEAU 86 See Monticelli; Renoir. WATTS, see Lenbacb. WEBB, Mr., on Rubens’ ‘splendid im- positions’ 452, 453 WEISBACH, Dr. Werner, essay on Pes- ellino (Mrs. G.c.) 127-129 WELLESLEY, Marchioness of, see Ro- land, Madame. WERTHEIMER, Asher, sold Rem- brandt " Young Couple” (Mrs. G. c.) 88 Rembrandt “ Little Ship of Peter” (Mrs.G.c.) 94 Terborch (Mrs. G. c.) 118 WEST, Benjamin, "Death of Wolfe,” see Reynolds. WESTON, Lord, and the Van Dyck- Gerbier controversy 489 WEYMOUTH, Lord, afterwards 1st Marquess of Bath 439 WHISTLER, James Abbott McNeil, see Coll.: Cavafy; Freer; — Mus. Luxem- bourg; — Exb. Bonvin; — Boussod F. Gr Co.; Cottier; Japanese infl.; Mancini; Manet; Maris; Millet; IFunderlich Gr Co. "Symphony in Blue” (Mrs. G.c.) ... . 3, 8 “The Blue Wave” (P. c.) 265,293 Catalogue Page 272 Essays by T. Duret, C. Mauclair, B. Sickert, M. O. Woodbury . . 323-330 " WeSTMINSTER BRIDGE " (P. C.) 265, 269 293 Catalogue Page 278 Essays by B. Sickert, W. H. Downes, L. Bdnddite, Roger Marx 330-336 "Symphony in Violet and Blue" (P-c.) 293 Catalogue Page 320 Essays by Roger Marx, Th. Duret, W. H. Downes, M. O. Wood- bury 362-367 " Thames series ” (etchings) 269, 332 PAGE "Seascape” (Courbet figures in it) (Mrs.G.c.) 323 "Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fes- enzac” .....323. 3$3 Coast of Brittany” (Seule); “The Great Sea”; “Valparaiso” 325 " Die Lange Leizen" (Johnson c.) 330 "Miss Alexander”, "Portrait of my Mother," "The Halcyon” . . . .331, 333, 345 "Harmonies” in grey and black 342 “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” 270 'Ten O’Clock’ 333 and Impressionism 264, 324 and Kipling’s ‘McAndrew's Hymn'.. . 265 and the Romantic Sch 278 and Corot 269, 362 and Degas 277 and Nationality in art 289, 293 and music and painting 293 and Courbet 323-325, 362-364 and Meryon 332, 335 and Turner 325, 362, 364 French Sch. infl 332, 334 and Lithography 333 and Fantin-Latour 343, 363 and Rembrandt, Velasquez, Ultamaro 345 and Winslow Homer 364 and Van de Velde 365 and Millais; David Roberts 331, 332 Palgrave; F. G. Stephens quoted ..331, 332 in Ajaccio; Algiers; Biarritz; Biscay; Guethary; St. Petersburg; Tangiers; Trouville; Valparaiso ... .272,323-325,363 WILKIE 454 "WILHELM I", of Germany, see Len- WILLAERTS, see Rembrandt. WILLIAMSON, Dr. George C. essays on Angelico (Mrs. G. c.) . . 157, 158 Botticelli "Chigi Madonna” (Mrs. G.c.) 194. '95 XV C. Flor. Sch. Master, "Madonna in Adoration " (H. c.) 396, 397 WILSON, see Girtin. WORMS, Diet of 235 WOODBURY, Marcia Oakes, essay on Whistler "Symphony in Violet and Blue” (P.c.) 365-367 Whistler "Blue Wave” (P. c.) 329,330 YRIARTE, Charles, see Mantegna. ZIEM, see Monticelli. ZORN, Anders, "Clarence King” (H. c.) 375 ZUCCI, Biagio di Antonio, see Botti- celli. ZWOLLE, Terborch there 211