LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class - m m THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SERIES EDITOR: JUSTIN MCCARTHY. ASSOCIATE EDITORS : W. P. TRENT, LL.D. T. G. MARQUIS. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. REV. W. H. WITH ROW, D.D. PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY BY WILLIAM SHARP TO WHICH IS ADDED A HISTORY OF MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY flY ELIZABETH A. SHARP THE LINSCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY TORONTO AND PHILADELPHIA LONDON : 47 Paternoster Row W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED EDINBURGH : 339 High Street 1906 /y sr < GENERAL the brarian of Congress, at Washington ^SSS Ithe Office o the Min Ml Rights Reserved. AUTHOK'S NOTE. THE original scheme of this book was to narrate the development of the fine arts in the nineteenth century, if possible, organically and proportionately. But after this scheme was prepared, and some of the book done, I found it advisable to relinquish an in- tention that could not be realised adequately with- out making this volume simply an uninteresting text- book of statistics. It seemed to me wiser to embody much of what might be said sectionally in one long preliminary part for Art does not grow this way in England or America, or that way in Erance or Ger- many or Holland, but is continually and inevitably interrelated. Thus, in treating at great length of the many phases of British Art, since Gains- borough's death and the appearance of Constable and Turner, to the Impressionists of to-day, I have really treated of the phases of modern art in America, in Erance, in all Europe. To write the history of modern Erench Art one would have to begin with Constable. All that is greatest in contemporary art derives from this great English master. 181490 '* Since the middle of the eighteenth century English in- fluences were fertilising Europe. The truth and naturalness of Englisb, ideas were introduced as models, and England became in her whole culture the instructor of the Continent." PROF. RICHARD MUTHER, Geschichte der Malerei im xix Jahrhundert. History of Modern Painting. (Eng. Trs.) " Constable Turner our modern art knows no names so great as these. In a sense they are Modern Art." EUGENE DELACROIX. " These great English painters how far they surpass us 1 They have done what we have been dreaming of " " It is here only that colour and effect are understood and felt." GERICAULT (writing from London). "These great English masters, and Turner above all what do we not all owe to them ! " CLAUDE MONET (writing from London). CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY. PAG3 Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Grave of Gainsborough. Hogarth's Fundamental Axiom " There is only One School, that of Nature." Its Influence, and Diversity of Interpretation. From Crowe, Constable, and Turner, to Millais, Rossetti, and Burne- Jones. William Blake's "Square-Inch" of Ocean. The Germinal Period in Modern Art. Contrast between Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough. The Common Bond in a Free but Varied Interpretation of the Hogarthian Maxim. Conclusion 1-5 CHAPTER I. TBE EISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. Gainsborough the Real Father of Contemporary British Art. Reynolds and Gainsborough. Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner, the Three Great Names in the Forefront of Modern Art. Their Influence. Richard Wilson, his Achievement and Influence. Romney, Hopp- ner, Raeburn, and Lawrence. Nasmyth, George Mor- land, Crome, Cozens, Girtin, and others before we Come to Constable. Closely Concurrent Birth of Con- stable and Turner. Notable Men of the Nineteenth Century Born in the Eighteenth, from Sir David Wilkie and William Blake to George Cruikshank. Alexander Nasmyth, the Scottish Painter, one of the First Naturists Following Richard Wilson. Allan Ramsay. John Croine, his Work and Influence. The : CONTENTS. PAG* not in themselves Enough to Account for the Seem- ingly Sordid Externals of his Life in the Main. Why say " Seemingly." The Mystery of Turner's Nature and Life. Summary of his Outward Life. His Genius Necessarily Involves a Potent Inward Life. Examples of his Work, as " Mercury and Argus," " Crossing the Brook," " The Fighting Temeraire," " Outside Rome," Plato and " the Colour of the Soul." Application to Turner. The Question of his Generosity. His Will and National Bequest. Why have Dwelt so Long upon " the Problem of Turner." Turner's Birth and Upbringing. First Efforts in Art. His Auto-Portrait at this Time. Influenced at First by Paul Sandby and by Girtin. How his Early Art Influences are Traceable in his Magnificent Later " Carthage," " Baiae," " Calig- ula's Palace," " Argus and Mercury," " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," etc. How Almost Incredible that the Young Painter of " Jason," " Lake Avernus," etc., a Few Years Before, could hardly Earn Even the Barest Living Wage. Claude and Turner. Turner left all his Chief Work to the Nation. His "Dido build- ing Carthage" and " The Sun rising in a Mist" to be hung between two of the great Paintings ;by Claude. Claude a Revelation to him. Proof of Turner's Supreme Genius. Turner and Ruskin. Modern Painters. Turner's De- fects, though the Defects of Great Qualities, very Serious. The Balanced Criticism of Representative European Critics such as Waagen and Wornum. "One of the Greatest Painters of all Times." Crucial Phrase for Artists, by Quatremkre de Quincy. Turner's Work en masse. The High-Priest of Light. Conclusion. "But One Turner."..., .. 46-61 CHAPTER V. FROM LINNELL TO MARK ANTHONY AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. After the First Quarter of the Nineteenth Century was past, the Realistic Influence of Constable and the Idealistic CONTENTS. xi PAGE Influence of Turner the Two Great Shaping Factors in Development of Modern Art. The Men of the New Period. Linnell. Landseer. Palmer. Hulme. Dyce. And Sidney Cooper, the English Cuyp. John Linnell. The Linnells and the Landseers among the Families in whom Art is a Common Heritage. William Linnell. John Linnell Born while Constable still a Lad at his Father's Mill in Suffolk. The Precocity of Linnell and other Painters. John Varley. The Founder of the Water- Colour Society. Linnell's Characteristics. Ineptly Called the Diaz of England. His Finest Period. Why his Work has To-day an Interest over and above its own Beauty and Worth, and is of so much Value to the Student of English Landscape -Pain ting. His most Famous Pictures. His most v Typical Successor in Academical Development, B. W. Leader, R.A., and, in " Komanticism," Mark An- thony. The Direct Influence of Constable Passes Over Linnell, etc., and is Found again in Cecil Lawson. Benjamin William Leader. His Work and its Charac- teristics. Millais' "Chill October." The Anglo-Ameri- can Ernest Parton. The Nature School. The Anthonys. Andrew Anthony one of the Most Eminent American Engravers. The Reflex Influence of Andrew Anthony and Timothy Cole on Fine Art Engraving. Mark Anthony. One of the Inspiring Influences of Millais. His Work and its Characteristics, and wherein it Mirrors other Developments .. 62-72 CHAPTER VI. PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART : CECIL LAWSON, GEORGE MASON, AND FREDERICK WALKER. Cecil Lawson, a Typical Representative of the Nature- Painters of the Middle-Victorian Period. His Work, Place, and Position. "The Cloud" and "Strayed: a Moonlight Pastoral." Primarily a Pastoralist. Two Scottish Painters to be named with him, Mr Macaulay Stevenson and the late T. Hope McLachlan. His Chief Work, "The Minister's Garden." Lawson, Mason, and Xll CONTENTS. PAGE Walker have the Common Bond of Exceptional Pro- mise and Early Death. In English Art, Mason and Walker as Indissolubly Associated as Shelley and Keats. The Pastoralists and the Idyllists. Where the Idyllists Fall Short. Fra^ois Millet not an Idyllist. Melancholy as the Base in Modern Art. Its Causes. The True Naturists. Their Outlook. Mason and Walker the Painters of an Ideal World. Goerge Mason. His Work and its Quality. His Three Famous Masterpieces, "The Return from Ploughing," "The Evening Hymn," and "The Harvest Moon." His Early Death. His Tardy Recognition as an Original and Fine Painter. His Achieve- ment in Art and his Influence Since. Difference between Mason and Walker. Walker's First Academy Picture, "The Bathers," a Significant Work. The Two Men as Men. Anecdote of Mason. Another Personal Problem. Walker's Birth and Early Career. Walker and Millet. "The Old Gate." "The Plough:" its Influence upon subsequent Landscape-Painters. The Famous "Harbour of Refuge." Walker's "Mower" in Contemporary Art. Anecdote of Puvis de Chavannes and Walker. Walker's Early Death. The Close of a Great Period. In France, also, with Corot and Millet, Courbet, Daubigny, Diaz, and Fromentin. In Spain, with Fortuny. Art's Momentary Pause... .. 73-97 CHAPTER VII. THE ANIMAL PAINTERS AND ANIMAL-LANDSCAPE PAINTERS FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. "Nature "and the Nature Sense. In the Early Literature of the Century and in Art. George Morland. His "Tradition" and Influence. From Morland and James Ward we Date Animal-Painting in England. Herring. Francis Grant. Edwin Landseer. Sidney Cooper. Mark Fisher (an American by birth). Van Marcke and Anton Mauve in Holland. Rosa Bonheur. Constant Troyon. Edwin Landseer and the Land- seers. John Landseer, a Remarkable Engraver, and CONTENTS. xiii PAGE Chiefly of Animal Subjects. Thomas Landseer. Octo- genarian and Nonogenarian Artists. Charles Landseer. Edwin Landseer. His Extraordinary Precocity and More Extraordinary Early Success. Landseer's Chief Works and Periods. Rossetti on Landseer. Ruskin on Landseer. The Ruskinian Theory of " Poems and Pic- tures." The Difference between Painters and Pictorial- ists. Landseer One Type, a Pictor Ignotus like Edward Calvert Another. Landseer as a Colourist. Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Landseer as a Sculptor. The Fa- mous Nelson Lions in Trafalgar Square. George Mor- land. His " Atmosphere." Stubbs. Herring. James Ward. His Work and Periods, and his Influence. Landseer again. Conclusion 98-112 CHAPTER VIII. THE SUBJECT-PAINTERS. The Literary Fallacy in Pictorial Art. Episodical Art. Marcus Stone. Luke Fildes, etc. The late J. Pettie, R. A. Painters and Subject. In a Sense, of Course, all Painters Paint Subject-Pictures, as Exemplified by Rembrandt, Millet, Meissonier, Orchardson, Watts, with Celebrated Pictures of Extraneous Interest (i. e. , Sub- ject). Interpretative Art and Repetitive Art. The Dividing Line in the Genre of Subject-Pictures. Stacy Marks. Landseer and his Successors in Animal- Subjects. Briton Riviere. John M. Swan. Briton Riviere's Work. Where he is a Disciple of Land- seer and where an Original and Poetic Artist. His Finest Work Culminating in " Nimrod" and the Superb "Persepolis," now in America. Description of " Persepolis " or "Syria: the Night Watch." "Perse- polis" stands as Unique in Modern Painting as, in Literature, the unsurpassable lines of Fitzgerald's render- ing of Omar Khayydm, which convey a kindred profound impression. John M. Swan, one of the Foremost Living Colourists. A Saying of Edward Calvert's. J. M. SwaD xiv CONTENTS. PAGB as a Painter. The Secret of his Genius. Other "Animal Artists." J. Nettleship. In ''Animal-Landscape,'* after Mr. Swan, None to Surpass Mr. Arthur Lemon. His Pictorial Characteristics of Colour and Dramatic Imag- ination. His " Centaur " Subjects. His Landscape Pic- tures. Mark Fisher. An American by Birth. Studied under George Inness. His Reputation Won in Eng- land. Among Young English Painters of this School, Arthur Tomson. His " Black Oxen " and Pastoral and Idyllic Landscape. Among Cat Painters, Mrs.Chance, the Henriette Ronner of England. Among New-Comers, Miss L. Kemp- Welch, Rashly Called a Young Rosa Bonheur.. ..113-128 CHAPTER IX. THE SUBJECT- PAINTERS (NATURISTS), "STILL-LIFE" AND RUSTIC ART. The Later Naturists. What they have tried to Emulate and what to Avoid. Some of the Best Work To-day done by Men such as the Sussex Painters Peppercorn and Aumonier. By the Scottish (Glasgow) Men, E. A. Walton, J. La very, Paterson, Macaulay Stevenson. By the New English Men, such as the Veteran Mr. Brabazon, Fore- most of the "Younger Impressionists," though an Old Man; Theodore Roussel, and Francis James. And by those Natural Followers of Frederick Walker and George Mason, J.Fulley love and Matthew Hale. "Still-Life," what the French Call Nature-Morte.Its Place in English Art. The Miniature-Painters of Nature. Randolph Calde- cott, Kate Greenaway. William Hunt, the Prince of "Still-Life "Painters. Rural Art. Birket Foster. Mrs. Allingham. Charles Gregory. Francis James, Par Ex- cellence the English Painter of Flowers, as, in France, Leon Bonvin. Mr. Peppercorn again. William Hyde. Mr. Brabazon. Alfred Waterhouse. Alfred East, etc. Yet None to Surpass Three Living French Naturists, Harpignies, Cazin, and Pointelin 127-131 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER X. IMAGINATIVE ART. WILLIAM BLAKE TO SAMUEL PALMER AND CALVERT. PAGE The Broad Realists and the Narrow Realists. "The Har- bour of Refuge" and "The Harvest Moon" again. The Cardinal Principle of the Pre-Raphaelites. Imaginative Landscape Begins with Blake. A Group of International Symbolists. The Art of William Blake. His "Adam and Eve " a Typical Symbolical Design. His " Ocean " an Unsurpassed Example of Imaginative Realism. The True and False Mysticism. Art is Essentially Sane. Blake's Influence. William Blake and his Circle. The Two Kinds of Distinction in Art. True Taste must be Catholic. Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert the Two Outstanding Men of the Blake Group. John Varley. Blake's Opinion of Some of his Renderings. Francis Oliver Finch. A. B. Johns. The Brotherhood of the Ideal. Several of its Members Men of Rare Power. The Literary Output of James Smetham and Calvert. William Sharp the Engraver and Mystic, and Others of this Group. Samuel Palmer. His most Beautiful Drawings inspired by his Favourite Poems, Milton's "Comus," "L'Allegro," and "II Penseroso," or the Virgilian Idylls. His Unique Place in English Art. A Student of Light. His Real Greatness is as a Painter-Etcher. Ruskin in Modern Painters the First to Draw Attention to his Work. The Great Critic Ranks Palmer's Foliage - Painting as Supremely Fine. Palmer's Influence. His Few but Absolutely Unique Etchings. Edward Calvert. How Little is Known of this Remarkable Man. His Birth. His Reverence for the early Italian Master Schiavone. His Independence of Outlook and Judgment. Early Achievement. His Extraordinary and Beautiful Work in Original Designs on Wood. His Spiritual Penetration into Art. Calvert and Blake. Symbolic Art in England. Calvert as an Original Painter-Engraver. His Most Notable Works in this Genre. His Painting. His Chief xvi CONTENTS. PAO Paintings. His " Virgilian Pastoral " in the Luxembourg. His Masterpiece, the "Migration of Nomads," better known now as "Arcadian Shepherds Moving their Flocks at Dawn." A Supreme Example in its Genre. Cal vert's Death. Why have Written at this Length on Calvert. He the Opposite Type to Turner, an Instance of the Ideal Artistic Life. The "Ideal" Problem in Art. Actuality and Ideality, how Misleading. Art a Divine Gift of Beauty, and not to be Hampered with Arbi- trary Ethical Interpretations. "Art for Art's Sake" a Famous Dictum at Once True and False. Where it is Inevitable. Where it is Unworthy. Art, its truest Ideal . 132-156 CHAPTER XI. RETROSPECTIVE. AND THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART. Growth and Progress of the Various Schools of Painting in England. And of a Common Art Ideal. In England, France, Germany, Italy. Two Typical Exponents of the Personal Problem in Art. Is Art Primarily an Ethi- cal Expression. A Problem Considered and Answered in every Age. the Distinctive Differentiation. Become To-day a Problem of Paramount Significance through the Genius of Rusldn. Its Solution of Material Value to Art. Art Holds her Secret yet 157-161 CHAPTER XII. THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. THE COLOURISTS. THE GLASGOW SCHOOL, ETC. Will Deal now with Certain Incidental Groups and Indi- viduals. The Subject-Picture. Anecdote of the Duke of Wellington. Low Estate of the Art-Ideal. " Art" the Craft of Pictorial Narrative. Three Main Divisions of the Subject-Picture. The Heroical and Grandiose. Haydon a Type. The Episodic and the Sentimental. CONTENTS. xvn PAGE Pettie, Stacy Marks, Marcus Stone, Horsley. The Scrip- tural and the Domestic. John Herbert, R.A., etc. The Colourists of the Narrative School. Wilkie and Etty. Mulready. Wilkie. Modern Scottish Art. John Philip. Orchardson. Guthrie. Walton. Scottish Sculpture. Mrs. D. O. Hill. Sir John Steell, the Most Eminent Scottish Sculptor. The Younger Scots. The Glasgow School. Its Members have Outgrown that Primary Cohesion inevitable in a School. Scottish Art Racial rather than National. The New English Art School. The So-called Irish School 162-177 CHAPTER XIII. WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. The Direct Outcome of the Episodical and Narrative Methods. The Painted Allegory. The Idealistic Theme. Literary Rather than Primarily Pictorial Instinct. Painters and Pictorialists. Haydonand David Scott and their School. G. F. Watts. His Position and Aims. His great Achievement and Influence. The Fundamental Mistake in the Watts " School." Leighton. His Bril- liant Career. Pre-eminently the Classicist. His High Qualities but Failure as a Colourist. Notwithstanding his Insignificance as a Colourist his Influence in Contem- porary Art Notably for Good. His Masterly Portrait of Sir R.Burton. His Fine Sculpture. The Leighton Group and Albert Moore. Moore. A Decorist Pure and Sim- ple 178-187 CHAPTER XIV. THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. AND HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS, AND ROSSETTI. The LaterVictorian School. Its Origin and Inspiration. A great Spiritual Movement. The three great Characteris- tic Movements in Modern English Art : the Decorative or Esthetic, the Classical or Movement of Intellectual Revolt, and the Religious Movement. This Triple Move- CONTENTS. PAGE ment, though in Varying Degree, Cosmopolitan. English, French, German,and Italian Representatives. The Religious Movement in British Art. Dyce the Im- mediate Pioneer of Religious Art. His Followers.-The Pre-Raphaelites. What the Pre-Raphaelite School Really is. Ford Madox Brown and his Part in the Move- ment. Rossetti and Pre-Raphaelitism. Madox Brown's Art. Holman Hunt. In some Respects the Foremost Religious Painter. His Career and Importance. The " Light of the V/orld " and other Famous Pictures. John Everett Millais. His Precocity, Aims, and Equip- ment. His Early Influence, both as Pre-Raphaelite and an Academical. Fine Traditions of English Poetic Art. The Long Tale of his Work. Its Several Periods. Unique as a Modern Painter of Children. The greatest Portrait-Painter of his Time. His extraordinary Power of Essential Portraiture. Not nearly so successful with Women. Reasons of his great Popularity. Millais and Rossetti. Where and How they must not be Com- pared ..................................................................... 188-210 CHAPTER XV. ROSSETTI. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Rare Creative Genius. His Influence in two Marked Directions in Literature and Art as Applied to Life. The ^Esthetic Movement. Rossetti's Career. Early Work and Friends. The P. R. B. Rossetti and Romanticism. Rossetti and Millais. Rossetti as Poet and Painter. Rossetti the Man. His Aims and'Art. His Four Phases as a Painter. His Types of Womanly Beauty. A New Emotion in Art. His Later Art. The Lost King 211-230 CHAPTER XVI. BURNE-JONES AND THE ./ESTHETIC IDEAL. Two great Modern Painters, Morris and Burne- Jones. Far- Reaching Influence. Burne-Jones's Art. Continuity of Impression. A Spiritual Realist. Nearly all great Art CONTENTS. xix PAQB Melancholy. Comparison of Burne-Jones with his Great Contemporaries. The Remoteness and the Sacredness of Beauty. A Man of Noble Imagination. His Art an Individual Revelation and Representative of the Motive Spiritual Ideas of To-day..^ 231-239 CHAPTER XVII. WILLIAM MORRIS. THE LATER PRE-RAPHAELITES. AND THE BLACK-AND-WHITE AND DECORATIVE ARTISTS OF THE SCHOOL. After Ruskin and Rossetti, William Morris. Poet and Decovist. His Great Diversity and Napoleonic Energy. William Morris, the Rebel and Reformer. His Vocation. The Making of Beautiful Things. His Enormous Influ- ence. Large Following of the School of Rossetti, Burne- Jones, and Morris. Spencer Stanhope, Arthur Hughes, and the Lesser -Known and Later Pre-Raphaelites. Walter Crane, W. B. Macdougall, and Others. Renais- sance of Minor Arts. The Lesser Romanticists. Ruskin. Lawless and Kindred Illustrators. Decorative Art. Hornel, Geo. Henry, and Byam Shaw, Moira, Gotch, etc., and Others among Younger British Artists. None among whom so Noteworthy as Cayley Robinson, the last of the Pre-Raphaelites. Black-and- White Work. Walter Crane. Aubrey Beardsley. The Younger Men 240-254 CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. BLACK-AND-WHITE. ETCHING AND ETCHERS. The Several Schools of Art. Marine Painting. The Succes- sors of Turner and the Early Sea- Painters. J. C. Hook. Colin Hunter. Peter Graham. Brett. And Henry Moore. H. S. Tuke, Matthew Hale, and Others. The Nude. Military Painting, and French and British Ex- emplars. Historical School and Orchardson. Herkomer. The Portraitists. National Caricaturists. Their Indi- viduality. Vogue of the Caricature. Rowlandson and XX CONTENTS. PAGE Gilray. Punch. Tenniel. Leech. Du Marnier. Phil May, etc. First Revival of Etching and Wood-Engrav- ing by Palmer, Calvert, etc. Contemporary Etching. Seymour - Haden. Legros, Whistler, Strang, etc. Gautier's Aphorism Applicable to this as to all Other Arts.... .. 255-265 \ PAET TWO. AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN (CONTI- NENTAL) ART. CHAPTER XIX. AMERICAN ART. Qualities of American Art. Characteristic Lack of Na- tionality. Outstanding American Painters: Whistler, Sargent, La Farge. Conditions which Affect Art. En- vironment and National Art. American Art. One great Service rendered to British Art by an American, Benjamin West, over a Hundred and Thirty Years Ago. George Inness first Distinctively American Painter. Introduction of French Pictures Developed Technical Excellence but Checked Originality. Important Influence of Puvis de Chavannes. American Landscapists, Figure Painters, and Portraitists. Robert Harris and the Young Canadians. Reason why their Painting is as yet a Reflex Art. In Art, as in Life, America still largely Transatlantic Europe. Wood Engraving and Cole. Etching and Joseph Pennell. What the New Age may well Discover 266-274 CHAPTER XX. DUTCH ART. Dutch Art Insignificant during first Third of Century till stirred by French Romanticist Movement. Joseph CONTENTS. xxi PAGE Israels the Pioneer. Awakening of Modern Dutch Art. Other Prominent Artists, Mesdag, Jongkind, Mauve, etc. The Brothers Maris. The Younger Men to Jan Toorop and Tholen and Antoon Van Welie. The Dutch Renaissance one of the most Notable Revivals in Art 275-278 CHAPTER XXI. BELGIAN ART. The Fleming All-powerful in National Art of Belgium. The Finest Development in Modern Belgian Art Began with Hippolyte Boulenger the Romanticist, under the Leadership of Courbet. De Groux the Painter of Squalid Life. Alfred Stevens and his Contemporaries. Hippo- lyte Boulenger's Influence at Tervueren on the Younger Belgian Artists. Appreciation of his Work. Tervueren the Belgian Barbizon. Representative Modern Paint- ers, Courtens, Clays, Khnopff, Rops. Characteristics of Belgian Art 279-283 CHAPTER XXII. SCANDINAVIAN ART. DANISH, SWEDISH, NORWEGIAN. Definition of Scandinavian Art. Danish Dreamers, Nor- wegian Realists, Swedish Impressionists. Scandinavian Literature greater than Scandinavian Art. I. DANISH. Thorwaldsen (Much Overrated) with the Painter Eckersberg may be said to Begin Danish Art. Eckersberg for all his Formalism did Much towards a National Art. Marstrand, the Danish Wilkie, Led the Exodus of Danish Talent to Italy and the East. Andersen, Hoyen, and Jacobsen. In 1845-50 a Ferment of Public Opinion Nurtured Strong Nationalism. Danish Artists Turned to their own Land for Inspiration. Painters of the Renaissance: Skov- gaard, Bloch, Zahrtmann. New Generation Much to CONTENTS. Unlearn. Peter Kroyer the Greatest of Danish Paint- ers. Kroyer and his Successors. Viggo Johansen, Jern- dorff, Paulsen, etc. Characteristics of Later Roman- ticists, Khyn, Viggo Pedersen, etc. Their Aims. The " Free Exhibition " Representative of all that is Best To-day in Scandinavian Art. II. SWEDISH. In Sweden, Malmstrpm a Distinctively Scandinavian Gen- ius. Early Half of Century Unproductive. Hoeckert. First Important Swedish Painter in Mid Century. Cos- mopolitanism in Swedish Art Counteracted by Hellquist, Cedarstrom, Forsberg. Native Landscape Painting Ini- tiated by Bergh, Salmson, Hagborg. The Real Sweden Portrayed by Eolistrom, Larrson, and Others. Anders Zorn, the Great Swedish Impressionist. III. NORWEGIAN. Dual Characteristics of Norwegian Art. Painters Repre- sentative of Later Phases. Thaulow. Religious Real- ism and Skredsvig and Edelfelt. Scandinavian Art a Reality, no Longer Imitative ..................... 283-293 CHAPTER XXIII. RUSSIAN ART. Russian Art Less Known Abroad than Slavonic Litera- ture. Forecast for the New Century. Stschedrin the First Russian Artist of Note. The Russian Public and Verestchagin. Artistic Revolt. " The Wanderers " Inaugurated Modern Russian Art. Repin, First Great Representative Russian Artist. His " Burlalli." Typi- cal of the Russian Genius ......................... 294-298 CHAPTER XXIV. SPANISH ART. Chief Contemporary Spanish Painter Pradilla. His Dominating Influence in Spain and Italy. Goya the CONTENTS. xxiii Rembrandt of Spain. Fortuny the Genius of the Early Nineteenth Century. His Work and Influence. His Followers. Apotheosis of Brutality in Paintings by Rami- rez, Vera, Checa. Villegas the Nationalist. Popular Spanish Painters. Madrazo, Casanova, Zamacois. Pra- dilla the Greatest Living Spaniard. Gandara. Daniel Vierge. The Dual Currents of Modern Spanish Art. A Young Spanish Artist of Exceptional Promise in the New Naturist School 299-303 CHAPTER XXV. ITALIAN ART. Rebirth of Modern Italy and Italian Art. D'Annunzio, Leopardi, etc., in Literature. Modern Art Arose in the Sixties under Fortuny. Outstanding Modern Art- ists Morelli, Michetti, the Leader of a New Movement, Dalbono, Campriani, Favretto. The Numerically Strong Second-Rate Italian School. Fine Nature. Painting by Ettore Tito, Nono, Selvatico. The Young Modern School. Fragiacomo Finest Water-Painter in Italy. Sartorio the Italian Dore. Segantini the Great- est Painter of Modern Italy. Probably will be Ranked One of the Greatest Artists of the Century 304-313 CHAPTER XXVI. GERMAN ART. Teutonic Expression in Art in the Main more Intellectual than Strictly Artistic. German Art Compared with that of France, England, Holland. Lack of Funda- mental Unity. The Nazarenes. Diirer and " Beauty." Austrian Art and German Art Allied. Steinle, the Viennese Nazarene. Cornelius, Kaulbach, Overbeck. The Diisseldorf School " Engineered " by Schadow. Value of its Teachings. Rethel, the True German Successor to Diirer, and Schwind the Viennese, among the Most Potent Originators of Modern Romantic Art. Feuerbach. Mid-Century Artists of Note. Piloty, Founder of the Munich School. Makart, the Fugitive Xxiv CONTENTS. PAGE Painter of Fugitive Things. Munkacsy. The Great Adolf Menzel the First Teuton Realist. Military Painting far Inferior to that of France. Franz Len- bach and Wilhelm Leibl and Portraiture. Lenbach Germany's Greatest Portraitist. Leibermann, Finest Nature-Painter in Germany. Contemporary German Art. From Boecklin and Thoma, to Franz Stuck and Max Klinger. Arnold Boecklin and Von Uhde. The Certainty of a Great Future for German Art 313-327 CHAPTER XXVII. FRENCH ART. The Vastness of the Subject. The Catholic Range of In- terest Homogeneity of Modern French Art. Compar- ison between French and German Art. Louis David and Classicism. Gros, Prudhon, on the Threshold of Modern French Art. Ingres. Gericault's " Raft of the Medusa." His Appreciation of the Great English School. Its Influence on French Art. Definition of Moder- nity. Delacroix the Shepherd of the Contemporary Painters of Light. His Development the Martyrdom of Genius. Delacroix's Visit to Morocco Opened New Vistas. Appreciation of his Qualities as Painter. The Oriental- ists. Marilhat, Decamps, Fromentin, Bida. Ingres and Delacroix the two Leaders of Modern French Art. Influence of Japanese Art. Impressionism and the Painters of Light. Four Main Expressions of the School of Modernity. Broad Classification. Courbet and Raphael." La Verite Vraie." Truth and Beauty. Poetry and Imagination. Impressionism in its Dual Quest for Actuality and Light. The Characteristic of Modernity. Courbet. Manet. Claude Monet. Degas. Carriere. And Bastien-Lepage. Later Im- pressionists. Digest of Tendencies and Features. Gustave Moreau and the Symbolists. Colour the Great Characteristic of the Finest Contemporary Art. Axioms of Art. " Whistler, Turner, and Monet." CONTENTS. XXV PAQB Millet, Carriere, and Others by Types for Remem- brance. Latest Schools. Carolus Duran, Bastion- Lepage, Puvis de Chavannes, etc. Sayings of Courbet and Puvis de Chavannes. . . . 328-354 PART THREE. MODERN SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER XXVIII. MODERN SCULPTURE. History of Modern Sculpture Mainly that of Sculpture in France. Neo-Classic Period. Greek Art. As Sculpture Once the Natural Expression of Artistic Emotion in Great Art so To-day Colour is the Latest Language. Sculptors of the Italian Renaissance. French In- fluence Predominates in Modern Sculpture, whether British, American, or Italian. Clodion, Houdon, Rude. D'Angers the Model Portraitist. Barye, Foremost Sculptor of the Animal World, and the First of the Moderns, and Pioneer of a New Art. Barye's In- fluence Incalculable. Prominent Contemporary Sculp- tors. Henri Chapu. Paul Dubois. Saint-Marceaux. Antonin Mercie. Falguiere. Fremiet. Idrac. Injalbert, etc. Two Supreme Men, Ilodin and Dalou. Rodin has Spoken the " Open Sesame" of Modernity 355-364 CHAPTER XXIX. MODERN ARCHITECTURE^ The One Obvious Lesson Architecture has Taught. The Aim of Modern Architecture. Paucity of Great Modern Architecture. The Most Hopeful Outlook now in America. Nineteenth Century Architecture in France Divides into Six Periods. Two Imitative xxvi CONTENTS. PAGB Schools in England Followed by True Gothic Revival. Civil Engineering Architecture. The Ferro- Vitreous Development. New Effort in Domestic Architecture. Perhaps the Full New Language of Sculpture will be Spoken in America in the Coming Century. Architec- ture, Once the First, now Follows the Other Arts. A Juster Equipoise, the Ideal of Art 365-370 MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. PART ONE. THE ROMANTIC ERA. 18001850. CHAPTER I. ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY. The Century Opens with the First of Beethoven's Sym- phonies. The Romantic Movement. Three Outstand- ing Composers, 1800. Beethoven, Schubert, Weber. Development of Beethoven's Genius. His Great Work. Technical Innovations. Chief Writers of Symphonies. Spohr. Schubert. Folk-song the Germ of National Music. Important Song Writers. Schumann the Ultra-Romanticist. Music's Debt to him. His Aims and Works. Mendelssohn Classical in Form, Roman- tic in Tendency. Fortune's Favourite. His Influence on English Music. Programme Music. His Contem- poraries. Liszt. Weber. Definition of Opera. The Creation of New Forms. Meyerbeer. Marschner. . 371-381 CHAPTER II. ROMANTIC MUSIC IN ITALY. The Neapolitan School. Piccini and the Finale. Italian Opera Lacked Dramatic Expression at Beginning of CONTENTS. xxvii PAGE Nineteenth Century. Tyranny of the Singer. Rossini. His Reforms. Characteristics of his Operas. " Wil- liam Tell. "Bellini. Donizetti. Verdi's Career Divides into Three Periods. His Earliest Operas after the Nea- politan School. A Remarkable Man and Musician. The War of Liberation. Verdi the Musical Expression of Young Italy 382-387 CHAPTER III. ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. The Early Days of the Opera in France. Debt to Foreign Composers. Gretry and Mehul. Supremacy of the Italian Opera. Spontini. Expression of Napoleonic Era. Cherubini. Outstanding French Composers. Boieldieu. Auber. Halevy. Meyerbeer. Unique Character, Versatile Composer. Settled in Paris. The Man of the Hour. Characteristics. Influence. Gou- nod. Berlioz, Most Individual French Composer. Musical Creed. Master of Orchestration. His Compo- sitions. Chopin, Inventor for the Piano. Feminine Element in Music . . . . 388-396 PART TWO. MODERN MUSIC. 1850-1900. Two Primary Schools of Music in Europe. Third Great Allied School 397-J CHAPTER IV. MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. Prominent Figure of Century, Wagner. His Reformation of Musical Drama. His Aims. Development of his Theories. Education. Exile. Liszt. The New School. Corne- lius. Goldmark. Bruckener. Youngest Members of XXviii CONTENTS. MM Wagnerians. Brahms. Restorer of Classical Tradi- tions. Direct Successor to Beethoven. His Develop- ment. Bruch, Eminent Living Musician. His Con- temporaries . . .399-408 CHAPTER V. MODERN MUSIC IN ITALY. Verdi. Representative of his Country and Century. His Three Phases. Ponchielli. Boi'to and his Influ- ence. Young Italian School. Mascagni. Puccini. Leoncavallo. Musicians of Second and Third Rank. Instrumental Music. Classical Music. Dom Perosi. 409-413 CHAPTER VI. MODERN MUSIC IN FRANCE. No Great Genius of the Musical Drama in France. Wag- ner's Influence Paramount Recently. Modified Use of Representative Themes. Gounod's Successors and Dramatic Sincerity. Franck and his School. Lalo. Delibes. Bizet. Thomas. Outstanding Men in Last Third of the Century. Saint-Saens. Eclectic Com- poser. Massenet. Reyer and the Effort to Create a Distinctive French Opera. The Young School. Bru- neau and his Contemporaries. Musicians of Advanced Ideas. Influential Conductors 414-418 CHAPTER VII. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS OF MUSIC IN EUROPE. Folk-Song and Dance the Nucleus of National Music 419 I. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. Influence of Italian Music in Spain and Portugal. National Element. Spanish Composers. Pedrell. The Younger Men. Portuguese Characteristic Music. Contemporary Musicians... .. 419-420 CONTENTS. xxix H. SCANDINAVIAN MUSIC. PAQE Scholastically Allied to German School. Folk Music. Northern Music. Norwegian National Music. Chief Representative Grieg. His Contemporaries. Danish Music. Gade and Fellow Composers 421-422 III. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. Dutch Musical Characteristic. Dutch Composers. Flem- ish Element Distinctive in Belgian Music. French In- fluence. Benoit Promoted Flemish Movement. Out- standing Musicians , 423-424 IV. HUNGARY. Hungarian Music. Tzigane and Magyar Elements Pre- dominate. Chief Instruments. Characteristic Forms. Hungarian Operas. Magyar Composers 424-425 V. BOHEMIA. Latin Opera. Austrian Oppression. The 1860 Reawaken- ing Movement Initiated in Music by Skraup. Charac- teristics of Bohemian Music. Prominent Musician, Dvdrak. His Career. Innovations. Racial Imagina- tion..., .. 425-427 VI. POLAND. Erudite Polyphony. First Polish Opera. Kurpinski. Chopin. Monuisko and the Opera. Modern Musicians 427-428 VII. RUSSIA. National Russian Music Dates with Nineteenth Century. Glinka the Father of Russian Opera. Contemporary Nationalists. The New School. Their Inspiration. The Five Chief Members. Tschaikowsky. Tragic Life. Posthumous Fame. National Anthem The Young School. Its Energy and Promise 428-431 XXX CONTENTS. PART THREE. MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA. 1800-1900. CHAPTER VIII. MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN. PAGHB Dominating Influence of Handel, also Mendelssohn. Music a Lost Art till Middle of Nineteenth Century. Remarkable English Oratorios. The Glee Essentially English. Glee Writers. Ballads. The English Opera. The Italian Opera. Efforts towards National Music. Contemporary Writers. Sullivan. Mackenzie. Mac- Cunn. Parry. Cowen. Villiers Stanford. Group of Vigorous Young Writers. Prominently Elgar, Taylor, German 432-437 CHAPTER IX. MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. Music in Mexico and Brazil. In Canada and the United States. Psalmody. The Introduction of the Oratorio Awakened Broader Love of Music. Formation of Musical Societies. --Lowell Mason the Father of Amer- ican Music. Popularisation of Music through Intro- duction of Opera. Musical Activity 1840. Ole Bull. The English Opera. American Musicians. The Civil War. Three National Songs, "Hail, Columbia!" "Yankee Doodle," "The Star-Spangled Banner. "War- Songs. Plantation-Songs of the Southern States. Forster Prince of American Melodists. Dv6rak, Distinguished Contemporary Musicians in the States. Buck, Pratt, MacDowell, and Others. Three Outstanding Canadian Musicians... .. 438-444 THE PEOGEESS OP AET IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, PART ONE. THE NATURE PAINTERS. INTRODUCTORY. WHEN Thomas Gainsborough, was laid to rest under the willows at Kew, the greatest of his con- temporaries said at the graveside : " Should England ever become so fruitful in talent .that we can venture to speak of an English school, then will Gains- borough's name be handed down to posterity as one of the first." This saying of Sir Joshua Reynolds, two years before the beginning of the nineteenth century, and Hogarth's axiom, fifty years earlier, " There is only one school, that of nature," may be accepted as the keynote to modern British Art. We owe an immense debt to William Hogarth. It is true that much of his work would, were it painted by a contemporary, now repel us. We no longer take pleasure in seeing art minister to what is sordid in subject, revolting in aspect: and the realism of Hogarth is as finally spent as, in Carica- 2 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ture, are the grosser perversions of Rowlandson and Gilray. But Hogarth played as great a part in the history of British Painting as Dryden played in the history of English Literature. His sincerity is not only a profound note in all that he did, but was, in turn, to quote the words of another great though wholly different painter of our day, " a central flame descending upon many altars." It is probable that the development of art in England would have been 'materially delayed but for the work and still more the indirect influence of this Londoner who died over a hundred and thirty years ago. ,When Hogarth said, " There is only one school, that of nature," he uttered an axiom that is a common- place to every true artist: yet one that has to be emphasised again and again, in all countries, in every age. It is, perhaps, so deep and wide a generalisation that it is lost sight of easily; as in a city, the horizons and the wide arch of the skies are obscured. It is the axiom in the mind of every great artis,t from Van Eyck or Bellini to Leonardo or Diirer, from the absolutely English Hogarth to the absolutely Japanese Hokusai. But, like a certain famous generalisation of the Psalmist, it is so obvious as commonly to be ignored. A truth is doubly effective when it is uttered by one whose words carry far, and, when they sink, sink deep. Hogarth spoke at a time when the trend of art in England was towards pitfalls of shallow- ness and insincerity in which it might well have be- come engulfed. His work was the pioneer effort, his words the clarion of a new epoch. Before ,the century was ended, Richard' Wilson and Reynolds and Gainsborough had splendidly extended the fron- tiers of what had been a small and unimportant prov- THE NATCTRE PAINTERS. 3 ince. Twenty-five years before the end of the cen- tury, Turner was born, and with his maturity began a new era, that wherein has slowly come to be accept- ed the all-important idea that while Hogarth's axiom is as inevitable as it always has been and always will be, " nature " is a profound symbol, a symbolic word of many interpretations. Hogarth, and doubtless even Gainsborough, the first of the impressionists as he has been called, would have regarded much of Turner's interpretation of nature as very far-fetched, as Constable, the greatest of landscapists in the Eng- lish tradition, certainly considered it. To-day we see that the same axiom may unite men such as John Crome and William Turner, David Cox and Rossetti, Gainsborough and Burne- Jones, Richard Wilson and Millais, George Morland and William Blake. For " truth to nature " is no longer limited to formal exactitude or detailed imitation. I have before me a small engraving by William Blake, representing the ocean, as conceived by his strange and Biblical imagination. It depicts little more than one great billow breaking in loneliness under a brooding sky. Neither Courbet nor any other sea painter has more truly or convincingly conveyed the sense of oceanic power and loneliness., Yet Blake certainly never saw the ocean, and depicted it through imaginative vision only. The fact re- mains that no realism could do more : we have here the soul of reality itself. Blake is as true to " nature " as Hogarth is. It is thus we have come to see that while there is only one school, that of nature, nature itself is not a convention of the schools. It is not a shibboleth ef tradition, but the one great source whose main stream, is the world of natural life and human life, the world as we know c 4 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. it, whose secret and vital tributaries are from the wellspring within the individual spirit. Herein lies the clue to the revolution in modern art. In all countries it was trending towards prac- tical dissolution through barren formalisms and outworn conventions. Xt was necessary for a great and fruitful idea to arrest this universal wave of decadence. The time was past when a mere turn- ing with helpless admiration to the unapproachable work of the old masters could be of any avail. Even men of exceptional talent failed in this last desper- ate endeavour, as, notably, Sir Joshua Keynolds, who, but for his persistent emulation of the supreme Italian masters, might have become the greatest of English painters. He turned to the works of other men and let his intellectual choice be his pilot. Gainsborough, so much less considered in that day, let his own individuality be his guide, and sought no other school than that of " nature " as he knew it. The time was come when a great and fruitful idea had to be not apprehended only, not accepted only, but realised to ,the quick. Gainsborough and Constable in England, Manet and Delacroix in France, each after his own kind, were the captains in the new movement, which before the end of the eighteenth century had become general throughout Europe. The watchword of this new movement was Hogarth's " There is only one school, that of Na- ture." This was the formative idea that was to arrest decadence, to regenerate, to lead to a fresh and wonderful development. It did no,t matter that it would have many interpreters: nor that over this new and yet so old axiom of truth and progress men so different in temperament and apparently so estranged in aim as Ingres and Delacroix, Turner THE NATURE PAINTERS. 5 and Millet, Mane,t and Rossetti, Horace Yernet and Eugene Carriere, Claude Monet and Holman Hunt, Corot and Meissonier, Maxman and Rodin, should ceaselessly dispute or, to be more exact, that their followers and apologists should so dispute. Out of all the confused stress has arisen the strong ideal: that Art, which is the rarefied expression of the essential in life and nature, has no limitations save those of Truth, and that Truth itself is approached by a thousand ways, and not by .this or that avenue only. In a word, there is only one school which endures, that of nature. The hope of a great de- velopment of Art in the coming century is based on a full recognition of what this axiom really means. All that is best in ,the Art of the nineteenth century is a demonstration of this axiom, and a fulfilment of the great movement pioneered by Ho- garth, by Richard Wilson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and by Thomas Gainsborough, PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTUKY. CHAPTEE I. THE EISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. IT is Gainsborough, more than any other English artist, who would deserve the .title, Father of Mod- ern English Painting. Reynolds, in most respects a greater artist, fell short of him in two essential particulars: individual as he was, he had not so much personality, and his broad scheme of paint- ing belongs to .the older schools. It is Gainsborough who, to-day, is to be traced through the whole de- velopment of contemporary art. We recognise his influence in Constable, in the middle- Victorian land- scapists, in the young painters of the Glasgow School and the New English Ar,t Club. This is not to depreciate Reynolds, an artist of extraordinary versatility and brilliant achievement, nor to underrate the immense influence he had over his contemporaries, over his immediate successors, and over the whole course of British Art. But he stands for Academicalism, and Gainsborough for Individuality ; and just because of this his influence has slowly lessened, while that of Gainsborough has grown and is a permanent force. The three supreme names which stand at the be- ginning of modern art in Great Britain are Gains- borough, Constable, and Turner. Of these the two first are not only our great leaders; through their influence in France they profoundly affected the art of Europe. It is no paradox to say that modern THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. 1 French art as we know it a,t its best from Paul Huet, the pioneer of the Barbizon school, to Point elin to-day would not have been what it is but for the influence of these two painters, and pre-eminently of Constable. The secre,t of this influence was that each forsook all that was barren in convention, and went, not to the schools, not to tradition, not to " authoritative sources/' but to nature. Each painted what he really saw, and each tried to attain a veracity in presentment such as had not been attempted before. When Gainsborough painted the chestnuts and beeches of English parkland scenery he did not busy himself to paint this or that tree as though it were for a botanical museum, and still less as though " a tree " were all that was needed. His beeches are beeches, his chestnuts are chestnuts, his oaks are oaks. He depicted them as he saw them, with long- leaved foliage thrown up by the wind, or with great boles surrounded with a swarm of leaves, or with brown branches meandering through dense clus- ters in a word, as chestnuts and beeches and oaks appeared to him when he looked at them. And what he did, tentatively and often loosely, so that his " impressionism " became an affront to his Aca- demical brethren and a cause of head-shaking among his friends, Constable did supremely. This great painter understood trees, hedges, water, clouds, rain, atmosphere, the tout ensemble of natural life, as no English painter before him had done: and painted with a vigour and freshness which astonished the admirers of Classical landscape, who thought that no one could surpass Richard Wilson. Wilson was a painter of rare excellence: so rare and fine a painter that even now he is not perhaps adequately 8 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. appreciated; but lie was not the creator of a new movement in Art, and his work lacked that electric quality of contagious genius which Constable's so notably has. Although Wilson does not belong to the nineteenth nor even to the close of the eighteenth century, his work should not go unrecorded here, for not only had it unquestionably an influence for good in the shaping of the new forces which were to revolu- tionise traditional landscape art in England, but it was not till well on in the nineteenth .century that his great merits were commonly understood even by the few who then had the least care for native land- scape art. Notwithstanding a reputation early won in Italy (where, after a promising beginning in Lon- don as a portraitist, he decided to devote himself to landscape painting), and a great success with his beautiful " Niobe " in London in 1760 by which ;time, however, he was forty-seven his name did not become widely known, and he was often compelled to accept sums for his pictures which could hardly have paid for the pigments and framing. One of the original thirty-six members of the Royal Acad- emy (founded in 1768), he exhibited there, from 1769 to 1780 inclusive, thirty-one pictures. But it was not until 1814, at the British Institution, when some seventy of his pictures were shown together, that Richard Wilson (twenty years after his death) became widely recognised as a master in landscape. Classical landscapes such as his " Cicero at his Villa," ajid its companion piece, " Solitude," " Apollo and the Seasons," " Meleager and Ata- lanta," " Phaeton," and his simpler " Albano," " Castel Gandolfo," and beautiful " Nemi " (several times repeated and varied) are painted with a serene THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. 9 beauty of distinction which few subsequent land- scapists have equalled and perhaps none have sur- passed in kind. In the National Gallery are to be seen several fine examples of the art of Richard Wil- son, notably his " !N~iobe " (landscape with figures, representing the destruction of Niobe ? s children) and the " Ruins of the Temple of Maecenas at Tivoli." Those who have an opportunity to see those paint- ings should not fail to examine also the less am- bitious English landscapes, such as the beautiful study of the pastures of the River Wye, with boys bathing by river shore under an azure sky streaked with white cirrus. Here they will discern the begin- nings of that austere naturalism which at this hour we find so notable in the nature painting of the Sus- sex water-colourist Peppercorn, of the French land- scapist Pointelin, of the Roman Costa, of the Swiss- Italian Segantini, of the American Boughton. Great names in portraiture must be classed with Gainsborough at the beginning of the nineteenth century, .though of Romney, Hoppner, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir Thomas Lawrence, only the first can be said to belong wholly to the eighteenth cen- tury. (Romney died in 1802). And before we come to Constable we have, among landscapists and painters of rural scenes, Alexander Nasmyth, George Morland, John Crome, .Cozens, Girtin, James Ward, and other able and still highly considered nature painters. It is significant that the two greatest British painters of nature were both born about the same time, Turner in London in 1775, and Constable a year later, at East Bergholt in Suffolk. Between that date and the end of the century there was no great painter born in Great Britain save the famous 10 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Scottish artist, Sir David Wilkie ; though the chroni- cle of these last twenty-five years includes Callcott, Pickersgill, Mulready, and Etty; ,the first of our poet painters and the most extraordinary genius in purely imaginative art, William Blake ; and the first original caricaturist and illustrator of customs and manners since Eowlandson and Gilray, George Cruikshank. Of .the immediate predecessors of Constable in landscape, apart from Gainsborough and Wilson, who are in the front rank, the most interesting of these who united individual manner with Academi- cal method is Alexander ISTasmyth. Though Na- smyth (who must not be confused with his son Pat- rick, " the Scottish Hobbema ") died so late in the nineteenth century as 1840, he was born eighteen years before Constable. Born and bred in Edin- burgh, ambition and worldly advantage together led him to remove at an early age to London, where he be- came the pupil of the brilliant Allan Ramsay, son of the famous author of the same name, whose " Gentle Shepherd " is one of the Classics of the eighteenth century. He could not have found a better in- structor, for Ramsay, in addition to being an able painter, was a man of wide culture, of cosmopolitan taste and knowledge, and had himself enjoyed good foreign training. So young Nasmyth naturally fol- lowed his master's lead, and, after a season, went to Italy. He lived in Rome for some years, and be- fore he left that city was recognised as a painter of singular promise both as portraitist and as land- scapist. It was not till after his final settlement near Edinburgh that he devoted himself to land- scape painting, though about this time he painted his most famous portrait, that of Robert Burns. His THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. H work is without that lift of vision which dis- tinguishes great art, but it is singularly observant, true, and able. Obviously the great example of Richard Wilson inspired him. But what is inter- esting is that here and there in his later work are to be discerned traces of Constable, as, in his earlier, signs of ,the coming change in landscape art, signs indicative of that individual return to nature, that individual observation, selection, and man- ner, of which Hogarth was the prophet in Eng- land. In a sense, Alexander Nasmyth is a notable tran- sitional painter, and in this sense is justified ,the claim of some Scottish critics that landscape and nature-background pictures have always been pri- marily influenced by Scottish painters, from Alex- ander Nasmyth to .the later men of the Glasgow School, who, it is averred, are the present pioneers of a new and potent development. It is certainly strange that this notable pioneer of modern Scottish landscape-painting should have worked on till well within the first half of the nine- teenth century, and yet should, by nearly twenty years, have been a predecessor of Constable.* Perhaps Nasmyth would stand out more distinc- tively but for the famous East- Anglian founder of the Norwich School of Landscape, John Crome, com- monly known as " Old Crome " to distinguish him from others of ,the same name and family. Crome preceded Constable by seven years, and throughout his long life remained an isolated figure, practically * A good example of Alexander Nasmyth's art may be seen in the National Gallery (No. 1242), " Stirling Castle * : full of careful and elaborate observation, with a freedom in hand- ling which is highly interesting and suggestive. 12 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. independent of contemporary outside influences. He has been greatly praised for the sincerity and vivid- ness of his work, but I think somewhat exagger- atedly. To-day " Old Crome " is more interesting for what he did than for what the work is ; and yet now and then one comes upon work of his so fresh and excellent in its kind that one gladly allows how much he, in common with Cotman and De Wint and others of his school, from David Cox to ,the less emi- nent members of a then swiftly growing band, have enriched English Art. Nearly all Old Crome's best work was painted in Norwich, and in a picture such as his admirable " Windmill on a Heath " (No. 926 in the National Gallery) we may see how the good seed was rapidly fructifying under new conditions. John Crome's father was a publican in Norwich and ,the lad was apprenticed to a coach-painter, and possibly it was this contact with pigments, however crude and in the rough, which awakened his latent powers. At any rate, he was practically a self-taugh,t man, and from the first independent of what was being said and done in London. On the other hand, Crome is only the nominal founder of the Norwich School, for it must not be forgotten ,that Gainsborough had set- tled in Norwich after his first untoward experience of London, and that his work, and still more his in- fluence, had a paramount effect upon the young painters of Eas,t Anglia. But neither in originality, intensity of vision, nor power of handling did the younger man approach his famous predecessor, and after work, such as, for example, Gainsborough's beautiful landscape with cattle and goats by a pool of water, all glowing in evening light (the picture known as "Watering Place"), one finds the nature THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. 13 work of Old Crome, faithful and often vivid as it is, cold and uninspired. We hear so often depreciatory criticism of Eng- lish Art and English methods that it is well to bear in mind, first, that the inevitable evolutionary laws in Art, as in every sphere of the mind and in life, follow the central law of ebb and flow. If the Academical Art of England, which immediately preceded and was concurrent with the Pre-Raphaelite movement that induced a Millais to paint the young Christ in the house of His parents, a Rossetti to paint a strangely new and beautiful vision of the Annunciation, a Hoi- man Hunt to confer pictorial colour and form upon a pictorial symbol, and in the " Ligh,t of the World " make an universal appeal, while the academical men were painting oleographic sentimentalities and banalities if this Academical Art touched then its lowest ebb, we must not forget that the same period saw Constable and Turner, nor, again, must we forget that in the first quarter of the nine- teenth century i,t was England and not France that led the way. In France a stilted Classicism, in Germany a dull Conventionalism, lay, like a pall, upon native contemporary art. In England, Gains- borough and others, but Gainsborough above all, had, at the close of the eighteenth century, left art freer and upon a surer and higher path than, at that time, it stood in any other country. Those who speak as if no modern art but that of Paris were of much account merely show a provincial ignorance. Early in the century England stood foremost, and this apart from the great, the splendid and unique genius of Turner. Such a statement as that which was made recently at the opening of a new Art Gallery in the United States, " that modern landscape art owed nothing 14: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. to English, but only to French influences, to the great romanticists and impressionists of France/' is gro- tesquely untrue and misleading. If Richard Wilson and Sir Joshua Reynolds were largely responsible for what was best in classic art and study, and Gainsborough and Constable respec- tively for the new romantic and synthetic and new naturalist and impressionistic interpretation of fa- miliar nature, we must not overlook the great service done, not only by the close observation and faithful work of men like Nasmyth and Old Crome, but by their consciously or unconsciously carrying on the finer tradition of the great Dutch school. How conscious an aim this was may be seen in one marked instance, that of Old Crome, a painter of whom one's consideration deepens as one understands the beauty and significance of work such as his achieved in his conditions and period. When, at a patron's house in Norwich, and later in London, he became ac- quainted with some of the masterpieces of the Neth- erlands, his enthusiasm was not of a moment, but lifelong. It is told that on his death-bed his last words were the reiteration of the name of the Dutch master whom above all others he revered, Hobbema: " Hobbema, Hobbema, my dear Hobbema, how I have loved you." It is true that Hobbema greatly influenced John Crome, but it is a mistake to speak of the famous founder of the Norwich school (a school whose note was sincerity, freshness, faithful- ness) as "the English Hobbema." There is a poetic quality in the work of the great Hollander which is absent in that of his English admirer ; but in sincere love of nature, in contented gladness to paint faithfully the familiar aspects of his native region, and in ceaseless and careful observation THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. 15 at first hand, the two painters may fitly be com- panioned. Crome (1769-1821) died before the first quarter of the century was complete, but his influence in an unanticipated direction was greater than that of any of his contemporaries. It is to him that we owe the first definite step towards that national system of art- education which in Great Britain and America has now known so great and surprising an extension. It remains to be seen, however, if facilitated oppor- tunities and systematised education will materially affect the average in number and quality of those whose talent is altogether exceptional. Men of original creative genius, rare in every period, will probably, as ever, appear independently of all such extraneous aids and influences. There can be no question on the other hand of the gain to the artistic crafts. Already in London, in Glasgow, in Paris, in New York, in Copenhagen centres of a new " Arts and Crafts " development striking and promising results of infinite promise have been ob- tained. Some fifteen years before his death Old Crome founded his little Norwich Society. A few poor Norfolk painters met fortnightly for an hour or two in a small room, the lighting and warming of which taxed their small resources. No one was " known " : even John Crome's reputation stood high only in his native Norwich, though he had ad- mirers in London, among them the influential Presi- dent of the Royal Academy, Sir William Beechey, himself an Eas.t Anglian. Influence, however, did not go far with " landscapists " in those days, when it was the vogue in " the art-world " to depreciate landscape by ranking it as a minor art as to-day 16 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the Royal Academy depreciates water-colour paint- ing by ranking it as minor art, for the annual representation of which one small room in the many galleries at Burlington House is ample; as, again, it all but ignores the importance of " Black and White." These meetings consisted solely of a few self-reliant and little-known and insignificantly re- warded men. Crome himself never received more than fifty guineas for any picture, and rarely more than 25 or so, and once, when he had painted a larger pic.ture than usual, a masterpiece, he cut it in two and sold the canvases separately, for he feared it would be impossible to dispose of the picture as he had painted it. Fortunately the same connoisseur ultimately obtained both canvases, and skilfully, and with very li.ttle perceptible trace, reunited them. The picture is now a national possession. Out of these meetings, however, developed a small but influ- ential society with regular exhibitions. Before Crome died, and for long after, Norwich as an art centre became known not only in England but throughout Europe. To-day not to know the his- tory, place, and significance of the " Norwich School " would be an inexcusable ignorance in any amateur of art. With "Old Crome " should be mentioned the abler of those artists immediately associated with him the younger Crome, John Sell Cotman, Stark, Vincent, Robert Ladbrooke and others, though to- day, perhaps, only one of them, Cotman, bears a commonly remembered name. Younger than his chief by a dozen years or more, he outlived Crome by twenty years, the last seven or eight of which were spent in London. Cotman is frequently spoken of as a marine painter, but this is misleading, for, THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. 17 though he painted some marine and riverscape pieces, he was essentially a landscapist, a,nd after landscape and a loving depicture of elms and ash- trees he cared most for architectural drawings, par- ticularly of the Queen Anne and Georgian man- sions in their park-land surroundings of Norfolk and Suffolk. Probably, indeed, Cotman is now remem- bered best by his " Architectural Etchings of Old English Buildings " (two hundred and forty plates), his " Sepulchral Brasses of Norfolk and Suffolk " (a hundred and seventy plates), and his "Liber Stu- diorum," a designation he is said to have adopted be- fore Turner made it famous. In this connection it is interesting to recall that when as a youth in Lon- don he studied design, his chief companions were Thomas Girtin (afterwards an artist of deserved reputation) and Turner. There must have been much in common between Cotman and Turner, and possibly the young Norwich painter, with his en- thusiasm for architectural effects, had some influence on the unique genius with which he was so early brought into contact. I,t is not improbable that the frequent statement already alluded to, as to Cot- man's having been a marine painter, arises from the fact that ,the only two works by which he is repre- sented at the National Gallery are a stormy sea- piece, "A Galiot in a Gale," and a riverscape show- ing two boats sailing down stream under a slack wind, under a grey sky with cloud cumuli rising from the horizon. Cotman is of particular interest in connection with the development of the art of water-colour painting in England. His work in oils is good, but his most distinctive work is in that other medium which a few English artists made famous as " the 18 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. English School," but which it required the genius of Turner to win for it in our own country its proper dignity and importance. The rise of the English School of Water-Colours is of great importance in the history of modern art. There is little doubt that it is here that we must look for the immediate source which fed the genius of John Constable, whose name stands all but the highest in modern British Art, and in Europe and in France in particular has long been revered as that of a great master. Besides Cotman and Girtin there was another painter of whom we do no,t hear so much to-day, but who had a great reputation early in the century John Robert Cozens. Though so exaggerated and parochial an estimate of him has been found accepta- ble, or was at any rate committed, to the effect that he was " the greatest genius who ever painted a land- scape " ; his chief distinction now is that he was the real pioneer of the art of wa.ter-colour painting as we now understand it. Those familiar with the rise and development of this particular art will always value the work of men like Cozens and Girtin and Cotman, the fine marine art of Copley Fielding, and the architectural work of Samuel Prout, " the father of picturesque-remains-painting," as he has been called, an artist whose influence has been very re- markable, though its recognition is owing mainly to the emphatic special pleading of Mr. Kuskin. CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 19 CHAPTEE II. CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. BEFORE we come to Constable it is of interest to note more clearly what had happened and was hap- pening in the English art-world when the " young miller of Bergholt " first exhibited a picture at the Royal Academy in 1802, and committed a saying since become famous : " There is room for a natural painter." In the year of Constable's birth (1776) his fellow-countryman, Gainsborough (for both were Suffolk men and born within a few miles of each other's parental home) had just settled in London, and was already become that vital influence which is now commonly recognised, though then ignored. A' great portrait painter died in the year (1802) when Constable, a youth, saw with triumph his first picture accepted; and one feels sure .that the young Suffolk painter, already so independent and with so keen and fresh an observation, must have been among those who truly lamented the passing of so rare a talent as that of George Romney. The men now most popular among the lovers of academical art were Euseli and Sir George Beaumont ; Sir Henry Haeburn and Hoppner were accepted as masters in portraiture, while Sir Thomas Lawrence was then midway in his brilliant career. As we have already seen, Alexander Nasmyth in Scotland and the elder Crome in England had followed a native inspiration and set themselves free of academical tradition, 20 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. while Cozens, Girtin, Cotman and others had begun a new school of nature-painting in water-colours. Another famous painter whose work must have strongly interested Constable, George Morland, died .(1804) soon after Romney, while the brillian,t but unequal Opie " the Cornish Genius " as it was once the vogue to call him died a year or two later. Thomas Stothard was in the prime of his successful career, and was beginning that revolution in book- illustration which was soon to develop into the first genuine stages of perhaps the most remarkable art movement of the century, in England, in Europe, and in America. Among the " new men " of most promise were two very able painters, the landscapist, Augustus Callcott, and the portraitist, Henry Pickersgill. Of men who were under thirty when Constable first came to London as an eager young student were two Scots- men, one of whom, Patrick Nasmyth, was to rival his father on his own lines and gain a reputation not less; and the other, David Wilkie, was to become famous as one of the greatest of Scottish painters and as the " Teniers of the ISTorth " ; and three bril- liant young Englishmen, William Mulready, Wil- liam Etty, and William Collins, though, perhaps, the first should rather be named Anglo-Irish, as his father was a Wicklow man. These men all left their mark on English Art, .and to-day it is interesting to trace the kinship of both the romantic colourist Etty and the essentially English landscapist Collins in not only the Pre-Raphaelite work of a later period but in that -of such virile younger schools of to-day, with their part genuine, part affected impressionism, as the Glasgow School and the New English Art Club. Again, in the same year that Romney died CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 21 and Constable exhibited his first picture, Edwin Landseer was born and George Cmikshank was a boy of ten. Here, then, we have a significant range of artistic energy, more than enough to convince that in the early years of the century there was at least as much vitality, individuality, and energy as else- where in Europe though, indeed, this is greatly to understate the actual truth. A further idea of the interlinking of these earlier periods may be gained from the knowledge that the lately deceased Sir John Millais and the still living G. F. Wa,tts and Holman Hunt were born while Constable was in his prime and some years before his too early death. Einally, as a startling light upon the incalculable appearance of unique genius, it was at this time of Constable's beginning his career, that William Blake was paint- ing those strange visions of the " other world " which have made him the great pictorial mystic of the world ; and that a youth of Constable's own age, Jo- seph M. W. Turner, was already a member of the Royal Academy and had begun to convey, through a new and superb use of colour, his lifelong vision of light. Some day a special history of art has to be written, to be called simply " Rembrandt ; Turner ; Monet," but of this great principle of the ideal of light I shall have more to say later. Like Rembrandt, with whom in essentials he had much in common, John Constable was the son of a miller. He was born on the llth of June, 1776, at the village of East Bergholt in Suffolk, not many miles from Sudbury, where, as already mentioned, Gainsborough first saw the light. Suffolk may well be proud of two sons so eminent as these. Naturally the young Constable was intended to follow his father's trade, but by the time the boy 22 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. went to school Mr. Constable had " done so well " with his three mills that he wished his son to study for the ministry. Books and study, however, had little appeal for the boy, and he was allowed to have his own way and become a miller, as his father was. It is recorded of him that he used to watch the ever- varying aspects of the skies, and that, from this cease- less observation, he became the first great English painter of landscape. That is surmise, however, I fancy. I do not recall any statement of Constable's to that effect, nor any, a,t first hand, by any of his friends. What is certain is that ,the constant watch- ing of the clouds, and of the noting of changes of the wind, and all the many effects of such changes, a watching incidental to his work as a miller, was of immense service to him later. It is unlikely from what we know of him ,that he consciously registered notes for artistic ends. He was still in his teens, however, when it became obvious that all his inclina- tions lay in the direction of landscape painting, and as his father was a sensible man, he decided that John would do better as a painter, " from love of it/' than as a miller " because he happened to be the son of the miller of Bergholt." A year or so later, in which time he had some local and unimportant teach- ing, but in which he had begun to note closely and with keen fresh observation, he went to London. He was in his twenty-third year when he wrote from his rooms in 23 Cecil Street, Strand, that he had " this morning been admitted a student of the Eoyal Acad- emy." At first he was disquieted by the new influ- ences which came to him with fuller knowledge, and found a difficulty in making up his mind exactly what to do with his brush and pencil. He copied several pictures from Sir Joshua Reynolds, but more CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 23 from the force of example than from his own choice. At that time Sir Joshua was the idol of the schools, and a great amount of pseudo-classicism prevailed: but though Constable no doubt perceived the essen- tial qualities in the work of the great pain,ter, he was also, for a time, under the spell of a merely conven- tional admiration, for he does not seem to have se- lected the best canvases for imitation nor to have succeeded particularly well with these. Possibly it was the ill-reception given to the altar-piece he at- tempted that decided him to give up trying to do what others could do better, and certainly we have every reason to be grateful that " Christ blessing lit- tle children " had no successors. It was about this time that in his frequent, restless strollings through the rooms of the National Gallery, he began to make a closer study of Ruysdael. There was much in the work of the great Hollander which strongly appealed to him, and there seems strong probability that it was Ruysdael rather than any living painter who was in- directly responsible for the return of the young artist to his native place in Suffolk. Two significant stories of him at this time are on record. One day he showed one of his careful and truly observed studies from nature to Sir George Beaumont, who had the reputation of being not only a fashionable artist, but also a connoisseur of the finest acumen. Sir George politely admired the study as a promising sketch, but asked " where Mr. Constable meant to place his brown tree." Constable never forgot that question, " Where do you mean to place your brown tree ? " and indeed it may be taken as the last toll over the death of the old Academicalism in landscape. So conventional had the landscape ideal become that even an eminent Academician such as Sir George 24 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Beaumont looked upon " a landscape " as an arbi- trary arrangement, which as inevitably needed a ma- hogany coloured nondescript called " a tree," as the " Delia Cruscan " shepherd had to be called Strephon and needed a crook and knee-ribbons. One can im- agine the young Constable's wondering contempt for that Academical brown tree. On the other hand, if one Academician effectively disabused him of any idea that he would find help and guidance from those officially set over him, from another he learned a life- long lesson. In the first year of the new century Con- stable sent in to the Academy his first carefully con- sidered picture. It was rejected. But the then President, the American Benjamin West, had noticed the promise in the work of the young Suffolk student, and spoke to him frankly : " You are not to be dis- heartened," he said, " by the rejection of your pic- ture, for you must have loved nature very much be- fore you painted this, and we shall hear of you again. Kemember," he added, " that light and shadow never stand still." While Benjamin West's recognition of his love for and understanding of nature, and his generous " we shall hear of you again," gave young Constable a new encouragement and a fresh spur to individual effort, the kindly American's parting words sank deep into his mind. At once he saw how his picture had de- servedly been rejected, though others in certain re- spects had been preferred; and how, with all his early knowledge and observation, he had failed to no.te the essential fact that light and shadow were not to be portrayed as a stile or a rustic bridge, and that if he were to depict them truly it must be with a new knowledge and a new method of conveying by the signature of paint what in nature was necessarily CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 25 fluent and evanescent. Constable himself has told us tha^ he took that hint to heart, and never forgot its lesson; and it is interesting now to note that one of the greatest and most individual of English painters of nature owed little to any of his English contem- poraries, but remembered always his debt to the silent lessons of the Hollander Ruysdael and the acute ob- servation of the American Benjamin West. ISText year (1802) Constable was successful with the picture he sent into the Academy, and when he saw his landscape hung on the walls of that greatly desired haven he thought his fortune was made, or at least .that his way would now lie smooth enough. Many another than he has thought likewise, on a first exhibition at the Academy or at the Salon, and soon discovered that the public are even slower in discrim- ination than most of the critics and even fellow- artists. If an innovator as well, it does not much matter whether it be John Constable or Francois Millet, whether it be Courbet or Carriere or Whistler, whether it be Delacroix or Monet ; there is little for him at first but misunderstanding, misapprehension and probable hostility. But whatever Constable's first elation it soon passed into a settled discontent with himself, his sur- roundings and, above all, his work. Not long after his Academy success it must have dawned upon him that if he were " to find himself " it was needful for him to leave London and go to that countryside he knew so well, and where once more, but in a closer in- timacy, he could again be in daily communion with that ever-varying natural beauty which he realised was his one source of genuine inspiration. For early in the following year he wrote as follows to his Suf- folk friend and teacher Dunthorne : " For the last 26 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeav- oured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performance look like the work of other men. I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to com- monplace people. I shall return to Bergholt where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing in the exhibition (the Acad- emy of 1803) worth looking up ,to. There is room enough for a natural painter." A significant letter indeed, and not only in the his- tory of Constable, but for every fresh and individual talent which would gladly learn (and unlearn) wher- ever practicable, yet must ever turn as ,the innate im- pulse decides. There is no more fundamental truth in art than that expressed in Goethe's maxim " That is best which lieth nearest : Shape from that thy work of art." At first every disciple of the Muses, whichever he follow, runs after this or .that and seeks the truth at second hand. " If you would see the world aright," a wise philosopher has said, : " turn your eyes inward upon your own soul, and then look out upon other souls, and upon human life, and upon nature, and then at least you will know at first hand what you know and see at first hand what is to be seen." It was the common mistake of youth which Constable made, that effort to conform his performance to the likeness of that of other men ; but it is only very rarely .that we find a young man of three or four and twenty, sin- CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 27 gularly handsome and attractive, willing to relin- quish easy emulation and continual pleasures for the sake of recovering a lost " elevation of mind," for the sake of a possible achieving of " a pure and unaf- fected manner/' for the finest expression of an over- mastering artistic impulse. And what was true for Constable in 1803 is true for the brotherhood of Con- stable in 1903, or any other year or period in any country : " there is always room enough for a natural painter." It is true not only of painters, but of all who would do fresh and original work in any of the arts or crafts. In a word, Constable has only said anew and for himself what, as we have seen, Hogarth said for every one and for every period : " There is only one school, that of na,ture." It was with relief that Constable left London and returned to East Bergholt. We can well imagine the joy with which he would once more see the great fans of the windmills winnowing the blithe summer air of Suffolk, and watch the clouds sailing over the wide blue skies broken only by uprising elm-boughs or by soaring and wheeling rooks. He could not have gone to a lovelier neighbourhood for one of his tastes and upbringing. Bergholt is in the centre of a f er.tile and beautiful region, watered by the Stour and many streams and canal-reaches, with woods and valleys and ancient parks and old manor-houses, with snug hamlets and clustered villages amid meadows and pastures, and (for Constable no small thing) groves of beech and elm, hornbeam and oak. Above all other trees, Constable loved the elm, and there are few of his pictures in which its shapely loftiness and cloudy foliage do not add a singular and character- istic loveliness to the composition. One of the hap- piest seasons of the great painter's life was spent 28 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. after this flight from London. He was fortunate in finding quarters in an unused parsonage, with a farm-house adjacent where he could have his meals and whence a woman came daily to attend to him ; and here, " among the oaks and solitudes of Helm- ingham Park and by the banks of the Stour, I am among the scenes which made me a painter and I am grateful." " Painting," he writes at the same time, " is with me but another word for feeling." That was the spontaneous saying of a young artist, but it was, and is, a profoundly significant saying. It holds the secret of Constable's greatness, and the secret of all true success in art. Only that art im- presses others deeply which, with the creator, has been but another word for feeling. Perhaps the most difficult lesson Constable had to learn was, that Nature wholly ignores our conven- tions of beauty and grace and propriety. Even in the paintings of the great Gainsborough, even in those of Ruysdael whom he so much admired, he found prettiness at the expense of truth, pictur- esqueness at the expense of actuality. Among all the contemporary work he had seen in London, nothing had interested him so much as that by the water- colourist Girtin, and that because Girtin had for- saken tradition, forsaken pictorialism, and tried to depict not merely what he saw but how he saw it. Though he had heard much of the power of the Norwich painter, Crome, he had not found in his work that quality of freedom for which he looked, nor that spontaneity of impres- sion and expression which he had now come to> see was a fundamental need in great art. Indeed, except from Girtin, he had learned more in his copy- ing from Claude, Ruysdael, and Richard Wilson than CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 29 from Crome and others whose work was then to be seen in London. It is somewhat surprising that he did not to a greater extent come under the spell of Claude, that great master of luminous effects, of light; but it is probable that the mind of the young painter was then turning, or was already turned, from all the then prevalent more or less arbitrary classicism derived from the great French painter, and still more from Eichard Wilson, and that he would rather see " the Glebe Farm " or the " Suffolk Corn- field " than the most gorgeous naval pageants of Claude's Rome or Carthage or the most picturesque ruins and mountains of Wilson's Nemi or Albano. It seems very strange to us that after Rembrandt had discovered so many of the secrets of light, and above all in his etchings had indicated the new read- ing of the book of nature, Constable should not only have to rediscover this essential part of truth, but should for so many years have to be subjected to the sneers of amused inferiority, of persons who could not understand the truthfulness of his stormy skies, of his vividly white clouds, of his intensely green trees, of his leaves glittering with sunlight, of his sun- lit white walls gleaming like snow. But the fact re- mains that through all the early years of Constable's mature career he encountered much depreciation, and that even in his later life he had just cause to com- plain of those who blamed him for the very qualities which gave vitality to his work. He recalled often with some bitterness as well as with gratification, that when one of his unsuccessful pictures was sent over to Paris it not only aroused the enthusiasm of tho ablest artists, but obtained for him the high, and at that time for a foreigner most unusual, distinction of a gold medal. It seems almost incredible to ua 30 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. at first sight that Constable should have died poor through the failure of the art-loving public to under^ stand his signal merits; and there is all the proud pathos of actual truth in words spoken by him, not long before his death at Hampstead in 1837: " How can I hope to be popular ? I work for the future." But genius has its own prescience, and Constable knew that he had greatly won even where to others he might seem to have lost or been distanced. The latter years of Constable's life were for the most part spent either in Suffolk or at Hampstead. He saw the flow and ebb of many reputations and of movement after movement, and witnessed the cease- less flowering of that strange and perplexing genius, " Turner " : but he never swerved from his ideal of what art should be, or from his own personal ideal of what he could do well and convincingly. Though born about the same time, Turner outlived Constable by some fourteen years, yet in that time it may be doubted if he added to the greatness of his fame, or beneficently deepened his influence upon British art, while year by year Constable's magnificent work be- came more and more recognised, and abroad, was revered as that of one of the greatest painters of mod- ern times. His supreme distinction is that he recognised the paramount value of atmosphere. In his own words he saw that a landscape was beautiful only in propor- tion as light and shadow make it so. He showed the falsity of the old idea, which made subject the mat- ter of primary importance; and revealed that there is a greater beauty in truth than in convention. When he wanted to paint a " cottage " he did not select his theme and paint in " the fitting adjuncts." For him, in a sense, there were no " fitting adjuncts." CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 31 The only adjuncts were the play of light and shadow on the road, on the grass, on the white walls and thatched roof, on the elms and poplars, on the vast windy space of cloud-filled sky beyond; these gave " atmosphere " and by that " atmosphere," wedded to his close observation and ceaselessly accumulated and corrected knowledge, to the daring synthesis of his genius, he painted masterpiece after masterpiece. Much of his work, where it was only strong and true, was considered coarse, even brutal ; a later and wiser estimate has ranked his virile and noble genius among the highest. One does not wonder that his fellow Academicians for the most part resented his innovations. It was not only the famous " brown tree " that went ; he broke up the arbitrary convention of prettiness or completeness or " harmony " in landscape painting. The supreme care in composition was for a rounded- off picture-propriety; Constable would have none of this; he painted what he wanted to paint, not what an abstract Academical principle dictated. Above all what we notice in his work is its lif elikeness not in exactitude of portrayal, but in definiteness of impres- sion. We may find much modern work, even since the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelite group, in which na- ture is depicted with a marvellous verisimilitude in detail, as, for example, in the famous " Chill Octo- ber " of Millais, in the pictures of Mr. Leader, in the drawings of Mr. Wimperis, in the marine paintings of Mr. Brett ; but in none of these is there the same life as in the work of Constable. In these wet rutty roads of Mr. Leader's, the wintry light falls on the pools, the stormy gleam is everywhere reflected ; and yet we do not hear the wind soughing along the miry roads, we do not feel the chill air moving in the 32 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. hedgerow or the reeds or in the tangled wayside grass. Still less, in the sea-painting of Mr. Brett, do we hear the splash of the wave, the blustering voice, the moan or strong cry of the sea- wind ; the sea-wrack is there, wonderfully painted on the wonderfully painted mus- sel-blue rocks ; the pools are there, so that a natural- ist would delight in them; the sands are wet and opalescent ; the narrow shoals are purple with under- weed or dark blue with passing cloud ; all is so real and painted with infinite heed and patience: and yet we remain untouched, unconvinced, artistically. This is because painters like Mr. Brett are so preoc- cupied with being faithful that they lose all synthetic vision ; in other words, in looking, say, at the spires of the grass they ignore the tout ensemble , the single individual impression of the spreading common, lighted with gorse, horizoned with trees or low ranges, multiformly affected by drifting light and shadow and given a new life and as it were sustained by the vast skiey expanse, wind-swept, or intricately involved with travelling clouds. It is in this synthetic vision of actuality (to dis- tinguish from the synthetic vision of the imagination, as with Turner often, and Blake always) that Consta- ble stands at the head of modern painters of land- scape. In his pictures we do, indeed, hear the wind among the grasses and hedgerows, can both see and hear the breeze ruffling back the sunlit leaves of oak and elm, can hear the splash of the waggoner's horses as they cross the ford, can everywhere be aware of the strong vigorous breath of nature, of life. It is this superb quality which lit the torch of modern French nature-painting, the finest and truest the world has seen. So intimately connected is the great English painter with this far-reaching movement, and par- CONSTABLE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 33 ticularly with the Barbizon School, that there was a vital truth beneath the seeming paradox of the un- known artist, who in one of the inns at the famous little village in the Forest of Fontainebleau wrote on a wall, " The Barbizon School is the offspring of Father Millet and Mother Corot, and neither of these would be here had they not been begot by Grandpapa Constable," 34 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK III. FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX, MULLER, AND DAW- SON, ETC. CONSTABLE, however, is not the only immediate link between British and French Art in the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the most notable of English painters occupies a place so re- markable as to be unique. I allude to Bonington. Surely as time goes on this great artist will become more and more appreciated. Among that high com- pany, the painters of light (those moderns who from Claude Lorraine and Rembrandt to Turner and Monet were above all preoccupied by the problems, the mystery and the fascination of light), Richard Parkes Bonington should be remembered. An ade- quate study on Bonington and his art would reveal much of interest. He was an Englishman whose youth was spent in France ; the dominant influences of his day were classical, and he was a born romanti- cist ; in sympathy and outlook ho was a French artist. In his work, therefore, we find, as we would expect in one of exceptional powers, a blending of what was best in both French and English Art. Still, one may go too far in claiming that the characteristic blitheness and clarity of Bonington's painting is French. His one modern master was Constable, and he owed far more to the great Englishman's pictures than to all Gros' careful training combined with the influence of the remarkable men who were then in FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 35 France coming to the front, or were in the van of that band of eager young students who were to revolu- tionise modern French art, among them that rare genius, afterwards to be called half-familiarly, half- reverently, " Our Father Delacroix." In his early death and brilliant promise Bonington makes us think of another recent young English artist, who also died of consumption just as his ex- traordinary powers were maturing for a new develop- ment; though it would be difficult to find original work in art more diverse in theme, conception and treatment than that of Richard Bonington and Au- brey Beardsley. Bonington' s painting was much ad- mired in Paris, and it was through his pictures and perhaps still more through his water-colour drawings, that he brought home to his French confreres the real significance of what was then being done in England. To most men in the art-world of Paris the modern use of water-colours was an unknown art, and there were many disquisitions upon the new " medium," its possibilities and its chances of public acceptance. Long afterwards the great Delacroix recalled his early acquaintance with Bonington, when he was him- self a student copying old masters at the Louvre. One day, he says, he saw opposite a Flemish land- scape a tall, slim, obviously overgrown boy, deeply preoccupied with his copying. The chance acquaint- anceship ripened and Delacroix never forgot his young English friend nor the effect which his beauti- ful, luminous, sunny work made upon him. " Other modern artists," he wrote, " are perhaps more power- ful and more accurate than Bonington, but no one in this modern school, perhaps no earlier artist, pos- sessed the ease of execution, which makes his works, in a certain sense, diamonds by which the eye is 36 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. pleased and fascinated, quite independently of the subject and the particular representation of nature. I could never grow weary of marvelling at his sense of effect. Not that in his great ease of execution he was quickly satisfied ; on the contrary, he often began over again perfectly finished pieces which seemed wonderful to us ; but his dexterity was so great that in a moment he produced with his brush new effects, which were as charming as the first." To this day, perhaps, Bonington has not been fully appreciated in his own country, though he has always had enthusi- astic admirers. In France his reputation stands secure. A single example of his work, such as that reproduced in the journal UAri, of " The Windmill of Saint Jouin," will show what close kinship his genius has with the best French art (Pissaro is his correlative to-day), whose dominant characteristic is luminosity, how truly he is a confrere of Constable and of the kindred of Rembrandt and Turner. Though fevered often by the first mysterious approaches of that most insidious malady consump- tion, Bonington was happy during his short life. His French sympathies and training and his visits to London seemed to have combined in giving him a pe- culiar balance by which he was able to see and to take the best from both countries. " I knew him well," said Delacroix, " and loved him much. His English composure, which nothing could disturb, robbed him of none of the qualities which make life pleasant." In the spring of 1828, when he was only twenty- seven, he realised that his growing delicacy was be- coming very serious. By the end of the summer his friends feared the worst. In the autumn he crossed to London to consult a quack whose reputation had grown till it endowed him with imaginary powers; FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 37 and tHere, after a precipitate collapse, Bonington died on the 23d of September. One cannot but be- lieve that, had he lived, he might have added a fourth to that great trio, Constable, David Cox, and Turner. I have mentioned a great name ; one of the greatest in English art; David Cox. Perhaps Cox is the most locally known of all great British painters. Few of his works have been seen abroad, and even in London the public collections do not contain many of his master-pieces. Yet one never encounters one of his marvellous drawings, or even his earlier pictures in oils, without recognising that in boldness and rich- ness of effect, in strength and beauty of handling and imaginative insight, in truth of the part and of the whole, Cox is an almost unsurpassed master. He chose to paint for the most part in water-colours ; so that even to this day Academical judgment would rank him below inferior painters who, wise in their generation, never attempted novelty in method, any more than originality of conception or individuality in handling. David Cox was also like Constable and Crome in this, that he was of humble origin. The son of a blacksmith, he fell in love, while yet a boy, with the rich pastoral country round Birmingham a very different Birmingham and a very different neighbourhood from what the visitor would see to- day ; and it was at Harborne, near Birmingham, that, after a brief residence in London and a longer stay at Hereford on the Welsh borders, he lived for the greater part of his mature years. Birmingham claims two great artists as her sons; but it is rather " Birminghamshire " that has parental rights to David Cox; and though Edward Burne- Jones was born in the grimy city itself, he came of parents in whose veins was strenuous Welsh blood and in whose 38 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. minds were the latent forces of Cymric intensity and imagination. In his later work in particular Cox be- came more and more impressionistic as we now under- stand the word. This, however, was in part due to a weakening of his sight (an ailment fully recognised, and courageously adapted by him to carry to their logical conclusion his own theories of landscape paint- ing a remarkable instance of the successful artistic use of an impaired faculty) ; though it would be un- fair to say that the beautiful general effects of Cox's later work were accidental and not intentional. Per- haps the best way to realise the immense stride by this time taken in English landscape-painting, is to con- trast a typical picture by Richard Wilson with one by David Cox. Cox, one thinks, must have been the landscape-painter dreamed of by Gainsborough when he first saw with his own eyes that the trees and beau- tiful elm groves of his native Suffolk were not simply " objects," but were elms, oaks, limes, chestnuts, each with its own shape, its own foliage, and one and all living things in the midst of variegated life, children of the wind and the sun of light and shade. Those who would understand more intimately the art of David Cox, and with it the whole development of modern landscape art from Constable, could not do better than read his own " Treatise on Landscape- Painting," written in 1814, but to-day so pregnant with suggestion that it might be adopted as a text- book by any young painter of the most advanced u school," that is, of those eager to express individ- ually and freshly the unchanging and yet ever vari- able aspects of nature. Just as Eembrandt found the immediate neighbourhood of Amsterdam more than enough for lifelong observation, so Cox realised that he never needed to go a mile away from his door. FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 39 Nature with all her revelation awaited him at every step. All the wonders of the world, said Emerson in effect, as Thoreau also, come to him who does not stir from his own place, if he has eyes to see, and the mind is open, and the heart desires. Nor could any years, any lapse of days, filled with work and observation, exhaust for Cox, any more than for Rembrandt, the ever-fresh charm and new beauty, the novel interest, of what lay close to hand. Doubtless in his old age the great Flemish painter lamented that he had to leave untouched, unrecorded, so much fascinating material within a brief walk in any di- rection; and so, too, David Cox, in the last walk he took to Harborne before his death, looked at the sun- lit walls, the grassy ways, the windy elms which he so much loved, and then muttering, " Farewell, pic- tures, farewell," turned and went home. One of the most beautiful of the Welsh drawings of Cox, at a period when his romanticism reached its highest level, was bequeathed by the late Mrs. Rus- sell Gurney to Dr. Byres Moir, an eminent London homoeopathic physician, in whose possession it now is. There are a few able and delightful painters who, as Stark, Vincent, and Cotman, are always recalled by Crome, inevitably come to mind when one thinks of David Cox. Foremost of them is Peter de Wint. Notwithstanding his Dutch name he was as English as Crome, Constable, or Cox. With Girtin, Cozens, Cotman, Bonington, and Cox he ranks among the finest of English water-colourists, and I know no work more beautiful in a minor key than some of his East Anglian studies such as " the Water-Gate of Lincoln," " Lincoln from the River Meadows," " In the Fens," or his lovely Surrey sketches. Much of 40 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. his work, such as his drawings of the Thames-side and the tributaries and canals connected with the civic reaches of the great river, has a quiet realism which none has surpassed, and yet gives an impres- sion as complete and convincing as a Thames-side etching by Whistler. He also is of the school of Rembrandt, though he is of the quietists in art rather than of those whom a ceaseless fever of creative energy impels to new, forceful, and dramatic expres- sion. Like Bonington he spent some time in France, a brief time only, it is true, but he nowhere shows any trace of French influence, and from first to last was a typically " homely " painter of " homely " English life and nature. Far more popular in his own day, more popular than David Cox or Constable, was William Miiller, a painter of singular merit and whose best work is to-day highly valued, but many of whose pictures now have an air of unreality. Miiller, as his name indicates, was of German origin, though he spent his boyhood in Bristol, and always considered himself an Englishman and had the Eng- lish outlook. In technical facility, and perhaps in power also, he had no rival but Turner. It is a little difficult for us now to understand why his pictures were rated as in every respect finer than Turner's, but if, in most instances, they have neither the last- ing charm, grasp, imaginative insight, nor lustrous depth of Turner's finest work, sometimes, as, for ex- ample, in the famous " Amphitheatre at Xanthus," he need not fear comparison even with the supreme master. To his painting of English subjects, quiet pastoral landscapes, spacious parklands, vistas of field and moorland, ancestral homes among ordered glades, he brought a foreign element. This perhaps was not because he happened to be a German; the FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 41 son of a Prussian exile was not likely to be more dramatic or imaginative than an Englishman; but because he was of a poetic and romantic tempera- ment, and was influenced by those intellectual forces and currents which, at that time, in other domains than that of pictorial art, were moulding the thought and changing the literatures of all Europe as well as Great Britain. There was an intellectual tendency in particular which he did not escape : the bias to trans- form the simple into the grandiose, as later, the bias was towards an exaggerated preciosity in expression. He would have liked to be the Coleridge, still more the " Werther," still more the Byron, of Art. How- ever, this was only a bias. It was an accident that he became an- English painter. Had his father gone to France, or Spain, or America, William Miiller would have become a French, or Spanish, or Ameri- can painter, for he had that marvellous adaptability which is one of the attributes of genius, but is often, with genius, a deterrent and even destructive quality. His true call was to the East or the South. Colour and romance or romantic suggestion meant more to him than all the quiet, grey-green beauty, or rich summer fullness of English scenery. He discovered this, when, at the age of twenty-six, he went to Athens and Egypt. When he returned it was with a new in- spiration, with a mind coloured and swayed by new visions and new ideals. His English pictures became more and more " romantic," even his Bristol pastures and quiet lanes became grandiose with a light that certainly was not theirs. Perhaps the influence of Turner further affected this development ; he saw that the great painter frequently ignored actuality, and was content with imaginative reality. But hav- ing known the unforgettable charm and fascination 42 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. of the South he could not remain content with what England had to give him. He did not crave for London or Paris; so far as any northern town was concerned he was well content with his native Bris- tol; but he longed for the unsurpassable animation of unadulterated light, for the glow and warmth, for the picturesque detail, for the romantic associations of the South and the Orient. Thus in 1843, five years after his resettlement in Bristol, he sailed again for the East, and spent some time in Rhodes and in Smyrna and elsewhere. A fever of delight had been upon him while he was in Greece and Egypt, and he had painted with a power and beauty which made him the foremost " Oriental- ist " not only among English, but among Erench artists. Now again " the call of the East " held him as in a spell. Perhaps, too, some premonition that he was not to live long added to his almost hectic eagerness to paint while he could, with the utmost verve and swiftness, the utmost glow and colour and romance of light. With his mind filled with mem- ories and visions of what he was to do, he returned to Bristol. His strength failed rapidly, but day by day he worked on or finished and brought together his Oriental sketches and pictures, till, one day, he could work no more. William Miiller died at Bris- tol, where he was born in 1812, less than a year after his return full of new purpose and hope. Thus, at the early age of thirty-three, there was lost to Eng- lish Art a painter of singular promise and power, who, if he had lived another score years, might well have ranked in English Art along with Constable and Turner, and in some respects perhaps surpassed the one in transformed actuality and the other in imaginative realism. I have often thought of Bon- FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 43 ington and Miiller as corresponding in the history of early Nineteenth Century art to Shelley and Keats in the history of early Nineteenth Century literature. The two poets and the two young artists were all dreamers of new beauty, were impassioned for light and radiance, and saw everywhere new meanings and new romance. All four died young with life-work incomplete, and yet each has left a legacy of more lasting worth than all save the work of one or two great masters. Two English painters, notable, if not among the excelling few, belong to this period and group. Thomas Creswick, born at Sheffield, a few months before William Miiller, is a link between the Con- stable epoch and our own, for his death occurred (December 28, 1869) practically at the opening of our final period, beginning in 1870. Creswick was a patient, conscientious, and in a degree a fine paint- er, whose work, however, has much more in common with that of Leader and Brett and Wimperis than with Constable and David Cox. It is interesting, as reflecting some of the cogent influences of the three great periods of English landscape-painting in our time. Creswick had all the qualities of a great landscapist, except that supreme quality defined in the word inevitableness. His imaginative vision was not " inevitable," his pictorial selection was not " inevitable," his careful, often exceedingly fine, sometimes excelling beauty of treatment, was not " inevitable." In other words, he is of that large body of men who have exceptional ability in one or other of the arts, who sometimes come near the frontiers of creative genius, but whose work lacks that inward, that inherent force which alone can enable a work of art to endure. The other painter 44 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. to whom I allude is little remembered now, though Henry Dawson's death occurred so late in the cen- tury as 1878. Dawson (born at Hull in 1811) was a man of singular independence. He came at a time when strength and independence were the char- acteristics of the best, though not the most popular, English artists: like Crome, Constable, Bonington, David Cox, he followed that within him which he knew to be his " genius," and cared little either for the Academical criterion as to what constituted the most notable merit or for the opinions of his more popularly successful colleagues. Perhaps some of the indifference which the public showed to his work was due to his choice of subject frequently the dreary reaches of the lower Thames, the Isle of Dogs, the low, marshy shallows near Rochester, the smoky straits of the widening estuary near Gravesend, and these not in their beautiful and picturesque aspects. But Dawson was occupied mainly with one vision: that of cloud beauty, the life and variety and tumul- tuous motion or sleepy indolence of clouds, and, above all, when these were heightened in mystery by mists from the river or low-lying regions or drifted smoke from the multitude of Thames craft or the great city itself. He was, in a word, the first Eng- lish painter to devote himself practically to the paint- ing of clouds, and it is only the greater fame of Turner and Constable which has prevented his name from being remembered by all but a few. I re- member hearing Mr. Ruskin speak once with enthusiasm of Dawson's powers, and he showed me a small drawing called " March," wherein there was a magnificent treatment of piled cumuli in the south, with immense reaches of torn and frayed cloud streaming from east to west, the result of two power- FROM BONINGTON TO DAVID COX. 45 fill winds in conflict; while beneath nothing was to be seen but a low grey-green band of brown bank, a narrow strip of grey-green water with a lugger with sail blown awry, 'and, as though baffled and beaten down, a single crow struggling sidelong in its flight like a whirled leaf. One felt the cold blast, the tremendous force of the wind; a tempestuous vehe- mence lived in every stroke of the brush. As a rule, however, Dawson's work, particularly that painted since 1850, was less vigorous, and latterly grew more and more mannered, until it seemed as though he would become what his friends called him, half in fun : " our only skyscapist." At his best he painted clouds and cloud-life with a power which Constable himself did not equal, which David Cox did not excel, and which remains unsurpassed by the finest later achievements in the same kind, as Cecil Law- son's "Spring Cloud," Mr. G. F. Watts' "The Cloud," Adrien Demont's " Le Nuage," Henry Moore's "Wind and Cloud," Alexander's "La Vague, le Vent, et le Nuage." 4:6 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK IV. TUENEB. BUT now we come to a man who sums in His own genius all that had been already experienced in Eng- lish Art since Richard Wilson painted " Nemi," till Creswick painted " The Harvest " ; since Gains- borough taught that impression and not an arbitrary pictorialism was the desiderated end, till Bonington showed how a complete impressionism might be wedded with classic sobriety and restraint; since Crome began to paint the real England as he himself knew it, till Miiller read into English landscape the romance and picturesqueness of the South ; since Cozens and Girtin began nobly the modern art of water-colour-painting, till David Cox carried it to its highest; to a man, moreover, who lived while most of these men lived, a student with some, a rival to others, in the end a master beyond all, and in every direction. There is no great artist so difficult to write about comparatively as Turner. Though he sums so many in himself, he stands alone ; though he gained much from others, he took as a master recognising available material, not as one who needs to enrich an insuffi- cient inheritance. In many respects he is in Eng- lish Art what Shakespere is in English literature, what Goethe is in German literature, what Wagner is in the empire of music. All derived from many sources, all took freely TURNER. 47 from predecessors or contemporaries, all made their own that which they used, all stand out unlike any others in kind, all have had a profound influence, and each is inimitable. The gods rarely give unstintedly, and there is no instance as that of Turner where so great genius was wedded to so sordid a life. The greatest poet in painting that the world has seen, spent a life seemingly so hopelessly vulgar and selfish, that we may well think of his unworthy body as possessed by an inspired spirit. But I use the word seem- ingly advisedly. It is impossible to believe that in his outward self Turner resembled the inward self, that spirit sustained by one unchanging passion of beauty, ardent with continual flame, ever consumed and ever recreated by the love of light and its mys- tery and wonder. It is impossible to believe that out of a sordid soul so much beauty could be woven, and this not only in a few inspired hours, but al- ways, from dull and impoverished youth till miserly and sordid old age. It is surely the likelihood that this man, so nobly dowered with genius as to tran- scend every artist of modern days, knowing himself ignobly born and bred, and accepting both facts, and his own unattractive self, and all his physical and personal disabilities, in a proud resentment empha- sised every boorish quality, till at last he became in- different as to what others thought of his manners, culture, or conduct. Poor, plebeian, vulgar, his parents gave him nothing. It is as though some great spirit, aflame with the passion of beauty, had in a moment heard the divine summons to embody itself in a human life, and in that moment had de- scended into the first new-born soul which then chanced to awake beneath that aerial flight. Nor is 48 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. this so fantastical as it may seem. In almost every great genius we can trace the formative antenatal influences, or safely infer them. But in the in- stance of Turner we find a blank. He was born in a poor part of London, the son of an ill-educated barber and a woman of the same class and character. He had no " atmosphere " about him in his boyhood. Rembrandt and Constable watched the fans of the windmills winnowing the pure air, severing the drifting clouds, revolving against travelling sun- light and moonlight, revealing mysteries of space and shadow; Crome, the son of a poor Norwich inn- keeper, had a picturesque little town to live in and a lovely country at his door; David Cox, as humbly born, had the blacksmith's forge, the animal life, the coming and going of peasants, the then lovely mid- lands, as his companions from childhood. Even William Blake, also a Londoner, also born poor, also remote from his fellows in his habitual life, had worthy parentage, enjoyed benign influences, was companioned by dreams and visions, and loved his work, both with brush and pen, in the sense of happy craftsmanship, and from boyhood to old age was of a clean, serene, finely ordered life, of a noble and pure spirit, a unique imagination. To many Blake's simple life might seem a painful monotony; it was rich and varied and beautiful, even in ex- ternals, compared with the unhappy, sordid, lonely, self-absorbed, genius-fed, and genius-sacrificed life of .William Turner. It is a problem that may never be solved, this mystery of a life such as that of Turner. On the one hand we have his lifelong devotion to his art, an art rising from and sustained by high ideals, in- formed by a passion for beauty, built on a basis of TURNER. 49 extraordinary observation and ceaselessly acquired and intuitive knowledge; and, on the other, an ex- ternal life of a dull uneventful commonplace that too often wore an aspect mean and even sordid. One important matter should always be borne in mind in judging of Turner's attributed miserliness and indifference to others ; for that he not only knew the hardships incidental to the profession of art, but sympathised with his less successful comrades, is made clear by his generous will. He died worth about 140,000, an enormous sum to have been amassed by one man in the pursuit of a profession which, at that time, held out to those who followed it but slight chances of wealth. But of this great fortune he willed that all his funded property should go towards the founding and endowment of an in- stitution for the assistance and refuge of artists who by ill-fortune or accident had come upon evil days. His finished pictures and an immense number of drawings he bequeathed to the nation in itself a legacy of almost incalculable worth, with the sole stipulation that the government should, within ten years, provide suitable accommodation. William Turner, as at first he called himself and under which designation he first contributed to the Academy or, to give his name in full, Joseph Mal- lard William was born on the 23d of April, 1775, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in which neigh- bourhood his father was a hairdresser, with a clien- tele mainly composed of the less fortunate members of the theatrical profession, " occasionally full-blown actors and actresses." But early in Turner's life, the wig-tax was imposed with the result that Mr. Turner's business was ruined, and his very pre- carious calling ceased to give even a chance of liveli- 50 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. hood. Turner certainly, and naturally, received a very rudimentary education, but both his mental and artistic training have been underrated. Even as a boy he was recognised as a lad of exceptional promise, and in the hundred ways of a clever boy and the thousand ways of a boy of genius, he ac- cumulated a mass of information which, though it often proved inadequate and misleading, was of immense use to him later. One of the most fortunate episodes of his early life was his acquaintanceship with Thomas Girtin, a man of real if restricted genius, who in other circumstances might have won a far greater fame. Through Girtin also he came to know a Dr. Munro, who had a fine collection of drawings, many of which he copied. How rapid the progress was of this " untrained and ill-educated young painter " may be gathered from the fact that in 1789, when he was only fourteen, he was admitted as a student at the Royal Academy; that in 1790 a water-colour drawing of Lambeth by one " W. Turner " was sent in to the Academy show and ac- cepted, though it certainly was a crude and indifferent piece of work in many of its details ; that nine years later he was an Associate of that " august " and jealous body; and that again, three years later, in 1802, when he was only in his twenty-seventh year, he had won the proud and much-envied distinction of being able to write R.A. after his name. In April of that year he went to Switzerland and France ; and we know from the evidence of his work what that memorable first visit did for him. So unexampled was this rise to eminence that we are hardly surprised to find the youthful Academician being elected in 1807, when he was thirty-two, to the vacant professorship of Perspective at the Academy. TURNER. 51 There is a portrait of Turner by himself, about this time, that has a singular attraction. In later life he cared little either to have others depict him or to delineate himself (he must have wondered at Bembrandt's ceaseless self -portraiture) ; but what few brush and pen portraits we do have of him rep- resent him as a short, thick-set, ungainly man, with, as we know otherwise, " piercing grey eyes." But in this portrait of the great painter in his early years, which bears every sign of faithfulness, we look upon a face which reveals much. The lines are strong and dignified, if not refined ; the face is pleas- ing, the expression that of an imaginative, silent, but certainly not morose character. The eyes are fine and seem deep and lustrous; but though the mouth is large and sensuous it is not sensual. In judging the man we must be guided by this portrait as well as by those less agreeable delineations of brush and pen which belong to later years. Mr. Buskin and others have made too much of his disadvantages, his lack of mental and artistic edu- cation. We know little of his mental development, and can only surmise; but we do know that from the age of fourteen he was learning daily and in many ways, and above all in the supreme way, that of individual application and observation, and that in those profoundly formative years between fifteen and twenty-five he had an " art-education " of the most varied kind, and more than any other calcu- lated to help him from a tireless copying of draw- ings by Paul Sandby and other water-colourists, to rivalry with accomplished men like Girtin, from academical studies to continuous rambling and sketching in London and by the Thames and in the regions beyond, and from almost every kind of 52 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. technical and mechanical application of craftsman- ship to the painting of original pictures. He had, moreover, some useful training in the office of an architect, of great service to him at the time, and, as we now see, with a profound influence upon his ma- ture work. It was to this promiscuous training, this accumulation of fugitive and uncollated facts and suggestions, all absorbed and widely and deeply appreciated by genius, that we owe much of that marvellous beauty, that dream-like magnificence which we find in works such as " Dido and ^Eneas leaving Carthage for the Chase," " Dido building Carthage," " The Bay of Baise," " Caligula's Pal- ace," and " Argus and Mercury," " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," " The Return of Agrippina," and others, not of his greatest, but of a great period. It is extraordinary, when we look at an early pic- ture by Turner, say the " Jason in search of the Golden Fleece," or the still earlier " Lake Avernus \ ^Eneas with the Sibyl," to think of what this tri- umphant master (and, from a lesser point of view, brilliantly successful Academician) was a few years before; a period when he had not enough to buy proper clothing for himself, when he could not afford even the adequate materials for his art, and when he was glad enough to exchange a small drawing of a house or castle or park or hamlet or village-inn for half-a-crown and his supper. When Turner died he left, as already stated, all his chief work to the nation. The Will was dis- puted. What Turner actually left comprised no fewer than three hundred and sixty-two pictures, of which the National Gallery acquired a hundred finished masterpieces and nineteen thousand draw- ings. This, with the innumerable work disposed of TURNER. 53 in his lifetime, bewilders one with the gigantic extent of his achievement. In his Will there was one significant clause. This was to the effect that (as he estimated) two of his best pictures, the " Dido building Carthage " (painted in 1814) and " The Sun rising in a Mist " (painted in 1806) should be hung in the National Gallery between two of the great paintings by Claude Lorraine. It is signifi- cant because, from the moment Turner first saw a masterpiece by Claude Lorraine he recognised it as the handiwork of one of the greatest painters in the world. Claude was a revelation to him. His own genius took flame before the work of the great French artist. From the first he appears to have realised that it was as a painter of light he, too, would be- come famous, and all in him that was poetic and visionarily imaginative was nurtured, developed, and ultimately excited to a magnificent emulation, by a constant and profound dwelling upon the secrets of Claude Lorraine's art. Yet the proof of Turn- er's own supreme genius lay in this, that not only was he " struck to the heart " by Claude, and, from being profoundly influenced, passed to a splendid rivalry, and ultimately to an excelling power and beauty on Claude's own lines, but that during this wonderful period he also remained " W. Turner," and in ceaseless endeavour painted pictures and drawings of English inland and coast scenery and life, in his own manner, which was that of an im- passioned realism sustained by an unforgetting and dominating instinct of art. This very " Sunrise and Mist," though it grapples with some of the same problems as those with which Claude strove so won- derfully, is unmistakably not the work of an imi- tator, not even of an emulator, but of a painter, con- * A- 54 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. scions of his mastery and content to achieve his end with as much conformity to the traditions of English Art as possible. It would be impossible here to give an adequate account of the life-work of this great painter. Even with all that has been written, a library in itself, an adequate account does not exist, and it would require a huge volume with no superfluous details to give even a satisfactory art record. Fortunately most readers will be familiar with the main features of Turner's achievement in art, his splendour of colour, his imagination, his extraordinary mastery of at- mosphere. Unfortunately the great majority of peo- ple are in ignorance of his beautiful and unsurpassed work in water-colour ; and many certainly judge him by the more flamboyant and far less worthy pictures of his later period. Of course, no little part of the enormous and world-wide vogue of Turner is due to the splendid advocacy of Ruskin. No other artist ever had so great a prophet. There were and are thousands who would never have heard of Turner, or, having heard, given him a second thought, but for Ruskin. There is, however, justification for those who claim that a great and dangerous reaction is involved in such claims (and still more in their method and manner) for the supremacy of one man " all along the line," and too often, as indeed is the case in Modern Painters, at the expense of others. Turner, far from being the supreme master in- variably, or even a master invariably, was sometimes a mere experimentalist, sometimes was merely melo- dramatic, flamboyant, pyrotechnic, superbly clap- trap. Throughout the finest works of all but his greatest period there is always absent in some degree TURNER. 55 that perfect mastery of technique which is the basic qualification for a great artist. Turner surpassed his own master Claude in much, but he never sur- passed because he never equalled him in certain primary qualities of form drawing, design, pro- portion, grace, harmony in composition. Let us turn from what even so great but so pas- sionately prejudiced an advocate as Mr. Ruskin has to say as also from all still more ill-judged because still more misunderstanding depreciation and lis- ten to the carefully considered verdicts of one or two of the best- trained and most accomplished au- thorities on art. The judgment of Dr. Waagen, the famous his- torian of The Treasures of Art in Great Britain, is a singularly balanced and just one. " No landscape painter has yet appeared with such versatility of talent as Turner," he says. " His historical land- scapes exhibit the most exquisite feeling for beauty of hues and effects of light, at the same time that he has the power of making them express the most varied moods of nature. ... I should therefore not hesitate to recognise Turner as the greatest land- scape-painter of all times but for his deficiency in an indispensable element in every work of art, viz., a sound technical basis." This dictum of Dr. Waa- gen's has been much disputed, especially by those later painters and critics who lay the utmost stress on a vivid impressionism as the true end of art, and care less for structure and design, for form, than for the raiment in which that form happens to be in- vested. But Dr. Waagen was a student of all the schools of art since Masaccio and Cimabue and Giotto, in Italy, since Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, in the north., and he had seen that " a sound technical 56 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. basis " underlay the achievement of all the great artists. It is the fashion to decry Raphael, but who can doubt that if the supreme technical mastery of .this great artist had been possessed by Turner, he would have excelled every painter of nature, ancient or modern? As it is, his genius sometimes carried him further than its wings could sustain the un- paralleled flight. Another famous authority on art, Wornum, the author of Epochs of Painting, writes admirably as follows : " Turner had three styles as a landscape- painter. THe first was highly elaborated, especially in his water-colour drawings. The contrast of style between his early and latest work is remarkable. In the best of his early works he shows a strong imita- tion of Wilson and a certain coldness of colour; the latest are distinguished for their looseness of execution and extravagance of colouring. It is in his middle style that he is greatest, that he is him- self. The middle period may date from 1802 to 1832 " (i. e., from about his twenty-seventh till his fifty-seventh year). . . . " In the last ten years of his career, and occasionally before, Turner was ex- travagant to an extreme degree; he played equally with nature and his colours. Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief ob- ject of his studies; to individuality of form or colour he was " (Wornum too dogmatically adds) " wholly indifferent. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been at- tempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is equally obscure and wild alike. These latest productions TURNER. 57 are a calamity to his reputation. Yet we may per- haps safely assert that, since Rembrandt, there has been no painter of such originality and power as Turner." These quotations are representative of the consen- sus of all the best opinion about Turner, always ex- cepting the unparalleled eulogy of Mr. Ruskin. It will be obvious to all that even these guarded state- ments, the carefully considered dicta of scrupulous and able judges, constitute a splendid tribute to Turner's excelling genius. The ever-cautious Wor- num admits that there is no other modern painter, none since Rembrandt, of such power and original- ity; and Dr. Waagen, with his intimate familiarity with all the great art of the past as well as that of the modern epochs and the early part of the nine- teenth century, all but admits him as " one of the greatest painters of all times." I recall an acute and serviceable saying of one eminent French critic, M. Quatremere de Quincy: " In art there are two crucial perils to avoid : too much art and too little art." This is really the root of the matter. Nine out of ten artists whether painters or sculptors, writers or musicians fail in one of these extremes, the most having too little art and the few having too much art. The one means penury, which art, though so austere, abhors ; and the other means artifice, which art ignores. Sometimes Turner lapsed into one of these ex- tremes. There are pictures of his which at the best can only be ranked as superb artifice. His greatness lies in this, that in the vast residue of his life-work he fulfils the primary requisite indicated by Quatre- mere de Quincy, and is the artist absolutely, the triumphant artist, the great master. 58 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. To estimate the work of Turner from any adequate basis of knowledge and understanding one must ap- proach it as one must approach the work of Shake' spere. Shakespere includes all the men of his time, even the brilliant Marlowe and the profound Ben Jonson; not merely because he excels them where they excel all others, but because he sums in his own genius every quality and characteristic of the genius which in them burned so intensely but far more restrictedly. So in Turner we may find every con- temporary, even the most individual and in- dependent, Constable. Every noticeable English painter since Eichard Wilson, "the father of Eng- lish landscape-painting/' to the luminous Bonington, the vigorous David Cox, the faithful De Wint, the cloudscape painter Dawson, the romantic Miiller, the homely John Crome, is to be found in Turner. There is not one whom he did not surpass even along the unique line of individual excellence. This is not to say that these men are dwarfed by Turner. There is no dwarfing in art, where adequate and individual expression constitutes the sole qualification. Claude is not dwarfed because, even where Claude tri- umphed, Turner in some respects, excelled. Turner is not dwarfed because in the most " Venetian " of his masterpieces, the " Temeraire " he is surpassed in depth and richness by the finest work of Titian and Giorgione. Each in his kind, in his degree. Art as fully recognises William Hunt, who painted plums and birds' nests supremely well, as William Turner who painted the unsurpassable glories of ideal sun- sets and sunrises. The ultimate test is always ex- cellence in kind. A lyric by Sappho outlasts for- gotten epics; a tragedy by JEschylus sees all liter- ature come and go, and remains the supreme tragedy. TURNER. 59 The more we study the life-work of Turner, the more we stand in admiration of its beauty. We could afford to lose all those astounding experiments of his later years, and even everything he painted be- fore he went to Italy for the first time, and find, in the thirty years' work which remains, enough to justify the highest claims that can be advanced for his greatness. The vastness of his range, the ceaseless in- genuity of his creative invention, the multiplicity of his subjects, the esthetic instinct which obtains in their treatment, their always brilliant and generally masterly handling; his mastery in painting in oils, in painting in water-colours, in that wonderful Liber Studiorum series which has been the envy and the desired treasure of every connoisseur before this unparalleled evidence of unique genius we can but bow in admiration and gratitude. It is as the high priest of Light that he has our first regard. But everywhere Turner stands. We meet him everywhere in contemporary art. Is not his " Temeraire " the key to much that is most beau- tiful in the romantic schools of to-day, here and in France and in Germany? His dreams of classic Italy and Greece have for many become classic Italy and classic Greece. Does not a picture like his " Frosty Morning " show his influence upon the great painters of France this noble work that might well bear the signature of the great Troyon himself? Do we not find a remembrance of him in the sea- scapes of Mesdag? Are the sobriety, balance, and serene luminosity of his supreme " English " period not reflected in the work of the two greatest living French landscapists, Harpignies and Pointelin ? Everywhere he seems to approach, to rival, to surpass, all modern masters. He was not a por- 60 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. traitist, or almost we might think of him as a pos- sible rival to Kembrandt, perhaps the greatest painter in the world. Yet he is always Turner. There could be nothing more suggestive than the fact that when he had profoundly studied and been influenced by Claude Lorraine, and finally equalled if not sur- passed that great master, and was told by convinced critics and connoisseurs that he was now the Claude of England, he at once recognised that he had done enough, that he had learned his lesson, that he had sufficiently followed the line of another's adventure, another's pioneering, another's guidance, and that thenceforth it was neither Claude Lorraine nor the " English Claude " in whom he had any immediate concern, but only Turner. If in a sense Turner is not typically English, as Constable is typically English, as all the members of that varied landscape school which comprises Crome and Girtin and Cox, Linnell and Samuel Palmer and Mark Anthony, Hook and Walker and Mason, Peppercorn and Walton and Edward Stott, are typically English and this, because in many moods he loved so profoundly the sublime, the majestic, the grand, the grandiose, too, and all aspects of the wild and terrible gloom and storm, the wrath and menace of tempests, the power and fury of the sea, the titanically picturesque there is another sense in which he is typically English, that which makes Shakespere and so many of our poets so unlike their countrymen in the individual and so represent- ative of the national genius as a complex whole. There can be but one Shakespere and so there can be but one Turner. Each stands out so far apart from and above his contemporaries and successors that the isolation seems greater than it really is. Their su- TURNER. 61 preme genius has been instanced in the metaphor of a great wave that rises to an unprecedented height, overwhelms the troubled waters around it, and then disappears and leaves no trace. But it is an inept image. Rather would one think of these two great and inexplicable representatives of the highest reach of English genius as two vast upheaved mountains, whose bases merge with our common familiar ground, whose lower slopes are attainable to us, whose ac- cumulated heights stand rivalled by countless neigh- bouring hills, but whose snowy summits, whose loftiest and inaccessible peaks remain in unap- proached loneliness and grandeur, forever sunlit, and yet of our world and not hopelessly remote from it because of that wind which is immortal, that alike blows upon the last pinnacles which pierce the sky and breathes upon the leaf-hid violet in the lowliest valley. 62 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER V, FROM LINNELL TO MARK ANTHONY AND THE PRE- RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. AFTER the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century was past, and when two great shaping influences, the realistic influence of Constable and the ideal- istic influence of Turner, were visibly and invisibly moulding English art to new developments, there ap- peared, now here, now there, nature-painters of singular charm and individuality. Some, like John Linnell, Edwin Landseer, Samuel Palmer, were of the " younger generation " in Turner's and Consta- ble's prime; others, like "the Yorkshire Turner," Frederick William Hulme (notable now only because more than any other contemporary he attempted to carry on the Turnerian method in picturesque com- position), or like the Scottish painter Dyce (in a sense the first of that group afterwards to be dis- tinguished as the Pre-Raphaelites), or like " the Eng- lish Cuyp," Sidney Cooper, were of those in reserve" to whom the hopeful looked for new developments. Not the least noteworthy of these men was John Linnell. Linnell belongs to two schools, and by natural development. He was not only a remarkably fine painter but had a marked influence upon a new school of poetic landscape, and notably upon one or two friends and contemporaries such as Samuel Palmer and Calvert. LINNELL TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. 63 The Linnells and the Landseers are among the few instances of what may be called family genius. The late James Thomas Linnell and Mr. William Linnell were sons of the famous painter, and both showed that they had inherited to a remarkable degree the strong and fine talent of their father. Some of J. T. LinnelPs pictures notably " The Wheat-Field," " The Moonlight Road," " Ploughing," " The Moon is up," " The Mower whets his Scythe," " Sunset over the Moors," and " Dartmouth " (the first named painted in 1858 and the last in 1876, and covering his best period, though he first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850) have, apart from their own beauty, a special interest as revealing not only " the Linnell treatment of landscape " but also the strong influence of the great nature-painters of France. As able, perhaps more able, is the work of his younger brother. Many of William LinnelPs pictures have a more individual touch than James LinnelPs; but though his admirers generally ranked his Italian subjects, such as the " Mountain Peasants on their way to Rome " or the finer " Heights of the Abruzzi," among his best achievements, it is now more critically estimated that William LinnelPs true claim to distinction is in his best English pic- tures, particularly in those painted after his return from Rome in 1867. His earlier work is somewhat imitative. But in paintings such as " Over the Heath," " Through the Barley," and " Hop-pickers on the Road " (all painted between 1873-5) and in several later pictures, such as the fine " Leafy Month of June " and " The Hayfield," which were in the Academy of 1877, he won his reputation so fairly that he lost rather than gained by the fact that to the public his work bore the signature of a greater sur- 64: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. name. In a characteristic critique which Mr. Ruskin wrote concerning the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1875, he specially noticed William LinnelFs " Hop- pers [or Hop-pickers] on the Road/ 7 with a rather unwarranted remark about John Linnell, a customary fling at the Academy men in general, and a sneer at the later French naturists and others. " This is a landscape," he writes, " and if it were more lightly painted we might be very happy with it. William Linnell cares no more than his father for brush dex- terity ; but he does no worse now in that part of the business than everyone else. And what a relief it is for any wholesome human sight, after sickening itself among the blank horrors of dirt, ditch water, and ma- laria, which the imitators of the French schools have begrimed our exhibition walls with, to find once more a bit of blue in the sky and a glow of brown in the coppice, and see that ' hoppers ' in Kent can enjoy the scarlet and purple like empresses and emperors.'* This ends so soundingly and with so vivid colour that we rejoice in it, but the criticism as such is not only quite apart from the true aim and method of criticism but stands typical of that particular aberration which modifies the value of so many of Mr. Ruskin's " appreciations " and is the bane of so much minor, and what is best defined as " literary " criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. John Linnell was born in 1792, when Constable was still a Suffolk lad watching his father's wind- mill and making his first crude efforts with his brush, and when the precocious Turner was already an indefatigable student and though still in his teens an exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Linnell was also a precocious youth, and was only fifteen when he sent his first picture to the Royal Academy. One wonders LINNELL TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. 65 how much of this precocity, characteristic of several notable painters at the beginning of the century, was excited and perhaps made possible in evidence by the less exigent conditions of technical training which then obtained ; or how much was due to what was " in the air," to a wave of creative energy reaching many about the same time, irrespective of age, as a wave of another creative energy reached practically simul- taneously the minds of Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and the youthful Keats. At this time there was a noteworthy water-colour painter, John Varley, born a year or two later than Turner and Constable, and an eminent member of the small group associated with Cotman, Cozens, and Girtin. Varley was the founder of an institution that to-day still flourishes as ever, and was the direct outcome of the first collective shows by these men: " The Water Colour Society," better known for many years as " The Old Water Colour Society," and now with the dignified appellation of " Royal." Varley was a good and careful if uninspired painter, but had a deserved eminence as an admirable teacher. It was to him that the young John Linnell was sent as an eager and enthusiastic student, though when the lad was only in his twelfth year he had first gone to the studio of Benjamin West, the kindly American Academician whose sympathy and personal guidance were so much more important than his own achieve- ment or any influence exercised by it. He spoke as sensibly and sympathetically to young Linnell as years before he had to the young Constable, and one of the first results was that the lad betook himself not to a portraitist or figure painter's atelier but to the class-room of John Varley. For a time, however, mainly because in that direction he saw a means of 66 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. livelihood and none or next to none in any other, he kept himself to miniature and portrait painting (as Joseph Severn and so many other painters did at first) ; but upon this period of his work there is no need to dwell, as it is without distinctive merit, meritorious in kind as it was. Moreover in his long artistic career Linnell painted so many pictures that any student of his work would have more than enough to do to chronicle his noteworthy achievements in landscape alone. Linnell has most inappropriately been called the Diaz of the English romantic move- ment, but even as a forest painter the designation is misleading. True he painted forestscapes and forest sunsets with something of the never tiring love and intense sympathy of Diaz, but the great Barbizonist worked with a far bolder genius, a stronger handling, a deeper understanding, and aromatic sentiment foreign to the other. Besides, in much of the work of Linnell there is an elaborateness in which breadth and freedom are to a great extent sacrificed. He is at his best where he more inclines to his memories of Con- stable than where he meets the " Pre-Raphaelites " on their own ground ; his finest period is that when he stood at the crossways, and, looking back, saw all that had made a great English school of landscape ; looking aside, saw the nature-painting of a great new Erench school of landscape ; looking before, saw new concep- tions, new methods, new ideals, shaping and resolv- ing, now here, now there. It is because Linnell stands in three periods and partakes of the distinc- tive qualities of each, that his work has to-day an interest over and above its own beauty and worth, and is of so much value to the student of modern English landscape-painting. He has, in his own lesser way, something of the great charm of COD- LINNELL TO THE PRE RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. 67 stable, that he is essentially English ; with all their poetic and reflected qualities one could not mistake his pictures for the work of any other than an Eng- lish painter. In personal character and tempera- ment Linnell resembled certain of the great men of Barbizon, and it is his poetic, dreaming, reserved, in- tense communion with nature (in his case, a pastoral, labourer-frequented nature) which has coloured and given its peculiar life and significance to his best work. One of his earliest pictures, " The Timber Wag- gon," struck the note of his real metier and his coming success. Then came canvases such as " The Barley Harvest," " Crossing the Brook," " Under the Haw- thorn ; " and later among his most popular, " The Lost Sheep," " The Ford," " The Coming Storm," the beautiful "Wood-Cutters," '"Woods and Forests," "Autumn," "The Heath," etc. Two finely representative pictures, " TKe Windmill " of 184Y and " The Wood-Cutters " of 1875 are in the National Gallery. His chief works are widely scattered, and among the private collections in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia (where of late so many famous British pictures have found a haven) there must be few of any note which do not possess a Linnell. Of the later men who, if not his followers, were in some degree influenced by him, and can fairly be classed with him as in the same line of development, it would be needless to select more than two repre- sentative painters. The typical successor of Linnell * * Linnell, it should be borne in mind, died so recently as 1882 at the age of ninety, a worker to the last. We have another veteran painter still hard at work, Mr J. C. Hook, &.A., now over eighty. G 68 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. in his elaborate naturalism and over-conscientious exactitude in feature and detail rather than in detail as subordinate to feature and feature as subordinate to a broad synthesis, to "breadth," unity, tout en- semble, is Benjamin William Leader, to-day still one of the most popular of Academicians. Linnell's typical successor in his free, spontaneous, and poetic handling of beautiful natural aspects, and partic- ularly of those of grey twilight, deep warm dusk, rich crimson sun-settings, and " romantic " back- grounds of dark trees standing out against light, is Mark Anthony. If we wish, in a corresponding period, to find where, unaffected by Linnell and his school (and here I use the word in a far wider sense than that which commonly obtains meaning by it those in whom the poetic and literary imagination is as strong an influence as the purely artistic [pictorial]) the direct influence of Constable most clearly survives, we must turn to the work say of one so typically representative as Cecil Lawson. Mr. Leader bids fair to emulate his fellow veterans. John Linnell, Sidney Cooper, and J. C. Hook, in length of years as well as in popularity; for he is still hale and vigorous though in his seventieth year. His work first became known in the art-world in 1855 (when he was twenty-four) when he exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture called " Cottage Children blowing Soap Bubbles." He exhibited several pleasing if not very distinctive pictures in the ensuing years, but it was not till his " Worcester- shire Lane " in 1863 that his work began to be sought after, though it was not till 1874 that with " Wild Wales," his popularity became assured. " The Eng- lish Hayfield " and still more " A November Eve- ning," both exhibited in 1876, represent his best LINNELL TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. 69 period ; a period that culminates in his chef-d'oeuvre, the well known " February Fill-dyke." Here Mr. Leader reaches his highest level; all work since may broadly be spoken of as variations of " February Fill-dyke " or " A November Evening." His painting is so conscientious, so faithful, so accurate in its details, often so pleasing in general effect that one is not surprised at its popularity and particularly with its vogue some years ago, when there was a general appreciation of the careful school of the " Pre-Raphaelites " at his highest in the "Chill October " of Millais, though that painter's early " Burning Leaves " is in conception, method, and handling as far beyond " Chill October " as that superbly photographic landscape is beyond the Academical work of the same kind, of which Mr. Ernest Parton is the most typical representative: (Mr. Parton by the way is not an Englishman as commonly supposed, partly from his landscape sub- jects and partly from the last five and twenty years of his life having been spent in London; but an American, born in New York State in 1845). But even in the best work that Mr. Leader has achieved there is a lack of that imaginative insight and swift and sure handling in its expression which character- ises the nature-painting of those who follow the great lead of the supreme pioneer-naturists, Rem- brandt and Constable. Everything is carefully ob- served, but there is not enough freedom, little breadth of treatment, little vigour of handling. But what is characterised by singular merit in Mr. Leader be- comes an obvious and irritating deficiency in most of the painters of his school, and that is why the work of all those many men and women who in London and New York (to take the two representative cities) 70 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. produce such endless variations of the " Leader " road at sunset or the " Leader " woolly sheep at a stile, or the " Ernest Parton " group of autumnal birches, or the " Parton " pool, or the " MacWhirter " stage-pine or mechanical lake, is now fallen upon evil days, for taste is on a higher level and is more general than it was, and picture-lovers (even when these are hardly in the true sense art-lovers) are weary of these dull iterative banalities which pass for studies from nature. Nature is alive and ever new ; these are dead and featureless, being merely re- duplications of already attenuated duplications. The sooner this " school " receives its quietus, by the force of public opinion and its own inherent fatuity, the better it will be. A very different development is that of the nature- school broadly represented by the fine and individual though relatively little known artist, Mark Anthony a surname familiar in the art-circles of America, because of the notable and beautiful work of the en- graver Andrew Anthony. Andrew Anthony, it may be added here, with Linton and Timothy Cole have proved to the world that so patient and difficult an art can flourish in America as well as in the older countries where as a matter of fact fine-art engraving had all but fallen into desuetude until the reflex influence of men such as Andrew Anthony and Cole gave it a new development and a fresh lease of life. Mark Anthony was born in Manchester in 1817, and was yet another of the band of precocious youths of that period of whom I have already spoken. When he was fifteen he made up his mind to be a painter (he was then in close training for the medical pro- fession), and in his seventeenth year he went to Paris, where he lived and worked as an art-student LINNELL TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL. 71 for six years. If he sent pictures to the Academy during the ensuing ten years (1840-1850) they were not accepted, but some since well-known canvases were shown at the British Institute (where he ex- hibited his first picture) and at the Society of British Artists. His "Harvest Home" (1847), his "Old Country Churchyard" (1849) and his noble "Elm at Eve" (1850) attracted influential and sympathetic attention, though the deep poetic feeling which animated Anthony's work did not seem to appeal to a public which was already turning to Academical and commonly puerile subject-inanities. It has always seemed to me that Mark Anthony was one of the inspiring influences of Millais, whose " Autumn Leaves " (or " Burning Leaves " as it is often and more distinctively called) is full of the sentiment and emotion of Anthony, and in particular of pictures of his such as the " Elm at Eve," " Even- song," and " The Keturn after Labour." Anthony first became widely known through his forest-pictures at the Royal Academy in 1851 and 1852 ("Beeches and Ferns" and "The Monarch's Oak"), though these do not represent his most characteristic work. In 1863 he made a very marked impression with his noble, dignified, and solemnly beautiful " Stonehenge," and long before 1871, when he had his first great success and reached that high level which he maintained thereafter, his pictures had become so much sought that they were generally sold before exhibition. He had a small public, but it was an enthusiastic and truly appreciative one, and that the taste has not changed is evident from the fact that Anthony's pictures rarely come into the market and are at once secured when they do. It was in 1871 that he sent his magnificent " Night, Storm and 72 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Darkness " to the Paris Exposition, where it won great admiration, particularly from the notable French landscapists ; and it was in this year also that at the Royal Academy he showed the " The Re- turn after Labour " a work which might well stand for that long series of wayside-pictures which are so greatly valued by us, from those of Walker and George Mason to those of Hubert Herkomer and George Clausen. As a direct if unacknowledged pioneer of the Pre-Raphaelite School his work, so fine in itself, will always have a particular interest for the student of the most significant movement in later Victorian art. PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 73 CHAPTEK VI. PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART I CECIL LAWSON, GEORGE MASON, AND FREDERICK WALKER. I HAVE spoken of Cecil Lawson as a typical repre- sentative of those nature-painters of the middle- Victorian period who, coming after Linnell, neither parsed into the narrow realism of the school repre- sented by Mr. Leader nor to that romanticism ex- emplified so well in Mark Anthony. Lawson was not a great painter, but he had the primary qualities of a great painter; he was not a leader, but he had the essentials for a leader. His work, to-day, is of interest to us not only for what it is, but for what it suggests: for the light it throws on what had been achieved in English Art, since Constable's death in 1837 till the beginnings of the later contemporary developments of nature-painting such as those as- sociated with, say, George Clausen, Peppercorn, Aumonier, La Thangue, or with the two well-known distinctive schools, " The New English Art Club " and " The Glasgow School." The Lawson family, of which Cecil was the most distinguished, was akin to the Linnell and the Land- seer families in its range and talent. William Law- son, who was born in Shropshire in the first quarter of the century, was an able portraitist. He had three sons, Cecil, Wilfrid, and Malcolm; the first became a noted painter, the second is an able worker in 74 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. black and white, and an excellent illustrator; the third is a musician of standing. Cecil, who was born in 1851, was trained as a painter by his father, though after a period of apprenticeship to portraiture he discovered that his bent was to landscape. Of a virile, emotional, and poetic temperament the young painter from the first took his art seriously. He was not only to become a landscapist, but an in- terpreter; he saw, and he was to reveal. It is this sacrosanct attitude towards his art that has uplifted many a man to high achievement, and that, in more or less conscious and nurtured degree, has animated and sustained every worker in any art whose achieve- ment has been found to possess enduring quality. There is not one of Cecil Lawson's pictures which has not a singular enchantment. He is a lover both of at- mosphere (of aerial gradation and space) and of detail. He saw Nature always through the vision of a longing love for her. He painted his landscapes as though he were a pioneer who had reached a prom- ised land, but was stricken with the fear that he would never enter it; later, as an exile who returns to his ancestral land, but too late, and with a dull ache at the heart paints for the delight and deep content of others what he can never enjoy himself. It is diffi- cult to say which is his masterpiece. For one thing, his pictures are now so scattered that one could not easily study more than a half dozen at most. Not that there are many to study, for Cecil Lawson died young. He was only thirty-one when in that month of June in which, as he once said, one can live more richly than in all the other months of the year, death interrupted a career of the most brilliant and exceptional promise. Had he lived, I think Cecil Lawson would have become one of the greatest of PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 75 Victorian painters. His most famous canvas is " The Cloud," a wonderful presentment which is as much a poetic vision or interpretation as it is un- questionably an admirably realistic study. No one has ever more truly and beautifully depicted the ascent and wayfaring of summer-clouds. He loved them, as Constable loved his elms, as Corot his birches and aspens, as Monet the flooding light on his inexhaustible haystack, as Carriere loves the fleeting, penetrating likeness of a visionary moment behind the mere verisimilitude of feature. Perhaps Cecil Law- son's masterpiece is " Strayed : a Moonlight Pas- toral," which was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878 and won the young painter so high a place in the estimate of those who value beautiful things. The definitive titular word is eminently significant. He is primarily a pastoralist. He is the English head of those who, like the able young Scottish painter, Mr. Macaulay Stevenson, or that other very remarkable Scot, the late T. Hope McLachlan (an- other painter who just missed greatness, who like Cecil Lawson might have become a leader of men, and whose work will always be valued for its reserved and powerful beauty) have given their best heed to that pastoral or naturist view of nature which dis- regards the human or even animal element as super- fluous (though not to its arbitrary exclusion, or even to any too marked avoidance), finding the moonlit valley, the solitary tree standing wrapt in sunshine and shod with shadow, the sunflooded garth or thicket- involved stream, the lonely upland, even the pas- toral meadow reaching towards tall elms or dusky hedgerows or broken array of gorse and bracken, or sloping to the watermill and the haze-revealed weir, enough in charm of interest as well as in charni of 76 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. beauty. Lawson's first important picture struck this note. There were few landscape pictures in the Koyal Academy of 1873 which for a moment could be compared with " In the Valley : a Pastoral," though this picture was the pioneer effort of a young man of only two and twenty. Another signal success was with " The Hop Gatherers," a fine and strong but hardly so beautiful a work as his other canvases on the same scale. Unquestionably one of the finest is the lovely landscape-picture entitled " The Min- ister's Garden," which attracted a great amount of attention at the Grosvenor Gallery in one of its most notable years (1878) where and when his " Moon- light Pastoral : Strayed " was also shown and is now in the possession of the Manchester Corporation. This masterly work has been several times re- produced, and so is probably more familiar than any other picture by Lawson. The name, though apt, is a little misleading, for it is but a sunny and delicious corner of an old-fashioned glebe or vicarage garden that we see, the vista being that of a wide pastoral region intersected with broken woodlands, and reaching to calm sunfilled perspectives. In the left foreground, almost under a superbly painted sun-and- air-saturated pine tree, is a tangled corner where several old-fashioned beeskips or hives rest upon a wooden bench, behind which tall hollyhocks rear and stand drenched in the sunglow. There is a finished art, a revealed mastery, in the closely detailed fore- ground, the noble and broadly handled middle ground of wood and pasture lands, in the powerful and re- served synthesis of the dim and retreating perspec- tives of the remote background. The more one is familiar with work such as this the more one laments that this young master ceased from all labour at so PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 7? early an age. Alas, he knew that he could not long live in the sunny beautiful world he loved so well; or at least some instinct warned him, for in the autumn and winter preceding his death he longed with a ceaseless and nervous impatience for the re- turn of the spring, and spoke often despondently ( (even when seemingly well) of the summers he would never see. When I think of him I recall the beau- tiful lines of a living poet, Mr. William Watson: . . . June on her triumphal progress goes Through arched and bannered woodlands ; while for him She is a legend emptied of concern, And idle is the rumour of the rose." Well, his influence has been deep, and will become greater. His work endures, as the work of more pro- lific men cannot so well lie in remembrance. Already he is among painters what Samuel Palmer is among etchers the artist of some half dozen or so master- pieces ; each to be remembered with delight, and the best secure against shifting vogues and movements. There are two other painters, among the finest (though not the greatest) whom England has pro- duced, of whom inevitably we think in connection with Cecil Lawson. Both achieved more than he did, and have left a greater name, and the work of each is now so highly valued that it is doubtful if any two artists are more profoundly loved. Both shared with Lawson a fatal inheritance, that of consump- tion; both revealed this inheritance in the extreme delicacy and tenderness of their work; and from it both gained something of that tender longing, that poignant beauty which gives so appealing a charm to what they accomplished. Neither had the robustness 78 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY, of Cecil Lawson at his best, but each excelled him in human emotion, in grace, in loveliness. Together, they stand as the feminine counterpart in genius to the virile genius of their great contemporaries Millet and Corot. Just as we cannot dissociate these two great French painters, or, for all their difference, Keats and Shelley, so we cannot dissociate George Mason and Frederick Walker. Shelley and Keats died young and within a short time of one another, and each left a new beauty, a new poetry, and each touched at least one deeper note than any poet before or since. Mason and Walker also died young, each from, earliest manhood doomed to a short span of life, but not till each had achieved a new beauty in art, a new poetry in paint, nor till each had touched at least one deeper note than any English painter before or since. The half of music, I have heard men say, Is to have grieved. . . . Out of our sadness have we made this world So beautiful." And we feel that it is out of their sorrow that Shel- ley and Keats wrote so passing well, that out of their sadness Mason and Walker have made this world seem so beautiful to us, who habitually view it in other aspects. Maeterlinck has said that it does not suf- fice that beauty should keep solitary festival in life, but that it should become a festival of every day. That is the spirit in which Shelley lived, in which Keats lived, in which in a new way Millet and Corot lived, in which George Mason and Frederick Walker and Cecil Lawson lived. It is the spirit which has drunk at divine founts. PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 79 Though so often classed as identical, there is a distinction between the pastoralists and the idyllists. Both approach nature as a poetic and beautiful reality that has to be interpreted through the poetic and beautiful medium of the imagination; nature as a divine vision, that must be represented by as lovely a dream as mind and hand can make real to others. But the pastoralists are content with less poignancy, with less emotion, with less human interest ; to them the natural beauty is self-sufficient; their art, there- fore, is generally more serene, more broad and virile. Moreover even where they paint subjects of direct human interest they subordinate this to the sense of something greater beyond, either the solemn and austere beauty of unchanging nature or the tragically indifferent operation of mysterious laws. Thus Mil- let, though he so often painted or drew idyllic sub- jects, is not an idyllist, whose aim is to ignore the tragic and austere. When he painted the " Ange- lus," it is not an idyllic or a pastoral scene we look at in this picture of two peasants reverently uncovering in the last hour of their weary toil in the fields ; it is this, so far only ; what we are aware of is the deep implicit pathos of those hardship-worn lives, that seem as absolutely of the soil as the brown fallows or the seeding grain or the trampled grass and yet have their dreams of a nature beyond this nature, a life be- yond this life, a redemption from overmuch toil and suffering. And deeper still we feel the pathos and significance of this voice of the vesper bells across the hushed fields ; a larger and deeper note is struck ; and the peasants are forgotten, and the old earth that is being made new and fruitful, and the far village and all that solemn evening landscape, and the still voice is heard, so poignantly human, so strangely divine, of 80 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the Son of God. There is the melancholy, too, that all great modern art has. If that melancholy is not ob- vious in the great poetic and plastic art of Greece it is because in these later ages the soul has ceased to look outward only: it has looked inward, and so has had a new vision and known a new ache, has known a new wonder and a new longing. This melancholy lies in the implicit recognition of the vast unchanging scope of natural laws, a recognition which appals many a soul, and induces in others a stoical resigna- tion, and in others only a blind desire to ignore the in- evitable. We are all, in truth, in a conspiracy to avoid recognising -death as an inevitable and pressing inevitable detail; and much of our most impressive modern work has this austere atmosphere behind its features of noble strength or even smiling beauty. Millet's work is as full of it as that of a painter such as, say, Frederick Leighton is void of it ; for the one was of those who. work from the core of the heart and the core of the mind, the -soul, and the other was of those who work through the eyes of the body only or of the charmed mind only. The naturists (a much better word than the com- monly preferred and too narrow " pastoralists," or too vague " landscapists ") and the idyllists are therefore clearly men who have a different outlook upon life and nature, at least in the expression of their outlook and emotion they differ materially from those who do not hope too much, or see too exclusively beautifully^ because they do not fear the actuality as they perceive it. In a word, the idyllists work in a dream of ideal beauty, ignoring the inevitable; the naturists work in a like impassioned vision of beauty, but accepting the actualities, and recognise the heights and depths and vast range of- PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 81 / " That divine, inscrutable great Law Which breaks our little moments into rain, To gather them, in some dim, far-off Hour, Into a Rainbow on the Hills of Heaven." When, therefore, we turn to the work of painters such as George Mason and Frederick Walker we must frankly accept them as poets of a beautiful ideal world rather than as interpreters of the beautiful world about us. With more depth and strength of mind, with greater and more virile art, the idyllists, or they of whom I speak as types, might reach the highest. For that lies nearer the ideal than what we call the real, though we cannot reach it or even perceive it but through mortal eyes and by our frail uncertain mortal feet. If, then, we find a stronger and more convincing art in the nature painting of Constable and all his strenuous followers to-day, than in the nature painting of Mason and Walker and others of to-day in whom the vision of what might be obscures the vision of what is, we should not forget that these too are pioneers, if by hidden beautiful ways rather than by the broad highroad. The work accomplished in his too short life by the painter of " The 'Harvest Moon " had an educative effect upon the public which hais never been fully admitted. The very qualities which prevent the highest claims being made for George Mason as one of the two or three greatest idyllic painters of the world stood him in stead with this public. It was a public trained to see the real beautifully expressed, to see an idealised real, an idealised " beautiful/ 7 but not (a profoundly different thing) ideal beauty. Hundreds who had never found in English painting what English poetry gave with such unforgettable loveliness, who looked in vain in art for what would 82 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. correspond to Gray 's " Elegy " or Milton's " Ly- cidas " or the poetry of Keats, found it in the work of this other poet. Unable to see, or perhaps only indifferent to the technical shortcomings involved (even for so skilful and conscientious a painter a realist in truth of detail, as, with justice, he claimed to be ) in his habitual exaggeration of a possible exquisite and idealised realism into an impossibly idealistic excellence, they saw only the whole mind and soul and genius of a poet revealing himself in painted dreams " coloured breath and tinted dream." Here was a new nature, familiarly unfa- miliar. Here were the sequestered village, the vil- lage pond, the lonely common, the rural lane, the tired teams, labourers, young girls, children all so familiar, yet one and all touched with a new light (as though they were painted by the vision of the soul rather than merely by the vision of the body) ? with an unexpected loveliness, a grace and charm in- expressibly bewitching. " The Garden," " The Cast Shoe," "The Young Anglers," "The Unwilling Playmate," even the names of many of Mason's pic- tures were not only of the homeliest, but recalled the conventional " keepsake " style of utterly inane sub- ject-pictures. Here were homely themes, but how treated ! The very air of melancholy, which gave so singular a charm, was so native that few noticed it except as an exquisite enhancement, as, in a perfect summer evening, one vaguely realises the melancholy in the tall elm or columnar cypress standing dark in the sunset-glow. This beauty sank deep into the minds of a large and growing public, and into the minds of many artists, and into the minds of a young and eager generation ; and to-day it would be a dif- ficult task to attempt to trace the far-reaching influ- PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART, 83 ence and direct and indirect developments, among Continental as well as among British and American artists, of the finest work of George Mason. Of course many of those who were so charmed did not realise that these pictures were not pictures of what they were supposed to be, but ideal presentments. And yet when all has been said upon this point the truth remains that George Mason did paint even more real- istically than is admitted. What he did not accom- plish was to be typical. There is absolutely no mis- taking the England of Crome and Constable and Cox. The England of painters such as Mason and Frederick Walker is, perhaps, not less real, though so unrepresentative for often the idealist reaches nearer to the indwelling truth than ever the realist can. His landscapes are akin to those in the imagin- ative England of Chaucer and Spenser and Keats ? which are not the less convincing though in each of them there dwells that unfamiliar light and that quintessential beauty with which the inward vision of the poet endows what it looks upon. Much of the actual nature painting of George Mason is extraor- dinarily realistic. Look at the minor details in " The Gander " or " The Young Anglers " or in the familiar picture called " The Unwilling Playmate " (where, in a lovely open woodland copse, three little girls are trying to entice a reluctant donkey to join their play), and observe the unceasing care and inti- mate knowledge of every detail in grass and under- growth, in shrub and branch and bough, and in the physiognomy of each of the trees, and of the land- scape as a whole. There is in this last picture noth- ing of that exaggerated idealism which undoubtedly exists in some of his larger canvases, for though the children are drawn and painted as by one who loved H 84 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the grace and beauty of childhood, it is by one who loved too well to render otherwise than as he habitu- ally saw it. At three of his masterpieces, " The Return from Ploughing," " The Evening Hymn," and " The Har- vest Moon," we look to-day with a new regard, for we realise something of the extent of the quiet revo- lution caused by them. They stand for the most original and beautiful nature-work done in England during a decade when, though all our great contem- porary painters were at work, English art as a whole had sunk into conventionalism. It was the supreme distinction of the " Pre-Raphaelites " and of painters such as George Mason and Frederick Walker, that with their poetic imagination and new ideals of real- ism they, more than any others, turned the tide of what through lack in imagination and in definite ideals threatened to become a national decadence. When, in the autumn of 1872, George Mason died, there was everywhere a profound regret; but it was not till the following year, When some two hundred of his pictures and drawings were exhibited in London, among them " The Harvest Moon," " The Evening Hymn," the "Return from Ploughing," " Marlow Ferry," and indeed all or nearly all his finest work, that it was generally realised how original and fine a painter he was. The collective exhibition made a deep impression, and from that date his fame went up by leaps and bounds. His chief pictures have all been etched, engraved, photogravured, and photo- graphed, and are now familiar, particularly in the large and beautiful etched reproductions by Mr. Macbeth. Perhaps, in a sense, it was well that George Mason did not live longer. In his latest triumph, " The PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 85 Harvest Moon," we realise that the idyllist can go no further; after that, this beautiful decorative idyllic art would become mere decorativeness ; the lovely manner would degenerate into mannerism, and the exquisite grace and sentiment into a conventional pictorialism, an unwelcome sentimentalism. As it stands, " The Harvest Moon " is one of the most sig- nificant as well as one of the most beautiful pictures painted in England. I may recall here the words of another famous painter : " Those scythes of Mason's in the ' Harvest Moon ' will yet reap an incalcu- lable harvest for art." Of all contemporary artists none so markedly shows the influence of George Mason as Edward Burne-Jones, though it is an influence of the spirit rather than in the work itself in its extraneous at- tributes. But this is Mason's real triumph ; that his genius fertilises the national imagination and lives in the minds of many who likewise pursue beauty with continuous and incessant ardour. Although Mason and Walker are so commonly mentioned together, and this for the reasons already indicated, they displayed no immediate similarity in work. Mason was primarily an idyllist in the sense that a dreamed-of nature was finer than actuality, while Walker was an idyllist only in the sense that he was a poet, and saw and dreamed as a poet, but was a realist in his artistic outlook upon life. Much as he admired the work of Mason he found in it too much idealisation. Strong muscles and red blood underlie the whitest hands and the most flowerlike faces; a truth which Walker realised and painters such as George Mason and Edward Burne-Jones have too habitually ignored. In Frederick Walker (though he has not the virile strength and depth of 86 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. his great contemporary and in a sense counterpart, Franc, ois Millet) we have one of the outstanding artists of the nineteenth century, a man whose work immediately impressed itself upon his contempo- raries and has since steadily grown in value and criti- cal admiration, and whose influence was not only potent but still is so and likely to prove greater and not less in the generation to come. !Nor can we re- gret, however highly we may rank great artists such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones, that Frederick Walker rather than they should be a powerful moulding influ- ence on the art of a coming day. He, too, was a poet and dreamer, but he was what they were not, a painter of his day and hour, of the life he saw and knew and shared, a realist who believed profoundly in a faith- ful quest of actuality in art and yet whose own ideal- istic genius was continually therein, a refining and ennobling flame. None who saw the exhibition of Walker's " The Bathers " at the Academy (in 1869) can have for- gotten the extraordinary impression created by it. It was realised not only that a new and powerful painter had appeared, but that here was a man who had gone to the greatest art of old, had learned its su- preme lesson of restraint and serenity, and, without imitation or even obvious emulation, had set himself to achieve a like beauty of strength and strength of beauty. In temperament also Mason and Walker those brothers in misfortune as in fame were dissimilar. For all his invalidism and instinctive knowledge of what he had to accept, Mason was a man of herpical temper. He did not withdraw to the seclusion of his Staffordshire home because he feared jealous or ad- verse comment (which work such as his inevitably PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 87 excited), but so as to have more uninterrupted time for his work than would otherwise be possible, and to dwell alone with his creative imagination which could not but have suffered in the uncongenial life of London. And just as he never feared nor was perturbed by any criticism or opposition, so was he unaffected by any adversity, accepting every mis- chance or misfortune with a stoical courage. I have been told, by one who knew him, that one day, in his last spring, when he was painting in a sequestered lane, a gentleman came up and said how greatly he admired his work, adding that he himself was a well- known Manchester physician; but suddenly ex- claimed when, after a serious attack of coughing, Mason withdrew his handkerchief heavily stained with bright lung-blood " Good God, sir, why are you sitting here, in this chill shadow; don't you know . . . don't you know . . . that you are " and then stopped; when Mason quietly took up the unfinished sentence, and added : " That I am a dying man ? Yes, I know it. But that has nothing to do with my not going on with what I have set my- self to do to-day." This characteristic attitude, and the quiet indif- ference with which he set aside hostile and even ma- licious criticism as when one day he received a wantonly severe attack upon one of his finest pic- tures but put it away with the remark that it was a pity people should write on art when they could neither understand what art means nor adequately express even an adverse opinion this habitual atti- tude was not that of Frederick Walker. It is a psychological problem difficult to solve, that the work of a man who was delicate and fretful and easily perturbed, whose serenity and even temporary out- 88 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. look upon life and art could be hurt by the worthless criticism of some anonymous and insignificant critic, could be saner and stronger than that of a fellow- artist as gifted as himself and as a man his superior in almost every respect. Frederick Walker has had more influence upon later Victorian art than any other painter, but this is solely through his genius and not through the influence of personality and cul- ture, as with Sir Joshua Reynolds; or the influence of an idea, as in Constable's work and standpoint ; or the influence of a group, as in the instance of the Pre-Raphaelites. In literature, it may be added, we know that the greatest modern master of classic re- straint and of a serene and austere beauty, Walter Savage Landor, was in private frequently intemper- ate in speech and often over-vehement in manner and action, as was the case also with Ingres, the high- priest of suave and refined classicism in France. Austerity in style, serenity in judgment and outlook, catholicity in sympathy, these are the cardinal quali- ties of Landor; but few of his friends found him notably catholic in his sympathies, or serene in his common judgments, and anything but austere in his speech. Not that there is so absolute contradiction as would appear. The nature of Landor, coloured by his temperament, lives in his work; the temper- ament of Landor, coloured by his nature, was re- vealed in the man. The two had to combine that his genius might have birth, but those who saw only the temperamental by-play the accident of nervous life, conditions, idiosyncrasy, and inherited traits and tendencies confused sometimes the irritations of the man with the serene mastery of the great artist. In this way we can understand Frederick Walker. He and George Mason both worked against the in- PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 89 sidious sapping fever of a mortal complaint, and if one had the heroic temper and one had not we see that it is not the outward accidents of personality which are the guiding forces in genius but the inward steadfastness and direction. Frederick Walker was born in London in 1840, almost at the same time (a few months or so divide their dates) as one of the foremost of living French nature-painters, Jean Charles Cazin. In his six- teenth year he entered the office of an architect, iix accordance with his father's wishes, but a year later it was mutually agreed that he should definitely give himself to the professional study of art. From the first he showed a remarkable talent for drawing, and before he was twenty had in a small way made a name for himself as a worker in black and white. Of Walker's place and influence in " Black and White " much might be written; at present it must suffice to say that his early contributions to Once a Week, as later to ComhM, not only brought him much repu- tation then but are now eagerly appreciated by all amateurs of this particular art, for Walker has long been recognised as one of its few masters. Some of the books illustrated by him for example, Thack- eray's Adventures of Philip are among the treas- ure-trove of the collector. He was twenty-three when he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, and though " The Lost Path " did not attract much public attention many critics and fellow-painters noticed it for its fine promise and individuality. His success began next year, when he was elected an 'Associate of the Water Colour So- ciety. For many years he exhibited regularly at this decidedly famous institution among the draw- ings being some of his finest, as " The Well-Sinkers/' 90 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. " Fate," " Spring," and " The Fishmonger's Shop." At the Academy also his work began to be looked for eagerly; and in 1867, when he was only in his twenty-seventh year, he had a veritable triumph with " The Bathers." There could no longer be any question as to English art having gained a new, powerful, and original recruit, and not only artists and the critics but the general public (especially those persons who had travelled and studied art in Italy) discussed his method, manner, and promise. For here was indeed something new in English art ; a picture in which the modern ideals of beauty ob- tained to a remarkable extent, and yet in which a classic restraint, an austere and dignified grace of line and harmony of composition, a rich and roman- tic sense of colour combined with a masterly control over its balance and proportion, were together re- vealed. It was evident that this new painter had studied the great masters of Italy, and notably the Umbrians, and Perugino more than any other. There was nothing imitative in the work, but it showed that Walker's influences were not from the men or the art of the hour. As a matter of fact, he owed artistically to two men more than to all others, Perugino and Francois Millet ; and it is to this com- bination of influences, neither of them ever con- spicuous and indeed hardly traceable directly in his pictures, though present as shaping and controlling memories and forces in his mind, that we owe the singular appeal of his noble and refined work. We know that Walker admired Millet beyond any modern nature-painter, and we can trace the influence of both, but in this famous picture of " The Bathers " the modern artist with whom he has perhaps most in com- mon is Puvis de Chavannes. Yet with all its beauty PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 91 both in design and colouring I cannot consider this picture to be the masterpiece which many of Walker's admirers claim that it is. This group of fifteen boys and youths by an English riverside, some stand- ing or running, some leaning and watching, some in the water, is painted with wonderful precision and grace; but the picture, as a whole, is invested with an air of unreality. This is not because it is frankly decorative. Puvis de Chavannes' work ia all decorative, but is never unreal in the intimate artistic sense. It is unreal because Walker willed the picture thus, not because the picture thus in- evitably revealed itself to him. He never saw bath- ers grouped and outlined as they are here grouped and outlined; it is the careful vision of a painter enamoured of a theme, not the compelling vision of a painter possessed by the commanding power of a theme. Thus I think it was for good that Walker put aside his continuous study of Perugino and other classic masters, and turned more to the study of Millet, and, above all, to the effort to " find him- self " individually and convincingly to express himself. A transitional stage is revealed in the beautiful picture called " The Vagrants in the Glen/' where a group of gypsies stand or lie round a camp- fire in a typical English landscape, painted with ex- treme sympathy and care and remarkable knowledge for one who had spent all his early years as a towns- man. It is in the figures of the gypsies, particularly the young mother and the impressive figure of a woman who stands to her left, deep in thought or memory, in which his characteristic sense of classic nobility of pose and statuesque beauty in line are conspicuous. A further advance in individuality was shown in the following year (1869), when " The 92 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Old Gate " first revealed to the public the Frederick Walker whom now we know so well. Here was a new beauty, a new tenderness, a new subtleness of emotional rendering which convinced most people that the artist was not merely a brilliant and able painter, but a man of genius. For his work was interpretative, and the more significant that its inter- pretation was of what is common and familiar, to all easily realisable as a pictured actuality. This fine painting is so well known through reproduction that detailed description would be superfluous. It is enough to recall that at the tall iron gates of an old manor house a widow draped in black has just emerged from the garden. Children are playing on the stone steps, and in the roadway two labourers pass returning to their homes at sundown. The subject is of little moment; a score of Academical painters could have taken the same theme ( as indeed hundreds of artists then and since have done) and yet achieved only a commonplace rendering of a familiar circumstance in most instances, no doubt, the tragedy, artistically, lying only in the suggestion of sorrow implied in the widow's apparel. But Walker has so saturated his picture with his own emotion, has so permeated it with the soft glow and exquisite light of the dying day, has with such poignant spiritual instinct depicted the dramatic contrast of the quiet sorrow of this dignified lady, who stands in mute regret, and the happiness of the playing children, the eloquent silence of the look with which the labourers regard her. In the blend- ing of dusk and sunglow one may see not only a rare power in the painting of this effect, but the in- fluence of the one English painter who gave his lit- PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 93 most to the romance of evening light, Mark Anthony, of whom I have already written. Walker may be said definitely to have taken his own place in 1870 when at the Royal Academy he ex- hibited " The Plough." In this noble English pic- ture he added a note of dignity which was deeply needed, a note that a few French painters had, but was rarely to be found in the English art of that day. The influence which this particular picture has exercised upon subsequent landscape-painters is extraordinary. To-day there are few landscapists, of any standing, of any school, who seem to have ignored its teaching. It has " the large note," and it is to Frederick Walker far more than directly to Millet that the later Victorian painters of nature and outdoor life owe so much. In " The Plough " one can see the kindred working of that spirit of deep religious sincerity (in the profound, not the conventional, sense) which animates Millet's " An- gelus," or dwells in so much of the painting and poetry of William Blake, or in the still landscape- pastorals and strange writings of Calvert, or in the spiritual intensity of the few but noble and unsur- passed painting-etchings of Samuel Palmer. It is only a picture of a labourer striding across the ploughed fallows while he drives the plough through the stiff-yielding soil; but the picture does not need the appended motto, " Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening " to arouse in the spectator the recognition of a certain nobly symbolical treatment, a Biblical solemnity, in this quiet scene, where nature is so serenely grand in her impassive way, and where one labouring man stands out as the type of all human effort. In 1872 Frederick Walker touched his high-water 94 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. mark. This was with, the now famous " Harbour of Refuge." In this noble picture it is not only the artist's genius that finds expression; the work is the consummation of that serene, that quiet, English genius which lives in our race still, but once was fuller and more widespread, the genius which gave us those old manor houses and ordered gardens " haunts of ancient peace," as Tennyson calls them ; which gave us Izaak Walton and Herrick, and " The Vicar " of Goldsmith, in our own day Wordsworth and Tennyson, the pictures of George Mason and Frederick Walker, and many of our loveliest treas- ures painted with the brush or written with the pen. So elemental are the emotions which animate " The Harbour of Refuge," so universal its symbolism, that in a sense the picture might be of any county and might certainly have the appeal of familiarity to Hollanders or Germans ; and yet no one could look upon it and fail to recognise it as essentially and un- mistakably English. The scene is the beautiful ancient garden or garden-close of an old manor, now changed into quaint and picturesque alms-houses, with an old chapel rising midway. A broad stone terrace runs forward from the left, upon which are two figures, a decrepit old woman bent with age and suffering, and a young woman, her daughter or granddaughter, tall, stalwart, yet touched with the strange melancholy which pervades the whole pic- ture, her fair face gravely meditative, with still eyes which seem heavy with dreams of what is to come for her too as well as for this feeble lonely old woman who totters by her side. In the middle- ground is an antique fountain surmounted with a broken statue, upon the circular marble seat at whose base sit several old parishioners and their visitors. PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 95 In the foreground to the right, a mower scythes the dewy grass. Over the whole scene is the double light of setting sun and rising moon a tender in- effable light, now of delicate rosy flame, now of soft flooding pale amber. The evening light and every natural detail are painted with extraordinary sym- pathy and beauty ; everything is in perfect harmony ; the deep and moving symbolism attributes a profound significance to its pictorial appeal; but it is perhaps above all in the figure of the mower that Frederick Walker's genius most triumphantly reveals itself. There is no obtrusion of any false symbolism. This bent, lithe, carefully studied, and exquisitely de- lineated figure is that of any stalwart young English gardener or field-labourer. True, as though ideal- istically realised by a sculptor, the mower is touched to a grace and austere beauty possible only in a per- fect moment. I doubt if there be in pictorial art a more perfect figure in its rhythmic strength. The slightly bent thighs and legs, the rounded side, the tense arms, the nervous grip of the muscular hands, the poise of the whole, the marvellous moment caught wherein motion is neither absolutely arrested nor yet proceeds here we have a master-work indeed. A few years ago in France I was in the studio of a great painter, and found him absorbed in a cartoon of a life-size figure of Walker's " Mower." It was an amazingly accurate and sympathetic rendering in crayons by a skilful young French painter who had come to England to spend a year or more in reaching the secret of a certain beauty he desired to attain. He happened to come upon " The Harbour of Refuge " soon after his arrival, and, finding here the ideal which he sought, contented himself with " an impassioned study " and copy after copy of the 96 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. " Mower," and returned, feeling that he had learned what he had hoped to learn, and that all else he might learn (however interesting or worth closest study and emulation) could be only superfluous for him. The great man to whom I allude had bought this cartoon from his young compatriot, and had found in it a realisation of something he had him- self dreamed of. " There," he said to me, " there you have a creator. Your countryman knew how to create. It is the rarest thing in art ; it is the highest art." One may recognise this mower in a hundred other mowers and peasants and ferrymen since, and not in painting only or in illustration, but in sculpture. He has become archetypal. The third quarter of the century ended in a mem- orable way. In 1872 George Mason died, and in the following year two hundred of his pictures were exhibited together in London; in 1875 Frederick Walker died, and in the same year a hundred and fifty of his most characteristic works were also shown together in London. With the death of these two painters, and with the representative exhibi- tion of their work in 1873 and 1875 one period of English art closes, and the latest Victorian period begins. But we have not yet equalled, still less ex- celled, what these two great English painters achieved. Abroad, Corot the greater George Mason of Erance, and Millet the greater Frederick Walker of France, also both died in 1875. Gustave, Cour- bet, Daubigny, and Diaz died within the next year or so. Fromentin, the last of the oriental plein- airists, died in 1876. In France, likewise, with the passing of the great artists of the Barbizon school, PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC ART. 97 the third quarter ended significantly. The new period has given us much, but it cannot be averred that it excels its predecessor, either in achievement or in influence, either in promise or in ideals. By a strange coincidence the greatest of modern Spanish painters, the one man who since Velasquez had raised his country's reputation in art, Fortuny, died about this time also (at th'e close of 18Y4). It is as though the spirit of art had drawn a long breath, looked to see what had been done by those who loved her most, and then, slowly withdrawing, bade her chief followers go to their rest, while she closed her eyes for that momentary oblivion which with her is time and change, and dreamed against her new awakening. 98 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEE VII. THE ANIMAL PAINTERS AND ANIMAL-LANDSCAPE PAINTEBS FBOM GEOEGE MORLAND TO LANDSEEB. LET us now return to the period which dovetails into the great epoch of Constable and Turner, though many of those who belong to it do so by accidental concurrence in time rather than by artistic affinity. Before Constable's death in 1837, and before that of Turner in 1851, were born many painters who ultimately achieved considerable reputation, and some who attained a good portion. Among them are artists who are at work to-day, as well as those who, as Sir John Millais, are gone from us. It is difficult to group these men, for nearly all in period overlap other periods to which in a chronological sense at least they belong ; many show the character- istics of more than one school; and many again display in their wort developments so marked that a man who was a romanticist or imaginative realist at one period (as Millais with, for example, his " Burning Leaves ") may be revealed as a literalist or imaginative realist at another '(as Millais with his "Chill October"). Again, there are men among us to-day who should be classed with Blake, Calvert, and Palmer, as in their day there were men who might be exhibitors at the New English Art Club or other representative show of the younger generation, though Indeed neither the " New English " nor the " Glasgow FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 99 School " now stands for the newest, so fast does one tidal wave rise as another recedes. Moreover, the old distinctions no longer obtain with even relative exactitude. Nature-painters are no longer neces- sarily landscapists, or landscapists in the sense that what else they paint is merely complementary. More and more, we may be sure, the world of nature and the world of man will be interpreted not as though the one were an invasion of the other or an imposition upon the other, or as though that other were an insentient and separate existence, but as in- dissolubly wedded companions. The first great note in this deep inward change in our conscious relation- ship to nature was struck by Francois Millet. It had been approached in some degree of depth and inten- sity before, and innumerously and variedly had been faintly preluded (it is impossible not to discern it in the work of some of the old masters, when " back- ground " deepened from ideal beauty into a new spiritual significance), but Millet worked the revo- lution in art. This conception of our unity with nature had been apprehended iby the poet and phi- losopher long before it entered into the life of art. It is inevitable, therefore, that in what is neces- sarily a purview rather than an analytical study of contemporary art we must be content to recognise that absolute continuity in narrative is impractica- ble. The life of art, like the life of which it is the coloured reflex, is not made up of smooth sequences: and any general record of one of its periods must perforce be fragmentary and inconclusive in parts in order to be approximately adequate in a main synthesis. When George Morland died in 1804 he left an ar- tistic tradition which had more influence than his i 100 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. paintings exercised during his short lifean in- fluence materially enhanced by the reproductions of his work, so admirable in its kind. It was vaguely understood that, though pigs and pig-styes, and even farmyard scenes and the rustic life grouped around farms, are not in themselves pictorially interesting, Morland was on the right track. Here was a man who painted nature, but with a method in approach and a manner in application as different as possible from the accepted Academic method and manner of Kichard Wilson. I do not think pigs were painted in England before Morland painted them: if they were, they were probably akin to the sheep of that day, strange woolly curiosities, " freaks " for the zoologist. But the tradition of Morland's natural- ism went far and sank deep. There was, it was seen, a nature to hand, a paintable commonplace reality worthy of selective art. In time, many who never saw, or, seeing, cared little for the art of George Morland, owed him more than they guessed. In his humble way, he was the pioneer of that homely, that farmyard school of painting, which, in the sphere of Landscape Painting, is what " do- mestic art" is in the sphere of Subject Painting. It is from him we date, however indirectly, the rise of that animal painting, for its own sake, which be- gan so well with James Ward, and with Herring, that admirable painter or rather portraitist of horses, and was carried so far almost at the start by three men born just as Morland died, Francis Grant in Scotland and his more famous colleague Edwin Landseer, and the late Sidney Cooper. What is significant in the work of Landseer and Sidney Cooper is the union of the qualities of land- scape-painting and animal-painting. That they by FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 101 no means go together is evident, and even in much of the best work of the Dutch painters in this genre we find that the background is generally fanciful and secondary. This new kind of painting was to find a most important and delightful development in Europe, and notably in France and Holland. What Landseer and Cooper did well, some kindred animal-landscapists in England (as Mark Fisher an Englishman by naturalisation only, for he is an American by birth) and still more in Holland (as Van Marcke and Anton Mauve) did better, and in France was brought to its highest in popularity in the able work of Rosa Bonheur and to its highest in art in the unsurpassed work of Troyon. Edwin Landseer came of an artistic Lincoln family. John Landseer, A.R.A. a remarkable man, whose long life covered much of the latter half of the eighteenth century (he was in his fortieth year in 1800) and the whole of the first half of the nineteenth was one of the ablest of English en- gravers, and it is significant that he won his repute by his series of engravings of animals after Snyders, Rembrandt, Rubens, and other masters. He had three sons who each attained a good position in the art-world and one of whom achieved fame. Thomas Landseer, his eldest son and pupil, died in 1880, within a decade of the patriarchal age of his father. No wonder that Sidney Cooper used to de- clare, when he was close on a hundred years old, that there was nothing like a life given over to quiet nature and kindly cattle remembering as he did that his friends James Ward, John Land- seer (besides his three sons, who lived respectively to eighty -three, eighty, and seventy -one), and John Linnell were nonagenarians. (Kosa Bon- 102 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. heur, it may be added here, died in 1899 in Her seventy-seventh year.) Although Thomas Landseer (whose son, George Landseer, a portraitist and land- scapist, died in 1878) was known as an engraver, hs was also an able draughtsman and painted several good pictures, notably the "Deluge of Kain" and " Lion Hunting." His best work is in his render- ing of certain famous pictures by his brother Edwin, particularly the two celebrated stag pictures, " The Challenge" and "The Sanctuary" and the fine " Peace " (the most popular picture in England after the long agony of the Crimean war) ; as also in his reproduction of Rosa Bonheur's magnificent " Denizens of the Forest." Charles Landseer, the second son, was a pre- cocious and able painter, whose genius, however, was not equal to that of his brothers and father, though (excepting Edwin) he was much better known to the public than they were, and became a Royal Acade- mician. Although he exhibited some good animal- pictures, such as his excellent " Bloodhound and Pups," he wisely chose another genre from that where he was so overwhelmingly surpassed by his younger brother, so that for the most part his con- tributions to the Royal Academy and elsewhere comprised historical or domestic subjects. From childhood John Landseer's third son showed unmistakable talent. From the first, too, he showed that love of nature and sympathetic love of animals which found life-long expression in his work. Ed- win Landseer, indeed, was one of the most precocious artists of whom we have record; to-day the visitor to the South Kensington Museum may see amaz- ingly clever drawings of his which were done when he was a child, done between the age of five and ten. FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 103 He was only fourteen when he entered as a student in the Royal Academy schools, when, concurrently, he had not only painted, but was exhibiting finished pictures in public collections both in London and the provinces. When the lad of sixteen painted a suc- cessful picture of " Fighting Dogs," the veteran engraver, who was his father, reproduced it, an un- usual tribute, indeed. When he was only eighteen Edwin painted a picture which achieved a wide reputation, and is still (in his father's engraving) immensely popular, " The Dogs of St. Gothard dis- covering a Traveller in the Snow." Thus before he was twenty Edwin Landseer was not only an accepted but a popular painter. He lived till he was over seventy, and in every year saw his reputation grow till it became fame unequalled by that of any British artist until Mr. Ruskin arose and preached the gospel of Turner though even then, and till his death, Landseer never ceased to hold the first place in the popular esteem. In the year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Acad- emy (1826, when he was four and twenty) he went to the Highlands of Scotland, a visit which proved to be one of the dominating influences, perhaps the dominant influence, in his career. In the scenery and natural life of the Scottish Highlands he not only found his metier, as Rosa Bonheur found hers in the horse fairs of Normandy and the forest life' and scenery of Eontainebleau, but was at once in- fluenced (as though his susceptible nature responded forthwith to the ruder and grander conditions of mountain life and mountain scenery) in his art, which from that time became more robust, more true to nature, broader in handling, more vivid in a word both in conception and execution. How well known 104 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. now are these early deer-pictures of his. . . . " The Sanctuary," " Children of the Mist/ 7 " The Return from Deer-Stalking/' and others which, as " The Challenge," will be recalled by most readers. " Peace " and " War," and other immediately cele- brated pictures succeeded owing part of their unparalleled vogue to their timeliness in theme and when in 1850 Landseer was knighted there was a universal satisfaction corresponding in kind to that shown when Millais was made a baronet, but greater, and almost as deep as the national self -approval (for in England it is not yet understood that certain " honours " should never be conferred upon, or should be ignored by, great writers and great artists in any kind) when it was announced that Alfred Tennyson was thenceforth to be Lord Tennyson. With his ever-growing popularity Landseer fre- quently transgressed a cardinal law in art, which is " let each man keep to his own way, and seek no other way." He was not at his best as a figure- painter, or, at least, not in figure-pieces for often he drew a single central figure with surprising ex- cellence; and when he began to exhibit ambitious work such as " Wellington revisiting Waterloo," where the subject had invited the painter, and not the painter the subject, many of his admirers feared that he would forfeit the supreme place he had won. He did not do this, in the general esteem ; but artists and students of art knew that he had allowed the wish to please to dominate the desire to do well only that which he was most fit to do. Far better in all respects is work done in a more congenial spirit, such as his " Sleeping Bloodhound," the delightful " Dignity and Impudence," " Low Life and High Life," and other animal pictures. These and FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 105 " Shoeing the Bay Mare " are now in the National Gallery, and visitors to London may also see at South Kensington sixteen of Landseer's most char- acteristic pictures, including the universally popular "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner." Popular- ity, in Landseer's case as otherwise, was sometimes a right and sometimes a wrong test ; right when it saw a masterpiece in " Rent Day in the Wilderness," wrong when (for other than artistic pleasure) it acclaimed the picture representing " Queen Victoria meeting the Prince Consort on his return from Deer- Stalking." In the enormous mass of Landseer's work it is not easy to select what are admittedly his finest pictures. But ais each lover of his work can judge only according to his own standards, I may say for myself that I rank foremost his magnificent " Swannery invaded by Eagles," painted in 1869, " The Children of the Mist," and perhaps there- after his " Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner." The first named I consider one of the finest pictures of its kind painted in the Victorian epoch, equalling, if not surpassing, the most splendid Flemish master- pieces in the same genre. When I think of it I re- call the words of a great painter of a very different order of genius : " I don't care for Landseer's pic- tures, but the ' Swannery invaded by Eagles ' is a great picture in every sense of the word, it's what I could call a royal picture in its kind 1 :" Of the third named Ruskin says in Modern Painters: "It is one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen." It is not to be supposed that if Ruskin had rewritten this in a more mature period he would have made so unqualified a statement, but that in effect he would abide by his high eulogium is also 106 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. not to be doubted. Alas, that synonymity of poems and pictures of Ruskin's! It has been the undoing of many minds who might have ripened to clear and sane judgment in art ! Poems are not pictures, nor are pictures poems, and never have been and never can be, however " pictorial " verse may be or how- ever " poetical " a picture may be. Landseer was so extraordinarily able a painter, so deft in his craft, and has so strong a hold because of his keenly interpretative sympathies with what most of us love, that we are apt to overlook one supremely essential point: is he a great painter ... is he primarily a painter? Pictorial art recognises two main divisions : the artists who are primarily colour- ists and painters; and the artists who are not colour- ists. To put it another way there are the artists to whom painting as such is the essential and funda- mental end to whom colour is the inevitable lan- guage, and artists to whom painting as such is not the primary motive or end, and to whom colour is not an inevitable language. Applied truly, it is a supreme test. It is not only the great ones who emerge. With Tintoretto, with Titian and Gior- gione, with Rembrandt and Claude and Turner, are many all but unknown men, painters of rare dis- tinction to whom " colour " was the breath of life, at once their inspiration and their ideal. A painter like Edward Calvert, whose name even is unknown to the present generation, who was born about the same time as Edwin Landseer, is more truly a painter than his famous contemporary. For Calvert there was only one language, colour. Again, can it be seriously set forward that Edwin Landseer is a greater painter than George Mason, who died in the same year as he, or than Frederick Walker, whose FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 1QT posthumous representative exhibition concurred in 1875 with his own? As a colourist, Landseer does not take anything like the rank to which his contemporaries considered him entitled. That he painted well, and often beau- tifully, is not to be denied. But he was not a colour- ist, in the distinctive sense of the word as applied to those whose work charms us by its painting first and foremost. To be a great colourist is to be a great creator, for colour is an ever new language of genius. Even the greatest painter, however, has to learn in colour ; it may be a gift, but, like the gift of song, it must be cultivated and with patience, love, and devo- tion. Titian himself said, after long experience, " he who desires to be a great painter must learn to rule the black, and red, and white " that is, he must patiently perfect himself in the alphabet of colour before he attempts to express that which can be ex- pressed aright only by a master-linguist, a master in the language of colour. To-day there is no question but that Landseer ranks below his famous rival Rosa Bonheur, as she in turn ranks below the greatest of animal-and-landscape painters, Constant Troyon. He has his own place in art, but it is one gained by compositional, pictorial, illustrative, and sympathetic qualities rather than by the supreme quality of colour. In his drawings and other work in black and white he shows what a bril- liant talent he did unquestionably possess, and how great a man he would have become had he been natu- rally a colourist as well as a superbly successful picture-maker, to use a homely but just and honour- able term, for I use it in the true sense. In England, or in London at least, Landseer is best known to the man in the crowd by his celebrated 108 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. four gigantic sculptured lions at the base of Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square. But Landseer was not a great sculptor or even a notable sculptor, and to judge from his known handiwork we cannot im- agine that he would ever have achieved anything be- yond the mediocre. Of the predecessors and contemporaries of Land- seer by far the greatest is George Morland, of whom I have already spoken. This notable painter reaches, at his best, a place to which Landseer never attained, for the more famous painter was without " atmosphere," which is to art, pictorial or literary, what fragrance is to a flower, what expression is to womanly beauty. In Morland's best work we find " atmosphere " to an extent which makes his most uninteresting themes fascinating to us, and this is his triumph. " Roadside inns, boors and beer, horses and pigs and pig-styes, that's all you'll find in George Morland," wrote a contemporary, oblivious of the inference that in his sneer against one who was not " a professor of High Art " he condemned almost the whole of the great plein-air art of the Dutch and the Flemish, and ignoring or rather ignorant of the fact that in speak- ing of the accident of subject he spoke as one who should say that because Robert Burns wore moleskin breeches or Walter Scott rough homespun clothes they were commonplace and unattractive persons. If Sir Edwin Landseer had restricted himself to familiar English themes, it is doubtful if his fame would so soon or so greatly have temporarily eclipsed that of Morland : but we all love what is new, particularly if it be picturesque or romantic. And in addition to what Landseer found awaiting him in the life and scenery of the Scottish Highlands, it must be re- FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. 109 membered that no small part of the vogue of his pic- tures of mountain and moor came from the immense and still unsatisfied curiosity and interest in every- thing Scottish aroused by the genius of Walter Scott and in a different way by the then half wondering, half resentful public feeling as to the Queen's known preference for residence in the North. Stubbs and Herring and other able painters of animals, particularly horses, earned a deserved repu- tation in their day, and amateurs still gladly acquire a " Horse Head " or " Bay and Grey " by Herring. Landseer's most famous predecessor, however, was James Ward. Although born in the middle period of the eighteenth century James Ward lived till well after the actual middle of the nineteenth, and so saw every phase and vogue of art from Gainsborough to the " Pre-Kaphaelites." But George Stubbs is the true father of this genre in England. Born some sixty years before James Ward, he led a casual and fairly successful " journeyman-artist " career till after he had visited Italy, when he settled in Lincoln- shire and devoted himself to endless studies and portraits of horses, farm-scenes, hunting-scenes, and so forth. When in 1766, just three years before James Ward was born, he published his series of drawings called " The Anatomy of the Horse " he was at once recognised as facile princeps in this genre, and thenceforth had as many commissions as he could accept. A picture of his, called " Whistle- jacket" (after a celebrated stallion which it repre- sented), in the Fitzwilliam Collection, set the fashion, which has long been so familiar, of horse- paintings without background. There is only one picture of his in the National Gallery (" Landscape: with a gentleman holding his horse." No. 1452), 110 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. and that is not one of his best, though the painting of both the horse and the greyhound is admirable in verisimilitude. James Ward was thirty-five when George Stubbs died early in the nineteenth century, and was un- questionably much influenced by Stubbs 7 work in his choice of a particular department in art, though a more direct influence was that of his brother-in-law, George Morland. At first, however, he was an en- graver and then a painter in Morland's manner, and it was not till later (and through an accidental con- nection with the Royal Agricultural Society) that he decided to become an animal-painter. He studied the work of Stubbs and others, and at first-hand, and in a brief while became acknowledged as not only Stubbs' successor but as the chief animal- painter whom England had produced. His really notable period was from 1816 till about 1825, which he began with his famous " Lioness " ; and in this period what he achieved was so fine that there is no disproportion in the criticism which claimed for him that he was the Snyders of England. His famous " Alderney Bull " is one of the treasures of the Na- tional Gallery, and his prolific work is scattered throughout almost every big collection in the country. He painted much else besides horses and cattle, though rich squires were always demanding his pictorial services to commemorate a favourite stallion or bull : as one of his biographers has it " lions, snakes, cats, swine, oxen, cows, sheep, swans, fowls, and frogs are familiar personages in his pictures." But justly celebrated, as James Ward is, much of his work is inferior, and no small part of it worthless. For the last quarter of a century of his long life he ceased to be a naturist and became merely a picturist, FROM GEORGE MORLAND TO LANDSEER. HI content to let the purchaser obtain just what he would like to see painted and fancied to be art, and, later, content to let go from his studio what all but the most ignorant patrons must have known to be feeble simulacra of what he had formerly done. Never- theless, Ward's influence has been very considerable, and to-day he, rather than Landseer, is recognised as the true predecessor of those later Victorian painters who have still further popularised animal-pictures. Paul Potter, Snyders, Troyon, and Rosa Bonheur must always rank above Landseer, great as he is (and if Landseer be judged, as we judge James Ward, by a single supreme decade, or say by a score of his chief works, then he stands among really great artists) and for this reason, that they paint truly. Truth does not lie in external representation only, but in veracity of feeling, also in emotional congruity. Neither Potter nor Snyders dreamed of adding a sentimental interest to what they depicted with all the brilliant and satisfying talent they possessed: Troyon, who understood nature as none of the old landscapists understood, never fell into the pathetic fallacy: Rosa Bonheur, even, though tempted by the immense vogue of Landseer and still more by the current of opinion prevalent in her day or in a con- siderable part of it, refrained from what in Land- seer was always a tendency, became a weakness, and ended in a vice. Snyders himself never painted anything finer than Landseer achieved in his best period (say 1840 to 1850) when he painted pictures such as " The Otter Hunt " and others already named; and Troyon himself, had he painted the north, might have been pleased to acknowledge the " Lost Sheep." But in the main two great charac- teristics are obvious in Landseer's art. First there 112 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. is a domesticity of sentiment, which obtains alike in the drawing-room spaniel and in the fierce stags and wild cattle of the hills, even, indeed, in his lions his pictorial lions as well as those sculptured digni- taries in Trafalgar Square, which, when decorated on a recent national festival were critically examined by the crowd and pronounced to be like dear old ladies in frills pretending to be grim. This tame- ness or gentleness (a reflex of the sweet and gentle and lovable nature of the artist himself, and so not easy to condemn) is a weakness which already tells against his work, and must tell more and more, for it is only truth that survives. But what is relatively a minor fault in the first characteristic becomes a serious fault in the second. This is a frequent, later, all but a continual, and finally disastrous abuse of what is known as the pathetic fallacy, the humanisation of animal life and nature. The sentiment in many pictures of Landseer's which show a stag or a sheep or a dog in some kind of distress is a purely arbitrary and imposed sentiment. The result is that the deer or sheep or dog is not an animal in nature, but an animal-remembrance coloured by temperament and shaped to please a personal idiosyncrasy and a public vogue. We may be attracted at first, but in the long run are not convinced, and then are more or less disillusioned. Rosa Bonheur's wild boars and Fontainebleau stags are as free from " cosmic pathos and regret " as are her robust Normandy stallions or droves of acorn- hunting swine, THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 113 CHAPTER VIII. THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. IT is this undue, this unreal use of what some people call " a new deep meaning/' but which those who understand what art means would not dream of so calling, which is the paramount fault in the work, particularly the later work, of Landseer. There is a radical tendency in the English art-world to value and certainly to care above all else for the work of the literary painter. Let a man tell a story well in illustration, or be obviously dramatic or humorous or fantastic, and he will be popular. It is the episode told or suggested in a graphic way which pleases the crowd. This native tendency which merely indicates untrained appreciation, the indiffer- ence of ignorance was flattered and enhanced by the influence of so enormously popular an artist as Sir Edwin Landseer. The painters who have been most popular since are those who are story-tellers or painter-illustrators literary painters, in a word ; as, for example, Mr. Marcus Stone with his pictur- esquely unreal or fatally pretty love-scenes, or Mr. Luke Fildes with his stronger but still paramountly episodic themes, Mr. Arthur Hacker, Mr. Solomon, and a score others as well known whose work always suggests the amazingly clever effort of a literary man to express in paint his romance, poem, religious reverie, or seasonable meditation. There are other artists again who occupy the frontiers; that is, who PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. are literary painters, in so far that the story-telling instinct is a dominant factor in their work, but who have in them much of the genuine painter so that we are often able to enjoy what they do simply as art, irre- spective of the literary interest of the picture. In this genre the late Mr. Pettie stood pre-eminent : perhaps the best representative to-day is the popular Acade- mician, the American painter, Mr. George H. Bough- ton. To go the round of the walls at the Royal Academy any year is to visit a huge repository of fragmentary stories and romances, historical nar- ratives, lyrics, pastorals, interrupted epics, jokes amusing and jokes feeble, unhappy portraits of men and unreal portraits of women (at one in a common insincerity) in a word, an immense collection of available illustrative material. Of course, on the other hand, this question of subject is only a relative one. Every painter has a subject, for who has the nonchalance (to say nothing of the inherent genius for colour) of Turner when he expressed himself just as pleased to have his picture hung upside down ! Nor is it a drawback to tell a story in a picture. In a sense every picture tells a story. Every depicted object, as every word, is a symbol, and a symbol is, fundamentally, that which newly reveals. Rem- brandt when he painted his famous "Sortie of the Town Guard" (wrongly called "The Night Watch"), Millet when he painted " The Angelus," Meissonier when he painted " 1815," Orchardson when he painted " Napoleon on the Bellerophon," Watts when he painted " Love and Death," were each paint- ing a subject-picture, telling an extraneous fact or expressing an emotion or deep thought. But with these painters, with the exception perhaps of Mr. Watts (a great master, and the head of all modern THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 115 literary painters, but great as a painter only by a genius so handicapped that it is very doubtful if posterity will rank him among the elect, among the company of those master-painters who so loved and understood their art that always they thought first of it and not first of teaching a lesson or propounding a faith) with these painters, as with all who are painters first and foremost, the story is merely ac- cidental. When we have apprehended the externals, we think no more of them : it is the design, the com- position, the art, the beauty, the unified expression of wedded form and colour, which hold us enchanted. !No great artist ever paints a picture merely to tell a story, any more than a great musician ever attempts to compose in music a literary essay. A picture can be a revealed narrative, as music can convey through sound the suggestion of colour, action, and emotion; but a painted moment is not narrative, which is fluent and multifarious (words being as inseparable parts of water in a flowing stream), and a sonata is not a description of moonlight nor a nocturne a description of falling rain, though Beethoven could in the one translate the poetic emotion of moonlight into a kindred emotion in music, and though Chopin in the other could render in musical utterance the sound, the melancholy, the weariness, or strange quietude of that which neither the poet nor the painter himself could do more than vaguely suggest. It is the lesser men who are eager to " describe " the moonlight and " imitate " the falling rain. Art is a jealous deity; her ministers must be as humble before her unvarying laws as proud in their steadfast devotion. Thus it is that there is one great division in the genre of Subject-Pictures; that of subjects upon 116 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. which the painter has worked as upon a basis (as the most spiritual music must rest on a basis of mechanical skill and technical detail), and that of subjects which remain subjects and no more, because primarily and finally only illustrative. We see this double tendency, of which I have spoken in connection with the art of Landseer, in some of his ablest followers. An exceedingly clever 'Academician, the late Stacy Marks, for many years delighted an enthusiastic public with his animal-pic- tures, and particularly his bird-subjects. These were the more admired because of their amusing humanisation. People delighted in this solemn Secretary Bird, because of its look of official blank- ness, its resemblance to so-and-so; or in that group of storks, because here was a pictorial equivalent of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures"; or in these solemnly obtuse penguins, for their obvious likeness to what the author of the "Bab Ballads" calls serious and inane people; or in those meditative cockatoos for the very human expression in their eyes and general physiognomy, familiar scandal- mongers. It is true that Marks always painted with skill and with knowledge, and it is also true that cer- tain domesticated beasts and birds do have at times a singularly human way with them; but even after this allowance it must be admitted that he, like Land- seer, fell into a mannerism of error, and perpetrated in seriousness what should have been at most an oc- casional diversion. Thus it came about that Stacy Marks, who might have become an animal painter of very high rank, grew more and more indifferent to real idiosyncrasy and physiognomy in the individual and to real characteristics and conditions in the species, with the result that his later pictures reveal THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 117 little beyond a skilful use of knowledge long since acquired but allowed to become sterile through mis- application and perversion. The most distinguished of Landseer's followers (followers as distinct from successors for Mr. J. M. Swan, perhaps the finest animal-painter of any country, is, though of course a successor, in no sense a follower of Landseer) is Mr. Briton Riviere, the popular Academician whose chief pictures are uni- versally known through reproduction. Mr. Briton Riviere is a rather puzzling personality in art. His work reveals several dominating in- fluences, not generally congruous; possibly the an- cestral French strain in him had much to do with the development of his peculiar and exceptional talents. He is not to be studied in one phase only, or even in the two main directions where he is so well known, the first of which was revealed in 1871 (by which time he was thirty-one), when he compelled general attention by his noble painting of Circe and the companions of Ulysses, when, changed into swine, they have surrounded the enchantress to whose wiles they have fallen victim. Briton Riviere's reputa- tion was now made, and thenceforth his success was assured. His ^ubsequent pictures belong to three divisions : those like the Circe, where an imaginative theme is imaginatively treated, with poetic insight and atmosphere and individuality ; those, like his second success, "The Prophet Daniel," where the theme and the animal-painting are in equal propor- tion ; and those where he enters into competition with Landseer in the familiar genre of the domestic and the pleasingly sentimental. Popular as he is in this last kind, it is not here we must look for the man of genius. Yet how excellent in kind are some of these 118 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. pictures, as the inimitable " Sympathy," where a little girl sits disconsolately on a step and is comforted by the friendly dog who, realising the fact if not the cause of her despondency (she has lost the door-key and so is shut out), endeavours, head on her shoulder, to give all the solace that sympathy can. But Briton Kiviere is much more truly himself when he paints a masterpiece such as " Nimrod," a noble imagina- tive presentment of a classic oriental scene. We see the " Mighty Hunter before the Lord " returning by moonlight from one of -his great forays ; and in the silent vastness of the Assyrian desert lie the slain and mortally wounded victims of that " Relentless bow that never shot in vain, That spear that rested not till all were slain." It is in the solemn beauty of this nocturnal picture, however, that the eye most delights. Vast space, perspicuous shadow, luminous moonlight, immense distance of sky and horizon, with something that is grand in emotion and finely grandiose in sentiment) combine to give an unforgettable impression. Ex- cept when he is painting moonlight and the effects of moonlight (where he is unsurpassed) he is not a great colourist sometimes, indeed, tjis colouring is poor and conventional and the charm of his best work is largely in noble design, in formal beauty, in poetic conception, in occasional masterly execu* tion, rather than in colour. This, however, cannot be adduced against the " St. George," the " Mmrod," or his masterpiece in its peculiar kind, I believe a masterpiece unsurpassed by any modern artist the noble and impressive " Persepolis." This celebrated picture is now in America, where^ as " Syria: the Night Watch " it hangs in the beau* THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 119 tif ul collection of Mr. W. T. Walters of Baltimore the finest though not the largest private collection in the United States. It depicts on a large canvas the moonlit ruins of a vast city, that royal city of Persepolis which ages ago was one of the proudest and most populous cities in the world. We see it still in its majesty, though its mighty temples and palaces are frequented only by the wandering wind, the prowling hyena, the lions and lionesses of the des- ert who make their lair among halls where queens feasted and where kings and great princes assembled from all parts of the world. There is no picture in ex- istence so flooded with moonlight. It is bathed in the moonshine, the light is fluent round every pillar and cornice and deserted stair, everywhere the ancient marble wears the bloom of this glorious moonflood. The men who dreamed of and built those lordly palaces and temples, the countless generations who rejoiced in their splendour, the kings who dwelled in them, are no more, less than the idle dust of the desert in whose depths all are buried; only the solitary magnificence of those temples remains. Upon the vast terraces whose solemn silence becomes almost op- pressive to everyone who feels the still enchantment of this pictured fallen glory, prowl three lions. So absolute is the illusion of reality that in the over- whelming stillness one almost expects to hear the soft tread, the quick fierce breath of these savage-eyed lords of Persepolis. The foremost lion looks desert- ward, and the moonshine fills his eyes with a terrible flame. Another crouches, with uplifted head, as though glaring at some crane or owl which has flown screaming overhead. It is a wonderful presentment of life and death ; the passage of human glory, the death of a nation from king to the last barefoot 120 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. nomad, the fall of glory and magnificence; the poignant savage life of nature, the eternal elemental life of wind and sun and moon. " Persepolis " stands as unique in modern painting as, in literature, the unsurpassable lines of Fitzgerald's rendering of Omar Khayyam, which, through the other means of another art, convey a kindred profound impres- sion : " They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep : And Bahrain, that great hunter . . . the wild ass Stamps o'er his head but cannot break his sleep." There are, however, few animal-painters of the imaginative intellectualism of Briton Riviere; in- deed, as must be evident, this artist is to be grouped among the animal-painters more by virtue of a bril- liant accident than because he has set himself to de- pict animal life as James Ward depicted it, as Landseer depicted it, as Barye modelled it, as, to-day, John Swan both models and depicts it. Mr. Swan is one of the foremost living colourists. This is his foremost claim to our admiration. To this he adds other high qualifications; he is an ac- complished draughtsman, an able and original " maker " (in the sense of design, of composition), and as much as and perhaps more than any other painter of to-day he has the selective instinct and the power to act by it that instinct and power without which even the greatest faculties must fall far short of their possibilities. To know what to do is all important, but to know what not to do, what to omit, is also all important. " Paint what you see," said Edward Calvert that most delicate and purely ar- tistic of English artists " Paint what you see; but THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 121 know what you see." This goes to the root of art. The secret of failure is in painting or writing about what one does not see, does not feel, does not know. In all the work of John M. Swan who is now in his prime there is the same dominating instinct for rich and deep colour. One feels this as much in those pictures which show white polar hears in the green seas of the Arctic as in his leopards in the jungle, his tigers among the reeds, his fierce lioness emerging from her cave at sundown, his mysteries of twilight, his Prodigal Son in his vast desert-solitude among his gaunt and perishing swine. It is not the subject that inspires Mr. Swan, but he who inspires the subject. This is the secret of his genius, and of the enchantment of his work ; as of all genius, and of every enchantment of flowing line, ordered colour, animated word, vibrant chord. Of the several able animal-painters of to-day and considering the love of animals, especially of horses, in England, it is surprising not that we have several but so few * I may select one or two. !Nbne of these, however, with the exception of Mr. ITettleship, are distinctively animal-painters ; that is, they paint animals exceptionally well, but are rather landscapists who lay stress upon the cattle and horses which occupy the foreground, who are known for their remarkable ability in this direction, and so in a sense may be thus grouped. Mr. Nettleship is not a great painter like Mr. Swan, nor has he a like technical mastery in other respects. His design has nothing of the inevitableness, his composition little of the dramatic reserve and intensity, his draughts- manship little of the knowledgeable and flawless * There are several admirable draughtsmen in black and white, as Mr. John Charlton. 122 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. symmetry, which characterise the work of his greater comrade in this fine genre. On the other hand, Mr. Nettleship, no longer a young man, has steadily improved his technique long after the nominally formative years were left behind, and to-day his work is simpler and stronger than it was a few years ago, as that in turn was an advance upon the feebly drawn, unconvincing and too melodramatic pictures which he used to exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery. The man who seems nearest to Mr. Swan, both as a painter and in all technical mastery, and in his knowledge of and power to depict animal life, with a pictorial imagination as keen and a poetic imagi- nation much more developed, is Mr. Arthur Lemon. Mr. Lemon's work is highly valued by a small public, but it has not anything like the vogue of Mr. Swan's a vogue, however, which came late, and not till the painter's reputation Itad been won in Brussels and in Paris, and even now is only a very relative vogue, and partly due to his election to the Acad- emy as an Associate, for to the general public the beautiful (as distinct from what is pretty) in colour is as remote as the beautiful in words or music, in sculpture or architecture. Mr. Arthur Lemon is of th'ose who are difficult to classify. He is a land- scapist by virtue of the insight and beauty of the land- scapes he paints, generally in a style nobly austere, as sober in tone as those of the Italian painter Costa who influenced him during the young English painter's long residence in Italy, but with an im- aginative richness in this sobriety more suggestive of Mr. Swan, and an atmosphere, an emotional inten- sity that is Mr. Lemon's own. Nor is there any living painter who has a more dramatic imagination. There are scores who are more dramatic in visible THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 123 narration, who give you the slain tyrant, or the hunted prince, or the murdered lover, or the pon- iarded rival, or the discovered liaison, or the inter- rupted elopement, or the foiled enterprise. But these are melodramatists for the most part; for the rest, it must he remembered that the dramatic im- agination of the artist in line and colour and that of the artist in words are not identical. Mr. Lemon is not one of those narrative-painters who for so long filled the exhibitions in London and New York, and still in numbers excel those whose object is not to enter into pictorial rivalry with the novelist or dram- atist. His dramatic imaginativeness is a painter's, though he has the imagination of a poet and dreamer behind his art. Therefore it does not matter whether he paints a scene from actual or imagined human-life, or from that mythical cosmic life in which he delights, where the half-human centaur be- comes not a legendary creature but a living being, kindred to us but with passions and emotions greater than ours in their intensity if less than ours in their complexity and range. Who, having seen them, can have forgotten those combats on twilit shores, upon wild hillsides where daylight on the slopes meets the dusk of the woods, those conflicts of fierce and passionate creatures of the wilderness and re- mote forgotten wilds ? It is Mr. Lemon's distinction that in these centaur-pictures he has given us some- thing that in art we have all but lost, that elemental imaginativeness in face of the elemental forces of nature which inspired all early nations from the Greeks to the migratory Celtic peoples. " All tra- ditions come to London to die," says one of the subtlest writers of to-day, u as all traditions come to Athens to find birth"; and it seems as though the 124: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. last utterance of the old elemental paganism were to be discerned, not in the classic subjects of Mr. Waterhouse and other idyllists on ancient themes, but in those small, gravely intense, deeply and richly coloured, austere paintings of the tragic loves and hates of creatures whom men of old believed in as their strange fellows in an incomprehensible mortal destiny. But here again it is of course not the sub- ject which holds the spell. A hundred painters might depict centaurs and ancient mythical life, and for all the latent poetry and romantic suggestion of their theme fail to convince or even to charm. It is because Mr. Lemon is a landscapist, who has studied long and deeply, and loved nature intimately, that he has made his tragic scenery real to us; and be- cause he has long and deeply studied the anatomy and motion of horses, and of horsemen and muleteers and field-labourers, that he has made his centaurs real to us. How little the accident of subject ob- tains is evident when we look at his other work, his quiet Tuscan or Sussex pastoralists, where great oxen move slowly along white roads or brown fur- rows or in green Kentish meadows cattle browse or horses " at grass " swish their long tails or nibble at the young undergrowth of oak or beech. Among those who should be mentioned with Mr. Arthur Lemon are many of the younger men of the later "movements" as well as some who belong by years at least to an earlier period. Of the latter I must not omit to mention Mr. Mark Fisher. With" some justice Mr. Fisher has been called the Van Marcke of England, for he too depicts nature and animal-life with that broad and virile handling which distinguishes the Dutch master. True, Mr. Fisher is English only by adoption and by a mature life THE SUBJECT PAINTERS. 125 spent in this country, for though of British parentage he was born in Massachusetts, and had his initial training in art in Boston. While still a youth he studied under the foremost American landscapistj George Inness ; but whether the method and manner of that unequal and uncontrolled master, or his own strong bent towards a more convincing realism, dis- suaded him, I do not know; but he left Inness and America also, and went to Europe a pilgrim seeking " to find himself." Apparently he did not do so, and returned to America; but after his settlement in Boston he began to paint in that strong if some- what coarse style which has since developed into so virile and controlled a realism. He had no " name," however, so that despite the support of a few admirers he found himself unable to make a living. He came to England, and settled in London where his work was at once appreciated at its true value, and since then he has lived in the metropolis and attained so wide a reputation that there are few good collections of contemporary work which do not include at least one example of his brush. He is of course primarily a landscapist, and is classed here only because of his felicitous treatment of ani- mals and especially of cattle. Of the younger English painters from whom I should select one as representative none more truly understands the pictorial use of oxen and labouring horses than Mr. Arthur Tomson, a painter of pas- toral and idyllic landscape of high quality. His brown horses ploughing the sloping fields of the Sus- sex downs or his great black oxen toiling along the thick furrows in the grainlands of Wessex are among the few largely treated pictures of their kind which the younger men are now painting. 126 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. There is, obviously, genre within genre in animal- painting. What Mr. Swan and Mr. Nettleship do with lions and leopards, and Mr. Arthur Lemon with horses, Mr. Mark Fisher with cows in the meadows, and Mr. Arthur Tomson with his favourite black oxen, others try to do with race horses and hunting horses, with hounds, dogs, and cats the last having their special painter in Mrs. Chance, the " Henri- ette Konner " of England. Among the most recent newcomers mention may be made of Miss Kemp- Welch, whose vivid and able, though as yet only promising studies of wild ponies in the New Forest have early won for her a considerable reputation. THE SUBJECT PAINTERS (NATURISTS). 127 CHAPTEK IX. THE SUBJECT-PAINTERS (tfATURISTS), " STILL-LIFE ** AND EUSTIC ART. IT is a natural transition from this group of paint- ers to those who are of the large number classifiable as naturists of the later kind; that is, men who have learned from Constable and Cox and Turner what may be achieved and from painters so able as John Linnell and Mr. Leader what should not be attempted, and, influenced on all sides by the cur- rents of ideas which have eddied incessantly and widely since that deep disturbing of the Fount at Barbizon, have each in his own way sought to ex- press individual vision beautifully. But it would be impracticable here to go into detail on so compre- hensive, on so endless, a theme. A volume devoted to the subject would still leave many names unmen- tioned, and even among those noted a sudden de- velopment or other change might at any time completely alter the basis of judgment. Some of the truest exponents of natural beauty have already been mentioned in these pages, as Mr. Peppercorn and Mr. Aumonier ; others, such as Mr. Walton, Mr. Lavery, Mr. Paterson, and Mr. Macaulay Stevenson, are among the band of brilliant young painters who in their own country and abroad are winning the high- est consideration for Scottish art at the close of the nineteenth century; and others, again, such as Mr. Brabazon, Mr. Theodore Koussel, Mr. Francis 128 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. James, belong to the Impressionist group. It would be a pleasure to speak in detail of the delicate and refined art which has been the natural outcome of the influence of Mason and Walker, but I must be content with mention of two names only, Mr. Fulley- love and Mr. Matthew Hale. Nor need I now, as originally intended, devote a chapter to that particular school of the nature-paint- ers who may be classified as the miniature-painters of nature, and the painters of Still-Life, what the French call " ijSTature-morte." Much beautiful work has been accomplished by the artists of this group, but on the whole it is not an important one in English Art, though two members of it have brought about a small revolution in illustrative art, Ran- dolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway. The school is headed by William Hunt, who in the first half of the century stood alone as a delin- eator of nature in detail, and as a still-life painter has not yet been surpassed. When in his seventy-fifth year he died in 1864 it was recognised that, however humble a place he might occupy, William Henry Hunt had no rival. A pupil of John Varley and one of the early members of the Society of Painters in Water Colours his best work, in quality as well as in quantity, is in water-colour. His ideal was to paint the homeliest subjects in the simplest way a bird's nest fallen from a hedge, a cluster of ripe plums, a dead bird but to paint them supremely well. Since the Dutch painter De Hooghe no one had done work such as William Hunt accomplished. He was, in his limited range (a limitation deliber- ately accepted by him) the one perfect craftsman of his day. He could draw with flawless grace, could paint with flawless beauty; and though because of THE SUBJECT PAINTERS (NATURISTS). 129 his simple and ordinary and to many misappre- hending minds, petty subjects, he never won the place in popular regard which was his due, amateurs from the first sought his drawings, and to-day there is not a connoisseur in Europe who would not gladly acquire a drawing by this humble English master. Many have succeeded William Hunt, but none have equalled him at least in still-life. His best known colleague in Rural Art, as a distinct genre, is Birket Foster, a recently deceased artist whose small closely detailed water-colour paintings were for long the delight of the public and, at their best, are among the most dainty and charming examples of this somewhat unreal genre of " Eural Art." A broader painter and freer handler of line and figure, in this genre, is Mrs. Allingham a most charming and ever winsome and graceful depicter of selected and prettified nature, but so fine an artist that we are at any rate for the time persuaded to accept her water- colour drawings of English rural life as authentic representations. As Miss Helen Paterson she first painted in oils, but before she married the distin- guished Irish poet whose name she has so long borne she had discovered where her peculiar talents lay. Fame came to her with her lovely " Young Custom- ers " in the year of her election as Associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours (1875), when hundreds who had never known of her existence, or perhaps never even visited the Water Colour Society's shows, began to discuss her eagerly because of an enthusiastic sentence in Mr. Ruskin's Art-Notes for that year. This drawing, he said, after expressing his surprise at his discovery, " is a thing forever lovely ; a thing which I believe Gainsborough would have given one of his own paintings for, old-fash- 130 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ioned as red-tipped dresses are, and more precious than rubies." Among the ablest living painters in this classification is Mr. Charles Gregory, whose work is truer than that of Birket Foster, and more virile than, though not so delicate or charming as, that of Mrs. Allingham. In the painting of fruit and flowers William Hunt has had no later rival in his own quiet and unpretending tradition; but among those who paint in a more vivid and actual fashion that is, those who so far as possible forsake the aca- demical or conventional idea] of pictorialism for the swifter personal vision and personal accent of a later school there is none to compare with Mr. Francis James, who paints flowers with a knowledge and sym- pathy and with a creative interpretative beauty which is unsurpassed in England or in any country, and can in intimacy and faithfulness as in beauty be equalled only by a little-known French peasant, Leon Bonvin, the supreme master in this particular genre who, I should add, just because he is so little known, must not be confused with Frangois Bonvin, an artist of great repute at one time, and one of the very few modern French painters represented at the National Gallery. Nor, once more, would it be opportune for me to attempt here with so much ground yet to be cov- ered any specific account of the many painters of to-day in England who have earned a more or less noteworthy reputation. Their name is legion. Of Mr. Peppercorn I have already spoken, I think (with Mr. William Hyde in black and white) the finest living nature-painter we have, though lyrically so to say, none can surpass Mr. Brabazon, whose swift and revealing brush is stronger and more vivid in old age than that of any impressionist in his prime THE SUBJECT PAINTERS (NATURISTS). 131 since Monet first attempted to restrain in a new way the fugitive magic of light. Others, like Mr. Waterhouse, like Mr. Alfred East, the latest Associ- ate of the Academy, are so familiar to the art-loving public that I am the more ready to relinquish the pleasure of numerous and detailed mention. We have many artists who paint natural aspects with immense assiduity and noteworthy technical facility ; some who paint nature with knowledgeable skill and beauty; and a few who know nature intimately and with ever fresh wonder and delight, and whose de- light, whose wonder, and whose knowledge find apt and enchanting expression in their works. Yet even among these I cannot recall any who, as landscapists, surpass or even equal three living Frenchmen, the veteran Harpignies, Cazin the Wordsworth, a decora- tive Wordsworth, of French landscape-art, and Poin- telin the one painter of to-day who is not only an inti- mate lover of nature but so much at one with the cos- mic breath or spirit which informs nature that, in his potent, beautiful, and gravely reticent work, we forget the painter in that eternal mystery which he so much more than any other reveals. 132 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER X. IMAGINATIVE ART WILLIAM BLAKE TO SAMTJE1 PALMEK AND CALVEBT. OF many of the painters who could be distinctively grouped as Romanticists in figure and landscape) painting I have already written. In a sense, all those naturalists who do not abide by the robust realism of Constable, or by that lesser realism which as we have seen relies on multiplicity of detail, as exemplified by Linnell in tendency, by Millais in mingled theory and tendency, in Leader by native bent, and in a painter such as Keeley Halswelle by example and force of circumstances in a- sense these others are romanticists. They would thus comprise all those painters- from Mark Anthony and Cecil Lawson, from George Mason and Frederick Walker, and from the predecessors and affiliated members of the Pre-Raphaelites, to the most impressionistic or least impressionistic of the youngest men. This, how- ever, is obviously too wide a classification, and sug- gests the ironical dictum of a severe critic of my acquaintance who avers that classical painters are those who paint life and nature untruly according to the light of tradition, that painters of the romantic school are those who paint life, and that realistic painters are those who depict life according to the light of yesterday in the misleading light of to-day. I will not go over again what I have said in con- nection with Mason and Frederick Walker. That IMAGINATIVE ART. 133 mower in the " Harbour of Refuge " of which I have already spoken, those scythes against the evening sky in " The Harvest Moon/' these are the forerun- ners of what is most impressive in contemporary romanticism in combined figure and landscape painting. But of imaginative landscape as such I may say a few words before passing to that school of painters called the " Pre-Raphaelites " originally the self- given name of a clique but become the designation of all those artists who to a romantic, poetic, or re- ligious habit of mind unite a painstaking sincerity and an insatiable thirst for the pseudo-real in their more or less conscientious quest for the real. Avoid- ance of actuality in subject or approach, as in treat- ment, is their cardinal principle, though it is not advanced as such, nor perhaps commonly admitted. Imaginative landscape began with William Blake. This man of so singular and potent genius was born in London not long after the middle of the eighteenth century and died in the same town near the close of the third decade of the nineteenth. It is of in- terest to the student of the psychology of art to note that when Blake's long visionary life was nearing its close, when his maturity was accomplished and clouded by too many visions and dreams, another turbulent and in Spinoza's words God-intoxicated artist, David Scott, was born in the far north; and that in the year of Blake's death there came into the world one who was to be another new and potent force, in whom an ordered mysticism was a dominant influence, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and that much about the same time Edward Burne-Jones in Eng- land, Gustave Moreau in France, and Arnold Boeck- 134 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. lin in Germany, the modern high priests of symbolic and purely imaginative art, were born. The landscapes, as the figures, which Blake painted or engraved were rarely if ever realities of the actual, but realities of the imagination. It must not be inferred from this, or from a casual and par- tial acquaintance with a few drawings or prints, that he had no technical ability to delineate with exactitude or to depict with ordered beauty. Among the drawings he made for Young's Night Thoughts and Blair's Grave and other works, including those for his own writings from The Songs of Innocence to the Prophetical Books, there are some not only of rare spiritual beauty but of consummate technical mastery. Who having seen it has forgotten that divine symbolic figure of Youth sitting with sunlit uplifted face above the portals of the grave? And some of those fugue-like landscapes, which are no sooner revealed than they merge into dream spaces or are populated by sudden wings or strange lithe fig- ures, have they not infinite charm in grace of line and colour ? In mere formal distinction look at that symbolical drawing of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden a drawing (and engraving) that to some people is not admissible as art, because in it the nude man and woman are beautiful with a beauty that is not of this world, because the investiture of flowers is an impossible bower if Eden were indeed an earthly paradise, and because in it, beyond the Ser- pent-man who regards this bower and those within, the sun, the moon, and the morning star are depicted as simultaneously shining in their full glory. But no artist will look on this creation and not delight in its beauty ; none with knowledgeable appreciation of art can fail to see what power of technique thia IMAGINATIVE ART. 135 " mad visionary " had. Not that there is anything of mad visionariness here. It is a purely symbolical drawing. Blake painted Adam and Eve thus be- cause in them he portrayed that lost ideal beauty of which now only a few dream, and visibly expressed their perfect innocence in those environing and wind- less lily-bells, and showed how beyond Evil (who is nearly all in shadow, a temporal creature) the eternal realities endure, an eternity beyond the mortal scope which has to divide Time by day and night, dusk and dawn, and the undimmed lustre of the morning star flashing upon each. Of course, in this particular design there is no landscape. But in many of Blake's drawings there are lovely aspects of natural beauty, though almost certainly none is a reproduction of any one place or view but a synthetic remembrance of many places and many views, an essential or general truth instead of an individual veracity. Of one perfect example of this intuitive kncxwl* edge and synthetic memory I have already spoken in these pages, but may again allude to it in the pres* ent connection. Blake never saw the ocean; everi the English Channel was known to him only acrosd the long beaches of Shoreham or the sandy stretched of Bognor and Littlehampton. I do not think ho was ever upon the water, and certainly was nevei? at sea. There is no record of his having made studies of waves or of the motions of masses of water, and though Blake drew and sketched con* tinually he was in no sense a plein-airist, did not trouble his hand (however busy his eyes might bo in noticing and his mind in recording) with mem- oranda of the brush or pencil when he saw a tree, of the shadow and shine on a corn-field, or the image 136 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. of a cloud, or the motions of wind and tide. Yet not one of the old masters, however intuitive his knowledge and superb his executive faculty, nor any of those Dutch and Flemish masters who painted the sea with so much appreciation and convincing craft, nor any modern marine painter, has ever equalled in truth as well as in impressive majesty this vision of ocean, the elemental Sea itself, which Blake has managed to convey in a small engraved drawing of a few square inches. There is nothing here but a long swell and an uplifted billow and a few breaking waves; above, a tempestuous sky; all is dark, terri- ble, elemental. But there is nothing like it in art. It is purely imaginative, but in realism surpasses all realistic art. I have brought this drawing to the comparative test in several ways, though to satisfy a critical curiosity rather than intuitive knowledge and ac- cumulative certainty. Years ago I sailed, and for months at a time, on all the oceans, and long before I had ever seen anything by Blake or any remember- able modern marine painter, I had studied those great masses of impelled seas which" wash past the Cape of Good Hope or meet the typhoons on the Indian Ocean, which break against Tierra del Fuego or surge among the bergs of the Antarctic, which sweep mountainously along the coasts of Brazil or more wildly still along the frozen shores of Labrador, and swing upon the rocks of Newfoundland and the precipices of Iceland and the Hebrides. So I speak at least with that partial surety which comes of ex- perience. But, what is more important, I have studied the marine painting of all acknowledged masters. I remember a " Wind and Wave " of Mesdag, I recall " La Vague " of Courbet but IMAGINATIVE ART. 137 none, not even Courbet who saw so deeply or Mesdag who saw so wildly, has equalled this untravelled and untrained Londoner, this preoccupied mystic to whom external realities were disquieting and imper- fect symbols. It is the veritable triumph of the Imagination. With all Blake's genius, however, it would be folly to ignore the fact that aberration of artistic sanity, as well as of imaginative sanity when he wrote as a poet, or intellectual sanity in his attitude to this world and the inevitable laws and functions of this world, is so frequent as to be idiosyncratic. He was a beautiful soul so intoxicated with the spiritual world that he lost count of this, and in continual in- trospection into the heaven and hell disclosed to him in his own mind, ignored all balanced contemplation of the wider and deeper and more truly significant heaven and hell of the Earth on which he lived. Thus even in many of his ideal landscapes there is an actual unreality wholly distinct from the super- ficial unreality of formal symbolism; the unreality of vagueness, which is the bane of art in any kind, and is indeed more essentially opposed to true mys- ticism than to any other activity of the mind and spirit. The mystic is not a vague thinker, as so many ignorant people imagine; on the contrary, the mystic is the only thinker whose thought is rooted in that exact science, the fundamental and ultimate science, spiritual logic. Where, in plastic or in literary art, the mystic fails is by virtue of the de- fects, not the finer energies, of his qualities, or in the effort to transcend the expressional powers of the common term, the accepted means. But Blake not only failed often through the defects of his noble qualities, and through a wilfully sustained effort to 138 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. accomplish the Ideal through the lesser realities and restraining actualities, but was also a victim to that perversion of inward vision as well as of outward judgment which obtains where the equipoise of soul and body is radically disturbed. Much of his imaginative landscape is accordingly not imaginative in the artistic sense, but purely literary, and fantastical and unreal at that. Any attempt to imitate him in this realm of aberrational fantasy could result only in insane art. Art is the most sane of all human activities, for it is the re- flection in the mirror of Time of the supreme sanity of the divine law. But at his finest these studies of ideal landscape show how great an artist Blake was. His influence, that was so profound and far-reaching, and lives to-day a vital leaven in our most spiritual and in- dividual art and literature, was that of the sane mystic, the sane visionary, the sanely inspired poet. It is a spiritual law that the inefficient, the radically eccentric, the merely aberrational, whatever its in- fluence at the moment, dies swiftly and without fruit- ful seed. Of all the men of that remarkable group of whom William Blake was the centre John Varley, the water-colour painter and enthusiastic astrologer; Joseph Hine, Francis Finch, Edward Calvert, Sam- uel Palmer, A. B. Johns, and others keenly in sympathy as Linnell and the elder Richmond two stand out as among the most noteworthy artists whom England has produced. There are two kinds of absolute distinction: that which goes with splendour of achievement through immense range of powers, and the deserved winning of world-wide reputation; and that which goes with IMAGINATIVE ART. 139 quiet beauty of achievement through equally intense but far more restricted range of far more limited powers. The latter has always the undeserved (and serenely ignored) indifference of the public, and even of all save the few who love art for its own beauty a number so few, in the deepest sense, that among scores of those whom I know who study art professionally or affect a profound interest in it and do take a genuine delight in it, I know but one or two who love it above all else and solely for its own loveliness. There are thousands who, through the mind, and, of course, also to a great extent through the aesthetic sense, and through impulse and guid- ance, come to a genuine and delightful pleasure and refreshment and still deeper emotion, in the work of the great painters and of acknowledged masters. Yet that is no test of a native understanding of art. If we find one who will slide into the current of aesthetic thought, and say (and in a sense con- scientiously) that he thinks Tintoretto the greatest master, Titian or Giorgione the supreme colourist, Velasquez the prince of distinction, Eembrandt the first portraitist, Turner the finest landscapist, Diirer the most imaginative symbolist, Millet the typical peasant-painter, Corot the typical idyllist if we find one averring this we are not really any the wiser, for it is probably but a sympathetic echo, an appreciative endorsement, of what others have said or written. And if we find such an one unable to appreciate the still-life of De Hooghe, or the plums and birds'-nests of William Hunt, or the drawings of Edward Calvert, or the etchings of Samuel Palmer ; or if we find such an one unable to realise the su- preme integrity of form, the supreme purity of con- tour, in Ingres, or even unable to approach what a 140 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. great if little known painter (a romanticist and colourist, too) meant when he exclaimed (in 1855), " Who will there be, after Ingres, to arrest the rapid decadence of painting in Europe ? " or if we find such an one who will rave about the beauty of the cyclamens and carnations in Bellini or Luini or Leonardo and be unable to see any exceptional beauty in the supreme flower-painting of the all but wholly ignored French peasant Leon Bonvin if we find such an one, we may be sure that what he does not see in Leon Bonvin and Samuel Palmer and Calvert, in the noble formalism of Ingres, in the hum- ble art of William Hunt and De Hooghe, he does not really see for himself in Diirer or Valasquez or Tin- toretto. Of the Blake group, two, I have said, stand out as among the most noteworthy of English artists though their work is hardly known to most professed lovers of art, and even their names, or the name of one at least, unfamiliar to many who consider themselves exceptionally well informed. But before saying a few words concerning Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, we will make a brief mention of their comrades of the Blake circle. John Varley, though an able land- scapist in water-colour and a still more able teacher in that art, kept his brush free from any copartnery in his mental and spiritual studies, speculations, and vagaries. At times he tried to depict some of the visions of his friend Blake, but without success. Even Blake, in whom the artist often transcended the indiscriminating spiritualist, would have none of these renderings. " They are bad, friend Varley, because your soul is not so well trained in seeing as your eyes are," he would say in effect ; and the cor- pulent Varley would sigh, and go away lamenting IMAGINATIVE ART. 141 his inability to limn the evanescent features of phantoms and sadly enough set himself to depict with deft and beautiful craft the trees and meadows and drifting clouds he loved so well. One is glad that friend Varley failed so conspicuously in that particular direction. Connoisseurs of rare and delicate art must be only too glad when they have a chance nowadays to ac- quire one of the lustrous, gem-like, tree-embowered vignettes of A. B. Johns or one of the lovely little pastorals of Francis Oliver Finch. But that seldom happens, and in another generation the very names of these faithful and humble disciples will be wholly forgotten, if indeed there be any who now remember them save the few who came to know their work through the enthusiasm of their friends or of fellow artists like Kossetti, William Morris, and others who found delight in their careful and lovingly humble idyllism. Francis Finch was the more noteworthy man of the two, but we owe Johns a peculiar debt for his influence upon Edward Calvert. His preg- nant sayings (as " The worst pictures are too well done ") circulated and had an influence among his friends and their little circle, a circle truly de- scribed as The Brotherhood of the Ideal. Several of its members were men of rare powers; all were men of marked individuality, even those who were on its verge, or who by extraneous accident could not share in actual community as, for example, the elder Richmond and Thomas Uwins or who came forward at a period somewhat too late to be one of the Brotherhood in fact however much in sympathy, as, for example, James Smetham. As among modern English artists there are few if any whose "thoughts" and writings have the artistic 14:2 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. value of those of Sir Joshua Keynolds, so I doubt if there are any whose recorded thoughts and letters and fragmentary writings have so deep an interest and value as those of Edward Calvert and James Smetham beautiful lives whose radiance dwells not only in their rare and now nearly forgotten work, but in the more enduring printed word and in the hearts they have freshened and the minds they have en- riched. But the student in a3sthetic thought as well as in aesthetic development should consult also, among the others, the biographical records and letters and " remains " of Varley, Francis Finch, Thomas Uwins, and William Sharp (1749-1824), perhaps the greatest of English engravers and a strangely original thinker and profound mystic. A common spirit breathed through many fine minds in that day, uniting them in a bond of singular beauty of thought and ideal. Palmer was born at Wai worth in Surrey in 1805 just as the older school of portraitists and landscapists or naturists had passed away with George Romney and George Morland, and as the long period of arti- ficial art closed in France with the death of Watteau. Palmer's two most intimate friends in days to come, John Linnell and Edward Calvert, were then boys of thirteen and six respectively, William Blake at forty-eight was in the plenitude of his powers, Turner was in his thirtieth year, a French lad named Corot was nine years old and was already surreptitiously snatching grudged hours for that na- ture he loved so well and, in a word, the wonderful new advance of art in the nineteenth century was in marching order. In that romantic movement, which has had so pro- found an influence upon our finest painters and IMAGINATIVE ART. poets, Samuel Palmer occupies a, unique place. It was, it should be said again, a spiritual movement of romance as distinct from the cruder, vaguer, and popular movement of romanticism, in England be- gun and enhanced by Miiller anff^urn^lfcit best typified, in another art, by Byron, as in France be- gun or enhanced by Delacroix, but best typified by Gustave Dore and Victor Hugo. After his studies in the Antique School of the British Museum and elsewhere were finished, Palmer, who fortunately for himself was not de- pendent upon his brush, went to Italy for two years. They were fruitful years. If he copied little, and observed no conventional rou- tine in study, he observed and meditated continually and deeply. When he returned to England, and to that quiet, serene, meditative, balanced, and con- trolled life which was his ideal at first in London, and then to his greater joy and peace in the coun- try it was to a long period of slowly conceived and slowly executed beautiful and profoundly original work. The glory of light preoccupied his artistic imagination, as it has preoccupied that of so many painters from Perugino to Rembrandt, from Claude to Turner, from Delacroix and Fromentin to Monet ; but, above all, with him, light in its sudden efful- gence, in sunrise and sunset, when bursting like broken fire behind and among boughs of trees, or upon hill-ranges, or flooding pastoral regions or re- treating in flame and splendour from secret valleys. But notable (though, in water-colour especially, often crude) a painter as Samuel Palmer was both in oils and water-colours, it is as an original etcher, as a painter-etcher, that he has his unique place and fame. In a popular and ambitious, but often exasperat- 144: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ingly incomplete and inadequate, dictionary of art- ists published in America, it is said of Samuel Palmer " he painted in oils and water-colours, and turned his attention somewhat to etching." It would show as true discernment of relative values to say of Kembrandt that he painted portraits, but other subjects also, and " turned his attention somewhat " to etching or to say of Turner that he painted Eng- lish landscapes and seascapes, but other subjects also, and " turned his attention somewhat " to the repro- ductive arts of the graver. The most beautiful of Palmer's drawings (and he painted oftener in water-colours than in oils) are those inspired by his favourite poems, Milton's "Comus," "L> Allegro," and "II Penseroso," or the Virgilian idylls. He painted trees and all the beauty and mystery of foliage with an intimate knowledge beyond that of any other artist of his day. Ruskin, in Modern Painters, was the first to draw public attention to his careful and beautiful work. " His studies of foliage," says the great critic, who had in his mind all that had been done since Perugino to the great English Painter whom he so idolised, " are beyond all praise for carefulness. I have never seen a stone-pine or a cypress [adequately] drawn except by him, and his feeling is as pure and grand as his fidelity is exemplary. I look to him, unless he loses himself in over-reverence for certain conventionalisms of the elder schools, as one of the probable renovators and correctors of whatever is failing and erroneous in the practice of English art." It would be to affirm too much to endorse this opinion now, for Samuel Palmer's genius was not robust enough or at any rate was not expansive enough to enable him to exercise a wide influence, or to renovate IMAGINATIVE ART. 145 or correct the chief errors in the common practice of English art. He did not set himself to any such effort or ideal, and indeed he became more and more contentedly absorbed in doing supremely well what he was fitted to do. He fulfilled the maxim of his friend Calvert by painting just what he saw select- ively and uniquely, and by first knowing what he saw. Still, as I have already indicated, it is in the beautiful art of Etching that Palmer's pre-eminence is revealed. He achieved no more than some half dozen of those patiently laborious and exquisitely complete works, but all are constantly perfect, and any one, as has been said by a great specialist, enough to ensure immortality for Palmer as a " master." Edward Calvert, born in 1799, was wont to say that it pleased him to think he belonged to the eigh- teenth century the century of Gainsborough, of Reynolds, of Eomney, as of the maturity of Blake and the youth of Turner. This singular artist, however, who died so recently as 1882, was in no sense of the eighteenth century. The age to which he belonged was the Golden Age. So little is Edward Calvert known, even now, that the inquirer interested in him would find not only some difficulty in discovering work of his, but in dis- covering the mere extraneous facts of his career. In one of the completest dictionaries of Artists of the Nineteenth Century we have there is no mention of his name. Calvert was born on September 20th, 1799, at Appledore, near the source of the Tamar in Devon, close by Bideford 14 Where the lads are more strong and the maidens more fair Than in Devon itself, and so anywhere," as an old Devon enthusiastic has it. 146 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. I have not space to dwell in detail upon Calvert's life, as I should like to do, for he was of the few whose art was but the outward bloom of a beautiful and fragrant soul; but I must give a few leading features. After a boyhood spent in seafaring exer- cise, much walking and rambling, eager study of Virgil and other classical writers and delight in Milton's poetry, he went to sea in his sixteenth year as a midshipman on H.M.8. Chesapeake, a name famous in the annals of the Anglo-American con- flict; ajnd ultimately left the service when he came of age in order to gratify his widowed and solitary mother. Two strong forces further developed his latent powers; a deep friendship with a remarkable man and notable nature-painter, A. B. Johns, and love for the woman who later became his wife. It is interesting to know that at that time this young Eng- lish painter, though Claude and Poussin were then his gods in art, revered above all others the early Italian master Schiavone probably the one English artist who has been directly influenced in any way by that remote Venetian painter. " Humble and simple and even poor, and yet, like Blake, he could touch people's love " is his written word on Schia- vone. At the time when Calvert was a youth it was difficult for any but the best-known artists to make a living by the brush except in portraiture. Friends urged this exigency upon him, but though with in- finite reluctance he at last agreed in one or two in- stances he would not persevere in what he could not conscientiously feel was his metier, though as a mat- ter of fact he had a remarkable talent in portraiture. His independence of outlook and judgment as seen IMAGINATIVE ART. 147 in a letter on this subject, written in his " twenties," is noteworthy. " An artist," he says, meaning at the moment a nature-painter, " when he invades the province of a portrait-painter, and departs from his calling, is likely to attempt the union of imagina- tive excellence with real resemblance to the indi- vidual, which is impossible, because that which is like humanity in the whole species is alone beautiful, and there is no other way of making a portrait but by insisting on those parts of a face that are the least human, for it is by those that we are distinguished one from another." We may not share the view or even consider the standpoint tenable, but we cannot but respect the steadfastness of conviction which could make a young artist write thus to one of his first patrons, or fail to sympathise with such inde- pendence of judgment in the face of overwhelming contrary opinion. Even by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the landscapist was commonly held to be a poor relative of the suc- cessful portrait-painter. But Haydon and all his kind are forgotten or ignored, and even the humblest of those men who devoted themselves lovingly to the beauty of the world the William Hunts and Samuel Palmers ,and Edward Calverts are re- membered with delight and thankfulness. Restriction in means now made it imperative for Calvert to make a living by his art. To this end, rather than take to portraiture, which he believed he could not conscientiously do, he settled in Plymouth and gave lessons in drawing at the house of one who afterwards became an intimate friend, Joseph Hine, a remarkable man and a close friend of William Wordsworth. It was in Plymouth and at this period he met Mary Bennell, who became his wife and a L 148 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. partner in a life of rare and beautiful felicity. After their marriage Calvert decided that he must find more opportunities for his art, so the young couple moved to London and took rooms in Arundel Street, within a glimpse of the Thames and just off the populous Strand a change, indeed, from Ply- mouth and Lostwithiel. Calvert's tentative efforts in art were either land- scape studies of the compositionally conventional kind, yet exquisite in detail such as his friend Johns painted, or drawings and pictures which already indicated his own bent and his slowly maturing natural style. We see this in a lovely little oil painting called " A Memory of Claude," where not only is there an obviously mnemonic copy of Claude's " Sunrise " but the unmistakable individuality of the copyist. A more ambitious painting was a " Classic Landscape with Goatherd," the first im- portant outcome of an early voyage to Greece; but here, despite the beauty of the composition, the rich colour and flowing contours we cannot but recognise an ultra-classical influence we cannot but recognise that this is not the natural but an arbitrary concep- tion for an English painter endeavouring to find individual expression. The picture is a memory, not an interpretation. It was, indeed, some time before Calvert could escape from the domination of Claude. Even when he was over fifty we find him writing thus to his- old friend Johns : " I admired in particular (at Lord Ellesmere's) that grand Claude of which you said years ago : * Until you have seen it, you may be said not to have yet seen a picture.' I think it is entitled ' Demosthenes on the Seashore.' It hangs next to a Titian with a colouring that appears to be identified with his. IMAGINATIVE ART. 149 What a majestic ideal of the elements it presents; what an ideal of colour, and almost an ideal of human life; and what a faithfulness and truth to the physical world." But as he came more and more to see the immediate and homelier beauty in the drawings of Girtin and David Cox (his father had been one of Girtin's patrons) and Varley and others, his own way grew clearer. He soon knew that he would always be a classicist in design and a romanticist in emotion and colour. There is, too, a kind of memory which is not a mere ingenious recollection of what others have done, but a recrea- tive remembrance of essential features here a hint in the use of blue or white or gold, in this vivacity of concentrated light or that subtle bewitching union in chiaroscuro, in this whole method of composition, in that system of slowly built detail. The one may be that of an artist finding his way, or more likely only that of a craftsman sympathetically reproduc- ing ; the other can only be that of an original painter. We first see Calvert thus in a quaintly archaic but exquisite wood-engraving, " A Primitive City," wherein he seems to have remembered one of Peru- gino's down-sweeping birds, a classic fragment after Bellini, a design after Schiavone's thought, decora- tion such as Luini loved, and sheep coming along a grassy way such as his friend Johns might have painted in a Devon combe or " friend Varley " in a Surrey lane; to have thus remembered, and yet to be Edward Calvert through it all. After Calvert's death George Richmond, R.A. (the elder), wrote the obituary notice in the AtJienceum of August, 1883, and therein referred to these extraordinary little engravings of his friend as so wonderful in their mastery in spiritual beauty. 150 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Headers of Gilchrist's well-known Life of Blake and the lesser known Life of Samuel Palmer will recall mention of these engravings on copper and wood. But little else has been written, little else is known of these lovely masterpieces, inch-long glimpses of ideal vision. " They," said one who loved Calvert, and alluding to him, in common with Palmer, with Blake and others, " were all emancipated from within the narrow walls of self-interest and worldly service " . . . " they pastured their souls, like sheep, on de- lectable mountains." That singular spiritual penetration into art which is revealed in nearly all that Calvert said or wrote on the subject was the outcome of deep spiritual emotion with intense love of colour and harmonious design; a spiritual penetration which, for example, made him in one of the papers in his Criticisms on Style treat in one group of Schiavone, Giorgione, and Blake. It is the amazement of specialists how Calvert 2 self-taught and only an engraver in his leisure, was able to accomplish work so masterly in technique as to equal in kind the finest accomplishment of en- gravers like Blake, Bewick, Palmer, and Linton. That he was inspired by Blake is obvious, and yet even his most Blake-like designs are never Blake's but always Edward Calvert's. In the history of the art of the graver these few masterly achievements by Calvert occupy a unique place, done as they were in the last year of Blake's life and the last two years of Bewick's life, and just when a new school was beginning in the vision of a lad named William Linton, afterwards to be so famous in his own country and America and so in- fluential throughout the art-world of Europe as well. IMAGINATIVE ART. 151 One of the first treasures which Calvert became possessed of in London was a copy of The Songs of Innocence and Experience, richly coloured with unique ornamental borders, given to him by Blake himself. This and his beloved Virgil were, as he was wont to say, inexhaustible mines for any life- time. Symbolic art in England seems to me to find its finest expression in these small painter-gravings of Edward Calvert. In one of the earliest, " The Cyder Feast : A Vision of Joy," designed in youth and en- graved in early manhood, we find a most remarkable and original quality. In its intensity of expression there is, perhaps, a strained realism of the imagi- nation, but even to those to whom it might as readily appear grotesque as beautiful there must surely be evident the beauty of design and the swift ecstasy of the leaping figure of rejoicing and adoring youth. In " The Bride " again there is, for all its exceeding beauty, a visible interference of intellectual vision with spiritual vision, with the result that a certain simplicity in meaning is gone, and a pictorial enigma obtains where a revelation through symbol should have been depicted. Contrast it with " The Sheep of His Pasture," a less than three-inch-long design drawn and engraved on copper about the same time (1828). Here we have a slow stream with sheep browsing on the river-pastures, and other sheep with- in a sunset-lit fold sloping upward to an outspread oak : beyond is a conical hill in shadow, the setting sun on its right flank, and, nearer, a farmstead, a cypress, and tall grain growing by the stream, half sunlit, half in shadow. An ordinary pastoral, one might say; yet through Cal vert's genius it becomes not only the very breath of pastoral art but the most profound 152 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. and moving pictorial symbolism. To the utmost skill of the original engraver Calvert has added the emo- tion of a great poet and the authentic vision of the inspired seer. Here, as with Blake in that wonder- ful graving of " The Sea " of which I have already written in detail, we realise how genius can as well express impassioned vision by means of a steel needle and a tiny three-inch plate of copper as Tintoretto himself on a vast canvas and with all the colours and hues of the rainbow on his palette. For " The Ploughman/' which has been so much admired, I care less than Mr. Richmond and others do, for with all its amazing strength and beauty it seems to me too obviously inspired by Blake. Doubt- less it has coarsened, heavied, in the later prints, and we have Mr. Richard's evidence that, " beau- tiful as ' The Ploughman ' is in the prints, as drawn upon the block before it was cut it was of superlative beauty." In " The Lady of the Rooks," " The Re- turn Home," the windy life and grave ecstasy of " The Brook," those wonderful etching-like litho- graphs "The Flood" and "Ideal Pastoral Life," and in that unsurpassable and unique " Chamber Idyll," where the real is so strangely real in its glori- fied idealisation, and where so much is revealed aiid so much suggested in what a friend truly called " those divine accessories " ; in these we find genius. But I must not delay on this subject, while in some of his pictures in oils, such as " The Sicilian Pastoral" and "The Double Pipe" Calvert has anticipated much of the classical idyllic work that to-day is so popular in London and to a lesser extent in Paris. In much of his later work he anticipates IMAGINATIVE ART. 153 the curious " cloudy " painting familiar to us in the work say of Eantin-Latour or the Anglo-Bavarian landscapist, Muhrmann. A sketch of " Hampstead Heath " reveals this as much as his " Amphion " (at the British Museum) or the oil-colour drawing called " Sacred Seats," also at the British Museum, or in the oil-monochrome " Apollo/' in the beautiful " Dryope," and in " Pan and Pitys." Among the pictures and drawings of his posthumous exhibition in the deceased British artists' section of the Old Masters' Exhibition at the Royal Academy, there was a painting which shows him at his best in this kind, " lasius the old Arcadian teaching the Mys- teries of Demeter." In the " Dryope " and " Pan and Pitys " one may see the first English painting in that manner which Mr. G. E. Watts has made so much his own in many of his mythological subjects, as " Daphne " for example. If " Pan and Pitys " were to drift into the auction-room as a work by G. E. Watts none would dispute its authenticity, un- less Mr. Watts (as Calvert did on an occasion when a picture of his own was " put up " as by Etty) were there to say that brush-work and manner were deceitful witnesses. " The Golden Age," another fine work in oils at the British Museum, should be mentioned in this connection, though it is broader in treatment and more truly decorative in design. It is unfortunate that many people know Calvert's work only by the "Virgilian Pastoral" in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris. Beautiful as it is, it does not represent him at his best. That best is to be found, however, in a picture fortunately in London, though regrettably not in any public collec- tion. This is the austerely beautiful " Migration of 154 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Nomads " afterwards more poetically but not more aptly called " Arcadian Shepherds moving their flocks at Dawn." ~No one who saw this picture at the " Old Masters' " Show at the Koyal Academy in the winter of 1893- can have forgotten it, and many must have seen the small study of it which is among the Calvert " remains " in the keeping of the British Museum. It is to be hoped that some day, when no longer in the possession of its present owner, Mr. W. F. Eobinson, K.C., the lovely example of English pastoral and idyllic art may be added to one of the national collections. In this long narrow canvas we see an immense upland wilderness, still partly in morning-twilight ; and across its whole extent stretch the white flocks as in a slow flowing silent flood, fol- lowed by the vanguard of the !N~omads, some in white waggons drawn by oxen, some on asses, the young men afoot, carrying spears and accompanied by the same large, fierce, white dogs of which the unwary pedestrian has still cause to beware in remote regions of Greece or Sicily or in the marches of Romagna. In its solemnity, grave beauty, and noble amplitude this " Shepherds moving their flocks at Dawn " is not only Edward Calvert's masterpiece but one of the finest pictures of its kind by any modern artist. We can imagine the French pastoralist Charles Jacque painting it, or the great Hollander Anton Mauve, if either had been actuated by the peculiar artistic temper and classical bias of Calvert. Calvert died in his eighty-fourth year, one of the most lovable figures in the history of art. I have written at this length of an obscure English painter not without full intent. Except for potent reasons, it is obvious that so much space to one man and he not a Constable nor a Turner, not a Dela- IMAGINATIVE ART. 155 croix nor a Millet would be conspicuously out of place in a general survey of contemporary art. But in the history of art there are some men whose life and work are so synthetically representative that they afford comprehensively the typical instance, and so stand, in their life and in their work, for a multitude of other painters. There are other paint- ers who are types of perplexing extremes, and in writing of Turner and Edward Calvert I wished to represent the extremes of personal life in the pursuit of art. Few great artists have ever lived so seem- ingly narrow and incongruous a life as that which Turner lived, which leaves us with the feeling that only the genius of the man is worthy of remembrance but nothing of his personal life, thoughts, deeds, or individuality. Few artists of any time in any country have lived so beautiful, serenely full, and happy a life as Edward Calvert lived, and none has left a more fragrant memory. How little a part " conduct of life " plays in art may be seen here as in a hundred other instances. This realisation also is necessary before that greater public which does not yet understand art can come to see that noble moral ideals and a life of ideal conditions, mental, spiritual, and material, are not in themselves enough to con- stitute genius. It is in the implicit inculcation of this doctrine that the great and noble-minded Ruskin, just lost to us, has induced a radically false element into the public attitude towards art, and into many contemporary manifestations of art itself. If moral qualities, and a passionate quest of the ideal both in life and art, were of paramount importance in the technique of art, then Calvert and Palmer and scores of others less deservedly remembered might rank where now are Turner and Velasquez and Bera- 156 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. brandt. In a word, art is the human translation of the divine gift of beauty; and it is of the first and not of subservient importance that the translator should have the perfect utterance, the master-hand, the rhythmic thought of the man who is first and foremost the poet or the painter or the musician, rather than that he should be actuated by too high ethical ideals or exhibit a beautiful morality of life. This is what is involved in a saying which has been radically misunderstood by most people : " Art for art's saie." There is no true artist who would not profoundly endorse that axiom, if only he understood it aright. It is the ultimate dictum of aesthetic truth. On the other hand no sane man, however great an artist he be, will accept the phrase if it be perversely twisted to mean that art has nothing to do with the ideals of moral and spiritual life, that expression is independent of the inspiration of thought and emotion and spiritual passion, and that neither as man nor interpreter of beauty need the artist have any concern beyond the idol of his ma- terial and the shibboleth of a meaningless phrase. RETROSPECTIVE. 157 CHAPTEE XL RETROSPECTIVE I AND THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART. WE have now seen the growth and intermittent progress of nature-painting in England, from its rise after Eichard Wilson and Gainsborough, through Constable and Crome, Miiller and Turner, David Cox and the great " Water-Colour " period, Boning- ton and the " light " painters ; and have traced the growth of animal-painting and animal-and-landscape from Stubbs and George Morland and James Ward to Sidney Cooper and Sir Edwin Landseer, and thence to living masters in this genre. We have seen how after the first great period of Landscape a new school arose, and again divided (the weaker overflow of each going to swell the annual flood of merely Academical, conventional, and imitative work) into the painters of the near and restricted vision finding expression in multiplicity of detail, and the painters of the greater and synthetic vision finding expression in breadth of handling, in inter- pretative generalisation. We have noted the rise and development of the school of which John Limiell stands representative, the school made so popular by Mr. Leader, the late Mr. Keeley Halswelle, the marine-painter Mr. Brett ; and the rise and develop- ment of the school which the late Cecil Lawson ex- emplifies, and of that of the pastoralists and idyllists, the imaginative landscapists and idealists, from Mark Anthony and George Mason and Frederick Walker, 158 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. from William Blake and Samuel Palmer and Ed- ward Calvert. 3sTor will the reader, I hope, have failed to note that there has 'been indication of a growth in a common art-ideal as distinct from per- sonal predilection : and that where men of high aims worked under separate stars (to use the similitude of John Varley, the famous water-colourist) there slowly developed a period when spiritual congrega- tion in art became a reality, and painters associated in groups animated by a common ideal. The reader will have seen this exemplified in the instances of George Mason and Edward Calvert and Samuel Palmer: and will perhaps now discern in this an inevitable development from the idealistic work of Turner and the writings of John Kuskin. To-day this sense of spiritual community is a potent force in the imaginative arts. We may discern it in the spiritual essays of Maeterlinck, in the imaginative abstractions of Puvis de Chavannes, in the nobly symbolical work of Mr. G. F. Watts, in the spiritual fervour of the mural paintings of the Scoto-Irish decorist and symbolist, Mrs. Phrebe Traquair to mention one or two typical instances only. We see how at one it is with the great movement in France which produced Millet and his kin, or the spiritual movement in Germany which produced Von Uhde, with that " mystery of the scattered seed " which in the person of an ignorant shepherd lad among re- mote mountains gave Italy her greatest modern painter, Segantini. We see how it is not only at one with, but an integral part of, the spiritual and poetic and artistic development known in England as the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Finally, in all thig flow and ebb of ideals, of individual attainment and failure, of collective growth and new development, RETROSPECTIVE. 159 the reader, I hope, will have come to a fuller under- standing of two typical exponents of art in its inward as well as outward significance: will have come face to face, in these presentments of Turner and Edward Calvert, with one of the most puzzling problems of Art: the problem so superbly and influential!}' demonstrated to one issue by John Ruskin: is Art primarily an ethical expression? It is a problem that has been answered in all periods, since Phidias in his passion for physical beauty wrought the Olympian Jupiter from nude athletes, or Myron put his genius into " The Quoit-Thrower," or Al- camenes or Praxiteles or Polycletus of Argos sought for the highest beauty in many types for the arche- type of Venus Urania, or from Phryne an Athenian woman ("overmuch loving and beloved") produced the flawless Venus of Cnidus, or out of one beloved reality and out of the dreams of poets shaped in im- mortal marble the colossal Juno, which all Hellas revered ; since Masaccio " thought more of the mys- tery of light and shade than of the mystery of the Trinity," since Bellini and Tintoretto both found their finest inspiration in a pagan theme such as that of Bacchus and Ariadne, and the deeply religious Salvator Rosa touched his highest in his " Pro- metheus " in the Pantheon at Rome ; since Rubens turned with equal interest from " The Descent from the Cross " to " The Sabine Woman," or Rembrandt discovered a new road for art when he painted an anatomist dissecting a corpse; since Velasquez pre- ferred the human reality to the divine abstraction, and since Millet, instead of painting the spiritual life of the soul for the contemplation of man painted the spiritual nature in man for the contemplation of the soul. It is a problem, nevertheless, that has 160 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. continually moved men and influenced the currents of thought and action, and must continue to move them so long as the ideals of art are as misappre- hended and misinterpreted as they commonly are, and particularly among peoples whose response to Beauty as such, howsoever manifested, is passive and receptive rather than swift and eager. In every people there are these two distinctive divisions: but there are peoples, like the Trench, who, nationally, are eager and respond swiftly; and nations, like the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who, nationally, are obtuse to art and respond slowly, and through the intellect first rather than through the eyes and along the nerves. It is this problem that, in our time largely through the genius of Ruskin, has come to be of paramount significance. We have seen how in all ages great artists have answered it: and in these pages I have purposely presented in detail two typical lives in one instance, where a man living without ideals of life and con- duct, socially a narrow, selfish, and in some respects sordid life (whatever his spiritual well-springs or hidden impulse) became the greatest painter of his country, and as some aver the greatest of all modern painters : and another, of true genius also, sustained from the first by the noblest ideals and in every phase of his life striving by thought, word, and deed to live up to those ideals, and leaving the memory of an ideal art-life whose work is not " great " ; whose achievement, fine as it is, is known only to a few ; and whose " faithful failure " may still in- deed be a remote creative ray in some minds, but can have little appeal to or influence upon the art-world at large. Mr. Ruskin himself thought Edward Cal- vert and Samuel Palmer were of the creators among RETROSPECTIVE. 161 whom there is no magnitude but only a great love in common, and Palmer he expressly believed was to be a potent renovator in modern art. But not the highest ethic or the most beautiful ideal is of so much value in art as the undimmed colour-vision of a Giorgione, the understanding of chiaroscuro of a Rembrandt, the swift, deft brush-work of a Velas- quez. Here, then, is material for thought, a problem for each to work out for himself. Ruskin may be right, but Art keeps her secret yet. 162 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER XII. THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. THE COLOURISTS. THE GLASGOW SCHOOL, ETC. HAVING dwelt in so much detail upon the making of modern English Art, and having incidentally in- troduced so much commentary on its connections with latest contemporary developments, I propose now to occupy the reader with as brief mention as practicable of certain groups, schools, and indi- viduals. It would have mattered little in art if Etty had chosen some other mythological theme than this or that theme, Rossetti some other reverie of romance than this or that reverie, Orchardson some other his- torical episode than this or that episode. We never feel that Etty emulates romantic colour, that Rossetti emulates romance, that Orchardson emulates a clas- sic dignity and reserve : but, that Etty is a colourist, "Rossetti" is romance, that the expression of Or- chardson' s genius is in grave dignity and reserve in design, contour, and colour. With the mass of sub- ject-pictures, however, we realise that not the painter, but the pictorial commentator, illustrator, journalist, story-teller is using colour as a popular vehicle of expression, using it as an unfamiliar and unacquired language. " I didn't want any of those picture-chaps to get hold of the matter," the Duke of Wellington is re- THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTEKS. 163 ported to have said on one occasion ; "if the story has to be told, let it be told in plain print, and just as it was, just as things happened." The anecdote is apposite. It reflects the attitude of a large part of the public, and the low estate into which the art-ideal is come. The public and practically the Royal Academy and all those in whom explicitly and implicitly it incul- cates this doctrine of complaisance, look upon " Art," with the Duke of Wellington, as the craft of pictorial narrative. The Subject-Picture of this kind falls into four divisions: the Heroical and Grandiose ("High Art," as it was once seriously and then ironically called) ; the Episodic and Sentimental ; the Scriptural ; and the Domestic. In the first Benjamin Haydon is a type ; in the next, let us say Mr. Marcus Stone, R. A. ; in the third, J. R. Herbert ; in the fourth Mr. Hors- ley, R.A. Haydon was a very remarkable man and an able artist. He died of a broken heart, and his art perished of inanity, through an impotent theory. He thought " the theme " was paramount. Long before his death, his brilliant promise sank into the limbo of unfulfilment. " High Art " for him meant the grandiose, the melodramatic, both in conception and execution. The Search for Salvation in the Theme (he himself always wrote, spoke, and painted in Cap- itals) wasted his undoubtedly remarkable powers and killed him. He dreamed to attain the foremost place in modern art: before he died he recognised that he had been false to his own instincts, his own inward ideal, in trying to be a Historian-Tragedian-Poet- Novelist-Moralist instead of what nature meant him to be, a painter, one of her interpreters in flowing line and living colour. There is something profoundly significant as well as tragic in those words which M 164: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. were found written on a piece of paper beside his dead body : " God forgive me. Amen. Finis." Where Haydon failed so disastrously a thousand others have failed. Now and then a painter of gen- ius has found the desiderated union, and given us the great theme nobly painted : but only because that painter has never subordinated the needs of art to the claims of artifice. For that is what it amounts to: the painter's art is art, the pictorialist's "art" is artifice. In the Episodic and Sentimental, the British art- ist of the conventional temperament and academical persuasion is as well-content as kine in the clover- field. He knows the insatiable appetite of the pub- lic. He ransacks romances and poetry, invades Shakespere and deflowers Milton, and blithely illus- trates the disrupted theme. If like Mr. Pettie (as a rule without a quarter of the faculty of that able painter) he can be dramatic, he loves to illustrate the Shakesperian episode or the Border-Ballad : if he be patriotic, Nelson and Wellington are always names to charm and he is safe with titles such as " The Thin Eed Line " or " The Wooden Walls of Old England " : if he relies on humour, so clever an an- imal-painter as Stacy Marks has shown him how to pervert unoffending creatures into palpable absurd- ities and grotesque resemblances : if he would appeal to those who like pictures to be painted texts, the late academician John Herbert has revealed how to be scriptural and inane : if he is wise in his genera- tion, and would at all cost be pretty and sentimental, he has a supreme exemplar in Marcus Stone, who is indirectly responsible for much oleographic rapture of incompetent sentiment: and if he would delight the housewife and the gratified tradesman, he has Mr. THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 1(55 Horsley (who began with " The Spirit of Prayer " and a presentment of " Satan," and ended with " Cupboard Love " and the " Confinement of a Cat " [not so named, though so apt!] ) and a host to show him how eggs should be carried to market, how poul- try should be hung, how little girls should deport themselves and little boys behave, how the shopman with his ribbons, and the nervous Mr. Bashful solic- iting the composed Miss Propriety, and the Spinster with her kitten-and-ball and antimacassar back- ground, should be alike feebly and unfaithfully and conventionally depicted. It is enough, however, merely thus to record the range and multifarious assiduity of this pictorial in- dustry. Like the incompetent and trivial " litera- ture " in which the mass pastures its debased appe- tite, it is always with us. But instead of blaming the artist for what ho has not to give, or for thus supplying indelectable provision, let us learn to turn aside from what is insincere and arbitrary and arti- ficial, and bear always in remembrance that in order to see Art we must bring to that vision a see- ing power of our own. The world of art, like the world of the Spirit, remains sealed to the merely passive. "When at last we are ready to see," says a famous philosopher, " we see what we are ready to see." Of the famous Colourists who are to be identified with subject-pictures, either by tendency as Wilkie or by accident as Etty, the two most celebrated names among the early Victorians are those just mentioned. Both died about the middle of the nineteenth cen- tury, and though each was in his day considered as wholly original and unprecedented we now see that one was a Scottish inheritor of the genius of Dutch 166 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. art and that the other was an English inheritor of the genius of Venetian art. Both these eminent col- ourists were born about the same time (David Wilkie in 1785 and William Etty in 1787) and each had a marked influence on the development of contempo- rary art. For a time it was the vogue to dispraise Etty, but with all his heaviness of touch and fre- quent over-vehemence he is one of the first great col- ourists of the English school. He had one ideal; to be " Venetian." All his strength and all his short- coming lay in this effort. But if the student will look at some of his most readily accessible work say "The Bather," "The Lute Player," "Youth at the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm," at the National Gallery, he will realise what a new and potent indi- viduality and influence came into English art with William Etty, and understand the emulative admira- tion of greater colourists than himself, Millais and Rossetti. Although not primarily a noteworthy colourist, Mulready should be mentioned with Etty. They were practically of the same age, and the career of each had many points in common. Mulready had a grace and distinction in his work which was not only widely appreciated but had no inconsiderable in- fluence on episodic and narrative art of the better kind. Many of his pictures are familiar throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, such as the schoolboy pic- tures called " The Wolf and the Lamb," " The Fight Interrupted," and " Lending a Bite." It is work in this kind which led his admirers wrongly to speak of him as the " English " Wilkie a painter with whom he had certainly much in common and to whose in- fluence he owed more than has been commonly ad- mitted. It is interesting that these three men, so THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 167 united in artistic kinship, and born in or about the same year, should stand for the three realms of Great Britain Etty for England, Wilkie for Scotland, and Mulready for Ireland. Perhaps Mulready's fin- est achievement in the two genres he affected are "The Bathers" of 1849 and "The Toy-Seller" of 1862, admirable works which reveal a singular purity of form and refinement of expression. Some time ago I was asked by an American visitor if Sir David Wilkie was one of Nelson's admirals. The .inquirer had in mind the famous picture by Turner, representing the burial at sea of the great Scottish painter who died on a vessel off Gibraltar. This, from a fairly intelligent person, might seem to indicate no great fame and yet there was a time when in America as well as in Great Britain no art- ist, except Landseer, had a like popularity. It is difficult to judge whether Wilkie is still considered to be the greatest of Scottish and one of the greatest of British painters : or even if his engraved pictures still hold their spell for the public in general. I opine that he is now somewhat less highly considered than he was twenty years ago, as perhaps he was then than in the thirties. This is partly due to the in- difference with which his contemporary episodical pictures are now regarded by those to whom, as illus- trations of social life, they are antiquated or at least old-fashioned; and partly to the recognition of the fact that the Scottish Teniers is too consciously the northern adapter of the Dutch master. But there can be no question, whether there be truth or none in the reputed lessening of his hold, that Wilkie was a great artist, as remarkable a painter in his kind as any of modern days. When the young Scottish art- ist, with his broad Fifeshire accent and gaunt pres- 168 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ence, first came to London none of his acquaintance believed that this uncouth north countryman would become one of the most popular painters of his time. He astonished everyone, and at once earned a gen- uine reputation, when in his twentieth year he exhib- ited at the Eoyal Academy "The Village Politi- cian," a now famous picture which then came as a revelation to show that a new and strong colourist and a genre-painter of rare individuality had ap- peared. Still finer works followed in rapid succes- sion, and soon " everyone " was talking about the painter of " The Blind Fiddler," " The Card Play- ers," and the immensely popular " Rent Day." When these and especially the third, were engraved David Wilkie found himself one of the three or four greatest painters in England an England in which Constable then lived, and Turner, and David Cox. This popularity became almost hysterical over " The Village Festival," "The Penny Wedding" and " The Reading of the Will," masterly genre-pictures painted with the most vivid depth and richness of colour. Nevertheless it was theme which attracted the vast popularity, or rather the humorously depic- tive treatment of a congenial theme for we find that the same indiscriminative applause, the same hys- terical furor, was excited later by the work of Frith when that able .but conspicuously overrated artist held the British social world spell-bound by his "Derby Day" and "Life at the Seaside" and " Road to Ruin " series. In a powerful vividness Wilkie stands pre-eminent. He could do supremely well as a painter what Frith at his best accomplished deftly as a craftsman for he could paint multiplicity of detail without emula- tion of the photographer, and so relate this multi- THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 169 plicity that while every face or every touch in his most crowded canvas was as carefully depicted as a leaf in a foliage-^study by Kuskin, his " leaves " all merged into the unity of the whole wind-swayed tree so that while any one leaf can be disengaged and studied, the whole foliage is always there in lovely amplitude of proportion. Thus, apart from the fact that Wilkie is a great colourist and Frith is not, one can always turn to the work of the Scottish artist with fresh interest while one is con- tent with a single view of that of his English rival in popularity. In a word, Wilkie painted popular life : Frith pictorially illustrated it. The one was a great painter: the other a popular artist. Modern Scottish art is often said to be derived from Wilkie, but this is an unscientific statement. Wilkie was an important figure, a pre-eminent fig- ure; but he no more stands for Scottish art than Burns stands for Scottish literature. I write this apropos of a recent remark made in a reputable periodical : " Scottish art simply means Sir David Wilkie and Sir Henry Eaeburn as Scottish liter- ature simply means Burns and Scott." In the long range of modern Scottish literature, from Gawain Douglas or " The King's Quhair " of the poet-prince to the writings of Robert Louis Ste- venson and J. M. Barrie, there is much that is nation- ally distinctive which neither Burns nor Scott ex- emplifies ; and still more conspicuously is the range of Scottish art from Jamesone to Orchardson and to the now famous Glasgow School not to be circum- scribed by Wilkie and Raeburn. As it is impracticable to enter here into any de- tailed consideration of Scottish art, it must suffice to say that it falls into three main periods. The 170 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. early period ended in the Netherlandish, powerful, and vivid work of Wilkie, and in the refined and beautiful though unequal portraiture of Kaeburn. The second began with John Philip, R.A., and George Chalmers and the colourists, that is with those whose paramount preoccupation was with the art of painting as such, was with colour; and with Horatio Maculloch and MacWhirter and Peter Gra- ham in landscape and seascape. The third may be said to be headed by William Orchardson and Colin Hunter, who in their widely differing methods have strongly and finely influenced the development of art in Scotland and far beyond the Scottish borders. A whole school of able academical painters, headed by Pettie, owe inspiration to Orohardson : a still larger, more national, and more individual group of painters owe much more than is commonly allowed to Colin Hunter and others whose racial temperament has so largely influenced strong individuality in method and manner. I know no work more distinctively Scot- tish than that of Mr. Colin Hunter. He is as faith- ful topographically as Mr. MacWhirter, as vivid as Mr. Peter Graham: but he paints nature with a strength and sympathy far beyond the attainment of the one, and with a breadth and light and depth to which Mr. Graham has never reached unless it be in " The Spate on the Highland Kiver," or as it is often wrongly called, " A Spate in the Highlands." On the other hand, I doubt if adequate justice is done now to the art and to the influence of Peter Graham. At his best he is a remarkable artist and few modern works excel his " Spate " and some of his other water-paintings, particularly bis picturesque marine subjects, such as "The Cradle of the Sea-Bird." There is another Scottish landscapist and seascapist THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 171 who should he named in conjunction with Mr. Hunt- er : the late Hamilton Macallum. Till lately it was the Lowland or East countrymen mainly who made Scottish art another than a merely provincial designation : the Aberdonian Jamesone and Philip and George Reid, the Fifeshire Wilkie, the Midlothian Nasmyth and Raeburn and Orchardson. True, Peter Graham was also born in Edinburgh (as were the three last-named), but his people were Highland, and he belongs by affinity to the West Country group. All the " Glasgow men " are not Highland, perhaps only a few are, though all are West Country. But taking the Scots without arbi- trary geographical differentiation, from Colin Hunt- er and Hamilton Macallum and T. Hope McLachlan and J. Guthrie and the brilliant impressionist Ar- thur Melville, to E. A. Walton and John Lavery, to Hornel and George Henry, to James Paterson and T. Millie Dow and Macaulay Stevenson, to James Cadenhead and John Duncan, a pre-eminently Celtic decorist and painter, to Mr. Mackie and Robert Burns and the able and original young Aberdonian R. Douglas Strachan in whose mural decoration and other painting is promise of high distinction, among these, and others whose names I have chanced to omit, there is enough nationality, power, distinc- tion, and charm, to justify the high claims now made for contemporary Scottish art. There are few liv- ing portrait-painters who in simple strength and potent sobriety equal Mr. Guthrie: in charm of beauty, perhaps no British artist to-day achieves in excellence as Mr. E. A. Walton achieves. There are several Scottish artists of repute to whom I have not alluded : as for example, Sir Eran- cis Grant, " the Scottish Landseer " ; Sir Daniel 172 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. MacNee, an able and distinguished portrait-painter ; Sir Noel Paton, William E. Lockhart, Keid, and others. But with few exceptions these are eminent in a local rather than general sense. Sir Noel Paton won a wide celebrity, as much perhaps by the many engravings after his popular pictures as by the pic- tures themselves : but to-day his work is popular only in the lesser sense. His best known paintings are not his best artistically: a small masterpiece like " Nicker the Soulless " is worth scores of " Fairy Eaids " and " Oberon and Titania " compositions. In "Home" and "The Pursuit of Pleasure," to name two typical compositions in distinct genres, he won a national reputation. In all his work a fine mind and poetic imagination are revealed: but his talent is literary rather than pictorial. Mention of Sir Noel Paton recalls his sister Ame- lia, who as Mrs. D. O. Hill (wife of the deceased painter, David Octavius Hill) was long one of the universally known personages in Edinburgh and in artistic Scotland; and mention of Mrs D. O. Hill (never " Mrs. Hill " any more than Christoper North would be " Mr. North " !) suggests Scottish sculpture. This accomplished woman had ceased studio work for some years before her death in 1904, which was not to be wondered at, as she was over eighty; but in her long art-life she was one of the most interesting sculptors whom Scotland has pro- duced. Unfortunately this does not mean much. Of all nations the British have least excelled in sculpture; and Scotland has contributed few sculptors to the small roll we can enumerate. Mrs. D. O. Hill was in no sense a great sculptor, but it is easy to believe that had she, enjoyed a proper training she might have won other than a solely national reputation. Her THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 173 statues of Burns, Livingstone, Captain Cook, Sir David Brewster, and Thomas Carlyle are among her best- known successes; and in ideal sculpture-portraiture her " Shelley " is a genuine triumph. The " Living- stone," so prominent in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, is the first work of sculpture done by a woman which has been erected in any public place in Great Britain. The most eminent Scottish sculptor is Sir John Steell; the latest, Mr Tweed. Between these two men, one born in Aberdeen in 1804, and the other in Glasgow some thirty years ago, there are several sculptors who might be named, but few whose names would be recognised out of Scotland, few whose names would be recognised or heeded there. Every visitor to Edinburgh is familiar with the famous Scott Monument in Princes Street, in which is enshrined Sir John Steell's fine statue of Sir Walter Scott in flawless Carrara marble; in Edinburgh, also, are the celebrated bronze statues of Wellington, "Christopher North," Allan Ramsay, Thomas Chalmers, Queen Victoria, and the great Scottish National Memorial to the Prince Consort in Charlotte Square, a colossal work upon which the sculptor was engaged for twelve years, and on the occasion of whose unveiling he received the honour of knighthood. Many Americans who have never crossed the Atlantic are familiar with the work of Sir John Steell through the bronze duplicates of his "Sir Walter Scott" and "Robert Burns" in the Central Park, New York. His work is always good, generally strong and indi- vidual; but he is not a great sculptor, even in portraiture and monumental sculpture, to which practically he confined himself. Of Mr. Tweed, and I must omit mention of many others, it is too soon to prophesy more than a deserved popu- 174 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. larity : he may yet show himself a sculptor of whom Scotland may well be proud. Trained in Paris and influenced by his master Bodin, he has begun his career with exceptional promise. The main interest in Scottish art to-day centres in what the younger men may achieve in effect and in influence. This influence has been felt far from Glas- gow and the North : far from London even. In Mu- nich and in New York, in Berlin and Boston, an in- fluence, not very clearly defined perhaps, and not al- ways recognised, has revealed itself a factor in the evolution of contemporary art. " The Glasgow School," so-called, is of course a derivative from French art : but it has an unmistakable individuality. It would be more exact to say that it has shown an unmistakable individuality. To-day, properly, there is no " Glasgow School." Its members and those who may for artistic kinship be classed with it 4 have outgrown that primary cohesion inevitable in a school. It is the accidental designation which to-day indi- cates E. A. Walton and J. Guthrie, John Lavery and Macaulay Stevenson, Hornel and George Henry, as an interdependent fellowship. They are indi- vidual artists and might as well live in America or Russia for all their real connection with Glas- gow. As a matter of fact, most of the " Glas- gow School " have ceased to live in or near Glasgow : several of the leading members indeed have long been settled in or near London. Nor, again, have I found any member of the " group " with whom I have spoken either exigent or even explicative concerning the " school " and its aims and ends. Two or three have frankly said, in effect, what one of its mem- bers recently confided to me as follows : " I haven't the least idea what the phrase means now. As long THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 175 as it meant a group of young fellows born and brought up in Glasgow or the West, there was some meaning in it; but I think we used it mainly to differentiate ourselves from the Edinburgh men. We had, and have, ideals, of course: at least I suppose most of us have: but I don't think they've anything to do with Glasgow or even Scotland, at least in the way that's commonly meant. Glasgow is our big- gest and most prosperous and ' mixt ' city, with not only an immense Highland and Irish admixture but a big blend of Germans and Scandinavians. So of course it's the likeliest place in Scotland for all sorts to have a try and as it was the best place to get on in (till we made enough to clear out and go to London!) naturally those who came to the front cohered. Nobody can get on without being in ear- nest, and no artist is an artist if he hasn't eyes for what's good and what's bad in the art round about him. So we chummed and had theories and talked big about ourselves, as all young fellows do, whether in Paris or Munich or London or New York. Then some of us had a run of luck: and one or two got a medal abroad: and by a Godsend A. and B. and C. developed certain fads, which got laughed at, talked about, and at last were seriously accepted. Then we were told we were the Glasgow School. We took it very solemnly in public. : At one of our (pri- vate) meetings, somebody proposed a grave conun- drum : ' What is a Glasgow School ? ' . . . It was then and there that ' The Glasgow School ? decided that it had no existence: that the members did not have individual aims and ends in common: that it was amusing, as long as it paid: that it would be a bore after it paid : that it wouldn't ' hold ' : that it had nothing in it: that it never had." 176 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. To-day, not a little that is best and most promising in modern British art may be found in the works of the " Glasgow School " and the " New English Art Club " : but it is by virtue of the individual merits and achievements of a few men, who, as soon as they have won their way out of this or that coterie, cease to belong to any school but that of "Art." Before leaving the subject I should add that though there are strongly defined racial qualities in the Scot- tish art of to-day there are few traits of nationalism. The men are Scots and their racial temperament re- veals itself in their paintings as in their external actions: but the paintings themselves are not Scot- tish, as Sir David Wilkie's pictures are Scottish, as Hogarth's are English, as Jan Steen's are Dutch, as Murillo's are Spanish. In the work of the finest in- deed, whom I take to be E. A. Walton there is more of what we recognise as the Erench genius than of anything northern : and yet there is no living land- scapist less imitative and more original. What I have written of the " Glasgow School " seems to me true in degree of the " 'New English " and every other appellation of the kind each at first so advisable, perhaps inevitable, often most con- venient for all concerned, but soon or late unsatis- factory, misleading, and at last wholly unacceptable. There is talk of a new Irish School, concurrent with the new movement in Anglo-Irish literature. But nothing has yet been shown to substantiate any such claim. There is no Irish art to-day, though there are several Irish painters of repute. As a mat- ter-of-fact they have not even a " school " that rec- ognised first step to collective reputation. There is no " Dublin School " or " Cork School " or " Belfast School " ! Some time ago at a public dinner, the THE LATER SUBJECT-PAINTERS. 177 chairman spoke eloquently of " the Irish School," but a subsequent speaker, with candid humour, re- plied that in the absence of the " Irish School " nothing could be said, as the gentleman in question was in London at present. 178 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK XIII. WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. THE direct outcome of the episodical and narra- tive methods in art was in the painted allegory, the idealistic but literary conception, and, as a natural outcome from these, the religious picture and the pictorial expressions of a literary rather than pri- marily pictorial fancy and imagination. The first has had many exponents, but only one or two great examples. Broadly speaking, the British gchool of allegory may be said to begin with Haydon and culminate in G. F. Watts. But artists such as Benjamin Haydon and David Scott, and all the many British and American painters who conven- tionally painted the conventions of allegory, were rarely painters. They were men with an artistic bias who made a profession of what should have been only an avocation: when this was not the case then they made a mistaken ideal of the true function of art, their principle, and painted, " with the dust of time and the moth's wing of oblivion." To-day, nothing of all this semi-historical, semi-allegorical art this High Art, as poor Haydon used to call it has any interest for us. It is, indeed, non-existent in practice now. In France only has it any real vogue: but that is only because of the bent in the Latin mind which crushes formal conventions even when long exploited. At the Paris Salon of 1900 WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. 179 I saw a painting which was much admired, depicting the genius of the Seine. Under the Paris buildings and in the clear air were grouped in all manner of impossible gestures of ascent and descent several plump mythological ladies, while in the river itself Parisian young women disguised as Nereids and epileptic athletes depicted as Tritons added to the unconvincing grotesqueness of the whole scene. It had not occurred to the artist, so far as I could ascertain it did not occur to any of the critics or the public that the genius of the Seine could be far more truly represented by another Millet than by another of the oblivion-doomed crowd of the allegorists. Another Millet might have taken a solitary figure of a bargee or riverside labourer, and, setting it against the flow of the river at some " psychical " moment, have created not only an unforgettable pic- ture, but a true and realisable if symbolical interpre; tation. All these pictorial presentments of " War," " Vic- tories of Peace," " Discord," " Harmony," " Union of the Arts," " Science and the Tine Arts," and so forth, how wearisome they are to us now : how toler- able only when we find that what they stand for is of little importance compared with how they stand. It is not by virtue of allegorical significance, but in despite of it that we care for the work of men such as Puvis de Chavannes, of Edwin Abbey, of a few others in France and England and America. What we cannot tolerate to-day in Hay don, for instance, we appreciate in Henri Martin: though this is not because the allegorical conventions of the latter are newer to us and therefore less outworn, but because Henri Martin is primarily a painter and only an allegorist by accident, while Benjamin Haydon was 180 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. only a painter by accident, and inevitably and un- alterably an allegorist an artist of allegory, which is but pictorial commentary, a kind of glorified caricature of actuality. But when, after many patient and frequently pop- ular exemplars of a kind of art dignified by its occasional adoption by so many of the great painters of antiquity, we come at last to George Frederick Watts, we come to a man who is unmistakably a potent individuality. The great painters are paint- ers first and foremost ; but in a sense Mr. Watts was not so. We can imagine him a greater writer than a painter. If in his high gifts as a painter he lacked one, the power or compulsion to paint because of beauty primarily, it is in this lack lies the secret at once of the immense extent of his appeal and of the indifference with which many artists regard his work. The public has accepted him as a great moralist who speaks to them in pictures : to many whose care for art is almost hieratic in its exclusiveness, his great- ness lies only in the magnificent effort, not in the very partial achievement. " He is but a finer, deep- er, broader 'Noel Paton," they say, in contradiction to the claim of the others. " Here we have the true inheritor of the genius of the great ones of old, who were great teachers as well as great painters." The truth would seem to be with neither. G. F. Watts was not a great painter as Titian was great, or Rem- brandt, or Velasquez: he was not a great painter compared with even a hundred lesser men; but so nobly did his indisputable genius wed lofty dreams and visions to a genuinely fine though not adequately fine power of expression, that he ranks far above many men of greater technical capacity, if still far below the supreme masters. He was so pre- WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. 181 occupied with the significance of his vision that his work, too, became visionary, in the sense that it is not real. It does not lack reality in aspect, but in its own life or painting. The artist, one thinks sometimes, was occasionally so uplifted by his dream or thought or vision, that, as it were, as a mere resource, he used pigments as a man on his sudden defence uses anything to hand that can serve as a weapon, and, using these, ignored that they, too, like words, are things with whose resurrection from death to life the true artist should paramountly concern himself. But while I sympathise with those who complain that G. F. Watts is a moralist first and a, painter afterwards, I think that the opposition to him on this score is exaggerated and unfair. As a rule, the ignoble resent the noble; the commonplace, the original; the vulgar, the uplifted and the beau- tiful. 'No little criticism of this merely antipathetic kind has been applied to G. F. Watts. Nobly de- signed works such as his " Love and Death " or "Timor mortis conturbat me" offend some people, as music offends them, or great beauty, or the ex- pression of great beauty. Whenever a small nature can see a chance to deride the apparent or real minor weakness of a great nature it invariably seizes that chance with a malignant eagerness, in the instinctive belief that it will lower what is high to its own level, or, indeed, beneath it, because it can discern (or have pointed out to it by others) just where a flaw lies in what is otherwise exquisitely and nobly worthy. Far too much of the common jargon about " Watts's ideal- istic stuff, you know," arises from this kind of per- son. He would say the same of Tintoretto's " Ariadne " or Giorgione's " Venetian Pastoral " or Leonardo's " Mona Lisa " if these pictures were 182 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. to be exhibited to-day for the first time as the work of, say, Watts or Rossetti or Burne-Jones. It would be out of place here to dwell in detail on the productions of this or that " school," or even of the chief exemplars themselves. Of Mr. G. F. Watts the time has not yet come for an adequate pronouncement. His is eminently an instance of those reputations where another generation will speak with more surety. Of all our prominent later Vic- torian painters, perhaps Millais only is understood aright by ourselves. Meanwhile we can justly con- sider Watts a fine and noble influence and an artist of high achievement in the third, perhaps in the second, rank of the really great. His portraiture, too, stands apart ; not so strong as that of Millais, it has a poetic insight and grave suavity which has en- deared it to us all : though it may well be that Rus- kin was right when, so far back now as a quarter of a century ago, he wrote, " his portraits are all conscien- tious and subtle, and of great present interest, yet not realistic enough to last." Remembering, however, those of Tennyson, Gladstone, Millais, Leighton, Martineau, John Stuart Mill, and the painter's self ("Browning" and most of the later portraits are, with one or two notable exceptions, not so convinc- ing) it is difficult not to believe that he has achieved here an enduring name. However high a place G. F. Watts will take, it is all but certain that his influence in contemporary painting, technically speaking, has not been wholly a good one: indeed, where traced, is seldom one to be glad of. In almost all the pictures inspired by him which one has seen of late from year to year, there has been a marked excess of the literary idea over the technical power of expression: an obvious WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. 183 trust to subject rather than to execution. With all this kind of art it is as though a photographer were to excuse a poorly finished or badly focussed portrait by saying that the sitter had lovely and noble ideals j of life. Frederick Leighton is sometimes spoken of as an allegorist and as though of the same school as Mr. Watts. This is a mistake, of course. The one artist knew a life-long obsession by high ethical ideas to be expressed through art: the other had no other preoccupation than that of visual beauty, in- formed by classic ideals, sustained by mental culture, and fulfilled in lovely expression. Leighton is one of the few real classicists in English art. Tradition meant for him far more than any modern cult : but it was tradition along the highest levels. He under- stood and loved art with Catholic sympathy and in- sight. Reproached for his coldness, his formalism, his classicism, and every ism wherein he could possi- bly sin by committal or defect, he responded by a swift sympathy and generous delight in every phase of art. If Greek sculpture, and early Italian art, and mediaeval art-handicraft appealed to him par- ticularly, none more rejoiced in the Venetian masters, in Rembrandt, and Velasquez. In contemporary art it was natural that the work of a man such as Puvis de Chavannes should appeal most strongly to him, but he was one of the first in England to discern the genius of Whistler: for many years he was almost the sole Academical voice lifted up in recognition of Rossetti, and it was mainly through his influence that the famous Rossetti posthumous exhibition was held at Burlington House: and had it not been for the eager advice and admonition of the President, the Royal Academy would never have admitted Ed* 184 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ward Burne-Jones into its nominally representative but actually parochial circle. Frederick Leighton's career was one of the most brilliant in latter-day art-history. There is no mod- ern artist for whom cosmopolitanism was so likely to be helpful, and it was Leighton's good fortune that his early circumstances exceptionally conduced to this end. Born of well-to-do and cultured parents in Scarborough in 1830, he was not yet in his teens when he was studying drawing and composition in Rome. At the age of fifteen he was a student at the Royal Academy at Berlin, and in the next few years lived and studied in Brussels, Frankfort, Paris, Florence, and Rome. He was only twenty-five when he exhibited his first picture in London, and the now famous " Cimabue's Madonna carried through the streets of Florence " was the talk of the season, and later of the nation, when it became known that the Queen had purchased it. From that year (1855) till his election to the Presidency of the Royal Academy and Knighthood in 1878 : through his long tenure of what was certainly the most popular presidency since that of Sir Joshua Reynolds : and till his eleva- tion to the peerage and attainment of almost every [honour that could come to an artist his success was on a par with that of Van Dyck, beyond that of al- most any modern painter. Throughout his art-life we see in Leighton's work a steadily growing love of classic subjects, that is for those which lent themselves to undramatic and decorative treatment. The " Cimabue " picture was significant. In a sense everything that he did sub- ' sequently rang true to that keynote for in manner, and method the Leighton of the " Daphnephoria " and " Phryne " and " The Garden of the Hesperides " WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. 185 is to be discerned in the first important work of the Leighton who drew his youthful inspiration from the most classic among the early Italian masters. No living draughtsman has excelled him in the draw- ing and painting of complicated drapery: and the fact that several able and scores of far less able men have imitated him, and that he himself fell subject to his own mannerisms, should not prevent recognition of what he achieved. In all his work is to be dis- cerned an absorbing love of beauty. In dignity of composition, in strength, and beauty of line, in re- finement of sentiment and distinction of manner, he wins our admiration. Unfortunately as a colourist he ranks far below many men whose other gifts were not comparable with his. He has no deep or indi- vidual sense of colour. Many of his paintings are exquisitely harmonious, but perhaps there is not one with which a born painter would not be painfully dissatisfied. He made no crude mistakes : whatever he painted was correct and in a conventional sense, beautiful: but colour was not his language and that is an end of it. There is no surprise in his work. His colour is never vibrant as Rembrandt's is, or rhythmical as Titian's is, or lyrical and choric as Turner's is: but I mention these names at hazard, for none would dream of mentioning them with Leighton in critical connection, nor is any critical method more pernicious than that which disparages a man for being what he is instead of being someone else. The influence of Frederick Leighton in Eng- lish art I take to be a good one. His refinement, his distinction, his imperative sense of beauty, have had, and may still have, a welcome and uplifting effect in the development of English painting. It is an influence, though secondary, of which we stand 186 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. in need, in a day when the common tendency is towards shallow pictorial commentary on passing events or in a ceaseless exploitation of the insatiable commonplace. It has been stated that Leighton's art was a mere Academicalism, the accident of training and early success. This view is not tenable for the student of his work. His art is what it is because he fulfilled in it as nearly as he could, the ideals which he cher- ished : and the choice of method and manner was one at once natural and well-considered. That he could paint with realistic vigour and directness we see, for example, in his masterly little portrait of Sir Kich- ard Burton, one of the triumphs of contemporary portraiture: how fine a sculptor he might have be- come, is evident from his " Athlete strangling a Python," or in "The Slinger," or "Weariness." In Frederick Leighton, indeed, contemporary sculp- ture has lost one who might have become a foremost representative. He is the dignified head of a school which has not much vogue mainly because its exemplars have not been men of marked power. The strongest of them is the late Albert Moore, an artist of a wearisome mannerism, but who at his best achieved beautifully in that decorative art which Leighton had inspired. If the ideal of decorative art be beauty without "human interest," without emotion, then Albert Moore came nearer to it than any other modern art- ist has done. "Not even Puvis de Chavannes in his most purely decorative work has reached a stand- point so remote as that of Albert Moore. There is reason in the remark made by a famous contempo- rary painter that Moore did not require anything but the run of Liberty's stuffs. The women of his WATTS, LEIGHTON, AND ALBERT MOORE. 187 paintings are as lifeless as the models of fashion- plates. To-day his work has lost much of its charm for us, not because the public taste is finer or more exigent, but because the work is savourless: is, in fact, but glorified pattern. If Albert Moore had painted some three or four of his finest pictures only, his place in art would have been a very high one. The continuous iteration of his effects became at first a weariness and then destructive. In his " Eng- lish Painters " Mr. Sidney Colvin alludes to him as nearer in spirit to the Greek than any other modern artist, and says that " he stands nearly alone in our day in his realisation of an ideal physical in the human type." It is hardly likely that this view is held now by artists and students of art. Albert Moore is the poet of drapery. 188 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK XIV. THE PBE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. AND HOLM AN HUNT, MILLAIS, AND KOSSETTI. THE whole movement primarily a spiritual rather than an intellectual, and then an intellectual rather than an artistic movement whose captains were, in one section, Leighton and Watts, and, in an- other Millais, and, in another, Rossetti and William Morris and Burne-Jones, with John Euskin as generalissimo had its origin in the same restless- ness and weariness which produced the most vital developments in nineteenth-century literature : which turned Keats backward to a golden age, and Words- worth inward to an ideal age, and Shelley forward to a new Utopia, and so many dreamers and prophets, to Carlyle and Emerson and Newman, to visions of regenerated and freshly inspired life. A kindred passionate earnestness underlay the work of men so widely different as, say, Albert Moore and Holman Hunt. They were extremes that met. But both men, and all between them, had turned from life as they saw it and knew it, weary of its problems, but far more weary of its sordidness and deepening ma- terialism. The one sought to paint himself into Christianity: the other to paint himself out of Christianity. The one, in 'his moral eagerness, went to the East, to seek there a greater nearness to even the external aspects of truth (heedless of that shift- ing quicksand, " verisimilitude ") : the other,, in his THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 189 starved hunger for beauty, went to books, to ancient sculpture and Renaissance art, and to his own hid- den land of dreams, to find there the secret of forget- fulness of the present, of preoccupation with a world that was, a world that may be. Thus it is that a common impulse unites the three great characteristic movements in modern art: the decorative or esthetic movement, the classical move- ment or movement of intellectual revolt, and the re- ligious movement. The triple movement, though in varying degree, is cosmopolitan. If in British art we have Leighton and Albert Moore, Rossetti and Burne- Jones, Watts and Holman Hunt, abroad we have the Frenchman Puvis de Chavannes, the German Von Uhde, the Italian Segantini, and many others. The religious movement in English art has been a potent one, though less closely allied to art proper than in France or Germany. Its immediate fore- runner (and in a sense the pioneer of the so-called Pre-Raphaelite School) was the Scottish painter William Dyce, an Aberdonian born in 1806. As a youth Dyce went to Rome, and at first his pictures were of the pseudo-classical kind then the vogue, " Bacchus nursed by Nymphs," " The Descent of Venus," and the like. He was over thirty when he painted his " Madonna and Child," and from that date (1838) till 1860, when his "Man of Sorrows" attracted wide attention, his work mainly consisted of scriptural themes. His " Joash shooting the ar- row of Deliverance " impressed an important mem- ber of the group of later painters, Ford Madox Brown, as one of the finest works of its kind, and we can see Dyce's influence in Brown's " Samson and Delilah " and other works. Dyce's frescoes in Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament 190 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. did much to disprove the assertion that no good mural painting could be seen in England. There ia as direct connection between the art of Dyce and the ecclesiastical decorative work of Puvis de Chavannes and other French artists as, in landscape, between the art of Constable and that of the French roman- ticists and naturists. His fine and highly original and suggestive drawings, his lectures as Professor of Fine Arts at King's College, London, and his fragmentary writings on art-subjects had much to do with the impetus of that celebrated movement in connection with which his name is now undeservedly forgotten. Before further mention of Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hunt, I might allude to the many painters of scriptural themes who have followed Dyce's lead. But none is of any memorable worth. Some individual pictures have had an immense vogue, such as Noel Baton's "Christ Tempted by Satan/' but it is significant that none is of any artis- tic importance except the few which were painted by men dissociated from the great Academical league. Of course, one famous religious painting by an Academician may be at once recalled, "Christ in the House of his Parents" (sometimes called "The Carpenter's Son") ; but it must be remembered this was painted by Millais when he was a young man, a "Pre-Baphaelite," and before he was elected an Associate. In the history of that "movement" in art known as the Pre-Baphaelite movement, to which frequent allusion has already been made in this volume, one name has of late been given too signal importance. A gTeat deal has been attributed to Ford Madox Brown, but I think without authentic surety. He THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 191 was an eminent artist, whose personal influence and enthusiasm were of great service, but whose own work is rarely masterly, is often mediocre, is some- times bad, but, it must be added, is always original. He was of a generous and enthusiastic nature, but had neither the spiritual fervour nor the imaginative intensity to become the primary mover or inspirer of a movement which has given to the Victorian era some of its most imaginative and spiritual art. There is evidence rather to show the reflex influence upon Ford Madox Brown of the early work of Millais, Bossetti, and Holman Hunt. The truth is, that not only was the designation a misnomer, but that no name could aptly indicate a "movement" which was not a single, conscious, and controlled movement, but, as we have seen, severally prepared long before by forces and individuals. From Gainsborough to Frederick Walker, from Constable to George Mason, from William Blake to Rossetti, from Bonington and Miiller and Turner to the latest impressionists and naturists a steady movement is observable, with its inevitable ebb and flow and flow and ebb. There is as direct connection between the latter-day romanticism and the art of these diverse predecessors as between the latter-day romanticism of literature and the notes sounded so newly and persuasively 'by Chatterton and Col- eridge and Keats. If we were to be told that a man of letters, such as the late William Bell Scott, for instance (who, though in lesser degree, might be put forward as the literary counterpart to Ford Madox Brown, in so far as relationship to the Pre-Raphael- ite movement is concerned), was the real " fount " or inspirer of the poetry and prose of Bossetti, William Morris, Pater, and others of the so-called aesthetic 192 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. school, we would know how misleading the statement would be, even if it could be proved that one man could so influence others of far greater power and individuality. We would know that Coleridge and Keats, that many from Chatterton to Landor among English writers, and from Kousseau and Chateau- briand among foreign writers, had done far more to prepare the way: that without them, indeed, these great ones named would not, at the least, have been thus great. To judge the Pre-Eaphaelite School without recognition that it was a gradual, diverse, and inevitable development from the ideals and work of earlier painters, would be as uncritical as it would be to judge the work of, say, Tennyson or Rossetti, without any knowledge of the poetry and influence of Keats. Even in a lesser way, I think the part played by Ford Madox Brown in the Pre-Eaphaelite movement has been much exaggerated. He was always sym- pathetic: he would have given his good-will to any genuine movement of young talent or to any young man of promise. He loved talk. At his house many of the younger men of a group afterwards to become famous were wont to congregate. His daughter, herself a painter in what is known as the P.R.B. convention, married a member of the group, Mr. William Rossetti. And that is all. It has been claimed for Millais that he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: the same has been claimed for Rossetti: Mr. Holman Hunt, I think, has stated that he was primarily responsible. Other claims, too, have been made. ISTone in the least mat- ters. The mere accident that one man affirmed or suggested something in advance of the comrades with whom 'he is associated is a mere detail of curiosity. THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 193 All that was of any value in the Pre-Raphaelite move- ment was due to a new spiritual and artistic impulse arising out of the ever-new romanticism which is al- ways following the ever-old weariness. We cannot think of Eossetti as a " Pre-Raphaelite." He was a powerful and original artist, a powerful and original poet. He stands clear now of all " isms." As already stated in an earlier chapter, he did not hold by " isms " or believe in them much, and laughed at a good deal of the nonsense proclaimed by those who created a new weariness by endless discussion of " Pre-Raphaelitism," the " Pre-Raphaelites," the origin and ideals of the " Pre-Raphaelite Brother- hood," the start, carriage, and miscarriage of The Germ, and other P.R.B. mysteries. I have heard him say that at no time did he ever take the matter very seriously. " In fact, I don't believe any of us did," he added once, " till dear old Ruskin came along and gave us too good an advertisement to laugh at it ourselves." The designation, as such, was of course misleading. There is no resemblance between the early work of Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt and that of the Italian painters who preceded Raphael except in a mental quality not restricted to any one group or period, sincere simplicity. Long before the art of the chief painters of the group had matured, Rossetti had ceased to be simple, Millais had " gone over to the enemy," Holman Hunt had taken himself to the East to paint more truly what according to P.R.B. principles he should have found at home. If the name " Pre-Raphaelite " was a mis- nomer at the time, it is now too incongruous for use. The particular " ism " never very clearly defined was long sustained as an entity, in the first in- stance by its association with the advocacy and eager 194 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. eloquence of Ruskin, and later by its association with the genius of Dante Gabriel Eossetti, the pro- foundest individual influence on the whole aesthetic movement in contemporary art and literature. At the same time it would be unjust not to allow a genuine if indirect and not very potent influence to Ford Madox Brown. He had had the advantage of a foreign training, and had newer and more ver- satile ideas on the development of art than obtained in England at that time : he had the further advan- tage of being older than the men who met at his studio, and by tact and good-fellowship was able to bring out not only individual qualities but to recon- cile them when hostile. Madox Brown's early years were spent in Flanders and Paris. Born at Calais, where his parents were temporarily residing, in 1821, he did not come to England till his youth was over. After studying in Bruges and Ghent, and for two years studying and painting at Antwerp (whence he despatched at the age of twenty, his first picture to the Royal Academy in London), he spent some years in Paris. In none of his early or late work is there any distinction or even real artistic worth: but as soon as he himself was influenced by the new romantic movement in English art and literature his work suddenly deep- ened in power and emotion, and, frequently, in intensity. He had become widely known as the painter first of historical and scriptural episodes: then of domestic and popular themes, e.g., his "Waiting," "The English Fireside," and "The Last of England," a genre to culminate in the " seventies " in his celebrated " Work," one of the most discussed pictures of its kind in modern art; and then he fell into line with the mew movement with his "King Edna's Honeymoon," "Death of THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 195 Sir Tristram/ 7 and like themes from Arthurian and other legendary romance. Much of his best-known work is scattered: some of it in Australia, some in America, and one famous picture at least, is at the bottom of the ocean. It is more than likely, how- ever, that his name will live hereafter less in con- nection with even pictures so deservedly famous as " The Last of England " and " Work " than popu- larly, in connection with the frescoes in Manchester Town-Hall, and, artistically, in connection with the work of his brief romantic " period," the period when he painted " King Rene's Honeymoon " and kindred subjects with a new and strange and perhaps grotesque " intensity." (There are a few pictures of this period by Madox Brown which, with one or two by Eossetti, several by Elizabeth Siddall Ros- setti, the poet-painter's wife, and most of those by Mrs. Lucy Rossetti, Madox Brown's daughter, might have come from the same brush.) To this period also belonged some of his finest work in the genre of the religious subject: notably his beautiful " The En- tombment," one of the finest works of its kind done in England. If Madox Brown had something to do with the romantic art of Rossetti in his early period, he had also to do with the religious art of one very re- markable man of this group, though never directly associated with it, Frederick Shields, perhaps the one living British painter who has given his life-long effort to the unbroken service of religious art, and this not only as a preference but from a deep and vital conviction. Strangely, in England, where the " Scriptural picture "has always been welcomed, lit- tle heed is paid to the few who paint scriptural themes from other than professional motives, who paint these out of deep conviction that they serve God directly o 196 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. even as Fra Angelico believed when he prayed eacH day before his easel. How few, even among those who profess to follow art closely, know the work of Frederick Shields in England or of Mrs. Phoebe Traquair in Edinburgh !: Holman Hunt (with Browning one of the few emi- nent men born in London) was born in 1827, and is thus the junior of Madox Brown by six years. It may be as well to add here that Rossetti was born in 1828 and Millais in 1829. Of this original band of young painters and poets, only three men became famous, though all won a measure of reputation. These were Rossetti, Hol- man Hunt, and Millais. Of late years the " Pre- Raphaelites " has come to mean a much wider group than indicated in the original Brotherhood : not only William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and Fred- erick Sandys and many other painters (such as Win- dus), but even a writer so individual and distinct as Coventry Patmore, are now commonly considered to be in the same communion. In course of time the term Pre-Raphaelite will come to signify, as indeed to a great extent it already does signify, not that which was attempted or achieved by a few eager young men, but that which in painting and poetry reveals a particular method of expression, the method '(from a vigorously individual independent of other conventions) of careful and minute elaboration ap- plied to themes primarily chosen or adapted for their homeliness or simplicity, or for their possibility of homely or simple treatment. It is a wide definition, of course : and holds many " loose ends " : but in the main is sufficiently inclusive. That it never was ab- solutely so is evident if we examine the worts which were painted during the actual Brotherhood-period: THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 197 the range between Rossetti's " Ecce Ancilla Domini " and Millais' " Child Jesus in the Workshop of Jo- seph the Carpenter " affords more than enough scope for any school. There is no doubt that Holman Hunt's naturally mystical and symbolical mind, expressing a pro- foundly religious temperament, had much to do with the success steadily gained by his work, in itself so unfamiliar and unconventional. With him, as with his friend Millais, and still more markedly with Ros- setti, what was native genius as distinct from the intellectually realised and ordered service of genius reveals itself most convincingly in his early work. There is a glow in a picture like his " Scapegoat " or that little canvas called " Peace " or simply " Sheep " which is wholly absent from ambitious later work such as " The Flight into Egypt " or " The Choristers on Magdalen Tower." William Holman Hunt was not so precocious as were many of his eminent contemporaries. Born in London inlS27, and educated at the Royal Acad- emy Art Schools, he was in his twentieth year be- fore he ventured to exhibit. Looking at his earliest tentative efforts we realise how inevitably he became one of the moving forces in and truest exemplars of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, a movement so spirit- ual in its impulse and sincere in intellectual con- viction. By the time he was five and twenty a small section of the public had begun to look for his work, finding in it the expression of a new and pow- erful personality: and already among a small group of eager and brilliant spirits, destined to become fa- mous, he was accepted as one of their most remark- able. Suddenly Holman Hunt became celebrated, became one of the most discussed and admired of 198 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. living artists while Kossetti and Millais were still appreciated only by the few. " The Hireling Shep- herd " of 1853 (when he was twenty-six) showed the direction of his strange genius : " The Awakened Conscience " of two years later confirmed the evi- dence. But in the same year a little picture was ex- hibited which made a sensation so great that not only all Britain but all artistic Europe and America heard of the painter of the " Light of the World." This picture is now familiar throughout the world. It has been imitated a thousand times, emulated a thousand times, equalled sometimes, surpassed a few times : but it remains the first of its kind in modern art, and must always have a unique place. It is needless to describe the picture: everyone knows it, but never did pictorial allegory more intimately come home to the public at large. The symbolism was at once deep and true and yet obvious to all. This lonely wood, this crowned and pathetic figure bearing his lamp of peace, this briar-beset door: everyone knew and felt the common spiritual truth, the individual application. The picture, too, for all its drawbacks, was so original, so able, so beauti- ful that the majority of people would hear of nothing but praise. Artists and those whose love and duty it is to be forever jealous and scrupulous of that which they love so well, noticed much that seemed to them crude, and notably in the unreal greenish colouring of the light in which Christ is illumined. Still even they admitted the winsome charm and pro- found spiritual appeal of the " Light of the World." and it was commonly realised that a new beacon had arisen in the confused and troubled ways of modern art. To this picture may be traced much of later re- ligious art both in England and abroad. THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 199 But even the artistically prejudiced admitted, in the following year (1856), that Holman Hunt was unquestionably an artist of singular power and orig- inality. " The Scapegoat " made a profound sen- sation. Exhibited among the usual Academical triv- ialities and pictures, as commonplace in technique as in conception, this strangely simple and yet wholly unfamiliar canvas could not but make an extraordi- nary impression. " What is it all about ? " enquired some bewildered people who could see in it only the picture of a very gaunt and dishevelled goat stand- ing solitary and disconsolate in a waste place: but most of those who saw it recognised ajt once that not only did Holman Hunt's picture sum up in a new and striking way the strange faith of the Hebraic race, familiar to all through the Scriptures, but further brought home the underlying spiritual truth. From that year Holman Hunt has been accepted in England as one of the greatest of modern painters of religious art : and if for many years past, the voice of criticism has grown more and more severe, and certainly under ample provocation, Holman Hunt still holds in the estimation of his countrymen the first place as a " religious painter." Some years later, when he was thirty-four, he painted the cele- brated " Christ discovered in the Temple," a work which, with Millais' " Jesus in the Workshop of Jo- seph," was eagerly visited by thousands, and consid- ered to be one of the greatest of English pictures. It is probably on " The Light of the World," " The Scapegoat," and " Christ in the Temple " that Hol- man Hunt's fame will rest. Those who love his art for his art's sake will care more for works such as " Sheep browsing " or " Isabella and the Pot of Basil " or the simpler and finer " King of Hearts." 200 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. When we examine famous pictures such as his " Christ in the Temple " and Millais' " Jesus in the Workshop of Joseph " we realise the reason of their all but universal appeal, but at the same time we see that in their very self-consciousness, their rea- soned simplicity and exactitude, they are distinct from the masterpieces of the great painters of old. It is wonderful to paint shavings so that they de- ceive the eye, or to paint raiment with such truth that a dealer in oriental stuffs would recognise the exactitude of pattern: but great art concerns itself with such matters only incidentally, if at all, and when it does so concern itself, never obtrudes the painstaking detail for the broad synthesis. In most of Holman Hunt's later work, and particularly since the famous " Flight into Egypt," his mannerisms have become painfully obvious. He seems to have lost his sense of colour, or rather, of the harmonious relations of colour: and his draughtsmanship, never his strength, has shown more and more singular defi- ciencies. In a work such as the ambitious " Mas- sacre of the Innocents " it is difficult to find any- thing to praise save the indomitable patience and scrupulous fidelity of the artist. He has, however, done one great thing, he has brought into modern art a new note of intense spiritual emotion. The man who, in a day of artistic decline, suddenly gave art a new direction and significance, is not likely to be forgotten or his best work undervalued. Holman Hunt has hitherto occupied and probably will continue to occupy, a place apart. In a sense he even stands free of English art. Not so with his two ^youthful comrades and lifelong friends, each des- tined to higher and more enduring fame than him- self, though in different ways. There are no greater THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 201 names in modern British art than Millais and Ros- setti. John Everett Millais is often spoken of as a Jersey painter, but though some of his early years were spent in Jersey he was not born there, nor even exclusively reared in the pleasant Channel Island. Born at Southampton in 1829, he spent his boyhood and early years in the Channel Islands and in France. I have often had occasion to allude in this book to the extraordinary precocity of some ar- tists, and, a page or two back, referred to Holman Hunt's comparatively tardy development. There are few instances more striking than that of Millais. He seems to have begun to draw at an age when most children are just emerging from babyhood: by five his childish efforts were admired, by seven his orig- inal talent was unmistakable: and at the age of nine he received a medal from the Society of Arts ! He was eleven years old when he entered the Royal Academy Schools and gained two silver medals. He was only sixteen when he exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy, " Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru," and in the following year (1847) he was the recipient of the gold medal for an historical painting " The Tribe of Benjamin seizing the Daughters of Shiloh." He was only twenty-one when he became with Holman Hunt one of the most discussed painters of his age, apropos of his " Christ in the House of His Parents." Two years later when he exhibited his now universally known " Huguenot Lovers/' he became the most popular painter of his day. In these two last named pictures English art took a sudden step forward. Nothing in religious art had hitherto so impressed the public : till " The Huguenot Lovers " nothing had so raised the popular 202 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. story-telling picture to the level of art. Henceforth there was a criterion in two genres by which it would be possible to judge artistic success or failure: and I think it was the grateful recognition of this that in no small part helped to the great fame of John Ever- ett Millais. It must be borne in mind that Holman Hunt's so- called revolutionary little picture, " The Light of the World," was not exhibited till five years after " Christ in the House of His Parents," and his " Christ in the Temple " not till 1861, six years later again. It might seem quite fair, therefore, so far as date of publicity is concerned, to say that Millais preceded Holman Hunt and 1 to claim that he was the real founder of the greatest movement in con- temporary English art. It must be remembered, however, that Hunt was a slow worker, that his thoughts and tentative efforts had long been bent in the direction of religious art, and that he and Ros- setti had admittedly much to do with the develop- ment of Millais. That the latter was not actuajted by an inward but rather by an intellectual impulse is clear from the change in his work which occurred at an early date and was in its fresh development maintained throughout his long mature career: whereas an absolute consistency characterises the work of Holman Hunt and a relative consistency that of Rossetti. But over and above this it must be borne in mind that the real motive spirit had already " begun the movement." In 1849 Rossetti had ex- hibited in a small gallery his " Girlhood of Mary Virgin." The poet of " The Blessed Damozel " and the painter of the " Girlhood of Mary Virgin," " Ecce Ancilla Domini " (now in the National Gal- lery) and the first pictorial Arthurian romances, THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 203 was the original, and certainly the most potent mov- ing spirit in this small band of genius. The public, however, knew nothing of the young English painter with the Italian name, nor did it pay any heed to his work until after the brilliant ad- vocacy of Ruskin. But at no period during his life- time was Rossetti's fame as an artist with the public to be compared with that of Millais, or even with the lesser but still great fame of Holman Hunt. " The Huguenot Lovers " ensured Millais 7 popu- larity with a great number who would not be reached by the new beauty and significance of his " Christ in the House of His Parents." This picture, too, was mainly responsible for his early election to Asso- ciateship of the Royal Academy to which he was elected in 1853, when only four and twenty in which year he universally confirmed his popularity with " The Order of Release " and the " Proscribed Royalist," the first of which in particular was soon known by innumerable reproductions throughout not only the Empire but Europe and America. These pictures, however, and " The Rescue " of two years later caused some perturbation among his intimate art-circle, and especially to Rossetti and Holman Hunt, who feared that this brilliant member of the " Brotherhood " was going over to the enemy by thus painting subjects whose appeal as " stories " was perilously near that fatal popularity which they saw had done and was doing so much harm to the cause of art. But as a matter of fact Millais was his own wisest critic and guide. He knew what he could do and what he could not do, and was quite well aware that he had not the continuous imaginative genius of Rossetti nor the single purpose of Holman Hunt. He was at once less ambitious and more ambitious: 204 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. far more ordinary in his intellectual and spiritual endowment, but also far better equipped in his tech- nical powers. If he realised that he could not com- pete with Rossetti in imaginative development, he realised also that even as a young man he far sur- passed his famous comrade in the technique of art. As quite a young man too he realised more convinc- ingly than any of his companions that in art it is bet- ter (to use a metaphor of his own in later life) to whip an ordinary trout stream well for a mile than to whip a beautiful one inefficiently for any number of miles. Probably he was uncertain as to the line of his own development at the time, but I think that one remarkable painting of this period shows that while he had chosen " the Academical Way " he had done so from choice and temperament, but that at any time he could paint a picture which would satisfy his most exigent of friends. In 1856 he exhibited " Au- tumn Leaves " (or " Burning Leaves " as it is some- times called). The public were not impressed though they hesitated before the rich vehemence of the ruddy tones: but all the genuine admirers of Millais at his best were delighted. The picture rep- resented only a small heap of autumnal leaves for burning, tended by four young girls, comely rather than pretty, and clad in rough brown dresses. The magic of the picture is in its intense actuality. It is a moment of actual, of lived and living life, liv- ingly represented. Millais' life-work was far too prolific and varied for him to be represented by any one painting, but we may be sure of this, that if only the " Autumn Leaves " remained of all he achieved, posterity would have enough warrant to THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 205 credit much of the sustained eulogium of his con- temporaries. For more than fifty years Millais painted with ceaseless power and ardour. He was only eleven when he finished his first complete picture, the " Cupid crowned with Mowers " of 1841 : he was still in his teens when among several other works he painted three pictures which excited more contro- versy than we can all but credit now, particularly that part of it which was preoccupied with the grossest injustice of abuse and misrepresentation, a prolonged debauch of malice and stupidity when not the mere blatancy of ignorance " The Christ in the House of His Parents," " Lorenzo and Isabella," and " Ferdi- nand lured by Ariel " ; he was not yet twenty-five when he was winning popularity despite an, at that time, ever deepening hostility on the part of many of the art-critics and influential artists themselves, with pictures such as " The Huguenots," " The Order of Kelease," and " The Proscribed Eoyalist " : before he was thirty he had triumphantly proved himself a master in every style he had adopted, having by " Au- tumn Leaves " and the lovely " Blind Girl " shown that he could excel in Pre-Raphaelitism of treatment : and in "A Dream of the Past " (better known as "Sir Isumbras at the Ford ") and the beautiful " Vale of Rest " shown that he could wed the Pre-Raphaelite method and manner to the finest traditions of English poetic art as represented by Frederick Walker, An- thony, and others : and in the " Escape of the Here- tic " shown that no artist of his day could surpass him in intensity of dramatic emotion and expression. From that time till 1896 his busy brush never ceased. He became the greatest of contemporary English painters, and, in this, admittedly also the 206 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. greatest portraitist. So virile was his power, and so ever-fresh and unspoiled his temperament, that he was an experimenter to the end. In the last year of his life he exhibited a picture as novel in design as in beauty, the fine " Forerunner " (or " The Fiery Cross "), where a nude young Celtic warrior of re- mote days stands in a forest glade binding the burn- ing brand of the Crann-tara to the straight sapling he is about to carry on his wild race through the regions beyond. It is significant that in 1896, when Millais was not far from seventy and in ill-health and much broken by many sorrows and anxieties, he painted no fewer than at least seven pictures and portraits. When he was only a boy of sixteen he was at work on three canvases, the "Baptism of Guthren the Dane," " Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru," and " The Moorish Chief." The long art-career, so sig- nificantly begun, so significantly ended, knew no break either in effort, in achievement, or in superb and convincing facility and versatility qualities sometimes associated with failure but generally the attribute of high genius, qualities moreover that in- dicate mastery, for all that they afford the favourite derogatory phrases for the incompetent who have no .other conception of facility than a weak mental leak- age, or of versatility than the fragmentary misdirec- tion of uncertainty. In some years Millais 7 mere output was in itself extraordinary, as in 1876, when in addition to his now famous "Yeoman of the Guard," the fine "Sound of Many Waters," and the popular "Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!" he painted " Twins," " Getting Better," " Pippa " (all portrait pictures), and eleven portraits among which are those of the late Lord Lytton and the Duchess of Westminster. THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 2Q7 Broadly speaking, Millais' direct association with what may be called the formative Pre-Raphaelite pe- riod came to an end with " Autumn Leaves " and " The Blind Girl " in 1857, and with the noble " Vale of Rest " and lovely " Apple-blossoms " (sometimes called " Spring ") which mark his transitional pe- riod. But again and again in his later work, and constantly in his wonderful drawings in black and white, he revealed the powerful influences of his early ideals and direction. The " Rosalind and Celia " and " The Brides-maid " of his middle period might almost be by Holman Hunt and Rossetti re- spectively : than the " Chill October " of 1870 and "The Deserted Garden" of 1875, no "Pre-Raphael- ite " landscape more convincingly fulfils the princi- ples of the creed of direct as against remembered and generalised vision, of exactitude of detail as against synthetised truth of impression. In the last years of his life, " Time the Reaper " and the " Forerun- ner " showed that he returned with the old eager interest to themes which had touched his imagination. But while the " Vale of Rest " typifies his transi- tional period, and pictures like " My First Sermon " typify the merely Academical aspect of his varied genius, the real change came abruptly in 1868, when the artist was nearly forty. It was in this year that among other notable works he painted his superb " Souvenir of Velasquez," a work so virile and broad and masterly that no living artist could have excelled it It was from this period that his marvellous series of portrait-studies began. The subtle influence of Velasquez, in that close following of the great Span- ish master which Millais adventured in the " Souve- nir," combined with a now closer than ever study of 208 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Reynolds and the great English portraitists, materi- ally helped to bring about this remarkable develop- ment. Millais' portrait work may be grouped into three main sections: portraits of children, whether direct portraits or disguised as " Caller Herrin," " Cinder- ella," " Cherry Kipe," and so forth : portraits of men and women whom he painted through the exi- gencies of his profession: and portraits of contem- porary celebrities, many of whom he painted in tribute of admiration or comradeship in this last group of course, being his own admirable portrait, which now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Of the first series it may safely be said that not even Sir Joshua has painted a more varied or charming gallery of winsome children: and to say that is to say that Keynolds and Millais stand alone in this genre in the history of art of any age or country. In the second group he achieved much notably fine, some masterly, and some indifferent work. In the third he stands unrivalled, for even the splendid series of portraits by G. F. Watts do not either in range or power equal those of Millais. Among his most successful are those of the famous Earl of Shaftes- bury, Thos. Carlyle, Gladstone (1879), Disraeli, John Bright, Cardinal Newman, Dr. John Caird 2 Lord Tennyson, Sir Henry Thompson, J. C. Hook 2 R.A., the Marquis of Salisbury, Sir Henry Irving, the Marquis of Lome (now Duke of Argyll), a second portrait of Gladstone (1885), T. O. Barlow, R.A., Lord Rosebery, the Marquis of Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), Sir Arthur Sullivan, a third portrait of Gladstone in 1890 (with his grand- son), John Hare, George Du Maurier, and a final (unfinished) portrait of the artist himself. The THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 209 "Gladstone" portrait of 1885, the "Lord Salisbury" and the " Beaconsfield " are among the triumphs of modern portrait art : indeed, by the common consent of the leading critics of Europe and America, the " Gladstone " of 1885 is considered to be the finest portrait of modern times. Perhaps the " Tennyson " of Mr. Watts is finer, and the Carlyle perhaps is not BO uniquely masterly : but in two types so opposite as John Bright and Cardinal Newman, Millais shows anew and convincingly his extraordinary power of essential portraiture. In almost everyone of these great portraits it is felt that the painter has tri- umphed in a far deeper sense than that of likeness, however convincing and able. In each the man himself, his intimate nature, stands revealed. On the whole, Millais was not nearly so success- ful with women. He had triumphs of course, as in his "Duchess of Westminster," "Mrs. Bischoff- sheim," and " Mrs. Jopling," the third being, in the opinion of the present writer, Millais' finest woman- portrait, almost austerely simple as it is. Apart from the obvious claim of his noble portraits of great personalities, it is probable that Millais owed much of his popularity to the winsomeness of his many child-pictures and to the universal appeal of many of his subject-pictures, notably the masterly " North West Passage" (perhaps the finest example of the subject-picture in British Art), " The Boy- hood of Kaleigh," " The Order of Kelease," and the dignified and lovely "Vale of Rest." In each of these widely differing but representative pictures ihe is true to his early theory of a true and consistent realism. In the suggestions of mortality and spir- itual resignation in " The Vale of Rest " he was guided by the same instinct which prompted the half- 210 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. closed telescope and the glass of grog on the little table beside the old Arctic-mariner as he sits listen- ing to his daughter's reading of the account of the ill- fated expedition of Sir John Franklin. It cannot truly be said that the other great member of the group was equally consistent to the P.K.B. theory of a simple and scrupulous realism. Prob- ably the primary difference in the genius of Eossetti and that of Millais lay in the fact that the one was ordered by the mind and controlled by the temper- ament, and that the other dominated the temperament and was the inevitable expression of an imagination whose language was colour whose ideal language, we should say in Eossetti's case, was colour and music. The two men have often been compared, chiefly be- cause they were comrades of the same age who began their art-life together, were bound in the same association with common ideals, and were together heralded by the greatest art-writer of the age as men of original and powerful genius. Comparison, how- ever, is futile. We may estimate what each has done in his own way, where one has fulfilled and the other failed or vice-versa, or where both had or have a com- mon ground: but we cannot compare genius so dis- tinct as that of Eossetti and that of Millais. Both were of signal power : but the genius of one man lay in his powers of technique, that of the other in his compelling imagination. ROSSETTL 211 CHAPTEK XY KOSSETTI. "No more puzzling personality awaits tlie judg- ment of posterity than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. So remarkable a force in art, so remarkable a force in literature, so remarkable an influence on his contem- poraries, where are we to find a like combination ? There are elements in the life of Dante Rossetti which made it as puzzling as that of Turner. Both men lived by and for their art with an exclusiveness and an independence of adverse circumstances almost unparalleled among other great modern artists. But whereas Turner was nothing but Turner the painter, Rossetti was a great deal more than Rossetti the painter : he was one of the foremost poets of the Vic- torian era, with an influence on contemporary liter- ature beyond that of any writer except Tennyson, an influence, as many believe, deeper and more potent even than that of Tennyson. It is to him more than to any other man that we trace the direction of the two great movements of the later Victorian epoch the movement in literature in the direction of subtlety and a rarer beauty in thought and: phrase, as best exemplified in Walter Pater, and the aBsthetic move- ment in the direction of the application of the prin- ciples of beauty to every possible phase of life, as best exemplified by William Morris. Forceful and individual as Morris and Burne-Jones were, it 13 difficult to believe that, without the direct and indi- p 212 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. rect influence of Rossetti, they could have achieved as we know them to have achieved. It would be easy, as it is tempting, to write at great length concerning the life and work and in- fluence of Rossetti: but that would be inconsistent with the scheme of this book. I must perforce re- strict myself to what is necessary for the information of those who know nothing or little of the most mys- terious and perhaps the most potent personality in the late Victorian period. Gabriele Rossetti, the poet-painter's father an Italian who had become endeared to his countrymen by his patriotism and his songs through being deeply involved in the political troubles in Italy in 1820-21, had to flee the country and take refuge in London, whence he never returned. A few years ago a monument was erected to him in the pub- lic Square of Vasto, his native place, a small town in the Abruzzi : to this day his patriotic songs are cher- ished in the Italy he loved so well. Gabriele Rossetti was also a man of rare culture, a deep student, an earnest thinker. When he settled in London he had to live a life of great simplicity and of what many people would consider poverty: but it was a life of quiet happiness, full of many and wide interests, amid valued friendships, with a wife (an Anglo-Italian of the old family of the Polidori) as noted mentally and spiritually as she was for the winsome sweetness of her nature and personal charm, and with four children all remarkable even in early childhood, two of them destined to become famous. A brief word only can be spared here for the three children of Gabriele Rossetti with whom we have no imme- diate concern. The eldest, Maria Francesca, in- herited that literary faculty so remarkable in Dante ROSSETTI. 213 Gabriel and Christina: and apart from her several minor writings, her Shadow of Dante was and still is admitted to be one of the subtlest and finest of the commentaries on the life and work of the great Italian poet. The second sister and third child, Christina, became one of the most beautiful of the women-poets who have written in English, second, indeed, if any comparison can be made, only to Mrs. Browning. The fourth child, William Michael, early made a reputation as a keen critic of art and litera- ture. He was associated with the foundation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was the intimate friend of everyone of the group and of all who were after- wards brought into close relationship with its mem- bers and adherents, and is the bibliographer and biog- rapher of the main facts and doings in the life of his brother. Much has been written concerning Dante Gabriel Kossetti, but though in the biographical sec- tion of it there is valuable material for an adequate " life " it must be admitted that that " Life " has not yet appeared. It is desirable that a full and trust- worthy record should appear before the personal tradition of the man loses all shape and continuity: but there are now only a few who could do this adequately, and it is doubtful if any of these feel able for the task. Meanwhilewe have several records deal- ing with everyiperiod of the poet-painter's career, from the small but excellent memoir by Joseph Knight to the sumptuously illustrated monogram by Mr. Maril- lier supplemented by the several volumes of Rossetti and associated correspondence recently edited by Wil- liam Rossetti and others. Rossetti was born in May, 1828, and was chris- tened Gabriel Charles Dante. The first name was that of his father deprived of its Italian terminal: 214 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the second was after Signer Rossetti's great friend, Sir Charles Lyell : the third was to commemorate the strongest literary interest in Gabriele Rossetti's life, the poetry, spiritual significance, and influence of Dante. The boy was always called Gabriel at home and by his intimate friends in later life: but at an early period in his art career, while still a youth he dropped the " Charles " altogether and transposed the two other names. Almost from the first he be- came known to the world as Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He is often spoken of as Dante Rossetti, but there is only one Rossetti in art. Such outside education as Rossetti received was had at King's College in London. He owed little, however, to the usual routine of education. He had a fair working knowledge of French and knew some German : he had but a schoolboy's acquaintance with Latin and knew no Greek. As with Keats, this was no drawback to him: he was familiar in later years with what is best in Greek art and literature, and if he did not know the language^ he knew the spirit and the achievement of the wonderful race whose beauti- ful tongue was, as has been said, only a divine acci- dent in their life. Rossetti was about fifteen when he began his train- ing in art by entering the Antique School at the Royal Academy. He went there already a rebel against accepted conventions. Intellectually he was far beyond his fellow-students, but many of them excelled him in the A.B.C. of their art. He was quick to recognise this, but he saw also that he could not develop in an atmosphere so hostile to his origi- nal and imaginative mind, which wearied quickly when confronted with task-work of a kind which in- volved close application to the doing of what when ROSSETTI. 215 done lie did not consider worth the time or effort. Eager to get " at the heart of things " he turned dissatisfied from the counsel which hade him relin- quish what he had in his mind and stick to the routine of drawing from casts and models. Rossetti listened to his instructors, considered what they and others academically trained had done, watched his comrades and their development, and, in sum, asked himself cui bono, and made up his mind to make a fresh start. He had been attracted hy the unconven- tional work of a young painter whom the Academy ignored, but of whom he heard much said in praise and deep interest Ford Madox Brown. With him, he believed, he would be able to work and to receive instruction that would be really helpful. Rossetti wrote and proposed that he should become Madox Brown's pupil: the painter asked him to call, was impressed by the marked individuality of the young man, and agreed that he should paint in his studio. It was not long before Rossetti discovered that he had found a sympathetic mentor and friend as well as instructor, and Ford Madox Brown was likewise early convinced that in 'his new pupil he had encountered a youth who was bound to become re- markable though whether in art or in literature or in both was uncertain. When the young artist sub- mitted some of his early poems (among them " The Blessed Damozel," now an English classic) his master recognised that his pupil had genius, and it was with eager pleasure that he did his utmost to foster latent powers. The chief thing Ford Madox Brown did for Ros- setti was to introduce him to two other young men. One of these, a youth still in his teens, was already known as a painter and as one of the most promising 216 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. of the younger men, John Everett Millais : the other, a youth also, was but a year older than Kossetti him- self, William Holman Hunt. One account says that Eossetti and Holman Hunt became acquainted at the Antique School in 1845, and studied there side by side (the designs of the bronze gates of Ghiberti are particularised), and then shared a studio in Lon- don. But this, I think, is a slip of memory : for it seems certain that Eossetti left the Academy School in 1843, before Hunt went there. It does not mat- ter, however, and it is quite true that for a time the two young men shared a studio. It was there, prob- ably, and not at Madox Brown's, as sometimes stated, that the incident occurred which gave the first direction to the " Pre-Eaphaelite Brotherhood." One of the friends had brought to the house a folio of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Discussion of these, and of the principles which underlay the art of these early Italians re- vealed not only the dissatisfaction with which the three friends regarded the art of the day, but how much they had in common in their hopes and ideals. Out of their discussion and subsequent talks on the " Primitives " and other Pre-Eaphaelite painters arose the new " Brotherhood." In gratitude for what they had learned, and in recognition of the loving and sincere art of the old painters whose ex- ample they desired to emulate, they decided to call themselves the Pre-Eaphaelite Brotherhood. Perhaps the most convinced member of the little band was Holman Hunt. At this time he was twenty-one, and was already known as a painter with the repute of an exhibitor. Millais, the youngest, was only nineteen, but, youth though he was, had already won no small measure of reputation, his EOSSETTI. 217 " Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru " having been one of the sensations at the Academy, particularly when it was known to be the work of a youth of seventeen, and his " Daughters of Shiloh " having won him a gold medal. Rossetti was as yet unknown to the public as an artist : a small circle knew him as a poet of genuine originality. Yet though by suc- cess and extraordinary personal charm Millais ought, one would think, to have taken the lead: or, failing him, Holman Hunt, because of the intense earnest- ness of his nature, coloured as it was by deep religious fervour : it was Rossetti, however, who was the mov- ing spirit. He brought all the romanticism and all his love and knowledge of poetry to bear on the enthusiasm of his friends. At that time his idol was Keats, and he so persuaded Hunt and Millais that they not only shared in his eager pleasure, but, as he urged, sought in the pages of Keats for pic- torial inspiration. As Rossetti admitted long afterwards, it would have been much more consistent to have sought in the pages of Crabbe, who was a poetic realist in a sense in which Keats certainly was not. As a, matter of fact, the very choice of Keats as a source of inspiration is the best proof that the " movement " was primarily a romantic movement, not a religious or spiritual movement as Holman Hunt in later years claims, or strictly speak- ing a reformatory movement as Millais was apt to speak of it. Hunt dreamed of a renascence of the spirit of primitive art: Millais, of its individuality and honesty, its simple and in kind masterly tech- nique: Rossetti, of its fresh and virginal imagi- nation, its romanticism therefore, for he knew that romance and youth are interchangeable terms. The several views, complemented or modified by those of 218 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the four other members of the original seven of the Brotherhood when once established at Rossetti's sug- gestion (who, also, was responsible for the designa- tion),* were summed as follows, according to the first-hand testimony of William Rossetti, (1) to have genuine ideas to express: (2) to study Nature at- tentively so as to know how adequately to express these ideas: (3) to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the ex- clusion of what is conventional and self -parading and learned by rote: and (4) the most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues. The most obvious criticism on this declaration is that it could be subscribed to, has in effect been subscribed to, by every kind of brotherhood and by every artist worthy of the name. Hogarth said it more succinctly in his famous apothegm, again and again alluded to in the opening chapters of this book : it is the unspoken creed of Constable, of Millet and Rousseau and Corot, of Rembrandt and all his great countrymen, of all the Italians from Giotto to Ra- phael, from Masaccio to Leonardo, from Cimabue to Titian. In a word, it is the creed of all living art. The fourth clause is almost grotesque. It is as though one were to say that the indispensable function of life is to live. If this were all that " Pre-Raphaelitism " meant, it is difficult to realise how any cause arose for the dissension of the Brotherhood, or why in a few years time, when, in November of 1853, Millais was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, Rossetti wrote -* These were Thomas Woolner the sculptor ; James Collin- son, an able and sincere artist, who died young ; F. G. Stephens, then and since professionally interested in the arts ; and William Michael liossetti. ROSSETTI. 219 to his sister Christina " So now the whole Round Table is dissolved." The truth is that Rossetti's romanticism, essen- tially archaic in its bias: Hunt's religiosity, essentially didactic in its bias, and Millais' mod- ernity, essentially pictorial, dramatic, and narrative in its bias were incompatible. As soon as a fun- damental principle had been arrived at, an inevi- table fundamental disintegration set in. Art lives through its dreams in colour and form, not through any intellectual agreement as to how these dreams are to be dreamed, how, when, and where colour is to be persuaded, how, when, and where form is to be compelled. Under Rossetti's poetic influence, Hunt painted " The Flight of Madeleine and Porphyro " from Keats' " Eve of St. Agnes," Millais his " Isa- bella and Lorenzo " from " The Pot of Basil." Then Rossetti bethought him of the religious art of those Pre-Raphaelite painters they so much admired, and he painted in a new, beautiful, and convincing way " The Girlhood of Mary Virgin." Hunt and Millais followed his example with " The Light of the World" and "Christ in the House of His Parents." Then Rossetti found a new and congenial inspiration in the Arthurian romances, and, above all, in Malory. The discovery awoke in him a pas- sionate romanticism as incompatible with the re- ligious devotion which had already begun to dominate Hunt, and in a few years was to send him to Palestine in voluntary exile, as with the unimpas- Bioned and in a poetic sense unimaginative mind of Millais. Millais resented the indifference to the paramount claim of technique which Rossetti affected : Rossetti resented the stress which Millais laid on every 220 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. technical shortcoming and his relative indifference to imaginative conception of subject or to symbolism of any kind but that obvious symbolism which is the accepted convention of all artistic periods: Hunt thought that " the World, the Flesh, and the Devil " were too much with Rossetti, that the perilous savour of popularity weighed too much with Millais. Over and above this each rapidly developed a markedly divergent individuality in method as well as in style. In his beautiful " Annunciation," now in the Na- tional Gallery, Rossetti unconsciously declared that the secret of his art in its ultimate expression was colour : in his " Light of the World," Holman Hunt unconsciously declared that the secret of his art in its ultimate expression was spiritual symbolism: in " Christ in the House of His Parents," Millais un- consciously declared that the secret of his art in its ultimate expression was in actuality and verisimili- tude. Each had to follow the law of the spirit that was within him ; and so Rossetti the " Pre-Rapha- elite " became the painter of Arthurian romance and Dantesque legend and of the abstract dreams and visions of the poetic imagination: so Holman Hunt the Pre-Raphaelite became the painter of the " Chor- isters on the Magdalen Tower " and the " Triumph of the Innocents," pictures far remote both in method and manner from living art as conceived by either Rossetti or Millais : and so Millais became the painter of Academical and conventional though bril- liantly able works, to exhibit in his landscapes the exemplification of the misdirection of the central principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, and, in his later sub- ject-pictures such as " Speak ! Speak ! " of the mis- direction of the poetic sentiment which early in his ROSSETTI. 221 life had led him to his finest work though not to his best technical achievement. The " Round Table " became dissolved, not be- cause any of its members was a renegade (Rossetti had no ill-will to Millais when he became a member of the Academy, but lamented only the secession " to the enemy " of one who he believed could exercise a far greater influence if he held himself proudly aloof from association with a body two-thirds of whose members were painters only by courtesy) but be- cause the members regarded as individual and pe- culiar and obligatory that which is universal and general and spontaneous. But if the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood lacked homogeneity (and mainly because it comprised Dante Gabriel Rossetti as its most insurgent and potent member), Rossetti himself was soon to found a school of art which was to change the features of modern painting. The Germ had already made his name familiar to all who were interested in the puzzling new de- velopment in art and literature which appeared under the mysterious banner bearing the initials P.R.B. In 1856 the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine came more intimately home to the group of young men who naturally adhered to or followed the insurrec- tionaries with whose names England was then angrily and scornfully concerned. Rossetti's name as a poet and as a painter, and his reputation as a powerful aesthetic force in the new developments, justified the choice of so young and untried a man to paint mural designs for the decora- tion of the " Union " at Oxford. He was at that time preoccupied with the tragic and noble beauty of the Arthurian romances, and naturally his artis- 222 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tic attempts had their inspiration in that source. Lancelot and Guinevere and the men and women of the Arthurian chivalry then and afterwards haunted his imagination as shadows haunt the afternoon, and Rossetti's mind throughout life was a perpetual afternoon. But his visit to Oxford was to have a deeper and more enduring influence than any could have fore- seen. Already his name was familiar to that small company of undergraduates who cared for other things than " dogs, boats, tobacco, and the needful amount of cram " : familiar, as a poet of a genius so rare and peculiar that he could be compared with no predecessor, and reputed to be a painter hardly less potent and original. One day in Oxford early in the " fifties " two young men were looking together on a drawing in a little magazine even then defunct some years. The artist was known to them as the painter of one or two pictures of a disquieting because singular and novel beauty, and as a poet who (as one of them afterwards said) literally tortured their imagination with a new pleasure. These two young men found their artistic quickening in this drawing of " The Maids of Elfinmere " in The Germ, as, years before, Holman Hunt and Rossetti and Millais had found their quickening in the Pre-Raphaelite designs of the Pisan Campo Santo frescoes. The artist whose mystical imagination and wholly individual faculty shaped this drawing was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The two young men who from that day were his disciples were William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones. " He borrowed nothing from his contemporaries and all borrowed from him." In that sentence of an ROSSETTT. 223 eminent critic we have a revelation. It is ad- mittedly true, or, at least, is admittedly true in the main : and therein lies the secret of Rossetti's veiled predominance. It may be that some critic in the future will show how deeply and widely his influence affected not only the art and literature of his period and of the succeeding period, but the social economy and actual life of his day. And nowhere will this critic be able to say that Rossetti took this or that from any contemporary: while in a hundred direc- tions he will be able to say " this was indirectly due to Rossetti, and this directly, and this, and this, and this." Here, however, only brief allusion can be made to the great poet and to the man himself. If Rossetti had done nothing else than these wonderful early poems of his, than that marvellous example of re-creative translation, Dante and Ms Circle, or if with these he had stopped short in pictorial art with the " Girlhood of Mary Virgin," the " Ecce Ancilla Domini," and the strangely new and beautiful Arthurian drawings, he would still be one of the most remarkable men of his epoch. But as the poet of " The House of Life " and the many strangely beautiful lyrics, sonnets, and other poems which are now part of English literature, and as the foremost painter of the hidden realm of the imagination, the supreme dreamer in colour since Turner, his name is with the great. As a man he was the most fascinating personality of his day. Winsome, lovable, perverse, irresistible, weak, brilliant, moody, robust, morbid, visionary, shrewd, fitted to excel among his fellows and a re- cluse almost monastic in his isolation, sane in his vision of life and insane in his application of the 224 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. principles of life, an ideal lover and at the sway of lesser emotions, an indifferent loyalist in love and yet dominated by one passion, a follower of ideal beauty and heedless of that comeliness which is her outward approach, a moralist who had few morals, a wit who was tired o"f~~wit, a humourist who was tired of humour and yet whose wit and humour made so many hours bright for himself and others, a man strong to endure and yet the impotent slave of a drug, the most powerful temperament of his time yet shattered by his own weakness, morose to a degree on occasion yet habitually so lovable that not one of his intimates took thought of resentment, sweeping in denunciation yet generous to everyone and to a foe most of all, impassioned with the roman- ticism of the most subtle and sensuous imagination of his time and yet with his chief delight in the novels of Dumas, an epicurean by temperament and in practice at all times heedless of the first principles of the epicure, agnostic in most matters of common faith and yet superstitious to a degree, gifted with superb energy and the most subject of all men to the prostrations of idleness, the most arrogant of all men and the most humble, cynical in much and in more naively simple, reckless in speech and loyal in spirit, a broken man and a triumphant genius, he remains the most perplexing, the most fascinating, the most wonderful personality of the Victorian era. 1 Rossetti's art may be considered in four sections. The first was that early period when he worked with Holman Hunt and Millais the Pre-Raphaelite period when with a new and quaint but conscious simplicity he produced those religious pictures to which al- lusion has frequently been made in these pages. To this follows the period of his early water-colour and ROSSETTI. oil pictures, whether these deal with Guinevere or Beatrice, with Lancelot or Dante, with dream-figures from Camelot or Arnoside or from the dim region of a continually peopled imagination. The third period may be taken as beginning with the advent of a new type of womanly beauty, the tragic loveliness of his " Proserpine " and " Astarte " and " Mnemosyne." The fourth period begins with " Venus Verticordia " and " Lilith," and, with much flow and ebb among old dreams and artistic preoccupations, has a sub- period of a noble dominion of noble conceptions nobly realised, and then, after a baffled wavering, a rapid decline. Possibly the ultimate conviction will be that his finest achievement is to be sought within the some- what fluctuating limits of the second and third periods. It is equally possible that two opposing views will obtain within that conviction. Most of us, no doubt, consider the Rossetti of the third period " the Rossetti." It may be so. For myself, who for twenty years have studied and restudied the work, considered and reconsidered the shaping genius itself in all its manifold and complex expression, have come to the belief that Rossetti was greatest in those less ambitious and in a sense less mature pic- tures and drawings which are the glory of his second period. He was of that genius of the centre which gives life and light to a new world rather than creates that world itself: that has to be the work of others who take up the task When his is done. And I think that the inspiration which moved Burne-Jones and with him so much in contemporary art and the new ideals of art, and William Morris and Walter Pater and with them so much in contemporary literature and the new ideals of literature, is to be traced, not 226 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. to the marvellous dreams of Rossetti's middle and later years, but to the significant designs and lovely and strange drawings and not less lovely and strange poems of his early maturity. After Rossetti had painted the early pictures already named, one unfinished known as " The Pass- over," and begun and worked much upon a realistic study from modern life called "Found" (a village girl found near one of the London bridges by a countryman who loved her in the village whence she had fled after her betrayal) he definitely gave himself over to the romanticism which was bis native inspiration. He found his keynotes in Dante, in medical legend, and, above all, in Arthurian romance. His black-and-white drawings, comprising some of his most original and delightful work, date from his early to his middle period. When we remember that they include " Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee " (with all its obvious weaknesses in design and draughtsmanship, perhaps the most sig- nificant and memorable drawing in the later Victorian period, and one which as much as anything else reveals the genius of Rossetti), " The Sphinx," " How they met Themselves," " Hamlet and Ophelia," and the lovely designs for Tennyson's poems, we may better estimate the value and im- portance of what he has done in this direction. Among the loveliest of the water-colour works of this period are " Paolo and Francesca " (where Dante is interpreted with a passionate intensity of romance unequalled perhaps in modern art), "Dante at the Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice," and " The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise " ; that superbly original and flame-like new breath of ro- ROSSETTI. 227 mance, " Lancelot and Guinevere at the Tomb of Arthur/ 7 and its companion drawings, " The Chapel before the Lists," "The Tune of Seven Towers," " Sir Galahad," " The Wedding of St. George," and those two powerful little studies, " Lucrezia Borgia " and " Fazio's Mistress." Rossetti's third period, which some consider his finest, began with " Beata Beatrix " in 1859 * and may be said to close in 1867 with " Joli Coaur " and " Monna Eosa " the first one of the freshest, most winsome, and most spontaneous of his paintings, the second a triumph of decorative grace and beauty. The second period had ended with the tragic death of Mrs. Rossetti herself an artist of rare quality, a born colourist become a romanticist through the in- fluence of Rossetti, whose model first and then whose pupil she had been before her brief married life. The beautiful face and spiritual intensity of Eliza- beth Siddall had inspired Rossetti's finest work. Through her the poet had come to a deeper and richer poetry, to a deeper and richer art. After her sudden death, he not only^ as we all know, buried his MS. collection of poems in his wife's coffin (whence, long afterwards, they were recovered through the in- fluence and action of a devoted friend) but buried also one period of his art. A new note came into his work, at times profoundly mystical and often spiritual, at times expressional of that infinite weari- ness of the temperament of romance, which, when driven back upon itself, forces either to absorbed action or to intense inward preoccupation. It is a temperament which is apt to let dreams become the sole realities, and for which the fashioning of sym- * Begun in crayons in 1859. Completed in oils in 1863. The oil-picture is now in the National Collection. Q 228 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. bols and images of desire and longing is the one in- evitable way both of solace and of hope. The " Beata Beatrix " was the first important work under this new inspiration, which in varying intensity and direction controlled his imagination to the end, per- verse though its expression became. The beautiful Beatrice of this famous picture is a portrait of Mrs. Rossetti, done, it is true, mainly from memory, but so strikingly like that those who knew her found the likeness as though that moment done from " that pale face and ruddy lovely hair " which the poet had so loved. Yet another influence had already come into his art, however, by this time: the influence of a new type of beauty, rich, sensuous, Venetian. We see it in the " Fair Rosamond " of 1861, in the "Lilith" of 1864, in the "Venus Verticordia" of 1865. To it we owe some pictures of great beauty, but not, I think, anything of Rossetti's highest. Even in this period, it must be remembered, he painted the final portrait of " Beata Beatrix " and that lovely work known as " The Beloved." Then again a new, and now a paramount (and to the out- side world "the Rossettian ") type and dream of beauty possessed him. One beautiful woman had profoundly affected three men, all men of genius. She became the wife of William Morris, and, in art, the Rossettian type of beauty. A deep friendship united the poet-circle, and William Morris never re- sented that his wife's strange and tragic beauty had not only been the flame of Rossetti's mature genius, but had become so wholly his artistically that it was bound thenceforth to be associated with his name. In 1869 the inner world of art was profoundly im- pressed by the picture " La Donna della Fenestra." Here was a new emotion in art. Here a new poetic ROSSETTI. 229 and tragic type of beauty was added to poetry, to art, and to romance. In that heavy hair, in those dark, lustrous, dreaming eyes, in those pallid features moulded in perilous beauty, not only a new loveliness was revealed but a fresh inspiration for the arts, which are forever being reconsecrated under the fires of the imagination at strange altars. Between the " Mariana " of 1870 and the " Proserpine " of 1874 Rossetti gave to art a new kingdom: a narrow king- dom, a remote kingdom, unlit by the sun, unfre- quented by the wind, a land where twilight always is, but a new, lovely, mysterious realm, to which only a few at any time will go, but these with great long- ing. In his laet years he painted nothing that was not in some sort a weaker repetition of what he had done early and late in life. I think a very lovely and graceful picture, " Ve- ronica Veronese," marks the change. Here the self- consciousness has become too marked: the colour, too, is now the offspring of skill and theory rather than the direct and native language, with its one in- evitable accent. " The Blessed Damozel " and " Astarte Syriaca," " Beata Beatrix " and " Lilith," " Venus Verticordia " and " Sibylla Palmifera " at all times Rossetti had been swayed by two stars, the Dark Star and the Star of Light. It was so with him to the end. Modern Art has many tri- umphs, but, in their kind, none stranger amd more memorable than " Proserpine " and " Dis manibus," " Mnemosyne " and " Astarte " : than " La Fiam- metta," "The Day Dream," "La Ghirlandata " : than " Monna Rosa " and " La Bella Mano " (the latest masterwork of the broken master) : than that long series of visions made real and beautiful in a 230 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. new way, from the first drawings of the Florentine and his love to Kossetti's greatest painting, the nobly symbolical and nobly beautiful " Dante's Dream." His was, in life, the via oscura: but, otherwise, his was a new way, and to say that of anyone is to say that he is among the crusading kings if not of the reigning emperors of art. And there is a legend of a crusading king who, tired of combat and the un- travelled way, returned ; but lived unknown and un- recognised among his people, moving them and ruling them by his secret will and secret wisdom, till the new time was fulfilled, and then all knew that this was because of the dreams and hidden working of the lost king. Even such a lost king is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. BURNE-JONES AND THE ESTHETIC IDEAL. 231 CHAPTEK XVI. BUENE-JONES AND THE AESTHETIC IDEAL. THE two greatest names in modern art, associated with Kossetti, are William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Both have profoundly affected the art of their time, and not only in their own country but in America and abroad : though this influence is far less in pictorial art than in decorative art proper, and in the artistic crafts. There is no art-centre in Great Britain, America, or any country of Europe, from Marseilles to Moscow, from Naples to Copen- hagen, where, however indirectly, the influence of the later Victorian renaissance in the decorative arts and crafts has not made itself felt. Of this renais- sance Rossetti was the veiled prophet : William Mor- ris and Edward Burne-Jones are the high-priests. There are in the history of art few as marked instances of the sudden flaming of dormant genius as in the instance of Edward Burne-Jones. This young student of theology, who came to Oxford from Birmingham, in the middle of the nineteenth century the dreariest and most commercial town in the United Kingdom, had not an idea of what was latent in his unawakened imagination and dubious powers. A great change came to him through a sudden friend- ship with a fellow undergraduate, William Morris: an awakening to them both, through the written work and shapen vision of an all but unknown young poet-painter : a literal vita nuova to each, but revolu- 232 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tionarily so to the younger of the two, when, at Oxford, they came at last into personal touch and association with Rossetti. " The young man Jones who thinks himself a painter and is only a spoilt priest," as someone wrote of him at this time, made so swift an advance in pictorial art that, crude as were his powers, Rossetti entrusted him with some of the mural painting at the Union. That settled " the young man's " career. He relinquished all idea of entering the Church, and from that time devoted himself with absolute and unwearying service to the art which for him was throughout life literally a passion. There never was any man more consistently and continu- ously sustained by an impassioned dream of the loveliness and mystery of life and desire to express that loveliness and mystery, than Edward Burne- Jones. Possibly, even now, after more than forty years of continuous toil of spirit and labour of hand in that highest quest of man the quest of beauty Edward Burne-Jones must await till a much later day an ade- quate judgment of his great achievement, and of his, it may well be incalculable, influence. The first impression, and it is a durable one, given by any adequate consideration of the achieve- ment in art of Edward Burne-Jones, is that of a sin- gular continuity a continuity of inspiration ; a singular continuity in aim and effort; and, with all allowance for development from immaturity to ma- turity, as, later, for the artifice of a mannerism dis- tinct from that shaping art which was an inevitable development from within, a singular continuity in the work itself. There is no aesthetic, only a tech- nical, difference between the " Annunciation " of BURNE-JONES AND THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 233 1860 and the "Star of Bethlehem" of 1890; the first oil-picture, " The Prioress's Tale " (1858) may be laid by the side of the nineties ; and in the lovely " Sponsa di Libano," of a year or two ago, is the same revealing touch as in the youthful pen-drawing of " Alice la Belle Pelerine/ 7 or that strange water- colour, " Sidonia Von Bork," with its hint of fantas- tic mediaeval beauty. It is rarely that an artist enters at once upon his inheritance, or, having entered into possession, that he is able to see clearly the aim and end in the first tentatives of youth. But, almost from the day when, in company with his fellow-undergraduate at Ox- ford, William Morris, his artistic self was quickened into active life through a drawing by a then little known artist, in a then already defunct magazine, Edward Burne-Jones recognised that, for him, the line of imagination lay along the beautiful and mys- terious borderland of actuality and dreamland: that actuality, so infinitely more strange and alluring be- cause irradiated by the remote glow and rainbow- light of the land of the imagination ; and that dream- land, so much the less an exquisite figment, so much the more a genuine revelation of spiritual reality, because habited with the familiar white clouds, the pastoral meadows, the winding ways with rock and tree, valley and upland, and with men mortal as ourselves and women no more divine than their kin- dred of Arden because habited with those happy commonplace things. From the outset he saw life symbolically. Thus spiritual ideas took on a new pictorial raiment; the flowing line and interwoven colour, which we recognise as the raiment woven from the loom of his individual imagination, being but the beautiful accident of a fresh and exquisite 234: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. apparition of spiritual truths. To all of us to whom the interpretations, the revelations, of the imagina- tion mean so infinitely more than anything else the human mind can reveal, Burne- Jones is no remote dreamer, but only a comrade who has fared further, who has seen beyond our horizons, whose spiritual outlook is deeper and wider. " When we think," he wrote as a young man, " when we think upon heroic men, conquerors, prophets, poets, painters, musi- cians, it is for the most part in the light of difference, . . . seldom, if ever, in the light of unity." It is because, in the imaginative sense, Burne-Jones is a spiritual realist, that to those of us who are in any sense his kindred, however remote, he is real and near to us in the light, not of difference, but of unity. It has been averred that his achievement is not of the greatest, because that from first to last it is, if not invariably sad, at least characterised by a beauty that is ever strange, remote, and melancholy. But that is a question of approach. All great art, like all great beauty, however revealed, is in a sense melancholy. How could it be otherwise? Genius discerns a loveliness beyond individual attainment, and the vision must either find one insensate, or it must intimately reach one. Before great beauty, whether wrought by nature or by man, whether of man himself or of that which is beyond and about him, we are either as children spiritually awakened, and touched to tears, by strange and exquisite music ; or as old people, with all the once alert senses in disarray, striving with failing memories to recall the Edens of youth. Joyousness is not necessarily a condition of amuse- ment, as we understand the word; it is also, or can be, a grave ecstasy. And a grave ecstasy is the ideal BURNE-JONES AND THE AESTHETIC IDEAL. 235 of the highest art. As has been truly said by a critic of rare insight : " I' imagination humaine esl, au fond, triste et serieuse." Yet if a man, seeing beyond the near horizons, however winsome or lovely these may be, limn that which he discerns beyond, he is warned that he is remote, that he is sad, that his visions are too lovely to be dissociated from melancholy : that this spiritual outlook, after all, is morbid and falsely aris- tocratical, and that a breath of the homely humour of a Wilkie or even of the buffoonery of a Jan Steen would be welcome. Those who argue thus, and they prevail as concerning literature they swarm, with the parrot-cry that no work is great unless it contains humour, oblivious of the supreme dramatic art of Greece, of King Lear, and Macbeth, of Milton do not see that these things are not necessarily congru- ous. In a word, they do not see that it is possible to write of the stars without the alleviations of farce. In what conceivable way would Burne-Jones be the greater if he had alternately, or even occasionally, "painted life as we see it, you know": if he had chosen the " Village Ale-house,' 7 instead of the " Brazen Tower of Danae," or depicted a " Harlot's Progress " instead of a " Chant D'Amour," or emu- lated Morland with a farmer staring at his pigs in- stead of representing Dante stooping in rapt ecstasy before his " Dead Beatrice/' or painted the " Derby Day " intead of the " Mirror of Venus " or the " Quest of the Grail " ? All such questionings are vanities, and worse than vanities. He answered them when he was still a youth, glad and bewildered with a new, almost hieratic, vision of beauty : " our work must not only be the best of its kind, but the noblest we have to offer." He could, at the close, as at any time during his life, have given an answer similar to 236 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. that of his friend (and enthusiastic admirer) Puvis de Chavannes, who, when addressed once by an ad- mirer, thus : " You have worked a little like the gods, alone and apart, but of all artists you have been most fortunate, you have never had to make your ideas bend one centimetre : " replied, smiling gravely, " I don't know how the gods work : but I could never have given anything but the best that was in me." As for the complaint of remoteness, of strangeness, in the work of Burne- Jones, it is clear that here again the question is one of approach. To the unimagi- native, all imaginative work must inevitably present a closed door. They will knock, but none will open. If they stare in at the windows they will see noth- ing but faded tapestries, fantastic furniture, obsolete weapons, old silence, the dust of ancient dreams. All beautiful art, all beauty, is remote: and as much when it is wed to familiar and commonplace things as when it relates to the dreams and visions of a love- lier life. The very essence of beauty is its fugitive- ness, its remoteness, as though forever unattainable; so that the light of the evening star in a sky of green and purple, the face of a beautiful woman, the drop of dew filled with rainbow glory, are one and all of a beauty inevitably remote and fugitive. And in beauty, is it not now more than ever recog- nised that strangeness is what fragrance is to the loveliness of a flower or what a subtle and foreign loveliness is to that which exhales a poignant and in- toxicating odour? Walter Pater has spoken, of not beauty alone, but the element of strangeness in beauty, as the inmost spirit of romantic art : and one earlier than he, the wise and deep-seeing Bacon, BURNE-JONES AND THE ESTHETIC IDEAL. 237 wrote : " There is no Excellent Beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." I think of Burne-Jones as having from the first been like no one else. It is true that he owed much to others; and that in particular he owed much to Rossetti. But he never borrowed more than a for- mula. In his very earliest drawings, " Alice La Belle Pelerine " or " Sidonia Von Bork," for in- stance, he displayed a genuine, an unmistakable originality. That singular raptness in vision was his, which may be discerned pre-eminently in certain masters, widely differing in kind: as Leonardo, Dii- rer, William Blake. It is characteristic of him that one of his favourite passages in modern literature was that fine saying of Newman's : " Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful pros- pect is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God in heaven." And remembering how sacred a thing with him beauty was, and not beauty only but all beautiful things, and how for him even the common- place relinquished often an air of something won- derful and symbolical, I am reminded of that fine saying of Pater's : " All the arts and accidents of daily life borrow a sacred colour and signifi- cance." In all the long range of his beautiful work, Ed- ward Burne-Jones displays the unwavering outlook of a rare and noble imagination. Some who do not care for his work, or for any art of its kind, admit that he is a great decorative artist; that in stained glass and in purely decorative design he takes very high rank. But he was far more than this ; far more, too, than the mere beautiful dreamer of impossible dreams which so many have held him to be. For he 238 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. was a man moved by the great forces of life, moved so strongly that, by the same instinct as impelled Ten- nyson to write anew the Arthurian legends, as moved William Morris to create the Earthly Paradise, as moved Dante Gabriel Rossetti to build the House of Life, he in turn made his own art an interior criti- cism of exterior circumstances, laws, and issues, and so wrought for us " Laus Veneris" with its sym- bolical background the passion of love, " the base note in the diapason of life/' against the strange and often fantastically incongruous background of ac- tuality ; or. " The Mirror of Venus/' wherein those in love with love, and wrought strangely by the pas- sion of passion, look into the mysterious waters of life to read the riddle of their deep emotion, while behind them is a lovely and remote background of exquisite innocences, desires and dreams ; or " Pan and Psyche/' where the old bewilderment that for ever divides soul and body, and is now, in our late day, more than ever a poignant and baffling incerti- tude, is painted with an insight so absolute, and a beauty so unfathomable, that this small painting may well be accounted as perfect in its kind in English art as another small picture, the " Ariadne and Bacchus " of Tintoretto, in the Ducal palace at Venice, is in Venetian art ; " The Beguiling of Merlin," where the eternal duel between the de- siring flesh and the withholding spirit is interpreted anew through the air of lovely old-world romance; " Pygmalion and Galatea," where the ecstasy of rev- erie, the passion of effort, the rapture of attainment, are unfolding as if in a scroll for every dreaming mind ; " Perseus and Andromeda/' where again, is revealed the high dream of divine justice ; " St. George and the Dragon," where lives before us the BURNE-JONES AND THE ESTHETIC IDEAL. 239 vision of the inevitable triumph of indomitable good over vanquishable evil ; " The Sleepers of the Briar Rose/' where, as in a mirror, we discern those sons of God within us which we call dreams, hopes, aspira- tions, faiths, desires, spellbound in terrible and beau- tiful silence ; " The Days of Creation," wherein the Word is made manifest in new beauty, the mystery of the processional order of the Divine evocation sym- bolically shown as it were in the very ideograms of heaven. What has come to him in the common light of day, he has transmuted into the light of romance: what impelled his thought by its nearness and exi- gency, his imagination has compelled into a still and remote beauty, whence all of fret and fever is gone, whence all that is incongruous, all that is superfluous, is disengaged; where the confused and variegated vision of the many is resolved into the controlled and directed vision of the seer. It is not imagination that achieves: imagination only uplifts: it is con- trolled imagination that achieves. And it is by vir- tue of his controlled and directed imagination that Burne-Jones, since he was twenty-five, till at sixty- five he ceased working to dream the last dream, had given to us a more incalculable and enduring treasure of beauty than any other genius of our time has done, with the exception of Rossetti, whose primary great- ness is that he was and has been, to adapt his own wordte, a central flame descending upon many altars. The art of Burne-Jones, in its noblest manifestation, eeems to me, then, a new and individual revelation, in new and convincing beauty, of those spiritual ideas which are shaping the deepest and most distinctive thought of to-day. 240 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER XVII. WILLIAM MORRIS. THE LATER PRE-RAPHAELITES. AND THE BLACK-AND-WHITE AND DECORATIVE ARTISTS OF THE SCHOOL. RUSKIN and Rossetti paved the way for William Morris. To what they had done, to what they brought, he brought genius as real as their own, with an energy wholly beyond that of one and a diversity of talent unsurpassed by the other. Rossetti used to say that if Morris had not wasted his energies hun- dredfold he would have become the greatest modern Englishman: but Morris knew better. He knew that no one direction in art could satisfy him, that no one inspiration could compel him. Much as he admired Morris the artist, Rossetti would have been well content to see all else sink in Morris the poet: but Morris himself wrote his poetry and much of his imaginative prose by a divine accident as it were. He was a poet born, and has written much lovely and some great work: but it is doubtful if anything he has done in verse will survive a generation or two. His poetry is all of the nature of beautiful tapestry, it is all woven in the looms of the mind. Only that poetry survives that is lifted out of the heart in song, or is shapen of the spirit in flame. In verse, as in his other art, he was a decorist, a weaver of lovely things, not primarily a singer or a seer. The imper- sonality that characterises all his work is conspicuous in his verse: a lovely and strong spirit informs it; WILLIAM MORRIS. 241 but, in effect, Morris's poetry is no more than the sub- dued musical accompaniment of the vivid and intense drama that was his life. He has been called a great inventor, one of the creators of art. It may be so. But I admit that I cannot see this. It seems to me that his genius was not initiative or in the supreme sense creative, but that it lay in a superb personal application of his powers in any given direction. When he wrote poetry, he gave himself over to po- etry : when he made designs, he gave himself over to the chami of design : when he made furniture, he was the craftsman above all else: when he wrote essays on painting or architecture or on the arts and crafts, he was the critic and instructor above all else : when he preached socialism, he was the propagandist as though to the manner born, as though that were his vocation and all else were his avocations. He was not, however, any one of these things by virtue of compelling power from within, but by virtue of choice and will. He had a Napoleonic energy. He could set himself tasks which could keep a hundred men employed. In one week, for example, he is known to have written several thousand words of one of his poetical archaic romances, made several designs for fabrics, drawn the design of a stained-glass window, worked at the illumination and caligraphy of one of his many missal-like productions, superintended the printing and done the decoration in parts of one of his famous Kelmscott Press books, lectured on social- ism, attended and spoken at an open-air meeting in Hyde Park, held one of his usual informal social- istic gatherings at his house in Hammersmith, visited an old artist-friend one afternoon, on another paid a flying visit to his " works " at Merton, and when on one of the evenings a friend looked in at Kelmscott 242 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. House he found Morris lying on a sofa apparently in happy indolence, listening with rapt intentness to the music his wife was playing. From his youth William Morris was a rebel. When he was about seventeen " all the world " was talking of the wonder and beauty of the Great Ex- hibition : but when young Morris visited it he soon stopped short and refused to go further, averring that " the wonder and beauty " was simply and irre- deemably "wonderfully ugly." To the end of his vivid and ceaselessly energetic life he was equally individual in his point of view, equally outspoken, and equally " difficult " in all things, whether in the conventions of society, of literature, of art, with friends and foes, with the world in general. " Noth- ing will pacify Morris," said a friend once with humorous but significant persiflage, " but an old saga that no one else will read, a trip to Iceland, or a ha- rangue in Hyde Park." These, indeed, were avoca- tions after his heart. His vocation was to spend every possible hour in the making of beautiful things sometimes with his hands, sometimes in the rhythm of words, sometimes in earnest speech, sometimes in fiery and eager words. His existence was a splendid marginal note on the blurred page of contemporary life, as his life-work is a splendid marginal note on the brilliant page of contemporary art and literature. It may be that, for those who come after us, the mar- ginal note will have more beauty and more signifi- cance than anything else on the vast confused page where it stands brilliantly detached. Of one thing there can be no doubt, the far-reach- ing and revolutionary influence of William Morris in what are called the minor arts, and on the public sentiment, with its now imperative need for beautiful WILLIAM MORRIS. 243 things and for the wedding of beauty (which is also, it must be remembered, the name of comeliness, or- der, harmony, and apt simplicity) to the things of common use. There are too many followers or adherents of the school founded by Kossetti, and carried to its extreme in one direction by Burne-Jones and to the frontiers of a vast new development by Morris, to be enumer- ated here. A few important names only must be selected. Along the Pre-Raphaelite line of development by which we mean a careful and laborious art informed by a spirit or sentiment primarily literary rather than pictorial there is now a large band, counting from the few directly associated with Rossetti and his circle to those who fell into line later and to those who have begun to paint within the last decade or so. The continuity extends from Deverell and Collinson and William Bell Scott, from Windus and Burton and George Wilson, from James Smetham and Matthew Lawless and other now forgotten " minor- ists " of singular charm, to Spencer Stanhope and Arthur Hughes, to Gerald Moira and T. C. Gotch and Byam Shaw, and to the one Pre-Raphaelite mas- ter of to-day, Cayley Robinson. Along the line of de- velopment in decorative art, due so largely to Burne- Jones and William Morris (and mainly to their ap- plication to textile and fabric designs, to stained- glass, and to the development of the several minor arts) certain names stand out pre-eminently, from Henry Holiday and Walter Crane to Charles Voysey and W. B. Macdougall. In decorative book-design the last named is among the ablest, to be considered along with Housman and Crane, with Ricketts and Shannon, and others of accepted standing and prom- 244 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ise : and, of these, perhaps the most direct successor to Aubrey Beardsley, a man whose rare and precocious genius exercised, in its limited range, as remarkable an influence as that, in a deeper and far wider range, exercised by Rossetti himself. To speak of modern black-and-white design without allusion to Beardsley would be, for example, to speak of the Pre-Raphael- ite school without allusion to Rossetti. In the remarkable renaissance of the minor arts, however, especially in metal-work, in the work of the goldsmith and silversmith, in ivory and precious stones, the French come first. I was never so impressed by the advance of the minor arts and the retrogression of pictorial art in the common acceptation as at the Paris Salon (1900). Among the several thousand pictures and drawings there was little of outstanding worth, little that was not deserving of what the French themselves say of contemporary Italian art, trop de marchandise. On the other hand, almost every " exhibit " in the section of the minor arts and in the section of Dec- orate art was of fascinating interest and often of rare and unique beauty. It is in this direction that the true Renaissance to-day lies. It is no injustice to Walter Deverell and James Collinson to say that their names are remembered now only in association with those of their famous com- rades. Their work is good, often full of charm and distinction, but they suffer from the markedly inferi- or value of their work as compared with the best of that of their masters, Rossetti and Millais; as, in poetic literature, so fine and distinguished a poet as Philip Bourke Marston suffered from the fact that he stood too far within the shadow of Rossetti. Moreover, though both died young, and it is impossi- THE LATER PRE-RAPHAELITES. 245 ble to say to what remarkable development they might have come, neither the art of Deverell nor that of Col- linson reveals original creative power. It is not so with five later members of the group, whose associ- ation with it, however, was only that of alliance by sympathy and bent of temperament W. L. Windus and W. S. Burton and George Wilson, Frederick Sandys and Frederick Shields. In Windus we have the romanticist almost at the finest development : cer- tainly I know no finer picture of its kind (a kind where to the romanticism of Rossetti is added the clear vision and technical mastery of Millais) than his " Burd Helen," a work fortunately in one of the National Collections fortunately, for it has a dual beauty of sentiment and beauty so convincing that it should inspire young artists in days to come. W. S. Burton, though perhaps even less known to the gen- eral public, is, also, one of the most noteworthy of modern English painters. He " derived " from Millais and Holman Hunt: but Millais himself never painted a finer romantic or historic episode than Burton in his noble ( and, in Pre-Raphaelite art, supremely masterly) " Wounded Cavalier in a Forest Glade," nor has Holman Hunt nor any subsequent painter excelled or even equalled in intense pathos and spiritual beauty and significance his picture of Christ called " The World's Gratitude," a vision of the Saviour at a narrow window behind prison bars. I doubt if in all art there is so ideally real a represen- tation of the " Brother of Sorrow." With Windus and Burton should be mentioned the youngest of that particular group one also by ill-chance almost un- known to-day even among those who most value the work of the group known as the Pre-Raphaelite School. I allude to George Wilson. This Scottish 246 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. painter (he was born at Cullen in Banff, in 1848) came early to London, and at once fell into line with the romantic movement, the movement of colour and life. He died young, after years of ill-health, in 1890: but even now his name remains unknown to all save a few. In the score years or so wherein he painted he achieved much that was beautiful. In his art he is a blend of his countryman, George Paul Chalmers, and of the English idyllist Edward Gal- vert, with suggestions of Frederick Walker and George Mason, though more robust and actual, in a sense more truly romantic, than any of these. Of his several memorable pictures I can think of none so memorable as his noble " Asia," a conception of a beautiful Titan woman standing with outstretched arms in a cirque of wild rocks and fantastic peaks a conception inspired by the Prometheus Unbound of Shelley, a poet who was to George Wilson what Dante was to Rossetti, what Rossetti became to the company of poets and artists known as the .^Esthetic Group. No modern artist has made finer use of what we may call the Leonardesque effect of jagged rocks and tortured peaks as a background, except the supreme Italian master of to-day (now, alas, gone from us), Segantini, though with him a hieratic realism ob- tained rather than a romantic delight in the fantastic for itself. Of William Bell Scott and James Smetham it is not necessary to say much here. Both were men of exceptional talent, but whose artistic expression wag inferior to the intellectual demands of the one and the spiritual desire of the other. Each was typical. Scott stood for those who live within the domain of art, not because primarily a poet or artist, but by vir- tue of a genuine sympathy with poetry and art en- THE LATER PRE RAPHAELITES. 247 hanced by a real but limited and uncreating talent for both. Smetham was of those who spiritually be- long to any great movement but without the mental energy or elasticity needful for the strife. The one man lives as a minor poet and critic, the other as the author of a volume of fascinating letters which not only reveal a noble, and lovely nature, but afford many interesting glimpses of, among others, Smeth- am's two idols, Rossetti and Ruskin. The great name just given recalls to me that John Ruskin ought to be mentioned in this connection. There is not one of the Pre-Raphaelites so " Pre-Ra- phaelite " as he in those wonderful drawings of his which convince one that if the great writer had not supervened we should have had in John Ruskin a great artist. These are little recognised by the pub- lic who admire so much what he has to say upon the pictorial work of others, yet it is doubtful if any artist of the nineteenth century excels him in a cer- tain exquisite masterliness, where a strong delicacy is the conspicuous virtue. Another very remarkable man is apparently of the company of true artists doomed to be forgotten, save by a few specialists, Matthew James Lawless is all but unknown as a painter : even as an artist in black- and-white his name is familiar only to those who know in the same connection not only Walker and Pin well and Millais and Sandys but Hough ton and W. Small. Lawless was born in Dublin one of the very few fine artists given us by Ireland in 1837, ,and died when he wais only seven and twenty : but in his short career he not only painted some remarkable work (notably "The Sick Call" a fine picture of " Brothers of Mercy " being rowed in a boat to at* 248 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tend to the husband of the prostrate woman who has sought their aid) but won a high place for himself among those artists whose black-and-white illustra- tive work largely in Once a Week, Cornhill, Good Words, and other magazines of the kind is unsur- passed in kind in any period in any country Pin- well and Walker, Millais and Leighton, Kossetti and Holman Hunt and Frederick Sandys, A. B. Hough- ton and Arthur Hughes and W. Small, and others hardly less highly valued by the eager collector. In the other group of which the captains are Spencer Stanhope and Arthur Hughes, the inspira- tion comes chiefly from Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Some, like Mrs. Stillman, and Fairfax Murray are wholly Rossettian: others, like J. ~N. Strudwick, are wholly in the leadership of Burne-Jones. Others, like Walter Crane, are allied to the school rather than of it: others, again, like Richmond, maintain their alliance by mental sympathy rather than by the con- vincingness of their handiwork. Of these artists, the most disappointing is Arthur Hughes, who has done some lovely work both in colour and black-and-white, but has never succeeded in emerging from a certain amateurishness or dis- cipleship. The most individual is perhaps Spencer Stanhope. He was in fact and is artistically speak- ing a colleague of Burne-Jones, having begun his long career concurrently, and at the same task, as his friend when Burne-Jones was called by Rossetti to help in the mural decoration of the Union. There is no mistaking Spencer Stanhope's remarkable faculty. One is convinced that even apart from the dominating influence of Burne-Jones his develop- ment would still have been much along the line it has consistently revealed. So absolutely, however, THE LATER PRE-RAPHAELITES. 249 did he accept the convention of his friend and master that he has never since been done full justice by the public or the critics either, though for many years his work has been sought for and valued only less than Burne-Jones' own. Relatively little of this work is on canvas. For the most part Spencer Stan- hope has painted designs for stained-glass windows and for mural decoration. He is of those whose work even at its finest always bears the impress of an- other's genius. The same may be said of another notable artist, Mr. Strudwick, a disciple of both Burne-Jones and Spencer Stanhope. The epithet exquisite best describes Mr. Strudwick's work at its best, as in his fine picture " The Ten Virgins " or " The Ramparts of God's House " : but he has never the spontaneity of his master Burne-Jones, or rather, his pictures generally lack the imaginative reality which gives those of the greater painter so wonder- ful a charm for all their "remoteness." It is note- worthy that few of this school paint nature beauti- fully for itself : at most they paint lovely " acces- sories." !N"ot one of them has painted sea-water as Burne-Jones painted it in " The Mermaid " : not one of them has achieved a landscape such as that master's " Pan and Psyche " though, indeed, it might be asked what modern master has. There has ever been a natural instinct with all the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite group to turn to dec- orative work. None of them, however, has done what two of the impressionistic Glasgow School have done, George Henry and Edward Hornel. These two men seem to me to be among the most notable of the younger British artists, for all their exaggeration. They have as native a gift of colour as their country- men Scott Lauder and George Paul Chalmers, with 250 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. a power and originality, an audacity almost of handling and composition all their own. We may look in vain among their English congeners for a like power and originality, a like romantic sense of colour. Nor, it may be added, is there any English painter even among the " New English Art Club " or the Neo-Pre-E,aphaelite group who can be com- pared with E. A. Walton in beauty of finish as well as breadth of handling. Of this English decorative group, however, there are three men of exceptional ability, Gerald Moira, Byam Shaw, and T. C. Gotch. Gerald Moira (with whom should be mentioned Archibald Macgregor, Douglas Strachan, and others) is one of those artists of whom one believes that they are always on the verge of great things. He has poetry, romance, and considerable executive power, but as yet has not come to the high fulfilment indi- cated in his brilliant promise. The art of Byam Shaw has attracted great attention of late. I think he is at his best in his black-and-white illustrative work as in his admirable illustrations to Browning and Keats. But his elaborate, vividly painted, patchwork-like pictures have many admirers. Their eccentricity is taken for imagination, their brilliancy for fine colouring, their elaborate detail for masterly composition. He may yet prove his worth in com- position, colouring, and pictorial imagination: but meanwhile his real originality and power are shown in his less ambitious drawings for book-illustration. T. C. Gotch is one of the most truly " Pre-Raphael- ite " of all the younger men. His work reveals im- agination, quaint fancy, spiritual significance, and has some high technical qualities. If only he had more mastery in the drawing of the figure, and had a keener sense of rhythmic beauty, he would be one of THE LATER PRE-RAPHAELITES. 251 the most promising painters of to-day. As it is, he is an artist of remarkable and indeed fascinating talent. But of all this group there is none, among the later men, to compare with Cayley Robinson. This subtle and delicate artist is not only a born colourist but a painter of the most notable original- ity. He has derived much from Burne-Jones, but without imitation. He seems to have learned a hundred secrets from a hundred sources, from Van Eyck to Rossetti, and yet nowhere is other than his own subtle original self. He will not become popular, partly because he paints, or rather exhibits, so little, partly because he is indifferent to popular appeal or applause, partly because a sensitive mind and a trained eye are necessary to appreciation of these strange, lovely, dream-like and yet vividly real " interiors " of his a word to which he has given a new and suggestive significance. He may be known hereafter, perhaps, as the painter of exquisite life in momentary repose, of the still beauty of ar- rested animation where the sensitive eyes and nervous hands retain the quick spirit of the inward life. The art of Cayley Robinson may best be described as, in recent painting, what the art of Maeterlinck is in recent literature. The two have so much in com- mon that, if Maeterlinck were to become a painter, he would, one may think, paint just in this method, in this manner. Frequent allusion has been made to the black- and-white work of the early and later Victorian artists, and of those who in that way and in colour have given some of their best to book-illustration. But among those who have been mentioned directly and in connection with others there are a few whom 252 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. I have hitherto omitted, all notable men, one a man of wide influence, and one a man of genius. In the last I allude to Aubrey Beardsley. Mr. Walter Crane belongs by sympathy, and to some extent by virtue of his work, to the later Pre- Kaphaelite school. He has, however, a variety and inventiveness which distinguish him from the rank and file. His work is never strong, never in the true sense creative, but it has great charm, infinite variety^ and a delicacy which have together won for him the high place he deservedly occupies. In book-illus- tration, fabric design, and in the decorative arts and crafts his influence has been second only to that of William Morris and Burne- Jones. A far more potent master within a far more limited range is that remarkable artist, Aubrey Beardsley. To open a new gate, to disclose a fresh vista, to be the pioneer of a new realm, this is to achieve one of the rarest triumphs in art. It was this that Aubrey Beardsley achieved. The black- and-white and decorative art of the civilised world to-day bears the impress of the genius of this youth, whose work appeared only a few years ago and who himself after a brief meteoric career was scarcely familiar to us before he was gone. There is much in Beardsley's work that is merely fantastic, much that is wantonly grotesque, much that is exaggerated beyond the vague yet recognised limits of vanity and good taste that inflexible quality which in all ages, under different names, has been so potent a de- termining factor. Often, moreover, Beardsley's work is wantonly unpleasant, and sometimes, too frequently indeed, is repulsive. More than any art- ist of his time has he taken a delight in evil. It has been said on his behalf that this was but an affecta- BLACK AND WHITE AND DECORATIVE ARTISTS- 253 tion; that he chose morbid themes and depicted depraved natures and created his unspeakably sug- gestive phantasma of evil merely out of a tempera- mental weariness of the conventional, coloured by an audacious whimsicality. There may be some meas- ure of truth in this, but no more than a minor measure. On the other hand, there is no reason to hint that the work is the reflex of the man. In all probability it is the reflex of a distempered brain. It is one of the mysteries of art of art in the widest sense that genius has sometimes a sane brain with an insane atmosphere, sometimes a sane atmosphere with an insane brain. Blake is an instance of the one, Beardsley of the other. Beardsley lived a sim- ple enough, latterly an austerely simple life, and in himself was a man impassioned with his eager quest of, his delight in, beauty. Erom early boyhood consumption preyed upon him. By the time he was twenty he had all but completed his span of health, frail as that always was. He worked feverishly, and died a young man, wise with unnatural wisdom, weary of life yet passionately desiring it, with the knowledge that he was only just approaching that via sacra of art of which he had always dreamed, and yet with the knowledge that more than any artist of his day he had affected the course of contemporary art in one momentous direction, and that his influ- ence was already felt far and wide. So keen-sighted was he that perhaps he recognised also that his in- fluence was what the gods had worked his " brief fever " for. Even the finest of his achievement is not so much worth as the influence that it exercised. If every drawing of Aubrey Beardsley perished, if not a single reproduction were available, his fame would endure. More than any other original crafts- 254: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. man of his time with the exception of Rossetti, he has sunk into the mind of modern art. What Ros- setti achieved through emotion in colour, Aubrey Beardsley achieved through intellectual excitement weaving for itself the essential insignia of form. If Rossetti is the subtlest modern dreamer in colour, Beardsley is the subtlest modern temperament ex- pressing itself in form. In a sense he discovered anew the flowing line, in a sense he revealed anew the supreme value of simple masses of white and black. To-day every draughtsman has learned a lesson from him. That is his supreme and lasting distinction. Of the later men (Beardsley at first was strongly influenced by Bur ne- Jones as, for instance, in his frontispiece drawings for Malory's Morte D' Arthur), who have all felt the motive power of this strange genius, perhaps the most noteworthy are Lawrence Housman, who follows most the Rossettian tradition ; Charles Robinson, who is more akin to Walter Crane, though with a charming fancifulness all his own; Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon, who are so constantly associated, and whose individual, fascinating, but mannered drawings reveal a curious affinity to Blake and Calvert as well as to Burne- Jones and more directly to Beardsley. Perhaps no living illustra- tive decorist has while remaining individual and distinctive learned so much from Aubrey Beardsley as Mr. W. B. Macdougall, THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. 255 CHAPTEK XVIII. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. BLACK ATTD WHITE. ETCHING AND ETCHERS. IT has been impossible to treat adequately or even approximately of every school or genre in modern art. The Historical school, the Still Life school, the genres of the Nude, Marine Painting, Military Painting, the school of Portraiture all these and others might be treated separately. That is now im- possible. However, each has indirectly been treated in these pages, where in speaking of one man's art I have so often taken it as typical of the art of many. In marine painting, for instance, I have already al- luded to the men who succeeded Turner and the early sea-painters, and, in our own day, to J. C. Hook and his Scottish congeners Colin Hunter and Peter Graham and Hamilton Macallum and to John Brett and his kin. It is hardly necessary to say more of others, except that one of the ablest of all marine painters was lost to art by the death of Henry Moore a few years ago: and that new painters of a genre which should naturally be popular in England have arisen in Mr. H. S. Tuke and Napier Hemy and Mr. Somerscales. Mention of Mr. Tuke sug- gests the " Nude," for he is one of the few British painters who can and do paint the nude with sym- pathy and convincing power. In his case, however, it is the male " nude " : for he loves to depict boys and youths bathing in the open sea, or standing on, or 256 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. leaping from, ledges in sunlit rocky havens. Mr. Matthew Hale is another notable painter of the nude, as indeed of moving water also. Both these men, and others of kindred power Mr. Waterhouse, for example paint the nude only in connection with nat- ural features which, oftenest associated with " epi- sode/' as invariably with Mr. Waterhouse, are par- amount rather than subsidiary. The same reason which prevented Sir John Millais from doing more work of the kind of his " Knight Errant " seems to prevent many British painters from attempting the loveliest of all genres. Perhaps, too, the same reason which underlies the poverty of British sculpture ac- counts for this: the apathy as to beautiful form for form's sake. One wishes that painters like Mr. John M. Swan, men with a genius for expression in noble colour, perfect draughtsmen, and skilled stu- dents of anatomy and the pose and harmonious re- lationship of all that goes to make up " figure," would devote at least a part of their great powers to this beautiful end. Meanwhile, it must be admitted that in this respect British art is behind not only French, which is supreme, and American which comes next, but that of Germany. In Military painting again, there is no comparison between British art and that of France or, in lesser degree (partly because of its narrower range) that of America. The great exemplars of this genre are all French, whether in the " Pre-Kaphaelite " method and manner of Meissonier or in the broader method and manner of De ISTeuville. Lady Butler, Ernest Crofts, and most of those who attempt this genre, are mere pictorialists, not painters in the primary sense. In its own kind, however, the art of Lady Butler is as excellent as it is deservedly popular. It THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. 257 is not a great kind, but it has all the qualities to at- tract those to whom subject in art is a primary ap- peal: it is pictorial, and always seizes a moment of dramatic crisis or occupies itself with a motive of national pride. An infinitude of labour goes to these interesting and in a sense stirring pictures, which only need that true verisimilitude which the great artist alone can give through colour and " the spirit that is in him," to be as masterly as they are inter- esting. The Historical School to-day is perhaps the most popular of any. It differs from the Historical School of the early part of the century as completely as the best portraiture of to-day differs from that of the Academical portraitists who succeeded Gains- borough and Romney, Lawrence and Raeburn. We understand by the designation now not so much the grandiloquent misrepresentations of history affected by Haydon and his school, or the pictorially rhetor- ical compositions of many French painters to-day but rather those episodical pictures which in subject turn upon some more or less well-known episode in the national chronicles. Here Mr. Orchardson stands foremost, as he does in the higher kind of the domes- tic genre. Always distinguished, a fine colourist, an able portraitist, a born pictorialist in the right sense, he is well fitted to be one of the best representatives of contemporary British art. A Scot by birth and early training, French by later training and sym- pathy and English by adoption and an Acade- mician who does much to sustain the honour of a deservedly much assailed institution, he stands to- day prominently fitted to be President of British art, as it was once proudly claimed the president of the Eoyal Academy should be. It was a disap- 258 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. pointment to most people that, on the death of Sir John Millais, he was not elected to the supreme office. Orchardson's " Napoleon on the Bellerophon " is the type of the best kind of historical painting to-day. It has inspired many good pictures, and particularly those which have learned its lesson rather than em- ulated it in manner or subject. Since this famous work perhaps the most popular painter of the histor- ical and episodical is Mr. Edwin Abbey, the brilliant American artist whose home has so long been in London and whose work (save in his drawings for Harper's Magazine and, now, his splendid mural decorations in Boston) is so much better known in the country of his adoption than to his own coun- trymen. In common with his fellow-countryman Mr. John S. Sargent, the most brilliant portraitist of to-day, and Mr. G. H. Boughton, he is regarded in London as practically a British artist, though by force of his circumstance, and not as might be sup- posed, through any " insular arrogance." In the in- stance of Mr. Sargent it should be added that he is really a cosmopolitan, and neither British nor American. Practically his life, since his birth, has been spent in Florence, Paris, and London: his " Americanism " is in the circumstance that he had New England parentage. Another popular painter who has won much rep- utation by pictures delineating themes of patriotic or nationally sentimental interest is Hubert Her- komer, a skilful craftsman whose brilliant and con- vincing deftness is often taken for an original and powerful talent. He is supremely the type of the clever painter. He can paint in almost any style and with wonderful effectiveness: at times he has achieved on a very high level. In everything he is ( UNIVERS . THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. 259 reflective, but sometimes his reflex art is finer than all but the best of that which is distinctive and orig- inal. Prof. Herkomer is one of the several British artists who are of foreign parentage and birth. Of these, Rossetti is of course the greatest (though an Englishman by birth and training it must be remem- bered) : but other eminent instances are the Bava- rian Hubert Herkomer and the Dutch Alma Tadema. The latter is probably one of the most popular paint- ers of the day. His careful and elaborate art, how- ever, is of a kind more akin to the glorified craft of the mosaicist than to painting as an emotional and idiosyncratic expression. It has often unsurpassed beauty of detail, and is always interesting and not seldom fascinating: but in these scientifically exact and pleasing reproductions of the antique life of Greece and Rome Alma Tadema (now Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema) occupies to-day in the profession of art much the place occupied by Georg Ebers in tho profession of literature a marvellous and always in- teresting reconstructor of the remote past, Greek or Roman or Egyptian, but not in the creative sense a revivificator or an interpreter. In a word, his im- mense technical skill is that of the master-craftsman, superbly so it must be added, rather than that of the master-painter, as we would use that word of his fel- low-countryman Rembrandt for instance, and of all artists who are painters first and foremost and inevi- tably, " by the grace of God and their own inability to help it." There are few living portrait-painters who like Mr. J. J. Shannon or like Mr. Sargent, devote their whole attention to portraiture. Most, like Millais and Orchardson, either paint subject pictures mostly or portraits mostly, or still more variously employ s 260 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY, their brush. If there is no British portraitist to-day so brilliant as Mr. John S. Sargent or none so su- premely distinguished as Mr. Whistler, there are sev- eral of remarkable power, from the veteran G. F. Watts to Mr. Furse, from the Academical Sir Ed- ward Poynter to Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Lavery, Mr. Wal- ton, and other Scots conveniently grouped in the " Glasgow School." Mr. W. S. Kichmond is a recog- nised head of the decorative school of portraiture, a school which produces more pretty pieces of figure decoration than living portraits. In one particular art the several nations are even more individual than in so idosyncratic a genre as portraiture, namely that of the caricaturists, social humourists and illustrators, and cartoonists. In this wide genre British artists stand apart from those of France, Germany, or America as English literary humour stands apart from American, Ger- man, or French. There is no possibility of mistak- ing Forain or Willette for anything but French, or Tenniel or Du Maurier for anything but English : as again, in a wider generalisation, Mr. Gibson, though an American, is as unmistakably an Anglo-Saxon, as Caran d'Ache, though a Slav by birth, is unques- tionably Gallic in art. The genre of caricature first came into vogue with the immense popularity of Rowlandson and Gilray. Their brutally coarse and exaggerated drawings still find admirers, who moreover profess that it is not the mere antiquarianism or grotesquerie that pleases them but a genuine and delightful art. It may be so. For myself I admit that I can obtain no pleas- ure of art from these always ugly and often hideous caricatures of events, persons, and manners. It has 'been objected that the Ally Sloper of to- THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. day will be as repellent to another generation as any- thing in Rowlandson, but to that there is an obvious response: that the caricature is only of a single type, that it is invariably treated humorously and never savagely, and that it has an always human and sometimes pleasing and natural environment, an environment at least no more remote from actual- ity than, say, the Christmas Tales of Dickens. Ally Sloper himself may be an impossible type, the very grotesquerie of exaggeration, but he is caricatured along lines of ordinary human weaknesses observed with genial amusement and in a sense with genuine sympathy. It is this characteristic which accounts for the immense national and indeed universal vogue of " Punch." There has never been in any country a periodical publication which can be compared with " Punch." As an eminent French critic has said, it is as much an English institution as port-wine, bull-dogs and le sport. No amount of amusing cari- cature and pictorial farce could have so long kept Punch in the place it has always held, had it not been for its genuine humour, kindliness and the consistent determination to ignore the vulgar ele- ment. In its political cartoons Punch takes the fore- most place in modern art. They are generally a marvellous reflex of the mind of the nation, are sel- dom unjust, and are sometimes works of art in a very high and distinguished sense as in Tenniel's celebrated cartoon of " General February " by the bedside of the Czar, during the Crimean War, or the still more celebrated drawing of " The Old Pilot be- ing Dropped," where Bismarck is depicted leaving the ship of state he had so long guided, while Cap- tain Wilhelm bids him good-bye from the taffrail. It was an immense change from Rowlandson to 262 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Leech with his kindly and delightful humour and true instinct for delineation and social types and incidents, customs and manners. A great change again it was from him, to the still more polished and refined Du Maurier, whose well-bred smile took the place of the guffaw of an earlier generation. He is the gentle ironist rather than the keen satirist, al- though he could be unsparing enough on occasion, while always courteous and urbane. So potent was his hold that his Punch drawings became a very real influence in the development of the amenities of social life: and there is no great exaggeration in the remark frequently made that Du Maurier added a new refinement not only to social manners but to the dress and carriage of the figure and to the social type itself. He did not add, perhaps: but he revealed so what was limited and perceived of the few was found to be more general and perceptible by the many. In his charming and delicate art there is some reality but not enough variety and above all not enough actuality. We all know how, when this brilliant pictorial commentator on contemporary life realised that his sight was beginning to fail to the extent that he was threatened with blindness, he took up his pen and suddenly became far more fa- mous as the author of Trilby and other books. To- day the art of Du Maurier has given way to a more robust, a more humorous, a technically superior but in scope and intention inferior art, best represented by Mr. Phil May a man of the people, able without bitterness and with humour and insight to depict the people. Mr. Raven Hill and several other distin- guished workers in this branch of art might be men- tioned were I able to go into the matter in detail. Despite the great advance in illustration, lithog- THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. 263 raphy, and all the kindred arts, there is none that has been so nobly maintained and so assiduously cultivated and appreciated as that of Etching an art that since the superb example and influence of Rembrandt has taken its proper place as one of the finest and subtlest, and, what few people realise, as one with an all but unequalled power of conveying colour. I have already spoken of the rise of a new art, in etching and in wood-engraving new in the sense of a fresh inspiration and a fresh direction in con- nection with Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert. Small as the output of these two artists was some half dozen etchings are all that Palmer's fame as an etcher rests on I do not think their joint influence has been adequately recognised. It is true that the etchers of to-day do not follow the close and concen- trated style of Palmer, nor the engravers of to-day the poetic and beautiful little " master-pictures in a square inch " of Calvert though it is easy to trace a connection between his art and that of Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon and others of the school but none-the-less the influence of these pioneers in the modern art of black-and-white has been subtle and far-reaching. Among the great contemporary etchers an hon- oured place is due to Sir Francis Seymour Haden best-known simply as Seymour-Haden. The doyen of the art, he remains also one of the chief connois- seurs in Europe and an acknowledged authority as well as acknowledged master. Strong, dignified, in- dividual, his work is also interesting for its ampli- tude in simplicity. More than most men he can con- vey the essential in a few touches. There are now hundreds who practise this art, and there are few 264 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. annual exhibitions better worth seeing and more ade- quately appreciated than the Boyal Society of Painter-Etchers, of which Sir Francis Seymour- Haden is the veteran president. It would be im- practicable to give the names of all who have at- tained eminence, and it would be invidious to select a few. Some are English, some Scottish (typically represented by Macbeth, William Strang, and D. Y. Cameron), and some naturalised for- eigners, e.g., Alphonse Legros, Herkomer, Axel Haig, and Theodore Boussel, the latter a French etcher in the style of Whistler in his earlier work but then and later with a charm and individuality which make his etchings the delight of the connoisseur. Of these just named none can rank in influence with Prof. Legros, an artist of the most marked individ- uality, of subtle and extraordinary power whether expressing himself in etching or in painting. His influence over the younger generation of etchers is so great that there are few who do not reflect it to some degree. Probably it is true that as a general influence none has been so great in contemporary etching as that of Whistler, but, in the important matter of teaching, Prof. Legros stands without a rival. Of his many distinguished pupils I must select one, as he also is an accepted master now, and per- haps the most powerful as he is certainly unique, among those in any country Mr. William Strang, a west-of-Scotland artist whose work is now familiar to all interested in etching. As a portraitist, he has a singular ability, and there are few better series of portrait-etchings than his " Contemporary Au- thors," among the most successful being those of Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But it THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF ART. 265 is as an etcher of original design, as a painter-etcher, an etcher of extraordinary imaginative and fanci- ful originality, that he is best-known. His rough, strong, virile, almost crude mannerism sometimes borders on the grotesque that is, where unintended by the artist, for often Mr. Strang consciously affects the grotesque, with an obvious delight in it for its own sake. His varied and forcible, always interest- ing and sometimes fascinating art lacks much, but there is nothing more robust, more unique, in con- temporary British art and it is the unique that sur- vives, the robust that endures. This, though with a wider, with its widest application, is what Theo- phile Gautier had in his mind when in Emaux et Camees he wrote his famous line " Toute passe, Part robuste seul a I'eternite." PART TWO. AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN (CONTINENTAL) ART. CHAPTEE XIX. AMERICAN" ART. SOME years ago an acute observer noted the sig- nificant truth that the nation of the United States, so great in other things, had lately slackened its pace in its literary development, but had acquired more strength in art. American art is now the most indiscriminate and the most cosmopolitan, the most chaotic and the most self-contained, the most bewildering and the moat confusing in the manifold and complex art of to-day. At its limited extreme it stands as high, perhaps higher than any other contemporary art: at its average, it stands between that of France and Eng- land : in its lower phases it is, contemporary circum- stances considered, extraordinarily crude. There is no other country where what is finest in modern art is so keenly apprehended and possibly appreciated, but there is no other civilised country where indiffer- ence to art is so overwhelming, where taste is so ab- sent or so corrupt, or where it is so difficult for native art to realise itself in dignity and pride. Every- where a few score understand, appreciate, help in AMERICAN ART. 2G7 their several ways : but against these are tens of thou- sands to whom " art " is meaningless, or at most means " something that is pretty to look at." But every year subtle forces are at work : every decade a change is becoming more and more conspicuous. In a word, there is no country where the conditions for art will in course of time become so advantageous, none where a rapid growth to that end is already so obvious. At the present moment the real diffi- culty in treating of American art is not on its merits, which are obvious, nor on its demerits, which may or may not be as conspicuous, but on its singular lack of nationality in feature. One can generally denote an English picture as English, a French picture as French, a Spanish picture as Spanish: but one can rarely denote an American picture as American. As yet a national idiosyncrasy has not found its way into American art. In the two great branches, portrait- ure and landscape, there is an expressional uniform- ity which is amazing when we consider the strong individuality of the national character. I have seen in New York and Boston seasonal exhibitions of re- cent pictures which in several respects impressed me as superior to average shows in London or Edinburgh or Glasgow, in Berlin or Munich or Rome : and yet, one realised, they were shows that could quite well be represented by one portrait and by one landscape. All were so good, all were in a sense charming: but all seemed to have been produced from the studio of one brilliant and able portraitist, one widely sym- pathetic and enthusiastic landscapist. Yet it is from this at present perplexing but promising high average in uniformity that Inness and Chase, Whistler and Sargent, St. Gaudens, and Macmonnies have come. Nevertheless it must be admitted that 268 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. when, to-day, at the Paris Salon let us say, we look at a "Whistler" or a " Sargent " or an " Alex- ander," we look at an art that may not be distinct- ively French, but is certainly not English, that may be Anglo-Saxon in certain respects, but is not con- vincingly American. These men a.re of the freed- men of art. There are three living American paint- ers who to-day stand in the forefront of Anglo- Saxon art: J. MaclSTeill Whistler, John S. Sargent, and John La Farge. Mr. Whistler is unique: he would be a bold man who, while admitting that Mr. Sargent stands supreme now as a portraitist, and Mr. La Farge as a decorative artist, would claim that in their art they are distinctively American. It is undeniable that none of these men need ever have seen or heard of America. They have never drawn, they do not now draw, any inspiration from their own country: each has ever stood wholly inde- pendent of any native influences: in training, in thought, in sympathy, each stands isolated from the actual fatherland, citizens of a wider country, a country unknown to geography, with, for populace, " the silent company of laurelled shades." It is of course no argument to say that the pres- ent conditions of life in America do not lend them- selves to the advent of great artists. In a sense they never do, anywhere. It is the great artists who mould or change the conditions. What is of infi- nitely more importance than conditions is " atmos- phere," and there is less of the true atmosphere of art in America than in any other country. It must not be held that out of the grimy commercial centres the great artist must not be looked for. Turner was born in a squalid part of London : the most potent and varied of the younger " schools " of to-day had AMERICAN ART. 269 its rise and development in Glasgow, perhaps in it- self the gloomiest of great cities. It is well to re- member that one of the greatest of modern English artists was born and spent his boyhood in the Bir- mingham of sixty years or so ago, and that the Bir- mingham of the " Thirties " was in every respect more parochial, more unrelievedly dismal, more de- void of any atmosphere save that of commercialism and a sad religiosity than to-day is Pittsburg or any other as dismal or more dismal American manufac- turing centre. If that unpromising Birmingham gave us Edward Burne-Jones, the most poetic and in- dividual of the later Victorians, the incomparably better circumstanced towns of the States may well be the nurseries of young talent less sorely handicapped. When men such as those I have najmed (Mr. La Farge I should add, however, has always been a staunch New Yorker) and others of genius or out- standing talent will live in their own country, find- ing not only adequate support there but a swift re- sponsiveness in public appreciation, then a great change will come to American art. For it is men ? not environments, that constitute the chief develop- ing influences in art. To take as instance the artist just named: Burne-Jones' friend William Morris, and his master and friend Rossetti, had far more to do with his career than all the disadvantages or ad- vantages of Birmingham and his life and circum- stances there. At present Paris or London is the goal of every young aspirant in America, not because he prefers to live away from his own country, but because in his own country, though he finds innumer- able picture-collections and great public galleries, he finds little encouragement and no " atmosphere. " " What is this atmosphere that you artists and liter- 270 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ary folk ^ are always talking about?" I heard a wealthy citizen say once in a New York gathering, and the answer was as significant : " When you, as a, representative well-educated American, don't re- quire to ask that question, then you'll have it." American art was simply a pale reflex of English art until near the middle of the nineteenth century.* Then the great change came: primarily, with the powerful and original work of George Inness, the first really American painter in the artistic meaning of the phrase, the first, that is, whose signature was national as well as individual. Probably he, Chase, and others would have developed a school of na- tional art, but that an electrifying influence was in- troduced by an enthusiast bringing to New York and Boston, first several pictures, then many, then a representative exhibition of works by the great French modern artists, from Millet and Corot to Claude Monet. From that day an immense impetus to the practice of art was given, but, with it, a severe check to originality, native inspiration, and at last even individuality. It must be remembered in this connection, that not only Mr. Whistler (one can hardly say Mr. Sargent, for he never lived in Amer- ica and is European or at any rate cosmopolitan) but many other able painters, for example Mr. G. H. Boughton, R.A., and Mr. Mark Fisher, had no rep- utation and certainly could win no support in their own country until after they had earned a reputa- * It should not be forgotten that an American, Benjamin West, broke one of the worst conventions of English Art. His Death of Wolfe, exhibited in London in 1771, dared to be practically contemporary (1759) in costume, etc., an innova- tion which had already brought Sir Joshua Reynolds to West's Studio in eager expostulations, and which (before it conquered) met bitter opposition. AMERICAN ART. 271 tion abroad. In a way they were individualists and it was difficult for them to persuade a conven- tion-loving public that they were not mere irrespon- sible eccentrics. In decorative art, too, an immense stimulus came indirectly from France. In 1886 and 1887 the mem- orable Durand-Kuel exhibitions convinced American artists and the small American public which really took any interest in art that there was no salvation but in what came out of Paris. But in one direction an unmitigated gain obtained, for a new conception and a new direction of art were revealed in the novel and beautiful mural panels of Puvis de Chavann^s. When young America of the studios had assimilated his " Ludus pro Patria," " L'Aumone," " Reduction des Peintures du Pantheon," and " Sainte Made- leine " when 'he had got over his surprise and mas- tered the idea of work such as " Le Pauvre Pdcheur " a new period had already begun. A catalogue of names is uninteresting, but cer- tain names must at least be mentioned in even the briefest writing on American art. Leaving aside that unique and potent genius, Whistler, who has so profoundly influenced contemporary art and partic- ularly in portraiture, and whose theories have moulded contemporary opinion to an extent far greater than is commonly realised, one must at least mention, among landscapists, George Inness (whose lovely "Peace and Plenty" and "Autumn Gold" are in the Great Central Park collection in ISTew York), Cole, Church, Bierstadt, Homer Martin, Wyatt Eaton, Metcalf, D. W. Tryon, Enneking, Ross Turner, Coffin, Triscott, Haydon, Arthur W. Dow, C. H. Woodbury, Edward Barnard, Walter F. Lansil, Francis Murphy, Joseph de Camp, Sim- 272 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. mans, Julian Weir, an enumeration far from ade- quately comprehensive, yet, at least, fairly represent- ative. In pure landscape, I may add, one of the most remarkable is Henry Muhrmann, commonly but mistakenly called an Anglo-Bavarian: with whom I should couple his friend Frank Mura. Among figure painters and portraitists I may name William Chase, deservedly one of the most popular of American painters, a " Munich man " and pupil of the famous Piloty : * Abbott Thayer, Waterman, Chas. Sprague Pearce, Benson, Tarbel, Walter Gay, T. Eosenthal, D. JSTeal, T. Robinson, Karl Mahr, J. L. Stewart, Walker, Appleton Brown, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Davies, Loeb, and Ernest Major, Frederick Vint on, R. G. Hardie, Walter McEwen, among those known in Paris and London as well as in New York and Boston, in Chicago and Washington. Then there are " the big- ger men " and the names familiar to all lovers of contemporary art: Whistler and La Earge and Sar- gent Robert W. Vonnoh, Gari Melchers, W. T. Dannat (so often in the Salon taken by foreign vis- itors for a Frenchman), George Hitchcock, Fra^ois Millet, Kenyon Cox, Bridgman, Weeks, Bidgway, Knight, Alexander Harrison, Alexander, and, in England at least ranked as one of the very foremost Americans, Edwin Abbey. William Chase and Von- noh are probably the two most popular resident por- traitists in America to-day. The one stands for the Munich influence, the other for the influence of Paris, latterly of the Impressionists. Among nota- * There are two other painters of the same name of Chase. John Chase, who died in 1879, was an English landscapist, a pupil of Constable ; and Henry Chase, a native of Vermont, born about 1855, is a painter of excellent marine pictures. AMERICAN ART, 273 ble women-portraitists are Sarah Whitman and Cecelia Beaux. ISTor should mention be forgotten of Kobert Harris, the most notable portraitist, and perhaps the most noteworthy painter of the many able young Canadian artists. Few of these painters live in America. Most, like Whistler (who has divided his allegiance between Paris and London), Dannat, Bridgman, Weeks, Ridgway Knight, Loeb, Alexander, Alexander Har- rison, live in Paris: or, like Sargent, Boughton, Edwin Abbey, Frank Millet, and many others whose names will readily occur, in London. Some are settled in quiet places in England, as Henry Muhrmann, who paints his sombre, poetic nature-dreams in the neighbourhood of Hastings, where he and Frank Mura reside. Some, like Gari Melchers (rashly called the American Legros, for apart from all else he lacks Legros' inward emotion or technical mas- tery) and George Hitchcock, live in Holland : others in Rome or Venice : a few in Madrid and the South : many in Munich. " What is an American artist ? " runs a question and its answer as set forth by a satirist : " An Ameri- can artist is a man, generally with a foreign name, who does not live in America, who paints his pictures in France or England or elsewhere in Europe, who spends his life there, but is very proud to be an American." There is too much truth in this. American art is, moreover, broadly speaking, a reflex art. This is due to two conspicuous as well as to other causes, the voluntary exile of so many American artists, and the cosmopolitan influences continually moulding indi- vidual, civic, and national life. In art, as in life, America is still largely transatlantic Europe. 274 PROGRESS OP ART IN THE CENTURY. In one very important branch of art, that of wood- engraving, America owes much to an Englishman long settled in the States, the veteran W. J. Linton. Thereafter one of her own sons gave her pre-eminence not only over England but over Europe Timothy Cole. Among others who should be named are How- ard Pyle, Whitney, Closson, Johnson, Kruell, French, Lindsay, King, Juengling, Davis. In illus- trative art, Smedley, Reinhart, Gibson, Bellew, Yer Beck, and a score of other names might be given. In Etching, America is less distinguished leav- ing apart that great master in etching, Whistler. Among her notable representatives is Joseph Pen- nell, an artist who has won a remarkable reputa- tion in England and France as well as in the United States, and, at his best (he has been of late some- what too recklessly prolific), is admitted one of the foremost etchers and black-and-white artists of to-day. Altogether, America has made a more wonderful beginning than any other country has done. It may be that the greatest developments, perhaps the great- est art of the twentieth century, will arise in this new and vast Commonwealth of gathered nations. DUTCH ART. 275 CHAPTER XX. DUTCH ART. WITH its magnificent tradition, the decline of Dutch art at the close of the eighteenth and long into the nineteenth century, was more marked than in any other country. In fact, the art of Holland had no contemporary significance. Then, just when Bosboom and one or two men were striving towards a finer development, a great change came upon tho art-spirit of the country. It literally awakened under the marvellous breath of the great Romanticist movement in France, the greatest art- istic movement in modern times. The foremost ex- emplar was a young man named Josef Israels, who had attracted much attention among artists and art- lovers at the Paris Salon of 1857 by two profoundly modern and individual pictures, " Children by the Sea " and " Evening on the Shore." They were the pioneer works of "the Dutch Millet." This great painter, however, may proudly stand apart from any euch designation : he is Josef Israels. Josef Israels had a hard boyhood and youth. The delicate Jewish lad was brought up in poverty, and for long had a struggle with means as well as health. Amsterdam awoke the artist in him as a boy; Paris nearly killed the artist in him as a youth. It was not till he isolated himself at Zandvoort, then a re- mote little village in the dunes near Haarlem, that the great artist awakened. Thenceforth Israels be- T 276 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. came the painter-interpreter of the people among whom lie lived, fishermen and peasants, young wo- men already worn with toil and childbearing, pa- tient old women, tired old men, in dim cottage in- teriors, or upon the desolate wind-swept shores of Holland. When, after some years, he had learned his lesson, he went to Amsterdam again. Thence his pictures went beyond Holland, beyond Brussels. Suddenly, in 1862, he became famous, having al- ready won reputation by two fine pictures ; one called " By the Mother's Grave," now in the National Museum in Amsterdam, the other " The Shipwrecked Man," which made artistic London, and Paris later, hail him as a master. English and Scottish collect- ors at once sought his work. To-day a single art- lover in Scotland has over forty pictures by Josef Israels. So, though some of his work is in Paris, and some in Belgium and Germany, and several good examples are in America, and Holland keeps a moiety of his best, it is in Great Britain that most of his paintings are to be found. In subject, in technique, in colour, Israels is the true captain of modern Dutch art. His deep human emotion, his brooding poetry of sentiment, his cease- less growth in mastery, his independence, the power and charm and variety of his work, his intense nationalism in his individuality, combine to justify the statement made by one of the most catholic of critics, that in Israels is embodied the strength of modern Holland. With Josef Israels modern DutcH art began a new life as wonderful as that of its great past. He has had for company some of the most remarkable of contemporary artists: his friend Mesdag, the great sea-painter, Ohristoffel Bissohop, Neuhuys, DUTCH ART. 277 Jongkind (so much more French, or Franco-Flemish than Dutch, and yet a Hollander of the Hollanders) ; Anton Mauve, the poet of nature ahove all other Dutch artists, as Matthijs Maris is above all other Dutch artists the poet dreaming in colour ; Lodewijk Apol, the winter painter, Josef Gabriel, and, among the younger men, Breitner and Isaac Israels, vivid impressionists; with (to repeat one of them) three names now celebrated throughout the whole art- world, Jacob and Willem and Matthew (Matthijs) Maris. The day may come when two at least of these brothers will be held even greater than they are now: when Jacobus Maris will be considered along with the greatest depicters of Dutch land- scape and life, since Rembrandt himself. The day has already come for a small but select public to value the work of Matthijs Maris as among the most poetic, individual, and scrupulously win- nowed work in contemporary art. Their appre- ciation abroad began in Glasgow, and it is unques- tionable that " the Maris influence " had greatly to do with the development of much that is best in the group of brilliant young naturists known as the Glasgow School. Another man who must be mentioned with Matthew Maris is W. Bauer, who, too, is before all else the dreamer and poet, though lie works mostly in etching, is, in fact, the greatest Dutch etcher since Eembrandt, though pre-eminently an artist's artist. The two latest movements in Dutch art, the symbolist (foreign to the Dutch genius) and the expressionist (expressionism being a vague designation intended to denote a more simple, austere, and literal presentment of nature than impressionism is supposed to include), are respect- ively well represented by Jan Toorop and Thorn 278 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Prikker, and by Karpen and Tholen, the latter a painter as highly appreciated in London and Paris as in his own country. Antoon Van Welie is per- haps the ablest Dutch impressionist in the narrower use of the term, since Jongkind. It is a splendid record and the Dutch Renais- sance is one of the most convincing resurrections in the history of art. BELGIAN ART. 279 CHAPTEE XXL BELGIAN AET. PERHAPS the least fascinating section in this com- plex national congregation we call Modern Art 13 that of Belgium. It has high qualities, but they are of the kind that do not win the love or even constrain the habitual attention of those born be- yond the flat frontiers of smoky, heavy Flanders. The Fleming is all-powerful in the national art as in the national literature: the Walloon is almost provincial in both, for all that French is the liter- ary, official, and social language. But genius is stronger than any adopted tongue. In all Belgian art the Fleming stands revealed, heavy, somewhat coarse, dull, loving the ungainly, the uncomely and the sordid or else loving the reverse of these things, but with a buoyancy that seems a little affected, a gaiety a little forced, a sense of beauty more an emotion of the mind than of the spirit. What is fine in modern Belgian art began with Hippolyte Boulenger, one of the most remarkable of the Romanticists, a true brother of Millet and Rousseau and Corot. Before him there were many able and a few distinguished painters. When he was a boy the two definite periods of the earlier nine- teenth century art were over, the periods of David and of Delaroche, the first a barren period of thirty years, and the second of twenty years, scarcely less barren. In 1850 the new period had begun : 280 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the influence of Courbet was the revolutionary force which altered the whole tenor of Belgian art. Courbet, a powerful but heavy-handed, overbearing master was eminently suited to appeal to the Bel- gians, having in himself and his genius so much of the Fleming. His art was like a trumpet-call to young Belgium. Here was a leader who had no French refinement, no English delicacy or subtlety, no German mysticism, no Italian pseudo-classicism: but was obvious, unmystical, unpoetic, virile, at times perhaps too heavy-handed but always sane, vigorous, and convincing. Thus it was that modern Belgian art began under the leadership of Courbet: la,ter, Hippolyte Boulenger, under the finer influence of Millet and Corot, was to lead it into a new way and mould it anew and more enduringly. Like Josef Israels in Holland, Charles de Groux and Const antin Meunier were Flemish exponents of the sombre and hard life of the poor. Probably the most pessimistic book in our time is the work of a Belgian, the " Chants de Maldoror," and certainly some of the most sordid and depraved have the un- pleasant distinction of being by Belgian authors: but even the grimiest can hardly be more depressing than the art of Charles de Groux. Contrasted with it, that of Israel is blithe and joyous. This artist set himself with passion to depict the sombre, tho squalid, the wretched in life. To pass from De Groux to later painters of the Courbet group, such 1 as Louis Dubois and Jan Stobbaerts, is to pass from ill-lit and consumption-smitten slums to the fresh, vigorous animation of the Kermesses of the Nether- lands from the revolting despair of " Maldoror " to the coarse but virile sensualism and energy of Georges Eckhoud. Then came Alfred Stevens, a BELGIAN ART. 281 painter whom it is the vogue to rank as an im- portant master, and who certainly has painted some lovely and deeply interesting studies in a vividly individual way: but whose work in the main is so lacking in atmosphere that one feels it is more likely to be valued hereafter as genre rather than as living art. There are others, from De Brackeleer to De Jonghe, Jan and Frans Verhas, and Charles Hermans, who might be spoken of in detail, but beyond the famous "Revellers at Dawn" of Hermans (who, in 1875 in his great life-size pic- ture, suddenly brought the influence of Manet to usurp or counteract that of Courbet) which again diverted the course of the main stream of Belgian art, and the work of Alfred de Knuff, the pioneer in Belgium of the great French Romanticist move- ment, the first under the influence of Huet and Rousseau to paint the true greenness of nature, there is no outstanding name or achievement until we come to Hippolyte Boulenger. This great nature-painter can with justice be called not only the Millet or the Corot of Belgium, but the Millet and the Corot. As they made Barbizon the Mecca of the younger French artists, so Boulenger made Tervueren the Mecca of the younger Belgian artists. He studied and painted man and nature as no other Belgian artist had done since the days of the great Flemish painters of old, but with a new poetry, a new emotion, a new intensity. The day will come when his work will be ranked among the finest achievements of the nineteenth century. The soil has its worshipper in him, light a high-priest, man a comrade and interpreter. With him should be named Theodore Buron and Josef Heymans, the former akin to Eousseau, the latter to Millet; 282 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Coosemans also, an independent comrade; Marie Collaert, the Rosa Bonheur of Belgium; the de- lightful and blithe Verstraete; Glaus, a subtle colourist; and Frans Courtens, a picturesque and vivid though sometimes too showy painter of forest and masses of foliage, one who has emulated in the manner rather than achieved in the spirit of Huet, Diaz, and Rousseau. In sea-painting there is no Belgian so great as the Dutch Mesdag, but Paul Jean Clays and Louis Artan are marine painters of whom any country might be proud. Symbolism is represented by Khnopff, a suggestive and distinct- ive painter. In Felicien Hops Belgian art has a pre-eminent etcher, typically Flemish in his work, sensually obsessed as it is. At present Belgian art is still in its main features the most prosaic of any, but a great awakening may lie latent in the legacy of the Tervueren school, and the more likely since in literature Belgium has recently had a remarkable renaissance and given to the world beyond itself a great writer such as Maurice Maeterlinck and a poet of such distinction as Emile Yerhaeren. SCANDINAVIAN ART. 283 CHAPTER XXII. SCANDINAVIAN ART. DANISH. SWEDISH. NORWEGIAN. A WIDE region of art is covered by this title. Were there space to spare a short article might well be devoted respectively to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painting. Yet, while they differ materi- ally the one from the other, they have naturally much in common. The Danes are the dreamers, the nat- ural mystics; the Norwegians the realists; the Swedes the impressionists, the painters of gaiety and brightness, the cosmopolitans. For most of us, however, to-day, there is little of outstanding excel- lence in Norwegian or Swedish art. The Norsk Thaulow, the Swedish Anders Zorn, these we all know and admire, but for the most part even the cosmopolitan Swedes have no great standing, though some, like Salmson, have a wide reputation. Scandinavia has given the world some of its most fascinating and moving literature. Prom the Danish Hans Andersen and Georg Brandes and the Norse Ibsen and Bjbrnson to the Swedish Selma Lagerlof there are over a score of poets, romancists, dramatists, and critical writers whose works have received the greatest attention and respect Ander- sen, Ibsen, and Bjb'rnson, to mention three only, having been translated into almost every modern language. But, as yet (though in Peter Kroyer 284 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Denmark has a really great painter, nationally con- sidered, and in Viggo Johansen one of the foremost of living impressionists) Scandinavia has produced no great artist in the outstanding sense. True, there is the famous sculptor Thorwaldsen. I am aware that to many people it must seem like sacrilege to deny greatness to this sculptor, but of course it is only an opinion, so none need accept it. But I think he is one of the greatly overrated men of talent: men who like the Germans Overbeck and Cornelius and Piloty were considered as semi-divine in their genius but whom a subsequent generation has refused to allow more than mediocre talent more or less triumphantly applied. With one or two exceptions (Thaulow, for in- stance, is one of the most admired of recent naturists, some considering his painting of flowing water to be finer than that of any painter of any country) it is Danish and not Norwegian or Swedish art that has most impressed the greater public beyond the three norland kingdoms. I will, therefore, select the smaller country as the most typical of all. I. DANISH. Even in Paris where all modern art comes to be presented at court one might not find it easy to learn much about Danish Art.. " Danish Danish why, is it not the same as Swedish, Norwegian? Is it not Scandinavian ? " In the studios, it is true, one might hear high praise of Peter Kroyer; per- haps even of August Jerndorff; and many con- nected with the later developments in art, the New Salonists, would respond to the mention of Viggo Johansen's name, and even more likely to that of SCANDINAVIAN ART. 285 Julius Paulsen. But, for the most part, one would hear among the men who have " arrived," " Danish art ah ! yes, of course, Kroyer " ; or, among those who are " arriving/ 7 " la peinture Danoise aujourd'hui? ah, oui, parfaitement cest W ilium- sen!" Of the re-birth, and striking and most interesting development, of Danish art within the last twenty- five years, much might be said. But here, as I write only of the most vital nationalist development, so finely inaugurated by Niels Skovgaard and others, I must restrict my introductory words to the fewest. Denmark has produced no great art, no art of the highest. Her chief glory, Thorwaldsen, is a lesser glory; a remarkable man, a man of convincing talent, but not, to us now, of convincing genius. Before the present century art simply did not exist in the small country that was once so great a king- dom ; Danish art began with the sculptor Thorwald- sen and the painter Eckersberg. As the kingdom shrank, the national life awakened. When, less than fifty years ago, Denmark became, geographically, simply a small sea-swept province, poets and ro- mancists and painters appeared, to save what was perishing, to keep adive the national spirit, the na- tional soul. To-day there is no country in the world where the many in a nation share so generally and amply with the few in the culture born of literature and art. The whole of Denmark numbers a fewer people than a single region of London; but this little nation lives where a populace merely exists. In Denmark itself there are names which are de- servedly honoured: Vilnelm Marstrand, for in- 286 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. stance, the Danish Wilkie, as he has been called. But since Eckersberg there has been no painter who has won a European reputation till Kroyer. To- day, when we look at the work of Cristoph Eckers- berg, it is difficult to see in what he obtained his great repute and greater influence; and if, perchance, one happens upon a picture of his pre-Roman period, the affirmation of his influence becomes almost in- credible. In his later work, however, he stands re- vealed as a genuine master in his kind ; but his coun- try's debt to him is more for what, directly and in- directly, he did for Danish art than for what he himself contributed. In Denmark he occupies the place which Ingres occupies in French art; though in the severe formalism of the French master, genius was a formative force, while in that of the Dane there was only an able talent. To-day, when the colourists represent what is best in contemporary Danish art, Eckersberg is little considered, except by those wise students who turn to him as a high teacher in draughtsmanship, design and " national- ism." Marstrand, who was so much more pleasing a painter, hail a harmful influence on his artistic countrymen, for it was he who was mainly responsi- ble for the all but general exodus of " Danish talent " to Italy and the East. For many years the Danes abroad simply imitated the great French artists who had discovered the Orient and the South, while the lesser men painted the conventional Roman " sub- jects," till Copenhagen became more weary of them than even the Romans did, or the French or the English of their like infliction. Three men, men of letters, have had more influence over Danish art than any single painter has had : Andersen, by his strong patriotism, world- wide reputation, and gen- SCANDINAVIAN ART. 287 uine artistic sympathies ; Hoyen, by his brilliant and scholarly writings on art, and above all by his per- fervidly patriotic appeals, as in his famous public address in Copenhagen in 1844, " On the Conditions for the Development of a National Scandinavian Art " ; and the one great contemporary Danish writer (I should mention also the celebrated critic, Georg Brandes), the romancist Jacobsen. But more potent influences than these were to play upon the national destiny. Between 1845 and 1850 a ferment of pub- lic opinion nurtured a fresh and more concentrated nationalism ; and when the disastrous war with Ger- many was over, the Danes at last realised that they had nothing left but their memories, their ancient traditions and literature, their dreams, a tiny king- dom, and a dwindled people. Now was the time when the passionate appeal of Hoyen sank into the public mind. The day was over for Danish artists to paint conventional Roman contadini and imitative Oriental themes; and the day was come for Danish artists to find in their own country, by their own shores, in their own villages and interiors, in their own folk-lore and ballads, and later poetry and romances, and in their own history and aspirations, the sole acceptable inspiration. Already painters were maturing towards this re- birth. Among these, a remarkable man, Peter Skovgaard, took as independent a position in his own country as Rousseau did in France, and was, to later landscape art in Denmark, what Rousseau was in the great renaissance of French nature-paint- ing. Still, Danish art in general remained frozen in unemotional convention. A famous French critic of the Great Exhibition in Paris in 1867 remarked that Denmark no longer existed ; not because she had 288 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. lost Sweden, or because Prussia had swallowed her richest domains, but because she had no art. It was not true, but the " art " in which Denmark was rep- resented at the Exhibition was so lifeless that the criticism was not wholly baseless. With Peter Skovgaard there were " big " men like Carl Bloch and, later, the remarkable Zahrtmann who were not only typical Danes and typical Danish painters, but artists among the most noteworthy in Europe, rank- ing only after the greatest. The third great exhibition in Paris (1878) definitely deflected what was merely provincial and unsound in Danish art, for the new generation real- ised overwhelmingly that, in painting, they had al- most everything to learn, and much, much from Eckersberg onward, to unlearn. Exactly halfway in this century, the greatest of Danish artists was born by birth a Norwegian, for Peter Kroyer was born on Midsummer's Day in 1851 at Stavanger. From his earliest boyhood in Copen- hagen, influences worked to his highest development. To-day he stands as one of the foremost living ar- tists in Europe, and some aver a surpassing master in portraiture. A Danish " Admirable Crichton," he is however a master in all genres. Since 1875 Kroyer, Viggo Johansen, Jerndorff, Julius Paulsen, and a notable band of younger men, have raised their country into line with the leading artistic nations. The later of the romanticists comprising those who seek their inspiration in the beautiful Danish poetry and old-world ballads, and in the most vividly realised and emotional vision of natural beauty, and particularly of atmospheric effects has its veteran in Vilhelm Kyhn and its m aster-colour ist in Viggo Pedersen. The school has this in common, that it SCANDINAVIAN ART. 289 is Danish to the core, that it should find inspiration in Danish themes and Danish nature, and that ro- mance in subject, handling, and colour should be the sought end. It has given much beautiful work, but its influence is not in the right direction, for it stands by a cardinal weakness instead of by a cardi- nal strength. All the abler younger men Niels and Joachim Skovgaard, for example who accept Kroyer and Viggo Johansen and Paulsen as masters, abide by the wise teaching that truth in art is more likely to be faithful and convincing in degree as nature is closely approached and incessantly studied ; the newer school, inspired by Zahrtmann on the one hand, by Kroyer in one direction (his brilliant un- conventionalism), and above all others, by Vilhelm Kyhn and Niels Skovgaard, believe in effect that nature should be romantically remembered rather than " prosaically " close-studied should, in other words, be a synthesis of impression rather than a synthesis of expression. In decorative nature paint- ing, too, Joachim Skovgaard (the elder of the two now famous sons of a celebrated father) has in- fluenced them considerably. Foremost among these important newcomers are Harold Slott-Moeler, Hammershoy, Johan Rohde, and Agnes Slott- Moeler, wife of the well-known decorative artist just named among the first to attempt definitely as painters the interpretation (for Laurenz Frohlich and Niels Skovgaard precede them in their beauti- ful illustrative work) of the romantic ballads and folk-lore of Denmark. Their work is invariably imaginative in quality and decorative in design. As colourists, they are unequalled, sometimes attaining great luminosity and richness, sometimes yielding to that hard brilliancy 290 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. which is so characteristic of many Dutch painters. As with so many artists of their school, draugjitsman- ship is secondary to colour. In 1891 a new society of artists was established in Copenhagen in opposition to the conventional Royal Academy a society whose aims were, in painting, much the same as those were which brought about in London the Grosvenor Gallery and the JSTew Gallery, but in Art principles and prac- tical matters connected with art more closely re- sembled those aims and ideas which obtained with the more brilliant and independent French artists when they formed a new society, that known for short as the New Salon. This society, indeed, was mainly the outcome of that movement in decorative art which has since had so remarkable a development in Denmark a movement regarded indifferently, when not with actual disfavour, by the academical and then all-powerful faction. But, as with the " E"ew Salonists," the movement had the enthusiastic moral support and even participation of some of the greatest men, and with the sympathies of Kroyer, Johansen, and others of established repute, the little body of revolutionists had no cause to fear. As a matter of fact the Free Exhibition the counterpart of the " Wanderers " in Russia was a success from the first, and to-day stands for all that is finest and most idiosyncratic in Scandinavian art. II. SWEDISH. The Swedish artist who connects the art of his country and that of Denmark, in the common bond of a distinctively Scandinavian genius is August Malmstrom, one of the few Swedes who have the SCANDINAVIAN ART. 291 dreamy poetical nature of their Danish, kinsmen. In Sweden there was no art of any importance until the middle of the century, when Johan Frederick Hoeckert appeared, a true artist, a fine colourist, a brilliant master in technique, and an unconven- tional mind. His rich and glowing colouring is eminently suggestive of Sweden, " the land of the glowing light." Thereafter Swedish art kept con- stantly inclined towards a dispersed cosmopolitan- ism: her painters seemed to wish to be everything except Swedish. Hellquist, Cedarstrom, and Nils Forsberg did much to change this, and Forsberg was so successful with one of his Swedish subjects that at the Paris Salon of 1888 he was awarded the first medal. Native landscape-painting of a genuine na- tional nature had its rise with Edvard Bergh, who began as the John Linnell of Swedish landscape-art and ended as a Barbizonist. But the actual leader of the modern movement is Hugo Salmson and Au- gust Hagborg. Salmson is yet another artist, like the Danish Krb'yer, of the Cosmopolitan kind. His earlier work was reflective and rather shallowly bril- liant, but his later pictures have revealed a true and effective realism in the painting of nature and the life of the fields following, though, the school of Bastien-Lepage rather than that of the Barbizon men. Hagborg shows a kindred development: from a pleasant manneristic style of popular work he has found finer expression in " The Potato-Gatherers " and other Millet-like work. At last the real Sweden not the Sweden of Stockholm, or of the Franco-Swedish no-man's land in which so many Scandinavian painters had lived is depicted in all its beauty, its northern wildness, its contrasts of snow and colour, its dark lakes and 292 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. virginal forests, its outlying hamlets and quaint peasant life, by Per Echstrom, Nils Kreuger, and Karl Mordstrom, Axel Borg, Johan Tire, Ivan Ny- berg, the versatile Carl Larrson, and several others of hardly less note. To-day Sweden stands best rep- resented abroad by the vivid and fascinating Anders Zorn, who as painter in oil, water-colourist, draughts- man and etcher is one of the most brilliant artistic personalities now living. He is the Sargent of Sweden, with a sense of beauty, joy, lightness, and a power to express these beyond the temperamental reach of the famous American. III. NORWEGIAN". Norwegian art has the characteristics both of Swedish and Danish, but is in some respects bolder and more independent than either. On the other hand it has not the same charm. It is best repre- sented in its later phases by Christian Skredsvig, Eilif Peterssen, Gerhaid Munthe, and Fritz Thau- low convincingly able and delightful naturists of varied, original, and brilliant talent. To-day Paris, London, Munich, and New York are familiar with the wonderful, flowing-water pictures and pastel- drawings of Thaulow, and at the Paris Salons sev- eral of the others are always represented. A New Salon without the Swede Anders Zorn or the Nor- wegian Thaulow would be an exhibition with some- thing of the expected charming savour gone. Finally that strange intense later movement of religious realism, which nominally began with the Saxon painter Yon Uhde, though it had its source in the early Pre-Eaphaelite work of Holman Hunt, Hillais, and earlier and contemporary English SCANDINAVIAN ART. 293 painters, lias had powerful exemplars to say the least of it, as fine as Von Uhde, and superior to Dagnan Bouveret and other French experimenters in Skredsvig and Albert Edelfelt (the first a Norse, the second a native of Finland). Skredsvig^s " Christ Healing the Sick " is as literal an interpre- tation as any painter could adventure, for the Saviour is depicted as a poor Norwegian artisan with a small round hat in his hand, and in all respects the scene is such as might be perceived any Sunday afternoon at a " revival " meeting in Norway. Edelfelt is not less sincere, but is more poetic and subtle, in his vision of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene the latter a poor Finnish girl, and the scene being one of the lonely lake-sides of Finland, Lapland, or Central Sweden. If Scandinavian art has not the homogeneity of Dutch art, which geographically is so contiguous, it is likely more and more to gain strength and unity in variety through the blending influences of French and German art : for Munich and Paris are still the stars of Scandinavia. But it is no longer imitative. Scandinavian art is at last a reality, with something of greatness, and with much high promise. 294: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK XXIII. EUSSIAN AET. RELATIVELY so little of Russian art is known in western Europe that one has to judge, apart from the pictures of a few men seen in Paris, London, Berlin, and Munich, from reproductions. Slavonic literature is much more widely known and appre- ciated, and it may be said at once far more ade- quately reveals the strange, brooding, melancholy, and yet in so much naive, childlike, and joyous genius of the Slav. The twentieth century may well end with Russia in the forefront of modern nations. Once free from the paralysing restrictions upon her intel- lectual development and mental and spiritual free- dom, once political and civic freedom is the pos- session of every Russian, the natural advance in all directions will be amazing, and perhaps nowhere more markedly than in art, which the student will again and again have found to be the sure reflex of the inward life of the nation of which it is the aesthetic expression. There is little to attract us in Russian art until the advent of Sylvestr Stschedrin, who died (at the early age of 38) at Sorrento near Naples in 1830. Stschedrin was a man of genius, and had he lived longer would have achieved a European fame and might have hastened by many years the great natur- ist movement. He was, in a word, a forerunner of Corot and Boulenger, of Monet and the plein- RUSSIAN ART. 295 airists. I have seen in Rome a picture of the Bay of Baiae by Stschedrin so full oj: light and beauty that when I realised it was painted in 1827 I thought how little we all, public and critics, knew of what had been done in the early decades of the century when we laid so great stress on the initial work of Turner and Bonington and Delacroix. Even Stschedrin, however, did no more than found a native school. His early death, and the fact that he painted Italian scenery, prevented his influence from being in Russia what it would have been had he brought his genius to bear on the life and land- scape of his own country. The Russian public still appreciated far more the grandiose, historical, and scriptural themes of Brulov, the Hogarthian themes of Fedotov, and the vast, melodramatic, martial, and declamatory pictures of Verestchagin. Every coun- try has in degree its Hogarth, its Wilkie, its Millet, its Matthijs Maris, and every country has its su- preme melodramatist, as France with Gustave Dore, Austria with Hans Makart, Hungary with Mun- Tcacsy, Germany with Piloty, and Russia with Vassily Verestchagin. A remarkable man with a remarkable career, Stschedrin made only one great mistake, in be- lieving that he was a great painter. He was a vivid and interesting pictorial journalist, with an unconven- tional and fantastic imagination, and had the good fortune of stirring and picturesque events to work upon. After Stschedrin the next great influence in Rus- sian art was the establishment, by a group of young men in artistic revolt, of a society called " The So- ciety for Wandering Exhibitions," known later sim- ply as " The Wanderers." The moving spirit here was a painter called Ivan Kramskoi, of no genius 296 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. himself but with energy and enthusiasm. " The Wanderers " did more for their country than all officialdom had been able to foster (when not de- pressing) or ever could do. It was a movement for truth and independence, and modern Russian art begins since 1870, when it was inaugurated. For the next quarter of a century " The Wanderers," be- come a national movement now, comprised all that was strong, individual, and fine in Slavonic art. Some of these early " Wanderers " became well- known abroad ; Constantin Makovsky, for instance, achieving considerable popularity in America. Needless to say, that popularity was only among the uneducated, for Makovsky art, especially in later years, was meretricious and often vicious. His sole claim to distinction is in a few pictures painted as a young man under the ennobling influence of Kramskoi. But in this group is one master : Elias Repin. The great painter, now in his fifty-sixth year, at the height of his powers, is the foremost living Russian artist, and one of the greatest in Europe. A Slav of the Slavs, he worships Russia and determined from the first to devote himself to depicting life and nature in his own country. Even when he had his travelling scholarship in his youth he was anxious to be in his own land again, and when he relinquished some of his time abroad in order to return, Rembrandt himself was not more ceaselessly curious and experimental in Amsterdam than Repin was by the banks of the Volga. His celebrated " Burlalli " the men who tow a vessel up the Volga when exhibited in 1873 was admitted at once to be the greatest picture painted in Russia. To this day it has not been surpassed. In his work, Repin is the first adequately representative Russian RUSSIAN ART. 297 artist. In him Gogol, Dostoievsky, Turgeniev and Tolstoi have their comrade. Repin has something of the characteristics of each of these great writers: the barbaric force and vividness of Gogol, the grace and charm and distinction of Turgeniev, the depth and melancholy and spiritual earnestness and epic note of Tolstoi, the habitual gloom and pessimism relieved by splendid art of Dostoievsky. Since his " Burlalli " he has achieved much and variously, and as a portrait-painter, too, ranks foremost (one of his portraits of Count Tolstoi behind the plough has a European fame) : but all his art, and all that is most characteristic in later Eussion art is summed up in this famous masterpiece. Let me conclude, therefore, with some significant words concerning it by Alexander Benois, the St. Petersburg critic sig- nificant because they interpret the Russian genius as well as the genius of Elias Repin : " In the blaze of the noonday sun, youths, men and boys are tramp- ing along in the burning sand on the flat, unsheltered banks of the river, with the thick ropes round breast and shoulders, and their tanned naked feet planted upon the hot ground. The hair falls in disorder upon their brownish red brows, dripping with per- spiration. Here and there a man holds his arm be- fore his face to protect it from the scorching rays. Singing a monotonous, melancholy, barbaric melody, they drag the high-masted barque laden with crops, up-stream, through the wide deserted plain; their work was yesterday what it is to-day and will be to- morrow. It is as if they had been tramping like this for centuries, and would be pushing forward in the same way for centuries to come. Types they are of the life of serfs, types cast variously together from the North and the South and the East of the vast 298 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. empire, by the hand of Fate: the children of dif- ferent slave-races, most of them figures of iron, though there are some who seem feeble, some are indifferent too, whilst others are brooding gloom- ily, but they are one and all pulling at the same rope." It seems to me that both the great painter and the critical interpreter have painted and spoken more deeply and significantly than perhaps they knew. Kussia Genetrix stands revealed. SPANISH ART. 299 CHAPTER XXIV. SPANISH AKT. ONE great name stands out in the contemporary art of Spain, Francisco Pradilla a man who, in present artistic significance, might almost be called Emperor of Spain and Satrap of Italy. For Pradilla is not only the greatest modern Spanish artist, and the influence which more than any other moulds and directs contemporary Spanish painting, but had and still has much to do with the renais- sance of original art in Italy. Like Fortuny, his great predecessor, he lives in Rome: and two great nations regard him as arch-priest in art. When one speaks of the art of Spain one naturally thinks of the art of Zurbaran, of Murillo, of Velas- quez. But a long silence fell upon Spain after these great men a silence so long unbroken by either art or literature that most people and many Spaniards themselves thought that the Muses had left the once great peninsula never more to return. Then sud- denly, in the eighteenth century, a great man arose. With crayon, with etching-needle, with the brush, Goya showed his countrymen and the world beyond that art was not dead in Spain. To-day Goya still stands almost as great as he seemed at the beginning of the present century. What we find artificial and outworn is only the accidental, the colour of time and period. Goya remains the Rembrandt of Spain, though not the great Rembrandt of the portraits: 300 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. a descendant of Kembrandt as it were, retaining his extraordinary powers of observation and interpreta- tion, but without his genius as a painter, without his overwhelming advantages of period and training. But though Goya awakened or re-created Spanish art there was no other of signal excellence till a young painter appeared who was destined to become one of the most famous artists of modern times, to exercise an immense and far-reaching influence, and to be to Spain and Spanish art much in degree what Sir Walter Scott was to Scotland and the romance of adventure. Mariano Fortuny was one of those revolutionary men of genius who seem destined to die just as their greatest period is about to begin "the fatal age of thirty-six" as some chronicler of the arts has it. He had a short life, yet one of the most brilliant in the history of art. But for an ac- cident he might have remained a painter in the in- tensely artificial Spanish vogue: this accident was his visit to Morocco at the time of the conclusion of the war between that Empire and Spain. The East intoxicated him. The gorgeous blaze of colour, so involved, so dazzling, and above all the startling chiaroscuro, entered into his inmost life and was re-born in his art. Morocco meant a new world for Eortuny: Eortuny meant a new world for a fasci- nated world-public. But brilliant as are " The Snake-Charmers " and " The Arabian Fantasia " and all their kind, Fortuny was to find his finest and most characteristic and much of his most influential development in those now famous genre pictures where to all his oriental gorgeousness he brought a charm and grace and distinction almost incompar- able in kind. " The Trial of the Model/' "The Spanish Marriage/' " The Kehearsal," these are SPANISH ART. 301 among the triumphs which gave Spanish art its colour and direction almost as Chaucer gave English literature its first colour and direction. Till Pra- dilla Spanish art has shown no material secession from or advance upon the method and manner of Fortuny, and to this day its characteristics remain the same an extraordinary vivacity, an artificial brilliance and vehemence, everywhere the features, the aspect, seldom the spirit, the dream, the inward life that moulds and shapes and whose interpreta- tion is the supreme office of ifche imagination. As an etcHer Fortuny ranks second only to Goya, and to many who care less for technical excellence than for a general impression of beauty his varied and delightful etchings are the most desiderated. After Fortuny ? s early death in Home, just when fame had come to him and he stood almost at the head of European art, his pupil and relative Ma- drazo (Raimundo) and others carried on the tradition of his " Spanish Marriage " and " The Amateur and the China Vase " kind of work. Others, following Regnault and the French orientalists as well as Fortuny, gave themselves to a barbaric lust of sav- agery, blood, splendour, to an apotheosis of the tyrant and his bloody work. The brutal element in Spanish life, that finds expression in the national joy in the bull-fight, disclosed itself here. The ap- peal was immediate and potent. The public stood fascinated before Manuel Ramirez' " Execution of Don Alvaro de Luna," where the head of the slain man has rolled down the steps and stares with stony eyes at the spectator. Before Ale jo Vera's dramatic " Defence of Humantia " crowds gazed as at a scene being enacted in some superb arena. At the famous Munich International Exhibition of 1883 Pradilla's 302 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. " Surrender of Granada " (which obtained the gold medal) would have been the most popular Spanish picture but for the irresistible fascination of Cas- sado's (Cassado del Alisa) terrible canvas, " The Bells of Hues-ca," where the king and his terrified and shrinking courtiers and stern companions de- scend the upper stair of a dungeon where an exe- cutioner stands, holding a great hound in leash, among fifteen decapitated bodies, whose heads lie idly here and there amid the red flood staining the great stone slabs of the dungeon. Checa's " Barba- rian Onset " and other Roman Amphitheatre pictures are familiar to-day: nor could they either appeal to or shock people as did Francisco Amerigo's " Sack- ing of the Eternal City by the Troops of Charles V." where no horror or outrage of savage triumph was spared. A finer note was struck by Jose Villegas, a painter of great power, who wearied of the artificiality of so much of Spanish art. In the " Christening " and the " Death of the Matador " (both now in the Van- derbilt Collection in America) he might be called the Wilkie of Spain, so individual is he in manner, so natively true in depicture, and so convincingly national in expression. No doubt the most popular Spanish painters of the decades immediately following Fortuny's death were other than these, typical genre-painters of the Rococo as their great leader had been: Raimundo de Madrazo, Casanova, and Zamacois, the latter an influential master. But at last Francisco Pradilla came and conquered. This brilliant and superb master can not only rival all these men and For tuny himself in the familiar Rococo Spanish manner, but is the supreme decorative artist in Spain, the head SPANISH ART. 303 of the realists, the chief naturist, the ablest painter of the sea and the vivid shore. In a word Pradilla is the Admirable Crichton of Spanish Art. All that is joyous and blithe in the Spanish genius is ex- pressed in his work as well as all that is fantastic, all that is grave, all that is grandiose. To-day, all Spain follows in his wake, except in rare instances such as that of Antonio Gandara, a distinguished portraitist noted for his " modernity," who lives in France and has been influenced more by Whistler than by any Spanish artist. One other brilliant exception must be made, one of the greatest if not the greatest of modern artists with the pen, Urrabieta, better and indeed universally known as Daniel Vierge, which, however, were only his two fore-names. He is commonly spoken of as French, but though he lived in Paris during several years of his brief career " Vierge " was a Spaniard. He renounced his surname Urrabieta when he came to Paris, and obviously Daniel Vierge was there a much better name to succeed with. In brilliant and orig- inal verve and delicacy Vierge is almost unrivalled in his kind, and notably in his master-work, the drawings of the edition de luxe of Don Pablo de Segovia. To-day Spanish art is in two currents, that which follows the impetus of Fortuny and Madrazo, and that which follows the impetus of Pradilla. Both are national : but the one leads deeper and deeper in- to mere genre, while the other leads to freedom and development. Among the quite young followers of Pradilla, I must mention a daring and delightful plein-airist, the marine and sea-shore life painter, Seiior Sorrida y Bastida. He can paint wind and air and light. It is an augury for the new Spain that we all await. 304: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY, CHAPTEK XXV. ITALIAN ART. OF all countries in the world Italy should be the most artistic. That the Italy of to-day is not so is due to causes as inevitable in their working as con- spicuous in their fulfilment. But, as the few unprej- udiced and wide-seeing critics have again and again pleaded in recent years, there is no assertion more ill-founded than that which avers that because the Italy of 1850 to 1900 is not the Italy of 1500 to 1550 the supreme period from Leonardo to Tin- toretto therefore it is a lifeless or at least a de- graded and trivial Italy. Each country must work out its own salvation as well as its own destiny, and the new kingdom of Italy is as much a new coun- try and dissociate from the Italy of Titian and Raphael and Michael Angelo as the Germany of to- day is a new empire and distinct from the Germany of Barbarossa. Times without number I have heard people say, in effect, " Oh, there is no literature, or there is no art, now, in Italy," when such statements are due to ignorance or indolence or both. There is nothing more remarkable than the re-birth of modern Italy, when a people broken into fragmen- tary sections was fashioned into one nation again, and a land of hostile states became a united country : and when, in an incredibly short space of time, a new Italian art arose and a new Italian literature. To-day one of the greatest modern masters in the ITALIAN ART. 305 art of words is an Italian, Gabriele D'Annunzio: a great school of romance, headed by Giovanni Verga, has arisen : Leopardi and Carducci and Ada Negri, to name three typical names only, of the past and present generation, have shown that poets of rare beauty and distinction still add to the great treasure- house of Italian beauty: Morelli, Michetti, Fav- retto, Fragiacomo, and a hundred other notable painters witness to the living artistic energy that will not vainly emulate or barrenly copy an irre- coverable past but is moulding and fulfilling a new national art: and only the other day the world lost in the person of Giovanni Segantini perhaps the greatest European painter born within the last half of the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century there is no Italian art worthy of chronicle in an account so condensed as this. The renaissance was to come from Naples, where so much vivid life is always generating new movements of some kind, in some direction. The actual revolutionary cause in art which anew awak- ened Italy was Fortuny, in the sixties: but twelve years before Fortuny was born, there was born in Naples in 1826 a child to be known as Domenico Morelli and to be accepted in due time as one of the foremost artists of South Italy. To-day everyone interested in Italian art is fa- miliar with the names of Domenico Morelli, F. P. Michetti, and Edoardo Dalbono. The minor and later artists of this group were all painters of bril- liant light, dazzling aspect, the fugitive features of things, of Bococo in a word, though the three just named rose above the artificial method and manner in which the others delighted. Fortuny was the master-spirit which influenced them all, as Pradilla 306 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. to-day: though Morelli had found a vivid and con- vincing expression for himself some years before the Spanish painter was heard of. He was perhaps the last of the old painters in the sense that he de- voted himself to religious art as the noblest source of theme and inspiration, though his treatment was so individual, so unconventional, while in technique BO characteristically Neapolitan that he cannot truly be called, as he has been called, the lineal descendant of Luca Giordano and Ribera. In the brilliant and fantastic treatment of his later work such as his extraordinary " Temptation of St. Anthony " or his vivid and scintillating " Mary Magdalene," he showed that he too had fallen under the spell of For- tuny, though to be sure he shows it only indirectly. It was reserved for his friend and pupil Paolo Michetti to be the obvious leader of a new awakening of Italian art. Through the generosity of a patron the peasant youth had the benefit of some other training first at the Academia in Naples and after- wards in Paris and London: but he was unhappy away from the light and vivacity of Southern Italy, and so settled ultimately at Francavilla a town close to where his friend the famous poet and romancist Gabriele D'Annunzio has his home. There Michetti still goes annually, to paint those glowing, spark- ling, sunny pictures in which he has so much de- light. Many of these pictures are so fanciful, such as the celebrated " Primavera egli Amoretti " (Spring and the Loves), where a number of little Cupids play boisterously beside a mass of hawthorn in bloom, or even the fine " Corpus Domini Proces- sion at Chieti " by which in 1877 he won his reputa- tion, a brilliant fanfaronnade of colour, that his splendid nature painting has not been done justice ITALIAN ART. 307 to. Landscape, trees, flowers, glades, the sea-shore, the sea, all these live again in Michetti's glowing pic- torialism. It is Hot great art; with one exception modern Italy has not yet attained to that: but in its kind it is beautiful and fascinating. His lovely " L'Offerta," at a recent exhibition, is one of those many " Mary and Child " pictures which appeal to us all the more since we are reached through the spirit and not through the letter. A young mother and her child are seated under the spreading bough of an olive, in a flower-starred glade sloping to the blue Adriatic, and before them a rude, kindly peasant offers grapes to the child. The whole picture lives in serene beauty. And what we find here we find in still more marked degree in the lovely work of Edoardo Dalbono, perhaps the finest naturist come of Naples. A man with the true Southern passion for the endless life and play of sunlight on green leaves and moving waters the poet of that eternal poem, the Bay of Naples. Of all this group comprising, among several others of high merit, the ill-fated Giacomo di Chirico with his brilliantly-bizarre, Fortuny-inspired " Wedding in the Basilicata " ; Campriani, more truly Italian than so many of his comrades both in choice of subject and individuality of manner; Santoro, with his swift, deft touch none achieved so much popularity in Italy and fame abroad as Giacomo Favretto. Favretto, of course, was powerfully influenced by Fortuny, but none the less he stands out as an original and charming if not a strong or great artist. He has been called the truest portraitist of contemporary Italian life, and if this be modified to the truest portraitist of the life of the poor and of the bourgeoisie in Venice it could hardly be challenged. He has humour, insight, sym- v 308 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. pathy, and an extraordinarily swift and sure touch. But for his early death (one more at " the fatal age 1J> of 36 or 37) a few years ago he might have hecome a great painter, for he showed continuous develop- ment. Some years ago in Venice there was a post- humous exhibition of his work, and none who visited the Sala Favrettiana but must have been convinced that by the death of Giacomo Favretto Italy had lost one of the few modern masters in the genre of the painting of popular life. There is a second-rate Italian school that is popular in a sense, but its popularity is with the more un- cultured British, American, and German visitors to Italy, who love the obvious Italianity of the insin- cere and arbitrary " scenes of Italian life " painted by Tito Conti, Francesco Vinca, and others. All this rococo style of painting is to be deprecated. For a large number of Italian painters the best thing that could happen, artistically speaking for alas it is the need to live, and the ready supply to meet the demand, which are the cause of so much meretricious work would be a prohibition to paint Venice and its pictorially attractive but generally slatternly young women, its handsome gondoliers, the eternal gondola, and all the like "model" subjects that have been done to death. But in the direction of nature-painting, since the combined influence of the French naturists and im- pressionists and under that of the versatile Pradilla and, later still, under that of certain British, German, Scandinavian, and Dutch masters, and of the example of the great Segantini himself a great change has come upon Italian art. It is now serious, poignant, searching, curious, gravely observant Xtiere is no finer nature-painting of its kind than that ITALIAN ART. 309 of Giovanni Costa. Again, take a painter like Ettore Tito. Formerly he painted the typical Vene- tian gondolier and flirting laundress, so wearisomely familiar in the exhibitions of every country. But now his work is different even when the Venetian girl is still his theme, as in his fine " Piazza di San Marco " now in a public gallery in Trieste : for here it is really a Venetian of the people, not a model for the studios. In his hideous but powerful " Gelatrici di Noci " he shows that he can be as realistic as the most realistic of the French. It is in his fine * Chioggia," a work greatly admired at the Interna- tional Exhibition in Venice some years ago, and rep- resenting a; simple quay-side life in the deserted old fisher-town, that he is at his best. I can mention only a few artists, so must select only those of whom it can truthfully be said that they are painters of whom France itself, so exigent in technique, or England, so exigent in intensity of emotion and significance, might be proud. Luigi Nono is perhaps the best known ; certainly his beautiful " Kef ugium Pec- catorum " has been exhibited in London and Paris as well as in Venice. Selvatico is a powerful painter of light and shade his " Partenza Mattutine " (Early Morning Departure), a gaunt station in morning twilight, being typical of his work. Ales- sandfo Hilesi, one of the ablest portraitists (his por- trait of the young monk-composer, Don Lorenzo Perosi, is already famous), has, in "Sospiri," achieved that almost incredible triumph, a painting of the Bridge of Sighs with a modern and individual note, a picture surcharged with humanity, with poignant pity, and yet neither sentimental nor pic- turesque. It is the Italian translation of Hood's pathetic poem. Mccolo Cannicci is the Cazin of 310 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Italy, but with a sombre human note in his peasants that suggests the influence of Bastien-Lepage. Ferragutti, a Milanese, and Formis, a Mantuan, are notable painters of the life of the fields; also the Millet-inspired peasant painter, Giuseppe Vizzotto- Alberti. Among the painters of quiet evening light and " the still sad music " of life are Giorgio Belloni, Mano Volpi, Italico Brass, Egisto Lancerotto. A more joyous note is in the work of the fine Florentine painter Francesco Gioli, whose typical picture of Tuscan women towing a grain-sloop near Bocca d'Arno I remember with singular pleasure. A very fine conventional and " picturesque Venice " painter of the Sea-City is the Venetian Giuseppe Miti- Zanetti. His work, however, is too sombre in tone: he is as sad as a Legros. Of all the younger men there is none of so much promise and distinction as Pietro Fragiacomo. Fragiacomo is probably the finest water-painter in Italy, either of the open Adriatic, the inner Venetian lagoons, or the Paduan water-ways. Of all the living impressionists, he has, I think, the greatest mastery in effectiveness of fore- ground : and there are few who can equal him in the nuances of twilight, cloud-shadow, water-mist. One of his finest works two sloops saluting each other on a moonlit calm sea is in the Royal Collection in Rome. A word should be said of "the Italian Dore," Aristide G. Sartorio though Sartorio as a painter is the superior of the celebrated Frenchman. In its terrible realism of ghastliness there is little in modern art to equal his " Diana of Ephesus and the Slaves," when scores of the dead and dying, many horribly mutilated, lie naked on the rocks of the wild fastness where rises the weird many-breasted statue of the ITALIAN ART. 311 Black Goddess. Nor is any scene in Dore's illus- trations of the Inferno more terrifying than Sar- torio's extraordinary " Sul Vesuvio," a vision of the frightful fiery torrent and appalling contortions of the sea of lava below the crater of Vesuvius. Perhaps, however, he transcends Dore altogether in a masterly painting such as his vision of " The Gorgon and the prostrate heroes." Sartorio, too, has an altogether different side to his strangely dual genius. He is also the painter of beautiful decorated panels, diptychs, and triptychs, where his work is suggestive at once of the later Eng- lish decorists and of the influence of Puvis de Cha- vannes. His great series of the Wise and Foolish .Virgins is a triumph of its kind. And now a final word as to Segantini. He was one of the few men who seem from childhood pre- destined to greatness in art. The peasant-born lad was at first a swineherd among desolate mountains. There one day on a huge slab of boulder he drew in charcoal one of his finest boars. The peasants came and saw it, and carried him (as long before, Cimabue) in triumph to the village. The boy was sent to Milan, and there had his earliest training. When at last he was a painter, he could no more stay in towns than Millet could live in Paris. His studio was the primitive lonely hill-wilderness among majestic heights, with almost no companions in his solitude but cloud-shadows, sunrise and sunset, the stars and the white moon, a few pasturing goats and sheep, one or two haggard and dumb peasants. There, in the Val D'Albola, in Italian Switzerland, Giovanni Se- gantini became the Millet of Italy, but a Millet with a single-heartedness and religious intensity of a Hoi- man Hunt. Something Biblical is over his work. 312 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. In that severe clarity, that austere beauty, there is something more solemn, more moving than in any contemporary art. He is as a man possessed, but with all emotion burned out of him save a vast and almost unnatural quiescence, an infinite pity, a grave acceptance of human life as a pathetic burden set in a pageant terrible in its beauty. The greatest man whom Italy has produced in our time, he is still but little known, and even since his premature death early in 1900 slight notice has been taken of him and his work beyond Italy, where, suddenly, the eyes of many were opened to the greatness of the peasant who has gone further than any since the great ones of old. I cannot but believe that Giovanni Segantini will be- come one of the chief names in the history of that mo- mentous period of modern art which ends with the close of the nineteenth century. Segantini is not typically Italian, if we judge him by the Rococo Florentine painters of the Tito Conti type, or even by the more national Favretto : but he is as Italian as Holman Hunt is English : and he stands a solitary and unique figure, a beacon for his fellow- countrymen. The day may come when those who succeed us will speak of modern Italian art before and after Giovanni Segantini. GERMAN AET. 313 CHAPTEE XXVI. GEKMAN AET. one thinks of German art one cannot think of a continuity within diversity as when one thinks of French art or of English art. It is a vast region, wherein the sentimental, earnest, religious, fantastic, homely, idealistic, intellectual but not naturally art- istic Teutonic genius expresses itself through the ac- cident of form and colour rather than through the more spontaneous method of song, legend, and ro- mance. The Germans are primarily an intellectual nation, German artists a congregation of thinkers on life rather than of spectators of life, of lovers of art rather than makers of art, of poets and reformers preaching or dreaming in colour and line rather than of artists become poets and reformers. Of course one can at once mention a few great names which stand out with cosmopolitan air from Diirer to Menzel or Boecklin but, in the main, Teutonic art in perspective seems far more an intellectual than a strictly artistic development. It has ever lived upon theories, save when lifted by a Diirer of old or a Menzel or a Boecklin to-day. Its artistic move- ments have always been the obvious reflex of potent intellectual influences, but seldom themselves been motive : in a word, they have been passive or moved " movements," not creative and moving " move- ments." We do not think of the artistic Germany of any modern period from Eafael Mengs and the 314 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. classicists, or from Overbeck and Cornelius and the Nazarenes, to Max Klinger and the latest fantasists and romanticists, or to Von Uhde and the religionists and symbolists, as we think of the Spain of Goya and Fortuny, or of the France of Ingres and Manet, Delacroix and Monet, Rousseau and Millet or of the England of Constable and Turner. What a little country Holland is, how small in a sense its output: yet how great its achievement. When we think of modern Dutch art, we have no thought but of art, howsoever the crowding reflections out of which the thought emerges are coloured by names such as Jacob Maris or Matthijs Maris, Anton Mauve or Tholen, Mesdag or Josef Israels : it is of painting only we think, the utterance of the Dutch genius in a beautiful, living, and native ex- pression. But not so with German art. We can- not think of it as a living entity as we do of Dutch art. An innumerable company of German artists paint, and many paint beautifully, and a few with powerful originality and distinction; but that is an- other thing. There is a fundamental unity in French art, in English art, in Scottish art, in Dutch, Scan- dinavian, Spanish, Italian: but this I opine for it is a personal opinion only is not conspicuous in the instance of German art. When I was last in Rome I remember paying a visit of curiosity to the rooms of the quondam monas- tery of San Isidoro in the Pincio. Here it was that the celebrated group of German ecstatics be- lated crusaders who became known as the Naza- renes, met and " lived monastically " ( Overbeck) and " dreamed pure God-directed dreams " (Cor- nelius). Was there ever so great an expressed de- votion in the cause of art? It was a new spiritual GERMAN ART. 315 movement: a regeneration of the modern world: a return to the greatness of the past as exemplified in early Christian art: everything that was great and worthy. All Europe believed. " The greatest con- noisseur the world has known," as someone called King Ludwig of Bavaria, avowed his belief that Cornelius was the greatest artist since the Cinquecen- to. He thought that the crowning glory of the Munich which he had uplifted from its minor status as the Bavarian capital to the status of a new Cosmopolis, would be in its frescoes by " the great Diisseldorfer." But as I stood on the terrace of the old monastery and looked across that Eome which the "Nazarenes " regarded as their Mecca, and across the Campagna to pagan Tusculum and the antique gardens of Hadrian, I realised that these good earnest men were never for a moment as near to art as many a Dutch painter of boors, as Vollon painting some nature- morte of fish, as William Hunt painting a bird's nest. It is not great intentions and grandiloquent theories that constitute the basis of art, but the over- powering faculty to see and feel and express in line and colour, to shape, to create, to give life. The " Nazarenes " claimed to have found the secret of beauty and inspiration. To-day, and for long, their words have lost all savour. Even in Germany the art of Cornelius is as dead as that of the Grand His- toric as represented by Hay don, in England. When I thought of all the dreams and hopes, the aspira- tions and efforts, which had once been the daily life of this famous group in San Isidoro, and of how all have come to nought, I remembered the saying of a countryman of these " Nazarenes," whose least sketch is of greater worth than their many frescoes and 316 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. huge canvases the significant admission of the wise Diirer, " What is beauty : that is what I know not." From the first, naturally, Austrian art has been included in German: the art of Vienna differing from the art of Munich and Diisseldorf and Berlin just as the art of Marseilles or Bordeaux might differ from that of Picardy or Normandy, or the art of the Royal Academy in London from that of the " Insti- tute " in Glasgow. It was in keeping, therefore, that the religionists and classicists, who were known as the !N"azarenes, comprised representatives of all parts of Germany Overbeck from Lubeck, Cornelius from Diisseldorf, Pforr from Frankfort, Vogel from Zurich, Schnorr von Carolsfeld from Leipsic, Schadow and Veit from Berlin, and Fiihrich and Steinle from Vienna. Perhaps the least justly con- sidered of these men was Eduard Steinle. Steinle, who born in Vienna in 1810, died in Frankfort in 1886, two years after the death of his famous coun- tryman Hans Makart, born thirty years later than himself, was too " German " for the " German Raphael " Overbeck or " the supreme master " Cor- nelius: but perhaps none of his group ever painted so living a work of art as " The Violin Player," a mediaeval youth sitting on the stone ledge of an open window high on a tower above an old German city: for here there is the indescribable touch and air of romance, of illumined life, which is art. Many of Steinle's illustrations are most charming, thoroughly Germanic in the best sense; as, for example, those he made for Brentano's " Wandering Student." That of the youthful hero kneeling before an old bas- relief on a ruin in the outskirts of a mediaeval Gothic town is an admirable instance. Peter Cornelius, Wilhelm Kaulbach, and Over- GERMAN ART. 317 beck were great names but now they are ignored. The reason is not only in what they attempted to do against the forces of Time but in the altogether mis- taken idea that all the great painters were wrong and Michael Angelo only was right in his contempt for oil-painting. Cornelius believed that modern art could be " renovated " by the classical ideal in- formed by a new Christian enlightenment expressed in the Michael-Angelesque method of painting in tempera and fresco : but even while he was speaking ex cathedra, the influence of Goya and Ingres on the continent, of Constable and Turner in England, was as the flowing tide coming in upon ambitious palaces of sand. The next school to arise was that of Diisseldorf, piloted by a secessionist from the " Nazarenes," Wilhelm Schadow. It was a school where a senti- ment of things German declined steadily to a Ger- man sentimentalism. The Diisseldorf School became ultimately as dead as that Academical school in Eng- land which ended in the banalities of Horsley and other more or less popular " R.A.'s." The real value of the teachings and example of Schadow and his followers lay in the directed earnestness of the new effort to retrace the true road that leads to the realm of painting. To-day we may find little to in- terest us in the pictures of these men, but in the years which preceded the formation of a new Ger- many they did good work, and helped to bring about a vital change in the aesthetic development of the nation. But as an ineffably bland unreality char- acterised the whole school it was no wonder that even from within the Fatherland came the mocking that ended in collapse. Heine laughed away the last pretensions of Diisseldorf to be "the centre" 318 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. in the latest development of modern art. In the words of an eminent critic, they rejected Leonardo's advice, to tug at the nipple of Mother Nature, and looked upon her merely as their aunt: and for this, despised Nature took her revenge by making their figures shapeless and phantom-like. " We look at their pictures now neither with praise nor censure, but with a tepid feeling of utter indifference." What a relief when we pass to two true and orig- inal artists whose names will be treasured as long as Germans live Alfred Rethel and Moritz Schwind, the latter a Viennese. In Rethel we pick up again the lost German art of Altdorfer and Diirer. Had he lived (his madness came tragically upon him when he was only forty) he might have been one of the greatest of modern artists. As it is, his drawings and designs have a high value, and their influence has been very considerable. Hun- dreds of people who may not know Bethel's name must have shuddered over his drawing of " Death at the Ball " or felt the serene peace and beauty of " Death as the Friend of Man." As for Moritz Schwind, it is no wonder Germans are enthusiastic about him: as a man perhaps the most lovable char- acter in the chronicles of German art as an artist, the most sturdily independent, whether of princes, dignitaries, academies, schools, reputations, or even the great traditions of the revered " ancients." The infinite winsomeness and charm of his work has endeared him to the whole Teutonic race, and doubtless thousands in America and throughout Europe (as notably in Scandinavia and Russia) have delighted in his fascinating drawings, where the world is young and romantic again, where the woods are full of sprites and fair creatures, where legend GERMAN ART. 319 lives once more as a beautiful reality "to be seen just round the corner." Here was a healthy return to a true direction: and if ever an artist deserved a national monument it is Moritz Schwind. Again, after all the lofty and " high-falutin " pronounce- ments and theories and " high pure creeds " of the Nazarenes, how sane and salutary such a " pro- nouncement " as that of Schwind when an eminent admirer called to acclaim him as " the creator of an original, German kind of ideal, romantic art." Schwind repeated the phrase slowly, weighing each word : then added abruptly, " My dear Sir, to me there are only two kinds of pictures, the sold and the unsold: and to me the sold are always the best. Those are my entire aesthetics." As the Diisseldorf school waned in influence Ger- man artists began to look towards Paris and the then notable centres of the Netherlands, Brussels and 'Antwerp. The first really great representative of the new movement was Anselm Feuerbach (1829- 1880), a painter who in some respects might be called the German Haydon not because his work specially resembles Haydon's, but because the Ger- man and English painters had so much in common in their ideals, in the largeness of their conceptions and nobility of aim, and in the disparity between their ideals and fulfilment. Feuerbach was far the greater artist, but much of his " High Art " (with capitals), like poor Hay don's, was beyond the meas- ure of his powers. Haydon, of course, never at- tained the classic simplicity of work, such as the beautiful " Medea," for instance, a picture whicn would justify rather the application of " The Ger- man Leighton " to Feuerbach. Passing by several artists well-considered in their 320 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. day, we come to three famous names. The first of these is Carl Piloty, who was born in Munich in 1826 and died at the age of sixty after a career of all but unexampled brilliancy and success a career as re- markable as that of his younger contemporary Fortuny (1838-1874). To-day his glory is not so much in his work as that he trained and inspired a hundred able artists and that he founded the great Munich School. Piloty's qualities as painter were so far in advance of those revealed by Overbeck and Cornelius that it is not surprising his countrymen went to extremes. Just as, in the height of the " Nazarene " craze, they called Overbeck the Ger- man Raphael and Cornelius the greatest of the mod- erns, so now they hailed Piloty as the most wonder- ful colourist, the most triumphant realist of his day. His pictures are generally theatrical ; but sometimes, as in his early and notably fine " Seni before the dead Wallenstein " he has the true historic gravity and dramatic concentration with simplicity of treat- ment, and again, as in " Nero walking among the ruins of Rome," a realism as exact and convincing as that of the most exigent of the French realists. His colour is thin aoid commonplace, though it seemed so fine to the Germans accustomed to the anaemic productions of the " Nazarenes." It never equalled that of his Viennese contemporaries, Schwind and Steinle, and of course it was soon eclipsed by another Austrian, Hans Makart a man whom Overbeck and Cornelius, had he been of their day and group, would have repelled with mingled disdain and horror, not merely for his subject-mat- ter but for his gorgeous colouration, " colour " being with them a coarse and inferior gift. Something of Piloty's success in Germany was GERMAN ART. 321 due to his social position. As a rule, the low-born artist even of genius finds it difficult to gain social recognition or even influential support among his fellows: that, at least, is what one gathers from the then contemporary and from later sources of all kinds. But with Carl Theodor Von Piloty it was different. He was a man of good family, and in his instance that circumstance seems to have moved half the battle. Piloty visited Paris, London, and Brus- sels before he settled in Munich. It was in 1855, with " Seni and the dead Wallenstein " that he first won wide reputation. From that year his success was continuous. Wallenstein's life and tragic death again and again afforded him a favourite and with the public always a popular theme, but among some of his finest works are the " Nero " already alluded to, the " Thusnelda at the Triumph of Germanicus " (now at the Pinakothek in Munich, where it was placed by the German Kaiser, Wilhelm I., who had purchased it for 35,000 florins), " Galileo in Prison," " The Battle of the White Mountain," the " Discovery of America," and " Elizabeth of Bo- hemia receiving News of the Loss of the Battle of Prague," a work familiar to many Americans as it is in the ownership of Mr. Probasco of Cincinnati. The appearance of Hans Makart was like a thun- derclap in Germany. The Austrian, so to sa.y, deaf- ened the astonished Saxons and Prussians with a fanfaronade of colour. At first they could not rec- oncile the work of this daring innovator, and were the more uncertain because of the outcry of the crit- ics and men of letters who were severe on the Viennese painter on account of his audacious anachronisms one of the most flagrant being the introduction of nude maidens into the now celebrated 322 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. " Triumphal Entry of Charles V. into Antwerp." But Makart did not care a straw about facts of date and period: he could think of nothing but pictur- esque effect and gorgeous colour. Finally, the major- ity of people yielded to his spell for a time, though more in Austria than in North Germany, where Prussian coldness is opposed to the Viennese light- ness and sensuous delight in the brilliant aspects of life. The visitor to Berlin may see at the National Gallery one of his admitted masterpieces, " Cath- erine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus " : others are at the Belvedere and elsewhere in Vienna: a few are in London and Paris. A famous French critic, Eugene Muntz, wrote of Hans Makart as the Wagner of painting : a criticism which can only make one think that M. Muntz knew or understood little of Wagner. As a matter of fact, Hans Makart's reputation did not long survive his death in 1884. His art was like over-ripe fruit: it was over-luscious, and had no element of genius. He had simply a talent for gorgeous and heavy decoration. The late Mr. Beav- ington Atkinson, a well-known London critic, spoke of him as the Paul Veronese of modern art. An- other critic, Mr. Comyns Carr, wrote of his " bril- liant technical qualities." It is in technique un- fortunately, however, that Makart fails. To-day there is probably not a critic of standing in Paris or London, Berlin or Munich, or in Vienna itself, who would admit that Hans Makart was in any sense of the word a great artist. He was a splendid and rather vulgar improvisatore vulgar in the sense of " display " being with him a radical necessity. Per- haps no modern work has lost so much through fail- ure in the pigments as has that of Makart: his bril- liant colours have become dull, his more delicate hues GERMAN ART. 323 lifeless. The glow has gone out of his gorgeous phantasmagoria: and we realise that he was a fugi- tive painter of fugitive things. His place in Ger- man art is that of an awakener. A brazen trumpet was necessary after the Nazarene apathy: Hans Makart was that trumpet. A greater than Makart was the brilliant but ill-fated Hungarian, Michael Munkacsy, a painter of extraordinary powers, of brilliant achievement, but whose work is too lurid, too theatrical. With all his obvious faults Munkacsy was a man of genius, and his recent death after years of in- sanity was heard throughout the world with sincere regret. Of the group associated with or following Piloty (and, in one direction, Makart) the most eminent is Gabriel Max, a Bohemian. His is a reputation, however, which has never travelled beyond the Rhine. In Germany he is still well considered, but the art- ists of to-day look at him askance. He had indi- viduality to a marked degree, imagination, power. He was not great, and yet one realises before some of his pictures that he had it in him to become a far greater than Piloty or any German artist of his day, with one exception. That exception? No German would hesitate to name Adolf Menzel. This powerful and original artist is perhaps the greatest whom modern Germany has produced. He is the Goya of Germany. Men- zel was the first Teuton realist. He is the Moritz Schwind of German life, only a greater than Schwind. A masterly painter, he is still greater in his drawings : in his etchings and wood-engravings he is unique. Did nothing else survive than his il- lustrations of episodes in the life of Frederick the Great (whom in oils, water-colours, lithographs, en- 324: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. gfavings, and etchings, he never tired of celebrating) the now universal fame of Adolf Menzel would still be in the very front rank of modern art. Goya and Menzel, one always thinks of the Spaniard and the German, different as they are, as kindred spirits, isolated in their greatness, and waiting for the high recognition that must one day universally be theirs. It is strange that in so military a country as Ger- many there should be so little good military paint- ing. The father of this genre was Albrecht Adam, and he had able successors in Hoss and others: but not for a moment can any be compared with the French artists of the same period, Protais, Raffet, Meissonier, Alphonse de Neuville, Detaille, Aime Morot. On the other hand, bourgeois life, " the vil- lage tale," rural episodes, and the like were painted by the Germans with a frequency and fidelity which showed how near the artists had got to the heart of the public. German landscape-painting, again, which in its modern development began with Koch and Rottman, could not be compared with that in England or even with that in France before the great [Romanticist movement was in full swing. In its later developments, from Wilhelm Trubner in the seventies, an immense stride has been made, though it is still inferior to English, French, and Dutch. The greatest names that come after Menzel are those of Franz Lenbach and Wilhelm Leibl. I once heard Leibl described as " The German Pre-Raphael- ite Movement " and to a great extent this is no mere grotesquerie of exaggeration. This extraordinary able realist was a literalist of the ideal " Pre-Raphael- ite " type, and something of his universal appeal may be gathered from the fact that his pictures and drawings may be found freely (tho' rarely in public GERMAN ART. 325 galleries curiously) not only in every centre in Ger- many but in Paris, in London, in New York and Boston and other American cities. He is " the Munich school " concentrated. Leibl practically leads the German movement in Realism that began about 1870. Perhaps his most enduring work will be his portraits, more akin to the art of Holbein than any other artist. Here, however, he must rank sec- ond to Franz Lenbach, Germany's greatest portrait- ist : one of the greatest in modern art : and in spirit- ual subtlety perhaps the greatest. A special study of some score or so of Lenbach's finest portraits (e. g. 7 his Bismarck, Liszt, the Kaiser Wilhelm I., the painter Morelli, etc.) would be an ideal commen- tary for a masterly treatise on psychology. It would be impracticable to mention the many score of able painters who in the " eighties " dem- onstrated the effectiveness of the lessons taught by Menzel and Leibl. I must select one more eminent than the rest, yet typical: the really great painter, Max Liebermann, the Millet of Germany. From the first Liebermann was an innovator, a new force. He had learnt a trade lesson from Menzel, and again from Leibl, and already went further than either in his sincere and earnest quest of the living actuality. When he came under the influence of the Barbizon school, he suddenly became the greatest painter in Germany, though even now hardly recognised as such, and at first hated and derided. The visitor to Munich may see in the Pinakothek a painting called " A Woman with Goats " which will convince him that Liebermann is an equal comrade rather than a follower of Millet. His " Net-Menders," " Labourers in a Turnip Field " and all his later 326 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. work, is the finest nature-painting to be seen in Ger- many. The animal and landscape painters, Hein- rich Ziigol and Victor Weishaupt, are hardly less worthy companions of the great Troy on. It is in its latest development that German art is most interesting, at least to foreigners. The names of Arnold Boecklin, Hans Thoma, Fritz Von Uhde, Franz Stuck, and Max Klinger have a European significance. Boecklin is the high-priest of fantasy. His vivid and poetic imagination recreates " the other world of the imagination " as no other German artist has done, as no artist of any period in any country has done. Often crude, in his later developments Boecklin is the greatest lyricist in colour of the mod- ern world. It is his language, and he has a strange divinity in it. Xo modern painter has his imagina- tive range, width, depth. His sincerity is as ab- solute when he is painting satyrs and fauns as ex- quisite sea-dreams and noon-pageants and twilight- reveries. Not to know the best work of Arnold Boecklin, and of the landscapist Thoma, and the fantasists Franz Stuck (a true master) and Max Klinger, is to miss the fine-fleur of that Nee-Pagan- ism which is one of the two distinctive notes of the closing epoch of the nineteenth century. The other is the Xew Idealism. Here Fritz Von Uhde is a natural leader. The realistic-idealistic movement in later " religious art " owes more to him than to any other. To-day he still stands foremost in this kind. His sincerity is absolute: He is a profound spiritual psychologist: and he is a painter of rare power. It is strange that a captain in the German army, who had fought in the bloodiest battles of the Franco-Prussian war, should be the foremost modern GERMAN ART. 327 painter-interpreter of the divine message of the Prince of Peace. The country that, among its living or recently liv- ing artists can boast of Menzel, Liebennann, Len- bach, Leibl, Boecklin, Franz Stuck, and F. Von Uhde, need have no fear of a great future in art 323 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK XXVII, FRENCH AET. IN treating of so vast a subject in a compass so narrow one must perforce continuously omit where one would naturally wish to enlarge. The history of French art in the nineteenth century is a theme, if treated adequately, almost beyond any one writer : for what would such a task mean? It would mean an intimate and catholic familiarity with every school and phase of the most various and experi- mental nation (artistically speaking) in the world: the power to apprehend and sympathise with the art of Gustave Moreau as well as with that of Ingres, with that of Besnard as well as with that of Rous- seau, with that of Monticelli or Renoir or Henri Martin as well as with that of Rosa Bonheur or Meissonier or Delaroche, with Cezanne and Pissaro as well as Courbet, with Troyon as well as Puvis de Chavannes, with Carolus Duran and Eugene Car- riere, with the massive Rodin and the delicate Hel- len, with the art of Monet as well as with that of Millet and Rousseau and Diaz, with Edouard Frere as well as Delacroix and the romanticists, with Leon Bonvin and Bougereau, with Tissot as well as with! Degas, with Aman-Jean as well as Boldini, with Benjamin Constant as well as Olivier Merson or Dagnan-Bouveret, with Cazin and Pointelin and with Harpignies and Daubigny, with Rochegrosse as well as Corot, and so forth in innumerable com- FRENCH ART. 329 bination. But over and above this, which after all is but the attainable ideal of true culture in art, one would need to know the whole development and scope of the decorative arts, and of the minor arts (about which alone a great volume might be written), of sculpture and architecture. To write even the most succinct account is no easy task. In order to present the main features one has to ignore much of vital importance and absorbing interest. Again, in the present instance, it is not possible either to be as succinct as is feasible in treating of the homogeneous Dutch Modern School or to be as relatively detailed as is necessary in treating of the miscellaneous and diffuse art of Ger- many. The one course would be to ignore too much, the other would mean a lengthy treatise. In a sense, one can write of French art much more briefly than of German: as one could write of French literature more briefly than of German literature not because there is less to say, but because there is infinitely more to say, only that in the one nation there is a fundamental genius making for artistic expression and in the other this genius is either absent, dormant, or uncertain. The result is a homogeneity which permits a sure synthesis. French art is the mani- fold genius of the race going one way by many con- verging paths : German art is the multitudinous pil- grimage of eager souls along any and every path, many of them blind alleys or wandering ways. When we look at French art as a whole we see an orderly procession: at German art, a confused, un- steady crowd. Form and colour are the natural lan- guage of an artistic people, but with the Germans that language is not native. To-day the frontiers of art are far extended into the old realm of nation- 330 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. alism, and so year by year certain distinctions lessen. A nation can learn as well as an individual, and it- may be that the first place in the future of art lies with the Teuton or the Slav. Meanwhile German art has not that recognisable if not easily definable homogeneity which " German Music " has or French Art or Dutch Art. A significant picture was painted in France in 1800. This was the famous " Kape of the Sabines " by Louis David. It was hailed as a masterpiece, and in common with other work by this great classicist had an immense influence in France, in Belgium, and in Germany. It stands now for the most barren and sterile art of modern times: tech- nically superior to but as effete as the art of Cor- nelius. David, however, who united the nineteenth with the eighteenth century, was in other respects a great artist. His " Coronation of Napoleon " is one of the greatest pictures of its kind, and has been a model since : his " Madame Recamier " has been the inspiration of much that is most distinguished in the genre of domestic portraiture, and has notably affected that great artist in the same genre, W. Q. Orchardson: his portraits of Napoleon, Marat, and others have artistic as well as historic value. But the Classicism of David is dead ; and one hopes for ever ; because it was based on unreality, on insincerity, on frigidity of artistic emotion, on an altogether false conception of art. It might seem almost incredible that work like the classic pictures of David should pass as masterpieces two hundred and fifty years after Tintoretto and Titian and Raphael. Early in the nineteenth century Watteau was al- ready ignored. In its opening years Greuze and Fragonard had died in poverty and neglect. A new FRENCH ART. 331 dispensation had come with the Revolution, and the painters of the charmingly bizarre and sentimental were as much out of their time as the " Nazarenes " would have heen as war-illustrators during the Na- poleonic campaigns. There was a long and dreary period to elapse before the advent of " The Genera- tion of 1830." David left a school more empty and impotent in its achievement than his own weakest. One of the few who stand out with the air of real distinction is the famous Francois Gerard, the most popular portraitist of his day, the delineator of three hundred notabilities of the First Empire. Then there is the great battle-painter Antoine Gros, the head of all modern military art, who achieved a world-wide reputation by his " Battle of Eylau " and other now as celebrated works. His brilliant suc- cess and many honours did not prevent his collapse as an artist when he strove to adapt his art to the Romanticism that was " in the air " and the Classicism that was already doomed: and with the passing of his idol Napoleon his own strength went from him. He is one of the sadly numerous com- pany of gifted men of last century whose lives have ended in madness or suicide. In Gros' case it was the latter. The famous painter, at the age of sixty- four, broken-spirited as much as broken-hearted, went to a shallow arm of the Seine near St. Cloud and lay down. When, a day later, his body was found and the news spread that Baron Gros was dead a sense of consternation was felt among all the Academical painters. The last champion of Classicism was gone. But already the movement of Romanticism had be- gun. Five years of the famous thirties were past, and not even the genius of David, Prudhon, and An- toine Gros could avail to retard the inevitable. Of 332 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Prudhon I would say much were it now practicable. He is perhaps the greatest French artist of the first quarter of the century. As a colourist he was finer than David or Gros : he was more simple and sincere than the first, more consistent and natural than the second : and he had that .naivete which is so often the characteristic of genius and is perhaps its most winsome trait. He too was an unhappy man, or rather a much more unhappy man: but while Gros' life was broken because, while by temperament and artistic insight he should have been the first of the Romanticists, he compromised fatally with the bar- ren and outworn classicism which for a quarter of a century had kept French art at its lowest ebb. Prud- hon's heart was broken, not by long 1 neglect, but by domestic sufferings, a brief period of happiness with his pupil and adopted wife Constance Mayer, and by her tragic suicide just as he thought life was about to become easy and pleasant. With Pierre Prudhon and Antoine Gros we enter the threshold of modern French art as we know it now although it was Grog who looked upon the art of the born colourist Dela- croix as " le massacre de la peinture." When in 1800 David painted his " Rape of the Sabines " and led the main body of French artists into a futile and barren path three leaders of the great revolution in art were already on the way. One of these was a classicist, but not a pseudo- classicist, the great Ingres, already twenty years old. Another was a boy of nine, and even as a child the little Theodore Gericault revealed an ardent and in- dependent nature, promise of the man to be. The third, Eugene Delacroix, was a child of two. Ingres is the poorest colourist among great artists. If his reputation depended upon his place as a col- FRENCH ART. 333 ourist his name would long since have been for- gotten. But he was a great draughtsman, he had the true classic sense of line and composition, he had supreme distinction. Moreover his whole art was a controlled and directed effort to reach the highest. Even his colouring was not a deficiency in him so much as an arbitrary subordination of what he con- sidered a secondary quality. It may be an extraor- dinary misjudgment but again we must remember that to the great Michael Angelo " the colour school " of Venice seemed crude and jejune, again we must remember Diirer's " What is beauty : that is what I know not." Meanwhile Gericault was growing up. Ingres was dreaming of a great classical art for France when the world would say in effect to " the colour- ists " what he said to his students when at the Louvre he had to pass through the Rubens gallery " Salute but pass on." He was dreaming of this and of him- self as its high-priest, when from of all unexpected places the studio of Guerin (who, with Girodet, was among the well-known followers of David, but was still more pseudo-classical) a young revolutionary stepped out and said in effect " I am tired. Let there be a new world." Even as a youth Gericault had revolted from the lifeless classicism of his day. At the Louvre he had copied not David nor even Poussin but Rubens. From the first his vivid nature was in a ferment. He had one supporter in Gros, although a dead set was maintained against him at first for the same Gros who turned with so much bitterness on Dela- croix, dubbing his work as the " massacre of paint- ing," welcomed the young Gericault who like himself was a painter of horses and martial pageant but with 334: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. a richness of colour and novelty of verve which made the veteran realise what he had failed to be. After his preliminary successes when quite a young man, Gericault went to Italy. It was not, however, to study Michael Angelo's frescoes, or to try to see Italy as Poussin saw it, or to learn the secret of Claude Lorraine: but to see the stallion-race down the Corso at Carnival, or the flight of the barberi in the narrow streets of Siena. To this day no one has surpassed Gericault as a painter of horses, par- ticularly in violent action, either rearing " in martial array " or fighting with one another : but of course it is not for this that we look upon him as the pioneer-captain of the revolution, but because of the charm and depth and convincing beauty of his paint- ing as such. But the death-knell of the old frozen classicism was to be tolled more dramatically. To- day, visitors at the Luxembourg and the Louvre find it difficult to understand the excitement created in their day by certain pictures. When they hear that crowds besieged Gericault' s " Raft of the Medusa," that bitter dislike and hostility were aroused, that long feuds came out of the angry discussions, that on the one side people said art was doomed, and on the other that art was saved, and then when these spectators look again at the " Raft of the Medusa " they stand bewildered. But if they were in the place of tihose who first saw it in 1819 or 1820 they would understand better. Here was a man who was alive. That was the fundamental secret. A man who was alive, and painted as though he painted life, and, in whose painting, art, which is the finer spirit of life, vibrated. Judged by the criterion of to-day, " The Raft of the Medusa " is a wonderful picture in its graphic, dramatic intensity, the truth and vigor of FRENCH ART. 335 which it delineates, the lifting green seas, the famine- worn wretches: but, at the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century, it was in France nothing short of revolutionary. In England, at the same period, how great the art, how infinitely more advanced. Gericault himself was one of the first to recognise this. From Lon- don he wrote " It is here only that colour and effect are understood and felt." Soon Delacroix ajid others were to learn the same lesson, and English art was to prove the great compulsion from without that was necessary to stimulate the growing impulse in French art to become free. I have often thought that to write in full the story of Delacroix, his achievement and influence, would be to write the story of modern art, of that great movement of modernity which is not the same thing as " a modern movement," but the same movement with which Giorgione or Tintoretto, Diirer or Rem- brandt, Turner or Monet, Velasquez or Whistler were identified, the movement of that eternal youth which is the soul of great art, as true in degree of Giotto or Masaccio as of the genius of to-morrow who will quicken anew what excellence of to-day will then be outworn. Above all else the student of contemporary art, and in particular of that great impressionistic move- ment which, simply put, indicates only the relentless search for an ideal vividness that shall be more true than truth, because that is but a congregation of facts for observation and the other is a fusion of facts into a single unity of expression should read everything of and about Delacroix he can. The story of his arduous art-impassioned life, his jour- nals and letters, the chronicles of his colleagues and 336 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. friends, books such as Fromentin's masterly Maitres d'Autrefois and his two Sahara volumes with their wealth of illuminative notes concerning the painting of light these will enable him to un- derstand the immense importance of this great move- ment of modernity, to understand the work of all those puzzling masters of whom he will have heard so much but cannot determine, from Manet to Degas, from Monet to Besnard, from Whistler and Monti- celli to Henri Martin and Eugene Carriere, or, to change the country and take a wider range, from Constable to the youngest of the Glasgow School, or whatever vital howsoever eccentric phase is later still. This vast and all important movement as remark- able, I do not doubt, as any that the world has seen, though we cannot again recover what lay to the touch of genius in that golden period when Leonardo took up his brush and Tintoretto laid down his will, in days to come, be regarded as one of the most wonderful manifestations of the ever eager and tire- less human genius in the whole scope of that won- derful nineteenth century now left behind us. It is no " French " or in any sense local movement : mod- ernity may have been the word spoken first by Dela- croix, but it is the same word in the East, with the Japanese accent of Hokusai (who died in the year when the world puzzled itself over the new and alarm- ing realism of Courbet's " Stone-Breakers," and stood wondering and insensibly touched by Millet's " Winnowers "), or, in the new and eager West, with the American accent of Whistler and Sargent. The greatness of Delacroix lies in this, that he is the shepherd of all the modern painters of light, of all the realists who are idealists by virtue of the art that is in them, of all the idealists who love and un- FRENCH ART. 337 derstand art too well to be othe,r than realists in tech- nique. When I think of Delacroix and his long and he- roic struggle against a thousand forces^of hostility, mockery, and stupidity, I recall, not one of the many great paintings perhaps, but a picture I saw once in a private gallery in America (that of Mr. Walters of Baltimore, who has several fine works of Dela- croix), called " The Combat." At the foot of some lonely hills, to quote from Mr. Walters' catalogue, " two men are engaged in deadly combat. Both are mounted. Their horses, rearing and plunging, are full of violent action that is in keeping with the scene. It is a masterpiece of drawing, full of the passionate genius that characterised Delacroix, and painted with great breadth. Every stroke of the brush is given with telling force, and there is the sureness, the confidence that make his pictures al- ways strong. The colouring though subdued is very rich. The fierceness of the combatants finds an echo in every part of the canvas. There is always in his pictures a central thought. In this one you have a part of the drama of life in her most barbaric condi- tion. It is an incident of the Orient, told by one who was one of the greatest creative forces in the art of the century." It is a significant picture. In a sense, all of Delacroix is there: the romantic temper, the im- passioned colourist, the actuality, the unconvention- ality, the new sense of beauty, the very sense of con- flict for was he not always a fighter, had he not always a relentless enemy to combat? He was a man of stronger fibre than Gericault, who died young, overborne by vicissitude. Or, perhaps, here rather is another instance of the enormous power of 338 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. money to aid the hard fight of genius. If Gericault had not had to waste his energies in poverty and anxiety he might have lived to become as great as Delacroix: if Delacroix, on the other hand, had been doomed to the hard fate of so many great art- ists, delicate and even broken in health as he was from boyhood, he could not have so long and devot- edly sustained the ceaseless conflict in which he was engaged. We are accustomed to the glib assurances of those who say that " genius always makes its way," that "genius is best left to itself," that "genius is its own reward." It is this world of glib selfishness that permits a Rembrandt to become bankrupt in old age, and did its best to starve Millet and Monet. Fortunately for Delacroix his patrimony was sufficient to free him from the wear and tear and anxiety of daily struggle for means, and this was the more important as his health was bad. So insecure, indeed, did he consider his tenure of life that he relinquished the many pleas- ures and distractions of all kinds which were ready to his enjoyment and experience, and gave all his thoughts and time with single-hearted devotion to his art and to the cause of art. He knew he had a disease that at any time might rapidly develop and put an end to his labours, and for this very reason he worked incessantly, often putting two days' work into one, as he himself said, and consid- ering every day lost in which he did not in one way or another add by the brush or by the pen or by the spoken word to that " crusade for the beautiful " in which he was so indomitable a captain. The first great picture that Gericault's " Raft of the Medusa " inspired was the " Dante's Bark " of his enthusiastic pupil and comrade Delacroix. Here FRENCH ART. 339 was indeed a novel thing : a classic theme painted by a modern of the moderns, which in those days was equivalent to a vandal of the vandals. It is said that when David, the arch-priest of classicism, saw this picture he exclaimed " D'oii vient-il ? Je ne connais pas cette touche-la" It is the tribute to modernity, that is to originality, which is always of necessity virginal, new, a revelation. Before all new revelation of personality, impression, outlook identical, artistically when intimately regarded whether, as I have said already, before Giotto or Diirer, Rembrandt or Turner, Delacroix or Millet or Monet, we say or think in effect the same thing: " Whence comes it ? I do not realise this touch, this accent." Although Delacroix did not encounter the savag- ery of hostility to the same extent as Gericault (or, later, as Claude Monet and his group) he had from the first and, indeed, all his life to meet ceaseless dis- like, ridicule, contempt, and passionate resentment. It is the fate of original genius. It is said often that the days of martyrdom are over. It is true that we no longer burn a man at the stake because he prefers to say that three and one make four, while we maintain that the only truth and the only way of salvation is to say two and two make four. But a man has only to have an intense conviction and to relinquish all for the sake of that conviction, and, if he be painter or poet, great artist or great writer of any kind, he will understand that the stoning of Peter is a symbolic truth applicable to all ages and conditions. Stones and ready and eager stoners we have always with us. Delacroix was fortunate at the start to win the commendation of the then all-potent Baron Gros, x 340 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. though that famous painter was so soon to turn and lament in Delacroix the decay of the art. For when "Dante's Bark " was at once perturbing the multi- tude, angering the many, and enchanting the few, Gros spoke to the youthful artist saying " Learn drawing, my young friend, and then you. will be- come a second Rubens." Delacroix, however, knew well enough how to learn (and unlearn) the " drawing " to which Gros alluded : nor had he any ambition to become a second Rubens, having his whole thought and life filled with the ambition to become Delacroix. Just as the conclusion of the war between Spain and Morocco gave Fortuny his unforeseen opportu- nity and indirectly disclosed for him and others a new vista, so with Delacroix, when, in 1832, in his thirtieth year, he went to Morocco with the Embassy despatched to that Empire by the King of France (Louis Philippe). He was only some tHree months in Morocco, but in that western satrapy of Islam and in Algeria he won the artistic conquest of the East. " There is nothing more beautiful in the antique," he wrote characteristically: as again, towards the end of his life, " in them (the Moor and the Arab) I truly found the antique beauty again." Constantly ill, constantly harassed by the bitter- ness of the hostility which his work invariably pro- duced and by the jealousy and disparagement of so large a body of his fellow artists, Delacroix lived solitary and worked incessantly to the end. From youth onward he had a struggle ^witH health: for the last twenty years of his life lie maintained life only by the most rigorous care and the energy of an indomitable will. With even greater cause than FRENCH ART. 341 with Ingres, his great opponent, he might have writ- ten over his studio, what " Father Ingres " was wont to exclaim, " Je compte sur ma vieillese; elle me vengera." He was hardly dead when France proclaimed him, who had been so continuously in- sulted and reviled, one of the greatest of modern art- ists. The runaway from Charenton, or the escaped madman, as he was politely called, from the fact that Charenton (where is the typical " Bedlam " of France) was his birthplace, was honoured with everything but the silence of the parrot-multitude.* The visitor to Paris who may know Delacroix only from a few famous pictures and drawings, should examine his splendid decoration of the ceiling of the Louvre, that of the Library of the Luxembourg, and the superb mural paintings in the church of St. Sulpice. He is so many-sided that he must be studied in every development. " He left no branch of the art of painting untouched," writes a cele- brated critic : " but there is one bond uniting all : to all the figures for which he won the citizenship of art he gave passion and movement." In a true real- ism he thus preceded Manet and Courbet, as well as pioneered the " orientalists " and " luminarists " of a later date. Some five years before Delacroix* death, an able French critic, T. Silvestre, wrote of him (Histoire des Artistes Vivants; 1857) as "a painter of the genuine race, who had the sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart, who in the course of forty years sounded the entire gamut of human emotion, and whose grandiose and awe-in- * " No work of his but called forth deafening howls, curses, and infuriated controversy. Insults were heaped upon the artist, coarser and more opprobrious than we would be justi- fied in applying to a sharper." Thore. 342 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. spiring brush passed from saints to warriors, from lovers to tigers, from tigers to flowers." He might have added that in him, too, the East and the West, the South and the North, met. It is a phrase to remember Delacroix by: that he had the sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart. One thing he lacks and that greatly. There is no joy in his work: joy in the sense of delight in life for life's sake, the joy of youth, of personal romance, of light and sunshine even, as light and sunshine. Life was a tragic, confused, hurried, vehement dream to him. He had neither the magnificent joie de vivre of Rubens, with whom he is so often com- pared, nor the happy and joyous serenity of his friend and comrade Fromentin. And although his pictures do not invariably or even frequently give the" spectator the sense of latent weariness or tragic sorrow, nearly all reveal his morbid and neurotic nature, a morbidity and neurotism which did not produce but merely gave a certain colour, a certain air to all he did with his brush. How strong this sense is with some people may be instanced by the example of Couture, extreme and ultra-temperamen- tal as it is : "I find the sighs of the damned in the pictures of Delacroix. In looking at his paintings I feel the want of sun, of health, of flowers and pure air, of life without fear." With Delacroix one naturally always associates the great group of the Orientalists who have added so much to the radiance of modern art from Prosper Marilhat and Decamps to Fromentin and Guillau- met, to Gerome and Alexandre Bida, and to those painters of to-day who find in Tangier and the Orient a new but kindred inspiration. FRENCH ART. 343 Of these great artists I have not space to write. But every would-be student of modern art must be- come familiar with their work. Marilhat is the most delicate poet of the East: Decamps its most splendid and fascinating romancist: Fromentin its daintiest and most picturesque interpreter: Guil- laumet a subtle charmer. It is noteworthy that sev- eral of those great artists were also writers of high distinction: Delacroix would be remembered by his writings and journals if all his work perished: no more charming books of personality and observation exist than the Sahel or Sahara volumes of Fromentin, and no finer volume of art-criticism than his cele- brated Maitres d'Autrefois; and "the dreaming East" lives again in the pages of Guillaumet's Tableaux Algdriens. What great captains in art these two men are Delacroix and Ingres ! In a moment we can differ- entiate them illuminatively out of their own words. " Ce f ameux beau/' begins Delacroix in a significant passage " Ce fameux beau que quelques-uns voient dans la ligne serpentine, les autres dans la ligne, droite, ils ne le voient tous que dans les lignes. Je euis a ma fenetre et je vois le plus beau paysage. L'idee d'une ligne ne me vient pas a 1' esprit. I/a- louette chant, la riviere reflechit mille diamans, le feuillage murmure." It is the voice of the born colourist : " I look from my window it is beautiful but I don't see it in lines and curves : the idea of a line, of ' form/ never crosses my mind for a moment. All I see is it's beautiful : the lark sings, the river shimmers as with a thousand flashing dia- monds, the foliage murmurs in the wind. " But Ingres ... he, the master of form, of draw- ing, of the " ligne serpentine, la ligne droite," had no 344 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. sympathy with Delacroix' point of view. Art with him was not the sound and colour of life, but the in- tellectual synthesis of life expressed in harmonious form. What he wrote was this : " I will inscribe above my door School of Drawing,, and I will make painters.' 7 Another time he said or wrote (I remem- ber the words but forget the source) " The man who can paint is the man who sees, the man who draws is the man who achieves/' as, once again, " Art is Form : as to ^ the colourists ' . . . bow in passing if you will, but pass on " (recalling his Eubens Sa- luez). In a sense, all recent and contemporary French art f alls into the Leadership of Delacroix or Ingres. At the great International Exhibition of 1900 one came suddenly upon the Salle of the Impressionists, between the Salle des Manets and that of the " Oherifas " of Benjamin Constant, behind the wall where hung the drawings of Ingres. The first thing, in the approach, that one saw was the immense "Distribution des Aigles " of David. How signif- icant the conjunction the old pseudo-classicism of David, the classicism of Ingres, the heavy impasto and oriental sensuousness of Benjamin Constant, the new strange formal impressionism of Manet (Ingres with a passion for modernity, and with a mind natu- rally thinking in colour), and then the Monets and all the rest, " the seekers of light." In this connection I would like, did space permit, to dwell on the extraordinary and even yet hardly adequately realised influence of modern Japanese art on the Impressionists from Manet and Whistler to Degas, and on the Light-seekers from Monet to Sisley. The exhibition, at the Exposition Internationale of 1867, of work by these great artists Hokusai (that FRENCH ART. 345 supreme naturist of the East, who died at the time when Millet had his " Winnowers " and Courbet his "Stone-Breakers" on the easel), Hiroshige, and Outamaro the Menzel and Millet, the Corot, and the Whistler of Japan and of many others, and the advocacy of the De Goncourfc brothers, had an effect so wide and deep as to be paralleled only by the effect on American art when Durand-Ruel held in ~NQW York and Boston his first and second exhibi- tions of the Barbizon men and the later impressionists of light and actuality. And after all, did Ingres, with all his wisdom and all the essential and immortal truth behind his fa- vourite dictum that " Form is everything," ever utter one new axiom of individual revelation as when Dela- croix affirmed that the colour of the skin, of the face, of the body can only truly be seen in full lighi and above all in sunlight ? ("La chair n'a sa vrai couleur quen plein air et suriout au soleil.") A very sim- ple, perhaps a very commonplace and obvious saying it may seem to some, but it goes to the root of the matter. " In light, and above all in sunlight : " that is the keynote of the most significant movement in contemporary art. As a generalisation, Impres- sionism is the effort to be essential, alive, individual, to achieve the triumphant synthesis, to recreate in radiant colour, to be truer than the loose, unwinnowed truth. It can be as reticent as Manet, as gravely austere as Ingres, or alive in its own eloquence of colour with Claude Monet, as subtle and emotional as the art of Eugene Carriere, the modern painter who of all others most nearly expresses with the brush that significant symbolism, or realism of the imagination, which only the subtlest art of words in prose or verse can do. Here the whole Barbizon 346 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. school and the later Impressionists meet. As M. Naegely has pointed out in his book on Millet and Rustic Life : " Without doubt a new and very in- teresting perception of the effects of the solar ray is the most startling feature of modern painting, per- ception based on observation, but based, I believe, still more on the innate desire, none the less imper- ative though only half conscious, to give that touch of legitimate splendour to the vulgar and sordid as- pects of the common life of to-day." There are, with this vital school of modernity, four main directions in expression. Their exemplars are: (1) those who are concerned with the spiritual and poetic interpretation of nature and the primitive life of man in nature (Huet, Millet, Rousseau, Dau- bigny, Troyon, Diaz, Corot, Dupre, Pointelin, Bastien-Lepage, to select a dozen variously repre- sentative names) : (2) those who are concerned with the visionary and imaginative and spiritual in- terpretation of the life of the mind and the soul, either expressed in pictorial symbolism as with Gus- fcave Moreau, or in decorative beauty as with Puvis de Chavannes, or in spiritual revelation as with Eugene Carriere: (3) those who are concerned solely with " the veritable art of the thing seen," of whom Gus- tave Courbet is the leader that terrible Courbet who so horrified Ingres and all the classicists and weak- ling Academicals, not merely by his strenuous ad- vocacy of an absolute realism in choice of subject as well as in method and manner, the verite vraie, and by his scornful disbelief that any good thing could come out of the ficole des Beaux 'Arts; but by a now famous saying, " As for Monsieur Raphael, there is no doubt that he has painted some interest- ing portraits, but I cannot find any ideas in him: FRENCH ART. 347 and the artistic kin, the heirs, or more properly the slaves of this celebrated man, are really pre- ceptors of the lowest art. What do they teach us? Nothing." Then (4) there are those who are concerned with the verite vraie as much as Courbet was, but with the effort to recapture the fleeting grace in line and curve, the fugitive beauty in the brilliant moment, the resting light, the sudden passage of light, drifting shadow, the tout ensemble of motion and light, the breath, the thrill, the im- portunate emotion of life Gericault, Delacroix, De- camps, Fromentin, Marilhat, Bida, Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Ce'zanne, Sisley, Degas, and a^ score other names will at once come to mind, with, among foreign names, those of Jongkind, Whistler, Pradilla, etc. This is, of course, but a very broad classi- fication. The opposite extremes, within which the true Impressionism is to be found, may be met in Courbet and Gustave Moreau. Moreau is the Burne- Jones of France : the man to whom all life that was other than mere existence showed itself as in a dream ; in whom the very spirit of imaginative romanti- cism dwelled; for whom symbolism was the natural and inevitable speech, and colour the natural gar- ment of that speech; to whom the current realism, whether of Courbet or Degas, of Balzac or Zola, was repellent because only superficially and fugitively true; for whom there was only one realism that is worthy of consideration, the realism of the imagi- nation. For Courbet, on the other hand, all this other world in art or life did not exist. " It is not there: we do not see it," was his favourite and con- clusive criticism. " Painting," he wrote once, " is an entirely physical language, and an abstract, in- visible, non-existent object does not come within its 34:8 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. province." He summed up his position when he said : " To practise living art is the compass of my design." Here, again, we have the suggestive commentary that two representative extreme types in modern art can find little or nothing in Raphael, that god of the classicists. To Moreau he was a great draughts- man but without the power of expressing himself in colour: Courhet, as we know, could not find any ideas in "this Monsieur Raphael," though, he ad- mitted, Raphael had painted some interesting portraits. Before a laugh rises at the expense of Moreau it may be as well to remember that Michael Angelo scorn- fully dismissed the " colour-art " of Titian and Gior- gione as crude and unfit for great art: before deri- sion of Courbet as a critic of Raphael, it may be as well to recall that when one of the greatest, and in certain respects the greatest painter in the world went to Rome, and now that he had seen all that was fairest in Italy, was asked what he had to say of " our Raphael," Velasquez answered, " To confess the truth, for I like to be candid and open, I must ac- knowledge that I do not care about Raphael at all." Of course the truth lies with neither Courbet nor Moreau, for, as has been variously said a hundred times, in art there is no verite vraie, but only a truth seen through a temperament. In his emphatic con- demnation of all art but that which he calls real, Oourbet 'and his kind forget the wise axiom of Boileau, " Tout poeme est "brillant de sa propre beauie." Indeed he forgets the universal truth un- derlying its immediate application, in his own words, " Beauty lies in nature : as soon as it is found it be- longs to art, to the artist who discovers it." Un- consciously he had to endure the revenge of art: for FRENCH ART. 349 his work (and how valuable and beautiful it is should be more than ever admitted in a day when the artist is almost as forgotten for the second time as he was in those last tragical years of his eager successful life) lacks just the quality which no genius for ob- servation only can give, which no realism of the eyes alone can convey: the quality of poetry, of imagi- nation, the atmosphere of creative genius. That is why Millet lives for all of us, and Courbet only for the few: though there was a time when the famous " Stone-Breakers " was considered a far more impres- sive and significant masterpiece than " The An- gelus." It is true with Ingres that " art is form " : it is true with Delacroix or Claude Monet that art is colour, the impassioned and individual reflex of the colour of life: it is true with Courbet that art is realism, and with Manet and with Bastien-Lepage, and with Degas: it is true with Moreau that it is the colour of the imagination, or, with Carriere, of the spirit, or with Besnard, of the nerves. One and all are true: but none alone is true, or even ap- proximately true. That does not lie in the emotional life of expression which we call Art, which discerned it : it does not lie in nature : but in the soul of man. Impressionism as a narrow label on classification has no right to exist. It is not the idiosyncrasy of a clique, but the characteristic of a, universal modern- ity. Art's subtlest secret is that her face is always inscrutable: that her eyes, howsoever heavy with dreams, are immortal in youth. But even in the narrower sense in which the word is commonly used, impressionism, as a recent French specialist says, delivers to the artist " obsessed with realism and modernity " the sole means of idealising this realism, 350 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. of preserving this modernity. It is colour that lives. Indeed, it is colour only, now, in effect, that in the artistic life of to-day, what the French call " le decor de la vie moderne" remains as beautiful, as varied, as rich in charm and range and every manner of appeal as in the greatest epochs. The landscape of to-day is as alive in the wonderful life of colour as that of the near or distant past. A short time ago when in Paris for the great Ex- hibition I heard someone speak scornfully of a won- derful little drawing of a railway station, by Whistler. I quoted first some words of Courbet's to the effect that it was truer art to paint a railway station that one had seen and everyone could see than a Cruci- fixion or a Venus arming Vulcan that one had not seen and that none could see : and added a saying of Monet's, " A railway station can be expressed in colour: what you call its detail is superfluous, but the hidden anatomy of the glowing living body." My companion laughed the idea to scorn. When reminded that Turner led the way with his famous " Bailway," that -first great symphony of steam and machinery, he hesitated : and, later, when he told me that he had, as suggested, examined Monet's " Pont de 1'Europe " in the Grand Palais and his " Gare St. Lazare " in the Luxembourg, he added " that he had come to look at that matter newly." That is what all true artists do, " they come to look at the matter newly." That is what we all of us have to do if we would gain any charm or delight in art. And in this connection let me add one of the wisest of axioms whether for art, or literature, or life Voltaire's " Let us cultivate preference, but yield to no prejudices." I have, of course, not attempted to give here any FRENCH ART. 351 detailed and consecutive account of the rise of the two great modern " schools," the Barbizon or Naturist school, and the later Impressionist school: or of the great men who led, and the many noteworthy men who exemplified, one or the other or both. But a hun- dred times I have had occasion to speak of Millet, of Monet, and of what they stand for. This digest is of tendencies and features: not of biographical and pictoriographical details. I can do no better service to those concerned than to say " Go at first hand to these men : if you cannot see their paintings or draw- ings, see what reproductions you can : read their lives : their autobiographies and letters above all: and even if you do not know much more about art in general you will certainly know a little more about it in particular, and, what is more important, be at once more catholic, humbler, and more truly cultured (to use in its true sense a sadly abused word) than you were before." And to read of Millet, the peasant with his great tenderness for the labourer of the fields : of his friend Corot the poet of trees, of Daubigny the poet of streams, of Diaz the poet of forests, of Rous- seau the strong priest of nature, of Troyon the painter who depicted animal life in nature as no other has so well done before or since, of Edouard Frere whose loving tenderness and simplicity is nobly idyllic, of Delacroix and his fever of tragic and intense emo- tion, of Manet and his deep controlled vibration of life, of Monet and his thrilling, tremulous touch of essential light, of Moreau dreaming strangely and in deep symbols and painting these dreams and visions in colour that breathes as with mystic fire, of Carriere and his faith in searching for and depicting only the soul in a face, of one and all to read . . , what profound pleasure and fascina- 352 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tion of interest! Nor can I imagine any man or woman to read the life of a man like Millet and not be the stronger and truer for that deep lesson and insight. As for the artist, in whatever kind, who can read, say, the journals and letters of Delacroix, and not learn in a hundred ways, he had better leave the brush and take to the ledger or factory, the shop or the plough. Of course, again, I have had to omit even mention of many names I would gladly now dwell upon. There are even schools to which I have not alluded, as the great school of portraiture, with world-famous names such as Bonnat and Carolus Duran, Ribot and Boldini: to Delaroche and Couture and the later " classicists " Cabanel and Bougereau and Lef ebvre ; to Henner and his followers in the " poetic nude " ; to Laurens and Rochegrosse and Mameng: to the whole " military school " from Vernet and Regnault to Meissonier, fromDetailleand De Neuville to Aime- Morot and Berne-Bellecour. To many painters sucH as Charles Cazin, that delicate and exquisite land- scapist, the Costa of France, Henri Martin; Aman- Jean, and scores of others, I have at most been able to allude passingly. A chapter might well have been devoted to that great naturist and " reformer " Jules Bastien-Lepage and his "school." Bastien- Lepage stands at the point towards which Millet steadily advanced, where Monet and the others half consciously now turn backward eyes, having been somewhat dazzled. There are his imitative disciples like L'Hermitte, or his allies and followers like Roll and Gervex, who would demand much to be said of them. There are Raffaelli and De Nittis, both eo " Parisian " though Italian : and Jean Beraud the crude but clever boulevardier of painting. There FRENCH ART. 353 are Duez and a score " naturists " : Dagnan-Bouveret and Jules Breton, and a score more : Damoye, of the northern twilight, Montenard, of the Provincial noon, and a score upon a score again: all the range from Bida and Tissot and Boutet de Monvel to the fin-de- siecle draughtsmen Willette, Steinlen and Forain the latter, a brilliantly able man, " the swineherd " of French, art in the sense that his pencil for the most part depicts vice in its sordid and lowest aspects. I should have liked, in particular, to have written at some length on Meissonier, a fine but greatly over- rated painter, the accepted master of microscopic detail-painting : and on Puvis de Chavannes, a noble master, still 'hopelessly underrated. But, in a word, all this, and much more, vaguely foreseen and now only too painfully realised, must perforce be for- gone. This is a coup d"ceil, not a specific survey, and must have the obvious disadvantages as well as the possible advantages of " the bird's eye view." What I hope to have conveyed is some sense of the incalculable variety, the ceaseless energy, the endless charm and fascination of modern French art. All schools have warmed their hainds at this central fire. One final word now as to two main lessons for re- membrance. One is in the words of Gustave Courbet : " Schools have no right to exist ; there are only painters." The other is less technical, but goes further and sinks deeper. It is a saying of Voltaire's, " Tout genre est agreable sauf le genre ennuyeux." For the young artist himself, who may glance at these pages, I may add this. When a friend said once to the great Puvis de Chavannes perhaps the greatest and certainly the most poetic decorative artist of the modern world that he had worked a little like 354 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the gods, alone and apart, Puvis answered with a smile, " I don't know how the gods work," and then added gravely, " I could never have given anything but the best that was in me." PART THREE. MODERN SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER XXVIII. MODERN SCULPTURE. THE history of modern sculpture, of sculpture within the nineteenth century, is to a great extent the history of French sculpture, with English, Amer- ican, Italian, and other supplements. Till Jean Goujon, Houdon, Rude, and Carpeaux there was no modern sculpture: perhaps the great new period, so often dreamed of, when sculpture, newly practised as an art and newly understood and loved of the people, will be as great an art as it was in Hellas, may have begun already with Antoine Barye and with the greatest living sculptor, Rodin. All that extolled period wherein Canova and Thorwaldsen were the alleged successors of Pheidias and the Hellenic masters is simply a period of an- cient beauty modernly and poorly translated. The original creators were men of genius, the translators were men of talent. It was, therefore, entirely natural that Canova and Thorwaldsen, and all their school, should be admired even more than the supreme masters: that, later, they should be admitted of the same company: thal^ later still, at least they ranked 356 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. as great moderns. In truth, there has been no original sculpture since the old order changed. It was not the Greek genius only that went, but an age that passed. Much perished with the gods. When the ancient world drew its long breath after its trance, and awoke with a barbaric new life, it had left behind it perhaps its fairest possession, the joyous inhabi- tation of the world, the joyous delight in beauty and strength, the joyous instinctive participation in the conditions which allowed that beauty and incurred that strength. This was all changed, later. The energies remained, but the naive joyousness was gone. The world had become conscious. The fig-leaf hid not only the pure paganism of the ancient world, but was the symbol of the physical degradation which set in with the loss of the antique ideals of beauty and life. The great art of sculpture was the natural expression of the artistic emotional life of that far-off age, as now the art of Monet and Carriere, who have but one language, colour, and one accent, whether it be living, external verisimilitude or living spiritual revelation, is the natural expression of the artistic emotional life of to-day. It is not a question as to which is better : it is a question as to whether each in its kind fulfils itself. We hear much lament of the absence of great sculpture as a reality among us as painting is a reality. But can we set back the clock ? Can we say, let us of Paris and London and New York be Greeks? Colour is the latest language. We do not speak Greek, and we do not see with Greek eyes, and we have not the Greek ideals, nor are our (Social and economic conditions the conditions of the Greek. There is no sculpture in the world to com- pare with that of Pheidias and Praxiteles : but as the world can never again be as it was in the great age MODERN SCULPTURE. 357 when Hellas was the sovereign nation, the sooner we cease to emulate what after all was a conditional greatness the better chance there will be for a living art of sculpture. Many of our modern sculptors have recognised this, though without sustained power and determination : some under the naturist influence of Millet and others, as Hamo Thornycroft with " The Mower " ; some under the intellectual influence of the vital principle of modernity in what is so vaguely called Impressionism, as Rodin ; some by an instinct- ive turning to the only corresponding world to that open to the Greeks, the unchanged animal world, as Barye. Even the beautiful art of the Italian Renaissance is a reminiscent art. Donatello had listened at an acanthus-covered stone portal and heard the music of fauns and satyrs in the secret garden beyond. Luca della Robbia was troubled as that sad dreamer Botti- celli was troubled, but while the latter fell under the sombre sway of Savonarola, Luca fell under a divine ministry of light. His sweet, serene, Tuscan genius took up Greek art where it was long before Pheidias : only, now, it had an Italian accent, and had a new rapture, distinct however from joyousness. Michael Angelo alone among post-Hellenic sculptors rose to the greatness of the past: but it is the greatness of a Titan as compared with the greatness of a God. And even he, with all his genius, derived from the Greeks. If he had gone down into the Via Flaminia and watched the vinedressers returning or the shep- herds driving in their flocks, or the wild shaggy horsemen of the Agro Romano riding along the rough way as to-day riders and vine-carts still ride on the Campagna or jostle down the Appian Way from Albano, and let these or such as these inspire 358 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. him, we should have missed much great Grseco- Italic art but had the magnificent beginning of great modern Sculpture. But he did not, and so we had our latter-day Canovas and Thorwaldsens, our Flax- mans and Gibsons, our Clodions and Pradiers, our Storys and Hosmers, our Falguieres and Geromes. Not one of these but is an able sculptor, and one or two have a talent coloured with the near glow of genius, but none has that inspiration which is the breath of life from within. Time, circumstance, and the " Zeitgeist " have breathed that into them to which they have responded. But as to our modern Sculpture since these neo- classicists of the school of Canova, Flaxman and Gibson and his famous American pupil Harriet Hos- mer : nearly all in it of high value is either French or inspired by French, whether in single statuary or in decorative panels or in monumental groups and this applies equally to the fine but limited Brit- ish School (Alfred Gilbert, George Frampton, Hamo Thornycroft, Onslow Ford, Harry Bates, Goscombe John, Gilbert Bayes, a young and promising sculptor, and others) ; to the still more limited and less individual and poetic but technically more ac- complished American school from Miss Hosmer and W. W. Story to Augustus St. Gaudens and Macmon- nies ; and to the very limited and not very fine Ital- ian school, from the once popular Marochetti to the younger men of to-day, Urbano Nino, Ettore Ximi- nez, Pietro Canonica, etc. It might seem paradoxical to state that the art of sculpture nowhere sank so low as in France were it not that in the corresponding period there was hardly any elsewhere to sink. In his admirable book on the development of MODERN SCULPTURE. 359 French Sculpture from the mediaeval days Louis Gonse alludes to the general work of the pre-nine- teenth century period as " quelle creuse et vaine flietorique." Nor, from our standpoint, is he a whit too severe. Cartellier (who belongs even more to the eight- eenth than to the nineteenth century, for though he died in 1831 he was born in 1757) though with some modern quality owes his real distinction now to the fact that he was the master of Francois Rude. The first really interesting French sculptor in the nine- teenth century is Frangois Gregoire Giraud. 'But better known by far is that notable master Jean Goujon, a sculptor still in the modern front rank. Clodion won a wide reputation also, though his work was too pretty for great sculpture. A great name is that of Houdon, to whom, moreover, we owe some of the finest busts of celebrated people. But the great- est of all this group is Rude, a powerful and original artist. Perhaps the finest monumental group (the inspiration of much pseudo-Rude as well as frankly Rudesque work, especially in America) is the fa- miliar " Chant du Depart " group of the Arc de Triomphe. Rude had a pupil who in some respects was as great as himself, though lacking somewhat in his great energy and robustness, Carpeaux. How many tens of thousands have stood before and de- lighted in the beautiful symbolical figures of his " Four Quarters of the World supporting the Earth " in the Luxembourg Gardens. Except Carpeaux and David D'Angers there is no other great name till we come to Barye, for Pradier and Etex and others were simply more or less charming and deft craftsmen without creative invention or masterly power. Car- peaux added much to Clodion's classic but unerno- 360 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tional delicacy, and one may see his finest touch in "La Danse" of the Opera House facade. David D'Angers remains to this day the model portraitist: with him the bust lived again, as in the old days of Greek and Roman. He modelled a face as Barye modelled a lion, or as to-day John M. Swan models a leopard, or Rodin the inward personality of a man in his outward individuality. But Rude's greatest rival was Barye. Sculptors are said to be long-lived and Antoine Louis Barye was no instance to the con- trary. In his eightieth year he was actually at work when he died. Barye's unique fame rests on his singular independency. No one preceded him. He learned at first hand. He turned to the animal world, and gave it life in art as no other sculptor had ever done. To this day he stands foremost in this new interpretation: the pioneer of a manifold evo- lution, which has had unexpected divergences, as in the Jungle Book of Mr. Rudyard Kipling and the 'Animals I have Known of the subtler American naturist-romancer, E. Seton Thompson. Again, he is the Delacroix of sculpture, and that recalls his water-colour and oil pictures, for Barye is ignored as a great painter only because of his overshadowing fame as a supreme sculptor in this kind. What living and marvellous art his is, whether in imperish- able bronze or in flower-fragile water-colour. It is in America that one may best realise at a glance, as it were, not only the greatness but the range and varied power of Antoine Barye, the painter-sculp- tor: for nowhere in France can be seen anything approaching the collection of Mr. Walters at Balti- more. That loyal friend and worshipper of the great sculptor not only secured most of his master- pieces but had copies made of all Barye has done, MODERN SCULPTURE. 361 and owns, too, many of those wonderful glowing drawings of vivid savage life which are as unique as they are beautiful. Only Mr. Swan among the Anglo-Saxon artists of to-day may be likened to Barye, as he, too, is a fine and noble and rich colour- ist and perhaps the greatest living sculptor of wild life, but neither with the brush nor the clay does he excel, and only occasionally equals, Barye the first sculptor who ignored the Greeks and the whole slow descent to Canova and Thorwaldsen, and expressed the genius for flowing rhythm in the moment of ar- rested movement where it could find iTntTfl.Tn-nnp.nfid expression, a "world" as new to-day as to the Greeks, and still as capable of imaginative realism in its demonstration. Barye's influence is incalculable. " The Silver Lion," that famous and beautiful triumph jn animal sculpture which Mr. Walters wants to have mod- elled on a gigantic scale and placed on a vast pedestal as a monument to the memory of General Ulysses Grant, the great soldier of the Republic should be reproduced on the same scale but in honour of An- toine Barye. For the day will come when the sec- ond great period of sculpture, if such a period is ever to be, will look to this abrupt and startling in- novator as the Father of a new Art. Among the eminent contemporary sculptors whose work is now from the neo-classic, now from the " ro- mantic " standpoint, one of the finest craftsmen is Henri Chapu, one of the ablest Paul Dubois. Both' these men have done original and beautiful work, and yet neither can truly be called more than " cel- ebrated." Saint-Marceaux and Antonin Mercie go further, but only in variety, in refinement, and in charm. Even the brilliant Saint-Marceaux is not 362 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. great (except relatively among the sculptors of to- day), and though there is perhaps no living foreign sculptor who could surpass Mercie's " Gloria Victis " * (in the Place de Montholon in Paris) still one must hesitate before applying the word great even to this fine work. Bartholdi and Falguiere have both won a world-wide reputation the former famous in America in connection with the great statue of Lib- erty which greets the newcomer sailing up the home- waters of the New World. But the mediocrity of Bartholdi is revealed in the ambitious commonplace of his Arc de Triomphe groups, and that of Fal- guiere (charming only in his simplest manner) in the pretentious commonplace of his similar groups, or as in that disastrous " Balzac " which he made as a set-off to Rodin's rejected and derided masterpiece. Of a different calibre is Emmanuel Fremiet, a sculptor whom many hailed as greater than Cain, as equal to Barye, but who for all his power is not at his best when trying to emulate this great master, but when fulfilling his own imaginative conceptions as in his noble " The Torch-Bearer." There is a tendency in modern art to mistake the repellent for the strong, but though Barye could be savagely strong, as in his " Jaguar Devouring a Hare," he would never have brought a cheaper sensationalism into sculpture as Fremiet did with his " Gorilla Carrying off a Woman." With these men, and Idrac, and In j albert, the classicist Guillaume and his school, and a score other able men, the middle period closes. * Mr. Macmonnie's splendidly modelled, huge " Pro Patria," symbolising the sacrifice of those who died for their country in the Civil War, which was at the Salon of 1900, is the near- est to Mercie's masterpiece of anything I can recall. But the American master is obviously a pupil of Carpeaux and Mercie. MODERN SCULPTURE. 363 The new Sculpture counts two supreme men, and both are French, Auguste Rodin and Paul Dalou. There are many others, of deep interest for every student and lover of art, from Jean-Paul Aube to Constantin Meunier and to Bartholome (whose nobly moulded figures in his monumental groups, notably " The Grave," afford a very real promise of great- ness), but now I must speak of these two only. In a, sense all British, American, Continental Sculpture approaches, and is to be estimated as it approaches Rodin or Dalou. Rodin is the Velas- quez with something of Rembrandt, of Sculpture, but is above all else Auguste Rodin, an inimitable master. Dalou is the Tintoretto with something of Rubens, of Sculpture : but he, too, is inimitable, and is above all else Paul Dalou. Rodin is the more marvellous modeller, Dalou has the warmer and richer shaping imagination. Rodin's knowledge is so great that he threatens to fail in great art by knowing too much to enable him " not to know but just to do " (which is that subtle secret of art we call naivete). Dalou has so Rubens-like a delight in the sensuous aspects of life that in his eagerness he is apt to yield to the desire to do this or that suggested or fancied enterprise without surety that the crea- tive imagination is also at work and that, with children of the imagination, is apt to be disastrous. But both stand so uniquely even in their lesser achievement: and have done so greatly and nobly in their best : that we can but think of them as great captains. Leaving aside Rude and Carpeaux and all other celebrated modern sculptors, the New Age if it is to come at all must be heralded by Antoine Barye, by Paul Dalou, and by Auguste Rodin. It is Rodin, 364 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY meanwhile, the sculptor of the genius that was Bal- zac and not merely of the Balzac who had genius, who has said the " Open Sesame ! " of modernity : and that is to do one of the greatest things that even great genius can accomplish. MODERN ARCHITECTURE. 355 CHAPTER XXIX. MODERN ARCHITECTURE. MORE than seventeen hundred years ago the Romans, looking wonderingly at the vast and mag- nificent buildings collectively known as the Imperial Villa on the Sabine slopes, speculated if it were pos- sible for the grandeur of architecture to achieve fur- ther. To-day there are only the superb ruins of Hadrian's Villa. But we know that for all their wonder and beauty, for all the genius of the great Hadrian, they were doomed even if the hordes of the barbarians were not to sweep across the Tiber. For these temples and baths and lordly courts were only the aggregation of buildings of divers and divergent styles and periods: and if there is one lesson that architecture has taught it is that in one sense this most intimate of arts has nothing in common with' the incongruous multiplicity of the museum : that it should be simple, natural, autochthonous, not amal- gamated, confused, cosmopolitan. There is little question of Hadrian being emulated to-day, alas, even in that wherein he was truly great, his love of noble and spacious architecture. The aim of modern architecture is utility and conven- tional convenience, not grandeur or beauty: and it is only occasionally that we find a modern building which gives us the sense of grandeur as well as beauty, as in the noble church of La Madeleine in Paris. 366 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ' The countries where most changes have occurred and are occurring are America, Britain, France, and Germany, in the proportion named. In Russia, too, there are changes from the once prevalent Oriental- ism: in Hungary a city of palaces is rising up in Pesth. In Italy there is little praiseworthy new architecture, and much that is bad, as in the deplor- able Via Nazionale in Rome, which should have been one of the finest streets in the world, and is in fact worthy of a second-rate Haussmannised Paris. There is little noble contemporary architecture in Europe: the finest outlook for this great but most misused of all the arts is in America. There the architect is not hampered by the continual reminders of the great past, as in Italy and Spain and to a lesser extent in France : nor is he so bound by certain conventions as in England. In France there are :six; main architectural pe- riods of the nineteenth century : I. The Napoleonic, or First Empire, 1800- 1815. II. The Louis XVIII. period, 1815-1824. III. The Carolinian period (Charles), 1824- 1830. IV. The Louis Philippe period, 1830-1848. V. The Third Empire, 1848-1870. VI. The Republican, 1870-1900. These seem political rather than artistic divisions, but they have a genuine though of course not exact but only approximate correspondence. The century begins with the coldly classical and academic: a notable instance being the Palais Bourbon, remod- elled for the Imperial Corps Legislatif by Poyel, who began the work in 1807. It ends with the mag- nificent motley of every known architectural variety MODERN ARCHITECTURE. 367 in the Street of the Nations and by the palace- crowded banks of the Seine. To-day the ideal at least is simplicity which shall shirk no sign of need- ful strength and solidity: but in the opening years of the century it was still the effort even of the fore- most architects to conceal the essential structural parts of a building. Boulogne Cathedral, begun in 1807 by Monsignor Haffremgue, is an example. The famous Bourse in Paris is an instance of failure through incongruity and ineptitude. The finest model, that of La Madeleine, was never used for street or domestic architecture. This " classic style," however, was pseudo-classic only : it was not even an adaptation from Italy, but an indirect development from later Gothic. When Visconti designed the new buildings of the Louvre it was a transitional phase in French architecture: they remain to-day imposing in their kind but not so imposing as they were meant to be, grandiose rather than grand. In domestic architecture the French showed a spe- cial if intermittent faculty. The best style is that of the end of Louis Philippe's reign and the begin- ning of the second empire, after which a decline set in, till the physiognomy of so much of Paris began to change under the genius for the grandiose com- monplace of Baron Haussmann. In that form of architecture known as the mili- tary trophy the French again are naturally supreme : as in the famous Column in the Place Yendome in Paris, the r Arc de PEtoile (oftener called the Arc de Triomphe), designed by M. Chalgrin and the finest triumphal arch in Europe, and the celebrated Colonne de la Grande Armee at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Perhaps the finest and simplest example of the 368 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. best modern French ecclesiastical architecture is the Cathedral of Marseilles: austere, harmonious, dig- nified, recalling the great Umbrian and Tuscan tri- umphs, but individual, apt, and justly imposing. In England the classical Eevival which set in dur- ing the Georgian era divided into two wholly imita- tive schools, the first following " pure Greek," as that was understood; the second imitating literal Gothic. The importation of the Elgin marbles had no little to do with "the Greek craze," which of course was not destined long to remain in ascendency^ being wholly arbitrary. Indeed, architects very J soon came to realise the incongruity of Greek archi- tecture for Christian churches. So aided by a hun- dred other influences, the much more harmonious Keo-Gothic movement came about. But in the many new buildings which began to arise in London the citizens were unable to arrive at any conclusion. If they took Sir J. Soane's imposing Bank of Eng- land or the fine St. Pancras !New Church as the best, it was only to learn the next day that the National Gallery was in the true style for English Architec- ture a painful delusion shared in by no one now surely. Wilkins was as unsuccessful with the Lon- don University Buildings as Sir Robert Smirke was successful with the British Museum, which has dig- nity and fitness, the two great desiderated attributes nowadays. The true Gothic Revival occurred in tHe return to the form and spirit of Wren and his period: in all except detail, for the later architects revelled in imitation of every kind of detail. The first nota- ble instance was Eon thill Abbey built for the famous v/ Beckford, author of Vafhek in 1822. The first now celebrated name is that of Pugin, whose whole art was MODERN ARCHITECTURE. 369 a continual compromise, an adaptation of the Catholic Cathedral and Pagan Temple to the requirements of the Protestant church. In time Neo-Gothic castles succeeded; then abbeys, Tudor palaces, Elizabethan mansions one and all covered England. One magnificent Gothic pile, Windsor Castle as we know it, was restored in 1826 by Sir Jeffrey Wyalville, who daringly adopted the idea of mak- ing the agreeable modern royal residence appear an ancient building. The architects of all countries unite in their admiration of the symmetry and dig- nity of Sir Charles Barry's Houses of Parliament, which loom so grandly through the Thames mists in autumn or winter. A quarter of a century ago it began to be realised that archa?ology is not archi- tecture. The realisation helped to enfranchise the imagination: and thus to make possible a national expression in architecture. To-day the domestic architect has more than am- ple scope. There is no definite national taste in do- mestic architecture, but only a multiplicity of opin- ion in villas, a bastard excellence reigns supreme in Suburbia everywhere. On the other hand, London and its neighbourhood and many other great cities have gained immensely by the ISTeo-Gothic-and- jSTew-Everything-Else architecture of the day, in warmth and tone and character. In London the great Civic architectural changes are striking : the Gothic Law Courts, the !N"ew Tower Bridge, the South Kensington Museum, the Impe- rial Institute, the Tate Gallery, all witness to a great energy and a great desire at least, and that 13 much. The most remarkable development of all has been in the vast growth of Civil Engineering Architec- 370 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. tare, such as the huge stations in London, Newcas- tle, Perth, Paris, Strasbourg, etc., and as the Eorth Bridge near Edinburgh, and the Brooklyn and New York Bridge, and the great Bridge of the Lagoons at Venice. Ferro- Vitreous architecture, as it is called from the use of iron and glass mainly, origi- nated in 1851 under the auspices of Sir Joseph Paxton of Crystal Palace fame. What is most encouraging now is the genuine effort in English domestic architecture to design harmoniously with environment, to fit style to size and means. In consequence, an essentially English style is being in part revived, in part evolved: a fortunate, pleasant, and characteristic and indeed, serenely picturesque, if not a great style. Of America much the same is to be said, only to a greater extent. In public buildings Amer- ica is as far in advance as it is villainously behind in public statuary. Erom the magnificent Capitol at Washington to the Public Library at Boston there is a range of modern architectural art such as no other country can show. Everywhere, in every State, a new, varied, and highly interesting and often charming domestic architecture is becoming conspicuous. In the great commercial towns, New York, Chicago, Pittsburg, etc., an extreme ugliness still prevails. But in America all the new language of Architecture in the twentieth century is almost certain to be spoken with' the most variety and per- haps even the most distinction. Formerly the other arts followed Architecture: now it is architecture that follows the other arts. Perhaps the day will come when a juster equipoise will be the outcome of all the ceaseless experiment, effort, and partial achievements of the nineteenth century. MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY, PAKT ONE. THE ROMANTIC ERA. 18001850. CHAPTER I. BOMANTIC MUSIC IN GEEMAITY. THE first of Beethoven's superb Symphonies was given to the world in April of 1800; it inaugurated a new century of music rich in development and of a character at variance with the musical creed of the eighteenth century. Indeed Beethoven's mighty genius dominated the two centuries; it carried him in his mastery of the laws of Formal Beauty to the highest reach of perfection in the Classical Era; it compelled the Horn antic Era in music by creating new methods for deeper and more individual ex- pression. In his series of nine Symphonies and in his Sonatas, Beethoven produced the finest existing work in Absolute Music so called in contra-distinc- tion to Dramatic Music wedded to words with per- fect mastery of the noble forms employed; for by transcending and expanding them, he moulded them to the expression of new phases of thought which 372 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. swayed Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Romantic Movement, in Music as in Literature and Painting, arose out of the impera- tive need of individuality for new expression; and from respect of the rights of the individual who had outgrown the purely autocratic imposition of law and order an irresistible need which found its first active expression in the French Revolution. As Sir Hubert Parry has truly said " if the world could be satisfied with the ideal of perfectly organised simplicity without any great force of expression, in- strumental art might well have stopped at the point to which Haydn and Mozart brought it.'VyDuring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Music was concerned with the evolution of the laws upon which its existence as an art depends ; during the eighteenth century Bach the greatest exponent of polyphonic music Haydn, Mozart, brought the technicalities of Absolute Music to a high degree of Formal perfection. On. the threshold of the nineteenth century stand three eminent composers side by side, the pioneers of romantic or deep human expression in music: Beethoven in Absolute Music, Schubert in Song, and Weber in the Opera. Ludwig van Beethoven, born at Bonn in 1770 (d. 1827), was the son of a Capellmeister to the Elector of Cologne. His early years were passed in hard work as second court organist to augment his means of living. During a visit to Vienna he had a few lessons from Mozart; there, too, he learned to love the literature of his own country and of England from the Yon Breunings to whom he gave piano lessons, and his youthful talent was warmly encour- aged by Count Waldstein to whom one of his sonatas is dedicated. In 1793 he moved to Vienna and lived ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY. 373 there for the rest of his life. He studied strict counterpoint with Haydn and Albrechtsberger who was dismayed to find his pupil regarded every con- trapuntal rule even consecutive fifths as an open question. This free attitude of mind is a truer in- dication of Beethoven's future greatness than the com- positions of his first period. His genius developed gradually, his finest work was not written till after his thirtieth year. The story of his life discloses a series of struggles pathetic and tragic, of ceaseless work for his living, much personal discomfort, the possession of few friends owing to his irascible temper, the bitter animosity of contemporary pianists and musicians in Vienna which did much to retard his success. His steadily growing deafness was a source of tragic suffering to him, for it denied him the oral enjoyment of the art to which his life was passionately devoted. The resulting bitterness often obscured his warm-hearted generosity and drove him in upon himself. Out of this suffering and loneli- ness of spirit, out of an essentially religious nature grew his magnificent creations inspired equally by his human sympathies and by his deep love of Nature of the fields, woods, and hills, among which much of his work, so truly described as the dramatisation of pure tone, was composed. Beethoven was fortunate in finding not only the musical forms in readiness for him, but the various musical instruments of brass, wood, and string necessary to a full orchestra, ' perfected to the point of sensitiveness necessary to a fine differentiation of timbre, whereby he was spared much of the crudeness and inadequacy of means that impeded his predecessors. Beethoven's great ac- complishment in music apart from his one beautiful opera " Fidelio," his oratorio " The Mount of 374 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Olives," and his great quantity of chamber music is his remarkable series of Sonatas and Symphonies. In his Sonatas he introduced greater freedom in the use of keys, he elaborated the slow Introduction, originated the Scherzo and the running of one move- ment into another without a pause. The Symphony is to the orchestra what the Sonata is to the piano; in his Symphonies Beethoven also made innovations adequate to his needs of expression. These technical changes, and consequent intensification of expression, are most striking in the " Eroica " with its Coda, March, and Scherzo; and in that unique work the Ninth Symphony, wherein, having reached the climax of emotion by means of the full instrumental capacity of his orchestra, he gives expression to a superb paean by the outburst of human voices, whose value is less in the words sung than in the ex- quisite added poignancy of expression given by the peculiar effect of the human tones soaring above those of the inanimate instruments. The principal writers of Symphonies after Beethoven are Spohr, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Dvorak. The four first named belonged to the German Romantic School prior to Wagner, and demand separate consideration as having left decisive marks on the development of music; Dvorak belongs to a later date. Ludwig Spohr (1784--1859) was a prolific writer, classical in form, but romantic in subject and treat- ment. At one time his great opera of " Yessonda " was very popular; his symphonies, especially that entitled " The Consecration of Sound," are still played ; his Oratorio " The Last Judgment " holds its place in England where oratorios are appreciated more than in any other country; but his Violin- ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY. 375 Concertos, fine in idea and in thematic treatment, will probably outlive the rest of his work. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) belongs more strictly to the Classical school as far as his symphonies are concerned. But Schubert's great reputation rests less on his instrumental music, fine though that be, than on his series of incomparable songs (455 are published), a form of lyrical expression carried by him to a perfection never surpassed. The Folk-song is the early form of all national music. Composers had already given it a home in the Opera, and Schu- bert's predecessors had demonstrated the need of ra,pport between melody and words. But it was Schubert who realised that the music of a song, to be truly lyrical, must proceed from the very heart of the words, must be of the subtle essence of the poem, full of deeply concentrated emotion; in ex- pression must be the musical counterpart of the rhythmical essence of the words. He was truly de- scribed by a friend as an inspired musical clair- voyant. He penetrated to the heart of the poem and the exquisite musical garb for it echoed instantane- ously in his brain. His method varies surely with his subject, lyrical or dramatic, purely emotional, or descriptive of natural sights and sounds, according to the humour of his theme. In his own day, over- shadowed by the greatness of Beethoven who, how- ever, recognised the genius in him; set aside shy and bourgeois as he was amid the controversies about and championship of Rossini that raged in Vienna, he met with little of the appreciation that has been awarded to him posthumously. Neglect, misunderstanding, lack of education and poverty were his portion in life ; music his one passion. Of it he wrote " My music is the child of my genius 376 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. and my misery; that which I have written in my greatest distress is what the world appears to like best." Pre-eminent among other song writers of the first rank in Germany is Schumann, who preferred the romance to the lyric, who was Heine's musical exponent, as Schubert was Goethe's. The Ballade in music originated with F. C. L. Loewe. Brahms and R Franz have written exquisite songs; and good work was published in the latter part of the nine- teenth century by Hugo Briickler who composed the opera "Der Trompeter von Sakkengen" by Henschel, Reinecke, Bruch, Elhert, etc. Bobert Schumann (1810-1856), the ultra roman- ticist in music, was a highly cultivated man, orig- inally educated to be a lawyer. Music owes him a great debt not only for the strength and character of his genius, which necessitated new means of expres- sion, for his generous, discriminating and balanced criticism on Music and Musicians unerring in its discovery and appreciation of great talent but for the powerful influence he, as Editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Husik, exercised over contemporary thought. To honour duly the poetry of art as critic, to shed light into the human heart as an art- ist were his aims; to war against Philistinism, con- ventionality, banality, the mere formal traditions of music that were venerated in default of real emo- tional art; in short against all that tended to the crystallisation and the consequent fettering of genius. These aims he followed until the eclipse of his mind which preceded his death by a few years. This dual activity as author and composer was a pheno- menon in the musical world of that day. Weber had written, it is true, but in a personal manner and nob as philosopher or critic. Schumann's precedent ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY- 377 was followed by Berlioz in France, later by Wagner, Rubinstein, and others. As a composer Schumann wrote exclusively for the pianoforte until 1840. It must he remembered that earlier composers for the piano had very inferior instruments to write for. Schumann was the first thoroughly to understand its character and possibilities, and to write from this basis. His method of treating it was wholly new; " he develops upon it a kind of orchestral polyphony ; and by means of the pedal, of extended intervals, of peculiar position of chords, and so forth, he succeeds in bringing out of it an undreamt-of wealth of effects to tone." From the first Schumann showed striking origi- nality in his compositions ; in his harmonies, rhythm, colouring, in the form of his melodies, he is mark- edly individual. As a song writer he is intellectually suggestive. Like Schubert he frequently had re- course to the National Folk-song ; he made his accom- paniment an integral part of the composition wrought in with the voice, and not merely supplementary to it. Schumann's Symphonies rank in nobility next to those of Beethoven, and are equalled perhaps only by Schubert's major symphony. Of his overtures his " Manfred " is the most imposing ; and he has left much valuable work in the form of quintets, concertos, etc. His first work for the voices and orchestra " Paradise and the Peri," so full of beauty and heart-felt emotion, and based on Moore's poem, is perhaps his greatest production; certainly it is an exquisite musical poem. Objec- tions were made to it on the score of its novelty of form as a secular oratorio, that fitted into no con- venient niche. In 1840 Schumann married Clara Wieck, the accomplished pianist and composer, 378 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. whose original productions have been lost sight of in her continuous loving efforts to familiarise Europe with her husband's piano works, at first so little understood. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847) is the musician who after Handel had the most direct in- fluence on English music in the first half of the cen- tury. He is classical in form and finish ; innovation was not his bent of mind. Nevertheless he was romantic in tendency and established a new order of oratorio which has remained the model ever since. A child of his time, the growth of romantic feeling affected him and emphasised his natural desire to throw life and feeling into dry works. Apart from the limpidity, spirit, and symmetry of his oratorios the advance on their predecessors lies in the direct attempt to express the subject to think first of the story and next of the music that depicts it. Men- delssohn was Fortune's favourite child of music. During his thirty-eight years of life, means, friends, opportunities, and successes came to him; no tragic element save that of natural deaith in his family threw a note of bitterness or misery into his career. And this absence of the terrible in his life is re- flected in his music; it embodies joy, suavity, grandeur, and aspiration; but the tragic pathos that touches the deepest secrets of the human heart is absent. He was a precocious writer. His beau- tiful Overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was written in his eighteenth year, and it is said of it that no one piece of music contains so many points of harmony and orchestration that have never been written before and yet seem inevitable in their place. Mendelssohn was much in England and wrote some of his finest work for the various Festivals. For ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY. 379 instance he dedicated the Symphony in C minor to the Philharmonic Society; and conducted " Elijah" for the first time at Birmingham in 1846. His dainty, exquisite charm, his lack of tortuosity or in- volved expression appealed to a people educated on Handel. He, more than any musician, understood the possibilities of English music, and helped, through his admiration and advocacy of Sterndale Bennett, to remove some of the continental prejudice that existed against English composers. Classical in form, an ardent follower of Bach and it is to Mendelssohn we owe the revival of Bach's music he was not primarily concerned with the science of music. He was the musician before all things, who expressed his impressions and emotions in terms of music more naturally than in speech. Thus, he loved " programme music " an outcome of the ro- mantic school music that is illustrative, that needs words to explain it ; witness his " Hebrides " Over- ture. He did not try to paint pictures with sound as the later school has, but to note down the emotions and impressions caused by specific sights. In 1829 Mendelssohn left Germany and travelled in Europe during three years before finally devoting himself to music as a profession. It is interesting to note the number of famous contemporaries he met with. In Germany he had known Spontini, Mo- scheles, Hummel, Goethe, Heine, and the English musician Sterndale Bennett. In Rome he met Horace Vernet, Thorwaldsen, Berlioz, Julius Bene- dict, and Donizetti; and in Paris he numbered among his acquaintances Kalkbrenner, Meyerbeer, Ole Bull, Chopin, and Liszt. Franz Liszt (1811-1886), "the friend of musi- cians/ 7 is one of the men who belongs to both halves 380 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. of the century. His fame rests mainly on his talent as a virtuoso of the pianoforte. But he was also a composer of importance. He exercised a potent in- fluence on the development of Hungarian music ; and his chief claim to notice as a member of the German School in which he is usually ranked, is his inven- tion of the Symphonic Poem, in form shorter than the symphony, though similar in general treatment, but without pauses between the movements, and pri- marily intended to illustrate a story. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was one of the pioneers of the Komantic movement by reason of his influence on the German opera and the reforms he introduced. The writings of Schiller, Goethe, Heine, suggested to Weber the importance of national stories for libretti, and indicated the awakening of the public taste for such legends. In his chief opera " Der Freischiitz " (1821) he anticipated and paved the way for Wagner, and therewith indirectly influ- enced the majority of operatic composers of the latter portion of ihe century. In his writings on the opera he practically laid the foundations of the modern lyrical drama. He defined opera as " an art work complete in itself in which all the parts and contri- butions of the related and utilised arts meet and dis- appear in each other, and in a manner form a new world by their own destruction." With regard to lyric music he taught that " it is the first and most sacred duty of song to be truthful with the utmost fidelity possible in declamation " a statement which to modern ears is almost a platitude, but at the be- ginning of the century was an innovation not uni- versally approved of. Weber saw the danger of a too rigid worship of the beauty of form for its own sake, and believed in the principle of romantic music ROMANTIC MUSIC IN GERMANY. 381 that new thought must create its appropriate form. "All striving for the beautiful and the good is praiseworthy, but the creation of a new form must be generated by the poem which it is setting." More- over, Weber increased the importance of the orchestra, by his profound study of instrumental timbre, in particular by his emancipation of the wood-wind choir. He made use of the simple folk-song form in " Der Freischutz," and thus gave a definite German character to it. In his overtures he was the first to embody in an instrumental prelude the principal emotions and incidents of the drama. Weber worked to overcome the prejudice of his countrymen to the German Opera as opposed to the degenerate form of Italian Opera then in vogue throughout Germany. He was listened to the more readily owing to his im- mense popularity from his setting of National Songs, especially those of the patriotic poet Korner. His finest work though not his most popular is his grand opera (opera without spoken dialogue) " Eu- ryanthe " ; of it Schumann wrote " It is his heart's blood, the very best he was capable of. The opera cost him a piece of his life, "but it made him im- mortal. From end to end it is one chain of sparkling gems." Meyerbeer, born five years later than Weber, ex- erted his influence on the French opera, and there- fore is usually included in the French School ; after him no writer of genuine power appeared in Ger- many except Heinrich Marschner (1796-1861) whose "Hans Heiling " (1833) and " Adolph von Nassau v (1844) were ranked high, until Wagner revolutionised the Musical Drama on the lines al- ready indicated by Gluck and Weber. 382 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER II. EOMANTIC MUSIC IN ITALY. INASMUCH as Mozart who brought the Sing- spiel, the German native form of the opera, and the lyrical comedy to a supreme point of excellence in his delightful " Die Entfiihring aus dem Serail," and his inimitable " Die Zauberflote " wrote his grandest operatic work, " Don Giovanni " in the methods of the Italian opera with a truer regard for the requirement of that form as a musical drama than had become habitual in Italy, it will be well to glance now at the musical progress of that country. At the beginning of the nineteenth century consider- able changes had been wrought by the successors of Monteverde and Scarlatti (who established the aria da capo that held its ground till the dawn of the ro- mantic era as an integral part of the opera), and in particular by the group of composers called the Nea- politan School in whose hands the Opera Buffa, or comic opera, developed out of the Musical Interludes that were formerly interspersed between the acts of the Opera Seria. The most important men wrote for both forms, such as Pergolesi, Paisiello, Yomelli, and Piccini, of famous memory not only for the long contest between him and Gluck, but for his skilful development of the Einale into an excellent concerted piece of music, which is, indeed, the earliest attempt to produce a culminating climax of rich harmonies and united voices at the conclusion of the opera. ROMANTIC MUSIC IN ITALY. 383 Cimarosa wrote seventy-six operas, the most famous being the racy " II Matrimonio Segreto," and died in 1801, on the threshold of the nineteenth cen- tury which has produced in Italy two men of out- standing fame : Rossini, who comes midway between the older methods and the radical later reforms in the Italian Opera ; and Verdi, who in his own person sums up the one method and is the exponent and finest representative of the other. The Italian opera in Rossini's youth had prac- tically lost all idea of expressing a dramatic action musically. It was written under the tyrannous rule of the singer, whose demands were exorbitant and not to be denied. The structural laws were severe and restrictive to a degree; if the composer had not originality and strength sufficient to impose his in- dividual expression he was seriously hampered. For instance the Personaggi were six in orthodox number, male and female sopranos, contraltos, one tenor and an occasional bass. The airs written for these singers were of five separate classes distin- guished by a peculiarity of style, but without much regard to the direction of the dramatic plot; each air was finished with the indispensable da capo, or repetition of the first part on the conclusion of the middle elaborated portion ; and a percentage of these airs of necessity gave opportunity to the chief singers to display the capacity of their voices by florid cadenzas, usually improvisations. It will thus be readily understood that the writers of the text had a hopeless task before them to satisfy the exigencies of both singer and composer, and that the composer himself was limited by hampering conventionalities. Rossini was born at Pesaro in 1792 ; his mother was an operatic singer and he was thus brought into 384 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. close proximity to the stage in early childhood. His exuberant facile invention led him to disregard a thorough study of the science of music as soon as he knew enough counterpoint to write a score. When he was twenty, one of his operas was performed at Milan, and the next year " II Tancredi " took Venice by storm and he was hailed as the legitimate suc- cessor to Cimarosa, though in every sense a less pro- found musician. In 1816 his " Otello " marked a reform in the serious opera by his abandonment of the recitative secco, in which the reciting voice is accompanied by sparse chords, and his substitution of the recitative strumento, where the accompaniment is fuller and harmoniously fills in the vocal inter- ludes. In the same year he produced his greatest comic opera " The Barber of Seville " ; it was written in a month, a fact which elicited from Donizetti the com- ment " Quite possible, he is so lazy ! " This com- ment indicates more than any elaborate criticism the light and rapid method of composition then in vogue among Italian musicians. Rossini's operas are characterised by their continuous and delight- ful flow of melody; by their imposing effect which was the nearest approach he made to dramatic verity. He was insincere and at times heartless in the illustration of his text; using, for instance, runs, trills, and light display to express mystery and villainy in " Semiramide." His music is sensuous, pleasing; his accompaniments harmonious. He en- riched orchestral colour by his use of the wind horns and the harp, and by the introduction! of long pas- sages of crescendi. He did good service, too, by writing his own cadenzas and resolutely prohibiting the singer's improvisation. Rossini's marriage with the singer Isabella Col- ROMANTIC MUSIC IN ITALY. 385 bran he had written twenty operas in eight years led to an important change in his choice of opera ; for her sake he forsook comedy for tragedy. A still greater change resulted from his residence in Paris, where he was eventually given a definite salary as composer to the King. He came under the influence of French taste, and moreover devoted himself to an enthusiastic study of Beethoven's symphonies. The result is freer orchestration, greater delicacy of de- tail and breadth of style; and a greater attention to the necessities of the drama are triumphantly shown in his finest and practically latest work, " William Tell/' a new departure that was followed by other writers after his death in 1868. Among his immedi- ate successors the most popular have beenMercadente, Pacini, Bellini, and Donizetti. Bellini (1802-1835) is noted for his melodiousness and sentimentality. His " Sonnambula " (1831) is an idyllic elegy treated with musical felicity ; " Norma " has an excellent dramatic libretto which inspired the composer to admirable music, and demonstrates how a pure Italian style can give expression to effective dramatic utterance. Donizetti (1798-1848) was an imitator of Kossini, simpler, less pretentious, less original; a melodist who always sacrificed dramatic truths to mu- sical effect. His early opera " Zorai'de in Granata " gained him exemption from conscription ; and, on its first performance in Rome, he was carried to the Capitol and there crowned. His popular successes were with his " Lucrezia Borgia," " Lucia di Lam- mermoor," and " Don Pasquale." These lesser writers bring us to the greatest opera composer of the Italian school; a composer who in his various phases is an epitome of the musical prog- ress of the nineteenth century in Italy; who ranks 336 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. with the greatest in the operatic schools of other countries. Giuseppe Verdi was born near Busseto and died in 1901. His career divides itself into three periods ; two belong to the first half of the century ; the third will be touched upon later, for it belongs to the purely modern expression in Music. Verdi's great genius and sympathetic mind expanded to and marched with the changes of thought through- out the century. That the composer of the purely con- ventional Italian " II Trovatore " should write after he had passed the age of seventy such superb operas as " Othello " and " Falstaff," imbued with the viril- ity and romanticism of the young generation grow- ing up around him, is a phenomenon unparalleled in musical history. His education was at first local; but a scholarship soon enabled him to study for two years at Milan, where his pedantic teachers did not recognise special promise in their pupil. His first successful opera, " II Proscritto," was performed in Milan in 1839. A period of disappointment and despondency followed; and it was not until 1851 that the performance of "Kigoletto'' proved him to stand without a rival. His earliest operas are in the purely Neapolitan style, tunes strung on threads of recita- tives without unity or special connection with the drift of the libretto, intended to appeal solely to the ear. " Rigoletto " is the finest production of his second and melodramatic style characterised by viril- ity, by sharp contrasts between bursts of dramatic power and cheap dance music ; sentimental in pathos, boisterous in orchestration, yet alive with exquisite passages that are veritable swallow-flights of genius. To understand aright the development and elasticity of this remarkable genius, the man must be studied as well as the musician; for his music changes in ROMANTIC MUSIC IN ITALY. 387 artistic worth with the great political changes in Italy in the early part of the century, in which Verdi played an important part. Born under Austrian domination, when Music was shallow and heart- less, he was an ardent patriot and passionate ad- vocate of Italian Unity. During the war of libera- tion the cry " Viva Verdi " was often heard in Sar- dinia and Italy. Much of his well earned means went to help the national cause. After the war, as a member of the Assembly of Parma, he was an in- fluential advocate of the annexation of Sardinia, later he was a deputy in Parliament from Parma, and finally was appointed to reorganise the National Musical Institute. Thus it will be more easily un- derstood why his genius apparently mature in "Kigoletto," "II Trovatore," "II Traviata," when his individuality asserted itself apparently to the full should, after the thrilling, tragic, but triumphant experiences of the war of 1859, by which Italian unity was gained and Italian Nationality developed, flower again ; why the genius of this man, whose deepest and most humane emotions had been tried, deepened, and intensified in the terrible strug- gle he had endured with and for his countrymen, should mould itself anew and give expression in manner and matter to the new needs, new aspi- rations of Young Italy. The story of Verdi's later life belongs to the second part of this narrative. Therefore we must now survey briefly the contem- poraneous development of the Opera in France. 2 A 388 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEE III. BOMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. ALTHOUGH France owes the first growths of the national opera to the introduction of the Italian Opera, it rapidly developed into a distinctive form, distinct from the parent stock inasmuch as it threw aside the Italian preoccupation with melody and mere vocalisation, and nurtured a nobler dramatic form, finer as an art, based upon the idea persistently expounded by Gluck, that the opera must be a drama expressed in musical terms with due regard to dramatic sincerity and organic unity. Gluck fol- lowed in the footsteps of Lully; in later days Wagner's creations were the logical conclusion to Gluck 7 s theories. It is a curious fact that the French Opera, always distinctively national, should owe so much of its finest productions to foreigners. Yet so it is. Lully, called the father of the French Opera, was an Italian; Gluck, who stamped it with its artistic nobility and in Paris laid the seeds of musical re- form, was a Bohemian. Cherubini, Spontini, and Meyerbeer reached their highest development in France, and most of their work is classified as French music. Two immediate followers of Gluck lived into the beginning of the nineteenth century : Gretry and Mehul. Gretry (1741-1813), owing to the es- sentially French bent of his nature, has been called The Moliere of Music, and the father of the Comic ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. 389 Opera in France. Mehul (1763-1817) was the musician who best succeeded in maintaining Gluck's traditions it is said with even more than Gluck's musical skill. Mehul's music bears the impress of the vigorous will of the people of the first revolution, of their passionate conviction in the righteousness of their cause ; his chief operas were " Ariodant " (1799) and "Joseph" (1807). But his expressive dignified music had to give way to the more popular Italian operas that held sway during the time of the Empire. Spontini, the Italian (1774-1851), wrote his finest music for France. He held the post of composer of chamber music to the Queen Josephine. He early discarded the Italian method. His " Mil- ton " (1804) was influenced by Mozart; thereafter he wrote in accord with the French dramatic tradi- tions, and in his scenic display, individualisation of characters and scenes he foreshadowed Meyerbeer. His " Fernand Cortez " is the expression of the Napoleonic era, martial, tragic; but he touched his highest point in " Olympie " (1819) characterised by dramatic unity of plan and expression. Luigi Cherubim, the Italian (1760-1842), spent most of his life in Paris, where he was the director of the Conservatory of Music. In 1797, after the culmina- tion of the French Revolution, he produced his tragic masterpiece " Medee " and in 1800 his finest opera " Les Deux Journees," known in English as " The Water-Carriers." Cherubini's religious music will last longer than his now antiquated operatic writings. His Mass in C ranks very high: it excited the en- thusiastic admiration of Beethoven. Of Cherubini and his two contemporaries, Spontini and Mehul, Wagner wrote, " It would be difficult to answer them, if they now perchance came among us and asked ia 390 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. what respect we had improved on their mode of musical procedure." A number of native composers wrote with dis- tinction in the first half of the century, whose music, fine though it be, shows a tendency towards cheap and obvious theatrical effectiveness owing mainly to the influence of Meyerbeer. These were: Boiel- dieu (1774-1834) whose "Caliph de Bagdad" ap- peared in 1800, but was surpassed in his later man- ner by his refined and humorous " Jean de Paris " (1812), and by his chief work, "La Dame Blanche" (1825), the best comic opera of its day; Auber (1784-1871), who for a time was a commercial clerk in London, and later owed his musical cul- ture to Cherubini his chief operas were " Mas- saniello" (1828), " Fra Diavolo " (1830), and "Manon Lescaut " (1850); Halevy (1799-1862) wrote lofty tragedy, such as "La Juive " (1835), which contains passages of great beauty and power and still holds the stage, and sparkling comedy such as "L'Eclair" (1835); Adam (1803-1856), a pupil of Boieldieu and a writer of excellent ballet music ; and Felicien David (1810-1876), whose fame rests on his Symphonic Ode, " Le Desert/' written after a sojourn in the East, and distinguished by genuine local colour. The gradual decline of the French Opera from the grand form and ideal of Gluck, to a presentment that made a more direct appeal to ordinary popular taste, led to the brilliant success of one of the most re- markable figures in musical history Meyerbeer (1791-1864). This versatile composer, endowed with a keen intellect and extraordinary ability for continuous work, who changed his style as he changed his climate, was the son of wealthy German Jews. ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. 391 He studied under Clementi and Vogler and was originally intended for a pianoforte virtuoso. His early German operas were failures. He went to Italy and there modelled himself upon Italian methods, especially those of Kossini, and turned out a number of successful operas. But he wearied of what was not congenial to his intellect, of what his friend Weber considered a degradation of his talent. He re- turned to Germany, but settled finally in Paris. From 1824-31 he devoted himself to a profound study of French History and French Music, and qualified himself as a writer of French Operas. He became eminently the man of the hour at a time when Paris was the centre of the restless, experimental spirit that perturbed Europe after the partial subsidence of the social ferment created by the first Kevolution. The boundaries of class, of thought, of certain forms of national art had been overthrown. While the deeper underlying national note was everywhere struggling for expression, the styles and thoughts of any and every thinker were accepted if cleverly pre- sented. Meyerbeer's peculiar cleverness fitted him to be the exponent of this unrest, of a time when cleverness and artificiality, imitation and ostentation, existed side by side with genuine artistic ability. Thus it was that Meyerbeer appealed strongly to the popular taste, while musicians and critics recognised and deplored his meretriciousness even though it was redeemed by flashes of high talent such as character- ised the fourth act of " Les Huguenots," admired even by Schumann and Wagner. His most success- ful operas were "Kobert le Diable " (1831), "Les Huguenots" (1835), " Le Prophete " (1849), and " L'Af ricaine " (1865). His chief efforts were directed towards grandiose scenic effects. Of him 392 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Sir Hubert Parry writes : " The scenes are collections of the most elaborate artifices carefully contrived and eminently effective from the baldest point of view. But for continuity, development, real feeling, nobility of expression, greatness of thought, anything that may be truly honoured in the observance, there is but the rarest trace." Meyerbeer's influences on succeeding French com- posers is restricted to the occasional adoption of his general plan; but they have striven for greater dramatic sincerity, purer melody, like him they have written directly to their audience though they have not fallen into the snare of clap-trap effect. The most notable of his immediate successors was Charles Francois Gounod (1818-1893). At first this fine musician, whose nature was profoundly reflective and religious, wrote church music. He studied Pales- trina in Rome after gaining the Prix de Rome, and on his return to Paris studied theology with a view to taking orders. Fortunately he changed his mind, and again applied himself to religious music. His career was decided on hearing Mozart's " Don Giovanni." His first opera " Sappho " appeared 1851 ; but it was not till 1855 that the work upon which his fame rests--" Faust " was produced, an opera which has grown steadily in European favour and still ranks as one of the purest and most beauti- ful of the lyrical dramas of the century. No other of his operas, however, had equal success ; and his " La Reine de Saba " (1862), " Mireille " (1864), "Romeo et Juliette" (1867), "Le Tribut de Za- mora (1881) show less inspiration and are now rarely heard. He wrote some superb religious music, such as his "Messe Solennelle in G," the oratorio ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. 39$ " Redemption," and many beautiful songs such as Nazareth and There is a Green Hill far Away. One figure in French musical history of last cen- tury stands out pre-eminently as the expression of the revolt of the individual against conventional tram- mels, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) a Titan whose music represents the fine and noble side of Roman- ticism, as Meyerbeer's represents the superficial and evanescent ; a strong, bizarre personality, an emotional thinker, a daring innovator whose influence in France has become as Wagner's in Europe generally the pivot upon which modern music revolves. Born near Grenoble he was at first educated as a doctor, till his musical genius imperiously led him to follow his natural inclination. His life was a series of disappointments, struggles, of poverty, misunder- standing ; his marriage was unhappy, his friends few, his music was beyond the ordinary compass of the orchestra or the understanding of his contemporaries. He had a few ardent admirers such as Paganini who, on hearing the Symphonie Fantastique, fell on his knees and kissed Berlioz's hands, and the next morn- ing sent him a cheque for 20,000 francs. Berlioz's strange temperament and genius doomed him to dis- appointment and apparent failure; though his the- ories have practically been accepted by all succeeding musicians. The following sentences are a part of the musical creed of his life : " Music, in associating herself with ideas that she can evoke by a thousand means, augments the intensity of her own action, with the full power to that which is called poetry; concentrating iher united powers on the ear she charms but also can offend, on the nervous sys- tem she over-excites, on the circulation of the blood which she accelerates, on the brain that she caresses, 394 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. on the heart that she swells and causes to beat with redoubled strokes, on the thought which she expands immeasurably till it penetrates infinity . Music acts within the sphere that is her own, that is to say upon beings in whom the musical sense genuinely exists.' 7 Mr. Dannreuther says truly : " Berlioz's startling originality as a musician rests upon a physical and mental organisation very different from, and in some respects superior to, that of other eminent masters: a most ardent nervous temperament, a gorgeous imagination incessantly active, an abnormally acute sense of hearing, the keenest intellect of an analysing turn ; a violent will that manifested itself in a spirit of enterprise and daring equalled only by its tenacity of purpose and indefatigable perseverance. . . . From a technical point of view certain it is Berlioz's attainments were phenomenal. The gigantic propor- tions, the grandiose style of those broad harmonic and rhythmical progressions, the exceptional means for exceptional ends in a word, the cyclopean aspect of certain movements, such as the ' Judex Crederis' or the 'Lacrymosa' of his Requiem, are without parallel in musical art. He is supreme master of orchestration; no one before him had so clearly realised the individuality of each particular instru- ment (for in this he anticipated Wagner) ... his experiment in orchestral colour, his combination of single instruments or of groups of instruments are as novel and as beautiful as they are uniformly suc- cessful." Berlioz's musical compositions sound the whole gamut of human emotions and range from the most delicate and tender grace, such as his " Nuits d'Ete," to the most demoniac and delirious passion as the finale, " Orgies," of the " Symphonic Fan- ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FRANCE. 395 tastique " and the " Chorus of Devils " in the " Dam- nation of Faust " the best known of his works out of France. Among his other important works are the Overtures to " King Lear " and the " Eoman Carni- val " ; the opera of " Benvenuto Cellini " ; the dra- matic symphony " Romeo et Juliette," and the sym- phony " Harold in Italy." After Berlioz's fame was established as musical critic on the Journal des De- bats, the idea seized him to put together certain most salient episodes from Virgil's " ^Eneid " and create what he called a Shakespearian drama in music. This lyrical tragedy " The Trojans " required eight hours for its performance, and managers would have none of it. Berlioz was forced to cut it in two, and the latter half was produced under the title " The Trojans at Carthage." The composer, unfortunately, never saw the first half, called " The Taking of Troy," staged; and indeed not until November of 1899 has a performance of it been given in Paris, though it has been previously heard in Germany. Another unique figure ranges side by side with Berlioz through a master of a wholly different genre of music, Frederick Chopin (1809-1849). Born in Poland, of a French father and Polish mother, this curiously subjective delicate musician- adopted France for his home, albeit his desire was to be con- sidered the national poet in music of Poland. " I like to be to my country what Uhland is to Germany." Delicate in health as in mind, refined, sensitive to a fault, a persistent worker, ambitious, he, as vir- tuoso of the piano, surpassed all contemporary pianists with the exception perhaps of Liszt who did so much towards the popular understanding of his contemporary's work. His compositions are few in number, yet in them he showed himself a great in- 396 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. ventor for the piano, remarkable for the richness of his harmony, his complexity and elaboration of or- namentation. Schumann called him " the boldest and proudest spirit of the times," who " with rea- soned audacity expanded the range of musical ex- pression to an unprecedented degree." He combined spontaneity with elaborate and painstaking finish; for while he drew his inspiration from the Polish national folk-lore and folk-songs he had garnered in his youth, he was untiring in his manipulation so as to reach the highest point of beauty and refine- ment, scorning the commonplace and obvious, re- joicing in faultless rhythm and harmony. His finest works are his Etudes, Preludes, Ballades, Nocturnes, Mazurkas, and Valses. His peculiar tonality originated in his early familiarity with the older Lydian and Dorian modes in which the Polish folk-songs were written, and his having later to master the modern or western scale of music. Chopin represents the feminine element in music. He is said to stand in relationship to Beethoven as in poetry Leopardi stands to Dante. He counted among his friends in Paris, in addition to George Sand, whose influence worked mainly for good upon him, Liszt, Berlioz, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Delacroix the painter, and Heine. PART TWO. MODERN MUSIC. 1850-1900. EUROPEAN music divides itself primarily into two great schools considered as an art consciously han- dled as distinct from the natural and spontaneous expression of folk music as dissimilar from one another as are the two great races from which they have emanated: namely, German and Italian music, belonging respectively to the Teutonic and Latin Kaces. The characteristic qualities of each race are stamped upon the qualities and disposition of its music: the sunny, passionate, joyous, objective na- ture of the South has developed forms of music wherein melody is the chief factor ; whereas the more serious reflective, poetical, and subjective brain of the North has found pleasure in polyphony, in the skil- ful combinations and progressions of harmonious sounds. The third great school, that of France, while stamped with the national dramatic character- istics is nevertheless largely an outcome of the other two, in part formed and directed by their influences, as for instance through the efforts of the Italians Lully, Spontini, and Cherubini; of the Germans Gluck and Meyerbeer. During the latter part of the century in particular the other European coun- tries have developed an active musical life and an 398 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. endeavour to specialise their music by the study and development of their folk-songs and dances. It may, therefore, be of interest, to follow the course of the music of the last fifty years in Ger- many, Italy, and France, with a rapid survey of the other groups of European music; in particular of the great Scandinavian and the Slavonic races, be- fore giving an account of Music in England and America. MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. 399 CHAPTEK IV. MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. AT the threshold of the nineteenth century there stands the greatest master of absolute music Beet- hoven ; and at its exit lies the greatest of his succes- sors, Brahms. During seventy years of its course there lived that unique artistic personality Wagner, the mightiest exponent of the musical drama, whose influence has touched every modern school and is still incalculable in its effect. When Wagner was born (1813) Beethoven was 42 years old, Spohr 29, Weber 27, Kossini 21, Meyerbeer 22, Berlioz 10, Mendelssohn and Chopin 4, Schumann 3, Liszt his unfailing friend and exponent 2, and Brahms was not born until 13 years later. Wagner's reforma- tion of the musical drama was not a new order unre- lated to the past, but the logical outcome of and con- clusion to the principles laid down three centuries ago by the Italian Peri, developed by Gluck and Weber, based on those of the Greek Drama. A pro- found student and idealist Wagner could not tolerate the condition into which the opera had fallen. He found it devoid of any unity between the dramatic idea, action, and expression, devoid of any relation to the material life or thought of the people; and largely dependent upon the idiosyncrasies of the singers for the display of whose voices much of the music was written. He found the subjects usually banal, the " boobs" fqeble and unworthy, the har- 400 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. incurious interpretation of the themes by the orches- tra less thought of than charming and graceful ac- companiments to the songs. The Herculean task he set himself and accomplished in spite of the bitterest opposition was no less than the balanced union of the various arts, in particular of literature and music ; the production of a Musical Drama that should be the expression of the deepest emotions of his nation, that should become for the Germans as much an expression of their deepest and religious emotions as the Greek Drama was to the Greeks. To this end he drew his subjects from Teuton my- thology and Christian legends; he wrote his own "books" in strong alliterative verse, he reformed the technical methods of the opera to suit his needs. To quote his own words : " The plastic unity and simplicity of the mythical subjects allowed of the concentration of the action on certain important and decisive points, and thus enabled me to rest on fewer scenes, with a perseverance sufficient to expound the motive to its ultimate dramatic consequence. The nature of the subject, therefore, could not induce me in sketching my scenes, to consider in advance their adaptability to any particular musical form, the kind of treatment being in each case necessitated by the scenes themselves. It could, therefore, not enter my mind to engraft on this, my musical form, grow- ing as it did out of the nature of the scenes, the tradi- tional forms of operatic music, which could not but have marred and interrupted its organic develop- ment. I never thought, therefore, of contemplating on principle and as a deliberate reformer, the de- struction of the aria, duet, and other operatic forms ; but the dropping of those forms followed consistently from the nature of the subjects." MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. 401 The development of his theories can be studied in the chronological sequence of his operas. His first 2 " Rienzi " (1842), was written on Meyerbeer's plan; the first individual expression is in " The Flying Dutchman" (1843), and develops in " Tannhau- ser" (1845), "Lohengrin" (1850), "Die Meister- singer" (1868), the tetralogy of " Der Ring des Mbelungen" (18Y6), and "Parsifal" (1882). For the old aria form he substituted his " continu- ous melody" and the leit-motifs, a repetitive use of certain symbolic, or representative, phrases in which he tried to embody " the principal mental moods of his dramas in definite thematic shapes and to use those shapes whenever he desired to express those moods." Another important feature of his method is the independence of his orchestra, as one of the chief agents in the development of the plot, for to it mainly are confided the characterisation and ex- pression of the thoughts and emotions of the drama in imposing tone language. So radical a departure from the contemporary operatic methods naturally met with obstinate opposition and caused great pri- vations and sufferings to the innovator, who for many years was friendless and checkmated in his efforts. Richard Wilhelm Wagner was born at Leipzig in 1813. His education was good, he was early pro- ficient in Greek classics and studied Shakespeare profoundly, intending at one time to be a poet. In his student days he was a prolific composer, as well as a political disputant among his fellow-students. Weber's presence at his mother's house was a potent factor in turning his mind towards music. His first theatrical experience was gained as chorus-master under his brother at Wurzburg. He held posts of musical director and conductor in various German 402 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. towns and finally in 1839 he went to Paris. There his three years' sojourn was disastrous to him pe- cuniarily though he wrote his fine " Faust " Over- ture, many songs, his " Flying Dutchman," and also contributed many articles to the Gazette Musicale to earn the bare necessities of life. Each successive opera was received with greater bewilderment, dis- like, opposition. Spohr was one of the few who hailed the newcomer worthily. The public was hopelessly puzzled. "A feeling of complete isola- tion overcame me," Wagner writes, " it was not my vanity and I had not knowingly deceived myself, and now I felt numbed. I saw a single possibility be- fore me to induce the public to understand and partic- ipate in my aims as an artist." And to this end he began his voluminous literary writings about what has been termed " The Music of the Future." The political catastrophe of 1849 added to Wag- ner's difficulties ; as a participant therein he was ex- iled from Germany. For thirteen years he lived in Zurich beside his friend Liszt and elsewhere, and in 1864 the King of Bavaria called Wagner to Munich, and his patronage resulted in the building of the Bayreuth Theatre for the performance of " The Eing" and of "Parsifal." Wagner died an ac- knowledged master and genius in 1883. His son Siegfried Wagner by his second wife, the daugh- ter of Liszt is a follower of his father. His maid- en opera " Die Barenhauter," based on Grimm's fairy tale, was performed in Vienna in 1899. Though reminiscent, it is ingenious and well orchestrated. Liszt was instrumental not only in forwarding the production of Wagner's plays, of advocating his views, but in gathering round him at Weimar a group of young artists the so-called New School of MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. 403 German music whose aim was to carry out Wag- ner's ideas. These aims developed the strong na- tures and swamped the weak. Prominent among the self-assertive of Wagner's contemporaries was Peter Cornelius (1824-1874), whose " Barber of Bag- dad" (1858) is one of the most successful operas of the New Romanticists; the score is full of char- acter, the melody fluent, the themes well-chosen, the humour delightful. He and his Hungarian friend, the brilliant, witty Karl Goldmark (b. 1832) greeted Wagner's music with applause and stoutly championed it. In consequence, Goldmark's com- positions were at first unfairly dubbed imitative; but after a time justice has been done to the musi- cian, who while in sympathy with and certainly influ- enced by the greater genius whose innovations the young generation cannot afford wholly to disregard shows a definite and interesting individuality in his work. His fine overture " Sakuntala," his popular symphony " The Country Wedding " led the way for his opera " The Queen of Sheba " whose success has not waned. This was followed in 1882 by the opera " Merlin " orchestrated with great ability and feeling for colour, and containing some daring progressions. Among his later works are his " Sappho " overture, then considered the most diffi- cult work written for the orchestra, " The Cricket on the Hearth " (opera, 1896) and " The Prisoners of War" (1899). Anton Brucloier (1824-1896), a famous organist, is also an extreme Wagnerian. He has composed much chamber and organ music and eight sympho- nies strange composite structures of romance and counterpoint of which No. 3 is dedicated to Wag- ner. Felix Draeske (b. 1835), a man of high ideas 2s 404 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. and artistic workmanship with a gift of melody, be- longs to this group. He has composed various sym- phonies and operas ; one of the latter, " King Si- gurd " (1857), met with deserved success. The youngest members of the Wagnerian school are Cyrill Kistler (b. 1848), the most distinguished of the younger men, whose operas " Kunihild " and " Bald- er's Tod " are strongly influenced by the Bayreuth master, but his latest production, a musical comedy based on Kotzebue's " Eulenspiegel," is scored with greater individuality and contains good promise for the future; and Kichard Strauss (b. 1864) unrelated to the famous composers of waltzes an orchestral composer of ultra modern tendencies and undeniable power who had in 1880 completed his 12th op. Of his Symphonic Poems his " Thus spake Zarathustra " is, so far, " the last word " in orchestral programme- music. Engelbert Humperdinck (b. 1854), the com- poser of the delicate, graceful fairy operas " Hansel and Gretel" (1897) and "The King's Children" (1896) was a Liszt scholar and, in 1881-82, a special protege of Wagner. His " Moorish Ehapsody " for orchestra (1898) is charming and full of delicate suggestive colour. Since the days of the celebrated strife between the adherents of Gluck and Piccini in France there [has been no such bitterness and opposition in the his- tory of music as that between the Wagnerians and anti-Wagnerians in the years that followed the rec- ognition of the master as a powerful force, as eman- cipator according to one party, as iconoclast accord- ing to the other in the development of music. " The Music of the Future " was a war-cry that could stir the most violent passions in either of the oppo- nents. While one party rallied round a central fig- MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. 405 ure, the devotees of classical music did not borrow the name of any representative musician, although there was one of strong genius who upheld the traditions of abstract music in its purest though not in its most arbitrary forms. Johannes Brahms is the legiti- mate descendant of the unbroken line of the great German composers, of Bach and Beethoven, who were his models and is the one worthy successor to Beethoven that the century has produced. He was born in 1833, six years after the death of Beethoven, 20 years after Wagner's birth, when Mendelssohn was 14 and Schumann 13 ; and grew to manhood in the days of the strongest development of the Roman- tic movement, when Wagner's influence seemed to threaten the destruction of all form in the musical art. Brahms stood, as it were, at the parting of the ways and was destined to restore the classical tradi- tions of music. Fame, due recognition, came to him late, because he was neither innovator nor propa- gandist, when it was realised how sane and potent was the force that was at work in his powerful austere brain. ' Brahms sums up at the end of the nineteenth century what Beethoven initiated at the beginning. During the intervening years there had been an im- mense growth of instrumental music which had created with it a new material for treatment. Wag- ner did not claim to be the musician solely, but rather the great artist, and music the chief of his methods of expression. The very fact that his ad- herents claim that he killed the symphony the high- est form reached by the musical art suggests that Wagner is the dramatist in music, rather than the pure musician. To quote an eminent writer on music, A. Hadow : " Brahms is the composer who, while he maintained and developed the harmonic 406 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. traditions of the Romantic school, devoted himself to the restoration and evolution of musical struc- ture: who took up form where Beethoven left it, set it free from the conventions that greatest of mas- ters did not wholly succeed in loosening, and carried it to a further stage, to a fuller organisation. So far as concerns the technical problem of composition . . . the work of Brahms is the actual crown and climax of our Musical art ... he may claim the counterpoint of Bach and the structure of Beethoven. Not only has he entered into the inheritance of these two composers, he has put their legacies to interest and has enriched the world with an augmentation of their wealth." The son of a musician, Brahms's life was out- wardly uneventful. Schumann, and the great vio- linist-composer Joachim (b. 1831), early recognized him as a genius. Schumann hailed him with unerr- ing intuition as " he who should come." A seri- ous, dignified, earnest nature, Brahms was devoted to his art, unassuming, of simple habits, and much loved by his friends. A wanderer for many years, he finally settled in Vienna and died there in 1897. He began to compose when very young and has left a large quantity of magnificent work chamber- music, sextets, quintets, trios, "conspicuous for the completeness of their musical organism, origi- nality, profundity, and artistic reticence of style " sonatas, a number of exquisite songs, Hungarian dances, etc., and for orchestra his superb series of symphonies, the popular " Shicksallied " for chorus and orchestra, " The Triumphlied " celebrating the German victories of 18YO-Y1 and the noble " German Requiem " performed for the first time in 1868 at Bremen to an audience of 2000 gathered from all MODERN MUSIC IN GERMANY. 407 parts of Europe among whom were Joachim, Mme. Schumann, and Max Bruch. The most eminent living musician, since the death of Brahms, is the distinguished Rhinelander Max Bruch (b. 1838) who, after the performance of his fine setting to Schiller's " Song of the Bell " at the Birmingham Festival, was appointed successor to Sir Julius Benedict as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. Although at an early stage of his career he composed the opera " Lorlei " to a libretto originally written for Mendelssohn also two others his real field is orchestral and choral music of large design ; he is a master of fine, flowing melody, of effective treatment of large vocal masses. His chief works are his famous " Frith j of Scenen " for male chorus, soli, and orchestra ; his fine " Odys- seus " and still nobler " Achilleus " forms of oratorio in which the themes are treated episodically. Very beautiful, too, is the popular "Kol Nidrei" for tEe violoncello, founded on a portion of Hebrew ritual. His symphonies are held in high" repute; his Con- certo in G Minor is a worthy rival to Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor. Numerous honours have been conferred on him; and in 1893 he received the hon- ourable degree of Mus. Doc. from the University of Cambridge to represent German music on the occa- sion when Saint-Saens represented France, Bo'ito Italy, and Tschaikowsky Russia. The line of distinguished organist-composers is worthily represented by Josef Rheinbergen (b. 1839), who has written several masses, oratorios, organ sonatas, and one comic opera. Among the lesser masters in Germany may be mentioned Theodore Kirchner (b. 1823), a song writer of deserved popularity, pupil of Mendelssohn 408 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. and a follower of Schumann; Waldemar Bargiel (b. 1828), half-brother to Madame Schumann, has written some good pianoforte music ; Heinrich Hoff- man, organist (b. 1848), has composed an opera, several cantatas and an orchestral suite; and J. S. Mcode (b. 1853), whose symphonic ode " Am Meer " is described as aggressively modern, uncom- promisingly realistic, strong, and picturesque. MODERN MQSIC IN ITALY. 409 CHAPTER V. MODERN MUSIC IN ITALY. VERDI and Wagner were born in the same year, 1813. Wagner died in 1883, his Italian contempor- ary lived to see the dawn of the twentieth century and died in 1901. It has been a fashion to say that the final phase of Verdi's music, dating from the pro- duction of his Egyptian opera " Aida," was influ- enced by Wagner. More dispassionate criticism, however, has seen that Verdi is a man keenly in tune with the developments of his century,, the new growths, new needs, wherewith his own development has grown proportionately. His latest work is now recognised to be the logical outcome, the mature and refined result of his earlier work, wherein he rises from the most popular writer of his day to be the chief mas- ter of Italian music of his century. In " Ai'da " he endeavours to bring the Neapolitan Opera into closer relation with the aesthetic principles of the Greek Drama; the inspiring stream of melody is guided into artistic channels, it voices the dramatic passion of the theme; the orchestra, though still the accom- paniment to the voice, and not independent of it as with Wagner uses rich harmonies to interpret the emotions of the characters. In writing " Othello " Verdi felt the unsuitability of the old form to give full expression to the text ; he realised the truth of the theory of composition preached by Gluck, and reiterated by Wagner. In this opera he 410 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. has retained all the vocal beauty of the Italian Opera; but he has developed the orchestral part into an harmonious union with the interpretation of the text. At the age of eighty Verdi produced a very noble Comic Opera " Falstaff," written with vigour, spontaneity, and freshness, combined with perfect mastery of style. The old aria form is little used ; for it is substituted a form of dialogue in char- acteristic Verdian arioso style, with an orchestral accompaniment which elucidates the action of the drama with a series of significant picturesque phrases, not, however, the Wagnerian leit-motifs. Verdi's latest works, published in 1898, are of sa- cred character ; namely an "Ave Maria," a fine " Sta- bat Mater," " Laudi alle Vergine," and a dignified " Te Deum." The composer who ranks next to Verdi in popular estimation is Amilcar Ponchielli (1834-1886). His chief operas are " I Promessi Sposi," 1856, and " La Gioconda," 1876 also a fine Garibaldi Hymn, 1881. The later opera has had a marked in- fluence on some of the younger composers, for in- stance on Puccini. Both Verdi and Ponchielli owe a debt of gratitude to one who is both poet and musi- cian, who wrote the remarkably fine " books " for " Othello " and " Falstaff " ; to whose one published opera " La Gioconda " largely owes its excellence. Mefistofele, by Arrigo Boi'to (b. 1842), by reason of its modernity and innovations, created so great a storm among his partisans and detractors in 1868 that it was withdrawn by order after a run of a few nights. In its original form it is subtle, philo- sophic, in spirit with Goethe's creation, essentially un-Italian. A revised version was produced in 1875, full of dramatic force and good character!- MODERN MUSIC IN ITALY. 411 eation, that has lasting success. This opera shares with " A'ida " the honour of having led the Italian opera back to the public paths of dramatic verity. Sig. Boito has composed a second opera, " ISTerone," not yet performed, which was reported by Verdi to be a veritable masterpiece. The young Italian school of composers endeavours to carry on Verdi's methods, with, perhaps, greater condensation and complexity of rhythm. The aria da capo has completely disappeared, great care is taken in the cultivation of the beautiful Italian arioso style, combining dramatic power of German declamation witli the Neapolitan fluent, melodious qualities of song. The following are the most prom- inent among the young modern composers. Pietro Mascagni (b. 1863) is an instance of sudden leap into fame. After years of great poverty and pre- carious livelihood in travelling troupes, his famous opera, " I Cavalleria Rusticana," was written in answer to a competition for the best three operas to be performed free of expense in Rome. In May, 1890, this winning opera was performed and received with a storm of applause, and was very soon repeated in most European countries. The author was hailed as Verdi's successor. Mascagni, however, has not written any succeeding opera that increases his repu- tation. "L'Amico Fritz" (1891), "I Ranzau" '(1892) are marred by mannerisms and have little staying qualities. His " Guglielma Ratcliffe " (1895) and " Silvani " (1895) were favourably re- ceived, and in 1896 he produced a duologue based on F. CoppeVs " Le Passant" that has nowise de- tracted from his popularity. Giacomo Puccini (b. 1858) is an important com- poser of young Italy who also desires to free her 412 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. music from conventional fetters, and so to give it new life. Born of a line of musicians Puccini is less popular but a finer writer than Mascagni. His first opera, " Le Villi " (Willis Dancers, 1884), original and imaginative, was well received in Italy j "Edgar" (1889) was a failure owing to its eccen- tricities and exaggerations. It was followed b;y Manon Lescaut(1893), by the very successful "La Boheme " (1896) light, clever, melodious music, founded on Murger's well-known " La Vie Bo- heme." In 1900 his latest opera " La Tosca " was voted a work of very high order and according to Siegfried Wagner the music is " a river of melody " ; in form and style it is purely Italian. Verdi con- sidered Puccini as the foremost of his successors. Ruggiero Leoncavallo (b. 1858), musician and writer, aims to do for Italy what Wagner did for Germany, to compose a great Trilogy dealing with a national subject, namely, the Italian Renaissance. During a delay in the production of the first part, "I Medici," his one-act opera, " Pagliacci," effective rather than original was written and pro- duced in 1892 and ranks as the second most popular of recent operas. " I Medici " proved a failure, though clever and richly orchestrated; it is an ef- fort to combine German polyphony with Italian melody. Nevertheless, Leoncavallo is considered a man of promise, who has not yet matured. He has shown better work in his orchestral episode with chorus from Balzac's " Seraphila " (1895); his latest work, an opera, " Zaza," was well received. Among successful opera writers of second and third rank may be noted the names of Anteri Man- zocchi, Coronaro, Cilea, Tasca, Cipollini, Mugnone, Giordano among the younger men; and Spiro MODERN MUSIC IN ITALY. 413 Samara, a Greek by birth, though an Italian by training, from whom much is expected. Italy does not produce much of the larger forms of instrumental music other than the opera. Yet there are a few men who, if not of first rank, still have done excellent work. Giovanni Sgambati (b. 1843), pianist and protege of Liszt who con- sidered Sgambati's artistic tendencies and sympa- thies altogether " new German " has written three symphonies, pianoforte concertos, and quintets and, in 1895, a " Te Deum." Antonio Bazzini (b. 1818), the leading representative of Italian Classical, or absolute, music has written several oratorios and symphonies. The pianist Giuseppe Martucci (b. 1856) is the author of a good symphony and some concert music. Youngest and most promising of all is the young priest Abbe Perosi (b. 1872), a deep student of Palestrina, Bach and Wagner, who has already written several masses and oratorios. His " Resurrection of Lazarus " met with such success at the Italian Congress for Sacred Music in 1897 that Pope Leo XIII. appointed him horn, maestro of the Papal choir. Perosi's latest work comprises three out of a projected sequence of twelve oratorios dealing with The Life of Christ those already writ- ten are " The Passion," " The Transfiguration," and " The Resurrection " ; and a remarkable dramatic oratorio " Moses " (1901) which gives evidence of musical talent of the highest order. 414: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER VI. MODERN MUSIC IN FRANCE. THE national opera in France is an outgrowth of Italian and German influences modified by certain racially Gallic characteristics. "NTo transcendent genius has yet arisen to stamp his individuality on the French musical drama as Wagner and Yerdi have on the operas of their country. Hector Berlioz, the one essentially great French genius who, rever- ing the teachings of Gluck, thereby anticipated Wag- ner, came before his time; although his influence has been potent on the younger men, he has founded no school of composers. The opera of last century was dominated by Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Wagner in turn ; and it was Wagner's influence that inspired the young realistic writer on the brink of the new century. Gounod's " Faust " formed a definite landmark in French Music at a time when Berlioz and Wagner were looked upon as destroyers. Though he used the Meyerbeer ground-plan, Gounod shows dramatic sincerity, avoidance of clap-trap, unity of emotion and expression, definite characterisation. He intro- duces no representative themes, but for his recita- tive used the beautiful Italian ariso with full ac- companiment. f A new generation of composers have followed, of high ideals, who aim at dramatic sincer- ity. Prominent among these for his influence as for his compositions is the eminent Belgian .Cesar MODERN MUSIC IN FRANCE. 415 Franck (1822-1890). He gathered about him in Paris a number of young composers who studied with him at a time when no attention was given to the Symphonic style at the Conservatoire. Eranck wrote two operas, and the remarkable oratorios " Ruth " and " Redemption," characterised by loftiness of thought and purity of form. His fine scientific writing earned him the name of the Erench Bach. Edouard Lalo (1823-1892) was sixty be- fore due recognition came to him on the production of his fine opera, " Le Roi d'Ys " (1881), his charm- ing original ballet music " Namouna " (1882), and his " Symphonic Espagniole." Lalo held very defi- nite ideas concerning the esthetics of his art; his orchestration is masterly, his originality of rhythm gives distinction of style. Leo Delibes (1836-1891), typically Erench, wrote graceful, clever, comic operas " Le Roi Fa Bit," " Lakme "that have been suc- cessfully followed by Messager's " La Bassoche " and Chabrier's " Le Roi Malgre Lui " and delightful ballet music such as his " Coppelia " (1881). The early death of Georges Bizet (1838-1 875) 'de- prived France of one of her most brilliant musicians of superior capacities and promise. Author of the graceful " L'Arlesienne ?? he wrote the most popular opera after "Faust," "Carmen" (1875), a drama founded on essentially Erench lines with great dra- matic fidelity, fine local colour, and delightful melo- dies. It forms an important point in the develop- ment of the Erench Lyrical drama. Ambrose Thomas (b. 1831) depends for his fame mainly on his dainty popular opera "Mignon" (1866), the work of a sensitive, refined artist. Three men of distinguished ability and accom- plishment have been prominent figures during the last 4:16 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. third of the century. Camille Saint-Saens (b. 1835) is the most gifted and eclectic of living composers; his highest distinction has not been gained through the drama, but with large forms of abstract music. His most successful operas are his fine " Samson et Dalila" (1877), almost an oratorio; and the more spectacular " Henry VIII." (1883). In 1899 he scored a great success with his effective tragedy " Dejanire " in which use is made of the Greek scale per- formed by an orchestra of 250, and 200 voices, in the Arena at Beziers. Saint-Saens, an accomplished pianist, has written much fine chamber-music; a picturesque Cantata " La Lyre et la Harpe " : a Symphony in C Minor, unconventional and modern, in which the organ and piano are added to the usual orchestra; four symphonic poems, imaginative, in- geniously scored with complete independence of spirit, of which " La Dance Macabre " has made him famous throughout Europe. In sacred music he has also distinguished himself, especially with his oratorio " Le Deluge " and his fine " Requiem." Technically he is a master of his art, and a contra- puntist of high order. Jules Emile F. Massenet (b. 1842), though he gained the Prix de Rome, was unsuccessful until after the Franco-German war, when he composed his im- portant music to Le Conte de Lisle's drama " Les Erinnyes." His reputation was confirmed by his sacred drama " Marie Magdalene " (1873), in which he introduces " reverie of description " and touches of human passion. In all his work there is an ele- ment of poetry and a sensuous charm. The overture to " Phedre " is the finest and most scholarly of his instrumental works. His successful spectacular opera with ballet music " Le Roi de Lahore " (1877) MODERN MUSIC IN FRANCE. 417 was followed by "Herodiade" (1881), by "Manon" (1884), in which he retains the spoken dialogue but introduces a suitable orchestral accompaniment. " Esclarmonde " (1889) is more Wagnerian ; repre- sentative themes are used. His latest work " Cen- drillon " (1899), is characterised by his peculiar style, graceful and full of charm. The musician whose aim is to create a distinctive French opera through an amalgam of the plan of Meyerbeer, the style of Gounod, the theories of Wag- ner, is Ernest Eeyer (b. 1823), a man of strong convictions and high ideals, who has not met with adequate recognition. His chief operas are " Sig- urd " (1884), " Salammbo " (1890). He describes the French school he has ably written about as " af- fected with Wagnerism, in different degrees, the sole precaution to take is not to drown our personality." It is indeed eminently natural that Wagner's idea, dramatic fidelity, should appeal to a nation essen- tially dramatic. The young writers allow them- selves, however, to be hampered by public predilec- tion for the Meyerbeer plan, by the inevitable ballet. They are sincere in their work; they endeavour to be sympathetically in touch with their subject, write beautiful arias, but lack daring and originality. The most prominent members of the young school are: Alfred Bruneau (b. 1857), the first French composer thoroughly to apply Wagner's theories. He is recognised as " the standard-bearer " of the school. His lyrical drama " Le Keve " (1891) is unconventional and realistic, as is also his later suc- cessful work, " L'Attaque du Moulin." His aim is " union as intimate as possible between the music and the words, to create a vibrant human concen- trated drama, to treat essentially French and modern 418 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. themes." Victor Jonciere (b. 1839), an ardent champion of the young school has written several operas and a " Symphonic Romantique " : Theodore Dubois (b. 1837) is a writer of operatic and cham- ber music: Charles M. Widor (b. 1845) is ,best known by his charming ballet music " La Korri- gane"; B. Godard (b. 1849), G. B. Salvayre (b. 1847), and Mile. Cecile Chaminnade (b. 1862) have written good work in various forms. There remains to be noted a group of men of very advanced ideas, several of them pupils of Cesar Franck, who are humorously called " La Repub- lique Franckaise." Foremost of the group is Vin- cent d'Indy (b. 1852), who has scored success with his symphony " Wallenstein " and his dramatic legend " Le Chant du Cloche." G. Faure (1845) and Camille Chevillard are fine symphonists. Au- gusta Holmes (b. 1847 in France of Irish parents) is a writer of extraordinary talent, whose fine sym- phonic poem, " Andromede," was produced in 1899 with great success. The French public and mu- sicians owe much in the rapid growth and apprecia- tion of modern music to the enlightened discrimi- nating efforts of the brilliant conductors Pasdeloup ,(1819-1887), Lamoureux (1834-1899), and Co- lonne (b. 1838), who have made opportunities, till then non-existent, for the production in Paris of modern European as well as French music. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. CHAPTEE VII. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS OF MUSIC IN EUROPE. ALTHOUGH the history of music concerns itself mainly with the musical art of three countries, there has flourished throughout Europe distinctive varie- ties of folk-song and dance, which in the nineteenth century grew into importance and form the nucleus of distinctive national music, such as that of Spain and Portugal, of Scandinavia, of the CzecK and Slavonic races. These peoples have given of their legends their memories to the conscious workers in sounds and words who have produced national, racial music of partly nurtured, partly spontaneous growth. I. SPAIN" AND PORTUGAL. During two-thirds of the nineteenth century Spain and Portugal have been under the influence of Italian Music, in particular that of Rossini. Musicians studied in Italy and wrote for the Italian Stage, notably " Portugallo " (1762-1836), who is ranked as the chief Portuguese composer. In Spain the national element showed itself in the Opera Bouffe through the introduction of folk-songs and dances in turn fantastic and sensuous, vivacious and lan- guorous, swayed by rapid contrasts of moods, ex- pressed by changing individual rhythm such as the dance, the Zarzuela. The famous singer Garcia 2c 420 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. did much both in Spain and Brazil to develop the national music ; Soriano Fuertes introduced Spanish subjects and songs into the opera; Barbieri wrote ex- quisite light music, founded on his fine collection of Cancioneri of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The chief living Spanish musician is Felipe Pedrell, an ardent nationalist in music. He has written operas, symphonies, and a fine Dramatic Trilogy. He has assimilated most of Wagner's theories, but, as a member of the melodious Latin race, he objects to the eclipse of the voice by the polyphony of the instruments ; also, he is endeavour- ing to re-establish the Mozarabian plain-song. Among the younger men may be noted Granado, called the Spanish Grieg; Breton, Nicolai, Chapi, Espi, Santesteban, who in different degrees are en- dowed with the supple fantastic imagination of the Spanish race. The Portuguese possess exquisite songs, Modinhas, and characteristic dances, Hoia, which are used in the modern compositions. The most distinguished living artists are De Freitas Gazal, a learned writer of sacred music; M. Angelo Pereira, a good cham- ber musician who has also written operas and sym- phonies; August Machado; M. Alfred Keil, the popular author of the hymn " A Portugueza " and the Cantata " Patrie." A similar impetus had in Brazil been given by the collection of folk-songs, and by the efforts of Carlos Gomes, a Brazilian musician, who wrote several operas and popular songs such aa his " Song of the Needle Gun." Portuguese music is distinguished by a well de- fined individuality, poetic imagination, and a ten- dency towards picturesque description. Great stress is laid on virtuosity and on vocal technique. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 421 II. SCANDINAVIAN MUSIC. The three great branches of the Scandinavian races compose characteristic music. Scholastically it is allied to the German school, as exampled by the prolific Danish orchestral composer, Niels W. Gade (1817-1891), the friend and disciple of Mendels- sohn, whose nationality shows itself, however, in cer- tain cadences and in his uniformly grey tonality. For Folk Music, and especially that of northern and hill peoples, Norwegian, Scottish, and also that of Poland, is written for the most part in the minor keys and with the chromatic scale. Northern music expresses a yearning melancholy spirit, an ardent perpetual longing, natural to the hill and sea folk of northern mist-swept lands. In Norway Halfden Kjerulf (1815-1868) wrote his eminently national songs to the words of the poet Bjornson during Norway's struggles for freedom and rebirth of mental and artistic activity; also stirring quartets and choruses for male voices, expressive of national aspirations. The greatest representative of Scandinavian music is the pianist and composer, Ed- vard Grieg (b. 1843), whose national qualities are neither fitful nor merely unconscious. His writings are coloured by a strong Scandinavian tonality: he is poetic, descriptive, and realistic as his subject dic- tates. He studied the music of Schumann and Chopin while a student in Germany; but as his in- dividuality and talent matured he threw himself into an absorbing study of Norse and Danish folk music and dances, so that, while in the main his form has remained German, his expression is more purely racial and individual than any other composer but Chopin. 422 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Among other valued Norwegian musicians are Tellef sen, friend and pupil of Chopin ; J. S. Svend- sen, who is a cosmopolitan writer of symphonies, rhapsodies, etc.; Ole Olssen, a gifted writer of sonatas and symphonies; and the famous violinist, Ole Bull (1810-1880), who during his travels in Europe and America did much to popularise Nor- wegian music. J. A. Soderman (1832-1878) is considered the foremost of Swedish composers. His masterpiece is a Mass for men's voices and orchestra, character- ised by a high degree of masterly finish and original- ity; his compositions are Northern rather than specially Swedish, and bear the impress of an ener- getic nature. He has also written the setting to many of the songs of the Swedish poet Bellman. A. F. Lindblad wrote many national songs and was the master of the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind. The violinist, S. Saloman, wrote several operas ; one was produced at Weimar at the request of Liszt. Emil Sjogren has recently written a curious episode for orchestra, " Wustenwanderung der Heiligen Drei Kb'nige " ; in 1899 an opera by A. Hallen was per- formed eight times in a fortnight, and an opera by Elfride Andree has been accepted for the Royal Opera, Stockholm. In Denmark, among contemporaries of Gade are Hans Lumbye, who has gained for himself the sobriquet of the Northern Strauss ; Edward Lassen, a song writer ; Asgard Hamerik, whose best work is a fine " Symphonie Spirituel," composed (1866) the "Festival Cantata" to commemorate the New Swedish Constitution; and the composer Hallstrb'm, who has completed (1899) the opera " Neaga " to the " book " written by " Carmen Sylva," Queen of Koumania. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 423 III. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. In Holland, while there is a definite individual- ity in the works of Dutch composers, they are never- theless allied to the German school. Among the important writers of the century are Andretan Kate (1796-1858), the operatic writer; Eduard Silas, who has composed fine sacred music, among other things an oratorio, " Joash," performed at the Nor- wich Festival (England) in 1863. The composi- tions of the Amsterdam organist, Richard Hoi, belong to the modern Romantic German school, and include masses, symphonies, songs, and oratorios. Jan Blockx, one of the youngest of Dutch com- posers, has recently produced a successful opera and five Flemish dances, lively and cleverly scored. Indeed, in Belgium, whatever is distinctive in music proceeds from the Elemish element, as in liter- ature and in art. What is not Flemish is allied to the French school; and the greatest of Belgian Musicians, Cesar Franck, deliberately wrote as a French musician. The chief promoter of the Flem- ish musical movement, P. L. L. Benoit (b. 1833), gathered round him a group of enthusiasts at Ant- werp ; the movement resulted chiefly in isolating the composers who used exclusively Flemish words. His output of operas and large orchestral works was enormous. Among his contemporaries are the or- ganist, A. J. Goovaerts, who has endeavoured to reform church music ; Paul Gilson, Pierre de Mol, a writer of oratorios, and Edgar Tinel, a writer of lyrical dramas and of a remarkable oratorio, St. Franciscus (1883), in which he made an attempt to return to the Italian form of Carissimi, though em- ploying modern musical material and including the 4:24 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. full resources of Wagnerian orchestration ; the result is interesting, but shows a loss of religious atmos- phere. IV. HUNGAEY. Hungarian National music is a product of mixed races, of the Wallachian, Slav, Tzigane (or Gipsey), dominated by that of the Magyar, descendants of the ancient Scythians of the Tartar Mongolian stock who settled in Hungary in the ninth century. The curious rhythm (known as " alia zoppa," or limping manner), the syncopation of the Magyar wedded to the characteristic and ornamental embellishments and grace notes of the Tzigane, has given birth to a music of impetuous piquant characteristics; com- posed, improvised by a people who are> temperament- ally, perhaps the most musical in Europe. Their favourite instruments are the violins, violas, bowed zithers, and the cimbelon, or dulcimer, the prototype of the pianoforte. Among the most important forms of Hungarian music are the Verbunkos, Csardos or tavern dances, the Hallgatos Nota, dances listened to, the Kanasz- Tanez or swineherd's dance used by the lower classes. Several German and Austrian musicians have fallen under the spell of this weird, fascinating music, including Haydn, Brahms, and Joachim. Liszt who is usually classed under French music- is a pure Hungarian. He has written much national music, such as his rhapsodies, marches, and his Hun- garian Symphonic Poem, his Carnival di Geste, and his grandiose " Messe de Gran." In his richly col- oured symphonic poems he in the form antici- pated Berlioz's Programme music. Berlioz empha- sised the dramatic elements. Liszt emphasised the THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 425 pictorial and symbolic bearings of his theme. It was Berlioz who familiarised Europe with the fa- mous Rakocsy march, the national Hungarian march. Hummel, Stephen Heller, and Karl Goldmark are Hungarians, but belong to the German school, and show little or no racial tendencies. The great vio- linist Joachim's " Hungarian Concerto " is consid- ered one of the masterpieces written for the violin. Of Hungarian operas, written to themes founded on national events, Fra^ois Erkel was the initiator and won local celebrity with his work. Good operas have been written by Csaszar, Faye, Farkas, and Alexandre de Bartha, who introduced the Hungarian opera into Paris. Beautiful rhythmical music has been composed by Rozsavalgyi ; Magyar marches and dances by the brothers Gungl and Kuch; national fantasies by Szekely, and by Egressy, who wrote the national hymn, the Szazat, or appeal. Religious music is represented by Louis de Beliczar and the Abbe Bogisch. v. BOHEMIA. Music was cultivated in the sixteenth century in Bohemia, which then boasted of a Latin opera. Na- tional energy was crushed during the Austrian oppression; musicians allied themselves to foreign schools Myslivecek gained the title of " II Divino " in Italy; Reicha settled in Paris; Gefrometz, who wrote " Agnes Sorrel " ; Tomasek, a fine musician, overshadowed by Beethoven, and Dussek, greatest of all, lived abroad. In 1860, however, a great impetus was given to National reawakening by the Imperial gift of liberty, that restored Bohemia to an inde- pendent State. Dramatic writers wrote operas on 4:26 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Tcheck themes; poets and musicians turned once again for the inspiration to the villages for their stores of legends, and their wonderful melodies. The movement was initiated in music by Skraup (d. 1862), who is composer of the Bohemian National hymn, " Kde Domov Miej " (When Lies My Coun- try), and continued enthusiastically by Smetana (1822-1884), who wrote two operas and six sym- phonies on national themes. He was ably seconded by his compatriots, the operatic writers Bendl, Fibrich, Sebor, Roskosny. The special characteristics of Bohemian music originate in the Tcheck element of the race, which endows it with energy, local colour, and genuine traditions. The polka was originated by a Tcheck servant named Anne Slezak; the Furiant, another species of Slavic dance, is used by Bohemians, Poles, and Cossacks. The mature expression of Bohemian music is reached by Dvorak (b. 1841), one of the most emi- nent if not the foremost of living musicians. Born in a village, he led a life of great struggle; he fell under the influence of Wagner for a short spell, awoke from it, and became famous by his character- istic works. The " Spectre Bride," " Slavische Tanze," the brilliant symphony in F, his " Sym- phonie Pathetique," are of the noblest of modern workmanship; likewise the famous Pianofore Quin- tets, and in song writing, his delightful "Ziegeuner- lieder." Dvorak's contribution to the Sonata or Symphonic form is the introduction of the Dunka, or Elegy, as a slow movement ; and of the Fur i ant in place of the Scherzo. He ranks with the classical school, inas- much as he is concerned in the highest production of sound rather than the changing phases of emotion* THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 427 He has not, however, the reticence and finish of the older masters, and is lavish with his colour effects. The new departure of his work, as a whole, is his use of the chromatic scale as a unit, and not merely as a point of colour as with Grieg, or an ornament as with Chopin. This attribute of his music is founded on the fact that the diatonic scale dating from 1600, established by Sebastian Bach and accepted in the three great musical countries, was unrecognised in Bohemia ; so that now, in the evolution of Bohemian distinctive music, this scale is handled from the out- side, without its fixed limitations, with an equal re- lation between the notes instead of the unequal rela- tionship of the diatonic scale. To Dv6rak chromatic passages are, to quote an eminent critic, part of the essential texture of a work, and this extended scale permits of new keys, which stretch the capacity of our symbols to the uttermost, but give his work a mar- vellous warmth of colour and richness of tone where- with his vivid racial imagination produces marvel- lous effects of surprise and crisis. VI. POLAND. Erudite polyphonous music has existed for sev- eral centuries in Poland, whose national instrument is the lute. A rapid development in the eighteenth' century introduced music into a social atmosphere by means of the Theatre ; the first local opera to Polish! words was written by Kaminski. The most im- portant writer was Joseph Eisner (1767-1854), the master of Chopin and composer of twenty-two operas and four symphonies. He advocated the adaptabil- ity of the Polish language to music. Kurpinski, a man of greater imagination and author of fifteen 428 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. operas, wrote many Polonaises, a national form of dance, originally a court dance, that became popular- ised. Chopin, who wrote for the French people, was the most distinctive Polish composer. He brought the Polonaise and Mazurka to the highest form of development ; he lifted them from the commonplace, used for them Polish national airs, and, indeed, re- tained little more than the original intensely national dance rhythm. The most important operatic work of the century which gained much local repute was written by Monuisko (1819-1872), a learned harmonist, whose eight sonatas on the Crimea and national songs show freshness and fertility of mind characterised by per- sonal and racial qualities. Good modern writers of chamber music are Novalkowski, Dombrowski, Yelen- ski, Moskowski, and Paderewski, the pianist. VII. EUSSIA. The emancipation of Russian music, with its various indigenous elements, including Cossack, Polish, and Jewish, dates from the beginning of the century. The first impetus was given by Glinka (1804-1857), whose opera, "La Vie de la Tzar," was performed by national musicians, the songs were modelled on existing national popular songs. An- other opera was founded on Russian legendary his- tory, and Finnish music was used for the ballet. The retreat of Napoleon from Moscow and the vic- tories of Kutusow gave birth to new patriotic music of all kinds; Serow (1820-71) wrote operas of bar- baric splendour, and Dargomijsky (1813-68) waa the originator of the lyrical drama in vogue now, THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 429 whose melodion, " Le Convive de Parre," is based on a poem by Pouchkine. The " New School " was founded by a group of eager nationalists, who modelled themselves upon Glinka for his intellectual brilliancy and fixity of design; on Dargomijsky for his efforts to free music from fixed laws; on Berlioz as the finest master of instrumentation; on Schumann who united a knowl- edge of subtle, profound harmony to a melodic con- ception. Wagner they admired, but they considered his theories as too essentially German. The mem- bers of the group were: Balakerew (b. 1836), who founded a national school of music at St. Petersburg, wrote symphonies, mazurkas, and national overtures, and harmonised a collection of folk-songs. Cesar Cui (b. 1835), son of a French father and a Lithuanian mother, a conspicuously original fig- ure a general officer, professor of fortifications, composer and editor of a musical paper. An elab- orate harmonist, he wrote both comic and serious operas founded on themes by Heine, Hugo, and Bichepin. Moussorgsky (1839-1886) was a vocal composer who excelled in declamatory music. A man of exu- berant vigour, insufficiently trained technically, he threw aside the accepted sincerity of form and pushed dramatic truth to crude naturalism. Borodin (1834-1887), a fine flexible writer, is the most scientific of the group. His opera, " Prince Igor," is founded on the Russian story of the struggle between princes and the southern people, in which he uses the old Polovtsinian dances. His delicate, characteristic symphonic sketch, " Dans les Steppes de 1'Asie Centrale," was frequently played by Lamoureux. 430 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. Rimsky-Korsakow (b. 1844) began his career in the navy. He is a man of imagination, of extraor- dinary fecundity, vigorous, graceful, and withal a patient contrapuntist. He has written several operas. " La Pskovitaine " illustrates an episode in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and contains good chord effects, striking contrasts, and a grandiose finale. He has written much other orchestral music, fantasies on Serbe melodies. His Suite " Schehera- zade " is well known throughout Europe. Among the Eclectic writers Rubinstein stands foremost (1827-94), a brilliant pianist and com- poser. A man of enormous productivity, he wrote in every style ; among his best works are his Drama " Le Demon," his Concerto " Caprice Russe " for piano and orchestra, etc. Tschaikowsky (1840-1873) was a follower of Liszt, an adherent of classicism, though all his work is pervaded by a strong personal note. His life was one of hard struggle, poverty, and tragic unhappi- ness ; fame came too late to alleviate the gloom of his existence, and to this suffering is due the note of despair in much that he wrote, the poignancy of his deservedly popular " Symphonic Pathetique," of his brilliant Concerto in B flat His " Overture Solen- nelle, 1812," commemorates the invasion of Russia by Napoleon. Alex Lvow, chief writer of sacred music, is the composer of the majestic national anthem, " Boje Tsara Khrani." The younger generation of musicians is of an ardent, eager nature that shows due attention to form in spite of the fermentation of mind, the youth- ful strength and daring of an ascendant school. Chief among them is Alexander Glazownow (b. THE YOUNGER SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. 431 1865), technically well equipped, and shows a fine distinction of form in his Symphonic poems: An- tonio Arensky (b. 1861), whose opera, "Un Songe sur la Volga," is full of fine melody and imagination; Anatole Liadow (b. 1856), the writer of chamber music that has met with deserved admiration; and Rachmaninov for his pianoforte music and his Fan- tasia in E for the Orchestra. PAET THREE. MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA, 1800-1900. CHAPTER VIII. MUSIC IN GEEAT BRITAIN. DURING the first half of the century English musicians were dominated by the potent influence of Handel (d. 1759), who had written seventeen ora- torios for the country of his adoption; an influence in sacred music that was strengthened by Mendels- sohn when, in 1846, he produced his " Elijah " in England, having previously written his " Hebrides " Overture (1832) and his "Italian Symphony" (1833) for the Philharmonic Society. It is com- monly said that Music became a lost art in Britain on the expulsion of the Stuarts; other historians affirm that the deadening of all efforts towards a national musical expression such as three centuries ago was represented by the distinguished musician Purcell (1658-1695) and later by Dr. Arne (1710- 1778), who was sufficiently original to withstand the Germanising influences of Handel was due to the rule of the Hanoverian Kings. However this may be, the more serious forms of music have appealed most strongly to the English taste, and England of MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN. 483 the century can boast of many fine oratorios and sacred cantatas from Sterndale Bennett's " Woman of Samaria" (1867), Macfarren's " John the Bap- tist" (1873), and "Joseph" (1877), Stainer's "Daughter of Jairus " (1878), to the many fine works written during the last twenty years. Organ music, also, has been produced by an unbroken line of fine organists such as Ouseley, Oakeley, Prout, Elvey, Martin, Goss, Best, Stainer, Smart, Bridge, etc., etc. The most essentially English form of vocal music is the Glee from the Anglo-Saxon word gligg, music unaccompanied part music for three voices, usually male, the purest polyphonic music " in Sonata form " written for the voice. The golden period of Glee writing was during the last two-thirds of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. The Glee Club (1787-1857) was at once the outcome and an incentive; the most important glee writers were: Webbe, Calcott, Horseley, Att- wood, Spofforth. A number of good ballads were written during the first half of the century by com- posers who wrote English operas with spoken dia- logue, and no attempt at unity and little dramatic fidelity. In 1809 S. J. Arnold opened the Lyceum Theatre for the production of English operas which were written by Horn, King, Davy, Braham, Bar- nett, Loder, Macfarren, Balfe, Benedict, Wallace, etc. ; operas that, with the exception of Balf e's " Bo- hemian Girl" (1848) of world-wide fame, are for- gotten. One or two of the men are remembered as the authors of a special song, such as Braham of " The Death of Kelson " ; Davy who wrote fifteen operas of "The Bay of Biscay"; Loder of the " Old House at Home." Nevertheless, good work was done, whose influence lasted when the operas 434 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. were forgotten. John Barnett's " Mountain Sylph " (1834) was the first English opera constructed in the acknowledged form of its age; Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855), famous for his part-songs, wrote charming English music in his operas, " Home, Sweet Home," among other songs. William Wal- lace's (1812-1865) "Amber Witch" brought him a commission for the Grand Opera, Paris. Hugo Pierson's name lives by his fine oratorio " Jerusa- lem " (1852) and the song " Ye Mariners of Eng- land." One composer stands pre-eminent among early Victorian musicians, a classicist of distin- guished talent, acknowledged throughout Europe. Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875), the worthy successor to Purcell, is the musician's mu- sician owing to his intellectually constructed har- monies and progressions, his refined thought, delicacy of finish, sensitive feeling for form and the exquisite balance of means to ends. His chief works are his cantatas, " The Woman of Samaria " (1867), " Par- adise and the Peri" (1862), and poetically-sug- gestive chamber music. Early in the second part of the century, in spite of the meretricious influence of the Italian Opera, persistent efforts were made to develop national music led by men such as the Prince Consort (no mean musician), by Sir Julius Benedict, August Manns and other eminent conductors of the various musical societies; by the principals of the active Royal Academy and Colleges of Music ; by the unsuc- cessful effort to establish an English Opera House; by the several annual and triannual festivals through- out Britain, the Eisteddfods in Wales, that afford valuable opportunities to young progressive talent. The most eclectic and popular of the distinguished MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN. 435 group of modern writers is Sir Arthur Sullivan (b. 1842, d. 1900), a highly cultivated musician " who cannot write ungrammatically even if he wished." His reputation was established by a quan- tity of serious and sacred music such as his Sym- phony in E (1866), his fine oratorio, " The Light of the World" (1873), and his acknowledged master- piece, " The Golden Legend," founded on Longfel- low's poem. His world-wide popularity, however, rests on his series of English comic operas " Pina- fore/' "Patience," "The Yeomen of the Guard," " The Mikado," etc., to " books " written by W. S. Gilbert, the humorous poet; by his grand opera, "Ivanhoe," which was hardly so successful as it merited. For his latest opera " The Rose of Persia " (1899) and another on which he was at work in 1900 the " books " have been written by Basil Wood. Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (b. 1847), an ambitious scholarly man, desirous of producing only his best work, taught the violin and piano for years in Edinburgh. His first genuine success was with his Pianoforte Quartet in E; this was followed by his Scottish Rhapsody on old melodies, his mature Scottish Pianoforte Concerto, which, according to Von Bulow, rank him as the founder of the young Scottish School of which Hamish MacCunn (b. 1868), author of the opera " Jeanie Deans " (1896), " Diarmid " (1897) on a poem by the Marquis of Lome, " Queen Hynde of Caledon " (1898), etc., is the most important young composer. Mackenzie's best works are his oratorios " Jason " and the " Rose of Sharon" dramatic music helped by representative themes, by his grand opera " Columbia " (1883) and the lovely orchestral ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci " : while his grand symphonic power finds full 2 D 436 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. expression in his " Dream of Jubal." Sir Hubert Parry (b. 1848), a learned, thoughtful musician, was appointed Professor of Music at Oxford in 1899. His setting of Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound " (1880) has fitting atmosphere and harmonious colouring. Of his mature works the most important are his polished, original cantata " A Song of Dark- ness and Light" (1898) and the masterly oratorios "Job" and "Judith." Frederic Hymen Cowen (b. 1852), a graceful, melodious composer, has writ- ten five symphonies full of energy and feeling; sev- eral songs and cantatas, the delicate orchestral suite " The Language of Flowers," his opera " Harold " is individual and well orchestrated. Dr. Villiera Stanford (Irish, b. 1852), a man of advanced theories, has done much to further definitely na- tional music by his romantic comic opera " Shamus O'Brien" (1896) of high quality; his settings of the " Voyage of Maeldune " and of Le Fanu's rol- licking ballad " Phaudreg Crohoore," etc. He has also written two oratorios, several large orchestral works, in particular his " Irish Symphony," in which he makes use of Irish modes and many old Irish airs. During the last twenty years a group of vigorous young writers have done good work, many of them under the influence and teaching of the above-named living composers. Among them two have made especial mark Edgar Elgar (b. 1857), who has written oratorios, orchestral ballads rich in device, and the " Gordon Symphony " (1899) finely scored, and M. S. Coleridge Taylor (of African descent, b. 1875), whose orchestral Trilogy, inspired by Long- fellow's " Hiawatha," is individual, with intensity, vivid contrasts, and good workmanship, in which representative themes are used. Much, also, is ex- MUSIC IN GREAT BRITAIN. 4.37 pected from Edward German (b. 1862) and Gran- ville Bantock (b. 1868), who have written excellent large orchestral works; good work has been written by Dr. Waif or d Davies, William Wallace, Arthur Somervell, Eeginald Steggal, Harry Ear j eon, and Ethel W. SrnytL PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK IX. MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. " ALL things must have their beginning, and this, though small, is important. We know that our music is mean; but we hope not to have a low seat among nations, and as we hope to have a history of the art worth preserving, we would not lose the past but carefully gather it up and set it with the future, that the contrast may appear more bright and beau- tiful." Thus George Hood wrote in 1846 in his History of New England of an art which, while it has taken a firm hold on the affection of the people, has not yet developed into any sharply differenti- ated school of music in any country in America. In the older civilisations of America, such as Mexico and Brazil, there is a definite music that was engrafted by the Spanish and Portuguese conquer- ors, fed by musicians, both foreign and native, and ihas created a school allied to the Spanish and Portu- guese and therefore to that of Italy. In Canada and in the United States the condition of Music has been fairly similar; for though there is in both a great admixture of races the austere in- fluences of the Puritan settlers stamped its mark upon all sesthetic development and forced its growth into definite narrow channels. Prior to 1800 secu- lar music was practically tabooed, except in the French sections of Canada; psalmody was the one form tolerated. Indeed the progress of music in MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 439 the States may be taken as typical of the general development in North America; and as such it will now be described. The introduction of the oratorio was followed by the acceptance and cultivation of other forms of orchestral and chamber music conse- quent upon the formation of the Philharmonic So- ciety in Boston about 1810. Five years later the Boston Haydn and Handel society was established, and identified itself with the Church Reforms of Dr. Lowell Mason (1792-1872), who is considered the father of American Musical culture. To him was due the foundation of the Boston Academy of Music, also the introduction of music as a public study; and the first report of 1838 of the School Committee is said to be the Magna Charta of Musi- cal Education in the States. He also originated the Teachers' Convention, for the better instruction of teachers, and in 1868 the States were represented by 134 teachers. A Sacred Musical Society was founded in ISTew York, a Harmonic Society in Balti- more, a Beethoven Society in Portland. A few Glee clubs sprang up; the pianoforte was imported from Europe and " The Battle of Prague " was equally appreciated in genteel parlours on both sides of the 'Atlantic. Modern ideas and foreign were gradually assimilated; the strongest interest came, however, from the popularisation of the Opera. In 1750 John Gay's " Beggar's Opera " had been performed in New York, and in the first portion of the nine- teenth century English operas by Dibdin, Arnold, Horace, Carter, and Sir Henry Bishop were im- ported. In 1823, John Howard of New York pro- duced "Clari, the Maid of Milan" with success. The great Spanish composer Manuel Garcia suc- ceeded in introducing light Italian Opera in New 440 PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. York. Various efforts were made to establish a permanent opera house with a standard company. From 1840-60 there was great musical activity in New York; operas by Pacini, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, and Meyerbeer were given; and in 1853, Mendelssohn's " Midsummer Night's Dream " was hailed with applause. Native talent met with little encouragement until Ole Bull the Norwegian vio- linist and conductor offered a prize of $1,000 for the best original Grand Opera by an American com- poser on a strictly American subject. The English opera flourished until 1856, when it succumbed be- fore the powerful attraction of the Italian, and more recently of the German operas. About 1858 ap- peared an American Grand Opera, "Leonore," by Wil- liam Henry Fry, in which he endeavoured to unite the features of the French and Italian schools; this he followed in 1864 with his " Notre Dame de Paris " and a meritorious set of symphonies. T. Bristow also produced good work about the same time. In 1861, however, all serious operatic and other forms of musical activity were interrupted by the civil war, out of which originated the germs of truly national music, namely, patriotic songs and negro melodies. Three songs in particular are cherished as typically national : " Hail Columbia " written in (1798) by J. Hopkinson to be sung to the music of the older " President's March " composed in honour of Washington when he was elected first President of the United States. (This song is re- garded in Europe as the American anthem.) ' Yan- kee-Doodle " and " The Star Spangled Banner " as national hymns are the outgrowth of the Revolution (1812-14) ; in both cases the words were set to MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 441 music already long in existence. The civil war brought forth a harvest of war-songs such as " The Alabama," " Dixie/' a spirited plantation song ; and " O Maryland " set to the old German melody of " Tannenbaiim." In 1861 a prize of $500 was of- fered for the words and music of a national anthem. There were 500 competitors but no success; the Union war-song " Say Brothers Will You Meet Us," was, however, set to the adapted hymn-tune " Glory Hallelujah." The famous Northern war-song " John Brown " was also an adaptation from an older simpler song. George F. Root wrote " Battle- cry of Freedom," Henry Clay Work " Marching through Georgia," and Charles C. Foster " Stand by the Flag." The Northern States are too young, too cosmopolitan, not sufficiently amalgamated racially to produce " Songs from the Soil," although there is a vigorous young school rising, influenced, naturally by the three great European musical methods ; every opportunity is given of popularising music, of welcoming and producing the finest Euro- pean musicians and their works in the best possible manner. The Southern States, however, have a definite Folk-Song, specially developed and differing from that of any other country, namely, the negro melodies; many native musicians have recognised this fact and have written poignant and delightful songs and ballads. Prominent among these is Stephen C. Foster, " The Prince of American Melo- dists," who wrote " The Old Folk at Home," " Mas- sa's in the Cold Ground," etc. The great Bohemian composer Dvorak, during his residence in the States seized upon the negro melodies and wove them into one of his finest compositions : " The New World " Symphony. f 44S PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. During the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 the Committee made an appeal to American musicians, but without immediate success; for art cannot be created to order. Native composers there are in the States, and in Canada, whose works are of high order, but more under the influence of German or French music than definitely national. Among them are the following musicians of distinguished talent: Prof. J. C. D. Parker (b. 1828), who wrote the " ^Redemption Hymn " in 1877, orchestral works, songs and church music. W. Horatio Parker (b. 1863). holds the Chair of Music in Yale University; he has written several cantatas, oratorios, and the " Commemoration Ode of Yale University," for male voices (1895). Prof. J. Knowles Paine (b. 1839), of Harvard University, is one of the leaders of American Musical development, and author of the " Centennial Hymn in D." He has also pub- lished an oratorio " St. Peter's " ; a popular sym- phonic Fantasia " The Tempest," and a fine Mass in D which were performed in Berlin in 1861. Dudley Buck (b. 1839) was the first American composer of high aims whose work received adequate recognition. His compositions are characterised by thoroughness, freedom of invention, good technical knowledge of resources combined with artistic fitness. His chief works are the Dramatic Cantata " Don Munio," the " Columbus Cantata," " The Light of Asia," remarkable for its oriental colour, performed in London, 1866 ; also a fine Cantata for the opening of the Centennial Industrial Exhibition at Philadel- phia, 1876, to words by Sidney Lanier. Silas G. Pratt (b. 1846) is a prominent advocate of musical culture in Chicago, for which he wrote the Centennial Overture in 1876. He has written many MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 443 songs; a Grand Opera " Zenobia " 1880: his "Kod- rigue Symphony " was performed at the Crystal Palace, London, in 1885. J. A. Butterfield (b. 1837) and H. Millard (b. 1830) are noted song writers, and the former has also written two popular comic operas. C. Eddy (b. 1851) is a fine organist and classical composer for the organ. The prominent New York musician E. A. Mac- Dowell (b. 1846) is an accomplished pianist and protege of Liszt. His orchestral compositions rank high, such as his strongly individual " Roland Sym- phony " for orchestra (1887), and his four sym- phonic Poems (1883--85--86--87). Other good writers of large orchestral works are : H. !N". Barton (b. 1845); B. J. Lang (b. 1837); A. Bird (b. 1856), whose comic opera "Daphne" was produced in New York in 1897; and Mrs. Beach (b. 1867), who has composed symphonies and sonatas. Regi- nald de Koven (b. 1859) has had considerable success with two operas, " The Begum " and " Don Quixote." Excellent chamber music has been writ- ten by, among others, William Mason, Mus. Doc ,(b. 1829), who studied under Moscheles. His piano- forte compositions are those of a learned harmonist with good, melodic invention; and William Footes (b. 1853), in addition to much chamber music has written an overture " In the Mountains " that was performed in London and at Worcester, England. Three names stand out prominently among the Canadian writers: F. Herbert Torrington (b. 1837). From 1856-68 he held the post of organist to Great St. James' Church, Montreal; he is also conductor of a fine orchestra which went with him to represent Canada at the Berlin Peace Jubilee in 1869. Since 1873 he has been organist and choir-master at 4:4:4: PROGRESS OF ART IN THE CENTURY. the Metropolitan Church, Toronto. His composi- tions are chiefly Sacred Music of high quality. Samuel Prowse Warren (b. Montreal, 1841), also a noted organist, studied in Berlin, and is organist to All Soul's Church, JSTew York. In addition to church music he has written many charming songs. Clarence Lucas (b. 1866), a pupil of Dubois at the Paris Conservatoire, is a musician of promise who has written two operas " Anne Hathaway " and " The Money Spider/' which scored considerable success. INDEX TO PAINTEKS, SCULPTOKS. ETC, A. Besnard, 328, 336. Bewick, 150. Abbey, Edwin, 179, 258, 272-3. Bida, Alexandre, 342, 347, 353. Ache, Caran d', 260. Bierstadt, 271. Adam, Albrecht, 324. Bischoffsheim, Mrs., 209. Alexander, 272-3. Bisschop, Christoffel, 276. Allingham, Mrs., 129. Bjornson, 283. Altdorfer, 318. Blake, William, 3, 10, 21, 48, 93, 98 Aman-Jean, 328, 352. 182-3, 135, 136, 137-40, 142, 145-6, Amerigo, Francisco, 302. 150-2, 158, 191, 237, 253-4. Andersen, Hans, 283. Bloch, Carl, 288. Angelo, Michael, 304, 317, 333-4, 348, 357. Boecklin, Arnold, 133-4, 313, 326-7. Annunzio, Gabriele D', 305, 306. Boldini, 328. Anthony, Andrew, 70. Bonheur, Rosa, 101-3, 107, 111, 328 Anthony, Mark, 60, 62, 68, 70-1, 73, 93, Bonington, Richard Parkes, 34-40, 44. 132, 157. 46, 58, 191, 295. Apol, Lodewijk, 277. Bonnat, 352. Argyll, Duke of, 208. Bonvin, Frangois, 131. Artan, Louis, 282. Bonvin, Leon, 130, 140/328. Atkinson, Beavington, 322. Eorg, Axel, 292. Aube, Jean-Paul, 363. Bosboom, 275. Aumonier, 73, 127. Botticelli, 357. Bougereau, 328. B. Bough ton, G. H., 9, 258, 270, 273 Balzac, 347, 362. Boulenger, Hippolyte, 279 280-1 294 Barbizon, 281. Boutet de Monvel, 353. Barbizon School, The, 7, 33, 96, 325. Bouveret, Dagnan-, 293, 328, 353. Barlow, T. O., 208. ' Brabazon, H., 127, 130. Barnard, Edward, 271. Brackeleer, De, 281. Barrie, J. M., 169. Brandes, Georg, 283, 287. Barry, Sir Charles, 369. Brass, Italico, 310. Bartholdi, 362. Breitner, 277. Bartholome, 363. Brentano, 316. Barye, Antoine Louis, 355, 357," 359, Brett, John, 31-2, 43, 157 255. 360-1, 363. Bridgman, 272-3. Bastida, Sorrida y, 303. Bright, John, 208-9. Bastien-Lepage, 310, 346, 349, 352. Brown, Appleton, 272. Bates, Harry, 358. Brown, Ford Madox, 189-92 194-6 Bauer, W., 277. 215-16. Bayes, Gilbert, 358. Brulov, 295. Beardsley, Aubrey, 35, 244, 252, 258. Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 8, 87, 85-6, Beaumont, Sir George, 19, 23, 24. 133 > 182, 184, 188, 189, 196, 211, 222, Beaux, Cecilia, 273. 225, 231-39, 243, 248, 249, 251, 252-4. Beechey, Sir William, 15. 269, 347. Bellew, 274. Burns, Robert, 169, 171. Bellini, 2, 140, 149, 159. Buron, Theodore, 281. Belloni, Giorgio, 310. Burton, Sir Richard, 186, 243. Benois, Alexander, 297. Burton, W. S., 245. Benson, 272. Butler, Lady, 256. Beraud, Jean, 352. Bergh, Edvard, 291. O. Berne-Bellecour, 352. Cabanel, 352. 446 INDEX. Cadenhead, James, 171. Caird, Dr. John, 208. Caldecott, Randolph, 128. Callcott, Augustus. 10, 20 Calvert, Edward, 62, 120 Cameron, D. Y., 264. Camp, Joseph de, 271. Campriani, 307. Cannicci, Niccolo, 309 Canonica, Pietro, 358. Canova, 355, 358, 361. Carlyle, Thomas, 188, 208-9 Carpeaux, 355, 359, 362-3 Carr, Comyns, 322. Cartellier, 355. Casanova, 302 Cassado, 302. Cazin, 131, Cedarsttom, 291. Cezannej 847. Chalgrin, 367. Chalmers, George Paul, 170, 246, 249. Chalmers, Thomas, 173. Chance, Mrs., 126. Chapu, Henri, 361. Charlton, John, 121. Chase, Henry, 272. Chase, William, 267, 270, 272. Chavannes (see Puvis de Chavan- nes). Checa, 302. Chirico, Giacomo di, 307. Church, 271. Cimabue, 55, 218. Claude, 29, 55, 58, 106, 143, 143, 148. Clans, 282. Clausen, George, 72-3. Clays, Paul Jean, 282. Clodion, 358-9. Closson, 274. Coffin, 271. Cole, Timothy, 70, 211, 274. Coleridge, 65, 191-2. Collaert, Marie, 282, Collins, William, 20. Collinson, James, 218, 243, 244-5. Constable, John, 8-14, 18-34, 36-40 42-5, 48, 58, 60, 62, 66, 68-9, 73 75 81, 83, 88, 98, 127, 132, 157. 168 190-1,218,314,317,336 ' Constant, Benjamin, 328, 344. Conti, Tito, 308, 312. Cooper, Sidney, 62, 67, 100-1, 157, 187. Coosemans, 282. Cornelius, 284, 314-17, 820, 330. Corot, Mother, 5, 33, 75, 78, 96 139 142, 218, 270, 279, 280-2, 328, 345-6! 351. Costa, Giovanni, 9, 122, 309. Cotman, John Sell, 12, 16-8, 20, 39, 66. Courbet, Gustave, 3, 25, 96, 137, 880-1. 328, 336, 341, 345-50, 353 Courtens, Frans, 283. Couture, 342, 352. Cox, David, 3, 12, 34, 37-40, 43-5 48 58, 60, 83, 127, 149, 157, 168 ' Cox, Kenyon, 272. Cozens, John Robert, 9, 18, 20, 39, 44. 46, 48, 58, 60. Crane, Walter, 243, 248, 252, 254. Creswick, Thomas, 43, 46 Crichton, Admirable, 303 Crome, John, 3, 9, 19, 39, 44, 46, 48, 58, Crofts, Ernest, 256. Cruikshank, George, 10, 21. D. Dagnan-Bouveret, 293, 328, 353. Dalbono, Edoardo, 305, 307. Dalou, Paul, 363. Damoye, 353. D'Angers, David, 359, 360. Dannat, W. T., 272-3 Daubigny, 96, 828, 346, 351. David, Louis, 279, 330-3, 339 344. Davies, 272. Davis, 274. Dawson, Henry, 44-5, 48. D6camps, 342-3, 347. De Concourt, 345. , . Degas, 328, 336, 344, 347, 849. Hooghe, 128, 139, 140. Delacroix, Eugene, 4, 25, 35, 36, 143-4 De , , 128, 139, 140. 4, 25, , 332 ~ 344 ' 347 349 351-2 Delaroche, 279, 328, 352. Demont, Adrien, 45. De Neuville, 352. De Nittis, 352. Detaille, 324. Deverell, Walter, 243-5. De Wint, 12. Diaz, 96, 282, 328, 346, 351. Donatello, 357. Dor6, Gustave, 143, 295, 311. Dostoievsky, 297. Dow, Arthur W., 271. Dow, T. Millie, 171. Dubois, Louis, 280. Dubois, Paul, 361. Duez, 353. Duncan, John, 171. Dunthorne, 25. Dupre, 346. Duran, Carolus, 828, 352. Durand-Ruel, 345. Diirer, 2, 139, 140, 237, 313, 316, 318, 333 335, 339. Dutch Modern School, 829. Dyce, William, 62, 189, 190. Dyck, Van, 184. East, Alfred, 131. INDEX. 447 Eaton, Wyatt, 271. Ebers, George, 259. Echstrom, Per, 292. Eckersberg, Christoph, 285-6. Eckhoud, Georges, 280. Edelfelt, 293. Ellesmere, Lord, 148. Emerson, 39, 188. Enneking, 271. Etex, 359. Etty, William, 10, 20, 162, 165-7. Eyck, Jan Van, 2, 55, 251. F. Falguiere, 258, 362. Fantin-Latour, 153. Favretto, Giacomo, 305, 308, 312. Fedotov, 295. Ferragntti, 310. Feuerbach, Anselm, 319. Fielding, Copley, 18. Fildes, Luke, 113. Finch, Francis Oliver, 138, 141-2. Fisher, Mark, 101, 124, 126, 270. Fitzgerald, 120. Flameng, 352. Flaxman, 5, 358. Forain, 260. Ford, Onslow, 858. Formis, 310. Forsberg, Nils, 291. Fortuny, Mariano, 97, 299-307, 314, 320. Foster, Birket, 129-30. Fragiacomo, 305, 310. Fragonard, 330. Frampton, George, 358. Franklin, Sir John, 210. Frfimiet, Emmanuel, 362. French, 274. Frere, Edouard, 828, 851. Frith, 168-9. Frohlich, 289. Fromentin, 96, 143, 836, 342-3, 347. Fuhrich, 816. Fulleylove, 128. Furse, 260. Fuseli, 19. a. Gabriel, Josef, 277. Gainsborough, Thomas, 1-14, 19, 21, 28, 38, 109, 129, 145. 157, 191, 257. Gandara, Antonio, 303. Gautier, Theuphile, 265. Gay, Walter, 272. Gerard, Francois, 331. Gericault, Theodore, 832-9, 347. Gerome, 358. Gervex, 352. Gibson, 260, 274, 358. Gilbert, Alfred, 358. Gilchrist, 150. Gilray, 2, 10, 260. Gioll, Francesco, 810. Giordano, Luca, 306. Giorgione, 58, 106, 139, 150, 1B1, 18L 335, 348. Giotto, 55, 218, 335, 339. Giraud, Francois Gregoire, 859. Girodet, 333. Girtin, Thomas, 9. 17-8, 20, 28, 39, 46, 50-1, 60, 66, 149. Gladstone, 182, 208-9. Glasgow School, The, 6, 11, 20, 73, 98- 9, 162, 169, 174, 175, 176, 249, 260, 277,336. Goethe, 26, 46. Gonse, Louis, 859. Goscombe, John, 358. Gotch, T. C., 243, 250. Goujon, Jean, 355. Goya, 299, 301, 314, 317, 323, 324. Graham, Peter, 170-1, 255. Grant, Francis, 100, 171. Gray, 82. Greenaway, Kate, 128. Gregory, Charles, 130. Greuze, 330. Gros, Antoine, 34, 331-3, 339, 340. Groux, Charles de. 280. Guerm, 333. Guillaume, 362. Guillaumet, 342-3. Gurney, Mrs. Russell, 39. Gustave, 96. Guthrie, J., 171, 174, 260. H. Hacker, Arthur, 113. Haden, Sir Francis Seymour - 263-4 Hadrian, 365. Haffremgue, Monsignor, 367. Hagborg, August, 291. Haig, Axel, 264. Hale, Matthew, 128, 256. Halswelle, Keeley, 132, 157. Hammershoy, 289. Hardie, R. G., 272. Hardy, Thomas, 264. Harpignies, 59, 131, 828. Harris, Robert, 273.' Harrison, Alexander, 272-8. Hartington, Marquis of, 208. Hassam, Childe, 272. Haussmann, Baron, 367. Haydon, Benjamin, 163-4, 178-9, 257, 271, 315, 319. Hellen, 328. Hellquist, 291. Hemy, Napier, 255. Henner, 352. Henry, George, 171, 174, 249. Herbert, J. R., 163-4. Herkomer, Hubert, 72, 258-9, 264, Hermans, Charles, 281. Herring, 100, 109. Heymans. Josef. 281. 448 INDEX. Hilesi, Alessandro, 309. Hill, David Octavius, 172. Hill, Mrs. D. O., 172-3. Hill, Raven, 262. Hine, Joseph, 138, 147. Hiroshige, 345. Hitchcock, George, 272-3. Hobbema, 14. Hoeckert, Johan Frederick, 291. Hogarth, William, 1-5, 11, 27, 176, 218, Hokusai, 2, 336, 344. Holbein, 325. Holiday, Henry, 243. Homer, Winslow, 272. Hood, 309. Hook, J. C., 60, 67, 208, 255. Hoppner, 9, 19. Horn el, Edward, 171, 174 249 Horsley, R. A., 163, 165. Hosmer, Harriet, 358. Hoss, 324. Houdon, 355. Houghton, A. B., 248. Housman, 243. Hoyen, 287. Hubert, 55. Huet, Paul, 7, 281, 282, 346. Hughes, Arthur, 243 248. Hugo, Victor, 143. Hulme, Frederick William, 62. Hunt, Holman, 5, 13, 21, 188-202, 203 207, 216-222, 245, 248, 311, 312. Hunt, William, 58, 128-30, 139, 140, 147, Hun 2 te 6 r, 3 Ao'lm, 170-1, 255. Hyde, William, 130. Kaulbach, Wilhelm, 316. Idrac, 362. Ingres, 4, 88, 814, 317, 328, 332-3, 341, 343, 344-6, 349. In j albert, 362, Inness, George, 125, 267, 270--1. Irving, Sir Henry, 208. Israels, Josef, 275-6, 277, 280. 314. J. Jacobsen, 287. James, Francis, 128, 130. Jamesone, 171. Jerndorff, August, 284, 288. Johansen, Viggo, 284, 288-9, 290. Johns, A. B., 138, 141, 146, 149. Johnson, 274. Jones, E. Burne-. See Burne-Jonea, Jonghe, De, 281. Jongkind, 277-8, 347. Jopling, Mrs., 209. Juengling, 274. Karpen, 278. Kemp- Welch, Miss, 126. Khnopff, 282. King, 274, Kipling, Rudyard, 264, 360. Klinger, Max, 314, 326. Knight, Joseph, 213. Knight, Ridgway, 272-3. Knuff, Alfred de, 281. Koch, 324. Kramskoi, Ivan, 295-6. Kreuger, Nils, 292. Kroyer, Peter, 283, 285, 291. Kruell, 274. Kyhn, Vilhelm, 288, 289. L. Ladbroolce, Robert, 16. La Farge, John, 268-9, 272. Lagerlof, Selma, 283. Lancerotto, Egisto, 310. Landor, Walter Savage, 88, 192. Landseer, Charles, 102. Landseer, Edwin, 21, 62-3, 73, 98, 100- 13, 116-17, 120, 157, 167. Landseer, John, 101, 102. Landseer, Thomas. 102. Lansil, Walter F., 271. La Thangue, 73. Larrson, Carl, 292. Lauder, Scott, 249. Laurens, 352. Lavery, George, 127, 171. Lavery, John, 174, 260. Lawless, Matthew James, 243, 247 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 9, 19, 257. Lawson, Cecil, 45, 68, 73-8, 132, 157. Lawson, Malcolm, 73. Lawson, Wilfrid, 73. Lawsou, William, 73. Leader, Benjamin William, 31, 43, 68-9, 70, 73, 127, 132, 157. Lef ebvre, 352. Legros, Prof. Alphonse, 264, 273. Leibl, Wilhelm, 325, 827. Leighton, Sir Frederick, 80, 178, 183- 189, 248. Lemon, Arthur, 122-4, 126. Lenbach, Franz, 324-5, 327. Leonardo, 2, 140, 181, 218, 237, 304. 318, 836. Leopardi, 305. L'Hermitte, 352. Liebermann, Max, 325, 827. Lindsay, 274. Linnell, James Thomas, 68. Linnell, John, 60, 62-4, 66, 68, 73, 101, 127, 132, 138, 142, 150, 157-8. Linnell, William, 63, 64, 150. Linton,W. J.,70, 274. Liszt, 325. Lockhart, William E., 17& INDEX. 149 Loeb, 279-3. Lome, Marquis of, 208. Lorraine, Claude, 34, 53, 60, 834. Luini, 140, 149. Lyell, Sir Charles, 214. M. Macallum, Hamilton, 17, 255. Macbeth, 264. Macdougall, W. B., 243, 254. Macgregor, Archibald, 250. Mackie, 171. Macmonnies, 267, 358, 362. MacNee, Sir Daniel, 172. Maculloch, 170. MacWhirter, 70, 170. Madox Brown (See Brown). Madrazo, Raiinundo de, 301, 302, 303. Maeterlinck, Maurice, 78, 158, 251, 282. Mahr, Carl, 272. Major, Ernest, 272. Makart, Hans, 295, 316, 320-3. Makovsky, Constantin, 296. Malmstrom, August, 290. Manet, 4, 281, 314, 336, 341, 344, 349. Marcke, Van, 101, 124. Marilhat, Prosper, 342-3, 347. Marillier, 213. Maris, Jacobus, 277, 314. Maris, Matthijs, 277, 295, 314. Marks, Stacy, 116, 164. Marlowe, 58. Marochetti, 358. Marstrand, Vilhelm, 285-6. Martineau, 182. Martin, Henri, 179, 328, 336, 352. Martin, Homer, 271. Masaccio, 55, 218, 335. Mason, George, 60, 72-3, 78, 81, 82-7, 94, 96, 106, 128, 132, 157-8, 191, 246. Maurier, George Du, 208, 260, 262. Mauve, Anton, 101, 227, 314. Max, Gabriel, 323. May, Phil., 262. Mayer, Constance, 832. McEwen, Walter, 272. McLachlan, T. Hope, 75, 171. Meissonier, 5, 256, 324, 328, 352, 353. Melchers, Gari, 272-3. Melville, Arthur, 171. Mengs, Rafael, 313. Menzel, Adolf, 313, 323, 324-5, 327, 345. Merci6, Antonin, 361-2. Merson, Olivier, 328. Mesdag, 137, 276, 282, 314. Metcalf, 271. Meunier, Constantin, 280, 363. Michetti, Paolo, 305-6. Millais, Sir John, 3, 18, 21, 31, 69, 71, 98, 104, 132, 166, 182, 188, 190-3, 196-210, 216-247, 248, 256, 258-9, 292. Millet, FranQois, 5, 25, 33, 78-80, 86, 90-1, 93, 96, 99, 139, 155, 158-9, 179, 218, 270, 272, 273, 279-281, 295, 311 314, 325, 328, 836, 338-9, 345, 346,' 349, 351-2, 357. Millie Dow, T., 171. Milton, 82, 144, 146, 164, 235. Miti-Zanetti, Giuseppe, 310. Moir, Dr. Byres, 39." Moira, Gerald, 243, 250. Monet, Claude, 5, 21, 25, 75, 181, 143, 270, 294, 314, 328, 835-6, 338-9, 844- 7, 349, 350-2, 356. Montenard, 353. Monticelli, 328, 336. Moore, Albert, 178, 186-9. Moore, Henry, 45, 255. Mordstrom, Karl, 292. Moreau, Gustave, 133, 328, 346-351. Morelli, Domenico, 305-6, 325. Morland, George, 3, 9, 20, 98-100, 108, 110. 142, 157. Morot, Aime, 324, 352. Morris, William, 141, 188, 191, 196, 211, 222, 225, 228, 231, 233, 238, 240-3, 252, 269. 'Muhnnann, Henry, 153, 172, 273. Miiller, William, 40-3, 46, 58, 143, 157, 191. Mulready, William, 10, 20, 160-7. Munkacsy, 295. Munkacsy, Michael, 323. Munro, Dr.,50. Munthe, Gerhaid, 292. Muntz, Eugene, 322. Mura, Frank, 272-3. Murillo, 176, 299. Murray, Fairfax, 248. Murphy, Francis, 271. N. Naegely, M., 346. Nasmyth, Alexander, 10, 346. Nasmyth, Patrick, 10, 20. Neal, D., 272. Nelson, 164, 167. Nettleship, 121-2, 126. Neuhuys, 276. Neuville, Alphonse de, 256, 324, 352. Newman, Cardinal, 188, 208-9, 287. New English Art Club, The, 6, 20, 73, 98, 176, 250. Nino, Urbano, 358. Nono, Luigi, 309. North, Christopher, 172. Norwich School of Landscape The, 11, 12, 16. Nyberg, Ivan, 292. O. Orchardson, William, 182, 170-1, 257- 9, 330. Outamaro, 345. Overbeck, 284, 314, 310-17, 320. 450 INDEX. P. Palmer, Samuel, 60, 62, 77, 93, 98, 132, 138-40. 143-6. 150, 155, 158, 160- 1, 263. Pater, Walter, 191, 211, 225, 236-7. Paterson, 127. Paterson, Helen, 129. Paterson, James, 171. Patmore, Coventry, 196. Paton, Sir Noel, 172, 180, 190. Parton, Ernest, 69, 70. Paulsen, Julius, 285, 288. Pearce, Chas. Sprague, 272. Pederseu, Viggo, 288. Pennell, Joseph, 274. Peppercorn, 9, 60, 73, 127, 130. Perosi, Don Lorenzo, 309. Perugino, 90-1, 143, 144. Peterssen, Eilif, 292. Pettie, 164. Pforr, 316. Pheidias, 356-7. Philip, John, 170-1. Pickersgill, Henry, 10, 20. Piloty, Carl, 272, 284, 295, 320-3 Pinwell, 247-8. Pissaro, 36, 328,347. Pointelin, 7, 9, 59, 131, 328, 346. Potter, Paul, 111. Poussin, 146, 333, 334. Poynter, Sir Edward, 260. Pradier, 358-9. Pradilla, Francisco, 299, 301-3, 305, 308, Praxiteles, 356. Pre-Raphaelite School, 62. Prikker, Thorn. 278. Protais, 324. Prout, Samuel, 18. Prudhon, Pierre, 321-2. Pugin, 368. Puvis de Chavannes, 90-1, 158, 179 183 186, 189, 190, 236, 271, 311, 328^ 346,' 353-4. Pyle, Howard, 274. Q. Quiucy, M. Quatremere, 57. Raeburn, Sir Henry, 9, 19, 169, 170-1, Raffaell'i, 352. Raffet, 324. Raimundo de Madrazo, 301, 302 303 Ramirez, Manuel, 301. Ramsay, Allan, 10, 173. Raphael, 56, 218, 304, 820, 330, 346, 848. RegnauJt, 301, 352. Reid, George, 171-2. Reinhart, 274. Rembrandt, 21, 34, 36, 38-9, 40, 48, 51, 57, 60, 69, 101, 106, 139, 143-4. 155- 6, 159, 161, 180, 183, 185, 218, 269 262, 277, 296, 299, 335, 338-9, 363. Renoir, 328, 847. Repin. Elias, 296-7 Rethei, Alfred, 318. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 1, 2, 4-6, 14, 22-3, 88, 142, 184, 208, 270. Ribera, 306. Ribot, 352. Richmond, George, 1S8, 141, 149, 15&, Richmond, W. S., 260. Ricketts, 243, 254, 263. Riviere, Briton, 117-18, 120. Robbia, Luca della, 357. Robinson, Cayley, 243, 251. Robinson, Charles, 254. Robinson, T., 272. Rochegrosse, 328, 352. Rodin Auguste, 5, 174, 328,355,857, obO, 362-3, Rohde, Johan, 289. Roll, 852. Romney, George, 9, 19, 20, 142, 145, Rops, Felicien, 282. Rosa, Salvator, 159. Rosenthal, T., 272. Rossetti, Christina, 213, 219. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 3, 5, 13, 86, 133, 141, 162, 166, 182, 183, 188-9 191-8, 201-4, 207, 210, 211-32, 237- 9, 240, 243-5, 247-8, 251, 254, 259. 269. Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddall, 195. Rossetti, Lucy, 195, 227. Rossetti, Maria Francesca, 212. Rossetti, William Michael, 192, 213, 218. Rottman, 324. Rousseau, 192, 218, 279, 281-2, 287, 314, 328, 346, 351. Roussel, Theodore, 127, 264. Rowlandson, 2, 10, 260-1. Rubens, 101, 159, 333, 340, 342, 362. Rude, Frangois, 355, 359. Ruskin; John, 18, 44, 51, 54, 55, 57, 64, 103, 105-6, 129, 144, 155, 158-9, 160-1, 169, 182, 188, 193-4, 203, 240, 247. Ruysdael, 23, 25, 28. S. Saint-Marceaux, 361. Salmson, Hugo, 283, 291. Sandby, Paul, 51. Sandys, Frederick, 196, 245, 247-8. Santoro, 307. Sargent, John S., 258-60, 267-8, 270. 272-3. 336. Sartorio, Aristide, 810-11, Savonarola, 357. Schadow, Wilhelm, 316-17. Schiavone, 146, 149, 150. Schnorr von Carolsfeld. 316. INDEX. 451 Bchwind, Moritz, 818-20, 823. Scott. David. 133, 178. Scott. Sir Walter, 300. Scott, William Bell, 191, 243, 246. Segantini, Giovanni, 9, 158, 189, 246, 305, 308, 311-12. Segovia, Don Pablo de, 303. Selvatico, 309. Severn, Joseph, 66. Shakespere. 46, 58, 60, 164. Shannon, C., 243, 254, 263. Shannon, J. J., 259. Sharp, William (Engraver), 142. Shaw, Byam, 243, 250. Shields, Frederick, 195-6, 245. Silvestre, T., 341. Simmons, 272. Sisley, 344, 347. Skovgaard, Joachim, 289. Skovgaard, Niels, 285, 289. Bkovgaard, Peter, 287-8. Skredsvig, Christian, 292-3. Slott-Moeler, Agnes, 289. Slott-Moeler, Harold, 289. Small, W., 347-8. Smedley, 274. Smethaui, James, 14, 142, 243, 246, 247. Smirke, Sir Robert, 368. Snyder, 101, 110, 111. Soane, Sir J., 368. Solomon, J., 113. Somerscales, 255. Stanhope, Spencer, 243, 24S-9. Stark, 16, 39. Steell, Sir John, 173. Steen, Jan, 176, 235. Steinle, Eduard, 316, 320. Steinlen, 353. Stephens, F. G., 218. Stevens, Alfred, 280. Stevenson, Macaulay, 75, 127, 171, Stewart, J. L., 272. Stillman, Mrs., 248. St. Gaudens, Augustus, 267, 358. Stobbaerts, Jan, 280. Stone, Marcus, 113, 163-4. Story, W. W., 358. Stothard, Thomas, 20. Stott, 60. Strachan, R. Douglas, 171, 250. Strang, William, 264-5. Strudwick, 248-9. Stubbs, 109, 110, 157. Stuck, Franz, 326-7. Stschedrin, Sylvestr, 294-5. Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 208. Swan, John M., 117, 120-2, 126,256, 860-1. T. Tadema, Alma, 259. Tarbel, 272. Tenniel, 260-1. 2E Tervueren, 281. Thackeray, 89. Thaulow, 283-4, 292. Thayer, Abbott, 272. Tholen, 278, 814. Thoma, Hans, 326. Thompson, E. Seton, 360. Thompson, Sir Henry, 208. Thoreau, 39. Thornyeroft, Hamo, 357-8. Thorwaldsen, 284-5, 855, 358, 361. Tintoretto, 106, 139, 140, 152, 159, 181 , 238, 304, 330, 335-6, 363. Tire, Johan, 292. Tissot, 328, 358. Titian, 58, 106, 189, 148, 180, 185, 218 246, 304, 330, 348, 357. Tito, Ettore, 309. Tolstoi, 297. Tomson, Arthur, 125-6. Toorop, Jan, 277. Traquair, Phoebe, . 158, 196. Triscott, 271. Troyon, Constant, 107, 111. 351. Troyon, D. W., 271, 328, 346. Trubner, Wilhelm, 324. Tuke, H. S., 255. Turgeniev, 297. Turner, Ross, 271. Turner, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 17, 21, 80, 38, 84, 86-7, 40-4, 46-62, 65, 98, 103, 106, 127, 139, 143-5, 154, 155, 157-9, 167-8, 185, 191, 211, 254, 268, 295, 314, 317, 335, 339, 350. Tweed, 178. U. Uhde, Fritz Von, 189, 292-3, 314, 326-7. Urrabieta (see Vierge, Daniel), 303. Uwins, Thomas, 141, 142. V. Van Welie, An toon, 278. Varley, John, 65, 128, 138, 140-2, 14ft Veit, 316. Velasquez, 97, 139, 140, 155, 161, 180, 183, 207, 299, 335, 348, 863. Vera, Alejo, 301. Ver Beck, 274. Verestchagin, Vassily, 295. Verga, Giovanni, 305. Verhaeren, Emile, 282. Verhas, Frans, 281. Vernet, Horace, 5, 352. Veronese, Paul, 322. Verstraete, 282. Vierge, Daniel, 303. Viggo Johansen. See Johansen, Viggo Pedersen. See Pedersen* Villegas.Jose, 802. Vincu, Francesco, 308. Vincent, 16, 39. Viuton Frederick, 272. 452 INDEX. Visconti, 867. Vizzotto-Alberti, Giuseppe, 310. Vogel, 316. Vollon, 315. Volpi, Mano, 310. Voltaire, 350, 353. Vonnoh, Robert W., 272. Voysey, 243. W. Waagen, Dr., 55, 57. Wagner, 46. 322. Walker, Frederick, 60, 72-3, 78, 81, 83-96, 106, 128, 132, 157, 191, 205, 246-8, 272. Wallenstein, 321. Walters, W. T., 119, 337, 860-1. Walton, E. A., 171, 174, 176, 250, 260. Walton, Isaak, 60, 94, 127. Ward, James, 9, 100, 101, 109, 110, 111, 120, 157. Watson, William, 77. Waterhouse, 131. Waterman, 272. Watteau, 142, 330. Watts, G. F., 21, 45, 153, 158, 178, 180, 181-3, 188-9, 208-9, 260. Weeks, 272-3. Weir, Julian, 272. Weishaupt, Victor. 326. West, Benjamin, 24-5, 66, 270, 836. Whistler, J. MacNeill. 25. 40, 183, 260, 264, 267, 268, 270, 271-4, 303, 335-6, 844-5, 347, 350. Whitney, 274. Whitman, Sarah, 278. Wilkie, Sir David, 10, 20, 165-69, 170-1, 176, 235, 286, 295, 302. Wilkins, 368. Willette, 260, 353. Wilson, George, 243, 245. Wilson, Richard, 2, 3, 5, 7-11, 14, 28, 29, 88, 40, 56, 58, 100, 157. Wimperis, 81, 43. Wint, De, 58. Windus, 196, 243, 245. Woodbury, C. H., 271. Woolner, Thomas, 218. Wordsworth, 94, 147, 188. Wornum, 56, 57. Wren, Christopher, 368. Kiminez, Ettore, 358. Young, 134. Y. Zahrtmann, 288. Zamacois, 302. Zola, 347. Zorn, Anders, 283, 293. Ziigol, Heinrich, 336. Zurbaran, 299 INDEX TO MUSICIANS. Adam, Adolphe Charles, 890. Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, 378. Andr6e, Elfride, 433. Arensky, Antonio, 481. Arne, Dr. Thomas Augustine, 483. Arnoldi, S. J., 433, 439. Attwood, Thomas, 433. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 872. 379, 405, 413. Balakerew. M., 429. Balfe, Michael William, 433. Bantock, Granville, 437. Barbieri, 420. Bargiel, Waldemar, 408. Barnett, John, 433, 434. Bartha, Alexandra de, 435. Barton, H. N., 443. Bazzini, Antonio, 413. Beach, Mrs., 443. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 871, 873, 373, 377, 385, 396, 899, 405, 406. Beliczar, Louis de, 435. Bellini, Vincenzo, 885, 396. Bellman, Karl M., 433. Bendel, Francois, 426. Benedict, Sir Julius, 397, 407. 438. 434. Bennett, Sir William Sterndale, 879, 433, Benolt P. L. L., 423. Berlioz, Hector, 374, 377, 379, 393, 394, 895, 399, 424, 425, 439. Best, William Thomas, 433. Bird, A., 443. Bishop, Sir Henry Rowley, 434. Bizet, Georges, 415. Bjornson,Bj6rnstjerne, 421. Block*, Jan, 433. Bogisch, Abbe, 425. Boieldieu, Francois Adrien, 890. Bolto, Arrigo, 407, 410, 411. Borodin, Alexander P., 439. Braham, John, 433. Brahms, Johannes, 874, 876, 899, 405, Breton, 420. Bridge, 433. Bristow, T., 440. Bruch, Max, 376, 407. Briickler, Hugo, 876. Bruckner, Anton, 403. Bruneau, Alfred, 417, 418. Buck, Dudley, 442. Bull, Ole Bornemann, 379, 422, 440. Butterfield, J. A., 443. 0. Calcott, John Wall, 433. Carissimi, G., 423. Carter, 439. Chabrier, 415. Chaminnade, Mile. Cecile. 418. Chapi, 420. Cherubini, Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salva- tore Maria, 388, 389, 397. Chevillard, Camille, 418. Chopin, Frederick Francois, 379, 395, 396, 399. 428. Cilea, 412. Cimarosa, Domenico, 383, 384 Cip611ini, 412. dementi, Muzio, 391. Colbran, Isabella, 384, 385. Colonne, 418. Coppee, F., 411. Cornelius, Peter, 403. Coronaro, 412. Cowen, Frederick Hymen, 436. Csaszar, 425. Cui, Cesar, 429. D. Dannreuther, 894. Dargomiisky, 438, 439. David, Felicien, 890. Davies, Dr. Walford, 437. Davy, 433. De Koven, Reginald, 443. Delacroix, 396. Delibes, Leo, 415. Dombrowski, 428. Donizetti, Gaetano, 879, 386. Draeske, Felix, 403, 404. Dubois, Theodore, 418. Dussek, Johann L., 425. Dvorak, Antouiu, 374, 426, 427, 441. 454 INDEX. E Eddy, C., 443. Egressy, 425. Elgar, Edgar, 436. Elhert, 376. Elvey, 433. Erkel, Francois, 425. Espi, 420. P. Farieon, Harry, 437. Farkas, 425. Faure, G., 418. Faye, P., 425. Fibrich, 426. Footes, William, 443. Foster, Charles C., 441. Foster, Stephen C., 441. Franck, Caesar, 414, 415, 423. Franz, R., 376. Fry, William Henry, 440. Fuertes, Soriano, 420. G. Gade, Niels W., 421, 423. Garcia, Manuel de P6pulo Vicente, 419, 420, 439. Gazal, De Freitas, 420. Gefrometz, 425. German, Edward, 437. Gilbert, W. S., 435. Gilson, Paul, 428. iordano, 412. lazownow, Alexander, 430, 431. Glinka, Michael I., 428. Gluck, Christoph Wilibald von, 881, 382, 888, 389, 397. Godard, Benjamin Louis, 418. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 376, 379, 880. Boldmark, Karl, 403, 425. Glomes, Carlos, 420. Goovaerts, A. J., 423. Goss, Sir John, 433. Gounod, Charles Francois, 392, 393, 414. Granado, 420. Gretry, Andr6 Ernest Modeste, 388, 389. Grieg, Edvard Hagrup, 421. Gungl, Joseph, 425. H. Halevy, Jacques F. E., 390. Hallen, Andreas, 422. Hallstrom 422. Hamerik, Asgard, 422. Handel, Georg Friedrich, 378, 379, 432. Haydn, Joseph, 372, 373, 424. Heine, Heinrich, 371, 379, 380, 396. Heller, Stephen, 425. Henschel, G., 376. Hoffmann, Heinrich, 408. Hoi, Richard, 423. Holmes, Augusta, 418. Hood, George, 438. Hopkinson, J., 440. Horace, 439. Horn, Charles E., 433. Horseley, William, 433. Howard, John, 439. Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 878. 425. Humperdinck, Engelbert, 404, Indy, Vincent d\ 418. J. Joachim, Joseph, 406, 424, 435. Jonciere, Victor, 418. Josephine, Queen, 389. K. Kalkbrenner, Friedrich, 379. Kate, Andre" tan, 423. Keil, M. Alfred, 420. King, Oliver, 433. Kirchner, Theodore, 407, 40& Kistler, Cyrill, 404. Kjerulf, Halfden, 421. Korner, Karl Theodore, 381. Kuch, 425. Lalo, Edonard, 415. Lamoureux, 418, 429. Lang, B. J., 433. Lanier, Sydney. 442. Lassen, Edward, 422. Leoncavallo, Ruggiero, 412. Liadow, Anatole, 431. Lind, Jenny, 422. Lindblad, A. F., 422. Lisle, Le Comte de, 416. Liszt, Franz, 374, 379, 3SO, 396, 399, 422, 424, 425. Loder, E. J., 433. Loewe, F. C. L., 37fi. Lome, Marqui? of, 435. Lucas, Clarence, 444. Lully, Jean Baptiste, 388, 897. Lumbye, Hans, 4 Lvow, Alex., 430. M. MacCunn, Hamish, 435. MacDowell, E. A., 443. Macfarren, Sir George Alexander, 433. Machado. August, 420. INDEX. 455 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander Campbell, 435, 436. Manns, August, 434. Manzocchi, Anteri, 412. Marschner, Heinrich, 381. Martin, H. W., 433. Martucci, Giuseppe, 418. Mascagni, Pietro, 411. Mason, Lowell, 439. Massenet, Jules Emile F., 416, 417. Mehul, Etienne Nicholas, 888, 389. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 374, 378, 379, 405, 407, 432. Mercadente, Saverio Raffaele, 385. Messager, 4l5. Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 379, 381, 388, 889, 390, 391, 392, 396, 397, 399, 401, 414, 417. Millard, H., 443. Mol, Pierre de, 423. Monteverde, Claudio, 382. Monuisko, 428. Moore, Thomas, 377. Moscheles, Ignatz, 379. Moskowski, Moritz, 428. Moussorgsky, 429. Mozart, Wolfgang A., 372, 382, 389. Mugnone, 412. Murger, Henri, 412. Myslivecek, Joseph, 425. N. Nicode, J. S., 408. Nicolai, Otto, 420. Novalkowski, 428. O. Oakeley, Sir Herbert Stanley, 438. Olssen, Ole, 422. Ouseley, Sir Frederick Arthur Gore, 433. P. Pacini, Giovanni, 385. Paderewski, Ignaz J., 428. Paganini, Nicold, 393, 394, 395, 396. Paine, Prof. J. Knowles, 442. Paisiello, Giovanni, 382. Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi Pietro Aloisio da, 413. Parker, Prof. J. C. D., 442. Parker, Horatio W., 442. Parry, Sir Hubert 372, 392, 436. Pasdeloup, Jules Etienne, 418. Pedrell, Felipe, 420. Pereira, M. Angelo, 420. Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 382. Perosi, Dom, 413. Piccini, Nicold, 882. Pierson, Hugo, 434. Ponchielli, Amilcar, 410. Portugallo, 419. Pratt, Silas G., 442, 443. Prout, Ebenezer. 438. Puccini Giacomo, 410, 411 , 412. Purcell, Henry, 432. Rachmaninov, S,, 431. Reicha, Anton, 425. Reinecke, Carl, 376. Reyer, Ernest, 417, 418. Rheinbergen, Josef Q., 407. Rimsky-Korsakow, N., 430. Root, George F., 441. Roskosny, 426. Rossini, Gioacchino A M 399, 414, 419. Rozsavalgyi, 425. Rubinstein, Anton, 877, 430. S. Saint-Saens, Camilie, 407, 41G. Saloman, S., 422. Salvayre, G. B., 418. Samara, Spiro, 412, 413. Sand, George, 396. Sautesteban, 420. arlatti, Alessandrq. 382. [Tiller, Johann Cliristoph Friedrich von, 880. Schubert, Franz Peter, 372, 374, 375, 376, Schumann, Madame, 407, 408. Schumann, Robert, 374, 876, 377, 391. 399, 405, 406, 408, 429. Sebor, 426. Serow, Alexander Nicolai, 428. Sgambati, Giovanni, 413. Silas, Eduard, 423. . Sjogren, Bmil. 422. STsraup, 426. Slezak, Anae, 426. Smart, Sir George T., 433. Smetana, Bedrich, 426. Smyth, Ethel W., 437. Soderman, J. A., 422. Somervell, Arthur, 437. Spofforth, 433. Spohr, Ludwig, 374, 375, 399. Spontini, Gaspardo Luigi Paciflco, 379, 388, 889, 397. Stainer, John, 433. Stanford, Dr. Villiers, 436. Steggal, Reginald, 437. Strauss, Richard, 404. Sullivan, Sir Arthur. 435. Svendsen, J. S., 422. Szekely, 425. T. Tasca, 412. Taylor, M. S. Coleridge, 438. Tellefsen, 422. Thomas, Ambrose, 415. Tlaorwaldsen, Bertel, 379. 456 INDEX. Tinel, Edgar, 428. Tomas6k, Johann Wenzel, 425. Torrington, F. Hubert, 443, 444. Tschaikowsky, Peter I., 374, 407, 430. V. Verdi, Giuseppe, 883, 886, 387, 409, 410, 414. Vernet, Horace, 879. Vogler, Qeorg Joseph, 891. W. Wagner, Richard Wilhelm, 877, 880, 881, 388, 393, 399, 400, 401, 402, 404, 405, 409, 412, 418, 414, 417. Waldstein, Count, 372. Wallace, William Vincent, 483, 434, 437. Warren, Samuel Prowse, 444. Webbe, Samuel, 433. Weber, Carl Maria von, 872, 376, 880, 381, 391, 399, 401. Widor, Charles M., 478. Wieck, Clara, 377, 378. Wood, Basil, 436. Work, Henry Clay, 441. Y. Yelenski, 428. YomelU,m ; HF UNIVE Edinburgh : Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SERIES. Price 5s. each net. Religious Progress in the Century. By W. H. Withrow, M.A., D.D., F.R.S.C. Literature of the Century. By Professor A. B. de Mille, M.A. Progress of South Africa in the Century. By George McCall Theal, D.Lit., LL.D. Medicine, Surgery, and Hygiene in the Century. By Ezra Hurlburt Stafford, M.D. Progress of India, Japan, and China In the Century. By Sir Kichard Temple, Bart., LL.D., &c. Progress of the United States of America in the Century. By Prof. Wm. Peterfield Trent, M. A., LL.D. Continental Rulers in the Century. British Sovereigns in the Century. Progress of British Empire in the Century. Progress of Canada in the Century. , . ., .. By Percy M. Thornton, LL.B., M.P. By T. H. S. 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