7b 83-B 1903 vi-v^Sfyi^vfitSK' iLlilU) ml: lil - 1 j H Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/greatportraitschOOhale GREAT PORTRAITS CJiltirm KING OF ROME LAWEENCE EEAUX-ARTS GALLEHT, PAEIS GREAT PORTRAITS By Philip L. Hale BOSTON, MASS. BATES & GUILD COMPANY M C M I X Copyright, 1909, by Bates S^ Guild Company Printed at The Everett Press, Boston 7WE GETTY ' LIST OF PLATES KING OF ROME Lawrence Beaux-Arts Gallery, Paris STRAWBERRY GIRL Reynolds Hertford House, London DON BALTASAR CARLOS ON HORSEBACK Velasquez Prado, Madrid MAIDS OF HONOR Velasquez Prado, Madrid INFANTA MARGARITA Velasquez Louvre, Paris THE BLUE BOY Gainsborough Duke of Westminster Collection, London LOUIS, DAUPHIN OF FRANCE La Tour Louvre, Paris MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE Nattier Palace of Versailles CHILD WITH BLOND HAIR Fragonard Wallace Gallery, London DON GARCIA WITH A BIRD Bronzino Uffizi Gallery, Florence THE BROKEN PITCHER Greuze Louvre, Paris MADAME VIGEE LEBRUN AND DAUGHTER Vigee Lebrun Louvre, Paris QUEEN OF SICILY Goya Collection of Comtesse de Paris HOLBEIN'S WIFE AND CHILDREN Holbein Basle Museum PORTRAIT OF MISS ALEXANDER Whistler Property of W. C. Alexander BOY WITH A SWORD Manet Metropolitan Mtiseum,, New York RUBENS'S SONS Rubens Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna WILLIAM n. OF NASSAU Van Dyck Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg PORTRAIT OF COUNTESS MOLLIEN Greuze Private Collection ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST Donatello National Museum, Florence STRA'W'BERHY GIEIi EEYXOI.DS HERTFOED HOUSE, LOITBOTr GREAT PORTRAITS: C|)Ubren PORTRAITS of children were not so common as those of men and women. And one wonders at this when one reflects that nowadays fond mothers are constantly taking their children to the photog- rapher. Indeed, it would seem in this time that chil- dren were photographed much more than their elders. But this is the era of children. In the olden days par- ents, no doubt, loved their children, but if any money were to be spent on portraits it was the father and mother who were painted first — later, it may be, the child. In royal families especially there was a reason for this; for portraits were painted largely as gifts to other sovereigns, or great lords, or devoted courtiers. The king had his portrait painted often, almost, as one might say, as a matter of business. Sometimes a httle prince was painted, but merely for love of the child. And for the same reason, outside of the portraits of royal children, few portraits of children have come down to us. So it was with the nobility, and so, too, with the commoners — even more so. 11 12 Great Portraits : Children Still, practically every great painter has tried his hand at painting children at least once or twice, and most of them have produced excellent work; only a man may turn out a very respectable portrait of a child and yet not be a true painter of children. To do that well there is needed a certain insight into child charac- ter. Not that a child has a very subtle or complicated character, but it is a character all the same and one that can be divined only by sympathy. Constable once said that ' * to a man who approached Nature in an arrogant spirit her choicest beauties re- mained forever veiled. ' ' One might 'say this particularly about children. We feel instinctively that only those who love children can paint them. Each great painter of children has had his own manner. Bronzino was hard and cold in his style, yet no man ever studied the subtlest curves of a child face more minutely and patiently than he. Velasquez's chil- dren are delightful; but there is in them, as in all his portraits, a sense of aloofness, as if the artist recorded all the beautiful aspects of the apparition with a mind apt for insight, but perhaps not very sympathetic. Rey- nolds's children are often delightful. One likes to think of the chill old bachelor pleasing himself by recording their infantile charm. Madame Vigee Lebrun is the only mother, of the older artists, who has painted her Great Portraits : Children 13 child, and she is dehghtful, full of demure French charm. Yet there is little sense of passionate mother- love. Indeed, Cairiere's pictures of mothers fervently bussing their children suggest more of this famous mother- love than does anything of Lebrun's. One of the charming and pathetic things about these mother pictures which one notices in life, as well as in Carriere's and Melcher's pictures, is that the child is cold and indifferent to his mother's passion. One re- calls the story of a child saying to her mother, whose face was crushed against the childish cheek, **What are you smelling me for? I isn't a flower." But the child does have the charm of a flower, and it is by its freshness and fragrance that it attracts and enthrals not only mothers, but every one else. Emer- son points out in his essay on 'Self- Reliance' that a baby dominates a household because it is the only one that knows definitely just what it wants and insists on get- ting it. But this self-reliance would hardly avail if it were not for the affection the child's helplessness in- spires. That very helplessness and gracious awkward- ness of a child awakens our sympathy. There is, indeed, something about the young of all species that delights us in a manner that the older animals seldom achieve. What can be more delicious than a young lamb caper- ing feebly about? Yet, save to the professional sheep- 14 Great Portraits : Children painter, a mutton is an unlovely thing. A kid is de- lightful in its grace and spirit; a goat is almost a synonym for obstinacy and ugliness. And one fancies that if the animals, or some man from Mars, had anything to say about us they would find our great men mulish; our handsome women a trifle cowlike; but a child is alway lovely — to every species, to every being. The problems involved in painting a child's portrait are very different from those which one faces in doing the portrait of a man or of a woman. While psychol- ogy in portraiture is in a rather embryonic state, still there is a certain effort in a man's portrait to state something of his character — what sort of man he is; to give, even, so far as may be in portraiture, some sug- gestion of his habits of life, even his profession, since one conceives that a soldier would look different from a clergyman, or a business man from a poet. And so it is in a woman's portrait: besides making her pretty, the serious painter may try to give an idea of what thoughts dominate her life. Now with a child the matter is quite different. He has no fixed habits; such little thoughts as he indulges in are of a very simple nature. On the other hand, he is delightful, from his youth, his freshness and gaiety; "Drunk with life's new wine." DON BALTASAR CARLOS OX HORSEBACK VELASaUEZ PUADO, MADBU) MAIDS OF HOICOR VEIiASQUEZ PKADO, MADEIIJ Great Portraits : Children 19 The problem, then, is to render this dehcious joyous- ness, this flower-Hke freshness. For, indeed, one may say that a child is like a very young plant, and should be painted in such a way as to indicate its softness, tenderness, yet vital strength. One might say that a child should be painted like a flower, just as one might try to paint a fine old man like a lion or like a rock. One feels in an elder's portrait that the form is all im- portant; that this must be rendered though all else fail. On the other hand, in a child's portrait one is willing to forgive some slight looseness or vagueness if the fra- grance and sweetness of the little creature only be pre- served. Indeed, it might be said that the painting of children partakes more of the nature of still life than does the portraiture of oldsters. Not that children are very still: indeed, as we all know, quite the opposite is true. But, just as in a good still life the painter strives particularly for qualities of texture, color, and surface bloom, even so, in the portrait of a child, these are the things that we desire, rather than any indication that the child is a prodigy. And one might go further than this and say that it is in just these matters that al- most all great portraits of children, even the greatest, seem rather weak. Bronzino, with all his magnificent draftsmanship, makes his little eidolons as hard as steel; Velasquez's princesses, though well enveloped with 20 Great Portraits : Children air, lack pulpiness. And so one might go down the list. With all their splendid qualities, Reynolds's children are bready, Madame Lebrun's are bloodless, Gains- borough's are scratchy. How, then, would one enjoy a picture of a child which had something of the look, the texture and con- sistency of a well-painted peach ! Some of the impres- sionists, notably Renoir, who painted flowers and fruit delightfully, also painted children with great charm. One of his portraits in Mr. Durand Ruel's house is al- most as beautifully drawn as an Ingres, and at the same time has a charm of color, a sense of surface and of tex- ture, that is quite unique. Still, this is, no doubt, one of the things most lack- ing in many children's portraits— that fresh, dewy look which makes for our delight in them. The elder men, for the most part, painted by a certain receipt as far as color went, which included a number of browns. So it happened that generally those exquisite pearly tints which are among the loveliest colors in a child's face went wholly unrecorded. One should make an excep- tion for Velasquez, who had an intuition for color which at times carried him out of and beyond his usual man- ner and practice. In his portrait of the ' Infanta Margarita' one notes the tender pearly tints above the temples beautifully INFANTA MARGARITA VELASQUEZ LOUVEE, PAHIS THE BLUE BOY GAIXSBOKO trail UUKK Ob' WKSTMIXSTEK COLLKCTIOX, I.OXDOX Great Portraits : Children 25 rendered. On the other hand, in 'Las Meninas,' where the same Httle princess appears, the tones of the face are more ashy — probably because, since the picture was at a much wider angle of vision, Velasquez felt disin- clined to study any very small felicities of color. As to the English painters, they quite often achieved handsome color; but very seldom, one might almost say never, did they make very true color. Gains- borough was happier and truer in this respect than the rest. His 'Mrs. Siddons' is one of the few English pic- tures of his time that shows an effort at rendering silvery nuances. But even Gainsborough, as a rule, made his pictures too warm in tone, so that the famous 'Blue Boy' is really a Green Boy. This defect was unfortu- nate enough in men's portraits and in women's, but even more so in the portraits of children, because the distin- guishing mark in children's color, especially in blonde children of northern blood, is the pearly argentine qual- ity about the brow and temples. The whole color- scheme has to be constructed to ring true with these silvery notes; and when, as in most English portraits, the color-scheme was already constructed on a golden Venetian basis the color of the child's face had to be sacrificed to "go" with the warm tones about it. So it happens that most of the Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner, children, even the most charming of them, are usually 26 Great Portraits : Children yellow-faced little people, lacking the distinctive charm of the little ones of northern races. Madame Vigee Lebrun, and most of the other French academic painters of that time, while their color was truer as far as the local tones went, did not know how to make the pulsating, palpitating look of live color which is particularly noticeable in children. This sil- very tone, we have already noted, comes about from the extremely thin skin of northern children. A color which in itself is of one hue will look quite different when seen through a translucent medium. And so it happens that red blood, which does not show at all through the thickest skin and looks greenish through yellow skin, looks almost blue through the del- icate thin skin of a Teutonic child. This is how the ex- pression "blue blood" came about; the "Sangre Azul" of the Spanish Visigoths was famous because their blood showed blue through their delicate blonde northern skin in contrast to the dark, dingy complexions about them. One of the reasons why Renoir has been so success- ful in some of his portraits of children is from his im- pressionist method; for so, more than in any other way, can the pulsating look of life be rendered. One does not feel so much the lack of this palpitating, almost ir- idescent quality in a man's portrait, where character, after all, is the main thing; even in a woman's portrait LOUIS, DAUPHIX OF FRAXCE LA TOCH IXJtrVIRE, PAKIS MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE XATTIEE PAI.AGE OF VEWSAIT.T.ES Great Portraits : Children 31 one is willing to overlook it, if only the form be beauti- fully rendered; but in a child's portrait it is most essen- tial, because it is the chief charm that a child has to show. For one does not expect great intellect or even character in children; they have their own character, to be sure, but it is of a much less complicated sort than that of a man. Nor does one expect subtle form; their forms are beautiful to us because we love them, but they are not so complicated, so difficult to trace, as those of their elders. But the color of the child is subt- ler, more exquisite, than in older people. It is, indeed, the child's chief charm, and if we are to make improve- ment in the painting of children it will be in the direc- tion of more exquisite color that we shall develop. Fragonard was the man of all the older men who was most successful in indicating this color-quality. He learned, in a dream, as it were, the secret of palpi- tating color, and the impressionists consider him one of their artistic forebears. In his 'Child with the Blond Hair ' he has indicated the charm of fresh blond young flesh in a way that none of the other elder men ever dreamed of. He had everything, technically, that was needful,— skilled draftsmanship, charm of color, and sense of arrangement. But, apart from all this, it may be that something of his success with children came from the fact that he umuiiiiiliyiHUitiiiiiiM 32 Great Portraits : Child was a big child himself. Poor '*Frago,' called him, had all the simple-heartednej ness of a child. He understood their r ings, and yet he was man enough to humor and pathos of these tiny men an( feels him more in sympathy with chil other painter. Velasquez, it is true, p with rare understanding, yet one sees \ superior smile as he swept his supple b canvas. Reynolds, too, painted childre mon understanding, yet one fancies Y them like an old woman through hi glasses. But "Frago" was one of tl child — who knew just enough of the olc what was significant and humorous in tli world. In none of his portraits of children cessful than in that of ' The Blond v The little fellow is indicated with great not so much the technical ability — and a past master in technique — as it is the ( color of the thing. It is well named *Th for "Fraefo" was one of the first to "p Great Portraits : Children much in old-fashioned art-books. It is true that Ve quez, and, for that matter, Van Dyck, painted gn than most of their contemporaries; yet to our moc eyes their work still seems rather yellow. But Fn nard, from a sort of instinct, painted ''blond." E his great academic picture, 'The High Priest Cores painted while he was still a young man and under i demic influence, is much more silvery in tone than most of the pictures painted about him. Not only in this picture, but in many others, Fragonard celebrated the charm, the humor, and pathos of childhood. There is one of these — not a ] trait, by the way — representing 'The Schoolmistr with her little flock about her. Before her stands wh pering a delightful little man, whose shirt, his only \ ment, would hardly serve as an advertisement for n shrinkable soap. Not only in his paintings, but in chalk -drawings and in his water-color sketches of c dren, was Fragonard supremely successful. There sists a sketch of his daughter Rosalie a deux cray which is not only masterly in its skilful and lear handling, but is also full of the freshness and charn childhood. "Frago" loved flowers and children, lip r»nintprl tlipm Krk+Vi -uri+Vi a licrli+npcc nf ^:cw^n\ UHiBHllWfWHfHI' 36 Great Portraits : Chile Of course the term "portraits of chilt broad one. For instance, we have very as Lawrence's famous 'King of Ron children of five or six, such as the * Inft or some of Bronzino's dehghtfully dem There are what one might call middle-a Goya's little 'Queen of Sicily'— only ready weighed down by regal dignity, are certain ones, such as the girl in G Cassee,' who is not a child— the whole legory tells one that — and yet, as cerU ** grown up." The puzzled face is stil though the body verges on maturity. In a certain sense a young baby is than a child of three or four. One lool iron renderings of the little Medici child: how he achieved such absolute detail, such firmness of modeling. Many, possi ers nowadays avail themselves of phot out the picture, and perhaps, considei culties, they are almost justified. But I such aid. In some hidden way he acl lute renderine:. It mav be, indeed, tha THE BROKEN- PITCHER GEEUZE LOtrVEE, P^UilS Great Portraits : Children 41 the poor frightened httle bird with all a child's uncon- scious cruelty and abandon. One wonders whether Bronzino had some obscure idea of typifying the fright- ful cruelty of the Medici-Toledo strain by introducing this incident. The poor little child is innocent enough; though history records that this same Don Garcia, when a little older, was accused of killing his own brother. Although Don Garcia apparently had life enough, it still remains probable that many little princes posed, as it were, in fear of their lives. The little Infanta Mar- garita stands as stiffly as possible among her Maids of Honor; indeed, what else could the poor little thing do in her stiff robes of cramoisie? Yet, even here, it is evi- dent enough that there was difficulty in keeping her still, for one maid is on her knees, trying to amuse her mistress, while another bends over, whispering encour- aging words to her; and the dwarfs and dogs were ap- parently brought in as diversions. Indeed, that is the motive of the picture. The little episode amused Velas- quez, and he painted it just as it was. It is probably the smallest incident that ever inspired a great picture, and yet how great the picture is! — "The Theology of Paint- ing," as "Fa Presto,'' the brilliant Luca Giordano, called it. The blonde little Infanta probably never sus- pected that she was helping in the making of one of the great models of painting. 42 Great Portraits : Children No one has been found to paint a portrait of a very young child, though certain of the elder painters, as Gerard David, have painted the little Jesus something as he may have looked when only a few weeks old. But to the cold, unbiased observer very young children are not beautiful. There is something embryonic about them; it seems as if they had not quite arrived at humanity. On the other hand, a child of a year or two, as one guesses the King of Rome (L'Aiglon) in Lawrence's picture to be, often is a delightful vision; although in this particular instance one suspects Sir Thomas of having made the child appear older than he really was, and also of having over- insisted on any like- ness he may have had to the mighty Bonaparte. When it comes to a portrait of a rather older child, as in the picture of Madame Vigee Lebrun and her daughter, the problem is somewhat simplified, though even here one can imagine an infinity of wriggling, and parental admonitions. Indeed, it may have been a succession of mauvais quatres d'heure for the poor child; as Madame Lebrun, despite the angelic counte- nance which she painted in her self-portraits, had the reputation of being something of a vixen. This same portrait, by the way, is admirably composed. It is a trifle formal — a little academic in its arrangement — but MADAME VIGEE LEBRUN AXD DAUGHTER vigJie lebhun liOtrVHE, PAEIS Great Portraits : Children 45 the lines are often beautiful, and, from an intricate de- sign, a simple and satisfactory effect is produced. We may be quite sure that the little 'Queen of Sicily' kept as still as a mouse while the gallant ex-bull- fighter, Goya, put her counterfeit presentment on can- vas. She was probably frightened out of her wits by his truculent manner, but, besides this, no doubt the cares of state oppressed the little maid. However, very likely she had not long to pose; for Goya, when the fit was on him, could paint with immense rapidity, using any- thing that came handy — his fingers, or even a sponge. He sometimes painted an entire portrait in a day. This particular picture looks more carefully done, and it is, by the way, perhaps the best portrait Goya ever did. Certainly it has the most of charm; and to one who has only seen this picture certain other of Goya's careless creations give something of a shock. Bronzino is interesting, among many other reasons, because he gives us an insight into what Michael Angelo might have done had he attempted portraiture. He was a pupil of Michael Angelo; and while in his treatment of the nude he never went to the excess of the great master, he had thoroughly learned from him the lesson of pure form. Indeed, in this matter of abso- lute forni nothing compares with him till we come to the comparatively modern Frenchmen. As a matter of 46 Great Portraits : Children fact, Ingres is known to have been greatly interested in Bronzino's work, and a fine portrait by Ingres is not un- like a fine portrait by Bronzino. The elder painter's por- traits of children are studied with the same severity as are his portraits of older persons; but "out of the strong Cometh forth sweetness, ' ' and there is a charm in his portraits of children, grave or gay, that comes from the absolute justness of his observation. The question of hardness versus softness in the treatment of children's portraits is an interesting one, and a hard one to solve. When one looks at a fine por- trait by Reynolds or by Fragonard, where something of the melting softness of a child is expressed, one feels that this is the right way to do the thing. But, on the other hand, when one looks at one of Bronzino's nobly severe heads, or even at something by Madame Vigee Lebrun, one perceives that there is much to be said for the other side. For the Reynolds, after all, despite its melting sweetness, leaves out many of the forms — and many of the forms, too, that are most delicious in a child. The delicate modeling of a child's nose, the way in which the red transparent skin of the lower lip merges into the rest of the face, the impalpable eye- brows, hardly seen and yet so full of character — these things are hardly attempted by Reynolds, and yet QUEEN" OF SICILY GOT.V coij:.ectiox of cojitebse ije paris Great Portraits : Children 49 Bronzino has found a way to achieve them and still preserve remarkable simplicity. Perhaps of all men Da Vinci best combined the sense of softness, of enveloping air, with that exactness of form that we always see and feel in nature. No child-portraits by him, as far as we know, exist; but there do exist children in his religious paintings, as well as drawings, which show how absolutely he could attain to form without losing his fine sense of the softness, the ' fragility, and the vitality of a child. One likes to think of Rubens, handsome, prosperous, and happy, enlivening his leisure hours by painting his two handsome boys. The picture was a labor of love, done at his leisure, and so he was able to, and did, carry it farther than much of his work. It is, perhaps, the best of Rubens' s portraits— at least, the most carefully studied; and because he knew the children, had seen them grow up under his eyes, the character is better understood than in much of his work. For it must be confessed that Rubens, so great in many things, was not at his best in portraiture. His men, his women, too, all look prosperous, cheerful, healthy, but they also all look the same; they are all of one family. He built his heads from a florid formula, rather than by coldly observing, as did Velasquez, the characteristic shape, the 50 Great Portraits : Children personal color, of each individual. But this portrait of his children is an exception; one feels their character is well indicated. Van Dyck, immensely skilful in everything, was no less so in his portraits of children than elsewhere. In- deed, his portraits of children have this advantage: that while he thought it necessary, in his presentments of men and women, to flatter them not a little, and, there- fore, to change the character and weaken the form, in his pictures of children he was under no such fancied obligation. He painted them much as he thought they looked. The portrait of the 'Children of Charles I.' shows more character in the heads than one often observes in his pictures of older people; and in the 'Prince of Orange with Princess Marie,' the faces, while distinguished, are hardly what one would call pretty. It is evident that Van Dyck, in this instance, strove to paint them as they were. Yet, with all his skill, he missed something of the child charm which men so different as Bronzino, Velasquez, and Greuze attained. Although Holbein apparently seldom painted chil- dren, yet the few examples he has produced of this sort remain remarkable performances. His portrait of his wife and children is one of the best things he ever did. It has not the afl^ected archaism of pose and modeling HOLBEIN'S WIFE AND CHILDRKX HOLBEIX JiASI.E JIUSEUM Great Portraits : Children 53 that was forced on him by the predilections of the Eng- lish court; rather, it is observed with great sincerity and justness, and the result is quite remarkable. The chil- dren are certainly not what one would call pretty; but in a collection such as this, where many of the portraits are of an almost cloying sweetness, it is something of a relief to come on these honest Tudesque faces. If Greuze made his children too pretty, Holbein doubtless made his too ugly. Still, his sincerity is edifying. This pic- ture, it is said, had a great effect on the art of Wilhelm Leibl, who was perhaps the strongest painter of modern Germany. Nattier has a charm that is difficult to analyze. Not that he is very subtle, but his pictures are so pretty, so mievre, that one feels they should be considered meretri- cious, and yet, for all that, a very distinct charm ex- hales from these delicate, anaemic faces of the little French Princesses, so raffinees, so young ladylike, so like intensely cultivated flowers. How charming is this little Madame Louise of France ! At first sight, a young lady, so prim is she, so anxious to be comme il faut. Yet when one looks well at the face it is the face of a little girl; but a little girl most anxious to be sage, to rightly do her little part in the court of the mighty and pleasant land of France. There is a pathos in the picture, whether perceived by Nattier or not — in this little child of eleven. 54 Great Portraits : Children who, in our country, would be climbing trees, but here is bound down in her stiff court dress to les conve- nances. Greuze, again, was above all things a painter of chil- dren. It is in his children's heads that he is indeed suc- cessful, for the softness, that was in much of his work a defect, was suited to the rounded, immature forms of children. Nothing could be prettier — more "cunning," as the women of our day delight to say — than his por- trait of the little Countess Mollien guarding her armful of puppies with all a child's pathetic insistence. It is interesting to compare the technique of Greuze with that of Reynolds and others of the English school. Though Greuze is just as soft and melting as they, his manner of drawing, of painting, an eye or a mouth is at the same time more academic and truer to nature than is theirs; in short, it is better observed. Indeed, Greuze, while rather over-rated in his day, is now under- rated. His great defect was, at the same time, one of his qualities: that he made things soft and pretty. But he was a very able technician, and, more than most men, he had a sense of the charm of childhood. Gainsborough, though first and foremost a painter of woman, could paint a delightful portrait of a child. The 'Blue Boy' is one of the most famous portraits in the world — largely through the well-known story of Great Portraits : Children 55 how Gainsborough painted it to disprove Sir Joshua's dictum that blue did not look well in the middle of a picture. The curious thing about his effort, as has often enough been pointed out, is that the boy is really dressed in green rather than blue; that is, the blue is so bathed in that famous golden glow that writers of his time speak of that the hue is subtly changed to green. Gains- borough also painted a 'Pink Boy,' but he, though he is pretty, has never been regarded as so successful as his more famous blue brother. Sir Joshua Reynolds himself considered the 'Straw- berry Girl' to be one of his finest performances. It was, he said, '*one of the half-dozen original things which no man ever exceeded in his life's work." And so it is, in- deed, charming and interesting, but one is at a loss to know why Sir Joshua should have regarded it as partic- ularly original. It is, let us say, personal rather than original. It has various of Reynolds's ear-marks which appear often enough in others of his works ; for instance, the wide-open, mouselike eyes were features which he delighted in. Indeed, he painted a picture, which he called 'Muscipula,' of a little girl holding a mouse. In this he tried to bring out a real or fancied resemblance between the little girl and the mouse. In this 'Straw- berry Girl,' which is pretty enough in the main, one notes, besides the enormous eyes, a curious length in 56 Great Portraits : Chil the nose and a corresponding shortness to the chin. The face can hardly be and yet it has something of the allure best efforts possess. Whistler's portraits of children are successful performances. His portrai ander,* which represents a child of tei at the time of its first exhibition, sup much in the manner of Velasquez. Su] be so. The arrangement is a combine learned from Velasquez and from the the two finest things in it, the design j quite Whistler's own. Whistler's cok inspired by Velasquez, but it became c ent thing. There is in it, especially as portrait, a certain gray tonality which had. Probably he never tried for it, a much warmer in tone. On the other tion of purplish or grayish nuances c portrait of Philip IV. , London, is more American's. Still, this portrait of Whistler's i .>«>«)NIUMiltWIIM)ttmfl1HtmiBH|Wmtit)ittfH|i|lflUfi' ^WltlltlHtUttlty^^ Great Portraits : Children 59 and dirty in color, and the face was thought cross and ugly. Like almost all criticism, these strictures had a certain basis of fact. The color is a trifle blackish; the child, while not ugly, is certainly not exactly pretty. But the picture has distinction and charm, and, for Whistler, it was very well made. One feels that Alice in Wonderiand may have looked something like this: indeed, Tenniel's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's delight- ful work represent Alice in much the same costume. How strange and farouche this little English maid seems, surrounded, as she is here, by prim princesses of foreign lands! Another picture which betrays in quite a different way the influence of Velasquez is Manet's 'Boy with the Sword.' Curiously enough, neither Manet nor Whistler were ever in Spain; that is, Whistler never was, and Manet spent only a few weeks there, long after he had painted his 'Boy with the Sword. ' But it is not hard to get a very good idea of Velasquez in London's National Gallery; and while the Louvre is not so full of fine examples of the Spaniard, it is known that Manet copied one Velasquez painting there, and doubtless knew the rest by heart. Although this picture was painted quite early in Manet's artistic life, and although it has no signs of the pure color of his later days, it is still very characteristic of his style: for instance, the face, painted 60 Great Portraits : Children so flat and without modeling; the eyes, each made in with a touch or two; and the coat, again, painted in almost flat tones of the famous ** Manet black." It is a curious thing that so little a matter as the manner in which a painter lays on the paint should de- cide whether or no he shall be a painter of children. Yet this thing is, in a measure, true. For instance, in the work of Franz Hals we find little or no painting of children; certainly nothing that is remarkably interest- ing. Now Hals had a direct, sharp, crisp stroke that was admirable for expressing the well-marked planes on the faces of middle-aged people; but when it came to painting children it was not so happy. For in a child's head the planes all melt one into the other, so that the most successful painters of children are either men like Velasquez and Fragonard, or the modern Carriere, whose manner is loose and flowing, expressing much of what the Italians called morbidezza; or else it is the rather formal classicist, as Madame Lebrun or Bronzino, who is successful. His or her precise, rather "licked" manner serves to preserve the forms precisely, indeed, yet with the gradations from one plane to another care- fully observed. It is curious that so physical a matter should aflect the painting of children; but, after all, Hals' s direct, rather brutale touch argued a lack of sensitiveness to delicate nuances, and children are all BOY WITH A SWORD MAoSET METKOPOLITASr MtTSEUM. NEW TOHK Great Portraits : Children 63 suggestion and the beginning of things, all cloud and air. Many modern portrait-painters make this mistake of painting all sorts of heads in the same technique. Most of them have a way of putting in the "planes" of the head in broad brush- strokes, and as far as the handling goes are apt to paint a child's head with much the same facture as the head of a man. They do not stop to consider that the character of each head can best be expressed by a particular style of workmanship. For instance, the almost scratchy, stringy technique which would do very well in rendering an old head would not do at all in suggesting the head of a middle-aged man. And in the same way, the ** square touch" which did well enough in painting a man would not succeed so well in portraying a child. Velasquez understood this particularly well. One might almost say that each one of his portrait heads is painted diiFerently. At least his old men are very dif- ferent from his men of the middle years, and he really invented a technique for the rendering of children that, in its sweeping softness, preserves something of the roundness and tenderness of a child's form. Velasquez's work is a little misleading in some respects: his touch is so loose and soft, almost a smear, that one does not realize, till after careful study, how subtly and delicately 64 Great Portraits : Children the most impalpable forms are indicated, or, at least, suggested. He had great sympathy for and interest in children, but one feels this sympathy was something like the feeling one has for a beautiful fresh blossom, something rather impersonal. It is the beauty of the blossom one cares for; one is not interested in that par- ticular blossom's individuality. And so with Velasquez one feels that he was interested in the delicious aspect of the little Hapsburg Infanta, but one doubts if he tried to analyze her immature mind. In this no doubt he was right, for who can read the face? We sometimes feel that many portraits of children are over-formal in pose, yet it should be remembered that the unfortunate painter, by the conditions of his craft, is only able to choose one out of a thousand movements. We see a child at play: at every moment it takes some divinely graceful and infantile pose. We feel now is the moment — or now— or, again, just now. Yes, but which of the various moments is the one to choose? This ques- tion of gesture comes into the painting of women's por- traits, too, and of men's as well. One desires a subtle something in the set of the head, in the movement of the hands, that shall give it the look of life, and, too, differentiate it from the portraits of other people. In portraits of men a supreme example of success in this RUBENS'S SONS HUBENS ilKCHTEXSTEIX GALLEHY, VIEXNA Great Portraits : Children 67 eifbrt is Ingres 's portrait of Monsieur Bert in. The fine old man seems just ready to spring from his chair, and yet he is immobile : there is repose to the picture as well as life. This is the ideal. Yet in many portraits, in many fine portraits, too, notably among the Venetians, the pose is perfectly commonplace — agreeable enough, but without betraying any search for originality or indi- viduality. In a child's portrait naturally the same difficulty arises, only it is increased a hundred-fold. An older per- son comes to have a dozen or so of gestures which are characteristic and suggestive of just that particular man or woman. It remains, then, to select that gesture which is at the same time the most individual and the most graceful. But a child is, as it were, experiment- ing with gesture: each minute he tries a new one, each one more graceful than the last, till the distracted painter falls back on a pose of comparative common- placeness. But there is more than this to the matter. Let us suppose the painter does paint his child laughing, or running after its hoop, or in some other marked move- ment. Well, one wearies at the end of seeing a person perpetually smiling, never doing anything but smile. In the same way, too, one wearies of seeing the child perpetually balance upon one toe. This suggestion of 68 Great Portraits : Children life, of movement, can be accomplished — it has been done— but it adds immensely to the difficulty of the problem. The truth is that what we really desire is the look, not of a moving figure, but of one just about to move. The Greeks understood this, and one of the things that makes for the aspect of life in their statues is this look of being just about to move. Their figures are seldom in strong action. On the other hand, they seem always just about to move. One way in which they accom- plished this was by always making their statues just a trifle off the balance, so that many of their figures have to be held up by a sculptured stump of a tree at the side of the leg. This lack of absolute balance gives a sense of life. One feels that the figure must move in a moment in order not to fall. Moreover, the very lack of balance suggests interior life, as one often holds one's self in some unbalanced position by a sort of fly-like attraction of the foot to the ground. Certain child-portraits have something of this move- ment, potential rather than exerted. For instance, Fragonard's 'Child with the Blond Hair' seems not quite smihng indeed, but surely just about to smile. When one comes to think of it, this is the charm of many a fine portrait. The 'Mona Lisa' is really not WaLLIAM II. OF XASSAU TAX DYCK IIKRMITAGE GALLF.HV, ST. PETERSBUKll ■MM mum^mmmmwp ii|i !| j ,M!i!| "M!!!,.|i! IHIIMI Great Portraits : Children quite smiling: rather, she has just been smiling; s" just about to smile again. This quality of life, of, at least, potential vitf while important in all portraits, seems particularly portant in the portraits of children. For in porl of men and women, old people especially, repose i: amiss. Some of them sit like " Gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone ; " and if their portrait has a certain immobility it is But a child is a bundle of nerves, never still a mon and though, by the conditions of his art, a porl painter is forced to paint him immobile, he striv< suggest potential movement as much as may be. Speaking broadly, one might say that those ai who have painted women well have also painted dren well. One thinks of Gainsborough or of Mac Vigee Lebrun in this connection. Yet this rule not always hold; for David, who was quite master his woman- portraits, often painted children as if were little men. One notes this in the portra Michel Gerard and his children. On the other 1: c* T T r> ij„ x„ 1 — ,• j-^j „i,: 74 Great Portraits : Chila still, in his portraits of children he is mc * Infanta Margarita, ' the same child in and the * Infanta Rose ' are among the traits of the world. A curious reaction is seen in the w costumes of children in famous port modern costume of children. As a chik its own costume, it is easier to try exp( luckless little being. For instance, not i haps twenty years ago, what were ba *' bangs" came very much into favor fo idea was taken, one must believe, from trait of the 'Children of Charles th( Antony Van Dyck. Again, certain vei knots of pink ribbon fastening blonde nizes as taken from Velasquez's famou garita. ' The costumes of Velasquez's In: much criticized as hopelessly ugly. Of rather stiff, but they have a certain beau For instance, the chief charm of Vela Rose' comes from the costume, whic affair of red shot with silver; the red is ip^|^fPW^If(Pf^ffWpWfP|l|J^ « ^^. r A' fe "Xn ^ / ^^gillJIIgiig^jijTnt^iy^m^^ ir!lii;i-;-l!il;'i:li!li r"^"'^i"piT^'^iii'iiiHiiiiiiii' ■it. ^-»->- Great Portraits : Children the flower-like look of the hands, and intensifies the icate oval of the face. The cult of the child did not exist in the olden d as it does now. Nobody cared very much what child thought or did, provided it stayed safe and soi There were no Stanley Halls in those times, to 1 down the first hundred words a child learned to and to philosophize upon them. A child was a chil these oldsters, and that was all. This made their traits more objective, and probably that was a ^ thing. At the same time, they were not dispose( regard a child as so intricate an organism as we do r and this may explain, too, why there were so few traits of children long ago. People did not realize tl as they do now, how important the child was; that "child is father of the man." With them a child veloped as a plant. Perhaps they were not altoge wrong in their point of view. With them there wa digging up of seeds to see if they would grow. 1 nourished the young plant and allowed it to deve and trusted that heaven would give the increase. ' is somewhat beside the mark. The point is that < 78 Great Portraits : Chi elders, that are studied further than done nowadays, it came about from exact study of detail, rather than fro] child-psychology. Perhaps if, in the future, some po made, better even than the old on come about from some mixture of the a more sensitive feeling of color; oft! a child's face; and, too, a more syn subtle sense of the little thing's mood gesture and its individual character indeed, but already its own. ^i!|!l:!i!'!1ia!IM!in-!:r!ri!!'!'!n! ''!!!!!!;bpi'!"!!''' '^^