PRINCIPLE
OF ART
J.C.VANDYKE
N
7425
V 25
FORDS. HOWARD

ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E PLURIBUS UNUM.
TULO
SI-QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAM
CIRCUMSPICE




f
N
7425
.125
PRINCIPLES OF ART:
39744
PART I. ART IN HISTORY;
PART II. ART IN THEORY.
JOHN C. VAN DYKE,
LIBRARIAN OF THE SAGE LIBRARY, NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J.
NEW YORK:
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT.
1887.
028
742 46 |
Copyright, in 1887,
BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE.
PREFACE.
THE sending forth of this volume to the public re-
quires but few words of preface. The subject of it
is not a new one. The leading principles of art have
been too long known and too well established to ad-
mit of much discovery; and if herein I have surveyed
these principles from a novel point of view and treated.
them in a comprehensible manner I shall have ac-
complished all that I intended.
The treatment has been a matter of special care
with me, as I wished the book to be of a popular
nature and appeal to intelligent readers generally.
For this purpose I have endeavored throughout these
pages to be clear and concise in statement, to be
accurate as regards events of history and their effect
upon art, and to be intelligible by the choice of the
simplest language. The scientific has been avoided;
I have not thought to write the hieratic for a small
metaphysical priesthood, but rather the plain lan-
guage of the people for all who are in any way in-
terested in art.
The first part of the book has been devoted to il-
lustrating the causes, the development, and the char-
acter of art, reasoning always from the nature of a
barbarism or a civilization to the art which is the re-
iv
PREFACE.
sult of it. I have endeavored to trace through an-
tiquity and history the mental evolution of man from
the savage to the civilized being, and to point out
the concurrent changes in his art, marking his prog-
ress. From this the reasoning has been that, if the
earliest art was only rude decoration, and imitative
drawings upon bone, wood, and slate, it but comported
with the savage state of life from which it sprung;
and if that of to-day is expressive of ideas, feelings,
and emotions, it again but indicates the high civiliza-
tion producing it. The conclusion of the first part of
the book is carried out in the second part, wherein,
theoretically, I have striven to show the aim and pur-
pose of painting as it is to-day-the ideas, sentiments,
and subjects that it now represents, and the charac-
teristic style of modern expression,-including that
strong element in Nineteenth Century art, the indi-
viduality of the artist.
To attempt the forestalling of criticism by expla-
nation or apology is quite useless, I have simply set
forth some thoughts about art, which seem to me
worth consideration, in this day of so-called “real-
ism." These thoughts, based upon historic and con-
temporary facts, have taken the form of an argument,
the successive steps of which I have sought to sustain
by citations from recognized authorities in the phi-
losophy of history, literature and art. Whether my
ideas find acceptance or not, if the book interests
those who care to think about such matters I shall be
well content.
J. C. V. D.
PREFACE.......
CONTENTS.
PAGR
iii
PART I.
ART IN HISTORY.
INTRODUCTION…………..
CHAPTER I. ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, AND SYMBOLIC..
PRIMITIVE ART.-The Origin of Man not discussed; The
Primitive Man of Geology taken merely as an Illustration;
His Conditions of Life, and their Effect upon Him-The Stone
Age: The Life and Art of Man under it-The Reindeer Period,
and Epoch of Polished Stone: Increased Intelligence; Con-
ception of Deity-The Age of Bronze-The Lake Dwellers:
Further Advance reflected in Art-The Age of Iron: The
Rise from the Savage to the Barbarian; Tribal Life; Building
of Cities; Approach to Civilization-Art again Reflective, but
its aim only Decoration or Imitation.
EGYPTIAN ART.-Favorable Conditions of Climate and Soil
in Egypt; Valley of the Nile; Earliest Egyptians; Their Rapid
Progress; Its Cause Founding of a Monarchy; Pursuits of
Life; Advance of the Nation; The Pharaoh Monarch Supreme;
War and its Consequences to Egypt-The Religion of the
Egyptians; Worship of the Elements; Death and Future Life;
Symbol-writings; Their Elaboration and Illustration by Painter
and Sculptor; The First Art Sepulchral; Its Nature and Aim-
Egyptian Literature; Methods of Writing; How Perpetuated
-Poetry of Pentaour the Scribe; A Statement of Facts in
Rhythmical Language—Architecture; Its Simplicity; An
Imitation of Natural Forms; Its Advance-Art Devoted to
Religion and the King-Character of Egyptian Painting and
Sculpture; The Latter bordering on Symbolism; Subjects and
Materials Used; Correspondence of the Art with the Egyptian
Civilization-The Arts of Chaldæa, Assyria, India, Phoenicia,
and Cyprus of a Nature similar to that of Egypt-Art, Imita-
tive, Decorative, and Symbolic, seen in all the Beginnings of
Civilization,
II
18
vi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II. ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL..
Art a Reflection of the Nature of a Civilization rather than
its Extent; Dependent on the Sympathies of the People; In-
stances given.
Greek Art.—The Geography of Greece; Topography,
Climate, and Soil; Natural Beauty of Greece and the Greeks
-Origin of the First Settlers left in obscurity; The In-
quiry begun at the Point of Progress to which Egypt was
traced-First Period: State of Greece prior to 580 B.C.;
Government, People, National Character, Pursuits, War, Re-
ligion, Philosophy, Literature, Poetry, Music-Greek Archi-
tecture, its Origin; Heavy Nature of the Doric; Sculpture
Archaic and Stiff; Materials; Ornamentation; Painting a
Part of Decoration-Second Period (down to 400 B.C.): Greek
History, Wars and Political Changes; Growth of the Greek
Character; Development of the Physical Man; The National
Games; Education-Rise of Philosophy, Law, Literature, the
Drama, Poetry, and Music-The Building of Cities; Archi-
tecture Lighter and more Graceful; The Ionic introduced-
All Branches of Knowledge advance, but the Greek Charac-
ter better shown in Sculpture than in anything else; The Ad-
vance on the Archaic Figure; New Materials; The Sculptors-
The Greek Ideal explained; The Ideal realized by Phidias—
The Periclean Age of Splendor-Third Period (400-323 B.C.):
Changes in the State; Changes in the Greek Character affect-
ing Literature and Art; Growing Indifference to the Gods;
Selfishness, Luxury, Vice-The New Ideal, the New Philos-
ophy, Poetry, Music, and Play-Ionian and Corinthian Archi-
tecture; Painting-Changes shown in Sculpture; Different
Subjects, Ideas, and Treatment; Art followed the Games and
became purely human-Scopas, Praxiteles, and other Sculptors
-The Hellenistic Age (323-133 B.C.): Decline of the Greek
Power Politically, Socially, Ethically, Religiously, Artisti-
cally-Advance of Science; Decline of Philosophy and the
Ideal-Sculpture and Architecture the most Enduring of
the Arts; Art at Pergamus; The Ending of Greek Art on
Roman Soil-The only Indigenous Classical Art sprung up
and died in Greece; Its Imitation in the Time of the Renais-
sance and in the Eighteenth Century. :
PAGK
42
CONTENTS.
vii
CHAPTER III. ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND INDI-
VIDUAL.
EARLY CHRISTIAN, MEDIÆVAL, AND GOTHIC ART.-Modifica-
tion of Climatic Influences upon Established Nations-Painting
chosen as the Representative Art of Christian Civilization—
Rome and its Place in Art-history; Rise of Christianity; The
New View of Life directly opposed to the Old Paganisms;
The Mind and Soul opposed to the Body; The Latter
Abused, Starved, and Scourged; The New Life; Outgrowth of
Excessive Emotion was Hysteria and Fanaticism; Endurance
of Persecution by the Early Christians; The Church and the
People; Dogmatism, Ignorance, Misery, Poverty-Education
denounced by the Clergy; Five Centuries of Darkness-Early
Christian Art but a Preparation for the Future-The Roman-
esque and Gothic Periods (1000-1400 A.D.); History of the Times
and the People; Intensified Emotion-The Crusades, Mari-
olatry, Chivalry; Growth of Intelligence, Commerce, and
Trade; Education advanced in Many Departments; A Small
Classic Revival; Universities established; Philosophical
Thought; Scholasticism-Rise of Literature; Italian Poetry-
Romanesque and Gothic Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting.
CHAPTER IV. ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND INDI-
VIDUAL (Continued)..
THE RENAISSANCE.-History of the Times and the People;
Nature of the Age-Causes of the Renaissance-Advance of
Knowledge, Discovery, Science, Invention; Restoration of the
Antique-Humanism of the Renaissance divided into Four
Periods; The Periods followed separately; The Result Great
Acquisition, but in Literature little Production; Its Effect as
an Educator; Its Abrupt Cessation-The Poetry of the Period
shown to reflect the Age-The Renaissance Architecture-
The Sculpture and its Nature-Painting; Its Causes and Im-
pulses; Effect of Classicism, the Study of Nature, and Christi-
anity, working together; Conditions favorable to the Existence
of Painting-Painters of the Renaissance: Masaccio, Fra Fi-
lippo, Botticelli, Filippino, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Squarcione,
Mantegna, John Bellini, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Francia, Fra
Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio-The Art of the
Renaissance summed up in the Works of Leonardo, Raphael,
PAGE
75
97
viii
CONTENTS.
PAGE
and Michael Angelo-The Venetian School a Brilliant Epilogue
to the Renaissance.
CHAPTER V. ART EMOTional, IntelleCTUAL, AND INDI-
VIDUAL (Concluded)....
MODERN ART.-Summary of the Causes of the Renaissance
Decline; Decline of the Church, Falling off of Sympathy, Loss of
Liberty, Advance of Science, Scattering of Knowledge, etc.—Art
immediately following the Renaissance-The Dormant Period
succeeding-Modern Civilization beginning in the Last Half of
the Eighteenth Century; France to be used for Illustration-
Spirit of the Age; History of the Times and the People; Political
Movements; Assertion of the Individual-French History prior
to the Revolution-England and Germany-Advance of Science
—Rise of Philosophy-German and French Literature exempli-
fying the Age; The Revolt against Convention; Romanticism in
the Drama, in Poetry, in the Novel-Summary of French Litera-
ture-Architecture; Classical Revivals and the Revolt against
them-Sculpture and Painting similarly affected-French Paint-
ing of the Present Century, David, Gros, Ingres, Horace Ver-
net, Delaroche, Géricault, Ary Scheffer, Delacroix, Decamps,
Fromentin, Corot, Rousseau, Daubigny, Troyon, Courbet,
Millet, Bréton, Frère, Gérôme, Cabanel, Bouguereau, Meisson-
nier, Vollon, Bonnat, Carolus Duran.
PART II.
ART IN THEORY.
CHAPTER I. ART AND ITS AIM.....
Impossibility of formulating a Theory or of giving a Definition
that shall explain all Art upon One Basis-Art is what its Civili-
zation makes it-A Theory of Modern Art alone considered
herein-What Art is not-1. An Imitation of Nature; A Popular
Fallacy; How established; Not so much believed in by the
Artists as by the Critics; Applied more to Painting than to the
other Arts classed as Imitative Arts; Art but a Point of View,
and Genius but aWay of Looking at Things-2. Truth to Nature;
A False Aim; Varies from Imitation; Truth the Aim of Science,
not of Art; The Two confused by Writers; Truth only a Means of
Accomplishment, not an End-3. Truth in Morality; Objected
131
173
CONTENTS.
ix
to on Same Ground as Truth to Nature; A Morality of Art, Yes;
An Art of Morality, No-4. Expression of the Ideal; Thrown
out of Consideration in Discussion of Modern Painting; The
Meaning of the Word distorted; People speak of an Artist's
“Ideal” when they mean his "Idea;” No Universal Abstract
Conception, but on the contrary Individual Conceptions-5.
Expression of Technical Skill; An Aim of many Artists; A Most
Important Factor in Production, but only a Factor and not the
Principal-What Art is: Expression of Beauty; Nature and
Existence of Beauty as an Attribute of it; The Emotions; The
Beautiful not to be confounded with the Agreeable-Material
or External Beauty may be an Aim of Art-Beauty of Thought
the Highest Beauty and Loftiest Aim of Painting.
CHAPTER II. OF PICTORIAL IDEAS..
•
Painting a Symbolic Language; Kinds of Ideas; Esthetic
Ideas; How conveyed-The Divisions and Limitations of the
Arts; Literary Painting; Painting capable of conveying
Pictorial Ideas only-Degrees of Beauty in Ideas; The High-
est Beauty; The Sublime described and exemplified; The
Sublime often beyond Comprehension; Failure of Art to ex-
press it; Shown in High Mountains, Niagara, the Ocean-
Analogy between Poetry and Painting; Sublimity, how ex-
pressed in Both Arts-The Sun and Clouds, how interpreted by
Poets and Painters-Beauty of Light, Clouds, Storm, Dark-
ness, Valleys, Lakes, Rivers Sublime in Human Action;
Religion a Lofty Theme of Painting-The Moral-sublime and
the Sublime in History-The Sublime in Physical Power and
Human Passion-Ideas of Lesser Grandeur; The Harmonious
and Simply Beautiful in Art-Ideas unconsciously conceived
and vaguely expressed; Poetic Feeling and Sentiment; Artis-
tic Feeling; Simple Beauty of Form.
CHAPTER III. OF PICTORIAL SUBJECT
The Constituent Elements of a Painting are Idèa, Subject,
and Expression; Subject perhaps the Least Important; A Clog
to Men of Genius and an Advantage to the Unthinking; Its
Choice, however, a Matter of Much Weight-The Artist-belief
that it makes No Difference what you paint if you but paint it
well-External Beauty as a Subject-An Idea like a Gem re-
quires a Setting appropriate to it; Analogy of the Other Arts;
Choice of Lofty Subject in great Paintings, Poems, Dramas,
PAGE
213
243
X
CONTENTS.
Operas-Subjects of the Present Time and the Artist's Own
Country not necessary; Nationality not displayed in Subject
chosen, but in Ideas and Manner of Expression-Contem-
porary Subjects too Crude and New; Time required to give
Perspective and mold Facts for Poetry and Painting; Haw-
thorne quoted; Subjects chosen by the Masters.
CHAPTER IV. OF PICTORIAL EXPRESSION
•
Practical Side of Art not dealt with-The Principle of Con-
centrated Force only; Its Absolute Necessity in all Art ;
Instanced in the Novel, the Drama, the Stage Representation
of the Drama, and in Poetry-It requires the Suppression of
Unimportant Material, the Suggestion, only, of Minor Details,
and the Full Expression of the Leading Features; Its Applica-
tion to Art-But One Idea can be expressed in a Picture-
Means of Expression: Form and Color-Color-values; Light
and Shade; Positions according to Value; Harmony, Grada-
tion, and Tone -Form- or Object-values; Selection, Arrange-
ment, Grouping, Composition-The Law of Concentration
again; Used by the Masters; Instanced in their Works; In-
stanced in Modern Art and in American Art-Suppression and
Suggestion of Details; Of Positive Exaggeration and Distor-
tion of Natural Forms; Has been done by the Masters, but
not to be Justified-Exaggeration should be Apparent only and
not Real.
CHAPTER V. OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
The Masses of Mankind Impersonal; History made by In-
dividuals called Geniuses; Nationality shown in Schools of
Art; Difference of View-Difference between Eccentricity and
Individuality; The Latter displayed not in Power alone, but in
Thought and Feeling; Shown in Different Conceptions of the
Same Thing; Shown in All Branches of Knowledge; Ideas
please because of their Individualism-Seen in Subjects chosen
for Literature and Painting-Shown best of all in Manner of
Treatment; Same Thought differently expressed—Recognition
of Paintings by their Peculiar Appearance; Points of View-
A Picture an Artist's Autobiography; Impossibility of Eliminat-
ing the Artist-Subjective Treatment out of Keeping with the
Spirit of the Age and False to Art; Realism-Great Art an Ex-
pression of Personal Feeling, and valuable for the Thought or
Feeling and not for its Mechanical Expression.
PAGE
256
278
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
PART I.
ART IN HISTORY.
INTRODUCTION.
THE skilled archeologist who collects antiquities of
art from some recent excavation has little trouble in
correctly classifying and assigning them to certain
nations, ages, schools, and even artists, of the past.
How does he do this, and why does he not often
assign Assyrian sculpture, for instance, to Egypt, and
Egyptian sculpture to Greece, or fall into some kin-
dred error? How can he determine that this marble
belongs to the Attic school, and that one to the school
of Pergamus? How can he say that one statue is the
work of Phidias, and another that of Scopas or Prax-
iteles? There must be some law of guidance in his
assignments, for each piece falls into its proper
place like the parts of a mosaic; each marble is a
page of history completing the mutilated text; each
statue a connecting link in the historic chain. By
what rule of logic does he arrive at such accurate
conclusions?
By no new one, surely. In fact, his reasoning is
12
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
so generally known and unconsciously used as to be
scarcely worth our pointing out. He reasons that
certain nations in certain stages of civilization produce
a certain quality of art. How does he know this?
Precisely as he knows that figs do not grow on thistles.
Like may only produce like. A low state of savagery
or barbarism will give forth only a savage or a barbaric
art. A high state of civilization will produce a civil-
ized and a high art. The archæologist reasons from
effect to cause. An Osiride figure of colossal propor-
tions, helmeted, cross-armed with scepter and flagel-
lum, and seated, austere and passionless, upon a throne
of stone, must have been produced in the days of the
Pharaohs. The life of Egypt in Pharaonic days war-
rants the inference. The workmanship of the statue,
its attempt at imitation or its symbolism, its conven-
tional type, confirm the conclusion and help to point
its date. Again, certain marbles may be known to
have belonged to the Periclean Age of Greece, not be-
cause they were taken from the Parthenon, but by
their peculiar modeling, their display of the perfect
physical man naked and athletic, their symmetry and
grace, their classic form and monumental repose. No
other land could possibly have produced them, and
Greece could have done so only during a certain pe-
riod of its civilization which we know as the Age of
Pericles. In this time a certain sculptor is known to
have lived whose individual methods of treatment
are shown in these marbles, and again the reasoning
is that Phidias must have produced them.
From this, before going farther, we may state one
INTRODUCTION.
13
principle of art, and leave to the following pages its
conclusive proof. Art reflects the civilization in which it
is produced. It is chameleon-like, and takes the color-
ing of its surroundings; it is mirror-like, and likens
the age out of which it springs; it is biographical,
and speaks the life of the artist and, necessarily, the
characteristics of his race. Nothing can record so
truly the nature of a people or a country's civilization
as its art, for "the acts of a nation may be triumphant
by its good fortune; and its words, mighty by the
genius of a few of its children; but its art only by the
general gifts and common sympathies of the race.”*
Whatsoever a nation has endured, attained to, and ac-
complished will find its expression and its history in
the epochs of its art. The artist lives in his own time
and seldom ahead of or behind it. If he is striving
toward the unattainable of the future, there is some
impulse of his age that urges him on. If he goes back
to imitate an art of the past, again some tendency of his
time promotes it. Whichever way he turns, and what-
ever he may do, the circumstances of his surroundings
rule him unconsciously; and if he ever promotes or
seems to originate the circumstances, it is only after
he is famed and commands influence. Apparently
the geniuses of the past have been men out of their
proper orbits, living in advance of their ages; but were
they so in reality? Was there not a reason for their
existence, and behind them a motive springing from
contemporaneous sources which impelled them on-
*Ruskin, St. Mark's Rest.
14
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
ward? It is easy to trace each lightning-flash home.
to its native cloud, and the light of genius, though
more brilliant than others, reflects none the less truly
its place of origin.
If, then, our first principle that art is a reflex of the
age producing it be true (and we shall endeavor to
prove this as we proceed), we are in a position to ex-
amine art in its development. Such an examination
necessarily brings in the history of nations, for the
reasoning is from that which is produced to the civil-
ization producing, or vice versa. Now if we take a
bird's-eye view of all history, we shall be able to gen-
eralize a second principle, viz., that man in history
has been and is progressive; that the tendency is on-
ward and upward; that necessarily art is likewise
progressive because reflective; and that from the art
of the Early Man of geology to that of the Periclean
Greek, and from the latter to the art of the European
of to-day, there are successive stages of progression.
This second principle must be modified and received
with caution; for while we are theorizing and trying
to be consistent, it must be looked to that we do not
distort history to suit our special case. There has
been a general progression of mankind, a development
from the little better than brute of antiquity to the
intelligent being of to-day; but this advance has not
always been either regular or chronological. There
have been breaks in the line, whereby certain nations.
have gone far ahead, and then there have been lapses
for hundreds of years, when civilization seemed to
retrograde. For instance, what shall we say of
INTRODUCTION.
15
Greece? It sprang from barbarism, and in compara-
tively few centuries attained a culture which perhaps
only our self-satisfaction in the nineteenth century
leads us to think was not so great as is our own. An
unprejudiced comparison of Greek life with that of
to-day could only result in the conclusion that we
differ from, but have not, in many respects, ex-
celled, the Greeks. Our philosophy, literature, law,
and art correspond to our present wants; but it is
impossible to say that they are better than were those
of Greece, and it may well be doubted if they are as
good. We must recognize, then, at the start that civ-
ilization has not made a uniform progression; yet it
has nevertheless advanced, and that advance may be.
attributed to certain causes. The order of its move-
ment is like that of the waves on the seashore. Ac-
tion and reaction is the law that governs it. The
wave of Greek civilization was mighty in its height
and power, and its recession was correspondingly
great. When it failed, for nearly fifteen hundred
years there was naught but barren beach. Then fol-
lowed the Renaissance, rising and falling like its pre-
decessor; and now once more a mighty wave is form-
ing upon which we of to-day are borne along. From
its size, its constituent elements, and its tendency, may
we not gather an idea of its future greatness, and ven-
ture the prediction that it will be higher, nobler, and
better than any that has gone before?"
It is an easy task to establish a philosophy of art in
any one country taken independently of other coun-
tries; but to found a universal philosophy by link-
16
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
ing together different periods of culture in a chrono-
logically progressive series is almost impossible. The
civilizations of the different nations have not always
extended their influence into the nations succeeding
them. Exceptions abound, of such startling force and
magnitude that the whole continuity is broken. Yet
this much we know, that the Primitive Man of geol-
ogy, in Europe, was little superior, intellectually, to the
animals about him; that man in Europe to-day is an
enlightened being characterized by mental strength.
A civilizing process extending over centuries has pro-
duced a change in him, and the transition has been
from physical to intellectual excellence. The inter-
mediate periods with their civilizations must record
the stages of the progress, and though this progress
like a mountain stream sometimes runs rapidly over
shallows, or sleeps for years in deep pools of silence,
or, again, perhaps disappears from view entirely, only
to emerge again farther on with new brilliancy, yet
within it all there is a tendency onward. The old
order has changed continuously, the development has
been irregular; yet if we go back and trace the
changes that have taken place, we shall find their
record has been faithfully kept in the book of art. It
is the autobiography of man, and in it may be read
his history. From this history we shall attempt to
generalize three stages of progression in art.* (1)
The Imitative, Decorative, and Symbolic stage, wherein
A
* Hegel divides art-history into three stages, called the Sym-
bolic, the Classic, and the Romantic.
INTRODUCTION.
17
the form is predominant. We shall find its illustra-
tion in the art of savage Europe, in Egypt, Assyria,
Chaldæa and Phoenicia, and in the early art of Greece.
(2) The Classical and Symmetrical stage, wherein form
and thought are harmoniously blended. This may be
best illustrated by the art of Greece during the Age
of Pericles. (3) The Emotional, Intellectual, and In-
dividual stage, wherein the emotion, idea, or individu-
alism of the artist predominates, and the form is sub-
ordinate. Its illustration is the early Christian and
Mediæval art; the nobler pieces of the High Renais-
sance; much of the early part of the art-work in the
nineteenth century known as Romantic art; and much
of contemporary times. We shall briefly examine
these stages separately; not for the purpose of detail-
ing a history, but merely by way of illustrating the
epochs of art progress and the principles underlying
them.
CHAPTER I.
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, AND SYMBOLIC.
This is with
PRIMITIVE ART.—It is not necessary that we should
discuss the origin of man. Whether he descended or
ascended, or both, is of no consequence herein. We
have only to deal with stages of art-progress, begin-
ning with the lowest stage we can find.
the being known to science as Primitive Man; but in
using that term it is not necessary that we should say
with ethnologists that he was the first man, or that
his periods of development, such as the Stone, Bronze,
and Iron Ages, were sequential in progression. His-
tory and the teachings of religion contradict the
first idea; and the existence of savage tribes to-day
side by side with civilized nations argues the pos-
sible contemporaneous existence of the earlier pe-
riods. Yet it is well established that this so-called
Primitive Man lived; and possibly there was a time,
before the record begins, when he was only a supe-
rior animal: but we have not the data of such a
period, and its existence can only be conjectured,
for the history of antiquity begins with the expres-
sion of abstract thought. This is the division-line
between the human and the brute. The latter lives
and dies to-day the same as centuries ago, making
no sign and leaving no record because devoid of intel-
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 19
ligence. Man survives oblivion through his thought
perpetuated by his descendants. The primitive con-
ceit that led the savage to strike two flints together
and edge their sides for spear-heads made possible the
sculpture of the Parthenon.* The instance of a child,
whose chief care is for facts, as compared with the
educated man, whose bent is toward ideas, will illus-
trate the difference between this Primitive Man and
the Periclean Greek. It is merely one of develop-
ment; and this illustration of the child should be borne
in mind, for tribes and nations grow from infancy
to manhood in an analogous manner. Again, the
conditions of life affect them alike, and we shall pres-
ently see that as the man of to-day is molded intel-
lectually by the civilization in which he lives and
cannot elect to be other than his age may make him,
so the man of the Stone Age was bounded by the
savagery of his surroundings and could not choose
but be a savage.
The social and intellectual influences bearing upon
nations, as M. Taine has well set forth, determine
the product of their thought. History has verified
this in the past, and is confirming it in the present.
The difference in the intellectual results of existing
nations and savage tribes of to-day is directly attribut-
able to difference of circumstances; and if we look
back at the man of the Stone Age in Northern Europe,
we shall find him in the lowest stage of human exist-
ence known to history, while his brother on the banks
* Boucher de Perthes.
† Philosophy of Art.
20
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
of the Nile, under more favorable conditions, haa
builded an empire and founded a dynasty. Life may
have begun alike in each case, but developed quickly
or was retarded, accomplished much or accomplished
little, according as the circumstances surrounding
were favorable or otherwise. With Primitive Man
they were most adverse. The first records of him are
found in France, Germany, and northward on the
shores of the Baltic. In that then inclement country,
swept by storms, floods, and glaciers, amid trials and
dangers innumerable, he lived in the forest and on the
sea-shore, fighting for existence not only against the
elements, but against the mammoth, the wolf, and the
great cave-bear. Like an animal he sought protection
from the cold and the attacks of his enemies in the
hollows of trees and mounds and in the depths of
natural caves whence have been exhumed the records
of his life. The earliest mark of his intelligence, his
self-consciousness, is found in the invention of stone
weapons which assured him success in the chase. At
this time it is supposed that he lived upon raw flesh
and what fruits of the earth he could gather; and his
clothing was the skins of the animals he had slain.
Some improvements came into his manner of life
after the discovery of fire, which is attributed to this
age. He invented the bow and arrow, and the hatchet
and knife of flint. He burned out the hollows of trees
to make canoes, and began navigation. And at this
early stage his first attempts at art make themselves
manifest in his necklaces of shells and teeth, in his
hatchings and carvings upon the handles of his
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 21
weapons, and in the markings and diagonal lines
upon rudely-made pottery. Whence and how came
his fancy for ornament cannot be explained, except by
saying that it was as instinctive to him as it is for a
child upon the seashore to build mounds of sand and
stud them with pretty shells. Such art is purely deco-
rative in its nature, and is indicative of a low order
of human intelligence, such as is to-day noticeable in
the savage tribes of the earth. But in this period oc-
curs another style of art worthy of more serious notice,
since it reveals a thought and a desire to transmit
that thought to others. This is the rude attempt to
carve upon bone and to outline upon stone and slate
the figures of animals. The outline-drawing of the
cave-bear upon a stone found in the Cave of Massat
may be said to mark the beginning of the graphic
arts. Here is a man who has something to say to his
fellows. He wishes perhaps to describe some animal
he has seen or killed in the chase. Words will not
adequately serve him, even if he had much command of
them, so he resorts to imitating the likeness of the animal
upon a flat stone. He conveys an idea of nature to
his fellows, but he himself has none but that of imi-
tation. This should be remembered here, for farther
on we shall see that this idea of imitation marks, again,
a low order of intellect, and is apparent in the first
actions of children, and even in animals and birds;
and that between it and an idea of passion or of power
which characterizes the genius of educated man there
is a vast difference.
The various periods in the life of Primitive Man
22
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
correspond to steps of progress toward civilization,
which we shall follow, discarding the question of their
succeeding each other in order of time. In the Reindeer
Period he is found a mighty hunter. The flesh of the
deer furnished food; the skin, clothing; the bones sup-
plied arrows, needles, spoons, handles; and the horns
were made into daggers. In the Epoch of Polished
Stone his weapons are found to be better constructed
and more numerous. He is still a dweller in caves;
but he has banded together with others of his kind
for protection, and society is formed. The friction of
mind upon mind strikes out the spark of thought.
Association becomes the promoter of intelligence.
Rude agriculture is begun, and the now advanced
man invents mills of flat stones to grind grain, tames
animals, becomes an expert hunter, travels from place
to place by beaten forest roads, navigates the rivers,
and builds intrenched forts of stone for protection
from unfriendly tribes. His pottery is now better
made and more floridly decorated, his weapons are
marked with the lines and forms of the animals he has
slain, his arms are clasped with bracelets of ivory and
jet, and around his neck hang strings of amber beads.
Another feature showing a greater power of ab-
stract thought appears at this time. The savage
has conceived of a Deity and a future life. Whether
his religion was inherited from the remotest ages or
sprang from natural sources cannot be known; but
likely enough it was a mingling of both. The inex-
plicable operations of nature, combined with tradition,
may have taught him the existence of an Unseen
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 23
Ruler; and gratitude for the bounties of the earth,
together with fear of the elements, may have been the
cause of his worship. However this may be, or what-
ever the cause or form, it is quite certain that a religion
existed, and in it Primitive Man incorporated the be-
lief that the Power which could create and control his
life here could re-create or continue it in a hereafter.
Hence, in that early age when the warrior died they
buried him with his weapons of the chase, and erected
over his body, as a protection, the tumulus of stone of
which the pyramids of Egypt and the sarcophagi of
Greece were but enlargements and developments.
During the Age of Bronze metals were discovered,
and copper and tin fused together were used in mold-
ing swords, spears, hatchets, rings, pins, bracelets,
and many articles of domestic and agricultural use.
The highest point of advancement during this period
was reached in Switzerland, where, hemmed in by the
mountains and confined to the valleys, men banded
together in villages of huts built out into the
lakes upon upright piles. The influence of society as
an educator is again instanced here. The lacustrine
existence was most favorable to the interchange of
ideas and the unity of forces. In consequence de-
velopment now took place with some rapidity, and
art progressed proportionately with the increased in-
telligence. Decoration became conspicuous; and
every implement of warfare was hatched and carved
with quaint designs, while the drawings of animals
and even men, upon wood and stone, became more
common and accurate in their delineations of nature.
{
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
24
And now we come to the Age of Iron, when the
periods of savagery seem to have been superseded by
epochs of barbarism-using that word to signify a
state of life half-way between savagery and civiliza-
tion. The barbarian is now the chief of a wild
horde riding forth to battle at the head of his fellows.
Upon his head is an iron helmet, in his hand an iron
spear, and at his side an ornamented sword. Bracelets
and rings, and collars with many pendants, are about
him. Trappings and housings are upon the horse;
within his mouth is an iron bit; and upon his hoofs
are iron shoes. Man has now subjugated surround-
ing nature, and to a certain extent made the cir-
cumstances subservient to his will. He has estab-
lished law, government, society, agriculture, trade.
He has founded a tribal monarchy, brought about the
despotism of superior power, and reared buildings of
stone and wood until they have formed cities. His
art has extended itself in many forms; and his
draughtsmanship, still rude and uncouth, has lent itself
to the imitating of many things heretofore unattempt-
ed. And here, on the division-line between the civil-
ized and the uncivilized, we may leave him. Our next
illustration is that of Egypt, where for the work of
the scientist we shall be able to substitute, in part,
that of the historian.
The art of Primitive Man, at its best, shows nothing
but a taste for decoration or an instinct toward imita-
tion. It does not deal with ideas or thoughts of any
power or importance, because incapable of doing so.
A child accepts facts and accommodates itself to
ART ÎMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 25
them without thinking or reasoning; it is imitative,
not creative; and possessed of a love for display,
without the power of discriminative taste. Primitive
Man was of an analogous nature, and his art was in
correspondence therewith. Yet this class of art is not
confined to the European savage and his different
Ages; but appears in the infancy of every tribe or
race while they are struggling up toward civilization.
It appeared in the early days of Egypt, Assyria,
Phoenicia, and Greece; and, again, in the aboriginal
days of Mexico and Peru. It is apparent to-day in
the bead and shell decorations and the picture-writ-
ings of the American Indians, and in the products
of other savage tribes of the earth. It is the very
beginning of art, revealing only the bare facts with
which man in the savage and barbaric states alone
deals.
EGYPTIAN ART.-In the preceding pages attention
has been called to the progress toward civilization fol-
lowing immediately upon the association of man with
his fellows. The earliest records of history are verifi-
cations of the truism that in the union of men there
is mental and political strength; and in those early
days when the conditions of the country and climate
were favorable to human existence, and the disposi-
tion of the land threw men together in certain val-
leys or sections of inclosed ground, the advance was
more rapid than elsewhere through a concentration
of forces. This was noticeable in Switzerland, where
the snow-clad mountains drove the Lake Dwellers
2
26
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
into the valleys; and now we are to glance hastily
at a geographical conformation even more favorable,
where man the barbarian soon developed into a
civilized being.
The Nile and its valley have undergone no material
change in their physical conditions during the past
five thousand years. The narrow strips of fertile land
lying on each side of the river, and extending from
the Mediterranean to the island of Philæ, a distance
of about seven hundred miles, constituted ancient, as
they now constitute modern, Egypt. The Arabian and
Libyan mountains bounded the river on each side,
from its delta throughout the length of the land,
making for the valley natural walls of protection
against the inroads of barbarous tribes, and against
the heat, the sands, and the siroccos of the surround-
ing deserts. The mountains were as the walls to a
castle; and the deserts were as the moat, for the
wastes were well-nigh impassable for invaders. The
land was one of eternal sunshine. The climate was
dry, healthful and warm, even hot; so that its early
inhabitants had need of no protection against cold
and rain. And in the valley, the Nile, which inun-
dated and irrigated the whole basin from mountain
to mountain each year, rendered vegetation luxurious
to an extreme degree. Here was a country so situ-
ated and favored by nature as to be peculiarly well
fitted for the habitation of man; and here the earliest
Egyptians lived. From the mud of the river they
built themselves rude huts, and in the wind-worn
caves of the mountains they found homes. Natural
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 27
instinct, combined with necessity, required them to
utilize the provisions of nature placed before them.
They became a pastoral, an agricultural, a trading
people; and in the early days, when they can be
but uncertainly traced, they appear to have been little
better than the Primitive Man of Europe. So the
transition from the barbarian of the Iron Age to the
barbaric Egyptian is slight indeed. The advance of
the latter from savagery to barbarism may be consid-
ered similar to that of the former; so we need not
follow it too closely. Religion, law, government, in-
ventions, arts, sprang from kindred sources; but the
secret of the more rapid advance of the ancient Egyp-
tians lay in the superior conditions of the land and
the climate, and in the fact that their numbers were
concentrated by the narrowness of the valley in which
they lived. A civilization arose from barbarism al-
most at once; and when the richness of the land of
Egypt became noised abroad to the savage tribes of
Asia, Ethiopia, and Libya, and these latter sought to
make incursions into the valley of the Nile, they found
the Egyptians an armed force ready to resist them,
with a leader, a Pharaoh, at their head. Up and
down the land men multiplied and grew in strength,
intelligence, and wealth. A spirit of trade sprung up.
The river was navigated for purposes of commerce, and
the deserts traversed on war-steeds in raids upon hos-
tile bands. Animals of all kinds were tamed, and the
Egyptians grew expert in stock-growing, agriculture,
hunting, fishing, warfare. The number of inventions.
increased rapidly; the earlier sciences became estab-
28
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
lished; the making and molding of pottery, glass,
and metals were understood; and the architecture of
their long, low buildings of stone, constructed upon
the principle of a cave and intended only for shelter
from the heat or the deification of some god or king,
is the wonder of to-day.
The Egyptian empire continued to advance in power
up to the incoming of the Shepherd Kings, after which,
for five hundred years, there was a lapse of which as
yet little is known. But after the expulsion of the
Hyksos and the restoration of the native Egyptian
kings, the country once more flourished. Dynasties
of leaders, called Pharaohs, succeeded one another by
right of birth. Each Pharaoh assembled around him
the warriors, the statesmen, the scribes, and the priests
of his dominions. He made the laws, judged the
people, declared war, and was monarch supreme. His
immediate officers fawned upon him, the scribes wrote
his praises, and the priests, to flatter him, declared to
the people that he was descended from the sun-god Ra
and was the beloved of Amun. The people believed
in his divinity and worshiped him. By successions of
augmenting power, soon the entire government passed
into his hands and those of his officers. The common
people became as slaves, willing to obey the wave of
his hand, the nod of his head, or the glance of his eye.
He marshaled them into battle array like automatons
to do his bidding, and led them against invading hosts
in mighty phalanxes of infantry. An unlimited mon-
archy prevailed, and Egypt was the Pharaoh.
Yet under this despotism civilization progressed.
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 29
War became a leading feature of life, pursued on a
grand scale. In the Nineteenth Theban Dynasty
Rameses the Great went forth to battle in a brazen
chariot drawn by war-steeds caparisoned with shin-
ing harness, war-plumes in their heads, and trapped
with turquois and amber beads. The king himself;
beside his charioteer, rode in the center of a vast
square of men, with a brazen helmet on his head, a
gorget of gold on his breast, bracelets of golden asps
upon his arms and wrists, and at his side war-lions
and the sword, spear, bow and arrows of warfare.
First in the vanguard marched a thousand musicians
playing upon onager-skin drums, brass sistra, and
short brass trumpets. Following came thousands of
war-chariots, then cavalry, and in the rear a hundred
thousand infantry moving like an ocean, their shields
and spear-points glittering in the sun.
The cap-
tives taken in battle were made slaves and set at
the building of public works, the digging of canals,
the making of dromo, the founding of cities with
streets, squares, and wharves. The priests and offi-
cers drew plans, and the common people with the
slaves labored to erect palaces, temples, and pyra-
mids that have outlived the memory of their found-
ers and the deities to whom they were dedicated.
All things combined to help on the new civilization,
and thus Egypt grew to be a mighty nation and the
first that proclaimed herself monarch of the world.
The religion of Egypt, existing in the very earliest
days, was a worship of the objects of nature, and
to the control of each element was assigned a god.
30
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Hapi the Good, the god of the Nile, who gave the
Egyptians a harvest and supplied them with the neces-
saries of life, was at first their chief adoration. Ra,
the god of the sun, who each morning sailed over the
Arabian mountains in a golden boat, bringing them
light and warmth; Hathor his wife, who presided over
the kingdom of the West and received Ra in her
arms each evening; Anubis, the god and watcher of the
dead, afterward became the objects of their worship;
while Typhon, the demon of evil, in whose hand was
the lightning, whose voice was the thunder, and whose
breath was the withering sirocco, was the object of
their hatred and fear. Later on in Egyptian history
the number of deities was increased, and every city
had its trinity of god-like protectors, symbolized by
the propylæ of the temples and palaces. The stars
became the eyes of the gods, and the juxtaposition
of certain planets was supposed to have an influence
for good or evil on the newly born. Future life
was to the Egyptians a certainty. The aalu-fields.
beyond the Libyan desert were the Islands of the
Blest, afterward adopted and believed in by the
Greeks, where the body renewed its life and became
immortal. With this and the further belief that the
soul remained in or near the body, it was their first
desire to preserve the latter intact until the day of
resurrection. To be denied the right of burial was
the heaviest punishment an Egyptian could receive.
Out of this arose the embalming of the dead with
myrrh, cassia, bitumen, and natron baths; the cover-
ing of the mummy with sheets of gold, pitch, and
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 31
varnish; the wrapping in air-tight bandages of
linen; and the sealing away in the depths of moun-
tain sepulchers or in pyramids. From their religion
sprung the first art-the art displayed in the tombs.
At first the gods were symbolized by signs and fig-
ures. This gave rise to a language whereby each
thing material or immaterial was symbolized by a
sign or figure, or by a combination of them. Upon
the lid and sides of the mummy-case, and upon the
walls of the sepulcher wherein it was laid, were
written in these characters or symbols the history of
the mummy's life, the account of the death and
burial, and the scenes attendant thereon. These sym-
bol-writings or hieroglyphs are in execution but
little better than the carvings of the man of the Iron
Age. The drawings of the birds, the animals, the
figures and representations of commonplace things,
are but rude imitations, and aside from their sym-
bolic meaning are intended only to convey an idea of
nature. But in the illustrations that accompany
them, especially those found on the walls of the
tombs, we meet with somewhat of an advance in art,
yet in execution only. The Egyptian in the earliest
dynasties had not only learned to cut hieroglyphs
upon the stone tablets and columns; he had like-
wise invented color, and upon the walls of the sepul-
cher, to the best of his ability, he painted the scenes
of life, death, and burial relating to the departed.
Upon the mummy-case was carved in wood, and
painted to resemble life, the portrait of the dead,
with eyes of glass; and on the outer wrappings of the
32
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
mummy were painted the scarabeus (symbol of immor-
tality), the figures of protecting gods, and vignettes
from the Book of the Dead. Within the sepulcher
were often placed busts and figures of wood, stone
and bronze, representative, again, of the dead. Rude
sculpture probably came into existence before paint-
ing, and the coloring of carved busts and figures
gave rise to the painting of figures upon flat sur-
faces. The first painting and the first sculpture
were sepulchral,* and the aim of the artist may be
said to have been imitation, or at best an attempted
reproduction, of nature. They wished the memory of
the dead, his likeness and appearance, to be preserved.
Language could not do this; so they chose sculpture
and painting. These were rude and distorted in
molding and drawing, and crude, barbaric, and un-
natural in coloring; yet they were as good as the
untrained hand and eye of the artist could do. He
carved and painted what he saw and as he saw it, not
what he thought or felt; for, with some exceptions
and aside from the material appearance, he had few
thoughts about it. It was reserved for a higher state
of civilization than his to do something more than
deal with cold realities. To him was relegated the
duty of recording bare facts; and how extremely well
he did this, in some cases so far back as the Fourth
Dynasty, may be seen by a glance at the engravings
of the stone portraits of Nefert and Ra-Hotep, the
originals of which are now in the Boulak Museum.
With the growth of the nation, inventions, com-
* Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Ancient Egypt.
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 33
merce, agriculture, and some of the exacter sciences,
such as astronomy, physics, and mechanics, progressed
simultaneously. In addition a literature reflective and
characteristic of the nation had been established, and
two new methods of writing, the hieratic (or priestly)
and demotic (or popular), modifications of the hiero-
glyphic, had developed, in which symbols were repre-
sented by certain signs which stood as their equiva-
lents. This literature, primitive as the civilization
which it sets forth, relates mainly to the king. It is
the record of his goodness, his power, his victories,
with statistics of his slain and the number of his cap-
tives taken in warfare. When record was made of pri-
vate life, it was but a repetition of this on a small scale.
The great bulk of it was a tale of facts, a statement
of reality, a something to be perpetuated to future
generations as history, although not undecorated and
possibly exaggerated. This literature in the hiero-
glyphic, hieratic, and demotic characters was set forth
in various ways, but chiefly chiseled or painted upon
the walls and columns of temples and tombs, or
written upon rolls of papyrus. It was usually ac-
companied by illustrations, and the scribe, the paint-
er, and the sculptor may possibly have been united
in one.
As has been said, this literature was generally but
a record of fact, whatever the subject chosen, even
when the scribe broached the fine art of poetry.
There are some examples of it extant, but it is chiefly
recitative or descriptive. Of the latter class the poem.
of Pentaour, a scribe in the reign of Rameses II., is
2*
34
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
one of the best. It is nothing but an elaboration of
the history of Rameses' conquest over the Khita, in-
terspersed with complimentary adjectives in praise of
this monarch and accusations of cowardice and weak-
ness against the Khita and their king. Aside from
this quality of praise and dispraise, it is essentially of
Egypt, Egyptian, and conveys only a record of fact;
a something to sound well upon the Pharaoh's ear,
and to stimulate the enthusiasm of his successors.
Pentaour the poet, his personality, and what he
thought about it all, are absent from the narrative for
the very good reason that he was an Egyptian and
had very few if any unconventional thoughts on the
subject. Moreover it was not then the poet's business
to think, but simply to record in rhythmical lan-
guage.
Coming now closer to the fine arts, we find the archi-
tecture of the Egyptians the simplest in design that
could be conceived of. The child that builds a house
of blocks by placing uprights and laying flat lintels
across them for a roof-support suggests the Egyptian
structure. It was but the grand elaboration of this
simple idea that resulted in the massive temples of
the gods and the palaces of the Pharaohs. In the
early stages of civilization man is an imitator of what
he sees, as we have already noted. The natural cave,
with its side walls and flat roof, inhabited by the early
Egyptians as a retreat from the heat, became in all
probability the model for the temples of Luxor and
Karnac. Even the very massiveness and somber
grandeur of Egyptian architecture may be attributed
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 35
to the imitation of the cave, the walls of which are
the mountain's width, and the roof the mountain's
height. Variations of the original model sprung up
with the advancement of the nation. Cylindrical
columns and ornamented capitals were put in to sup-
port the façade and the roof; and the pylons without
were added as entrance-gates. As in the earlier
structures, the main object of the builder seemed to
be to erect something so solid that it would endure
forever; something so thick that it would resist the
heat; something so grand that it would be honorable
to the god or the Pharaoh to whom it was dedicated
and for whose use it was intended.
Of ornamentation and decoration as displayed in
other things than painting and sculpture, as for
instance in pottery, glass, arms, and jewelry, we need
hardly speak, except to say that they kept even pace
with the general progress of Egypt. Decorative art in
any age may show skill of hand and eye and yet little
of expressive thought; so we need not stop to discuss
it, inasmuch as we are already within a realm where
ideas are beginning to make themselves faintly ap-
parent. It has already been hinted that the art of
Egypt was essentially monarchical and religious;* and
through all its ages of history, from its rise to its fall,
it did not vary much from this. The king was the
luminary—the very sun itself. The people worshiped
him, the poet praised him, the musician sung of him,
the architect builded for him, the painter represented
* Perrot and Chipiez.
36
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
him in life and death, and the sculptor made great.
statues of him seated upon his throne-stern, silent,
and cold as the granite block from which the figure
was cut. The temples, palaces, pyramids, and obe-
lisks contained the records of his public and private.
life. The priests wrote in hieroglyphs his descent
from the gods and the history of his family, and the
sculptor cut them in bands around the lofty columns.
The architraves, lintels, and door-posts enumerated
his battles, while upon the panels of the walls the
painter showed him in war and in peace, his inter-
views with he gods, his recreations and his domestic
relations. he tomb of the Pharaoh, hidden away in
the heart of the mountains or in the labyrinth of the
pyramid, was even more elaborate in painting and
sculpture. The walls were covered with the achieve-
ments of his life, the lamentations over his death, and
the scenes of his burial. Thus the best of art, as the
best of everything, was devoted to the glory of the
gods and of the Pharaoh, their descendant upon earth.
Yet art was not confined alone to deity and royalty.
It was too universally known and read by even the
humblest of the nation to be anything other than
catholic. The nation was educated by it as we mod-
erns are taught by books. It was a part of their liter-
ature, history, record, and there is scarcely a scene of
Egyptian life that has not been painted or chiseled
in some form. Every Egyptian was a Pharaoh in his
own household, and in a small way the servant aped
his master. His achievements, like those of the king,
were set forth with paint-brush and chisel, especially
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 37
after death, when his mummy-case and sepulcher bore
his likeness and history.
The character of the Egyptian wall-painting is well
known. It is merely an outline of form filled in with
crude color, and generally devoid of background
and perspective. The drawing, though distorted at
times, is not without a certain degree of grace and a
general truth to nature. Aside from their symbolic
or historic meaning, these paintings represent only at-
tempts at imitation or decoration; this, however, with
some exceptions. The general figures of bird, beast,
and man seen in the representations of Egyptian life.
are but enlarged and elaborated repetitions of what
may be seen in the hieroglyphs. The slender white-
kilted Egyptian figure is but a type of the race; and
the Pharaohs, and in some respects even the gods, are
but elaborations of it. It is not claimed by Egypt-
ologists that these paintings are portraits of indi-
viduals, yet this, again, is subject to some exceptions.
The color and the form show but an Egyptian type,
and this is further exemplified by the variations from
it in the pictures of Negroes, Ethiopians, Libyans,
and other foreign captives represented in the triumph-
scenes of the kings. Generally speaking, the Egyp-
tian painter was an imitator of nature in outline: if
he had ideas or loftier conceptions of his subjects,
other than reality or convention disclosed, he did not
and perhaps could not express them, because he
lacked the technical skill. But the sculptor, who in
the early ages of the monarchy was a maker of stone
portraits a reproducer of simple nature-during the
38
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
latter dynasties became somewhat of an expresser of
ideas, through the attempt to give to the Pharaohs
and the gods their characteristic attributes of power.*
*
There was thus a change in the province of art. At
first it was almost wholly sepulchral; but afterward,
though the art of the tombs existed as before, a dif-
ferent art sprung up and became an adjunct and an
adornment to architecture. The early portrait-sculp-
tors of the Memphitic dynasties were never excelled
in their lifelike representations; but with the nation's
growth art became more graceful and monumental,
more descriptive and expressive of meaning. Here is
a distinct step forward from the realm of facts to that
of thoughts regarding facts. In Egyptian art this is
apparently slight, yet nevertheless noteworthy ast
marking the transition. Possibly the new departure
had its origin in symbolism. The Sphinx, with the
head of a man and the body of a lion, was not in-
tended to represent the doubt and mystery which
have been for so many years attributed to it. On
the contrary, the head was but that of a king, and the
lion's body was but a symbol of the monarch's
strength, though the Sphinx at Gizeh symbolized the
god Harmachis, or the sun on the horizon. Again,
the colossal statues of the Pharaohs were not por-
traits alone (possibly they were not even that, for one
statue often did service as the portrait of successive
Pharaohs), but the representations of sublime and
godlike power. The attitude of the figure seated
upon a throne of stone is that of kingly dignity and
* Perrot and Chipiez.
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 39
repose. The impassive face is that of a monarch
whom not the presence of a god could cause to trem-
ble or to change. These are attributes of majesty
which it may well be fancied were not always in the
originals. These are ideas conceived by the sculptor
and embodied in the stone. These are the qualities
that tend to raise the artist from an imitator to a
thinker and a creator. Yet how slight at best was the
thought of the sculptor is instanced in the statues.
and statuettes of the gods. An addition of his own
ideas to the figure of the living man before him was a
simple effort as compared with the portrayal of the
unknown and the unseen gods. Here he was at once
thrown upon the resources of his imagination; and
how poorly he fared under these circumstances is
shown by the uncouth and eccentric representations.
of the Egyptian deities. They were molded, in the
majority of cases, after the Egyptian type, and in
the best examples we find an attempt to set forth
the attributes of each: youth to Horus; maternity
to Isis; power to Osiris; hideousness to Typhon; ra-
diance to Ra; and solemnity and watchfulness to
Anubis.
The art of Egypt, though it changed concurrently
with the civilization of the land from the Memphitic
to the Saitic dynasties, did not advance much, for
it was ever hampered by conventions. The people,
like the inhabitants of China, never allowed their
original ideas to be disturbed or altered by inter-
course with other nations. For the main, the ideas
conceived in the beginning held sway through eighteen
40
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
dynasties of kings,* and are as apparent in the paint-
ing and sculpture of the reign of Rameses II. as in
the earlier reign of Chephren. In technical execution
the powers of the sculptor were again limited by
the poor quality of the tools and the unsuitable hard-
ness or softness of the materials. Indeed, Egyptian
art had many things to struggle against; and when it
is considered that the country grew from barbaric
life to civilization; that its people, so far as we know,
borrowed from none but were original in all things,
it will not be surprising to us that three thousand
years produced but an-imitative, decorative, and sym-
bolic art an art bordering upon something higher,
which, however, it never fully attained. It was but the
reflection of a people who had known and submitted
to facts for centuries, and who just as they began to
conquer through ideas were destined to perish.
An inquiry into the art of Chaldæa and Assyria and
its offshoots would show but a repetition of that of
Egypt. The civilization upon the Tigris and Eu-
phrates was nearly the same as that upon the Nile,
though it never reached the height of the latter; and
the art reflected every stage of this progression, be-
ginning with decoration and imitation and passing to
symbolism. Their literature was first expressed in
hieroglyphs called ideograms, and afterward by com-
binations of wedge-shaped forms. This literature was
but a chronicle of facts regarding themselves, their
kings, and their gods, principally the two latter. Their
* Perrot and Chipiez.
ART IMITATIVE, DECORATIVE, SYMBOLIC. 4I
architecture was molded by the circumstances of cli-
mate and the needs of the people, and was much deco-
rated with sculptured bas-reliefs, glazed and colored
tiles, alabaster slabs, and mural paintings. At the
portals of the palaces stood enormous winged bulls
and lions, representative both in decoration and sym-
bolism; the head, being that of a king, symbolized
wisdom, the wings swiftness, the body power.
Painting was scarcely worthy of the name, with
these nations. It consisted of the coloring of statues.
and the decoration of tiles and wall-spaces. The tomb,
a chief cause and subject of painting with the Egyp-
tians, was unknown to the Assyrians, and even to this
day their burial-places remain undiscovered. Sculp-
ture was their highest art, and was generally a votive
offering to the king or the gods, never advancing be-
yond imitated facts and ornamentation, except in its
symbolism. It was not so graceful in execution as the
Egyptian sculpture, but excelled in conveying ideas.
of strength-that characteristic of the Assyrian people.
The same character of art-that is, the imitative,
decorative, and symbolic-is apparent in the civiliza-
tions of India, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. The early art
of Greece may also be used for illustration. It is the
art marking the earliest periods of civilization, when
people deal alone with facts, and is apparent in every
nation that rises from barbarism unaided by outside
influences. Greece may be said to have shown it
less than the others we have mentioned because she
was not wholly an original nation, but inherited much
from Phoenicia, Assyria, and Egypt.
CHAPTER II,
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
BEFORE treating of the subject of this chapter an-
other caution must be given against the too literal
acceptance of the statement that art is a reflection of
the civilization producing it. In a general sense it
is such a reflection, but rather of the spirit and na-
ture of that civilization than of its extent. Often-
times a culture like that of England, to-day, produces
no corresponding art, because the spirit of that cul-
ture is not in full sympathy with art as was the case
with Greece, and as is the case, in a lesser degree,
with contemporary France. Art, though showing the
varied progress and intellectual development of a
people, is dependent for its own excellence more upon
their common sympathies. It is an outgrowth of feel-
ing rather than of mere mentality, although it finds
expression by means of intellectual growth. This was
apparent in the art of Egypt and Assyria, which not
only recorded the greatness of those civilizations, but
showed the nature and inclinations of the different
races. It was a necessity with them, for, aside from
its decorative effect, it was the literature of the peo-
ple-the symbolic language seen and read by all.
We shall presently see the same sympathy exem-
plified and illustrated in the art of Greece. For
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
43
art was the prophet of Greek mythology. Through
it alone the great gods became approachable. Be-
fore the statues as the representatives of deity the
people prayed and offered sacrifices.
In the early
periods of post-apostolic Christianity we find the
same dependence upon art. The Gospel was taught
by pictures symbolizing certain features and doc-
trines of the faith. It was Gregory the Great who
wrote: "Paintings ought to be retained in the
churches in order that those ignorant of letters may
as it were read by looking on the walls what they are
not able to read in the manuscripts." The introduc-
tion of art as a means of religious education made it
familiar, well understood, and appreciated by the peo-
ple; and it was in part the growth of this sympathy
that resulted in the works of the High Renaissance.
With England, however, it has been utterly differ-
Art has never been a teacher, a religion, or a
vital essential of the English people. The early ages
cared little for it; nor have the later times given it
anything like a popular and race support, because
never dependent upon it, either for education or
expression. Yet note the long line of English poets!
Foetry has flourished because felt and appreciated by
the whole race, from the days of the bards and min-
strels, from Merlin and Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table, to the present time. This literary in-
clination makes itself manifest in English painting,
which has been justly criticised because of its literary,
"tell-a-story" subjects. To-day many of the English
artists are incapable of looking at subjects pictorially.
ent.
44
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
They see them from a literatesque point of view on
account of their literary bias. Let us be careful, then,
that in accounting for art we reason not from the
extent of a nation's civilization alone, but take into
consideration the nature of that civilization and the
characteristics of the people producing it.
Again, it is a general rule that all the arts and
sciences advance together; but this is not without
many exceptions. These are not so apparent in the
early stages of human progress as in later times.
Homer lived and sung when the arts were unborn, or
at least in their infancy. The Roman civilization,
though advanced in some of the sciences, produced
no art except architecture worthy of the name; and
in the literary age of Shakspeare and his contem-
poraries there was no corresponding sculpture or
painting produced in England. In our own time
and country the civilization is extensive and whole-
some; the sciences and the more matter-of-fact in-
dustries are well developed; but as an offset to them
the arts, with some brilliant exceptions, are flippant—
witness the poetry, novels, pictures, plays, operas,
decorations. As our argument advances, therefore,
it will be necessary, while following the general ten-
dency upward and onward, to use caution in drawing
too rigid deductions; and it will also be necessary to
choose the arts best suited to exemplify our classifi-
cations.
In the early days of which we have spoken almost
all the arts were decorative, imitative, symbolic. In
the succeeding period, called "classical," poetry, paint-
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
45
ing, sculpture, architecture, music, the drama, all de-
veloped proportionately; but we shall deal mainly with
sculpture, as the art best suited to illustrate the period.
GREEK ART.—In its geographical distribution Greece
was a land of mountains and of rivers; of hills cov-
ered with Arcadian woodlands; of groves and grot-
toes of poetic fancy; of valleys and sea-shores; of
sheltered bays and commanding promontories. A
land of beauty with a mild and a congenial climate, it
offered in many respects superior advantages to its
inhabitants; yet in the products of the earth it was
not so prodigal as was the valley of the Nile. The
soil was ungrateful and required activity on the part
of its cultivators to yield a livelihood, so that the
Greek early became a man of energy, invention, and
self-reliance. He could not dream away life like the
Egyptian, for no Nile furnished him subsistence with
little work. He had to struggle for existence, and
his dependence was solely upon his own brawn of
arm and shrewdness of thought. Under such condi-
tions a vigorous and independent race sprung up
that could not for a moment have tolerated the ar-
bitrary rule of a Pharaoh. Liberty was the birth-
right of the people, and the conditions of life served
but to increase it. And this liberty was not alone
one of bodily freedom from monarchical rule, but a
freedom of the mind to think, to originate, and to de-
velop. Out of this liberty of thought sprung philoso-
phy, and from the cleverness and the cultivation of
the Greek mind grew that appreciation of the beauti-
46
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
ful which afterward found its noblest expression in
art. Yet, again, this beauty was an inheritance from
nature, for Greece was a symmetrically beautiful land,
a land of poetry and song where the sun shone
brighter, the skies and seas were bluer, the moun-
tains more picturesque, and the valleys more softly
fair than any the eyes of man had looked upon.
Beauty surrounded the Greek on every side. It
was his environment. He was in the midst of it,
saw it always before him, and could not but think
about it continually, until at last he took the color-
ing of his surroundings and became beautiful him-
self. It is not strange that out of beautiful nature
sprung beautiful man. It would be stranger had it
been otherwise, for a people or a race cannot choose
but show physically the influence of the climate and
the land in which they live. For the Greeks as a
race to have been ugly or ill-formed would have been
an abnormal freak of nature equivalent to the Ethiop
being white or intellectually great, or the Esquimo
being blackened by the wind and sun. So the Greek
in his beautiful land grew beautiful, and heightened
beauty as he grew, until at last he produced a civili-
zation and an art the greatest the ancient world ever
knew.
The origin of the first settlers in Greece is shrouded
in obscurity. It is most probable that they originated
with the tribes of Western Asia, and that Greek civil-
ization came about, not by a gradual rise from sav-
agery and the development of patriarchal and mo-
narchical sway, but by the despotism of Semitic mer-
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
47
chant princes who colonized the land and extended
their influence.* Whoever they were and wherever
they originated, they came as semi-barbarians and
grew, as other nations have grown, by a course of
many years, to civilization. To follow the steps of
the early trading, pirating, adventuresome Greek is
not necessary here, and would but lead to a repetition
of former pages; let us therefore begin our inquiry
somewhere near the point of progress to which we
traced the Egyptian.
The First Period of Greek national life dates from
the time when as a nation her people began to have
dealings with other nations. This was about 580 B.C.,
though Greece through Phoenicia had long before
become conversant with Egyptian and Assyrian
ideas. At this date the tribal barbarism of the early
dwellers in Hellas had passed away and given place
to civilization. Politically the country had been di-
vided into independent states, each possessed of a
government the laws of which afforded ample pro-
tection to all its citizens; and almost immediately
a communistic national life, a unity for mutual pro-
tection, happiness, and welfare, was brought about,
developing that strong kindred spirit and feeling
which was the foundation of Greek independence.
The individual was incorporated with and became a
factor in the state. A selfish struggle for existence
was almost unknown at this time, and all alike lived,
struggled, fought, and died for the honor of the gods
* Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece.
48
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and the glory of the state. The chief industry of
the people from the beginning seems to have been a
commerce among themselves and with neighboring
nations, for which an unexcelled coast-line with good
harbors offered them the best facilities. Agricul-
ture was likewise a pursuit, though the more abject
classes and the slaves tilled the soil; for the Greek
civilian had already grown to be a warrior, a poli-
tician, and a citizen, discussing wars, treaties and
state affairs, and despising all menial toil. His educa-
tion as a freeman led him to this. A physical train-
ing in athletic sports, and an intellectual proficiency
in adroitness and deception, acquired in public places,
fitted him for a soldier and a defender of the state.
And there was need of his service, for the arts of
war as well as those of peace had been cultivated.
Well equipped and skillfully conducted armies ex-
isted in all the states, and already Greece had passed
through the Trojan, the Messenian, and the Corcy-
ræan wars.
From the earliest ages a religion akin to that of
Egypt had been known in Greece, and a constella-
tion of gods whom the Greeks called the relatives
of the Egyptian and Assyrian deities had been es-
tablished, to whom sacrifices and hymns of praise
were offered. Religious belief in the power and
wisdom of the gods was universal and compulsory,
and unbelief, even far down in Greek history, as in-
stanced in the case of Socrates, was punishable with
death. Founded in part upon this religion, philoso-
phy had arisen, and Thales and Anaximander had es-
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
49
tablished systems of cosmology which stimulated
thought, if they did nothing more. A literature,
written in a language itself suggestive of poetry,—a
language so simple and yet refined as to be char-
acteristic of the Greek nature, had long been known.
Poetry appears in the very beginnings of Greek
history, for Homer and Hesiod and the Hesiodic
bards had sung and died, and "it was from Homer
that the poets drew their inspiration, the critics
their rules, and the philosophers a defense of their
opinions." Music, the complemental art of poetry,
or, as the Greeks interpreted it, "poetry sung," had
likewise come to the land with the early Phrygians,
and both vocally and instrumentally was practiced
in processions and at the festivals in honor of the
gods.
In architecture the early structure of the Pelas-
gians had passed away before the temple of the
Dorians, the model of which with all its somber
massiveness was probably taken from Egypt. Its
style comported well with the rude simplicity of
those early days; but as civilization advanced, the
temple, originally of wood, was changed to stone,
and costly structures of great extent were put up at
Ephesus, Assos, Samos, and Olympia. These stone
temples seem to have been modeled after the wood-
en ones, for in the change of material the effect of
carpentry is still maintained. The beam-ends be-
came triglyphs, the vacant spaces between became
* Pope.
3
d
50
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
In the stone
metopes, the rafter-ends mutules.*
more than in the wood the massiveness of the struct-
ure became apparent, and yet its simplicity was no
less maintained. This heavy architecture of the
Dorians had its parallel art in the sculpture of the
time, which was little more than its handmaiden of
ornamentation. Rude in form and feature, and rep-
resentative almost exclusively of Homeric gods and
goddesses, this sculpture was set up in the temples
and public places and on the altars, for religious
worship, very much as were in later times the figures
of Christian saints and martyrs in the churches of
Europe. Modeled of wood, terra-cotta, silver, and
gold, the hard archaic treatment of the figures ren-
ders them of but little interest as works of art apart
from history. They show Asiatic influence and are
lacking in technical development. The gods whom
they represented were vague and ill-formed in the
minds of the people, and consequently appeared so
in sculpture. There was little or no attempt to in-
dividualize them by characteristics of form or feat-
ure, and the only way they were distinguished was by
the symbols which they generally bore. Ornamenta-
tion and decorative art, however, even in Homer's time
were carried to a high stage of elegance. Household
utensils, drinking-cups, plates, vases, all were deco-
rated, and the coats of mail, the shields, tripods, and
swords, formed of brass, gold, and silver, were mar-
vels of workmanship. Painting had as yet become
* K. O. Müller, Ancient Art and its Remains.
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
51
no more than a part of decoration. It was confined
tc coloring the statues of the gods, and the earliest
painting on vases which followed was first practised
by the Corinthians.
The Second Period of Greek civilization may be
dated down to about 400 B.C., and includes the begin-
ning, the progress, and the ending of the Periclean
Age of splendor-in art the greatest in all Greece.
During this period the Greeks had been almost con-
stantly engaged in warfare. The Ionian cities had
been subjugated by Croesus, king of Lydia, and he,
in turn, had been conquered by Cyrus. But Ionia
revolted under Aristagoras, and the independent
states of Greece were called upon for help, and
swarmed together, making common cause against
the enemy. Sardis was burned and the Persians
were repulsed. Darius reconquered the Greek coast
bordering on Asia Minor, and, not forgetful that
Athens had participated in the revolt, he brought
his army to Marathon, where Miltiades and the ten
thousand met and defeated him. Athens then rose
to power; but in 480 B.C. Xerxes led the third Per-
sian expedition, which survived Thermopyla, took
Athens and burned it. The Persians next encoun-
tered the Greek fleet at Salamis, and were repulsed
with great loss. This repulse, followed by their
defeat at Platæa, resulted in the deliverance of all
Greece from their yoke. After this Athens became
the leading state, and the city was rebuilt with great
splendor. Comparative peace reigned for a time, and
all things flourished. The Persians had been driven
52
PRINCIPLES of art.
off, but the Greeks soon quarreled among themselves,
and for twenty-seven years the Peloponnesian War
raged and wasted the energies of the country, end-
ing only in the capture and political downfall of
Athens, 404 B.C.
The influence of long and stubborn wars upon a
people is to make the men warriors and the women
worshipers of deeds of strength. The education of
the warrior is chiefly a physical training, and his
disposition in the ancient days was not unlike what
it is in these modern times. The pain of battle was
borne with fortitude; but after pain the pleasure of
banqueting, worshiping, loving, beautifying, became
greater. It is not strange, then, that the Greek war-
rior despised the life of the shepherd and the tiller
of the soil. These, with all other pursuits and ser-
vices of a menial kind, were relegated to the slaves of
warfare; and the master, liking not humble toil, shut
himself up in elegant cities, frequenting for instruction
the temples and the groves, and for amusement the
theaters, the squares, the palæstra, the stadion, and
the gymnasium. His subsistence came from the gain
of commerce and the spoils of war; while his aspira-
tions were satisfied in the glory of his city, its power,
art, wisdom, and protecting gods. Yet the life of
the Greek was neither idle nor luxurious, and the
severe simplicity of his character was such as became
a warrior. His wants were few and easily satisfied.
In private he oftentimes lived poorly, even niggardly;
in public and as a unit of the state he lived in splen-
dor. All things went to the glory of the common-
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
53
wealth. Individual wealth was unusual and reproach-
ful, and personal aims unpatriotic. In order to main-
tain his rank as a citizen and a soldier, the education
of the Greek became at first a physical training, and,
as the nation grew, the wise saying of Chilon, "Know
thyself," began to be more diligently studied with
special reference to the body. The first two wishes
of the Greek, according to the ode of Simonides, were
for health and for beauty.* The development of
the body became a matter of every one's care. In-
deed, from Homeric days the perfect man, among the
Greeks, was the man of muscular symmetrical figure.
To aid the development of this figure, as few garments
as possible were worn, and these of a loose character
easily cast aside. In the games and athletic contests
the naked body was always freely displayed and pub-
licly gloried in. It was a custom of the land, and one
of the many free habits pointing to the simplicity of
the people. To be ill-formed or crippled was a re-
proach, and in Sparta it was death. To attain sym-
metry of form was one of the first ambitions of the
Greek youth; and, hence, from the beginning the
athletic games had been followed by all classes. In
this second period of Greek civilization the edu-
cation of the physical man from being an occa-
sional and social matter became a public concern,
and the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmean
games were nationally recognized. People from all
Greece flocked to them to witness the contests in
* Winckelmann,
54
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
;
wrestling, boxing, running, leaping, throwing the
disk, and hurling the spear. Honors and prizes
were given to successful competitors, and the vic-
torious athlete became an object of the highest
admiration. The state freed him from duties and
gave him presents of money; the poet sung his
praises, and the sculptor molded an ideal figure to
him which was placed in the Olympic grove-one of
the highest of honors. Beauty of the body became
a passion of the people, yet its cultivation at this.
time was not excessive. The muscles were devel-
oped only to a harmonious degree, not abnormally,
as was the case later on. The pugilist, the wrestler,
and the athlete were not now of brutal proportions,
but symmetrically built, not overstepping or falling
short of the perfect ideal proportion. This should
be remembered, for the history of the best Greek
sculpture is but a history of the development of
the national games. It was from the latter that the
sculptors took their models; and if this perfect physi-
cal man is taken into consideration, together with the
plastic character of Greek thought which led the peo-
ple to frame ideas by means of objects seen in the
mind, we have the key to the predominant features of
the Phidian marbles.
During this period the cultivation of the body,
though a strong feature of Greek education, was not
the only one by any means. There could scarcely be
an advance like that of the Periclean Age except by
development in many directions. The Assyrians wor-
shiped strength of body, somewhat like the Greeks, but
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
55
they had no great strength of mind, and it was to the
cultivation of this latter quality that the Greeks gave
a special attention That philosophy upon which all
subsequent philosophies have more or less leaned for
support was now growing stronger and stronger.
Thales and Anaximander had been succeeded by
Pythagoras, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Parmenides,
and Zeno of Elea; but their failure to establish a
cosmological system became apparent, and a new
school of inquiry into the origin and limits of knowl-
edge advanced with Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Emped-
ocles and Democritus. They could not establish a
basis of certitude, and their theories were in turn suc-
ceeded by skeptical indifference. The school of the
Sophists arose with Prodicus and Protagoras, but this
could not last. Socrates came, and by the application
of dialectics as a negative argument prepared the
way for inductive inquiry. And Greece was mak-
ing no inconsiderable progress in science. Law and
government under Solon were becoming better
known; war was being perfected by such generals as
Aristides, Alcibiades, and Pericles; and historians and
travelers like Herodotus were bringing back to
Greece the ideas and improvements of other nations.
The purely subjective arts, such as music, poetry, and
eloquence, were keeping pace with the advance. The
Phrygian music with its somber numbers was still
used; but now the martial notes of the Doric were in-
troduced, and shortly afterward the gay cadences of
the Ionic and the Attic. The epic poetry of Homer
and Hesiod had been succeeded by something more.
56
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
suitable to the realm of beauty, something better fit-
ted to accompany the flow of song; something more.
in keeping with the spirit of the people. Sappho,
Anacreon, Simonides, and Pindar came singing the
lyric. Moreover, in this fifth century the drama rose
to its most exalted height with the trio Eschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. Nothing can better illus-
trate Greek life throughout than the tragedies of these
writers; and the secret of their greatness, even to this
day, lies chiefly in their simplicity, that strong charac-
teristic of the Greeks to which we must so often refer.
But possibly the greatest advance in the practical
affairs of this period was in the building and elabora-
tion of the cities. The marble quarries of Paros had
been recently opened, and these furnished excellent
materials. Public buildings, temples, squares, foun-
tains, aqueducts, gardens, all sprang into existence as
by the stroke of an enchanter's wand in this blooming
time of Greece. And the Greek had advanced won-
derfully in conception of form and outline. The mas-
sive Doric temple was modified to a lighter and more
symmetrical structure, which in Athens found its no-
blest expression in the Attic-Doric Parthenon, without
doubt the most perfect structure ever erected. Be-
sides the lighter Doric, a new style of architecture
came in during the Periclean Age, called the Ionic, a
more volatile and oriental art-product,* and one bet-
ter suited in sentiment and beauty to the then prev-
alent Ionic music and lyric poetry. From use and
* K. O. Müller.
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
57
strength in the beginning grew grace and beauty,
and these, as we shall see hereafter, developed into
elegance, affectation, and ultimate decay.
·
All the branches of knowledge seem to have
advanced contemporaneously at this time, but we
shall see the classic mind of the Greek better dis-
played in sculpture than in the other departments.
The early age of sculpture in Greece had been one
of struggles with the technical conditions of the art.
The artist could not express his conception, because
lacking the requisite skill. The human form was not
well reproduced, was clumsily joined in the parts,
over-muscular, hard in line, and awkwardly posed.
Again, the artist's conception was vague and ill-de-
fined. His subjects were the Homeric gods, and
these he strove to show by the existing forms of
humanity. To do this, he copied the most perfect
forms to the best of his ability; but the attributes of
the gods were not apparent in the face or figure, and
the ideas of the sculptor were but slightly suggested.
With the progress of Greek civilization, however,
and the nationalization of the athletic games, the
human form grew to be the sculptor's and the people's
study. It became better comprehended, and this
superior knowledge was directly reflected in the work
that followed. New materials were now used, and in
the place of the stone and wooden figures appeared
chryselephantine, marble, and bronze statues. The
demand for sculpture as an adjunct to architecture be-
came greater. Metope, frieze, and pediment required
adornment, and the time and skill of the artist were
3*
58
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Life
taxed to the greatest capacity. The cold, expression-
less, and stiff figures began to bend and move.
appeared, and the rigidity of archaism was broken.
In the age immediately preceding Phidias, Pythag-
oras of Rhegium seems to have been the first artist
of much importance, and that his art was directly.
due to the influence of the games is proved, to a
great extent, by his subjects being chiefly athletes.
In these figures he seems to have excelled in por-
traying the symmetry, rhythm, and harmony of the
body. After him Myron succeeded in making the
outer form reflect the physical life. His faces showed
nothing but good carving, but his forms were posed
in the intense moments preparatory to activity, as is
instanced in the Marsyas and Discobolus. His con-
temporary, Calamis, though representing life in the
body, and famous for the grace and charm of his
female figures, stopped not there, but gave to each
figure its peculiar attributes, and to each face its pe-
culiar expression. He made the soul speak through
the features, and in his art we see the first expres-
sion of what was known as "the Greek ideal." Still
these men, though releasing sculpture from archaism,
did not and could not satisfy the longing for ideality,**
and it was reserved for Phidias to fully develop what
his predecessors had strongly suggested.
In treating of the ideal in Greek art, the word must
not be confounded with "the ideal" of to-day as it is
understood in its contemporary application. Our
* L. M. Mitchell, A History of Ancient Sculpture.
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
59
ideal is but an imaginary type, “a form seen in the
mind," a memory gathered from many impressions;
and in works of art it is likely to be as characterless
as it is agreeable to the eye. The Greek ideal was
something entirely different. In the first place, the
Greek physically was the most perfect man imagin-
able. It was his inheritance from the land and cli-
mate, and this heritage was improved through many
years by athletic training and the natural develop-
ment of the race. In Sparta none but the perfect
were permitted to live; none but the perfect were
ever perpetuated in the statues ; none but the per-
fect received the admiration of the judges and the
applause of the people. Lessing quotes a Greek
epigrammatist as saying to a cripple: "Who would
want to paint you, when no one would want to look
at you?"* Undoubtedly the Greek, physically, was
more perfectly formed than any human being be-
fore or since his day. But all bodily perfections.
centered in no one person. Some excelled in one
thing and some in another, and the form that ex-
celled in all things was not of man, but attributed
only to the gods. To represent
To represent the gods, then,
the Greek sculptor generalized the human form
and was eclectic. He combined the excellences of
the many into one perfect whole, and thus made.
a new and individual form. This gave him the
physical ideal of his art. In the second place,
* G. E. Lessing, Laokoön.
† Waldstein, Essays on the Art of Pheidias.
60
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the Greek mind was as approximately perfect as
any that has ever existed. His mental qualities.
were not inferior to his physical, but on a par and
in harmony with them. Yet, again, as with the body,
the mind and soul were not perfected in any one
mortal. It was only by the uniting of the qualities
taken eclectically from the many that a complete soul
and mind could be made up which would correspond
to that attributed to the gods.
cism, the mental and moral
creating a new mind and soul.
tal, and moral ideals it was the
and harmonize in one creation. The result would be
the perfect god, symmetrical in body, soul, and mind.
To represent this was the attempt and accounted for
the inspiration and the success of Phidias.
Thus, through eclecti-
ideal was established,
These physical, men-
sculptor's aim to unite
The sculpture of the Periclean age, commanded
almost entirely by Phidias, is too well known to
be particularized or to call for much comment. In
its regard for the limits of the art, in its subjects,
and in its realization of the ideal, it has never been
equaled. The form was that shown in the games,
and was the harmonious normal and perfect figure,
neither exaggerated by strength nor falling short of
full development. The mental and moral ideas were
such as befitted the incomparable gods, and were
plainly visible in the look, the pose, the attitude.
Zeus was possessed of all majestic power. Athena,
in her peace-giving character, was the personification
of dignity and wisdom; and the Aphrodite of Alca-
menes was graced with every gentle womanly
"C
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
61
charm." The subjects chosen for sculpture during
this age were the loftiest known to the Greek mind-
the great gods themselves. These were represented,
not in violent action or under excited conditions, but
in repose and with the dignity becoming the dwellers
on Olympus. The representation of soul and thought
in the statues was apparent, but it was passive, not
active; reserved, not demonstrative; silent, not bois-
terous. In addition, the grandeur and sublimity of
the best work of Phidias was materially heightened
by the colossal proportions, as instanced in the Olym-
pian Zeus and the Parthenonic Athena. In technical
execution the art of Phidias was of the first excellence,
as the Elgin marbles (and these are but decorative
sculptures) still bear witness. That it was superior
to the execution of his successors Scopas and Prax-
iteles, as is claimed by many, may well be doubted.
As a whole, the sculpture produced during the Peri-
clean age, in its perfect blending of the physical,
mental, and moral, is the best example of classical
and harmonious art that can be offered for illustra-
tion. It most truly reflects the symmetrical character
of the Greek people; and although after Phidias art
in Greece changed rather than declined, yet in con-
ception it never equaled that of the preceding age.
The Third Period in Greek art may be dated from
the close of the Periclean Age to the death of Alexan-
der the Great (400 B.C. to 323 B.C.*), during which time
many changes in the political and social conditions of
* Mitchell.
62
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the Greeks took place. With the end of the Pelopon-
nesian War Athens lost her political supremacy and
fell before her jealous neighbors. Sparta came into
power, and it in turn was plunged into four wars in
succession-the Elean, the Corinthian, the Olynthian,
and the Theban. The unity of the Greek states was
broken; in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon overran and
conquered them; and with his successor, Alexander
(336 B.C.), began foreign conquest and that reign of
luxury which in all nations is the forerunner of decay.
Yet despite its wars and internal convulsions Greece
flourished continuously. Its commerce, science, phi-
losophy, and power became greater than ever; its
learning reached the very highest pitch of ancient ex-
cellence; and its influence tinctured the civilization
of the whole world. Such was its great virility that
the decay became manifest only after many years, and
that at first not so much by a falling off as by a
change in the national ideas and impulses. This
became noticeable with the dissolution of the states.
The national spirit and public trust began to fail.
Each state sought its own welfare, and within the
state each individual sought selfish advancement.
How great this last evil became, the orations of Isoc-
rates, Æschines, Demosthenes, Lysias, and Lycur-
gus, against private munificence and public poverty,
will prove. The greatness and simplicity of the
Greek character began to decline. The rich vied
with one another in splendor; luxury and vice crept.
in; and, worst of all for art, faith in the great gods
was shaken, and skepticism sprung up.
In the place
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL,
63
of the early gods Zeus, Athena, and Hera, were sub-
stituted the lesser deities Plutos (Riches), Tyche
(Fortune), and Eirene (Peace).* The other gods were
likewise represented, but with less of the ideal and
more of the human about them. In fact, the tale of
humanity now began. The ideal was changing,
not passing away, before the spirit of the new era.
The people in their conceptions were less grand, but
more passionate. The popular thought was lighter,
and the love of pleasure in the festivals, proces-
sions, and games became excessive.
But though
the Greek changed in many respects, his nature
was not as yet greatly altered. His mind had be-
come broadened by contact with other nations, and
a cosmopolitan culture was more universally dif-
fused; yet still his inclinations had varied but little.
More elegant, and of an elegance bordering on the
luxurious, he was still a lover of beauty in all its vari-
eties-beauty of form, thought, speech, deed. The
temple, the theater, the agora, the games, the groves,
were still his chief places of resort, and the man of
strength, mental, moral, and physical, was his admira-
tion,
The transition of popular ideas soon became appa-
rent in the different branches of learning. In accord-
ance with the shifting thought of the people, philoso-
phy had inverted the glass from without upon the
human mind within. Plato, the last great exponent
of the ideal and the abstract, gave way before Aris-
* Mitchell.
64
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
totle, the philosopher of the real and the concrete.
The tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles were super-
seded by the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander,
in which humanity was dealt with and the vices of
the time exposed to ridicule. The poets became
more expressive of purely human thought and emo-
tion; lyric song, under Philoxemus, Telestes, and
Phrynius, was corrupted both morally and rhythmi-
cally;* music grew to be the note of passion; and
architecture displayed itself in theaters and odeia,
blossoming with Ionian and Corinthian elegance. At
this time, and in this period, painting is said to have
arisen, and in three great stages reached perfection in
the works of Apelles, Zeuxis, and Parrhasius. But
for Greek perfection in painting we have to take the
words of the ancient writers; as, except the vases,
nothing is preserved to us. Yet there is no reason to
think that Greece, so complete in all other arts, was
lacking here. It may be taken for granted that
Greek painting was quite equal to the sculpture,
for the one received as much praise from the
ancients as the other; but we cannot speak of its
style, because there is nothing upon which criticism
could be based.
In the marbles and bronzes of the period we may
follow the change in the people as truly as in the
open pages of a book. As Dr. Waldstein has well
shown, the history of Greek monumental art finds its
parallel in the history of the athletic games whence
* K. O. Müller.
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
65
came the sculptor's models. In and before the Peri-
clean Age the games were indulged in moderately, for
pleasure and profit, by all classes. The body was
well developed, but not by any means abnormally so.
How far this development was carried the Phidian
marbles from the Parthenon will show. It will be
seen from them that there is nothing brutal or heavy
in the make-up of the figure. The muscular develop-
ment is not out of proportion to the size of the body.
Both are symmetrical and harmonious. But, after
the change in the Greek people consequent upon the
dissolution of the Pan-Hellenic unity, as we have
shown, they became individualized, selfish, excitable,
passionate, pleasure-loving, skeptical, luxurious. The
games, from a recreation and an amusement, became
a business and a profession. The athlete, the pugil-
ist, the disk-thrower, and the wrestler became experts.
The heretofore well-rounded body became massive
and lumpy, and this figure was the new model of
the sculptor, the vase-painter, the die-sinker, and
the gem-cutter. It was the admiration of the time,
the new ideal body with which the lesser gods were
represented. An example of it in latter times is
the ponderous Heracles; but this is an exceptional
case. The forms of the gods (not the great gods,
for they had been almost entirely abandoned) were
not so exaggerated as the Heracles, but were thor-
oughly humanized to meet the requirements of the
new taste. It will be remembered that art, to
a great extent, had now passed from the care of
the state and was in the hands of the individual,
66
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and his taste was in reality that of the people. It
sought after things fierce, fiery, sensuous, and the
sculptor again satisfied the popular desire. Before
Phidias the body was of more importance than the
face; but now the latter mirrored forth the depths of
human passion. Love, hate, fury, pride, anger, all
came forth and formed the attributes of the different
characters. Again, the simplicity and repose in the
figures of the Phidian marbles gave place to violent
and dramatic action. The soul and thought, which in
the former period had been represented passively, were
now positively expressed. The body was represented
in motion or posed at some critical period of action.
Muscles were strained and contorted, and torsos were
twisted, and heads thrown back, forward, or to the
side, in moods of passion. This is admirably in-
stanced in the Amazon frieze of the Mausoleum of
Halicarnassus, now in the British Museum, and in the
Niobe group at Florence, both of which are attributed
to this time. It must not be inferred that all the
sculpture was of this class, but rather that this class
was characteristic of the period. The gods were still
often represented in repose, but instead of the Phidian
gods of grandeur "we meet a fluctuating throng, in
which we see the forms of the maternal Demeter,
proud Niobe, charming Aphrodite, bewitching Eros,
raving Bacchante, and pleasure-loving Dionysios.”*
Grace rather than grandeur, beauty rather than sub-
limity, sensuousness and elegance rather than purity
* Mitchell.
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL,
67
and simplicity, were stamped upon the marbles.
Especially was this true of the female figure, which
became more humanly beautiful than ever before.
Effeminate charms were given it, and the intenser
emotions of the simply passionate showed in face and
form. The tendency toward naturalism received a
fresh impetus when portraiture in stone was intro-
duced. Under Alexander, not only he himself had
his stone likeness, but the athlete who had been thrice
victorious in the games was entitled to a portrait-
statue, which was placed in the Olympian grove.
This was a positive departure from previous rule,
which before Alexander had followed the ideal, not
only in the god and in the human, but in the animal.
Athens, though she had lost her political suprem-
acy, still influenced the art-productions of this third
period. She was too much impoverished to pro-
duce much art for herself, but her artists went
abroad throughout Greece, and two of them, Scopas
and Praxiteles, directed the sculpture of the time.
As has been said, the ideal was now more human
than divine, yet nevertheless harmonious. The sub-
jects chosen were the lesser gods, heroes, athletes,
horses, lions, dogs; and although these were
so simply great in themselves as those of the for-
mer age, yet the excellence of the workmanship be-
stowed upon them compensated in a measure for
the loss of majesty. All the stiffness of archaic work
vanished. The figures, instead of being seated in
erect attitude, or standing with one foot thrust for-
ward, were now represented gracefully leaning against
not
68
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
some support-a tree or stone carefully placed and
oftentimes concealed by the folds of the drapery.
The pose was easy, and there was a flow of line-
what has been called plastic rhythm—about the whole
figure. This was brought about not alone by the
grace of the pose, but by the technique of the statue.
The modeling was as near perfection as the art of
sculpture has ever attained; the proportions were well
maintained, and the parts ran easily together as in
nature. Again, there was a rhythm in the forma-
tion of the muscles; the smooth texture of the skin
was almost deceptively rendered; and the qualities
(the flow and fall) of the draperies most natural and
effective. Great attention was given to the perfecting
of the human form in all its parts,-the hands, feet,
hair, skin, muscles; and the tendency toward literal-
ism was plainly marked in the copying of minute de-
tails, as may be instanced in the works of Lysippus,
who belonged to the latter end of the period, and who
favored more the technical side of art than its ex-
pression of grand conceptions.
The Hellenistic Age of Greek art, dating from the
death of Alexander to the fall of the Pergamon dynasty
(323 B.C. to 133 B. C.), is marked by the decline of Greek
power and, in a lesser degree, Greek art. After the
death of Alexander the land was divided among his
generals. This led to the establishment of despot-
isms and independent states, and naturally factional
wars ensued. Greece was continually under Mace-
donian oppression; but at last there followed a period
of peace during which certain cities flourished. Then
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
69
fresh troubles came in the shape of the invading bar-
barians—the Galatians-who overran parts of Greece.
The smaller states, to escape the barbarians, sought
protection of Rome, and were absorbed in the em-
pire of the protector. This was finally the fate of the
remainder, and thereafter the dominion of the ancient
world passed into the hands of the Romans.
The decline of the nation politically finds its com-
plement in the degeneration of the people as a race.
The strong brotherhood of unity, which had been the
great factor in the rise of the Greek nation, was now
entirely broken. Liberty was lost, and the national
spirit crushed. In their place was substituted an
exaggeration of the selfishness which we have noted
in the preceding period. Each state more than ever
fought for its own advancement, and within the state
the individual sought his own interest. Nationality
gave way to a condition little better than slavery.
Some few commercial cities gathered to themselves
wealth and power, and their rulers established mag-
nificent courts, around which like satellites revolved
the now degenerate Greeks. Immorality, corruption,
faithlessness, crime, grew like cancers in the flesh.
The habits and tastes of the individual changed like-
wise. He became more servile and hypocritical, and,
though still a warrior, an adventurer or a cunning
merchantman, he was also a voluptuary, a sensualist,
and a lover of the purely human. The games were
still his delight, but these had passed the bounds of
moderation. Either brutal or wildly exciting, they
pleased best when most bordering on the bizarre or
70
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the horrible. The festivals and pageants were ex-
travagant and theatrical; and in art the popular taste
ran to the violent and the striving after effect. Stand-
ards of judgment were swept away, temperance was
forgotten, and the caprice of the passing moment pre-
vailed, now leading to sensualism and riotousness,
and then returning to stoicism and indifference. The
religion of the gods was openly doubted or denied.
Many adopted the religion of Isis and Mithras; for
while Greece had been hellenizing the East, the East
had likewise been orientalizing Greece, and much of
the dazzling glamour of the Orient found its way into
Greek life. The colonization of the nations con-
quered by Alexander resulted in a scattering of forces.
Instead of a small community bound together by
a general sympathy and purpose, the Greeks now
became cosmopolitan. The synthetic and the ideal
died out, and in their stead arose the scientific and
the analytic. The time was come for an acceptance
of realities rather than a worship of idealities. The
seed planted in good faith by Aristotle brought forth
the fruit of materialism. The philosophy of the age
in Epicurus taught that the gods existed, but cared
for neither the weal nor woe of man. It offered
pleasure with temperance as the supreme good, but the
Greeks omitted the saving clause and took the pleas-
ure in excess. It was in vain that Zeno the Stoic
called upon them to heed Plato, to be virtuous and
brave, not corrupt and effeminate. They preferred to
misinterpret Epicurus and accept Pyrrhon. The New
Academy, under Arcesilaus and Carneades, threw
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
71
doubt upon everything by teaching the uncertainty of
knowing anything positively and the beauty of soph-
istry. And at last, when one theory after another had
been overthrown, the philosophers descended to quib-
bling and bickering over terms and words. Science
was more prosperous, because more in keeping with
the spirit of the time; and the advance in geometry,
astronomy, philology, and history was shown by the
books in the great libraries of Pergamus and Alexan-
dria. In poetry the last vibration passed away with
Theocritus, who was not produced by the age, but was
rather an emanation of a former civilization, blooming
like an exotic on foreign soil. The theater descended
to the lowest comedy and burlesque, and when not
contemptible was offensively naturalistic. Architec-
ture, though lacking the simplicity of former periods,
was not so easily contaminated by the change in the
people. Numerous monuments and temples were
erected, and in them the Corinthian order prevailed
—a light style profusely decorated, yet withal not by
any means lacking in beauty or grace.
Sculpture, the most national because best in keeping
with the plastic nature of the Greek mind, proved
itself in this period to be one of the most enduring of
the arts. Throughout Greece generally it declined.
with the people; but at certain places where com-
merce produced prosperity it flourished, and was not
an unworthy successor of the previous periods. Such
were the commercial Rhodes and the court of Perga-
mus, places which drew to themselves the remaining
strength of Greece, and, starting anew, seemed to
72
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
revive much of the ancient Greek spirit of art. At
these places, fostered by wealth and a still remaining
taste, sculpture lived on, and at Pergamus, at least,
was great. Some extant marbles, such as the Nikè of
Samothrace, with several Apollos and genre subjects,
prove that in other places of Greece art was neither
effeminate nor feeble. Yet these were but healthy
spots in an already diseased body. Recent excava-
tions have shown only that the decadence was broken
in upon by some wonderful exceptions, for, generally
speaking, the substance of art had passed and only
the shadow remained. The limits of its ideas seemed
to be exhausted. The gods of Homer, the heroes of
mythology and poetry, the divine and human ideal,
had run their course through the former periods, and
now in seeking new fields sculpture passed into the
grotesque and artificial. The patronage of art was
entirely in the hands of the rulers, and they sought
the gratification of their vanity by strivings after
effect. The descriptions of the ancient writers of the
pageants and banquets wherein sculpture played a
mechanical part for decorative and scenic effect, such
as the funeral-pile of Hephæstion, the Adonis feast of
Arsinoë, and the Ptolemy II. feast of Bacchus, all go
to prove the emptiness of artistic thought. Even in
such beautiful work as the Great Altar Frieze at Per-
gamus, and the Laokoön group, there is little plastic
repose, but, on the contrary, the most violent action,
trenching upon the very uttermost limits of the art.
Undoubtedly this was influenced somewhat by the
labored seeking after the pictorial effects of painting;
ART CLASSICAL AND SYMMETRICAL.
73
but, aside from this, simplicity seemed to have passed
away. Over-elaboration is seen upon the best art
of the age,—the Pergamon Frieze,-where even the
hair has lost its simple adjustment, the dress has
become showy, and the very shoes fantastically dec-
orated. The conception, the basis of monumental
art, with the exceptions we have noted, had van-
ished, but in execution the works of this period were
scarcely inferior to the others. The Greeks knew
how to chisel long after they had forgotten how to
create; and if in this declining age they devoted them-
selves to realizing a Dying Galatian or a Fighting
Persian, it was done with a skill not unworthy of
nobler days. Indeed, this skill remained an inheri-
tance of the Hellenes long after decline set in. The
impetus of Greek art was not easily checked, and it
was not until after the Christian era and on Roman
soil that the spent arrow of Ulysses finally fell to
earth.
""
The only indigenous classical art that has ever ex-
isted sprung up and decayed with Greece. Since
Greek days that which has pretended to be ideal, or
classic," is but its imitation. The art of Rome, when
not showing the degeneracy of the last of the Greek.
artists, was imitative of preceding periods. The so-
called classic art of the Renaissance, brought about
by the revival of learning and the finding of antiqui-
ties, is again only a copying of the Greek methods,
and does not contain the Hellenic spirit and thought.
Later on, Thorwaldsen and Canova attempted a sec-
4
74
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
ond revival of the classic, and succeeded in producing
some handsome works, but utterly lacking in sponta-
neity. Their efforts, carried on by Stuart and Revett,
revived the classic in London, and David did a sim-
ilar questionable service for Paris, where a phase of it
still exists in the École des Beaux-Arts. The result of
it has been to make good draughtsmen and modelers,
and in the work produced this has been the one and
only redeeming feature; but as an art reflective of
the people and their sympathies the revived classic
fails. It is not original or representative, because
the French and English peoples are not, have not been,
and never will be, Greeks. We shall presently see
that we belong to a different civilization, and for us to
attempt the revival of Greek art is as absurd as would
be the restoration of Greek religion, law, or methods
of warfare.
CHAPTER III.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND INDIVIDUAL.
MAN in the savage state is not unlike a plant, in that
he flourishes best where the conditions of life are the
most favorable. This is the gist of M. Taine's phi-
losophy applied by him to civilized nations, and it
undoubtedly possesses much truth. In the preceding
chapters no little stress has been laid upon the cli-
mate and its influence upon a people in the beginning;
but now we must modify its importance, and for this
reason:-a nation in infancy is susceptible to cli-
matic circumstances through very weakness; but a
nation in youth or in manhood resists the influence
through acquired strength. A slight exposure, a
croup, a cold, that easily causes death to the child, is
lightly thrown off by the vigor of the man.
A rough
wind, a storm, or a frost may blast the young bud, but
not materially affect the growing tree. Yet naturally
the pine grows in the frigid zone, and the palm in the
tropics; and whether in infancy or age, the surround-
ings have somewhat to do with their growth. While,
therefore, the importance of climatic influence upon
established civilizations must not be overestimated,
let it not be entirely disregarded, for undoubtedly it
works in an unseen manner, and molds the people
though they may not know it.
76
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
In treating of the classical era, it was necessary
that we should choose one art for illustration which
by reason of its nature was best fitted to exemplify
our principles. Sculpture was chosen because de-
pendent upon form and relying for its appreciation
more upon the senses than the perceptions. This was
in perfect keeping with the nature of the Greek civili-
zation. We now come to the examination of a civiliza-
tion very different from that of Greece, in that it
deals with life less as a matter of the senses and more
as a matter of the mind and soul. With Christianity the
psychical, the sympathetic, and the emotional nature
of mankind became predominantly apparent, and the
art best fitted to represent that is painting, because.
more perceptive than sensuous. The existence of
painting as a leading art since the days of Rome may
be offered as a proof that it is the proper representa-
tive of the Christian civilization.
In the consideration of painting, I must be brief
and dwell principally upon causes and tendencies,
because as we move onward in human progress the
record doubles at every step; and the reader must
again be reminded that I am not attempting to detail.
a history of art, but only using art-history to illustrate
principles.
EARLY CHRISTIAN, MEDIEVAL, AND GOTHIC ART.-
About the only thing that Rome ever did for the fine
arts was to collect the masterpieces of the world into
one great funeral-pyre upon which she herself ex-
pired. Her men were warriors, rulers, administrators,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 77
but never philosophers, philanthropists, or artists.
She consumed the earth, but produced little save her
laws and her architecture; and at last, when all was
gone, she turned to feed upon herself, and brought
on that inward exhaustion which eventuated in her
destruction. Weakened by the depopulation of pro-
vinces, broken in spirit and public morality, badly
governed and illy served in decrepitude, Rome fell
before the barbarians of the North. The city was
overrun, pillaged, and burned again and again by
the Goths and the Vandals, until life was extinct.
Then followed five centuries of barbarism succeeding.
the establishment of the military despotism of the
Lombards, and with each century the old pagan civil-
ization sunk lower and lower, until at last it was ab-
sorbed in the new civilization of the West.
It is not surprising that Christianity in its beginnings
was beset by every conceivable persecution. Its
teachings were diametrically opposed to the then ex-
isting paganism, and of necessity it encountered oppo-
sition from those unwilling to accept its tenets. In
the midst of the old it began the new-new life, new
faith, new ideas. Its position was exceptionally vio-
lent, reactionary, antagonistic. Greece and Rome
taught the beauty of the world, the enjoyment of life,
the worship of the body. Life was worth the living
for the pleasure that it gave, and death was the great-
est of all calamities. Even the brave Achilles "would
rather be the slave of the meanest living than reign in
the kingdoms of the dead." Naturalism, materialism,
paganism were predominant, and the ancient making
78
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the most of his little hour went his way to the grave
with regret. How radically different was the belief of
the early Christians! To them this world was but a
stepping-stone to something better, a place of exist-
ence the trials of which but fitted them for life everlast-
ing. Its beautiful valleys were marked by the shadow
of death; its overhanging skies, fretted with golden
fire, were but a pestilent congregation of vapors;
its human forms but tenements of clay, for the use of
the soul soon to be released. Earthly life was at best
but transient; celestial life, eternal. Enjoyment was a
sin; pleasure, a temptation of the devil; hell, a certainty;
and heaven, a blessed abode to be won only by faith,
prayer, humility, and mortification. The exaltation
of the body was a pagan abomination. The flesh was
meant to be debased, not glorified. There was some-
thing nobler within to which the outer man should be
subservient. The soul lived and was all-absorbent.
In the order opposed to the ancients the soul came
first and the body last, while the mind (will) was an
intermediary to keep the latter in check. The pri-
mary thought of the Greek was to perfect the physi-
cal; that of the Christian, to perfect the spiritual.
How very different was the new view of life from the
old may be instanced in the disposition of the body
after death. To the Christian, a scant-cut niche in
the walls of the gloomy catacombs, sometimes a name
or sign above it, and oftentimes nothing at all, was
sufficient entombment; but the Greek required as a
final resting-place a mausoleum proportionate in
magnificence to his rank in life. Another instance of
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC.
79
the difference is shown in the heroes of Greek days,
-Apollo, Hercules, Achilles, all excelling by physical
prowess, -as contrasted with the hero-martyrs of early
Christianity, who, weak and emaciated through morti-
fication and persecution, still possessed strength of
soul to endure martyrdom unflinchingly. A third
illustration of this complete change in ideas may be
seen in the pagan Odyssey, as contrasted with the
Christian Divine Comedy. We follow Homer through
a bright world of beauty and pleasure, but Dante
leads us into the realms of the supernatural. The
one is of humanity, human; the other is aspiring,
spiritual, ethereal.
What should be the outcome of the new, strong
faith working upon ill-balanced imaginations but
fanaticism, hysteria, emotion? These became a stamp
upon the people, which suffering and martyrdom
but brought out the plainer. Born among enemies,
baptized with their own blood, and nurtured upon
the bitterest persecutions in the annals of history, the
Christians clung to the cross and their faith in Christ,
not only with fervid zeal but with fanaticism. For
four centuries the new faith lived on, though scourged
again and again by Rome; and then for four centuries
more it outlived the furious wars of the Goths, the
Lombards, and the Franks. But its early light was
feeble, at times almost extinguished; and then, again,
it flared up and lived on. Step by step and year by
year the old paganism dwindled away and a semi-
barbarism succeeded. The arts, sciences, literature
and learning declined to mere skeletons of their for-
80
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
mer selves. The Church was quite supreme in its in-
fluence, though continually at strife with the civil
authorities. The popes contended not alone for tem-
poral power, as is often supposed, but for indepen-
dence and Christianity. A struggle began between
those wishing a religious, civil, and progressive life
and those who sought a continuance of the military
and conservative life of the empire. It was a period
of strife. The Church was divided even within itself.
Councils quarreled, popes excommunicated, institu-
tions were anathematized, and the people were rack-
ed by dissensions. Still they clung to their religion
and its teachers, and the monasteries were the cen-
ters of colonies, under a tributary system analogous
to feudalism. The priests became the patrons and
diffusers of an ecclesiastical education; but knowl-
edge was wofully lacking, and dogmatism was intol-
erant of innovation. The leaders of the Church fought
secular learning. Tertullian combated the arts, and
showed his displeasure with Hermogenes on account
of the two sins into which he had fallen,-painting
and marriage.* Gregory the Great prided himself
on his bad grammar, and according to his standard
culture was antithetical to piety. Speculation bor-
dering on the pagan philosophy was frowned upon as
the fruit of the forbidden tree. Boëthius, the last of
the classic writers, died in prison in the sixth century,
and after him for years literature, except of an eccle-
siastical nature, was almost unknown. The ages were
* Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 81
barbaric and unenlightened indeed,-well called the
Dark Ages! Fanaticism, ignorance, ecclesiasticism
ruled, and side by side with the really devout moved
the hypocritical and the immoral, even in the Papacy
itself.
Whatever knowledge could help the interests of
the Church was advocated by the clergy, and so nat-
urally architecture flourished after a time, and paint-
ing was used as a means of teaching the Bible to
those unable to read. These arts were truly reflective
of the Christian civilization, both in their design and
accomplishment. The ideal beauty of the Greeks met
with opposition from the beginning; it was pagan
and of the earth, earthy. The new art debased form,
and above it reared ideas and the symbols of ideas.
The Egyptian palace represented strength and eternal
endurance; the Greek temple represented beauty of
form; but the Christian church symbolized the faith
of its builders. At first, from using the deserted Ro-
man basilica as a place of worship, and tinctured by
the former civilization extending into theirs, the
Christians built churches upon the Roman model; but
as they grew in strength changes took place. The
new idea required a new form impossible to produce
at first; but time and change wore away the old and
brought in the new. Not alone did the ground-plan
of the basilica grow to the form of the cross, but the
rows of parallel columns within led the in-comer di-
rectly to the altar. The walls were covered with
paintings representing sacred scenes. From the
vaulted apsis Christ and the Apostles looked down
**
82
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
on the assembled host. Symbols of religious import
were on every hand, and a chief aim of the clergy
was to make the church the literal house of the Good
Shepherd. In the misery, squalor, and ignorance of
those dark times the people turned to it as a place of
refuge, a heaven on earth, a firm rock though all else
should fall. This conception of the church-building,
being representative of an idea, grew with Christian-
ity, and after passing through the Romanesque style
at last culminated in its complete expression-the
Gothic.
Sculpture in the earlier Christian ages was hardly
known. The people feared the graven image, for
it savored of idolatry; and that art, being depend-
ent upon form, was almost abandoned.
Such as
was produced favored the antique model, but al-
ways failed in technical skill. Painting, again, though
wholly religious, was an art looked upon with sus-
picion and often denounced. As in architecture,
the new thought could not find its complementary
form at first, and so, partly through inability to
embody conceptions and partly through fear of idol-
atry, symbolism arose. This gave the first original
expression to Christian ideas; and though after-
wards anathematized by church councils, it was fa-
vored by the clergy as a teacher and received by the
people as an inspiration. This symbolism was at
first shown in letters and afterward in figures. "The
cross was used as a token of sacrificial death and re-
demption; the palm, as the symbol of eternal peace;
the peacock, as the sign of immortality; the lamb, the
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC.
83
The images mul-
vine, the ship, all bearing [bore] distinct reference to
well-known biblical passages. But it was not long
before painting began to deal with forms in direct
representation, and during the fifth century scrip-
tural scenes became the subjects. Again the councils
anathematized, but of little avail.
tiplied in number and became intensified in emotional
and spiritual power, but continued to fall off in tech-
nical rendering. Indeed, technically, early Christian
painting is bad throughout and little better than the
picture-histories of the Egyptian temples. It was kept
subordinate to architecture, and though dealing with
form in a different manner from Roman painting, it
could not avoid showing the influence of the latter
in its beginnings. Its object was never to display
beauty of form, but ideas, emotions, passions. To
show through the face the workings of the tortured
mind and the ecstatic soul, to stir the beholder by the
story that it told, was the new mission of painting.
Mosaics of Christ, the Madonna, and the Evangelists,
accompanied by such symbols as the angel, eagle,
bull, and lion, came in during the fifth century, and
as we near the tenth century the influence of Byzan-
tine or Eastern art began to make itself strongly felt.
This latter was hard and lifeless, and about its only
attraction lay in the richness of its materials.
The whole period of Christian art down to the tenth
century was but one of preparation and education for
the future. Its history shows two features vitally
* Lübke, History of Art.
84
PRINCIPLES of art.
important to us in examining the succeeding pe-
riods. The first is the transition from the Greek
beauty of form to the Christian idea, as an art-aim.
This latter influenced, if it did not control, the whole
tendency of art from the fall of Rome to the sev-
enteenth century, and must not be lost sight of for
a moment. The second feature is the education of
the masses by means of art, which brought about
a love for it. People affect what they know the
most about, and it was the art-teaching of the early
Church that first formed and gave the impetus to the
pictorial mind of Italy. It was that beginning in the
common sympathies of the race, that knowledge of
art among the people, which afterward appeared as the
fine taste of the Renaissance. We have, then, in these
two features the motive and the inclination; let us
follow farther the development.
In the ancient world nations expanded separately,
by their own strength and in their own manner.
Rome strove to crush out all race-peculiarities and
establish a universal empire. The Christian civiliza-
tion, through its religion, gave a common aim to the
peoples of Europe, and while holding them together
by the bond of faith, left them civilly free to develop
as they chose. Thus from the ninth century the races
of the West were divided into separate nations, yet
the Church was acknowledged as the head of all.
The Papacy rose to great power under the ambitious
Hildebrand, but disputes arose between the emperors
and the popes, and their quarrels long agitated
Europe and kept mediæval life at fever-heat. The
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 85
Church, at first triumphant, gathered about it colo-
nies of the people, and produced a community of
interest in things temporal as well as spiritual.
Shortly afterward the Lombard free cities arose and
strife sprang up between them, succeeded by the
bitterer wars of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, of Fred-
erick Barbarossa, and of Frederick II. Throughout
the entire Romanesque and Gothic Periods (1000-
1400) Italy was torn and devastated by political wars,
though the free cities through their leagues of
protection and their commerce were prosperous.
Generally speaking, the times were out of joint and
the people were flighty, ignorant, superstitious, ill-
balanced. The leading features of life were accepted
with extravagance. The human mind seemed given
over to wild longings after the impossible and the
unattainable, which produced only dissatisfaction and
uncertainty. Bad government, wars, famines, in-
security, had a weakening effect, and the strong
strain of religious enthusiasm made the fanatic
and the monomaniac. The emotional character of
the people, inherited from the preceding generations,
and heightened by the storm and stress of mediæval
life, began to appear now stronger than ever. Delu-
sions and superstitions, impositions and absurdities
were nourished, and excesses of every nature broke
forth. Some thought the year one thousand was to
be the end of the world, and in fear and trembling
they awaited the millennium. It came not, and their
hysteria found vent in another direction. Mariol-
atry, chivalry, and the worship of woman came in,
86
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
with all their sentimentality. The lover became an
idolater, fanatical enough to risk any danger or com-
mit any folly to please the object of his love, and
the chivalric knight spent years in wandering about
the country doing deeds of valor in a fair lady's
name. Then followed the Crusades; and though these
latter emanated not directly from Italy, yet they visi-
bly affected it. The extremes of passion met and
counteracted each other. In the midst of battle and
his hatred of the infidel, the crusader made his vows
to the lady of his love. The amorous warrior and
the ecstatic monk moved side by side. Later on
came the religious fanatics, the penitents and pil-
grims; following them came the flagellants, roaming
through the streets by thousands, whipping themselves
and calling upon an offended God for mercy; and
still later the sentimentalists established the Courts of
Love.
The
Yet, in spite of this fanaticism and extravagance,
the people grew in intelligence and power.
Papacy, triumphant, became arrogant and corrupt;
and gradually the people, viewing its pretensions
with alarm, grew colder toward it. The worship of
God was not less; but the pope, "His vicegerent upon
earth," was looked upon with suspicion. Chivalry,
the Crusades, the free cities, the growth of commercial
life, drew people away from monastic sway, and the
wars between the emperors and the popes split the
land into factions. The hold of the Papacy upon
the people slackened somewhat. Men gradually
roused from their religious morbidity to view the
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC.
87
surrounding world and find something worth living
for in it. Life began anew with an inclination toward
nature, and at the end of the Gothic period this be-
came more pronounced and universal. People had
lived for a thousand years in intellectual darkness;
now they followed their natural instincts and again
sought the light. Religion still bound the nations
together, and its sentiment was in no degree impaired;
if anything, it was more enthusiastic ;* but man was
freeing himself from dogma and tradition. He was
still humble before the church, but not abjectly so.
On the contrary, he became more assertive and manly,
because grown stronger in comprehension. In addi-
tion, worldly prosperity was with him. The laws.
were amended and many abuses corrected; gov-
ernments became more stable; banking and commer-
cial houses were established, and the sciences be-
gan to flourish. In its geographical position Italy was
well situated to be the highway of trade between the
East and the West. All the countries bordering upon
the Mediterranean contributed to its wealth.
to the western world what Phoenicia was to Egypt.
The Crusades stimulated traffic and roused energy in
numerous branches. Commerce flourished at Pisa,
Genoa, Venice, and Florence, and made possible.
many industries. A trade in spices, mirrors, silks,
jewels sprung up, and manufactories of glass and
woolen goods were established on Italian soil.
It was
* Woltman and Woerman, History of Ancient, Early Christian
and Medieval Painting.
88
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
The intellectual mind began to stir about the be-
ginning of the twelfth century, and its result was
the establishment of universities, the study of lan-
guages, the multiplication of manuscripts, and the in-
vestigation of Roman law.* The papacy at one time
advocated education. Gregory VII. in the eleventh
century commanded every bishop to open a school
in connection with his cathedral, and he further
encouraged the copying and collecting of manu-
scripts. But Gregory's successors thought that learn-
ing tended toward heresy, and they speedily changed
ground to oppose it. The influence in Italy of the
first premonitors of the Renaissance, Abélard, Joachim
of Flora, and Roger Bacon, with their predecessors,
Erigena, Roscelin, and William of Champeaux, was
stamped out; but the spirit of learning continued to
rise. A moral pressure came upon Italy and the
Papacy from the North; and the Moors of Spain, who
were high in Arabian culture when the rest of Europe
was in darkness, brought an intellectual pressure to
bear through France. The sciences were taken up.
A knowledge of mathematics and geography was ob
tained from translations of Euclid and Ptolemy, and
astronomy was introduced from Arabia. Alchemy and
medicine flourished under Aquinas, Cecco d'Ascoli,
Mundinus, and others. A small classical revival
took place in the eleventh century, when Cicero,
Quintillian, Sallust, Horace, and Virgil began to be
read, though "the first real restorer of polite learning
* Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, vol. i,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC.
89
was Petrarch.” * The Latin died out as a language
of the people, and was superseded by dialects, though
it still remained the medium of the learned. Scho-
lastic jurists like Accursius, Bartolus, and Baldus re-
vived the study of Roman law. Universities sprung
into existence in the principal European cities. The
schools of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna became known
and established as universities in the twelfth century;
Piacenza founded one in the thirteenth; and during
the next century different ones were established at
Rome, Perugia, Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Arezzo, Lucca,
and Pavia. Philosophy in its first stage (that is, to the
twelfth century) was subordinate to theology, having
for its teachers Alcuin and Anselm. The second stage
was its combination with religion. Scholastic philos-
ophy had its fountain-head with Roscelin, Abélard, and
Aquinas at Paris, to which place most of the scholars
of Europe at that time repaired. The teachings of
the schoolmen brought about the third stage, or the
separation of philosophy and religion. Heresies.
broke out anew, and the church now put forth all its
energies to check them and the progress of philos-
ophy by the establishment of the Inquisition; but it
was too late. Dogmatic theology in the schools of
the church rose to great power in the fourteenth cen-
tury, and free philosophical thought, in the latter
part of the Gothic period, received support from the
revival of Greek learning. Greek literature had been
* Hallam,
90
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
studied as far back as the tenth century, but its res-
toration was not properly begun until the middle of
the fourteenth century. Boccaccio was "the first
Grecian of the modern world," though his predilec-
tion for classical studies was animated by his friend
Petrarch. He was succeeded by Giovanni da Raven-
na, Chrysaloras, and Poggio, the rescuer of manu-
scripts, who have been recognized as the revivers of
learning in Italy.
The Romanesque-Gothic Period was but the multi-
plied inheritance of the early Christian ages, and all
the overwrought sentiment of the age found its per-
fect record in the arts. Mirror-like they reflected.
each popular impulse and each stage of progress.
The time was not unfavorable to them. On the con-
trary, the arts often flourish best in seasons of com-
motion, friction, wrong, and oppression. People feel
more intensely, think deeper, and act stronger at such
times. In Italy this period was the one in which the
arts began to rise. The advance in poetry was later
with her than with her neighbors; for while France
was listening to the love-songs of the troubadours,
and Germany was engaged by its myth-making min-
nesingers, Italy was clinging unconsciously to its
classic traditions. But the foreign poetry had its in-
fluence, and became known to the Italians through
adoption; and afterward it was the revamped and
restored tales of Charlemagne and Roland that pro-
* Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 91
*
duced the Morgante and the two Orlandos: The
Provençal, the Franco-Italian, and the Sicilian poetry
first appeared, and then, almost at the same time
(the thirteenth century), the dialects of the different
parts of Italy gave expression in various forms of
prose and verse.t Guido Guinicelli, whom Dante
called his father in poetry, made poetry more na-
tional in spirit and elevated in style by writing in
Tuscan. The subject of all the verse was love, but
Guido treated the theme with novelty, and started
a school of transcendental singers uttering the phi-
losophy and metaphysics of love. Around him were
many minor poets,-Onesto, Fabrizio, Ghislieri,—and
their poetry formed the link between the Sicilian and
the native Tuscan ; yet aside from its being reflec-
tive of the time it calls for no special mention here.
The first great voice to utter the sentiments of the
age was that of Dante (1265-1321). The popular
mind, fed on priestly superstitions, glowing fancies of
happiness, and imaginary horrors, was well fitted to
receive his poetry. He not only represented the doc-
trines and teachings of the ecclesiastics, but the senti-
ments of the people. He etherealized and heightened
the conceptions of the troubadours, and in embody-
ing the faith of Christianity he gave to the world its
greatest religious poem. Petrarch held an inter-
mediate position between Dante and Boccaccio.
Much of his poetry shows his classical taste and
* Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature.
t Ibid.
‡ Ibid.
92
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
study, while much of it, again, shows his tendency to-
ward the purely human and the real. It was reserved,
however, for Boccaccio, who may be called a prose-
poet, to fully represent the material side of life. In
many things the Italians were realistic by nature, and
Boccaccio had his forerunners in Folgore and the
obscene writers of the thirteenth century. He was a
writer of the people and of things as they were-a
writer of the natural and the sensual; and in this he
but supplied a then existing demand. He, like his
predecessors, obeyed an impulse of his day—a ten-
dency toward naturalism. Diametrically opposite to
each other, Boccaccio anatomized life with a not too
gentle scalpel, Dante exalted it to the spiritual world.
Dante's greatest work was The Divine Comedy; Boc-
caccio's, The Human Comedy, as the Decameron has, not
inappropriately, been called. And between them
was Petrarch with his classical taste. We shall pres-
ently see that the popular sympathies which these
three individually expressed were brought together
and united in the art of the Renaissance.
Early Christian art exhausted itself before the Teu-
tonic mind was sufficiently developed to fill its place.
with a something better; and when civilization began
to move onward again, architecture was still the leader,
and painting and sculpture its subordinates. The
Roman was the model of the Romanesque architecture,
which after undergoing many developments became a
distinct style. Its main import was religious, and in
Italy, particularly, it was long bounded by ecclesi-
astical tradition. The Transition Style was caused
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 93
by a love for richer features and the embellishment
of worship. It is best seen in Germany; and the
leaning of the people toward nature is seen in much
of its ornamentation. The incoming of the Gothic
was an evolution in building. Though different from
the Romanesque, it was not an original growth but
rather a development of the former model brought
about by a change in the popular disposition. The
pointed arch came back from the East with the Cru-
saders, and the first complete example of the Gothic
appeared in the church of St. Denis near Paris in 1144.*
Architecture had somewhat passed into the hands of
the laity by this time; the clergy were losing ground;
and the people were rising, especially in France.
Their freer spirit was exhibited in the Gothic tracery
and ornamentation, and the new forms were in some
measure a protest and an opposition to the convention-
alism of the antique and the ecclesiastical. More than
ever this style embodied and symbolized Christianity.
It opposed the architecture of the ancients, not alone
in its aspiring porpendicular lines of airy lightness as
contrasted with the horizontal massiveness of the
Greeks, but in its reassertion of the Christian idea.
The Gothic, as Lübke has well observed, represented
the "ethical artistic ideal;" and though it afterward
attained a beauty of form founded on romantic na-
ture, yet this was not its inceptive purpose. It sprung
to perfection almost immediately in France, while
Germany, content with the richer Romanesque, did
* Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses on Architecture.
94
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
not receive it until later. It found its way into Italy
last of all because of the classical bias that prevailed
there. It never reached its purest forms south of the
Alps, for which perhaps we need be thankful, since it
resulted in fewer windows, more wall-space, and a
greater number of pictures.
Sculpture in Italy during the early Romanesque
period was but a repetition of the old types. Monas-
tic life and church restrictions limited its field of
action to the teaching of the people by its symbolism,
and the art degenerated. At the north, where the
people were freer from conventions and more suscep-
tible to ideas, it was much better. Yet at best the art-
forms were determined by tradition, and were stiff
and hard until the age of chivalry came in, when the
figures became slight, affected, and sentimental to cor-
respond. Painting in France and Germany at this
time was confined to ornamentation, miniatures, and
painting on glass, and in Italy it ran into mosaics and
symbolism, of which enough has been said. It was
not until the time of Nicolo Pisano (1205–1278?) that
either painting or sculpture advanced greatly. Nicolo
was a phenomenal renaissance in himself, and his work
in sculpture was the immediate cause of progress in
painting. He was a believer in the classic, and drew
the attention of a people overburdened with sentiment
to the importance of form in art. To the Gothicists
with Christian thought, who came after him, he gave
pagan form, and his influence can hardly be over-
estimated. The artists grew more observing of na-
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 95
ture, and though unable to master the human figure,
yet the head swayed, the body moved, and there was
some rhythm. The expression of emotion still pre-
vailed at the expense of strength, and the form was
often hard and conventional; yet there was visible im-
provement. Giovanno, son of Nicolo, took up the
model of his father and strove to amalgamate it with
the Teutonic, and after him for a space the interest in
sculpture gave way to that of painting.
Cimabue, who has been called the father of Italian
painting, now came to the front, infusing life into the
Byzantine type by picturing natural effects. Duccio,
a contemporary, pursued the same methods with sim-
ilar results. The next painter of consequence was
Giotto, the pupil of Cimabue, who gave to art a
vitality by a new conception. He was not wholly
free from archaism, but his forms were dramatic
and comparatively strong, and his ideas were ex-
pressive of nobility. He advanced painting greatly,
and left not unworthy successors in Taddeo and
Angelo Gaddi and Orcagna. Contemporary with
Giotto was Simone Martini of the Siennese school,
who adopted a model with a distinct cast of fea-
tures and a rounder, fuller figure, which he posed in
devotional attitudes. Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his
brother Pietro succeeded, and after that the Siennese
school declined into hardness and overstrained senti-
mentality. The schools of Central Italy, Bologna,
and Modena adhered to the archaic type, and at Padua
and Verona, though the schools were active and
showed an inclination toward nature, yet they were
96
principles of art.
hampered by the same conventions as the others. Fra
Angelico belongs to this period, though living far into
the fifteenth century.
The general aim of painting during the Gothic
Period was to picture the same sentiments as those
set forth in the lauds and sacred hymns, which ap-
peared in great numbers at that time. Feeling and
tenderness were the chief features striven after. It
was primarily an emotional art with a leaning toward
nature. It afterward degenerated into excessive sen-
timent, and nothing but a vibration to the other ex-
treme could bring in the naturalism of the fifteenth
century.
CHAPTER IV.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND INDIVIDUAL
(continued).
THE RENAISSANCE.-The period of history known
as The Renaissance recalls the Arabic story of the
Genie pent up in the bottle, who when at last loosed
from confinement expanded into a cloud-like fig-
ure of enormous proportions. It was thus that the
Genius of Knowledge, starting in small beginnings,
developed in size until its shadow overspread the
whole civilized world. The Renaissance was a growth,
a transition; not a revolution or a reaction. The in-
fluence of the preceding period was felt upon it,
and the religion, the sentiment, the fanaticism, the
violence of the Mediæval age of faith were the seeds
from which sprung the knowledge and power of the
Renaissance age of reason. It assimilated the knowl-
edge of the past, and reproduced it with the added
thought of the present. In other words, it was but
the Gothic Period in maturity. Three leading fac-
tors brought about this advanced civilization, viz.:
the inherited Christian education of the preceding
centuries; the restoration of the antique; and the
study of nature. In art the unity of these factors
formed the crowning glory of the Golden Age. But
5
98
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
before we speak of it let us briefly examine the in-
clinations of the people and the expanding knowl-
edge of the time.
It will be remembered that previous to the begin-
ning of the fifteenth century, life was distracted by
political wars and intrigues on the part of the rulers,
and by shaken opinions and unsatisfied longings on the
part of the people. At the beginning of the Renais-
sance the situation was not much better. About the
year 1300 commenced the reign of the Despots, of
whom the best that can be said is that they gen-
erally encouraged learning and the arts. The re-
moval of the Papacy to Avignon in 1309 was a loss of
papal power in Italy, only restored by the return of
Nicholas V. to Rome in 1447. In the intermediate
period, quarrels between the Church and the cities and
among the Despots themselves went on uninterrupt-
edly, until at last court intrigue and diplomacy did
away to a great extent with force of arms, and com-
parative peace followed. From 1450 to 1494 there
was little of war; and the people, weary of fighting,
turned to culture and learning. Yet petty quarrels
and revolts kept up, and the whole period of the
Renaissance is filled with crime and corruption, eccle-
siasticism and æstheticism. A stranger mixture in
mankind of the divine and human, the god-like and
the brute, cannot be found in the annals of history.
Religion still held the people; the pope was the vice-
gerent of God; faith did not die out as historians are
continually informing us that it did. There never
was a Reformation in Italy. Yet the people and their
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 99
rulers were at odds with the Papacy. They opposed
its immorality, and at times grew skeptical of its di-
vine authority; but they never openly revolted or left
the Church. After the fourteenth century the Italian
became still more assertive and aspiring, still more
immoral and licentious. External life became brill-
iant; wealth poured in upon the cities; money was
used lavishly to promote the pleasure of the peo-
ple and thereby the popularity of the despots; and
social intercourse reveled in splendor. Court fes-
tivals, processions, fêtes and banquets materialized
mankind; and the grossest license, the most flagrant
vices, the most pagan ideas, flourished: yet when the
Benvenuto Cellinis came to die, they required the
absolution of the Church. Immorality and religious
belief did not seem to be incompatible with one an-
other even in the Papacy itself. But the moral pres-
sure from without and the intellectual pressure from
within were bearing strongly upon the corruptions
in the Church. The Savonarolas were thundering
against them, and the Papacy was losing ground; yet
its thousand years of almost absolute power was not
to be overthrown in a day. The rising of the Turk-
ish power in the East averted public attention for a
time and postponed the Reformation; and when at
last it came, the great work of the Renaissance had
been accomplished-accomplished under the Papacy
and under the shadow of ecclesiastical Christianity.
Italy had never been a united nation. The cities
were independent, fighting their own battles and go-
ing their own ways, irrespective of each other. A
Uor M
100
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
unity like that of the Greek states was unknown.
This was not a bad condition of affairs for the devel-
opment of knowledge. Turbulence of the times, as
we have before noted, often favors advancement;
and now the arts and sciences all flourished. Yet
the land possessed no national strength; and when the
year 1494 began the period of foreign invasions under
Charles VIII., Italy fell an easy prey. Liberty was
lost; yet this at first did not seem to affect the people
much. With an Arabic "kismet" on their lips they
turned to study and intellectual development, and
knowledge continued to advance. The Golden Age
now began in spite of liberty lost, and after 1494 the
greatest men of the Renaissance appear. This may
be explained by the fact that the most of them were
born and educated before the invasions; and then,
too, Italy was destined to be a second Pergamus. So
great was the propelling force of the Renaissance that
progress stopped not abruptly. Yet, devoid of unity
and liberty, the country could not long flourish. The
Reformation came in the North; decline set in; from
1530, onward, Italy had no political existence of its
own; and with the dawning of the seventeenth century
the great wave of learning had broken and scattered
itself on the sands of Europe.
The Renaissance was not brought about solely by
Christianity, nor by the revival of the antique, nor the
return to nature, nor the political and social state of
the country. It was no one factor alone, but the amal-
gamation of many elements, that produced it. Among
them, the education of the people through discovery
Maou
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. ΙΟΙ
and invention may be considered of no small impor-
tance. Michelet, speaking of these, makes two princi-
pal divisions: the discovery of the world geographically
and in scientific research, and the discovery of man in
body and in spirit. The advance of science was great.
Botany, chemistry, and medicine were studied, and
while owing something to the work of Paracelsus and
Jerome Cardan, they owed much more to the cele-
brated anatomists Zerbi of Verona, Vesalius, Fallo-
pius, Eustachius, Arantius, Coiter; to the surgeon
Varolius; and to the physiologists and botanists
Cæsalpin and Prosper Alpinus. The tendency to-
ward nature aroused the spirit of inquiry in all de-
partments. Zoölogy and botany developed in the
works of Gesner and Belon. Geography became bet-
ter understood and appreciated. Mathematics, stimu-
lated by the study of Euclid, flourished under Scipio
Ferreo, Tartaglia, and Rheticus. Cosmic ideas rested
upon a more scientific basis. Actual demonstration
took the place of vague speculation. Astronomical
discovery predicated the sun and not the earth ast
the center of our planetary system, and the theory
of Copernicus was established. Magellan's voyage
around the world in 1520 was a practical proof of the
earth's rotundity. Later on came Bruno, declaring
the stars to be suns and centers of systems; and
lastly, in the time of decay, came Galileo, whose name
alone is sufficient to recall his many discoveries in
natural philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics.
Nor was discovery confined to science. Not alone
the starry heavens above them and the outstretched
102
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
earth about them, but even the waters of the dis-
tant oceans became the object of people's attention.
Those of a more practical turn put out to sea in ships.
Navigation was at its height. The Azores were dis-
covered in 1448; America in 1492; the Antilles in
1493; Vasco da Gama in 1497 sailed to India around
the Cape of Good Hope; and twenty-three years later
Magellan circumnavigated the globe. The magnet,
the compass, the telescope, the making of paper, the
application of gunpowder-the list of inventions that
came in during the Renaissance might be stretched
out indefinitely. One of them, particularly, was of
very great importance. Printing was invented about
1450, and in 1455 the first Bible, now known as the
Mazarin Bible, was printed. The new invention
sprung, Minerva-like, to perfection at its birth, and
its influence as a factor in civilization can scarcely be
exaggerated or comprehended. It was a sure and
speedy means of transmitting knowledge. Within
thirty years from its invention ten thousand books had
been printed, and the knowledge stored up in libraries
and monasteries was given to all mankind. The pulpit
wavered before it, and oratory sank beneath it. Books
became comparatively cheap, and soon that mirror of
the times, the newspaper, came into vogue at Venice.
Engraving on wood and metal followed printing as a
natural consequence.
A leading factor in the Renaissance movement was
the revival of learning and the spread of the knowl-
edge of the antique. The beginning of it has been
noted in a former chapter. From Petrarch it ad-
2
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 103
vanced steadily, gaining in volume until all the learned
men of the period applied themselves to acquisition.
Even the priests grew better informed, though hating
the Greek and holding fast to the Latin. The Des-
pots (especially the Medici), the scholars, the philos-
ophers, painters, sculptors, architects, poets, were
avowed students of the humanities, and all favored
the restoration. The whole intelligence and power
of the age seemed brought to bear upon it. It was
in vain that some of the popes regarded it with jeal-
ousy and often with open opposition; in vain that
Savonarola denounced the pagan philosophy and li-
centiousness of the classics. The movement went
onward and upward until at last it reached that
height where it could not sustain itself—that climac-
teric height to which all great movements have at-
tained only to fall.
The Humanism of the Renaissance has been divid-
ed into four periods;* the First being the awakening.
with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Chrysoloras, and the
dawning of a new light that should dispel mediæval
superstition and ignorance. "This was the age of in-
spiration and discovery." Slowly men awakened to
the importance of Greek learning, then turned to study
it, and at last grew to worship it. They saw wisdom
in its philosophy, truth in its science, and beauty in its
The comparison between the antique and their
own civilization was odious. Enthusiasm spurred
men on to study, and a reverence for the relics of
art.
* Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Revival of Learning.
104
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
antiquity, amounting to sentimentality, grew with
the advancing knowledge. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Pog-
gio, began the collecting of manuscripts, and among
scholars and princes this soon developed into a pas-
sion. Almost all the Latin and Greek classics were
saved from destruction at this time, and the translation
of them, the formation of libraries, the establish-
ment of universities, began in earnest.
་
The Second Period includes the patrons of learning,
at whose courts assembled the first scholars of the age.
Florence was then the chief center of humanism. Palla
Strozzi, the Albizzi, the Medici, all were there, and,
though political enemies, they were generous rivals
in the patronage of scholarship. Palla sent to Greece
for manuscripts, taught the language, employed many
copyists and translators, and was the founder of
the first public library in Italy. Cosimo gathered
about him a great coterie of learned men, and lavished
money extravagantly upon fine buildings, paintings,
sculpture, gems, coins, inscriptions, manuscripts.
While in exile he built the library of San Giorgio
Maggiore at Venice, and afterward established others
at Florence, and among them the Laurentian collec-
tion.* He also founded the Platonic Academy, had
Marcilio Facino educated to expound Platonism, and
on his death-bed was consoled by Facino with the
philosophy of Plato. Niccolo di Niccoli emulated
Cosimo, made collections, and became the founder of
the Marcian collection. Bruni the Latinist, Manetti
* Symonds.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 105
the
the student and orator, Filelfo and Aurispa
collectors of manuscripts at Constantinople, all flour-
ished. In 1440 the Greek was taught in five
cities. Then came the conquest of Constantinople.
and Greece by the Turks, and the influx of scholars
into Italy. Gemistos, Argyropoulus, Trapezuntius,
the great revivers of Hellenism after Chrysoloras,†
came and taught the Greek at Florence, and at the
same time printing was invented and lent its most
potent influence to help on the movement. Nicholas
V. at Rome, a humanist himself, gave protection to
the scholars; he had the Greek poets, historians,
fathers, and philosophers (including Aristotle) trans-
lated into Latin, and at his death the Vatican library
was a collection of five thousand manuscripts. Lo-
renzo Valla, the critic and satirist; Poggio, with Valla,
an imitator of Cicero, Seneca, and Livy; and Cardinal
Bessarion, the collector, defender of Plato, and pro-
tector of the Greek refugees-were all at the papal
court. Everywhere throughout Italy the revival had
begun and been carried on; and yet the period pro-
duced nothing of any consequence in original thought.
It was an age of acquisition; men's heads were
crammed with indiscriminate erudition; criticism was
low, and little judgment was used in the accumula-
tion. The productions, such as they were, but imi-
tated the antique; they lacked originality, and the
thought of the people was not apparent in them.
* Hallam.
+ Symonds.
5*
106
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were almost aban-
doned, and the classic reigned quite supreme.
The Third Period of humanism is the age of Lorenzo
de Medici, and Florence is still the center of learning.
The Academies, or circles of the learned, were now
formed, and Lorenzo gathered about him the most
brilliant coterie of humanists and geniuses ever known
in Italy. Facino the Platonist was still at the Medi-
cean court, discussing, teaching, and believing Platon-
ism; Poliziano, a born poet, writing in Latin, Greek,
and Italian with perfect style, was beside him; the
brilliant John Pico, Count of Mirandola, was another
one of the circle; and if we would make the group
complete we must add Alberti, the prototype of
Leonardo da Vinci in versatility, Landino the Latin-
ist, Pulci the poet, and, lastly, Michael Angelo the
artist. It is quite impossible to give the names of
the many distinguished humanists of this period, or
even to catalogue the absurd Latin titles of the nu-
merous Academies that flourished everywhere through-
out Italy. The passion for the accumulation of
knowledge lost none of its fury, yet the power of
reproduction among the erudite was still lacking.
What was produced was, when not broadly imitative,
pedantic and often ridiculous. Affectation came in,
and toward the latter end of this period humanism
began to wane. The antique never struck a respon-
sive chord in the hearts of the people. It was an
affectation in itself which, though beneficial as an
educational means, never could exist as a popular
end. People began to weary of it, and a rival arose
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 107
in the shape of the Italian language. Lorenzo and
Poliziano at Florence, Boiardo at Ferrara, and San-
nazaro at Naples began the new revival, which met
with encouragement at once because appealing to
the masses.
Another movement toward nature was
soon to make itself manifest. Yet it must not be
thought that the antique passed away. It lived and
underwent the refining process of comparative criti-
cism. The accumulation of the former period was
purified and brought to its proper appreciation, while
beauty of style now became a strong feature in pro-
duction.
The Fourth Period is the age of Leo X. and the
decline of learning. The Revival had been accom-
plished before the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury,* and what followed was the sunset of humanism
and the fading brilliancy of the Renaissance. The
center of learning was now at Rome under Leo.
The pope himself, a lover of letters and art, lent
every encouragement to the scholars, the artists, and
the littérateurs of the age. Like his predecessor,
Nicholas, he made vast collections of antiquities,
began the excavation of ancient Rome, and founded
the Museum of the Vatican. Bembo was to Leo what
Poliziano was to Lorenzo, the leading humanist of
the day. He and Sadoleto were the pope's secre-
taries, and nobly represented the age of purism and
critical learning. Yet, again, the scholarly men of this
period produced little besides histories, dictionaries,
*
Symonds.
108
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
grammars, and critical dissertations. The printing-
press turned these out by the hundreds, the universi-
ties taught them, and the students tried to absorb
them. But the ability to produce anything great,
aside from criticism, was lacking. Spontaneity was
trammeled by academic styles, and Bembo at his best
was weighed down with mannerisms and affectations.
The style of saying argued more than the thing said.
The power of humanism began to fail; the diffusion
of knowledge to the many sapped the influence of
the few; and naturalism came to the fore. The
native Italian literature under Ariosto, Castiglione,
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Berni eventually su-
perseded the antique, and the philosophy of Plato
gave way to the realistic tendency of the time. Aris-
totle advanced, and, as in his own land so in Italy, his
coming marked the decline of all things. With the
sack of Rome in 1527 the period of learning ended
abruptly in violence and bloodshed, and the Inquisi-
tion with the Jesuits came upon the scene.*
*
Though the revival of learning resulted in little
original literature, and in fact for a time throttled the
popular impulse, yet its importance must not be
lightly cast aside. As an intellectual training of the
people its influence was great even beyond estimation.
It was a school which developed the youthful mind
of Italy, and its teachings are reflected in the great-
est works of all the fine arts. Taste, judgment, dis-
crimination, were the chief features developed by it.
* Symonds.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 109
Little was produced that did not show the leaven-
ing of the classic; yet be it remembered that it was
but a leavening, an ingredient and not a motive
productive of spontaneous art by its own strength.
Two other factors, Christianity and naturalism, share
in the honor of bringing forth the Renaissance arts;
and as we examine poetry, architecture, sculpture, and
painting, we shall see these three factors and their
influence, either separately, in couples, or in complete
unity, in the masterpieces of the different periods.
Art-like the Renaissance itself was reflective, shift-
ing with the light, and in each stage of progress mir-
rored its varied surroundings.
In poetry a strife sprung up in the time of the early
Renaissance between the naturalists and the classi-
cists, the one set wishing the expression of emotions.
in the language of the people, and the other wishing
a return to the antique. The excellence of classic
models then extant won the day, and from the time
of Boccaccio to that of Lorenzo there was little native
poetry. Lorenzo, and after him Poliziano, compro-
mised the matter by producing Italian poetry in classic
form, and classic poetry of Italian spirit. Boiardo,
producing the Orlando Innamorato, went back for his
theme to the mediæval romances, and in style favored
the classic. Pulci, his contemporary, in the Morgante,
though more realistic, satirical, and humorous than
Boiardo, still shows the effect of the antique. Sanna-
zaro, the discoverer of the modern Arcadia, at first
sought the romantic in the classic, and at last went
over to the Latin almost entirely. The next great
110
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
*
poet belonging to a later period was Ariosto, who has
been called the painter-poet, and who is more truly
representative of the Renaissance than any other, save
Tasso. He brought to perfection in classic form the
romantic theme of Boiardo, and in the Orlando Furioso
the two elements of naturalism and classicism mingle
in perfect unison. There is no other poet worthy of
mention in his immediate day, save possibly Trissino,
who imitated Homer in the epic. In the last period.
of humanism a number of lyrists and imitators of
Petrarch came to the surface, and among them Bembo,
Molza, Guidiccione, and Castiglione. Then followed
the minor sonneteers Alemanni, Vittoria Colonna,
Michael Angelo; and finally the impudence of Pietro
Aretino succeeded in usurping the literary dictator-
ship and turning the current of poetry into buffoon-
ery and burlesque. With the decay of liberty and
the decline of learning, poetry sadly degenerated into
strivings after effect, producing only the grotesque.
Tasso, "the legitimate heir of Dante," living far into
the period of decay, combined in the Jerusalem De-
livered all the impulses of the Renaissance. His
thought was Christian, and his form and expression a
blending of the antique and the natural. In him the
chivalric and the ecclesiastical, the Hellenic and the
Italian, are all bound up together. He was to the
Renaissance what Dante was to the Gothic age—a
complete mirror of the time.
Architecture, the most susceptible of all the arts to
* Hallam.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. III
the influence of the antique, because of the existing
Roman models, turned back upon its course early in
the fifteenth century. The Gothic had never been
thoroughly at home in Italy, and the return from it
to the classic was not hard to accomplish. It but
followed the tendency of letters; yet the change was
not suddenly brought about, and the first period was
one of experiment. Brunelleschi was the father of the
new style, called the Renaissance, which had its
origin at Florence. At first it was a blending of the
antique and mediæval forms,* with a leaning toward
early ornament and decoration. Alberti and Pietro
Lombardo, with Brunelleschi, are the representative
architects of the early transition. The Second Period
came in with Bramante, and dates from 1500 to 1580.
The features of the improved style were the greater
use of antique forms, less decoration, and more sim-
plicity with refinement of taste and nobleness of
design. The faults of the former model were now
corrected, and with purity and simplicity the aim
was to attain a unity of all the parts. The best build-
ings of the Renaissance were constructed during this
period, and among the architects besides Bramante
were Giulio Romano, Michael Angelo, and Jacopo San-
sovino at Venice. But Michael Angelo set a bad ex-
ample in architecture by disregarding the limits of the
art and allowing his own individuality and genius too
much rein. He himself succeeded, but the influence
upon his followers was pernicious and brought about
* Lübke, Geschichte der Architektur.
112
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the bizarre style of the Third Period, in which caprice,
over-decoration, and exaggeration ran riot. When
power and thought in art are exhausted, the age gives
place to affectation. Imitators sprung up and strove
to produce Michael Angelo's effects by trickery and
forced processes. Decline set in, and architecture
shared a fate similar to that of poetry.
The sculpture of the early fifteenth century was in-
fluenced by the prevailing tendency toward nature,
and also by painting, much of the work being pictorial
in design rather than statuesque. Donatello's mar-
bles are good instances of the former influence, and
Ghiberti's Gates of the Baptistery at Florence of the
latter. Most of the sculptors of this period have been
indiscriminately called "realists," but the term is mis-
leading. To be a realist requires objective imitation;
and where individuality is so apparent as it is in the
work of Donatello, pure realism cannot exist. Jacopo
della Quercia, Ghiberti, Donatello, Verrocchio, show
the movement toward nature, and undoubtedly they
modeled the human figure precisely as they saw it;
but they were not imitators, nor could they, by any
liberal adherence to the model, erase their own con-
ceptions. Donatello was the leader of them all, and
in many respects he was not unlike Michael Angelo.
He had the same fiery nature, worked in a like im-
petuous manner, cast aside all teachings and conven-
tions, and followed the bent of his own genius in the
same arbitrary way. But he had not the great genius
of Michael Angelo, and never soared so high. At first
he began with the antique, but soon abandoned it for
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC.
113
the bald and even the harsh expression of passionate.
realities.* His scorn of the effeminate, and at times
almost of the beautiful, is remarkable; and his love of
nature, even to portraiture in his marbles, is quite
apparent. Yet his passionate power in execution
amply compensates for what he may have lost by pur-
suing nature to the far extreme. Verrocchio, following
his methods, was his principal pupil; and at the same
time lived Lucca della Robbia, partaking somewhat
of the tendency toward nature, yet showing more.
sympathy, sentiment, and tender beauty than any of
the others.
In the early sixteenth century, nature and the re-
vived antique blended with Christian thought, and for
a brief period sculpture stood upon a great height.†
Leonardo da Vinci as a sculptor belongs to this
period, but unfortunately there is nothing left of his
work. Rustici, his fellow-pupil under Verrocchio,
caught not a little of Leonardo's spirit,‡ and there is
much of the sixteenth-century freedom of form in
his art. The next great master is Andrea Sans
whom Lübke likens in sculpture to Raphael in paint-
ing. His imaginative and creative powers were great,
and he had much feeling for beauty, producing some
masterpieces of purity and nobility. Jacopo Sanso-
vino, the pupil of the former, though possessing
talent, ran too far to the classic and fell into manner-
isms. Form over-refined gradually took the place of
thought, and sculpture went back to imitate the Torso
* Lübke, History of Sculpture.
† Ibid.
Ibid.
114
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and the Laokoön. Michael Angelo as architect,
sculptor, and painter stands alone. He can be coupled
with no artist or school of artists, for of all men he
was independent. In sculpture he retained the Chris-
tian thought of Dante, while about him literature was
sinking into insipidities of style, and his contempo-
raries were producing marbles baldly imitative of the
antique, and neither Greek nor Christian. During
his long life he reflected all the different influences of
the age. At first devoted to nature, then classic, and
lastly intellectual and individual, he combined in him-
self all the strength of his predecessors, and added to
it the might of his own genius. The chief feature of
his art was the subordination of form to the expression
of his personal ideas and feelings. He was thoroughly
subjective, in fact over-much so for the limits of sculp-
ture and architecture. They are too dependent upon
form for emotional individual arts, and though Michael
Angelo through great genius succeeded in making
sculpture wholly expressive of thought, yet he once
more set a very bad example. The fate of his fol-
lowers who caught up the staff of the prophet and
tried to conjure in his name can easily be imagined.
The rod turned into a serpent. The power which
his strong will easily held in check turned to un-
bridled caprice with those of lesser strength. They
imitated his faults, but could not grasp his virtues.
Exaggerations and mannerisms sprung up. At the
death of Michael Angelo there was scarcely an inde-
pendent sculptor living; and from sheer exhaustion
the art declined,
ART EMOTional, inteLLECTUAL, ETC. 115
In speaking of painting it may be premised at the
start that Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Vasari, and other
historians who have builded theories of history upon
the supposed fact that Christian sentiment and
thought as an art-impulse were exhausted and died
out before or during the Renaissance, are mistaken.
Such was not the state of affairs by any means. A
thousand years of Christianity firmly established in
the state and with the people was not to be uprooted
or cast aside by a century of revived antiquity. It
never was and never has been replaced in Italy
by any paganism of any kind; and though during
the Renaissance skepticism, discontent, crime, and
immorality were singularly prevalent, yet we have
already seen that these features at that time consti-
tuted no hindrances to church-membership. More-
over they were characteristic rather of the nobility
and the rulers than of the people. The teachings of
Christianity still lived strongly. They were losing
ground before all the corruption of the time; but
when they had so far decayed as to be no longer a
motive in art, the Renaissance had passed and all
things were in the decline of the seventeenth cen-
tury.
A more positive mistake on the part of these his-
torians is the supposition that the return to the
classic or the departure toward nature were principal
causes of the Renaissance painting. They were not
principal but accessory causes. The study of the
classic and of nature resulted in remodeling the
mediæval form, which was unsatisfactory; but it pro-
116
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
duced no spontaneous or original thought of great
consequence. The art-ideas came from Christianity
refined and tempered by humanism, but the form in
which these ideas were set forth was an amalgama-
tion of the classic and the natural. These latter,
then, vitally important be it admitted, were the
means and not the end; the methods of the few, not
the thoughts of the many. The only ideas emanat-
ing from all classes of any people at once have been
religious in nature. Religion produced the arts of
Egypt, Assyria, India, Greece; it produced the art of
the Renaissance, and whatever other factors may
have come into play in the production must be set
down as subordinate to the main impulse. To be
sure, many artists of the time began and ended with
the antique and nature; but these compositions from
Greek mythology or Italian life pure and simple were
not the masterpieces. The great works had for their
subjects the Madonna, the Sibyls, the Prophets, the
Saints, the Resurrection, the Descent, and the Last
Judgment. It has been said that these lingered but
as traditions, and that the pagan Venus is but mas-
querading in the garb of the Christian Madonna,
Apollo in St. Sebastian, Hercules in St. Christopher;
but the observation has little force. It could as easily
be said that Venus was a garbless Madonna, or Apollo
an unmartyred Sebastian. What was the necessity of
masquerading or making a mental mixture of the
two? They were well known from each other, and
painted separately by many artists. The truth is,
Christian subjects were chosen because Christianity
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 117
was the theme most in accord with the sentiments of
the people. The deep spirit of Dantesque religion is
not more apparent in Fra Angelico than in Leo-
nardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. For confirma-
tion of this, witness St. Peter's at Rome, where art
will be found religious in thought, classic in form,
and natural in expression. Painting but followed
the other arts in making a unity of these factors.
The revival of the antique was educational in its
effect; and though some mistook it for an aim of art
in itself, yet the majority used it but as a means for
the better expression of Christian ideas. The im-
pulse of the Renaissance art generally, then, was
Christianity, and nature and the classic were but
directing features of the movement.
The architecture of the fifteenth century was favor-
able to painting because the Renaissance style fur-
nished wall-spaces in abundance and demanded for
its completion the services of the painter. Paint-
ing was further favored by being somewhat less in-
fluenced by the classic than the other arts, because of
the lack of antique models. With the opening of
the fifteenth century the tendency was toward nature.
The painters with the sculptors turned to study the
human form—the nude, in its many phases—in order
to overcome the technical conditions of their art.
Masaccio of the Tuscan school was the pioneer of
the new style in painting.* He was a student of
nature, and likewise of the marbles at Rome, the in-
* Lübke.
118
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
fluence of both appearing in his work. Like every
beginner in an undertaking he shows us more of the
language than the spirit of art. His plastic compo-
sition, perspective, foreshortening, and picturesque
color-schemes are all records of his experiments, yet.
not without great life and boldness, even grandeur,
of execution. His subjects are in the main religious,
with little of the dramatic in them. Undoubtedly he
was much influenced by the study of sculpture, and
possibly by Donatello;* and on the other hand he
was likewise influenced by nature, which gave to his
art its remarkably vitality. Fra Filippo Lippi, a con-
temporary of Masaccio, leaned toward the more sen-
suous side of nature, and in some of his religious
themes there is a want of holiness in the characters.
Yet he was not without feeling. A spark of the old
Byzantine tenderness is shown in the faces of his
women, and there is a quiet dignity about the
men altogether admirable. In addition he was an
excellent modeler, composed dramatically, and had a
keen faculty for pictorial treatment and color.
Botticelli was an apostle of Dante and Savonarola.
His paintings with their melancholy Madonnas are
poetic in the extreme, and their counterpart may be
found in the romances of his time. He placed him-
self half-way between the classic and nature, and was
affected by both influences. Half-religious, half-
fanciful, he formed out of many inspirations and in-
*Crowe and Cavalcaselle.
+ Symonds.
+ Woltman and Woerman.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 119
fluences "a vehement and passionate manner of his
own."*
The style of Filippino Lippi was based upon
that of his father Fra Filippo. He was more classic
in his tendency, and in some respects excelled both
his father and Botticelli. Ghirlandajo, the master
of Michael Angelo, combined in himself the art-
knowledge of his time. His execution was powerful,
and his handling of the human form excellent; yet
he is wearisome with many passive virtues. His
work is prosaic and lacks sentiment, enthusiasm, and
that genius which elevates the commonplace. Severe
and dignified, never tender or brilliant, his modera-
tion and extreme good sense made him uninteresting,
paradoxical as it may sound to say so. His knowl-
edge but formed a stepping-stone for others to rise
upon. Signorelli, his contemporary, was a much
greater man. Indeed he has been justly called “the
morning star" of Michael Angelo, for in his daring
play with form, his dramatic and excited action, and
his tragic power he anticipated the latter. He was
a master of the nude, and it was his delight to handle
form in masses, foreshortening, twisting, and contort-
ing for the purposes of drawing. It was for this that
he chose so many antique subjects. Yet his aims
were ever high, and in striving after and partially at-
taining them he showed not a little of that religious
poetry and thought developed afterward by Michael
Angelo.‡
* Crowe and Cavalcaselle.
Woltman and Woerman.
Symonds
120
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
In the schools of Upper Italy Squarcione had a
most potent influence. He founded the Paduan
school; and was more of a pedagogue than a painter.
He was a great collector of antiques, and taught the
study of the body, not from the nude, but at second
hand, from Greek sculpture. The effect of this is
visible in the statuesque appearance of his pupils'
works. Especially is this true of his greatest pupil,
Mantegna. He posed and drew the marble to the
life, but it was only marble-a human being "turned
to stone." It lacked life, and even the suggestion of
possible movement. His art, pure and strong, was
likewise icily regular; yet in his hard, stiff figures
Mantegna was not lacking in force and tragic power,
and in his best works he is not devoid of feeling.
These latter are of religious subjects wherein nature,
which he also studied, blends with the antique. The
great bulk of his work was nevertheless of the plastic
stamp. Another artist influenced somewhat by both
Mantegna and Squarcione was Giovanni Bellini, the
founder of the Venetian school. He lacked deep
thought and showed little passion; but these defects
were atoned for by dignified repose in his figures,
moral beauty, poetic sentiment, and beauty of color.*
While the schools of Upper Italy were tending to-
ward the classic, and the Tuscan school toward
nature, the Umbrian school of the mystics clung to
the religious sentiment of the Middle Ages. Niccolo
Alunno was the founder of the latter; and after him
* Lübke.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 121
2.
His
came Perugino, the first prominent leader.
works are filled with religious fervor, and the faces
of his characters show only the pensive front of the
forbearing saint. This sentiment is often dissipated
in sheer sentimentality, and the painter always failed
in strength and energetic action. Even his Spartans
and Romans are as mild and harmless as his Sebas-
tians and Bernards.* Michael Angelo had almost
as much contempt for his art as Vasari had for his
personal life. The latter affirms that he was, at once,
an infidel, a criminal, and a miser, sacrificing his art
for gold; but Rio† denies this. However this may
be, as an artist, though often insipid, he is still at
times highly poetic, and his skill should not be un-
derestimated. Among the pupils of Perugino and
other followers of the Umbrian school may be men-
tioned Lo Spagna, Pinturicchio, and Francia. The
last was very much like Perugino in his religious feel-
ing, and excelled him in warmth of color, though not
so strong in other respects.
Fra Bartolommeo, a Florentine contemporary of
Michael Angelo, was a painter of the Church, and is
strikingly representative of the Christian thought of
his age. He was a connecting-link between the Early
and the High Renaissance, showing alike the religious
feeling of the Umbrians and the splendid technique of
the Florentines. His chief success was in devotional
painting, and in this he was quite unrivaled. Sympa-
thetic rather than great, and lofty in feeling rather
* Symonds.
† Poetry of Christian Art.
6
122
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
than in imagination, he charmed more by his beauty
and purity, his fine drawing and splendid color, than
by force or dramatic power. He was greatly in-
fluenced by Savonarola, and joined with him in decry-
ing the sensuous antique model. When Savonarola
perished at the stake, the painter-monk threw down
his palette and brush, and only after four years was
he induced to resume them. Afterward he became
the friend of the young Raphael and taught him
many accomplishments. He was never a star of the
first magnitude, because lacking brilliancy; but
though not the center of the Renaissance constella-
tion, he nevertheless held a prominent place and was
one of its most representative supporters. Another
Florentine artist of commanding abilities who paint-
ed devotional pictures, but of a decidedly human
cast, was Andrea del Sarto, called "the faultless
painter." He was influenced by Leonardo, Michael
Angelo, and Fra Bartolommeo, and received from
them much of his inspiration. He was an excellent
draughtsman, and his work always possessed dig-
nity, force, and a charming freshness of treatment;
but he was not grand in imagination. His strong fea-
tures were his drawing, his flesh-tints, his exquisite
chiar-oscuro, and his beauty of color.* A melancholy
interest attaches to his personal history and has
given rise to many speculations as to what he might
have been under different influences.
Correggio was a musician who affected, not the
* Lübke.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 123
tragic chorus, but the sweet symphony of life and
beauty. Like Andrea he painted religious subjects,
but his Madonnas and Magdalenes are earth-born
daughters of Eve and possess little holiness. In all
his subjects, especially in the antique, his chief aim.
is to reproduce warm, palpitating beauty; to show
the inner life of animal spirits; to display the charm
of the purely sensuous. In thought he is scarcely
noble;* yet his intensity of feeling, his splendid
flush of life, and incomparable sweetness of mood
make a minor greatness in themselves. Technically
he was influenced by Leonardo, yet his style is new
and quite his own. He is best known by his effects
of chiar-oscuro, of which he was a master. This
with his color and good drawing made up much of
the charm to be found in his pictures. He was a
lover of nature and the representative painter of the
human, as Fra Bartolommeo was of the spiritual and
religious. A school was founded by him, but after
his death his followers carried his methods to exag-
geration.
We have at last before us (not without some disre-
gard of dates and schools) the great trio of the Re-
naissance-Leonardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo.
Singularly enough, the characteristics of their art
were, in each case, shown in the face and personal
appearance of the artist. Leonardo was majestic,
stately, splendid; Raphael, youthful, beautiful, and
charming as an Olympian god; while Michael Angelo
* Lübke.
124
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
had the prophet's rugged brow, and out of his eyes.
shone the light of commanding genius.* In Leonardo
the elements of greatness seemed to mingle. "He was
one of those rare phenomena in whom nature loves
to combine all conceivable human perfections; his
beauty was as graceful as it was dignified; his physi-
cal strength was scarcely conceivable, and his mental
gifts were of a character more versatile than is
scarcely ever combined in the same person."† Rich,
noble, courtly, he drew and charmed the world by
his varied accomplishments. Like the English Bacon,
all knowledge was his province. He excelled in
painting, sculpture, music, poetry, architecture, en-
gineering, mathematics, anatomy, chemistry, as-
tronomy, botany, geology, optics. Physically and
mentally he was a giant in his age and country. In
art he studied all schools and sifted out what was
best in them. He saw power in the skill of those who
had gone to nature; he saw beauty of form in the
relics of antiquity, and beauty of thought in the re-
ligious art which had preceded him. It was reserved.
for him to assimilate these excellences and repro-
duce them together. How well he did this even the
engravings of the Last Supper, with which we are
all familiar, will testify. It is seldom indeed that
such a masterpiece of composition, such a wealth of
passionate power yet tempered with moderation, such
a characterization of human beings, have been com-
bined in one picture. The fresco has been praised as
* Symonds.
+ Lübke.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 125
the masterpiece of the ages, and even in its ruins it is
not undeserving of the seeming extravagance. Un-
fortunately there are not many of Leonardo's works
remaining. Indeed, he executed but few; he thought
and experimented too much and embodied too little:
but the ideas he gave vent to-many-sided as his own
genius—found expression in the works of his pupils,
which are valuable on that account if for no other
reason. At his best Leonardo's work is remarkable for
dignity of character and great depth of poetic feel-
ing, and technically for delicacy of execution and
perfect mastery of light and shade, and aërial per-
spective. The face of Mona Lisa in the Louvre will
show these characteristics, and he who looks at it
once will return to gaze at its beauty again and
again. It would be hard to imagine anything more
perfect, save the wonderful face of Christ in the
Last Supper; yet Leonardo was not satisfied with
either of them, and pronounced both incomplete.
Great as was his ability to realize, his conceptions
were even greater; and taking him for all in all, he
was undoubtedly the equal of any painter that ever
lived. His principal pupil was Bernardo Luini, and
his influence is seen upon Soddoma and others of
less note.
Raphael and Michael Angelo cannot be com-
pared, for they are different. Neither can it be
said with justice that Raphael was an idealist. In
some of his classic subjects he attempts the Greek.
ideal, and fails (that is, "fails" for Raphael) through
lack of spontaneity; but these are his poorer works.
126
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and do not merit consideration. His nearest approach
to the classic ideal is in his harmonies of form and
thought; but even here there is too much of thought,
too much of the artist's individuality, to admit of pure
idealism. A harmony of all beauties was undoubtedly
the general aim of Raphael's art, but in his great-
est works he forgot this aim and was carried away
by the genius of his own conceptions. The sublim-
ity of the Sistine Madonna consists, not in its har-
mony, but in its predominant idea of holiness. The
"Light of the world" shines out of those Infant eyes,
the serene consciousness of a divine Motherhood is
on that Madonna face; and in comparison, of what
consequence are the well-wrought limbs of the child,
the regular features of the mother? Of what con-
sequence the splendid modeling, the composition,
the technique? The thought is primary; the other
beauties are only secondary. No; Raphael was
not an idealist, nor yet a realist, nor yet, again, a
painter of passionate thought like Michael Angelo,
but rather a combination of all three. He was not
unlike Leonardo in that he assimilated and repro-
duced all the virtues of his age. "No acquisition of
the art of the period was disregarded by him; every-
where he knew how to adopt freely essential merits."*
All his life he seems to have been seeking ideas in the
art around him. Greek, Roman, Byzantine, con-
temporary art, all were the objects of his study. At
first a pupil of Perugino, he caught the sentiment of
* Lübke,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC 127
the Umbrian school; then, when still young, he
came under the influence successively of Masaccio,
Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo, and Michael Angelo,
until at last, having learned the best in the art of the
greatest, he became himself, and formed his own
incomparable style. As we have said, the chief aim
of his art was the harmony of many beauties-beauty
of form and feature, beauty of idea, beauty of ex-
pression. There were some of the Renaissance
period who thought deeper than he did, others who
executed better, and others, again, possessed of more
feeling; but he alone, with the exception of Leonardo,
combined all these qualities. His range of ideas and
choice of subjects were unlimited. History, symbol-
ism, mythology, the classics, Christianity, all came
beneath his eye and found a representation; but
among these he loved the religious subjects best,
and it is among them that we find his masterpieces.
The technical side of Raphael's art is too well known
to call for comment. His influence was great, and
many pupils followed in his footsteps, but they did
him little credit. The first among them was Giulio
Romano, who possessed strength, but of a coarse
and at times sensual nature. He lacked the moder-
ation of his master, and led the way to extravagance
and mannerism. After Raphael's death many
imitators strove to reproduce his harmonies, but the
insipidities that followed bore witness to the dangers
that attend the playing with the edged tools of genius.
And lastly, Michael Angelo. In painting, as in
sculpture, he is so great that few ever equaled him,
128
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and none ever surpassed him. The same impulse
that moved him in the one art guided him in the
other. Different from the cosmopolitan Leonardo
and the beauty-loving Raphael, he hewed out a path
to be trodden by himself alone. A man of genius in
many branches of knowledge, he chose to cast aside
history and trample tradition under foot. In solitary
grandeur he conceived the passionate thoughts of
genius, and with the power of a Titan he wrought
them into action. He was most emphatically a
subjective artist, and bent all things to his mood of
mind. Whatever he touched bore forever after the
stamp of his individuality. No artist, either past or
present, has ever equaled him in this. He stands
alone; and if others of his kind would see his great-
ness, they must look up. In his singleness of aim, in
his making of a picture or a statue stand representa-
tive of one overpowering idea, lies the secret of his
sublimity. The revelation of power in the Moses
bears us away as upon "a mighty rushing wind."
All details of form or finish or technique are lost sight
of and forgotten. The idea is pre-eminent. This is
true of his paintings in the Sistine. The spirit of
Dante is in the Last Judgment, and the shadow of
Savonarola falls upon the Prophets. In the presence
of such power it is almost ridiculous to question
about form, drawing, and color. They are but the
means of accomplishment, which we do not see in
viewing the splendid result. Apparently Michael
Angelo never gave a thought to facts and details.
He used them unconsciously as a writer uses the
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 129
letters of the alphabet. No one ever understood
them better than he; no one ever had a greater
command of line and form in mass: yet facts and
forms were to him but materials which he changed,
transmuted, even distorted, in order to produce ef-
fects. Power transformed, power concentrated, power
in volume, is pre-eminently characteristic of him.
In this he stands as the representative of the intel-
lectual height of the Renaissance, and his subjectivity
is that of a forerunner to the Individual Art of the
nineteenth century. All causes and tendencies find
their climax in his art; and though his subjects are of
every kind, and his works show the profound study
of nature and the antique, yet his thoughts were
essentially Christian. The potency of religion is not
more conspicuous in the marbles of the Parthenon
than in the frescoes of the Sistine. Here, at last, is
the final witness of the still-living power of Chris-
tianity as an art-impulse. Michael Angelo was one
of its latest exponents, and we shall see in the next
chapter that when Christianity failed to find repre-
sentation in art, decline had already set in.
•
When the great master died, he left no successor
worthy of the name, and imitators sought to produce
by trickery what he had accomplished by genius. A
fitting silence followed, for, with the chief actors gone,
it was time that the drama of the Renaissance should
end, and it was but its brilliant epilogue that followed
at Venice.
It is not necessary for the purpose of characterizing
the art of the Renaissance that we should follow out
6*
130
PRINCIPLES OF ART
its final history in the Venetian school. Moreover,
the causes that gave rise to the school are somewhat
different from those of the rest of Italy. Venice,
geographically and to a certain extent politically and
commercially, was isolated from the other cities, and
was less affected by the movements of the time.
Wars distracted her not; commerce flourished; her
citizens and rulers grew wealthy; and when, at last,
the intellectual movement reached her, its products
took the form of pictorial art. In the gold and azure,
the opalescence and iridescence of Venetian skies and
waters, her artists conceived painting as a matter of
color more than anything else, and this is the chief
characteristic of their art. In other respects the
tendency was toward sensuous nature. The leaders
were Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Titian, Tintoretto,
and Paolo Veronese; but Titian was the master-spirit,
and is generally conceded to have summed up in
himself the excellences of the school.
CHAPTER V.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND INDIVIDUAL
(concluded).
MODERN ART.-Many causes combined to precipi-
tate the decline of the Renaissance. The lack of
political unity in Italy; the foreign invasion; the Ref-
ormation at the North; the dissipation of learning
and scattering of forces; corruption, skepticism, im-
morality,—all worked together, and in every branch
special causes were mining and sapping the general
strength. We need not follow the decline into its va-
rious departments; but it is necessary, in order to sus-
tain the conclusions of the last chapter, that we should
assign some of the chief causes of the falling away of
painting independently of the dearth of genius.
If the principle we have maintained, that art is
dependent upon the sympathy of the people, be true,
then the withdrawal of that sympathy would bring
about a decline. This was in reality the case after
the Renaissance. Ecclesiastical authority suffered
severely by the Reformation. The corruption of
the Papacy, the sweeping away of abuses and su-
perstitions, the discoveries of science, the private
interpretation of the Bible, had shaken belief in
the Church. Many doubted its holiness, many were
indifferent to it, and the reformers openly re-
132
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
nounced it. Church allegiance, instead of being
bond scrupulously adhered to by all classes as in the
Middle Ages, was now but an obligation to be entered
into or not at pleasure. The strength which had pre-
viously been centered at Rome was distributed. The
religious beliefs of the people were not in harmony.
Different creeds arose, and the variation of opinion
rega.ding method and doctrine broke up the univer-
sal form of worship. It was no longer a subject in
which all conceptions found expression, a goal sought
by all the arts. There was no unity of thought regard-
ing religion, and as a theme for painting it received
no support or sympathy from the people as compared
with what it had received in the past. Again, thoughts
of a scientific and realistic nature came into the life
of the North and West. Before the seventeenth cen-
tury painting had been chiefly devotional; after that
it was dissipated into many branches,-landscape,
historical pieces, still-life, genre,-and with the weak-
ening effect we have noted. The first cause of the
decline of painting, then, may be set down as a lack
of sympathy consequent upon the disintegration of a
universal church-in other words, the Reformation.
In the Gothic period, when painting on glass was
common, the curé of St. Nixier at Troyes recorded
by an inscription the fact that he had caused to be
painted three windows "pour servir de catéchisme et in-
struction au peuple."* But after the Renaissance, paint-
ing for the instruction of the people was no longer
* Rio, Poetry of Christian Art,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 133
necessary. A surer method of teaching had come in
in the shape of printing, which advanced painting, at
first, by educating the people, and afterward helped
to destroy by superseding it. The church ceased to
be a school-house, and people read their Bibles in
another way than from the frescoed walls. The days
of teaching by pictures passed away, and with them
the knowledge and care for art on the part of the peo-
ple. Again, it was against the spirit of Protestantism
to embellish worship by decorating the interiors of the
churches. That savored too much of popery, and so
still another cause for the decline appears in the lay-
ing aside of monumental work. The great walls of
the churches and the public buildings where thou-
sands passed and repassed were now comparatively
bare. Easel-painting for the rich came into vogue;
and art, from being a feature of public interest, be-
came private, and, with a few exceptions in monu-
mental painting and the public galleries, it remains so
to this day.
It is easy to see that the contraction of the sphere
of art as a popular educator should result in a failure
of its influence; it is easy to see how lack of demand
should bring about lack of knowledge; and easier
still to see that, with popular sympathy withdrawn,
it should decline for want of support. Such in reality
was the case; and instead of art being universal, it now
passed with civilization into the various countries of
Europe, reflecting the peculiar thoughts and sympa-
thies of the different peoples. It became nationalized
within the nations. Thus in Germany and the Low-
134
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
lands, in perfect accord with the matter-of-fact people,
it represented commonplace life; in France it aped
the court-flippancy and mock-heroism of Louis XIV.;
in Italy, with the Counter-Reformation and the em-
bellishment of worship, it copied the religious art of
the Renaissance masters; and in Spain, where the
Roman Church was still mighty, it flourished.
under Velasquez and Murillo. This time, embracing
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however
important in a history of art, is not much to our
purpose herein, since it shows no well-defined move-
ment which may be traced. Though it produced
some great artists, it was a dormant period-a period
when reaction succeeded to action and little effort
prevailed. It was only with the close of the eight-
eenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century
that the tendency of the present time began to make
itself broadly felt; and we shall limit ourselves to illus-
trating what is called the "Nineteenth Century Move-
ment." In this we shall choose France for illustra-
tion, because she is typical of the age in every respect,
and all the influences of the past two hundred years
have manifested themselves in some form upon her
soil. Yet the movement was not confined to any one
people. It passed over all of North Europe, and was
felt with varying degrees of intensity in the different
countries. France, England, Germany, and the Low-
lands were chiefly affected, but France more than
any of the others.
A custom through usage becomes known as a law.
The law exists and serves its purpose. The people
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 135
to whom it was applicable and beneficial pass away.
New generations and races for whom the law was not
intended and whom it does not benefit come upon the
scene, and now the law survives its usefulness and is
oppressive. Still as a matter of tradition and inherit-
ance it is retained in force through the following cen-
turies, until at last humanity can endure it no longer.
A revolt takes place and the relic of antiquity is cast
aside. In the barbaric state we found man under a
leader possessed of absolute power; in semi-civiliza-
tion absolutism continues; in civilization the tradition
of inherited power still exists in the minds of the
autocrats. The king is the state, and the people
are his subjects. But in Europe after the close of
the Renaissance a new sentiment begins to form in
the minds of a long-suffering priest- and king-rid-
den people. Discovery, science, the diffusion of
learning, teach the doctrine of equality in mankind.
The priest has been cast off by some, and now the
feeling gradually grows that the state is the people,
and not the king. It rises higher and higher, yet is
still held in check by reverence for royalty. Stronger
and stronger becomes the assertion of rights on the
part of the people, until at last they can be kept down.
no longer and revolt begins. In England Charles I.
is executed, and later on James II. is driven from his
throne; America revolts from foreign rule; France
plunges into the Revolution by sending to the guillo-
tine both king and queen; and Germany begins the
War of Liberation. Government, which had begun
in the early ages with monarchy and autocracy, comes
136
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
in the nineteenth century to democracy and the rule.
of the people.
This Nineteenth Century Movement, which has re-
sulted in such radical changes, may be characterized
as the assertion of rights on the part of the people;
the popular assertion of man as a human being, and a
factor in the state entitled to consideration; the as-
sertion of the individual-or, in other words, individu-
alism. I now wish to indicate as briefly as possible
that this movement was not confined alone to the
political life and events of the time, but extended into
every department of human knowledge; that it
roused up science, made new philosophies, created
revolutions in social and intellectual life, overturned
old ideas of the drama and poetry, and stamped it-
self upon every branch of the fine arts. The whole
current of thought and action was changed by it;
and if we would understand the individual and sub-
jective painting of the present century, we must ex-
amine the cause producing it. It was an easy task to
show that in Egypt under the Theban dynasty, eight-
een hundred years before Christ, the individual was
of no more consequence than an animal; that the king
was supreme ruler, and was worshiped as a god; and
that art was purely objective, showing scarcely a trace
of individual modes of working or thinking. It will be,
I think, as easy to prove that in Europe eighteen hun-
dred years after Christ the old order was completely
reversed: that the people became the rulers; that the
man became a king in himself; and that his art be-
came but the expression of his freedom, the asser-
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 137
tion of his individualism. Let us examine this
further.
As the eighteenth century entered upon its last
quarter it found France politically and socially at
fever-heat. For a century and a half her people had
suffered under kingcraft and priestcraft; had been
overtaxed, enslaved, and down-trodden; and had en-
dured, not without murmuring, the subversion of law
and the distortion of regal power. When Louis XIV.
died, what little good had been in or about his life
and reign was interred with his bones, and the evil he
had done lived after him to become the inheritance of
his successors. His court had been artificially splen-
did, his battles and foreign diplomacy quite brilliant
in the old Machiavellian way, his patronage of his
friends and flatterers munificent, his administration
of the finance wretched, his government of the peo-
ple corrupt and oppressive in the extreme, and his dis-
regard of human right and justice of that outrageous.
nature which afterward brought forth the Eumenides
of the Revolution. A more worthless, corrupt, and
selfish king never sat a throne-except, perhaps, his
successor, Louis XV. No wonder the people turned
in haste from his death-bed to greet the new monarch
with "Vive le Roi !" Possibly they looked forward to
better times; but these did not come. Louis XV. and
the Du Barry were no better than Louis XIV. and the
Maintenon-if possible they were worse.
The op-
pression went on; the church under the profligate
Dubois lent its aid to the corruption of the throne;
the nobles by extravagance, insolence, and usurpation
138
PRINCIPLES of art.
continued the ill-treatment of the people. The army,
the navy, the state, became almost dismembered.
Financial embarrassments accumulated upon the
heads of the ministers. New and unbearable taxes
were levied to support the court splendor; famine
increased; trade languished; the arts lay dead. It is
the continual wonder of the student of history that
the French people tolerated oppression so long.
Their endurance was great, perhaps being induced by
years of degradation, a respect for royalty, and a fear
of the consequences of revolt. Those who spoke
boldly suffered as royal or noble caprice dictated.
The Diderots, the Voltaires, and the Rousseaus were
persecuted, imprisoned, banished; since the nobility,
for their own preservation, still held that the state
was the king, and he could do no wrong. Yet under
it all was the murmur of the people against the
king, against the church, against oppression—a mur-
mur destined to grow into the roar of the Revolution.
Then the king, worn out and satiated with every
sensual and selfish pleasure, stretched himself out to
die alone, and once more his butterfly courtiers
rushed away from his apartments to greet Louis XVI.
with "Vive le Roi!" And Louis XVI. might have
lived, and saved France even at that desperate hour
had he been anything other than a weak man, He
was disposed to do right, but the nobles ruled him.
He listened to bad advisers, and his reign was not very
different in result from that of his predecessors, save
that it ended abruptly with the Revolution. The
people at last asserted themselves; and when the
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 139
head of the king fell into the basket, no smooth-
tongued courtier saluted the new ruler. It was Sam-
son, the executioner, who shouted, "Vive la RÉPUB-
LIQUE!" and the mass of people without caught up
and echoed the cry. The new had vanquished the
old. The people, represented by a mad mob, were
in power. The Third Estate had come.
The English, quick to resent injustice, had long
before this revolted against their king, and it was the
teaching and example of England that afterward
inoculated France. The seventeenth century in its sec-
ond quarter found them quarreling with the Stuarts,
who claimed for the royal power all rights existent.
The quarrel resulted in Charles I. losing his head and
England coming under the protectorate of Cromwell.
The Restoration followed, and Charles II. was in turn
succeeded by James II., who attempted the revival of
Catholicism. The revolution of 1688 drove him from
the throne, and William and Mary came to power.
Notwithstanding these events of magnitude, it was
not until the eighteenth century that English writings
and ideas of the rights of man became disseminated
throughout France. They were then received with
avidity; and when the American War of Independence
had succeeded and the United States had been es-
tablished, further persuasion was unnecessary. The
French caught up the unextinguished torch and
rushed into the Reign of Terror.
With Germany the conditions were less favorable
to revolt than with England. In 1618 began the
horrors and miseries of the Thirty Years' War. Half
140
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the land was depopulated. Famine, misery, degrada-
tion, and consequent ignorance and brutality created
a national attenuation from which the land did not
recover until long after the peace of Westphalia.
During the succeeding period of lethargy and weak-
ness, Louis XIV. of France, to maintain "the balance
of power" (a political Machiavelism which he had
invented), began plundering the German provinces;
and when this had partially ceased, the petty wars of
succession between the various states kept the peo-
ple in a continual ferment throughout the first half
of the eighteenth century. It was not until Frederick
the Great came to the throne that Germany, in spite
of wars, began to rise; and not until 1812 that she
finally shook herself loose from the grasp of Napo-
leon and established the German Bund, which, though
not successfully carried out in all its conditions, never-
theless gave her a liberal government and a freedom
of the people.
Such were the political movements of the three
principal countries of Europe during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Their histories show the
direction of popular thought and the pushing forward
of the rights of the individual; yet there were under-
currents of influence acting upon and producing this.
impulse of the people. The chief of these was that
of education. Ever since the Middle Ages intellectual.
culture and scientific knowledge had been increasing,
and though with the fall of the Renaissance there was
a lull in the movement unfavorable to literature and
the arts, yet science pursued its way, and in France,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 141
at least, had a most potent influence. It helped to
break down the superstitions of the priesthood; it es-
tablished a spirit of inquiry, freeing mankind from
error; it created a basis upon which the mind might
reason to nobler things. But the achievements in sci-
ence and invention are so great and so many that I dare
not broach them, or even mention the names of those
who, like Laplace, Cuvier, Cabanis, and Lavoisier,
made the age brilliant by their discoveries.
Nor was the internal world or the kingdom of the
mind neglected, though French philosophy more near-
ly resembles metaphysics than it does the abstract syn-
thetic thought of the Germans. The first aggressive
philosophy of the eighteenth century in France was
the sensualism of Condillac. The "I think, therefore,
I exist" of Descartes was opposed by the half-Epicu-
rean, half-materialist Gassendi; but it was Condillac
who submitted an opposite mode of proof by found-
ing all knowledge on the experience of the senses.
He taught the natural history of human cognition
based on sensuous impressions, and was ably seconded
by Bonnet, Destutt de Tracy, and Cabanis. The
philosophy of Diderot and the Encyclopedists, of
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Condorcet, was mainly of a
politico-social nature. It was strongly marked by
the nineteenth-century movement, and opposed the
prevailing church, religion, society, and government.
As a body these writers were materialistic, and to
them may be attributed much of the atheism of the
French Revolution. Diderot's view of life, the world,
and the future, was as hard and mechanical as the age
142
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
surrounding and producing him. Voltaire was no
great philosopher, properly speaking, but his pleas
for liberty of conscience, his sneers and scoffs at
everything in general and the church in particular,
had great weight. Hugo said of him, not without
some justice, that he was "the devil's missionary to
mankind."Rousseau was a naturalist in the full
sense of the term, taught the idea of individual rights,
and in life proclaimed the need of the human heart
as opposed to the social conventions of the time.
Condorcet, great and noble, wrote against the priest-
hood and taught that all evil came from inequality.
The school of eclectic philosophy, called the "Doctri-
naire," founded by Royer-Collard, produced Cousin
and Jouffroy; the former teaching the rule and per-
sonality of man-God in him and in all things-a
seeming pantheism, which he, however, afterward
denied. His philosophy favors Kant, and is ideal-
istic. The late philosophy of France is the Positiv-
ism of Comte, which is too well known to call for
any explanation.
The revolt against established law and opinion, the
dissatisfaction with any and all restraint, was again
illustrated in the philosophical writings of England
and Germany, especially the latter. Kant began by
the critical examination of the sources of knowledge,
the objects of it, and the faculty of cognition itself.
After demolishing reason and the senses by negative
argument, he proceeded to build up a belief founded
upon ethics, which with him was inseparable from
religion. His object was to show the limits and
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 143
extent of the human mind; to confute dogmatism
when claiming too much, and skepticism when deny-
ing too much. His motto-Think and understand for
yourself, and have the courage of your own convic-
tions—was in singularly good keeping with the self-as-
sertion of the times. The Transcendental Idealism of
Kant was followed out, with some modifications, by his
pupil Fichte. The latter led German philosophy from
the subjective to the objective by the subjective itself,*
and formed the link between Kant and Hegel. His
philosophy, on the whole, was based upon the subject-
ive, and is pure and absolute idealism. Schelling fol-
lowed him, but Hegel diverged and established the
most comprehensive system of pantheistic philosophy
existent. In other respects both he and Schelling
maintain the absolute ideality of thought and being.
Hegelianism found a large number of followers; and
indeed with the beginning of the nineteenth century
so many different systems and men sprung into exist-
ence that it is quite impossible to characterize them
except by their individualism.
In literature, especially in poetry, the novel, and the
drama, Germany was the first of the nations to feel
the motion of the rising wave. Up to the time of
Frederick the Great the literature produced was imi-
tative of Racine and Corneille, or of the English con-
temporary writers. The real founders of classical
literature in Germany were Klopstock, Wieland, and
Lessing, who placed themselves in opposition to Gott-
* Saisset, Modern Pantheism.
144
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
sched. While at their height they were attacked by the
Sturm und Drang school which proclaimed hostility to
all rule and convention. The temper of the latter was
not shown toward poetry alone, but toward politics, re-
ligion, philosophy, art. Contempt for the church and
religion, contempt for the past and its opinions, impa-
tience of restraint, were followed by a mild fanaticism,
gloomy and disordered fancies, unhealthy imagin-
ings, vain longings for the beyond and the unattain-
able. The representative and critical advocate of the
Sturm und Drang writers was Herder, a man of great
influence in German literature. He was a reformer,
and gave to literature a vitality;* and he was likewise
a forerunner of Goethe and Schiller. The two latter
now appeared as the strong men of the new depart-
ure. No better drawings of the restless, moody, un-
satisfied hero of the age could possibly be made than
the character-studies of Götz von Berlichingen and
Karl von Moor. Both Goethe and Schiller were too
great to be merely local. They reflected universal life
and all movements. Goethe witnessed three stages of
intellectual development in Germany. In his early
days the historic past was the theme, and poets went
back to medieval times, to knighthood, crusades,
castles, Teutonic forests, and haunted mountains for
their subjects. In his maturer years the revived
antiquity of Winckelmann influenced him, as is shown
in Iphigenia in Tauris. In his latter years the effect of
the Sturm und Drang agitation, which had never died
* Gostwick, Outlines of German Literature.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 145
out entirely, came to the fore, calling itself Roman-
ticism; and Goethe again reflected this, in Wilhelm
Meister and Elective Affinities.* The literary history
of Schiller in this respect is akin to that of Goethe,
though he was a manner of man more after the Byron
kind and threw himself impetuously into the action of
the hour. The Romantic movement emanated from
Goethe and was undoubtedly influenced by the sub-
jective philosophy of Fichte, which proclaimed the
individual. In reality it was merely an emphasized.
and exaggerated continuation of the Sturm und Drang
restlessness. The aim of it was to find freedom of
thought and style as opposed to the conventions of
the classic. In this it went so far as to teach that the
world of art was not founded on nature, but was pro-
duced from inner consciousness like the philosophy
of Fichte and Schleiermacher. It repudiated all rules,
confused all forms of poetry, depreciated Lessing and
Wieland, exalted Goethe and passed over Schiller in
silence. Of this school Novalis and Tieck were the
leaders, the brothers Schlegel the critics, and Richter,
Musäus and Müller the principal followers. After-
ward a branch of it appeared in the Schwabian school,
of which Schwab, Uhland, and Chamisso were the
chiefs. The Romantic movement in English litera-
ture took place a little later, but was actuated by the
same motives as that of Germany. It was the revolt
of Burns, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, Shelley, and
Byron against the classic style of Pope, Addison,
Goldsmith, and Johnson.
* Scherer, German Literature.
7
146
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
In France the whole tendency of the seventeenth-
century literature was to establish elegance of form,
and to write according to "Aristotle and the rules."
How a drama was written was of more importance
than what was written. Such a course naturally
stifled spontaneity and encouraged the imitation
of the classic and heroic which prevailed with sin-
gular inappropriateness at the court of Louis XIV.
Aside from some indifferent work of La Fontaine and
Boileau there was little poetry that did not take the
form of the drama. Three distinguished writers-
distinguished more for classic style than anything else.
-led this department: Corneille, Molière, Racine.
Some attempt was made at romance and memoir writ-
ing during this period, and the historians Mézeray,
Fleury, Tillemont, and Maimbourg flourished. Style
and the influence of the French Academy are apparent
in the most of these productions; but the brilliancy
of sententious gems appears oftener in the works of
the moralists Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, the Port-
Royal controversialists, and the court preachers Bos-
suet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Fénelon. The beginning
of the eighteenth century was almost dead in litera-
ture; the men of the time of Louis XIV. had passed
away; and poetry, which under them had never been
anything but theatrical, now grew silly. The drama.
was little better under Voltaire, Diderot, and Crébil-
lon. It soared in an artificial air, though it could not
help but show something of what was passing in the
nation around it. The novel fared better, under
Rousseau, Le Sage, Prévost, St. Pierre, and Chateau-
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 147
briand, and became a mode of expressing ideas and
convictions. As the eighteenth century waned, people
began to awaken, and the writers echoed the polit-
ical and social discontent. The stinging wit and
sarcasm of Voltaire appeared in every department.
of literature; Montesquieu, a reformer rather than
a revolutionist, had already sent forth the Per-
sian Letters and the Spirit of Laws; and Rousseau
had produced his discourse on Inequality Among Men
and The Social Contract. Turgot, Malesherbes, and
Necker, with countless political writers, journalists,
and pamphleteers, appeared as the Revolution ap-
proached. In the last quarter of the century, tumult
and excitement, oppression and injustice, atheism and
fury, affected literature, making it fanatical, ill-con-
sidered, and ill-produced.
At last the storm broke; and such was its force that
it is not wonderful that, for the time being, it dis-
tracted attention from all other pursuits. After it had
partially passed, Napoleon declared that "the career
is [was] open to talent;" but it was some time before
"talent" could get itself in position to take advan-
tage of the new freedom.* Political, military, scien-
** Even before the Revolution, Diderot and minds like his
sought to break open this path. The Revolution itself and the
reign of Napoleon have been favorable to the cause; for if the
years of war allowed no real poetic interest to spring up, and were
consequently, for the moment, unfavorable to the Muses, yet a
multitude of free intellects were formed in this period, which now
in times of peace attain reflection and come forward as talents of
importance."-Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann, p. 187.
148
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
tific, and practical talent came first; but it was not until
the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century
that French literature and art responded to the Ro-
mantic movement which we have glanced at in Ger-
many and England. The movement in France, as in
the other countries, was but the expression of the pop-
ular spirit opposed to kingcraft, nobility, dogma, con-
vention, hard-and-fast law, tradition, historic prece-
dent. The typical man of the century is seen in the
Frenchman of this period. He will not be bound by
laws of any sort, but chooses to do as he pleases and
let the world judge him by his work. He ever appeals.
from a universal to an individual law applicable to
himself. He wishes to be judged by his own stand-
ard, not by the standards of the world. Listen to
Couture the artist: "My nature revolted against rule,
so I became one myself." This was the spirit of the
time. Every man was a law unto himself. That he
differed from other men was good; that he was self-
assertive was better; that he had the courage to act
upon his own beliefs was best of all, since it produced
individuality. In all departments of life throughout.
the leading countries of Europe this spirit awoke at
nearly the same time; and though it came to France
last, it nevertheless emanated directly from the peo-
ple, though some of its tendencies there were un-
doubtedly influenced by England and Germany.
The strong feature of the new movement in French
literature lay in its opposition to the style and thought.
of the monarchy and the more recent empire. Ro-
manticism was pitted against the classic, and eventu-
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 149
ally the former won the victory, but before that came
about there appeared forerunners from the old to the
new. Madame de Staël helped the transition by dif-
fusing cosmopolitan ideas. Chateaubriand, the father
of French Byronism, though no revolutionist, yet in
vague unrest, evident dissatisfaction, and choice of
subjects, forecast the coming change. Béranger had
more to do with natural and social than with romantic
themes; and had many properties of the older French
poets; but he also possessed a lyrical faculty, much
wit and genius, and a brilliant manner of expressing
himself. Lamennais, though a leader of influence,
was an excitable genius producing ill-regulated
flashes of beauty-a diamond in the rough. He
was revolutionary in spirit, and in his writings fa-
vored Romanticism by a natural style of expression.
Lamartine was still more pronounced in favor of the
new school and has been classed with them,* though
there were many classicisms attached to him. He
was an innovator in shades of color, inclined to senti-
ment, and was a free expresser of emotion.
These were some of the premonitors of Romanticism;
but the real founder and leader of the school, from its
beginning as a school up to his recent death, was
Victor Hugo. He, with Sainte-Beuve and Leroux
the critics, and a coterie of friends, first asserted the
new principles in periodical literature. "They would
have no unities, no arbitrary selection of subjects, no
restraints on variety of versification, no academically
* Van Laun, History of French Literature.
150
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
*
limited vocabulary, no considerations of artificial
beauty, and above all no periphrastic expression."'
L'ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?" was the only
canon of criticism tolerated. No standards, no com-
parisons, no Procrustean rules, no judgment of a
work save upon its own merits. The revolt in liter-
ary subject and expression not only in France but
throughout Europe was the result of the speculative
and philosophic side of man existing co-ordinate with
the democratic or combative side. Democracy de-
stroyed the old forms, and speculation built up the
new. The Werther-like subject of Romanticism ap-
peared everywhere. All the medieval past was
restored. Scores of poets looked to the East for
heroes, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Moore, Hugo,
Gautier, De Musset,-and, as we shall shortly see, the
painters Turner, Delacroix, Decamps, Fromentin, did
likewise. In expression French Romantic poetry was
well typified in the Orientales of Hugo, published in
1828, in which he threw down the gauntlet to the
classic. It was a studied break with the conventional
model in form and meter, and was intended to an-
nounce that form was but a means of expression and
should vary with the subject treated. Perfect freedom
was the creed of the Romanticists; and a man like
Hugo, of headlong, impetuous genius,—the modern
Angelo, as he has been called,-was well fitted to be
their leader. A deep and noble thinker, of gifted im-
*
Encyclopædia Britannica: Article on France.
† Victor Hugo, Les Orientales.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 151
agination and fancy, a master of many forms of verse,
he combined in himself all the phases of the movement
from beginning to end. His splendid abilities and
personality, together with the principles he set forth,
drew about him a circle of followers-poets, drama-
tists, novelists, critics.
Among the most gifted of these may be mentioned
the youngest of them all and the first to die*-Alfred
de Musset. The influence of Byron upon him was
potent (as indeed it was upon Hugo and the most of
the school), and in many respects he was of a nature
similar to that of the English poet. A bright genius
never regulated by judgment, dictated to by caprice,
and acting always from impulse, he dashed himself
to pieces against the realities of life. A new Eupho-
rion, he rose to dizzy heights only to fall into the
abyss below. His career is melancholy to contem-
plate, especially as the possibilities were so great.
As it was, he produced some most admirable poetry
-poetry which, in depth of passion, tenderness, and
often in lurid flashes of the terrible, has not been ex-
celled by any of the century. Count de Vigny
was influenced by Sir Walter Scott, and in some
respects scarcely belongs to the Romanticists. Ex-
quisite finish is characteristic of what little he pro-
duced. Barbier was a product of the Revolution,
and was a satirist chiefly. Sainte-Beuve and Gautier
were likewise poets of the school, though Sainte-
Beuve was better known as a critic, and Gautier as
* Van Laun.
Saintshury, French Literature.
152
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
A second group
a critic, essayist, and novelist.
of Romantic poets appeared later on, some of whom
are still living. They have followed out the teach-
ings of their predecessors, sometimes extravagantly,
but oftener with undisguised individuality. The
names of the leaders are Baudelaire, Banville, and
Leconte de Lisle.
The versatility of Hugo destined him to lead the
new movement in the drama as well as in poetry
proper; and it was the production of his Hernani in
1830 that raised such a storm of opposition from
Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne, and others. The new
drama was hostile to the classic, in form and spirit.
The old-time comedy and tragedy in measured verse
were pushed aside by the melodrama. In this depart-
ment, as in poetry, Hugo was full of power. Hernani
was soon succeeded by Marion de Lorme, Le Roi
s'Amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, and other dramas in which
tragic passion, striking situations, and concentrated
force were the main features. Before the production
of Hernani, Dumas the Elder, who, though not within
the inner circle of the Romanticists, yet nevertheless
was with them in style and subject, produced Henry
III., and followed up that success by Antony, Made-
moiselle de Belle-Isle, and other good acting plays.
Georges Sand, Mérimée, Gautier, De Musset, and even
Balzac, all attempted the drama with more or less
success, together with the more modern writers,
Ponsard, Augier, Feuillet, Labiche, and Sardou,
Of late years the tendency of French literature has
been in favor of the novel; and in this, again, Hugo
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 153
was the beginner with Notre Dame de Paris, a shifting
panorama of Parisian pictures of much force and
beauty of setting. It was not until thirty years after
that he produced Les Misérables and the Travailleurs
de la Mer. Dumas the Elder, of ability inferior to
Hugo and influenced by Sir Walter Scott, produced
in Monte Cristo, Les Trois Mousquetaires, and La Reine
Margot the typical novel of incident, which has
likewise been represented by Eugène Sue, Janin,
Erckmann and Chatrian, and Gaboriau. Balzac, in
his La Comédie Humaine, has given the opposite view,
or the novel of character-analysis. Another writer in
this line is Georges Sand. Her first novels, Indiana,
Valentine, Lélia, Jacques, aimed at the emotional and
the pathetic; in Spiridion she grew philosophic; and
in her masterpiece, Consuelo, socialistic. She wrote
with great ease and spontaneity, reflecting, in her
nearly one hundred novels, every phase and shade of
life. Few have equaled her in beauty of expression,
power of imagination, and keenness of insight.
Prosper Mérimée was also an analyst of motives and
a perfect master of French prose. His simplicity of
style is in striking contrast to the rich and even
luxurious manner of Gautier, who was an enthu-
siastic follower of Hugo and distinguished himself
in many branches of letters. His novels Le Roman
de la Momie and Le Capitaine Fracasse are marvels of
description and literary workmanship. De Musset
was also a contributor to novel-literature; and beside
him are Jules Sandeau, Charles de Bernard, and among
the later writers Feuillet and Flaubert. At the pres-
7*
154
PRINCIPLES of art.
ent time French fiction, like poetry and the drama,
has so many followers, in so many different styles, that
it is quite impossible to specify them. The original
impulse of the Romantic school has not died out, but
widened in its scope. The novels of to-day are but
the expression of individual thoughts and views, and
are as varying in this as the authors that produce
them. In all literature, with few exceptions, the
individualism of the century is apparent, and the
man and his work are almost synonymous and quite
inseparable.
We at last come to art, and have finally to show
that the movement of the century which we have cur-
sorily traced through politics, science, philosophy, and
literature affected in a like manner the architecture,
sculpture, and painting of the period. Architecture,
though from its limited nature not well calculated to
embody much of the designer's individuality, yet
within its limits reflected the now well-known
Romanticism. In the latter part of the eighteenth
century the revived classic style of Winckelmann
and others influenced it and resulted in a restoration
of the Greek. Schinkel and his followers in Ger-
many, Stuart and Revett in England, and Chalgrin
and Vignon in France, were the practical repre-
sentatives of the revival, and succeeded in erecting
some symmetrical and imposing structures wholly
inappropriate to the century. Opposition, however,
soon sprung up with Gärtner, Ohlmüller, Bürklein,
and others in Germany, and Lassus and Viollet-le-
Duc in France, who represented the new school, and
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 155
produced work founded on the Romanesque and
Gothic styles.* Since then, architecture has varied
in style with the popular wish, assimilating, adjusting,
reproducing different models, but showing no one
well-defined tendency. In this, though more limited
by nature, it is not unlike literature and painting,
and at least shows the inclination toward individual-
ism, if not always its accomplishment.
The classic revival in sculpture spread even farther
and wider than in architecture. In it the followers
of the antique were quite at home, and imitators of
Scopas and Praxiteles appeared without number.
Canova was the inaugurator of the revival, and he
was followed by Dannecker in Germany, Chaudet in
France, Flaxman in England, Sergell in Sweden, and
Thorwaldsen in Denmark. Some graceful, even
noble, pieces were produced by these sculptors; but
their work lacked spontaneity and was not based
upon any popular impulse. Opposition was the
natural result. Schadow of Berlin adopted realistic
portraiture, and was followed in that line by Rauch.†
Drake, Bläser, Fischer, Rietschel, became more indi-
vidual and assertive in their styles as they advanced,
and in Schwanthaler we find the representative of the
Romantic movement. In France the antique model
was violently opposed by the strict adherence to
nature of Pierre Jean David (commonly called David.
d'Angers) and the more moderate art of Rude and
Duret. In modern times, sculpture, like poetry and
* Lübke, History of Art, vol. ii.
† Ibid.
Ibid.
156
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
painting, is lawless within itself, and is dependent for
its success upon the genius and individual strength of
its producer.
The history of painting in the nineteenth century
is but an emphasized repetition of the history of lit-
erature. It followed the same course, and was even
more reflective of the age than the latter. Roman-
ticism in painting started in Germany about 1812;
and it would be an easy task to trace its course in
opposition to the classic there, as well as to a lesser
degree in England. But France stands first in the
world of modern art; and, as the movement is well
shown there, we will confine ourselves to its art-
history, and permit it to stand as an illustration of
the others. Even here we must be brief, and men-
tion only the leading artists. During the reign of
Louis XIV., painting, under Poussin, Le Sueur, and
Le Brun, like the drama of Corneille and Racine, and
in fact like everything in or about the court, aped the
classic and the heroic. With the king's death and
the beginning of the Orleans regency it became co-
quettish, affected, and simply amusing, lacking even
the dignity of the antique. Watteau, who led the
fashionable world of art by the nose, invented the
soubrette and the shepherdess, and catered to the
taste of the court by offering the gay, the airy, and
the frothy. Chardin painted humble life, and Greuze
the sentimental genre, both with good intent at least ;
while Boucher, a mannered and erotic painter, mir-
rored his licentious surroundings.
Jacques Louis David came next and brought
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 157
about a restoration of the classic, and gave to art a
respectable tone if not originality. The preference
for the antique of David was inspired by life at
Rome, by a contemplation of the excavated models
of Pompeii, and by a study of Winckelmann. Like
many another otherwise good painter, David was be-
witched by beauty of line and maintained the classical
conception. He was a good draughtsman, but a harsh
colorist and an unsympathetic thinker and painter.
His effects are theatrical rather than dramatic, tawdry
rather than substantial, imitative rather than origi-
nal. Art to him was a matter of the human form
beautiful, and all things else were subordinated to it.
It is the strongest criticism that has ever been passed
upon his work, that the form is there, but cold and
stiff in death-no life, no soul, no sentiment, no feeling.
'All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of
form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men,
women, and children-in our gardens and in our
houses; but let us love that other beauty, too,
which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the se-
cret of deep human sympathy."* That "deep hu-
man sympathy" was precisely what David lacked.
There was no correspondence between his art and
the thoughts of the people; he reflected little of con-
temporary life save in his portraits, and his objective
treatment dealt only with facts dead and cold cen-
turies ago. Still, for all that David lived in restored
Greek days, he had a mighty chorus. His influence.
* George Eliot, Adam Bede.
158
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
was most potent, and is felt to this day in the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts.
Of his pupils, Girodet exaggerated his style to the
grotesque, and Gros rebelled against him by his nat-
ural treatment of contemporary subjects, such as the
Napoleonic battles. But Gros was always fettered
by his classical education; and though he was at first
inclined to the Romantic subject, and as a battle-
painter was highly praised by Delacroix, yet in his
latter days he again came under the influence of
David, combated Romanticism, and fell away in
vigor of execution and influence upon his followers.
Ingres, another pupil, was an apostle of line. A be-
liever in Phidias and Raphael, he saw in nature little
but the nude figure, and in art little but the draw-
ing of it. He placed no dependence upon color or
tone, and it was upon this point that Delacroix con-
tended with him. His conception was of that cold
cast characteristic of the classic ideal; his subjects.
were more modern and Romantic, but the render-
ing of them was remarkable for insipidity of back-
grounds, lack of textures in surroundings, unreal
qualities of draperies, etc. During his life he was
considered an apostate by the Davidians, and praised
not a little by the opposing Romanticists. Horace
Vernet, another battle-painter and the painter of Na-
poleon, chose still more modern subjects, and was in-
clined in his earlier works toward Romantic treat-
ment. Instead of cold regularity he strove to paint
life as he saw it, and in this he was not unsuccessful.
Good draughtsmanship and a certain amount of fire
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 159
and dash were his chief excellences. His son-in-law,
Delaroche, the pupil of Gros, stood half-way between
the two factions, conciliating the Classicists by good
drawing and excellent composition in historical
pieces, and the Romanticists by his choice of subject
and the melancholy seriousness of his ideas. He was
eclectic in his art, and in fact became the leader of a
school of that name. His paintings, such as the Exe-
cution of Lady Jane Grey, the Deathbed of Queen
Elizabeth, and Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles
I., are well known, and attract the masses by their
striking subjects, dramatic force, and fair finish; but
to the artist and the connoisseur they are lacking
in breadth of treatment and the qualities are not
good.
The work of Géricault was a decided protest
against the traditional methods of treating life in art.
Though receiving his training from classical masters,
he inclined strongly to the Romantic side, and his
work, such as the Shipwreck of the Medusa exhibited
in the Salon of 1819, antagonized the Davidians and
the École des Beaux-Arts, by whom he was imme-
diately opposed. Unfortunately he died too early to
realize the leadership of the new school, and that
honor fell to Delacroix. Géricault, though not ex-
celling as a colorist, was possessed of a strong imag-
ination, and was remarkable for the harmony of the
dramatic and the purely pictorial.* Oftentimes his
enthusiasm and the rapidity with which he worked
* Chesneau, Les Chefs d'École, Louis David, Gros, etc.
160
principles of art.
led him to the point of the theatrical; but he lived in
an epoch of revolution, was hysterical and excessive
by nature, and died before his youthful energy had
been tempered by the prudence of age. Ary Scheffer
(a Dutchman by birth, but French by adoption),
whose name has been associated with those of Géri-
cault and Delacroix as a leader in Romanticism, was
in reality more of a poet than a painter. The influ-
ence of poetry upon his painting is apparent in his
subjects taken from Byron and Goethe. The best
that can be said for him is that his sentiment shows
the impulse of the time. His paintings affect the
melancholy and religious view of life, and are well
enough drawn, but lack color and contrasts of light
and shade.
Romanticism as opposed to the classic; subjective
treatment as opposed to objective treatment; spon-
taneity, life, color, feeling, passion, as opposed to the
exact, the cold, and the heartless, in painting, found
their first strong advocate in Eugène Delacroix. For
the leader of a revolt against established conventions
Delacroix was wonderfully temperate in his art; yet
new and strange enough to cause great opposition
from those who could see nothing in a picture but
form and line. It was in drawing that Delacroix
chiefly sinned; and Ingres and his following could not,
or would not, see that other features, such as passion,
color, or strong individuality, might more than com
pensate for the fault. Yet it is not wonderful that
his contemporaries failed to comprehend him. He is
a painter hard to understand even at this day with
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 161
half a century of years for perspective, and he could
never be popular with those who look to a picture
for an imitation of nature. He cannot be measured
or judged by separate qualities, but must be taken in
his entirety. Like Tintoretto, he sought out the har-
mony of the whole rather than the excellence of the
part. Art with him meant the expression of a feeling,
an impression, a state of mind in glowing color; and
unless he be viewed in the light of his own con-
ception, he is quite incomprehensible. Primarily
Delacroix asserts and explains himself by color; and
with all that he tells us of his own mind, there is still
something withheld. One feels in him that reserve
power characteristic of genius which always pauses
on the proper line, nor risks a fall by extravagance.
Powerful in imagination and strongly individual and
dramatic in conception, he chose for his themes the
terrible and the passionate, like the novelists and
poets of his time. His model was Byron, and he
painted much of the pictorial side of Byronism in such
works as the Barque of Dante, the Shipwreck from
Don Juan, the Massacre of Chios, and the Murder of
the Bishop of Liége. As a colorist he ranks with the
first artists of the century; and indeed color was his
strong feature, though he excelled also in breadth of
handling. His defective drawing and disregard of de-
tail were but sacrifices to the power gained in breadth.
Many of his pictures are mere feats of strength; but
in his best works his skill is subordinate to his expres-
sion of feeling or passion. Neither he nor Géricault
nor any of their followers founded a school in the
162
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
strict sense of the term, except in their general oppo-
sition to the classic. Romanticism in art as in litera-
ture prescribed no rules and established no canons.
It simply advocated independence; so the followers of
the movement, differing widely from one another,
must be judged by independent standards. Yet the
influence of David and Delacroix, respectively, may
be traced in the art of to-day, though the lines of dis-
tinction are fast fading away into an individualism
consistent with the age in which we live.
If Delacroix was epic and dramatic, Decamps, who
followed him, was simply lyric, but not unworthy of
praise on that account. He was not so great in im-
agination as his predecessor, and was more given to
experimenting with methods; still, judged by himself,
we shall find him an exquisite colorist, an original
thinker, and very much of a poet. He was the discov-
erer of the Orient as a subject for pictorial art, and all
the oriental pictures of modern times have emanated
from followers of Decamps in that department.
Countless people had seen the East before Decamps;
but when he placed upon canvas what he had seen
there, though the likeness was recognized, it appeared
different from what they had seen. It was simply
the East seen through Decamps' eyes, for he never
painted a picture that did not mirror his own indi-
vidual and peculiar views. In this he was independ-
ent of both David and Delacroix. He was original
oftentimes, at the expense of art, and his technique was
a language entirely his own.* In subjects he chose
* Rosenberg, Geschichte der Modernen Kunst.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 163
The
chiefly the genre-sometimes the grotesque genre-
landscape with figures and animals; views in Syria,
Asia Minor; streets in Turkish towns; court-interiors,
caravans, travelers,-Oriental life in general.
most striking feature of his treatment of these was the
magical effect produced by his light. This, with ex-
quisitely-modulated color, good atmospheric qualities,
and breadth of handling, brings before the spectator
all the spirit, warmth, and richness of Eastern life.
In light lay his great strength; and, strange as it may
appear, his use of it was quite regardless of what is
known as the law of "values;"* yet this was in per-
fect accord with his general handling, which aimed at
effect rather than exact realization.
Another poet-painter who caught the spirit of the
Orient, chiefly the desert and its inhabitants, was
Fromentin. He followed Decamps, and was like
him and yet not like him. Both were somewhat
influenced by others, yet both were original. De-
camps' individuality lay more in his manner of
expression; Fromentin's, in his manner of thinking
and feeling. The latter was more imaginative, more
poetic, more refined and delicate in sensibility. He
saw in the desert something besides the facts of sand
and stone and knoll. He saw and portrayed the in-
tense heat, the waving air, the color, the shrouded
Bedouin, the flying horse. The deeper meaning,
the essence, of the desert was made apparent. Fro-
mentin had the poet's eye for the poetic, and the
* Fromentin.
164
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
artist's eye for the picturesque. These, combined.
with a splendid gift of composition and a subtile feel-
ing for motion,* enabled him to produce some noble
work, wherein the warmth, the action, the poetry
of the desert and its nomadic inhabitants are por-
trayed to the life. His figures belong to their land-
scape, the landscape to the figures; his tones of
color, true to the East, roll into perfect harmony,
affording no sharp contrasts; his light, mellowed
by heat, becomes atmospheric yet luminous. Like
Decamps, his technical education was somewhat
neglected; that is to say, he often lacked in draw-
ing; but the action of his falconers and dashing
horsemen is so splendid that it seems ungracious to
cavil over minor defects.
Corot, the father of French landscapists, should per-
haps have been mentioned before Fromentin, whom he
influenced somewhat in treatment of color. He was
emphatically a poet of light; and his pictures are but
the peculiar views of a genius who overlooks the
commonplace and the close at hand, to revel in
distant effects. He seldom chose to see the nature
that the eyes of the many saw; he seldom painted
out the familiar accessories of a landscape. A paint-
brush and a canvas in his hands were but means
to reveal to the world a hidden significance. He
strove not to imitate or reproduce, but to translate
what he saw and felt,-to convey his own ideas and
impressions. The leading passion of his life was the
* Gonse, Eugène Fromentin,
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 165
poetry of the morning light. To express this was his
aim; and in his nobler paintings, such as The Orpheus,
he most fully accomplished it. Yet he was not, and
is not now, a popular artist; perhaps for the very
good reason that his thoughts are not commonplace,
and his vision is too far-reaching for ordinary eyes to
follow him. That his works command large prices.
and are talked about a great deal in fashionable
circles is no indication of his being appreciated.
Many of his buyers
"Talk of beauties which they never saw,
And fancy raptures which they never knew."
Yet Corot was a great painter-one of the greatest
landscapists the world has ever seen-and in art was
an interpreter of nature comparable to Newton in
science. That he saw differently from others is no
proof that he saw not truly. He comprehended Na-
ture as an influence: most people have not advanced
beyond the idea that she is a form. He understood
Nature as a depth lighted by a sun: most people
understand her as a surface against which objects are
thrown like a silhouette. He understood that Nature
to the eye is not a fixed fact, but a fleeting impres-
sion: most people understand her as a vast piece of
still, life to be imitated, or a catalogue of facts to be
photographed on canvas.* With such a conception
it was quite impossible that he should treat facts
minutely. He passed by detail and concentrated
* Atlantic Monthly, July, 1868.
166
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
strength on the sky and its light; all else was merely
accessory and suggestive. In his pictures grass and
trees are blurred and shadowy, as though swayed by
the wind; figures are sometimes introduced in a
vague way, showing the slight classical tinge im-
parted to his art by his master, Bertin; and his
foregrounds are almost always roughly sketched in.
Though peculiarly original in his ideas and individual
in his methods of expression, Corot was nevertheless
influenced, in common with his contemporaries, by
Constable and Bonington, who exhibited some of
their works in Paris in 1825. His treatment at first
was in detail with fine finish, but he found later in
life a broader and freer style that more fully realized
his aims. He painted a great number of pictures,
many of them for commercial purposes alone, which
are, as might be expected, quite unworthy of him.
A comparison between Corot and Rousseau can
scarcely be instituted. They were both great, but in
different ways.
Corot limited himself in subject,
while Rousseau, many-sided and versatile, depicted.
almost every phase of earth, air, sky, and water.
Luxuriance of power seemed the peculiar inheritance
of the latter, and he possessed that faculty of hand-
ling landscape form in mass only to be compared
with Michael Angelo's command of the figure. Few
landscapists have equaled him in rendering foliage.
A tree to Rousseau meant something round, not a
flat outline; it meant depth and volume as well as
surface; and his broad handling and solid painting
were well calculated to reveal this truth. In color he
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 167
is generally marked by a warmth and richness;
though in this he is variable, for ir. his many render-
ings of nature he has exhausted the chromatic scale
again and again. Diaz, a Spaniard by birth, but still
belonging to the French school of painters, is perhaps
inferior in his landscapes to Corot and Rousseau, yet
by no means an inferior artist. He had his own way
of seeing nature, and he generally interpreted it in a
sympathetic and poetic manner. His reputation has
been much injured by hasty work and by forgeries of
his style. In his best pieces the handling of light in
wood-interiors is marvelously effective, however dis-
torted it may be. As a colorist he appears to better
advantage in his figure-compositions. Daubigny, a
painter showing much poetic beauty in his gray
lights of evening on the Seine and Marne; Jules
Dupré, a painter possessed of strength and feeling;
Troyon, a painter of landscape with cattle; and
Courbet, the so-called "realist"-who, by the way,
never "realized" anything but the individuality of
Courbet-may be mentioned among the prominent
French landscapists.
Of the figure-painters profound in sentiment, Mil-
let, the poet-painter of peasant-life, stands preeminent.
Like all true profundity, Millet's work is devoid
of obscurity, and in fact the simplicity and directness.
of his thoughts constitute their chief charm. A
peasant born, he told with unaffected pathos what
he had seen and experienced in humble life.
Though dealing with the commonplace, and telling
what he knew with a broad and at times almost
168
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
careless brush, Millet was never coarse and brutal
like too many of the Dutch genre painters, and never
lacked in refined sentiment. What Robert Burns was
to English poetry Millet was to French art. They
both described the "simple annals of the poor," their
homely joys and sorrows, their loves and labors,
their faiths and humble longings. But Burns was
more revolutionary in spirit than Millet. Much
modern criticism has been written to place Millet in
opposition to the rich and the proud, and to show in
his paintings a design to depict suffering and oppres-
sion; but in life he denied this, and his art does not
show such an intent. His great masterpiece, The
Sower, is not a picture of the down-trodden peasant,
but of the hero of labor. Against the high sky-line
in the evening twilight the figure of the Sower with
his rhythmic motion grows almost gigantic in his
representation of the toiler of the fields. He moves,
the embodiment of manly dignity and power, brave
in heart, humble in spirit, true to God. If The Sower
represents the nobility of toil, The Angelus must
personify the creed of the peasant's undying faith.
Nothing could be simpler or more beautiful than the
picture of these two figures pausing from labor in the
fields with bowed heads, while on the air of sunset
from the distant church-tower come the chimes of the
Angelus. Were it greater in theme it would be sub-
lime; yet, as it is, its pathetic beauty has drawn tears
from many a beholder. Such were the themes and
thoughts set forth by Millet, not as a revolutionist, but
as an interpreter of the nobility in the life about him.
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 169
Technically he was not overstrong in drawing, though
handling form with splendid effects of motion. In
textures and qualities he was much better, and there
is a wonderful charm and sense of feeling in his deep,
rich tones of color. He was most emphatically a man
with a mission to deliver, and he delivered it in a
truly noble manner.
Jules Bréton is a painter who has worked on lines
parallel in point of subject to those of his contem-
porary, Millet; but he is not so great an artist.
He lacks Millet's imagination and poetic feeling,
howbeit such splendid work as he has exhibited in
his Evening at Finistère contains much beauty of
sentiment. He is a most excellent technician, and dis-
plays it to great advantage in his figures of peasant-
girls going to and coming from work in the fields,
with which we have all become familiar. Edouard
Frère has also depicted scenes from humble life simi-
lar to those of Millet and Bréton; and that, too, with
delicacy and tenderness. Among the younger
artists of to-day the blue-frocked and wooden-shoed
peasantry has become a stock article. It was to be
expected that the leaders should have imitators.
The painters we have thus far mentioned have been
more or less influenced by the Romantic movement,
though thoroughly original and peculiarly themselves.
Among those who cling more fondly to art-traditions
and show the influence of classical teaching may be
mentioned, first, Gérôme. He is a clever artist, exact
and intellectual, and tells a story exceedingly well.
In addition to his cleverness, his subject chosen is
8
170
PRINCIPLES OF ART,
usually of a gladiatorial, heroic, or dramatic nature,
and to this last feature as much as anything may
be ascribed his popularity. He is not undeserv-
ing of it in many respects, for he is a superior tech-
nician, a good composer, and a consummate modei-
er. His shortcomings may be briefly noted. First,
he is not a great originator or creator. Second, his
abilities are of a superficial nature, and his charac-
ters are empty, hard, and cold, possessing no great
thought, life, or sentiment. Third, his color is often
unpleasant, not to say at times rankly bad. Cabanel,
another follower of the classic and the École des Beaux-
Arts, is even more inwardly empty than Gérôme; and
Hébert is religiously melancholy and classically cold.
The most modern advocate of form is Bouguereau,
than whom a more correct and perfect draughtsman
never lived. Unfortunately there is nothing to his
art but the perfection of line. He is not a good
painter of flesh or of draperies, possesses not a spark
of feeling or of poetry, and in imagination is utterly
lacking. It must not be inferred that these last-
named artists are strict Davidian classicists. They
have lived in the present century, and have been in-
fluenced by its tendencies, perhaps unconsciously; so
that, though professing rule and tradition, they are
nevertheless quite independent of them.
Aside from the painters in whose work certain in-
fluences are apparent, there are a number of artists in
France, like Meissonier, Vollon, Bonnat, and Carolus.
Duran, in whom only the individualism of the cen-
tury may be traced. In no country is the art of to-
ART EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, ETC. 171
day subject to conventional rules, notwithstanding the
École des Beaux-Arts at Paris still affects the classic.
The criticism of the age in art, as in literature, is
placing more liberty in the hands of the individual,
and making the man and his work inseparable. The
result is that to-day an artist succeeds not so much
by his adherence to school formula and graven law as
by his own spontaneity and genius.
Let us now see further whether this individual and
subjective art, which we have tried to prove in perfect.
accord with the nineteenth-century spirit, may not be
shown to be theoretically as well as historically in
harmony with this moving spirit of our time.
PART II.
ART IN THEORY.
CHAPTER I.
ART AND ITS AIM.
In the first part of this book we have traced the
changes in art that have taken place with the men-
tal development of man. We have traced that art
through many stages of its progress, each stage re-
flective of the time and civilization producing it. We
have seen its standards shift and vary, producing dis-
similar yet none the less genuine art. To attempt
a definition or to formulate a theory that should ex-
plain it all upon one basis is an obvious impossibility
which we will not essay. Art is what its age and its
environment make it; and if it be spontaneous it is.
true art, no matter whether it conform to the line of
Raphael and the color of Titian or not. The Dutch
painters cannot be tried by the laws of Leonardo and
Michael Angelo; nor the modern French sculptors
estimated by the methods of Phidias and Praxiteles.
There is and can be no law applicable to all alike.
174
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
They are separate, distinct, individual, and must be
judged by their own impulses and methods. As for
ourselves, we live in the nineteenth century; and I
will endeavor to set forth a theory regarding con-
temporary art (noting that part of it only which re-
lates to painting, and using the other arts by way of
illustration) which shall show what I conceive to be
its essential basis, its elements, and its effective ex-
pression.
In defining what painting is, and what should
properly be its aim, I cannot begin better than by
offering negative arguments. If we clear the ground
by learning first what it is not, perhaps we shall be
better able to understand what it is.
AN IMITATION OF NATURE.—And first we must deal
with the popular fallacy that art is an imitation of
nature. Undeniably a large number of the uncritical
have but one standard by which they judge of a
painting, viz., the closeness of its approach to re-
ality. To these people all artistic considerations,
such as good grouping, fine coloring, strong technique,
not to speak of poetic conceptions, are swept away
before the fiat, "It does not look natural!" The
loiterer in a picture-gallery will hear this from his
neighbors on every side; for the veriest tyro knows.
that painting is classed among the imitative arts, and
from that the popular reasoning is, naturally enough,
the closer the imitation the better the work.
the uncritical are all excellent judges of nature in
their own estimate, and though willing to admit with
And
ART AND ITS AIM.
175
charming modesty that they know nothing whatever
about art, yet they all "know whether a thing looks
like anything they have ever seen before." Strange
is it not?-that these believers in nature should
be invariably looking for something they have seen
before, and never think. to look for something the
artist may have seen! What brings them to the
gallery-to see the blue sky and the sunshine they
have just left? Why do they read a book—to learn
something they already know? Why do they at-
tend a lecture-to be told again why the apple.
falls to the ground? Some there are who are pleased
with the reiteration of a well-worn theme, but there
are others who go abroad to gain new ideas. And
this is the object of genius in any department-to
point out, not what men know already, but what
they do not know; to point out what genius, by rea-
son of superior intelligence and keener vision, alone
may know. But the nature-critic does not think of
this. Like many another he is wedded to the past
and bounded by convention. His standard of judg-
ment is an inheritance of the ages handed down from
father to son. It was established by the ancients,
and respect for antiquity has preserved it. Indeed,
if we would examine the matter we should find that
it is to the teaching of the past that the present is
largely indebted for the art-fallacy of imitation.
To the many, a time-worn maxim or proverb is a
strong argument; an ancient idea, a truism; and a
tradition or superstition, a historic fact. Thus the
advice of Hamlet to the players, "Hold the mirror.
176
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
up to nature," has been put forth again and again
as an argument to uphold nature's most stupid and
commonplace things (and she is just as stupid and
commonplace in some respects as art), when in re-
ality neither Hamlet nor his players before or since
Shakspeare's day, nor even Shakspeare himself,
ever literally or imitatively held the mirror up to
nature, or ever attempted to do so. So, again, the
ancient tradition regarding Holbein that, before he
left Basle, in order to show his ability as an artist he
painted a fly on the forehead of a portrait so exactly
like nature that the owner tried to brush it away;
the numerous stories told regarding landscapes in
studios that people have mistaken for windows look-
ing out on nature; the portraits that have been mis-
taken for their originals; the classic traditions regard-
ing Parrhasius deceiving the birds with his painted
grapes, and Apelles deceiving Parrhasius with his
painted curtain, have become matters of faith with
some people, and prove to them beyond questioning
that the object of it all is to delude the spectator
into believing that he sees the real thing instead of a
pictorial representation of it. Moreover, the writings.
of many celebrated critics have so harped upon
"truth to nature" that readers have grown to think the
term synonymous with "imitation" notwithstanding
there is hardly one of these critics, not even Quatre-
mère de Quincy or Mr. Ruskin, who does not rank
imitation as the lowest and the most contemptible
form of art. The whole course of art-education in
the past has leaned toward a belief in it. Livy, Lu-
ART AND ITS AIM.
177
cretius, Diderot, Hazlitt, Baumgarten, have advocated
it, and the great argument always brought up in its
favor is the precedent of early art. True, early art
was an imitation of nature, and some of the products
of Greece, and even of the Renaissance, inclined toward
it. And so in those earlier days Zeus was the ruler
of all, the earth was flat, and the stars were the lamps
of the gods; but none of these ideas are applicable to
the civilization of the nineteenth century. I have
attempted to show this in the preceding pages; yet
the teaching of the past has a firm root in the popu-
lar mind, and historic conclusions are perhaps ill-
fitted to dislodge it. Let us question it in another
way.
If imitation is the object of art, why do we prefer
the sightless eyes and white surface of the marble,
which never could be deemed a fac-simile of nature,
to the flesh-colored, carbuncle-eyed statues of saints
in the churches of Italy? The old ecclesiastical robes
in which they are dressed, the position, look, size, and
form, are life-like even to deception; yet they give us
nothing but a shudder.* Why do we prefer the
dusky bronze, that could not deceive a child, to the
Madame Tussaud wax figure, which may deceive
almost any one? The one is our admiration, the other
our aversion. Why do we prefer a portrait by Van
Dyke in Windsor Castle to the portrait of Denner in
the Louvre? The one is far from literal realization;
the other is as near it as is possible for skill of hand
* Taine, Philosophy of Art.
8*
178
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
to produce. Every tint and reflection, every fact,
even to a hair on the eyelid, a pimple on the flesh, or
the blue veins dimly traced under the skin, are decep-
tively set forth in the latter work; the head almost
protrudes from the canvas: yet we do not like it.*
True, it makes us wonder; but our wonderment is of
the kind we experience in looking at the mechanism
of a tiny watch, or the Declaration of Independence
engraved on a silver coin. Again, if imitation is our
wish, why do we not like the photograph better than
the etching, the colored photograph better than the
painting? No hand, however skilled and patient, can
equal the positive record of the camera. If its prod-
uct were as satisfactory as the painting, there would be
no further need for the artist. He would pass away
with the mechanic whose handicraft is superseded by
machinery. "What would be the use of poets if
they only repeated the record of the historian ?"†
What the use of the artist if he but aped the rôle
of a naturalist and unsuccessfully attempted to rival a
machine? But mechanical work is unsatisfactory, and
for the very good reason that as soon as literal copy-
ing begins, the idea of the artist evaporates and only
the record of fact remains. Note this, again, in the
reproduction of masterpieces: of how much value to
us as works of art in themselves are the copies of the
old masters which we possess by the thousands?
And why is it that they have so little interest for us,
aside from history, since they are literal transcripts of
* Taine.
+ Goethe.
ART AND ITS AIM.
179
the originals? Why, simply because they are literal
transcripts-imitations. They are only the chroni-
cles of facts; the spirit of the master is not ap-
parent.
Imitation began with man the savage; and had it
always continued, doubtless we should still be in the
savage state, making flint arrow-heads, living in caves,
and subsisting by the chase. It is the first instinct,
appearing before reason. A boy's great ambition is to
be like his father; but as he grows he becomes more
individual and personal, and then, and then only, does
he attract our admiration by the display of originality.
Nothing is easier than copying; nothing more dif-
ficult than creating. Such has long been the judg
ment of the world; and hence the painter who is an
imitator never receives aught but condemnation. We
despise him as heartily as we do those who affected
the styles of Phidias and Michael Angelo. We like
not the counterfeit presentment of another person in
the painter, but rather his own individuality if he pos-
sess any. Nor, again, do we like the picture which
is an exact copy of nature, for, again, the counterfeit
is repellent. Of what use for an artist to minutely
reproduce for us the same sky, trees, and water that
we can all of us see by a glance out of a window?
It fills no need and answers no purpose. But if he
can place upon canvas some quality or phase of that
landscape hidden to our eyes because we possess not
the far sight of genius; if he can tell us what he sees,
feels, or thinks about that landscape, then perhaps
we shall possess a picture, a creation, or interpreta-
180
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
tion, and we shall value it, not for its faithful du-
plication or even truth to nature, but because it pos-
sesses the artist's individual thought. Before this lat-
ter quality mechanism disappears. We see and are
brought to know facts, to be sure, but facts transposed
by the hand of man so as to convey a meaning. It is
this that gives interest to a work of art; and if the
nature-critics cannot appreciate the artist's concep-
tion, but prefer the imitation, it does not prove the
latter to be the better art, but rather that the
critics' minds are in an unnecessary state of igno-
rance.
Yet, strangely enough, the demand for this exact
conformity to nature does not extend so much to poetry
and the drama, although they with painting and sculp-
ture are classified under the imitative arts. People
can admire the rhymed bombast of Scott and Byron;
can listen well pleased to the Ancient Mariner speak-
ing as never human being spoke; and again they can
find fault with Wordsworth for transcribing the talk
of peddlers, wagoners, and idiot boys precisely as it
might have occurred in life. They can sympathize
with Othello, a distracted Moor who wanders about
talking English blank-verse; and they can weep with
Lear, who, though in a drenching storm, in agony of
spirit and fire of mind, scatters imagery and simile
about him in a most reckless manner. We hear no
criticism passed upon Faust, Marguerite, and Mephis-
topheles discoursing most eloquently in rhythmical
cadences and rhymed couplets, though we know well
enough that not one of them would naturally talk in
ART AND ITS AIM.
181
that manner; nor is objection made to Dante, Mar-
lowe, or Milton putting purely human words into the
mouths of satanic people.
The same is true, again, of the players and the
stage. From the days of the Blackfriars theater
to the present time, from Garrick and Betterton to
Booth and Salvini, no actor of any note has ever
attempted to portray an imitative Othello. Such an
attempt would be hissed from the boards for its
stupidity or brutality. The actor, as well as the
playwright, is a creator, not an imitator, and he can-
not choose but give his own conception of the char-
acter. These Othello-conceptions of the actors vary
widely; yet were nature reproduced they would not
vary at all. But the mirror is never literally held up
to nature, because simple reality in art is flat, stale,
and unprofitable. What makes the greatness of
Shakspeare, unless it is that he lifts his characters
out of the common lot, and in the masks of ordinary
men puts forth the thoughts of extraordinary men?
He took Richard, Macbeth, Romeo, and Lear,-mere
skeletons upon which some facts of story hung,-
and upon them builded his own thoughts, and into
them infused his own spirit. Sweep Shakspeare out
of existence and the four sink back into commonplace
factors of history, possessing little interest. Stifle hist
imagination by making him only a recorder of facts,
and all that is Shakspearean vanishes instantly. The
players are not unlike the dramatist in this. They
take the lines spoken by a character and use them to
reveal a new conception. Make of them but parrot-
182
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
like reciters of sentences, and stage representation
degenerates into "words, words, words."
Now turn to the novel for one more analogy.
Have the great novelists in any sense of the word
been imitators of nature? Could they be so if they
chose? Would it be possible, or has it been pos-
sible, for any of them to escape individual bias
and peculiar ways of viewing and seeing life? And,
after all, what is art but a point of view, and what is
genius but a way of looking at things?* Bear in
mind the difference in conception while I ask, Is the
world in the habit of seeing in every-day life, or
has it ever seen, a young Werther, a Jean Valjean, a
Lady Dedlock, a John Halifax, an Adam Bede, a
Donatello, or a Harvey Birch? True, these people.
resemble humanity, and so did their authors; but
both characters and authors are but a handful from
the millions. The characters are not such persons as
the world is accustomed to seeing, but the individ-
uals seen only from the point of view of genius. The
true novelist well knows that an array of natural
facts does not constitute a novel; nor a photograph of
a type, a hero. Precisely like the dramatist he uses
the forms of nature only as a frame upon which to
build. He takes and makes people as the mouth-
pieces of his own ideas. To imitate is not the aim of
either novelist or dramatist. They both wish to
convey through characters their own ideas of life.
The whole history of literature shows that this can-
* Henry James, Jr., in International Review, April, 1880.
ART AND ITS AIM.
183
not be accomplished by exactly reproducing nature,
save in the exceptional cases of great historic charac-
ters possessed of genius equal to the novelist or the
dramatist and this is one reason why historic tales
and plays are written.
The truth is that the bare facts of ordinary exist-
ence possess little interest for us.
They are the
Reality is the
very things we long to get rid of.
humdrum of every-day life. It is around us, about
us, within us. It lies down with us at night; it rises
with us in the morning; it follows us through the
day. Waking or sleeping it is beside us. At last,
when heartily sick of its endless detail, it is a relief
and a pleasure for us to turn to art. In it we forget
ourselves, our surroundings, and our thoughts. We
look at a picture, we go to the theater, we take up
a novel or a poem, not to see what we would fain
forget, not to be dragged back again to matter-of-fact
life, for there is no more pleasure in contemplating
the reality of some other life than there is in our own,
-but to lose ourselves for the time in the thoughts
and views of others, who see farther and stronger
than we do and who from behind the outer show of
nature bring forth to our view something nobler and
more beautiful than we have ever seen or imagined.
Their creations and imaginations please us because.
they are above and beyond us; but as soon as the
conception is taken away the skeleton alone remains,
and we turn aside indifferent.
As a matter of fact, the idea of imitation has had
little effect upon the producers of art, though much.
184
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
upon the beholders and critics of it. In no depart-
ment either in sculpture, painting, poetry, or the
drama have the masters been in any sense imitators.
Those who tried to literally "mirror nature" have
long since been forgotten, and only the creators live.
Some of these have been known as "realists;" but
we may presently learn that there is a difference
between truth to nature and literal copying, and we
may also learn that art consists in the artist, his
manner of seeing things, his thoughts, and his expres-
sion, and, as Sir Joshua puts it, not in the painting of
cats and fiddles so finely that they look as though
they could be taken up.
TRUTH TO NATURE.-The belief that truth to na-
ture is the aim of art is not so much confined to the
public generally as to the dilettante, the amateur, the
critic, and a large body of professional artists. The
word "realism" is often used to describe it, though
all of the so-called "realists" are by no means believ-
ers in literal truth to nature. The variance between
them, however, lies more in the method of realizing
than in a distinctly different aim. In both cases they
believe in truthful reproduction as the chief concern,
regardless of other considerations. It varies from im-
itation in that it is not the painter's object or attempt
to deceive or create an illusion to the senses. Its fol-
lowers may believe with Mr. Ruskin that it is the
duty-"the imperative duty of the [landscape] painter
to descend to the lowest details with undiminished
attention;" and yet, with that writer's charming con-
ART AND ITS AIM.
185
tradictory spirit, they may believe not so much in lit-
eral as in "generic" truth. Mr. Ruskin, for instance,
expressly disapproves of the painting of leaves so mi-
nutely that the stems and veins are apparent; but he
does insist upon the form of an oak-leaf being painted
so that it may be distinguished from that of an elm-
leaf. Between a literal and a generic truth there is a
difference in degree which eliminates imitation and
yet maintains nature. This is apparent in the con-
trasted portraits of Van Dyke and Denner already
mentioned. The one is the generic face and form;
the other is the literally imitated fact. In a future
chapter we shall have somewhat to say of the man-
ner in which truths are expressed; but at present we
have to combat the idea that truth, either literal or
generic, is the aim of art.
As has been said, the difference between the two
truths is not essentially great save in the manner of
their expression. Both deal primarily with facts, and
both utterly ignore the main point that facts never, in
this wide world, made a work of art. They are only
the materials out of which, if properly handled, some-
thing may be made, but in themselves are nothing.
Yet conformity to the facts of nature is not objection-
able; indeed, it is a necessary requisite of art. Ve-
racity is not a subject for dispute, but it is not in it-
self sufficient to make up a picture. It should be the
painter's aim to show us the greatness of his imagi-
nation and conception rather than his truthfulness
to nature. The object of the fine arts is to give
186
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
pleasure, not to inculcate truth.* In itself truth is
not necessarily beautiful or pleasurable. It is true
that two and two make four; that the sun is the cen-
ter of our universe; that fire and water will not com-
bine; that color is made apparent by the presence of
light: but such knowledge is not æsthetically pleas-
urable, nor are such truisms beautiful. And, again,
there is beauty and pleasure independent of truth. We
see it in the rainbow or the ocean, or hear it in the
music of the storm or the Eolian harp. Properly
speaking, truth is the aim of science and is only rela-
tively connected with art; that is to say, art must ac-
cept it as a condition and not offensively sin against
it, but art must not be made to play the lackey to
science nor be distorted from its proper purpose. The
line between the two is broadly drawn, and there can
be no mistaking their individual aims. To make art
didactic would be quite as ridiculous as to aim at
making science æsthetically pleasurable. With such a
misplacement neither could exist, for an accessory as-
sumes the place of a principal. The scientific purpose
will not answer in art. A dictionary and a grammar
as compilations of words and sentences are truths;
but put them together and will you make a Milton's
epic or a Shakspeare's play? Both the poem and
the drama are required to respect the law of lan-
guage, and they must not offend. But is it their aim
to display the law, or to use it as the means of ex-
"The purpose of a picture is, not to tell the truth, but to
gratify the æsthetic sense."-Taine, Philosophy of Art.
ART AND ITS AIM.
187
pressing great ideas? Earth, air, sky, humanity, are
truths; unite them, and will you make a masterpiece
of painting? Do the facts of nature constitute a pic-
ture any more than the words of a language consti-
tute a poem? Does the artist become subservient to
the facts, or do facts become subservient to his art?
If the former, then a poem, however stupid or lacking
in poetic thought; a novel or a play, however devoid
of life and action; a picture representing any one of
the inane genre subjects of the past or present, if only
they be "true," must be as much works of art as the
masterpieces of the Hugos and the Millets. Surely
there must be something more than this, and the
eager teachers of the truth-to-nature doctrine have mis-
taken the servant for the master himself. Facts and
their different truths are but the blocks of a mosaic.
Of what use, if the hand of the master do not touch
them into life and meaning? What, then, in the com-
pleted whole do we admire-the veracity of the blocks
or the genius of the master? Again we arrive at our
former conclusion that the pleasure-giving quality of
art is dependent on the individual thought of the
artist, and a strict adherence to the truth of nature is
a substitution of mechanical skill for the artistic
spirit.
Finally, truth is a statement of facts; art is a state-
ment of ideas regarding the facts; and though the
latter includes the former, yet the former does not
include the latter, by any manner of means.
This cry of, "Paint nature precisely as she is," is
not a new one.
Painters probably lived and died and
188
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
went to the shades unsung, before Agamemnon's days,
with the same words on their lips. Aristotle taught
realism, and there were realists, Pre-Raphaelites, and
truth-to-nature painters from the very earliest days,
and they exist in the nineteenth century; but while
admitting their technical powers, we have yet to learn
that they have produced any great works. It were
better if the sentence were changed to, "Paint nature
as you see it;" with the parenthetical reservation,
"Do not paint at all unless you see something that
nine hundred and ninety-nine of your companions do
not see." In such a case the artist would be an inter-
preter of what he alone comprehends. It were better
still if it were changed to, "Paint what you think
about what you see," for then the artist would be a
creator, an originator. It were best of all if he could
combine the faculties of interpretation and origina-
tion, for then he might be a star of that brilliant mag-
nitude seldom seen in the artistic heavens, and more
valued for the rarity.
Truths of MORALITY.-This is one of the things
that the aim of art so obviously is not that it scarcely
merits consideration; yet there are those who seem to
think that the teaching of moral truths is the highest
purpose of art, and I do not think it doing Mr. Ruskin
injustice to class him as prominent among the few.
The idea is a trifle antiquated and has long outlived
its usefulness. Plato gave it form and may have
originated it, and in Platonic days when the chief
purposes of life were dedicated to the glory of the
ART AND ITS AIM.
189
gods it was quite appropriate. But that oneness of
thought characteristic of early Greek life-splendid
though it was—does not exist in this nineteenth cen-
tury. Thought is divided, and distinct ideas have
individual methods and forms of expression.
Against Mr. Ruskin and others holding the truth-of-
morality position much silly trash has been written
and said, the substance of which may be summed up
in two very prevalent sayings which have cloaked
multitudes of sins: "Unto the pure all things are
pure;" and, "Art for art's sake." Both of these
sentences, though conveying negative truisms, are
rendered positively false in application. All things
are not pure to the pure. They were not so to Paul,
who wrote the sentence. The most immaculate-
minded can conceive impurity and be shocked there-
by. The lives of Christ, the Apostles, the Prophets,
the greatest and purest of earth, do not show that
they found all things in a state of perfection here
below. In fact it was quite otherwise, else there had
been no need of those messengers from heaven.
Evil lies not alone in the beholder's mind, but like a
contagious disease may come from without, striking
the healthy and the unhealthy alike. The saying,
like many another tongue-rolled adage, is more apho-
ristic than truthful in meaning, and is used as a petti-
fogger's argument to shield a culprit. As for the
other phrase, it is an absurdity to suppose that paint-
ing can ignore all the laws of life and exist independ-
ently and by virtue of its own strength. Like every
other art it is bounded by a civil, a moral, a natural,
190
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and an artistic law. It may not offend against any
one of them by a positive action without incurring just
censure. It may oftentimes negatively slur them by
omission; but may not offend by positive falsity or
misstatement. The position of affairs between those
who believe in art as a teacher of morality and those
who favor "art for art's sake" is easily comprehended.
Each occupies an extreme position, and where one
demands everything the other will concede nothing.
They are both right and both wrong, as is oftentimes
the case with disputants, for the proper position lies.
between them.
The same objection brought to the doctrine that the
truth of nature is the aim of art may be maintained
against this last theory. Morality is a matter of politi-
cal or ethical science and has only a passive bearing on
the arts. It must not be transgressed. Painting need
not preach, but it must listen to and respect moral
truth. There must of necessity be a morality of art,
but there cannot be an art of morality. Painting is
not necessarily a vehicle for the conveyance of ethical
doctrines, for the very good reason that there are
other vehicles that can convey them better. It may
express and has expressed them, but neither truth nor
morality is its primary object, for in itself neither of
these qualities is aesthetically pleasing.
As for the philosophies which strive to prove that
art is but an emanation from religion and that its aim
was and now is to teach religious truths, the authors of
them have simply mistaken the effect for the cause.
Painting has always been reflective of the people, and
ART AND ITS AIM.
191
in the past they have been wrapped up in religion;
hence the predominance of religious ideas and sub-
jects, as an effect of popular sympathy.
THE IDEAL. It would materially benefit a compre-
hension of painting if the words "real" and "ideal,”
with their many definitions, were thrown entirely out
of the modern art-vocabulary. They are but arbi-
trary divisions breeding confusion and doing more
harm than good; yet from time immemorial all art
has been shared between them. In classification ar-
tists are usually considered either realists or idealists,
when in point of fact the modern artist is neither one
nor the other. The age in which we live is too indi-
vidual to permit absolute objective realization in any
artist: his education and surroundings will not allow
him to utterly destroy his identity, though it may
permit him to efface himself sufficiently to render
his work worthless. The same argument holds true
of the idea. That which in our art should respond
to the name is an individual fancy, brought about by
eclecticism or an imitation of the Greek ideal, and not
a universal conception. In Greece, it will be remem-
bered that the ideal was a creation of the people, an
archetype, a national want. There is no such thing
existent among the nations of to-day; the term is
misapplied to that art which is not strictly realistic,
but rather imaginative. Thus we read Mr. Hamer-
ton's definition: "The word idea, in art at least, does
not mean a thought or a moral proposition, but a
form seen in the mind. So far as a work of art real-
192
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
izes the inner vision it is ideal. Realism is the sur-
render to outer vision. Idealism is the surrender to
inward vision."* In other words, an artist is a realist
when he strives to annihilate himself in the presence
of nature, and an idealist when he permits his own
thoughts to be added to the natural facts. And all of
this may be true enough aside from the distortion of
the original and proper understanding of the word
"ideal." Under this definition of Mr. Hamerton's,
Michael Angelo, Delacroix, Millet, and Corot would
be classified as idealists; whereas none of them ever
tried to record a type, build up a perfection, or realize
a universal conception. They simply gave rein to
their imaginative genius and painted what they
thought about what they saw; and in this they were
no more idealists than Vollon, the painter of the
wonderful pumpkin. I do not mean to say that what
is known in modern art as "the ideal" does not exist,
but I do mean to say that that phrase is misused.
People speak of an artist's ideal when they mean hist
idea. The ideal is an abstract universal conception; the
idea, a concrete individual conception. The Winckel-
mann-Müller-Alston meaning of the word is the
true one, and not very different from the Greek
meaning. With them it is the perfect type, the Pla-
tonic model, the sought-after; and idealism is the add-
ing to and perfecting of beauty by eclecticism. In
this sense we, in common with European nations,
have inherited from Greece the ideal form, but not
* Thoughts on Art, p. 278.
ART AND ÏTS AIM.
193
the ideal thought. We see this form in our galleries
to-day, and we have even the "ideal city" and the
"ideal landscape;" but they are imitative and aim-
less nothings, wholly lacking in good thought and
entirely out of the scope of serious work. That imagi-
nary beauty devoid of likeness in nature, that general
perfection formed by the unity of many individual
perfections, may properly subserve the purposes of
decoration, as did much of the Assyrian and Egyptian
sculptures; but it cannot be ranked as lofty art.
Any picture that does not express some thought,
passion, or feeling of the painter signifies nothing; *
and this ideal form of to-day is at best but a surface-
beauty, showing perhaps some cleverness of hand,
but none whatever of thought.
For ourselves, then, in our consideration of modern
art we will wholly abandon "the ideal." Our theory
can get on without it. It had its place and lived and
died in Greece. The present time and art scarcely
know it, except in its distorted meaning. We live
in an age of individualism, and there cannot be,
as in Greece, a universal conception and type. That
which Mr. Hamerton and others know as the ideal
we shall recognize under another name. We might
also abandon "the real" as an aim in art; but as a
most important factor it must always be retained, for
upon it are builded all ideas, and out of it spring all
conceptions. The extremes of idealism and realism
are equally dangerous. Either the artist abandons
* Cousin, The True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
9
194
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
nature entirely and works from the imagination, pro-
ducing an art devoid of character; or he literalizes
the facts before him, and is wanting in good thought
and feeling.
AN EXPRESSION OF TECHNICAL SKILL.—And this is
the fond fancy of a great number of artists, and one
that demands consideration. It is, comparatively
speaking, a modern idea, owing its recent importance.
to the teachers in the French, German, and Roman
studios, who, not believing that art is a language and
painting but the expression of an idea, would reverse
the phraseology so that it should read, "Language is
an art, and painting but an idea of expression." The
pursuit of style and method is not confined to paint-
ing alone. Literature, at the present time, is full of
people writhing, not with the power of passion, but
with the passion of power. They have little to say,
but lay great stress upon how they shall say it.
Their beliefs regarding literature are similar to those
held about painting. Many of the modern painters
believe that the one and only thing to be admired in
a picture is the technical skill of the artist in draw-
ing, massing, coloring, and general brush-work, and
that the work of the intellect, the blending of form.
and color to convey an idea, the sparkling thought
itself, is nothing-a mere bagatelle and a secondary
consideration. This is equivalent to the repetition of
the nineteenth-century fallacy that "It makes no dif-
ference what you say if you but say it well." It might
as well be said that it is immaterial who you are if
ART AND ITS AIM.
195
you but dress well; or that a counterfeit coin is as
good as a genuine one if it but pass current. It does
make all the difference in the world whether you say
something or nothing. It makes just this difference,
that thought will live, but expression never, except as
the embodiment of thought; that the man may live
and attain to great ends without the fine clothes, but
the clothes without the man can attain to nothing;
that the bright counterfeit may circulate for a time as
a genuine coin, but sooner or later people will detect
the baseness of the metal. If the history of the past
century has taught one thing above another, it is that
nothing will last that has not the enduring substance
of thought. No matter what branch of knowledge
we go to, whether in art, literature, or science, we
shall find that ideas are required of us. We may be
possessed of a fluent tongue, an easy, graceful pen, a
facile brush; but unless we have some thought to ex-
press, or some ideas to convey, what we produce will
be only temporary, our position will be unsubstantial,
and our ultimate downfall certain.
Perhaps there is more necessity for technical skill
in painting than in any other of the arts, and it is
most assuredly one of the chief factors; for it will be
remembered that a grand idea is a lost idea if it be
not well expressed, and the number of poets and
painters born by nature, yet lacking the accomplish-
ment of expression, would fill the ranks of an army.
Indeed we should give the greatest importance to
expression, for that the artist knows how to paint is
his first claim to our consideration. We shall not
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PRINCIPLES OF ART.
trouble ourselves much to find out what he may say if
it is apparent at the start that he does not know his
alphabet. That a man is capable of hand leads us to
inquire into his mental capacity. Yet withal skillful
expression is but another one of the means-an im-
portant one, surely-but not the end in itself. Some-
thing more than dexterity of the fingers is requisite
for a controlling purpose. To borrow part of an
illustration from Véron,* if we should be assembled
in a hall to hear some great orator on a topic of the
time, and we should be told by the chairman of the
meeting that the orator was not present, but that his
oration would be read by a young collegian, and
thereupon the latter should begin the reading in the
most approved collegiate style of elocution, we should
very likely be much disappointed, though the ideas
and arguments would be there in the very language
of the orator. We should be disappointed, for we
should wish to have knowledge of the man, his style,
delivery, personality. But, on the other hand, should
the orator appear before us, and, with all the grace,
elegance, and winning intonation of a finished speaker,
deliver to us an harangue devoid of ideas and filled
with threadbare metaphors and similes, should we
not be still more disappointed?
Something analogous to this appears in literature,
and especially in verse-making. Each year shows a
mushroom growth of pseudo-poets, and some of them
possessed of a very clever faculty of rhyming. They
* Esthetics.
ART AND ITS AIM.
197
The
are not lacking in good expression, and sometimes
have elegant rhythm, but they do not last, for the
simple reason that they possess no ideas; they have
nothing to say. The world listens a moment and then
passes them by. It is quite different with the great
poetic thinkers-Shakspeare, Milton, Goethe.
world holds them in reverence for the conceptions.
they have realized. Their expression cannot be de-
preciated or slurred, yet it is not the most important
feature of their works, and this is partly proved by the
comparatively little they suffer by translation into a
foreign tongue, as is shown in the Tieck-Schlegel
translation of Shakspeare and the Taylor translation
of Faust. The expression may be changed or varied
without material loss, but the thought, if properly
transferred, is unalterable. And this, through all the
past, is the only thing that has survived time. Style
and manner fade out and become unknown like the
colors of an oriental rug, but the warp and woof-the
ideas-remain.
It is not our object or wish to underrate the im-
portance of technical skill. It is an absolute neces-
sity, and without it painting could not exist; but it is
only an accessory and not the principal. At best it is
the shell which holds the pearl of thought; but what
seek we for, the shell or the pearl? There are those
who see and admire the former; but art has a more
comprehensive aim than the display of line, mass, and
color for the admiration of artists. It should appeal
to all mankind; but make it dependent solely upon ex-
pression and it appeals only to the class. The execu-
198
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
tion of the hand is placed above the product of the
head; and though this may please those directly inter-
ested in technical methods, it awakens no sense of
pleasure in the average beholder.* The spectator cares
as little for the artist's well-preserved "values" as he
does for the dramatist's forcing of a scene to a hur-
ried ending. He looks only to the general effect. So,
again, the reader of poetry never thinks of the poets
slaving over certain lines to make them "fit in;" he
never bothers himself with admiring the cleverness of
some double or triple rhyme; he never ponders over
the ransacking of heaven and earth for a fine image.
He simply accepts the united whole for what it is
worth, nor questions how it is made.
Still a great body of artists sneer at the "idea,"
and scoff at "sentiment" in all its phases. The for-
mer they generally choose to understand as "some-
thing literary," and the latter is, of course, a gruesome
accompaniment to a "tell-a-story" picture-halluci-
nations which we will endeavor to dispel in our next
chapter. They rather glory in a contempt for all
things not strictly technical. "Form or color; noth-
ing else is of any account. It is a mistake."
excellence of technique is maintained, and it is only
where the idea is wholly lacking (a very rare occur-
rence) that its value is appreciated by its absence.
Any canvas that is coherent or comprehensible is not
without some sort of a motif, great or small, and the
The
* "The loftier aim of art is the work of the intelligence and not
the hand."-Taine, Philosophy of Art.
↑ Véron.
ART AND ITS AIM.
199
nearest approach to a failure we can instance is in
some of the late pictures of Turner, painted when
he was demented. The pictures show that his hand
had not lost its cunning, but that his mind was
clouded. There is a lack of clearness, the thought is
neither conceived nor expressed, and we are at loss
to say whether the pictures are anything more than
meaningless splashes of color. If expression were
the sole requisite, then all of the mature work of
Turner or of any other artist should be nearly uni-
form in excellence. But as a matter of fact such is
not the case, and the main reason for the variations
lies in the difference of quality and quantity of
thought expressed. It is just this difference that sep-
arates genius from mediocrity and makes a master-
piece or a commonplace work. Strike out the
thought and you strike out the artist and his product-
Paint out the eyes of the Sistine Madonna, veil the
head of the Moses-destroy the ideas-and of what
further use are the exquisite painting and drawing,
the fine modeling and carving, that remain?
The simple truth is that in great painting all
things must blend together for the realization of a pic-
torial idea. Surely it is of little value unless compre-
hended, and to be comprehended it must be well ex-
pressed; but the painting alone is as absolutely
worthless as the sheath without the sword, and a can-
vas that is merely a harmonious piece of color or a
display of manual dexterity is entitled to little more
consideration as a work of art than a Daghestan rug,
an Indian curtain, or a pattern of tapestry.
200
PRINCIPLES of art.
BEAUTY. Having now finished with those features
which we have seen are not in themselves the aim of
painting, but merely some of the means of its accom-
plishment, we come to the consideration of another
quality which possibly, like the ideal, might be spared
discussion without materially affecting an understand-
ing of painting. Beauty is a quality, an attribute, and
in pictorial art it appeals to and is perceived by the
eyes; is recognized by the intellect (not necessarily
by a process of reasoning); and is appreciated by its
effect upon the emotions. Where it may exist as an
attribute is a matter of dispute with metaphysicians,
some holding that it is in external nature, and some
that it is in the human mind. Farther on we shall
endeavor to show that it exists in both places. But
first something must be said against the fancy which
demands for painting the province of appealing to the
eyes alone.
In one sense it does appeal solely to the
sight, because it cannot reach any of the other senses.
But there is something beyond. The unaided vision
is physically capable of recognizing in a picture that
which may be agreeable; as, for instance, soft har-
monies of color; but it is not capable of recognizing
the beautiful. This recognition comes from the in-
tellect after it has been appealed to by the eyes.
The intellect in turn awakens the emotional nature,*
* "Emotion is not what it has often been represented by physi-
ologists, a mere nervous reaction from a bodily stimulus, like the
kick which the frog gives when it is pricked. It begins with a
mental act, and throughout is essentially an operation of the
mind."-McCosh, The Emotions.
ART AND ITS AIM.
201
and our appreciation of the picture may be deter-
mined by the activity of our emotions caused by it.
The objection to the theory that the object of paint-
ing is to please the eye with a purely sensuous beauty
which affects mankind through the emotions regard-
less of the intellect, is that an elimination of the in-
tellect precludes the possibility of man seeing beauty,
or of having emotions either sensuous or otherwise.
It places him on a par with the lower animals that
may live amid beds of violets, see sunsets, rainbows,
and landscapes, and care as little for them as for the
uglier and more commonplace things of earth.
Beauty existed in the world four thousand years ago
as it does to-day; but the inhabitants at that time
probably did not see it or have their emotions affected
by it, for the reason that they lacked the intellectual
capacity to recognize it. The American Indian of to-
day sees it only in proportion to his intelligence, and
the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego proportionately
still less than he. The Assyrians saw little beauty in
the human form; but it was otherwise with the Greeks,
whom education had trained to recognize and appre-
ciate it. Turn from them and look at the barbaric
Goths and Vandals that overran Rome, and how did
they treat the then extant Greek and Roman sculp-
tures? They valued them only as blocks of stone to
be cut up for building purposes. Look again at
the restoration of these antiquities in the intellectual
age of the Medici, when their beauty became such an
object of worship that whole schools of artists set
themselves about imitating them. The very best ar-
9*
202
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
gument that can be offered on this subject comes
from history. Art originated with intelligence, as
we have endeavored to show in our first chapters,
being the reflex and the outgrowth of it; and to-day
beauty is a quality the appreciation of which is con-
fined to the intellectual and the educated.* Discard
the operation of the mind, and beauty lies as deeply
hid from the eyes of man as the door of the cave of
the Forty Thieves from the eyes of the passers-by.
The answer offered to this is, that of course the eye
must be trained and educated. And the reply is,
that, to any extent, this is a physical impossibility.
Men's eyes see little more and little better to-day
than they did forty centuries ago; but their minds are
better trained to note the impressions received by the
eye. The sense of sight in the man, the beast, and
the bird is not essentially different. One sees about
as much as the other. But the minds of the three
and their consciousness of ocular perception do differ
very widely. This enables man to perceive qualities
in nature which the others do not, and in propor-
tion it raises the appreciation of beauty in the edu-
cated man far above that of the uneducated. Let us
have no confusion, then, regarding the perception of
beauty. It is not recognizable by the eyes alone, else
the eyes of one could perceive it quite as well as
those of another, and this, as a matter of fact, is not
It is dependent upon the intellect, and appeals to
so.
* "The sight of Beauty never creates raptures for those who do
not understand her."-Couture, Conversations on Art.
ART AND ITS AIM.
203
that for recognition as beauty; and the stopping at
an intermediate stage is not unlike the act of the in-
quirer who seeks a First Cause no farther than the
sun instead of going back to the Creator of all.
Confusion, again, must not be brought about by
confounding what is agreeable to the eyes with what
is beautiful. The one involves merely a bodily sense;
the other is unavoidably connected with intellectual
action. The first is a condition dependent upon one
of the five senses, and may exist in the beast as well as
in the human being. The sense of taste enables both
of them to prefer some foods and drinks to others.
The senses of smell and of touch are the same, and
those of sound and sight vary but slightly. The ears
of a dog are wounded by long-drawn cries, and the
eyes of a bull are irritated by a waving red flag, in the
same manner and for the similar reason that a man's
ear is pleased with the sound of an Æolian harp, the
wind sighing through the trees, the carol of a bird,
the murmur of flowing waters; or his eye gratified by
the softness of gray light as contrasted with sunlight
on the snow, the coloring of green earth as compared to
the desert, or the shadows of the clouds on the ocean.
But it will be remembered that these sounds are not
poetry, and these sights are not pictures. This is
nature, not art; and these are natural, not artistic,
effects. A picture may be agreeable in color in the
same manner without being beautiful. The agree-
able is dependent solely upon sense; the beautiful,
upon sense and intellect working together.
204
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
MATERIAL OR EXTERNAL BEAUTY.-For the pur-
poses of painting we may consider beauty of two
kinds, Material or External Beauty, and Beauty of
Thought a division which would correspond in a
more scientifically treated work to objective and sub-
jective beauty. Regarding the first it is scarcely
worth our while to enter into any argument either to
prove or disprove that beauty is to be found only in
the human mind. The recognition of it is, to a great
extent if not wholly, a matter of education; but that
the attribute itself should be solely in the beholder's
thought is not necessarily true. It may be, and is,
existent in nature likewise; and those who believe with
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Jeffrey, that there is
nothing ugly or beautiful, but the thinking makes it
so, are simply taking an extreme view. Undoubtedly
education has changed man greatly. The belief in his
mental and moral development is well founded, but we
have yet to learn that he developed much of anything
except himself. Nature has not changed materially,
except for the worse, since the days when man was
not numbered on the face of the earth; and his coming
has not altered the beautiful sunsets, the sky and
clouds, the sea, or the land. The rose and the lotus
bloomed in the Nile valley, and the lion stooped to
drink at the river's edge, before the Pharaohs reigned.
The Alps loomed upward through the clouds, with the
pink glow of sunset upon their diadems of snow, and the
chamois, the eagle, and the arrowy pine were at home
upon their heights when the Lake Dwellers were un-
known. Yes; and the same sunset showered a track
ART AND ITS AIM.
205
of gold along the Ægean, and tinged with purple and
amethyst the islands of the Cyclades, many years be-
fore Agamemnon lived or the beauty of Helen caused
a Trojan war. Nature has not shifted her mantle so
suddenly that in the last three thousand years beauty
has flashed forth upon the globe. It has always ex-
isted from the time when the fiat, "Let there be light,"
was given forth; but until lately man has been too
much of the barbarian, too feeble in intellect, to see
it. Thirty centuries ago he trod a diamond under
foot, nor ever thought of its beauty; and to-day, though
he has learned much, he is still unconsciously stepping
upon diamonds that the future alone can and will re-
veal. His evolution of mind has wrought wonders
in him; but the forms of nature about him have not
been changed thereby. They remain the same; but he
has grown, is growing, up to them. At last, by as-
sociation and education he is so mentally and æstheti-
cally trained that he can perceive and appreciate
their beauty.
There can be no reasonable doubt of an external
beauty in nature. The grace of a person beloved is not
necessarily in the lover's eye alone, as the poet would
have us believe; for whatever we may think does not
alter the features, and we may absolutely hate a per-
son and yet recognize his or her beauty. It belongs
as much to the material world as do heat, pro-
ductiveness, cohesiveness. Every excellence in the
picture we admire finds its original in nature. Color,
form, grace, unity, harmony, light and shade, all are
there. It is as apparent in the light of morning and
206
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
evening, in the sky and clouds, in the elements and in
the human form, as is loveliness in the rose or power
in the ocean. It has always been with us and about
us, and is as much a part of the earth's make-up as the
laws which govern its existence and motion. It is not
strange that man should have overlooked it. The earth
centuries ago revolved in its orbit as to-day; but people
lived on in ignorance of that fact until Copernicus
came. And again, centuries ago the same earth was
held together by the law of gravitation, but it required
a Newton to discover it. The dullness of perception
in the majority made the existence of these great
scientific discoverers possible; and it is the same dull-
ness at the present day that gives rise to the office of
the poet and the painter-the discoverers of beauty.
There are fields of beauty lying deep hid in nature
which, like the prophet's paradise, only the elect may
There are emotions of the human heart which
only the highly emotional and the sympathetic may
understand. There are flashes of sublimity and
grandeur about us which may fire the sensitive mind
into glowing passion, yet kindle no spark in commoner
intellects. These sights and these impulses are the
inspirations of genius; and this is one of the aims
of both poetry and painting,-to reveal to mankind
natural beauties which the great majority of people
may not see for themselves. The poet with words,
the painter with symbols of words, are, then, the inter-
preters of beauty, setting forth to the world what
things they alone may see in nature. How their dis-
coveries are revealed we shall endeavor to explain
see.
ART AND ITS AIM.
207
hereafter, only pausing now to say that it is not by
placing the original before us and exhibiting what it
really is, but, on the contrary, in another way, giving
to the world merely their idea of what it is.
BEAUTY OF THOUGHT.-For its progress in civiliza-
tion the world is indebted, not to the existence of its
unthinking many, but to the cleverness of a few of its
children. I have said in the first pages that the cir-
cumstances make the man, and that is true; but the
man, if he be a genius, likewise makes the circum-
stances. The two act and react upon each other.
The leaders of men not only shape the thought of
their time, but they are the pioneers, the scouts, the
forerunners of every enterprise, who signal back to
the world what they have discovered. They are
esteemed geniuses, and rightly so; for "the greatest
thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see
something, and tell what it sees in a plain way."*
Each field of human knowledge has its discoverers.
Science, Philosophy, Religion, Art, have had, and have
at this day, their adequate representatives. Galileo,
Copernicus, and Newton discovered new laws of
science; Solon, Pericles, and Justinian, new laws of
government; Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, new philoso-
phies; Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mahomet, new religions;
David the psalmist, Homer and Shakspeare, Phidias,
Michael Angelo and Millet, new beauty. The starting
point of genius, then, is at original discovery; and the
second step is the interpretation of it to the world.
* Ruskin, Modern Painters.
208
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Now, in all the branches of subjective knowledge in
which discovery is made, that which is discovered is
set forth, not by the practical exhibition of the thing
itself, for that is impossible, but in the shape of
ideas held and advanced by the discoverer. Let me
quote Plutarch on this: "Idea is a bodiless substance
which of itself hath no subsistence, but giveth form
and figure to shapeless matter and becometh the cause
that bringeth them into show and evidence.”* The
mind as a means of interpretation shadows forth its
individual conception, its own idea. Thus the pres-
ence of a Deity and the interpretation of the laws and
word of that Deity are placed before us in the ideas of a
Buddha, a Zoroaster, or a Mahomet. The existence of
God is avowed by these men in common with Moses
and the Hebrew Prophets; but mark how different are
the conceptions! Thus, again, varying views of our
relationship to that Deity come to us in the ideas of
Plato, Descartes, and Kant, and still more widely
varying conceptions of life, death, and immortality in
the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakspeare.
These are among the greatest geniuses the world has
known; yet their interpretations come to us in those
"bodiless substances" which we know as "ideas." In
the same manner and in an analogous field of investi-
gation stand the poet and the painter. Their spe-
cial domain is the realm of beauty, and in it their
office is like that of the philosopher to discover, like
that of the prophet to reveal, and like that of the
*
Opinions of Philosophers, translated by Holland.
ART AND ITS AIM.
209
translator to interpret. Whatsoever they may find
in the world that is beautiful is made known to us
by the presentation of poetic and pictorial ideas.
And it is the ideas we admire, and not the realities
themselves. It is not the object of either poet or
painter to produce before us only the facts in na-
ture which embody his conception, nor to offer us an
imitation of them. The true artist, it will be remem-
bered, is a genius no less than the philosopher and the
prophet. He is that one man out of many who may
discover beauty. To the eyes of the millions it is
unseen. If, then, they cannot see it in the original,
how will it be possible for them to see it in any coun-
terfeit presentment of that original? Practical dem-
onstration of the real thing or its imitation will not
answer; we must look only through the artist's eyes,
and comprehend only through his conception.
The medium of interpretation wherewith the poet
addresses the mind is language through the sense
of hearing; with the painter it is illustration upon
flat surface addressed to the mind through the sense
of sight. It will readily be seen, then, that painting is
but a language of the eye whereby the artist tells
what he conceives, feels, or thinks about life and
nature. Mr. Ruskin recognized this truth when he
wrote: "Painting or art generally, as such, with all
its technical difficulties and particular ends, is nothing
but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the
vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing." And
Millet understood and appreciated it still better in
writing to Pelloquet, the art-critic; "You belong to
210
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
the very small number of persons who believe (alas
for those who do not believe it!) that all art is a
language, and that language is made to express
thoughts." Pictorial language is the painter's
medium of expression and bears a perfect analogy to
that of the poet; for the latter but paints with words,
while the former speaks with works. Now, undenia-
bly, there is beauty in this language of the painter, as
there is in that of the poet. It lies in the style, the
rhythm, the treatment, the color. Yet in both arts this
is a subordinate beauty-a means, not an end; for
what we chiefly prize is not the form or manner in
which the artist chooses to express himself, not his
style of saying, but rather what he really says. Again,
as we have tried to demonstrate, there may be external
beauty in the nature which he attempts to interpret
to us and these two beauties in themselves may
make up excellent art. But if the artist would pro-
duce the very highest art there must be a deeper, a
stronger, a more perfect beauty than either of these,
namely, the beauty of conception coming from the
artist's own mind. How well Millet knew this!
Thus he writes to Sensier: "I tried to show Thoré
that I thought grandeur was in the thought itself."‡
And how well he has written that truth in his art!
Look at The Angelus. The subject is indeed beauti-
ful; and who before Millet ever saw it or used it in pic-
torial representation? The language and the expres-
sion are likewise beautiful, and again they form Millet's
*Sensier, Jean François Millet. † Annibale Carracci. Sensier.
ART AND ITS AIM.
211
own and peculiar style. But the thought, the poetic
conception, is the greatest beauty of all. In its con-
templation we lose sight of other things. Millet the
discoverer and painter fades into insignificance com-
pared with Millet the thinker and poet. The mind
that conceived the grandeur of an humble faith in
God is above and beyond the hand that bowed the
peasant heads. Look again at The Sower! How
noble the toiling hero, how splendid the rhythm of
his swinging motion! But how infinitely more
splendid the intellect that could grasp the beauty and
dignity of labor and justify the creation of God to
the eyes of man! Throughout all great art we find
this same preponderance of subjective beauty sweep-
ing away minor considerations and in itself absorbing
the attention. Eliminate the passionate thought of
Michael Angelo, and the glory of the Sistine vanishes
in writhing arms and legs. Strike out the ideas of
Shakspeare, and the plays become but a Babel of
words. No technical execution can equal it; no pan-
orama of nature, however gorgeous, can compare with
it: the product of the mind is above all. It is the
one thing almost unbounded in its scope, untram-
meled in its flight, that rises above reality into the
regions of the superhumanly great; and the more we
study it the more keenly shall we appreciate the
truth that the loftiest beauty of which the world can
boast is the beauty of human thought.
We should conclude, therefore, that the higher pur-
pose of the artist is the conception of pleasure-giving
pictorial ideas, and that the higher aim of painting
212
PRINCIPLEs of art.
is the expression of such ideas. This is undoubtedly
the superlative purpose, and from it downward the
work of the artist may descend to lower levels, de-
pendent upon the quality and quantity of thought
expressed.
Having established the highest aim of art, it is now
my purpose to speak of ideas and their kinds, and to
ascertain, if possible, what class of ideas may be best
expressed in painting.
CHAPTER II.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
PAINTING, then, in its broadest sense is but a sym-
bolic language whereby the artist may describe what
he sees, feels, or thinks. If it be intelligible, it must
convey to the beholder some kind of an impression,
emotion, or idea; and any language that does not do
this is but a tale of words or methods, and commands
no respect whatever. I now hasten to place a limita-
tion and a qualification on the general word "idea,"
for fear I shall presently be accused of advocating the
literary, tell-a-story" art. To the minds of many,
especially the artists, the word seems to have no
other meaning; and so soon as one speaks of the
necessity of idea in art, visions of canvases in which
the painter usurps the place of the poet or the novel-
ist immediately rise to view as examples in hand.
Now, there are ideas, and there are ideas—thou-
sands of them in every branch of human knowledge, in
jurisprudence, religion, philosophy, history, science,
literature, art, and it must be obvious that each de-
partment has its own peculiar aim and way of making
itself understood. Perhaps, then, it is unnecessary to
prove that ideas of binomial theorems, of laws of real
estate, or of exegetical theology have nothing what-
ever to do with art, for they belong to foreign fields
214
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
1
and are not, in themselves, capable of giving æsthethic
pleasure. We have already seen that it is an indis-
pensable requisite of art that it shall please, and
so we place the first limitation upon the word idea, by
saying it must be beautiful, pleasing, or æsthetic.
Ideas of all kinds are conveyed to the mind through
the five senses, and all of these senses are capable of
distinguishing the agreeable from the disagreeable,
but only two of them may recognize the beautiful.
Again, it is not necessary that we should prove that
ideas conveyable by touch, taste, and smell have
nothing to do with the fine arts, for these senses are
generally considered non-æsthetic and incapable of
revealing ideas of beauty.* Our investigation, then,
is narrowed down to a consideration of beautiful
ideas brought to the mind by the two æsthetic senses
of sight and hearing; and the examination of these.
brings up the limitations of the arts so admirably set
forth by Lessing in his Laokoön.
Evidently that beauty which depends on sound,
volume, melody, or harmony should find its expression
in oratory and music; that which depends on outline
and form should be expressed in sculpture; that upon
color, perspective, light and shade, in painting: and
all of these beauties may find some kind of expression
* This is a concession made merely for the purpose of disposing
of three of the senses; for, whether æsthetic or not, they are ir-
relevant in this connection, as painting is dependent on sight
alone. In a work on æsthetics it might be well questioned whether
the senses which are here left out of account are not capable of
conveying ideas of comparatively lesser beauty.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
215
in poetry. The low, dull hum of marching armies,
the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, the sound of
the storm, the wail of the forest, the cry of misery or
of gladness, the voice of pity, of love, or of tenderness,
are not for painting or sculpture. These arts may be
only suggestive of sound, for they appeal, not to the
sense of hearing, but to the sense of sight. The
proper mediums of expression, then, for the instances.
enumerated are found in music and poetry. On the
other hand, beauty of form may be set forth by
sculpture and painting, very indifferently by prose
and poetry, and not at all by music. We have in the
classics descriptions without number of Zeus, Hera,
and Aphrodite, but we do not comprehend the Greek
idea of them until we see them in the marble. Sup-
pose we had never seen the statue of Giuliano de
Medici: what sort of an idea of his personal appear-
ance could we gather from the prose descriptions of
him? As to painting, Mr. Hamerton, somewhere in his
writings, gives an excellent illustration in the case of
a child which had lost one of its parents before years
of remembrance. When the child grows up it desires
to know the face of this parent; but no relative or
friend, either by tongue or pen, can describe a face
that it can see. But a portrait of the dead is pro-
duced, and a glance is sufficient to reveal what vol-
umes could not have described. Form and color
baffle description by words, and poetry inadequately
creates their mental image. Thus, a word-painting of
the splendor of sunset but discloses the poverty of
language. Sound is insufficient to portray color and
216
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
light. To properly convey these qualities to the mind,
the sense of sight is necessary and the brush of the
painter is required. A botanist or a poet may de-
scribe the formation of a rose; but had we never seen
one, could we conceive a perfect image of it? Obvi-
ously not; for once more form and color come into
play. Again, the novelist, poet, or orator may by
illustration and simile describe to us an attitude or
passion of love, hate, pride, strength, majesty, joy, or
sorrow; it is not outside of their sphere of action:
yet it can be equally well, if not better, treated in
sculpture and painting by the expression and pose
of face and form. ·
But while poetry, the novel, and the drama are
permitted, to a certain extent, to wander at liberty
through the realms of the other arts, producing
harmonious, sculpturesque, and picturesque effects,—
inadequately, perhaps, yet nevertheless in some way
producing them,-these other arts of music, painting,
and sculpture are confined within themselves, and
may not vary from their fixed purposes. The glow-
ing color, betraying the exuberant life in painting,
cannot burst forth in song; and
"What fine chisel
Could ever yet cut breath ?” *
The suggestion of motion and life can easily be
given, and so the suggestion of related ideas. But
* The Winter's Tale.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
217
painting and sculpture may not "tell a story," for
they cannot speak. Story-telling requires literature.
with its many side-facilities—its capability of address-
ing the ear by sound, and the mind's eye by mental
images. The sad eyes and death-struck face of that
fair young woman who looks forth from castle walls
across the malarious Campagna tell no story in them-
selves. The picture but shows one overcome by dis-
ease and woe, taking her last look across the waste.
It may suggest Pia de Tolomei, yet the story of the
cruel husband who placed her in that prison in order
that she might contract the fatal malaria of the place
is not written on the canvas, but must be learned from
the title or a catalogue. So, again, the rigid muscles,
the half-opened mouth, and the congealed brow of the
Laokoon betray his agony, and the drooping head
and relaxing muscles of the Galatian tell that he is
dying. But the former utters no death-shriek, and
the latter tells no story, though both are suggested.
It was the poet who, supposing the Galatian to be a
gladiator dying in the arena, told the story of his last.
thoughts being far away on the banks of the Danube,
where his young barbarians were at play beside their
Dacian mother. The poem and the statue or the
picture are not links in a chain, but separate and
distinct creations, dependent in no way one upon the
other. They both deal with beautiful ideas, and the
goal striven after in each instance is the human mind;
but the poem uses primarily the avenue of sound, and
the marble and the painting the avenue of sight: one
IO
218
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
articulates sounds in time; the other uses forms or
colors in space.*
Of the two æsthetic senses, then, painting addresses
only the sense of sight; it cannot chant an epic, sing
an opera, or tell a story. So one more limitation is
put upon it; and we might now amend our definition
by saying that the aim of painting is the expression
of a beautiful idea appealing to the intellect (or to its
effect, the emotions, if the word is preferred) through
the eyes alone. But this would also define sculpture;
and we must discriminate between it and painting,
for their aims, again, are separate and distinct.
Sculpture in its nature is plastic; and where color is
not a primary and necessary feature, form can per-
haps be best shown by it, since it gives all the dimen-
sions without illusion. Painting, on the other hand,
can best depict those subjects wherein color, perspec-
tive and chiar-oscuro, are requisite, and is in nature
not so plastic as pictorial. We therefore further
amend the definition and limit the range of ideas to
be expressed in painting by requiring that they shall
not only be beautiful, but pictorially beautiful. Let
us now further examine their scope and nature.
We must first consider that there are degrees of
beauty in ideas, as there are in natural forms. In the
latter, for instance, we mark the difference between
the bud and the full-blown flower, the gentle river
and the outspread ocean, the low rolling hill and
the lofty mountain. In all forms of nature there is a
* Lessing, Laokoön.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
219
gradation from a commonplace to an almost perfect
beauty; and the same gradation applies to all æsthetic
thought, from a conception slightly raised above “the
pretty" to the highest pitch of sublimity. There may
be greatness, mediocrity, smallness, vagueness, or al-
most an absence of idea; and in painting it is depend-
ent very largely upon the degree of thought whether
the artist produces a masterpiece, something medio-
cre, or merely a decorative picture. To be sure, there
are those artists in the past who have frittered away a
great deal of strength over inanities and yet produced
pictures. But it would seem as though the pictures.
existed not by virtue of their shortcomings but rather
in spite of them, through redeeming excellences.
People read and admire a certain English poet of
contemporary fame for his musical flow of words, ad-
mitting his poetry to be often unintelligible.
consider how much greater a poet he might be had
he thought to add to his rhythm. In the same way
some of our modern novelists are admired for their
style and clever conversations. Like the poet, they
have nothing in particular to say, but they say that
nothing in such an agreeable manner that oftentimes
we lose sight of the main object in our admiration of
some brightly-written description. In this manner,
many a trial-lawyer leads a jury away from the point
of truth by divergence into a side issue; and many
an artist paints a picture that attracts attention, not
because of its imagination, but because of some ex-
cellence of technique that diverts the observer's atten-
tion into a channel foreign to the true one. But this
But
220
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
proves nothing except that people may be deceived.
It does not prove that an idea regarding the wet and
scaly appearance of a fish is as good for the purpose
of painting as an idea of the holiness of the Madonna.
It does not prove that the Medici statue by Michael
Angelo is as great as his Moses; that Raphael's
Stanze are equal to his Sistine Madonna; nor that
any of the commercial pictures of Millet can be com-
pared with his Angelus. Let us set aside this decep-
tive art for the present, and let us dispense with the
fallacious reasonings and false comparisons of the
populace. It is no argument to say that a hand
painted by Leonardo is worth all the work Carlo
Dolci ever produced. Admitting it to be true, it
only proves one artist superior to the other, and does
not affect the question of the importance of thought.
The proper mode to prove this latter is by compar-
ing an artist, not with another artist, but with himself.
Granting the difference in the appreciative value of
art to be dependent in a large degree upon the great-
ness or smallness of the conception expressed, and we
are ready to inquire into the nature of the highest
ideas of beauty. In the superlative realm of æsthetic
creation we meet with that art which has for its first,
last, and central aim the expression of an overpower-
ing idea. This is the sublime; and my definition of it
shall be that preponderance of one idea which by its
magnitude and volume overwhelms and masters the
mind to the exclusion of all other considerations.*
* Blair in his Rhetoric states the fundamental quality of the
sublime to be a "mighty force or power;" and regarding litera-
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
221
Its sphere is the very loftiest altitude attainable by
the mind, and its grandeur the highest of compre-
hensible beauties. Yet the beautiful per se is not al-
ways the sublime: the latter includes the former, but
the former not the latter. Again, sublimity is always.
pleasing, even though it be possessed of terrors and
dangers. Up in the high mountains where the storm
and the avalanche may overwhelm, where the light-
ning may strike, where death may come suddenly and
swiftly, the mind turns instinctively to admire the
grandeur of the dangerous power. The tempest at sea
when the ship is tossed like a cockleshell, or the rising
of the desert samoum, the onward march of the sands,
the roar, the lightning, the yellow sky, and the blood-
red sun, cannot close our eyes to the beauty of the
warring elements. Our admiration of the power
which may destroy blinds us to fear and peril.
So, again, we forget the horrible with the danger-
ous. In that dread scene at twilight when
"the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters like a veil,"
and night and fear and death remained alone with
the shipwrecked crew;* when all hope had fled and
the final struggle with death had come,—in that pic-
ture of horror there is a sublimity that makes it beau-
tiful. After the ship has gone down and the crew has
ture he says: "The main secret of being sublime is to say great
things in few and plain words."
* Byron, Don Juan,
222
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
perished, and all is hushed save the remorseless dash
of billows,—in the last scene of all, when from out of
the darkness there comes,
66
Accompanied with convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony,"
even then there is a beauty predominant which
attracts us. Nothing can excel the horror of a cavalry
charge like that at Balaklava, when the steeds and
their riders, line upon line, in perfect obedience to
orders, sweep into the very jaws of death. Yet it is
sublimely beautiful to contemplate, through the one
idea of heroism. We forget that there is carnage and
bloodshed, agony and death; we forget the roar, the
clash, the shout; we forget earth, air, sky, the univer-
sal and existent whole. Everything is dashed aside
by the overpowering thought of self-sacrificing hero-
ism. Is it wonderful, then, that those of highly emo-
tional nature, borne along by such a motive, oblivious
to all else, upon just such fields as Balaklava have
sprung to horse and ridden to certain death with
their companions? Is it wonderful that Cambronne
and the Guard at Waterloo, blind to everything but
honor, and fronting death, should have refused all
terms of surrender? Call it patriotism, enthusiasm,
heroism, fanaticism, whatever you choose; but is
it not produced by the resistless impetus of one sub-
lime idea? All the agony and suffering of the Christ
hanging upon the cross does not make the contem-
plation of it in language or in painting repugnant
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
223
to us.
The glorious idea of self-sacrifice for the re-
demption of the world overcomes the repellent fea-
tures. So Cranmer and Bruno at the stake, and
Galileo before the Council, with the injustice, tor-
ture, and misery of their condemnation, do not make
us shudder, for the courage of conviction sufficiently
strong to defy death is predominant. Destroy this
idea, make the execution of Cranmer and Bruno
nothing more than the penalty paid by two felons for
crime committed,-and how quickly the scene turns
to one of disgust from which we shrink away!
The sublime is so transcendent in itself that often-
times its splendor blinds us; we can but faintly com-
prehend it, and utterly fail in the power of expressing
it. It may be as far removed from the utmost stretch
of the imagination as are the faintly-seen stars in the
firmament; or it may be that the idea is so infinite in
scope that we cannot contemplate it any more than
we can gaze with naked eye upon the face of the sun.
This but proves the limitation of the human mind;
for, as thought ascends, the beautiful continues to
unfold in greater power.
Man's intellect is bounded
by an orbit and a law of gravitation as surely as is his
body. Out of his fixed circle he may not go. The
strongest and swiftest winged eagle fails to soar
beyond the atmosphere into space. And so the
human mind lacks power to grasp the boundaries of
the beyond. Man has a dim yet overpowering idea
of a Personal Deity; but let him try to express that
idea, and how insufficient is the conception! Michael
Angelo's picture of God in his Creation of Eve is but
224
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
a majestic man of years, inspiring reverence, and not
the Father Almighty; and the conceptions of Him
expressed by Goethe, Milton, Byron, Raphael, and
Blake but humanize Divinity.
Time and space are appalling in their sublimity;
but what swift pen or skilled brush shall present them
to us? The one word "forever" will awaken inde-
scribable sensations; and the eye that can look
beyond our world into the vasty realms of the stars
will be overwhelmed by the incomprehensible. Even
in this world of ours we often meet the sublime in
tangible form and shape, and feel and know that it is
indescribable. Oftentimes people on the height of
Mürren gaze upward at the peak of the Jungfrau and
turn away in tears. And looking upon such mighti-
ness, what tongue would attempt to describe it?
What poet has ever done it? Byron degraded Mont
Blanc by likening it to a petty monarch upon his
throne, and Coleridge made it ridiculous by describ-
ing it as piercing the "ebon mass" of air around it like
"a wedge." Monarchs and wedges and Mont Blanc !
They neither of them builded so well as they knew,
or they never would have compared the greater with
the lesser. Nor are the painters happier in expres-
sion. There have been many who have sought to
place this grandeur upon canvas; but the world has
yet to see one who has succeeded. Poets and paint-
ers, novelists and travelers, can describe the form of
Mont Blanc; they can picture its height and its color,
its rocks and its trees, its clouds and eternal snows:
but they cannot give form to the overwhelming idea
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
225
of colossal might. In looking upon such scenes, form
and detail do not arrest our notice. The slowly-mov-
ing glacier, the riven and scarred rocks, the pines, the
clouds, the blue sky, are forgotten in the presence of
higher beauty. This majesty of mountain-mass is the
pleasing, the beautiful, the sublime, in one of its lofti-
est forms; but it will not answer the purposes of art,
for it is beyond the uttermost rim of artistic compre-
hension, and necessarily of expression.
Another instance of the grand, and likewise the
incomprehensible, over which poets and painters have
stumbled and fallen, is Niagara. A glance will par-
tially reveal to us its power; but no number of glances
will enable us to conceive the idea and bear it anew
either in poetry or painting. Artists have for years
tried to do it, but failure has ever stared them in the
face. They have made fairly good pictures, but only
by those diverting side-lights of which mention hast
already been made. Some minor excellence is put
forth as the chief consideration, and the observer's
attention is turned aside from the true quest—much
as the boy is lured from the pheasant's nest-by a
prospect elsewhere. One artist
One artist dazzles ùs with a
gorgeous rainbow below the Falls; another makes us
look at the rising clouds of moist spray; another
focuses the light on the blues and emerald-greens
of the falling water; and still a fourth induces us to
look at the light riding clouds in the air. Compo-
nent parts thus make up the separate pictures, but no
one artist grasps the main idea, and no one paint-
ing tells the grandeur of the cataract. Like Mont
226
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Blanc it is quite beyond the realm of comprehension;
and not until one of superhuman mind shall come
will the mighty rush of waters be translated upon
page or canvas.
Still another illustration, to descend to that which is
comprehensible, may be found in the ocean. Though
vaster than the mountains and the cataract, it is never-
theless more familiar and intelligible to us; and sub-
limity belongs not alone to the incomprehensible,
though perhaps that is its highest form. It is found
wherever anything elevates the human mind.* Sun,
moon, and stars do not alone possess it. It is in the
earth, in the sea, and in the sky; in landscape, in hu-
manity, in the life about us. In the descending scale,
then, between the inconceivable and the conceivable,
we come to look upon the ocean. Hundreds of modern
painters have chosen it for their subject, and by the
same process of magnifying side-lights we have noted
in the paintings of Niagara, though perhaps in a less
degree, they have made good pictures. They have
told of cloud and breaking wave, of greens, blues,
and yellows, of sunlight and moonlight upon it, of
ships and shipwrecks, of storm and death; but few
indeed have told us of the ocean's uncontrollable
power. The difficulty of comprehending and express-
ing such an idea is almost insurmountable, and by
way of lessening the greatness of the subject the ma-
jority of marine painters (quite unconsciously, per-
haps) confine their pictures to a few miles of sea-scape
* Ruskin, Modern Painters.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
227
in or near some harbor. Thus the attention is divided
between land and sea, and the idea of power dimin-
ished. Rare, and as seldom seen on earth as the By-
rons, are the painters sufficiently strong of mind and
sure of hand to paint the
"glorious mirror where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time
Calm or convulsed-in breeze or gale or storm;
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime—
The image of Eternity." "*
Yet this is the one idea that sweeps away all other
thoughts; this is the only idea that one of emotional
or æsthetic nature can possess in looking upon the
ocean. Again and again as we gaze out over the vast
expanse recurs the thought of its unconquerable
strength, its vastness, its dread, its loneliness. Let
those who will, descend to the shore and amuse them-
selves with pebbles and sea-shells. We may count
them with the children. But the poet and the
painter should not be there. The moon and the
stars may not shine in the same day with the sun.
Though appealing to different senses, poetry and
painting are analogous to each other in the concep-
tion and rendering of ideas; and perhaps there is no
better way of proving the value of ideas than to
Byron, Childe Harold.
+ Sir Isaac Newton late in life modestly said of himself that he had
been like a child on the sea-shore gathering smooth pebbles and
shells, while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him.
228
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
show their predominance in the masterpieces of both
arts. For instance, the loftiest pitch of poetry is
reached in the Song of the Archangels in the Prologue
to Faust:
"Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Brudersphären Weltgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebne Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Stärke
Wenn Keiner sie ergründen mag;
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”*
The glory of the sun is so great that even the angels
draw power and light from his burning face. He is
the one and only luminary; so brilliant that all others
hide their diminished lights. Listen again to the ex-
pression of the same idea in Ossian: "Thou comest
forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves
in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the
western wave: but thou thyself movest alone." Once
again hear Byron:
* "The sun-orb sings in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres his ancient round;
His path, predestined through creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.
The angels from his visage splendid
Draw power whose measure none can say:
The lofty works, uncomprehended,
Are bright as on the earliest day."
-Bayard Taylor's Translation.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
229
"Thou material god!
And representative of the Unknown
Who chose thee for his shadow! Thou chief star,
Center of many stars! which makest our earth
Endurable, and temperest the hues
And hearts of all who walk within thy rays.
Sire of the seasons! Monarch of the climes
And those who dwell in them.' "*
Let us now glance at the "majestical roof" of
heaven, which is but as the mighty mirror of the sun
himself. How like an army of angels the clouds
move along the sky, "covering the East and the West
with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom
of the farther infinite with a vesture of divers colors,
of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the
embroideries flame." Change the point of view, and
each cloud becomes an emblem
"of the departed soul
To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given,
And by the breath of mercy made to roll
Right onward to the golden gates of heaven."‡
Change the view again, and the clouds are voyag-
ing
"Their sun-bright path in folds of silver; some
In golden masses float, and others have
Edgings of burning crimson."
Change once more, and they become
"The ornament of heaven,
Who give to it its gayest shadowings
And its most awful glories."§
* * Manfred.
+ Ruskin,
+ Wilson.
& Percival.
230
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
He
It will be observed in the quotations we have made
that the sun, sky, and clouds each present one pre-
dominant idea of power or of glory. Now, if we
keep this fact well in mind and turn from poetry to
painting, we shall find their exact counterpart in the
suns and skies of Turner. Mr. Ruskin pronounces
him one of the greatest painters that ever lived, and
the world thinks the critic very right in his general
estimate, but not quite so correct in his enumeration
of the special features of Turner's greatness.
holds high rank,-not because he is the "only man"
who correctly drew the form of a cloud; or the "only
man" who knew about the forms and cleavages of
rocks; or the "only man" who painted the form of
an oak-leaf so that it could be told from an elm-leaf,
—but because he is the only (English) man who con-
ceived and told sublimely the glories of the sun, sky,
and clouds. An artist is not great by virtue of per-
ceiving small things and rendering them with dexter-
ity, and Turner never thought to be renowned by his
truth of leaf and grass-blade. He never thought
people would pry into the conformation of stick and
stone, and petal and stalk, when the sun was in the
heavens before them; and even if it be admitted that
he did think so, it was one of his mistaken ideas to
which no importance need be attached. People who
are always examining a foreground corner of a can-
vas for the purpose of finding out whether the minu-
tiæ are true to nature" remind one of Humpty-
Dumpty in the pantomime, who strikes a match to
search for a lighted lantern. They are so busy look-
"
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
231
ing for exact form that they never see light. There
is nothing admirable in a lighted lantern except its
brilliancy; and though people oftentimes ornament it
to relieve its bareness of outline, yet they do not
imagine the ornamentation is of more value than the
light. So there is nothing to the best of Turner's
paintings but the sun and its reflected splendor on
sky and cloud, river and ocean, hillside and meadow;
and if in these pictures flowers, grasses, trees, and
rocks appear, it is only for ornamental and general
effect. With Turner this ornamentation is at times
carried to such an extreme that the main idea is con-
fused and almost lost. This is the case with "the
two Carthages," which Mr. Ruskin quite rightly calls
nonsense-pictures." They are so, however, not be-
cause "the foliage is sacrificed to the architecture, the
architecture to the water,-the water is neither sea
nor river nor lake nor brook nor canal, and savors of
Regent's Park," but because the glory of the sun has
been detracted from by the Arabian Nights palaces
along the shore, and the tell-a-story figure-groupings
in the foreground. Herein lies the "nonsense;" and
there is not a little of it in his Téméraire and in his
Ulysses, the sun being pushed off into a corner to
balance the ship in the one picture, and Ulysses and
Polyphemus in the other. In a few of his pictures
(for Turner was not always "splitting the ethereal
blue" of sublimity) he bends his whole energy upon
the effects of flaming sunlight, and details and side
issues are passed over or nearly obliterated, as in the
Venetian piece, San Benedetto looking to Fusina.
232
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Here the object-values are correctly maintained in
their proper relation to the idea; but the picture is
not credited with as good color as the Ulysses or the
Téméraire.
The scale of beauty in nature is like Jacob's ladder
-its greatest brightness is at the top; but the lowest
round of it is not without some splendor. So, though
there be lesser glory in diffused light than in the
sun itself, still there is a beauty which may attain
sublimity if rightly treated; and as we descend the
scale of gold we find many artists dealing with light
and its reflection upon cloud or sea or hill, or valley.
To Corot, for instance, the most beautiful thing in
nature was the pale glow of morning and evening.
This one beauty absorbed him as much as the sun
absorbed Turner. He saw and felt little else; and
looking at the morning light standing
"Tiptoe upon the misty mountain-tops,"
he seemed to overlook the earth. The lesser was lost
in the greater. It was the passion of his long life, and
he saw it even in the delirium of his dying hour. His
singleness of view is apparent in almost all his pic-
tures, especially in The Orpheus—a large picture—the
one predominant idea of which is the yellow flush
of morning rising up the eastern skies. When he
painted it, Corot seemed to have possessed himself of
the very eyes of Orpheus-he who each morning
stood upon the mountain-top to greet with a hymn of
praise the sun-god Apollo. It cannot be imagined
that either Orpheus or Corot saw anything in nature
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
233
at that time but the beauty they both praised; and
surely Corot never intended that those for whom he
painted should see anything else. All things of the
created world like
"The vapors round the mountains curled
Melt into morn, and light awakes the day."
For this reason he does not distract our attention by
minutiæ in the foreground. With him trees and
foliage and figures are suggestive, but never of suffi-
cient importance to detract from or share the central
beauty. This is why in The Orpheus the figure is
only fairly modeled, the trees indifferent, and the
grass "painty;" and yet it has been criticised and de-
nounced for these very excellences-criticised by
the Humpty-Dumptys looking for the lighted lantern,
and denounced by Newtonian children looking for
sea-shells on the beach, with a great ocean of light
lying undiscovered before them.
But the sun and his splendor are not the only
things that are beautiful in creation. The clouds that
obscure them in storm are frequently sublime for
their power and volume. Often the light comes not
up in splendor. The morn
"riseth slowly as her sullen car
Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it;
She is not rosy-fingered but swol'n black;
Her face is like a water turned to blood,
And her sick head is bound about with clouds
As if she threatened night ere noon of day." *
* Jonson's Catiline.
234
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Storm and darkness are mighty in their strength; and
who, be he poet or painter, can translate their power
like the incomparable Rousseau? And who, when the
storm has passed, when
"the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,"*
can picture the still angry and sullen gloom of the
tempest like Courbet? Or who portray the dull gray
leaden clouds that hang like a mighty veil above the
lowlands like Daubigny? The face of nature has a
different mood with each hour; and if we do but look
upon her with the poet's eye, we shall see her beauty
and feel its charm, whether she be clad in gay gar-
ments like a bride or robed in mourning like a
widow. We would not have the sun forever in the
sky. There is a time for the moon and stars, the
clouds and the storm. We would not always be look-
ing up for light. There is a beauty on earth, in the
mountains, the valleys, the lakes, the rivers-aye, in
the component parts of these. The trees are above
the grass, as the rose is above the violet; yet in their
humbler spheres they are all beautiful. Almost any
idea regarding nature, if of sufficient greatness to
stand alone, may be made sublime by artistic treat-
ment; but when the idea is so small as to be depend-
ent upon other relative ideas, or upon beauty of form
or color, such as may be instanced in the case of a
* Milton, Paradise Lost.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
235
flower, a tree, a cloud, or a fair landscape, then it falls
into the second scale of simple beauty. Of this latter
we need not now treat, for in the higher realm we
have yet to speak of human action, power, and pas-
sion.
The sublime in the human subject is conceived and
expressed in precisely the same manner we have in-
stanced in the sun and light, clouds and storm. The
object of the artist is identical in every instance,
namely, so to express one idea that its force shall over-
come other considerations. In the range of concep-
tions relative to humanity nothing can have greater
weight than religion. Here we come to an agree-
ment with Mr. Ruskin; for religion may become one
of the themes, but not the sole aim, of painting.
Christ, the Madonna, the Apostles, the saints, and
the martyrs have been of earth and are suited to pic-
torial representation; hence from the beginning they
have been chosen to set forth those ideas of truth,
faith, and holiness which represent Christianity.
There is no loftier theme for the pen or the brush
than the Crucifixion. It was of such profound mo-
ment that in the darkness of that hour the earth
quaked, the rocks were rent, and the graves of the
dead were opened. The event shook the world, and
an idea of it upon canvas, such as some of the great
masters have painted, might well shake the beholder
with the power of sublimity. Again, the Madonna
-whether borne through the lighted sky as in the
"Immaculate Conception" of Murillo; or, the Child
in her arms, walks upon the clouds as in Raphael's
1
236
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
"Sistine Madonna;" or with maternal brow holds
out her restraining hand to the Infant as in Leo-
nardo's Madonna-is always sublimely beautiful, be-
cause appealing to our loftier sentiments with the
idea of purity and holiness. So, in a lesser degree,
there is a sublimity in the courage of the many saints
and martyrs to whom faith was stronger than per-
secution or death.
Next to the religious comes the moral-sublime,
having a basis upon heroism. But it has not suffi-
cient to do with painting to detain us. It is hardly
pictorial, and appeals more directly to the intellect
through literature. This is true, again, of the grand
in the intellectual, and to some extent with the sub-
lime in history; though men and events are certainly
proper subjects for pictorial art, and around the
heroes of history there is always thrown a halo of
grandeur. Napoleon was great on the throne, at
Marengo, at Waterloo, at St. Helena; and even at this
day, lying dead under the dome of the Hôtel des
Invalides, there is a sublimity about his very ashes.
Again, Galileo and Columbus-whether they appear
as the triumphant discoverers of new worlds or,
maligned and persecuted, lie in the gloom of dun-
geons-possess the power to move us. The noble in
history appears at every page; but it will be remem-
bered that in its portrayal the limitations of the arts
must be observed. Painting depends upon pic-
torial features; and in these Cæsar, for instance,
lying dead at the base of Pompey's statue may be
no better than a plebeian lying there; and, again,
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
237
Columbus in chains may possess no more sublimity
than a common vagabond in chains. Historical paint-
ing is at best rather illustrative than purely creative:
and if it would succeed it must catch the pictorial
moment. This is not necessarily a moment of head-
long action, but one that by its interest shall make
the painting a picture in itself, quite independent of
any historical text attached to it.
Another field of beauty, and one oftener chosen
than any other by poet and painter, is that of the
sublime in strength, power, action, life. Milton ex-
hibits it very often, and in no instance better than in
his description of Satan:
"High on a throne. which far
•
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind
·
Satan exalted sat,
Their dread commander; he, above the rest,
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower."
The figure of the leader of the rebellious angels rises
magnificent over all the hosts, the glare, the glitter,
and the clash of hell. He is so lofty that all may
see him; and we cannot choose but admire him for
the sole quality of daring power. If we turn from
this picture and bring up to mind the Moses of
Michael Angelo, we shall have, with a different motive,
its counterpart. Moses is half-turning with indig-
nant strength, as though he would rise and crush the
idolatrous children of Israel.* He sits there, silent
* Lübke.
238
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
and severe, yet suggestive of sudden action, and there.
is nothing in or about him but power. This is the
one thought of the sculptor; its expression creates
sublimity; and if the spectator fails to grasp it, he
will see little more than a well-carved block of stone.
This revelation of power is prominently stamped
upon the face and figure; and the spectator may not
turn aside to look for a garment askew, or a mis-
shapen finger or muscle, any more than in the pres-
ence of Satan he would become inquisitive about a
cloven foot. Michael Angelo never intended the
chisel-marks on the statue to be examined; nor did
Milton anticipate that the syllables of his verse
would be counted. Look to the angry brow of Moses,
the glittering front of Satan, and questions regarding
petty details will not be asked.
Again, different attributes of power appear upon
different brows. The Apollo Belvidere, whether the
hand hold the ægis or the bow, has upon the face
the beautiful scorn of a god who glories in the ease
with which he conquers. * Zeus and Athena overawe
us with the majesty of their presence; while Heracles
and the giant figures battling at Pergamus are splen-
did in their muscular power. The physical in wo-
man is not often of a sublime nature, for it lacks
force. Not even the Venus of the Louvre can aspire
beyond simple beauty; and it is only when some other
attribute comes in, as that of holiness in the Madonna,
or colossal majesty as in the Pallas-Athena, that the
* Winckelmann.
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
239
sublime is felt. Nor is the grand in the physical con-
fined to man alone. The beast and, for poetry, even
the bird, may possess it, though it is not easily ex-
pressed in art. The lion advancing in the arena or
stooping to drink from the desert pool; the flying
Arab horse; or that
"
one black mighty steed
Who seemed the patriarch of his breed,
Without a single speck or hair
Of white upon his shaggy side,"
who led the thousand of the wild untamed troop up
the Ukraine steppes, are grand in their strength, and
may well furnish subjects for the poet's and the paint-
er's art.
One more instance of ideas of grandeur. It is not
necessary that painting should illustrate either his-
tory or the poets. It is free to originate its own con-
ceptions; and probably the greatest field for the dis-
play of these is that of human passion. There is
scarcely a phase of love, hate, pride, joy, despair,
agony, or fear that cannot be and has not been made
truly great by the upholding throughout of the one
idea. Shakspeare in literature has struck almost every
note in the gamut; and Michael Angelo in painting,
"in the passion and the prophecy of the vaults of
the Sistine," has equaled him in intensity if not in
number. The pride of Lucifer, the despair of Man-
fred and Cain, the hatred of Iago, the love of Imo-
gen, the agony of Lear, all have found their counter-
parts in the paintings of the great masters. Through-
240
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
out all art the passions have been a chief motif in
production. They are used alike by genius and
neophyte, and whether they produce great art or not
is dependent upon the greatness of the conception
and its expression.
In painting, then, sublimity consists in the revela-
tion of an idea which of itself is sufficient to capture
the eye and overcome the emotional nature. For its
effect, in one sense, it is quite independent of form,
since the sublime is not reached unless form can be
forgotten or overlooked in the contemplation of the
idea. The range of the creator and revealer of it is
not limited in nature, save in exceptional cases. He
may choose to take up the neglected stone at his
doorway and by skillful treatment reveal to us a
matchless diamond, or he may in unknown places
seek newer and loftier beauties.
Next in the scale comes that art which shows but
simple beauty. It consists of idea dependent upon
form, or a union of both, as may be instanced in
much of the painting of the Renaissance. That it is
not so great as the former may be accounted for by its
ideas being less grand, and by the importance given
to form, which divides the attention and detracts from
the chief aim. The harmony of form and thought
produces in some respects a faultless, and in all re-
spects a popular, art; and if it is not the greatest, it is
for the reason we have just given. Too much prom-
inence is allowed to form, which should not equal the
idea. Thus Barry Cornwall wrote of the ocean :
OF PICTORIAL IDEAS.
241
"The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free."
It is a rather clever idea; is set in a clever couplet,
and makes clever poetry: but the couplet and its
rhymes are too important, and the thought, which
should be overwhelming, is dragged down to meet
them. How different it is from Byron's address, in
which the poet cared nothing for couplets, and even
used questionable grammar to express the omnipo-
tence of the ocean! In subject this art of simple
beauty is universal; and its producers, though not the
great geniuses of the world, are nevertheless worthy
of serious consideration. They are creators, discov-
erers, interpreters; and though they may be of lesser
brilliancy, yet we value them highly, as we do Keats.
and Tennyson though they be not Shakspeare and
Milton.
Below the harmonious art is that which may pos-
sess no clear-cut revelation of thought, but rather an
unconscious or instinctive sentiment. This senti-
ment is usually called "poetic feeling," and has its
origin in the peculiar manner in which the artist
views nature, or in the effect which nature may pro-
duce upon him. It is but an unconscious idea, half
expressed, or put forth as vaguely and shadowy as it
is conceived. The difference between it and a clear
conception may be well instanced in the work of
Corot. His Orpheus conveys a distinct and predomi-
nant idea of light; while much of his other work, his
Ville d'Avrays and Fontainebleau landscapes, possess
only the sentiment of light. Again, The Sower by
II
242
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
Millet distinctly tells of the nobility of the peasant;
while his shepherds and wood-choppers are only hints
or suggestions of it. This poetic feeling is also well
shown in the landscapes of Daubigny and Diaz, in the
Oriental pieces of Decamps and Fromentin, and in the
peasant-pictures of Bréton and Frère.
Next to this art comes that which is largely depen-
dent for success upon technical skill, neither beauty
of idea nor of form being predominantly strong. It is
accompanied in many cases by what has been called
"artistic feeling," displayed in the artist's manner of
treatment; the peculiar style of expression conveying
an idea not so much of the man or the individual as of
the artist. The works of Fortuny and his school, and
of Vollon, than whom a better technician never lived,
are good examples of this class of art. Delacroix and
Millet even in their poorer work have the artist's feel-
ing for color; and Bouguereau, devoid of imagination,
and a poor painter of flesh and draperies, possesses a
feeling for line that Michael Angelo might have en-
vied.
Last of all is that art dependent solely upon form.
In its nature it is decorative, whether it be an "ideal"
head or figure, an elaborate imitation of fruits or
flowers, or a stupendous canvas of allegory or moun-
tain-scenery. It is not likely to possess any of the
artist's thought or feeling, and hence, aside from dec-
oration, is nothing.
CHAPTER III.
OF SUBJECT.
THE three constituent elements of a picture are idea,
subject or form, and expression. The idea is the
thought to be conveyed; the subject is the vehicle of
conveyance; and the expression is the manner in
which it is conveyed. These three elements must unite
and be appropriate to each other in order to produce
great art; and though, of the three, perhaps subject is
the least important, yet it may not be lightly over-
looked or set aside. If we vary the image, it may be
said to be the glass in which all ideas are mirrored,
and their proper presentment to the eye is very much
dependent upon the quality of the glass.
To men of originality, all subject or form, in all art,
is likely to be more or less of a handicap. Thought is
free, and in its untrammeled state is quite boundless in
its scope. It wanders hither and thither at will, im-
agining the inimitable, viewing the sublime and the
beautiful, and perceiving phantoms of splendor pass
and repass, shapeless, formless, inexpressible. In that
state it is ethereal, intangible, and in proportions grand
as Aladdin's palace. But only seek to capture con-
ception and pin it down to earth, try to bring it within
the bounds of form, strive to clasp this beauty of the
mind and place it in artistic shape, and what a change
244
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
takes place! It suffers like the blue-winged butterfly
of Cashmere:
Every touch that wooed its stay
Hath brushed its brightest hues away."
The splendid idea of the poet fades into a feeble echo
of itself when it is constrained in verse, and the paint-
er's vision of beauty is dissipated by the face peering
out of the canvas. The artist longs to embody his
idea in expression, yet cannot fully illumine his art.
with the "lightning of the mind" because the mold of
form limits and checks the thought. Yet there is no
other way to express ideas; and possibly not a little of
the constraint which form entails is laid upon the artist
by his own choice. To the minds of the unthinking,
on the other hand, it is oftentimes an advantage, as an
aid to thought and a suggester of ideas. Some men
there are with ideas like molten metal, that overrun
the mold; and others, again, cold and dull, scarce eke
out the necessary quantity. Yet form is not Pro-
crustean in its nature; on the contrary, it is pliable
and adaptable to circumstances, and much of the
painter's art lies in his knowing what forms to choose,
and how to bend them to his will after they have been
chosen. Art is truly but "a fine frenzy;" yet in the
very torrent and whirlwind of passion the artist must
beget a temperance born of good judgment, and
select for purposes of illustration forms not only
appropriate, but familiar and comprehensible to his
audience.
OF SUBJECT.
245
It is a studio-belief of some of our modern artists,
especially those of France and Germany and the
followers of Fortuny and the Spanish-Roman school,
that the subject of a painting is of very little con-
sequence; that it makes little difference what you
paint if you but paint it well. Almost anything will do,
from a pumpkin, a brass pot, and a suit of armor to
a bric-a-brac shop or a group of society women in a
French drawing-room. This is but another phase of
the argument put forth by the believers in technical
skill as the aim of art, which we have attempted to
confute, some pages back. If painters have nothing
to say, perhaps they may as well gossip about gems,
bronzes, cutlery, china, and millinery goods as about
sunlight and cloud-form and human passion. In
either case it is but a tale of the paint-brush and need
not attract our attention. But if they have ideas to
express, they would better place them in appropriate
and intelligible forms. If their subject is bad, there
will of necessity be an obscurity, perhaps a total loss,
of the thought, and then the picture becomes depen-
dent upon skill of hand, which, we have seen, is not
sufficient in itself to make great art.
It seems to be a generally recognized requisite of a
painting that it must have some beauty about it;
and the painters who believe not wholly in expres-
sion, and have not sufficient wit to originate ideas,
oftentimes hit upon beauty of form and color, think-
ing thereby to conform to the aesthetic creed. This
latter generally takes the shape of the "ideal" of
which we have spoken; and for the sayer of nothing,
246
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
again, perhaps it is well that he chooses it, for it is bet
ter to say that nothing agreeably than disagreeably
The half shop-girl, half Greek goddess, which passes
for an "ideal" is much to be preferred to the dressed
pig's-head of the "realist" who has neither good.
thought nor good subject and yet thrusts expression.
at us in repulsive form. The simperings of the fool-
ish may be endurable, even amusing; but the howl of
the mad is unbearable. This beauty of face and figure,
however, is not at all necessary in painting notwith-
standing Raphael used it. His success, artistically, is
not attributable to it, though it may be admitted that
much of his popularity among the masses is due to it.
If he were a great artist by virtue of this alone, then
Carlo Dolci and the hundred other insipid followers.
of the Renaissance might claim greatness on the
same ground, for their beauty-patterns were cut from
similar cloth. In portraying ideas or strong feeling,
skin-deep beauty may be entirely discarded, and the
uncouth, wrinkled faces of Rembrandt, or even the
repulsiveness of the demons of the Last Judgment,
substituted in its place, if necessary. Michael Angelo
despised it, for he found it characterless. More
thought could be shown in sterner figures; and to
him rugged power, not smooth polish, constituted
beauty. To express strength he singled out his sub-
jects with the greatest care and with special regard
to their fitness. The Sibyls and Prophets of the
Sistine are confirmations of this. In modern art,
beauty of form, like the school-boy's laugh, generally
betrays "the vacant mind." We do not find it used
OF SUBJECT.
247
very much by the leaders. Delacroix and Millet
may have turned their brushes upon Hebe-faced
studio-models, and Decamps and Fromentin may
have painted the seven gazelle-eyed houris of the
Prophet's paradise; but we have no record of such
canvases. On the contrary, their art shows how poorly
a fair exterior could translate their thoughts, and how
perfectly in the crucible of the mind the common ore
of humanity may be transformed into shining beauty.
An idea is like a gem : it requires a setting in pro-
portion to its size and brilliancy. Its light must not
be hidden by dingy surroundings; but if it would
be well shown it must be well set. The latter must
be appropriate and accommodate itself to the former.
The necessity of this, and how it has been recognized
in the past, may be illustrated by examples from the
arts analogous to painting. Thus Shakspeare chooses.
Macbeth for ideas of ambition; Lear for suffering un-
der ingratitude; Romeo and Juliet for love; Richard
for treachery; and Queen Katherine for insulted dig-
nity. It will be remembered that these characters are
not people brought into being by the imagination of
Shakspeare alone, though his art has of course given
them great prominence. He did not find them in the
remote regions of fancy, but in the pages of history;
for they were historic figures, remarkable for the qual-
ities mentioned, before Shakspeare's day. Strange-is
it not?-that out of all creation he should have chosen
these characters! Yet are they not well fitted for their
respective purposes, and does not each one admira-
bly embody the peculiar thought of the dramatist?
248
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
How ill each could set forth the other's thoughts!
Richard could not be Romeo, nor Romeo, Lear; for in
either case the conception and the character are
indissoluble, and the deed and the doer of it are
complementary to each other. The hand of the mas-
ter-workman is apparent in the setting of each gem;
and instead of the form detracting from the thought,
there is a unity and a harmony without an equality—
a perfect chord, yet a difference in pitch.
Take an antithetical instance. In these modern
times there are many who believe that Browning
stands next to Shakspeare in dramatic art; yet if we
turn to his Blot in the 'Scutcheon we shall find Gerard
the Warrener acting like a servant, while talking as
good English upon as learned themes as the elegant
Earl Mertoun or Lord Tresham. In Pippa Passes, the
girl Pippa is a hand in the silk-mills; yet she dis-
courses like a De Staël, theorizes, speculates, and
poetizes. Byron, again, in his choice of characters
is quite as infelicitous as Browning. His Cain is a
nineteenth-century skeptic instead of the untutored
first-born of earth, and his Childe Harold, Corsair,
Mazeppa, and Sardanapalus are all brothers of the
same mind and stature. His contemporaries Southey,
Coleridge, and Landor are even less successful. In
the works of these men we find no lack of gems of
thought, but unfortunately they have but one setting
for them all. It has been the critics' grievance
against Byron from the beginning that he could
draw but one character (subject); they never said he
had but one idea,
OF SUBJECT.
249
A similar analogy is apparent in dramatic repre-
sentation. Every prominent actor of to-day has a
repertoire of plays almost entirely drawn from the
drama of the past because the present playwrights
are not happy in their subjects; and the cause of a
skillful actor's success in one rôle and his failure in
another is not to be accounted for so much by his
own variation in acting as by the difference in the
character (subject) which he attempts to portray.
This reasoning holds true, again, of the novel, into
which I need not go more than to cite the people of
Dickens and George Eliot as examples of forms
appropriate to the thoughts set forth.
In a broader sense, taking not individual character
but a work of art in its entirety, there is a likeness
between great poems and great paintings in that
they both fix upon the loftiest subjects-subjects
proportionate to the ideas expressed. Pentaour the
Egyptian chose no ordinary man to be the hero of his
pæan of praise. He took the Pharaoh descended
from the sun-god, the very highest of earth. The
Egyptian sculptors did likewise by making their
most colossal statues in the image of the king. In
Assyria the themes of the poet and the sculptor were
similar to those of Egypt: and in Greece Homer
and the Hesiodic bards dealt principally with the
gods and demi-gods; and if they descended to men,
these were ever of the heroic mold of Achilles and
Ulysses. The Greek sculptors followed the poets
step by step. Above all others these latter were
most particular regarding the forms they chose, and
II*
250
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
in the Periclean days of sculpture none but the gods
or national heroes ever became their models. Again,
in more modern times, Milton, in portraying power,
foiled wrath, and baffled pride, stopped not to deal
with men and their rulers, but sought the very high-
est exponents in the persons of the rebellious angels.
Michael Angelo chose the Last Judgment for a sim-
ilar purpose. Throughout all branches of art sub-
lime ideas are marked by the greatness of the sub-
ject in which they are displayed. Architecture
finds its most exalted expression in the cathedral,
not in the prison; music reaches the height of its
power in such dramatic themes as "Tristan and
Isolde," "The Nibelungen Ring," and "Tannhäu-
ser"-pieces taken from the European legends of
heroic days; striking and startling events of history
or of human passion become the themes of great
dramas; and poetry in the superlative degree is
found in the epics that have to do with events of
mythological, supernatural, or historic origin, as
instanced in the Iliad, the Æneid, the Divine Comedy,
Jerusalem Delivered, Paradise Lost, and Faust.
counterpart of this is found in plastic and pictorial
art. The gods and demi-gods have presided over
sculpture, while the Crucifixions, the Annunciations,
the Last Judgments, have displayed the genius of the
painters. If successful example may be accepted as
a precedent, this would seem to prove that great ideas
demand subjects proportionately great, and ideas of
lesser power subjects proportionately less; that the
thoughts of a man need only the ordinary expression
The
OF SUBJECT
251
of humanity, but the thoughts of a god the form and
language of deity; that ordinary people may die and
be buried like ordinary people, but that an Elijah
requires to be translated to heaven in a chariot of
fire.
And finally we reach the much-mooted question,
Should painting confine itself to picturing subjects of
the present time, or is it at liberty to go back into the
past? Writers without number, from Goethe on-
ward, have repeated the injunction: "Paint what you
see, and paint in the living present; let your art be
indigenous and reflect the spirit of the time." And
this in substance is precisely what all art of any
consequence has done from the days of Primitive
Man to the present time. It is ever a reflection
of the age in which it lives, though in being that,
it is not essential that English painting, for instance,
should represent the glories of the reigning Queen,
as the Laureate attempts to do in verse; or that
American painting should be made up of scenes in
the New York Stock Exchange, or buffalo-hunts and
Indian life, on the Western plains. If he is national
in spirit, the English artist will be essentially English
in thought, and the American essentially American;
but it is not necessary that their subjects should be
respectively located in their own countries, or that
they should be of this century. That of which a
* Mr. William M. Hunt put it more violently thus: "Paint
what you see and what you feel, if it's nothing but a cat.”—Talks
about Art.
252
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
man speaks does not determine his nationality, but
rather his individual thoughts and his manner of
expressing them. Shakspeare was emphatically Eng-
lish and reflected the Elizabethan age notwithstand-
ing he wrote of Pericles, Cæsar, Antony and Cleo-
patra-people of foreign lands who died long before
his date. Racine was French although he wrote
Alexandre, Bajazet, and Phèdre. And Lessing was
German if he chose not his own time or country
in the drama of Nathan der Weise. This is apparent,
again, in sculpture and painting. Phidias was typical-
ly Greek though he chiseled the forms of the old and
the unseen gods; Michael Angelo was Italian, and
his art was a perfect mirror of the Renaissance in
spite of such characters as Moses, David, the Prophets,
and the Sibyls; and Holbein, Dürer, Rubens, and
Rembrandt could not possibly conceal their national
affinities, no matter what their themes or how far
back in history or mythology they were placed. It
may be safely said that there is no positive require-
ment of art that its subject should be adapted to the
country and age of the artist, and the mere fact that
the subjects of the greatest masterpieces have been
located in past time and in lands foreign to the
painters would seem to indicate that there is some-
thing absolutely unfavorable about the present event.
This modern demand of the critics that art shall
picture the existing facts has not been raised in re-
gard to painting alone. The poem and the novel
have likewise been hawked at despite the fact that
both the poet and the novelist expressly show by
OF SUBJECT.
253
their seeking antiquity that they know that to be
their proper sphere of action. But the modern critic
from his scientific point of view cannot see why the
steam-engine, the electric telegraph, a drop of water
under a microscope, or a strike of factory-hands will
not make a good poem; nor why modern society,
political history of the times, or fashionable love-
making will not make a strong novel. He thinks
them possessed of the elements of strength and
beauty, and so perhaps they are: and so is the picture
called "The Night-Prowlers," by Munkacsy; but if
this canvas were placed within two feet of the critic's
face he would see neither strength nor beauty-
nothing but sprawling legs and muddy paint. Close-
ness is a cause of false sight or no sight quite as
often as distance; and this is precisely the difficulty
with current events for the purposes of art. They are
too new, too crude, too near. There is no perspec-
tive, no unity, no romance, no spirit—nothing save
gross form and harsh outline. It takes duration to
mold facts and give them that proper rotundity
which they are destined to hold in history. Time,
again, is a great sifter of the wheat from the chaff.
It separates the salient points from the mass of detail,
and makes them more prominent by the suppression
of unimportant surroundings. At first sight all is
more or less hard and mechanical, as are the happen-
ings of our every-day life. The written history of our
times is generally a mere dictionary of indiscriminate
facts. But the years at last set all things in related
positions, and events find their proper estimate and
254
PRINCIPLES of arT.
importance in our minds, as do the lives and charac-
ters of great men. It is a stereotyped remark of the
historian that we are not far enough removed from
certain matters to speak of them justly; and a judg-
ment upon a present occurrence or a living man is
often found to be one-sided and almost worthless.
Under similar circumstances something akin to this
mental nearsightedness creates a false focus in the
vision of the poet and the novelist. The world has
yet to see and read the great poems that have been
founded upon occurrences contemporary with the poet.
There are, to be sure, some exceptions, and among
these may be cited the description of the night before
Waterloo in Childe Harold; yet over this same subject
Scott, Southey, and a host of the less notable stum-
bled and fell, as in past times Lucan did over Phar-
salia.
Possibly no one could speak with greater au-
thority on this subject than he who as an author en-
countered all its difficulties-Hawthorne.
I quote
from the preface to the Marble Faun: "No author
without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing
a romance about a country where there is no shadow,
no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy
wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity
in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case
with my dear native land. It will be very long, I
trust, before romance-writers may find congenial and
easily-handled themes either in the annals of our
stalwart republic or in any characteristic and probable
events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry,
OF SUBJECT.
255
ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make
them grow." This, in a lesser degree, is the case with
painting. It is a product of age, and dependent upon
it to a certain extent. An idea in any department
of knowledge first appears to us in irregular out-
line. It lacks uniformity and has no high lights
or shadows; but if allowed time to develop, it event-
ually shapes itself. The startling incidents of to-
day appear in vivid colorings and distorted propor-
tions, but the to-morrows tone them down into poetic
and artistic objects of history. When looked back
upon through the years, or even the centuries, they will
have lost all their crudeness and detail, and only the
strong leading features of form and color, which by
reason of their strength and truth are best fitted to
survive, will remain. It is these features thus rounded,
emphasized, and refined by time that the poet and the
painter take up and transfix in verse and upon can-
vas; and their doing so is a mark of genius which
never slaves over the commonplace to produce the
poetic. Such was the motive that actuated men like
Dante and Tasso, Michael Angelo and Raphael—men
modern in thought-to overlook the history of their
day and seek out subjects in the past. Perhaps it
was not necessary for them to have done so, and it
may as well be frankly admitted that in painting
there have been many fine pieces both in ideas and
subjects produced in the living present; nevertheless,
the masters, with few exceptions, discarded their own
age and went back to former times, and it is safe to
say there was some very good reason for their doing so.
CHAPTER IV.
OF EXPRESSION.
It is not my purpose to deal with the practical side.
of expression in painting, or to treat of those various
features, such as chiar-oscuro, perspective, and draw-
ing, which have to do with its accomplishment. Such
consideration would belong more properly to a
treatise on technique, and would be valuable only when
coming from a professional artist like Fromentin or
Couture. In glancing at art in theory we can but
outline the principle which dominates the production
of strong and effective work. This principle must
have been premised from the preceding pages to be
the concentration of force, and such it is. In its ac-
tion it requires the utilization of all means for the
accomplishment of a certain end; the bending of every
energy for the attainment of a definite purpose; the
concentration of all force into one coigne of vantage.
The same law, or its analogy at least, is demonstrated
in all the workings of nature, is practically applied in
all physics and mechanics, and is well known in every
department of philosophical and scientific thought. I
shall attempt to show that it is a necessity in the pro-
duction of art.
A logician who wishes to prove by argument a
conclusion in any branch of knowledge sets about it
OF EXPRESSION.
257
in a logical manner. He makes that which he seeks
to prove represent the hub of a wheel; the premises
from which the proof may be drawn are represented
by the outer rim of the wheel; and the various points
of proof brought into play are shown by the spokes,
which, proceeding from the outer rim of thought,
center in the conclusion, or the hub. One after
another these points are brought up into position
until the desired end is reached, and the argument is
completed by the concentration of force upon one
point which sustains and is itself sustained.
The novelist who gathers together a series of scenes
and puts them together in the shape of a novel gene-
rally does so with some well-known purpose in view.
This is oftentimes supposed to be the pointing of a
moral; but whether the purpose be this or something
entirely different, the means and manner of attaining
it remain the same. A hero, a heroine, or both, are
the chief exponents of the purpose. They are the
central planets in the novelist's system, and all other
characters are but satellites. These latter revolve
about the former; and if they possess any luster, it is
but a reflected light. Arthur Donnithorne is but a
foil to receive the righteous rage of Adam Bede; and
all the fanaticism of early Christianity in Alexandria
is but a background upon which to show the Neo-Pla-
tonism of Hypatia. Thus a novel like My Novel follows
through plot and counterplot the lives and fortunes
of many people to prove that knowledge is power, but
a power like a two-edged sword which may cut the
holder's hand; and how admirably arranged in the
258
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
order of their strength do these people come! The
two friends Harley L'Estrange and Audley Edgerton
are the principal characters; and around them, as the
tennis-balls to the players, to vary the metaphor, are
such people as Leslie, the Avenels, Dale, Riccabocca,
Leonard Fairfield, and Violante, who serve merely to
display the skill of the contestants. The aim of the
book is to prove the truth of a certain idea; and
people, scenes, plots, and descriptions are but the
means of its attainment.
The handling of characters with the object of pro-
ducing certain effects can perhaps be better illustrated
in the drama. Here the law of culminating strength.
is well known, and has the name of " dramatic force."
There is always an idea to be expressed, a something
to be proved, a virtue to be exalted, or a frailty to be de-
based. In proving or showing these the dramatist uses
people as a juggler does puppets. He makes them
talk to suit his wishes, and assigns to each a given
part according to its importance. From the begin-
ning the tendency of the piece is onward; each scene
unfolds something of the plot and has a climax; each
act has a climax; and the whole piece has one im-
mediately after which the drama closes, the purpose
of it presumably having been accomplished. The char-
acters are but points of proof, tending toward convic-
tion or confirmation of what the playwright chooses
to set forth. Yet even in these, like the scene within
the act, and the act within the play, each is construct-
ed with a regard to effect and upon the true principle
OF EXPRESSION.
259
of concentrated power. Thus, for instance, Schiller
with Mary Stuart, and Shelley with Beatrice Cenci,
are very careful not to bring in the commonplace
details of history. That in fact these heroines went
through a routine of daily life not different from or-
dinary existence, even at the height of their misfor-
tunes, is most certain; but the dramatists do not choose
to refer to these minor matters, because they lend not
directly to the strength of the characters, but rather
undermine and detract from them. Every person in
the drama is put forth as the exponent of a certain
purpose great or small, and there is still another pur-
pose in the position occupied by the chief characters
among the minor ones. Each of the latter is built up
in itself and forms a block of the pyramid that raises
aloft the hero or heroine. In the play, Mary Stuart,
though dethroned, imprisoned, and condemned to
death, is greater than the sovereign Queen Elizabeth;
none of those surrounding her equals her in impor-
tance. And this is true art; for she is the center of inter-
est, and it is the place of the lesser to pay deference to
the greater and thus heighten the effect. The figures
possess a certain proportionate value, as do pawns,
knights, bishops, and kings in a game of chess. In
The Cenci, Beatrice is as much above her mother as
the latter is above either of the murderers; and it is
the proper maintenance of these positions that makes
up the strength of the play.
Again, this can be further exhibited in stage presen-
tation. Hamlet, for example, is the central figure,
and almost always occupies the middle of the stage.
260
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
If there are other people upon the boards, they are
placed in the order of their importance. The super-
numeraries, courtiers, pages, and waiting-ladies are at
the back; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a little more
to the front; Horatio, still nearer; the Queen, King,
and Ophelia, nearly central; and lastly Hamlet, the
center of the group, "the observed of all observers."
Whatever change there may be in the scene, these
characters maintain their relative positions; and the
homage paid to Hamlet by all of them tends to make
him the leading person of the play.
A final example of this concentration of force may
be taken from poetry. Here, again, some controlling
purpose takes possession of the poet's mind and rules.
throughout the poem, be it epic in twenty-four books
or lyric in twenty-four lines. It may be the power of
heroism, as in the Iliad; the passion of sorrow, as in In
Memoriam; or the note of sad regret, as in The Dream.
In any case, the purpose of the piece is sustained
throughout, and it is the object of the poet to bend all
forces to the expression of it. His mind is but a mir-
ror reflecting in multiplied images different aspects of
the same thing. Again and again the glass is turned
upon the conception, viewing it in new lights and posi-
tions, until at last we comprehend it, and the object
of the poet is attained. As in the drama, so the
poem is produced not alone by sequential force in the
whole, but also in the parts, and each part moves and
holds position in the order of its strength. Whatever
does not tend to strengthen must of necessity weaken;
and the introduction of material that has no direct or
OF EXPRESSION.
261
relative effect on the whole is bad art in any depart-
ment. In the poem all that is commonplace is omitted;
much that is prosaic and yet necessary for the sake of
comprehension is but faintly suggested; and all that
is highly poetical or brilliant is set forth with a
strength proportionately greater on account of the ab-
sence of detracting features. Oftentimes the omission.
of the unpoetic leaves of the poem but a string of
flashing gems held together by the slightest thread of
narrative; for if detail is introduced, it is with an ex-
penditure of strength; and if too much is brought in,
the whole is dragged down to the commonplace. This
is well instanced in such poems as Christabel and The
Giaour, where even coherence is dependent at times
upon the reader's imagination. Thus concentration
of force in the argument requires the elimination.
of all that is not logical; in the drama it requires the
elimination of all that is not dramatic; in the acting,
all that is not histrionic; in the poem, all that is not
poetic. And now it remains to be shown that the
same reasoning holds true of painting, and that the
production of strong art requires that all that is not
artistic and pictorial shall be discarded, and that only
shall be retained which means something in the ex-
pression of an idea.*
*"A work should be all of a piece, and people and things should
be there for an end. I wish to put strongly and fully all that is
necessary; so much so that I think things weakly said had better
not be said at all, because they are in a manner deflowered and
spoiled; but I profess the greatest horror of uselessness (however
brilliant) and filling up. Such things can have no result but to take
262
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
It may be premised from what has already been
said that it is not the province of a picture to convey
more than one idea; nor has it ever been so claimed,
except possibly by Mr. Ruskin. Two or more ideas
could not live in the same picture, any more than
two suns could be brilliant in the same sky. One
would dim the splendor of the other, and both would
suffer. Moreover, the following of different lines of
thought in a picture would be as confusing to the
spectator as hearing, or trying to hear, two operas at
one time. Raphael's "Transfiguration" is a good ex-
ample of this. Given the one idea, then, the means of
its expression in painting are, generally speaking,
two-form and color (chiar-oscuro and perspective be-
ing assumed for the sake of argument as but modifica-
tions of these). Like the characters of a play, a novel,
or a poem, these means have certain proportionate
values, which must of necessity be maintained in the
forcible expression of the idea. They may be called
color-values and form- or object-values.
Every successful picture has a certain predominant
color which corresponds to the key of a melody of
music, and all the notes of the color-gamut must be in
harmony with it. Each note has its proportionate
value to the key-note, precisely as in the drama Ber-
nardo, Horatio, and the Queen hold relative places of
importance toward Hamlet. Some examples will il-
lustrate our meaning at the start, not only as regards
off the attention and weaken the whole."-Millet to Pelloquet, in
Sensier's Jean François Millet.
OF EXPRESSION.
263
the color-pitch, but pure light as well. In sunset ef-
fects the high light is the sun itself; next it is a halo;
after that comes a half-tint; and so on, lessening in
value as the radiation continues, until at last it fades
off into shade or darkness.* In a similar position of
relative value to the high color may radiate all the
colors of the spectrum and their thousand tints and
shades. Gold, crimson, scarlet, blue, purple, may all
appear, provided they hold their proper positions.
But place one light too high or too low, or one hue or
tint amiss; let a lackey stand in a nobleman's place;
strike a false note in the gamut, and instantly there is
discord and the effect is perhaps destroyed. Not only
must the harmony of a sunset be maintained by the use
of tints, and gradations of light proportionate to the
sun itself, but the various positions of these tints and
lights and shades must be maintained. The sky will be
the chief exponent, the water next, and the earth next.
Therefore, as regards their values, the sun is greater
than the sky, the sky greater than the water, the water
greater than the earth; and any brilliancy of tone or
degree of light placed upon the last that outvalues that
of the first is not in harmony, is not true in value, is not
in proportion, is not strengthening but weakening,
and, hence, bad art. This on the supposition, of course,
* “There must be a principal light; all the others should be sub-
ordinate to it, and should become fainter toward the extremities
of the canvas. The same principle holds good in shadows, but in
an inverse way; that is to say, that the strong values ought to les-
sen in approaching the center."-Couture, Conversations on Art.
264
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
that the idea which the painter wishes to express is re-
garding the sun. If it primarily concerns the earth,
then let him heighten the coloration there and depress
the light of the sun and sky by partly concealing the
former behind a cloud or taking it out of the canvas
altogether.
Again, in the paintings of Oriental life, caravans,
street-scenes, groups in interiors, or court-squares with
horses, where warmth and complexion are the chief
attraction, there will generally be found some leading
color with which all the other shades and tints will
be in keeping. The key in which the composition is
pitched can be told at a glance by the general appear-
ance of the whole. Should the picture be bad by a
lack of gradation, it will appear much after the man-
ner of a modern patch-work quilt, where pieces are
put in at haphazard; but if, on the contrary, it be good
by the subordination of tints and semi-tints to the
prevailing color, it will be harmonious and pleasing
to the eye. When this predominant color so harmon-
izes and amalgamates the others that, if the canvas
were placed upon a swiftly-revolving pin, the colors
would blend into one uniform tint, then the picture is
technically said to be “good in tone." The degree of
color, whether subdued or high, is immaterial, provided
the "tone" or uniformity of it be kept up in propor-
tion. The chief color prevailing in figure-composi-
tions, as in landscape, usually radiates from the cen-
ter of interest as the light of the sun goes out to all
points through the heavens. The minor tones are
generally blended off into tints and semi-tints, or lost
OF EXPRESSION.
265
in neutrality; but the value of each, whether it be
great or small, is maintained throughout for the sup-
port of the whole. There is but one commander of an
army; but there are generals, colonels, lieutenants,
and privates, increasing in number as the rank grows
less; yet each has his position and relation to the com-
mander, and each works for the maintenance of the
united force.* The application of this principle may
be made to all kinds of painting,-landscape, figure-
compositions, portraits, or still-life, and to almost all
of the works of the great colorists, Titian, Tintoretto,
Velasquez, Rubens, Turner. It will not always ap-
ply to the works of Raphael, Leonardo, or Michael
Angelo; for, heretical as it may be to say, they were
not remarkable for color, except in some instances for
its badness.
Of the exaggeration and distortion of lights and
tones as they appear in nature, for the purpose of
producing effects in art, something will be said under
the head of form- or object-values, of which we have
* “Take for example his [Correggio's] picture of Antiope. The
woman, enveloped in a panther-skin, is as bright as a flame. The
soft red tone forms the first halo; then the light blue draperies
with a slight greenish tint form the second halo. The Satyr has
a value a few degrees below that of the draperies, making it the
third halo. When the bouquet is thus formed, Correggio surrounds
it with beautiful dark leaves, shading toward the extremities of
the canvas. These gradations are so well observed that if you put
the picture at so great a distance that you cannot see the figures,
you will still have the effect of light."-Couture, Conversations
on Art.
12
266
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
next to speak. That it has been done successfully
by genius the history of art will prove; but it would
seem to be a bad rule of action for mediocrity to
follow. That it is open to the popular objection of
not being "natural," and that it does not reproduce
nature, or even the truth of it, is very true. But we
have already learned that nature is one thing and art
is another; and as for truth, there are many kinds of
it. For instance, there is a truth of nature which
rules nature, a truth of history ruling history, and a
truth of art for art. Few pictures have been painted
that in conforming to one of these truths have not
in some degree transgressed another. There never
has been a Christ or a Madonna painted by either an
old or a young master that was not false to history.
What, then, shall we do-cast them all aside? Titian
and Michael Angelo at times falsified not only history,
but nature. Often they did not even maintain Mr.
Ruskin's "generic truth." But one thing they did
maintain, and that is truth to art. These transgres-
sions are scarcely defensible; yet primarily the sepa-
rate departments of knowledge would better be ruled
by their different laws. This judging and gibbeting of
one because not like the other smacks something too
much of the Crusade manner of hanging a Moham-
medan because not a Christian.
The general sources from which painting derives its
constituent elements are but two: the human mind,
which produces the conception, and nature, which
furnishes the materials. The first has been spoken
of; and regarding the second, we will not now take
OF EXPRESSION.
267
up anew the argument whether the forms of na-
ture shall be reproduced literally or not. Words
are but the forms of a language, yet we do not hesi-
tate to take and use them in any way we choose.
The clay is a natural form, yet the hand of the potter
molds it to his fancy. And so it is the province of
the artist to use and mold objects in nature in the
manner he thinks best for the expression of his ideas.
They are but the materials of his work, and in them-
selves are merely facts as uninteresting as are words,
or potter's clay. It is the use to which he puts
them, the meaning that he gives them, that may
elevate them as the signs and symbols of ideas.
Facts reproduced remain simply facts. An imitation
conveys no more meaning than an original. If
people see no beauty in the latter, how can they hope
to see it in the former? The presence of an inter-
preter is necessary. In its natural state the splendor
of the diamond is not visible; but the lapidist has
an art of bringing light out of darkness. He chips
away the outside crust, and the reflected luster be-
comes apparent. And this is the way the painter and
the poet in the field of nature bring forth her greater
beauties and her deeper meanings-by doing away
with concealing features, and concentrating the atten-
tion upon one sole idea which scintillates like a gem
of many facets.
The facts of nature, then, are to the artist as
building materials to the mechanic-means out of
which, if properly constructed, something may be
made. The first movement is that of selection, for all
268
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
forms of nature are not fitted or advantageous for
use upon canvas. There are always one or more
objects of greater importance than the others as con-
veyers of ideas, or the embodiments of ideas in them-
selves; these are first selected, and accessory objects.
that may be used as reflectors to enhance the brill-
iancy of the more prominent ones come next in
order. After this has been accomplished follows the
grouping of the different forms; and the manner
in which this has been done by the great painters
gives us the principle upon which we are build-
ing: that the chief object has first place, and the
lesser ones hold position according to their value.
Features of small importance are merely suggested;
and all forms that have no direct bearing upon
the idea, or that do not contribute their quota of
strength toward its effectiveness, are given no place
whatever. Unnecessary detail is avoided, not only
for effect in forcibly conveying the idea,* but for the
sake of simplicity in treatment. It is inimical to a
broad style, and beauty of outline, mass, and color
require its incessant sacrifice. The object which is
the chief impersonator of the idea has the greatest.
splendor, as the moon has more light than the stars
and the outspread ocean. The others have brilliancy
in the ratio of their importance in a descending scale;
but the light of no accessory equals that of the prin-
cipal, except by detracting from the latter.
*"If you want to make an impression you must sacrifice as
many details as possible."-Wm. M. Hunt, Talks on Art.
+ Couture.
OF EXPRESSION.
269
In any one of the many pictures of the Last Sup-
per the figure of Christ is always central in position,
light, and color. By His side is the beloved John, and
along the table are seated the disciples in the order
of their relation to the Master, until at the extreme
end Judas is dimly seen with half-averted face or
else passing hurriedly out at the door. Such group-
ing is in perfect accord with the proper preservation
of object- and color-values; and whether or not this
was the position of things as the scene occurred is a
matter of indifference. It is necessary that it should
be so in art. Another instance may be taken from
the pictures of the Crucifixion. The Christ is
always the primary object to which everything else
is contributory. At His feet, and closest to Him, is
the Holy Mother; beside her is the Magdalene; next,
the two thieves, one on each side, toned down in light
and color to be in keeping; farther removed stand
the Roman soldiers, indifferently expressed; and in
the distance are dull, dark clouds and mountains, so
dim as to blend with the neutral ground. Again, in
the Rubens pictures, at the Louvre, Marie de Medici
is always in the center, well brought out and well
maintained; Henry IV. is of medium value only;
while the gods and goddesses at the sides and back
are blurred and dim.* Fromentin claimed this as a
proof that Rubens never could paint anything that
he had not directly before him, and that the accesso-
ries were indistinct because the artist never saw them;
* Hamerton, Thoughts about Art,
270
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
but this would seem to be a mistake. Rubens saw
the models plainly enough; but in the picture he did
not wish them to appear prominently. This same
process of dramatic composition in painting may be
seen again, in any one of the Descents from the Cross,
in the pictures of the Madonna, in Michael Angelo's
"Last Judgment," in Raphael's "St. Cecilia," in
Correggio's "St. Jerome," in the pediment groups of
the Parthenon, and in the stone group of Laokoön
and his sons. In recent American art a good illustra-
tion may be found in the "Niagara" of Mr. Inness,
where the object of the painter seems to be to dis-
play the beauty of falling water. Every feature
of the picture, earth, air, sky, and cloud, leads up to
where the torrent breaks in its descent, as though the
draught of it drew them in like a whirlpool. Another
example is the "Life Line" of Mr. Homer exhibited
at the National Academy of Design in New York in
the spring of 1884. The scene is the hollow of an
enormous sea, where the view is shut in by two walls.
of gray water. At one side a remnant of flapping
canvas indicates a ship, and through the mist in the
distance is faintly seen a scrap of a rocky coast. Sus-
pended above the water, in a sea-chair attached by
pulley-ropes to the life-line above, are two figures, a
life-saving-service man, and a half-drowned young
girl lying unconscious in his arms. The interest, of
course, is in the figures, and chiefly in the girl. To
intensify and increase this interest in her, the painter
has not shown the face of the man at all. A gust of
wind has blown a woolen muffler or tippet directly
OF EXPRESSION.
271
across his face, so that only a portion of his figure and
the top of his hat are seen. Many have regarded this
as a piece of studio cleverness to avoid the labor of
painting in a second head; but, I think, wrongly. It
is a perfect piece of art, wrought out for the express
purpose of preserving the value of the girl as a prin-
cipal, at the expense of the man as an accessory.
The importance of some objects over others in
a canvas is recognized to a great extent by all
painters in all kinds of painting. In portraiture the
draperies, furniture, dress, and even parts of the fig-
ure, such as the hands, feet, ears, and sides of the
neck, will not have so much skill expended upon them
as the leading features, the hair, eyes, nose, cheeks,
and chin.* And if we examine a picture of a studio-
interior (a not uncommon subject nowadays), we
shall find that color- and object-values have been so
studied and weighed that a blue-green vase will man-
age to balance a red curtain, and a statuette or cast
in the corner will not have so much prominence as the
painter himself seated in the middle of the room at his
easel. Again, in a battle-piece the soldiers at the sides
and at the back are inferior in every respect to those
in the central foreground; and this is so because the
artist, consciously or unconsciously, recognizes the
cardinal value of certain objects above others of sec-
ondary worth. And this leads us to the further con-
* "That's the difficulty about portrait-painting-to give the
draperies character and fitness and keep them subservient to the
head."-Wm. M. Hunt,
272
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
sideration of the suppression or mere suggestion of
details in a picture, and of the exaggeration of the
leading parts.
The cuttlefish is supposed to have the ability
of beclouding the water about him and in the
darkness of it escaping from his enemies. Many
a writer (especially if of German extraction and
writing on æsthetics) has a similar though less happy
ability of so befogging his ideas with a cloud of
words that his readers are bewildered and lose the
point at issue. This may happen to the painter
if he deal extensively in elaborated details; for too
much gold, silver, and precious stones upon the
royal robes will distract the attention from the king
himself. There can be but one idea in a picture; and
over-importance given to an inferior feature makes
of that a second idea. Confusion is the immedi-
ate result; for whatever does not add to the chief con-
ception detracts from it. Hence we cannot wholly
believe with the one Slade professor (Mr. Ruskin)
that that “art is greatest which conveys to the mind of
the spectator by any means whatsoever the greatest
number of the greatest ideas;" while, on the con-
trary, we may entirely agree with the other Slade
professor (Mr. Wyatt) that nothing appears "more
tedious and to be regretted than to see an artist
of real genius wasting his time in expressing by la-
borious imitation objects of entirely secondary im-
portance on portions of a picture upon which it is
far better that the attention of the spectator should
not be concentrated." Simplicity, not complexity,
of expression.
273
is an attribute of all genius; and the fewer forms
the painter can use, the purer will be his art, and
the stronger it will appear. Moreover, the attain-
ment of great ends with slight means is always a
matter of admiration with us, for it raises the idea of
power in the producer. We appreciate that which
is done strongly yet easily; while the greatness
which consists in the elaboration of little things is
always a mark of weakness. If detail means nothing,
it should be suppressed entirely; and this may be
done in full sympathy with the "true to nature"
doctrine, for atmosphere and point of view at the
painter's will may make possible distinctness, faint-
ness, or obliteration. If it is of contributory value
and nothing more, it should simply be suggested.
And this power of suggestion is greater in every
branch of art than is generally supposed. The sim-
ple carol of a bird falling upon the ear of the prisoner
in the dungeon of Chillon "said a thousand things"
of beauty, and brought back his mind from madness.
A flower to the bed-ridden invalid is an instantaneous
reminder of the warm days of spring, the trees, the
meadows, and the soft south wind
'That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor."
In Our Mutual Friend the brief description of Rogue
Riderhood as he stands in the doorway of the lawyer's
office to give evidence against Gaffer, rubbing with
uneasy hand an old fur cap against the grain, tells
the man and his character better than a chapter of
I2*
274
PRINCIPLES of art.
words. And so it is in painting that often a dim out-
line, a blur upon the canvas, or a shade of color, may
contain more meaning than much finely wrought
work. Moreover, the suggestion does not detract
from more important things, while the elaboration
most certainly would. This suggestiveness may cor-
respond to Mr. Ruskin's generic truth; and his ex-
ample of the painting of the form of a leaf without
detailing the veins and stems of it is a good instance
in hand. It is truth, but not the whole truth: rather,
a line, a shade, a mass, which the eye may grasp and
fill out by the aid of the imagination. If we look at
an object ahead of us, we are not blind to objects on
either side of us, but these latter are apparently
blurred. We see them indistinctly, yet there is enough
about them to suggest what they really may be.
Painting reproduces upon flat surface, not things them-
selves, but their appearance; and it may be safely as-
sumed that what has been called the "blotesque
style of painting is not very far from the apparently
real state of things. Suppose ourselves to be actually
watching from a neighboring field the rhythmic
motion of The Sower; suppose our eyes focused upon
him (as they would be): should we see clearly the dis-
tant hill, the wagon, and the streaked sky, or should
we see them dimly and suggestively as Millet has
painted them? The painter is true to appearances,
and presents nature subjectively, not objectively—as
it is seen by him, not as it is in reality. Every pic-
ture, whether in art or in nature, has what may be
called its sun-that point of interest where the sight.
"
OF EXPRESSION.
275
is focused and where all values are concentrated; and
to distribute the attention by giving as much impor-
tance to cleavages of rock and to leaves of trees as to
sunsets and cloud-effects is not true to our observa-
tion of nature, and is false to every principle of art.
They are of minor consequence in the one, and should
be so in the other. Suggestiveness presented to the
beholder's imagination will give them the place they
are entitled to without depreciating from others of
higher position.
Special emphasis or accent laid upon the chief ob-
jects in a picture by the suppression or mere sugges-
tion of minor features is perfectly true to nature as we
see it, and not only legitimate, but indispensable in the
production of effective work. The building up of one
by the pulling down of another is an old and well-
known method of procedure practiced by the ancients
not alone in art. Whether the building-up process
can be farther advanced by the exaggeration or dis-
tortion of the main objects or colors is quite another
question. Heretofore we have only negatively slurred
actual nature by omission and suggestion. That it is
justifiable to positively transgress natural law by vio-
lations of drawing, proportion, or color is much to be
doubted. It has been done by the masters; but then
the idiosyncrasies of the great never furnish prin-
ciples to any but the dunces. The Egyptians and As-
syrians exaggerated the figures of their kings to colos-
sal proportions. Phidias made Athena of gigantic
mold; and in other of his works where human figures
appeared with horses, the latter were diminished to
276
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
unnatural smallness so as not to detract from the
heroes. Holbein, Dürer, and Raphael, in their relig-
ious pictures, often knowingly sacrificed truth, and at
times even probability, for a similar reason; while
Michael Angelo and Blake, still bolder, did not hesi-
tate to throw their figures out of drawing for the pur-
pose of producing greater effects of power and motion.
This is permissible in men of their stamp, like many
other transgressions; but it is scarcely justifiable, and
in ordinary talent would be intolerable. It may safely
be set down as a vice which genius compensates for
by excelling virtues. Art should not unnecessarily
offend nature any more than morality or history;
moreover, positive distortion of forms is not pleasing
to the eye, nor is it conducive to the quick recogni-
tion of what they are or what they mean. It may be
true that "the artist can only represent what he
thinks by skillful modifications of what he may have
seen;" but this modification may be made by an ap-
parent change without a real alteration. Thus, as we
have instanced in negative exaggeration, the suppres-
sion or semi-suppression of many objects for the
benefit of one greatly enhances the importance of
that one. Its appearance may be preternatural,
when in reality it has undergone no positive change.
It retains its truth to nature, yet possesses an accented
brilliancy because it stands alone and is not dimmed
by other objects of comparison near it. This would
seem to be the better art. The poet is bounded by the
law of language, and the artist by that of form; both
laws have been sinned against, but unwarrantably.
OF EXPRESSION.
277
Forms are used for the purpose of conveying ideas;
and the simpler and truer (as we know the truth)
they are, the easier will they be comprehended, no
matter how great the idea. The grandest revelation
ever brought to the human mind came in the simple
form and language of the Gospels, and it were well
if all art and all life would emulate that simplicity.
We should conclude, then, that the aim of painting
is to convey a beautiful pictorial idea; that the mate-
rials used in accomplishing it are the forms of nature
as they appear to us; and that the combination of
both in expression completes the work of art. This
unity brings up to mind again the simile of the wheel.
Neither the idea nor the hub, neither the forms nor
the spokes, may stand alone. It is only by the con-
centration of force on the central feature in both
cases that the perfect whole is made up.
CHAPTER V.
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
IMPERSONALITY is the negative stamp of the many
millions who live through life and never attain more
than the mediocrity of achievement.
The great
masses of mankind, commonplace in thought and
conventional in deed, move from the cradle to the
grave and leave no record of their coming or their
going. The world heeds them
"As the Seven Seas might heed a pebble cast."
For though they fall in countless numbers, the great
surface is ruffled but for a moment, and then all trace
is obliterated. History is made by the acts of indi-
viduals. These few, like the many, are human in
that they resemble humanity; but they are likewise
individual in that they resemble none but themselves.
The man of superior mental strength who rises above.
his fellows, who sees clearer, farther, truer, who
originates and creates, is called a genius, and his
expression is called his individual style. In a na-
tion its men of genius, though they may be different
in part, if united in general purpose establish what
is known as a national style. This applied to the
different branches of knowledge produces national
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
279
history, which is always distinct as compared with
that of other nations.
The nationality of art, as has been suggested, lies
not in the choice of native subjects, but in the pe-
culiar manner of viewing, estimating, and judging all
subjects, and in the further manner of treatment. We
have no difficulty in distinguishing German art from
French art, nor in noting the difference between the
Spanish-Roman school and the Pre-Raphaelite school
of England. The subjects chosen may be widely dif
ferent, or they may be the same, they may be located
in the past or in the present: yet we are not deceived.
The Madonna of the Germans and Dutchmen is one
thing, and that of the Italians and Spaniards quite
another. The thought and treatment are radically
different. Contrast the Crucifixions of such repre-
sentative men as Mantegna, Holbein, Velasquez, and
Rembrandt, and the distinction will become appa-
rent at once. This will apply to the artist as well as
to the nation; though in the former the choice of sub-
ject, as it varies from others of his class, may be taken
as indicative of individual thought. It may be well,
however, to note a difference between this individ-
uality and that which has often been mistaken for it
-eccentricity. Great men differ in their views, and
not infrequently inferior men do likewise. There is
an individuality of greatness, and an eccentricity of
foolishness; and though great men are often eccentric,
yet eccentric men are not necessarily great. We are
not treating of the simply odd or the grotesque. A
man who may be recognized by extravagance in
280
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
tricks of the pen or of the brush is very different from
the man known by singleness of thought and expres-
sion.
In the artist, individuality is not necessarily a dis-
play of his power, but of his thought and feeling as
well. Genius, plodding, not in the beaten path of
others, but in a new field of action, discovers first some
hidden beauty. Then looking about for a manner of
conveying an idea of it to the world, the discoverer
finds the conventional manner of expression inade-
quate, and he originates a style of his own. Thus,
when presented to the world, there is a new idea, a
new subject, a new expression; and in each of these
the peculiar power or passion of the artist is dis-
played. At first they startle us. New things usually
do, for we do not fully comprehend them. It is the
fate of greatness to be misunderstood, and we gener-
ally succeed in misunderstanding and abusing an in-
novation upon our conventional ideas until long after
the innovator has passed away. Then after years of
familiarity, when we have grown more appreciative
of the work, we change our opinion of the man, call
him a neglected genius, and place him among the
nation's immortals. The history of the world is a
confirmation of this, beginning with Homer begging
his bread in the cities that afterward quarreled for
the honor of his birthplace, and shown in this present
century in our estimates of Millet and Corot, who
were at first despised and are now glorified to ex-
travagance.
The variance in men is but a difference in the ca-
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY. 281
pacity to think and feel. The quality and quantity
of thought in the person shapes the action of the in-
dividual. The leaders of mankind are marked by
mental strength, and their power to do is their in-
centive to dare. The might of the eagle urges him
upward beyond the uttermost limits of the feathered
tribe, and the power of genius drives the poet and
painter into unknown realms, and into rarer atmos-
pheres than common life may breathe. Again, these
leaders of men differ widely from one another. Art to
Phidias was a matter of form; to Titian, a matter of
color; to Corot, a matter of feeling. How widely
varying they are! Yet who shall say that each is not
a genius? and who shall deny the unapproachable in-
dividuality of each? It is in the nature of genius to
be peculiarly itself, and to follow a separate vein of
thought and action. If Turner, Corot, and Rousseau
could be brought together and placed before one.
scene in nature and induced (each by himself) to
paint what they saw before them, it cannot be doubt-
ed that all three of the canvases would be true rep-
resentations of the scene; but they would not be
alike. Each would be treated from the peculiar
point of view of its painter. Thus in one we can
imagine an emphasis of sky, in another an emphasis
of light, and in the third light and shade, mass and
body of trees; yet they would all be pleasing, through
the difference of thought in the men. To Michael An-
gelo a woman's face was nothing if not thoughtful;
to Raphael, nothing if not beautiful; to Correggio,
nothing if not animate with life. Each saw truly,
282
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
yet peculiarly and singularly. And the record of
variations includes all art and all life. Homer con-
ceived existence heroically; Dante, ecclesiastically;
Milton, religiously and supernaturally. Byron, again,
saw its darker side; Shelley, its intellectually-beauti-
ful side; and Scott, its more romantic side. To take
up and read their works is simply seeing the world
as they saw it. A shift from the one to the other
is like the revolution of a kaleidoscope, a com-
plete change of view. And for this we cannot be
too thankful, since it is but the diversity of genius,
the difference in thought, that makes painting and
literature enjoyable. If these great minds had all
run in the same channel, as we are given to un-
derstand great minds do, and if they had all fol-
lowed, not the promptings of their own conscious-
ness, but that sine qua non of excellence called
"truth to nature," imagine the monotony of star-
ing at the same page and canvas! All would then
be alike, and all would be similar to what we our-
selves might see in nature. What would be the ne-
cessity, then, of the poem and the painting? But
the human mind is chainless, boundless, free; Prome-
theus-like it peoples the world with countless con-
ceptions. The monotony is broken, the mechanism
of convention vanishes, and we look forth to see a
panorama of life passing before us.
We recognize
the scenes as natural, but a kind of nature we have
never seen before. In other words, we are brought
to know the vision of genius. The new sight pleases
us, the new thoughts are our admiration, and the
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
283
new expression excites our wonder. And, after all,
what is it in the poem or the picture that we admire
if it be not the man and his thought-the very indi-
viduality that marks him apart from mankind? It is
the master shining through his work that pleases us,
and the impress of his genius that we feel.*
Individuality is seen not alone in the thought, but
in the subject chosen to convey that thought; and
here, again, appears variety. Ariosto, Molière, Byron,
Tennyson, all treat of love; but mark the difference
in their lovers. Contrast the Fausts of Marlowe and
Goethe, or the Mephistopheles of either with the Satan
of Milton. The main ideas are not dissimilar, but the
forms in which they appear most certainly are. Each
in his peculiar way chooses the subject best fitted to
embody his thought; and in the nature of genius,
which, even at its height, is ever limited within itself, it
could not possibly be otherwise. Men act as they must,
not as they would; and though one may be greater
than another, yet they occupy separate spheres of ac-
tion, and each in his place is worthy of admiration.
With equal ease do we recognize the different subjects
of the painters. Neither the thought nor its expres-
sion is necessary to tell at a glance the figures of Fra
Angelico. Whatever may be his ideas, we know what
forms he will choose for their portrayal. So, again,
from a distance we recognize the healthy-looking peo-
* "Of every work of art we may truly say that its chief value
consists in the personal character of its author.”—Véron, Æsthetics,
284
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
ple of Rubens and the muscular-limbed, serious-faced
characters of Michael Angelo. It is quite impossible
to make a mistake about the classical line of David,
or not to know the peasant-figures of Bréton and
Millet. They are as apparent as the Endymions of
Keats or the toiling poor of Robert Burns. The drift
of thought in Keats can find no expression save in
classic form, and the poetry of peasant-life remains
unsung if the singer be not born to the peasantry.
These peculiar signs as displayed in subjects chosen,
by which we learn the bent of individual minds, are
what may be called ear-marks of genius; and yet they
are not vices, as many suppose. While the skill of even
the greatest is limited, success would better be at-
tained in one thing than failure experienced in many.
The marks of genius become vices only in the counter-
feiters. We see not alone the perceptions and style
of an artist copied by his school of followers, but his
subjects likewise. Thus Michael Angelo appears in
the Carracci; Raphael, in Guido and Carlo Dolci; and
Millet, in the hundreds of young students at Paris
who are now painting the blue-frocked and wooden-
shoed peasantry of France. Originality, even though
eccentric and mannered, is admirable; but imitation
is ever contemptible. And why is this latter true if
not because the man-the individual-is absent?
But possibly the individuality of genius never makes
itself quite so manifest as in its expression. Its note
is always clear, distinct, decisive. The same thought
may have occurred to many men, yet be of different
value owing to its treatment. Many in history have
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
285
meditated upon death from a suicide's standpoint—
Phædra, Pelopia, Cleopatra, Cato, Hamlet. They
all may have had similar reflections regarding it, but
their interpreters have translated them differently.
If Petrarch treats of love, we recognize the worshiper
to whom love is a mediæval creed; if Shelley treats of
it, we are made to know the hymnist of ideal devotion;
if Byron, we have all the fire of a purely human pas-
sion. Again, the individual is identified by the smaller
details of his treatment, much as is a bird by its note.
If one should take up a book of poetical quotations.
and read at random, it would be an easy task to name
many of the different authors from their rhythm and
choice of words. The geniuses of the world become
known to us in the same way as acquaintances on the
street. There is something singular about their ap-
pearance that separates them from their kind, and that
singular something may be called individuality. We
like some of our associates better than others because
they have qualities different from the majority; and
we like genius for a similar reason. As we recognize
Macaulay, Taine, or Carlyle by sound, so we may tell
Holbein, Rembrandt, or Delacroix by sight. The
veriest rustic in art may learn to know the masters as
he does the letters of the alphabet-by their peculiar
and distinct appearance. Take the imaginary case
we have cited of Turner, Corot, and Rousseau paint-
ing the same landscape. Should we have any dif-
ficulty in distinguishing one from the other by the
various treatments of sky, light, and trees? Turner
would very likely paint everything in the view, even
286
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
to rock-cleavage and leaf-vein. Corot and Rousseau
would do nothing of the kind, but rather concentrate
strength on light and shade and color. Look, again,
at the Crucifixions, and the difference in line, mass,
and brushwork will mark apart the robust, muscular
Christ of Rubens from the delicate and refined Christ of
Van Dyke, the physically weak and spiritual Christ of
Fra Angelico from the purely human and anatomical
Christ of Bonnat. Color is but another element by
which we may recognize the individual.
It is only
a means of expression, like line and mass, yet it
speaks volumes regarding the artist. It unfolds his
tastes, his views, his beliefs, his aspirations. And here,
as in ideas, subject, and form, we are able to dis-
tinguish the artists as we do the flowers of the
field. All things of earth are modeled after their
kind; yet unto some are given such emphasis of
qualities that instantly we recognize their superiority
over their companions. Thus it is with man; and they
who excel in mental strength, though human, are yet
individual; and though men, they are yet superior
men.
A picture is at best but an autobiographical state-
ment: and it is the man and not the facts that may
awaken our admiration; for, unless we feel his presence
and know his genius, the picture is nothing but a
collection of incidents. It is not the work, but the
worker; not the mold, but the molder; not the paint,
but the painter. Imitation, and even simple truth to
nature, is an elimination of the individual that deadens
the whole, for the soul of creation is the contribution
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
287
of the creator and is not found in simple forms. The
perceptions, actions, emotions of the man are as
patent on the face of the canvas as in the poem.
Both are revelations of the inner life. To read books
is to become personally acquainted with the authors
of them, to enter into their choice thoughts, to
discuss and talk with them, to admire them. We sit
at the table with Plato, Confucius, and Zoroaster; we
rise and walk with Rabelais and Cervantes; we
commune at night with Ossian, Emerson, or Chateau-
briand. Each in turn reveals himself in his writings.
Not alone the nation, but the individual, writes his
autobiography in three books: the book of his deeds,
the book of his words, and the book of his art. The
first, as Mr. Ruskin, whose figure we are using, tells
us, may be compelled and therefore not indicative of
true character; the second may be false and again
not representative; but the third proceeds from the
impulses of the full heart. Art alone tells truly the
character and genius of its producer. If all the life
of Michael Angelo known to history were swept away,
we yet could judge his nature from his works. The
solitary figures of the Sibyls and the Prophets with
their sad eyes and heavy brows betray the lone and
gloomy master, and in the Moses we see the passion
and fury of a Titan suppressed within an exterior of
stone. Consciously or unconsciously, people paint
themselves upon the canvas. They mold the world
upon their own thoughts, and that which they have
known, suffered, and endured speaks out until the
picture becomes but a record of the artist's life. The
288
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
elegant Leonardo, accustomed to the most courtly
surroundings, appears in the noble faces and majestic
figures of the Last Supper; Van Dyke, the polished
gentleman and courtier, shows his refinement and
delicacy in the faces of his portraits; and in the
figure of The Sower toiling on among innumerable
difficulties we see the prototype of Millet·
Millet the peasant, battling heroically against the
stubborn world.
even
This is applicable not to figure-pictures alone, but
may be traced through landscapes, although in a
slighter, more uncertain manner. "He best can paint
them who shall feel them most." . Courbet's stormy
skies betray the turbulent revolutionist; the light of
Father Corot is symbolic of the soft radiance of the
man's life; and the sun of Turner in solitary splendor
was but the echo of a mind "unstooping to the baser
crowd "-a life and an art both unapproachable.
"One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,
Or sanctify the canvas till it shine,
With beauty far surpassing all below,
Transfused, transfigured, and the line
Of Poesy which peoples but the air
With thoughts and beings of the mind reflected
Can do no more."
A word regarding the reverse of individual expres-
sion in both art and literature, or that which goes by
the pseudo-metaphysical title of "objective treat-
ment." Aside from its being entirely out of keeping
with the spirit of the age, and the impossibility of
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY.
289
ever attaining more than approximate objectivity, it
is false to every principle of art as we now understand
it. Poetry is not a dictionary of facts, nor painting a
physiological, geological, or botanical encyclopedia.
The wood in the forest and the marble in the quarry
are facts; but something more than these is required
to make the cathedral and the palace. The genius of
man must enter and remain in the work. The oblit-
eration of human thought and feeling leaves but
mechanical exactness: and this is what the believers
in objective treatment admire and seek after. They
are more familiarly known under the name of “real-
ists;" and a general definition of them would be, those
who believe in the total absence of the author and
painter except as a person who puts the facts of nature
together as he finds them, and presents them to the pub-
lic in that shape. In literature the lesser writers im-
agine they are objective when not referring to them-
selves in the first person singular; while the inter-
mediate poets and romancers become so by going the
rounds of the people note-book in hand, after the man-
ner of Daudet, and putting down actual sayings and
conversations as they hear them, to be afterward tran-
scribed in book-form. This may be truth to nature,
but it is not literature; and the literal imitation of facts
may be photography, but it is not painting. Art is a
matter of ideas; and those who possess them cannot
escape the bias of their own minds, and must express
them. So soon as they are set forth, more or less of
the artist's individuality is displayed and forms a
part of the work. It cannot be left out of considera-
13
290
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
tion; and to separate the poet from the poem, the
painter from the painting, is an impossibility unless
the man convert himself into a lens and become a
photographer of the good, bad, and indifferent alike.
All that is Homeric is Homer; all that is Miltonic is
Milton; all that is Shakspearean is Shakspeare.
Thrust aside the individuals, and the rest is but
"leather and prunello." The man lives in his art as
the soul lives in the body. Strike out the one, and
the other is but worthless clay.
Painting, as we have attempted to maintain, is but
a symbolic language for the eye, and is analogous to
poetry, a language for the ear.
"Great art is pro-
duced by men who feel acutely and nobly, and it is
in some sort an expression of this personal feeling."
The author of Modern Painters never wrote a truer
sentence; although as a believer in "truth to nature"
it is a large concession for him to make. Nothing
great was ever created that did not emanate directly
from a great mind. Words, facts, forms, what better
are they in themselves than the wedges that make
up the cuneiform ideograms? Utterly vapid and
meaningless rubbish! Yet when touched and put
into place by the master-hand there is scarcely any-
thing too lofty to be expressed by them. What,
then, do we value-the forms that express or the
idea which is expressed? And what is the idea but
the expression of this "personal feeling"? Given the
thought, we shall have no difficulty in recognizing
the thinker. The more we see of him and of his
ideas, the better we may like them; but sweep them
OF THE ARTIST'S INDIVIDUALITY,
291
both off and present us with pure imitation of reality,
and immediately our interest ceases.
Art is man's language for the expression of the
beautiful, and nature furnishes him the words of that
language. The former is dependent upon the latter;
but nature is passive, while the active principle—the
sublime thought and the glowing fancy-is the con-
tribution of the artist. In the conception of genius
lies the chief strength of art. It is this that we seek,
this that pleases us; and the longer we live and the
higher we rise in the scale of creation, the better we
shall appreciate the matchless beauty of the mind-
that indefinable something which connects us with a
spiritual world.
THE END,


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