■ :^ ^ U,pyr4Fk\ ^^ /^^4«i^: Modern Artists By Christian Brinton IP New York THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 1908 I /VD3 5 CJOPYEIGHT, 1908, BY THE BAKEE & TAYLOE COMPANY Printed in the United States of America THE TEOW PBES8, NEW YOKK APROPOS 'WJf T'EILE the thrill of the modern spirit hoth in art and W in life should obviously he the dominant note of the following pages, no conscious sacrifices have been made in behalf of any given theory or thesis. The aim has not been laboriously to trace the origin and development of certain more or less formative influences, but to reflect such tendencies in terms frankly specific and personal. Although, during the period covered, which embraces something over a century of production, the profile of art in general has yearly become more and more distinct, that which here takes prece- dence is the persuasive magic of the artist himself. In order the better to picture those contagious forces which are to-day vitalizing art in all lands the selection has purposely been broad and eclectic rather than narrow or local. A number of characteristic figures — not always the conventionally greatest or best known — have thus been chosen from various countries, and the attempt has been made to give a sense of the individu- ality of each man treated, and through the individuM a feeling for the conditions and surroundings, aesthetic and social, of his actual or adopted home. The personal element and the ele- ment of nationality will hence inevitably prove the constant factors in this series of interpretations. The former quality has long since won its title to consideration. It is as yet, how- ever, only vaguely realized that the latter is one of the artist's richest possessions. There are few more amiable fallacies than [v] 271439 MODERN ARTISTS the pretension that art should strive to he international and cosmopolitan, for in point of fact the men who have best suc^ ceeded in becoming so are those whose performances have most emphatically home the particular stamp of time and place. Elusive though unmistakable, sensitive though innately un- changeable, nationality is an element which should never, and indeed can never, he entirely overlooked. Every artist is in essence a nationalist. By freely expressing himself he cannot fail to suggest that larger heritage of which he shares but a slender portion. Though conforming to these general outlines, the present volume is not meant to he either speculative or sternly critical. It is frankly sympathetic and appreciative, and, in as far as possible, each man in turn has been permitted to plead his own cause through the facts of his life and the works of eye and hand. While it is true that the varied mani- festations of nineteenth-century art may here he followed from chapter to chapter with sufficient accuracy, the individual him- self will, it is hoped, always he found to stand the more firmly and humanly in the foreground of these sketches. Grateful acknowledgments are due the artists themselves whose efforts and achievements have been a continuous source of inspiration in the preparation of the ensuing pages, to owners whose paint- ings are herewith reproduced, and to those editors who have already welcomed certain sections of the material in its early and fugitive form. [vi] CONTENTS PAGK Jean-Honore Fragonard 3 (Born Grasse, France, 5 April 1732; died Paris, 22 Au- gust 1806) Antoine Wiertz 25 (Born Dinant, Belgium, 22 February 1806; died Brussels, 18 June 1865) George Frederick Watts 43 (Bom London, 23 February 1817; died London, 1 July 1904) Arnold Bocklin 61 (Born Basle, Switzerland, 16 October 1827; died Fiesole, near Florence, 16 January 1901) CONSTANTIN MeUNIER 81 (Born Etterbeek, Brussels, 12 April 1831; died Brussels, 4 April 1905) James McNeill Whistler 99 (Bom Lowell, Massachusetts, 10 July 1834; died London, 17 July 1903) [Vii] MODERN ARTISTS N PAGE Franz von Lenbach 117 (Born Schrobenhausen, Upper Bavaria, 13 December 1836; died Munich, 6 May 1904) Ilya Efimovitch Repin 135 (Born Chuguyev, Government of Kharkov, Russia, 24 July 1844; resides St. Petersburg) John S. Sargent * 155 (Born Florence, 12 January 1856; resides London) John Lavery 173 (Born Belfast, Ireland, 1857; resides London) Giovanni Segantini 191 (Born Arco, Austrian Tyrol, 15 January 1858; died near Pontresina, Upper Engadine, Switzerland, 29 Sep- tember 1899) Gari Melchers 211 (Born Detroit, Michigan, 11 August I860; resides Egmond- aan-den-Hoef, Holland, Paris, and New York) J. J. Shannon. 229 (Born Auburn, New York, 3 February 1862; resides London) Ignacio Zuloaga 245 (Born Eibar, Province of Vizcaya, Spain, 26 July 1870; resides Eibar and Paris) [ viii ] il LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Plates in Colour) James McNeill Whistler Arrangement in Black and Brown— Portrait of Miss Rosa Corder Frontispiece '^xj^ h Franz von Lenbach FACING PAGE Prince Bismarck 124 Gari Melchers Brabangonne 218 '■'-^ J. J. Shannon Miss Kitty 236 (Plates in Half-tone, with Tint) FACING PAGE Jean-Honore Fragonard Portrait of the artist painted by himself 3 La Poursuite g Le Rendez-vous H La Lettre d'Amour 14 L'Amant Couronne 13 [ix] / MODERN ARTISTS yACINQ PAGE Antoine Wiertz Portrait of the artist painted by himself 25 The Greeks and Trojans Contending for the Body of Patroclus 29 The Revolt of Hell against Heaven 32 A Scene in Hell 37 George Frederick Watts Portrait of the artist painted by himself . . . . . .43 Orpheus and Eurydice 46 Algernon Charles Swinburne 50 Love and Life 56 Arnold Bocklin Portrait of the artist painted by himself 61 Sleeping Diana 65 The Island of Death 69 The Fields of the Blessed 73 CONSTANTIN MeUNIER Portrait of the artist by Max Liebermann 81 Antwerp Dock-Hand 82 Watering a Colliery Horse 86 The Quarryman 88 The Mine 93 James McNeill Whistler Portrait of the artist by Fantin-Latour 99 Harmony in Green and Rose — The Music Room .... 102 Harmony in Grey and Green — Cicely Henrietta, Miss Alexander 106 The Lady with the Yellow Buskin — Portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell HI [X] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Franz von Lenbach Father and Child 117 General Field-Marshal Count von Moltke 120 Theodor Mommsen 129 Ilya Efimovitch Repin Portrait of the artist from a recent photograph .... 135 Eeligions Procession in the Government of Kursk .... 139 The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan Mohammed IV . . . 143 Village Dancers, Little Russia 147 John S. Sargent Portrait of the artist painted by himself 155 Mme. Gautreau 158 Egyptian Woman with Coin Necklace 162 Lord Ribblesdale 167 John Lavert Father and Daughter 173 Mary in Green 176 Polymnia 180 The Sisters 184 Giovanni Segantini Portrait of the artist painted by himself 191 Ave Maria a Trasbordo 194 Ploughing in the Engadine 199 The Unnatural Mothers 203 [xi] MODEEN ARTISTS FACING PAGE Gaei Melchers Portrait of the artist by J. J. Shannon . . . . . . 211 The Man with the Cloak 214 Mother and Child 222 J. J. Shannon Portrait of the artist painted by himself 229 Lady Marjorie Manners 232 The Flower Girl 240 Ignacio Zuloaga Portrait of the artist by Jacques-Emile Blanche .... 245 Daniel Zuloaga and his Daughters 248 Lola, the Gitana 250 Promenade after the Bull-Fight 255 The Picador, El Coriano 256 [xii] JEAN-HONOR]^ FRAGONARD JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD Portrait of the artist painted by himself [The Louvre, Paris] JEAN-HOWORE FRAGONAED NOWHEEE and in no age has art reflected life with more intimate fidelity than in Erance during the eighteenth centur}^ The accord between that which was and its transcription in pigment or marble, in coloured chalk or terra- cotta, here revealed a perfection seldom attained before or since. With unfailing spirit and accuracy the painters, sculptors, and architects of the Reign of Rococo gave to all they touched the precise physiognomy of the period. They were incomparably true to existing conditions, to that rose-tinted convention which was not to be crushed until the red dawn of the Revolution. Although it seems to stand apart, to display an abandon quite its own, French art of the eighteenth century recalls on one side the inflated eloquence of the Grand Siecle, and foreshadows, in a measure, all that came after. Scattered here and there throughout the span of Louis XIV are various gestures in bronze or plaster which presage the coming of Watteau, Pater, Lancret, and their followers. Certain of Coysevox's nymphs, Girar don's fountains, and chance wreaths, garlands, and cupids on palace wall or ceiling, hint that, smothered beneath this solemn pretence, lurked a gleam of joy and beauty which might some day relieve the august pomp of Le Brun's ^ Histoire du Grand Monarque ' and the stateliness of Le Notre *s parks and gardens. If under de Maintenon all was rigid and constrained, official and perfunctory, with la Pompadour came a welcome freedom from control. Society had been too long on parade. [3] '■"''''• ''"•''"■'" MODERN ARTISTS Unnatural restraint gave way to licence frankly human, and austere splendour was replaced by the magic of personal en- chantment. As in life, so in art, there were no traces of pain or sorrow. A feverish reversion to pleasure was the only note sounded. Skies were perpetually blue, gallants languished about strumming guitars, and the greensward was dotted with shep- herds and shepherdesses beribboned and operatic. Existence became a pastoral now French, now Italian, now Spanish, and the world gaily embarked in flower-decked galleys for Cythera, unmindful of hoarse mutterings which were soon to sweep aside this fleeting moment of nonchalance. In essence the entire movement was a return to paganism, not the broad paganism of earlier days, but an ethereal paganism recording all the in- consequence of its hour. For the time being standards were strangely confused. Religion as well as reality was obscured. The crucifix and the crown of thorns were forgotten. Those bambini who tempered the zealous exaltation of numerous Um- brian and Flemish canvases, who with Raphael or van Dyck added such spontaneous charm, became mischievous amorini bent on missions dubious and diverting. Venus slipped into the niche so long sacred to Mary of Nazareth and Psyche shone cream- white amid the green of Versailles leafage. The chosen poet of all this radiant subversion, the one who best caught its particular accent, was not Watteau, so tinged with pensiveness, nor Boucher, who possessed every gift save the gift of truth, but Jean-Honore Fragonard. It was he whose purpose was clearest, he who reduced desire to its most infec- tious terms, he who joyously revived so many lost kisses and neglected caresses. Throughout his life Fragonard played and perpetuated the Comedy of Love. Femininity, perverse and en- dearing, he glorified in countless miniatures, portraits, fans, and decorative panels. Though he came last among the painters of Elysium, he imprisoned a beauty which had escaped all, [4] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD which had even eluded Antiquity and the Renaissance. This Cherubino of art had no avowed message for mankind, no defi- nite lesson to instil. He seemed content to follow prevailing modes. He wished only to delight and amuse, sometimes with fancies that recall not alone Ariosto and Boccaccio but the mel- lower wantonness of Propertius and Alciphron. And yet in the whole range of his production there is never the slightest note of insistence. It is an art which persuades, never repulses. Each of these little goddesses of pleasure can say, with Mozart's Zerlina, *^ Je consens, et je refuse. '^ While having its origin in the desire to please and to attract, this art is nevertheless con- siderably more than a propitiation, a mere courting of favour whether of the public at large or of some wealthy patron. In addition to being typical of his epoch Jean-Honore Fragonard also ranks as a distinct precursor, as an unconscious, though unquestionable initiator. Long decried and ignored, he stands to-day among the most significant and original of eighteenth- century painters. In one phase or another of his work he antici- pates most of those truths of vision and treatment from which has sprung the vitality of the modem school. Beneath his astounding facility is a science which few have taken pains to discover. Nor is he always merely gay and volatile, for in the midst of his playfulness there sometimes escapes a cry of pas- sionate tenderness or foreboding. Though he made no preten- sions, and professed no theories, few artists the world over have surpassed in felicity, animation, and imperishable charm this light-hearted son of la Provence. Born at Grasse, 5 April 1732, in a little house in the rue de la Porte-Neuve near the place aux Herbes, the boy spent the first fifteen years of his life at home. Famed for its flowers and its perfumes, encircled by a silver-green fringe of olive trees, with, beyond, the sparkling rim of the sea, Grasse could scarcely fail to influence the lad's early impressions. Always, in his can- [5] MODERN ARTISTS vases, sway and nod the trees and blossoms of Ms native land bathed in a violet mist blown from across the plain of Cannes. To the very last the background of his art retained those same dark masses of foliage, those bright flashes of colour, and the now gleaming, now vaporous skies of his birthplace. The son of a modest glovemaker, who was in turn descended from the Fragonardo, or Fragonardi, of near Milan, Jean-Honore found himself, at sixteen, articled to a notary in Paris, whither the family had gone in order to better their fortunes, Fragonard pere having meanwhile failed owing to certain unlucky invest- ments. Local tradition, with its infallible instinct for the pic- turesque and appropriate, avers that the youth made the trip all the way from Grasse afoot in company with Claude Gerard, one of whose daughters he was later to marry. He already wished to become a painter, an ambition which the good notary of the Chatelet heartily approved, so at the end of a few doleful weeks his mother took him to Boucher, then at the pinnacle of his fame. Too busy to instruct beginners, the facile '^ Peintre des Graces et des Amours ^' sent the boy to his friend, Chardin, then labouring with patient, searching conviction amid humble surroundings in the rue Princesse. It was inevitable that the sprightly, irrepressible little Meridional should have made scant progress under the sober painter of the bourgeoisie. Just as when with the notary, he spent most of the time wandering, wide-eyed and enthusiastic, about the teeming streets. He also visited the dim, solemn churches of the capital where hung so many rich toned canvases, and these he would eagerly copy from memory on returning home. Convinced, after some six months, that he could learn little from Chardin, the youthful aspirant went again to Boucher, this time bearing an armful of draw- ings. His reception proved different, for Boucher, recognizing his talent, welcomed him at once, and before long he was assist- ing with various decorative compositions or making replicas of [6] LA POURSUITE By Jean-Honore Fragonard [Courtesy of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.l JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD his fecund master's pictures. Alert and voluble, Fragonard instinctively felt at home in the big studio in the Bibliotheque du Roi which was thronged at all hours by pupils, models, and men and women of fashion, and where he must have seen " la belle Murphy " somewhat oftener than he did the seductive and easily consoled Mme. Boucher. The painter whose false and captivating Dianas and Auroras fluttered on every wall or plafond proved a stimulating preceptor. He was the incarna- tion of the Rococo spirit in all its supple elegance, and this spirit Fragonard was quick to absorb. So rapid was the newcomer's progress that in 1752, though not a student of the Academic, he competed for and won the Grand Prix, his nearest rival being Saint- Aubin, whose chagrin was such that he thenceforth re- nounced painting for engraving. From the free activity of Boucher's studio Fragonard next passed to the Ecole Royale des Eleves proteges and the more restrained guidance of Carle Van Loo, where he awaited his turn to proceed to Rome a full- fledged pensioner of the king. The years in Rome, five in all, which were passed at the Palazzo Mancini under the not always approving eye of Natoire, or in the enlightening company of the abbe de Saint-Non, less abbe than distinguished amateur of the arts, held unmeasured richness for Fragonard. At first overwhelmed by Michelangelo and Raphael, he soon found his level among such masters as Barocci, Pietro da Cortona, Solimena, and Tiepolo. These he copied assiduously, readily catching the soft glow of purple light, or the sheen of satin robe held in place by jewelled hand. While Natoire and the Academic did much for him, Saint-Non did more, and it was during those lingering summer months spent at the Villa d'Este in company with the abbe that Frago- nard first responded to the silent throb of the antique world and the palpitating atmospheric beauty about him. From time to time they were joined by Hubert Robert, who was also at the [7] MODEEN ARTISTS Academie, the three thus cementing an enduring friendship. While most of Eragonard's studies after the older painters show accuracy and vitality, none can compare in interest to his ^ L'Allee ombreuse/ with its great vault of foliage meeting over- head, or his * Vue prise a la Villa d'Este.' Here was the real Fragonard, sensitive, submissive, and displaying a sjrmpathy with Roman life and scene which must be partially accounted for by his Italian ancestry and that unmistakable affinity which exists between the Campagna and the country about Grasse. From the very first he appears to have seen nature and natural forms not boldly and sharply, but enveloped in a caressing ambience — blue, blond, or golden. Seated before his easel in one of those majestic oak or cypress lined avenues, with here a vine-covered wall, and there a flower-grown foun- tain, the receptive, observant youth did not fail to note that vibrant play of diffused light and shade which is one of art's most precious discoveries. He never knew that what he was striving for would one day be called impressionism. He only saw and suggested certain effects as best he could, yet it was a full century before his efforts were to be surpassed. On his return to Paris full of high enthusiasm, Fragonard, after a period of indecision, made a commanding debut at the Salon of 1765 with * Coresus se sacrifie pour sauver Callirhoe.' The amateurs applauded, Diderot praised him, and the king ordered the picture to be reproduced in Gobelins tapestry. His triimaph was largely theatric, for his theme had been taken from the poem by Roy with music by Destouches. While it was not Gluck, it pleased the fancy of the public, and a dignified academic career seemed to await the young Provengal. Yet he somehow never duplicated the dramatic fervour of this com- position, the passionate reds of these flowing robes or the be- seeching whites of these breasts and arms. Although purchased for the State, it was several years before Marigny paid him for [8] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD the work, and meanwhile the one-time pupil of Boucher was fated to conquer Cythera, not Oljnupus. Through the kind offices of Doyen, who was himself too prudish to accept the com- mission, Fragonard was enabled to paint for the baron de Saint- Julien * Les Hasards heureux de I'Escarpolette,' his first indis- putable masterpiece of grace and frivolity. There was no further hesitation. He had found his chosen vocation. The baron was enchanted, and the picture was engraved by de Launay, quickly becoming the success of the hour. Before he knew it Frago's fortime was made. Wealthy fermiers generaux such as Beau j on, Bergeret de Grancourt, Rostin d'lvry, and Randon de Boisset showered him with orders. Every one, in- cluding king and court favourite, wished something from the not over scrupulous brush which knew so well how to flatter the taste and stimulate the appetites of a society whose character- istic frailty was what Voltaire termed love weakness. Within a few busy years the young painter who had so anxiously awaited payment for his Academie picture was enjoying an annual in- come of forty thousand pounds. Meanwhile it mattered little that Diderot should massacre the charmingly aerial ceiling he had sketched for Bergeret, or that Bachaumont should savagely accuse him of desiring to shine only " dans les boudoirs et les garde-robes.'' After the Salon of 1767 he ceased to exhibit, and grand, imposing com- positions were renounced for countless exquisite revelations of nudity, often venturesome, always inviting. Though henceforth he painted mainly to please himself and his opulent patrons the marvel of it is that the quality of his work seldom suffered. In- credibly prolific, he displayed an ease and fertility almost with- out parallel. His art became a perfect mirror of contemporary caprice both sensuous and sentimental. Just as the baron de Saint- Julien had inspired ' Les Hasards heureux de I'Escarpo- lette,' so the marquis de Veri gave him the suggestion for * Le [9] MODERN ARTISTS Verrou.' To Varanchan de Saint-Genies went * Les Baigneuses,' and to the rich notary, Duclos - Dufresnoy, * La Fontaine d 'Amour.' In rapid succession came * Le Serment d 'Amour,' * Le Sacrifice de la Rose,' * Le Debut du Modele,' and innumer- able * Billet-doux ' and * Baisers ' all executed in a spirit of vivacious frankness and responsive sensibility. He proved him- self amazingly varied, this eager little amoroso of the brush. The subdued dignity of ' Le Contrat ' was offset by the less cir- cumspect insinuation of ' La Gimblette ' or * La Chemise en- levee.' Moreover, he kept his impressions fresh by constant contact with the world about him. He was no frigid onlooker. Always animated, always gay, witty and insatiate, he frequented at will the coulisses of the Opera, the chauff oir of the Comedie, or took supper *^ chez les soeurs Verrieres." A natural, in- stinctive being, he was disturbed neither by the maxims of the Encyclopaedists nor the lachrymose penitence of his moralizing friend Greuze. In an age of exteriorization, when the surface of things must perforce be in fastidious accord with the complexion of the moment, it was inevitable that the decorative arts should enjoy high esteem. Already well known through his work for Berge- ret, and for the royal chateau de Bellevue, it was natural that Fragonard should have been among those chosen by Drouais to adorn the new pavilion being erected for Mme. du Barry at Louveciennes, overlooking the Seine near Marly. Nothing was spared in making the structure a miracle of refined allurement. Ledoux was the architect, Lecomte, Pajou, Vasse, and AUegrain contributed the sculpture, and Vernet, Halle, Van Loo, and others the paintings. There were timepieces by Lepaute, carv- ings by Gouthiere, and tapestries by Cozette, while from the gilded wainscoting glanced demurely Greuze 's ^ Cruche cassee.' It was in his series of four panels painted for this cabinet of beauty and licence that Fragonard achieved the cardinal tri- [10] LE RENDEZ-VOUS By Jean-Honore Fragonard [Courtesy of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD mnph of his career. Conceived by the favourite herself, this * Roman d 'Amour de la Jeunesse ' epitomizes in chaste and ap- pealing accents that same Romance of Love and Youth with which Fragonard was so familiar. And yet the work, fitting as it seems, was never placed upon the walls for which it was in- tended. The reason was not because Mme. du Barry lacked fimds, nor because Vien's lubricous classicism was deemed more appropriate, but possibly because the artist had been a shade too explicit in the matter of portraiture. It was one thing to picture the golden-haired, fresh-tinted creature from Cham- pagne as a fancy shepherdess, but Louis le Bien-Aime could hardly have relished being depicted as her companion. The royal sybarite doubtless refused to sanction even this faint record of his profligacy, so Fragonard 's idyl, which traced in such captivating terms the love of king and courtesan, was sup- planted by decorations in no way comparable to his dream of youthful fondness and frailty. It is even doubtful whether the painter received proper indemnity, though in any case he must have somewhat sadly rolled up the canvases and placed them in the comer of his studio where they remained neglected in the flush of a life crowned by success and filled with eager pleasure. The same mad craze for luxurious appointments permeated all classes of society, all save the sullen, brooding peasantry who loomed more and more ominously in the background, and whom La Bruyere alone had seen in their true light. As du Barry was employing Ledoux and Fragonard in the adornment of her pavilion, so had la Guimard secured their services in beautify- ing her famous ^* Temple de Terpsichore '' in the rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. The two projects were carried forward al- most simultaneously, and, oddly enough, ended in a somewhat similar manner. Annoyed, it is inferred, by his procrastina- tion, *^ la belle damnee,'' as Marmontel none too deferentially christened her, quarrelled with the painter who promptly and [11] MODERN ARTISTS generously left the work to be finished by none other than Jacques-Louis David, then on the threshold of his stormy and triumphant career. Weary of endless fetes and numerous princesses of the opera or the theatre, Fragonard had meanwhile married, on 17 June 1769, at the age of thirty-seven, a simple, wholesome lass of eighteen from his native town. The wedding itself was not without its air of refreshing simplicity, having been celebrated at the church of Saint-Lambert among the green fields and winding lanes of Yaugirard, then a suburb of the capital. Pos- sessing less style and decidedly more common sense than the Parisiennes about her, Marie- Anne Gerard, later known as *Ma caissiere, ' ' made a prudent, though scarcely inspiring wife. The family, which was soon augmented by the arrival from Grasse of Marguerite Gerard, a younger and far prettier sister-in-law, and also by her brother, Henri Gerard, all lived comfortably together in the Galleries of the Louvre which, since the time of Henri IV, had been divided into apartments for those *' excel- lentz maitres," the artists. To Fragonard 's quarters on the ground floor often came Hubert Robert and Saint-Non, Hall, the miniaturist, who brought his flute and his beautiful daugh- ters Adele and Lucie, Greuze, bilious and irascible, the Vernets, and de Launay, all delighting in " Taimable Frago's " hospital- ity and the picturesque diversity of a studio containing BouUe furniture, Beauvais tapestries, a tiny fountain, a rustic swing with toylike trees dotted about, and a memorable Benvenuto vase. Save for a leisurely journey to Italy as the guest of Bergeret, rich Receveur-general, whose tastes were quite as gas- tronomic as they were artistic, Fragonard remained faithful to his lodgings in the Louvre and his country retreat at Petit- Bourg, near Corbeil. With the advent of his daughter Rosalie, and his son, Alexandre-Evariste, familiarly known as ^' Fan- fan,'^ his devotion to domestic life assumed new depth and [12] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONAED stability. Memories of prentice days with wise, sane Chardin seemed to drift back to him. He became ahnost a little Flemish master, painting with unsuspected penetration and insight such episodes as ' La Jeune Mere,' * La Visite a la Nourrice,' ' L'Heu- reuse fecondite,' and * Les Beignets.' It was an existence quite cahn and equable. The wayward * Baisers ' of former years had become ' Les Baisers matemels.' The provocative creature of ^ L'Escarpolette ' had been superseded by * Mo'sieur Fanfan ' learning to walk, or ride a hobby horse, or straddle the back of a big house dog. Not only did he imperceptibly become one of the first and greatest of intimists, he loved equally well to paint outdoor scenes. His records of peasant life are veracious and exact. They have little of the pretty deceit of their day. His shepherds are not operatic, his shepherdesses are not made of Sevres. To everything he treated Fragonard brought the same clarity of vision, the same lightness yet surety of touch. Just as he had anticipated impressionism in his views of the Italian villas, just as in his endearing glimpses of domestic felicity he had antedated the later apostles of intimacy, so in farmyard in- cident or landscape he gave the art of his time fresh sincerity and significance. While Gallic in interpretation, it is manifest that certain of these inspirations came from outside his native land. If his more fanciful and pagan conceptions descend from the florid Rubens, it is equally true that his interiors often recall ter Borch or Vermeer, and his trees, meadows, and skies those of Ruisdael and Hobbema. Though it is unlikely that the busy Frago ever journeyed to the Low Countries, it is a matter of note that he was familiar with the already important collection of Dutch and Flemish canvases then in the Luxembourg. A Greek at bottom, he was gifted with unfaltering instinct for that which was articulate and expressive wherever it might be found. Despite a very human laxity in other directions, in questions of art he was concise, specific, and logical. While his feeling for [13] MODERN ARTISTS form and rhythm was clearly classic, his work was imbued with a nervous grace and daintiness wholly new. His divinities still inhabited Olympus, but it was Olympus feminized. As the years slipped by and good Marie- Anne grew scarcely less prudent and phlegmatic, it was inevitable that her place in the household should have been in various ways filled by Mar- guerite Gerard, among whose attractions were a sprightly wit, a head of brown wavy hair, a pair of bright eyes, a small, slightly upturned nose, and cherry lips. More adaptable than her elder sister, who still wore her crisp white cap and spoke in the none too limpid accent of the South, Marguerite readily made her presence felt. Under the painter's inspiration she developed a slender, imitative talent, and often her ^* bon ami Frago " would bend over the easel adding deft touches here and there and ab- sorbing the fragrance of a young being who soon came to embody for him *^ la poesie '' and presumably more. Decorative paint- ing was by no means neglected along with the multitude of tasks including illustrations for Don Quixote and La Fontaine, which date from this period. On several occasions the entire family was installed at Cassan where Fragonard was engaged in embel- lishing Bergeret's new villa. The summers at Cassan, and at Folie-Beaujon, found their record in quantities of sketches and larger compositions dashed off with astonishing virtuosity, many of them fugitive, impromptu glimpses of perhaps the happiest hours of the painter's life. Though the only cloud thus far had been the death of his daughter Rosalie at the age of eighteen, it was not long before the sky began to darken fatefuUy. The States-General had met in May 1789, and already catch phrases of freedom and progress were penetrating the studios. Although largely supported by the crown, the artists of the Louvre were republican in birth and sympathies and were easily swept along by the rising hurricane of liberal enthusiasm. In September of the same year the names of Mme. Fragonard and Marguerite [14] LA LETTRE D'AMOUR By Jean-Honore Fragonard [Courtesi/ of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.^ JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD Gerard as well as those of Mmes. Moitte, David, Suvee, and Vien figured among the list of citoyennes who offered to the As- sembly their tribute of rings, bracelets, and jewels of every description for the national defence. Within a few feverish months all were plunged into the greatest social convulsion the world has ever witnessed. The change was cruelly sudden. Be- fore anyone could realize it the Reign of Rococo had given way to the Reign of Terror. Fragonard, lacking the aggressive temperament of David and his circle, was completely bewildered. There seemed noth- ing he could do. His wealthy protectors were seeking safer quarters, and surly, red-capped mobs, maddened by the lust of blood, thronged the streets and squares. Arrests were being made on every side. Hubert Robert was flung into Saint-Lazare and Hall was forced to flee the country, while from his windows the anxious little painter daily saw groups of sansculottes drag the " mauvais riches " off to prison or the guillotine. Shaken in spirit and filled with dismay by the scenes of horror which constantly met his eye, it was not strange that *' le petit papa Fragonard,'' as they had come to call him, should often have thought of bright, serene Grasse. Taking with him his long neglected panels he one day slipped away to the South, finding, with his cousins the Mauberts, a grateful welcome. Here at Grasse he passed considerable time, and it was here, in the se- cluded, cypress-screened house of his kind host that the ' Roman d 'Amour de la Jeimesse ' found at last its true setting, a setting more enduring than it would ever have known at Louveciennes. In the large salon on the lower floor, with its windows look- ing out upon the garden where pomegranates, orange trees, pur- ple hollyhocks, and great masses of geraniums shimmered in the sunlight, Fragonard completed, harmonized, and fused into single effective unit his immortal love pastoral. In size and general arrangement the room was admirably suited to receive [15] MODERN ARTISTS the four subjects already finished, and to these he added a fifth, painted four dessus de porte, a panel above the mantelpiece, and four connecting shafts. Although opinions vary, the logical order of the series is obviously: — * La Poursuite,' * Le Rendez- vous,' * La Lettre d 'Amour, ' ^ L'Amant couronne,' and * L 'Aban- don.' Nothing in the art of Fragonard or the art of his con- temporaries quite approaches the persuasive charm of this Romance of Love and Youth. Not only is the narrative carried along with just the proper note of precision in the larger panels, it is also suggested with playful symbolism in the minor com- positions. It is Paradise and Earth, a blissful Paradise with a chubby deity chasing doves about in midair, and a smiling Earth, profusely fiowered and peopled by a young couple whose every movement is cadenced by the pulse of love. The gallant who offers the emblematic rose, who climbs the terrace where the chosen one awaits him, who is by turns ardent and trium- phant, is beyond question Louis XV minus nearly half a century of self-indulgence. His Bourbon profile grows less exact after the first and second panels, but in them it is unmistakable. The slender blonde who accepts his suit with such studied artless- ness, such inviting reserve, is of course Mme. du Barry whose white throat was soon to be severed by the guillotine. In the fourth scene, * L'Amant couronne,' it is permissible to infer that the youthful artist who has been called upon to immortalize their happiness is none other than Fragonard himself whose dark curls and clear cut features are also visible in * L'Armoire ' and other canvases. It was an age of touching sensibility as well as avid pleasure, and in the last panel Fragonard shows his dainty shepherdess musing ruefully alone at the foot of a marble column which is surmounted by a mocking and admonishing cupid. The loved one has departed, the flowers have withered, and over the park has settled the chill of autumn tinging all things with subdued fatality. Each of the groups is delicately [16] JEAN-HONOEE FRAGONARD varied as to colour and disposition. Blossoms become brighter and costumes more vivid as the climax is approached and dimin- ish in intensity toward the end, the final episode being almost a monochrome in russet brown. Fluent, audacious dexterity of handling is everywhere apparent. Silks of blush-pink, mauve, amber-yellow, or pale blue vie in richness with abounding clus- ters of bloom. All the resources of an iridescent palette have been called into play throwing into just sufficient relief the ex- pressive pantomime of the figures. The whole spirit of the story is imbued with discreet restraint as well as luxuriant radiance. It is poetized longing. It is passion made lyrical. For over a century Fragonard's Romance of Love and Youth remained quite as he had left it in this silent room with its Beauvais tapestries, gilt consoles, couches, and tabourets — this room so filled with the fragrance of past, faded elegance. It was not, in fact, until 8 February 1898, that the paintings left the possession of M. Malvilan, a grandson of the artist's cousin, M. Maubert, on which date they were sold at Cannes, bringing 1,250,000 francs. During the autumn of the same year they were exhibited in London, and were subsequently purchased by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Yet not all of Fragonard's sojourn at Grasse was spent in dreaming anew with mingled joy and pathos dreams of former, happier days. Faithful as he was to his own treasured kingdom of grace and beauty, he did not wholly escape the troubled issues of the hour. Echoes of the storm penetrated the farthest comers of la Provence, and, more- over, the sanguinary Maximin Isnard was his neighbour. If tradition may be accepted it was the little exile himself who, in an outburst of patriotism, painted the heads of Robespierre and abbe Gregoire together with the emblems of law and liberty such as the Phrygian bonnet, axes, and fasces which ornament the stairway of his host's house. In any event it is consoling to know that though things were going so badly with his friends in [17] MODERN ARTISTS Paris, the artist's visit did not prove altogether fruitless, as is shown by a receipt recently discovered in the Maison Malvilan which reads: — " J 'ay regu de mon cher cousin Maubert, pour ouvrages de peinture, la sonune de trois mille six cent livres, dont quittance jusqu'a ce jour, pour solde de tout compte, a Grasse, ce dix mars 1791. Fragonard, peintre du Roy." Returning to the capital on the morrow of the September Massacres, Fragonard found the situation even worse than when he had left. The passion for blood had not been slaked and the Paris which greeted him was not the Paris he had once known. The streets still swarmed with drunken soldiers, beggars, thieves, and wild-eyed hags. Saint-Non was dead and there were few who recognized the tiny fellow with short white locks, flowing grey mantle, and loosely knotted scarf who dodged about in search of some friend who might drop him a word of welcome. The very soul of things had altered. Financiers and nymphs of the Opera were scattered. The Loves and Graces had departed, and Beauty had been stamped under foot. Idle gallants no longer danced minuets or tinkled lutes under the protect- ing trees. Instead, hot headed fellows mounted rostra and harangued the populace in the name of liberty and equality. The insinuating songs of de La Borde were drowned by the majestic roar of the Marseillaise and art was called upon not to please or flatter but to flame and to inspire. The blatant Graeco-Romanism of David was in the ascendant, ^* Fanfan " was rapidly becoming Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, equally distinguished and equally monotonous as painter or sculptor, and Marguerite Gerard was exhibiting at the Societe des Arts vapid, feeble reminiscences which could hardly have brought her master either pride or joy. All seemed strange and hope- less. Cherubino was forgotten. He belonged to another and a brighter world. Moreover, the brushes had lost their magic. There remained on the palette no glittering dust from invisible [18] L'AMANT COURONNE By Jean-Honore Fragonard [Courtesy of J. Pierjiont Morgan, Esq."] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD butterfly wings. There is no telling what might have befallen the distraught and unhappy painter had it not been for the all- powerful David, who, though relentless to so many others, never forgot the kindness Fragonard had shown him years before. On David ^s reconomendation he was made a member of the Jury des Arts and later President du Conservatoire du Museum. He even figured with Lesueur in the place of honour at the planting of a Tree of Liberty in the Court of the Louvre, and by an ironical turn of fortune was detailed to make inventories of some of the same luxurious private hotels he had once helped to deco- rate. The temper as well as the taste of those about him was visibly turning against all that Fragonard and his art repre- sented. He courageously tried in two or three empty, ambitious canvases to adjust himself to the manner of David, but his heart was not in the work. So little were his own family in sympathy with the traditions he still cherished that one day Alexandre- Evariste consigned to the flames a number of sketches and prints by his father, exclaiming, with pride, ** Je fais im holocauste au bon gout ! " The hand which had once painted in a single hour the fluent, virile portrait of M. de La Breteche shortly became weak and faltering, and the income, formerly so ample, dwindled to almost nothing. At one period Mme. Fragonard was even forced to beg at the butcher and bake shops of the quarter. Be- fore long Vivant-Denon not only removed him from his post with the Museum but soon suppressed his pension as well. They were bitter months for one who had hitherto tasted naught save success and happiness. In distress he turned to Marguerite Gerard who replied with daintily phrased platitudes counselling him to practise forethought and economy. He had showered upon her an infinity of affection and inspiration. All she had for him in his hour of darkness was egotism and discreet advice. On his return from the South Fragonard had again taken up residence in the Louvre where he had lived since the day the [19] MODERN ARTISTS yoimg pensioner of the king had proudly become painter to the king. As though his trials and disappointments were not al- ready enough, he was compelled to submit to another, and still greater humiliation, for one night Napoleon, riding by with Duroc and seeing a few modest lights gleaming from the win- dows of the Galleries, ordered the '"'' immediate evacuation '^ of the place, fearing that a chance fire might imperil paintings and statuary sacked from every corner of Europe. Not wishing to be away from his beloved Louvre, Pragonard moved across to the rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore, lodging with a restaurant keeper named Yeri, in the Palais-du-Tribunat, now the Palais- Royal. Peeling himself isolated he virtually gave up work, and being active despite his years, spent the time pattering about the streets and gardens ruefully noting changes which were fast destroying the ancient aspect of the town. On certain of these wanderings he doubtless happened upon stray engravings by de Launay or Beauvarlet of canvases which he must have recalled with confused, pathetic rapture ; though on the whole, there was little to remind him of a vanished and discredited Arcady. One afternoon on returning from the Champ-de-Mars tired and feverish he entered Veri's and called for an ice. It brought on cerebral congestion, and by five on the morning of 22 August 1806, he was dead. His entire life save those few troubled years toward the last had been itself a * Roman d 'Amour de la Jeunesse,' expressed in continuous variants on the blues, whites, and reds of his own luminous Grasse. Though he touched with flexible ease many themes, love was his favourite theme — love which he pressed into the petals of a rose, a rose worn now at the breast, now offered in mystic, virgin sacrifice, now lying crushed upon the floor. Por a decade or more before the end came the art which he practised with such infectious enthusiasm had been a thing of the past, yet he lingered on a solitary, pathetic reminder of those [20] JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD pleasure loving days when Ms fame had seemed so secure. The reign of aristocracy was indeed over. Republican aggression and imperial authority were the successive watchwords of David, who at intervals laid aside his Roman toga to picture with trenchant power the leaders of this vast movement for the eman- cipation of the human spirit. It was inevitable that the Journal de Paris and the Moniteur de FEmpire should scarcely mention the passing of Fragonard, and that the lightness, truth, and impromptu freedom of his art should find scant favour at the dawn of so stressful and grandiose an era. In his own elusive, unpretentious way he represented the principal movements, artistic, social, and intellectual of his age. A modernized Athenian, he learned from Boucher and Tiepolo the secrets of decorative composition. Through Chardin, Watteau, and espe- cially Rubens, he enriched France with the fruitful Flemish tradition, while there are in several of his more serious and aspiring canvases hints of that classic revival which followed the discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneimi. Typifying in many respects the frivolous hedonism of Crebillon, Laclos, and Mme. d'Epinay, he nevertheless echoed at moments the scepticism of Voltaire and the return to nature so explicitly preached by Rousseau. Yet above all else he was a poet, not a mere versifier, a painter pure and simple, not a philosopher or a rhetorician. Whatever his task, he always managed to illumine and adorn it. He gave to eroticism new mystery ; he etherealized feeling just as he volatilized colour. Personally as well as artistically he is directly allied to the chief modern school, that of the Impres- sionists, his great-granddaughter having been the beautiful and gifted Mme. Berthe Morizot, wife of Eugene Manet. If he has to-day regained his rightful position, if his memory has been appropriately honoured at Grasse, Besangon, Nice, and Paris, it is because in him is recognized not only the fitting epitome of his time but a painter who must always remain youthful and [21] MODERN ARTISTS rich in inspiration. His colouring still retains its freshness and its bloom. Not a single one of his roses has faded, nor can ever fade. And neither the ceaseless tramp of armies nor a century of neglect has been able to obliterate this expressive, spontane- ous art — ^this art which is both epilogue and prologue, which in tender, gracious accents bids adieu to the old regime and salutes the coming of the new. [22] ANTOINE WIERTZ ANTOINE WIERTZ Portrait of the artist painted by himself [Wiertz Museum, Brussels^ ANTOINE WIERTZ IT was not until years after the passing of the pale captain who had come up from Corsica and had changed for awhile the map of Europe, and so profoundly the destiny of man, that art resumed her true course of development. Rigid and invincible, the resurrected heroes of Greece and Rome continued to stalk before the eyes of an enthralled populace. Not satisfied with having formalized the art of his own country, David, like some conqueror of old, crossed over into Belgium and encased Flemish painting in the casques, breastplates, and stiff draperies of bygone ages. The period was one of slavish subserviency or stormy, ineffectual revolt. Oscillating between the dominant influence of a single powerful tradition and the gradual awak- ening of social consciousness, the painters of these arid days reflected little save restlessness and uncertainty. All were in a more or less degree victims of the impending transition from precedent to personal liberty, from established authority to the sovereign rights of the individual. The most acute embodiment of this ferment of the human spirit, this fever-dream which fol- lowed the blood letting of the Napoleonic era was Antoine Wiertz. It is less as an artist that this singular figure chal- lenges attention than as the man who best typifies that night- mare which preceded the dawn of rationalism and democracy. With scant exception it has been customary to consider this extraordinary being as a mere freak or madman in no way in- fluenced by current conditions, or as one whose work possesses [25] MODERN ARTISTS little interest beyond that of eccentricity. Unbalanced Wiertz certainly was, and incontestably lacking from an artistic point of view, yet on his vast canvases are pictured as nowhere else the death agonies of Antiquity and the crude vehemence of the modern world. The man's entire existence was an unceasing struggle to attain self-adjustment. He was torn asunder by conflicting and incompatible ideals. Possessing what he fancied was veritable Promethean fire, he was jeered at by his contem- poraries. Hounded out of classic precincts, he took hold of actual issues only to be maligned and misunderstood. Through the sheer power of abnormality he nevertheless managed to force himself into the company of the great, unforgettable masters of his own and former times. He was not a Rubens or a Michel- angelo as he supposed, yet by measuring himself against such giants during years of frenzied endeavour he has succeeded in being remembered along with them. Ambition, however colos- sal, is an insufficient asset, but when that ambition is expressed in transcendent manifestations of misguided genius the result is apt to be formidable. It is impossible to gaze upon Wiertz 's tortured canvases or trace the story of his titanic and forlorn life struggle without falling under the spell of an abounding individuality. He seizes upon you like some fatal obsession conjuring up visions hideous or imploring. Involuntarily you believe that there must lurk somewhere within the man and his work a baffled beauty, a sublimity which, by the merest mis- chance, became grotesque pretence or tragic incompletion. In surveying the field of art it is by no means obligatory to choose only the stereotyped products of organized effort, only those names which have been hallowed by general approval. The lesson of failure is quite as significant as the lesson of success, and in the case of Antoine Wiertz the failure was complete enough to serve any conceivable purpose. With this angry, turbulent spirit you enter at a bound that vague reabn, [26] ANTOINE WIERTZ half aesthetic, half speculative, which has lured countless ar- dent souls to their destruction — that province where thought so often triumphs over taste, where the idea and the image are constantly at war. A child of the great Revolution and an eye witness of the valiant uprising in which Belgium won her independence, Wiertz's nature was unalterably militant. It was in the quiet town of Dinant, on the Mouse, bordering the leafy recesses of the forest of Ardennes, that this strange victim of aspiration and fatality first saw light on 22 Febru- ary 1806. Antoine Wiertz was the only son of Louis-FrauQois Wiertz, a soldier of the Grande Republique, and Catherine Disiere, a daughter of the people. His father, though a native of Rocroy, was of Saxon origin, and in his mother's veins flowed the blood of the sturdy and industrious Walloons. In the boy's earliest attempts, in his first recorded sayings, and through his troubled career, it is impossible not to realize that he was an outcome of that stirring, sanguinary idealism which since 1789 had been sweeping all before it. After four years' campaigning Louis-Frangois Wiertz retired, wounded, to the hospital of Louvain, later resuming civil life in the modest capacity of a tailor. On the fall of the Empire he entered the local gendarmerie, and though he never rose beyond the rank of a simple brigadier, he was gifted with a noble and virile soul and exercised a profound influence over his son's development. Aside from a consuming passion for universal success and renown he instilled into the boy's heart two notable qualities — a stoical indifference to mortal ills and an abiding contempt for material reward. Yet it was of fame which the old soldier oftenest spoke, and quite logically the father's love of martial glory became with the son an unquenchable thirst for artistic achievement. ** My brushes," he would exclaim, *' are my lances, a canvas is my battle-field." While it is true that he lost most of his battles, the idea of strife, of conquest, never [27] MODERN ARTISTS forsook him. It pursued him during all those bitter, agonizmg years, and when, on that mellow June night in Brussels he was compelled to accept his final defeat, the struggle was heartrend- ing in its fruitless intensity. JProm the outset there appears to have been no question con- cerning the lad's future calling. Playing one day beside his mother, who was seated at her spinning-wheel, he suddenly an- nounced that he wished to be a king. ^* Why? " asked the good dame, thinking his mind must be fixed upon the shock of war or the splendour of regal pageantry. ^^ So that I might become a great painter," the boy replied. At the age of four he drew with astonishing ability, colouring his productions with the juice of berries, and by ten was painting portraits. A little later he carved out of wood a frog which was so lifelike that visitors would try to make it hop about, and which, on one occasion, a swaggering captain of gendarmes even attempted to impale on the point of his sword. The art of engraving he also mastered, or rather rediscovered, and so locally famous had he become by twelve, that the proprietor of a popular inn at Ciney commis- sioned him to execute a sign for his hostelry which was known as the *' Cheval noir." Although the youthful aspirant had never before handled oil colours he was so successful that honest folk who flocked to the celebrated fairs of Ciney predicted that he would one day become the foremost sign painter of the town. It was about this period that M. Paul de Maibe, patron of art and member of the States-General, hearing of the boy's uncom- mon talents, sent him to school at his own expense, afterward securing from the king the slender pension which enabled him to continue his artistic studies. Dinant naturally o:ffered scant facilities for advanced instruction, and, moreover, the lad was nightly visited by the luminous apparition of a tall figure wrapped in a flowing mantle and wearing a huge Spanish hat. Its manner was imperious and in its hands was borne aloft a [28] I^; 1— 1 Q "^ pq H ^ O ^ c« P ^ M J? U < O !2 Pi 9 H ? < H ^ G fe S O ^>. ^ "c s S f^ < 53 O >> H P^ « ANTOINE WIERTZ banner whereon gleamed in letters of fire the word ** AN VERS. '* Young Wiertz never for an instant doubted that it was the spirit of Rubens beckoning him to Antwerp, and, already convinced of his high destiny, to Antwerp he forthwith proceeded. Possessing naught save his pension of one hundred florins a year the young enthusiast desired little beyond ^' bread, col- ours and sunlight, '^ though often he was forced to do without all three. He worked assiduously at the Academy under Her- reyns and Van Bree, occupying a miserable attic room too low for him to stand upright in and almost too short to ac- commodate him when lying down. Though only fifteen he was tall and fully developed physically, having the stature of a grown man, his pale, chiselled features being covered with a luxuriant black beard. In his shabby cell was neither stove nor fireplace, and through the battered casement or openings in the roof used to blow at will bitter winds or puffs of snow. The room was a chaotic jumble of books, papers, anatomical studies, musical instrmnents, and the varied paraphernalia necessary to the practice of sculpture, painting, and engrav- ing. At times it grew so cold that the zealous student was forced to take to his bed, and more than once fell asleep with crayon in one hand and scalpel in the other. It was a grue- some retreat. Against the bare wall dangled a skeleton, and opposite the door grinned a cleverly painted death's head. Few visitors ever crossed the threshold, for Wiertz was re- garded as an eccentric, and between himself and the world was already erecting an impregnable barrier. His fellow-pupils openly sneered at the strange recluse of the rue du Pont-Saint- Bernard whose gods were Rubens, Michelangelo, Homer, and Comeille, and whose only goddess was Glory. He never mar- ried, and while still a student took vows of chastity, invincibly schooling himself against every distraction, every seduction. A phenomenally gifted musician, he played numerous instruments, [29] MODERN ARTISTS and when it grew too dark to work would thus divert his fancy, while below on the street passers-by would pause and listen to the wild, haunting strains floating on the midnight air. Al- though he lived for years in utter poverty, he did so mainly from a matter of principle. Beyond a few hastily executed portraits which he refused to sign, he never made the slightest attempt to sell his work, preferring to have it always by him for purposes of alteration and correction. A wealthy connoisseur once called and offered an excellent figure for a certain sketch. ** Keep your gold,*^ cried Wiertz, closing the door in the intruder's face, " it is death to the artist! '^ In 1828 the young Dinantais competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome. It was a cruel blow to his hopes, and a still ruder shock to his overmastering pride. Undaunted, he next repaired to Paris, where he was so poor that often, instead of dining, his only expedient was to draw his belt a bit tighter about the waist in order to lessen the inconvenient void. He had hoped to subsist by painting portraits, but not finding sitters at any price himg out a sign reading ^* Portraits Gratis." As though to enforce the irony of fate, no one condescended to come even on such flattering terms. Four years later he again entered the academic lists, this time carrying off first honours. All the soaring ambition so long held in check at once flared forth in radiant anticipation. In an ecstatic letter to his cousin and patron, Gilain Disiere, a sturdy, kindly boatman of the Meuse, Wiertz grandiloquently announced that ^* the path of glory " lay open to him. The Antwerp officials gave a reception in his honour, and on his departure for Rome via Paris, the townsfolk of Dinant strewed the streets with flowers, fired complimentary salutes, and entertained their young genius in the Council Cham- ber of the Hotel-de-Ville. No wonder after years of anguish and obscurity, of fevered, mocking dreams in the pitiful man- sards of Antwerp and Paris, the marble-browed visionary's [30] ANTOINE WIERTZ head was completely turned. Small wonder that when, in the summer of 1834, he entered Rome by the Porta del Popolo to the accompaniment of a crashing thunderstorm, he compla- cently regarded the incident as being heaven's recognition of his arrival on the threshold of the Caesars. The same unrelaxing austerity, the same unflinching devo- tion to what he conceived were the supreme manifestations of artistic expression, and that same burning desire for glory which had characterized his student days continued to torment Antoine Wiertz during his sojourn in Rome. He worked incessantly, succumbing to no such disturbing passions as those which as- sailed poor Leopold Robert. Under the aegis of Michelangelo and Homer a species of heroic, audacious frenzy took posses- sion of his soul. At the time he was planning his huge canvas depicting the * Greeks and Trojans Contending for the Body of Patroclus ' he wrote as follows to his devoted but amazed boat- man cousin, Gilain Disiere; " I am all impatience to begin; I would have my arms ready at hand. My brush strokes will be furious and terrible, like the lance thrusts of the Greek heroes. I shall defy the greatest colourists; I shall measure myself against Rubens and Michelangelo! " The Vatican and the Sistine Chapel had a momentous influence over him just as Notre-Dame in Antwerp had, when, a mere lad, he stood motion- less before the Flemish master's * Descent from the Cross.' All the while he was making studies for, and actually painting his * Patroclus,' Wiertz was inflamed with the ardour of conflict, more than once exclaiming, ** I imagine, like Alexander the Great, that the eyes of the universe are fixed upon me ! " Within six months the composition was finished and exhibited at the Academy of Saint Luke in the presence of over a thousand en- thusiastic artists. Thorvaldsen, greatly impressed, said: ** This young man is a giant." Yet the reception accorded * Patroclus ' in Rome was not to [31] MODERN ARTISTS be duplicated elsewhere. When the canvas finally reached the port of Antwerp, consigned of course to the Academy, that un- perturbed institution declined to pay the five hundred francs carriage, and, had it not been for the generous assistance of Van Bree, it is difficult to conjecture what might have been its fate. Pending its formal exhibition at Antwerp, Wiertz placed his pic- ture on private view in the ancient convent of the RecoUets, and there he sat almost alone day after day playing the guitar and confidently awaiting his hour of triumph. Fired by the lust of conquest he meanwhile decided to throw down the gauntlet to Ms mortal enemy, Paris, but unfortunately the big canvas ar- rived at the forbidding portals of the Louvre too late for the Salon of 1838. Wiertz, in Homeric rage, demanded its admit- tance, or, failing of that, permission to erect a tent and publicly display his masterpiece in the place du Louvre. As both re- quests were everywhere suavely yet firmly refused, there was nothing to do but wait a year longer. The following season he sent ' Patroclus ' and three other subjects, including an * En- tombment,' painted at Liege, a work which he assured his friends marked the opening of his *' duel with Rubens, of which Paris will be the witness ; his duel with Paris, in which Rubens will be his second." Unhappily the *' hideous monster," Paris, which he threatened to crush under his heel, that " cancer," or, as he often called it, that ^' city of suicide," declined to bow to the magic of his brushes and palette. The jury accepted three of his contributions but skied them all cruelly, * Patroclus,' though hung in the Salle d'honneur, being barely distinguish- able. Wiertz, cut to the quick, waited moodily about for a few weeks seeking retribution, then left forever the scene of his pain and humiliation. Press and public had alike ignored him. It was a blow from which he never recovered, and from thence- forth dark shadows of hatred and revenge began to gather closer and closer about him. He planned numerous retaliatory meas- [32] THE REVOLT OF HELL AGAINST HEAVEN By Antoine Wiertz [Wiertz Museum, Brussels] ANTOINE WIERTZ ures, and the succeeding year actually had the ironical satisfac- tion of seeing a similar *' immortal jury " decline an admirable canvas by Rubens, which he had borrowed for the occasion, and to which, in the presence of witnesses, he had affixed his own signature. The verdict of Paris was in large measure sustained when * Patroclus ' was placed on exhibition in Antwerp and in Brus- sels. While a few of the critics praised it, most of them were openly hostile. Classic themes were fast vanishing before the rise of a \dgorous national school under the leadership of Wap- pers, and the first hints of that new, poignant actuality of which Charles de Groux was to become the apostle and Constantin Meunier the chief exponent. Wiertz felt out of consonance with his age, and in order to justify and defend his position, began with brush and pencil a campaign of bitter, indignant rebellion which only ended with the grave. He resided at Liege during this period in order to be near his widowed mother for whom his devotion was unbounded. * Esmeralda ' and * Quasimodo ' were the immediate results of his visit to Paris and his admira- tion for the Hugoesque. Other subjects followed in lightning succession, the most important being the * Revolt of Hell ' which he painted under the cupola of the church of Saint- Andre. He worked with incredible energy, covering in six weeks this colos- sal canvas measuring fifty feet high by thirty feet wide, with masses of writhing demons and avalanches of riven rock. ** I know neither day, nor hour, nor date," he wrote at the time. " I know but two things, the moment of labour, and the moment of repose." Occasionally in the evening he might be seen, tense, abstracted, yet full of filial solicitude, strolling along the quai de la Souveniere arm in arm with his tottering mother, soon, alas, to be taken from him. Her death drove him to Brussels where, housed in an abandoned factory, he completed the ^ Tri- umph of Christ,' in many respects his most rational and con- [33] MODERN ARTISTS sistent production. It was this effort which induced the govern- ment, through the intermediary of M. Rogier, to build him a suitable studio on condition that upon his death he should leave all his works in perpetuity to the State. And thus by the spring of 1850 his restless, sombre probation was over. He had found at last those great bare walls he had dreamed of as a child, and which he might now cover as an ever encroaching spirit world saw fit to dictate. The interval between his return from Rome and his estab- lishment in what later became the Musee Wiertz marked the creation of the painter's most important classical and biblical works. Those which followed were mainly of a pseudo-phil- osophical character, or else sheer, unredeemed studies in terror and grotesquerie. Beset by all save a slender handful of believ- ers Wiertz made matters worse by rushing into print at every opportunity. While a few able, though extravagant effusions, among them a * Eulogy of Rubens,' which was crowned by the Antwerp Academy, flowed from his vehement pen, for the most part his writings were charged with exalted egotism and ma- jestic presumption. The critics were the particular objects of his wrath. He could never forget them, and even said that if they pressed about him after death *' like a flock of vultures " picking his fame to pieces he would surely rise from the grave and defend himself. The inspiring events of 1830 which had so quickened Belgian national feeling found ready response in Wiertz. Political revolution he firmly believed should be fol- lowed by artistic revolution. In an open letter to the Minister of the Interior in which he offered to the State a picture of his own on condition that it be hung beside Rubens 's ^ Descent from the Cross ' in the cathedral of Antwerp, he says : — * * It is time we threw off this foreign yoke ; it is time we had confidence in our native forces. Let us cease to believe with the French that M. Delacroix is a greater man than Rubens, and that M. Decamps [34] ANTOINE WIERTZ is a worthy rival of Raphael. It is time, in short, for our Bel- gian artists to sing their Marseillaise! '' And yet all the while this resplendent prophet was crying aloud to the world in lofty tones, all the while he was crowding his vast canvases with dis- traught and pleading conceptions, he was enduring the most dire poverty and neglect. He painted as always for posterity, refusing to part with any picture of importance, a foreign prince once vainly offering an iromense sum for the ^ Triumph of Christ.' It was often with him a case of *' bread or lead,'' though somehow just enough bread always came to save him from that oblivion which he dreaded above all else. The image of death haunted him with increasing vividness as the years slipped by, not as something to be feared in itself, but as the messenger who might summon him hence before glory should be definitely assured. Under his explicit instructions and in exact replica of the ruined temple of Neptune at Paestum the State agreed to erect for him a permanent studio situated near the Pare Leopold and not far from the Garde du Luxembourg. The building is to-day surrounded by the melancholy charm of a small, neglected gar- den, and though gloomy, is reposeful in aspect, somewhat sug- gesting a mausoleum. About the massive columns, over the broken pediment, and along the rough walls have for years twined masses of creeper and ivy, now green, now purple or crimson. Though certain exterior features have altered, within the place remains much the same as during the painter's life- time. It is a pictorial pandemonium, a Vatican of eccentricity. On the walls rages a cyclopean conflict between good and evil, between beauty and horror. The majestic and the trivial are grouped side by side just as they burst from their creator's disordered, incongruous fancy. Visions of seething, relentless power are offset by cheap devices and panoptical tricks unworthy of the rudimentary imagination of a child. Sentiment of the [35] MODERN ARTISTS sugary, Bouguereau brand is succeeded by dramatic vivisections and insistent diablerie from which the most callous visitor shrinks in loathing and disgust. All periods from the classic to the ultra modern and morbid, all episodes from the * Educa- tion of the Virgin ' to the * Romance Reader ' throng this lurid graphic cosmos. Apart from the pictures he had previously painted it took the artist just fifteen years to fill the remaining space at his disposal. A portion of the time was passed in writ- ing his * Flemish School of Painting ' and numerous brochures, pamphlets, and tractates as well as in modelling, for sculpture was also one of his passions. During many anxious, baffling months he devoted his energies to the study of chemistry with a view to perfecting his *^ peinture mate," a combination of fresco and oil painting supposedly having more fluency of handling than the former and none of the latter 's often irritating re- flective quality. It was of course necessary for him to continue fabricating portraits ** pour la soupe," as he would say, and during less exalted moments he perpetrated various *' petites bamboches," or serio-comic platitudes without interest or dis- tinction. He insisted upon living a rigidly isolated existence, seldom venturing out, though adjoining his studio he devised a miniature ** jardin geographique," in which, arrayed in long black tunic, big Rubens hat, and gaiters, he used to promenade, fancying himself in different parts of the universe. He laboured ceaselessly, it being his hope some day to enlarge the museum to many times its actual size and paint a continuous panorama of civilization, of which the portion already completed was but the preface. Yet this grandiose dream was not to be realized. Death, who had long since gazed fixedly upon him from the walls of his narrow Antwerp mansard, at last claimed him for that dim kingdom which is all dreams, all phantoms. He suffered intolerably from neuralgia, and moreover his chemical researches had undermined an otherwise robust con- [36] h-J H-1 w ffi N ■!-> ^ ^ _« HH S w ;^; 'o a < >, < m ANTOINE WIERTZ stitution. Though ill but a few days he died in fearful agony from gangrene shortly after ten o'clock on the evening of 18 June 1865, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Even as the mortal chill was creeping over him he moaned fran- tically " I am burning! burning! '' At the bedside had gath- ered Dr. Watteau, Louis Labarre, his lifelong friend and champion, Mme. Sebert, and the eldest son of the good boatman, Galain Disiere. It was a soft, magical summer night. Overhead 'swung a silvery moon and from the near-by gardens were wafted the strains of a waltz. He grew calmer after awhile and spoke of Socrates 's belief in the immortality of the soul, and then, realizing that his time was at hand, fought off the inevitable moment with agonizing fortitude. Just before the end he raised himself upon the pillow and cried : " Oh what glorious horizons ! What beautiful, tender countenances! how sad they are; they weep because they love me so. Quick! My brushes! My palette! What a picture I shall paint! I shall vanquish Raphael! '^ Then, speechless, he raised his hand and with his finger traced imaginary outlines in the air, sinking back with an inexpressible sob of regret. They buried him temporarily in the cemetery of Ixelles, conducting the heart to his native town of Dinant to repose in an urn in the H6tel-de-Ville, where, years before, he had been proclaimed the godson of Rubens, the saviour of the art of his country. ' It is useless to pretend that the work of Antoine Wiertz possesses any special aesthetic value or significance. He occu- pies a decidedly rickety seat in the Pantheon of the masters. He entered not by day, between wide, lofty portals, but on a stormy night through the back door and up dingy, crooked stairs. Though at the outset he may have had some hint of the plastic fervour of Michelangelo, some gleam of the chromatic f ulgor of his revered Rubens, such gifts were quickly engulfed in a bound- less ocean of personal vanity, and vaunting, arrogant emula- [37] MODERN ARTISTS tion. A flash of the spiritual evocation of Blake here and there shines forth only to be rendered dull and lustreless by the heavy pomposity of Haydon. The man came too late upon the scene. He stirred up the dust of giants long since departed. He sum- moned from the spacious, heroic past stalwart figures who merely mocked him and glided back into the abyss of eternity. At no time does he appear to have possessed a clear perception of reality. His dreams early began to dethrone thought^ and finally reason. He was utterly lacking in all sense of relation or proportion. Size was to him synonymous with greatness. His art is extensive rather than intensive. The fundamental defect of his nature seems to have been a disastrous form of egomania. He was continually substituting ambition for ac- complishment ; he was forever confounding glory and self-glori- fication. Not the least of his shortcomings is that he was a per- petual borrower. His special divinities he often placed under contribution, and, still unsatisfied, he did not scruple to look elsewhere. Upon ^ Happy Times ' has settled the Hellenic quietude of Poussin. Back of ^ Two Young Women or the Beautiful Rosine ' looms the eloquent and occasionally volup- tuous fantasy of Delacroix. Each stage of his development is reflected in these violent, abortive productions. In * Patroclus * he challenges the universe ; the * Revolt of Hell ' depicts his own revolt against those in power, and in the * Triumph of Christ ' are mirrored the few brief moments of peace he was ever to experience. Nevertheless this art is not only typical of the man himself, but in a distorted way of the nation as well. While individual, this turbulence, this morbid unrest, were also gen- eral. Other of Wiertz's contemporaries thought and felt much as he, and numerous Belgian artists both past and present have fallen under the same spell. There is something of Wiertz in Laermans, in the pallid figments of Khnopff, and the sardonic demons of Felicien Rops, while young Henry de Oroux is clearly [38] ANTOINE WIERTZ his artistic grandcMld. Above and before tbem all, however, towers the mighty, fecund genius who has given the world that series of * Last Judgments ' and cataclysmic * Revolts ' now in the Munich Pinakothek. More than anyone else Wiertz resem- bles Rubens — a Rubens bereft of health, bereft of mind. It is in the last phase of his activity that Wiertz exhibits most sympathy with the particular tendencies of his race and his time. While in his classic and biblical subjects he seldom speaks with his own voice, in a series of crudely powerful social studies he strikes a far deeper note. * Orphans,' * Premature Burial,* * Hunger, Madness, and Crime,' * The Last Cannon,' and * Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head,' each preaches a sermon with but scant attempt at disguising the text, one plead- ing for charity, one for cremation, one against poverty, one against war, and another against capital punishment. He was ever haunted by vague souvenirs of the days when the armies of the Republic and the Empire so seared and scarred the face of Europe, and in a * Scene in Hell ' does not hesitate to depict a certain familiar figure with long cloak, cocked hat, and folded arms standing unmoved amid livid flames, whilst about him surges an infuriated, lamenting crowd of widows and orphans, bearing in upraised hands the dismembered remains of their slaughtered loved ones. In these and similar episodes Wiertz proves himself a true son of democracy and humanitarianism, as well as one of the first artists to treat modem themes on an imposing scale. It is obvious that more restraint and less crapu- lous horror, less of the stench of the charnel house would have heightened the efficacy of these appeals, and yet at times the man's brain seemed itself a veritable morgue. To the last Wiertz fancied himself a soldier of advanced thought, a ^^ chas- seur d'idees." One of his favourite projects was the establish- ment of a series of exact correspondences between the various arts, a theory to which Goethe and others had already given no [39] MODERN ARTISTS little consideration. In distorted measure lie possessed the mind of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet, and the fervour of a patriot. Endowed with acute organic susceptibility he ap- peared destined from the first for martyrdom. He was born, and persisted in continuing, tragically out of harmony with the world about him. He lived the life of a lost Titan, always alone, always harassed. His unflinching devotion to his career and his austere vows of poverty and celibacy — vows which were never forsworn — did not, in the end, suffice to constitute him one of the gods or redeemers of art. Through reasons beyond control of his troubled spirit he could not remain upon the heights. He descended perforce from Olympus into the re- cesses of dark Avernus. [40] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS Permission of Frederick Hollyer GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS Portrait of the artist painted by himself \_Possession of Lord Ilchester, Holland House, London^ GEORGE EREDERICK WATTS LONGr since, a youth of eighteen with sensitive features, a brow crowned by dark curls, and eyes that spoke of high enthusiasms dreamed an exalted, resplendent dream. He dreamed of a gleaming Temple of Life with vast corridors and stately chambers. The temple was built of marble and its walls were covered with frescoes depicting in epic sequence the august mysteries of birth, of life, and of death. Grouped about were statues giving form to those ideas better suited to plastic expression. Each crisis in the upward struggle of the soul and the surge of each elemental passion there found fitting sem- blance. The themes were treated in allegorical vein and in terms which would appeal to mankind for all time. That which is, and that which is not, that which has been, and that which can never be — the entire pageant of hope, and effort, and aspiration was unfolded in symbolic beauty and significance. Inevitably this fervid, soaring conception was never realized, for the cosmic history of humanity can hardly be written by a single individual. Only a little wall-space has been covered, only a few bits of statuary have been put in place, a few faces limned with un- faltering serenity, yet enough exists to witness the depth and vitality of that early revelation. Though feeble of body the dreamer remained ardent in endeavour, and never ceased striv- ing for the fulfilment of his youthful vision. Until the verj^ last he continued adding to a task which from the first must perforce have remained unfinished. [43] MODERN ARTISTS Only in England during the nineteenth century could such a phenomenon as George Frederick Watts have occurred. He belongs to the Victorian age, to an age of liberalism, of humani- tarian aims, and a certain broad, didactic habit of mind. In artistic as well as political progress his countrymen had been the leaders of the modern movement. A century and more be- fore the place de la Concorde was dyed crimson, England had passed through a corresponding crisis and was already laying the foundations of a well ordered social and economic system. The same results were achieved as in France, but by vastly dif- ferent and less violent means. The very moral stability of the people made it impossible for them to drench their country in blood and tears. Moreover, there were no traditions to hamper development; the iron hand of classicism did not reach across the Channel. Society was less highly crystallized and the varied activities of the human mind were more natural, more healthy, and more spontaneous. By the time Watts was born in London on 23 February 1817, the intellectual atmosphere about him was clear and serene. He grew to manhood amid settled, equable surroundings, and since throughout his career there seemed lit- tle to do beyond improving and uplifting existing conditions, it was fitting that he should have become an idealist. In common with his contemporaries in the field of letters or of science he dedicated his gifts to the cause of humanity. For close upon ninety years he gazed at life with the eyes of the spirit, seeing only that which the spirit saw, recording only that which to the spirit seemed worthy of record. Though this steadfast vision- ary often turned to actuality in order to enforce or verify an impression, always, with him, did the symbol transcend the fact, always did the unseen shine more radiantly than the seen. Fundamentally moral, it was the impress of an ethical rather than a physical beauty which he sought to transcribe. Since art was for him a sacred mission rather than a disturbing riot of the [44] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS senses, that which he strove to portray was the austere serenity or the purifying anguish of the soul. In depicting what he con- ceived to be inspiring and eternal truths he never hesitated to sublimate colour and contour as well as passion and volition. While his colleagues were for the most part painters only, he was both painter and prophet. His work was everywhere illumined by imaginative reason. He saw in all things the image of divinity. God was for him the world and the world was God. Almost any time until the last four years might have been seen seated before the fire at Little Holland House in his fa- vourite red plush arm-chair or strolling about the garden of Limnerslease in skull-cap and workman's blouse this venerable, benign figure. Those who knew him intimately called him ' * The Signor, ' ' and in many respects his patriarchal appearance sug- gested some bygone Venetian senator. To certain minds he was but a kindly, dignified echo of past grandeur and faded glory. There seemed, it is true, a pathetic incongruity between the out- ward frailty of the man and his unquenchable earnestness of purpose. Furthermore, he was the ceaseless victim of doubt and mistrust. He habitually imderrated his powers and often re- ferred to himself as *^ the poorest of poor creatures.'' While it is obvious that he must often have been taken at his own meas- ure, those who understood George Frederick Watts were never deceived. Though his greatness was not at first apparent, it was nevertheless indubitable. A delicate, sickly child and a man who suffered throughout life, he still managed to keep burning the flame of high hope and far reaching ambition. Through infinite care he maintained a finely adjusted equilibrium of forces which lasted until the end. With unflinching persistence he outlived long periods of indifference and obscurity, drifting at length into the serenity of general recognition and accept- ance. From the deepening twilight of the heroic age of art [45] MODERN ARTISTS looms this solitary being. In pious ecstasy he recalls the Hebrew seers ; for tragic awe he may be likened to Aeschylus. In devo- tion to form he suggests Phidias, and in tone the richness of the Renaissance. While he possessed none of these qualities in generous measure, each was in some degree his legacy, and each in part transfused every canvas, every bit of bronze or marble he has left behind. In the truest sense of the phrase this meek yet mighty spirit seemed to inherit the earth. His majestic roll of years gave him ample perspective, his open, inquiring mind moved freely among the varied works of God and man, and his vision embraced all periods and all epochs from the awakening possibilities of crea- tion to the clouded hour of our own day and generation. Beyond everything he was a supreme pictorial genius. Even when he failed, as he often did, to clothe his ideas in finite guise, the effort exacts attention and respect, for the man's calibre is also manifest in his groping, incomplete gestures. He was essen- tially a creator. Whatever he touched sprang into predestined form and colour. Out of chaos he made a vast panorama of primitive potentialities; he retold with new depth and preg- nance Greek legend and Arthurian romance, and over the troubled destiny of mankind shed a flood of consoling light. Above all he was simple and elemental. The sea, the sky, the gleam of flesh, and the far stars were the alphabet of his art. From the primal dust and wind, from the diffused radiance of the first sunrise he fashioned creatures tender and ethereal, prophetic and courageous. Although the art of George Fred- erick Watts gathers under her protecting wings so many of the earth's children and the children of the brain, there is no lack of unity, or of community, in anything he painted or modelled. A single thought animates his entire graphic cosmos. His mes- sage is the message of universal brotherhood and universal peace. Leaving to divers youngsters the sterile doctrine of art [46] Permission of Frederick Holh/er ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE By George Frederick Watts [Possession of Mrs. Beers, London'] GEORGE FEEDERICK WATTS for art's sake, he boldly proclaimed that beauty was the heritage of the many, not the property of the esoteric few. Art, he held, should in her highest manifestations be consciously utilitarian, should be a medium for the transmission of ennobling ideas. ** A picture without an idea,'' he said, ** is like a face without eyes." He went still further. " A great picture," he main- tained, *^ must be ethical — didactic, if you like, but certainly ethical. Humanity has created art, as it has created tools and weapons, for its own advancement, for its own help, for its own comfort." Had he possessed a mind less clear and logical, and a less exacting aesthetic conscience, it is easy to see how this evangelist in paint must have encountered complete shipwreck. Yet that same gift of balance which so long held body and soul together also kept in sufficient accord the thought and its ex- pression. However instinct these canvases are with mental or moral purport, they but seldom fail to reveal a compensating external loveliness. Spirit and sense have here been strangely, almost mystically, married. It is a frequent contention that the art of Watts is literary, meaning, presumably, that it contains elements which properly belong to the domain of letters. Few judgments could be more superficial or inadequate. The conceptions that took shape under the caressing stress of his brush or chisel are not the ex- clusive property of any sect or coterie; they are the common legacy of all men and all ages. They are those fundamental verities which have perplexed or inspired humanity from the beginning and will continue to do so until the end. They occupy alike the painter and the poet, the theologue and the man of science, the sybarite and the beggar by the roadside. In scarcely a single instance has Watts repeated either in substance or in form that which had been said before. What he did was to take certain tjrpical themes and recast them in a language of his own. When at his best he embodied in splendid, sweeping lines and [47] MODERN ARTISTS solemn, glowing colours the eternal aspiration and the eternal heart-hunger of the human race, the joy of service and the pain of those who, having great possessions, depart in sorrow. It was no narrow view that he took of his mission. * * Art, ' ' he held, *^ embraces the whole of those conditions which are to be repre- sented to the mind through the medium of the eye.'' Himself a rigorous, elemental man he gave to certain of these truths a clarity and a structural simplicity which made them universal in application and appeal. When he speaks in his rightful voice it is impossible to remain deaf to the message of Watts. Full of subdued rhythmic vibrancy, his canvases seem like pictorial anthems. One and all they chant the Gloria in Excelsis of life and art. While he acquired much from without, while he took glad- ness from the vernal freshness of spring, or tinged his palette with the burning glow of the dying year ; while he borrowed the veiled whiteness of the pearl and the pink of the nautilus, the drifting vapours of the river and the iris of the rainbow, Watts 's chief storehouse lay within. It must not be assumed that this man with his imaginative fervour, with that power of recreation so doubly his, represents a wholly British endowment. The keynote to his character and his achievement lies in the fact that he was a Celt, not a Saxon. His father was of Welsh ex- traction, and from him doubtless came the sustained poetic im- pulse, the kiss of fire, and the benediction of tears, that suffuse all Watts touched. Into his landscapes stole unconsciously that pale light which gleams behind the mist-wrapped hills of Wales. Imbued with all the wistful yearning of his race, and with an abiding sense of the futility of earthly things, he managed to establish a definite and fruitful relation between the past and the present. Musing in his peaceful Surrey home his fancy travelled to vague, dim times, to dark forests and the sea crash- ing on a lonely coast. At nightfall as he moved about the gar- [48] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS den, wMte-bearded and clad in flowing blouse, lie seemed almost an ancient Druid watching the flame from some rude pyre moimt skyward in slender, fitful spirals. And out of this realm half creative and half reminiscent emerged at intervals stalwart men and ardent, heroic women. ^ Britomart ' and ^ Uldra,' ^ Una ' and ^ Brynhildr,' each came to him awakening echoes of an ear- lier, more mystical existence. The trace of the Celt was seldom absent. ^ Eve Repentant ' might have been a distraught Isolde, and the broken lyre in the tremulous fingers of * Hope ' a harp once belonging to some wandering bard. While several of his inspirations were superficially Spenserian, in point of fact they went still further back — back, indeed, to days before those rest- less seekers pushed westward, clinging, finally, to the last fringes of land facing the Atlantic. There is something not only Celtic but Asiatic in the art of Watts. It is Oriental sjrmbolism seen through the grey fogs of Britain. Every episode in a career inwardly rich though outwardly placid helped Watts to formulate his cherished conceptions. The f oiu* years passed in Florence under the patronage of Lord and Lady Holland, and the months spent among the islands of the Aegean or the plains of Asia Minor with the Newton expedi- tion, added warmth and definition to his maturing vision. The hours consumed while studying the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum likewise contributed their particular quota. A student at the Academy Schools for but a few weeks, and a desultory pupil of the sculptor, Behnes, Watts was without systematic training. ^* I never had any master save Phidias," he often said, and this was literally true. Victorian in its breadth and philanthropy, the art of Watts is eclectic, for he wandered over a wide field in his endeavour to restore painting to her early grandeur and prestige. In a measure his sense of form is Florentine, and his colour Venetian, yet in no pronounced degree is either the case. The tombs of Halicamassus and the tower of [49] MODERN ARTISTS Giotto loom vaguely, though only vaguely, against his varied graphic background. While there are traces of the sweep of the Panathenaic procession, or the subdued glow of Giorgione, everywhere can be seen the resolute desire to speak an inde- pendent aesthetic language. So strongly did the creative im- pulse surge within that he was incapable of making copies after the Italian masters he so revered. Though Titian, Tintoretto, and especially Orcagna meant much to him it was only in a general way. He was above all a painter of processes, one who recorded the ever changing vesture of outward things, one who mirrored the mind's ceaseless inquietude. To him nothing was explicit, nothing final; decay followed fast upon growth and death was succeeded by joyous rebirth. A whole cycle of muta- tions both visible and invisible was continually unfolding itself before him. The world was ever new; the heart of man ever young. The painter-knight who, at Lord Holland's mask ball, ar- rayed himself in a suit of silver-black armour, and whose earnest countenance is here framed by a dark casement with, beyond, glimpses of the Palazzo Vecchio, was always an instinctive, searching student of human physiognomy. When, on his return from Florence, he failed in his efforts to revive mural painting on an heroic scale, he turned to portraiture, gradually forming the idea of leaving to the nation a complete gallery of the poets, artists, publicists, and statesmen of nineteenth-century England. In all his portraits Watts aimed to see beneath mere accidents of circumstance. Each interpretation displays a humble and passionate integrity of purpose. This shrinking, modest man to whom money was naught and fame almost an intrusion, re- fused to exhibit himself in place of his sitter. He declined to pounce with a cheap show of analysis upon what appeared to be a dominant emotion or a characteristic trait. He was at all times content to remain questing and expectant, merging his [50] permission of Frederick HoUyer ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE By George Frederick Watts [Watts Picture Gallery, Compton Lane, Surrey] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS own identity into that of his subject. No technical bravado mars the simplicity of these likenesses. Serene, pontifical Ten- nyson, irate, rebellious Carlyle, and grandly optimistic Brown- ing look out of canvases that are devoid of any striving after points. It was the deeper mystery of personality, the uncon- scious revelation of self and of soul which Watts strove to per- petuate. None is without interest, none without penetration. The lyric intensity of Swinburne, the blended humour and sad- ness of Leslie Stephen, and the brain weariness written on the brow and in the eyes of the poet of ^ Obermann ' are the acme of synthetic divination. Obviously these portraits are transla- tions rather than transcriptions, for that which Watts aimed to achieve was something higher and nobler than pyrotechnics in paint or photogi'aphic accuracy. Taking the elements of the individual before him he recreated upon canvas his inner, rather than his outer, image, retaining those qualities which alone were essential and enduring. He remained always the idealist. He showed with gentle forbearance what man is, and with quicken- ing enthusiasm what man should be. The principle Watts applied with such convincing power to the delineation of his fellow-workers in the field of social ad- vancement was applied alike to primal fancy. Mosaic tradition, Cretan myth, or medieval story. He managed to revive with a magic all his own the centuries-old narratives of the Genesis, the Fall, and the Flood. To the grief of Ariadne seated on the wooded shores of Naxos waiting the return of Theseus he added fresh poignancy. The Orpheus of legend is less tragic than the sweet singer who here clasps in his arms the already lifeless form of Eurydice, and it is not simply Diana, but the very spirit of nocturnal mystery which here bends to kiss the sleeping shepherd of Latmos. The lines of Dante carry but a faint suggestion of the listless, burned-out ecstasy of this Paolo and Francesca circling remorsefully through the Inferno, nor [51] MODERN ARTISTS has poet been able to picture a knight quite like Watts 's Sir Galahad standing beside his cream-white steed, his eyes aglow with mingled rapture and resolye. If it be true that there is no beauty without some strangeness, it is equally true that there is no beauty without a certain sadness, and both elements are ever present in the work of Watts. A delicate veil shrouds each countenance, an indefinable pathos envelops hill and valley, and shadows fall aslant the path of peace. Even in the spring- time of life and love, flowers droop and heads are bowed. It is not that these beautiful, sedate compositions breathe hopeless- ness or despair; it is merely that they teach the dual lesson of courage and compassion. Yet the real ethical and aesthetic import of Watts 's message is not manifest until you emerge from the realm of fable and romance into the pale, serene atmosphere of abstract thought. The central figure in this drama of ideas is of course man. As the painter himself said: ** The noblest symbol is the human form, and the human form can express all the virtues of life — love, courage, faith ; and all the tragedy of life — sin, suffering, and death." Considering the manifest difficulty in treating such themes it is remarkable that this prophet in paint did not more frequently allow moral considerations to outweigh his sense of form, colour, or design, for with him the ethical purpose was ever uppermost. In point of fact, however, he was less didactic than he imagined. ** I teach great truths," he once remarked, *^ but I do not dogmatize." Or again, speaking of the public, he said: *^ I lead them to the church door, and then they can go in and see God in their own way." In a series of visions sometimes inchoate and obscure, sometimes incomparably direct and uplifting, he thus sought to embody the perennial enigmas and aspirations of humankind. Although in essence they are deeply philosophical and deeply religious, these works are unconditioned by creed or doctrine. Basic ideas are ex- [52] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS pressed in the broadest, most liberal terms. The customary insignia of the church are absent. Cross, crown, and bleeding heart find no place in this grandly simple imagery. It is a grey, somewhat formless region where there are no firmly postulated texts, no fanatical sacrifices to faith. Over this art is spread the complex pathos of modern agnosticism. His pictures show, as Watts himself recognized, humanity's breaking away from theological formulae and still holding true to the law of its being — ^morality. Just as he had formerly read new mystery and magic into oft-told tales, so Watts gave new shape to certain conceptions which had long been the property of the multitude. Hope never before showed such resigned and unwearied tenderness as does this bowed creature clinging to the bare disk of the world listening to the music of a solitary string, nor was Time ever before pictured as a resolute youth, clear-eyed and firm of car- riage. The man's creative impulse seldom flagged, nor was he ever satisfied with conventional expedients. With steadfast gaze this calm apostle of allegory surveyed the universe afresh and in the seclusion of his studio redreamed the dreams of the ages. The most moving of all his visitants was Death, who appeared before him not in the guise of a hideous, leering skull, but as a majestic, resistless presence clad in pearl-white, her face averted, as though deploring her dread errand. Now she carried in the folds of her robe blossoms plucked but yesterday ; now she crowned the brow of Innocence, and now brushed aside Love who sought to stay her hand upon the flower- strewn threshold of Life. There is always in these pictures a suggestion of maternity in the treatment of death. It was not accidental, but intentional. ** I want," the painter said, " to destroy the notion that death is * the king of terrors.' My fa- vourite thought recognizes Death as the kind nurse who says: * Now then, children, you must go to bed, and wake up in the [53] MODERN ARTISTS morning/ '' On another occasion lie spoke of her as ** a gracious Mother, calling her children home." Despite the cloud shadows that flit across this fair land, it is always springtime, always April, in the art of Watts. An inherent primalism clung about the wondrous old man even to the end. Born in the morning of the year, he somehow never lost the capacity for re-creation and the response to new life and new possibilities. Until the very last he was fond of paint- ing such subjects as * Green Summer,' or fair-tinted * Lillian ' bearing in her hands a basket of fresh-plucked roses. Particu- larly fond of the golden crocus, he seldom failed to introduce into his paintings an appropriate floral symbolism. And like flowers his thoughts themselves would grow into being, unfold- ing gradually, according to some inner, hidden law, from bulb to blossom. Though by no means an exact or painstaking stu- dent of natural forms his spirit was ever in consonance with nature's meaning and nature's moods. His sympathies were attuned to the world and all that throbbed therein. His soul was at peace with God and man. In his calm, harmonious way he represented the great oneness of the universe. There was never, in the daily life of Watts, any conflict be- tween aspiration and accomplishment. The ideals enunciated in his art were upheld by his actions. He was not one who preached charity and failed to put his hand into his own pocket. Year after year he gave of his best with no thought of reward. When he returned from Italy convinced of the immense edu- cative value of mural painting he offered to decorate without charge the Hall of the new Euston Station only to have his pro- posal rejected by the phlegmatic directors of the company. Aside from an insignificant legacy he never had a penny he did not earn, and yet presented canvas after canvas to the nation. A whole succession of contemporary likenesses was given to the National Portrait GaUery, while many of his most important [54] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS allegorical compositions went to the Tate Gallery. The cartoon of * Sir Galahad ' he gave to Eton College Chapel, * Love and Death * to the city of Manchester, * Fata Morgana ' to Leicester, a version of * Love and Life ' to America, and * The Happy Warrior ' to Munich. Judging by the price offered privately for ^ Love and Death,' which was five thousand pounds, he might have made large simis, yet he preferred to live modestly, even plainly, with barely enough for his meagre needs. Al- though evincing generous sympathy for the artists of his time, and sharing to a certain degree their struggles and triumphs, he never allied himself with any particular group or movement. A Pre-Raphaelite he cannot be called, and the only possible label which may be given one so remote and so hieratic is that of having belonged to those New Idealists who have offset the rigours of naturalism and the prismatic conquests of the Im- pressionists by pouring over the world a tender, melting beauty — a beauty which is of the spirit rather than of the senses, of the mind rather than the eye. Decade after decade he wrought in silence and semi-obscurity, and it was not until he had reached the age of fifty that he was made a member of the Royal Acad- emy. Yet such matters concerned him little, for later on, when twice offered a baronetcy, he each time declined, caring nothing for worldly distinction. Like Michelangelo this humbler, more pacific giant of the English Renaissance had within him a persistent love for the round. At intervals he busied himself with sculpture, the bust of * Clytie,' the statue of * Hugo Lupus ' which commands the entrance to the grounds of Eton Hall, and the heroic equestrian entitled ^ Physical Energy ' which was appropriately designed to stand upon the heights of Matoppos in commemoration of the achievements of Cecil Rhodes, being his chief contributions to plastic art. For many years he lived in Little Holland House, Melbury Road, where his friends often gathered to see his work [55] MODERN ARTISTS and listen to grave dissertations on current topics or delight in his playful, almost boyish, banter. He used to wear the prover- bial crimson skull-cap and blue blouse, and when animated would move his head sharply from side to side making short, impatient sweeps of the arm. At times, though, he would remain seated for days the prey of nervous depression or a curious *' brain sickness,'' as he called it, which made it impossible for him to visit the studio wherein were gathered so many canvases com- pleted or in process. A Stoic in cast of mind, he was a Spartan in his tastes and habits. He never smoked, never touched alco- hol in any form, and ate sparingly. Avoiding as a rule public gatherings, he was fond of strolling about the streets arrayed in a long fur coat. And every night for years, at the close of a hard day's work, he would sit down to a supper of cold pudding, milk, and barley water. The life in London was carried out in brighter, more inspirit- ing colours at the painter's country home known as Limners- lease, in Surrey, near Guildford. Guarded by tall sentinel firs the modest, vine-grown house looked across a landscape dotted with white cottages set among smiling fields. In his younger days Watts was a capital horseman and might often have been seen galloping up ** Hog's Back " or along the very road where Chaucer's Pilgrims used to wend their way toward the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Throughout the siunmer and autumn he rose every morning at three thirty, worked until seven, when he had his bath and breakfast, then worked until one, and again from three until six or after. Unhurried, undis- turbed, he would labour at different periods for ten, or even twenty years upon the same composition, getting closer and closer to the idea which he sought to portray. Though his tech- nique was troubled and fumbling, he somehow managed to achieve the desired results, and when all was finished would cover the canvas with a film of white, afterward adding fresh [56] Permission of Frederick Hollyer LOVE AND LIFE By George Frederick Watts [The National Gallery of British Art, London] GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS touches of colour in order to get just that bloom which indeed is the bloom of eternal youth. A few of his pictures, such as the fire-bathed head of * Brynhildr/ and ^ Time, Death, and Judg- ment ' came to him as complete revelations, but for the most part his conceptions were evolved slowly and painfully. His art is not, in fact, a reproduction of that which is without; it is a representation of that which is within. It is that most difficult and hazardous of all aesthetic tasks. It is thought made visible. Just as he had in London shed about him loveliness and benevolence, so here in the open there grew up imder his eye numerous tokens of charity and utility. Together with Mrs. Watts he built the picturesque Mortuary Chapel which stands in the grove near his house, and together they established, under the auspices of the Home Industries Association, a flourishing pottery at Compton, not far from the spot where Mrs. Watts has since erected a Picture Gallery containing as many of her husband's works as it has been possible to collect. And this Gal- lery, which he never saw, is perhaps the nearest approach to that Temple of Life of which he had dreamed so long and ardently. As time went on, though the weight of years bowed that slender frame, his spirit never faltered. Shortly before the end he re- marked, with pathetic heroism, *' I think aspiration will last as long as there is consciousness." He was in fact actually work- ing on the huge model for his statue of ' Physical Energy ' when, on 1 July 1904, the final summons came. Although the past had perhaps always clung too closely about him, and though he was not fated boldly to carry the banner of art into new territory, he nevertheless achieved that first and most precious of all victories — the victory over self. Eager, ruthless oncomers with the cruel intolerance of youth were soon to thrust aside his hinnble offering, yet the lesson of his life can never be overlooked. And as he lay there restful [57] MODERN ARTISTS and motionless in the deepening summer twilight it seemed as though, like his own * Happy Warrior/ his brow must in truth have been softly kissed by one of those same beautiful, tender beings he had often summoned from the radiant beyond. At the simple, impressive service in St. PauPs Cathedral which was attended by some of the foremost artists and states- men in England, they played a Beethoven funeral march, the archdeacon reading that memorable prayer from Ecclesiasticus beginning: ** Let us now praise famous men, and the fathers that begat us. Their bodies are buried in peace but their name liveth for evermore." The next day they left him sleeping on the sunlit hillside he loved so well, gently covered with lilies, the white and slender symbol of that immortality he had man- fully won. [58] ARNOLD BOCKLIN ARNOLD BOCKLIN Portrait of the artist painted by himself [The National Gallery, Berlin] ARNOLD BOCKLIN IT is a significant fact that despite tlie encroaclunents of sci- ence and the increasing materialism of existence the Blue Flower of the ideal should have continued to flourish upon the earth. Lofty and impersonal with Watts, serene and Vir- gilian with Puvis de Chavannes, and dreamily sumptuous with Gustave Moreau, these glimpses of regions beyond or above more than held their own beside the sturdy reality of such masters as Menzel, Courbet, and Liebermann. By a logical process of development that which in England was detached and spiritual, and in France was vaguely formal and classic, became in Ger- many a superb apotheosis of native strength and force. The resistless trinity of modem Teutonic symbolism is composed of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arnold Bocklin. It is they who have swept all before them, they who have routed prosaic notions of equality and have enthroned that disturbing and aggressive conception known as the Overman. It is in Ger- many alone that this new symbolism obtains, and it is impossible not to realize that it has flowed direct from the ironic outbursts of Nietzsche, the symphonic lava stream of Wagner, and the glowing colour poems of Bocklin. The specific product of a unified country, they embody, each in different terms, that same Pangermanism which in certain quarters is to-day considered so inspiring, and in others so menacing a world factor. While other cults are losing ground, converts are still flocking to this splendid, turbulent arena of fancy and of fable. Pale with [61] MODERN ARTISTS Watts, languid and exotic with Moreau, the flower of modern idealism blossoms with unparalleled luxuriance amid the gar- dens and meadows where the art of Arnold Bocklin finds its home. More than any of his colleagues does this extraordinary being represent creative imagination in its fullest, most robust florescence. Scarcely anything could have been more arid and pedestrian than German art during the early half of the century just passed. There seems scant choice between the flaccid piety of Overbeck, Schadow, and the Nazarenes, and the congealed heroics of Cornelius and Schnorr. The plan of reviving na- tional art on a religious basis, like the irrational return to medie- valism, ended in sterility. Nazarenes had too much of the spir- itual and too little of the temporal; romanticists too many of the trappings of romance and too small a spice of actuality. Neither the Passion nor the Nibelungenlied was interpreted with conviction. The Saviour was anaemic, and Siegfried pre- posterous. By the mid-century German painting had dwindled into an affair of monks, cloisters, brigands, cavaliers, tearful sunsets, and operatic crucifixions. This was at Diisseldorf . In Munich and Berlin had sprung into vogue under foreign influ- ence a servile rendering of rural or domestic incident devoid of interest or illumination. During these infertile decades there had been no Delacroix, no Ingres, and no grave painters of wood and field. Kaulbach and Feuerbach held attention for a space, and Piloty, whose studio dramas had been borrowed from Dela- roche, managed to cast over his canvases a gleam of surface rich- ness, yet one after another each man and each movement failed to produce aught that was important or progressive. It was not, in fact, until certain of the later men began journeying to Paris instead of to Rome that the situation changed for the better, though even then the true redemption had to come from within. Possibly because the probation was so long, the rise [62] ARNOLD BOCKLIN of the present school proved to be correspondingly rapid. While various elements contributed their quota, the impetus, so sudden and so manifest, was in main part due to a single indi- vidual, a man who stands almost alone in the annals of art. Arnold Bocklin was a posthumous expression of Teutonic romanticism. He flashed forth as it were after the lights had simmered out bringing with him a fruitfulness hitherto un- known and a personal equipment riper than any since the Eenaissance. With the mild exception of Schwind he had no precursors and no helpmates, yet by the overwhelming vitality of his nature he recreated the art of his country. Quietly and without parade he accomplished for German painting what Goethe had striven to achieve for German verse and what Wag- ner was endeavouring to attain for German opera. Through the medium of an exuberant mentality and a rich-set palette he revealed to Germans, and to the world, the Germanic soul. While in a measure he had no successors he fecundated an en- tire circle of men who have since left their traces not alone upon art, but upon literature and music as well. The sylvan brood of Hauptmann's * Sunken Bell ' and the rhythmic so- nority of Huberts * Symphony in E minor ' are as direct a tribute to Bocklin 's genius as is Hermann Urban 's solemn variant on ^ The Island of Death.' The forceful Stuck and the fatalistic Klinger, the idyllic Thoma and the statuesque linger, have each profited by him, not to mention Greiner, Briick, and his own favoured pupils such as Sandreuter, Welti, von PidoU, and Landsinger. The painters of Worpswede and Dachau owe to him not a little of their poetic view of landscape, while the boldest bits in the Secessionist exhibitions of Mimich, Berlin, and Vienna, or the pages of Jugend are the offshoots of his over- powering personality. Born in Basle, 16 October 1827, there was little in Bocklin 's surroundings to foster an artistic career. It is true that his [63] MODERN ARTISTS father, who was a struggling silk merchant, had been moved to name his three sons Werner, Arnold, and Walther, after Schiller's * Wilhelm Tell,' and that his maternal uncle was a house decorator, yet when the boy wished to devote himself to art his practical parent replied that there were already " enough hungry painters in the world." He meanwhile attended the local Drawing Academy as well as the Gymnasium, and spent day after day gazing at the wondrous collection of Holbeins in the dusky Hall of the University, little dreaming that they would later form, with his own works, the chief treasures of the Basle Museum. Had it not been for the shadow of Holbein, Bocklin might never have become a painter, for it is impossible to overestimate the influence of this master whose sense of verity was so exact and who showed such compelling energy in his fantastic and macaberesque conceptions. The boy also passed much of his time wandering alone in the open among the valleys or by the rushing river, and never, even in after life, did he forget the spirit of Holbein and the rugged silhouette of his Rhenish birthplace. The gradual awakening and development of Arnold Bocklin 's genius forms one of the most troubled and inspiring pages in the history of art. Possessing typically Swiss independence and love of liberty, hardy and undaunted, he gathered momentum with each year, emerging at last from darkness into light, from poverty and neglect into general recognition and renown. Although this great, primordial man of the mountains and the sea lived to witness his triumph, it was not because he was more fortunate than his fellows, but because he was stronger and closer to nature than they. Nothing ever shook his purpose or caused him to swerve from his chosen path. Heroic of feature and of frame, he was blessed at birth with strength enough to carry himself to the ends of the earth, and while still in his teens began that odyssey which was so to enrich his soul, each halting place affording new substance and [64] < ARNOLD BOCKLIN new beauty, each fortifying and intensifying that which ap- peared to be an ahnost prenatal capacity for vigorous colour expression. Responding to the pleadings of his wife and friends, who firmly believed in the lad's talent, the elder Bocklin at length consented to his son's departure for Diisseldorf, where he studied some two years imder Hildebrand and Schirmer. Find- ing the vitiated atmosphere of the place little to his liking he next left with a companion, Rudolf KoUer, for Brussels, Antwerp, and, after a short interval in Geneva, for Paris. While Schirmer gave him a fugitive appreciation of landscape, and the Flemish galleries stimulated his love of line and kindled his eye for tone, that which most impressed the young Swiss were the bloody and stirring scenes he witnessed on the streets of Paris during the Revolution of 1848. Though it was an un- propitious time for study, art was by no means neglected. Poor beyond belief the two friends took a single room in the rue de Verneuil, slept in one bed, and drew from models by day in the studio of a kindly compatriot. Invaluable as these preliminary experiences were, it was not until Bocklin returned to Basle; and eventually reached Rome, with more enthusiasm than cap- ital, that he entered upon his true aesthetic heritage. In Rome he joined the circle composed of Dreber, Feuerbach, Reinhold Begas, and the writers von Scheffel and Paul Heyse. They were eager, anxious days for one of the supreme colour poets of the centiu-y. Often compelled to sleep imder the star-dotted sky for want of a roof over his head he staved off actual starvation by painting again and again the same views of the Coliseum and the Forum for the picture shops of the Via Condotti. Un- deterred by the spectre of increased responsibilities, he married, in 1853, after a single day's acquaintance, Angelina Paseucci, a luxuriantly handsome Trasteverina. Though there were in- numerable obstacles, religious and other, to their union, the [65] MODERN ARTISTS impetuous painter overcame them all, wimiing, as it happened, a noble and inspiring life partner. Yet his success as an artist was the reverse of encouraging, the first picture he ex- hibited having been condemned by the censor to be flung into the street. This particular Roman sojourn, which lasted eight years in all, proved but the first of those constant oscillations between north and south which marked the remainder of Bocklin's career. Each time he visited Germany or Switzerland his art became more genial and robust. Each time he turned toward Rome or Florence it acquired that depth, stateliness, and auster- ity which are alone the gift of Italia, the foster-child, the younger sister, indeed, of Hellas. Arnold Bocklin was able to develop a specifically racial art because he possessed sufficient magic to impose his vision upon his countrymen, and because that vision embodied both the national taste for myth and the national love of antique beauty. The paintings of Bocklin are an aftermath of the Holy Roman Empire, the idea of which had haunted the Teutonic mind for ages. They reflect all the ineffable nostalgia of his land for the marble statues, cream- white viUas, fountains, and cypress trees of Italy. This art is but another version of that Sehnsucht for the South which had already found voice in the ballads of Goethe, the prose fancies of Heine, and the inspired periods of Winckelmann. Once again it was the German viewing Greece through Renaissance eyes. The special form which Bocklin 's appeal assumed in- volved a reincarnation imder local conditions of the classic spirit. He early realized that the one way to treat such themes was to infuse them with modern passion and modern invention. Pan, Diana, Prometheus, monsters of the deep and grotesques of the forest, were given new semblance and new vitality. Not satisfied with existing types he peopled this pagan world with creatures of his own making. Nature was continually suggest- [66] ARNOLD BOCKLIN ing to this vigorous, primal man forms half bestial and half human. Out of mountain spring or surging wave, from rocky- cavern or gnarled tree trunk, issued at his beck the strange children of the great Earth Spirit. In essence this art is simply anthropomorphized thought. It is a species of graphic panthe- ism illustrating the kinship of man and nature, a conception common to all elemental minds. It was Bocklin's triumph to have refreshed and revitalized art, to have, in a sense, led human fancy back to its starting point. While romantic in temperament Bocklin avoided the routine faults of romanticism. His eye for form was individual and his colour modem in its chromatic brilliancy. Even when treat- ing classic scenes not the least charm of these stretches of meadow or sky, of shore or wood, is the anti-classic, Dionysian vein in which they are interpreted. Pagan Greece often fades before Lutheran Germany. Bacchus becomes a beer drinking burgher and the abundant humour of Hans Sachs now and then illumines the features of some grisly centaur. Always painted in a single key, there is never the slightest discord between mat- ter and manner. Each canvas is a unit, the animate factors being but a more volatile embodiment of the inanimate. By a spontaneous, instinctive mental process Bocklin was able to project himself backward into prehistoric times. He never ap- pears deliberately to have fabricated his motives; he seems to have placed upon canvas only that which he himself had wit- nessed. It is as though he were an accomplice, not a mere spec- tator of creation. To the cherished faculty of dealing unfet- tered with the past he added an explicit, detailed observation of the present. Though he turned through some hidden affinity toward the South, the traditional ItaHanism of Poussin, Claude, or the early Corot found no echo or equivalent in Bocklin's art. With no sacrifice of ideality he gave each theme a personal, veridical setting. He never copied nature, yet beautiful and [67] MODERN ARTISTS accurate botanical and geological data mark each outdoor scene. By means of a localization which was never slavish and always replete with suggestion, always tempered by the secret spirit of place, he succeeded in making romance real and reality roman- tic. There seems to lurk in these pictures, as in nature her- self, some hidden, inexplicable meaning. More than any of his contemporaries Bocklin was an Inhaltskiinstler. A mys- terious, indefinable purport magnifies a hundredfold the actual beauty or solemnity of each flowered terrace, each castle by the sea. It was not by rapid strides but through a long process of inner germination that Arnold Bocklin attained the fullness of his power. Like nature herself he grew slowly and silently. Having managed to make a few sales while in Rome, chiefly to friendly compatriots, he decided to return to Basle only to find his art received with open derision by his unappreciative towns- folk. Discouraged but persevering, he accepted a commission to decorate the dining room of Consul Wedekind's house in Hamburg, but here, too, disappointment was to await him. Despite their originality and imaginative force, his patron re- fused to accept the series of frescoes depicting man's relation to the elements, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the painter received his meagre recompense for four months* arduous labour. Munich proved his next destination, and it was there, after a tragic prelude, that the tide at last turned in his favour. Utterly destitute and lying ill of typhoid fever, to which malady one of his children had succumbed, he sent to the Kunstverein a large canvas entitled * Pan among the Reeds ' which was highly praised and subsequently purchased for the Pinakothek. In Mimich he also found his former friend, Paul Heyse, and through his good offices made the acquaintance of Baron, afterward Count, von Schack who was already forming the nucleus of the now famous Schack Gallery. Although the [68] H < H Q P^ O C *'~\ Q ^ < :0 H-) 2 W 'o •— 1 M »4 w < ffi >> H W ARNOLD BOCKLIN prices von Schack paid were the reverse of princely, he was a loyal, discerning Maecenas, and did much for the art of his day. Becoming somewhat better known, Bocklin was offered, in the autumn of 1860, a professorship in the newly inaugurated Acad- emy of Arts in Weimar, having for his colleagues Lenbach, Begas, and Preller, the landscapist. Yet the sleepy scholasti- cism of Weimar, heavy with the shades of Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland, proved scarcely to his taste, and after an inactive in- terlude during which he produced little beyond * Diana Hunt- ing * and * Pan frightening a Goatherd,* he again fared south- ward visiting Naples, Capri, and Pompeii, and settling once more in Rome. It was during this second Italian sojourn that Bocklin at- tained his artistic majority. The sapphire skies, the melancholy sweep of the Campagna, and the thrill of that legendary, Homeric world of Sicily gave him a richness and profundity of sentiment which forever influenced his development. Uncon- sciously his art divided itself into two distinct phases, the satyric, humorous paganism which had characterized * Pan among the Reeds,' and * Pan frightening a Goatherd,' and the solemn, lyric grandeur of * The Villa by the Sea.' All that came after finds its genesis in either of these two moods. They ex- press by turns, or simultaneously, the man's exultant vitality and that subdued, permeating intensity which form the essence of his entire achievement. Although bom of the mountains, he was singularly fond of the ocean, and year by year responded more and more to the fascination of the Mediterranean. Re- turning again and again throughout his lifetime to this land of myth and tradition he gradually adjusted nature to his own particular imaginative requirements. Sunburned shepherds tending their flocks became faims, dolphins sporting in the waves became nereids at play, and castles high upon storm- smitten cliffs were sacked and burned by ruthless pirate bands. [69] MODERN ARTISTS He even dreamed of building himself a home on one of the Siren Islands opposite Almafi, the supposed originals of Scylla and Charybdis, but his own ' Villa by the Sea ' the better realized that romantic ambition. It was not in fact until much later that he was able to equal the poetic invocation of these wind- tossed cypresses, these crumbling walls, and this dark, Iphi- genian figure watching the waves break at her feet. The last survivor of a departing race she must herself ere long be borne to that ^ Island of Death ' where the very soul of antiquity lies immured. In strong contrast to the brooding melancholy of the * Villa by the Sea ' was the joyous, idyllic * Daphnis and Amaryllis ' of the succeeding year, one of Bocklin^s happiest Theocritean fantasias which he composed shortly before his return to Basle. His home-coming on this occasion was more encouraging, for shortly after his arrival he was asked to decorate the summer room of the Villa Sarasin-Thurneysen as well as the stairway of the recently erected Museum. The stay in Basle was marked by a number of portraits and also by a trinity of canvases small in compass but striking in conception including * The Ride of Death,' * The Rocky Gorge,' which was suggested by his own crossing of the St. Gotthard Pass as well as by Mignon's song, and the * Furies pursuing a Murderer ' all of which are now in the Schack Gallery. They were still romance pure and simple but more concentrated, more dramatic, than the romance of his day. Slowly but surely he was acquiring that unity of mood, that identity between mental state and natural phenomena which became the keynote of all his subsequent work. The stay in Basle lasted five years, and as a sardonic memento of his visit he left on the garden facade of the Kunsthalle six sculptured masks caricaturing with wilful exuberance the leading pillars of a conmaunity at whose phlegmatic indifference to matters of art he could at last afford to laugh. The years which ensued ^ [70] ARNOLD BOCKLIN were increasingly productive. His vision grew clearer, its for- mulation more concise, and he was able to give full sweep to capabilities which had hitherto found but limited scope. Plung- ing at once into a mythical, pagan realm he depicted the * Bat- tle of the Centaurs,' which as a masterly epitome of the fury of natural forces not only recalls but surpasses Rubens 's * Lion Hunt.' * Pan Fishing ' and the * Nereid and Triton ' of the Schack Gallery followed within a few months. To the latter theme Bocklin returned time after time, the deep-sea mystery and dazzling brightness of sky and wave which he attained with such assurance having never been surpassed. Sometimes, as in * Naiads at Play ' and * Sport of the Waves,' he was jovial and humorous. In * The Silence of the Ocean ' he spread over the blue expanse an infinitude of calm, while in Herr Simrock's * Triton and Nereid ' his mood assumed epic significance. The nereid, superb in her nacreous lustre of tint, is desirous and insatiate. The triton, his eyes averted, gazes across the waste of waters with all the diunb, undefined pathos of creature part man and part aquatic monster. They were bom in the dawn of life, this strangely mated pair. They belong to dim, rudimentary days ; around them wash the waves of purple Oceanus. After four years in the Bavarian capital Bocklin recrossed the Alps settling this time in Florence, where, imder the in- spiration of the Renaissance painters, his art acquired a more formal perfection and still deeper emotional import. It proved indeed his supreme creative period. With each canvas his colouring became more sonorous and intense and his invention correspondingly vivid and daring. The beautiful * Sleeping Diana,' ' The Fields of the Blessed,' ' The Island of Death,' ^ Prometheus,' and * The Sacred Grove ' are but a few of the imaginative masterpieces which succeeded each other with ma- jestic calm and surety. * The Island of Death ' with its gently swaying cypresses, burnished waters, and barge gliding irre- [71] MODERN ARTISTS sistibly toward its craterlike bourne is one of the most pene- trant evocations of any age. Noble in tonality, impeccable in composition, and infinite in tragic suggestion, the picture typi- fies both the solemnity of a vanished world and the restless in- terrogation of later times. It is at once an elegy upon antiquity and a symbol of human longing for divine peace and transfigu- ration. Silently and inevitably the past and the future are brought face to face among these dark island catacombs. From the sublime awe of * The Island of Death ' Bocklin rose with un- diminished power to the heights whereon his Aeschylean * Pro- metheus ' lies chained to the inaccessible crags of Caucasus. Here again is allegory of a profound order, for this colossal, cloudlike figure suggests not only the battle of gods and giants but the blunt, imceasing struggle of mankind for a more exalted estate. The vast, titanic form of this * Prometheus,' so vaguely outlined that he seems almost an atmospheric vision, marks the climax of Bocklin 's quasi-classical manner. With undimmed clarity and zest he turned from purpureal threnody to the glaucous splendour of * The Sport of the Waves.' The famous *^ blue phase '' was over. He emerged once again into the light of the Sim. For the sake of his children's education Bocklin next moved to Ziirich, where he bought a house at Hottingen, in the Ries- bach district, and built himself a big, wooden studio. The world had at last begun to recognize his originality and his greatness. Honours fell to his lot, and he gathered about him a devoted coterie of friends, including the novelists, Gottfried Keller and Ferdinand Conrad Meyer, and the artists, Stauffer-Bern and Otto Lasius. His tastes were those of a simple, normal Swiss bourgeois. His studio was bare and workmanlike containing none of the sumptuous atrocities which so appealed to Makart or Munkacsy. For him not only was the kingdom of heaven, but in large measure the kingdom of earth, within. He was a [72] Q Q H o .s ARNOLD BOCKLIN slow producer, and would sit for days beside an imtouched can- vas, his soul imprisoned by a line from Tasso, by some uncouth, Boeotian suggestion, or a glimpse into the fabulous fore-time of the universe. From the first he had been a law unto himself, caring as little for the conventional in life as for the quotidian in art. When asked by Wagner, who greatly admired his work, to undertake the scenic decorations for the * Ring ' he laconic- ally replied that he did not care ^* to make pictures for music." His was essentially an isolated nature. In conversation he was diffident and often constrained, though on occasions displayed abounding good humour. Society he abhorred; he had to be dragged, almost, to his daughter's wedding, arriving late and sitting far back in the church with hair awry and eyes tense with emotion. His boon companion during these Ziirich days was Gottfried Keller, as great a nationalist in letters as Bocklin himself was in art. Often they might have been seen passing arm in arm along the winding streets of Lavater's town or sit- ting, almost any evening, ** Zum Pfauen " over their beer, en- veloped in dense clouds of tobacco smoke. Though his life was darkened by domestic misfortune, and though he was cruelly shaken by the death of Keller, he continued to paint with un- abated energy until 1892 when he was severely, almost fatally stricken by apoplexy. On his recovery he turned for the fourth and last time to Italy, his foster home, passing the remainder of his days at his villa in San Domenico midway between Florence and Fiesole. When again strong enough to resume work this epic man showed but slight diminution of power, ' Venus Genetrix,' * Polyphemus,' and * Orlando Furioso ' being only a trifle be- low his accustomed standard. Surrounded by a numerous and talented family, and acclaimed the length and breadth of Ger- many on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, the last few years of Bocklin 's life were calm and quiescent. In a minor [73] MODERN ARTISTS way his home became, like Wagner's Wahnfried, the Mecca of faithful admirers, who came, chiefly from over the Alps, to spend a few days or hours with the master-f antast now grown grey and taciturn and never, indeed, caring aught for worldly honours or adulation. His own odyssey, which had proved so fertile, was over, and he seldom left the peaceful walks and terraces of his villa from whence he could see the valley of the Arno, the heights of Lastra, and by night the reflected radiance of the city below. Because of his massive head and military bearing the Italians called him *' Bismarck,'* for it was not until shattered by successive apoplectic strokes that his iron frame lost its erectness and vigour. Though he continued at his easel to the last, painting within a year or so of his death * Melancholy,' * War,' and a black-winged * Plague,' the great work, by the beginning of the century, lay behind, not before him. Almost inarticulate, and moving with short, ataxic gest- ures, he seemed like one of those mythical, hyperborean creat- ures which had so long peopled his brain. Unable to see the ocean which he so loved, he would place to his ears big, multi- coloured shells, and sit for hours listening to the murmur of distant waters. Hastened by an attack of pneumonia the end came on 16 January 1901. Two days later, at five o'clock in the afternoon, they bore him to the Campo Santo degli Allori just beyond the gates of Florence. There was but a handf xil of mourners present and the services were extremely simple. It had been a dark, overcast day, with only a few gleams of sun- light. As they left him reposing on the undulating slope, watched over by tall cypresses, the western sky was suffused by a glory of pale gold and a gentle wind stirred the protecting tree-tops. Arnold Bocklin belongs to the Olympians of art. Phe- nomenally endowed, he was a doer as well as a dreamer. Few men have ever come into the world with such abundant natural [74] ARNOLD BOCKLIN gifts and such boundless physical energy. Not only was he a great painter ; he was a great thinker as well. There was prac- tically nothing he did not know concerning the technique of his craft. For months at a time, particularly in Ziirich, he devoted his mind to chemistry in order to familiarize himself with the properties of various pigments. Throughout his entire life, though notably in Weimar, he busied himself with mechanics, it being his cherished ambition to solve the problem of aerial navi- gation. Although, in company with a goodly number of Icari- ans, he failed, no less an authority than Helmholtz, on examining his models, which were based upon the flight of birds, averred that the painter had come nearer success than anyone he had known. Like other members of his family he was a gifted mu- sician as well as an indefatigable reader, mainly of medieval and ancient authors, his favourites being Tasso, Ariosto, and Homer, and on all questions philosophical or aesthetic he held emphatic and illuminating opinions. His niunerous portraits of himself offer an excellent index to the outward appearance of the man, the best of them being the calm, virile likeness in which he holds a wine-glass in his hand, and an earlier canvas showing him pausing an instant while Heath plays in his ears elusive, spectral harmonies, a variant, of course, on Holbein's * Sir Bryan Tuke ' in the Munich Pinakothek. And yet with his hirsute head, his powerful arms, and his profound affinity with bygone ages and epochs, he suggested above all else Chiron, the wisest and justest of the centaurs, who stands knee-deep and pensive in the azure pool which waters the painter's own * Fields of the Blessed.' The most unusual feature about Bocklin was, however, the incredible strength and perfection of his eyes, which were a clear blue-grey. ** I like to look straight into the sim," he re- marked to Professor Horner of Zurich, and doubtless he was able to do so. It was in large measure because of this remark- [75] MODERN ARTISTS able visual faculty that Bocklin became the supreme colourist he was. His eyes literally drank up the varied hues about him, and no image, once received, was ever lost or ever became blurred. Although he lived constantly in the open, he never made sketches, always preferring to paint from memory. He chose by instinct the most diverse and alluring tints — the blazing glory of midday, the vapoury softness of a limar landscape, the grotto-blue of the sea, the copper-brown of faun's skin, or the viridescence of water serpent. He saw colour ever5rwhere and in everything. The hazy Campagna, sharp vistas of t^e Juras, foam-lashed rocks along the Sicilian coast, or the hyacinthine uplands of Tuscany in springtime — here a splash of sunlight, there a stretch of dark forest — all afforded him an incomparable accumulation of optical stimuli. Unlike most artists he com- posed in colours instead of in line or mass giving each work a distinct tonal unity which could not fail to compel attention. Yet in common with his great contemporary in the realm of opera, Bocklin, like Wagner, often deliberately varied what might otherwise have proved a smooth, melodic utterance. Both painter and musician were the avowed apostles of abrupt, almost crude, transitions. It is they who have best demon- strated the emotional and artistic value of occasional dissonance. Though he sometimes drew the figure with welcome precision it is to be regretted that Bocklin 's plastic sense was not more highly developed, for in this province he is easily excelled by the vigour of Stuck or the eurhythmic elegance of Gysis. Sane and affirmative, the art of Bocklin is concerned with no problems either pious or social, its only possible text being a fearless proclamation of the identity of all created things. *^ A picture must be painted for the eye, not for the mind," he maintained, and it is for the eye that this art exists. It was Arnold Bocklin 's aesthetic mission to mirror his soul in a continuous cycle of beauty and mystery. A Teuton to the core, he accomplished [76] ARNOLD BOCKLIN that which had so long baffled his fellow-countrymen. By the magic of his brush, and with all nature for his palette, he suc- ceeded in blending Germanic fantasy and Hellenic blitheness. Like Euphorion, he was a typical child of those two master cur- rents. Antiquity and the Renaissance, out of which has emerged the questing modem world. [77] CONSTANTIN MEUNIER CONSTANTIN MEUNIER Portrait of the artist by Max Liebermann [^Courtesy of Herr lAebermann^ CONSTANTIN MEUNIER TO have led art from palace and cathedral to cottage door and into field and factory, to have delivered her from the hands of king, priest, or noble patron and presented her unfettered to the people, is not the least triumph of the nineteenth century. Once aristocratic and pietistic, art is to- day also democratic and socialistic. Although it took the peas- ants of France but a few months to storm the Bastille and sack the Tuileries the moment was long preparing. Though in a similar way it has only been within the present generation that art has attained universal suffrage, it was as far back as the early 'twenties that the movement had its inception. Curiously enough, a flamboyant romanticist, Gericault, was one of the first to recognize the dignity and power of labour. It was not Millet, but such masters as Gericault, Cals, and Jenron who were the true heralds of the proletariat in art, who were the original champions of the man in sabots and smock. For a good quarter of a century he moved clumsily, even timidly, in this new realm of form and colour. With the redoubtable Courbet he entered aggressively into his own. While Gericault 's * Lime- kiln ' and the humble rustics and vagabonds of Cals were ex- perimental, it was with something akin to savage assurance that the * Stone-breakers ' of Gustave Courbet crushed under their swinging blows the marble pedestal of a frigid, exclusive, and antiquated temple of beauty. By the 'fifties work had be- come a theme in itself. Across the Channel Ford Madox [81] MODERN ARTISTS Brown was inspired to paint its apotheosis, and some years later the perceptive Adolf von Menzel, to whom no phase of human activity was foreign, gave the world a third great pict- ure of labour with his * Rolling Mill/ Thus far, however, work had been treated in a broad, sjrmbolic vein. Despite their un- questioned sincerity Courbet^s * Stone-breakers,' Millet's sober toilers on the plain of Fontainebleau, and Menzel's grimy iron- moulders of Konigshiitte were not sharply individualized. There was still something theoretical about them ; the idea still loomed larger than the fact behind it. With the exception of Millet, work was with these painters an episode rather than an experience, a chance text rather than a permanent condition. It was not in France, nor England, nor Germany, but in a smaller, more compact, and more densely populated country that labour and the labouring man assiuned their rightful place in the domain of aesthetics. It was not, indeed, imtil the rise of modern industrialism, not until they had gained unity and organization that these serfs of civilization captured the citadel of art. There is singular propriety in the fact that Flanders and the Low Countries, which were the first to free themselves from the tyranny of Court and Church, should also have been the scene of this new conquest for the extension of the artistic franchise. Certain timid spirits are fond of contending that industrialism is the enemy of aesthetic expression. The factory and the forge, the coal-pit and the quarry, are supposed to crush beauty, to obliterate art. Yet the contrary is true. No country is more industrial than Belgium. Within a few decades the meadows of Brabant, the leafy copses of Hainaut, and the valleys of the Meuse and the Sambre have been seamed and blistered by myriads of collieries and iron-foundries. The whole face of the land has been seared and the sky blackened by fumes from countless chimneys and blast-furnaces. Man, [82] ANTWERP DOCK-HAND From the bronze by Constantin Meunier [The Luxembourg, Paris^ CONSTANTIN MEUNIER instead of remaining pastoral, has become a dusky, subter- ranean creature. His back is bowed and the song on his lips has turned to a bitter harangue for easier hours and better pay. Everything, it would seem, has conspired to annihilate art and the sense of beauty, yet both have survived and even taken on new and profound significance. The novels of Ca- naille Lemonnier, the verse of Verhaeren, and the gentle mysti- cism of Maeterlinck have all flowered on this sombre battle- field of industry. In painting Frederic and Laermans reveal a vital and penetrating mastery, while the sculpture of George Minne displays a dolorous and tender appeal. It is not despite, it is rather because of, existing conditions that such results have been achieved. The art of Belgium is imcompromisingly social. It has never been, and can never be, a mere matter of play or prettiness. Nowhere is the social function of art more clearly understood; nowhere is its vindication more concrete or more absolute. Except for a brief excursion into romanticism jthe Belgians have always been hardy, resolute realists, and never more so than during the century just passed. Early in his troubled career there gathered about the pathetic, sedentary figure of Charles de Groux a group of men whose creed was actuality, whose passion was not a vapid, languid loveliness, but a truth that could enlist the deepest hmnan sympathies and aspirations. Yet it was not in the paintings of these apostles of the poor, these friends of the forlorn and fam- ished, nor in letters either, that the supreme accent of the move- ment was manifested. It was voiced in the austere yet benign, the vigorous yet resigned art of Constantin Meunier. One by one his colleagues turned aside leaving the yoimgest member of the group to find the path alone. And he, too, seemed to deflect for a while, though only to return with renewed strength and fortitude. In his reticence and simple ruggedness and sincerity Con- [83] MODERN ARTISTS stantin Meunier recalls the master-craftsmen of other, sturdier times. He passed away at seventy-four, in the fullness of effort, for he was one of those who mature but slowly. With the ex- ception of a brief journey to Spain he scarcely left his native land. " I have never had any adventures," he once said, ^' I have only dreamed and worked." Though modem in feeling his art is both Gothic and Greek, both restless and serene. It is above everything an art that typifies the spirit of the hour. All the fierce energy, all the material pride and progress, and inventive genius of to-day are reflected in Meunier 's miners and foundrymen, his puddlers and glassblowers. The logical product of the coimtry of his birth, he was the first sculptor who saw plastic beauty in the workman, the first to give labour the precious baptism of art. Born at Etterbeek, a suburb of Brussels, 12 April 1831, the son of an impecunious tax-collector and the grandnephew of a smith whose three boys had left home to follow the banners of Napoleon, Constantin Meunier was distinctly of the people. Left a widow with six young chil- dren to provide for, his mother, who was a gentle, tenacious soul, moved from Etterbeek to a small house in the place du petit Sablon where she opened a modest dressmaking establish- ment and rented her few spare rooms. A timid, pallid child with huge head and slender, angular frame, Constantin was placed almost wholly in the care of his elder brother, Jean- Baptiste, who was a journeyman printer and later an engraver of note. From birth the boy was emotionally supersensitive and until fifteen used to weep every evening toward sundown. Hav- ing been previously taught drawing by Jean-Baptiste, Constan- tin, at seventeen, entered the studio of the florid, academic Fraikin in order to learn the rudiments of sculpture. During his three years with Fraikin the lad did little beside tend the fire with complete circmnspection, keep the clay wet, and imbibe an utter loathing for the insipid elegance of the school then in [84] CONSTANTIN MEUNIER vogue. Although his debut as a sculptor was made at the Brussels Salon of 1851 with * The Garland/ he evinced but slight enthusiasm for the plastic arts, and on entering the atelier Saint-Luc was readilj induced by de Groux and others to renounce sculpture for painting. The change was a consistent one, for the poignant verity which these masters sought to lay bare could be better told by brush and crayon. The moment when sculpture was to take up the burden of contemporary life had not yet come. Insensibly and perhaps through some awakening religious atavism, Constantin Meunier's rigid, contemplative spirit was next drawn toward the shadows of the cloister. Oppressed by the sorrow and poverty about him and seeking perchance solace or self-immolation, he went to live, as Verhaeren afterward did, among the Trappist monks. At Westmalle in the Flemish Campine he found a fitting retreat, and in both cases the se- questration proved fruitful, the painter's * Burial of a Trap- pist ' and * Stoning of St. Stephen ' being curiously paralleled by the zealous exaltation of the poet's ' Friars.' Yet always Meunier must have felt that sacred art, however pleading and human, was not his final expression. It was inevitable that he should have sought to widen his sympathies, to enrich a somewhat sober, hectic palette. Just as Maeterlinck later turned from * Ruysbroeck the Admirable ' to ^ The Treasure of the Humble,' so Constantin Meimier drifted gradually from the passivity of monastic existence into a broader fellowship and brotherhood. Bowed figures in dim, grey chapels and those twisted images of Christ on the wayside crosses of Flanders seemed, after all, less beseeching than the poor labourer who hurried by making the sign. Meanwhile he was more than a mere spectator of mortal suffering and misery. Having mar- ried young and finding scant sale for his pictures he was forced, together with de Groux, who was an even sadder victim of iU [85] MODERN ARTISTS fortune, to support himself and family by executing designs for stained glass and drawing heads of saints for cheap printed handkerchiefs. They worked side by side, these two friends of humanity, for Capronnier, the ecclesiastical decorator, and in the churches of Louvain, Chatelineau and throughout the prov- ince of Liege may still be seen windows or stations of the cross fashioned by the sweat of their brows and the blood of their starved artist souls. On his return from Spain, whither he had been sent by the government to copy Kempeneer's * Descent from the Cross,' Meunier definitely left the monastery for the mine, definitely gave up colour for clay and bronze. The visit to Spain, where pity is almost a pastime, and something in the man's own men- tal and moral austerity impelled him to visit that " Black Coimtry " which is itself scarcely more than an industrial in- quisition. An opportune commission to furnish the illustra- tions for Camille Lemonnier's descriptive book on Belgiima caused him to make a systematic tour of the region, and it was not long before he realized that he had at last f oirnd the field for which he had so earnestly been seeking. At first he drew and painted as before, but one day in the Borinage, as he was passing the entrance of a mine he happened to catch sight of a group of workmen, toil-stained and stripped to the waist, emerging from the depths into the glow of evening. He instinctively felt that the rhythm of their movements and the heavy, yet supple elasticity of their bodies could be translated only by sculpture. So strong was his conviction, and so implicit was his faith in himself, that this man of past fifty suddenly gave up his career as a painter and began his artistic life afresh. He proceeded to study the labourer in all his aspects and atti- tudes. He lived for a time at Val Saint-Lambert among the glassblowers, and later among the f oundrymen and puddlers of Seraing. All along that black, stifling belt which stretches from [86] ^^l* t xoaf3jss.g3i2a:'?i::"'?A";- "?^: *yt?»a!tgB^';' : --^T^jgap^^^aB^ WATERING A COLLIERY HORSE From the group by Constantin Meunier [Square Amhiorix, Brussels] CONSTANTIN MEUNIER Liege to Charleroi and from Charleroi to Mons he watched those dogged sons of Cain fulfilling their sinister destiny. At Frameries and Paturages he found them stunted, deformed, and stamped with tragic depression, but for the most part they dis- played a silent heroism and a primitive energy which turned pity into admiration. Still, he did not spend his entire time indoors nor imder ground among creatures more like antique troglodytes than human beings. He also went abroad in the sun, with the mower or the happy harvester. It was work which he chose for his theme, work and the workmen in their every phase. All the man's passion for form and contour which had thus far lain dormant surged forward with resistless impetus. He actually appeared to grow younger, to undergo a species of physical as well as artistic rebirth. The whole of his previous life was but a prolonged apprenticeship for that which fol- lowed. At the outset he modelled little figures in wax, which, though crude, were rich in vital intensity. Within a few short years he had attained the accent of assured mastery. The fight for recognition nevertheless proved a bitter struggle. * The Hammerman ' and * The Puddler ' which were exhibited in Brussels and in Paris during 1885 and 1886 were received with more curiosity than enthusiasm. Although their appearance synchronized mth the rise of the Labour Party in Belgium and elsewhere, few realized the significance either social or aesthetic of these majestic, submissive giants of the forge and furnace or saw that they possessed any special claim to consideration. It was naturally difficult for an artist who had suddenly changed his medium to secure commissions, and feeling uncer- tain of the future, Meunier was compelled to accept the profes- sorship of painting at the Academy of Louvain. For family reasons alone the sacrifice was made, and in 1887 he left his humble quarters in Brussels for the grey, scholastic town of Father Damien. [87] MODERN ARTISTS Yet this apparent renunciation did not prove in vain, for it was here that Constantin Meunier revealed the measure of his power as an artist, and it was here that he proved his deep understanding of the sad, ennobling beauty of toil. Instead of being a barren exile the years at Louvain proved the vigil of his glory. He worked unremittingly, pausing only to attend his classes. Statue followed statue, and group succeeded group, until he had almost completed that valiant hymn to labour which constitutes the fitting climax of his life task. The ma- jority of these passive, cyclopean creatures as well as numerous busts and reliefs were either planned or executed at Louvain. Most of them were men, though he now and then modelled a female figure such as the buoyant * Mine Girl ' or the mother crushed beneath a weight of anguish and fatality in that tragic episode entitled * Fire-damp.' Animals, too, he made share their portion of creation's inflexible destiny. Like Zola in * Germinal ' he felt drawn toward those sodden brutes con- demned to plod dumbly amid suffocating darkness. With the * Old Mine Horse ' he gave but another version of * Bataille ' in all his spent and helpless decrepitude. Meunier 's sympa- thetic observation was meanwhile not exclusively confined to the '* Black Country." Little by little he widened his circle of activity by adding * The Mower ' and * The Ploughman,' * The Reaper ' glancing at the noonday sun, and * The Sower ' scat- tering his seed with an impressive, primeval sweep of the arm. * The Quarryman,' too, he transferred to this cycle of human effort nor did he neglect * The Brickmaker ' or * The Dock- hand.' Bit by bit he enlarged his panorama, omitting the inci- dental and bringing into closer accord that which was general and tjrpical. And by and by the varied elements began to show a certain community of feeling as though obeying a single, uni- fying impulse. Although the actual subject-matter of his art had changed he rigorously adhered to the inner law of his being. [88] THE QUARRYMAN From the bronze by Constantin Meuniei: [The Modern Gallery, Brussels] CONSTANTIN MEUNIER He had simply turned from the heroes and martyrs of faith to those himabler though not less eloquent victims of economic pressure and distress. The studio in which this earnest, patriarchal man worked from dawn until nightfall was situated on the outskirts of the town. The building was known as the " Amphitheatre " hav- ing for a long time served as the dissecting room of a near-by medical college. It was a grim, sepulchral structure, tower- shaped and pierced by high, arched windows some of which were roughly boarded over. The interior was dim even at mid- day, for the walls were darkened by the moisture of ages. In the seclusion of this sleepy Gothic town, the silence broken only by the sound of distant bells or the footfall of some chance passer-by Meunier remained almost a decade. He rarely had an assistant, preferring to execute even the most rudimentary tasks with his own hands. Pale, long-bearded and wearing a beret and plain grey blouse he wrought with the solemn pre- occupation of one performing an almost sacred office. Guided by the inherent simplicity and grandeur of his own nature he looked at all things simply and grandly, his antique energy of purpose being tinged by Christian sorrow and self-sacrifice. Mystic to the core, he was at times the prey of hallucinations more or less vivid. He appeared to be in constant communion with the great spirits of the past. The impress of things gone and the shadows of things to come were always upon him. ** I am never alone here," he would often say, grimly referring to the countless departed souls who seemed to haunt the place. His psychic powers were not, alas, purely fanciful, for the pre- cise hour his younger son, the beloved *' marin,'' was lost at sea he had a distinct presentment of the event. This blow coupled with the death a few months later of his talented elder son, Karl, turned Meunier 's eyes once again toward the pensive consolation of sacred themes. A pitiful, tortured * Ecce Homo,' [89] MODEEN ARTISTS a * Prodigal Son,' full of filial trust and paternal forgiveness, and a * Pieta ' are the mute records of his suffering and res- ignation. A wish to leave the scene of his bereavement, as well as the necessity for better facilities in order to finish the monumental groups already under way caused Meunier to return to Brus- sels. He had moreover partially overcome the wasting fight against poverty and could afford to give up the tedium of daily instruction. In the old period of obscure, unregarded effort he had lived first in the rue des Secours and afterward in the rue de la Consolation. On this occasion he settled in the rue Albert-Delatour, also in the district of Schaerbeek, moving later to 59 rue de PAbbaye. Although his step was slower and his shoulders drooped beneath the double weight of grief and increasing infirmity, once established he devoted himself afresh to his art, completing in succession * Watering a Colliery Horse ' for the square Ambiorix, and a * Trinity ' for Notre Dame du Sablon besides several single figures and portrait- busts. As this silent army of toilers slowly assumed their proper places in the long perspective of his art Meunier began to perceive that unity in his accomplishment which was appar- ent to all interested observers. He had never been strong, and realizing that his days were numbered dedicated his few re- maining years to that * Momunent to Labour ' which is his crowning achievement and the eloquent synthesis of his career. Conscious of the vastness of the project he sought Government aid, on failing to obtain which he undertook the task himself piece by piece. Unable to pay for marble or for bronze cast- ing, he went manfully ahead finishing his scheme in plaster. Dominated by the colossal figure of * The Sower,' flanked by four reliefs entitled * Industry,' * The Mine,' * Commerce,' and * Harvest ' with groups about the base depicting * Maternity ' and the several * Trades,' Constantin Meunier 's canticle in [90] CONSTANTIN MEUNIER praise of work ranks as one of the most impressive conceptions in the history of sculpture. It was his legacy to the world, and before the end came he had the supreme joy of knowing that it was purchased by the State and would eventually be placed in the rotunda of the new museum on the Mont des Arts. As with every true craftsman Meunier's task was left un- finished. The monument to Emile Zola for the Tuileries is not in place and other commissions were barely begun. The mes- sage of his art none the less remains full and complete. Even at the outset there was no mistaking the man's meaning. Stripped of trivial accident and exalted to a plane of simplicity that raises them beside the creations of any age these types are untrammelled by theory or thesis. Meimier never dealt directly in generalities ; he approached the general through the particular. He gives us a single more or less specialized figure, and if that figure spontaneously becomes a symbol the symboliz- ing process is as much our own as his. He disavowed all in- tention, all parti pris. He claimed no rights other than the right to pity the world's disinherited and to place that pity on record. When recognition finally came and he was hailed as the creator of a new epoch in art, as the founder of the ** aes- thetics of work " he simply looked puzzled and exclaimed " Why what can they all see in my poor stuff? " Those few enthusiasts who gathered about Constantin Meunier during the late 'eighties and early 'nineties and those fortunate individuals who attended his first exhibitions in Brussels, Paris, and Dres- den to-day cherish imforgettable memories. They have seen gropings and hesitations end in a grand, though troubled tri- umph. They have watched a sustained and resolute sym- metry issue from that which was rough and tentative. Above all, they have witnessed in the man and his art the ascendency of that which is spiritual over that which is material. For sincerity, intensity, and epic dignity the bronzes of Meimier [91] MODERN ARTISTS stand alone. Though explicit in subject, they share affinities with the eternally sculptural. Meunier's labourer is both local and immemorial. He taps at a vein or pauses before a pot of molten metal, yet he embodies universal dynamic laws. In the serene and buoyant days of Greece the wrestler and the athlete were the chief exponents of motion. Man was not a sullen, driven beast, he was acclaimed in the Stadiiun. Chris- tian art taught him penance and renunciation, taught him not to immortalize but to mortify the body. With Michelangelo he became a surly colossus full of grandiose inquietude, and with Clodion a white and wanton boy. In recent times sculp- ture has made him echo, somewhat feebly, a remote antiquity or chafe against a ruthless modernity. The specific triumph of Constantin Meunier consists in having bridged over the past, in having adapted sovereign, immutable truths to actual con- ditions. In this art, which appears at first so revolutionary, he has not overthrown, he has preserved, the lasting canons of plastic beauty. Gods and gladiators have merely been put into harness. Infolding draperies, soft as sea-foam from the Aegean, have been exchanged for rough blouse and leather apron. Mercury has slipped his winged heels into sabots; the flexible Discobolus has learned to swing a sledge. It is not Venus, it is Vulcan whom this new race worships. Being but a continuation of that which had gone before, there are numer- ous correspondences between this art and the generous sym- metry of the ancient manner. That early drama of action, the Pergamum frieze, is the direct prototype of Meunier ^s reliefs. Each depicts struggle, the one simply epitomizing a former phase of strife. Weeping Mobe has her counterpart in the grief -stricken mother of ^Fire-damp,' and the * Old Mine Horse ' is but an abused and forlorn Pegasus. Coming down to the Renaissance, the rider in * Watering a Colliery Horse ' is none other than a CoUeoni of the people. Over all Meunier's [92] fl 1 a 1 ■*^ 1 n 1 o \ o I >> ja •\ r »4 S - O ja o ■4J c